Jaffareadstoo....: 📖 Sunday Brunch with Jaffareadstoo ~ Brian Price

On this quiet Sunday morning why don't you put the kettle on, make your favourite breakfast and settle down for Sunday Brunch with Jaffareadstoo

I'm delighted to welcome Brian Price to Sunday Brunch

Welcome, Brian. What favourite food are you bringing to Sunday brunch?

Well you can’t really have curry for brunch so I’ll settle for a free-range sausage sandwich on granary bread

Would you like a pot of English breakfast tea, a strong Americano, or a glass of Bucks Fizz?

Tea, please. I drink coffee to stay awake, not for pleasure

Where shall we eat brunch – around the kitchen table, in the formal dining room, or outside on the patio?

The patio if the weather’s good and the ambiance is quiet, otherwise around the kitchen table

Shall we have music playing in the background, and if so do you have a favourite piece of music?

Difficult - I like so much music. Favourite songs include Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’, BeBop Deluxe’s ‘Maid in Heaven’ and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘All along the Watchtower’ but they’re short and need to be loud. I’ll settle for Fairport Convention’s Liege and Lief album.

Which of your literary heroes (dead or alive) are joining us for Sunday Brunch today?

Terry Pratchett

Which favourite book will you bring to Sunday Brunch?

Again, difficult. Probably the latest Poe and Tilly thriller by M.W. Craven.

Constable
2021

When you are writing do you still find time to read for pleasure? And is there a book you would like to read but haven’t had time for …yet!

Reading for pleasure is part of a writer’s job. I intend to read Philip Pullman’s ‘Book of Dust’ series but I’m waiting for him to write the final book, at which point I’ll re-read the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy within the sequence.

Where do you find the inspiration for your novels?

‘Fatal Trade’ came along after I won a competition, run by Crime Fiction Coach, for the best opening line for a novel. I then had to write the book! I’m not sure I get “Eureka” moments for a book but ideas occur to me that I think I can fit in to a story. I mentally file away stuff I’ve seen in the media, from science, and from reading – perhaps a phrase or a small nugget which could be used as a plot point, or a major issue which I feel I need to write about. One such issue appears in Fatal Trade – but to tell you which would be a spoiler

Have you a favourite place to settle down to write and do you find it easier to write in winter or summer?

I write in my study which is a loft conversion looking out over a cemetery. Neither winter or summer is easier, although there’s more noise from mowers and strimmers in the summer and the hammering of rain on the roof sometimes drives me into another room. I review drafts in a different place.

When writing to a deadline are you easily distracted and if so how do you bring back focus on your writing?

I’m pretty good with deadlines – I don’t hear them “whooshing past” as Douglas Adams described.

Give us four essential items that a writer needs?

Imagination, a good command of English, an enquiring mind and a decent laptop

What can you tell us about your latest novel or your current work in progress?

Fatal Trade is a gritty, twisty thriller which starts with the discovery of a man’s head on his ex-wife’s doorstep. DC Mel Cotton and her colleagues investigate and are pitched against a ruthless gang prepared to use murder, kidnapping and torture to maintain their hold in the local drugs trade. But where do they get the rest if their illicit income? At the same time, a former sex worker has infiltrated the gang to take bloody revenge on its leader - the man who trafficked her and put her in a Glasgow brothel when she was a teenager.

A sequel, Fatal Hate, will be published on the 12th April which deals with far-right terrorism, corrupt politicians and a group of unscrupulous perverts.