The books
How do you think up all these new murders?
I often get the idea of a murder from the motive. It’s the motive that I find interesting, so that’s almost always where things start – an idea about why someone does something so terrible as to kill another human being.
Where do you get the names of all your character from?
Names are actually a bit tricky. You often have a bunch of names at the top of your mind which tend to recur. But sometimes I actually just flick through the telephone directory to find names that I appeal to me.
What do the locals of Fjällbacka think about you killing them off?
They seem to be taking it in their stride! I was a little nervous about how it would be received, but they’ve only ever been really positive about the books. I was awarded “Fjällbackian of the Year” in 2004, which was a great honour! I often get asked how many residents of such a small village I can kill off without totally undermining my credibility, and I usually answer: “with 1,000 residents and an average of two murders per book, I can write about 500 books before I run out of people!”
Patrik’s partner Erika features prominently in your books. She’s an author and writes crime novels. Might she be you alter-ego, perhaps?
I deliberately made Erica five years older than me so that we wouldn’t be that similar. But she’s borrowed a lot from me as it is, no doubt about it. More than anything, she’s borrowed a whole load of experiences, such as post-natal depression.
When you wrote The Ice Princess, did you have someone read your manuscript before you sent it away to be published?
I bit that potentially humiliating bullet and decided to hand it around to quite a few people: some members of my family, some good friends whose judgement I trusted, and Gunilla, who’s the aunt of my friend Bella and who’s worked at the book fair for many years and has a great deal of experience of the publishing world. They all made comments, which I took into careful consideration.
I read and edited my manuscript myself about seven or eight times. I think it’s extremely, extremely important to submit a well-edited draft. Don’t skimp on this if you want to get published.
And they told me things that they’d noted in the manuscript as well, such as “On page 78, I don’t get how Patrik can suddenly realise that…” – you get the picture. Typing errors, grammatical errors and so on I got back marked on the script itself.
So all in all, my advice is: EDIT, EDIT, EDIT
And if you think it’s embarrassing to have someone else read your manuscript, remember that you’re doing this because you’re hoping to get published and to have a sizeable proportion of your population as your readers!
How did you come up with the idea for The Ice Princess?
The Ice Princess started with an idea that had been germinating for a couple of years, ever since I heard a report on the TV news. It was about the limitation period for murder in Sweden (25 years). I started to wonder about what happens when the expiry time approaches, whether it triggers a whole series of processes – in the victim’s family and friends as well as in murderer, who’s still at large. This then became the basic idea of the novel.
I decided later during my crime writer’s course to write about Fjällbacka after having been advised by my teacher Peter Gissy to “write about the environment with which you’re most familiar”. It was also obvious to me that the story should be set in the winter, since most people know Fjällbacka as a summer place. It was fun to show people the other side of the village. The season also matched the kind of mood I wanted to create: of people that had closed down, frozen up, and shut themselves off because of something that had happened a long time ago. Since then, I’ve always had a link between the season and the atmosphere I’ve wanted the book to convey.
Erica was my first character. I knew that noooo waaaay was I going to write yet another cop story (well, I was spot on there!), and that my principal character was going to be a woman and a writer. But part way into the book I realised that it wasn’t easy having a private person running around solving murders so – voilà – Patrik stepped onto the scene. And around him I assembled the rest of the gallery of figures at the police station.
The first of the secondary characters was Alex – the victim. She’s the actual hub of the book, around which all the others spread out like a fan. To be frank I can’t really remember, looking back, how particular characters come into being in my books...
And I wanted to make Erica and Patrik as “normal” a couple as possible. Not super-heroes, just nice people with everyday worries and love handles, and the same desires as we all have to reconcile work and home. And then it’s impossible to avoid drawing inspiration from within.
Personal
When did you decide to quit your job as an economist?
I was working at the energy company Fortum as product manager for telephony and internet when I went on maternity leave after the birth of my first son, Wille. When he was three months old, Fortum laid off a load of staff, and I was one of them. More than anything, I took this as just further confirmation that my calling in life was to be a writer. Following this, my other children came in quick succession, and I took maternity leave straight away after my daughter, Meja, arrived. During that time I just sat writing. By the time my maternity leave expired, I’d built up a platform from which I could make a living as an author.
What kinds of book do you read?
I’m a bit of a crime nerd. 80 per cent of what I read is crime fiction. My favourite writers include Peter Robinson, Reginald Hill, Andrew Taylor, Mari Jungstedt, Håkan Nesser and Åsa Larsson.
Were you ever a member of a book club?
The children’s book club and that one for Disney books. I’ve got a huge collection of children’s books, actually, which my own children are now enjoying. It’s fun to read them again with “adult” eyes. Barbapappa is total communist propaganda! :-)
You’re often very open in interviews. Where do you draw the line?
I guess where you draw the line for your privacy is up to you. I suppose I’m quite chatty and open-hearted as a person, and so it’d just be weird if I tried to be different towards journalists. But above all I’m just too boring to have anything much to root around in. So for my own part I don’t worry too much about all that. But when it comes to the kids we’ve got a lot of rules. For example, I never put pictures of them in my blog, and only paste up photos that have been published elsewhere. And most importantly of all, if the kids don’t want to be photographed, say, I never make them. No doubt there’ll come a time when they point blankly refuse – but so far they think it’s fun and they can be included if they want. I remember once when my daughter threw a fit when a photographer wanted to take some pictures of me without her for an interview with Cecilia Hagen. She just sat there, bawling: “Meja want to join in too!” I see no harm in that.
Books that you tried but gave up on?
Horse books! I tried to read horse books and magazines but they just gave me a headache... I’m the kind of person who thinks that horses are best between two burger buns. Just kidding! So animal lovers, please don’t swamp me with angry letters!
How do you remember all your ideas?
I’ve never collected little bits of paper and stuff like that with ideas on. I belong to the school that says that if I have an idea but forget it the next day, it wasn’t good enough. But if you do want to write things down, make sure to always carry a notebook and pen so you don’t have to keep track of all those fiddly little notes...
What was your first great reading experience? Everything, everything, everything! I read like CRAZY when I was little. And a proper mix it was too. I quickly came across my father’s Agatha Christie collection, and those I devoured. I must have read most of her books before the age of 11 or 12. My favourites were the Miss Marple stories. I also read lots of sagas – you know, those heavy volumes you get of Viking tales. I also had a lot of comics. I’d spend all my pocket money on them, mostly Agent X9, with a bit of Korak, son of Tarzan, the Phantom and so on thrown in. I also borrowed a lot of comic albums from the library if memory serves – Li’l Abner and Daisy May, and Prince Valiant are some of the titles that spring to mind. I also liked Elfquest. I’ve got a nice little collection of them, which are actually worth something; although I’m missing no. 1, which is the most valuable.
The Nancy Drew books also featured, of course, although I think I preferred the Mary Lou series. I thought they were much better than the Nancy Drews. I also went through a fantasy phase, with the obvious Narnia series and Lord of the Rings, of course, but also the books of Ursula K. Le Guin about a wizard called Sparrowhawk or something like that. When I got a little older I read The Valley of Horses, books by Jackie Collins, The Valley of the Dolls and things like that.... I also liked Sparre’s historical romances.
Some books from my childhood have really stayed with me, such as Goodnight Mister Tom and A Solitary Blue. And finally I have to mention Stephen King and Dean R Koontz in the context of my childhood reading experiences. Dear, oh dear, how I ploughed through their books!
How come you know so much about police work?
I’m lucky to have always had a rather nerdy interest in police work. So I’ve read a lot of fiction and non-fiction on the subject, which has given me a good ground to build on. Naturally I’m no expert in how things really work, but fiction doesn’t always have to be totally realistic. If you wrote a crime novel that was 100 per cent accurate as regards how a police investigation is conducted, your readers would probably drop off after ten pages...
But I’ve got some contacts who I can check details with, and real police officers at Tanumshede police station get to read my manuscript when it’s ready so that they can plug any holes they find in it.
Being an author
How did you start writing in earnest?
Since I never thought I could be an author, I studied to become an economist. But I really hated it. I did my best at work, but Sunday evenings would often find me sitting there with a painful knot in my stomach in anticipation of the working week ahead.
In the end, having got fed up with me going on and on about wanting to be an author, a friend found a course for me, which I was then given as a Christmas present by my husband, mother and brother. It was called “crime writing” and was organised by Ordfront writers’ association.
The course was brilliant. There were twelve of us – all women. They’d made it women only in an attempt to increase the number of female crime writers! Needless to say, men can take the course now...
For three weekends in Göteborg and under the tutorship of crime writer Peter Gissy, we studied the noble art of crime writing. The course covered a great deal of the craft that I’ve since benefited from, but what I mainly got from it was the feeling, for the first time, that it IS actually possible to write a book – a crime novel. It’s not some weird hocus-pocus but the product of a lot of hard work. I actually started to write The Ice Princess during the course. Two of us from that group have since been published.
It took me ages to complete The Ice Princess. I’d written 50-60 pages when all of a sudden I was struck by a crisis of confidence, and thought that “this is just a load of shit that no one’s ever going to want to read” and put it aside for a couple of months. Then my writing-lust returned, I wrote another 60 pages, and had another attack of nerves… When I then fell pregnant with my son, I realised that if the book was ever going to be ready, it would have to happen before he was born. I spent the entire summer of 2002 with my nose to the keyboard, and in August the manuscript was ready!
How long had you wanted to be an author for?
My whole life! At least for as long as I can remember. Even at the age of four or five I was drawing little stories, which I then tied together into books. On one occasion I mass-produced a whole basket of little books which I carried up to the old people’s home in Fjällbacka to distribute to the residents there…
You have an agent. What do they do?
I can’t really say how other agents work but in Sweden Nordin Agency is one of the few that represent their authors abroad as well as at home. This means that they negotiate contracts with the foreign publishing houses, represent me in Sweden and act as my spokesperson in my dealings with my publisher on things like contracts and marketing.
How have you had time to write books after having two children?
God knows. When I look back at it, I can’t really remember how I could have written my books. In some way, the past few years are one big blur. And my post-natal depression didn’t make things easier. I’d sometimes sit there, blubbering and writing, but what I’ve always tried to keep in mind is that this is me realising my dream, and all the hard work is worth it.
The writing
How do you go about writing a book?
It all starts with a little tiny idea. In the case of for example book number five The German Child it was a gravestone in Fjällbacka cemetery that I always found particularly fascinating – it’s the one that appears on the Swedish cover. From the image of the gravestone, the idea matured enough for me to think about victim, motive and murderer – without these three factors, I can’t put pen to paper.
I write up what I have in a Word document as a synopsis. At first, I have little more than a few lines of thoughts and ideas. Then I have the synopsis as a living document. I start to write, and as I do, I get more ideas about the character and plot development. As soon as I come up with something, I note it down in the synopsis.
After this, the first fifty to seventy pages are the hardest to write. It’s then that I have to “find” the story and sketch out all the characters – well most of them, at least; some can come in later. But the basic gallery I have to establish. Then things don’t really take off until I’ve written about a hundred pages. Until this point, I can write a maximum of five pages or so a day, and then the number gradually increases. When I’ve written about a hundred and fifty pages, I start to get a clear enough idea of the story to pick up speed and write an average of ten pages a day. On a good day I might write even more, perhaps fifteen or twenty pages. That feels great. It’s like my fingers are moving of their own accord. But this is rare.
Much of my stories comes during the process of writing. I certainly don’t have the book clear in my mind when I start, and always find myself scratching my head as I press the first key, thinking, “how the hell am I going to fill about 300 sides of A4 on the basis of this little idea?” But somehow I always do. The story and the characters in it take on a life of their own.
How do you go about editing your books?
First, I finish the book without giving a thought to editing. I never edit as I go.
I then print it out, sit down and read it from beginning to end, while making notes in the text on what needs correcting: words, grammar, repetitions, double spaces, bizarre syntax, wrong names and so on. Beside me I also have a notebook, where I jot down things I need to check up on.
How do you find the peace and quiet to write?
I’ve got no foolproof advice on that. As you know, I wrote my first book while I was working as a full-time economist, and the second while I was expecting and on maternity leave. But to be honest, I’m not sure how... Somewhere in the general chaos I clearly found the time to write. I wasn’t that organised a writer during that time, but just got down to it when the opportunity arose. It’s a matter of priorities for me. I’ve always put my writing first, to the detriment of things like socialising, cleaning and so on.
You can’t just sit and wait to get the peace and quiet to write, just like you can’t wait for inspiration to strike. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: all you can do is PUT YOUR BUM ON A SEAT! Nothing else works. It’s not as if some Zen Buddhist calm will suddenly descend on you until the words start to flow... I’ve never felt an inner calm like that, and often it’s stress, anxiety, and general performance fervour that pile up on top of me when I sit down to write. And joy, once I get into my stride. But I don’t always do that. However, I also have to be honest and say that it obviously makes things easier to have a supportive partner. When I was writing The Ice Princess, my ex-husband said to me, “Just get writing and leave the dishes and laundry to me.” He always supported me in my writing and my career. And that’s an important factor!
To sum up: Don’t go around waiting and waiting and waiting for all the external factors to fall into place so that you can start writing. This will never happen, and you’ll never get anything written. That’s just how it is. You just have to sit down and do it. Now. Today. Not on Monday. Not when you’ve tidied up. Not when the kids have grown up. Not when there are two Thursdays in the week... NOW!
Do you have any little rituals when you’re working?
My ritual is pretty much to pace around the computer like some brooding hen, finding all sorts of excuses not to sit down and work. But I always make sure, for instance, to have pot of fresh coffee and a full cup by my side when I start. And I usually sit in the sitting room in front of the TV or in the kitchen with earphones on listening to music. I don’t like working in silence. I also lay a blanket on the table in front of the computer to soften the point of contact between the surface and my wrists. As I write, I find that my wrists start to hurt more and more, and towards the end I consider the Liza Marklund solution – to splint them up while writing. But it doesn’t really work for me, so I just grit my teeth and keep going in the hope that my wrists won’t pack up before I reach the last line.
I can also neglect my nails while writing. Me, who’s otherwise so terribly vain about my nails! So I have to just completely forget about them during a period of writing. Sitting pressing computer keys all day long dries out the nails, and they usually chip and break and get worse and worse. (Sure, I can oil them but, come on, who can bother with all that in the evenings?)
But other than this, I can’t really think of anything else I do when I write. I don’t really have any “idiosyncrasies”. I just write.
But perhaps I should do like Dan Brown. Hang upside down in gravity boots. And do sit-ups when the clock strikes the half hour…