Back in 2012 I met a fellow thriller writer, Martin Bodenham. His novel, The Geneva Connection, and my dark tale, The Silent Hills, became stablemates and we've tried to stay in touch ever since. I say tried because Martin gets around - as you'll see!
I recently caught up with him online and he recapped his writing journey for Strictly Writing.
How did you get into writing financial thriller
novels?
During the heady days of
the 1990s and the subsequent dotcom bubble, I was a corporate finance partner
with both KPMG and Ernst & Young, putting together Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) deals and
raising private equity for clients.
After that, I ran a private equity firm in London. I saw at first hand the tension between
greed and fear in investment banking.
They say write about what you know, so I guess it was natural for me to
look at the world of international finance for inspiration. I found plenty!
What are you up to now?
Last year, I moved to
the west coast of Canada where I write thriller novels based around finance and
crime. My first novel, The Geneva
Connection, was published in 2012 when I squeezed in the writing during the
evenings and weekends. On the back
of that book, I was able to sign up with a New York agent. Now I write full-time and my second
novel has just been published.
How do you find the process of writing for an
international audience?
It’s funny, but I
wrote my first novel with a UK audience in mind, but most of my sales were in
the US because that’s where my publisher was located. When the book went through the editing process, I had to
learn quickly about the language differences between UK and US English. That was not the difficult part,
though. It is the more subtle
differences that are hard to spot.
A turn of phrase we might use in the UK can have a completely different
meaning in the US. That is where a
good editor improves the quality of the final manuscript. Mine is based in the US, so she is well
placed to spot my errors and misuse of language. Moving to Canada last year has complicated things further as
it seems Canadians have some form of mid-Atlantic English of their own.
Was writing the second novel easier than the
first?
Yes and no. You learn a lot about technique and
plotting during a first novel.
That means the technical process is a little easier on each succeeding
project. However, the idea for my
first novel was swimming around my head for some time so, when it came to write
it, the story just spilled out onto the page. For my second novel, I had to go hunting for story ideas. I had to drop quite a number of them
before settling on my final choice.
One piece of advice I received from another published author was to make
sure you are absolutely happy with the outline plot before committing to
it. That was good advice considering
you have to spend the best part of a year to create a finished book.
What is your second novel about?
The book is called
Once a Killer and it is set in the world of hedge funds and M&A in New
York. The best way for me to
describe it is by sharing with you the blurb from the back cover:
Michael Hoffman has come a long way from his deprived childhood in
Chicago’s south side. Now he’s a young, successful partner in a major New York
law firm, handling some of its clients’ most prestigious M&A deals. With a
beautiful wife, and two young daughters who look up to him, he has built the
perfect life.
But Michael has a secret: one that goes back to his childhood; a secret
so dark it could destroy his family and brilliant career. Discovered by the
wrong people, it would certainly get him killed.
There is only one person who knows about his past, and he is a career
criminal who manages a low profile hedge fund, bankrolled by Eastern European
mafia money. Michael is safe, but only for as long as he agrees to feed details
of his firm’s deals to the fund so it can make millions from insider trading.
More information can be found on my author website: www.martinbodenham.com
Where do you get your ideas/inspiration from?
One thing I have
become is a people watcher. I
don’t mean that I go around staring at complete strangers, but I try to observe
how people react to situations.
What do they say and what expressions do they make to demonstrate their
emotions? As a writer, our job is
to show the reader what a character is feeling by describing their behaviour
and through the use of dialogue.
It is lazy writing simply to tell the reader a character was angry/
happy etc.
As for plots, they are
everywhere: newspapers, television, obituaries, even former work
situations. They say there are
only six stories to describe the human existence: love, revenge and so on. The trick is to find new ways of
telling them...
How do you stand out in the crowd?
As I said, there are
only so many stories. A writer
needs to find his own approach, perhaps by creating interesting characters or
by setting them in new environments.
There are not that many financial thrillers out there, so I guess I saw
that as my gap and opportunity to stand out. My inspiration was my favourite author, John Grisham who, as
a former lawyer, led the way with legal thrillers.
What’s next?
My third novel has
been written, but I need to take a break from it. I find taking a break from a story for three months or more
enables me to see it in a completely new light. Once I have revised it, then it will be time to send it to
my professional editor. You need
thick skin to take some of her comments, but the process really improves the
final product.
Martin Bodenham