Denise Mina
Denise Mina
Denise Minais a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also dabbled in comic book writing, having recently written 13 issues of Hellblazer. Since 2006, she has had two plays performed with successful reception...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
gay married terrified
I'm terrified to get married. I'm not getting married till my gay friends can.
class parent odd
My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.
jobs school law
If you went for a job interview in a Glasgow law firm, they used to ask you what school you went to. And that was a way of finding out what religion you were.
writing political stories
I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.
people want sells
None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.
reading murder-mysteries people
People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.
witty real crime-novels
There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.
book mean writing
Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?
shoes laughing degrees
I just got an honorary degree from Glasgow University, and I had to wear around very painful shoes so that I didn't laugh all the way through the ceremony because I felt like an outlaw.
real thinking voice
In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.
brother kids female
Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids.
children book reading
There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.
character trying
Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.
clever book writing
Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.