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
heart lucky my-heart
In my heart Im just a lucky waitress.
sophisticated enough reader
Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.
london grew feeding
I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy.
confused spring hate
I hate it when I'm reading a comic, and the dialogue looks like stickers stuck on top to explain what's going on. For me the best is when your eye goes in a certain point and moves through the composition and then springs out on the dialogue, or gets confused in the image and then goes to the dialogue for an explanation.
people feminism phds
I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.
thinking negative flaws
I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.
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.
nice air people
We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.
school warrior men
I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.
fun children writing
I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.
character trying
Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.
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.
witty real crime-novels
There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.
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.