Regan and Carter. Remember The Sweeney, the classic cop series back in the seventies? Sadly, surnames are probably all Linda Regan and I have in common with TV’s arguably toughest double-act. We don’t do car chases, and we write rather than fight crime. Mind, I’d jump at the chance of delivering lines like, ‘Get your trousers on – you’re nicked.’ And my all-time favourite: ‘We’re the Sweeney, son, and we haven’t had our dinner.’ But I’m an author, not an actor. Unlike Linda Regan, who’s both.
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Regan: I write hard-boiled police procedural thrillers, set in South London. So far, they’ve all had a show-business theme. I didn’t set out to do that, it just happened, but they are quite a strong read.
Carter: Dead Like Her is certainly that. It’s about a serial killer who preys on Marilyn Monroe look-alikes. Tell me where the idea came from?
Regan: I played Marilyn Monroe on stage about fifteen years ago and when I was doing it I got a lot of very strange letters and scary things sent to me and said to me in phone calls at the stage door. I had a stalker who seemed to know where I was at every given hour. It completely terrified me. I was away touring, alone, in towns that I hardly knew and not only did I have a stalker but I had a whole string of lunatics who thought I was Marilyn Monroe. I was an actress just playing a role, but it got me thinking how hard a life Marilyn must have had. Then when I started writing thrillers I remembered all this, and how I was scared touring strange towns on my own, wondering if I was being followed, and wondering what I could do if I was. I mean, how would it sound if a woman walked into a suburban police station and said, ‘Excuse me officer, but I am being followed by a strange man who thinks I am Marilyn Monroe’? I remembered all that and thought it was a good basis for a thriller. The book has more layers now; as well as look-alikes, it’s about drugs, guns and importation of illegal immigrants.
Carter: You’re a successful actor. Why did you feel the need to forge a second career?
Regan: I’ve never really thought about writing as another career. I think the two are so closely linked. They’re both about creating characters and telling stories through the eyes of those characters. The nice thing about writing is I can play all the roles, and invent any that I fancy playing. I guess I wrote because I wanted a creative outlet. As an actor you have to wait to be asked to work, but as a writer you can do it all the time, you’re not waiting on the phone all day, hoping it will ring with an offer. I think a lot of actors write; it’s a natural partnership, I think.
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Carter: As an actress you’re part of a cast, a team player. As a writer, you’re on your own. What are your thoughts on that?
Regan: I have to admit, hearing that question I wonder if I am a secret schizo (I’m not even sure I can spell it…) but clearly both sides are in my personality. Often I long for solitude so I can retreat into my mind and write for hours. Then the other part of me is a people person. I love sitting round a table discussing plays and why and how things work, or listening to my girlfriends letting off steam. I particularly love going to dinner parties and listening to people talking; how old and new friends communicate. And I love the sound of laughter from an audience – that really is a high, an addictive one. My dad was a comic, and so I think I grew up listening to the audience with him. If they laughed, he was in a good mood. If the jokes went badly, so did our evening!
Carter: OK, you sit down and write your first novel. Was it a crime story?
Regan: It was a romance and so awful I buried it. I sometimes have dreams that it un-buries itself and comes chasing after me, the white paper looking like a ghost, and I wake up in a terrible state. If anyone ever read it, I would have to leave the country and change my name! I was writing for years before I wrote crime fiction
Carter: Did you always read it?
Regan: I didn’t always read crime. I got into reading it when I met my husband twenty years ago. [Linda’s married to the actor Brian Murphy]. I had, of course, read some, but he was an avid reader of crime fiction. I sort of expanded my knowledge of the genre basically to get his attention and have him get interested in me. I don’t know if it worked, but we do often sit like bookends reading for hours on end and we like the same writers.
Carter: So the novel’s completed – did you have immediate success or was it a case of, if at first…?
Regan: I am like King Bruce’s spider normally, but I have to say my first crime novel was picked up immediately. No one was more surprised than me.
Carter: Is your acting experience helpful for plots, characters, scenarios?
Regan: A big yes to all three. An actor’s hat is my biggest qualification as a writer. I recently did an MA in creative writing, and I found all the characterisation stuff exactly the same as I’d been taught as a student actress. It really is a marriage of jobs: creating characters who create stories. Ask someone to define a writer or an actor and the same definition could be used for either. I create characters and through those characters I tell a story. It’s as straightforward as that. Only difference is one performs and the other writes.
Carter: Do you work to an outline, a daily word count and a deadline?
Regan: I learned on the MA about working to an outline, but I don’t do that, or a daily word count. I panic when I get behind, but I write until I stop feeling inspired. Some days are better than others. Sometimes if I’m acting, I don’t write for a week or more, then I miss it terribly. But I also miss cameras and stages when I don’t perform.
Carter: If you get writer’s block how do you get over it?
Regan: I panic. And I do get it – like I get stage-fright, sometimes so badly I’m violently sick continuously. I met my husband that way though so it has compensations. We were acting opposite each other in a play and I paced the wings so much before the start, he grabbed hold of me one night and said I was going to wear the floorboards out. Not only that, he said I made him nervous just watching me, so he wrapped me in the big camel coat he was wearing to keep me still. It made me feel better and I stopped pacing the wings, and that’s how we fell in love. Now I’ve forgotten the question! Oh yes. Writer’s block is hideous. I wish I knew the answer to overcome it, but sadly I don’t.I just panic and that’s no help to anyone.
Carter: Performing seems part of a writer’s life nowadays. I’m thinking of panels, events, festivals. In theory you have a head start, or is that an assumption?
Regan: It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t admit that I’ve been in show-business since I was a child. I’ve done everything from stand-up comedy and presenting, to acting in everything from Shakespeare to pantomime, so one would think all that would help. In some ways it does, but some of the best speakers I’ve met are not in show-business but are doctors, sportsmen or politicians. Anyway, the thing I’ve learned is that some writers can do it, some can’t, some don’t want to, and some really hate public speaking. I think if a writer is basically a shy introverted being then it is wrong to push them into being anything otherwise. If they want, and can, talk fluently about their work then they are likely to do it well and that is fab for us as readers. Personally, I enjoy getting out and meeting other writers and readers. Since being published I’ve been taking workshops, and I love doing that: encouraging new blood. I think it’s so important to encourage younger people to have the confidence to write.
Carter: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?
Regan: I would say write from your heart. You can edit with your head, but if a subject empowers you, then it will empower the reader.
Carter: And what’s the greatest advice given to you?
Regan: The greatest advice I was given was that when someone says something unkind or puts your work down, it’s only their opinion. The next person may love it, so believe in yourself and never give in or up. I was once told by one who does professional appraisals that my work was un-sellable. It nearly crushed me. But I proved it not to be the case so, again, I say, never give up.
Carter: If you had to choose between the small screen and the blank screen which would it be?
Regan: I couldn’t, and wouldn’t. As long as I can write I will, and as long as people employ me to act, I’ll do that, too.
Carter: Ever fancied playing a hard-nosed DI who goes round shouting: ‘you’re nicked’?
Regan: Shut it!
Fair cop – the last bit’s journalistic licence…
For more information on Linda Regan visit her at
www.lindareganononline.co.uk
Maureen Carter is the creator of the Bev Morris detective series.
Published by Crème de la Crime, the sixth title –
Blood Money – is out now.
www.maureencarter.co.uk
I’I’ll Her acting career came first, with work on film, stage and radio; TV credits include Holby City, The Bill, and Minder. Linda landed the longed-for role of real life crime writer in 2006 with the publication by Crème de la Crime of Behind You! – first in the Banham and Grainger crime series. Passion Killers appeared the following year and this June saw the launch of Dead Like Her. Later in the interview, we explore how acting informs and influences her writing. First I asked Linda to describe her novels in just a few words.