Robert Wilson, Crime Novelist

Ola!

I’ve just returned from an amazing writing retreat in magical Sintra, Portugal, led by Canadian editor extraordinaire, Allyson Latta.

The stunningly colourful Pena Palace, one of many palaces and castles in Sintra.

On the last day of the retreat Robert Wilson, award-winning, best-selling British author and his wife, Lucy, speak with us. Wilson, with intense eyes that gaze into yours when he speaks, towers above Allyson as she introduces him. Dressed in navy jeans and a navy shirt, he looks every bit the rugby player he used to be. He charmingly begins his talk by presenting each one of us with a plump, gorgeous orange from a tree he planted at his home in Portugal. He advises us to pierce the skin of the orange and soak in its tantalizing aroma. It smells almost too good to eat.

We’ve been reading his psychological crime thriller, The Blind Man of Seville, as it’s a great study of the ins and outs of character development.

“The search for exceptional characters comes from the world you know,” Wilson says. “We have to invent and the invention comes from your family, friends, people you’ve worked with…the men and women you’ve loved and didn’t love. All these compelling characters are inside you.”

Wilson knows it’s important to see characters change, but when speaking of Chief Inspector Javier Falcon, the middle-aged male protagonist in The Blind Man of Seville, and in three subsequent books, he said: “My biggest problem was how do I make a 45-year-old man change?”

You can bet all the women in the group laughed. And the answer? Through a traumatic incident. I won’t reveal any details, except to say that Javier Falcon is a brilliant name for this detective!

Still, while characters are huge in Wilson’s writing, he tends to begin his stories with place. “If I have the place inside me, I know everything else will come from that.”

He certainly had Seville, which he calls “one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” as the place before writing The Blind Man of Seville. “I always knew I’d write about Seville,” he said. His descriptions are brilliant; you can see the people, feel the celebrations, smell the coffee, the wine and the food.

“Towers of magenta bougainvillea, spectacular after the rains, tumbled down the white and ochre buildings. The bright blood-red of geraniums nodded through the black balustrades of the wrought-iron balconies. The smell of coffee and baking bread loafed in the quiet streets. The cavernous cool of narrow alleyways broke out into the warmth of open squares where the golden stone of ancient churches settled in silence.”

Wilson cautions that when a character demands to be something other than what we imagined, that we must let them run with it. “Always be ready to change, to go with it,” he said.

Wilson began his career as a travel writer but when that genre collapsed, his friend, a screenwriter, suggested Wilson write crime novels. He began by reading the great crime writers, including Raymond Chandler and George V. Higgins.

Wilson instructed us that getting an agent today is challenging, but crucial. He sent the first few pages of his first book to five agents, all five requested he send his full book. Luckily for him—and for us—one of the five took him on.

He described Lucy, as his perfect first reader. He listens to her and appreciates her constructive advice. After she has a read-through he rewrites. “Rewriting is where the magic happens,” he says.

Lucy attested to the fact Wilson is up every morning at 5:30 to write. He writes—in longhand—until about 1 p.m. every day. In the evenings he’ll often return to his work to do rewrites. He implored us to write every day.

Although many would-be novelists dream of their books being made into a movie, as two of Wilson’s have, he cautioned that unless your name is J.K. Rowling, you’ll have no control over the script. “Once you take the money, you realize the film has nothing to do with you. My book. Their film.”

Wilson graciously agrees to autograph copies of his books for us. When signing mine he asked what I'm writing. I told him memoir, that I know it’s difficult to find an agent and publisher unless you are a well-known person. He and Lucy quickly say they are huge fans of a British programme called Life Writing, stories of everyday people. He wished me well.