Get Booked – Jonathan Whitelaw, The HellCorp Series

Hello, I'm Hazel, and this is Get Booked for Women's Radio Station, a show all about books and writing which focuses on supporting women's and men's emotional well-being. I hope you're all well and ready to get booked. If you would like to sponsor Get Booked, please do get in touch with us via our website at womensradiostation.com, or you can email us directly at presenters@womensradiostation.com. Now today joining us in the studio is Jonathan Whitelaw, the author of many books, Hell Corp and The Man in the Dark, just to name a couple. Jonathan, hello. Hello, thank you very much for having me on, good to be here. It's great to have you here and it's quite nice to hear the Scottish accent. Oh, thank you very much. I'm no Sean Connery unfortunately, but I'll do as my wife says. Well, you know, I've got quite a lot of friends in Glasgow and I'm like, I'm not getting to see them, so it's nice. It's a bit like when you hear a I'm a northerner and I live down south, it's like when you hear a northern accent you're like, "Oh, it's like going home." Absolutely. As we always say up here in Glasgow though, the further south you go, the more north you get. That's one of our phrases anyway, or the one that I was always told, but yeah, there you go. I like that one, it's great. It's all relative. Yeah, it's been interesting because as we've been in lockdown, I've been watching a lot more Netflix and I started watching White Lines, which is based on characters from Manchester, and my accent has been all over the place, it's like no one's business. Anyway, I digress, we're here to talk about books. Absolutely, yeah, well, we could have plenty of accents, people put, you know, a lot of readers are always going to tell me that they put their own kind of local dialect and accents on the characters, even if that's not where they come from. I think it happens quite a lot in Scottish fiction, I think, And I think Scottish readers will always tend to have a, always tend to put that sort of Scottish accent on kind of lead characters, you know, so it doesn't matter if it's like the sort of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or indeed something Tartan Noir, they'll always come out, "Sounded like Scotch," as Alan Partridge famously said, yeah, absolutely. Do you know what, I get so invested in the books that I read that when I know that they're to have an accent, I quite often read them in that accent. Yeah, yeah, it's easily done, I suppose. It's, yeah, very, very easily done. I'm very, very guilty of— well, interesting that I said the sort of Lord of the Rings there. I'm terrible for having and picturing characters from movie adaptations when I read it, even before, even if I read the novel before it, you know. So Lord of the Rings, I can't read, I can't read the Lord of the Rings now without having, you know, Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen in the lead roles. Which is good and bad. I mean, you know, that's not a bad example of an adaptation that's been done right, but there's obviously plenty of them that haven't been, unfortunately. Do you know what, that's quite interesting because there's quite a few— I've been doing audiobooks as well during lockdown because it's like having a friend chat to you while you're cooking or doing whatever, and I like to kind of mix it up a little bit and It's interesting because when you hear their voices, I mean, some of the ones I've read by Donal Porter, I know exactly what those characters look like and I've never seen them anywhere. Yeah, I suppose it's the double-edged sword, isn't it, of kind of reading and literature, is that some writers will go into really, really minute detail in terms of how many freckles they have on their left forearm, and then you get writers that don't offer any description. Yeah, I actually found that I did a lot more of the description, kind of descriptive writing, when I was younger, when I was kind of really just starting out, and it didn't really work for me. It didn't work a great deal. I kind of feel that I'm a lot better balanced at it now. I suppose there's no right and wrong answer, obviously, with these types of things, because obviously Depends on reader's taste as well. Some readers like to have every kind of, you know, fine detail of a character painted for them, and that's who they picture. And a lot of others hate it, so it's different horses for courses, as they say. I did actually read a book the other day, and the author described this guy, and he was actually starting to date, and he'd gone on to one of the apps and I was like, if only he was really on that app, he sounds perfect for me. Oh dear, yeah, reality and fantasy mixing together, lovely. I did actually, I actually messaged her and I went, was this based on somebody? Because if it was, can you give him my number? Fantastic, there you go, that's it, 21st century literature, it's It goes way beyond the bookshelf. Doesn't it just? And quite interestingly, when I said before that I've been listening to audiobooks during lockdown, so I've liked to mix it up a little bit, and I do like reading books on my iPad, but I've really loved having the physical book because during lockdown, in terms of like issues that people have had with their mental health, the good— I mean, you sent your books through electronically and I've read Hell Corp, and the other One, I've got to alternate my books in between audio, physical book, and electronic, because too many electronic books, it means that you get the notifications on your phone, on your iPad, things like that. And then they can turn the notifications off, but we're not going to do that. No, no, I agree. And yeah, you know, that's the, that's the, the kind of again, talking about double-edged swords, is that the convenience that everyone always says about having books in e-format is that, of course, if you're going on holiday— not that any of us are going on holiday or have been in the last couple of months, but hopefully, hopefully back to it in the future— but you can take 20, 30, 40, infinite amount of books on a Kindle or all on the device. But of course, all it takes is for one email or one notification, exactly as you say, and the sort of the fantasy of it's broken. Yeah, it's— again, I don't know if it's my age. I'm 34, so I grew up with obviously physical books. But I also, the kind of formative time of when I was at university and before going to university, there was really the sort of spike in the electronic format. And Yeah, I think it all depends. I do a lot of review work and I get obviously kind of authors sending me books and stuff that they'd like me to read ahead of time, which is obviously a massive, massive privilege, and it'll depend. And I think any and every time I think I'm offered a physical book, then I would always take it. But, you know, sometimes there are deadlines looming that it's not convenient, or, you know, as as we've been talking about, obviously lockdown's been a big scupper for a lot of things. And actually, you know, some of the people that I know within the industry that have done such a fantastic job throughout lockdown, still getting books out, still getting, you know, publishing books, also getting them out to reviewers, they've been really going above and beyond, sometimes when the physical books aren't even there. So yeah, I think it's pros and cons, I think, for both of them. But yeah, I do agree, I think, you know, I don't think I've ever turned off notifications on my phone. To be perfectly honest with you, I probably don't know how, which is a really embarrassing admission, but it's true, you know. And do you know what? There's something else that I really like about the physical book, and it's going to sound a little bit silly, but I quite often read while I walk. All right, okay. I really like, I mean, I'm not going to do it, you know, in Covent Garden where it's busy, I'm going to bump into people, but sometimes if I know I've got to get, especially in lockdown because I didn't want to go on a bus. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, if you've got that, yeah, that kind of, you don't want to lose out on the reading time, no, I can appreciate it, yeah. I'm far too clumsy unfortunately, I don't trust myself to not walk into a tree or a lamppost. I don't trust you, Bruce, I'll be honest. I'll bet, I'll bet, I mean, I don't trust myself to not walk into trees and lampposts poles when I'm not reading and I'm completely concentrating on the pavement. Yeah, well, the thing is, I am quite clumsy, but I have been practicing walking with a book. But the thing is, if you walk into somebody and you're reading a book, they're not that bothered. If you walk into somebody and you're looking at your phone, you are gonna get sworn at. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird thing. I suppose it's that maybe cultural snobbery towards mobile phones. You could be walking reading, you know, Chaucer or Tolstoy or anything on your phone, but you might just get dismissed as being a social media hound where you can't put down your Facebook. So yep, that's it, it's the strange times that we live in. Isn't it? It's just trying to find are the right path for us, here, there, and everywhere, trying to get the most out of life. Absolutely. Now, talking about getting the most out of life, you're quite a busy bee, aren't you? Yeah, that's one way to describe it, yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's, yes, everything all the time, as the Eagles once famously sang, but I think they were perhaps thinking more on the pleasurable side of things as opposed to as opposed to work. But I say that, you know, I see that completely glibly. I totally enjoy everything that I do, and again, it's an absolute privilege to be able to be so busy. Yeah, do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Absolutely that, absolutely that. Yep, very, very much buy into that philosophy. Yep, couldn't agree more. One of the things that you do to keep yourself out of trouble is writing books. Now, as I said, Red Hell Corp And honestly, you made the devil sound quite enigmatic. I mean, I know he's a bit stroppy, but he seems kind of like, you know, endearing in many ways. What was the reason behind that? Do you know what, let's just explain to our listeners what Hellcop is about, if you want to take that away. Certainly, absolutely. So in short, the devil longs to have a holiday. He's sick of being the cosmic bad guy, has been for eternity, and he thinks that he's long overdue a vacation. So he comes up with a company, the eponymous Hell Corp, to do his job while he's away. But God, not trusting him, quite rightly so, not trusting him, decides to test his mettle. And charges him with solving the murder of a man who took 40 years to die. So from that point on, the devil's sort of transported to Earth, given a human body, and he's teamed up with a young junior doctor, Jill Gideon, to solve this murder with the view of him finally getting his holiday at the end of it. And that's it, I mean essentially that's the sort of story in a nutshell, the kind of enigmatic nature of him, it all really comes down to, I mean the big thing for me was that there are so many great crime writers out there who are doing such brilliant work all the time and I never ever saw myself as being a crime writer, I didn't, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't think I was clever enough to do a crime novel again going back to the fact that I don't trust myself walking down the pavement not to walk into lamp posts. So, you know, and you'll know this, and we have so much sort of crime fiction on the bookshelves and on TV and film. We've had every detective under the sun, we really, really have. If it's not a detective who is an alcoholic, they are a workaholic. If they don't work too much, they don't see their family too much, that, you know, every every trope under the sun has been covered when it comes to an anti-hero detective. So I always thought if I was going to give it a go, that would be my sort of starting point. And I figured, well, who's the ultimate anti-hero? Who would be the ultimate person to— the last person you would think to want to solve a crime and do a bit of good? And it settled on Old Nick. And from there, really, the character grew and then the plot the plot sort of grew from, grew around it. But I was, I mean, I was adamant that I didn't want to go down the kind of, you know, the stereotypical horn and two horns and pointy tail route, far from it. One thing that I've always enjoyed as a reader and, you know, growing up and stuff like that, I was a big, big Dad's Army fan and my favorite character was always Captain Manry. And one thing about kind of Croft and Perry, who wrote the series, they always did they always kind of stamped on authority figures, they always cut them down to size really, really well. That's always stuck with me when it's come to writing and again that's something that I wanted to do in Helcorp was that well this might be, you know, this great big horrible ruler of the underworld, he's totally taken out of that environment, plunked into a body of human beings who he utterly despises in every way, shape and form and really just, yeah, absolutely cut down to size. It's that sort of balance between someone who is all-powerful but actually having no power. And that really fascinated me. And again, really all the kind of character traits came from there. And I took great pride in cutting them down to size every single opportunity I could. And yeah, that's really where it came from. So thank you very much for thinking he's enigmatic. That's nice to hear. Nice to see I did something right. Maybe it says something about my character that I find the devil endearing. But it was quite profound as well, some of the things, you know, that Gideon would kind of say, and he'd be like, "Oh, when will you humans ever learn? Seriously, you can make a phone, but you can't come out with common sense?" And it's just like, I did— it's— do you know what? I read the book in about a day and a half, and I still had kids to homeschool and things like that, because it's just it was such an easy read, but yet, you know, at the same time you're kind of thinking, wait a minute, God and the devil get on quite well. They've kind of got a bit of a cheeky relationship and you kind of— Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely, that is— yeah, I mean, one of the kind of, one of the first things that came to mind, obviously, when I first properly got the idea for what was going to go on was I knew they had to have a foil, I knew they had to have some sort of character that was going to be, you know, from a narrative point of view, someone for the reader to be introduced and to ask all the questions that you want to ask, but I wanted it to be much more than that and then kind of Jill Gideon, you know, she's a doctor, she's an independent woman, she's someone who doesn't take fools lightly and that applies to the devil as well, you know, even when she knows exactly who he is she's not shy about again cutting him down but also put him in his place because that's one of these things that I think I always wanted with the character of the Devil was that, you know, here's someone who is so enigmatic and so all-knowing, supposedly all-knowing, you know, completely operates on a different plane of thinking from anything that we would know as human beings but he's actually quite out of date, you know, he's quite out of touch and again that just sort of having the character that would be able to point out those sort of foibles and having someone strong enough to be able to stand up to him effectively regardless of who he was, particularly if he's doing something wrong, if he's saying something, saying something out of order, which he frequently does. Well, the thing is though, he was like a stroppy toddler at times, whereas, you know, doctors constantly, especially in A&E, that they're having to deal with all sorts of people, drunk people, people with varying degrees of psychosis and, and stages of different illnesses, but it was like the perfect match, wasn't it? Yeah, absolutely, and a lot of that, a lot of that comes from my wife's medical background. My wife's a psychiatrist, but when she first left university she worked in A&E, and some of the stories that she told me when we first met were were absolutely appalling. Some were funny, you know, don't get me wrong, some of them were so odd that they were quite hilarious, but some of them really, really frightening stuff as to what doctors see on a day-to-day basis. And that's obviously many, many years before what the NHS and the frontline have been having to go through over the last couple of months. So yeah, I think, yeah, it made sense to have Gideon as a doctor. I think partly in tribute, obviously, to both to my wife and to kind of doctors everywhere and medics everywhere, but also, yeah, absolutely that. Here's someone who knows how to handle other people. And I suppose ultimately it comes down to that relationship between the two of them. You know, as much as the devil is who he is, I still like to think that he learned something at the end of the whole affair. You hope, I think, you hope as the writer, and hopefully the readers think it as well, that you'll maybe come away thinking that we humans aren't quite as the shaved apes that have just kind of pulled ourselves out of the primordial soup, as he sometimes dismisses us as, which is what we're like, that humanity's got so much good to give, a lot of bad as well, but yeah, so much, so many kind of redeeming factors and things like that, that that we should all be proud of. Yeah, I mean, you do actually, bizarrely, it's kind of, it's definitely full of humour, but it's kind of existential as well, isn't it? You've kind of mixed in horror, crime, comedy, and who am I, what am I doing? Yeah, you know what, I, when When, before publication in 2018, I remember speaking to my publisher and the pair of us both agreed that I think we were going to give bookshops, bookshop owners and staff a dreadful nightmare every time that it came in because it's— and funnily enough, oddly enough, I've seen it, I've seen it up and down the country and I don't think I walk into two bookshops and see it on the same shelf every time. I've seen it in horror, I've seen it in fiction, I've seen it in crime, seen it in sci-fi and fantasy, and then obviously, you know, you kind of get your localised elements of it as well. So yeah, keeping that balance was important when I was writing it. It was something that I was aware of. I, you know, I knew that this was a crime novel at its heart. It's a kind of juicy whodunit, is how I've always described it. But, you know, there's elements of sort of urban fantasy in there, the kind of existential element of it I grew up, I didn't grow up in a religious household and it's not been something that I've ever wanted to bill it as. It's not like an atheist handbook or anything like that, far from it. I've always hoped that it wouldn't come across as at all preachy but I grew up in a household that we didn't really adhere to any sort of strict religion but I was always fascinated by the I was always fascinated by every religion actually because in our school we were always taught about all of them really, all the kind of major organized religions and I always loved the storytelling of it and you know what the different— I hate using the term mythology because I always think that comes across as being a bit too dismissive and that really isn't what I want to put across I just, you know, I always loved all the kind of Old Testament stories, David and Goliath and the Ark and Garden of Eden and things like that, and then obviously kind of other religions as well growing up and becoming more familiar with these things. And it's again, you know, like it or loathe it, regardless of your own opinion on it, it's such a massive part of our culture and continues to be a massive part of our culture, and we're all, you you know, we are all affected by it in one way or another. But, and we should just educate ourselves. We don't have to actually want to be a part of a particular religion, but we should understand it so we can understand other people. Absolutely that. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Is there something, I mean, especially with what you were just saying then about all, you know, the different religions, and, you know, you were brought up in quite you know, atheist background. Have you read The Gatekeeper? No, I've not. I've not actually. I've heard all about it. It's fantastic, but seriously, you will be stopping halfway through going— I mean, first of all, Russ Kane is not religious, you know, he's just done his research. But you'll be— you'll read about a bit and you go, that is ridiculous, and then you Google and go, it's real! Oh my goodness! It's— and then you look at all the conspiracy theories, which are, you know, a lot of conspiracy theories are based around religion and belief, and some of them can be quite kind of holistic. And you read it and you just— you actually feel as if you've been schooled at the end of it. And the amount of times I had to stop reading, and I was just like— when I met up with Wes and he came on the show, and I was like, How much time did you spend researching? Where does this information come from? And I understand, you know, as a writer you could have a creative brain, but the majority of what you wrote about was real, just it's just hidden in history books. Yeah, yes, I mean, I suppose it kind of feels that way certainly over the last couple of years in this country, in the wider world, and well, do you know, I was going to say that, you know, sometimes fact is a lot stranger than fiction, The funny thing is, in the opening couple of chapters of Hell Corp, there is a Donald Trump reference. And I've always, since the book came out, I've had to make the caveat that it was written before 2016. But there's a reference that the devil makes about Hell Corp itself, saying that he wants it to look like the Trump Tower in New York across from the United Nations. Now, when I wrote that, Trump was just a TV personality. And business tycoon. Little did I know that when the novel came out in 2018, he would be 2 years into his 4-year tenure as the President of the United States. Come on, you could have never predicted that! Absolutely not, absolutely not, and I didn't, I didn't. Yeah, incredible, absolutely incredible stuff, and again, you know, it perfectly sort of sums up that It perfectly sums up that stranger than fiction stuff. No way, no way did I ever think that having that sort of Donald Trump— because that was the thing. I mean, the last time I was in New York was actually 2001, just a few weeks before everything unfolded, unfortunately. And I remember being on one of the bus tours and driving past the Trump Tower, which is, like I said, close to the United Nations. And it always stuck with me. I mean, I would have been 14, 15 at the time, and I remember that reference at the time being, oh, there's TV personality Donald Trump's Trump Tower, and it always stuck with me, and the imagery of it has always stuck with me, but again, you know, who could have thought 2001 and then subsequently 2016 and then 2018, obviously when the book came out, that it would be, he would no longer be president, So there you go. I suppose on one hand you can be doom and gloom about it, and then the other hand you can go, well, at least anything can happen, I suppose. Keeps us all on our toes. Well, do you not watch The Simpsons? Because they predicted it. Yeah, listen, I'm a massive, massive fan of The Simpsons, and it's absolutely incredible what the writers have been able to predict. And it has been a prediction. It's one of those things, the show's been running for 30-odd years, 31 years I think, or 30 years this year maybe, 30, 31 years. I mean, it's like, it's a cartoon, but it's so incredibly clever. Yeah, definitely, absolutely. And so well, well written. In fact, one of, one of my writing heroes is John Swartzwelder, who was the, who was very, very influential in the first, in the opening couple of series. I think he still might, he might still contribute to it, but not as much as he did. But he was, and he's such an enigmatic character as well, like he You know, I remember reading the story about what he used to do was he used to go to a cafe, a local cafe close to his apartment in LA, and he used to sit at the same booth every, every time when he was writing scripts for The Simpsons, and he would chain smoke and drink coffee that was provided to him. The cafe then closed down a couple of years after the show started, and he ended up buying the booth and having it in his house so that he could continue the process of being able to to write episodes the way that he used to. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Well, exactly, precisely, yeah, precisely that. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, what a show, an absolute show, a total gem, a total commentary on everything, really. You name it, politics, religion, society as a whole. It's covered it all. And more often than not, it kind of shines a light and shines a mirror back to us. Probably a lot closer than anything else really in the last 30 years, which is incredible. And also it's a good indicator of if you've made it. If you've made it in the world, you will get, you will appear as a cameo. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, it's an indicator definitely, yeah, you've made it then, you've made it. You're done, my life is complete, I need to get on The Simpsons. Something I did wonder about, whether you were worried about or whether your publisher was worried about, obviously you are from Scotland, you live in Glasgow, did you not worry that you'd have people who lived in Glasgow going, "Dude, you're completely slating our culture, you are taking the mickey out of everything that we fry, you're kind of describing us as the kind of place that the devil had set up," and there was a lot of there was a lot of references to Glaswegian culture. Yeah. Now, do you get a little bit worried? Well, no, no, actually. I mean, one of my get-outs is that I'm from Glasgow, so it's one of the, you know, born and bred. So I guess if anybody can take the mic, it must be one of our own. And, you know, funnily enough, it's all done in a loving sense, you know. It's, this is a city and Glaswegians Scotts in particular, we tend to not take ourselves too seriously most of the time, he says glibly. And it's one of those things that I think I always remember, I love stand-up comedy and the kind of rock music and stuff like that. And one of the sort of perennial things that you get across the sort of entertainment industry is that Glasgow crowds were traditionally or are traditionally one of the hardest crowds to play in the UK, if not the world. And that ranges from, you know, some of the biggest bands in the world through Foo Fighters, AC/DC, that type of thing to, you know, old-time entertainers like Bob Monkhouse and Morecambe and Wise. You know, they, they were very much of the opinion that if you could make it in Glasgow with a Glasgow crowd, you wouldn't have any problems winning over a crowd anywhere else in the UK or beyond. So there is a sort of, there are high expectations I think when it comes to any time that Glasgow or indeed anywhere in Scotland is featured in the literature because there's such a massive, particularly crime, you know, the Tartan Noir scene is so huge now and there are so many great writers doing fantastic work in it. One thing that always strikes me, particularly if I write about somewhere like home is that you always try to do a service, but you should always, as a writer, you should always do your hometown and places that you hold dear to you, should do them the right service and the right service by you. And through that sort of kind of humour and that tongue-in-cheek and having someone like the devil, I mean, it could only really be someone as infernal as that that would probably get away with saying those types of things throughout the Glass Beaches without without having them having the head stuck on them, as they say up here. But of course he does, you know, and that's the— again, that's the sort of wonderful thing about being able to cut down a character like that, is that it's all well and good being able to pontificate from your cozy office in the underworld, but when you're actually on the street and you're insulting these people, they're going to react. But I like to think that that's going to be the same anywhere. That's not just a Glaswegian thing, of course. No, but they're known for their high spirit. They are, they are. That's one way of putting it. That's a very generous way of putting it. Yeah, absolutely. It was quite interesting because I went to, one of my best mates lives in Glasgow and I went to her hen do in Glasgow with all these Glaswegians and a few of my friends, you know, back in southwest London in the leafy burbs of Twickenham were like, "Oh, you're going to be having deep fried Mars bars and da da da." and I was like, and I can't, I can't eat fried food. Don't get me wrong, I do like my junk food and everything, but yeah, I went, I went in, we went to this beautiful restaurant, and I'm a vegetarian, and the vegetarian dish was deep fried halloumi in Iron Brew, and I went, I'm having that, that sounds bang on what I fancy, and You know, there's me there knocking it with the deep-fried Mars bars, but that Irn-Bru battered halloumi was incredible. Yeah, I've got a terrible admission, I suppose, I suppose I should make. I've never had a deep-fried Mars bar. Yeah, it's not, it's not been, it's not been one that's— I haven't ever really been tempted to have one. It's that it's never quite— I'm not a huge Mars bar fan as it is, let alone having it deep-fried. But yeah, it's not— Can you really be classed as a Glaswegian then? I don't think so. So I think, yeah, I think I'm an imposter. I've got imposter syndrome up here. That must be what it is. Yeah, it's a— yeah, I've never been tempted by it. Never been hugely tempted by it. But I think I do think that's a lot more of a commentary on me than it is the Delicatessen, the famous Glasgow Delicatessen. Well, to be fair, I mean, I have been a little time and my friend made me go to this champagne brunch in one of these really nice hotels just in the main square. Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah, it was good. I can't wait to go back. Um, it's gonna— as soon as everyone feels a bit safer to travel, I'm there. I'm all over it. Absolutely. Well, you'll be— we'll be welcomed with open arms, as everyone always is. I just need to find out if anyone's doing that halloumi again, because I need it. I'm sure they will. You'll find it somewhere. So the other book, you've done quite, you've written quite a lot of books, but there's, um, there's the follow-up to Hell Corp, isn't there? Yes, yep, The Man in the Dark. So that was a, that was released in September there, um, so it's, yeah, it's the second in the, it's the second in the Hell Corp series. So it's, uh, um, this time it's the, the devil still hasn't had his holiday, um, spoilers I suppose, spoilers for Hell Corp, but yeah, it's He still hasn't had his holiday, but, and he's challenged this time to find a woman, a holidaymaker who's been kidnapped by international terrorists. But while he is on the, is in the human realm, Brutus and Cassius, those famous Roman traitors, have eyes on his throne in the underworld, and they are doing their very, very best to to oust him while he's away and take over. So a little bit different, a little bit, yeah, slightly different. Again, still, still a sort of, at its very core, there's a whodunit mystery to be solved, but a little bit different, a little bit more characters, and you get to see a little bit more of the underworld, or downstairs as it's known in the series. Yeah, one thing that I always do when I sit down to write a Hell Cop novel, I always have sort of 3 pillars that I base on. I have the devil's story, which is usually the mystery element of it. I have the kind of the perspective from humanity, and then I also have that sort of supernatural urban fantasy element to it as well. And I like to try and keep that balance across the 3 of them. Well, also, I mean, you know, one of the great things, one of the great things being able to sit down and write the sequel was was getting that chance to explore some of the other kind of characters and quirks and more of the world that's sort of introduced in Hell Corp. And it's again, it's another— I mean, I love to get my teeth into a villain. I always find writing villains— I always take greater enjoyment out of writing villains than I do for heroes, which again probably speaks volumes as to my own psyche, which I should probably get some help about. You've got your wife for that, you married well. I did, and you know, funnily enough, I did study psychology, my original degree is psychology, so you can imagine what the dinner table conversations are like in our house. You know, funnily enough, that always reminded me of, I remember when I was writing Aelcorp, there was one incident where my wife was coming back from work, we were staying in Edinburgh at the time and I think she was working sort of closer to Glasgow and she phoned up and said, could you put the dinner on? And in a terrible, unforgiving act of bad husbandry— well, we weren't married at the time, but I'm a husband now— I said, oh no, I'm sorry, I can't put the dinner on at the moment because I'm in the middle of a conversation between God and the devil about the end of the universe. Obviously. Obviously, you know, as you do. And I genuinely was. It wasn't just an excuse. I'm happy to say that barring, I think, 2 or 3 occasions, I've now cooked dinner every single night for my wife coming home, making sure that she's well fed when she comes home, which I'm immensely proud of. But she took it, she took it very well. She took it a lot better than she should have. But yeah, it's— but that's it. That kind of goes back to what I'm talking about with the kind of writing element of it, is that the great thing about the Hell Corp series is that you've got these massively huge you know, universe-spanning dilemmas that are playing out for the characters. But also you've got, you know, what can sometimes be quite mundane and being able to tie those two together, sometimes even within the same sentence, certainly within the same chapter, has always been something that I've immensely enjoyed about it. Yeah, it's great fun. It's brilliant fun. Do you know what I mean? I think every single book has a wellbeing element, and we do try and focus on the wellbeing elements here at GetBooked, but there's— I've never come across a book that doesn't do something for your wellbeing. I mean, whether it's a distraction, whether it's helping you appreciate something, whether it's making you giggle. I mean, I alternate my books because there's some serious ones, there's some memoirs I need to accommodate. I want something that's going to get my brain thinking, I want to learn something new, and I've got to alternate alternate it, otherwise it can just be, you know, quite— you've got to make sure that you plan your journey well when you're aging. But I mean, interestingly, I mean, you've even got the workplace elements of well-being where, you know, sometimes you want to go on holiday, but yeah, you've got to work twice as hard to earn the holiday. Then you've got to make sure that everything's set up so that, you know, somebody else isn't going to take your job when you go off for a couple of weeks. And, you know, the devil's got the same problem, hasn't he? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's just that, yeah, definitely, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I, I, again, it's that sort of questioning authority element of it, you know. And, and the way that he's sort of portrayed in the first one, before obviously goes to the human realm, is that he is, he is supreme bar one, um, which of course completely, completely, uh, completely antagonizes him and drives him up the wall, um, because he's that type of person, obviously, even though he knows that there's absolutely nothing that he can do about it, he's still the type of person that gets driven up the wall by the fact that he will always be subordinate to someone or something. Jesus Christ, stop mentioning him! Why can't you please talk about me instead? Oh my God, you're so stroppy, stop talking about him! Exactly, yeah, absolutely, yeah, please don't mention him, yeah, it's, yeah, but I, you know, there's always been great I've always found great humour in that and exactly as you say from a writing process but also as a reader because I completely agree with you, I think you know books are so, so powerful and they're so, we're so lucky to live in a society where we have such a wide range of different types of books and different content and we have such a ready access to it that isn't unfortunately available for everybody around the world in this present day which is absolutely appalling but we do have that luxury and, you know, there are so many, again I keep saying it, but there are fantastic writers out there that are doing such great important work and offering that different, that little bit of well-being. I always remember one of the kind of really, really fondest moments of being a writer, being a professional writer, I remember a reader came up to me not long after Helicorp came out and she said to me that she'd been, she'd found herself in a bit of a reading slump which we all do, of course, we all get it. And she said that she was recommended Hell Court by a friend of hers, and she got it, and she picked it up and sort of treated it the same way that she'd been treating, you know, however many books it was in the run-up to that point, with a sort of resigned knowledge that she was going to end up putting it down pretty early on. And she ended up finishing it, and which of course I was hugely humbled by, but she she went on to say that if it hadn't been that book, she probably wouldn't be back reading anywhere near as early as she had been, and that really, really hit me. I mean, it actually hit me like a ton of bricks because up until that point, you know, I'd kind of seen writing as something that obviously I wanted to do, I love to do it, but sometimes, you know, it takes moments like that as a writer to take a step back and go, actually, do you know, this is a really, really powerful medium, it can have a profound effect on the people that read it, and it really, really is a privilege, and there isn't, genuinely isn't a day that goes by where I'm not privileged to be able to call myself a writer and to have work out there for people to read. I'm very, very lucky, very lucky. I have said a few times, people have said to me, "Oh, I just can't concentrate enough to read." I'm like, well, then you're the kind of person person that should be reading, because you need to retrain your brain to not be overthinking. Definitely. And don't get me wrong, sometimes people just don't enjoy reading, and that is totally fine. You know, I don't enjoy golf, whatever. But it's, I mean, especially say when I've had more challenging times in my life, and I can suddenly go, wow, I've just not taken in the last half page, and I'll go back and do it. And it's retraining because brain, there's so much going on and you're overwhelmed. And it does take a bit of training sometimes, but you know, it is an escape and there are— it can work absolute wonders. And sometimes it's just either hearing about somebody else's world or realizing, you know, that people are going through the same struggles as you, or as I said, distraction, entertainment, having a bit of a giggle. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's it. That's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of it as a medium, is that you can get all these things, you know, you can have all these things. Sometimes you can get lucky and get books where you have it all within the same book, but, you know, that's exactly it. And I always remember my primary one teacher told my mother, just get Jonathan reading, doesn't matter what it is, it could be the Beano, which actually, funnily enough, got me— I know I'm a massive Beano fan, the comic, the Beano fan, and still am. And a couple of years ago, I actually got the chance to go to an exhibition in Dundee to review it that was on, like, the, you know, I think it was the 75th anniversary of the comic or something. But it was so, so, you know, that stuck with me all the time. And I tell everyone that, you know, being part of this industry and kind of doing blog tours and interviews and things, it's something that I always stress is that just read, you know, just read, read, read. There's so much there, there's so much there that you can sink your teeth into and enjoy. And like you say, have a giggle, get yourself thinking, maybe challenge some beliefs that you've got, maybe give you new beliefs that you want to pursue. It's all there, it's all between the pages. And yeah, the more the better. Yeah, absolutely. I did actually— have you read Ben Aldridge's 43 Weird and Wonderful Things to Put You Out of Your Comfort Zone? Yep, yep, yep. I haven't read it, but I'm aware of it. Yep. It's— I mean, it's good. The thing is, you might not want to do the 43 that he's come out with, but it's the concept of trying something different, and it kind of— it's a little bit like reconditioning the brain to not be as scared and to suddenly realize, you know, It doesn't matter how old you are, whether you're 3 or 83, there's always something you can learn. Yeah, definitely, definitely. It's, yeah, absolutely that. And a lot of the challenge is being open to it. You know, it's having the open-mindedness to want to be that way. Because once you've sort of come over that hurdle, exactly as we've been talking about, there's so much out there that you can that you can pick up and enjoy and read. And again, yeah, as a writer, it's something that I'm aware of. You know, we all like to— we all like the kind of element, we all like the escapism element of reading and TV and cinema and stuff like that. But, you know, I always— yeah, I think in terms of kind of the books that I write and the novels I write, the stories I write, particularly the Hell Corp series, you know, it is on that it was on that sort of extremist end of the escapism part of it, but you know, as you've touched on and other readers have kind of told me as well, there's still kind of other parts of it that you can pick up on and enjoy. And also, you know, yeah, if you just want to see the devil cut down a few pegs, there's that too, so it's win-win, I think. Yeah, definitely. And then as we've been talking about the well-being elements, do you have What would be your 3 tips on trying to get the, you know, the most positive state? What would be your wellbeing tips for our listeners? I think the first one is to be open-minded. That certainly helped me. I like to think of myself as being a very positive person. I always try to look at the glass as being half full rather than half empty. Nothing Always be open to trying new things and being open, importantly, particularly in the sort of, you know, the days that we live in just now, where opinion varies and can go from one extreme to the other. You should always be open-minded to other people's opinions, and that is whether you agree with it or you don't, you know, it is their opinion after all. Another part, another part of the kind of positivity that I try to get from is that everything's a learning experience. You know, you can learn, you can learn from anything, you can learn from everything. If that, that can be something as tiny as, well, you know, if I left the, if I left the house 5 minutes early, I'd get to work 10 minutes earlier than I ordinarily would, to things like, well, you know, maybe something didn't go right with, with, in my case, like the writing. I'll give you an example. So The Man in the Dark, first draft of it, I ended up scrapping about 75 75,000 words because it just got completely out of hand. It did what I call the Fast and Furious effect where there were helicopter chases and, you know, high-speed car chases and things like that, and it just wasn't true to the series and the characters. So, you know, it hurt, obviously. It hurt to kind of bend so much work. Yeah. I took from that the positives that if I hadn't gone through that process then we wouldn't have The Man in the Dark that we have today and I know for a fact that The Man in the Dark as it is now is a lot better a book and I'm a lot more happier with it. So yeah, everything is a learning experience and you can only get better by learning more and I think my third tip is always be looking for a new opportunity. It kind of goes back to what I'm saying about being open-minded, but always be happy to want to learn and happy to try new things and again learning from it. I think that's what certainly gets me through the days and it gets me through my writing and everything else that I'm doing, is that always wanting to be to be happy to be open to new experiences. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, open mindset, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it can make such a difference. You know, listen, nobody's perfect. I understand that. None of us are. We've all got our own individual challenges and stuff. And I know that there are probably times, sometimes on a daily basis, where I could be a lot more open to things than I am. But the great thing about it is, like I said, you know, you can always learn. You can always, you can always learn to do better. And there's always something to learn from, which is great. And it's good. You know, the doors are never fully closed. And that's a sort of mantra that I like to live by. There's nothing usually— there's nothing that can't be reversed or you can't learn from, like I said, moving forward. Yeah, definitely. I love that. I think that's brilliant. Thank you very much. I should copyright that. Yes, you should. You should, quickly. I do want to— we're running out of time. It's already— we've got 10 minutes left of the show and I haven't asked you about The Fright Before Christmas yet. All right, yeah. Well, that's— so The Fright Before Christmas was a kind of very, very hastily put together project myself and my publisher Arbeen, who were absolutely fantastic about it. We unfortunately, another writer died suddenly, another Arbeen writer died suddenly last year, and we were all pretty hit bad, pretty badly by it actually. The kind of nature of Arbeen is that all the writers and the publishers themselves, we do all genuinely feel like a big sort of extended family So we were really, really sad when that happened. And I've been toying with a couple of ideas to try and raise a bit of money for charity. And we kind of got up to Christmas. I think it was the last week in November, first week in December. And I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a short story and we'll put it on the Urbane website and then ask people for donations. So Urbane were absolutely fantastic. They kind of took the idea and absolutely ran with it. So it's a short story set in the Hell Corp universe. The devil and God have a conversation in a certain field outside a little town called Bethlehem, which is fairly busy for that time of the year. I won't go out again, no spoilers, but it's a short story, I think it's about 2,500 words, and all the donations have been going to the Samaritans. So we've had fantastic feedback from it, a really, really great response, a really, really heartwarming response we had over Christmas. We managed to raise a big wad of cash cash for the charity and it's something that, I mean, it's still available, it's still available on Amazon and all the proceeds are getting donated to the Samaritans, a cause that's quite close to my heart, quite close to the publisher as well. So yeah, that again, kind of going back to what we're talking about with kind of privilege and being very lucky as a writer, you know, there's something that that I never ever thought being a writer would ever afford me, but there you go, and again had wonderful support from readers and the publisher, and that, yeah, it meant a lot, it meant a lot to be able to do something like that, yeah, really, really good. Fantastic, and so if people want to find out a little bit more about it or to be able to donate, where would they go to find out about this book, to find out about you? So I'm mostly on Twitter, you can find me at @JDWhiteLaw13 on Twitter and all my novels are available in all good bookshops and some of the bad ones as well. For The Fright Before Christmas it's a digital only, it's an e-publish so that's available on Amazon and like I said all donations for that go to go to the Samaritans. Yeah, what I will do is I'll make sure I put up a link for that actually. That would be fantastic, thank you very much for that. I'm just, I'm making sure that I highlight this on my notes section to make sure that I do that. And what's next for you? So I'm just, the third Hail Corp novel is with Erbin, So that's a— that's sort of taking over. I've also got a number of other projects. I do have a very, very secret project at the moment that I don't think I'm allowed to talk about. I know I'm a terrible tease, but it's a— yeah, there will be an announcement fairly soon about that. It's away from the Hell Corp series, but I'm very, very excited about it and just constantly working. Yeah, like I said, it's I don't see being a professional writer as a job, it's a privilege. I'm a journalist as well, I'm a full-time journalist, so there's always— we've not been short of a few stories over the last couple of months, as I'm sure you can imagine. Oh no, seriously. Just constantly working away. Have you got a little bit bored as a journalist having to write about the same things, or in terms of, you know, just going, not this again, this is It's just not real. Yeah, there's been a little bit of fatigue about it, which is, you know, the fatigue I think is setting in. It's not been helped by us all working remotely, of course, and not having that sort of support system with your other colleagues to sort of share it. You know, we'll meet twice a day over Skype and Zoom and things like that, but it's not the same, as everybody acknowledges. It's not the same, and particularly in some something like journalism where, you know, there's always a very, very strong team spirit amongst the, the people on the team. Um, but yeah, I think that one of the sort of fatigues has always been that, you know, we, we as journalists are living through this the same as everyone else, but we're having to report on it every single day. So there's, you know, while people might miss daily press conferences once or twice a week, you know, we are glued to the screen every time it's on. And, and a lot of it is the same information, particularly at the the height of the lockdown, you're getting the same information for understandable reasons. It comes with that caveat. It's completely understandable a lot of the time. But yeah, listen, compared to some industries, as we were chatting before, my wife's a doctor and all of our friends are doctors. I really have absolutely no place to moan because they've been doing such a fantastic job before, during, and after. And my heartfelt thanks, and I know everyone, I think I speak for everyone when I can express my thanks to them, and it really, really does mean a lot. Completely, 100%. I mean, you're very lucky that your wife has been able to come home on an evening because she works in psychiatry, but so many nurses and doctors and porters have had to they can only go home if there's no children and your partner works in the same industry, you know, it's just, um, I did have a friend actually, his, his wife was a nurse and he got a job, he basically couldn't do his job because he couldn't while we're in lockdown, so he went and volunteered as a porter because then he could be with his wife and she could come home and I just thought, well done you for thinking outside the box. Yes, absolutely, and making a difference and helping out. And yeah, absolutely, it's been incredible. It's been a tough couple of months for everyone, everyone around the world, but there's been such great, great stuff, great, you know, some great stories and great examples of people being the very, very best that they can be coming out of it, more so than I think we ordinarily would see. So yeah, it's again, trying to take the positives from something that's been, that's been dreadful for everyone to live through. But yeah, again, cannot thank, cannot thank them enough. Do you know what, interestingly though, I mean, dependent on, you know, what kind of journalist you're talking about, they don't always get the best rap. And these, there's been journalists having to report on this constantly. I've got a friend who works at the FT and she was struggling with her well-being and getting so stressed because she's reading the facts about the economic crisis. And I went, is there any way you can switch off for it and just do, you know, kind of mainline to the bit that you need to do because it's making you scared? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is terrifying and unfortunately there are some of the colleagues have said to me, some of my journalism colleagues have said to me that a kind of element of numbness about it comes in and, you know, statistics that particularly people that have died, they just become numbers and that's awful and it's an awful way to be and yeah, I think we will find that, I think as a society we'll probably find there will be a lot longer lasting effects of this for people that have lived through it, particularly psychologically, particularly from a wellbeing point of view, as you say, for many years to come. And I suppose that's it. We just have to kind of hold on to the positives of it. And like I said, there's been so many great stories have come out of it, people doing such fantastic work, you know, and yeah, we just got to hold on to the positives. I think what might be quite interesting is You know, when the guy going round in the 120,000 Maserati or whatever, and he thinks he's way above everybody else and he's been working, I don't know, in banks or trading or whatever. And he's— I say he, he or she has always felt a sense of hierarchy above the person that's behind the cash desk at Poundland and Iceland. Do you know what? He was furloughed and not missed a jot, right? And yet people had carried on working in all these supermarkets because they were a key worker and they were needed and people were queuing around the corner to be able to utilise the service that they offered. Definitely, absolutely, yeah, it's, it's, I couldn't agree more, absolutely, yep. And it's, I think it's going to be, it's not been a great situation but I think it's going to be a great eye-opener to for some people, and hopefully we need to try and take the positives out of a pretty rubbish situation as much as possible. I've thoroughly enjoyed chatting to you. I could chat to you for ages, and it's just been— I hope all the listeners have enjoyed it as well. I'm going to put some links up on our Women's Radio Station Twitter and on mine as well, @NuttyButty, so you can go and buy The Fright Before Christmas. And just thank you so much for joining me. Not at all, thank you very much for having me, it's been fantastic. Well, make sure that I get the next book when it comes out and we'll have you back in again and hopefully come down to London when the studio opens. Absolutely, that'd be fantastic, thoroughly looking forward to it.