Hi Fergus. Welcome to Onic podcast.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

So happy to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Okay. I'm a writer, a British writer. I live in London, in the uk. I have been for many years, an actor and a comedian. So I've written a lot of comedy for British tv. And over the last few years I've started to write books as well.

Yeah.

And I write mysteries, I guess. Yeah,

Yes

I guess about it, I.

yes you do. You write some mysteries. They're not too glorious, but there's a serial killer in this one. It's a, if you are like a little bit of thrillers, but, and then mystery aspect of it. This is the, let's talk about, I'm not the only Murderer in my Retirement home, which is your latest book. It's about a retirement home. So older characters and one of them is Fresh outta prison. Love After Luck up, she just needs to find a place to land after prison, and she's a serial killer and well, somebody dies and. She may or may not be the killer. Well, we know she's not the killer 'cause the person dies when she was watching it. But everyone's a suspect. Everyone is trying to figure out, who work in law enforcement of some sort or crime writers or involved in this area. So talk to us about the seed of inspiration and what led you to write the story.

Yeah, I wanted to have some fun with the cozy crime.

Yeah.

I think cozy crime books are a lot of fun. I love a mystery, but I thought what would happen if I threw a serial killer into the mix? Can it still be cozy? Can it still be enjoyable? I think publishers Weekly reviewed it and they call it a cracked co cozy. I thought that was quite a good that I looked it up. Apparently that's, I don't think that phrase has ever been used before. I'd like, I thought, oh, that's, that, that kind of works for the book. So, yeah, it's it's about a retired serial killer who goes to live in a luxury retirement home. Somebody dies. Now she has to find out who did the murder to clear her name.

Yeah.

What makes that difficult is that pretty much everyone who lives there is also is some kind of retired investigator

Yeah.

of sorts. Yeah.

So what was your your research experience in, into this crime fiction? Cozy crime because you are, you're dealing with people who work in law enforcement and politics and you have serial killer you have all these different characters that are unique and standalone and they all have to come together in the story to make sense of the process.

Yeah, I mean, I knew I was gonna have a retired serial killer and I knew that they had to be likable 'cause I wanted them to be my protagonist and I wanted the reader to wanna spend time with them. And when I was sort of preparing to write, I thought, well, I should watch some. Obviously I've watched them before. We all have, but I thought, oh, I should watch some serial killer documentaries on Netflix and stuff. But as soon as you go in, you go, well actually serial killer. They're not that likable

no.

and real serial killers. My serial killer is a lady, real serial killers. They tend to be men.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously they're incredibly dark. And I thought, I don't know if this is helpful. So although the book has a lot of truth to it, I think in terms of characters feelings about their lives and stuff, it's also a sort of heightened story that, you, I think we are it's a bit of an escape. We're not expecting this to happen in the real world. So, there are many great gritty crime novels. Will give you some kind of insight into the mind of a serial killer or how a real police investigation would work. This is not one of those books,

Yeah.

so it's not research heavy I'm totally honest, no.

yeah. Well, I love your story color the way. She kill people and the way, the rights and the reasons why, and even the mind of it. 'cause we get into her mind, we get, the other characters trying to investigate her and trying to understand it. I was like, oh, I can see it, when I support women's wrong rights to do wrongs. I was like, some of these men deserved it. Like it was it.

I'm glad you said that. I think as a re I wanted readers to feel like, okay, maybe I wouldn't have done the same thing that she did, but I can, just, she's not just randomly killing any old person.

Yeah, no, she needed anger management maybe and better coping skills. But, she journaled those and she had other places where she was able to create that space. So I support it. Some of them deserve it And she was smart, she was scrappy. She was not like a one time same time, a serial killer. She. Killed in different ways. And I think that's like a fun little tidbit. Like she didn't have one signature move and she had to figure out, as it was happening.

Yeah, so the, we follow the story of the mystery that she's investigating. But I thought, well, you can't if you are reading this, and I was sort of curious as I was writing this, I was thinking about this serial killer. It would be a shame to miss. Out on some of her murders. So there's a few flashbacks. Her thinking back to some of her murders it's not the bulk of the book, but like it would be a shame to write a book about a serial killer and not have her killed in people. So we get to look back on that, but yeah.

So talks about transition to write book writing from actor comedian, to now adding this to your portfolio career. What led you to start writing? Was it a pandemic project or was it something you always pursue or just add on.

I had a really real weird route to writing novels, but I always wrote a lot, ever since I was a kid. I was a comedian. I still do that sometimes. So you're obviously always writing material when you're doing that. And I've written a lot of comedy on tv, so being creative and writing things was something that I've done for a long time. I did fiddle around with writing novels for myself, just writing prose, writing chapters, seeing where it would go. And like with everyone really, I think the first time you try and write a novel, it's not great. Maybe some people crack it first time. But yeah, I did that. And then weirdly enough I did this character online this sort of comedy character that took off a little bit in the uk. And that character, he was sort of a middle class dad and I said one day that I was in character, I said, oh I'm writing a crime novel. And then I started to read out extracts from his crime novels. And they were really deliberately bad. It was like parody, spoof, really bad crime novel. Every line was a joke. And and off the back of that, I got offered a book deal to write. Books in the UK to write a full novel. So I ended up writing two sort of parody crime novels. They were called Once Upon a Crime, A Murder at Crime. Now Manner. These, the cl it's hard to describe. The closest thing would be, I guess, like Naked Gun if it was a book, it's just deliberately bad. And joke. And they had a sort of a small audience who really loved them. But this time around I wanted to kind of, actually, it's still funny, but I wanted to explore characters a little bit deeper.

Yeah.

Rather than deliberately writing bad fiction, I thought I'd have a go at writing. Some good fiction.

Yes, I, sometimes you just have to try, but I think in some ways there's a market for, not just bad writing, but parody or satire of some of the fiction, some of the areas that we. We looked at, we need laughter. More than ever, I think, we're just in a weird time, so we might as well

Yeah.

just laugh. D, don't take yourself too seriously. And I think that's probably, and sometimes when you think it's bad riding and actually it's homing the skill, obviously you're delivering jokes. Be a comedian. It's not an easy path. You have to put yourself out there. You have to hone in and try to test things out, and I think in some ways that those books probably, led to this one in many ways.

I think in all, if you look at all the types of books that are doing well at the moment, most of them seem to be a bit of a, an escape. People are looking for an escape and I, it wasn't that I cynically decided, aha, this is where the sales are. It was more a case of, I think that's what I wanted to do when I was writing. I find it quite depressing. Investigate researching real serial killers. I thought let's have fun writing a cozy one.

Yes. Oh, I love this. Well, let's talk about your reading live. What kind of books do you tend to read? Do you read fiction, nonfiction?

I read very widely. I'm very sort of, promiscuous in terms of.

Yeah.

The things that I read. So I tend to a lot of literary fiction, a lot of, I do read a lot of nonfiction. I also love a good autobiography of a sports star or actor or something. Those are really fun, easy reads. I listen to a lot of audio books. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I try, I read a fairly big variety of stuff.

There any books that you recommend or listeners to pick off like that you have?

I mean, yeah. Yeah. I was, as soon as somebody, 'cause obviously I knew the premise of this podcast before I did it, so I thought it's so exciting when somebody says, what are your favorite books? And then it's really difficult.

Yeah, that is the most difficult question. I cannot answer that question myself, so that's a very difficult question.

But I feel like a pressure 'cause I wanna do it right. 'Cause I've always said throughout I, if you ask me anytime, what's your favorite book? I've always said, in my mind, it's East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

Yeah.

I was looking back and I was thinking, well I read that 25 years ago and I don't really remember it because, I don't reread books. So, I should reread it. Maybe I won't enjoy it this time around that's a, there's a real recency bias to the books that I'm recommending. I've actually got them beside this one. This one is The Beast Thing by Paul Murray. I don't know,

I

did you read that book?

been recommended.

It's been,

times, so I'm like, oh, you actually, the third person's a and I'm like, yeah, I should pick it up.

It.

me what is the what should I pick it up?

I read it like a year ago, maybe. I think it's the best book currently. I think it's the best book I've ever read. It's so easily readable, easy to read, and yet it, it's kind of literary. It's about this family around the time of the the, did you guys call it the credit crunch in the states? When, in sort of 2008, when there was a big recession? After the sub primor, Ty and I this family is in Ireland, and I know Ireland was hit really bad by that. And you've got the family and it will go you'll skip, you'll have a long section with one character. So it starts with the daughter as there's two there's a teenage daughter and and son, and then the mother and father, and you start. For a long time. You stay with the daughter and you see what concerns her and her life, and then you go to each of the main characters in that family. And they're all, the whole family is in crisis 'cause they're being hit by the financial crash. But, obviously the teenage daughter isn't worried about that. She's worried about romance and her friendship. And the son, I think maybe he's 11 or 12 and he's worried about video games and whatever. And then. Each member of the family has got real concerns. And then the mother is just an unbelievable character and all of her sections she goes back through her history and how she ended up marrying the dad and her whole section. It doesn't have any punctuation at all. No, I know. Yeah. It's just, but and I was describing to my girlfriend and 'cause you, I would've, I would've imagined I would find that unreadable. There's not even a comma in the whole long section of hers, but it really sort of, you get completely in her head because she's sort of really volatile and I guess scatty. And you really feel like that as you are, as you're

Yeah.

And then obviously I don't wanna give any spoilers, but it really builds it's to an amazing climax and I, at the moment, I think it's the best book I've ever read.

Well, I'm adding that to my TBR and you totally sold it, so I am excited to read it even though I'm a little skeptical about 2000 recession. 'cause I did lift it. It's still, it's part of, I

It's not about the recession at all. It's not about the recession at all, but you know.

it's a, it's that era be, it's been interesting. I think the past 25 years has been such an interesting time, at least in America. We have nine 11, then 2008, then we got 2016, then we got 20 20, 20 25, and. Plenty of mass shootings and plenty of all, so it's just been interesting, like to revisit same term periods of time, be like, where were you in, in that place.

Yeah.

at that time it was sexually my. Late twenties. Yeah, late twenties time to figure out, make a sense of the world and uncertainty of what it will look like and it hasn't gotten easier unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah. Things get crazier by the year, right?

yeah. So Fergus, tell us, we gonna pan on line.

Oh, I'm where I'm on all of the platforms. I'm on Instagram as Dr. Fergus Craig. I'm on, although I'm not a doctor, I dunno why I'm called that, but I'm called Dr. Fergus Craig on Instagram. I'm on X as Fergus Craig and TikTok and everywhere. Really.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to the What three next. For more book lists, cozy reads and library tips, visit the what three Next block.com. Your next great read might be waiting there.