That’s Not Me: Val Penny

Next up (on my special birthday, as it happens) in the series That’s Not Me! is Val Penny, author of crime fiction set in Scotland.

That’s Not Me! examines how much of our fiction is autobiographical and why some authors try to insist there’s no link between their fictional characters and themselves. Over to you, Val.

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I write crime fiction set in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. In every one of my books somebody is murdered. Now many tutors of writing advise their students to ‘write what you know’. I have only followed this advice to a certain extent. I have certainly never committed a murder, nor been involved in investigating such a crime. However, I do know Edinburgh well.

I decided to write crime fiction because that is the genre I most enjoy reading. I was also a lawyer for many years, a lifetime ago and met many of the types of people I write about.

When I was choosing where to set my books, I considered creating an imaginary Scottish town, much like Peter Robinson who created the fictional English town of Eastvale in the Yorkshire Dales. However, when I thought about it, Edinburgh is a small city (about 600,000 people) and it is a place many people know about through travel documentaries or have visited on vacation. It has a wide variety of types of housing, universities, a prison a beach and hills so why not base my stories here.

To tell my stories I needed a character that I and my readers could depend upon. Enter, DI Hunter Wilson.

I wanted a name that reflected the policeman’s job, fighting crime. One day when my husband and I were going to my mother’s house in Edinburgh, we passed a lawyer’s office. The name on the facia was Wilson Hunter. Perfect! However, my husband thought that I better not use that name, in case the lawyer objected, and so Hunter Wilson was born.

Although not consciously based on anybody in particular, when I drew up the biography for Hunter Wilson, I realised that his character reflected one of my uncles. He is an intelligent, hardworking man who is respected by his colleagues and has a wide circle of friends with whom he shares hobbies and interests and has deep love for his family.

Hunter, like my uncle, is loyal and determined. He is not pushy but does not shy away from difficult decisions, but perseveres with his work until he reaches a successful conclusion. Like my uncle, Hunter was denied promotion by a boss with whom he clashed. However, unlike my uncle, who has been married for over fifty years, Hunter is divorced. He also drinks strong coffee, my uncle is definitely a tea-jenny!

Hunter and his team are faced with many unpleasant characters and difficult situations in my novels. I am often asked if these are based on real events. The answer is a resounding, sometimes.

Authors are terrible thieves and grab ideas or characters from all sorts of places; a couple overheard in a coffee shop, a man talking in the phone in a train, or an event reported in a newspaper or on television. I have notebooks everywhere to jot down ideas or phrases as they come to me. Indeed, as I live in the very wet West of Scotland, one of the best presents I ever got was a waterproof notebook! You will often see me using this at bus-stops or in train stations during a sudden downpour.

Although my stories and characters are not autobiographical, there is definitely a lot of me and my life-experience in my novels and I hope that readers enjoy that and their visits with me to Edinburgh too.

Thank you again for inviting me to your blog today and allowing me to share some secrets about DI Hunter Wilson with your readers.

BIO

Val Penny has an Llb degree from the University of Edinburgh and her MSc from Napier University. She has had many jobs including hairdresser, waitress, banker, azalea farmer and lecturer but has not yet achieved either of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina or owning a candy store.

Until those dreams come true, she has turned her hand to writing poetry, short stories, nonfiction books, and novels. Her novels are published by SpellBound Books Ltd. Val is an American author living in SW Scotland. She has two adult daughters of whom she is justly proud and lives with her husband and their cat.

Contact Details

• Website
• Facebook author page
• Facebook
• Facebook group
• Facebook: Val’s Book Bundle
• Twitter
• Goodreads
• Amazon page
• Bookbub

Val’s Books

• Hunter’s Chase
• Hunter’s Revenge
• Hunter’s Force
• The First Cut
• Hunter’s Blood

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To take part in this series, see the page That’s Not Me.

You don’t have to be an author to write a guest post. You might be a reader with views on the topic…