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04/07/2006: "A change of identity"
When I wrote my last book, The Forest of Souls, my publisher decided that is was sufficiently different from my previous four to be put out under a different name. It was odd to change identity – I have been Danuta Reah for over twenty years – and now I was Carla Banks. Who is she? Well, her name comes from a gravestone in Highgate cemetery, I know that, like me, she is the daughter of an eastern European cavalry officer, and like me, she is an academic. She writes crime fiction, and she was impatient to get to work on her next book.
When I took over as Chair of the CWA, everyone told me that I wouldn’t write a book in my year as Chair. I didn’t expect to. The ideas were in my mind, and I knew what I wanted to write, but all my energies were being taken up in what was proving to be a very challenging year.
And then something strange happened. Carla wasn’t the Chair of the CWA, and she wanted to write the book. As I worked my way through my year as Chair, Carla wrote. And just as I am about to step down, the book is finished. It’s is set partly in London and partly in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and because it is about people living somewhere where they are out of place and out of context, I’ve called it Strangers.
I’ve started looking over my shoulder, wondering what Carla is about to do next. I’m about a third of the way through a book about vampires – if it ever gets finished, it won’t be by Danuta, and it won’t be by Carla either. The house is beginning to feel a bit crowded.
Danuta Reah on Friday, April 7th 2006 @ 08:16 PM GMT [link]