Interview

Interview September 2017

We asked author Kevin Marsh about his life as an engineer, teacher and writer.

Q.        What did you do before becoming a writer?

A.        When I left school, I served an apprenticeship as a sheet metalworker.

            I had intended to stay on at school for the 6^th year, but the job opportunity came along, which included a place at the local Technical College, so I took it.

It was 1977 and I left school at Easter to join a small Fabrication Company where my father worked as a fabricator welder.  (He was a Blacksmith by trade).

Elvis Presley died in the August of that year and I can still remember the shock of his passing, the noisy workshop becoming silent with disbelief as the news was broadcast on the radio.

In September, I started college sponsored by my company. The first year I was a full time student attending college five days a week including one evening for forty two weeks.

After that I was there as a day release student for a further four years.  It was great fun, I thoroughly enjoyed my time as an apprentice, then in 1982 I was made redundant.

Q.        Why were you made redundant?

A.        For some companies this was standard procedure, move the trainee on as soon as he qualifies, but I did not expect that to happen to me.  I had just got married and had a mortgage, but it did not take long for me to find another job.  Those days it was quite easy to find employment in the trade, there were plenty of fabrication and welding companies in the area.  It turned out to be a good experience as I was able to learn processes and procedures that I had not seen or used before.  Within a couple of years I started my own company.

Q.        Did you write anything during this period?

A.        Not really, I toyed with various ideas, made notes and wrote part of a book set in the Victorian era, I still have the notes. 

Q.        You started your business in the early 1980s?

A.        Yes, it was about 1983, I went out on my own working pretty much out of the back of a van and in my garden shed.  It took a few months to find a workshop but this gave me time to build up my business.  Over the next few years, the business developed and I began to employ others.  We specialised in all kinds of steel fabrications, steel staircases and fire escapes, wrought iron gates, railings and balconies, mini skips and gun cabinets.  It was a varied mix.

Q.        Why did you leave all that behind to go into teaching?

A.        In 1997, I decided to change direction so proposed a basic metalwork course to the Adult Education Authority.  They liked the idea and found a little workshop in a school and a trial course began.

            At this time, I was studying for my Teaching Qualification and needed to have classroom hours logged as part of the course.  My metalwork class was workshop based and not the type of teaching required for the module I was studying, so I proposed a Creative Writing course.  This course proved popular and I was able to log more than enough teaching hours to fulfill the requirements.

            By this time, I had reduced the size of my business but was still working full time, teaching in the evenings.  I decided to take on a trainee and enrolled him on a course at the college where I had studied.  Some of my old lecturers were still there so I told them about the work I was doing with Adult Education.  There was a part time lecturing position available at the college so I applied and got the job.  Over the next year I began to run my business down and spent more time studying for my teaching qualification which I gained in 2000.  It was then that a full time position became available so I worked at the college as a lecturer in the Fabrication Dept until 2009.

Q.        What about your writing?

A.        I was concentrating on writing short stories for magazines, but received more rejection slips than I care to mention.  It was a good discipline, writing complete stories of between one to two thousand words, quite different from the technical papers and lesson plans that I wrote on a daily basis.

Q.        What did you do after 2009?

A.        I joined a Military Engineering School teaching sheet metalwork.  This gave me a lot more time to think about my writing and by 2012 I had completed my first novel.

Q.        The Belgae Torc was your first book.  Why an action adventure novel?

A.        An action adventure novel with an historical background.  I love history and find the research element very interesting.  The Belgae Torc satisfied all of my interests.  It was a steep learning curve as I had never written a full length novel before.  There was far more research than I anticipated and my characters kept getting themselves into very awkward situations.  I had no idea at the time that the book would develop into a trilogy.

Q.        How did that happen?

A.        The Belgae Torc was advertised in a history magazine both in the UK and USA.  The editor I was dealing with got the idea that this was book one of three, he came up with The Torc Trilogy and I think this appeared in the published article, so I had little choice, I had to write two more books.

Q.        Before you wrote The Gordian Knot, you produced a psychological thriller, The Witness.  Why?

A.        The Witness is a completely different book.  I had loads of notes already prepared and most of the plot spinning around in my head, so I chose to spend the next few months working on it.

Q.        The witness came out the following year, but your readers had to wait until 2014 before The Gordian Knot was published.  Did that worry you?

A.         No not really.  I realised that The Belgae Torc would not appeal to everyone so I wrote The Witness for a completely different audience. 

Q.        The moment The Gordian Knot came out you began to write the final book in the trilogy.  Why did it not appear until 2016?

A.        Cutting the Gordian Knot took a lot more planning.  It’s the final book in The Torc Trilogy and there were many problems to sort out in order to bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion. 

I wanted the lives of Orlagh and Jerry to appear normal, but at the same time, the action adventure element had to continue.  It is a little more far-fetched than the previous plots, but I had tremendous fun writing it.

Q.        Do you plan to write more action adventure books?

A.         I would like to develop some of the characters from The Torc Trilogy.   Orlagh, Jerry and Jack will most probably appear in further adventures.

Q.        How did you come up with the name Orlagh Gairne?

A.         I was listening to the Irish band The Corrs singing one of their songs and during the chorus the words ‘All Again’ are repeated.  All I could hear was Orlagh Gairne, so the character was created.

            I used this in a paragraph in The Belgae Torc.  Orlagh was introducing herself to Jack and Paul, they turned to each other in confusion and said, ‘did she just say her name was All Again?’

Q.        The Cellist is your current novel.  Is this one a crime thriller?

A.         Sort of, although I prefer to call it a thriller.  It follows on from The Witness, but is not a sequel.  Characters and places from The Witness appear in The Cellist, which can be read as a standalone novel.  Readers would however have a greater understanding of the plot if they have already read The Witness.

Q.        Do you intend to write more books in this genre?

A.         Yes, I have a number of books planned.  Characters and places from previous stories in this series will appear again.  I intend every plot to overlap.

Q.        What next?

A.         I am working on something at the moment although it is only at the research stage.  I have some ideas for the plot but nothing has been finalised yet, it is very much work in progress.