The Dark Defiles

About Richard Morgan

Richard Morgan is 39 and was, until his writing career took off, a tutor at Strathclyde University in the English Language Teaching division. He has travelled widely and lived in Spain and Istanbul. He is a fluent Spanish speaker.

Below is a Q & A with this author.

Who’s your favourite author?
Haruki Murakami.

What’s the first book you remember reading?
First adult book – Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love.

What's the greatest influence on your writing?
Probably the noir crime tradition. That, coupled with an intense political rage at the way the world is run.

What is your philosophy for life?
As summed up in the Milcho Manchevski movie Dust – "Live your own life – because you die your own death."

Did you always want to be an author? If not, what did you originally want to be and when and why did you change your mind?
Yep – been scribbling stories since I was about eight or nine. Only took me the best part of the next thirty years to get published!

Who do you most admire and why?
My father – because he's worked hard all his life, often under conditions of crushing adversity, has never once backed away from his obligations and responsibilities, and has still managed to retain an incredible generosity of spirit that I've rarely seen equalled.

What jobs did you have before you started writing?
In my time I've been a rent collector, a furniture mover and a barman, to name but three of the more interesting. Mostly, though, I worked as a globe-trotting English as a Foreign Language teacher, with spells in Istanbul and Madrid.

Tell us about your best or worst holiday experience.
Best so far has to be walking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu – I'd wanted to do it ever since I was a kid and my expectations were huge, but it still more than lived up to them. One to remember when you're old.

What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you?
As a young man, sidling up to an older woman I thought fancied me, putting a hand on her leg and discovering I had utterly, utterly misread the signals. Cringe!!!! Happened long ago when I was young and inept, but it still makes me blush to recall it nearly two decades later.

What is a typical writing day?
An impossible dream – I seem either to sit around staring into space and writing nothing, or lock on obsessively and spend dawn 'til dusk scrawling without a break. You'd think at my age I'd have learnt a little moderation (and time management), but sadly, no.

What single thing might people be surprised to learn about you?
That my violent tendencies are limited to non-existent.