Kate Evans: 'I like complex and layered characters'
BY Katie Smart
7th Apr 2022
Kate Evans studied on our three-month online Writing Your Novel course in 2016. Now she is the author of the North Yorkshire-set DC Donna Morris series, which begins with A Wake of Crows (out now in paperback from Constable, Hachette).
We caught up with Kate to find out more about her crime novel and advice for budding writers.
The debut novel in your three-book DC Donna Morris series, A Wake of Crows, is out now from Constable (Hachette). Can you tell us a bit more about the series and the inspiration behind it?
I wrote my first novel when I was nineteen, nearly thirty-nine years ago. I wrote novels and sent them off to agents and, when I did get a response, it was along the lines of ‘good writing, but not commercial enough’. Over those years, I put a lot of effort into honing my craft and also returning to characters and themes. These novels were, I thought, vaguely ‘literary’. A turning point came when I decided to pull what I was trying to write about into a crime novel. Again it took several tries, but eventually this paid off with the contract with Constable. So in many ways, the inspiration is a culmination of my last thirty-nine years of life.
Constable liked the idea of the novel I submitted, but asked for a different protagonist. I had just gone through a nightmare peri-menopause culminating in a hysterectomy. It didn’t seem to me that there are many peri-menopausal detectives in fiction out there, so DC Donna Morris was born. I don’t want to give too much away about the plot, but a chance meeting I had when I was fourteen in Krakow also gave me one of the threads in the story.
DC Donna Morris is a probationer and has chosen to come to Scarborough to be close to her daughter. A Wake of Crows interweaves with a story about communist East Germany. The series is also charting her journey which will include re-assessing her life choices and past.
The second novel in the series, Drowning Not Waving, will be published this June. Do you have any advice for writers who want to develop a detective for a crime series?
Don’t make your detective’s back story too complicated. I fear I may have done! Seriously though, there’s always a balance to be struck between telling the crime story which is at the centre of the particular novel, and the back story which may run over the series. I think having the main protagonist a police detective is a good idea. Other writers have managed it, but I feel it stretches credulity if someone who is not an officer keeps tripping over murders. Keep copious notes. For the novel itself, if something needs changing later on in a novel, it helps to know where the clues and red herrings are when rewinding back. Plus notes for the series as a whole, so there’s continuity and development between novels.
The series takes place in Scarborough, a small coastal town on the North Yorkshire coast. Tight-knit communities create such compelling situations in crime fiction, what drew you to set your series in this small town?
I live in Scarborough and I love the town. For its size, it has an interesting mix of people and things going on, as well as a rich heritage. Plus the landscape is wonderful. I adore the sea in all its moods. Plus there are the moors and the wolds. I like reading novels which have a good sense of place and I write what I like to read. I enjoy finding new ways to describe the environment. And I like to bring it in to reflect what is going on for the characters or in the plot.
You’re trained as a psychotherapeutic counsellor – does your knowledge of mental health issues help inform your fiction?
I think so. I like complex and layered characters. My counselling training, my own therapy, plus working for a short time as a therapist, gave me an opportunity to explore human nature. How we so often say one thing and do another, the narratives we construct, the lies we tell ourselves, our vulnerabilities. I hope I bring all this into writing my characters. I want the perpetrators of the crimes in my novels to have a reason for doing what they are doing which at least makes sense to them.
What are some of your favourite recent crime novels?
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, Amnestyby Arvind Adiga, Abir Mukherjee, Ovidia Yu, Frank Tallis, Clare Mackintosh, Eva Dolan. There are so many!
Can you talk us through your writing routine?
I mostly write in the mornings. When I get stuck I go for a walk or a swim and I find that unsticks me. I generally write five days a week. The first draft goes down as fast as I can manage. I can’t start crafting or editing until I have words to work on. Since working with my editor at Constable on two novels for the DC Donna Morris series, I am getting better at knowing what a good structure looks like and holding it in mind as I write.
If you could only pass on one piece of advice to aspiring novelists, what would you say?
Write because you love it. Publication and acclaim might never come, so love what you are doing.
There will be a third book in the Donna Morris series. Can you offer any hints as to what’s next for your detective?
I am currently working on the third book. Donna came to Scarborough not intending on staying, but she is finding herself more and more attached to her adopted town and her colleagues. This, of course, causes conflict with the husband she has left behind. Plus she has questions about her childhood to unravel.