Creating real life fiction

Lynne McEwan is a former national newspaper photographer turned crime author whose novels draw on real life experiences covering major events, blending them with fictional crimes. Interview by Kate Chapman.

Former press photographer Lynne McEwan has swapped pictures for words and is now enjoying a flourishing second career as a writer of fast-paced twisty crime thrillers, inspired by her Scottish roots.

Lynne, who grew up in Glasgow and now splits her time between the city and Nettleham, near Lincoln, released The Winter Dead, the sixth instalment in her DI Shona Oliver series, last year.

The seventh, published by Canelo, will follow shortly while earlier this year she published another police novel, A Death in Glasgow, under the pseudonym Eva Macrae.

“I always enjoyed reading and writing from an early age. At school, I remember we’d have double English on a Thursday afternoon, when we’d be told to write a story.

“Everybody else would hate this, but I could happily spend two hours making things up – things that couldn’t be wrong. It was always a toss up as to what I would do, either writing or photography,” recalls Lynne.

“I have come into this later, it’s a second career. I worked as a press photographer for 25 years and it’s definitely helped with the writing. I covered a lot of crime stories, and while I was never a police officer, I’ve seen a lot of the procedure and how officers think about the viewpoints of victims of crime and their families, which has helped me create an empathetic police character.”

Lynne says inspiration for her work comes from all around – even the most ordinary of incidents – including the idea for The Winter Dead, which was sparked by something that had happened to her.

“I had a delivery of wooden logs for my house, which I was putting away and underneath them was a hammer – covered in red paint. I jokingly asked the guy who’d delivered it, ‘is this a murder weapon?’ and then I started thinking, what if it was?

“The Winter Dead opens with a scene like that. Shona has a similar delivery and finds a hammer, except she knows it is covered in blood. The story that follows is the process of solving a murder when you have a weapon – but no body.”

Life through the lens
Despite being torn between her passions for writing and photography, Lynne studied the latter at college, focussing on scientific and technical photography. She learnt how to take pictures of structures including oil rigs and nuclear reactors, and also did some medical work, including photographing post-mortems.

“I fell into newspaper photography as there were opportunities in Glasgow. It just became more difficult when I had the children as I didn’t want to be away from them,” she adds.

It has proved to be a fantastic complement to my writing, as I was getting to experience other people’s lives through my lens.

“I spent a fair amount of time in Kuwait, covering the Gulf War. It wasn’t frontline photography, more what happened behind the scenes, the feature-type stuff.

“I was also there when the Berlin Wall came down, and I’ve been to a state penitentiary in America to see a British prisoner incarcerated there. The role took me all over Europe.”

Creative writing
Lynne worked for various titles across Scotland, Wales and Fleet Street, covering events at home and abroad including crime and high-profile murder cases. Along with another journalist, she was the first press to interview Stephen Lawrence’s family following his murder in 1993.

After becoming a mum, Lynne – who has two grown-up children, Leo and Chloe – found it harder travelling for work and decided to relocate to Lincolnshire from London in 2003.

“That’s when I seriously started to think about writing,” she says.

“I thought about it for a long time, which a lot of writers do before they actually start that book. I did an Open University degree, they’d just brought in creative writing courses, and I really enjoyed it.

I thought about what I wanted to write and crime seemed like something I’d enjoy. The more I explored it, the more I realised it could be taken in so many different directions, it hybridises with all other genres so well.”

Lynne completed an MA in crime fiction at the University of East Anglia and by this point had written her first book. It secured her an agent but sadly wasn’t published. When she was asked to write a Scottish police procedural she agreed to give it a go.

That was the beginning of the DI Shona Oliver series, set on the beautiful Solway Firth, which forms the border between Scotland and England. It’s also where her main character is a lifeboat volunteer, inspired by a female volunteer she met during her time as a photographer.

“I never got the chance to do a feature with this lady, but even now I’m still curious about her. I wanted to ask her ‘Why do you do this? Why do you put your own life at risk as a volunteer? It’s not your paid job to rescue people.’ She was a character that could really be explored.”

As part of her research for her books, Lynne visited Cleethorpes Lifeboat Station, where she accompanied the team on exercises and was able to ask questions about their roles and the procedures they follow.

She says this part of the process is just as important as the writing itself, as it enables her to give real depth to her work.

She adds: “We think we might know what we’re talking about, but to be able to research, often what we find out is more dramatic than what we could ever have imagined.”

Lynne, who enjoys attending events, festivals and meeting readers, says there are still plenty more stories for her to tell, and as for setting a future novel in Lincolnshire, she hasn’t ruled it out.

“I’d love to set one in Lincolnshire – it’s a fantastic county, with lots of history and great landscapes.

You’ve got the Wolds, the coastline, the marshes, which could all be a very good settings.

“Then we have Lincoln itself with its Gothic infrastructure – I definitely think I can come up with some dirty deeds going on there!”

For more information visit www.lynnemcewanwriter.com

We Recommend

Winter takes flight

An actor’s life for me!

Creating fabulous fragrances

Louth is full of festivities

The art of restoration

A taste of tradition

View all