CRIMINALLY GOOD: Paul FitzSimons, author and screenwriter

1) So, who are you & what have you written?

I’m Paul FitzSimons, I like moonlight walks and romantic movies …

I’m a writer for the last 13 years and have tried my hand at pretty-much everything – novels, TV, movies, theatre, even Haiku (love haiku). My novel BURNING MATCHES is actually the first thing I ever wrote (not counting school essays) – I rewrote and revisited it every year since 2005 and following another tweak this year, finally pushed the button and published it.

I also wrote (and produced) the feature film THE GIFT (OC Productions, 15A), which was released in 2017 and is now on AmazonPrime. Watch the trailer here.

I have developed a number of TV Dramas and worked as a story writer on the RTE drama FAIR CITY.

I am currently working on the screen adaptation of Burning Matches and a TV drama with a UK producer. I’m also writing my new crime novel FALTER, the first in a series of stories set in my home town.

2) Why do you write crime fiction?

That’s a bit like ‘Why do I breathe?’ I write crime because I can’t not (not sure what that says about my psyche). It’s the genre that excites me on a daily basis, that gets me to my keyboard every morning. I have read crime since I could read (well maybe after Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl), cutting my teeth on Lehane, Patterson, Grisham and Crichton. I’m currently addicted to BA Paris, Jo Spain and Simon Kernick.

3) What informs your crime writing?

I am inspired by ‘what-if’ questions I ask myself when I’m bored, as well as real-life crimes, events that happen in my own life and people around me. I also find get ideas from random conversations I hear on the train (sorry, fellow travellers). The rest just comes out of that psyche of mine.

4) What’s your usual writing routine?

All going well, I’m at my desk by 9, crucial milky-coffee in hand (my Gaggia is my best friend) and my morning is a mix of writing/editing/social media/tackling my ever-increasing to-do list. I also try to do meetings in the AM.

Afternoons I tend to move to the window-table of a local caffeine-related watering-hole (admittedly it’s Starbucks) and then it’s all-writing til 6.

5) Which crime book do you wish YOU’D written, and why?

Any of the Kenzie/Gennaro books by Dennis Lehane, ‘Gone Baby Gone’ comes to mind. Patrick and Angie are two fantastic deeply-nuanced characters who are affected by every case they take. Plus the stories are faultless.
I would also like to have written Catherine Ryan Howard’s ‘Distress Signals’, largely as I would have ‘had’ to do my research on a cruise ship.