Miss Smith Commits the Perfect Crime? by Guy Rolands - Book Tour
Miss Smith
Commits the Perfect Crime?
Recovering from a brutal attack where she
was savagely raped, university student Sam Smith attempts to rebuild her life
and overcome the ongoing effects of her ordeal. Her ultimate goal is to bring
her assailant to justice, but before she can do so her life and loves take a
series of intriguing turns as she continues her sometimes unconventional
education.
Eventually
she is able to identify her attacker and decides to exact retribution in her
own particular style, but during her preparations Sam becomes aware that her
every move is being tracked by a mysterious organisation. To avoid detection by
the police and also her hidden watchers, Sam Smith attempts to commit the
perfect crime. However in the aftermath of her vigilante action events change
rapidly to bring about a most unexpected outcome.
Miss Smith Commits the Perfect Crime? is
the first book in the Sam Smith Adventure Series and can be read as a
standalone.
Purchase Links
Trailer
Author Q&A
1. What would you consider to be your
Kryptonite as an author?My great weakness as an author is that I only want to
write. These days, if you self-publish, you are expected to be a
jack-of-all-trades. The most time-consuming of all the many chores is marketing
your book on social media. There seem to be two schools of thought: spend every
hour you can networking and posting on Twitter and Facebook or forget all that
and write another book. I am leaning towards the latter of these options. What
could be better than spending your time creating characters and situations that
you enjoy and hopefully will satisfy your readers too?
2. How long, on average, does it take you to
write a
book?I guess I take between three or four months to
write a book. I attended a lecture given by Jeffrey Archer, in which he said
that to write successfully, you need a set routine. He got up at five every
morning and wrote undisturbed for the next two hours. I evolved a system which suited me. I
would go to bed with a clear idea of the action and characters in the current
chapter. I would wake up around seven the next morning with the outline of the next chapter clear in my mind. After
breakfast, I would sit down with a pot of (Yorkshire) tea and write down the
next one to two thousand words. As I went along, I re-read sections and
ruthlessly edited out anything that didn’t work. I stuck to the guidelines of
the old UK radio programme, “Just a Minute”: no hesitation, deviation or
repetition.
3. How do you select the names of your
characters?I think character’s names are terribly important.
I try to select names that give the reader an inkling of the character’s
personality, or that reminds me of someone whose traits I am trying to portray.
My heroine’s name, Sam Smith, was chosen as the whole premise of Miss Smith
Commits the Perfect Crime is an ordinary girl’s quest to become extraordinary.
Had she been called Clarissa Ponsonby-Smythe, it wouldn’t have worked. Sam
Smith says it all: down to earth, no airs and graces. The girl next door, you
know and trust. On the other hand, Wilf Bradshaw, the Yorkshire pig breeder in
my story, was based on a late friend called Wilf. I can see him in my mind as I
write this. He was a short, tubby Yorkshireman, generous, optimistic with a
great sense of humour. When I was writing about my character Wilf, I only had
to think of my friend: what he would say, how he would react, and the words
flowed.
4. Favourite childhood memory involving books?As a child, I loved going to my public library. I
was an avid reader, and at an early age, I initially lost myself in the books
of Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’ books and then the ‘Biggles’ books of Captain W
E Johns. Soon, I widened my horizons and ventured into the adult book section.
For a time I lost myself in the war books written by the likes of Paul
Brickhill and Jerrard Tickell; volumes I still occasionally return to. During
my final years at school, I encountered ‘The Techniques of Television’ by
Rudolf Bretz of CBS. This was at the time, a state-of-the-art manual on
television programme production. After reading this book, I knew what I wanted
to do: I wanted to become a Television Director. It took another ten years, to
achieve my dream, but I did, thanks to finding the right book at the right
time. Now, having given up the day job, I have returned to my first love, the
world of books.
5. If you could dine with any literary character,
who would it be and why?It would have to be PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves — what
great character. He sails through a life beset with fools and idiotic events so
that in the end, everything turns out all right, and he emerges unscathed from
a never-ending series of disasters. What I could learn from him.
6. What
fantastical fictional world would you want to live in (if any) given the
chance?I would like to live in a world where I am the
absolute dictator. I would put all the things right that annoy ordinary folk
like you and I. All supermarkets would have to be laid out identically. No more
swearing when they have hidden the cat treats. They must be the same place
where they were last week and also in the supermarket down the street, or else.
Summer-time or Daylight-saving-time will be abolished – in this day and age who
needs it. Airlines would have a fixed ticket price for a journey. It is
criminal the way prices are constantly adjusted to the detriment of customers.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
7. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?Don’t get disheartened. Keep writing regularly.
Be fiercely self-critical. If you are not happy with what you have written,
it’s odds on that it won’t please readers either. I rewrote the first third of
this book three times, and I knew it wasn’t right. I analysed what the book
should be saying and started my fourth attempt from a different point in time,
coming at the same plot but from a completely different perspective. I was
pleased with the end result; at last it felt right.
8. Have you ever met anyone famous?Having worked in television for most of my life,
I have met many famous people; however, one of the most impressive was Ella
Fitzgerald. She was appearing on Britain’s top variety show, ‘Sunday Night at
the London Palladium’, (similar to the Ed Sullivan Show in the US). In those
days, I was a humble sound engineer and was privileged to stand in the wings
watching her perform. At the time, she had cataracts in both eyes, and the
bright lights caused endless streams of tears to run down her cheeks. It didn’t
affect her performance. She was as wonderful as ever and strangely
self-deprecating. On the dress rehearsal, with only the band and the crew present,
she announced her final number with the line. ‘This next number is a heap of
crap.’ Then she turned to the band. ‘But you guys know, it’s the crap that pays
the bills.’ The musicians all fell about laughing as Ella led them into her
beautiful rendering of Moonlight in Vermont.
Since this was a live show, there
would be no record of this great performance. Having the run of all the
broadcast sound equipment, I made a private audio recording of a truly fabulous
performance which I stashed away in my loft together with the television debut
of the Beatles at the Palladium, which I also privately recorded. We moved
house several times and my wife, unbeknown, to me, not realizing their
significance, threw out these priceless reels of tape. Amazingly the marriage
survived!
Author Bio:
Guy Caplin worked in television
broadcasting for over 40 years and is one of the few people to have achieved
success in both the technical and artistic branches of the medium. He has worked with many celebrities
including, the Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope and Maria Callas.
He moved to ITV’s Yorkshire
Television in 1969 as a Producer and Director of Sport, Outside Broadcasts and
special events. Among the many
programmes he devised was the quiz programme “Winner Takes All” fronted by Jimmy
Tarbuck and Geoffrey Wheeler, which under his tenure was regularly amongst the
Top Ten TV programmes and twice reached the coveted Number One Spot.
When the final series of the hit
American programme Dallas ran into technical problems in Hollywood in 1989, Guy
left YTV and joined a UK broadcast engineering company to try to come up with a
solution. The solution proposed resulted
in the creation of the DEFT process, which although too late to be used on
Dallas, was used initially on the Simpsons and subsequently on Friends,
Frasier, Superman and many others America series. DEFT was awarded an Emmy for outstanding
technical achievement.
Back in the UK Guy owned and ran a
company creating video productions for both broadcast and industry, was a
freelance trainer at the BBC and a visiting tutor at the National School of
Film and Television
For the past thirteen years Guy
has also been regular lecturer for P&O cruises and Cunard and has
effectively travelled twice around the world.
Now,
having closed his video company, he spends his time writing under the name of
Guy Rolands and has now completed four novels in the Sam Smith Adventure
series. Having worked all over the world and encountered hundreds of remarkable
characters, his experiences provide colour and intrigue to his work.
Facebook
author page – https://www.facebook.com/guyrolandsauthor/
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