I produced and directed documentaries for the BBC for over a decade, later as an independent filmmaker whilst also pursuing an academic career. I currently work as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in film, exhibition and curation.
Documentary filmmaking taught me how to structure and edit stories. Fiction gives me the freedom to imagine the loyalties, motives and inner lives that evidence and testimony can only hint at. Both disciplines demand an investment in research, the ability to shape complex material and an instinct for compelling human stories, all of which have influenced my approach to writing crime fiction.
I spent much of my childhood in the Angus Glens and know their rich, complex terrain intimately. That landscape stayed with me, and over the years I became increasingly fascinated by the competing claims made upon it: ownership and stewardship, conservation and exploitation, and the hidden world of wildlife crime that exists alongside them. Those questions became the seed of TIED.
Susan Kemp 