Watching You in Scotland Helen Fields
Watching You – A chat with Helen Fields
Today, Helen Fields, lovely lady who writes quite dark stories – is here on The BookTrail chatting all things Scottish, plots, drama and more.
Why is the book set where it is, is it important to the story and/or author?
Watching You is set is Scotland, as are many of my stories. It’s an important place to me emotionally. My father always felt a strong draw to Scotland, and both my parents were regular visitors, so I’d heard a lot about it before I first visited. Scotland is where I’ve left my heart. I’m lucky enough now to visit on a regular basis, but it surprises me every time.
Location map of Watching You
The gothicness of Edinburgh….
Location map of Watching You
It is a blend of dark gothic and joyful colour, and this is true from the buildings to the castles, the landscapes to the people. Scottish cities are vital and energetic but they’re situated amidst oceans of calming highlands, lowlands, lochs and isles. For this particular story, I need a city with good infrastructure and a large population to make a police investigation complex, but I also needed rural places as escapes and locations for some of the action. Scotland was, as ever, the perfect choice for both.
Edinburgh castle
Location map of Watching You
Why did you want to tell the story you did?
Watching You has characters from two different series that I write, which means that regular readers will find plenty that’s familiar, but it also had to work as a complete standalone for new readers. The thing I enjoy most when I write is developing characters. That might be in a single story or across many books, but no character should remain unchanged by the things they see, do or experience.
Location map of Watching You
In this book, I was able to really take each character on their own arc, and I was very conscious of making those journeys credible, understandable and interesting. I always think readers are less interested in the act of killing and much more engaged with the question of what suddenly drives someone to kill. I think, of all my books, this is the story where I look at that in the most detail.
Did you go to the place in real life to research?
Yes, I don’t write about places I haven’t visited (the only exception to that was during Covid when I simply couldn’t). Fortunately, I spend plenty of time in Scotland, and when I do, I’m always travelling around taking photos, marking places on maps and keeping notes on great locations for future stories. I’m very specific about my locations, so much so that people often contact me to say they’ve done a tour of Edinburgh based on places from the books
Location map of Watching You
Recently, a tourist trail in Mull was created to visit the scenes from my novel “The Last Girl to Die” which is based around the true geography, folklore and history of the island. Setting a book in the real world has the added benefit of allowing readers to find photos and look up the history of the places mentioned – something I doo al the time when I’m reading.
Jupiter Artland gallery
Location map of Watching You
Can you tell us more about the setting/location in your book?
Jupiter Artland was the perfect opening location. There, you’ll find a series of five statues called the Weeping Girls, who are the only witnesses to the first murder. When I saw them, I knew immediately that they had to feature in a book. They’re so animated and real, so hard to look away from, and the park itself is a testament to the point where nature meets art.
Weeping Girls (c) Laura Ford
Location map of Watching You
I had to make my hospital location up – it’s a sensitive subject, so using a hospital that exists and talking about stalking in the corridors and a murder in a lift wouldn’t have been fair! You’ll also find some scenes set on Loch Voil. The Scottish lochs are amazing locations for stories. It would be so easy to lose yourself, to hide a body, to go on a hunt – in places like this. When I really need to get away from the world, I inevitably head for the lochs. The quietude never turns to loneliness there.
Loch Voil
Location map of Watching You
Themes in your book?
It’s a mixture of what you’d expect from a crime thriller, so there’s a mystery, a body count, some stalking, a revenge strand. But there’s also comedy, and a strong seam of what it means to return to hope after loss, and to keep fighting to find light in your life. Grief and its effects feature heavily, not always in the ways you would expect. There is a side-story about art, too, that I had great fun imagining that!
Something surprising you found whilst writing it.
I often write about psychology, but here I found one of the most interesting medical psychological conditions in all my research. I won’t spoil anything, but suffice it to say, I hope readers are as intrigued and astounded by it as I was. (BookTrail – totally! My google search now is all about this – fascinating!)
Helen Fields author
Location map of Watching You
What I love is finding the hidden parts of our psyches, the pieces that can suddenly break and change everything about us. As I wrote, I also realised that even I need a light at the end of the story tunnel – crime can’t be all doom and gloom – and working towards a fulfilling ending sometimes means taking risks in a story.
Location map of Watching You
I’m proud of Watching You because it’s a thriller with heart. It’s really, in fact, about love and relationships – mother to daughter, son to father, new found love, the bonds of work colleagues. Without strong emotional interplay, thrillers can feel a little thin, just a series of moments of action woven together by investigation. When we invest in a story, that’s about wanting characters to triumph (or not!). That’s what I was aiming for here (and what I hope I managed to do.)
Edinburgh mortuary
If you could add one book to The Book Trail to celebrate its fascinating locations, what book would that be and why?
A Town Like Alice by Nevile Shute.
The action begins in Malaya (now Malaysia) during the Japanese WWII occupation where the protagonist, Jean, meets and Australian POW, Joe. They become companions, then friends, then fall in love. Form there, we go to London, where Jean has returned. After that, the book jumps to Willstown (Queensland) in Australia where Jean is trying to find Joe. The title is a reference to Alice Springs (Northern Territory, Australia) which is really the dream in the book. I’ve never read any other book with as clear and compelling sense of place (and time), so for me this epitomises The Book Trail. I love being whisked away on journeys in my mind. This book is perfection.
That was QUITE the journey Helen! Right, come on. Me and you – The Milkman coffee shop for a brew and a pastry.
BookTrail Boarding Pass:Watching You
Twitter: @Helen_Fields
