An interview with Keith Miles

Pam Freeman, Project Leader, Literary Heritage - West Midlands, interviewed Keith Miles in June 2002. She asked the author how he felt to be included in the site and to tell us more about his writing background.

Pam: Keith, thank you for doing this interview. I'm sure visitors to our site would like to know how you feel about being included on the website.

Keith: I'm delighted to be included in the West Midlands Literary Heritage Website. Having lived in the region for over thirty years, I have the fondest memories of it. I got my first break into professional writing with BBC Midlands so I owe the area a special debt.

Pam: Keith, you've written about the Midlands in many forms - plays, children's books, crime novels, for the TV series Crossroads, the radio series The Archers and also in the Domesday books - what is it about the Midlands that makes for a good backdrop?

Keith: The Midlands is an ideal backdrop for a play or a novel because of the huge variety that it offers. Take a county like Staffordshire, where I lived for a while. It has industrial centres, quaint cathedral cities, Cannock Chase, Pottery towns, delightful small villages, agricultural areas and much else besides. Warwickshire, too, has far more variety than appears at first sight. Each county has its own distinctive character. When you live in one of them, you have an urge to write about it.

Pam: You say the Midlands inspired you as a geographical background, but which writers have inspired you - both past or present?

Keith: The two writers who've inspired me most over the years have been Bernard Shaw and P.G.Wodehouse, both witty men who worked in exile and who were still turning out wonderful work at an advanced age. Shaw had the more impressive range and intellect but there's no more entertaining writer in the English language than Wodehouse. Among present-day authors, I'd pick out Saul Bellow, Anne Tyler and Elmore Leonard. Each is so individual and consistently good.

Pam: A writer's life is often portrayed as one of solitude, with bursts of promotional activity, but what's it really like being a professional writer?

Keith: If you don't enjoy being alone, don't become a writer. I thrive on solitude. It's the only way I can produce the amount of work that I set myself. Organisation is the secret. I work regular hours, six - sometimes seven - days a week, aiming for certain targets at each stage of a play or novel. Having been at it for over thirty years, I can usually guess how long a project will take so I plan accordingly, always allowing some leeway for unforeseen problems. I was lucky enough to come from a family with a strong work ethic. From the start, I saw the value of setting yourself a firm pattern.

Pam: With such a heavy commitment to writing, tell us what you are planning to write next.

Keith: I'm currently writing the thirteenth crime novel in a series about the Elizabethan theatre then it's on to the fourth novel in a series of Restoration romps. When that's done, I have to organise an anthology of my short stories for publication in the States, then I move on to a book set on a Mediterranean cruise during the Edwardian period. I also plan to spend more time with my lovely granddaughter.

Pam: Thank you, and I look forward to reading your next Elizabethan crime novel.