... Anne-Marie Ormsby. Hello Anne-Marie and thanks for being here. Tell me, what is your current release?
AMO My current
release is Purgatory Hotel, a whodunit set in the afterlife. A young woman is murdered and wakes up in
Purgatory, a mouldering old hotel, with no memory of how she died or what she
could have done wrong to end up among rapists and murderers.
AW What first got you into writing and why?
AMO I have always
been an avid reader, since I was a small child. My parents read loads so they
encouraged me the same way. When I was
nine I read a book that was one of my Dad’s favorites – The October Country by
Ray Bradbury - and I decided that I wanted to be able to make people feel the
way he had made me feel with just words.
His stories made me feel totally immersed in what he was writing about and
I just wanted to learn how to write like that.
AW And is Ray
Bradbury a favourite of yours too? Do you have other favourites?
AMO He was and still is a favourite author. Other favourite authors include Jack
Kerouac, Stephen King, Denis Lehane and Douglas Coupland. I also take great
inspiration from music and movies - favourite artists being Nick Cave and The
Bad Seeds, Johnny Cash, Interpol, David Lynch and David Fincher.
AW You write
paranormal fiction. Is it all imagination or do you also undertake
research?
AMO With this book
it was mostly imagination but I did do some research into police procedures and
into a real life series of murders that I included in the narrative.
AW And what about other types of writing? Have you
ever dabbled with short stories, for instance, or other genres?
AMO I started out
writing short stories, then poetry for a long time and eventually novels. I’ve also written a few screenplays which I
really enjoyed. One was actually
produced as a short independent movie a few years ago.
AW Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had
a special space for writing. Do you have a writing ‘shed’ of your
own?
AMO Not currently as
I have just recently moved, so I will be trying to find my space there
soon. I generally just need a
comfortable space and music to help set my mood. And wine helps too…
AW Finally,
if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with any
one individual, living or dead or a character from a book, who would it be, and
what would you want to discuss?
AMO It changes all
the time, but I’d really like to meet my paternal Grandfather. He died in 1958,
the year before my parents got married, long before I was born. He lived in
Cork City in Ireland and was a policeman there through the troubles in the
early part of the 20th century.
I’ve heard a lot of stories about him and his experiences, but I’d love
to just spend an afternoon with him and hear all the stories from him.
about the book… Dakota Crow has
been murdered, her body dumped in a lonely part of the woods and nobody knows
but her and her killer. Now in
Purgatory, a rotting hotel on the edge of forever, with no memory of her death,
she knows she must have done something bad to be stranded among murderers and
rapists. To get to somewhere safer she must hide from the shadowy stranger
stalking her through the corridors of the hotel and find out how to repent for
her sins. But first she must relive her life.
Soon she will learn about her double life, a damaging
love affair, terrible secrets and lies that led to her violent death.
Dakota must face her own demons and make amends for her
crimes before she can solve her murder and move on - but when she finds out
what she did wrong, will she be sorry?
You can get the book from Amazon
about the author… Anne Marie grew up on
the Essex coast with her parents and six siblings in a house that was full of
books and movies and set the scene for her lifelong love of both.
She began writing short stories when she was still at
primary school. In her teens she
continued to write short stories and branched out into poetry, publishing a few
in her late teens. In her early
twenties she began committing herself to writing a novel.
She wrote Purgatory Hotel over several years, but kept it
aside after several rejections from publishers. Luckily, she found a home for her twisted tale with Crooked Cat
Books.
Anne-Marie recently left London for Margate where she
lives, amidst books and DVDs, with her husband and daughter.
... Anne-Marie Ormsby. Hello Anne-Marie and thanks for being here. Tell me, what is your current release?
DR I never imagined I could go back to
the way things were, but somehow, that is exactly what has happened. Of course, I don’t stray too far from
Edinburgh these days, not like her, always off adventuring, but when she is in
the city, myself, Janet (Lady Glamis) and Sir William Kirkcaldy serve her as an
inner circle of sorts. And that brings
me back to the start. Sir William was an accessory to my own murder. Meeting him again in this life was a
strange, strange thing, but he had returned to serving my queen by the time he
died, another man who gave his life for this poor woman, and we have reached an
arrangement. After all, with so many
centuries now passed, there is plenty else we can discuss. Such as how to deal with Darnley, when that
wretch turns up in the city. Something
will have to be done, that’s for sure; the way he torments me and the queen is
quite unfair. 
