When I received an email and a phonecall about my novel, A Portrait of the Arsonist as a Young Man from the BBC yesterday, I felt a frission of excitement. And who wouldn't? I was told that the BBC were in the process of making a film about firesetters, that they'd read and been interested in my novel and the research that had gone into it. We spoke about the possible motivations behind the behaviour of arsonists, about the forensic psychology of firesetting, and how my novel had been partly inspired by a real-life story of a publishing house been burnt to the ground!
Obviously, they were not making a documentary about me or my novel, I understood that, I'm not that vain, but it was a nice reminder to myself of the importance of writing a book with contemporary relevance. Statistically, the crime of arson is on the increase...but the psychologists are only now getting into the minds of the firesetters themselves.
The BBC2 documentary will be out in September, and I'll be watching...just in case I'm quoted...
...but don't quote me on that!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Fancy getting yourself a reputation as an expert on arson! What would your mother say?
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, over 35,000 people have now seen your Arsonist book cover's cameo in our Sty TV intro video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av3FysOqPLs
A handful of those people might no doubt have been intrigued enough to Google the pun-tastic title.