Rob recently did an interview with his editor, Andrew Mackenzie, for the Ringwood Publishing website. It is reprinted below:

2025 will mark the fifth anniversary of the publication of your first book with Ringwood, Cuddies Strip. Since then, you have published two follow-up novels and a short story collection. How do you reflect on the past 5 years? 

By far the best unintended consequence has been the fact that I’ve reconnected with family I’d lost touch with over the years. It easily happens when people move away and get on with their lives, but meeting up again with my Auntie Greta and my cousins has been an absolute joy. I have Cuddies Strip to thank for that.

“Life-changing” is a bit of a cliché, but in my case being published by Ringwood has done just that. People who’ve heard me do talks will know that even as a (normally lacking in self-confidence) child I was certain that one day I’d be a “world-famous” writer. I’ve maybe not reached the “world-famous” bit yet, but at least with four published books I’m on the way! 

But the biggest change is that I made the decision, about eighteen months ago, to give up my day job and become a full-time writer. It’s very lucky that, while I was always set on being “world-famous”, I was never much bothered about being rich as well. But, apart from the lack of material wealth, it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. 

How has turning full-time changed the way you approach your writing? 

It’s given me a lot more hours in the day to find ways of procrastinating and not getting on with the writing! Seriously, it’s been liberating. I don’t have to worry about fitting writing into a spare half hour, or writing when I’m not in the mood. 

And do you think your writing style has changed? 

I think writers are always evolving as they seek that elusive formula. Before I wrote Cuddies Strip I was a pantser – I made everything up as I went along, with nothing worked out in advance. With Cuddies Strip I couldn’t do that because I was writing from a real-life case, so I had to completely change my style. Ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out how much planning I should do beforehand and how much I’m better just making it up. I don’t think I’ve found the perfect blend yet!

What hasn’t changed is that I try to get a first draft down as quickly as possible, and I don’t care how bad it is. First drafts are meant to be terrible, and there’s a very good reason why nobody ever sees them. Just get the words down and then you can start polishing them.

How different is the first draft from what we the readers eventually see?

My first drafts are usually quite short, about 50-55,000 words, against the 85-90,000 words of a finished novel. They don't have much subplot. They're more a set of separate episodes without much holding them together. In the writing, certain characters or ideas start to form and these get expanded in the later drafts. I certainly couldn't predict, at the start, how the book will eventually pan out.

Does the plan ever change while you're writing, do your characters surprise you and take you in a direction even you didn't expect? 

Always. In Barvick Falls there’s a character called PC McAnuff. He very briefly appeared at the very start of the last book, Moot, and didn’t even have any lines of dialogue, but somehow he stuck in my mind and out of the blue he got himself a starring role in the new book. And some characters change enormously from my initial plan. Sandy Disdain, for example, who appears in Moot and Barvick Falls, was originally intended to be quite an unpleasant character but as I wrote about him I came to realise he was really just misunderstood and he’s not at all bad. So he’s changed a lot over the planning and writing process. 

The fourth instalment of the Bob Kelty series, Barvick Falls, is due to be published this year. No spoilers, but what can you tell us about the novel? 

I’m really looking forward to this coming out. It introduces us to two new characters. The first is Ellen, a twelve-year-old evacuee from Finnieston in Glasgow, who comes to live with Bob and Annie at the outbreak of the Second World War. Ellen is a feisty and headstrong girl and Bob and Annie certainly have their work cut out looking after her. Her schoolteacher is Miss Carrington and she is the second main new character in the book.

Everyone knows something about Lorna Carrington. But no one knows everything. And if they did they would be very, very frightened. So the book is about whether people will talk to one another in time and discover what she’s really like before she does something truly terrible.

Sounds frightening! Is Lorna Carrington based on one of your old schoolteachers?

My lips are sealed.

Ringwood’s solicitors can breathe easily. What are you currently working on? 

I’m writing the fifth book in the series . We’re now in March 1940, and conscription has reached men of Bob’s age. We know from previous books that Bob hates violence and has a strong pacifist streak so this is obviously going to be difficult for him. No spoilers, but he faces the hardest test of his life.

You've mentioned before that you have a plan for your Bob and Annie Kelty series of historical novels that spans multiple books, and indeed, decades. How difficult is it to keep track of this plan across multiple novels and characters? 

I have a terrible memory at the best of times, so having hundreds of fictional characters to keep track of is a bit of a nightmare. I have a spreadsheet of characters across the whole series with their birthdates and when they die, and a note of their age during the action of each book. There are things which happen in the early stories which won’t actually matter until decades later, so I have to keep these things in my head. I’ve actually already written one of the last books in the series, so to an extent everything I’m writing now is building up to what happens in that book.

This takes us to a fascinating philosophical and religious debate about whether human beings actually have free will or not. As the writer of a multi-part series I’m fascinated by how little free will my characters really have. Even when they go off-piste and do something I hadn’t planned for them (which they do all the time), it still winds round to the same result in the end. Make of that what you will…

An interesting thought. Does Bob Kelty spend a lot of time debating such metaphysical mysteries?

Not Bob. He just lights up his pipe, listens to some music and watches while the world revolves around him. It’s not a bad approach.

What would Bob be listening to, do you think?

At the time this novel is set his tastes are quite traditional, with a preponderance of Scots music. He does play the fiddle and bagpipes, of course. But increasingly over time he grows to love jazz. We got a touch of this in Moot, when he played some Scott Joplin ragtime music. By the 1970s he is fully into Miles Davis and John Coltrane and free jazz. One tune which features in this novel is Little Coquette, which was fashionable at the time. This is a beautiful version of it by a modern band, Tuba Skinny, but played in a very traditional style. Bob would have loved this. The singer, Erika Lewis, actually had a very bad throat on the day this was recorded, but you'd never know.