My work is less violent because we tend to write what we want to read... and I'm not that interested in gruesome books. Any violence, to fit in well with a crime novel, has to have compassion.
More Quotes by Ann Cleeves
Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.
I write traditional drama, and the small enclosed communities work well with this form. I enjoy exploring secrets. On small islands, privacy is important, and there are secrets that everyone can guess but nobody talks about.
Television is much more collaborative in many ways than prose.
'Shetland' is adapted from the novel 'Red Bones.' The book is based around an archaeological dig, and the mystery starts with the murder of the elderly woman who crofts the land where the dig is happening.
Shetland has always been a place of sanctuary for me. I visited when I dropped out of university, and I just loved it from the minute I got there. It's a bleak but very beautiful place.
Shetland's influences are far more Scandinavian than Celtic.