HE may not be able to imagine doing anything else now, but for Cumbrian crime writer Richard Simpson, it was the struggles of the financial crash that forced him into being an author.

Simpson, whose pen name is JJ Salkeld, worked as a journalist, documentary filmmaker and features writer for 20 years, living in Kendal for most of that time.

““Then the crash happened and the BBC and Channel 4 didn’t have any money for documentaries – at least not the ones I liked making,” Richard explained.

“I specialised in art-related documentaries – I’m very interested in the creative impulse.

“But it’s very difficult to get funding for a film – it’s a huge commitment, much more than writing a book – and the company I worked for went bust.

“So I thought: ‘What else can I do, that I like doing?’ and I thought of writing.

“I decided not to go through with the formal process of getting an agent, because I’d done that in my 20s and it hadn’t worked out, so I thought I’d self-publish via Kindle and see what happened.”

The first in the series of Richard’s ‘Lakeland Murders’ novels was published in early 2013 but he said it took several before he began to find an audience.

Since then he regularly been an Amazon ‘Kindle All Star’ author meaning that he is among the 100 top-selling KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) authors across all literary genres - and his books have featured heavily in the relevant Kindle best-seller lists in the UK, the USA, Australia and Canada since 2013.

His second series was the adrenaline-fuelled Carlisle-set Border City Blues novellas.

On why he decided to go into crime fiction in particular, Richard said he was interested in ‘policing as work’.

“Fundamentally my books are about two things: family and work,” he explained.

“I’m a huge fan of The Sweeney, because it’s an amazing social commentary on Britain in the 1970s.

“It shows you the power relationships and the things that were important in people’s lives, and crime fiction does that.

“Although it rarely sets out to offer any kind of social commentary, in reality it invariably reflects the times in which it is written.”

The books often feature distinctively Cumbrian activities and locations, from Morecambe Bay to Long Meg by way of hound trailing and net fishing.

“In crime fiction, perhaps more than any other genre, readers place particular value on a sense of place,” explained Richard.

“I’m conscious that lots of people come to the Lakes on holiday and love it, but they perhaps don’t have a sense of the people who live there all year round, so I’m creating a different relationship with the landscape.

“I do try to reflect the lives of the people who call Cumbria home, rather than just a beautiful place to visit.”

Indeed, it is often a visual image relating to the landscape that provides the catalyst for his books, with the first Lakeland Murders novel, ‘Separated at Death’, inspired by a real news story from his time living in Kendal.

“In the early 90s there was a suspicious death near where I lived with my family, where a body was found in the woods.

“That image always stayed with me, although I didn’t know anything about the person, and when I wrote that first novel I started from that image without any other idea about where the story was going.”

Another book, ‘Riddles on the Sand’, started when Richard saw an image of a tractor being found on Morecambe Bay, and began to imagine how it got there.

“As a journalist this was my patch for decades,” he said, “so I’ll use my local knowledge of, and interest in, things like Appleby Horse Fair or hound trailing, and show them in a different light.”

Richard is a central figure in Britain's burgeoning 'Northern Noir' movement, as he explained: “Crime fiction set in northern Europe, from Iceland and Scandinavia to Scotland and the far north of England, seems to strike a powerful chord with readers.”

These days Richard and his wife split their time between Edinburgh and Maryport, where Richard spends several hours a day writing.

On how he is so prolific as an author, he said: “I think it comes from doing a job for such a long time that was deadline driven and productivity driven.

“Kingsley Amis once said that writing is about the application of the seat of the trousers of the seat of the chair, which I wholeheartedly agree with.”

But he admitted he ‘hit a wall’ earlier this year, and now plans to reduce his output to three novellas a year at most.

“I started a book that I wasn’t happy with at all, so I took around ten weeks off until something else popped into my head.

“You can’t keep churning things out indefinitely to the same standard so I’ve changed my working method to reduce productivity and keep quality.

“You should never underestimate a readership – they know you as a writer and they know when you’re doing it well and when you’re not.”

Richard is also in talks about adapting his novels for either screen or radio, which he said he is ‘keen’ to see happen.

“I’ve decided I am going to continue to self-publish because it gives you more financial control, but the difficulty is that there’s no marketing budget.

“I’m extremely grateful for so many loyal readers but it would be nice to reach a new audience.”