An Interview with Richard Stokes

Richard Stokes is the award-winning producer of UK television shows including Broadchurch, Torchwood, Silk, and The Siege, amongst others. He has made critically acclaimed and commercially successful television shows for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and AMC.

After a successful career making other people’s stories come to life, he felt it was high time to tell his own. He has written for television including episodes of Law & Order: UK.

His screenplay Galileo won the inaugural Filmmatic science-fiction screenplay competition and earned him a place on the Screencraft screenwriting fellowship in 2023.

After many kind words from broadcasters but no cigar, he turned the story of a police team on Mars into the first of the Galileo series of crime novels—Galileo Storm.

He lives in London with his wife, son, and mad spaniel.

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What inspired you to start writing this book?

I have always thought that a police procedural in space could be a really great story idea. I grew up loving shows like Star Trek and was seven when Star Wars came out, so SF was in my narrative DNA. I wrote a pilot TV script called Galileo and showed it to various commissioners. It got me a lot of meetings and a lot of kind responses, but it was sci-fi, which is a hard sell in the UK, and was considered too expensive to develop. With some downtime to hand, I wondered if it could possibly make a good crime novel. So, I began writing. It has been very hard work and at times exhilarating and at others heartbreaking, but I have learned so much and loved the creativity of sitting alone with a computer and writing a story I think I—and hopefully others—would want to read.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

The original title was Galileo, after the screenplay. But I thought it would make a cool series of three novels so gave each a ‘shade-of-red’ plus-a-word title. The first was going to be Crimson Dust. The second would have been Cardinal Dawn and the third Vermillion Moon. But I realised a series of novels—particularly in the self-published space where ideas need to really stand out—tend to have a word or two that are similar, or even the same, in each. I was reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of … series at the time and thought it would work if each title were named Galileo ‘Something.’ So, the first is Galileo Storm. The second will be Galileo Dawn (out later this year) and the third I’m still working on. It is currently still Galileo Something.

Describe your dream book cover.

I think I have it. I’m very lucky to have worked with some brilliantly creative people in my TV career and I’ve been able to draw upon their talents as favours or bought for mates-rates. Nick Motture is the brilliant designer who did a title sequence for me for a spy thriller on the BBC a few years ago called Undercover. I went to him with a brief and he sent me some thoughts. We worked on them together until we had what is currently on the book. We’re working together on the second cover now.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I love film soundtracks. I always write to them to give me the right vibe for the chapter I’m in. I tend to avoid the more obvious works, as they are so specific to the films they accompany, but there are some more obscure Hans Zimmer soundtracks that work a treat. A lot of this book was written with The DaVinci Code or Thin Red Line playing in the background. I also love The Creator, Giacchino’s The Batman, and James Newton Howard’s work for M. Night Shyamalan.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

I dip in and out of sci-fi for research and pleasure, but also crime. I’m currently devouring Mick Herron’s Slow Horses spy series, which is beautifully written, and for research I’m reading A City on Mars. Written by Dr Kelly Weinersmith, I heard her interviewed on the radio, reached out on LinkedIn, and made contact. I bought her book and, bless her, she bought mine.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I’ve been a TV producer for most of my working career. I started out as a script editor on EastEnders, helped develop Holby City into a year-round medical series, and then produced Torchwood, Law & Order: UK, Broadchurch, and Silk, among others. I didn’t think I was going to frontline produce again when I got an email from an old friend asking if I wanted to produce a new six-part series for Channel 4 based on Ben Macintyre’s The Siege. I said yes, and we finish filming in a couple of weeks. Should be out sometime in 2027.

Where is your favorite place to write?

We had a loft extension done a few years ago and I write up there in front of the window. Lets in a lot of light, which is lovely. On the desk, I have a range of Star Trek and Star Wars collectibles of various ages. Pride of place is my original 1977 R2-D2. I’m sure if it was boxed and pristine it would be worth a fortune, but as a kid I played the hell out of it so it’s a bit battered.

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

It’s a sci-fi crime thriller. I hope they felt it had enough twists and turns to keep them guessing, but also it has some of my deeper feelings about politics and utopian futures in there. I hope it feels as real as a contemporary thriller—just set fifty years from now in a settlement on Mars.

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