Pete Sortwell is the author of comedy e-books The Village Idiot Reviews, The Office Idiot Reviews and The Idiot Government Review, More Village idiot Reviews. His writing has been published in a total of ten different anthologies. His novel So Low, So High, was published by Caffeine Nights 24 June 2013. Pete met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about his new release and the publishing industry.

Who is Simon Brewster?

Simon isn’t one person, he’s more like an amalgamation of many people all rolled into one and then told with my voice. He’s a person that has come to a point in his life where he knows something has to give. He doesn’t know what it is when we meet him in chapter one, but he knows it’s there. Having said that, it’s important to note that Simon is not me, he’s also not anyone I know and doesn’t represent any one person. Of course, he’s fictional. The reason for the disclaimer, if that’s the best way to describe it, is …

The way I’ve written it is to put people in the shoes of someone who is struggling with drug and alcohol addiction. I’ve done that to show that people don’t generally choose the lifestyle they end up with when painfully addicted to one substance or another. I wanted to get across the complete powerlessness of the condition. I also wanted to make Simon a pretty likable fellow. He’s not well and his actions leave an awful lot to be desired, but the point is he isn’t a bad person trying to get good, he is a sick man who needs to get well, but who doesn’t know how to. As a rule people in the grips of addiction are generally not nice people to be around. They’re fairly annoying and draining, but I’ve had the absolute pleasure of watching people go from what Simon is to being productive members of society, on more than one occasion.

There isn’t a reason that Simon can pinpoint as to why his life has gone the way it’s gone, there was no horrific abuse, both parents were with him, his brother has not had such issues and he has the best friend a person could ask for. For some reason, and I still don’t know what it is, some people just seem to have a predisposition to addiction. Simon is one of them.

Simon doesn’t have an honest job, he’s a drain on society, the police and the services he attends, when he remembers his appointments. His family have all but lost hope that he’ll manage to recover and his best mate, John, is fed up of bailing him out of trouble.

Tell us about So Low So High.

I started writing SLSH almost three years ago to the day that I’m writing this answer. For years I had a feeling that I should write my life story. Of course at 29 there isn’t too much of a story to write about, so after thinking more I decided to write fiction. It’s my first novel. Well, the first one I wrote, there are other books out there now, but this was my first. I spent many hours toiling away getting it right, to the point that my editor, the great Julie Lewthwaite, pointed out that if I carried on tinkering it may well end up a short story or a boringly long, repetitive essay.

What it’s ended up as is a story unlike most crime stories. There’s crime, of course, although it’s petty. There’s someone who is trying to improve his life, who has not only a terrible addiction to deal with, but also people who he’s mixed up with trying to ruin his chances.

As the product description says: “Simon will stop using, one way or another”.

Do you think that people ever give up addictions or simply transfer them into other areas?

Now that is a tricky question. I suppose it all comes down to a couple of points. With Simon, I picked the type of dependant user that needs something drastic to happen for him to ever have even the slightest chance of living a decent life. Of course everybody is different, or at least there are different types of problem drinkers/users. I’ll frame my answer for someone who is in the same boat as Simon, although please understand that this is just my opinion and I’m still learning myself.

When someone is as ill as Simon and a drastic change is needed for them to stay clean and sober, it’s because there is something within them that makes them not only mentally and emotionally different to others, but also physically different. In a sense they are allergic to mind-altering chemicals. Now, to answer your question, I’ll talk about what I think Simon’s problem is. It is something that means once he takes one, (whether pill or drink or whatever) something happens inside his body that doesn’t happen inside most of the population’s: an almost unbearable craving for more. The mental and emotional side of things are kind of the drive he needs to feel different; without a drink or a drug, Simon feels uncomfortable in his own skin — he doesn’t fit in, he’s full of fear and has an overriding need for acceptance. When he takes a substance, that goes away; however, because of the physical part of the illness, he can’t stop. It’s a double whammy.

Once someone like Simon does stop, with the right programme implemented, then they can stay clean and sober. However, and this is where I really answer the question asked, there is always the risk of moving from one addiction to another. One word I hear a lot is ‘balance’; people who are addicts and recovered addicts will always need to be able to balance things that make them feel good, i.e. food, sex, work, shopping — the list can go on. I’ve found that some people who have suffered an addiction can become extremely motivated members of a workforce/society. If someone has been able to find the money and means to use like Simon does, then once they’ve learnt how to direct that drive into something positive, remarkable things can happen. Although people need to think about what it is they’re doing and whether it causes harm to anyone, including themselves, again, it comes down to balance and sound judgement, which can only be achieved by recovering from the initial problem.

So I suppose the answer to your question is, and this is a long winded way of saying it, it depends on the individual, but generally it’s something that needs honest reflection by the individual.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

I f***ing love it. It’s made it possible for me to publish some little comedy books that I dread to think how long it would have taken me to find a publisher for, if I had at all.
It’s put some power back in the authors’/small publishers’ hands. I’m not sure how long it will stay that way and I’m interested to see how it all pans out, but I don’t think anyone better than Amazon could be leading it. I like the way they’ve held their own against the big publishers and not let them name the self-publishing arm ‘vanity’ publishing or anything like that.

The cost of buying a book has gone down for me, I like the e-reader app on my phone, one hand reading is a good thing for me. I think the gadgets and devices have some way to go and I’m waiting for someone to make me an e-ink monitor, which would be really handy for when I’m editing a book.

I really like what Caffeine Nights have done with their iPad app, they offer two free chapters of all their books and if people like them they can click straight into iBooks and be finishing the book in seconds. That is cool. The possibilities for marketing are much wider than in the print world. I imagine something similar to the iPad app in the print world would be a magazine sent out to a few hundred people, who could then mail order the rest of the book they liked.

The reach of e-books is huge. I’ve sold in every Amazon demographic there is. I’ve not had a review in most yet so I’ve no idea what the people of Japan or Germany think of my work. I’ve got their money, though, and that’s all that matters.

Of course there are dangers with it, I’ve seen so many people led up the garden path by people who learn how to format a Kindle book, grab a picture off Google and call themselves a publisher. So it’s an idea to research how you should go about publishing an e-book, but putting the name of the publisher into Google should give you an idea of what they’re like.

All in all though, it’s not going anywhere and will grow. That question has been answered in my sales alone.

Did I say I loved it?

Is there a particular event that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

I think there’s probably been several. I’ve wanted to write ever since I saw a book my father had written in the school library, so I like to think I was always going to end up doing it … well, doing more than just writing my name on all the school desks, anyway.

However, for ‘So Low, So High’ there’s no avoiding the fact that I got clean and sober myself in 2006, so my experience does come into that. There is very little of my actual life experience in it, as it’s a fiction book, but the thoughts that Simon has have obviously come from someone who knows what it’s like to think like that.

With my less dark comedy books, I suppose there was an event that changed my life and triggered me to write them. Last summer, after a long illness, my friend and sponsor passed away. It was a horrible time and not something that will be easy to forget. After the funeral had passed and I’d settled back into life, I found myself not really knowing what to do with myself, wanting to smile and laugh but not really having the means with which to do it, so I started writing comedy reviews of products that I’d bought, just to make myself smile. The idea went from there and I ended up with The Village Idiot Reviews.

I think writing is a terrific outlet for me. I mean, having a frustrating day can be turned into fun — when I’ve felt like kicking someone down the stairs I can come home and make it a reality for one of the characters in my books. (Although never having actually kicked anyone down the stairs, I can’t compare how different the feeling of satisfaction between writing about it and actually doing it would be.)

Who are your literary influences?

Sue Townsend, Danny King and too many Tv comedy writers to mention. To be brief.

Do you think publishing is in trouble?

I don’t, no. It might have been a different answer had I not heard on the radio recently that paper sales have gone up, along with e-sales.

I think things will change, though, more than they have already. More and more people who self-publish will need to buy in professional help. I already do for getting my self-published titles out: designer, formatter and editor. I think there’ll be publicists that will soon be doing the rounds, pulling together all the information that’s mostly already out there and flogging it to self-publishers. I think that both agents and the big publishers will have to start signing different deals, too, no more 20% of everything, forever, and all rights sold forever with huge buy out fees. In fact, it already is changing. Hugh Howey, the guy who wrote Wool, flat out refused to sell the e-rights and got a huge deal. There’s also the White Glove service, although I’m not sure why anyone would use it when it’s so much cheaper to pay someone other than an agent (who’ll take 20% forever) to do the formatting, editing and cover design. Maybe that’s because I haven’t got an agent and don’t fully understand the ins and outs, though, I’m not putting anyone down that does those things.

So, to get back to your question, no, I don’t think it’s in trouble. I think things are changing and I still fully believe that if you write a good book it will find a market. There’ll need to be promotion though, or no one will know it’s there.

Graham Greene wrote ‘There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.’ What do you make of his observation?

All seems a bit deep for me, but then I’m all for looking at the light of a situation. I suppose for me, it resonates in that I can quite happily write about losers and all the tragic things that happen to them, albeit in a darkly-humorous way. But I think that’s because they aren’t real people. I’m not so heartless as to laugh at others’ misfortune (too much) in real life. I suppose there is also the fact that writers can be pretty isolated; I personally spend many hours sitting alone tapping away at a keyboard. I suppose the splinter in the heart could mean I don’t need to have as much human contact as people who haven’t. I’m not too sure, though. I think I’ll stick with my original prognosis that it’s all a little too deep for me.

What advice would you give to yourself as a young man?

Strap yourself in, it’s going to be a great ride.

More specifically, I suppose it would be to be myself more, not to worry about what others either think or might think about what I’m doing. I don’t have any fear about putting my writing out there now, but I remember worrying about it about ten years before I ever wrote anything. Now you come to mention it I should probably give myself the same advice with a couple of other dreams I have.

You’ve sold over five thousand e-books. Is there any secret?

I just don’t know. I can tell you what I did: One of the things I say to other people who write is, ‘Put some money behind your work, if you’re not prepared to invest in your book, you can’t expect anyone else to.’ I have a team I use now and I’ve been fortunate enough to find some fantastic talent that helps me get the books out there.

I also use the tools that are out there, I might have sold five thousand, but I’ve given away seven or eight times that through KDP select. I’ve seen people say that free books devalue the work we put in, but I’m fairly sure that without giving away the amount I have done, I wouldn’t have sold the numbers I have. I even pay to promote free giveaways now — because it works and I end up selling more than I spent.

Thank you Pete for giving an insightful and versatile interview.

Links:

Get a copy of ‘So Low So High’ in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon UK and US.

See all of Pete Sortwell’s books on his Amazon UK and US author pages.

Follow Pete on Facebook and Twitter @petesortwell.

Graham Smith writes gritty real crime fiction. He delivers hardnosed and tightly structured stories that have the feel of night clubs and late night boozers. DI Harry Evans is a renegade detective in his debut thriller, The Ironmongers’ Error. Graham met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about crime fiction and the E Book revolution.

Tell us about your novel.

My debut novel is a police thriller which has the working title of The Ironmonger’s Error. It is about a middle class couple whose children are kidnapped against the father’s gambling debts. They have one week to raise the £95,000 ransom. Penniless they turn to crime to fund their children’s release.

Hot on their heels is DI Harry Evans a renegade detective who is trying to escape enforced retirement while coming to terms with his own personal tragedy.

With the kidnappers sending them perverted images of their teenage daughter as cruel motivation, the couple have to work together to beat the deadline before they are apprehended for their crimes.

The novel has red herrings, false leads and various sub-plots to keep the reader guessing and I have used multiple viewpoints to showcase each character’s perspective.

While The Ironmonger’s Error is not yet complete I have already had interest from a couple of highly respected agents.

Who are your literary influences?

That’s a really tough question to answer as I count every author I’ve ever read as an influence. They’ve all taught me something about writing and storytelling whether it’s what works well or what is terrible.

To be specific I would have to say that the author whose style I most admire is Stuart MacBride as his writing is pared right past the bone and down to the marrow. Early influences would have to include Lee Child, Alistair MacLean and Simon Kernick. Matt Hilton also deserves a mention as he is a good friend who has given me some great advice on writing.

How important is Scotland to your writing?

While Scotland is very important to me as a country it bears little importance to my writing. I have actually set The Ironmonger’s Error in Cumbria rather than my native Dumfries and Galloway, as Cumbria has a city ( Carlisle ) and some spectacular scenery which is well known to the public. I’d have loved to have used D&G but it is not as well known as Cumbria . D&G has stunning scenery like the Devil’s Beeftub and the Grey Mare’s Tail but they are not as well known as the Lake District.

In essence really I’ve copped out and went for the well known area which is easier to describe to readers. I do have a Scottish detective in the novel though to fly the flag.
However I have set numerous short stories in Scotland and will undoubtedly set future tales in God’s own country.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

I love traditional books and cannot ever image life without them. However eBooks are so damned convenient that they will be around to stay.

I believe that there should be a fair price set for eBooks though as too many authors are giving their work away either free or for pennies. Amazon et al should build some parameters into their algorhythms which control pricing to make sure the authors get a fair price and cannot undercut each other. For example books of 5,000 words or less are £1. 5-10,000 words are £2 and so on. Just don’t ask me what the thresholds should be.

Tell us about your involvement with Crime Squad.

My involvement with Crimesquad.com started back in 2009 when I attended the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate . I was outside taking a break from drinking to have a smoke and I got talking with a guy doing the same thing. He was with Crimesquad.com and when I discovered what Crimesquad was about I sent myself a text so I’d remember in the morning.

I cheekily asked if there were any jobs going and he introduced me to the editor who asked me to write a review of a book I’d recently read so he could see if I was any good. In between panels I wrote out a review of Mo Hayder’s excellent Pig Island and then I sweet talked the hotel receptionist into typing it up for me. The rest as they say is history.

As a Crimesquad reviewer I am supplied with more great books than I can possibly read and through them I have been lucky enough to meet and interview some of the top names in crime fiction.

Tell us something about yourself that other people do not know.

As a schoolboy I played rugby for Dumfries and Galloway schools. I was part of the team which beat both the Ayrshire and Borders teams for the first time in the same year. I have also played Jocky Wilson at darts. On this occasion it is little surprise I wasn’t on the winning side.

Graham Greene wrote ‘There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.’ What do you make of his observation?

I think the answer to that question lies in the perception of the individual. Personally I think that all serious writers have a steel core which provides them with the focus and discipline necessary to complete a novel. In the instance of crime and horror writers then yes I guess that there will be a splinter of ice or two in the cardiac area but I doubt the same coldness exists in romance or literary novelists.

How important is Basil Fawlty to you and what do you think of hotel inspectors?

I am a massive fan of Fawlty Towers and use Basil as a sanity barometer. If a situation arises at work and I have to stop myself going into a Basil style rant I know I’m ready for a holiday.

Hotel inspectors do not worry me at all because I have a great team who all do a wonderful job. Environmental Health Officers and the like are only doing a job and if your standards are kept high then their visits become routine occasions. It is always advisable to foster a good relationship with inspectors of any kind as like traffic wardens, if they are antagonised they will simply find more ways to punish you.

Due to the advent of review sites like TripAdvisor every guest now has the potential to be a hotel inspector so keeping standards high is an absolute must for me. I’m very proud of the fantastic reviews The Mill Forge has had on TripAdvisor and the fact that we are ranked in the top five hotels in Dumfries and Galloway. Our TripAdvisor page can be found at http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g2281332-d593910-Reviews-Mill_Forge_Hotel-Kirkpatrick_Fleming_Dumfries_and_Galloway_Scotland.html

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a re-write of The Ironmonger’s Error and am around the 75,000 mark. Once this re-write is complete (which will hopefully be in the next couple of weeks.) I’ll be sending it off to beta readers and then will action the parts of their feedback I feel will improve the novel. I already have the major plotline in mind for a follow up and I have a few short stories in mind that I am desperate to write.

Which part of writing do you most enjoy?

I love throwing down the first draft. When it’s going well, I almost seem to go into a zone where my fingers just type away while I sit back and read what’s appearing on the screen in front of me. When this happens I can type much faster than usual and there’s a damn sight less typos in my writing.

Thank you Graham for an insightful and great interview.

Links:

Find out more about Graham Smith and his books at his website and Goodreads page.

Get a copy of ‘Eleven The Hardest Way’ at Amazon UK and US; ‘Harry Charters Chronicles’, Amazon UK and US; and ‘Gutshots: Ten Blows to the Abdomen’, Amazon UK and US

See all Graham’s works on his Amazon UK and US author pages.

James Sallis is a seminal American novelist, poet and musician whose works encompass crime fiction and the avant garde. He is the author of the popular Lew Griffin novels and the recent novel The Killer is Dying, as well as countless short stories, poems, and essays. In addition, he has written and edited a number of musicological studies and works of literary criticism, including The Guitar Players, Difficult Lives, a study of noir writers, and Chester Himes: A Life, a biography of one of his literary heroes.

James met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the great American novel and fractured identity.

You have written fifteen novels. What do you make of the huge success of Drive?

I assume you mean the film. The novel, I must remind you, was turned down by major New York publishers; it slipped into the world beneath the door of Poisoned Pen Press, reaffirming my respect and affection for small publishers. Hardly a secret that I’ve such admiration for small presses – having worked with them my entire career. So you have Rob and Barbara at Poisoned Pen and my agents, Vicky Bijur and Steve Fisher, to hold responsible. They’re the ones to blame.

Do you believe in the notion of the great American novel and if so has it been written, or is it an evolving literary entity?

It’s been written hundreds of times. The frontier novels of James Fenimore Cooper. Huckleberry Finn. Light in August. Woe to Live On. Blood Meridian. More Than Human. It will be written many more times. Often, though, it goes out in public wearing a disguise.

Do you consider yourself a Southern writer and what does the distinctive flavour of the South still mean in US literature today?

Resolutely I do. And though sadly our regions are disappearing – the levelling effect not only of democracy itself but also of pervasive (invasive?) communications – there is still, I think, a recognizable Southern character, part caricature, part curmudgeon, part last-of-the-frontiersmen.

The South has always thought itself a colonized nation, adhering to the common culture on the surface while surreptitiously continuing endemic traditions, rather like slaves playing and dancing at Congo Square in New Orleans. In that respect, perhaps, the Southerner can remain the eternal Outsider, the one who comes into the alien culture (Tocqueville, the Sleeper, Gulliver, Huxley’s Savage) and shows it for what it is.

Your novel Renderings has been described as avant-garde, yet it seems a meditation on grief and transience, in many ways, a poetic novel. How do you view it?

I was trying for the maximal compression. I’d been writing these quite short stories and was interested to see just how far I could push that. How short, how disjunctive, how associatively can I write and still have a novel? I’d been reading (as you might surmise) a lot of contemporary French novels and writing a lot of poetry. I felt that I was leaving in only the interesting stuff and leaving out the unimportant stuff. It’s been suggested that I had it backwards.

Graham Greene wrote, ‘There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.’ What do you make of his observation?

Many writers are forever somewhat apart and dispassionately observing, even at our most passionate moments. But there are also splinters of kindling in there, and sparks to catch at it.

Tell us about your time editing Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine.

I was 21, had sold three stories, had read hugely on quite a narrow bandwidth, had no idea what I was doing. It’s important to remember that New Worlds was an amateur enterprise: four of us living in cheap flats and putting the magazine together while trying to stay afloat ourselves. We did it because we loved it, loved the writing, loved supporting the writers, loved having a voice. But I think we were well aware that what we were doing was important.

Artaud: what forces do you think motivated his assault on theatre?

Some of us as artists never have enough. We find the right words, then we want to dash them against stones, break them open, see what else might be in there.

You are also a musician. How does music inform and enrich your life and if you could select a playlist for one of your novels as a film, who would you count among the musicians, and for which novel?

Music has always been integral to my life; my first great childhood ambition was to be a composer. I’d sit in my room reading as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Wagner and Vivaldi stormed the walls. Then I’d turn on the radio at noon and listen to local legend Sonny Boy Williamson on KFFA. Went to sleep at night hearing honky-tonk country and Jimmy Reed from the drive-in restaurant down the street.

I’m all over the place with listening, with what I love. My band, Three-Legged Dog, is a good marker: We play oldtime mountain music, vintage country, Cajun, calypso, blues, early jazz, Western Swing, devotional music, Civil-War era songs, bluegrass, originals that sound like all those. (Two of us write songs.) We climb onstage with sixteen or twenty instruments: multiple guitars, banjos, mandolins, bouzouki, cello, fiddle, electric fretless and upright bass, accordion, mandocello, Dobro, Hawaiian guitar, musical saw, harmonica….Someone once shouted: Looks like a music store up there!

As writer and musician I find humor in the fact that, on the day I was born, the country’s most popular song was “Don’t Fence Me In.”

There is often a sense of fractured identity in your fictions. To what extent do you see this as part of America today or is it a global phenomenon?

I think it’s simply a fact of our existential lives. Each of us is many selves scrambling for time; these selves surface and subside and surface again.

What advice would you give to yourself as young man?

As a writer: Don’t ever let yourself forget how important this is, why you were drawn to do this in the first place.

As an individual: You are of no more importance than that bird lying dead outside your window.

Of course, as a young man, I wouldn’t listen to what some old fart had to say.

Thank you James for a great and perceptive interview.

Links:

For all things James Sallis, go to The James Sallis Web Pages

For all James’ books, see his bibliography and Amazon US and UK author pages

‘Drive’ links: Amazon US and UK

‘Driven’ links: Amazon US and UK

And look for ‘Others of My Kind’ coming 10 Sep 2013:  Amazon US and UK and Bloomsbury Publishing