Crime writer Nick Quantrill’s stories have appeared in Radgepacket. His novel ‘Broken Dreams’ looked at Hull’s past and future, and the death of the city’s fishing industry, exploring the problem of how the city can build a new future for itself. His new novel ‘The Late Greats’ is out with Caffeine Nights Publishing. It deals with the comeback of a band. As journalist Joe Geraghty is employed to negotiate between two different camps, he realises he could lose everything.

Nick met me at The Slaughterhouse here we talked about the class system and surveillance in the UK.

Do you think there are fundamental differences between UK and US crime fiction and if so what are they?

I don’t think I’d describe the differences as being ‘fundamental’. I think all good crime fiction, be it from the UK or the US, shares common characteristics – it’s all about strong characters, exciting plots and playing with interesting ideas. At the top of the tree, I see writers like Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin as being the different sides of the same coin. Good writing is universal. Away from the big hitters, maybe it’s more a case of we differ in the way we tell our stories. Thankfully, guns are relatively rare in the UK, so we generally settle our differences a little differently. It’s just a cultural thing. Having a sense of who you are and where you come from in terms of being a crime writer is definitely a strength in my eyes. It’s a rare writer who can bridge the gap and be convincing.

Do you think the best detectives have strong criminal shadows?

I suspect it may be an essential part of their make-up. To catch a criminal, a detective needs to know the criminal, know how they think and know how they’re likely to act. And if a detective can anticipate a criminal, it’s only a short jump to a skewed sense of morality. That’s where it turns in my mind – how far will a detective go to get ‘justice’? What is ‘justice’? Do the end results really justify the means? The detective walking a fine line between right and wrong is a key component of crime fiction writing for me.

Tell us about ‘The Late Greats’.

“The Late Greats” is the second novel to feature small-time PI Joe Geraghty. Joe’s job appears to be quite simple. New Holland, a famous Hull band from the 1990s are reforming and allowing one privileged journalist to document the process. Joe is employed by the band’s management to act as a buffer between the different parties. However, the job changes when the band’s front-man, Greg Tasker goes missing. As the stakes increase, Geraghty has to choose his friends wisely, as it threatens to undermine everything he holds dear. The first Geraghty novel, “Broken Dreams”, was very a novel about my home city and looked at the way it was trying to reinvent itself after the demise of its fishing industry. “The Late Greats” is less directly about, rather more about how the city views itself in a wider context. It asks what constitutes success and happiness. Questions which could easily apply to Geraghty himself.

Do you think writers are motivated by a fear of death?

Speaking for myself, it’s not a motivation for writing, though the nature of crime writing does often bring death to the fore and there’s an element of playing God with your characters. I try to stay away from serial killers in my writing, so the body count is never particularly high and maybe as a consequence, it does carry weight with me when death occurs in my work. The end result is that I probably spend a bit too much time thinking about death, but it’s in the context of fiction and what works for the story. Looking at the question from a more personal angle, I’m partly motivated by the fear of death. I hope I’ve got many decades in me, but I want to be able to tell my daughter that I made some kind of mark on the world, however small, and leave something behind that talks a little about life in my home city at this point in time.

Do you think the prevalence of the cult of the celebrity is destroying peoples’ appreciation of books and what strategies do you think are necessary for a writer to combat obscurity when competing with it?

I try to take the view that if people are reading, it’s a good thing. Naive? Maybe. Obviously, my preference is that people are reading something with a bit more substance than Katie Price’s latest autobiography or ghost-written novel, but ultimately, who am I judge? I think the celebrity genre appeals to a particular group of readers, so there’s little value in trying to
compete with it. First and foremost, all you can do as a writer is produce the best book you can. If you know your market, you can promote it efficiently. A big budget helps, but social media is free and a good publisher will always look for new and different opportunities. When I wrote “Broken Dreams”, I decided Joe Geraghty’s background was to be that of a former rugby league player. A year later, Caffeine Nights had me installed as ‘Writer in Residence’ at Hull Kingston Rovers, a position which both helps my profile and allows me to contribute to the promotion of literacy in my local community.

Is there a particular experience that has had an influence on you as a writer?

I think it was a more general build-up. I don’t think you can become a writer without being a passionate reader, and although I wanted to be a policeman or a footballer as a child, I was never far from a book. The Famous Five and then Sherlock Holmes were big favourites and no doubt instilled a love of crime stories in me. It was only in my twenties when I returned to reading that the thought of actually being a writer started to take hold. The Rebus series was very influential in my thinking. I could see that Rankin was writing page-turners that had real depth. By this point I’d obtained a degree in Social Policy, so that was also very influential in my thinking. If you wanted to discuss contemporary society, it became clear to me that crime was the tool for doing it. The actual decision to try writing was triggered by reading a very bad book, which is maybe a little strange. My thinking was that the act of writing couldn’t be all that difficult. I soon learned how wrong I was!

Do you think the class system in England still affects crime and its representation in literature?

Class, for me, is a slippery kind of concept and not something I tend to think directly about when I’m reading or writing. I think the boundaries have blurred and shifted so much, it’s more useful to think of it in terms of economic outcomes. In “Broken Dreams”, part of the focus is on a family which worked in the trawler industry. It asks the question, if your trade is ripped away from you, what do you? It seems to me that you only have two choices – you either roll over and die or you start over and thrive. Clearly, you can take a step back and point to the fact the owners of the capital and the political elite effectively bring about such situations, but I’m much more interested in consequences and how they play out. For me, the best crime writing from people like George Pelecanos has class and economics at its heart, but the way this is represented is never preachy or definitive. It’s always for the reader to draw their own conclusions.

What do you make of the rise of the e book?

As a writer, I’m in favour of any technology which allows readers to access my work in a method of their choosing. It also helps level the playing field a bit, too. Caffeine Nights are a small independent publisher, so they don’t have the money to jet me out to New York to promote my books, but with digital media, they can still reach out. As a reader, I have some reservations. My wife owns a Kindle and I can definitely appreciate that they’re a nice piece of kit. If you use public transport a lot and/or travel, the advantages are obvious. My reservations are in relation to the never ending supply of books made available for less than 99p. Whether or not the high volume/low profit method can sustain a business model, I don’t know, but I suspect if the reader is faced with a difficult search to find the good stuff, how many will bother? Overall, though, I like the fact the major publishers are pushed on to the back foot a bit, so if that’s the price that has to be paid, so be it.

How much do you think we live in a society of surveillance in the UK and how does this impact on crime?

I think the concept of surveillance is definitely increasing, both visibly and in less directly obvious ways. Rightly or wrongly, CCTV seems to be something we accept as the price for living in a free society, but monitoring through bureaucracy seems to be never ending. Targets and measured outcomes in public sector provisions like health and education come through soft surveillance and I don’t like it. It’s not the kind of society I want to live in. In respect of crime, it seems intertwined with technological innovation. The media phone hacking scandal seems to be a prime example of this. The ability to monitor private mobile phone messages is a relatively new crime, but where do you draw the line? I’m sure there isn’t a person alive who could begin to defend the hacking of a murdered teenager’s phone, but if the freedom of the media is curtailed, would we learn about things like Parliamentary abuse of the expenses system? Understanding the relationship between surveillance, crime and technology is difficult.

If you had to choose – crime writing or sport?

Can we just say I love both? No? I think it’s about changing horizons and maturing. When I was in my twenties I played amateur football at the weekend as well as on several nights. It was what I did and I loved the feeling of being able to completely zone the world out for ninety minutes or so as I competed. It was a rush, but there was always the nagging knowledge that it wouldn’t last forever. Crime writing was something which crept up on me at just the right time. You can’t replicate the energy of being in your late teens and twenties, but the more I think about it, nor should you. Things are of a certain time. Enjoy them whilst you can, but you have to move on. It doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved, it’s about what you can still go on to achieve. I found that crime writing gives me a similar rush and escape from the real world. It’s where I’m at now and it feels right. That said, I still love my football club, Hull City, and I have my season pass. I used to stand on the terraces with my mates, but now I have a daughter who I’ll want to take along in due course, so the experience will change for me again. And I think that’s how it should be.

Thanks for a great interview Nick, it’s a good introduction to your work, and good luck with ‘The Late Greats’.

Links

Author website:
‘Hull Crime Fiction’

Pick up copies of Nick’s books:

The Late Greats
Amazon UK and US

Broken Dreams
Amazon UK and US

Benoit Lelievre reviews books at his site Dead End Follies. He also writes sharp, tight crime stories, that fit comfortably in the traditions of Noir and crime fiction, but also stretch them that bit, giving his narratives an original, unsettling voice. His story “Undead” is up at The Flash Fiction Offensive now and encapsulates this effective mix of styles. He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about conviction and Art.

Is there a particular work of fiction that has had the most influence on you?

Of course. It was somewhat of a defining moment for me. In my life, I mean. I walked into my Contemporary Japanese Literature class in my first year of university and there was this guy Dave already there and reading a book. He was a nerdy kid with a thing for gothic. He creeped me out because he was very lanky and he wore those fishnet shirts. He also always had foundation cream to hide his acne. Turned out it was the least creepy side of him, but that’s another story. He was reading MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane.

I knew about Clint Eastwood movie adaptation back then, but I hadn’t seen it yet. When I asked Dave if the book was good, he told me: “It’s interesting” which is lit speak for “go fuck yourself” or “I have no clue what I’m reading”. I was always die hard about books so I decided to find out for myself. Turned out it was a very good decision. Beforehand, I associated crime fiction with mysteries. There was a sleuth, a culprit and the book was the time it took for them to find each other. There is a mystery to MYSTIC RIVER, but it’s not what the novel is about. It’s about loss, coping and darkness of the human mind. It’s a story where everybody loses and there’s nothing you can do about it, but try and salvage the most you can.

It was the first novel I read with elements of contemporary noir (I do think there are distinctive eras to noir) and it might not be the most hardcore, but I have a special place in my heart for Dennis Lehane. He introduced me to a genre I didn’t think existed and that I actually wanted to write myself. I have read it several time since.

WB Yeats said prophetically in the Second Coming “the worst lack all conviction while the best are full of a passionate intensity” do you think morality has been reversed in the last century?

This is a very deep and complicated question. The concept of morality has a lot to do with the Judeo-Christian heritage. Really, read your ten commandments and you will be surprised to find how well it applies to modern life. Since I’m agnostic, I belive more in a set of values than a rigid code. But to answer your question, there is been a clear point in the last century where the rules of morality drastically change. Just as artists started to question and challenge the way things always worked, Ronald Reagan has been elected president of the United States.

It’s an important point in history, because it’s when the greater good has stopped being the government’s priority. Well, this is debatable of course, but the Reagan era is a clear departure point. The babies of Ayn Rand were given power, bank regulations have been cut and the middle class slowly started to disappear. Things have started to work backwards ever since. I am in the first generation in who knows how long, that will be poorer than their parents. How is that supposed to be? There’s someone (or someones) who take care about the world I live in, who don’t care about anything but the money in their pockets.

Everything was affected. From the geopolitical map to even literature. Noir has changed drastically through the Reagan era. Anthony Neil Smith said that contemporary noir has a lot more to do with psychological horror than traditional noir (Cain and such). It’s not juste a bunch of scumbags anymore. It’s a lot more personal, demented and sure shit a lot darker than it used to be. Moral hasn’t been reversed, but it became a tool more than a code of virtue. It was swallowed by capitalism. That’s what I think happened.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

I think good writers do, yes. It has to do with the eternal writing advice to “torture your darlings”. Good writers will care about their readers, more than their protagonists. When you’re very good, approaching masterful levels in writing, you can torture your darlings AND torture your readers. Two books I’ve read lately, EVERY SHALLOW CUT, by Tom Piccirilli and CHOKE ON YOUR LIES by Anthony Neil Smith did that to me. Coincidence or not, they are the best two books I’ve read in this decade so far (the new decade technically started in 2011, right?). But you have to be REALLY good to pull that off.

Whenever I write something and that I feel it doesn’t work, I tell myself I need to make this darker and gorier if possible. When it’s dark enough that I stumble upon the gates of hell, I’m usually satisfied with it. Graham Greene was right when he said that, but he was very polite in his formulation. Writers need to be violent assholes under the lid.

What has your experience in the martial arts taught you as a writer?

It helped a lot. It’s funny because not that many people know I’m doing martial arts. I’ve never been a mountain of muscle and I don’t like to talk about it. I find (especially now that it’s trendy as all hell) that people have such extreme reactions when you say you’re doing martial arts. Everybody think they have a special bond with you. There’s the UFC fans that ask you questions about the latest show before saying hi in the morning. There are the street fighters who bore you to death with their stories or the old drunken, fat guy at the bar, who says he has a black belt in Shotokan Karate and talks to you like you did war together. Truth is, I started martial arts about ten years ago for very personal reasons. I was tired of being a mediocre person and I wanted to do at least one thing better than the others in my life. So I never wore it like a medal. It was my little thing I did for me.

I wouldn’t be writing today if I didn’t go through martial arts first. Before, I had this weird impression that you were good or bad at something from birth. That you couldn’t get better. I was proven wrong. Martial arts taught me how to get better at something. Through focus, repetition , good work ethic and perspective. I’ve never been a title winning fighter and I don’t think I’m an award winning writer, yet, but it gave me the mindset necessary to evolve within a discipline. Also, it put me in front of failure and made me humble. Failure of my body, failure of my mind, failure of my ego and sometimes, just bad fate.

So yeah, it was of a tremendous help to me. I was never compelled to write martial arts stories, but it gave me the necessary set of tools to learn and get better at what I do.

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

I can see you have chosen your words carefully. “Revolution” is the important term here, because it’s what it is. A goddamn revolution. Not that I had any major issues with the way the publishing industry was run before (please note that I don’t exactly have a wealth of experience on the issue, though) but I find it’s making a few interesting corrections to the equation.

The biggest thing is that it democratizes publishing. Whoever has enough balls to get his work out there and read by the anonymous masses can do it now and without bleeding themselves dry. That removes from the equation the ever-so-bored-and-unartistic business major working in the marketing department of a big publishing company, telling everybody which genre they should publish if they want to make money and whatever is safe or unsafe. That guy is best as far as possible from the publishing world. Seriously, fuck that guy. With the eBooks and the terrific distribution system Amazon created for them, the only variable that matters anymore is the quality of the writing and it’s quite refreshing. It’s still the Far-West over there as everybody can publish, but it will become a self-regulating entity over time. The ruthless bunch of reviewers over at Amazon will make sure of that.

But with the good, comes the bad. Amazon is a company that is pushed forward by very smart and very aggressive marketers and NOBODY seems to care among the Big Six of publishing. They might not have the money to follow them in what they do, but they need to start thinking outside the box or Amazon will soon become the Big Brother of publishing. In a few years, they have went from internet retailer to a superpower of Google and Facebook magnitude (I might be exaggerating here, I don’t have number to prove my claims), but they opened a publishing house who releases AMAZING titles because the others are too chickenshit to do so. They will now open book stores because Barnes & Nobles doesn’t want to carry their titles, which I think it utterly brilliant.

And I love Amazon. Because they always have whatever the fuck I need and I don’t have to deal with the shitty English major at my local bookstore, who looks down on me because I don’t want to discuss David Foster Wallace with him. I’d like to encourage my indie bookstore, but Montreal has none for English books. I love Amazon, but somebody needs to step up and give them competition. I don’t mean powering through and competing at the same things, but thinking outside the box and offer a different product or concept they can’t quite replicate. Because I might hate Amazon tomorrow if they continue to grow like this, without any opposition whatsoever.

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

There are many of them, but I will try to keep them under a lid, so let’s say I’ll give you three. My hometown is all over my stories. A small, remote town, where you can’t really escape because everybody knows everyone. It looks nice, but the town has two faces. A lot of alcoholism, drugs, suicide. I always write about towns like this. I rarely, rarely write about big cities. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I have been very unhappy for very long there and I have to write it out of me.

Then came fear. This visceral unreasonable fear I grew while watching true crime television and yet I kept coming for more. I still watch and read a lot of true crime today, but the fear is gone. I go back to this place a lot though. To the person I was, the frightened child. My parents never really know what was wrong with me, so I had a lot of “snap out of it, kid” and “get a grip” so I carried this fear for a long time, into my teens. I was scared to get abducted, scared to fall from a swing a break my neck, scared of older kids (sometimes rightfully so). Even today sometimes, I’m walking in the street and I cross a guy. I’m thinking “What if he stabs me?” or things like that. According to the studies, 20% of people have a form of mental disease. Mine is paranoia. I turned it into a very efficient tool for writing. I put my fears on paper.

Reading FIGHT CLUB also was a turning point. Changed the way I read books, changed the way I looked at myself. It’s the reason why I joined a gym in the first place. I wanted to destroy beautiful things and seep into my own mortality.

Why do you think people want to read about crime?

This is difficult to answer, because there are many aspects to crime novels. There are mysteries, thrillers, hardboiled, noir. I think crime fascinates people because of its the forbidden fruit. The oldest object of fascination is what you can’t have, or in this case do or even be. We have forbidden a certain set of actions and behaviors as a society and therefore it’s human nature to be fascinated by it. Some are fascinated by the freedom criminals have and others (like me) are fascinated by what gets somebody to cross that line, so we all use literature as a looking glass.

I like noir and psychological horror better than any other genre, because they examine the process that drags people in and out of dark places. My favorite stories are those where the protagonists find some kind of strength to it. Like BREAKING BAD’s Walter White, you know? His life going down the shitter, but he becomes more than he would have ever been. He was destined to be a sucker , a rat and now he’s a freakin’ drug lord? How did that happen? How humans survive and thrive on an empty tank is what I love to read and write about. Contemporary noir covers that very well. That’s why I read this particular subgenre of crime, but for many people it’s probably different.

Your stories are extremely realistic and evocative narratives. If you had to name one you are proudest of which one would it be and why?

It’s the first time my work has been described as “evocative”. I like it, thanks! I’m very secretive about what I do before it’s out in the world, so I don’t get that much feedback. There are two stories I’m more proud of. SECOND ROUND DIVE (even if I hate the title. I always hate my titles), published in Beat To A Pulp: Hardboiled anthology is the first short story I have written. In there I share a lot of my views about boxing and fighting in general. A lot of apprehension with the sport too. Some reviewers who competed before recognized that and it made me very proud. It’s not very technically sound, but there’s a lot of heart in it. Plus it was published in a very reputable magazine, alongside names I respect a lot like Kent Gowran and John Hornor Jacobs.

I really like BURNING also, the kickoff Lowell Sweeney story I have published in Pelp Metal Magazine. It’s a little melodramatic and there are a few copyediting errors, but technically, it’s my best story yes. Plus, Lowell IS a melodramatic bastard with a fucked up perception of life, so it fits very well. He’s going to come back soon. He’s feeling a little better, but not by much.

Do you think crime is motivated by the desire for possessions and do you think extreme psychopaths are separate?

Not necessarily desire for possessions, but yes. I do think all the ills of mankind are driven a desire, one way or another. Physical lust, desire for a better life (bank heist, killing your boss), desire to be someone else, It’s always about wanting to have what you don’t.

Psychopaths are indeed separate, I think and it’s why they are so fascinating to me. In a psychopath’s mind, he is the only person that really exists. Everything and everybody are objects to his satisfaction. There this case in Quebec of a doctor who sliced his two kids because his wife had divorced him. If I stretch hard, I can understand how depression can get you to shoot your kids and then shoot yourself, but peep this.

He searched Google for painless ways to kill himself that nice, then literally sliced his kids. He said at the trial how his son was begging him to stop. Then he tried to committ suicide by drinking windshield washer. I mean, what the fuck? Of course he passed out before dying and had his stomach pumped. The most disgusting part is that he was declared innocent for cause of momentary mental issues. Of course, no psychiatrist is able to say WHAT he has and he won’t be released from the loony bin until they do. At his parole hearing he said he wanted to start practicing medicine again and have other kids. That’s a textbook psychopath. He wants to rewind and start things over like it never happened. His actions have no weight, no reality. To him, a child is a commodity. Disgusting but fascinating at the same time.

If you achieved all you wanted and had the chance to thank those you learnt from what would you say for the merit of those still trying to learn Art?

We’re a long way from there! But I’ll play along. I would tell young writers to write. As much as they can, as regularly as they can. Nothing will replace that. Seek writing advice whenever you need it, but keep your critical distance and more important, be aware that you can grow dependent to it and fuck up your writing. There is no substitute to writing with furious passion. Don’t talk about it too much, keep your nose down and do your thing. You have to love the fiction. You have to love living in that world and be comfortable there.

I don’t have many people to thank, but some have been very helpful so far. David Cranmer, who was the first person I didn’t intimately know to lay an eye on one of my stories. He gave me positive criticism and worked with me towards publication. Kent Gowran, Sabrina Ogden, Matthew C. Funk, Steve Weddle, Jimmy Callaway and all the editors who worked with me. I think it’s all of them, but I might be forgetting some. Heath Lowrance and Jennifer Hillier for being friends. Keith Rawson, for opening up doors for me without me ever asking. Such kindness can never really be repaid. Frank Bill and John Rector for sharing advice and insight with me. Those guys owed me nothing but they took time and helped. Ron Brown, Paul Brazill, Matthew McBride…dammit I’ll stop there. It sounds like a goddamn Oscar discourse. Point is, I’m a thankful guy. Thanks to you too for the Chin Wag.

Ben thank you for an insightful and great interview that I hope will draw new readers to your work.

Find everything Benoit Lelievre at his website ‘Dead End Follies’

When you read an Ian Ayris story you know you are reading something a bit different. He has an original and compelling voice and while he writes great crime narratives, he also writes prose that is confessional, often told in dialect, which he writes with great skill. His stories can be found in many magazines, among them Pulp Metal Magazine and A Twist Of Noir. And he has his first novel out this week, Abide With Me, published by Caffeine Nights. It is a brilliant debut novel that whispers in your ear from the first page and carries you along on its prose, and I highly recommend it. Ian met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about redemption and psychopathology.

Do you think crime fiction is redemptive?

That’s a really interesting question, Richard, one I think is relevant on several levels. Can the act of writing crime fiction be redemptive to the writer? Can the reading of crime fiction be a redemptive experience for the reader? And what about the characters in crime fiction, is it it even necessary for them to undergo a redemptive experience of any kind at all?

When I write, the process is entirely organic. A word sounds in my mind, or I see a face, or hear a phrase. And I just start writing. I follow the voice wherever it leads. Almost without exception, this has led me to tell the stories of characters that are at the point of breaking in two. These are people clinging to the edge of an intolerable existence where redemption and hope have no place. Yet, as the character’s story unravels, I always see a hint that their life might not always be so hopeless. So I write that down as well. Sometimes it’s a tear in the eye, or the realisation of who they’ve become, or a reaction to something which moves them deep inside, something shifting in the darkness, breaking free, something they do not yet understand. In these moments, there is a definite movement towards hope. Always. And so, for me. the act of writing crime fiction becomes a redemptive pursuit. Merely through spilling my own darkness onto the page, a part of me once hidden is now revealed, is given a voice, is recognised as a valid part of who I am.

The reading of crime fiction is a different matter. I’m not sure I really want to read redemptive crime fiction, not in the conventional sense where the good guys win and the perps get their just desserts. But neither do I want to read crime fiction that is so bleak as to have me reaching for the cutlery drawer. For me, as a reader, the whole thing is measured against what is real. Reading unremitting bleakness, to me, just isn’t how I want to spend my time. I want to read about real people. I don’t wish to enter into the self-indulgent whims of an author playing the game of ‘How Bleak Can I Get?’. Real life contains the seeds of redemption in every waking moment. And I want to read about characters that are open to that, open to change.

Do I believe in redemption? Yep. I do.

As for the characters needing to undergo a redemptive experience, that entirely depends on them. If the writer is watching and listening close enough, I believe that almost all characters yearn for a redemptive experience of some kind. We all want to be loved. Even the most psychotic of axe murderers. Perhaps particularly the most psychotic of axe murderers.

Do I think crime fiction is redemptive?

The only hope of it being redemptive, truly redemptive, is if it is written with a sense of what is real. Other than that, it’s just words on a page. And crime fiction can be so much more than that.

Do you think a psychotic axe murderer would despise the person who loves him and could that be turned into a love story?

I think in tackling this question, I would look at the hatred and destruction my psychotic axe murderer metes out as a projection of his own deep sense of self-loathing. Someone with a sense of self-loathing that runs that deep would find it very hard to believe they can ever be loved. That is not to say they cannot be loved, just that they would find the acceptance of that love almost intolerable, experiencing it as of a finger poking a gaping wound. Despise, in this case, is not too strong a word.

Turned into a love story? Anything can be turned into a love story. I would see this scenario as going something like this: the more our axe murderer eschews the love of his lover, the greater the need for the lover to show their love, thus exacerbating the insecurity and the rage within the axe murderer. It is only when the axe murderer is standing over the still, broken body of his lover does he realise her love was true. One more self-inflicted swing of the axe, and we have Romeo and Juliet all over again. Except with more blood. Lots more blood.

Do you think a first person narrative has more immediacy than a third person narrative and what are your different writing experiences of both?

A first person narrative, written well, enables the reader to, literally, see through the narrator’s eyes, feel what the narrator feels, in a sense, for the period of the story or novel, to actually be the narrator. More often than not, I tend to use the first person in my stories purely for this reason, to give the reader and I an immersive experience. The third person perspective also has its place. For me, the third person is ideal for standing outside of the scene, for commentating on a tragedy yet to unfold – made more tragic because the characters involved can only see through their own eyes. The tension, the awful tension, is increased through hinting dispassionately from a distance, leading the characters helpless to a fate they cannot see while the reader looks on, just as helpless. Only third person can achieve this.

I prefer writing first person narrative – indeed, my upcoming debut novel ‘Abide With Me’ is written entirely from this perspective. Writing in the first person allows me, as a writer, to explore the hidden depths of a character, depths in which lie feelings no words can adequately describe. If I can get to that place beyond words, that darkness within us all, and stay there but awhile, I and the character become one. Then the words find themselves. But it is only in the sitting there in the dark with that pain the character and, by association, I feel that enables this to take place. That is why I think it is so important for a writer to write with courage, for therein lies truth. And something written with truth as the ideal has the potential of reaching the reader below the surface of the intellect. Writing in first person, my goal is always to bypass the intellect.

One of the most powerful things I’ve ever read is by the Sufi poet, Rumi. He wrote ‘Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ For me, only writing in the first person has the potential of taking a reader to that field.

Something like that, anyway.

Tell us about ‘Abide With Me’.

Abide With Me is the story of two boys – John and Kenny – growing up in East London in the nineteen seventies and eighties, and their struggle to understand a world once known now falling apart. John is fanatical West Ham supporter from a tight-knit family. Kenny, well, Kenny’s a little bit different. Here’s how John describes him in the early part of the book:

‘It’s like he’s lookin at me and through me and past me all at the same time, like he’s a million fuckin miles away. And there’s these tears in his eyes. Like glue. And tears like that, they don’t never fall.’

The reader does not hear Kenny say a single word throughout the entire book, but he is there – behind every line. Every word. The friendship of the two boys is not what you might call ordinary.

Here’s John describing his feelings when things go a bit pear-shaped for young Kenny:

‘Fuckin cried all the way home, I did, sittin on that train, lookin out the window tryin to make sense of it all.. Weren’t like we was even mates, or nothing, me and Kenny. Not really. I mean, he hardly said a fuckin word to me all them years. But we shared a life. And that sort of means something to a kid, you know.’

The query letter I originally sent out to agents and publishers summarises the later conflicts in the book:

‘John’s out the nick after doing seven years for a bodged robbery. And childhood friend Kenny’s out the nut house, ten years after bashing up the school bully with a dinner tray. Everything’s lookin rosy, until John finds out Kenny’s got a job as bagman for local villain Ronnie Swordfish. John fears the worst. And he’s right.

Kenny, the daft bastard’s handin out money to all and fuckin sundry, including John’s Mum who’s borrowed a large wedge off Ronnie to tide her over while John’s inside. But where’s
Kenny gettin the money from for this little Robin Hood act, if not from Ronnie Swordfish himself?

John knows Ronnie’s got his eye on him, likes the look of him. And when Ronnie helps John out by blowin up the bastard screw that was makin his life inside a living hell, John knew he’d come callin. But a paranoid psycho like Ronnie Swordfish don’t trust easy. So what better test than get John to bring Kenny in? Two birds with one stone.

Faced with handin over his lifelong friend on a plate on Ronnie’s say so or watchin his own mum and sister burn in their beds, John don’t see he has a choice.

Thing is, he don’t even know the fuckin half of it.’

The book is about far more than this, though. It is about the nature of friendship, of family,
of hope, of doing what it takes to get through another day. It is about men, and what it means to be a man. It is about motherhood and sisterhood It is story of redemption. And it is a story of two boys, battered by life, who, when their darkest moments comes, find the courage to be men.

How much does narrative mean to you articulating what has no voice and does this involve the sense of justice?

For me, putting into words that which has no voice is almost my prime motivation for writing. That is why I tend to concentrate on the feelings produced by the empty space rather than describing the circumstances wherein the empty space has manifested. The space may be empty, but the feelings, they seethe and they boil. Again, it’s just a case of sitting there awhile. I have always found putting these feelings into simple, unelaborated, prose the best way of transporting the reader to this oftentimes disturbing place.

And this leads onto my answer to the second part of this question.

To directly transpose these ‘feelings of the empty space’ involves writing with a pen of absolute unwavering truth. Is there a difference between writing with absolute unwavering truth and writing with a sense of justice? I think so. Justice implies right and wrong, good and bad. To write with absolute unwavering truth means to write whatever you find, with no judgement whatsoever.

Who are your literary influences?

Literary influences. Mmm . . . So, many. And ever growing. I love the Russians – Dostoyevsky, Checkov, Turgenev, Solzenhitsyn. And Dickens. love me a bit of Charlie Dickens. The man could spend ten pages describing a door handle and have me laughing, melancholic, tearful, and, most importantly, seeing the door handle. Virginia Woolf – probably my biggest influence. There is a woman who knew darkness and simply wrote on a different level than anyone else I’ve ever read. It’s like she could see what was going on in the spaces between the words, between the lines and wrote such darkness with such beauty. And that, that is genius.

More modern influences – Chuck Palahniuk, James Ellroy, Joseph Heller, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Ted Lewis, Derek Raymond.

But I read all the time, and I’m learning constantly. My next literary influence could be just a book away.

How much do you think the class system in England affects its literature and distinguishes it from the literature of other nations?

I think most definitely the class system in England affects its literature. For too many years now, the celebrity biography has become the opium of the masses, as it were. The celebrity culture of the last decade, along with the weekly carrot of winning the lottery, enables the normal man and woman on the street to dream of a life they are unlikely ever to experience. Just another form of escapism to avoid the difficulties in their day to day lives.

And that’s fine. That’s great. If that’s what you want to do. The upper echelons of the middle classes will always have their Booker Prizes and their high-end literature love-ins. And that’s fine as well. But I have a feeling, from those I know, family, friends, clients I talk to in my role as a counsellor in one of the most deprived areas of London, that something is stirring. There is a backlash coming. I don’t mean a revolution in the literal sense, but there are a growing number of people that want now to be recognised. A generation of working class people that want their own literature. They are fed up with being force-fed celebrity gossip and told how wonderful Harry Potter is, and that the true literature of their class is the text message and the social networking sites and the sensationalist press. I believe what people are beginning to want is a literature that reflects their own experiences. They want something to identify with. Something to call their own.

Does the class system in England distinguish its literature from other nations? I think there is always a need for the voice of the common man to be heard. I see much hope in independent publishing houses in the UK, such as Byker Books and Pulp Press, who provide a vehicle for the voice of the common man, writers who are beginning to put into words what they see around them every day, unvarnished, unafraid. In the US, I can only speak for the vibrant online crime-fiction scene, and can testify to the brilliance of many of the writers and their willingness to seek the truth of what it is to suffer in the lower economic reaches of society. So, yes, the class system in England might distinguish its literature from that of other nations, it might have a more direct affect, but truth is universal. And where there are writers seeking to write the truth, the voice of the common man will be heard loud and clear.

Do you see a connection between fatherhood and the position occupied by a narrator?

Being a dad of three, I think I know where you’re going with this one, Richard. If you are talking, quite literally, about the act of creation then, undoubtedly, the narrator is the father to the characters he creates. If you then enlarge the analogy to encompass the responsibility of letting your creations live their lives unfettered, encouraging them to be true to themselves, allowing them to make their own mistakes, learn their own lessons, yet safe in the knowledge you will be there for them always should they need your help, then the position of fatherhood and the narrator become almost interchangeable. Mind you, to think that some of my literary creations could be considered, in some way, in any way, children of mine makes my skin crawl. No hard feelings, chaps. Just does, that’s all.

And on another note, just wanted to say the three littl’uns of mine I referred to earlier in my answer are Mollie (12), Charlie (8), and Summer (3). There, you embarrassed now, Mols 🙂

Do you think that the extent to which we rebel is commensurate to the extent that we reinforce the person we are rebelling against?

To the extent that one defines the other, I think that’s true, Richard. If, however, in Freudian terms, we have the Id rebelling against the Superego, the act of rebellion is too instinctive an act to be able to recognise this sort of structural dynamic in the heat of battle – except through hindsight. And if with hindsight, we can see the one being rebelled against as an aspect of ourselves, the process can’t help but be instructive.

Do you think that love involves psychopathology and that literature is a way of redeeming that against the flaws that often govern individual lives and lead people to sabotage the thing they want the most?

I would hesitate to say love is completely governed by psychopathology, but I do think it is a dominant factor. And literature, yes, literature is capable of redeeming the negative aspects of a psychopathology by showing us our own flaws in the guise of fictional characters. We have the opportunity to relate, to recognise those parts of ourselves that contribute to the self-sabotage we all indulge in from time to time as a way of reinforcing our own sense of inadequacy.

Due to the nature of the beast, I am here talking completely of myself, obviously. The characters I create, the moment I sense them crawling out of the darkness, I know they’re here to teach me something about myself. Otherwise, you know, there would be no point in me creating them, would there?

Thank you Ian for a great and insightful interview which I hope will draw new readers to your work.

Links:

Ian’s author website

Facebook

Get a copy of ‘Abide With Me’ at Amazon US or UK, B&N, or see Goodreads for a complete list of online stores.