Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont is a student of Stuart history. She is a widely read deep political thinker who has an extensive grasp of the history not only of England but the world. She is not afraid to speak her mind on issues that are contentious. She is also extremely well read in fiction. Her analyses of current and historical situations are individual and outside the stereotypical tired political thinking that is prevalent. If my opinion is worth anything her historical analyses deserve to be widely read. She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about government and politics.

I made sure the sommelier fetched and decanted the finest Gevrey-Chambertin from The Slaughterhouse cellar.

John Locke, known as the Father of Liberalism, developed his theory of the social contract which looked at appropriate relations between individuals and their governments. What do you think of his analysis of the state and how would he have viewed the liberty granted or denied by the Big Society of Britain today?

Richard, for the long answer I would refer you to I must be free or die, a piece I wrote on my blog at the beginning of December last year http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-must-be-free-or-die.html. The most pertinent extract is as follows;

I believe in freedom; I believe the state to be an intrusive imposition, an attempt to place limits on freedom. Still, we life in communities and communities have to be ordered, so I accept the state as a necessity, just so long as it is kept at a maximum distance. I dislike any form of welfare or state subsidy, which I believe to be corrosive of self-respect and economic freedom. More than that, the high levels of taxation they require do much to bleed the life out of enterprise, impacting on the very people that welfare is supposedly meant to help.

I think Locke would have been horrified by the development of the modern state, particularly the degenerate form created by the previous government, intrusive and authoritarian to a quite obnoxious degree. I still have no clear idea what our present Prime Minister means by the Big Society, undefined and nebulous, the intellectual child, I suspect, of the woolly-minded Philip Blond, that well-known ‘Red’ Tory. I do not want the big battalions; I want the little platoons that Edmund Burke placed so much reliance on, a point on which I think Locke would agree. I’m in the process of discovering the work of Frédéric Bastiat, whose views on liberty and the state accord so much with my own.

In ‘Manufacturing Consent’ Chomsky put forward the theory of the Propaganda Model, which posits that corporate-owned news mass communication media distort news reportage because they are businesses subject to commercial competition. To what extent do you think Britain today is subject to these distortions and how effectively do you think the propaganda machine is working?

I could easily make out an argument to the contrary, that insofar as corporate owned media are in competition with one another, and with other sources of communication, a premium is placed on gathering genuine news, on not distorting stories for simple political ends. Rupert Murdoch may be politically motivated but he is a business man first with enough sense to leave news gathering to professional journalists.

Journalism is a cut-throat profession and we have seen from some of the less scrupulous newspapers that people will break all rules to get a story, or create a story where there is none. That’s a form of distortion, I suppose, but it’s on the margins, the kind of thing one sees in the newspapers I never read. Newspapers as pure propaganda would quickly end up dead. People may be stupid, but not so stupid that they are blind to a message, blind to the fact that they are being manipulated. Josef Goebbels was a propagandist of genius because he recognised this simple fact. Consent can never be manufactured. I have to say, as a general principle, I’m far more concerned by super injunctions and the invidious effects this legal tactic is having on free expression.

Laurence Sterne’s innovative novel ‘Tristram Shandy’ uses John Locke’s ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ to explore his theories of empiricism and raise the question of how much we can really know of ourselves. Do you think his theories still hold good today and are we living in an age of heightened narcissism?

Is this an age of heighten narcissism or degenerate narcissism? The latter, I suspect, the age of reality TV, of Big Brother, of a succession of mediocre celebrities, of people famous for being famous. How Locke would have hated this unreflective time and its unreflective people, whose empiricism, if I can even use that term, is one without any interior examination, simply an animal-like response to one bogus stimulus, trend or fashion after another. Maybe Sterne would have understood better:

With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen.

Do you think under current anti-terrorism laws it is arguable that burning Guy Fawkes is incitement to terrorism and if you were alive at the time of the gunpowder plot how would you have legislated against the plotters?

Sorry to burden you with yet another reference but I give you to this, a piece I wrote last year, a response to an article by Frank Skinner calling for the scrapping of Bonfire Night.
http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2010/11/bonfire-of-absurdities.html

Actually, people burning Guy Fawkes, by contemporary lights, should really be pursued for incitement to hatred against a religious minority. I’m sure there must be something under the previous government’s laughable blasphemy legislation.

It’s impossible to legislate in advance against plotters, for the simple reason that their schemes are devised in secret. If the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded it would have wiped out virtually the whole of the English governing class, causing monumental political chaos. In 1605 legislation against traitors like Catesby and Fawkes was already in place; there would have been no need for any additional measures. But if I had been alive then, and in a position of influence, I would certainly have argued against a general campaign against all Catholics, few of whom were traitors in words or deed.

In ‘Metahistory’ Hayden White posits the theory that a historian begins his work by putting together a chronicle of events which is organized into a story before the material is put into a plot which is latently expressing an ideology. As a historian what do you make of his theory and how do you avoid narrative prejudice when writing history?

It’s a good question. If I understand White correctly he seems to be saying that the whole process is already mapped out before a single document is examined. Of course no researcher comes to a topic in the raw, so to speak, as she or he will have already gone through the background literature and to that extent have already formed a broad impression.

However does this necessarily mean that a strict explanatory framework is already in place, that there is necessarily a narrative prejudice or an ideology determining how the evidence is interpreted? I’m not saying this can’t happen but the best, the most original historical writing, is free, or should be free, of any marked political or philosophical bias. I would like to think that my argument would always be driven by the evidence; that I can, with the right approach, understand what motivates a Whig as much as a Tory.

Elias Canetti in ‘Crowds and Power’ writes ‘No political structure of any size can dispense with order, and one of the fundamental applications of order it to time, for no communal human activity can take place without it. Indeed one might say that the regulation of time is the primary attribute of all government.’ What do you make of his observation?

Right, OK, this is a difficult one for me because I have such a poor opinion on Canetti! I’ve read Crowds and Power and Auto-da-Fe, his novel, and was impressed by neither. But I had already been soured, I suppose, by a reading of P. J. Conrad’s Iris Murdoch- A Life. Here is what I wrote a couple of years ago about the relationship between Canetti and Murdoch:

Elias Canetti lived in England for nearly forty years, seemingly hating the experience. In his resentment he turned on Iris Murdoch, with whom he had had an affair, seeing in her all of the perceived faults of the country. She was, in his eyes, a ‘complete Oxford parasite’. She dressed badly, her figure was wrong; she was promiscuous, bisexual and religious. She was a person who had enjoyed ‘vulgar’ success, in novels that were far too Oxonian, with characters that were merely caricatures of her friends and pupils. She was, unlike him, an illegitimate Poet or Master of Transformation. And so his memoir continues in this sour and silly tone. At one point he uses literally hundreds of words to criticise a revealing blouse she wore to attract Sir Aymer Maxwell, who, though homosexual, was grandson to a Duke of Cumberland.

It all reveals so much about Canetti’s character. It also, perhaps, reveals some lack of judgement on Murdoch’s part in ever entering into a relationship with such a shallow egoist. As far as I am concerned his writings, both his fiction and his non-fiction, are amongst the most grossly overrated of the last century.

So, there you are! Sorry, I’m getting so far from the point of your question. I think the regulation of time has precious little to do with government. Government has existed for centuries, back to a time when time was no more than the rhythm of the seasons. If time has become quicker and more intrusive that’s because of the general changes within society that emerged with the Industrial Revolution. Time gets faster by the minute, if that makes sense, too fast often for government to keep up let alone regulate.

How do you think matriarchal and patriarchal social structures differ?

In answer to your question all I can say here is that patriarchy is a practice and matriarch merely a hypothesis. I imagine matriarchy, understanding this to be a society run specifically by mothers, would be a lot less competitive and far more nurturing. By that definition Amazons are not matriarchs; they are just female patriarchs! Feminism, I should add, is not really part of my intellectual makeup. I can see and I can understand the artificial barriers that a society dominated by men erects against the advance of women, but the higher the barrier the greater the challenge. I suppose I must be something of an Amazon too.

As a historian specialising in Stuart history you are dealing with a period in British history where there is an Interregnum. During this period England was dominated by Puritan literature and official censorship, as exemplified by Milton’s ‘Areopagitica’ and his later retractions of that statement. Although some of the Puritan ministers of Oliver Cromwell wrote poetry that was elaborate and carnal, such as Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, this poetry was not published. What do you think the literature of the period reveals about the time and why do you think the Commonwealth failed?

My focus has chiefly been on the political literature of the period, particularly the polemical pamphlet, in which the age excelled. To some extent these still colour our view of the whole period: we are still influenced by some of the myths, as you will discover if you keep your eye on my blog! I will be publishing an article in a day or so showing how modern day perceptions of the Puritans continue to be influenced by John Cleveland, a minor Royalist poet.

Generally speaking the literature of the period, thinking specifically of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, is quite barren, setting Marvell and Milton to one side. Censorship, despite Milton ’s appeal, was the dominant force, not just political censorship but also the censorship of artistic expression. The previous golden age of the theatre was brought to a juddering halt by Puritan intolerance. The sterility of the Interregnum with what went before, and what was to come with the Restoration, is quite startling. Even Milton ’s greatest work came in the reign of Charles II.

By the Commonwealth I’m assuming that you mean the whole period of the Interregnum, from the execution of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II? The experiment failed simply because it was impossible to find a permanent political settlement, one that was not backed by military force. By the time of its dismissal by Cromwell in 1653 the Rump of the Long Parliament was hopelessly unrepresentative, even of that narrow part of the nation that was allowed to vote. It was also self-serving and corrupt. Its successor, the Nominated or Barebones Parliament, was ineffectual.

What then? Why the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, a restoration of the monarchy in all but name. He was even offered the crown shortly before the creation of the Second Protectorate, only refusing because of the hostility of the army. Although Cromwell was not a dictator in the modern sense, in that he continued to seek parliamentary legitimacy, his power did not depend on his narrowly selected legislatures but on the New Model Army. The rule of the Army, particularly in the period of the Major Generals, was hugely unpopular and ruinously expensive.

With the death of Oliver Cromwell he was succeeded by Richard, for no better reason than that he was his father’s son. But Richard had no legitimacy whatsoever, no power base in either parliament or the army. His fall in 1659 was succeeded by complex political manoeuvring, but in the end it was obvious that the only real solution was to restore the monarchy and the ancient constitution of the country, subverted by Cromwell and the Puritans, a far greater threat to English liberty than Charles I had ever had.

To what extent do you think the problems between Israel and Palestine were exacerbated by the Balfour Declaration?

So, on to Balfour. Did you know that Robert Cecil, his predecessor as Prime Minister, was his uncle? When Balfour succeeded in 1902 people clearly amused by this perceived nepotism invented the expression “Bob’s your uncle.” Doubtless you knew this already.  🙂

I think there would always have been problems between Jewish incomers to Palestine and the Arabs who already lived there. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 – made when he was Foreign Secretary in Lloyd George’s government – was a clear hostage to fortune, a promise made under a particular set of circumstances, a political investment that was to flower into some truly intractable problems for the British, especially after they obtained the Mandate of Palestine. It was simply impossible to reconcile the two sides. A promise made and then cynically ignored made the British look hypocritical and untrustworthy, a fact that made a final settlement all the more elusive. To encourage Lawrence and the Arab Revolt while promoting Zionism (incidentally in the belief that this would keep Russia in the war because the country was supposedly dominated by the Jews) was a monumental miscalculation. The Jews and the Arabs may have hated one another, but they ended up hating the British more.

Do you think New Labour was bordering on totalitarianism and how many elements of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ do you see in their policies?

I wrote a piece in May of last year I called Bad Law, a gloss on Philip Johnston’s book Bad Laws. Since we are on the subject of Stuart history, and since I’ve already mentioned the rule of Cromwell’s Major Generals, I think this provides a more pertinent example of the forms of killjoy governance favoured by Blair and Brown than the totalitarian tyranny of Nineteen-Eighty Four. BB they may be but they were not BB, if you take my meaning!

Yet, as I wrote in Bad Law, there are some parallels with Orwell’s dystopia and New Labour Britain. The Religious Hatred Act effectively introduced thought crime into English law. The various pieces of anti-terror legislation created a greater threat to our liberty than Al-Qaeda ever could. The Regulation and Investigatory Powers Act, something that could have been put in place by O’Brien of the Thought Police, allowed officials to read private correspondence and monitor the movements of even the most law-abiding citizens. The spread of CCTV meant that we were all under closer observation than even the citizens of Cuba or North Korea . I concluded my argument with another Stuart reference;

…each and every one of us has become a potential suspect, guilty until proved innocent. Sweep the lot away, sweep away the legacy of a dreadful thirteen years, either that or reintroduce Royal Absolutism, my favoured solution. We were much freer under its gentle guidance.

Yes, we were.  🙂

Thank you Ana for a brilliant and refreshing interview.

Anastasia’s blog; Ana The Imp

Shaun Jeffrey is the author of three published novels, ‘The Kult’, ‘Deadfall’ and ‘Evilution’, and one collection of short stories, ‘Voyeurs Of Death’.

His writing is dark and tense and among his other writing credits are short stories published in Cemetery Dance, Surreal Magazine, Dark Discoveries and Shadowed Realms.

‘The Kult’ was optioned for film by Gharial Productions. His next novel ‘Fangtooth’ will be released by Dark Regions Press shortly.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about monsters and the current world of publishing.

Do you think the worst monsters are humans?

Absolutely. When dealing with human monsters such as serial killers, they actually exist. These are no made up ghouls. They could very well be out there now undertaking everything from cannibalism to ritual murder. Some people have no moral compass and that is a terrifying thought. Even more terrifying is that you or I could very easily be their next victim.

Dictators have turned to cannibalism. To what extent do you think the ultimate manifestation of control is the desire to consume another’s body and what does this illustrate about the horrors fiction authors write about?

I guess that would be called ruling with an iron stomach. If it’s not for a survival purpose such as during famine, then cannibalism seems to be more to do with esoteric purposes, acquiring the power of the person they consume in the same way that people will eat animals such as tigers in the belief that they will become as strong or virile as said animal. In horror fiction, I believe writers want to get underneath a readers skin (rather than eating it) and cannibalism is one of the greatest taboos, so it makes for a disturbing subject with which to illustrate horror in its rawest state.

Do you think that horror fiction is the literature of subversion?

It’s not so much about rebelling as much as it is about getting to the root of fears and giving them form. To me horror fiction should elicit an emotional response. It’s the stuff of nightmare, the stuff that should make you look over your shoulder; check that the doors are locked; leave the light on. By writing and reading about that which scares us we are in some way facing those fears. And it’s a safe way of achieving this aim without risking life and limb.

Ultimately this is a good thing and it stems back to primordial times I guess when we would have been chased by sabre toothed tigers and such like, providing the ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ response necessary for survival. Now that we don’t face as many natural predators, and unless you put yourself in dangerous predicaments, I think that fiction and film can still help us tap into that emotion and give it an airing.

Who are your literary influences?

I started reading from an early age and used to devour books. I still prefer reading a good book to watching a film as it’s a much more intimate and personal adventure. As a kid, I distinctly remember enjoying books, such as The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron. Imaginative books such as this opened my eyes to the power of words. Then in my teens I discovered short story collections such as The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert Van Thal, which featured lurid, gory tales that I thought were absolutely fantastic (I remember borrowing a friend a book called The Satyr’s Head and Other Tales of Terror and said friend having to give the book back to me because it had scared him too much. I found this quite funny at the time, but again it made me realise how powerful words can be).

Then I started reading authors such as Guy N. Smith, James Herbert, Shaun Hutson, Graham Masterton, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King etc, so I guess my early literary influences were from what I think of as the golden age of horror, when new books seemed to appear all the time, books with cheesy covers that epitomised their pulp status. I guess add to that the fact that I grew up in a house in a cemetery and I was never going to be writing for Mills and Boon.

Do you think it is possible to write a made for film novel and if so what are its characteristics?

Interesting question as I get a lot of people saying that my novels are ‘cinematic’ in nature and that they feel that they are watching a horror film – I guess that might be the reason why The Kult has just been filmed by an independent production company called, Gharial Productions, and I was lucky enough to fly out to the US last year to see some of the shoot. I think that to write a ‘made for film’ novel it has to be very visual in its execution and that said novel has to paint a picture with words that make people believe they can ‘see’ the image you are describing. The story has to come alive on the page and it has to be engaging. As with anything to do with literature, it’s all about the words. Finding the right word to describe what you are trying to get across. Some people have a knack for it. I wouldn’t personally put myself in that category, but other people seem to think so and who am I to argue?

Do you think that certain types of murder are sexually motivated and what do you think the pathologies behind them are?

Yes, without a doubt. There are numerous high profile sexually motivated serial killers, people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Peter Sutcliffe and the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

It’s reported that many of the perpetrators come from broken homes and have a history of being neglected or abused as children. This is why they pray on vulnerable victims such as children, young women, prostitutes, and adolescents. Of course this isn’t true of everyone that has been raised in these circumstances. Learning plays a big part in the way a person behaves; as does their true personality, which comes down to the nature or nurture argument.

Are people born evil (nature) or made evil (nurture). Some scientists believe that people behave as they do according to genetic predispositions. This is known as the “nature” theory. Other scientists believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so. This is known as the “nurture” theory. I found this a fascinating subject, enough so that my latest novel featuring the protagonist from The Kult, is based around this theory and questions whether killers can be nurtured, or whether it’s something they have to be born with.

In my opinion, the pathologies behind these crimes are a combination of both nurture and nature. The seeds are probably already there, but something happens that makes them sprout.

Tell us about ‘The Kult’.

OK, without reciting the back blurb verbatim, it’s a story about Prosper Snow who made a pact with his school friends to exact revenge on anyone that wronged them. This usually took the form of anonymous beatings, but then once they’ve grown up, a member of the group comes and asks for their help. But this time he doesn’t want someone beaten up. He wants them killed. This of course poses moral dilemmas, not least because Prosper is a police officer sworn to uphold the law. Blackmailed into helping, Prosper and his friends try to get away with the murder by blaming the crime on an active serial killer called The Oracle, but then things go from bad to worse when the serial killer starts hunting them down.

As I mentioned, the book was optioned for film and was shot last year around San Diego . Post production has just finished and although I don’t know all the details, I guess they are now looking for a distributor. Sadly since then the original publisher of the novel has gone bankrupt, but the book is available for download via all the major eBook distributors such as Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble etc. The story is quite graphic in the vein of Saw or Se7en, so it’s not for the easily disturbed, but it’s the book that I’m most proud of, and which I think is my favourite of all my works because I tried to make the characters as real as I could. Prosper is not an inherently bad man, but when he tries to do the right thing, things invariably go wrong and he ends up breaking more laws than he upholds. I’ve just finished a second novel featuring Prosper that once again puts him in a difficult position. It’s a stand alone novel, but obviously events from The Kult have shaped who he now is. I’ve already signed a contract for the novel, so I’m hoping to see it released later in the year.

Elias Canetti in ‘Crowds And Power’ writes: ‘In the mental disease whose processes most closely resemble the workings of power the urge to unmask appearances becomes a kind of tyranny. This disease is Paranoia and there are two characteristics by which, among others, it is particularly distinguished; one of these, in psychiatry, is called dissimulation… paranoiacs are so skilful at dissembling that many of them are never identified as such. The other characteristic is the continual urge to unmask enemies.’ How relevant do you think this observation is to crime and horror writing and the characterisation of the pathologies that inhabit it?

All writers are crazy. They have to be as writing is hard work, often for little reward. I remember seeing a sign that said, ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’. That should hang above every author’s desk.

Now whether consciously or not, I think authors dispel a lot of their demons through their work, so perhaps this is us ‘unmasking our enemies’, enemies in this case being those internal dilemmas that need a form of release. As the old adage says, ‘write what you know about’, so it’s easy to imagine that authors the world over are putting a little bit of themselves in all they write, writing what they know, which is their thoughts and deeds. Whether these are dressed up in sci-fi, crime, horror or fantasy, all stories have characters, and all characters are given life by the author.

What do you think about the current world of publishing?

The past few years have seen vast changes. The internet has opened up whole new avenues, first with the way work can be submitted, and now with the way it’s published. Before the advent of the internet I used to submit all my work by snail mail, and then waited weeks or months for a response. Now most markets allow an emailed submission, which means that your work and your enquiries arrive almost immediately (of course the responses can still take weeks or months). And then now of course we have the arrival of the eBook, a format that many authors are taking advantage of. This has both good and bad points. Some authors are making a lot of money via eBooks, while others linger in obscurity. What was once thought of as taboo is now becoming acceptable: self-publishing.

And of course, while there are some good books available, there is also an awful lot of unedited dross. In this brave new world it’s also not true that the cream will always rise to the top, as some of these works are priced so cheaply that people buy them anyway if it’s something they think they might like. The marketplace is huge, as we’re talking the whole world where anybody can download a book at the click of a button and have it delivered immediately, but competition is fierce.

With this in mind I think that publishers should be worried. Bookshops are going bankrupt and many high profile authors such as JA Konrath are becoming ambassadors for the merits of self-publishing (and Barry Eisler reportedly turned down a $500k publishing deal in favour of self-publishing his next book) and while there might only be one out of every 1000 authors that has a modicum of success, there are thousands more stretching their literary wings and bypassing the conventional route of agents and publishers and going it alone in search of fortune and fame.

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

Although I’m not familiar with the quote, I think he probably meant that authors sometimes have to be cruel. We create characters and situations that need emotional involvement, but as the creators of said characters we sometimes have to kill our babies. It can be hard to do this when you’ve spent so long creating them, and so sometimes it’s not just a piece of ice that we harbour, it’s a whole chunk. I guess it could also refer to the kind of detachment a writer has to have, to be able to look at a something objectively, no matter how disturbing the subject matter may be. We also create situations that most people wouldn’t like to ponder, as a good story is all about conflict, and to do that can take a certain detachment. I guess we’re all cold hearted to some extent. Some more than others.

Thank you Shaun for giving a perceptive and informed interview.

Visit the online home of horror writer Shaun Jeffrey here.

‘”The Kult” – People are predictable. That’s what makes them so easy to kill.’

Watch the film trailer on Shaun’s website or on YouTube.

Read a sample of ‘The Kult’ here.

‘The Kult’ and other books by Shaun Jeffrey can be found at Amazon in the UK and US and at Smashwords.

B R Statetham writes gritty hard boiled Noir that inhabits the tradition comfortably and with style. He is a regular contributor to A Twist of Noir. His blog In The Dark Mind Of B.R. Stateham contains insightful and interesting posts, not least about E books. The latest in his Smitty series is out, A Dish Served Cold, and his story “Hotel Beaumont” was recently published in The Ultimate Six-Pack with five other authors.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about crime fiction and what makes him passionate.

Do you think murder or the resolution of crime is at the centre of crime fiction?

I think it depends on the kind of novel you are trying to create. Some writers whip up a psychological profile of the murderer. Some write the traditional cozy. Some explore the bloody deeds of a serial killer. Some writers (like me) write a scene–a vivid scene that uses all the five sense we have so you can feel, see, smell, touch and hear. And from there build a story.

Other times I like the ‘whodunit.’ Your ‘resolution of the crime.’ The complex puzzle to be solved.

I guess what I am saying is that there is no one single answer. Each writer, even each reader, comes to this genre with their own expectations. My hope is to find that readership that can identify with my style of writing and appreciate it.

Do you think certain politicians should be viewed as criminals?

We start down this road in wanting to arrest politicians because they are criminals, we should think about stepping back and seriously considering the motivations and/or the consequences for such actions. All decisions carry with it unintended consequences. Hardly ever are those possible consequences thought about until after the fact. And then it’s usually too late.

What is the motivation of arresting politicians? Are we basing the arrests on the evidence that genuine crimes have been committed? Statutory, clearly defined wrong doing? Or are we reacting blindly to supposed injustices done to us? If they are not clearly defined wrong doings, then who’s parameters are we using to incarcerate politicians?

This kinda smacks to me like the clear outrages of the French Revolution when mass arrests and executions nearly destroyed the fabric of French society in the 18th Century. Maybe we should just vote them out of office and tell them to go back home and plant turnips. I think we all need to step back and take a deep breath.

Who are your literary influences?

Oh gosh, lot’s of’em. If you write noir/hard boiled somewhere on your list is a guy by the name of Raymond Chandler. Many believe he was the master when it came writing the tough, hard boiled detective. Including me. But there were others. Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain (especially McBain when it comes to writing a police-procedural(, John D. McDonald, Agatha Christie, Earl Derr Biggers, Earle Stanley Gardner. Gardner, especially early Gardner and his Perry Mason novels, were some of the best, tightly scripted reads I’ve ever come across. Everyone remembers the TV series–but early Gardner was especially clear and concise.

My love for sci/fi and fantasy came from guys like Edgar Rich Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven. But there was Rafael Sabatini–wrote lots of action/adventure books a young boy growing up would fall in love with. And Robert E. Howard. Everyone knows Howard was the creator of Conan The Barbarian. But his other creation, Solomon Kane, had far more potential, and a more interesting, character.

Writers who impress me today are becoming more rare. I think it’s due to acquiring some age and some experience. I find it odd and a bit depressing that there are a lot of authors out there writing but damn few good ones. And hardly any original ones. Mind you, this is my opinion only; subject to debate and/or out right rejection. Still, the older I get, the more critical I become of writers and how they write–and what they write.

But that’s a whole different discussion.

What one experience has had the most influence on your writing?

To be honest no one experience stands out when it comes to my writing. The only time I’m impressed is when some kind reader decides to write a review, or send me an email, and say something about something I’ve written. Good or bad things, oddly enough. I appreciate readers who open up to me. Even those who take the time to tell me my writing is like watching grass grow in their back yard.

Sometimes you learn more about yourself and your writings from the bad reviews.
No. I don’t get too impressed with myself, or my writing, any more. I enjoy the writing experience. I want to write good stories. I want to build up a fan following–not for any kind of ego trip, mind you. But because they, like me, prefer reading a certain kind of story in a style that is different from that found in other writers. Or they have discovered one of my fictional characters and find him intriguing enough to read more.

What issues make you feel passionate?

What makes me feel passionate? Hmmm . . . .

Passion is such a fierce word. It means taking something that either you believe in, or are adamantly against, and extending that emotion to the ultimate extreme. No. I try not to do that. Invariably when I get passionate about something I say or do something uniquely stupid. Words are exchanged. Actions are committed. Neither which, mind you, can truly be erased from someone’s memory.

This is not to say I am a passive, vanilla-based pudding that just sets on the table like some inanimate bowl of . . . . well . . . . pudding. You can tell instantly I have emotions burbling close to the surface if you read my Facebook page. I talk a lot about my writing. About politics. About how people treat people. Usually badly. About both the fascinations of this universe and the dregs of the universe. Sometimes I get loud. Obnoxious. Even angry. Mostly I try to convey a wiry sense of humor. Mostly.

No; passionate I try to stay away from. Attuned and committed; yes. Curious–absolutely. But for me, I try to stay away from the extremities of emotions. That’s walking into dangerous territory filled with hidden pitfalls

What kinds of killing can you relate to and at what point do you cease to understand certain types of killing?

Oooh, what an interesting question. Can I relate to killing? As a writer, yes. Intellectually I can paint all kinds of scenarios in my head that would justify killing. That’s what a writer is supposed to do if they write noir/hardboiled. Pragmatically, being human, I realize that humans sometimes are more irrational than rational. That word–passion–slips in here. People get passionately angry, passionately crazy, or passionately religious and go off and do quite brutal things. Violent harm to fellow human beings has to be, unfortunately, expected in this world.

In fact, I would suggest that being both creative, and naturally violent, are two hallmarks of being human. Remove either one and we no longer can call ourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

The killings I find difficult to deal with are the senseless ones. The killing of the young. The killing of those who disagree over religious beliefs. The ritual executions over some mythical set of taboos.

Serial killers I can understand. Label them completely, absolutely, pull-your-hair-in-despair NUTS. Their minds are warped. The wiring in their brains were stretching a little too tight. Or their are just plain evil.

Remember me telling you in an earlier question that I don’t like to go passionate in one direction or the other? Well, here is one of those instances. Trying to justify, or not justify, what forms of homicide I can accept is asking me to go passionate. All I can tell you is this: Shit happens.

Do you think the e book is revolutionising publishing?

Absolutely. Ebook publishing has shaken the very foundations of traditional publishing. Profound changes are rippling through the industry with each passing week. Main line publishers at first wanted to brush off the ebook phenomena as some blip on the radar screen soon to disappear. But it hasn’t. In fact its growing at an exponential rate. So fast in fact the main line publishing conglomerates were forced to enter the market, albeit belatedly, and try to play catch up.

What ebook publishing has done is open up the market like never before. Plunging prices for books and other printed material drastically as a consequence. But with that plunge in pricing, the market has expanded into even larger audiences. Compare a book that, in hardback form, costs approximately $25–and then look at the same book in an ebook format for $4.99, and you can see how millions more of readers have suddenly shown up.

And I think it is just the tip of the iceberg. Ebook publishing is going to evolve. I can see where motion-picture/animation techniques are going to be incorporated into the printed ebook format. In fact I think we are going to see the re-invention of the ‘illuminated’ book. But this time the illumination will actually move.

Do you think William Blake would have liked the e book?

Hmm, I would say ‘yes.’ I think authors across the board, across generations, across historical periods, would find the ebook revolution as exciting. To open up the printed word to millions, if not billions, more readers at a fraction of the current cost of modern traditional print? What’s there not to like?

Do you think excessive description kills a crime story and there needs to be a greater proportion of dialogue or do you think it doesn’t matter?

This is a key foundation stone for any writer in developing his one style. How much description is too much? Should a writer paint a bare minimal portrait for description in his stories? Or should he go the other extreme and describe so much nothing is left to the reader to imagine.

My answer: short stories. To write a great short story you must be very economical in words. And yet very rich in description. A phrase, a sentence–no more should be used in describing a scene, a person, an incident. Master the writing of a short story and you’re set. For me, perhaps the writer that was so minimal in his words, yet so elegant in his prose, was Ernest Hemingway. A fabulous writer. One who could paint vivid pictures in the least amount of words.

Using dialogue to supply the descriptions , I think, is as cop out. Yes, some writers do it very well. But most writers don’t. And, to be honest, reading a novel filled with nothing but dialogue is boring to me.

I think a lot of writers today think descriptive writing is passe. So they don’t. They paint an outline of descriptive work and then expect the reader to fill in the details. At first this sounds like a good idea. But I take a different tack. Paint too little of a portrait and you send the reader down an entirely different road in their reading. What you want, as the writer, for the reader to understand and what the reader decides for themselves, can be entirely opposite in positions simply because too little–or too inept–descriptive efforts took place.

So a writer should struggle on finding that happy middle. And struggle with it every time they sit down to write a piece of fiction.

What do you think the key differences are between classical literature and crime fiction?

Ah. A simple question! (smirking broadly and shaking my head). To be honest, all the definitions about ‘classical’ literature–in my opinion–are nothing but a collection of worthless opinions by people who sign their names with letters from the alphabet added at the end of their names (like, Ph.D).

English professors have to occupy their time somehow. So they collective point to this piece of literature and define it ‘classical’ and point to another and call it ‘pulp fiction unworthy of serious study.’

Okay. That’s their opinions. But I don’t have to agree with them. And often do. Sorry, but I think the best of Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Chandler are as good as anything found in the hall of academia. Throw in Ed McBain, or Lawrence Block, or Ian Fleming. Hell, a good story is a good story. If the author can bring out some hidden meaning–draw in words the darker side of the human psyche, how could this not be worthy of being labeled ‘classical’ literature?

Thank you Bryant for giving an insightful and revealing interview.

Books by B.R. Stateham can be found on Amazon.com, here.