How did the journey of being an author start for you?
I’ve always been a story teller. I can remember as a small boy, writing my own comic book. Through school, I always excelled in English Literature, and I penned quite a few stories for class. I suppose I got serious in the early 1990’s. I took a novel and short story writing course, then armed with that diploma, started to write and submit short stories to small publications. Rag magazines mostly. I had some limited success.
What was your first written piece?
Oh, man! I guess my first genuine effort was a short story called The Bait. It was circa 1992 or so. A whimsical tale about a retired British navy officer who used humans as bait for deep sea fishing in the Caribbean. A lovely little story, it never sold. I may revive it one day. The story has novel potential, I think.
What is your current work about?
I have several projects on the boil at the moment. The sequel to my last novel, Blood & Brown Sugar, titled Blood & Bombay Black, is currently undergoing the painful process of its second edit. I’m very close to the submission phase for a collection of short stories called A Crate of Rags & Bones and I’ve just finished the first draft of another novel, A Mad Dog & His Englishman.
In what genre does it fall in?
Bombay Black is the same as its predecessor, a crime thriller. Rags & Bones is a mixture of thriller, horror and outright weirdness. Mad Dog is a historical thriller.
Do you have a personal favourite character?
My own, or fiction in general? Out of my motley crew, I’m partial to John Reeves. He’s a supporting character in Brown Sugar, but takes centre stage in Bombay Black. Something about his flippant and cynical nature makes him a lot of fun to read and write about. Despite the fact that he never does what I want him to.
In fiction, I’m a card-carrying member of The Vampire Lestat’s fan club. The way Anne Rice created such a cool and defiant character that is so deeply laced with insecurities and introspection fascinates me. He has an electric James Dean quality that hooked me the first time I read about him.
What is that one element in your book that can keep the readers hooked to it?
It’s hard to sing the merits of your own work. If I may be so bold, I like to think I just don’t give you a chance to put it down. I work very hard on scene setting and character development, all with an eye on immersing the reader so deeply in the story, they can’t, or don’t want to get out. I try to blend that with an aggressive plot and fast story pace so as not to give you a convenient place to stop reading. You know how they say you should never run a horse towards his barn after a ride or you’ll lose control? That’s how I write. With the hopes of the reader losing control and having no choice but to gallop on and finish. Humbly, I’ll say that most of the reviews I’ve read about Brown Sugar have echoed that.
Did you ever go through writer’s block? How did you overcome it?
Not a block per se, as in I was unable to write. Many times I’ve thrown up my hands and screamed, “That’s it! I’ve run out of talent!” But that’s more in reference to me not liking what I’m writing. Or not being able to twist a character’s actions to my will, or knowing that particular passage isn’t very good and will get axed in the edit. I write my way through it. I just keep typing, pounding on the keys and spewing out whatever comes to mind. Eventually it comes back around. Once or twice, I’ve jumped on my motorcycle and gone for a ride for a week or so. When I come back, it may take a while, but I fall back into the groove.
How many hours in a day do you usually write?
It very much depends on what I’m doing. If it’s a short story or a scene in a new novel, first draft stuff, I can go for five or six hours. My resilience drops off while I’m doing spit polish on existing work. Four hours tops. And editing? Cold, hard, hack and slay editing…I feel physically ill after two or three hours.
Plot, character, settings, what comes first to you? How do you decide which one to give priority to?
Tough question. Most of my ideas, short stories or novel, come to me from a turn of a phrase, a flip comment, or a desperate screech in my head. So, I suppose characters come first. But generally, they are saying or doing something I find deeply interesting due to a specific situation. So, that’s plot, isn’t it? Some one screaming “That hurt!” in my head isn’t particularly intriguing, unless it’s a man lying on a delivery table with a doctor standing between his legs, holding a new born babe in his arms. So, I guess characters and plot generally arrive pretty close to each other.
I try to give my characters priority. As I’ve said, I invest a lot of time in character and scene development. All tales have already been told, we know that. For me, it’s the characters, settings and when the story takes place, that gives old tropes a new twist. That’s what gets me excited, you know? What if Walter White was a pirate and he was manufacturing rum instead of methamphetamine? Stuff like that.
If you could meet any one character from all the books you have read, who would it be and why?
Dracula. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the whole tortured soul thing he had going on was an act. I’d love to call him out on that.