03 Friday May 2019
Posted in Authors, Books, Crime, Crime fiction, Debut novel, Fiction, Literature, Mystery, Noir, Novels, Pat Black, Writing
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Crime, Debut novel, fiction, Novels, Pat Black, PR Black, The Family, Thriller, writing
My debut novel, The Family, is available now for Kindle, Kobo, Google Play Books, Apple Books and NOOK.
Becky Morgan is a survivor.
Her family were wiped out by a serial killer in France 20 years ago.
She was the girl who got away.
Now, she’s looking for the killer – but he has his own unfinished business to take care of…
Who will win this deadly game of cat and mouse?
25 Thursday Apr 2019
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It’s all about you – what’s your and what’s your story?
I’m Lisa Hobman and I grew up in West Yorkshire. In 2012 my family and I relocated to Scotland after falling in love with place during holidays. It was after this that I began my writing career and have since published 14 books.
Tell us a bit about your latest book.
A Summer of New Beginnings is set along the stunning north coast 500 route in the Scottish Highlands. It tells the story of broken hearted, luxury travel writer, Zara, who is suddenly catapulted front her comfort zone and asked to cover the route by bicycle! She expects to hate every second but along the way learns lots of new things about herself and human nature in general. It’s a romantic story with a few giggles and a wee bit of a The Proclaimers along the way.
What do you love about your chosen genre?
I’m a total romantic at heart, so I love to be the weaver of spells that sprinkle a little love into my characters’ lives.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’m reading the Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series and absolutely loving it. I like to read outside of the genre I write to expand my horizons. I’ve just finished binge reading all of Lisa Jewell’s suspense novels too.
Movie magic: what actors would you cast in the big-screen version of your book?
Ooooh now then… I think Richard Madden would have to play Lachy, dark and brooding but with a sense of humour. And I think Charlotte Ritchie would play a great Zara! Quite demure and very pretty but with an inner strength and great comedy timing!
What writing projects are next for you?
I’m currently working on the first of what I hope will be a series set on the Isle of Skye. Having visited a few times it feels like the perfect setting for a story. The scenery is breathtaking and I’m excited about bringing it the attention of my readers.
Many thanks to Lisa for dropping by The Ox. You can connect with her right here:
Twitter: @LisaJHobmanAuth
Facebook: facebook.com/LisaJHobmanAuthor
Instagram: @Lisahobmanauthor
02 Thursday Jun 2016
Tags
Boats, Book, Fragment, Fragments, Ionian, Lost at sea, Novel, Novels, Ocean, Peril, Rescue, Sea, Shark, Tiger shark, writing
My fingers wanted to type “Motley Crue” there, even after I’d told them not to.
Adrift was my attempt to write about modern-day peril on the high seas. The idea was that a small tourist boat would get lost in the Ionian, or maybe the Med, following a huge storm.
The passengers, a crude cross-section of British society, have to take command of the vessel without any navigation or seamanship skills after the captain – a chancer who cuts corners and maintains his boat on the cheap – suffers a fatal heart attack.
Things get a bit Lord of the Flies as cliques develop, alphas and betas emerge, blood gets spilled, wives are coveted, and food and water runs out. A huge tiger shark begins to stalk the boat, too. Maybe a giant squid, or a fucking sea serpent. Why not?
Sea monsters are about as plausible as a boat remaining lost in the Ionian Sea for any length of time, with rescue planes, GPS navigation, satellite distress signals and god knows what else on hand to help effect a rescue.
The scenario still intrigues me: the notion that our ideas of home, safety and civilisation are as thin as a pane of glass in your patio door. It only takes a moment of crisis to completely change the game, and nudge us towards a more primal state. Hey, for some, the difference is only a pint of lager or two.
I was inspired by my first two “big” foreign holidays which didn’t involve being a drunken dickhead with like-minded dickheads, taken when I was in my mid-20s.
I met some strange people. Probably I seemed like a strange person, to them.
I remember one girl on an overnight cruise ship to Egypt at our dinner table who made a face like a cat’s arsehole just about every time I opened my mouth. It turned out that the three couples assigned to our dinner table were Scottish, English and Irish. My opening line: “Hey, sounds like the start of a joke!”
Everyone laughed politely, except this girl, who made a face which stuck for the rest of the trip. It became horribly obvious that I’d done something to piss her off.
Being a sort-of good, nominally catholic boy at the time, I blamed myself. I thought: it’s my accent. It’s too rough. They don’t understand when I’m being ironic, or simply cracking a joke. My facial default mode isn’t “smile”. They call it “resting bitch face” these days. All of these factors can add up to an unfriendly picture.
The girl came over at the end of the trip and said: “I just want to say sorry to you. I spoke to my husband; I didn’t understand you were joking with the Scots-English-Irish thing.”
So, it wasn’t my fault, after all… she was a moron.
They’re out there, alright.
Separately, we had dinner with two other couples we met, one of whom were extremely well-to-do property developers, while the others were ordinary working folk from Inverness. It was like the Frost Report sketch with the Two Ronnies and John Cleese. I think we were in the middle. Well, possibly. I know my place, anyway. The upper class couple (they passed out business cards at the end of the night) were jaw-droppingly, casually rude about the Inverness woman’s appearance.
I wondered how the clear social stratification on show at the Thai restaurant could be altered by a simple piece of bad luck, or a moment of crisis. Other writers might imagine a wife-swapping party. It goes back to that primal thing again.
I sucked my teeth when I re-read the opening paragraphs, after a gap of more than 10 years. It’s something I was guilty of quite a lot at the time. In describing a woman, I’d start by outlining her body; and by “outlining her body”, I mean things I like about women’s bodies. Their breasts, their legs, their buttocks… possibly their eyes, if I was feeling magnanimous.
I’d probably read too many horror novels by sweaty, bulging-eyed British men in my youth and imbibed some of their prose style. I can’t even put this on the blog, I thought.
But when I read on, I realised my 27-year-old self knew what he was doing. I follow this blunt appraisal by describing the meathead who’s making the original description – a no-necked boor who quickly asserts himself, for all the wrong reasons, when crisis strikes. The type of man who has women categorised, ticked off and possibly even verbally abused without ever taking a look in the mirror himself. Note also his second name: Tamworth.
The description of human bodies as something you might see on a hook in a butcher’s is a very deliberate nod towards what is going to happen later, when matters of the flesh don’t relate so much to idle fancies in the Mediterranean sunshine as something you might actually eat, if you were more than a little peckish.
So, a tip of the hat to my younger self, there. Although for some, head-hopping is a writing no-no.
I received one of my rudest ever pieces of criticism from an agent when I sent the first three chapters off: “This dialogue is not believable at all. If you want to be published, you have to get that right. Can you imagine people saying this stuff in real life?”
Well, obviously, mate. That’s why I wrote it down.
But the final analysis must lie with the reader.
Perhaps I could re-set Adrift in the Tropics, somewhere remote in the Pacific – or any place on this planet where people could plausibly get lost at sea…
Out of all the Undead Books, Adrift is the only one with a premise that I could see making print. Whenever I lose heart, I always tell myself: worse books than this have been published. Much, much worse.
Anyway, here it is: chapter one. Anchors away! (Aweigh? Ole!)
Chas Tamworth could tell that she was British before he even heard her voice. That two-tone sunburn across her shoulders was a dead giveaway, something that marked out the UK holidaymaker from other white sun-seekers, almost an actual anthropological trope. Her exposed skin from the neck down was lobster red as she climbed on board, but the parts of her that peeked out from beneath the bikini top were fishbelly white.
She would’ve been a nice girl if it weren’t for the sunburn, Chas thought. Generously built. Plump. Big up top. Dimples in her cheeks and her stomach as she stepped onto the gangplank towards the boat. Unabashed about her squashy belly, which Chas liked a lot, without knowing why.
Chas turned to his wife Denise and whispered, without taking his eyes off the girl: “She’s well done, eh?”
Denise peered over the rim of her sunglasses. “To a crisp,” she said, without moving her lips.
Denise was draped over the best deckchair, her wire-frame body and tinted hair fully exposed to the early morning sun, a G n’ T in her hands and a novel face down on her lap. She watched the sunburned girl and another man clamber on board the boat, noting the folds in the girl’s exposed stomach as she bent over slightly to drop onto the deck. She seemed ill-at-ease with the gentle swaying of the boat. The man had a cute face but he was a bit stocky. He had on an eyesore of a T-shirt, a psychedelic jumble of horizontal stripes of varying breadth and shade. Denise grimaced. “His T-shirt doesn’t look well,” she said to Chas.
“It’s like a broken TV set,” Chas muttered. Chas – shaven-headed, brawny and hairy-chested – was sat on the second best deckchair, clad only in his bathing shorts and expensive little sandals. He was putting on his sun cream, forcing the last of the Factor Five out of a tube. The tube gasped as he released it. He smeared the cream over himself, squinting as he slipped off his Elvis sunglasses to rub around his eyes.
To the couple stepping onto the boat, Chas’ eyes were surprisingly small once the glasses were off. Sam Bannen, the man with the sunburned woman, thought the big fellow looked a bit piggish as he squinted into the morning sunlight and wrinkled his bulbous nose. Like a football hooligan. Definitely English. He must have a Union Jack beach towel lying around somewhere, Sam thought.
Sam’s wife Lia, the sunburned girl, took his hand as they moved uncertainly onto the deck off the gangplank. The boat was moored at the little harbour and the water was calm, but Lia didn’t quite like the way the world suddenly became unsteady both under her feet and in her line of vision. She had a horror of seasickness, drowning and fish. But she had not considered any of these things as being a possibility when Sam had urged her to go on the one-day cruise around the islands.
She glanced over the side into the sapphire waters, noting the barnacles and other creatures dotted down the length of the pier’s legs and the side of the hull. A tiny school of orange fish huddled around the structure, seemingly taking shelter in the shadow. Even by the side of the docks, it looked deep enough to drown in.
“There’s no chance of a storm or anything, is there?” she asked her husband.
“Actually, there is,” Sam grinned. “But it’s forecast for tomorrow.”
“Bloody hell. I thought there wasn’t going to be any rain at this resort?” Lia tugged her sarong, lifting it a little higher on her midriff. The material chafed her reddened skin and she suppressed an urge to scratch it. There were two other people on the deck already, and they were both looking at her. There was one bald guy with a bull neck; he looked like a rugby player or something, a big lump of a bloke. She had to squint to look at him; the sun glared off his smooth, sweat-beaded head, his scalp seemingly aflame. Beside him there was a skinny girl in a red one-piece bikini sipping a G n’ T.
Lia fancied a G n’ T. “Look, you must be able to get drinks,” she said to Sam. “Already.” She nodded at the couple on the deckchairs. They both nodded back. “I fancy one of those.”
“Looks like a G n’ T,” Sam said. “Bit early for a G n’ T, isn’t it? Even for you.”
They stopped the conversation as they approached the other couple, sitting down on two of the less privileged deckchairs set in the shade. “Morning,” Sam said. “Looks lovely out, eh?”
Chas had put his Elvis sunglasses back on. He smiled at Lia and Sam. “Blooming,” he said. “Another scorcher. By the way, I’m Chas. Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands.
Denise smiled, taking Sam’s proffered hand. She had a firm, dry grip, but she only took hold of his index and middle fingers, a child’s handshake.
“And I’m Denise,” Denise said, after a pause.
**********
“The Firebird,” Amy Smart said, pulling her long blonde hair back into a ponytail. “Stupid name for a ship, don’t you think?”
Struan McPherson put his glasses on and squinted into the sunlight at the boat. There, on the side, was the black lettering etched out against the brilliant white hull. Beside the name was an abstract figure of a fiery phoenix, a sort of red arrow with a beak and orange flames undulating out from the back. From a certain angle it might have been a jellyfish.
“Not appropriate, you’re right. I suppose it’s got some kind of special meaning to the captain. Maybe he doesn’t realise that he’s mixing his metaphors slightly by applying an aeronautical name to a nautical vessel.” Struan’s Highland Scots accent ruffled the vowels, shuddered the consonants; these sounds continued to delight Amy, even after so many years.
“Do you think we should tell the skipper?” she grinned. “Ask him to change it? How about The Fiery Fish?” They were walking along the jetty, bypassing the other yachts and speedboats tied up in the little island harbour. It was still early but there was a lot of activity on board the vessels, ropes and lines rattling, sails sighing on the yacht, chatter as supplies were loaded aboard for that day’s tourist intake. Buoys dipped in and out of the water as the boats rocked gently. The dark-haired, tawny-skinned men untethering lines or loading boxes openly glared at Amy as she walked past them. A few smiled.
Struan didn’t mind this, or didn’t notice. “Perhaps we should wait until we get back to port. It could be a long swim home if he takes offence and decides to make us walk the plank.”
“Doesn’t look like there’s many on board,” Amy said. She could see a few heads bobbing about on the deck just past the gangplank. “I thought we were late. Do you think it’s normal to have just the six passengers?”
“Six is just fine,” Struan said. “It’s not that big a boat. I’m happy enough with the extra space, anyway. You remember all those French people we were squeezed up against the last time we took a boat trip? That was tres mauvais.”
“Get away!” Amy said. “They were fun. It would’ve been a boring trip without them. At least they were having a laugh.”
“Fun? They were rude. They only seemed fun to you because you couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
“They started singing Frere Jacques. That was fun. And I know what that meant. Well… I know how the tune goes, anyway.”
“Bof!”
“Bof yourself.” They linked hands. He gave her a kiss as they went up to the gangplank.
“Ladies first,” she smiled, and motioned Struan to go forward.
****
“That’s the most ginger man I’ve ever seen,” Chas said. He hadn’t meant to say it so loud; Sam barked a short laugh, while Lia’s eyes bulged in astonishment. “Sorry, no offence if any of you are secretly ginger, but…”
“Hey, some of my best friends are ginger,” Sam tittered.
Struan was ginger. His hair was of a darker tint, more like stained wood or ancient terracotta pots unearthed after being buried for centuries. His goatee beard, though, was a few shades brighter, as carrot-red as his hair had been when he was a youngster. He was tall and rangy, and had the look and the three-quarter length shorts of a surfer or an animal rights protester. Then Chas saw who was following up the gangplank and his laughter died away. Tall and blonde, with tiny little shorts and a –
She looked right at him. “Hello!” she called out. “Top of the morning! Whew!” Amy strode past Struan and sat down in the empty deckchair in between Chas and Sam. “What a day!”
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Lia said, from the shade. She twirled her black hair girlishly around her fingers. “Couldn’t have picked a nicer day for a cruise.”
“Whereabouts is our captain?” Struan said, his Scots burr causing everyone’s head to snap up. “Is there anyone else on board?”
Sweaty sock off the starboard bow, Chas thought. He’s got a real live ‘See You Jimmy’ hat on, too. God almighty.
“Don’t know where he’s gone,” Sam said, standing up to shake hands with the newcomers. “He said he had to go pick up some supplies, or somesuch.
****
One hand settled on his paunch, Captain Jack Mills leaned back in his chair and drained off the last of the coffee. He sighed and placed the little cup back in its saucer on the table. From this moment forth, each and every single morning, things begin to get better. He smacked his lips.
Looking up from the cup, he could see the sombre eyes of Gregoris peering down at him from behind the café bar.
“Why do you always look so upset, Gregoris?” Captain Mills said. “You should be pleased to see me.”
“You are a regular source of business,” Gregoris said, in a gritty smoker’s voice, “every morning and every night too, Jack.”
“That I am,” Jack said. “I’m in this fine establishment just about every day, isn’t that true?”
“That’s true, Jack.”
“I’m the first face you see in the morning, and the last arse you kick out at night, wouldn’t you say that was so? I’m almost part of the furniture.”
“Yes, that is so.” Gregoris scratched his white beard. The hairs on his chin, like those on his head, were stiff and spiky like a cat’s whiskers. “What do you want, Jack?”
The Captain cleared his throat and leaned forward. You couldn’t tell how heavy he was when he was standing; six feet three in his socks and almost as broad again, he carried it well. But when the Englishman sat down, it was then you noticed the belly, stoked with liquor and rich food for all the years he’d been on the island. “I’ve got a proposal for you. It just so happens, there’s a vacancy on board my ship.”
Gregoris laughed. “You have many vacancies on your ship Jack. This much, we all know.” He picked up a broom and started sweeping the stone floor. He half-turned his back on the Captain while he worked on a corner.
It wasn’t that Gregoris didn’t like Jack. They had always been civil to one another each morning Jack came in, even after those nights when Jack had stayed till long after the English women had left and the music was switched off, and Gregoris and his brothers had to lift the seafarer’s head off the table and propel him out of the door and into a taxi. Their conversations had become part of the ritual of opening the café for the owner. And yet it was more than just familiarity borne out of habit. Gregoris couldn’t deny that he had a certain fondness for the man; he could burst with the most irrational optimism, that special quality common to all truly hopeless men. But Gregoris would make any excuse to make himself busy if the mornings with Jack dragged on a little and the other customers, regulars or otherwise, took too long to arrive. There was just something tragic about the man, Gregoris decided, something desperate.
“Well, business is picking up,” Jack said. “It so happens I’ve got a charter party today. A tour of the islands. Six good English people, Gregoris. Appearing at the dock, at nine o’clock. And I’m short of a mate.”
Gregoris stopped sweeping. “I see. I thought you had taken on some help?”
Jack made an impatient gesture. “That fool? He jumped ship to work for somebody else. He wasn’t quality, Gregoris. Quality’s hard to find. And you need quality out on the sea. I need a quality man. To do an easy job.”
Gregoris thrust his porcupine chin out, a gesture which always tickled Jack. He looked like an exasperated tortoise. “I told you after the last time, I’m not happy about Yannis going to sea with you. Not the way you carry on at nights. I’m sorry.”
“Ah, Gregoris,” Jack said, leaning back in the chair. “You think I drink on the job? Come on, what do you take me for?”
Gregoris said nothing.
“Look. I just need someone to pour the drinks and untie a few lines for me. It’s nothing difficult. And it’s not like we’re going to get rough seas.”
“This is not what the weather reports tell us.”
“Not till tomorrow, Gregoris. Plus it won’t be as severe as people are saying. I bet it won’t even blow the fluff off your prick.” Gregoris winced at this expression. “Besides. We’ll be back here by ten o’clock. With British airs and graces and the girls slapping our faces.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll pay him double whatever he’s getting in here.”
“Double!” Gregoris spluttered. “Who is your charter, Mr Prime Minister and The Queen?”
“Well, I did say it was good English people,” Captain Jack said, rubbing his thumb and fingers together and leering. “Ones who don’t argue. Ones who always think it’s a fair price. Yes? Come on. Yannis is a big boy now. And it’s cash in his pocket towards his trip to America. Let’s see if he fancies another trip on the ocean waves with his Uncle Jack. See if we can’t toughen him up a bit out there! What do you say?”
Gregoris sighed. “I might be able to spare him. But it all depends on him. I’ll call him and find out.”
“That’s more like it! For that, I’ll have another coffee. I’ll drink to our health.”
“To your health,” Gregoris said, feeling underneath the bar for his mobile phone.
******
Yannis killed the engine on his moped and put it on the kickstand. He could see Jack through the window of his father’s café, leaning back on his chair, his open mouth booming silent laughter. He wondered if Jack had been drinking already; wondered if the big man would be sneaking sips from the bottles he kept in the wheelhouse beside the First Aid kit during the voyage. Yannis had done the sums and he would be mad not to take the trip out on the boat with the old man. Today was his day off and he would have been happier in bed, but the offer was too good to miss. One thing he could say for Captain Jack; the old man was quick enough with his money. Too quick for his own good, maybe, but it was cash towards next year. This was all-important.
He took off his helmet and ran a hand through his thick, curly black hair. Hateful hair; every night he would try his best to flatten and straighten, to tickle and tease it into submission with gel, mousse, even his sister’s spray which made him smell like a pansy. But by midnight, like in the fairytale, it would have unravelled back to its wild, untamed foliage. Some women loved to run their hands through the hair as he served them at the taverna; some were even sober enough to look disgusted when their hands came away covered in the translucent soup he had covered his head with.
Chantelle-Grace had not looked disgusted, though. And she had run her hands through his hair a lot. Chantelle-Grace, who he would be meeting outside the Metro Bar tonight. Alone, she had said; meaning without the squawking friends who had got in Yannis’ way the past couple of nights they had gone out together. There would be plenty of time for him to go home again after the voyage was over for the night, to get cleaned up and put on his good clothes. Chantelle. He mouthed the word to himself without realising it, this tall, handsome young man of nineteen, as he went across the square to the café to meet Captain Jack.
“Thank Christ for that, there he is,” said Chas. The others on the boat looked to the gangplank. There was a tall, heavily-built man lumbering towards them, dressed in khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with buttons missing. He wore a battered-looking cap, with strands of greying hair sticking out from beneath. There was something of an old military colonel in him, Chas thought, or maybe an ex-copper. Something in the posture, his movements precise for such a big man. Definitely a uniform guy; he decided he would chin the skipper about it later on when things got quiet.
The captain had huge hands, and the boat swayed noticeably as he pulled himself aboard. He looks like he could’ve been a bit of a boy in his youth, Sam thought to himself. Looks handy. He noticed Lia grimacing as the vessel swayed a little; her hands strayed to the seat of her deckchair and she gripped it, hard. Perhaps reading his thoughts, Lia smiled at him. “I know. If we sink, that won’t help.”
“It’s the same on a crashing plane, too. Not very effective. Unless there’s a lifeboat under there.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Gritting your teeth can work wonders though.”
“Good morning shipmates!” Captain Jack boomed, presenting himself on deck with a quick salute. “Sorry to have to abandon ship briefly, I was forced into press-ganging this young fellow on board for today’s trip.” He indicated Yannis, who nodded and smiled with his eyes downcast as he followed the captain along the gangplank. Denise looked up, her eyes peering over the rim of her sunglasses. Tasty, she thought. And only a little fellow.
“Now I’ve already met some of you,” – here the Captain nodded to Chas and Denise – “but presently I hope to make everyone’s acquaintance before we set sail for the islands. As you can see, it’s a lovely morning, and conditions are perfect for our voyage today.
“I’m Captain Jack, and I’m in charge of the good ship Firebird. My first mate Lieutenant Yannis is here to assist me, and he’ll be happy to serve you all refreshments at the bar just inside the main cabin. Please feel free to call us ‘sir’ and salute, but this is not an essential on board for today.
“Now before we prepare to cast off, a few safety notices. If, at any point during the trip you should feel seasick, no problem – give me a holler and I’ll be happy to stop the boat, and you can get out for a little walk until you feel better.
“In the event of the boat sinking, you will find lifejackets in the marked cabinets fore and aft. Unfortunately, the emergency helicopter is in for repairs, so lifejackets will need to do if you should go into the briny.
“We set sail at…” he peered at his watch, “ooooh, whenever I feel like it, so in the meantime sit back, make yourselves comfortable, and prepare for a trip into the deep.” There was a smattering of embarrassed applause, started by Sam and Lia. The Captain doffed his cap smartly, then unlocked the wheelhouse at the bow before disappearing inside.
Struan’s gaze followed the captain as he passed through the door, then arched an eyebrow as he spotted a loudhailer system bolted to the wall. “I bet you this guy’s a frustrated comedian,” he said, indicating the speaker. “He’ll be talking to us on that thing all day.”
“What thing?” Denise said. Suddenly, there was a sharp whine as the loudspeaker shrieked into life.
“Apologies ladies and gentlemen, just checking to see if you’re all awake!” Jack’s voice boomed forth. The group burst out laughing.
Yannis began untying the boat from the jetty, fumbling some of the ropes, worrying that he hadn’t got them all. He could see the whole dock collapse in the wake of the Firebird, trailing along behind the boat out to sea. Another part of him was rejoicing at the vision that was the tall English girl with the ponytail, forgetting for the moment all about his Chantelle. It would be a pleasure to serve, he thought.
The holidaymakers chattered away among themselves, pitching in the odd comment to each other about the weather, the apartments they were staying at, all the restaurants and bars they hadn’t enjoyed. The final checks were completed, and then the engines roared into life. Foam surged up from the propellers at the stern; soon the boat began to pilot away from the jetty. At first the motion was so slow, Lia began to wonder if they were moving at all; then she realised that the dock was angling away from the boat. She had a slight moment of disorientation, then a sense of the universe being out of sync, the horizon pulling away from the foreground; then the engines roared again and the boat leapt through the dock and out to sea. Even Denise cheered as the wind caressed their heads and tossed their hair.
Lia stared at the water hissing against the side of the boat, white foam creeping over the deep blue in stark, probing fingers. “This isn’t bad, this!” she cried.
28 Saturday May 2016
Tags
Books, Chapters, Charlie Dimmock, Chick-Lit, Fragment, Home renovation, Minty McGee, Novels, Opening chapters, Phil and Kirstie, Property, Salutary lessons, Sarah Beeny
In those desperate early noughties, I had a crack at chick-lit.
I noticed that even people who weren’t normally into reading bought and read these books – and lots of them. They all seemed to have the same covers and the same plot.
I’ve never looked down my nose at the genre – I read novels about prehistoric sharks eating people – but I supposed that these stories were all written to a strict formula, and if I followed it, I couldn’t miss.
As you’ll see… not the case.
I didn’t have a title but I had the name of my main character: Minty McGee, a red-headed TV property show presenter. She meets someone she doesn’t get on with at first, but eventually sparks fly, etc etc.
More interestingly, I didn’t tell the story from her perspective, but from that of a runner/gopher called Jess – Sancho Panza to Minty’s Don Quixote.
For obvious reasons, I didn’t send my sample chapters to anyone. So this post is an act of literary masochism; but even so, I cannot bear to include the subsequent chapter where we meet Minty’s gay best friend. That would be an act of literary sadism.
I guess you can write novels to formula, and people have made plenty of money doing so for their entire careers. But you can’t reduce them to that. They’re horribly complex things to put together, regardless of whether they’re about giant prehistoric sharks or kooky interior designers. Luckily I didn’t persevere with Minty for too long before taking this on board.
Do play along at home with your “a man wrote this” bingo cards. I’ve got my head in my hands at the part where I say Minty has “a long skirt”, and leave it at that.
I’m not sure what was going on in my mind with Minty McGee. Could she have been a fantasy figure – like Red Sonja, or Sarah Beeny as drawn by Frank Frazetta? There’s definitely an element of that in there. I was careful not to describe her body in any great detail: I thought the hair was enough for the imagination to work with.
In 2004, as now, I thought property renovation shows were the very devil. So many nights I sat at the other end of the sofa, grinding my teeth, as people on television became anxious that their £400,000 budget for a bit of painting and decorating might not be enough.
This was when people talked about a “property market bubble, heading for trouble,” but not too seriously.
I guess it’s all to do with building a secure and comfortable dwelling place, one of the most basic human impulses. But there are other impulses, and as my time as a property TV show widower went on, I began to pay attention to these. I found it difficult to get Sarah Beeny off my mind, or that lass with the red shoes. Kirstie?
I didn’t really fancy her, but I used to fantasise about a night out with Kirstie. She’d start off by telling you about her ex-boyfriend and how badly she missed him. Then she’d get horribly pissed, far too soon. Some bloke called Phil would send her dozens of texts, their tone becoming increasingly desperate, but after a while she’d ignore these. She’d launch herself at you in the taxi queue. You’d participate out of a sense of fascination rather than lust. Disgusted onlookers would tell you to get a room. I think they call this cognitive dissonance. And maybe I had a night out like this, once or twice.
My Sarah Beeny fantasies were more focused on a night in, rather than a night out. How big a house, and how much work would it need? We could convert the loft. I’d spend a lot of time re-plastering the twin room. We could investigate the basement. And so on and so forth.
The garden is strictly Charlie Dimmock’s domain, though. I’d meet her there at dusk. You wouldn’t need a drop of drink. The plants would sigh with the dying light. The air rich with scents and buzzing with invisible activity. You remember Charlie? She had red hair. There’s a lot of Charlie in Minty’s DNA. I have no aptitude for gardening whatsoever.
If there’s any lesson to be learned here, it’s: don’t write something if your heart isn’t in it. Perhaps even more pertinent: don’t try to write positively and without irony about something you hate.
Had I continued with this folly I might have called it The Ballad of Minty McGee. It’s a better title than it deserves…
“Minty, don’t you think this is a bit-”
The car lurched over a speed bump. Jess’ chin touched her chest.
“-Fast?”
Minty slid her sunglasses down her nose and winked at Jess. Her red hair burst out behind her in the wind, streaks of flame flickering against the sunburnt paint of her convertible.
“We’re going to be late,” Minty said.
“We’re not going to be late. Minty, I think I saw sparks there.”
Minty smirked. “Well. You’ve got your seatbelt on, haven’t you?”
“That’s hardly the point,” Jess said. “If we crash and explode, they’ll hardly say: ‘Well, at least they died with their seatbelts on’.”
Minty barrelled through amber lights. Behind other windshields, Jess could see open mouths, bared teeth, bulging eyeballs. “Don’t you like this car?” Jess said. “In one piece?”
“We’re going to be late,” Minty said again.
“We are not going to be late,” Jess said, exasperated. “We meet Jim-Bob and the crew outside the house at one o’clock. It’s ten past twelve. It takes ten minutes to get there. How can we be late?”
“We’re taking a detour,” Minty grinned, her hair caught in the slipstream like a fighter pilot’s scarf.
Jess glanced at the organiser in her lap. “A detour to where? Minty, you know you have to film today, then later on you’re meeting Peter. What detour is this? When did we organise this? Jesus, what was that?” The car lurched again, stuttering over some small obstacle on the road. But Jess hadn’t seen any speed bumps. “A dog? Or a child?”
Minty looked unsure for a moment, biting her lip. “A hole in the road? I dunno.” She glanced at the mirror and wrinkled her nose. “Poor design, that’s probably all it was.”
Jess shook her head. “Okay, so where are we going on this detour?”
“We’re taking a drive. Up the Boulevard.”
Jess snapped shut her organiser. “The Boulevard. Why?”
Minty turned off onto the main road. Trees appeared by the side of the road, brilliant green in the afternoon sun. “This is why. Look at all this,” she said, smiling. “Greenery. Now this is good planning.” The trees lined up on either side of the road, planted in perfect symmetry, all roughly the same height. The road tapered off towards the horizon, white lines shooting forwards. “This is design Jess, my love.”
“Now I know you’re mad,” Jess said.
“Just look at it,” the girl driving the red convertible said as they hurtled down the neat, ordered rows. “It’s all so simple.”
*************
“We’re late,” Minty said, sliding out of the car. She took her time about it too, smoothing down the long skirt, tousling that hair. She slid her sunglasses back on top of her head and clicked a button on her key ring to activate the alarm. Jess always expected this car’s alarm signal to purr, the contented sound of a lean cat curling up on itself. But it simply gave out a cheerful boop and the hood stretched itself out, wrinkles straightening, the soft top resolving itself into hard angles and leather sheen before clicking into place.
Minty watched all this coolly. Then she looked around the street she was parked in. Terraced houses, dirty red brick, sparse patches of grass with concrete bald spots. “Does it say which number we’re supposed to be going to?”
“Well it’s not exactly a number,” Jess said, turning pages back and forth in her organiser. “It’s a house name, but I can’t make out…I can’t even read my own writing… here, what does this say?”
Minty peered at the slanted lettering. “Hmm. ‘Pick up two pints milk, cotton buds, baby wipes’,” she said.
“Funny girl.”
“That’s why I’m the one on TV, honey.”
“Look at the other part of the note,” Jess said. “At the bottom.”
“Ah. The house is called ‘Rhiannon.’ That’s nice.” She looked around the street. “Celtic. Earthy.” Here she bunched her shoulders – “I like it.” She spotted the Orions and the Fiestas, the Puntos and Saxos and Cinquecentos and Bravas. “Not sure if it fits into this neighbourhood, but I like it. Rhiannon. Yes.”
“‘Yes’? Wasn’t it Fleetwood Mac?” Jess said.
Minty took a few seconds, then pretended she got it. “You’re the one who should be on the TV,” she sighed. “Okay. Suppose we’d better get looking. And you should take your time, love,” she added, as Jess began to root around in her bag, trying to find a slot for the organiser among the threaded hairbrush, the torn envelopes, the fingers of lipstick. “We’re late already. That means we have to take it slowly. We don’t rush.”
09 Monday May 2016
Tags
authors, Crime, Crime writing, Fragment, Mortis Lock, Novels, Unfinished
Look back in manger
I have a file on my computer labelled “The Book of Misfires”. It’s a collection of novels which I started but did not finish. It contains 10 abandoned projects and runs to just under 130,000 words in total.
In mitigation, most of these stories were not abandoned because I couldn’t finish them; instead, they were cut short rather cynically.
Having had my dreams of literary stardom dashed after grinding out 200,000 words of deathly – not deathless – prose with Meat, I felt I had to be a bit more businesslike in my writing projects.
Meat took me more than four years to finish. That’s a lot of huffing and puffing for something so low-yield and high-risk. If you’re serious about your dreams, then there comes a time you have to employ your reason.
I hypothesised that I could sell novels to discerning agents after having written just three chapters. Upon reading these, the underwear of the London literati would simply melt away, and they’d beat my door down for the rest of the book. Which I’d then provide, of course. Pretty soon, I’d be bidding a not-so-fond-farewell bid to my colleagues, with a chunky advance smouldering away in the bank.
And to think some people say an imagination is an unhealthy thing…
I sent the opening chapters of Mortis Lock to lots of agents in my Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, spending a small fortune in printing and posting in those not-quite-digital days. I’ll never forget the look of horror on the woman’s face as I approached the counter at the Post Office with my envelopes and paperclipped sheets. “No’ you again!”
I got no bites whatsoever, and so another 10k was filed into the trunk, unseen by anyone else… until now.
Mortis Lock is a crime novel about a stand-up comedian who smells a rat when his best friend dies unexpectedly, supposedly a suicide.
I started writing it in 2004 – I’m astonished that it was so long ago – and I vividly remember the day the idea first occurred to me. While I was reading Ian Rankin’s Black and Blue on a sun-lounger in my back garden, I realised that a man I deeply disliked bore a close resemblance to an artist’s impression of Glasgow’s still-at-large serial killer, Bible John.
This guy was just about the right age, and the likeness is uncanny. He was also quite manipulative and psychopathic, a truly nasty piece of work and a perfect fit for someone you suspect to be a serial killer, although he had no biblical leanings whatsoever. I almost convinced myself. I was strongly minded to tip off the cops. Some dark nights, I still am.
Among the many things which date Mortis Lock, you will notice one part where people are smoking inside a social club. It’s like when you see goalkeepers picking up pass-backs in vintage football highlights. “Hey! You can’t do that!”
If any agents feel like beating down my door for the rest of it, don’t be shy… Remember, no writing project is ever truly finished or left unfinished… Mortis Lock is not dead, just undead.
Seven men, one coffin, six shoulders braced against the wood. Only one of the men was not a beanpole basketball-playing cloud-bothering bastard, and that man was me. Thanks to my stature the coffin was hanging like the shelf in the basement your father doesn’t like to talk about. It was ludicrous, but no-one said anything. It was my best friend’s funeral, after all.
I hadn’t realised Scott Breely’s little cousin was a good three inches taller than me until he lined up opposite me by the side of the box. When we lifted it up and finally allowed it to come down on our shoulders I was literally letting the side down. In fact, I literally could not keep my end up. I was on my tiptoes, trying to make my right shoulder reach its underside. Talk about tilting at windmills. I thought: this is how Tom Cruise felt, attending all those movie premieres with Nicole Kidman.
If anyone in the church noticed, they didn’t laugh. I glanced at the pews as the six pallbearers shuffled past the congregation to the strains of the closing hymn and all I could see were white faces and red eyes. I focused on Scott’s father’s lapel in front of me, tiny beads of water dotted around the black fabric, until we got out of the church and loaded the box into the hearse.
There was a little bit of waiting around while they got the cars ready. I was travelling with my mum and dad, but of course we had to wait until the black cars were away first. The hearse went first, with all the floral tributes bunched up against the windows. It looked a bit choked in there; too many tributes written in white petals: ‘ZORRO’, his nickname at work – answers on a postcard to the usual address, please – ‘SON’ and ‘BUD’. ‘BUD’ was from me.
I watched the first Roller fill up with the top team for today. Scott’s dad, Danno Breely, Danno’s latest squeeze (Tess, or Tricia, this one was called), along with Scott’s mother Lucy and her new husband Len. They were all looking old, even Danno’s bit of fluff, who might have been a blonde bombshell 20 years ago. Danno, with his long hair tied back, flecks of silver showing, put me in mind of Willie Nelson.
One other person climbed in after them, helped by gentle hands; Summer.
I’d not been looking forward to seeing Summer again. It was awkward enough when Scott, her fiancé, was still alive; the air kisses, the banal chat, insipid conversations, masking the tension.
The girl was shattered, and every eye followed her as she made her way out of the church into the car. She looked numb, fragile. Her face was clear of lipstick, long blonde hair pulled back into a secretarial pleat and her milk white face a sharp contrast to the black dress. You got a sense people were crying for her, her especially.
“The whole world in front of them,” I heard one old dear say.
“Terrible,” someone else said. “How do you rebuild from that?”
“Terrible.”
“It must be the not knowing that’s the worst.”
“Terrible.”
All the boys were there with their partners, as well as a few of Scott’s university pals who I didn’t know so well. I nodded to all of them. Big Cairney tipped me a wink as he shepherded his tiny little missus past us towards the car park, and as he did so a tear rolled from his eye into his black beard, lost forever. That ridiculous sight – did King Kong cry? Did Godzilla? – might have brought on a sniffle in me had my father not put a hand on my shoulder at that moment.
“Best we get to the cemetery,” he said. “Rain’s coming on.” I nodded and followed him, my mum and dad and my little sister Collette into the car. My older brother Raymond and his wife followed behind us.
My mum, bless her, tried everything she could to inject some levity into the journey from the chapel to the cemetery. “Well he’d be glad he got a service in the old church, eh? That was his style.” Scott was an architect. He liked Gothic things, imposing buildings, soot-blasted old places. She may have been right. I didn’t say anything. My mother looked terrible, I thought. Like something had taken residence under the skin of her face. Something to do with HRT or pills or lack of them, I wasn’t sure. My dad was driving, saying nothing, reading my mood but letting her prattle on. The radio was on low and it was raining. I’d have taken my own car but I knew there were a few drinks to come. To tell you the truth, I’d had one or two already.
It was at the graveside that I felt my chest starting to hitch. It was a bit like hiccups, and I tackled the spasms and hitches the same way I would the windipops, by holding my breath. I made fists to keep it together. Squeeze, and release. In, and out. I couldn’t stop the tears though and I brushed them away, shaking, ashamed. I didn’t look at anyone’s face and the priest’s words melted into the rain.
I kept my head down as I took the strain of the cords – Christ, the box was heavy – and I helped lower my best friend into his hole in the ground.
Danno, Lucy and Summer all spread the dirt over the box. Danno nodded at me and numbly I did the same, taking the crisp earth from what looked like a cigar box and letting it escape through my fingers into the pit. Then Summer came back to the grave, openly weeping. That beautiful face disfigured in grief, like a bloom pressed into a book. She let a blood red rose drop onto the coffin.
I had a couple of conversations with the boys when it was over. There were a few hugs, plenty of promises to meet up for a drink at the wake, and beyond, invitations to come and stay, pledges to go out for a meal or a drink or anything. And we filed down the hill past all the tombstones. I took a look back at the grave, the gravediggers’ little putting green carpet framing the wound in the earth, and the white letters by the side of the hole:
‘BUD’.
************
The wake was worse, and I told myself to keep a lid on the drink. The jocularity, the little bursts of laughter and pockets of smiley suits got on my tits. Cairney came over for a while and we tipped a couple of jars and ate a few tuna and onion sandwiches by ourselves by the social club bar for a while. He was the only person I asked: Does anyone know? Does anyone know why?
Cairney looked away from my eyes and got very serious. “Easy fella. Drink up. Me and you’ll have a convo about this later. Just drink up. My advice? Get out of here as soon as you can.”
I didn’t catch what he meant. I thought he meant Summer. But he couldn’t know about that. “There’s too much going on at wakes, fella. Too many things in the background. And there’s a great big thing in the background in this one. You get more fights at wakes than you do at weddings. Even in this town. Just split as soon as you can. My advice to you.” Then he grinned, crooked teeth pushing to the surface of his thatched face. “But man, can you believe he died mid-season? Imagine not knowing if we’d won the title or not?” I loved Cairney but I couldn’t take the stand-up routine from him. Not there. Thankfully he took his own advice, and disappeared with his brassy little wife before long.
Mum and dad left early. My dad approached me as I was enduring a long blether with Scott’s auntie, a woman I’d never met, and gently asked me if I wanted a lift. “No? Okay. Well, give us a call if you want us to come and collect you later. Mind yourself, eh?” He made it sound like he was concerned for my well-being in general, but from the look in his eyes I knew he was echoing what Cairney had said.
I didn’t know that it was getting late and that I was drunk until I passed Summer on my way to the toilets. She just appeared, a phantom, as I rounded a corner. I lurched a little to get out of her way. She didn’t change direction, but instead clapped her hands on either side of my shoulders. “Well soldier,” she said, rubbing my arms, “you look like a wee lost soul there.” I hugged her, hard. For a few seconds her head was pressed against my chest, and she held onto me by the fingernails. Then it dispersed into a vague Funeral Cuddle – lots of slapping and patting on backs and shoulders. Her eyes were moist. “How are you?” she whispered.
“Just swell,” I said. I swallowed. “I’m awful sorry, Summer.”
She nodded. “We’ll have a talk later, yeah?”
“Of course, of course.” I looked away from her. Meeting Summer Donahue again at last, and that’s all I could say to her. Summer’s mum and dad interrupted the chat, such as it was. I had to restrain myself from pulling back suddenly.
Steenie Donahue looked like a bit like Lurch from the Addams Family. Everyone had said so, especially Scott. He had given Summer her long limbs but thankfully not her features. “Now then,” he bellowed in his best stage tone, “how’s young Jason doing?”
“Fine Mr Donahue,” I said, nodding at Summer’s mum, a timid figure at his back. “Yourselves?” Scott hadn’t liked him, hadn’t taken so well to the man’s bluster. I could dig that.
“Oh, bearing up, you know.” Stock replies for a funeral. They were all on their way out, and I walked them to the front door of the club. It was still raining outside. Steenie had a new Beamer, I noticed. Newly minted judging by the licence plate, black as the hearse we’d taken Scott in.
“If there’s anything you need,” I said to Summer, “give me a call, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, managing a smile, following her folks to the car. She indicated the chapel hall. “I didn’t like to stay, you know? It gets sort of…” she made a fanning gesture at her throat.
“I’m feeling you.”
“I’ll drop you an e-mail.”
“You take care now.”
Steenie flashed the lights at me as they pulled out of the car park.
************
Back inside, Danno Breely’s ex-wife and his latest bird were locked in intense conversation, both of them with lit cigarettes in their hands. Scott’s mum’s husband sat at the other side of the table from them, nodding vigorously and laughing when he was supposed to. The total package was that of a bank manager with this guy, but you could break him down into his constituent parts. The tweed jacket of a bumbling academic, the dry handshake of a clergyman, the baldness of a coot. He was all wrong. In fact I think he did work in a bank; I’m sure Scott had mentioned it once. He seemed plain, nice. He couldn’t have looked less like Danno Breely.
Danno was holding court at the bar with a load of people I didn’t know. Occasionally there were whoops of laughter. People who had been on the verge of leaving found themselves staying to listen to his patter. Names like Danno Breely only sound right if they belong to rock stars, and he was one. Danno Breely, singer and rhythm guitarist for The Rivets. A rock band made up of Clyde shipyard workers. Hairy bastards, very loud, often misogynistic, vague leanings towards the occult, coming on like a souped-up Black Sabbath. Better, in my opinion. Big in the seventies, middling in the eighties, dead for much of the nineties, resurrected for the odd comeback tour and album in the noughties. Not a superstar by any standards, but his name and his face always rang a bell, as did his songs on the rare occasion they made it to the radio.
He had partied with the best of them but had managed not to fritter away his modest fortune. Royalties from their one big transatlantic chart smash, which Danno had written – a big favourite with advertisers throughout the years; even now it was hard to think of the crunchy riff without thinking of chewing gum – kept rolling in. He was a record producer now, mainly based in London and still doing alright, but The Rivets still made the odd appearance. In fact they’d opened up one of the big festivals last year, or the year before.
He had been an embarrassment to Scott, his only child, for most of the boy’s adolescence of course (even when grunge came about, and you would often hear the odd bored-sounding American superstar mention The Rivets as a big influence), but he seemed impossibly cool to me and the rest of the boys.
Danno had split with Lucy when Scott was four. He hadn’t really been around when Scott was growing up, just the odd exchange trip once a month to his big house somewhere up north. But pity the idiot who doubted he’d loved his son. So he said, anyway.
“Jason Mulcahy,” he said, gallus as ever, seizing me as I went past him and his entourage. “Now this kid could play his guitar. D’you still keep up with your pickin’, son? I was going to give this boy a spot on one of our tours, you know. Dagger was just about falling asleep on stage every night, and I thought, fuck it I’ll get our Jason in instead. Turned out he was too expensive!” Dagger was Bill ‘Dagger’ Daggett, the lead guitarist for The Rivets. Nigel Tuffnell to Danno’s David St Hubbins. He overdosed in 1985, three days after Live Aid. Danno had kicked him out of the Rivets two years before. A sort of Brian Jones situation, but slower and without the swimming pool.
“I thought I was the comedian,” I said. “I’ll crack the jokes.” Everyone laughs at this, of course. I’m famous too you know. Oh yeah.
Slowly, people drifted away and I got talking to Danno at the bar. Drinks were sank. We couldn’t help ourselves. He kept saying, “I was meaning to talk to you.” He told me that his son had adored me, that we were like soul mates. He said it a few times. I couldn’t say anything. He was upset and pissed and I was embarrassed.
“He was going places,” Danno said. I was glad there wasn’t much bitterness in his voice. “He had that new job. He’d just got engaged to that lovely lassie.”
“I know.”
“It didn’t make any sense, Jason.”
I didn’t want to say it. Had told myself over and over, don’t say it. “Danno, I had no idea. I had no idea there was something wrong. If I’d known…” And shit, I’d said it. There it was. And yet I didn’t say it. What I meant was:
I didn’t know your son was going to kill himself.
“It wasn’t… I’m not prepared to believe it was that.” He didn’t want to say suicide, no-one did. “Someone was out of line.” He was shouting. Worried glances from the bar staff. “Some fucker… was out of line. And when I find out who it was…” He drew a finger across his throat then took a long, slow sip from his glass. “Mark my fucking words.”
************
I’ve been meaning to talk to you.
I walked home. The chapel hall wasn’t too far from my parents’ place. I stumbled along, feeling sorry mostly for myself, encountering no-one on the streets. The odd car fizzed by in the wet road. I let myself, my new black suit, take a soaking. I felt I’d earned it. Danno had asked if I wanted to come back to the house for a nightcap. He and his bird were staying over with Lucy and her man. They’d have a wee party. Thanks but no thanks.
“Not that kind of party, you cheeky cunt!” Playful slap.
There was something Scott wanted you to have.
Contrary to popular opinion no fights or arguments had developed. I had a walk in the rain, feeling sorry for myself. But even sad bastards get sick of the rain and soon I made it up to my street. Scott’s mum’s place was round the corner where the bigger houses were; I fancied I could see the flashing lights, the muted thunder of a sound system up full blast. Summer’s parents were somewhere beyond even that, behind the black tree-line. She’d be staying there tonight, I knew.
I think he knew something was going down, son.
Good old dad was waiting up for me, of course. Sitting in his chair, back rigid, a book open on his lap. The pose I’ll always remember him by. “Good night?” he asked. He looked better than me even with his glasses on, the old bastard. Lined but lean, a three-times-a-week man down at the gym. Like Danno, showing signs of his mileage but not looking his age.
“Not bad. I’ll just crash if you don’t mind, dad.”
“Of course. You remember the way to your room, I think.”
I only just found it two days ago. I’ve no idea what it is. I didn’t look. Don’t have the heart just now.
I hadn’t stayed at my parents’ since last Christmas. My room and Raymond’s rooms had been transformed from teenagers’ dungeons to minimalist chambers, stark white walls and wooden flooring, tiny little pictures placed here and there. Scandinavian. A touch sterile for my tastes. An ensuite bathroom as well, now, I noted – that was new. How I would have killed for that when I needed a spew during my teenage clandestine drinking years.
Raymond had gone back home with his wife. Collette was asleep in her room, I guessed. It had always been assumed I’d come back, though no-one had raised it. I sat down on the bed and unlaced my shoes. The bedding felt fresh, smelled fresh. I felt a burst of nostalgia.
“Jason?” My dad appeared at the door.
“Hey there,” I said, peeling off a sock.
“You did well. I’m proud of you. It was a hell of a day.”
“Thanks dad. Goodnight, eh?” I felt my voice falter. And all of a sudden my dad looked drawn. His bottom lip twitched. He took his leave then, closing the door firmly, before it got any more sickly sweet.
But please, Jason. Please. If it’s anything relevant… anything at all… you’ll tell me, won’t you?
I fell asleep soon enough. I forgot all about the package in my suit jacket until I groped inside the pockets, fearing I’d lost my wallet, when I woke up the next day.
22 Saturday Nov 2014
Tags
authors, Cars and Girls, Crime, Evangeline Jennings, Femi-Noir, Feminism, Gender, Genre, Interview, Neo-Noir, Noir, Novellas, Novels, Pankearst, Pulp, Women, writing
Evangeline Jennings
I speak to Evangeline Jennings, who runs Pankhearst, writes amazing neo-noir with a feminist slant, and supports Liverpool FC.
Here’s Evangeline’s website. Follow her on Twitter, if you would, or indeed Facebook.
Pankhearst’s Christmas single, No Christmas, is available here.
Pankhearst’s first full-length novel, Yuko Zen Is Somewhere Else, by Simon Paul Wilson, is available here, now.
Cars and Girls, a terrific pulp-flavoured novella collection, is available here (UK) and here (US).
Read her short story, “Food Chain”, right here.
1. “Food Chain” had an air of early Stephen King short stories to it. It’s not quite what we’re used to seeing from you – what was your inspiration?
Early Stephen King? Is that before he got good?
Some time ago, a very lovely friend of mine invited me to join a writing group. They were in the early stages of developing a short story collection about the End of the World. I wrote Food Chain for them. Then I decided I couldn’t be doing with the man that ran the group so I bailed. I forget exactly why but the words “patronising”, “misogynist”, “arsehole” and “knobhead” all spring to mind. Possibly also “fuckwit”.
The inspiration for the story itself? I’m fascinated by solitariness, isolation. Also by travel. A lot of my writing turns out to be about travel. It’s both a metaphor and a joy in itself. I’m never happier than when I’m on the road and I plan one day to live that way – in a small RV or possibly on a yacht of my own. So … the End of the World, travel, isolation. Oh, and death, of course. We all die in the end.
2. There’s a school of thought that we are already engaged in a Third World War. How have contemporary conflicts shaped the events in “Food Chain”?
Not at all. Which is unusual. I often write about or around issues that concern me. For example, a Big Publisher once told me off for being too critical of the oil, gas, and mining industries in a YA fantasy book they were considering. And much of my fiction deals with gender issues and violence against women. But Food Chain is just a cigar. A story I ripped out one weekend without really thinking about it.
Although I suppose I could claim to have predicted the whole Ebola thing.
3. “We tend to forget about all the nukes in the world these days.” Discuss.
I don’t think we’ve forgotten about them, but maybe familiarity has bred contempt? Or disinterest. Certainly the mass media seem to find chemical and biological weapons much more compellingly sexy at the moment – unless they want a reason to bomb Iran. Perhaps younger generations don’t even realize the scale of the danger nukes still pose. It’s not that they’ve forgotten. They’ve never been told in the first place.
4. The clipped, precise style is very You. It helps your stories zip along, hardly a breath to spare or a comma from start to finish. Does this come naturally to you – a style you like and quite naturally imitate – or is it something you’ve honed over time?
It’s both natural and honed. I do write other styles – usually under other names – but this is the real me. I think every word should count and I value rhythm. To steal a phrase, the medium is the message.
Sometimes I write in what is almost shorthand because that’s all a reader needs to understand the action and because I want them to use their own experience and imagination to fill in any missing detail they actually care about. Food Chainis definitely one of those stories.
I’m not conscious of imitating anyone else but my writing style certainly reveals my love of Richard Stark (Donald E Westlake), Lawrence Block, James Ellroy, and Andrew Vachss while thoroughly concealing my passion for Wodehouse and Christie. Although I hope my inner Agatha comes out in my plotting. Whenever I twist the tail of one of my stories – and I often do – you can be sure I’ve worked hard to make sure it’s both a surprise and absolutely justified by everything you read that led up to it.
5. Tell us a little bit about Pankhearst, and any upcoming writing projects.
It’s hard to say a little. Pankhearst is a bit weird and needs to evolve. It’s a writers collective and I often describe it as an independent record label for books. I’m envisaging something like Fast Product when I say that. A very early independent Scottish record label, Fast Product only existed for a couple of years and I can’t imagine the owners retired off their earnings, but while they were active, they released the debut singles by the Mekons, Gang of Four, and Human League. And also put out two tracks that were basically outtakes from Joy Division’s first album, Unknown Pleasures. That’s kinda of what PH is for. To give new writers an early platform so they can express themselves and learn by doing before they move on to bigger and better things – or go back to real life. We also encourage our writers to take risks. Independence isn’t writing third rate takes on popular best sellers, it’s an opportunity to explore and experiment.
So far, we’ve released four collections of short fiction – I sometimes call them samplers – featuring many different writers. Three were more or less YA – YA Noir, I’d say – and the other very much wasn’t. They’ve all been well received and we even got a compliment in The Guardian once. We probably should have retired that day.
We’ve also been running a thing called the Pankhearst Singles Club which is coming to the end of its first year – my own No Christmas will be our very risky Christmas Number One – and in the New Year, I’ll be handing over the Singles Club to Ellie McG to manage through 2015. Which is an example of what I mean when I say we need to evolve.
For the last two years, I’ve been driving PH – for good and bad – and now it’s time for new ideas and energies. There are projects I want to work on – and I’ll talk about those in a moment – but other people need to come forward with their own ideas and take responsibility for making them happen. Ellie has. And so has Kate Garrett. She’s “curating” Slim Volume, a themed journal of poetry and flash fiction which will appear twice a year – the first edition comes out in December – for as long as she wants to do it. We very much hope other writers will talk to us about their ideas and we’re ready to give them as much help as we can. I couldn’t have done half what I’ve done this year without the never-ending and always generous support of Lucy Middlemass, and we’ll both be very happy to work with people on their ideas – including practical help like editing, design, and the technical publishing stuff – but it’s time for us to start some other projects and if no one else comes forward to fill the gap, there will be no more PH samplers. Unless I get an idea I can’t resist.
What other projects? I’m glad you asked.
Lucy and I are keen to publish longer fiction. Our first novel, Yuko Zen is Somewhere Else by Simon Paul Wilson, was published at Halloween. Lucy’s own Jinger Barley and the Murkle Moon will be published in December, or possibly January. And we are talking to other authors about working with them on their novels throughout 2015. Additionally, we’ll be starting a web-based serial in late January. The Vegas Thing will bring together two of the characters from last year’s Cars & Girls in a big new novel length adventure that will be published in weekly instalments on the web.
Is that enough new projects?
Oh, hold on.
On Valentine’s Day 2015, we’ll also be publishing Riding In Cars With Girls by … um … me. A novel length collection of themed novellas and short stories that is – essentially – a sequel to the original Cars & Girls. It’s noir as fuck and ready to go now, but I don’t have time to do all the necessary promo work so I’m holding off.
6. What’s your favourite pub finger food?
This is probably the hardest question I’ve ever been asked. I do love a good pub and I’m very fond of my food. I take them both very seriously. After hours of agonizing, let’s say it’s the spicy sausage nachos at the Half Moon Inn at Horsington in Somerset. It used to be my local. Other than that, anything with chorizo.
7. During the apocalypse, what would be your ideal cannibalistic finger food?
I’m partial to a nibble of breast and thigh.
