Ahh, novels. Aren't they poncey?
I didn't come to novels - proper novels - until embarrassingly late. Well, I say embarrassing. Now I write them I get, natch, a perverse anti-intellectual thrilly buzz of telling readers, booksellers, other writers and students that I didn't read until very late. Because I'm a revolting snob, obviously.
Anyhoo, I didn't. My childhood was entirely made up of comics. The Beano, my brother's Dandy, then on to the UK Marvel Transformers and a jumble-sale's worth of annuals (Spiderman, Batman, Victor, Monster Fun and whatnot).
Books - novels - simply weren't as good as telly. Which in many way they're still not (ooh, controversial). I think it was Robert McKee (author of screenwriting guide "STORY" - played by the splendiful Brian Cox in the otherwise tiresome "Adaptation." Remember? No, of course not). Anyway, he said that anyone seriously interested in story telling in the 21st Century would be writing screenplays, rather than novels and they do work better as a story telling medium, I think you'd agree. Or not.
Not that Mr McKee's theorems were the reason I melted my retina with hours of strobing LWT as a yoof. No, nowt so poncey. I was just lazy and hadn't found a writer I liked. So I was happy to get my mythology and mystery from George Lucas, Phil Redmond and whoever the hell used to write "Manimal".
Novels arrived in the guize of Ronald Dahl (yes, I know his name was Roald. But my spell check keeps underlining it and plus it's a favourite mispronunciation and something I like to drop in to annoy the middle classes. See also "Sex In The City" and "Trivial Pursuits") I recall spending lunchtimes in the school library devouring "Danny, Champion Of The World" and, spent hours up in bed with "Fantastic Mr Fox." Which sounds rude but actually isn't.
I don't recall when I went from the kids section of the library (lots of Milly Molly Mandy) to the adult bit (large print Alistair Maclean mostly). It was independent of school I'm pretty sure, as we were force fed tedious and time-stretchingly ghastly reading material such as "The Wizard Of Earthsea," "White Fang" and "Macbeth" - none of which blew my hair back in any sense. Perhaps I should revisit these as a mature adult? Difficult, I'd need to first wait until I become a mature adult.
So we'll have to cope with some time lapse photography, some fluttering calendar pages, a whizzing clock and perhaps fast moving clouds over a woodland season change because my next recollection is being knee-deep in the damned things. Key influences on my desire to write were, and still are:
Douglas Adams - the wriggling glee when first dipping into THHG2TG
PG Wodehouse - Needs no explanation, surely?
Cyril Bonfiglioli - you don't know who that is, do you. Find out now. Twerp.
Roger Hargreaves - (except Mr. Tickle, who's twisty, fourth-wall breaking, Ringu style Japanese horror ending still gives me the willies).
(Oh, and yes, I'm half convinced the quality of my favourite reads was much much muchly much more to do with my state of mind than the books themselves, but then that's oft true of so much art that it's too tedious a poncy argument to have without a bowl of pasta and five bottles of red wine).
Anyway, my first novel - T-SHIRT & GENES - was a borne of a desire to write the funniest romcom I could, as an antidote to the pastel pale "unpickupable" spate of humourless chicklit that engulfed the early part of the century. More jokes than plot and certainly the only novel in the English language to start with a stapler up someone's bottom and end on the word "poo." To find out what links these two frightening diorami, you'll have to read it.
GAGGED - A Thriller With Jokes? My absolutely, number one, no holes barred, downhill, no-brakes attempt to write an exciting page-turning edge of seat comedy thriller, inspired in no small part by Hugh Laurie's "The Gunseller." Honestly, it has EVERYTHING: Fat wiseguy mob bosses; incompetent fat necked wiseguy nephews, hunky coked-up Hollywood producers; grey haired loveable cigar "chomping" Hollywood moguls (odd, that's the only time you read "chomping" these days); sassy valley-girl Variety reporter; expendable curly-haired single-minded sidekick; a novelty, "hilarious" slow-paced golf-cart chase and a huge petrochemical explosion at the end.
Currently farm fresh and still bursting with hot-off-the-press country goodness that visibly lowers your cholesterol. CONMAN - another comic thriller - was launched in June 2009. A twist filled page-turning thrill a minute scam fest and a general celebration of everything trickstery.
I don't know where my fascination with scams, swindles, set ups and switcheroos originated. Earliest recollection is of squirmy bliss filled glee watching Paul Daniels in his "Bunko Booth" on television as a boy. He was in a straw boater and lively waistcoatoon if I remember and it was all about balls n cups and aces up sleeves and matchboxes and silky handerchieves and I was transfixed.
Spent a great deal of my youth sat cross legged on my blue lino floor (parents thought lino was best, as I was into my "arts n crafts." Lino stained with purply brown splodges - that colour only 400 different shades of plasticine pummelled together can make). And I would palm coins and hide cards and unwrap my Paul Daniels magic tricks - to be performed to the seasonal irritation of visiting uncles and aunts.
Magic eventually faded, but the fascination with the sleight of hand never went away and since then I've been a sucker for any movie or novel with a con, a heist or an audacious twist. This was my li'l tribute.
New novel due 2011.
See you then rx
