I’ve been kind of putting this off. No idea why. Normally, I like to have a post about a new book straight out there on the day of release. But here we are, a month or so after The Last Great Radio Show peeped over the barricades and no blog post. Still it’s an ill wind that’s better late than never in the sunshine as my Grandmother used to say (no-one knows why).
This one’s a bit different. For years, I’ve been struggling with a kind of dichotomy or schizophrenia in what one might laughingly call my authorly persona. On the one hand, there’s the dark, emotional, often violent and certainly apocalyptic side of my imagination. And on the other, I have this sense of humour, and a desire to write stuff which is warmer and more, well, uplifting. The Shattered Land came from one side of my personality; Radio Show is definitely from the other. In the books which will follow (there are two on the go at the moment), I’m going to make a serious effort to merge the two.
It's a little-known fact, but I started The Shattered Land with the intention of it being, if not a comedy, then certainly a story with a stronger streak of humour than eventually came out. You can see vestiges of this in the early chapters of The Last Five Days (the riff about Ackerman and the darts team, for instance). But a story takes you where it takes you, and TSL quickly became a much darker story than I’d anticipated. Somehow, I couldn’t see a place for the humour in there, which is something I now regret in a way. Albeit that it does creep in anyway, mainly in the likeable form of Frankie Madison, one of my favourite characters in the entire series. There are some characters you create and you think: wow, I wish you were real. I’d love to have a pint with you. Frankie is one of them.
I guess James Rutherford Arkwright and Carlos Jose-Maria Gonzales are, too. These guys have quite a long history for me. Back when I was writing Young Adult fiction*, Gonzales was a recurring character. He even got to be a dashing romantic hero in one book. Arko was there, too, but it was somewhat more difficult to develop his character, the reason being that he was dead.
* “The Georgia Series” by MJ Kingston. I don’t publicise it much now, and the books aren’t available for the Kindle. You can get them for other platforms (ibooks, Kobo etc) if you really want to. They’re very soppy, and – according to my friends – a bit odd; not least because they centre largely on a lesbian love story. They were just what was in my heart at the time, so I wrote them. I was probably mourning my lost youth. Nonetheless, there are two books in the series which are very close to my heart even now, and I learned a lot from writing and publishing them.
The Last Great Radio Show is, more than anything else, a story about male friendship. It’s an area of human experience which I think is under-explored in fiction – Brideshead Revisited notwithstanding*. I venture to think that, in a world in which traditional views of masculinity are being re-examined (quite rightly), the notion of a deep and emotional platonic connection between two men is something which deserves more literary screen-time. In fact, it’s probably my most “blokey” book ever. That said, the traditional view of male bonding – football, beer, cor look at the tits on that – may have a basis in truth, but there’s another side of it which people seem afraid – or ashamed – of admitting to. As a life-long soppy bastard, I don’t have a problem with writing about it – or with dedicating it to my good friend “White” Mike who was, in a vague sort of way, the model for the character of Arko.
* If all else fails, I intend to claim at least some credit for using the phrase “Brideshead Revisited notwithstanding” in a blog post. OK, it ain’t Tolstoy, but I still think I deserve some kudos.
But this is me, ain’t it, and I can’t resist a good girl character. I got endless fun out of writing Molly and Rosie. The first Amazon reviewer of the book (thank you, dear Kathie Phelps), noted “Terry Pratchett-influenced characters”, and I’m fairly sure she was thinking of Molly who is, in a way, a sort of younger version of Granny Weatherwax. In fact, one of the greatest pleasures of writing the book was creating the characters, but then it always is. Moses and Chiltern, in particular, will always have a place in my heart, not least because I’ve no idea where they came from. Sometimes a character just comes into your mind, fully-formed, and you’ve no idea where from, or why. An equivalent in The Shattered Land would probably be the twins, Flora and Morag MacLenaghan. And Frankie, of course, who was only meant to be a bit-part, but kind of ambled amiably into the centre of things, plonked herself down and dared me not to make her a star.
After all this time, I’ve still got no idea whether readers are interested in where a story came from, what were the ideas that generated it. I know “where do you get your ideas from?” is a standard-issue question for authors (See my post on the subject elsewhere on this blog). For the record, Radio Show felt like a ‘clearing out’ of old ideas that I’ve had knocking around for a very long time; so that I could go on and write something completely new.
The setting – Kingstown – is classic Mike, in a way. I’ve always been fascinated by small communities - towns, villages, islands – mainly because, apart from seven years in London, I’ve always lived in them. Kingstown was suggested by a certain town in Norfolk, where I spent a summer when I was a student, working in a vegetable freezing factory and living, with my then-girlfriend, in her mother’s house. At the end of the street, there was a working-men’s hostel*, which was the original model for Bright Futures, later modified by Hannah’s (my current girlfriend) experiences working in a retirement home.
* The background to the cover photo is a picture of that actual building. It comes out better on the e-book. Unfortunately, the p-back version is a little too dark.
The Rock’n’Roll element was part of the baggage that came with Arko and Carlos: but I’ve wanted to write a rock’n’roll book for ages, and there was an unpublished MJ Kingston novel upon which I drew for the back-story of the band Celestial Spirit. That novel was encouraged by my friend, Mia Page Chambray, who is an actual bona fide rock star, or on her way to becoming one. Her (amazing) band Mohawk Radio get a mention, because, well, I wanted to (www.mohawkradio.co.uk). If you want to know which band Celestial Spirit were actually based on, tough, you’ll have to guess. There are a few clues in the text. Free signed copy of the p-back to the first reader who emails me with the correct answer.
Then there’s the radio bit. I’m like Arko and Carlos, and the Remarkable Reg (and Jess). I loved radio when I was young, particularly The Friday Rock Show. The title of the book was something I’d had in mind for a long time, and which started life as the title of a non-fantasy novel (which died a-borning and eventually metamorphosed into Scherbius, an unfinished book which is mentioned elsewhere on this site).
Finally, a bit of tidying up. I share Moses Achele’s taste in heroes, and we have two in common. George Lamming, the Barbadian author of In the Castle of my Skin; and, of course, Robert Nesta Marley. Like Moses, I had the honour of meeting George Lamming: I attended a writer’s workshop he conducted in Bermuda in 1996, and the advice he gives to Moses in Chapter Six is, word-for-word, that which he gave me at the end of those sessions. I remain profoundly grateful to him, even if I am still trying to follow his advice and maybe not quite getting there. Sadly, I never had the privilege of meeting Bob Marley; but I hope that my brief portrayal of him in the same chapter will be taken in the respectful spirit in which it was meant.
PS - you know what I'm going to say. If you've read and enjoyed The Last Great Radio Show, please, please leave a review on Amazon. They make a huge difference, and are always appreciated. Thank you.