Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I read ‘Fire’ by Simon Armitage when I was sixteen and realised poetry could be more than the shit I studied for English GCSE: ‘Anthem for a Doomed Youth’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ et cetera. ‘Fire’ was more abstract, allowing the reader to bring their own meaning to it. Thus began my obsession with writing poetry. It wasn’t until twenty years later that I published my work, a trilogy of collections, Spilt Milk, poems on birth, childhood and death, Circle Line, poems on politics, war and the media, and Red Wine, poems about love, addiction and religion, all written from 2006-2016, along with Glorious Demise, a collection of earlier poems. I enrolled onto a degree in creative writing at the University of East London primarily to escape the monotony of Bournemouth, where I grew up, and to get to the capital. I have a love affair with London. I didn’t expect to graduate in 2009 with first-class honours. I’m lucky enough to live near Alexandra Palace which is one of the top three places I’ve been in the world along with the Blue Lagoon in Reykjavik and the Old Town Square in Prague. I have a never-ending internal conflict with my duties as a father to a delightful one-year-old and an unfulfilled wanderlust. One day when I can afford it I intend to go around Europe with my son and partner. Oh, and I’m a huge coffee addict and a vegetarian, albeit a pretty bad one. In addition to the four collections of poetry, I have written one novel, The Order of Chaos.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
When I finished uni I continued to work on an embryonic novel that began as an assignment. It came about after I went to what was dubbed the ‘Financial Fool’s Day’ demonstrations in 2009 where I witnessed anarchists no older than teenagers fighting with police. This novel grew over the next seven years to become The Order of Chaos, published in 2016. I took a comedy module at university in which we studied the concept of bisociation: “The simultaneous mental association of an idea or object with two fields ordinarily not regarded as related.” Much of the comedy in the book stems from this idea: the anarchist working in a bank, for example, or the Black homophobe sparring with the gay racist, which is itself intended to magnify the folly of prejudice. The squat in the novel was influenced in part by a house in which I lived in Leyton. You would be cooking in the kitchen and water would be dripping from the light-fitting onto your head. Once I was cooking in a frying pan and left the room briefly before hearing a thunderous bang; I came back into the kitchen to see that half the ceiling had fallen down from the weight of the water. Close call. A girl who was crashing on the sofa tried to burn the place down in the end so we had to move out. Crazy times. She committed suicide a few weeks later, sadly. Actually the character Foxy from The Order of Chaos was based loosely on her.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not unusual per se. I find it helps to have music on in the background, but nothing with lyrics as they can be distracting. I listen to a wide range of instrumental music, far too many to list them all, but Ludovico Einaudi has helped me write many a paragraph in the past. At the moment I’m listening to a band called Esmerine and an avant-garde Polish musician called Stara Rzeka. Other than that, I always make sure I have a cup of coffee when I write which can lead to many unintended sleepless nights. When I was writing The Order of Chaos I replicated the chapter I was working on in my environment, taking the corresponding drug for the drug scenes, getting naked for the sex scene and so on. That’s pretty weird I guess.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Oh, so many. Despite having read a thousand wonderful books since, I still have to rank The Catcher in the Rye as my favourite novel of all time. A cliché, I know. The Bell Jar comes a very close second. My biggest influence, however, would have to be Chuck Palahniuk. I love his use of repetition, or “choruses” as he calls them, something I enjoy replicating in my own work. Henry Miller used a similar technique in Tropic of Cancer, although not to such an extent. A few years ago I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; that has definitely influenced the novel I’m working on now in terms of setting. I subsequently bought all his books and read them all one after the other. I got hooked. My favourite was The Unconsoled. I love that it got really bad reviews upon publication. It’s undeniably a masterpiece. It just goes to show you should never trust the critics. Opinion is subjective. Another major influence for me, Oscar Wilde, said it best in the prologue of Dorian Gray when he said ‘When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.’ He also said in the same prologue, ‘There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.’ Which brings me to my other biggest influence, Bret Easton Ellis. I have never read anything like American Psycho and doubt I ever will again. There are so many perfect epigrams from Oscar Wilde. My personal favourite is: ‘The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’
What are you working on now?
I attempted a novel in my early twenties, Eight Days in May, which remains unpublished, because it’s not good enough. But the premise is good and is being used for the novel I am working on today, called Inland Island. I can’t really say too much about it without giving away massive spoilers which is going to make marketing the book very difficult. If I ever finish the bloody thing that is.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m new to the whole promoting game. Like a lot of artists, promoting and selling myself isn’t my strong point. I’ve tried the social media route and a few free ebook promotions with little success. I’m now going to try some Goodreads giveaways and this here website. Ask me again in a few months.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
1) Avoid clichés like the plague.
2) Say it in the fewest possible words.
3) Don’t over-describe. Leave 75% of what you write to the readers’ imagination.
4) ‘Show, don’t tell’. I find this arguably the most difficult thing when writing.
5) Edit your work. And when you’re done editing, go back and edit it again.
6) Make sure your ‘shit detector’ is well oiled.
7) Never write for an audience. Only write for yourself.
8) Write about what you don’t know. It keeps you engaged and educated. Wikipedia is your best tool.
9) Stock up on good coffee.
10) Writing stoned helps you be creative. Writing drunk always ends in disaster.
11) Give up your day job.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
God knows. I could go on for a while. “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” Samuel Johnson. I’ll go with that for now since it seems relevant.
What are you reading now?
For Christmas I got a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace without realising how goddamn long it is. I mean, who has the time to write something that long? I would have hanged myself as well, if I’d have written that. I do have the utmost respect for his dedication to the art, and I am really enjoying it – I’m just over a hundred pages in, so only another nine hundred to go – but I find the incessant footnotes irritating. So I decided to get a few other books to read alongside. One of them being The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace, which I haven’t yet started. It’s a bit shorter, that one, because it was unfinished at the time of his death and published posthumously. Makes you wonder how long it would have been if he’d have lived to finish it. I am also in the middle of reading Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk – I still enjoy his work but it’s not as fresh and exciting as his earlier stuff like Choke and Invisible Monsters – and I’m also a few chapters into Brave New World. It’s awful that I’ve never read Brave New World. People always compare it to 1984 and I’ve heard some people say they prefer it but I don’t think it will top 1984 for me. I’ve just finished Kill Your Friends by John Niven which, being a victim of the nineties Britpop era, I liked a lot.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m hoping my second novel doesn’t take another seven years to finish. I have outlines for another two novels after that – one is a retelling of the New Testament with the Jesus character as an accidental rockstar who can heal people with the power of music. That’s a very succinct explanation of the premise. Then I’m going traveling.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, because it would last for-ev-er.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
No Ordinary Moments by Dan Millman.
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in any Climate, on Land or at Sea by John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman.
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