Meanwhile, over at SF Signal: The Dream Anthology

The delightful John DeNardo at SF Signal asked a few people to pick and choose for their dream anthology, citing what you’d choose and why. The answers were so big, they had to split the post in two.

Mine is here, as is that of Nancy Kress (hallowed be her name), Violet Malan and other interesting folk.

Part Two is here.

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Every Dead Drive-by: John Connolly

I confess to a literary crush: I would walk miles over broken glass to get hold of the next John Connolly novel. The prose is pretty much pitch-perfect, the characters flawed, believeable, terrifying, engaging, witty and compelling. The dialogue – Connolly is one of the authors I look to for dialogue hints, to autopsy what he does and to analyse it so I can work out how it can be so damned good. But I begin to ramble.

Connolly’s debut novel, Every Dead Thing, sparked a bidding war among publishing houses and won the SHamus Award for Best First Novel in 1999 – he may even have been the first non-American to win it – what him being Irish and all (someone correct me if I’m making things up – hey, I’m a writer, it’s what I do). Since then, his works have included further Charlie Parker novels (inlcuding The Killing Kind – not to be read by arachnophobes), The Book of Lost Things (about a young boy who has to negotiate a world inhabited by Old School fairytale characterrs – not the fluffy-sanitised-by-the-Grimms kind), the short story collection Nocturnes, and the stand-alone Bad Men. His latest is The Whisperers, which I banged on about here.

He was kind enough to answer five random questions:

1.  You get to be any fictional character you like for a day, with no consequences: who do you choose, where do you go and what do you do?
Increasingly, as I get older, I feel that I’m coming to resemble Ignatius J. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces.  I’m railing against the world more, and am showing a distressing inclination to read more non-fiction that fiction, so it can only be a matter of time before all I read is books about the glory of the Raj, and I begin making apologies for hardline right-wing dictators, and my children leave home because the collection of Nazi memorabilia in the basement keeps increasing, but only because I claim to be interested in the period.  So, bearing that in mind, I’d have to go to New Orleans, and begin selling Paradise hot dogs from a vending cart. 

2.  You’re an Irish writer writing a very American character – have you ever, errr, stuffed up?
Oh, I still mess up occasionally, although thankfully most of my mistakes are caught by my copy editors.  In the beginning, I struggled with the language a little, not just because there are different words for different objects, but because the rhythm of American speech is different from that of Irish speech.  Now I’ve settled for a stylised version of the former that probably incorporates elements of the latter, and I make fewer mistakes.  I have contacts for things like police procedures, guns, and material with which I might have struggled earlier on.  I’ve never had somebody run over a hedgehog in California, though, as I understand one non-American writer once did.  Mind you, when Americans write about Ireland and England they take some terrible liberties, and make some real howlers, so it’s not all one-way traffic.

3.  I hate being a writer when …
I hate being a writer when taxi drivers ask me what I do for a living, and I’m dumb enough to answer that ‘I’m a writer’, and they ask me what I write, and I tell them, and they ask me would they have heard of any of my books, and I say that I don’t know, and they ask me for a title, and I give them one, and they shake their heads and tell me that they don’t recognise it, and then they ask me what my name is, and I tell them, and they shake their heads and tell me that they don’t recognise that either.  

 Now I just don’t tell taxi drivers what I do for a living.

4. Every Dead Thing is a complex novel, not only thematically, but structurally – do you ever look back on it now and marvel that you managed to pull it off in a debut novel? Think ‘Oh, my God, what was I thinking? How did I do that?’
I try not to look back too much at all, mainly because, like a nervous mountain climber, I’m afraid that if I look down I’ll fall.  Structurally, Every Dead Thing has always had its critics because it’s structured like an hourglass, with one plot feeding through a narrow channel into another plot that is linked thematically, rather than directly, to the first plot.  At the time, that was just how I wanted to write it, and as the initial chapters had already been rejected by just about every publisher everywhere I didn’t really feel beholden to anyone.  Also, it took so many years to write that it was a bit like being lost in a forest for much of the time, and I have only very vague memories of how I got out.  If I could change one thing about it, I would probably tone down some of the violence.  It was more explicit in its descriptions than it needed to be, but I was a young author and I wanted people to understand how Parker could be so traumatised, and to give the reader a real sense of the nightmare world that the investigation forced him to inhabit.  I’d like to think that I could do it more subtly now, but I might be wrong.  It’s the curse of being a series writer: occasionally, a reader will come up and tell you that he or she still thinks that your first novel is the best, and you sigh and wonder if that means you’ve been going downhill ever since.

5.  Donuts or danishes?
I prefer cinnamon buns, but if I had to pick one then donuts, although the idea of a donut is always more appealing than the reality.   It’s a bit like Terry Pratchett points out in Going Postal: the smell of sausages cooking is always better than the actuality of the sausage.  

His website is here and it’s worth a visit not only for the bonus short stories posted there.

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Just finished reading …

John Connolly’s The Whisperers. Once again, a Charlie Parker triumph, delivering intelligent prose, well-paced action, engaging (and frightening) characters, and lines such as this:

“You think trouble follows me?”
“Jesus, Death himself probably sends you a fruit basket at Christmas, thanking you for the business”

And this:

“He’s crossing the border. The thought had struck me. And, with respect, I don’t think squirrels cross the border without you knowing it and taking ten percent of their nuts.”

Go, get, you’ll love.

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Sunday afternoon

Today I have been less than productive … indeed if there was a minus scale of lack of productivity, I would appear on it. I would get a gold star and a koala stamp for laziness.

It’s been disgustingly hot here in Brisneyland, so a lot of the day has been spent on the back deck watching the greenies (those are birds, not activists) play in the jacaranda tree … re-reading chunks of John Connolly’s The Lovers (I love Connolly, he provides page-turners with great pace and humour as well as creepy apocrypha-inflected plots) … drinking red wine (after 3pm), then watching The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror with King Snorky in it (who doesn’t find homicidal dolphins adorable?) … and, well, napping.

But, the day has not been entirely wasted: there has been much percolation. I’ve finished, for all intents and purposes, the short story collection Sourdough and Other Stories, and am just waiting for feedback from my beta- readers on that. I feel like it’s a finished project, just waiting for the last tidying touches. And I’ve been back-braining a new novel – which will be written in about a year or so – it’s a mix of Beowulf with the saga of Glam and Grettis … I’ve been scribbling notes on my favourite thing – the cocktail napkin – and thinking and dreaming about the story. And I’ve been thinking about the re-write on Well of Souls for next year.

And I have also been thinking and scribbling about Narrow Daylight, which is my PhD novel, and is what I am finishing over the Christmas break. So, while there has not been much physical movement, the brain has been working – ‘That there can be action in that which is actionless, few can understand.’ That maybe Lao Tzu … or not … but anyway, I have been actioning the actionless … or something.

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Squeeeee! John Connolly’s The Lovers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irish author John Connolly’s new Charlie Parker novel is poised to be released! Huzzah! Let there be Snoppy Dancing. Details below from Connolly’s newsletter:

THE LOVERS

The new Parker novel, THE LOVERS, will be published on June 2nd in the US, and on July 9th in the UK, although Irish readers will get to buy it from June 18th or, if they pop into Murder Ink on Dawson Street, they can pick up the US edition even earlier than that. The book has already received a starred review from Publishers Weekly in the US, which is always nice, and concerns Parker’s search for the truth about his father’s death.

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Random Unfinished Thought – On Whether Characters Need to be ‘Liked’

Do my characters have to be ‘likeable’?

Having had a couple of short story rejections this week (which is a designated taking-time-off-work-and-writing-like-a-caffeinated-monkey week), this is something I’ve been pondering. One of the rejections said “We didn’t like the main character”. This started me thinking about the received wisdom of readers needing to like your characters. (Admittedly, it also caused me to make rude hand signals at the email in question – hey, I hate rejections same as the next person, I just happened to write a sensible post about dealing with them).

I mean, not everyone is going to like Elizabeth Bennett – some might see her as a whinging little pill – but a highly engaging whinging little pill.

So, do your characters need to be likeable?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say “No”.

I had a chat with the most excellent Karen Miller recently and the thing she said that stuck in my mind (well, there were many things, but this was the particular thing that had sequins and some ostrich feathers on it and I’m partial to both of those things) was that your characters need to be engaging. That’s not the same as likeable. A reader has to want to take the journey with your character – maybe because s/he likes them, sure. But maybe also just because said reader wants to see what happens, even if s/he doesn’t like the character.

I’m going to build on engaging and add that a reader needs to understand a character – also something you don’t need to like someone to do. I may not like a character, but if I can understand her/his actions and choices (even if I don’t agree with them) I will go on the journey with them. I want to know how things work out.

Characters who are engaging for me that I don’t necessarily like? Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin in Perdido Street Station – selfish, intellectually vain, arrogant sod. The narrator in Gaiman’s Bitter Grounds – again, selfish. Julia in Philippa Gregory’s Wideacre – not likeable at all, but engaging and understandable in a lot of ways. Lestat in the early Anne Rice books. Don Sebastian de Villanueva in Les Daniels’ Yellow Fog – selfish, monstrous but sympathetic.

Characters I have found engaging and liked but not necessarily agreed with their choices? John Connolly’s Charlie Parker – superbly drawn, conflicted character, someone whose actions you don’t always agree with, but man, you have empathy for the guy. Finn in Diana Norman’s Daughter of Lir – grumpy and bossy but you love her. Hekat in Karen Miller’s Empress of Mijak – scary but you understand her and suffer for her even if you don’t always like her. Fia in Nancy Kress’ The White Pipes – cowardly liar, but you understand why. Those are just the ones leaping to my tired mind because (a) they’re on the bedside table, and (b) they rock.

And if there’s no conflict for a reader about what a character does, then where’s your story? If a character doesn’t make questionable choices some time, then what’s the point? “Everyone was nice and made the right decisions and we all sat down for tea and toast” – doesn’t really work, does it?

So, I personally don’t need to like a character. I just need to understand and empathise with her/him. The likeability I can take or leave.

That’s just me.

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