Here's the first in a series of Perfect Edge Books Interviews. Not only did they support the goat and ask to publish our book, but they've grabbed onto some amazing other authors, definitely keep an eye on them, here.
Craig is one of the nicest guys I've met from across the pond and it's a pleasure that he's interview number fifty! I'll let him speak for himself and goat out.
1. What
comes to mind when you hear, "Mourning Goats?"
Aren't
goats the personification of the Devil, and isn't the Devil always horny? And
Morning Glory, isn't that an euphemism for a man's erection? So is it when a
man is feeling a little frisky in the early hours, thus the collective noun is
Morning Goats? I have no idea.
2. How's
it feel to get all of this attention, all of a sudden? Novel out, in
newspapers, all over the web; must be amazing.
It's
great to hear nice things about your work, but I have a tendency to feel
awkward around compliments. I tend to use distraction techniques to avoid
dealing with them. I'll never get used to the attention for this reason. But I
appreciate the praise and kind words people have been giving the novel, but
it's still early days yet. The novel has only been out a few weeks and is
slowly gathering momentum. This time next year it'll either have vanished off
the radar, or I'll be a megalomaniac drinking panther piss and proclaiming
myself the new Hemmingway.
3.
Speaking of The Sound of Loneliness, did I read that you wrote it years ago?
How did it come back from the dead?
I wrote
it about 5 years ago. It took me about 6 to 7 months to write. After the second
draft I sent it out to a few independent publishing houses. It got chewed up
and spat out by each one. Disheartened, I archived it and wrote another novel. I
treat novels like relationships in French New Wave cinema: the first thing you
do is find someone else to fuck if the one you're with is no good. That novel
became To Die Upon a Kiss and was more universal hated than the early drafts of
The Sound of Loneliness. So, you guessed it, I began writing another novel. 5
years had passed by this time, then Richard Thomas mentioned my name to some
guy called Phil Jourdan. I didn't know Phil but I had heard of his band Paris and
the Hiltons. He sent me an email, told me he was a setting up a publishing
press called Perfect Edge Books and wondered if I had anything. To die Upon a
Kiss had just been accepted by Snubnose Press and The Sound of Loneliness was
the only completed novel still free. Phil read about half of the manuscript and
offered me a contract. The only reason that novel is in the world and not
deleted is because of Phil Jourdan. For those that hate it, you can blame him.
4. What
do you think making a book trailer for the book will do for you? Is it about
pulling in the movie audience? Just another form to promote?
I've
heard mixed opinions about book trailers. Some say it can force the reader to
establish a prescribed image of the protagonist, or their voice. I was reticent
to undertake the process for this reason. I'm not savvy enough to understand if
book trailers work or not, but for me, it was just a nice little foray into a
forgotten skill set. I used to make films and was an editor for nearly ten
years. I'm a frustrated filmmaker and this allowed me a moment of indulgence.
Plus, I can't see it harming book sales. Not unless they hate my voice.
5. I
loved your question to yourself, "What do you hate about being a
writer?" Have any more insights other than advice, doubt, publishing, and
whoring?
We are
limited in life by constraints imposed by science, physics and finance. The
only limitation a writer has in life is their imagination. Don't abuse that.
6. What's
it like working with the goats publisher, Perfect Edge Books? And Snubnose?
Perfect Edge Books are really transparent.
They have this cool website which allows you to see every stage of the process,
from the contract, all the way through to the production and marketing phase. I
wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of my input, but they’ve been accommodating
and made the process as painless as possible. It helps having Phil there too to
bounce ideas off. I’ll get these crazy ideas in my head, fire him an email, and
soon after he’ll come back with something like, “Are you fucking joking?!” It’s
a good relationship. Snubnose has been less transparent, but Brian Lindenmuth
has been keeping me informed about things and was kind enough to allow me to
work with their graphic designer, Eric Beetner, to help design the cover.
7.
Menacing Hedge Magazine? And...go!
I wrote a short story a couple of years ago
called Human Tenderloin about fine dining for cannibals. I wasn’t too sure who
would take it so I was doing that thing where you search Duotrope for the best
markets. I stumbled on this fledging journal called Menacing Hedge. They
pitched themselves as "committed to fostering access to
emerging and experimental poetry and prose." I liked their mission
statement and artwork and the fact they were giving the authors the option of
recording their story in the spoken word. I submitted and the next day the
editor-in-chief Kelly Boyker got in touch me with an acceptance. Since then we
kept in touch. Last summer Kelly sends me an email asking me if I would be
interested in being Menacing Hedge's fiction editor. I thought she’d sent it to
the wrong person, but she assured me she hadn't. I’d never done anything like
that before so I agreed to edit one edition, mostly to see if I could fit it
around work, family life and writing. Turns out I could. I’m now the full time
fiction editor, except for the Spring edition. This is being guest edited by
the crazy-brilliant writer Amanda Gowin, who is doing such a good job, I’m
unsure at this stage if Kelly will want me back. It was always a goal of mine
to try and pair fledging, or previously unpublished writers, with more
well-established authors. That's why you'll see names like Aimee Bender, Amelia
Gray, Stephen Graham Jones, Andrew Kaufman, and the UK writer Adam Marek,
alongside unknown writers. And I can tell you this, all of those fledging
writers are just as talented as the pro writers.
8. You
had two novels come out with different presses very close to each other, how do
you feel the two novels differed in how they were published, promoted,
etc.?
To Die Upon a Kiss released by Snubnose Press
was supposed to be my debut novel. It
was due for release in the summer of 2012, but was postponed until later in the
year. Brian (the editor) got seriously
ill so it was put back again to the beginning of 2013. The whole process has
nearly taken a year, and save for the time I was talking with Eric about the
cover, it’s mostly been something bubbling in the background, out of my hands.
There has been no official promotion yet, but Brian has ties with Spinetingler
Magazine so I'm sure it'll feature in there at some stage. I don’t mind that
approach. It’s quite nice, and I assumed that was how these things
happened. But with The Sound of
Loneliness it was much more involved, and I guess its journey was better mapped
out. Dates for the various stages of production were given in advance and you
could see the boxes being ticked at each stage. But either method works for me.
The hardest part is never the production of the book, it’s getting the
contract. Once that’s done, the rest is
gravy.
9. Do you
think it's important to be a part of a writing workshop, or a support group of
sorts, being a writer? It's a lonesome career.
Workshops are only good for two things –
keeping you writing, and proofreading. They provide a support mechanism for
writers who have little to no discipline and are easily distracted. But in
terms of feedback, the main problem is you’re allowing writers to critique your
writing. If they love it, they’ll be indifferent towards it. If they hate it,
it really means they love it but are too fucking envious to say so. Writers are
petulant creatures that are too self-absorbed to wilfully engage with their
peers about their work. They may throw out a comment or two, but that’s mostly
constructed with an air of superiority, which renders the sentiment as an
exercise in control management. I maybe wrong, but Poe, Dickens, or Hemmingway
weren’t part of any workshops. I certainly know Bukowski was never part of any
workshop. They just wrote. They learnt the craft via practice, life lessons and
reading as many books as they could get their hands on. Sure, they knew other writers,
and I imagine those meetings were just pissing contest disguised as an
“intellectual conversation”. For me, the lonely writer is the REAL writer.
10. Who's
your first reader? Is it different for each story/novel/etc.?
As in,
who reads the very first draft of anything I write? It is always my wife. She
deserves to be sainted for the amount of shit I’ve sent her way.
11. I
don't think I've heard of anyone saying, "I’m a firm believer that you
should never allow family and friends to have copies of your work anyway. It’s
not healthy." Please explain where this came from.
It’s the reason tone-deaf people enter X
Factor – family and friends lie. Even if they think you can’t write, they will
just avoid talking about it, or perhaps word it in a way where the writer can
misinterpret the feedback as positive. That I allow my wife to read the first
draft of anything is not because I’m expecting approval or plaudits, it’s
because I’m a sloppy writer. I rarely proofread and she helps clean up the
prose.
12. On
Goodreads, you were called a writer's writer, why do you think that is?
A
"writer's writer" is a nice way of saying the only people who will
tolerate your prose are writers. I think
it was D.B. Cox who said that about me, right? He's right. I'm never going to be airport
fiction.
13. I
love the social media push you're doing right now, do you think it's necessary
for today's authors to be their own promoters?
Any writer out there who thinks writing a book
is the only thing they have to do is delusional. The writing part is only 30%
of the job. The rest of the 70% is divided into editing, submitting and
promotion. In truth, of that 70% I would say 50% is promotion. I know writers
who don’t want to entertain that side of things, like it’s dirty, or
compromises their integrity or work ethic. Bollocks. You need to do it because
everyone else is doing it, and those that are doing well can’t write for shit,
but I can guarantee they’ll be the one with the 3-book deal with Random House
next year. You’ve got to get into the
bed with the devil in this game, spoon the fucker and whisper sweet nothings
into his ear if you want any chance of making it as a writer.
14. Do
you think UK writers are different from US writers, or that location when
writing dictates output?
Life experiences naturally bleed out in prose,
so I think where you live does influence your writing. The Sound of Loneliness
is all about location. It is set in Salford, a rough area of Manchester, and
it's about the people there and the things I remember while growing up. Had I
grown up in Oxford or some quiet hamlet in Hampshire, then I would never write
something as gritty and underbelly as TSoL. So yes, location does has some
bearing on your writing. As for who is best, Uk or US? I don’t know many UK writers. I used to love
Jim Crace, especially Being Dead and Quarantine, but his work is not really
regional. It’s more literary. Flann O’Brien was the only regional writer that I
could say really impressed me, but I can’t remember if he’s southern or
northern Ireland. Only if he's from the later will he be classed as a UK
writer. A lot of writers who I have liked in the past are from America, but
that doesn’t mean the US is better than the UK. In terms of good writing, I
think now is a good time for the UK. In acting we’re becoming more prominent in
major Hollywood movies, and back in the mid-90s we were the epicentre of the
musical revolution with Britpop. Now is the time to shift the pendulum of
literature this way for the new breed of Brit-Lit. Just you wait. We're coming.
15. In
one interview, you said, "Art allowed me to open doors in my mind that
many keep closed." Can you expand on that, what did you mean? How?
I remember being in art college and there was one
lesson where the teachers made a construction of chairs, boxes, plants, vases
etc, a sort of Jenga tower of domestic furniture smack bang in the middle of
the classroom. They told us we had to draw it, but, we couldn’t draw the
contours of the chair’s legs, or the sides of the vase, or the outline of the
plant’s leaves. Instead, we had to look at the negative space between each
shape and draw that. All the negative space, or “gaps” between objects were
many and varied. And it was only drawing out those hundreds of tiny rectangles,
squares and rhombuses that the full construction came together on the page.
That exercise taught me to look at the world differently, to see the gaps
formed in life, the little negatives areas of society, and deliver them to the
page. That’s all my writing is. I think that’s what I meant.
16. Your
short story book, Quintessence of Dust, has an amazing title. What do you dive
into in the book? What were you trying to do with it?
I approached Quintessence of Dust the same way
you approach making a mix tape for a friend. I had written upwards of forty short
stories by then, most of which had been published. A lot of them were in print,
or the magazines were no longer running. It was important for me to try and get
a book out that I could use as a introduction to my writing. I’d been talking
with Pablo D’Stair, who at the time was creating KUBOA from the ashes of Brown
Paper Publishing, and I floated the idea by him. He went for it. As it stands QoD
is just some of my favourite short stories. If you’re asking me to pick a
favourite, I think the most personal are the first two, Night Holds a Scythe
and Railway Architecture, but people always seem to gravitate toward Anal
Twine. I think no matter what I do in my career, that damn story will be the
only thing I’m remembered for.
17. I
love your thought on society trying to get "fixed" instead of
embracing their defects as what makes them unique. Do you feel like your
writing is a way for you to show the world your uniqueness in an acceptable
way?
Yes. I’m one of those people in the world who,
given a chance, people would like to fix. I’m broken. I’m flawed. But in some
ways, I’m okay with that, and this is why I write about characters that are on
the fringe of society, who are not accepted among their peers and who, better
or worse, are broken to the point that no amount of glue will fix them. To be
honest, I find perfect boring. I’d much rather read about a person who sees the
world slightly askew than one whose vision is tinted rose coloured.
18.
What's your writing schedule like? Are you an every day writer?
I can’t do that.
I’ve heard some writers say you have to sit in front of the computer and just
write. How depressing a concept. No, for me I have to have a little idea that,
over time, germinates into something worthy of sitting in front of the laptop
for. Time is a commodity people should use more wisely. I have family, and I
need to balance my life as a father and husband along with being a work
colleague and a writer. I’m fucked if I’m going to sit in a room staring at a
blinking cursor because the allotment of my imagination is cultivating weeds.
19. Who
are you reading, these days?
I don’t read that much these days. I used to
read a lot, maybe two or three books a week at one stage, but I find most
modern literature dull. the books these days lack any real heart or guts. I
have come off two decent reads, Nod by Adrian Barnes which is the novel
Palahniuk should have written ten years ago, and Twilight by William Gay. I’d
been compared to Gay and I wanted to see if there was any truth in the
association. Turns out Gay shits on my prose.
20.
What's next for Craig Wallwork?
Rest my fingers. It’s been a hell of an
interview.
Thank you!
Goat
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