It’s
hard to hang around the crime fiction community much and not come across the
name Paul Brazill. (Often mispronounced, but still.) Paul is the author of Guns of Brixton, Cold London Blues, The Last
Laugh, and Other Shots of Noir. Born
in England, Paul now lives in Poland. He’s a member of the International
Thriller Writers whose writing has been translated into Italian, German and
Slovene. His writing has appeared in various magazines and anthologies,
including The Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. He has edited a few
anthologies, including the best-selling True
Brit Grit with Luca Veste.
Today
Paul is here to talk about new newest book, Kill
Me Quick!
One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Kill Me Quick.
Paul D. Brazill: Seatown may not have
a lot going for it – apart from the Roy Orbison lookalikes and Super Seventies
Special every Thursday night, of course – but it is at least the place Mark
Hammonds calls home. And after a decade away, it's the place he returns to when
he has nowhere else to go. From dead bikers to dodgy drug deals, from one
downbeat bar to another, from strippers to gangsters and back again: the
luckless former musician bounces from one misdeed to the next along with a
litany of old acquaintances, almost as though he never left. And if only he can
shake off everybody who wants to kill, maim, or otherwise hurt him, maybe he
could even think about staying. After all, there’s no place like home, eh?
OBAAT: Where did you get
this idea, and what made it worth developing for you? (Notice I didn’t ask
“Where do you get your ideas?” I was careful to ask where you got this idea.)
PB: I’d read Cathi
Unsworths Weirdo and re-read Graham
Greene’s Brighton Rock around the
same time. Both take place at the English seaside. I was e-chatting with Cathi
about the lack of seaside noirs. She suggested a few books, and since I’d set a
few short stories in the fictional seaside town of Seatown I thought I’d give
it a go. Can’t hang a man for that!
Kiss
Me Quick hats used to be very popular at the English seaside so the title was
obvious.
OBAAT: How long did it take
to write Kill Me Quick, start to
finish?
PB: About six to eight weeks, with gaps, breaks. I
left it to marinate for a couple of weeks and then tidied it up. Went back to
it about a week later.
OBAAT: Where did Mark
Hammonds come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?
PB: Well, he is a bit like me in that he drinks
too much and is always one step behind the action. His musical career was much
better than mine, of course!
I’ve
known, and know, lots of musicians of various degrees of success and Mark is like
many of them. He’s someone who had his moment in the sun and has absolutely no
idea what to do with the rest of his life. He’s just about clever enough to
know that he’s not particularly clever though he does have one moment of
inspiration in the book.
OBAAT: In what time and
place is Kill Me Quick set? How
important is the setting to the book as a whole?
PB: It’s for sure set in
the north east of England. It’s where I grew up. It’s in the fictional town of
Seatown, which is an exaggerated grotesque version of my hometown and its
environs.
It’s
post ‘80s. It had to be set after the ‘80s because that was a time when a few British
bands had a degree of success that they never really recaptured.
OBAAT: How did Kill Me Quick come to be published?
PB: Around the time I was
thinking of writing a ‘seaside noir’, I read and liked a few books from the
publisher Number 13 Press. Their plan was to publish 13 novellas on the 13th
of each month. That kick started me into writing the book and submitting it to
them. I made the deadline, just!
OBAAT: What kinds of stories
do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?
PB: I mainly like stories
about people with strong personality and writing that has personality, too.
Crime fiction offers up a lot of that.
Naming
names: Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Nelson Algren, Charles Bukowski, Les
Edgerton, Oscar Wilde, KA Laity, Damon Runyon, PG Wodehouse, Dorothy Parker, and
Heath Lowrance are good examples. There are loads of others, of course.
OBAAT: What made you decide to
be an author?
PB: I didn’t. It’s
something I stumbled into. I’d always quite liked the idea of it, of course, because
writers used to have such strong personalities and lived such full and rich
lives in the old days - Capote, Mailer, Wilde, Greene etc. Now they just play Bejeweled
Blitz and moan a lot on Twatter, of course.
But
I fell into writing after messing around on social media and found some flash
fiction websites that I liked – Beat To A Pulp, A Twist Of Noir. I thought I’d
give it a shot and still seem to be getting away with it.
OBAAT: How do you think your
life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?
PB: Well, I’m not scared of
made up versions of violence because real life is worse, of course. I’ve met
lots of colourful, interesting people. Heard lots of interesting stories. Seen
some funny and weird things. They’ve given me stuff to use. Whether or not I
write crime fiction is another story, of course.
OBAAT: What do you like best
about being a writer?
PB: I enjoy writing and
finishing it. Anything else is a bonus.
OBAAT: Who are your greatest
influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you
think has had a major impact on your writing.)
PB: People with strong personalities or whose
‘art’ has a strong personality. Tony Hancock, Tom Waits, Alan Bennet, Ealing
comedy, Damon Runyon, Bukowski, Mamet, Tarantino, Billy Wilder, Mar E Smith.
All the writers that I’ve mentioned and many more. Certainly real people at
least as much as entertainers. No names no pack-drill.
OBAAT: Do you outline or fly
by the seat of you pants? Do you even wear pants when you write?
PB: As in the rest of my life, I wing it. Fully
clothed. We may only be writers but we’re not barbarians!
OBAAT: Give us an idea of
your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing
the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?
PB: Block my block. Word
by word. Sentence by sentence. Leave it for a bit and tidy it up. Two steps
forward, one step back. I think Les Edgerton does the same thing so that’s
alright.
OBAAT: Do you listen to music
when you write? Do you have a theme song for this book? What music did you go
back to over and over as you wrote it, or as you write, in general?
PB: I don’t usually listen
to music as I write as I’m too easily distracted but film soundtracks sometimes
work.
The
theme song for Kill Me Quick! Could
the theme to the ‘70s British sitcom Whatever
Happened To the Likely Lads?
I’ve
been listening to the soundtrack to The
Phantom of the Paradise a lot recently and who knows how that’s influencing
me!
OBAAT: As a writer, what’s
your favorite time management tip?
PB: Time is a concept
created by the bourgeoisie to oppress the proletariat. I have no time
management skills. Que sera sera.
OBAAT: If you could give a
novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?
PB: Never give or listen
to advice. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Enjoy yourself, while
you’re still in the pink.
OBAAT: Generally speaking
the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and
tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own
writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach
each and why you rank them as you do?
PB: Character and
atmosphere are the main thing for me. If it ‘feels’ right then I stick with it.
I’d write better plots if I could but I’m not clever or organized enough.
OBAAT: If you could have
written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it
about that book you admire most?
PB: Maybe, Gerald Kersh’s Night and The City. Atmosphere
characters and a proper story.
OBAAT: Favorite activity
when you’re not reading or writing.
PB: Life.
OBAAT: What are you working
on now?
PB: Back From the Dead. A sort - of follow up to Guns
of Brixton and Cold
London Blues – both published by Caffeine Nights Publishing. Darker and
more violent but still funny, I hope.
A
short story for the next NoirCon programme.