Route Online » Interviews

Dave Pescod Q&A

selwyn — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:04:19 +0000

Q. What was the inspiration for ‘All Embracing’?

A few years back I’d ended a relationship and was waiting in Liverpool Street Station watching people meet and greet, hugging each other affectionately. It was Christmas and there were large groups gathering and embracing and I was suddenly struck by a huge wave of envy. What would it be like to never hug or hold somebody again? I wondered what would you do if that was true and I saw two groups of friends meeting and exchanging hugs and cuddles and wondered if I could sneak in and get one. Of course I didn’t, but I did the next best thing and wrote about it. By the time my train journey home ended I had got the first draft down. I read it to a writers group I went to, and afterwards there was a long silence, almost shock and sense it was a bit spooky. I could tell it was quite powerful so I worked on it.

Andy Love, a filmmaker friend of mine, was keen to direct a short. I showed him the story and a few months later, there I was with Andy and twenty other people re-enacting the hugs in Liverpool Street Station. It took a lot of takes and after an hour and nearly a hundred hugs or more everybody was a bit high and nobody wanted to go home. They just stood there grinning, wanting more. It made me laugh. And just at that time St Pancras was being refurbished and had unveiled the embrace sculpture – it’s huge near the Eurostar platform. Well, we went and filmed that and sneaked it into the film.

It’s been in a few festivals and it always gets people talking – is it sad or silly, impossible or tragic? It’s up to the viewer and reader. That’s lovely, that a small piece of my writing gets a response like that, and I never thought it might become a film. Oh, and by the way we got back together again, so that’s really good.

Ada Wilson Q&A

selwyn — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:16:37 +0000

Q. What was the genesis of Red Army Faction Blues?

Football and rock music are the cultural glue for many people, myself included, but I’d never read a compelling piece of fiction about either, really, and was somewhat at a loss to explain why. Until The Damned United.

Besides being terrific, I found it both shocking and liberating in what it suggested in terms of potential subject matter and how to shine a new light on the immediate past. It’s about football, but at the same time, not at all. It’s about a real person, a well-known celebrity, turned symbol or cipher. Much of modern culture, for a number of reasons, appears to have been closed off to imaginative fiction and I think there is a hunger for alternatives to ‘official’ versions.

I was already corresponding with David Peace a little, and I’d mentioned the story of the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, how the band’s initial disintegration had assumed mythical status – become another symbol really, for the end of 1960s optimism and experimentation. In particular, what the surviving members of Fleetwood Mac in interviews referred to as ‘The Munich Horrorshow’, which they attributed to the start of the sad decline of Peter Green, the band’s original creative force.

I initially tried to make Green the protagonist, but it was hopeless – the known facts forced out any freedom and the clichés flowed!

Q. What was the source of your fascination with Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac?

As a kid I was a big fan of Peter Green and one of the first albums I ever owned was The Pious Bird of Good Omen – the one with the nun holding an albatross on the front. When I started to learn to play guitar it was Green I initially tried to copy. Perhaps because it seemed simple – deceptively so, of course. With hindsight, they were a very effective singles band, while never quite making the classic album they threatened to. But that run of singles – ‘Need Your Love So Bad’, ‘Black Magic Woman’, ‘Albatross’ ‘Man of the World’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘Green Manalishi’ – is quite staggering in its breadth and originality. And then of course, what happened to the three guitarists is awfully tragic – even as Fleetwood Mac went on to being the best-selling band of the 1970s. The 60s ended when I was ten, so the story was initially skewed through the prism of childhood for me, when the generation above me all seemed to be speaking in magical and exciting codes I had only a very limited understanding of.

Michael Nath Interview – La Rochelle

idaley — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:07:44 +0000

Michael Nath answers questions on his novel La Rochelle.

Q: Where did the idea for La Rochelle come from and what is the launch point for such a book?

A: The idea came from a dream my brother Paul told me, in the autumn of 2003. His girlfriend had been kidnapped by a criminal called ‘Whitby’. I agreed to do a swap for her, so we took a taxi down from London to the countryside, where Whitby’d taken her. In the taxi, the driver turned to us and said, ‘Can’t you see, the whole of London’s going down!’ Behind us, there were fires in the sky, falling cranes, etc. This was the starting point, the disappearance of a woman, and the name Whitby, which really stuck in the mind.

Q. It is quite an unconventional read. What is it you were trying to achieve with the book?

I was trying to write a novel that wasn’t too much like a ‘novel’. It had to have the qualities of life instead, such as thickness, abundance, presence, a degree of untidiness. I was after something baroque and dishevelled, with a coat of varnish. I also wished to write something that will last, so that readers may feel inclined to read it again (and even again). Furthermore, I felt it was necessary to bring privacy back into fiction. Can anyone tell what the narrator’s problem really is in La Rochelle? This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise.

I was also trying to make people laugh, and worry.

Q. Could you elaborate on ‘This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise’?

A. I mean it isn’t a book in which the narrator’s problems have been formulated in advance, and in a manner that robs them of their particularity to him. They are problems that are being experienced through a sort of fog, rather than seen clearly, as something that ‘everyone’ knows all about these days. The narrator can’t see around his own corner, whereas journalism typically supposes it can.

Story Inspiration Author Interviews – Route Book at Bedtime

idaley — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:00:41 +0000

The Route Book at Bedtime (Route 22) is designed for adult bedtime reading, a book of 12 stories that aims to capture those moments of deep emotional significance which return to us in our dreams. But what is the story behind the stories? Here 11 of the authors talk about the inspiration behind the work.

M Y Alam – Smokes and Dust
I’d completed a draft while my father was in hospital for nearly three months. He recovered for a couple of months before relapsing. It’s not that I felt obliged to write anything about or even for him, but the love of the word was something he cultivated in me from an early age, sometimes without even knowing it. Unlike me, the writing was a much deeper part of who he was. Writing kept him alive, I used to think, but like everything else, even that left him. Barely able to hold a pen, he wrote his final poem, one of the most beautiful pieces of verse I’ve ever heard, a few days before he died. The writing of this one was relatively easy, for a change.

Sarah Butler - Leaving
Somewhat ironically, I wrote ‘Leaving’ just after buying a house with my (now ex-) boyfriend. I was struck by the amount of stuff we owned, and the physical effort that was required to move it. I am very interested in relationships, what makes some of them work and some of them not work, or some of them work for a while and then turn stale. I’m also interested in objects, and how – particularly when relationships are breaking down – we invest them with emotion. My own relationship ended messily, and I had to leave the house we had bought together, which was both traumatic and freeing. It’s funny looking back at the story now, because it is strangely prophetic. It’s filled with objects I ‘borrowed’ from my own life, which makes it even harder not to see the parallels!

Paul Laverty – Looking For Eric

idaley — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:52:20 +0000

Paul Laverty talks about his approach to writing Looking For Eric.

Q: What was the most difficult aspect of the script?

A: Imagining the main characters and central premise is always key to any story. Although there is a jocular tone between little Eric and Cantona, I was deadly serious about trying to envisage both Eric Bishop’s detailed history and mental state when we join him. Incidentally, in the script when we open Eric is actually stuck on a roundabout going round the wrong way again and again. Unfortunately, on the opening day of filming the stunt driver made a mistake and collided with Eric’s car on the first loop. We were very lucky no one was seriously hurt. Ken had bruised ribs for a couple of weeks and Barry got a knock too. (Director of Photography) Maybe this shows it is much easier to write a script than make the film.

Although Eric Bishop pretty much came to mind in a flash we were really keen that his psychological condition was absolutely coherent. The comedy only works if we are entirely serious about his pain. I read many books which were helpful, especially one by Andrew Solomon called The Noonday Demon. It is quite brilliant. He analyses himself with impressive honesty and insight and does an entire overview of the condition, even going back to the ancient Greeks. It is clear Eric is not in a deep depression otherwise he would not have been able to get out of bed, but he is certainly going through a significant crisis in his life.

Ian Clayton Interview

idaley — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:26:24 +0000

Ian Clayton answers questions about Bringing It All Back Home in a public house in the Castleford Potteries, a traditional drinking hole adjacent to a dilapidated old tin hut which was once home to a school where a young Henry Moore began his education.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to write this book?

A: It’s just some stories that I’ve been telling for years and never written down. Most stories circulate in their own neighbourhood, you might call this a gang of stories bursting out of where they are from.

Q: The book is essentially about music, but in it you do talk a lot about the value of the stories and the power of storytelling.

A: It starts with sounds really. If you enjoy music it’s because you’ve enjoyed sounds as a kid. The sounds can be anything, from listening to birds whistling in the morning to listening to the sounds of the street where you live, to listening to arguments. In my case I listened to a lot of arguments because I grew up in a house full of them. I listened to what people were shouting to each other about. And it’s a learning thing then. Because I tried to understand what the arguments were about and in trying to understand what arguments are about I get an understanding of what people are about. So that’s the first part of it, listening to sounds, listening to noises. I always enjoyed listening to what was going on, it could be my old granddad telling stories, could be old neighbours telling ancient stories about what their lives were about and what entertained them.

Katherine Locke – Dog Days

idaley — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:35:08 +0000

Katherine Locke talks about her approach to making the story collection Dog Days, reading for the Bridport Prize and inspiring children to read for pleasure.

Q: Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind Dog Days?

A: I love dogs! Writing is often a way in which we explore our relationship with others and our relationship with animals, dogs in particular, is constantly fascinating. Dogs are our companions, child substitutes, protectors, work mates, burglar alarms, excuse to get out of the house and a unique expression of our human need to communicate. Any of these ideas would make an interesting start for a short story. However, I was also interested in the duality of the phrase ‘Dog Days’. It can be interpreted literally (as above), or used to explore ideas around high summer. I think the introduction to the book goes into this in a bit more detail.

When we are looking for starting points for writing it helps to have something that can be interpreted in as many ways as possible and have differing meanings depending on context. I certainly wasn’t looking for a collection of stories about dogs, and in fact the stories that were about heat and the end of the summer were generally far more interesting. It is very hard to write about animals without becoming mawkish. What we have ended up with is, I hope, a balance between animal based stories and those exploring other themes.

Zdravka Evtimova – East of No East

idaley — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:18:16 +0000

Ten Questions Eastwards — Daithidh MacEochaidh talks to Bulgarian writer Zdravka Evtimova about her writing, translation and political change.

Daithidh: As a writer what are your fundamental concerns? Fundamental concerns, may be too loaded a phrase, food in your belly, a roof over your head, these are fundamental; yet, something beneath the pomposity of the question remains: when you put words down on the page,what do you fundamentally wish to achieve?

Zdravka: Yes, I do care about the roof over my head, about food, but when I put words down on the page I want to make people who read them unable to forget it for a long time. The words give me a chance to open a door for people of other cultures and let them come and sense life in Bulgaria – the only life I know. Words prove that all people no matter where they live have something in common – strife after justice, freedom, understanding and love. Sometimes words are the only path to justice.

Daithidh: You have work published both in Bulgarian and English, are your translated writings just that or are they, in a sense, a re-write for a different market, audience and culture?

Zdravka: My translated writings are not a re-write for a different market. I understand that there are certain situations when I have to explain what I mean, sometimes I shorten the Slavic names for they are very difficult to pronounce; that however happens quite rarely and in these cases I try to keep the first four or five letters of the name, so that a Bulgarian reader who lives anywhere in the world can guess what the real name of the character or of the town is. Bulgaria is a small country, there are 7 million Bulgarians. Bulgarian writers have never been rich; they cannot give their countrymen money, but they can give them truth. In thirteen hundred years of Bulgarian history, truth meant courage to speak it, to stand up for it and to die for it. In the 1300 years of Bulgarian history truth was Bulgarian survival.

Susan Tranter – Brief Lives

idaley — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:39:05 +0000

Susan Tranter talks about the inspiration behind the collection Brief Lives and her work as reader-in-residence for the British Council’s Encompass Literature webite.

Q: Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind Brief Lives?

A: I read a story a couple of years ago which was about one man’s life. It started with his birth and ended with his death. It struck me as something many weighty novels have tried to do – yet this short story managed not only to convey a convincing sense of a life lived, but to capture something essential about it, much more economically. I’ve been interested ever since in ‘biographical’-type stories, and the ways in which short story writers present whole lives, and the passing of time.

Q: And do you think the short story is an ideal form for this kind of storytelling? And if so, what do you think the short story can give that the novel can’t?

A: We’re used to hearing the short story described as a ’snapshot’, or a ‘fragment of time’ that’s revelatory – I suppose in the way that it explains, or implies, or sums up, the time before and / or after the action of the story. I wanted to invite writers to demonstrate that it doesn’t always have to be that way. You can have a story of just a few pages that covers 100 years or more (and the opposite of course, a novel that covers a few hours).

Bloom Writers

idaley — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:03:40 +0000

All six of the authors featured in the young writers collection Bloom talk about the inspiration for their story and answer a follow-up question. In addition, to get us started, we hear from editor Emily Penn on the inspiration behind the collection and what it represents.

Emily Penn – Editor

I wanted to read what people my age and younger were writing. Short stories have that ability to capture a moment in time, provide a glimpse into a world or world view and my hunch was that 18-30 year olds at the turn of the century would capture some interesting and important glimpses. The writers in this selection proved me right.

I do think it’s important that new fiction by very new, but, as this collection shows, talented, creative, skilled, writers has a platform. It’s important that some of these platforms are within a ‘young’ context – managed and mediated by that writing community – but its equally important to provide young artists with a route to a general audience, to really test their skills and also to enable them to impact on the more established writing community – to become a part of it and to change it and help it move forward.