AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Nick Stone, part 2

In a case of ‘write what you know’, UK-based author Nick Stone set his first novel in Haiti, the birthplace of his mother, and delved into the world of voodoo and island mysticism. His second novel, KING OF SWORDS, takes place in a Miami during the fading days of the disco era, where Caribbean cultural influences run deep. The tarot plays a major part in the plot, and Stone deftly weaves threads of a gruesome crime novel, island superstition, and a love story together in a chilling thriller. Turns out, Stone has had encounters with both voodoo and the tarot. When reading KING OF SWORDS, I found the scenes discussion the history and application of tarot completely fascinating. Stone then upped the ante by having the tarot cards become a . . . well, I won’t give the twist away. Noir fans will not be disappointed by Stone’s inventiveness.

Please enjoy part two of our two-part interview with Nick Stone.

Q: You’ve used the occult as a theme in both MR. CLARINET and KING OF SWORDS, and you’ve had some first-hand experience with tarot cards and the mysticism of the Caribbean islands. Can you tell us about it, and how it inspired your fiction?

Nick Stone: They say that in Haiti the people are 90% Catholic and 100% Voodooist. I don’t practice voodoo, but the religion is very much woven into my DNA, and I have a great deal of respect for it.

I’ve been to voodoo ceremonies in Haiti and Miami. There are differences in the way they’re conducted. The ones in Haiti can go on all night and well into the morning, whereas the ones in Miami are shorter. They’re great fun. Unless you’re a chicken. Chickens get sacrificed a lot.

Needless to say, they’re really nothing like the ones I’ve described in Mr Clarinet or King of Swords. Those are both perversions of voodoo, black magic basically.

When I was in Haiti, I visited my late great uncle Fritz’s fortune teller. Amazing guy. He was 90 plus. We sat down and, without any kind of cod-mystical shenanigans, he told me exactly how my life would turn out. He told me that I’d forgot everything he’d told me as soon as I was half way down the road, but that I’d remember he’d predicted it after it had happened. He’s been very accurate so far. For example, he told me when I’d meet my wife – the exact date. When I asked what she’d look like he said “You’ll see her in a dream before the day you meet her”. And guess what? The day before I met her, I had a dream about meeting a stunning woman in a beige coat. The next day my future wife came into my life, dressed in a beige coat.

I also used to read tarot cards. I started in school, with a friend of mine called Jane Kenyon. She taught me to read them.

Really nothing to it. Once you know the full meanings of the cards, you can pretty much read them by sight. And I do believe there’s something in them, that they do predict a possible future – I say a possible future, because life is all about choices and decisions, about right turns and wrong turns. The cards will indicate where you will end up if you choose one path over another, or if you stay on the particular road you’re on.

I don’t read tarot any more. I stopped nine years ago. But, to anyone reading this, who might want to get a reading, I’ll give them the following pointers about the kind of card readers to avoid:

1). Someone who charges you more than $20

2). Someone who looks and acts like a tarot reader – staring eyes, incense, mystic mumbo jumbo

3). A reader who asks you more than your name – a good reader will know nothing whatsoever about you

The above are phonies. Beware.

Q: You’ve push pace to a cracking degree in KING OF SWORDS. Can you share with writers your secret to milking tension and quicken pace?

NS: I couldn’t really tell you. I write the tense sections quite quickly though, if that’s a help.

Q: You weave a rather tender love story within a gritty and often horrifying thriller. Was it important to you to show the softer side of Max Mingus?

NS: Ah, you’re a sharp one! You picked up on that. And I’m delighted you have. I didn’t do it deliberately – you know, give Max a love life to tenderize him like so much tough meat.

I wrote about the end of their relationship in Mr Clarinet. With King of Swords I wrote about the beginning, not only how they met and fell in love, but also how she starts influencing him in a positive way. She makes him see the error of his ways, and, in the end, he does do the right thing after quite a lot of wrong. I think, ultimately, the person you are closest to – your spouse or partner – has the biggest influence on you as a person.

Q: Do you let plot unfold organically, or do you plot heavily in advance?

NS: I’m one of life’s worriers. So I plan. Meticulously.

Plus I’m the sort who’ll write out a three or four page outline about a character’s background and use very little of it in the finished book. For King of Swords I had about seven pages about Max’s relationships – including a lot of detail about his parents.

Q: Are you drawn to anti-heroes as a rule, and why?

NS: I like well drawn characters. No one is ever wholly good and never wholly bad because I don’t believe that anyone is born good or evil. The latter is taught, instilled, brutalized into a person.

Q: Can you share any tips for making an unlikable character likable?

NS: I think you have to look for reasons why a bad character turned out the way he has. There are those quite remarkable final pages in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary where you find out that the very unlikable and sinister character, Popeye, had a dreadful childhood. That humanized him in the book’s final pages and made you reconsider the horrors that had gone before.

That said, one of the best drawn evil characters is Machine, in Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay for 8 MM. “There’s no mystery. Things I do, I do them because I like them. Because I want to.” It’s a great speech with echoes of the Johnny Cash line in Folsom Prison Blues: “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”. Sometimes evil really is that simple to explain.

Q: What books or writers influenced you?

James Ellroy’s LA Quartet

Tim Willocks – Green River Rising

Don Winslow – The Power of the Dog (the greatest crime novel of the decade)

Andrew Holmes – 64 Clarke (the greatest British crime novel of the decade)

Don DeLillo – Libra

Seth Morgan – Homeboy

Paul Auster – New York Trilogy, Oracle Night

Nick Kent – The Dark Stuff (I never leave home without it)

Hubert Selby Jnr – Last Exit to Brooklyn

James Webb – Fields of Fire

FX Toole – Rope Burns

Michael Herr – Dispatches

John Hart – Down River (INCREDIBLE)

Tom Wolfe

Cormac McCarthy

Dostoevsky

Stephen King

HP Lovecraft

Chester Himes

Neil Cross

Cervantes

James Crumley

Charles Willeford

Jean Paul Sartre

Richard Price

Franz Kafka

Albert Camus

Eric Ambler

Graham Greene

George Orwell

Iceberg Slim

Raymond Chandler

Dashiell Hammett

James Sallis

Q: Why do you think genre fiction receives so little respect in literary circles, despite the fact that the majority of fiction sold is genre?

NS: Simple answer: snobbery. Second simple answer: stupidity, and its close cousin, smirking ignorance.

It’s the great perceived dichotomy between quality and quantity: the misconception that bestsellers can’t possibly be any good because they’re enjoyed by the sort of people who wouldn’t look twice at a literary novel if it strolled down the street butt naked.

That’s the modern argument. It conveniently sidesteps the fact that, in their lifetimes Shakespeare and Dickens, were not only popular but populist too. Dickens was the JK Rowling of his time. People used to queue to buy his stories when they were serialized in magazines, in much the way they queued up for the last three Harry Potter books. Dickens even changed endings of his books to suit popular tastes.

Said argument is easily rubbished when you look at the roll call of genuinely great writers within genre fiction. Eric Ambler, who wrote the first thriller with A Coffin For Demetrios, had a huge influence on Graham Greene – one of the greatest writers of the 20th century – and one who wrote thrillers himself. Or, rather, “entertainments”, as he called them.

That said, for every genuinely great genre writer, there are dozens of utterly dreadful ones. But you can say exactly the same about modern literary fiction. I find most of it utterly unreadable and, frankly, pointless. But then, it’s a bit like modern art – one person’s pile of bricks is another person’s idea of impermanent sculpture.

Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Quite a bit, yes.

1). Don’t talk about it. Do it.

2). Write every day.

3). Read every day. And read broadly. Don’t just read in your genre, or you’ll wind up offering nothing new.

4). Don’t write with money as an overriding and absolute objective – too many contemporary crime novels and thrillers read like mortgage repayment plans set to prose. Write from the heart not the wallet. And write with a keyboard or open, never a calculator. In fact, always be a writer, not a typist.

5). Write a book, not an expanded screenplay. In fact, don’t write with a movie adaptation in mind at all.

6). Choose your publisher VERY VERY carefully. Just because they may be well known, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the right publisher for you. Do your research. Being saddled with the wrong publisher is a lot like being stuck in an elevator with an idiot you suspect might want to do you serious harm.

7). Always write what you’d want to read. Never ever forget you were a reader before you were a writer.

8). Don’t give up, but know when to quit too.

9). Drink Bustelo coffee.

Q: What are you reading now?

NS: I’ve just finished George Pelecanos’s The Turnaround, which is superb. In fact, it’s not only one of Pelecanos’s best ever books (which is saying something), but one of the best books I’ve read all year.

The other book I’d recommend without reservation is The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez. It’s out in the UK in April 2009. It’s excellent, and, I think, a must-read for those who like dark thrillers in foreign climes.

I’m also starting to discover Michael Connelly. Now, I know you’re going to be throwing your arms up in the air in disbelief, but I tend to discover writers at my own pace. I’ve read five Connelly books so far and I’m a big fan. The guy really is a master.

I’ve also been re-reading James Crumley, in honour of the great man, who died very recently – a monumental loss to crime fiction.

KING OF SWORDS is available in online and bricks ‘n mortar retailers everywhere.