“I think the most important thing is that you need to be passionate about what you do. Being an indie author is great fun, but it’s also an awful lot of work for relatively little reward. If you don’t love your book when you’re writing it, you’re going to really hate it by the time you’ve finished editing it.”

Gary Marshall 6 October 2011

The Back Flap

Eighty is the new thirty. Nobody’s having babies, the old massively outnumber the young and the hip crowd has become the hip replacement crowd.  Twentysomething barman Matt Johnson would be bored senseless if someone wasn’t trying to kill him.

When Matt isn’t playing silly pranks on his elders with his colleague Dave or laughing at Dave’s dating disasters, he’s trying to summon up the courage to ask best friend Amy out on a date. Then Matt narrowly escapes a car wreck, and he discovers that his accident was no accident. Someone’s murdering young people, and dozens are already dead. Can Matt, Amy and Dave stop the killings? The answer involves guns, gangsters, an angry bear and plenty of irate pensioners.

About the Book

What is the book about?

The book’s about Matt, Amy and Dave, three twentysomething friends who’ve inherited a world where the old have the money and the power and the young look after them. They soon discover that some people think money and power are worth killing for.

It’s first and foremost a thriller – a funny one, I hope – but there’s a touch of SF to it too: not just the technology, which never turns out to be as impressive as future-gazing pundits predict, but the wider world. I wanted to extrapolate from some of the things that are going on around us now, so for example we have an ageing population and falling fertility levels, there’s an enormous and growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, and we have botoxed goons running around the place trying to look seventeen instead of seventy. The rich demand – and get – tax cuts at the expense of poor people’s healthcare and services, well-off couples pay poor women to act as surrogates and at least one MP has seriously suggested poor people should sell kidneys to raise a bit of cash.

The world is seriously, seriously weird – so what would happen if it got just a little bit weirder? What would happen if the people who run the world now decided they wanted to run the world forever?

When did you start writing the book?  How long did it take you to write it?

I started thinking seriously about it in 2008, and wrote it over five or six months in 2009. That was the first draft. The next seven drafts took another year and a half.

Where did you get the idea from?

I was standing outside a supermarket in Florida when a gold Lexus nearly splattered me against the wall. The driver then took the best part of ten minutes to actually get out of the car: he was about 200, very shaky and didn’t seem to be entirely sure where he was, and yet he was driving what could easily be a two-ton killing machine. That’s when the light bulb appeared over my head.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

Finding the time was the hard bit. I was working long hours and my daughter was a wee baby, so a lot of the writing had to be done in my head while rocking her to sleep and typed up in the wee small hours.

What came easily?

There were several bits where the book appeared to be writing itself – the big action scenes in particular. I love it when that happens.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

I’ve borrowed some bits and pieces from real people. For example Amy, one of the main characters, is a composite of some very fiery, funny and faintly frightening women I know in real life, and Dave has a lot in common with a few old friends. There’s only one character I can think of who’s based completely on a real person, though, and he’s bumped off very early in the book.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

I love Tim Dorsey and Christopher Brookmyre, both of whom write funny thrillers (or wrote – Brookmyre’s started doing more serious books now) and both of whom can have me rolling around the floor in stitches. Dorsey in particular is just incredible: he writes Florida crime capers featuring a serial killer with OCD and a policeman who talks in 1950s James Ellroy dialogue, and they make me laugh so hard it hurts.

There’s definitely some Douglas Adams in there too, and I think some of Matt’s descriptions of things have a touch of the PJ O’Rourke to them – PJ’s just superb at describing people, like his description of Russian mafia wives having “covered their bodies in Elmer’s Glue and run through the boutiques of Palm Springs buying whatever stuck”. I love that kind of thing.

I think I’m as influenced by bad writing as I am by good, though. It’s nice to read something that’s absolutely hellish, analyse why it’s so bad and try very hard not to make the same mistakes. The Guardian newspaper has a superb column by John Crace called the Digested Read that’s perfect for that kind of thing: Crace skewers the book in a few hundred words, and it’s usually hilarious.

Do you have a target reader?

Me. That changes during the editing, so for example I took a lot of swearing out because it might offend and wasn’t particularly necessary, but when I’m writing I just want to tell a story that I’m excited about.

I think there’s some truth in the cliché about writing the book you want to read: I get really annoyed by books that are obviously padded out to hit a word count or page count, with descriptions of everything just thrown in there to make the book look bigger. If a character is going to open a door, don’t give me 200 words about the door – just open the door! Who cares what kind of wood it’s made from, or what the door maker’s dad’s dog’s name was? It’s something I hope ebooks will address, actually: you’re not judging books’ value on whether they look thick enough, so hopefully authors will let stories be the length they need to be – whether that’s 60,000 words or 160,000.

I think, too, that sometimes characters can be a bit too wooden, a bit too “I’ve done loads of research and by damn I’m going to shovel it into this book somewhere” exposition instead of realistic dialogue. I’ve lost track of the number of times a supposedly smart, glass ceiling-shattering female character suddenly becomes a simpering idiot thanks to Captain Exposition. This kind of thing:

Him: We need a laser.

Her: A laser?

Him: Yes, a laser. It stands for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation, and it was first suggested by Einstein in 1917. In 1958, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow theorized and published papers about a visible laser, an invention that would use infrared and/or visible spectrum light, however, they did not proceed with any research at the time. Today, however, lasers are everywhere, used in a variety of industrial and military applications. You’ll even find them inside home entertainment equipment such as DVD players.

Her: You are so clever! Let’s have sex!

If that kind of thing annoys you as much as it annoys me, then you’re my target reader 🙂

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I spend months just collecting things – clippings, interesting online articles, photos of interesting places – and letting them percolate in my head until I start to get a sense of the story. Or the beginning of the story, anyway. Once I’ve got an opening line, I up sticks and go to the pub with a pen and notebook. I’m a tech journalist by day and I’ve found I can’t write fiction in the same environment that I work in – I need to be away from my desk, away from the computer. I’ve got hellish RSI so writing longhand’s a challenge, but I can manage 500 to 1,000 words before my hands turn into claws, so it’s a fairly slow process.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just Chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I don’t. I get an idea, start writing and keep going until writer’s block hits. When that happens I’ll leave myself cryptic notes –  DAVE/PASTA or NEED TO KILL EVERYONE HERE – and wait until the next bit pops into my head. That can take hours, days or weeks.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I think momentum is more important than accuracy – for me at least it’s better to do 10,000 words and cut 9,000 of them later than to spend a week making sure page 1 is perfect. If you decide on page 74 that your character isn’t a Jack but a Matt, or that everybody’s Belgian, or that the whole thing would be better off if it were happening in space, then I don’t think you should stop: just start using the new name, the new nationalities or the new location and fix pages 1-73 later. Everybody’s different, of course, but that approach is definitely the one that works best for me.

I think too that you can be too close to the book. There were some really obvious flaws in the first draft of Coffin Dodgers that I simply didn’t notice the first time around – plot holes big enough to swallow the sun – and I think that shows how important it is to take your time and get some distance from what you’re doing. Write the first draft and come back to it fresh a few weeks later. I guarantee you’ll see things more clearly.

In the end, Coffin Dodgers went through eight drafts. Some of those drafts were just picky editing, going through the text to find the typos, grammatical howlers and other errors, but some of the drafts involved introducing new characters and new situations.

Did you hire a professional editor?

I didn’t. I’m lucky because my friends include editors and pedants, and they were happy to cast their expert eyes over the book. I think I’d hire a pro editor next time, finances permitting, though. I don’t want to take the mickey out of my friends.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

Not consciously – it’s on in the pub when I’m scribbling, but it’s not something I pay much attention to, not least because the pub’s music is awful – but I do listen to music to get me in the mood. There’s a big chase scene in the book that wouldn’t have happened without God Hates a Coward by Tomahawk.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

I did, to dozens, and a few of them were kind enough to give detailed feedback. The consensus was that the book was funny and well written but too niche – and at 67,000 words, a bit too short – for mainstream publishers. One agent was blunt: if you want to make a living from novels, don’t write funny ones.

What made you decide to go Indie? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

A gradual process, definitely. I started to think that I’d rather get the book out to interested people than have it sitting gathering digital dust on a hard disk. I’m sensible enough to realise it’s not a licence to print money – so far I’ve covered the cost of the cover, and that’s about it – but it’s a real kick to see a good review from someone you’re not married to, related to or on first name terms with.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did it you do it yourself?

The impossibly talented Ronnie Brown designed it for me. He’s very good. Everybody should hire him.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

Oh, I’m winging it. It’s one big exciting experiment. I’m trying to blog about it as I go along and share what I’ve learnt with anyone who’s interested.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

I think the most important thing is that you need to be passionate about what you do. Being an indie author is great fun, but it’s also an awful lot of work for relatively little reward. If you don’t love your book when you’re writing it, you’re going to really hate it by the time you’ve finished editing it.

On a more practical level, do as much as you can yourself – many things, such as creating Kindle-friendly files, are much easier than you might think – but don’t be daft either: if you can’t draw for toffee, don’t design your own cover; if grammar, spelling and detail aren’t your strong points, get a professional editor.

About You

Where did you grow up? Where do you live now?

I was born near Inverness in Scotland, and I live just outside Glasgow with my wife, daughter and black lab.

What would you like readers to know about you?

Coffin Dodgers is my first novel, but I’ve written loads of other things: in addition to 13 years of tech reporting I’ve written several books for young musicians, one about working from home and one about laptops. I’ve also co-authored lots of computing and music books and played in various bands.

My musical career included playing Glasgow Barrowlands and T in The Park, a five-year-old’s birthday party, a teenage beauty pageant and a gangster’s private function. I’ve been heckled, bottled, threatened with knives, harassed by the police, molested, mocked in national newspapers, electrocuted, ripped off, chased by hormone-crazed girls and set on fire.

What are you working on now?

I’m finishing off a collection of my tech writing, writing a big dark gloomy novel, working on a long short story that makes me laugh and planning the sequel to Coffin Dodgers. I’ve got about an album’s worth of songs to finish off too. The sooner cloning’s invented the better.

End of Interview

You can find out more about Gary here. You can buy his book at Amazon UK, Amazon US, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Diesel, Sony Reader, and Smashwords.