Bad Dog looks like a crazy ride. Do you have a series planned for this
detective book?
There is a sequel which is being proof read at the moment
and will be out shortly, so keep your eyes peeled for that one. After that I
needed to get away from Zippy’s mindset for a bit and so I have just finished
writing a panto, something a bit lighter.
I have thought about a third, but nothing firm so far.
Can you tell us a little about the story?
It’s set in the 80s
in Southampton England, it starts off as darkly comic homage to writers like
Raymond Chandler but turns into a supernatural thriller where the protagonist
is pitted against demonic entities and vampires after being locked up in a
psychiatric institution.
What inspired you when writing Bad Dog?
Obviously detective
writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet but particularly Hunter S
Thompson and William Burroughs. Real life plays a big part, I like writers like
Henry Miller who deal with their own lives, but I also like fantasy works like
Tolkein. I’ve not lead as interesting a
life as Henry Miller and neither can I construct an imaginary one as well as
Tolkein so I decided to combine the two.
It’s a fantasy set in the real world, a lot of the scenes are based on
things that actually happened to me. I
was stopped by the police on suspicion of armed robbery, I just happened to be
driving a similar car to the one used by bank robbers and the friend I was with
looked like one of the suspects.
Why did you decide to become a writer?
When I was a kid I
saw an old Ealing comedy on the telly about a family whose daughter had written
a book about her family. It was a
complete work of fiction but people thought it true with comic results. What stuck out for me was that it was
something she did on her own, an ordinary person who worked 9-5. Before then I didn’t really think that
anybody wrote books, (I was very young) and it was just something I wanted to
do.
How did you come up with the story in Bad Dog?
It evolved as I
started writing it, at first it was just a piece of autobiographical writing
about a night out at the pub. After that
it came as I was writing, and for a long time I had no idea how it would
end. I was a bit more disciplined with
the second book, I did know how that would end, but had no idea how I would get
there. Some things surprised me.
Did anything stick out as particularly challenging when
writing Bad Dog?
The Historical
chapters dealing with Medieval Egypt took a lot of research and I did feel a
bit of a fraud writing those, trying to get into the head of someone from that
time was tricky.
What do you like to do when not writing?
I’m a single parent
and a widower so I spent a lot of time looking after my children. We still all live together now they’re grown
up. I like all the clichéd stuff people
say when asked, but I also like performing stand-up comedy and amateur
dramatics. I’m still looking for a theatre group to put on my panto if anyone’s
interested.
Where can readers find out more about your work?
More information
about the book is available on the amazon page. For any direct queries please
feel free to contact me at baddogauthor@gmail.com