Bad Dog (Author Interview)





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



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