International best-seller John Connolly has variously worked as a journalist, barman, local government official, waiter and a dogsbody at Harrods department store in London. Born in Dublin, he studied English in Trinity College and journalism at Dublin City University. His first novel, Every Dead Thing, was published in 1999, and introduced former policeman Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker –a damaged, conflicted man hunting for the madman who murdered his wife and daughter.
The Charlie Parker series continues to rivet audiences with its atmospheric and gorgeous prose and disturbing insights into the darker side of the human experience.
John took a few minutes to chat with me for the Big Scary Blog.
JONATHAN MABERRY: Your books keep one foot lightly over the line into the supernatural and yet they’re gritty crime stories. Talk about the way you blur the genre lines.
JOHN CONNOLLY: Well, blurring those genre lines sometimes seems to cause more problems than anything else. There’s still a lot of conservatism in mystery fiction when it comes to mixing genres, but particularly when there’s any hint of the supernatural. I think that’s to do with the mystery genre’s rationalist roots, but there’s also an element of snobbery to it as well. I’ve never felt that there’s a hierarchy of genres, and neither am I necessarily convinced that rationalism is an adequate response to the world, either in fiction or in life. Also, I think there’s a deliberate misunderstanding of the use of the supernatural in my books. I mean, it’s not as if I’m saying ‘The ghost done it!’. Rather, the acceptance of a world beyond this one allows me to touch upon morality and metaphysics in a way that’s different from the approaches of most of my peers. It’s not superior, or inferior, just different. I’m also a product of my upbringing, which is Irish Catholic, and my literary influences, which include, I suppose, the great Anglo-Irish gothic novelists (Maturin, Le Fanu, Stoker) as well as certain British supernatural writers, in particular M.R. James, and Ross Macdonald, who is also a gothic novelist, I think; Californian gothic, but gothic nonetheless. I mean, you only have to read The Doomsters to see that Macdonald was already playing with conceptions of the genre as far back as 1958.
MABERRY: Discuss the creation of ‘The Collector’.
CONNOLLY: That’s a case of a character suddenly assuming a prominence and importance that was never planned. I wrote a Parker novella entitled “The Reflecting Eye” that became part of the NOCTURNES collection, in which this odd, raggedy character called The Collector appeared, a kind of hunter of the damned. He just popped up, so the act of creation wasn’t conscious. That happens a lot in my books. I’ll often begin a story with just the name of a villain, and as I start to write that character will take form on the page. It’s not as if I sit down and make a list of attributes. They simply emerge.
Anyway, when I came to write The Unquiet, the figure of the Collector started to weave itself into that narrative too. I sometimes regret not publishing “The Reflecting Eye” as a separate volume, to be honest, as I suspect some of my readers aren’t aware of the character’s origins. Too late now, I suppose!
MABERRY: You’ve been at this for a while. What keeps it fresh?
CONNOLLY: Well, at least since THE WHITE ROAD, I’ve tended to write every second book out of contract, or just about, which gives me the opportunity to experiment. NOCTURNES, THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, THE GATES and, I believe, BAD MEN were all written without a contract or an advance, and I’ve been very fortunate that my publishers have been willing to give me that space, and to publish whatever results from it. As a consequence, I get to play with new forms, new genres, and different ways of telling a story, all of which feed back into the Parker novels. In addition, after taking a break from those books I tend to come back to them very refreshed, which I hope is communicated to the reader. The downside is that perhaps a certain amount of momentum has been lost in terms of gaining readers, as one Parker book doesn’t necessarily follow on from the previous one every year, and that really is the way to become a big bestseller: give the people the same thing every year, but just slightly different. On the other hand, if I did that I’d go crazy. I think I’ve achieved a nice balance, but not without making certain sacrifices.
MABERRY: Talk about your favorite short pieces you’ve written.
CONNOLLY: You know, I don’t really write very many short stories. In fact, since NOCTURNES was published in 2004 I’ve only written four, but that collection was incredibly important to me as a writer. I sometimes think of my writing career in pre- and post-NOCTURNES terms. NOCTURNES allowed me to experiment with various voices, and fed directly into later books, both Parker and non-Parker. If I had to pick stories that I particularly like, I suppose I’m proud of “The Inkpot Monkey” and “The Erlking”, two of the earliest stories written. Curiously, once I begin to write a short story I do it very, very quickly, maybe because it’s usually been simmering away at the back of my mind for a while. Oh, and I like “On THE ANATOMIZATION OF AN UNKNOWN MAN (1637) by Frans Mier”, which is about to be published in an anthology in aid of Amnesty International, maybe because it’s the first short story of mine which is not supernatural in nature. As an aside, I sometimes think that the short story form is better suited to the supernatural than the novel, maybe because the requirement to explain, or conclude, isn’t there to the same degree in the short story.
MABERRY: What’s your process from “Hey, I have an idea!” to “I just sent my manuscript to my editor!”
CONNOLLY: Long, very long. I write very slowly, but I write a little nearly every day, and then I go right back to the start and work my way through the manuscript, and I repeat that process over and over. EVERY DEAD THING, my first book, went through about 40 drafts, but it was written over the space of five years. Now, it’s probably 8-10 start-to-finish drafts. For the first draft, I’ll set a target of 1000 words a day. If I get a little more done, then great, but that’s what I aim for. Once the first draft is done, I may look at one chapter every day, honing the language and expanding on characters and situations. I find that a chapter a day is the most that I can do; after that, I’m inclined to skim.
Then, usually when I’m about halfway through a novel, I’ll start to have some idea – a very general one – about what the next book might be. I push it to the back of my subconscious and try not to think about it directly, but I’ll know that it’s there. All told, then, from idea to delivery usually takes at least 18 months, although in the case of something like THE GATES, which I’ve been mulling over for ages, it’s been seven years, I think.
MABERRY: Give us the lowdown on THE LOVERS.
CONNOLLY: THE LOVERS is quite pared down compared to some of the earlier books, but the mood is pretty consistent. I’m pretty happy with it, and it may even be the best of the Parker books so far, although that’s hard for me to judge as I’m too close to them. On the most basic level, though, as a writer you hope that you’re getting a little better with practice, and maybe it’s just that I’d like to think that THE LOVERS is good. It deals with Parker’s childhood, and his father’s death. It also, I guess, comes down conclusively on one side or the other when it comes to the supernatural elements in the novels and, as a consequence, the direction of the subsequent novels is likely to change.
MABERRY: Tell us about your next book.
CONNOLLY: Well, the next book is THE GATES, which is due to be published in October. It’s about a small boy and his dog who discover that the new neighbors are Satanists who have accidentally opened the gates of hell. It’s an odd little book, filled with footnotes and discussions of quantum physics and philosophy, but I like the tone of it, and it was fun to write. It’s mischievous, I guess, and in no way ‘worthy’. Also, it’s a magic-free zone. No wizards. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know any kids with magical powers when I was young, not unless you count being able to steal a bike in under a minute as magic . . .
- JM
Visit John Connolly at www.johnconnollybooks.com
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