I’ve written a novel and, naturally, I wrote it arse-first, as is my style... by Will Nett
I’ve written a novel. That’s right; it’s finished. If a book can ever be said to be finished.
I’m writing a novel. No; wait. I’ve been saying it for that long those four words have infiltrated my sub-conscious. I’ve written a novel. That’s right; it’s finished. If a book can ever be said to be finished.
I’ve been writing my full-length fiction debut, Hogweed, for about three years, now; standard timescale for most authors. That is, those unencumbered by unrelated full-time semi-gainful employment and the attendant tedium of everyday life; cutting the grass, cat sitting and taking down the Christmas decorations – although you can kill two birds with one stone by combining the last two.
But here we are: four Prime Ministers; two Popes; two Boro managers – maybe three by the time you read this; 34 Katie Price boyfriends; 26 flights and 408 bottles of Fleur d’Aboukir later, with a near-final draft sitting on my desk at the foot of the Cleveland Hills that will hopefully quieten the most ardent naggers of the ‘When’s it out?’ crowd. They’re usually the people that haven’t read any of my previous five books but especially want to know what it’s about. Anyway, Boris Pasternak took nearly forty years to write ‘Dr Zhivago’ which is roughly about the time you wait to see a real doctor these days. These days. Time is relative then, when it comes to writing.
I didn’t really know how to describe the book until recently, when an interested agent pinned it down as a literary crime thriller, though it started out as something very different, but that’s another story; Hogweed II probably, which will no doubt be eventually demanded by Netflix producers and showrunners.
Once I’d developed the characters, they themselves did away entirely with my original storyline and started taking hallucinogenic drugs, robbing each other blind and offing anyone who got in the way by varying means, so blame them not the author for the long wait. That’s what happens, see. The characters come alive and run amok in such a way that even the person who created them can’t control them, a bit like Doctor Frankenstein and his big daft monster.
Naturally, I wrote it arse-first, as is my style. Not chronologically but geographically you might say, the location-heavy narrative determined by wherever I happened to be in the world at that particular time; the dusty souks of Marrakech; a Chinese restaurant in Brittany; a Turkish baths in Budapest; downtown Reykjavik; or the grimy streets of 1980s Spencerbeck. You can take the lad out of the estate, etc.
And before you ask… NO… you’re not in it. Actually, one of you is but you’ll have to read it to discover which thinly-disguised bludgeoned-to-death-with-a-bird-table character will have you consulting your lawyer by the end of the first act.
The book was born out of the picture accompanying this article; of the author standing alone in the wild looking back on himself and seeing nothing but a million miles of blue sky and barren scrubland. When a friend threw in the ‘Hogweed’ header based on my previous life as a gardener, the whole thing put me in mind of great literary anti-heroes like Hamlet, Raskolnikov, and Camus’ Meursault. Y’know; wrong ’uns on fatal crusades, vacuum-sealed in their own hubris.
Lob in a restless semi-retired thief embroiled in an existential family crisis; two audacious heists – is there any other kind?; a load of magic mushrooms and a couple of French mistresses and you end up with the Gonzo-bastard lovechild of Guy Ritchie and Patricia Highsmith. And before you ask… NO… you’re not in it. Actually, one of you is but you’ll have to read it to discover which thinly-disguised bludgeoned-to-death-with-a-bird-table character will have you consulting your lawyer by the end of the first act. Don’t worry if you don’t make the final cut, though. Like any good tradesman, I rarely throw away material(s); the Danish Scientologists who press-ganged me in Copenhagen; Roth, the David Dickinsonesque watch dealer from Geneva; and the well-known Middlesbrough restaurant proprietor who appeared in the first draft will likely turn up in the next adventure. Through to the final edit, though, are an Italian Tarot card reader; Benny Binion; a notorious local murder victim, and *squints at notes* Mary Shelley.
As for my own part; I suppose I ought to distance myself from the rampant criminality that the central character becomes embroiled in, and say something like ‘It’s fiction, remember’, but that’s the sort of thing Hogweed himself would say, so as ever I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide what is real or imagined.
When’s it out? Nobody knows. That’s an unfathomable question as complex as the story itself. Why? Because that’s how it works in publishing.
Coming Soon(ish): Hogweed
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