Author John Connolly
John Connolly is best known for his works in the Charlie Parker Series. He was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel for Every Dead Thing. He also became the first author outside of the U.S to win the Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Novel in 2000. With his novels falling mainly under the Crime genre they have come to feature more supernatural elements. His works also appeal to fans of the horror, sci fi, fantasy genres. John’s newest work is slated for release in May. Before becoming a writer he worked as a freelance journalist for The Irish Times.
Q: What was it like to grow up in Dublin? Seems like a beautiful place? What is it like there?
A: Well, bits of it are beautiful. It would be straining credulity a bit to describe Rialto, where I grew up, as beautiful, although there were worse places, some of which we could nearly see from Rialto’s taller buildings, which were all local authority projects. We had a canal: parts of that were beautiful. Not all of it, but parts of it. Seriously, Dublin is a small
city, and has a lot of charm to it. It’s not grand in any way, but I’m very fond of it.
Q: Do you remember which first stories appealed to you as a child?
A: Well, the first book I read was an Enid Blyton novel. It was a Secret Seven mystery, and I devoured them from then on. After that, I exhausted the books in the children’s section of the library, and was given an adult ticket: H G Wells, Alistair MacLean, Stephen King, and assorted ghost story writers. That was the way of things when I was a kid there was no ‘young adult’ fiction as such, or very little. You just kind of jumped straight from children’s books to adult books, with no great difficulty, and to no great harm. I came to mystery fiction in my teens, through Ed McBain, so I was quite a late convert, at least compared to some of the other genres that I’d explored before then.
Q: Do you think coming from where you did has influenced your writing style?
A: I don’t write quite the way an American would write, but there would have been no point in simply imitating an American voice. That would have been a sterile exercise, a little like Martin Amis’s mystery novel, Night Train. You can’t shake off your cultural and social influences so easily, and you probably wouldn’t want to. I guess I’d like to think that there’s a lyricism to my writing that may owe something to the Irish literary tradition, but I may be wrong. If
nothing else, I wanted to escape from those preconceptions of what an Irish author should be, so that desire to do something different may be the greatest influence that Ireland has had on me.
Q: Do you still contribute to The Irish Times on occasion?
A: Very occasionally. I review books a couple of times a year, and I’ll do the odd author interview if it’s someone in whom I’m interested. All of those interviews have been posted on my website. I think I fret too much when I write journalistic pieces now, so they take me much longer than they should. I’ve fallen out of the habit of working quickly. In addition, the novels are really the priority now, and I could get 10,000 words of a book done in the time it takes me to write a 2000 word newspaper article.
Q: What did feel like to be nominated for Bram Stoker Award?
A: I’m sure it would have felt very lovely, had I won it, but I didn’t. Every Dead Thing was nominated, and I received a certificate in the post, but that was it. By and large, I don’t tend to worry too much about awards. Nobody ever wrote a better book because the previous book won something. In addition , I don’t like going to awards ceremonies if I can help it, which means that I don’t get nominated for certain prizes, as a precondition of being nominated is that you’re going to show up for the ceremony. Hell, you don’t even have to show up for the Oscars if you don’t want to go, and they’ll still give you a prize. In the end, awards are lovely to receive, but you shouldn’t get too hung up on them.
Q: What inspired you to write the Charlie Parker Series?
A: I was very influenced by James Lee Burke and Ross Macdonald, so reading them was probably a large part of the impetus for wanting to write myself. I don’t know if writers necessarily think in terms of inspiration when it comes to beginning a series, or even beginning a novel. You’ll have your influences, but you’re spurred on by that desire to create something different, something that hasn’t quite existed before. Also, I felt very frustrated in the Irish Times,
probably because I wanted to write fiction generally frowned upon in the newspaper world, but also because I knew that I was never going to be a very good journalist. I’d be an okay one, but there were far more talented people than I in the paper. I’m not sure, though, how I started believing that, not being a very good journalist, I could somehow go off and write a book that would be published. Ego, maybe, or just the hope that I might be able to prove something to myself, and to others. Never underestimate that desire to prove a point, or disprove the opinion of others, when it comes to spurring yourself on to do something different.
Q: Your novels have become more..supernatural.Why do you think that is?
A: It wasn’t intentional, or planned: it’s just been a natural progression. I like the idea of restoring some of that old sense of the word ‘mystery’, which has its roots in the spiritual and supernatural, to a genre that generally prides itself on its rationalist roots. Perhaps something of my own Catholicism plays a part too,Parker is a man seeking redemption, which is a common enough notion in mystery fiction, but that word comes freighted with a certain spiritual baggage for me, so the supernatural elements are a logical consequence of that.
Q: Why do you think the supernatural and darker elements appeal to so many people?
A: Well, the supernatural is a good ‘carrier’: it’s capable of taking on a great deal of subtext and metaphor. Also, I think we all secretly have a little kernel of fear within us composed of specific and nonspecific fears. Darker fiction allows us to crack that kernel, perhaps.
Q: Is there one subject you have yet to cover that you would most like to bring your readers?
A: Gosh, again I’m not sure that I think in those terms. Like most writers, I’m a magpie by nature, always looking for shiny things. A subject catches my attention, whether it’s religion or quantum physics, and that provides the seed for a book. I’m not an issue-based writer, but issues that concern me do find their way into the books. I’m conscious, though, of not being preachy, or making readers feel like they’re being hectored. I may not get that balance right all the time, but I am aware of the need for it.
Q: You also write short stories. Do you prefer to write short stories or novels?
A: I haven’t really written very many short stories, or certainly not since the NOCTURNES collection. I’ve probably only written four or five in five or six years. Generally, what happens is that an idea for a story strikes me, and I then I wait for an excuse to write it to come along. That’s often someone requesting a story for an anthology, but I rarely write stories to fit. Rather, if the idea is there, and the suggestion suits the story in my head, then I’ll put it down on paper. I really love the short story form, but when I write them they tend to be supernatural by nature. I think I just prefer the space offered by the novel form, and the opportunity it offers to develop a multiplicity of ideas instead of just one. Then again, there are times when an idea will just be better suited to that short form. I get a great sense of satisfaction when I write a short story, though. There’s a completeness to them, I guess, a kind of unity.
Q: Would you like to see your work brought to life on film?
A: One of my short stories, THE NEW DAUGHTER, was filmed, but that’s very different to the filming of a novel. With a short story, the writer has really just provided an idea upon which a film can expand. Filming a novel tends to involve a degree of contraction, and the removal of a lot of narrative voice, which is the thing that often made people like the book to begin with. In general, I’m very protective of my books, although I have optioned two of them, but not any of the Parker books. I love film, so that curiosity is there, yes, but I’m also a little wary.
Q: The Book of Lost things is about Fairies and the power of books. What led you to write that? Do you have any tales of fairies from your neck of the woods that have influenced your interest in such things?
A: I think THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS is a book about childhood and stories for adults, although it’s interesting that younger readers read it in a different way, perhaps because the issues dealt with in the book, particularly the sometimes painful transition from childhood to adulthood, are so immediate and relevant to them, while older readers pick up on the sense of regret. I love those old folk tales, but I didn’t use any Irish stories in the book. I preferred the more universally known tales, and I approached them as stories that still had important things to say about the world.
They were created as a means of imparting wisdom and knowledge to children at a time when children were expected to take their place in the adult world much earlier than they do now. That’s what I found fascinating about them.
Q: Why do you think book and written word contain such powers of escape?
A: I’m not sure that we read books to escape, or not solely. They are a means of understanding the world, and novels in particular represent the refraction of individual experience, an attempt to find the universal in the specific. That’s their appeal. Oh, and they help to pass the time very nicely. Nobody who reads is ever bored.
Q: Do you consider yourself lucky to be writing material that does offer the reader an escape from the norm?
A: I consider myself very fortunate to be published at all. I think I still have nightmares about it all being taken away from me, which is why I work so hard at it.
Q: Who are some of your favorite modern authors? Why?
A: Well, I still admire James Lee Burke a lot, and there are so many modern writers, both inside and outside (but mainly outside) my own genres whom I admire but, in truth, I’ve become very aware of the gaps in my knowledge, and conscious of the classic, older books that I haven’t read. So I’ve just finished Great Expectations, and I have a bunch of Penguin Classics to which I want to turn, and a pile of non-fiction books too. I think, particularly as a writer who gets sent quite a lot of new books, often in the hope that I’ll offer a supportive quote, that it’s too easy to become overwhelmed by the new at the expense of the old. I want to fill in those gaps, and no modern novels have given me as much pleasure as, say, The Three Musketeers, or Bleak House.
Q: Is there anything you can tell us about your book due, I believe in May?
A: It’s a sequel to The Gates, which was about a small boy who discovers that his neighbors are trying to open the gates of Hell. There’s still some dispute over the title, but in the UK it will be called Hell’s Bells, I hope. Most of it is set in Hell. I’ve dragged a small boy to Hell in a book, but I’ve tried to make it funny as well as a little scary.
Q: What other projects are you excited about bringing to the public next?
A: Excited? I worry a lot about how my books are going to be received, so I’m not sure that ‘excited’ is the right word. I try to write the best book that I can at any particular point, but I really wish that I was better at what I do, and that’s not false modesty. I’m pleased with the way the new Parker, THE BURNING SOUL, is developing, but it’s still far from ready to be seen by anyone and I know that, a year after it comes out, I will be very conscious of its flaws, but that means I’ll try to make the next book better still. I may not succeed, but I’ll try!
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