Author name: E.P.ROSE
Book Name: THE CONSPIRACY KID
Where to buy: Amazon, local bookshops, www.tablethirteenbooks.com.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TABLETHIRTEEN
Twitter: @tweeteprose
Website: www.tablethirteenbooks.com
Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!
I was born and raised in London, England, and that’s where I still live, with my restaurateur wife and various daughters and Frank (labradoodle) and Wednesday (cat).
Dr Johnson said: “A man who is tired of London is tired of life.” Mind you, the good doctor never knew New York or Paris or Chicago or Vienna or practically anywhere else at all, so what did he know? He also said: “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” I go along with that. And: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” – which is a pretty good discussion topic, if nothing else.
I was born into a Jewish family, went first to a Roman Catholic school and then away to board at The King’s School Canterbury where, as a scholar, I was inducted into the Cathedral foundation. I kept my fingers crossed when the Dean placed his hand upon my head and said: “Admitto te.” It was all very nerve-wracking. I was forever expecting at least one deity to smite me with a thunderbolt. However, I seem to have survived unsmitten – so far.
Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
The Conspiracy Kid starts with a poem, which begins: “Friend, as of now, the Conspiracy Kid has taken up residence in your mind. And if you say I didn’t, well I did ……. “ And this poem, which is a nice short sonnet, is the starting point for the book. If you read the sonnet, you are automatically enrolled in The Conspiracy Kid Fan Club, whether you like it or not.
This book tells the story of some of the earliest Conspiracy Kid Fan Club members. No, it’s not a gospel, whatever some people may say, because, apart from anything else, it’s fiction, isn’t it? That’s what it says on the cover – fiction. The Conspiracy Kid Fan Club is not a religion, whatever some people might think. I am though very interested in what makes one man’s religion another man’s con or conspiracy. It’s fascinating and funny. Goes back to my schooling, I guess. Fear of being struck by thunderbolts goes hand in hand with a lunatic kind of compulsion to dare the deities to show themselves.
There’s a lot of comic potential, especially with people who are damaged and distressed and bereaved and broken and bonkers, as some of the poor people in this story sadly are – well, as most of us are in fact, one way or another.
How do you create your characters?
I imagine them. I imagine what they look like. I imagine what they sound like. I imagine what they feel like. I imagine how they walk, how they eat, how they sleep. I rehearse them – in my head and out loud, when I’m alone in my office, when I’m in the car or on the bus, or when I’m out on the common walking Frank, which can lead to some pretty strange looks, I can tell you – especially if I’m alternating between, say, Joe Claude the bereaved billionaire’s Alfred Hithcock waddle and Fritz the waiter’s Teutonic mince.
Dogs, though, do come in quite handy in this respect: if you talk to yourself without canine company, people assume that you are nuts (or an actor, which is much the same thing). If you talk to yourself, though, when walking a dog, they think you’re talking to the dog, which is of course also nuts, but people seem to think it’s cute.
What inspires you and what got you started in writing?
I grew up (or failed to grow up probably) with Peter Pan, which I suppose I must have read when I was six or so – and I fell in love with books. You can plot a line: Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Hiawatha, Emil and the Detectives, Animal Farm, W.H.Davies, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Stan Lee – so many books, so little time – the list goes on and on.
But when did it occur to me that I wanted to write one myself? I blame Brautigan and Heller, who opened my eyes, with Trout Fishing in America and Catch 22 respectively, to a whole new level of language. These two very different American geniuses rearranged the world with words and, well, I think there is something to be said for taking the human experience, which is, let’s face it, not exactly a bed of roses, and using words to turn it into something manageably hilarious. I also blame Kurt Vonnegut, oh, and Damon Runyon more than somewhat.
Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)
I write in a room, which is situated above Sonny’s Kitchen, which is one of the restaurants my wife and Phil Howard own. This is a very convenient arrangement, what with the attached deli and the bar. Stimulants? The trouble with stimulants is that the law of diminishing returns invariably applies, whatever the stimulant may be. The best stimulant is the story and the excitement of working out what is going to happen next, word by word by word. And for this process what I require is SILENCE!
How do you get your ideas for writing?
I wake up and there they are. It’s a miracle. Unless they wake me up in the middle of the night, in which case it’s a pain, because it’s then very hard to get back to sleep.
What do you like to read?
Oh, all sorts of stuff. What can I say? Well, how about the last three things I read? Roberto Escobar’s rather bizarre book about him and his brother, Pablo. Curtain, Poirot’s Last Case – for the third time, I think. When I’m finding it hard to get back to sleep, Agatha Christie is perfect. You can tell me jokes over and over, because I forget the punch-line. And I can read Agatha Christies again and again, because I forget whodunnit. And before that, A Visit To Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford, which I have been meaning to read for years. It describes a journey to Mexico after the war. It is gloriously funny and finely written and informative and, well, just read it – a treat in store.
What would your advice be for authors or aspiring authors in regards to writing?
Arithmetic is a very handy writing tool. If you write 1 page a day and take the weekends off, that’s 5 pages a week, which works out to 260 pages in a year – and that’s a respectable sort of size for a book. So get on with it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. Just, as the saying goes, do it.
Anything else you’d like to share?
One of my favourite Damon Runyon characters is Big Jule (pronounced Julie) from Chicago. You probably know him from Guys n Dolls, which is all based on Runyon’s stories. Big Jule from Chicago is shooting craps and someone points out, bravely when you consider the size of the gun Big Jule carries about his person, that there are no spots on Big Jule’s dice, to which the aforementioned gangster replies: “Yes, I took them off for luck – but I remembers where they was.” Einstein famously said he was convinced that God does not play dice with the world. Einstein may have been right. On the other hand, if it turns out that the world is a crap-shoot, then I think that God would almost certainly be using Big Jule from Chicago’s dice.
1 comment
HHIS I should have thought of that!