Fighting

This is going to be another of those confessional posts. You can either read it or not. You can take it on board or ignore it. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this; it's just a distasteful memory that came to me earlier today, when I was feeling melancholy.

I remember the first real fight I ever had. I was about fourteen years old, playing football with some friends outside one of their houses. Some other kids I knew from school approached us and told me that one of their number wanted to fight me. I didn't know him; I'd never even seen him before. But he wanted to fight me.

I didn't want to fight. I was playing football. I didn't even know if I knew how to fight, not for real. After about half an hour of these other kids trying to convince me to fight and calling me a chicken, I got pissed off and said Yes, okay. I'll fight him.

I walked out of my friend's garden and into the middle of the road. This other kid was tall - much taller than me. I'm short now, but I was even shorter then. I remember him coming at me, swinging wildly. I threw a couple of clumsy punches, and then it developed into a huddle. We both went down on the ground - I think I might have tripped him. I remember the impact against the tarmac; I remember I was on top. I was holding him down with my right hand, so I threw a punch with my innefectual left. The punch missed its target; I struck the road surface instead of his face, scraping my knuckles. I remember hearing somebody laugh. Then time seemed to stretch and distort. I swapped hands. I started punching him in the face with my right. He didn't fight back. I had him. After a while, I stood up. He stayed down, clutching his face. I kicked him a  few times - in the body, not the head. Everyone else was quiet. Then, not knowing what else to do, I walked away, picked up the football, and went home.

I saw the kid the next day at school. People kept coming up to me asking if I'd seen his face, and did I really do that to him? He claimed that it hadn't hurt, that my punches were soft. So I approached him in the school yard, and called him on it. His face was a mess: all lumps and scratches and fresh bruises. One of his cheeks was swollen from my punches. There was fear in his eyes. He told me he hadn't said those things. He was so tall, but in that moment he was smaller than me. When I asked him if he wanted me to hit him again, he shook his head and walked quietly away.

The most disturbing thing to me now, as I look back on all this, is the memory of enjoying the fact that I'd done so much damage to his face. I'd marked him. I hadn't wanted to fight him. I'd even tried to talk my way out of it, but he and his friends had refused to back down. They'd wanted violence. So he got hurt. I hurt him. And that felt right. It felt just. There are consequences to everything we do and say. I knew that, even then. The state of his face was the consequence of him being such a fool.

I learned a lesson that day, but I'm still not sure if I understand what it was.

Habit by Stephen McGeagh

Last year, I took a chance on a debut novel by an author I'd never heard of, simply because of the involvment of Nicholas Royle and the publisher Salt.

The book was Habit by Stephen McGeagh, and it was certainly a chance well worth taking. Here's the potted review I posted on Facebook, where I talk briefly about the books I read each year:

Habit by Stephen McGeah

Books like this make me happy. It's short and brutal, dark and violent, seedy and miserable, and populated by truly unlikeable characters. Terse prose, minimal description, a simple, uncluttered plot. Modern noir, blood-and-neon-drenched; angry, loveless, raging against everything. Books like this make me happy.

I was so impressed with this novel that I contacted the author to ask him a  few questions. Here's the resultant Q&A:

GMc: I'm embarrassed to admit that I know very little about you, other than you play in a metal band and have written a superb debut novel for Salt. Could you fill me in on your background, maybe tell me about some of your influences and inspirations?

SM: That's probably it, to be honest. I grew up in Manchester but was born in Liverpool. I'm a season-ticket-holding Evertonian. Studied at MMU. Came into contact with people like Calum Kerr and Michael Schmidt as part of the BA, who (maybe unwittingly) encouraged me to write more. Messed around a bit (a lot) after uni. Took out a wopping bank loan to go back and join the Writing School. Wrote more. Finally found a great bunch of lads in Colibra. Wrote even more. Everything has just snowballed really. It's all one lovely, grimy, back-street, metal, sexy snowball.

Would enjoy a literary drinking session with Bret Easton Ellis, Joe Abercrombie, Russell Hoban, Kazuo Ishiguro and Steve Hollyman.

My biggest influence musically are the US band Lamb of God.


GMc: Habit is a very dark book. Beautifully dark. Could you tell me a little about the original inspiration for the story and how those themes and ideas developed? Was that pitch-dark tone there from the start, or did it come out of the writing process?

SM: Thanks, Gary, I hope it's dark. It should be black as Hell. That's what I wanted. That's what I enjoy writing. I'm not sure I've ever written something cheery, and liked it. Habit was horrible from day one. The writing process allows us to wallow, I suppose. Standing knee deep in dirty water and plunging your hands in to the elbows, trying to rake something worthwhile up from the mud at the bottom. Originally, working on Habit was a way of exploring the more shadowy parts of town. The characters and plot grew out of Manchester's night. I hope it all hangs together.

GMc: The book is tough to classify. It's part crime, part horror, part bitter, biting realism. Did you set out to blend genres in this way, or did ideas that not even cross your mind as you wrote the story?

SM: I didn't set out to write a genre novel. It was just a story. I enjoy horror fiction. I enjoy realism. I really love straight-up fantasy, swords and sandals shit. The best thing about readers reactions has been the sheer variety of feedback I've had. People have told me they've read it through their fingers, putting it down at certain points "for a breather". Other have laughed through it. It's for readers to classify, I guess is what I'm trying to get at. I'm very happy for it to be a genre-blender.

GMc: We have a mutual friend in Nick Royle. I've been a fan of his work for decades, and he was a major part of the "miserablist" movement in the 1990s that helped me find my own literary voice when I was struggling to decide what I wanted to say with my writing. Did you know Nick before you read him, and did his work influence you in any way?

SM: I didn't know Nick until our first workshop together at MMU. I felt he really got what I was trying to do with Habit, early on. He made me believe it was worth writing. He told me which bits were shit. He invited me to do my first public reading - taking a chance on a student at an event that was promoting his then new Nightjar imprint. Through Nick I met people like Conrad William, Tom Fletcher, and Simon Bestwick. I think one of the hardest things about writing can simply be *feeling* like a writer. Like that is what you should be doing. Nick has influenced me in a massive way, I was lucky to meet him as his student, luckier still to keep him as a friend. I love what he does. Counterparts is a fucking great book. I've just started his new one, First Novel. I've been lucky enough to hear it read from at certain events. People need to get a copy early. Say you where there, before the prizes start rolling in.

Stephen McGeagh

A Chapter

I don't usually do this, but here's a short chapter from the novel I'm working on right now. The book is called The Bones of You, and it's a melancholy ghost story about the ties that bind people - particularly families - together and the damage those ties can cause.

I'm sharing this chapter in it's unedited, first-draft form. In fact, I've just this minute finished writing it. Ignore the typos. This extract will no doubt change quite a bit during subsequent drafts. But I think it has something. I think I've managed to capture a mood, a moment, that I was aiming for...

 

Chapter Eight: It Was Like This

 

I remember being in the car with my dad. I must have been eight or nine years old. I have no idea where my mother was – it was just me and my dad, out for a drive, or maybe going somewhere specific, perhaps to visit someone. I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. We were in the car, just me and him. That’s what matters here.

            The sky was growing dark outside the car windows. I have a vague notion that it was late in the year, but not quite winter. We were alone on the road; one of those freak pockets of traffic-free driving. On either side of the car, the bleak moors stretched for miles. I think we were heading towards Manchester, or we might have been returning from Manchester to Leeds. Again, this isn’t important. Just the darkening sky, the empty road, the moors…they’re important.

            I glanced sideways, at my dad, and saw that he was frowning. He was staring straight ahead, through the windscreen, but in the reflected light of the dashboard I could see the worry-lines on his face. His forehead was creased. His mouth was a tight slit in his face. He might have been worried, or scared. I think he might have been scared.

            This was a few months before my parents split up. I didn’t know why they broke up back then, but I do now: my mother was having an affair with a work colleague. It started slowly, with clandestine lunches, a quick drink after work, and then developed into illicit sex in badly-decorated hotel rooms during weekend conferences. Then there were no conferences; they were just a lie to facilitate the sex.

            I think my dad knew about the affair for a long time before he confronted my mother. What held him back – the thing that stopped him from asking her outright – was me, what it would do to me if their marriage broke apart.

            So he kept it in, held it back, probably lay staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping at night, and listening to my mother’s deep breathing next to him.

            That day in the car, surrounded by the shadowed moors, I stared at him and felt a terrible tightness in my chest. I started to cry, but silently. I didn’t want him to know that I knew he was hurting. That was the extent of my insight: I could sense his pain, and it caused me pain, too.

            We sat there for what felt like hours, but was really, in all probability, just the space of few minutes, him staring out at the road, his face knitted in a scared frown, and me staring at him, tears flowing down my cheeks.

            Then headlights flared on the road ahead, and my dad blinked. I turned away, lifted a hand and rubbed my face, drying the tears. The headlights grew brighter, came closer. They were on full-beam. My dad started flashing his headlights, trying to signal to the other driver that he needed to dip his lights. The other driver sounded his horn, but he dipped the lights as he passed us on the other side of the road, heading in the direction from which we’d come.

            “Fuck,” said my dad. It was the only time I ever heard him swear. “That idiot is going to get someone killed.” He turned towards me. His cheeks were wet. I hadn’t noticed before, but he’d been crying too. He smiled. It was the saddest smile I think I’ve ever seen.

            I didn’t say a word. I just sat there, feeling closer to my dad than ever before, yet aware that there was an immeasurable gap between us. For some reason, this small incident had opened up a channel, forged a connection. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. It was just one of those things, those tiny moments were the universe tilts towards you, giving you an insight that makes no sense, but feels good anyway.

            My dad is dead now. He’s been gone a long time – too many years for me to want to count them. But whenever I think of him – when I remember what kind of man he was – I call up that time, that place, that moment in the car, when we shared something strange and intangible but neither of us possessed the knowledge or the understanding to speak of it.

2013, I'm Coming For You...

2012 was an odd year. It had a few small highs, a couple of incredible lows, and a lot of middling ground where I felt like I just wanted to get the year out of the way.

But enough of that. Now it's 2013, and there are plans to be made.

Right now, thanks to karate and running, I feel fitter than I have done in about five years. This year I'm continuing in the same manner, and hope to keep getting fitter, faster, stronger and sleeker as the year advances.

2013 will see a few new releases from me.

There's my novella Nightsiders, due in April, from DarkFuse.

My short apocalyptic novel The End will be launched at the World Fantasy Convention by Newcon Press in November.

Then there's my Secret Project - the one I'm not yet allowed to say very much about. A short supernatural novel called The Bones of You, which will be released at Halloween as a lovely limited hardcover.

This year I'll also be finishing The Quiet Room and handing it over to my agent, who'll hopefully then sell it to a major publisher for a hefty advance as part of a three-book deal. We shall see... Whatever happens, I'm very excited about this one. It's shaping up to be the best thing I've ever written.