J O H N ' S    J O U R N A L I S M T H E    W R I T I N G    L I F E by John Connolly for Ottakars magazine, 2003 The interview began reasonably well. I was promoting my third book, The Killing Kind, in the Far East and the journalist conducting the interview seemed unusually excited at the prospect of speaking to me. (Actually, any degree of excitement at meeting me is pretty unusual. Even vague disinterest sets my pulse racing a little.) Niceties exchanged, she began asking her questions, and the interview immediately took a turn down a conversational dark alley. Journalist: "You've lived a very interesting life." Me (wondering just how boring someone's life would have to be to find mine even remotely interesting): "Well, I'm not sure about that . . ." Journalist: "You're being too modest." Me (with 99 per cent certainty): "Er, no I don't think so." Journalist: "I mean, you've saved lives. People would be dead if it wasn't for you." Me (wondering if, when I'm napping, I somehow sleepwalk and rescue women from burning buildings, like a kind of somnambulist Superman): "Look, I - " Journalist: "And now Martin Scorsese is making a film of your life." Me (briefly entering a fantasy world in which Martin Scorsese does make a film of my life, and it's even duller than his Tibetan movie "Kundun"): "I'm not sure that he is, and - " Journalist: "Tell me, you must miss driving an ambulance in New York." Me (as the light dawns): "Um, I think you're confusing me with Joe Connelly, the guy who wrote Bringing Out the Dead. I've never even been in an ambulance." Journalist (unable to conceal her disappointment): "Oh. So what do you write...?" * * * * * Being a writer is a funny business. I spend large portions of my time in an office at the top of my house, making stuff up and being paid for it. As the writing of a book proceeds, I become more and more solitary, a situation not helped by the fact that large numbers of people have died quite nastily in my books, so it's sometimes assumed that I sit at home and longingly finger kitchen knives in my spare time. And then, when the book is eventually published, I head out into the world to promote the result and some journalists and booksellers don't seem entirely sure of who I am. In addition to the whole ambulance driver/ Martin Scorsese fiasco I have, over the last five years, been handed books to sign by Michael Connelly, Joseph Connelly and, strangely, Ian Rankin, who is Scottish, doesn't look like me, and whose name bears no resemblance to mine. I almost signed the Rankin books, if only because I could have added a shamrock to my signature and confused some Americans into believing that Edinburgh is in Ireland. I have also, at various points: crashed my publishers' car while lost in England (and then asked for directions from the guy I'd rear-ended. The directions cost me two thousand pounds, including VAT.); been threatened with violence for making a disparaging remark about a Dorothy L. Sayers book; met a man who was shot while trying to burgle a house, but didn't realize he'd been shot until he took his sweater off and his lung collapsed; managed to get lost in Montana's Rattlesnake Wilderness while attempting to interview the great crime writer James Lee Burke, who had to send out dogs to find me; and fallen off a stage while giving a reading. (That last one was pretty embarrassing, I have to admit. Actually, most of those were pretty embarrassing.) You see, increasingly, writers are expected to go out into the world and publicise their books. After all, tens of thousands of new titles are published each year in Britain and Ireland alone, and the only way for a budding writer to get his or her book noticed is to take to the road and try to convince booksellers and readers that the book is worth seeking out (even if this is a lie.) But writing is a solitary business and writers are, by and large, solitary creatures. Some of them are deeply unsuited to being sent out to talk to regular human beings, and they make strange demands of booksellers and publishers. One well-known female American writer requires a small dog to stroke when she makes bookstore appearances, since it is the only way that she can calm her nerves. Any number of writers demand a bottle of wine at their right hand when they sign books, and it's a safe bet that they don't leave very much in the bottle by the end of the night, while one Booker winner asked for a complete chicken dinner before facing an audience. A famous gay American writer visiting Britain insisted on being guided around the clubs used in the TV series "Queer as Folk", despite repeated assurances that the series was filmed in the studio. He greeted each unfamiliar club with a baffled "It sure looked different on TV." And legendarily, a now-deceased male American writer of "bonkbuster" novels apparently required his publishers to provide a suitably accommodating young lady at the end of every evening on tour. My publishers will stretch to a pint of beer and a packet of crisps, which is not the same thing at all. As it happens, I quite like touring. I enjoy meeting booksellers who, generally speaking, are interesting people, and I like talking to readers. I'm still a bit surprised when people show up for events, though, which is why I tend to do signings alongside other authors. That way I have somebody else to blame if nobody shows up. Typically, this is the unfortunate Paul Johnston, a very fine Scottish crime writer with whom I have toured regularly for the past four years, although, among others, I have also burdened Martyn Waites, Mark Billingham, Colin Bateman, Pauline McLynn, Walter Mosley and Harlan Coben with my presence. Naturally, I claimed all credit on those occasions when we were mobbed by adoring crowds. If we were greeted by two men and a dog, I would assert, with some force, that my peers were dragging me down and would not draw flies if they were dead. You see, authors on tour live in dread of the "no show," those awful events when a line of empty chairs stares back accusingly at the writer, confirming that he or she is, in fact, a total nonentity and barely deserving of space in a remainder bin. Most writers have a fairly fragile ego, and this sort of occurrence does it no good at all. It can sometimes be a prelude to a breakdown of some kind, fuelled by lots of glasses of cheap wine left over when the expected multitudes didn't appear. "No shows" happen. My worst memory is of a bookstore event in the United States not so very long ago. I was kind of expecting the worst before I got to the signing, as my book was the only one in the bookstore window which had not been written by a black person, or which did not deal with black history or culture in some way. Rather unfortunately, the book in question was called The White Road, which made it look even more out of place than it already did. It struck me that it was in danger of being mistaken for some kind of controversial lifestyle book, a crazed race treatise suggesting that young black people might be a lot happier if they just acted more like white folks, if they swapped their Public Enemy CDs for music by that nice Andy Williams, and their Wu Wear for Pringle sweaters and plus fours. Nobody came, which is probably just as well. I'm fortunate, in one sense, since my books, which are set in the United States, require a certain amount of hands-on research, so I get to balance the time spent writing alone with a degree of contact with policemen, coroners, private detectives and men so tough they can be shot and not realise it until later. Folks like these tend to be more colourful than the norm. In Maine, where my main character Charlie Parker is based, the former medical examiner would encourage his staff to save their empty ketchup, jam and mayo jars and donate them to the office. They would then be used to store specimens from the bodies of those who had passed through his hands. The labels were not always completely removed from the jars before use, though, so parts of the M.E.'s basement now look like the supermarket from hell. (Heinz Tomato Kidneys, anyone?) In New York, while researching my first book, Every Dead Thing, I met a man who had been to school with one of John Gotti's sons. John Gotti, for those who don't know, was a New York gangster known as the "Teflon Don" because no charges ever stuck. Unfortunately, Gotti's Teflon coating eventually wore off and he was sent to jail. His son John Jr. temporarily took over as the head of the organisation, but he was one of the worst mobsters in history and quickly went the way of his father. John Jr. is famous for being just about the only mobster to admit under oath to the existence of the Cosa Nostra, which kind of defeats the purpose of being the head of an ostensibly secret society. (He also wore purple polyester leisure suits, and people who wear purple polyester leisure suits should not be allowed to run large criminal organisations. In fact, people who wear polyester leisure suits should not even be allowed to run small health clubs.) Anyway, the Gotti schoolmate was able to provide some curious details about Gotti life, not least of which was his claim that the school wisely decided not to send out report cards on the Gotti boy. After all, who was going to fail a Gotti? While working on The Killing Kind, a book that deals with religious obsession, I came across a TV evangelist who claimed to be able to cure ailments by putting his hand against the TV camera. Afflicted viewers were then invited to touch the relevant body part - sore ear, bad foot, itchy back - to the TV at home, after which they would be cured. Well, they would be if they sent in a donation. If they didn't pop twenty dollars in the mail then the cure didn't take and all they were left with was a bad case of static electricity and hair that stood on end any time they walked too close to their televisions. I enjoy the hands-on element of research. At the very least, it allows me to travel and talk to people who lead far more interesting lives than I do. Frequently, it throws up details which enrich the books. While researching Bad Men, my new book, I spent some time out on Peaks Island, which lies in Casco Bay, just east of Portland, Maine. I wanted to set Bad Men in an enclosed, isolated community, and an island seemed like the best bet, but I had no idea just how much material Peaks would yield. Peaks was dotted with old observation towers, a legacy of World War II when the island was one of the defence posts for American warships refuelling in Casco Bay. In addition, a pair of huge guns had been mounted on the island in case of attack. They were only fired once, in order to make sure that they worked. The noise broke every window on the island, leading the islanders to politely suggest that the next time they were fired the Japanese had better be in sight of the eastern seaboard or there would be hell to pay. The guns are now gone but the emplacements built to hold them, and to house the soldiers responsible for their maintenance, remain. They are man-made hills, covered by grass and trees but still riddled with tunnels. Combined with the silent, slitted towers, they made Peaks the ideal setting for a supernatural crime novel. I changed the name of the island to Sanctuary, but based its history and much of its geography on Peaks. Had I not taken the trouble to visit the island, to stay there and talk to its policemen and its postmaster, I would have learned none of this, and Bad Men would be a poorer book as a result. Now, with the publication of this new book, I'm about to take to the road again. At some point I will probably end up lost, or falling off a stage. I will be hoping that the audiences (if they come at all) will not have too many nutters in them (at an event in one north of England town half the people in attendance appeared to be on some form of day release); that nobody will be asleep (as happened in Edinburgh once); that I will not be accused of talking "absolute b******s" (Manchester); and that no-one will not follow me from the reading for reasons I don't even want to go into. (I'll keep that one to myself.) It is a deeply strange world out there, but I feel relatively normal by comparison. Relatively.