Origins: Tony Black

Being the latest in what will probably be yet another short-lived series, in which yours truly reclines on a hammock by the pool with a jeroboam of Elf-Wonking Juice™ and lets a proper writer talk about the origins of his or her characters and stories. This week: Tony Black, author of the Gus Dury series.

“Back in the day, when I was still pounding the streets, notebook in hand and hangover hovering after a hard-night’s ‘hackwork’ (reviewing nightclubs for a Scottish tabloid) I had a thought: what the fuck can I really say about another club? More lights … a less sticky carpet? Something had to give.
  “The night before, I’d been taken to the basement of a club in Glasgow,
introduced to a man in a Camel-coloured overcoat – and yes, his hair was slicked back too, clichés exist in the real world as well – who told me what he wanted to read in my review. He’d even gone to the trouble of making me a list that included a mention for his DJ son, Flava-Dave, (that might not have been his actual name).
  “A week before, I’d been treated to a display of roundhouses, foot-sweeps and power punching – though thankfully not to my person – by another club owner, who, when done with his display, placed a firm hand on my shoulder and said: “I know where you live.”
  “The job was becoming a chore. Even with the top-offs – the Nationals paid well for those then – about rival club owners dousing dance-floors in paraffin in the middle of the night, or standing over their own cashiers with bouncers in balaclavas, didn’t compensate. I jumped ship.
  “Call it reactionary, but I went from the Scottish club scene to covering the courts for another daily newspaper. On my first day, fumbling about for the press box in a funky open-plan courtroom, I managed to sit myself down in the dock. The fiscal quickly sorted me out: “Don’t let the Beak catch you in there, he’ll do you for contempt.” I should have seen it as a sign.
  “I spent a year or two watching a succession of overfed, tweedy arsewipes lording it over society’s misfortunates – single mothers who hadn’t been able to pay the rent, ex-service men who couldn’t get a handle on civvy street, bored scheemie teens, cadaverous addicts … the list was endless. The justice, swift.
  “By this stage, I’d become a fully-paid up cynical hack. I didn’t need a stint covering the newly-formed Scottish Parliament, or should I say the shiny-arsed careerists that filled it, to tell me there was something rotten in Denmark … or another small Northern European country. Life was looking very Noir to me.
  “I’d been invited to a press call, a Minister for something-or-other, was giving a speech and being a hack my job was to ask a few questions and get a story that wasn’t the manufactured media release. I stood outside the venue in the biting cold, waiting for the limo to show. When it did, the Minister was quickly ushered inside without so much as a nod to the assembled. His speech lasted less than a minute, then he was off, racing for the door. I tried to waylay him as he left but as I produced my Dictaphone I was quickly surrounded by men in black. Another three Dictaphones appeared over my shoulder as I spoke.
  “I never got my story. What I did get was knots in my stomach, a bollicking from my boss, and a desire to expose the hypocrisy. When I got home that night, Gus Dury was born. I replayed the scene I’d just been through with the Minister and put Dury in my boots – he handled it differently – swinging for the flunkies and landing a flying headbutt on the Minister. The scene survives in PAYING FOR IT, my first novel featuring Gus Dury.
  “What influences an author to draw a character in a certain way is not always clear; unconscious motivation comes into play and any dissection of the origins of a character or a book, especially when recounted by the author, must be questionable. But I do know for sure I wanted to make Dury a failed hack. I wanted to use my experiences, and expand on them, to produce a deeply cynical protagonist who had fallen so low that he didn’t much care about the next bend in the road.
  “Four books later, the journey has been a bit of a vertical fall for Dury, but the latest in the series, LONG TIME DEAD, shows he is starting to turn things around. The cynicism is still there, the anger and desire for justice too, but there is only so much bullshit one man can take. As Hemingway said, ‘The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.’” - Tony Black

  Tony Black’s LONG TIME DEAD is published by Preface Publishing.

No GUTTED, No Glory

CAP’s good friend Tony Black (right) has a new novel coming your way, GUTTED being the follow-up to PAYING FOR IT, and featuring the reluctant PI Gus Dury. “Maybe the best novel I’ve read all year … A stunning piece of work,” says Allan Guthrie, no slouch himself when it comes to penning stunning novels. And agent-type representing of Declan Burke, for that matter. Anyway, seeing as how he has already filled in the standard Q&A, we fired a few fresh Qs at Tony. To wit:

You’ve a new novel coming, called GUTTED. Tell us a little about it and its protagonist, Gus Dury.
“GUTTED kicks off with Gus staking out badger baiters on Edinburgh’s Corstorphine Hill and after a bit of a pagger with the local young crew, who are torturing a dog, he finds himself tripping over the gutted (see what I did there!) corpse of a known villain. Gus is mad enough to hang about and call plod, who turn up and promptly put him in the frame.
  “The real fun ensues, though, when Gus finds the investigating officer is dating his ex-wife, Debs, and that fifty grand belonging to city ganglord Rab Hart has been snatched from the corpse. Roll on corruption, casual violence and a stack of characters so unsavoury they make the first book look like an episode of Chuckle Vision.”

What was the one thing you learned about writing and publishing PAYING FOR IT that helped most when you came to GUTTED?
  “To try and enjoy it. Seriously I got myself so stressed out with the first one that I forgot about how frickin’ hard I’d tried to get published. I made a conscious decision not to do that this time round, so I’m way more laid back … enjoying the ride. I’ve spoken to a few writers about seeing their first novel published and to a one, none have enjoyed the process first time round - it’s just too nerve wracking.”

What is it about Gus Dury that you, as a writer, find so compelling? And, for the uninitiated reader, what sets him apart as a reluctant PI?
  “Good question. I’ve never really examined it that closely and I’m a bit reluctant to try in case some of the magic rubs off … y’know, like I’ll understand him and lose all fascination. But, to try and answer the question, I guess there’s something in the fact that he’s an escapist figure; he’s a hardcore alky, a man who sorts his problems with his fists, he just doesn’t give a shit.
  “What sets Gus apart is, and again I’m guessing because really it’s not for me to say, but I think he’s a man that’s fallen so low, who’s so completely wrecked himself, that there’s a certain curiosity to see what keeps him putting his boots on in the morning.”

The decision to set the novels in Edinburgh – not taken lightly, I presume, given the shadow cast by Ian Rankin?
  “Well, there was never going to be anywhere else to set them, I’m from Edinburgh and the character of Gus is so closely associated with the city that he wouldn’t be the same man elsewhere.
  “Every writer brings something different to the work so my Edinburgh isn’t going to be Ian Rankin’s or Irvine Welsh’s, or Muriel Spark’s for that matter … but I hear what you’re saying, Dec, and the honest answer is that if I looked at the sheer quantity and unbelievable quality of writing that’s come from this place I’d never open the laptop.”

Ken Bruen has been loud in his praise, and PAYING FOR IT was compared with the work of Ian Rankin, Simon Kernick and Mark Billingham. Did you feel any pressure to match that standard when it came to the ‘difficult second novel’?
  “God, isn’t Guv’nor Bruen a true saint of a man … I can absolutely die happy tomorrow knowing what Ken’s said about my work. As far as I’m concerned he’s the best there is. Bar none. To get his praise, to get any praise, as a new novelist is a surreal experience.
  “The pressure was there alright with GUTTED, from the get-go. I was told that there’d be folk queuing up to give me a kicking if the second book wasn’t as good as the first. Thankfully I’m never satisfied with anything I do so am constantly finding fault and looking to improve on what I‘ve just done. It was another shock when folk started to get excited about GUTTED, but, God, I’ve just delivered the third, called LOSS, and they thought that was better yet … I keep expecting to get a call saying, ‘Hahahaha, we were joking you actually totally suck!’”

Who are the writers who got you writing? Is there one novel you can pinpoint as the novel that exploded the flashbulb above your head, and got you saying, “I can do that!”?
  “The first book I can remember reading and being utterly transported by was Twain’s ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN … I must have been about eight or so, I was really captured by the adventure of it all. Same happened with Stevenson’s TREASURE ISLAND a bit later.
  “The first time I started seriously to think about writing though, was after reading Hemingway’s A FAREWELL TO ARMS, must have been eighteen then and was blown away by what writing could do. In terms of the crime stuff, that was Bruen’s RILKE ON BLACK … the style and the sheer force of the storytelling dazzled me.”

Is Gus Dury going to be around for the long haul? Do you plan and plot books ahead, or how does a character and story unfold for you as you’re writing?
  “Gus is there for a wee while yet, I’ve got a four-book deal and although I might do some standalones in there I do have a fourth episode for Gus all mapped out. I don’t look much further ahead than the next book, I’m in awe of these writers who can envisage a grand arc covering several books. Couldn’t manage that. So, yeah, I take a loose idea and try to add layers as I go along, then rewrite and rewrite again.”

You work as a journalist. Do you find being a journalist a help or a hindrance when it comes to writing fiction?
  “Well, there’s advantages and disadvantages - Hemingway said hackwork was good for a writer as long as they got out soon enough and I think I know what he meant. I still do bits and pieces here and there but I couldn’t still do a full-time reporter’s job and write around it … I did that for about six or seven years before I got a deal and it was too much. But, the discipline of putting down words that journalism teaches you, as you know yourself, is useful. I’ve never heard a hack griping about writer’s block or a lack of inspiration … the muse doesn’t write daily newspapers!”

Why do you think so many journalists take up writing crime fiction?
  “The game’s gone to balls … Christalmighty, when PR starts to look like a better option, journalism has hit the skids. Crime fiction’s a far better gig than Macy Ds, I suppose.”

Finally, what are the future plans? Are there more Gus Dury books in the works?
  “Well, LOSS is out around February 2010, and after that there might be a standalone I’ve been working on, or the other Dury novel which I’ve got planned out … I’m not looking much further ahead than that. To be honest, this whole writing gig’s such a tough nut to crack, and believe me there was years when I thought I’d never get an in, that just to be able to say I’m published is still a bit unreal.”

Tony Black’s GUTTED is available now.