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Author
Interviews Interview: Mike
Gayle With
three successful novels under his belt,
Mike Gayle talks about turning thirty, and
doing it outside of London! Fiction-Net:
Your new novel, 'Turning Thirty', is based
in your home city of Birmingham, unlike
most modern fiction which tends to
concentrate on London. Is this something
you've wanted to do for a
while? Mike
Gayle: Yeah, totally. I think one of
the main reasons London gets written about
so much is to do with the fact that so
many people move there in order to get
their writing careers off the ground. The
capital is where all the main publishing
houses,
literary
agents
and magazine publishers are. And on top of
that London has more books shops and
Londoners buy more books than any other
region. Quite often setting a book in
London is down to elements of geography
and economics like that. I set my first
novel, My Legendary Girlfriend, in London
because like the main character I'd moved
to London to get my career going. I lived
there on and off for three - fours years
before I decided I'd had enough and moved
back to Brum. It's
always been on my agenda to write novels
outside of London and I admire people like
my fellow Brummie author Chris McCabe
(Paper/stickleback) because he did it
straight from the start. My next novel
will be set in Manchester which doesn't
mean that I want be going back to London
(or Brum) it's just that I quite fancied a
change. Fiction-Net:
So do you see yourself moving to
London or elsewhere in the
future? Mike
Gayle: There's no way on earth that
I'd move back to London. If I had a
similar "The
lead up to thirty can rock your world
somewhat" Fiction-Net:
Turning Thirty deals with the main
character, Matt Beckford's, 30th birthday.
How 'close to home' for you was the
character's approach to the
event? Mike
Gayle: Very close indeed. I'm
twenty-nine and turn thirty in October of
this year. Although thirty isn't the end
of the line by any means I think there is
very much a change in your state of mind.
Not that you necessarily feel older but I
do think that the way you see the world
changes. Turning twenty-nine and the lead
up to thirty can rock your world somewhat
but I reckon at the end of the day it all
depends on what kind of person you
are. Fiction-Net:
The characters in Turning Thirty often
communicate via e-mail. Are you a big
internet user? Mike
Gayle: I
wouldn't say I'm a huge user. I like to
have a bit of a surf at the start of the
day just to delay writing the next novel
that bit longer.
Fiction-Net:
Do you see the internet having any
real effect on the publishing
industry? Mike
Gayle: To be honest, no. For all the
talk of e-books and Stephen King's
internetty things and Microsoft's deal
with Amazon, I think the book on the
written page will always rule. I mean,
look, this country grinds to a halt the
second we run out of petrol, if something
happened to all the batteries in the world
your e-books would be useless. A crap
agrument I grant you but an argument all
the same. Long live the proper
book! Fiction-Net:
Do you think you'll ever write a sequel to
any of your novels? Will we be reading a
'Turning Forty' in a decade? Mike
Gayle: I don't know. Maybe. People do
ask me what happens to some of the
characters from my books. I like the idea
that they're living on in the reader's
mind. That said some of the books do beg a
sequel if only to discover if happy ever
after really is happy ever
after. Fiction-Net:
And finally, our forums see a number a
writers discussing the best way to
approach a novel: planning it in detail
beforehand or letting the story develop as
it's written. What's your
approach? Mike
Gayle: My approach basically stems
from my years working as a magazine
journalist. I start with an idea. Write
loads of notes. Do a skeleton first draft
as fast and as carelessly as possible and
then I re-write and re-write up to and
over twenty times until I'm happy. It
might not be the most effcient way to do
it but it's the only one I can
do. |
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