Critical Mick

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Because It's Huge Fun

Kick-ass cool author of The Big O, Declan Burke, tells Critical Mick all about 30-something year old gals who can't get married and like to rob banks, calls out of the blue, writing thrillers, indie publishing and trading karate kicks with Westlife. Email interview June 2007.

Critical Mick: So! Life since 1969. Is it all worthwhile?

Declan Burke: Life's pretty good, man. I'm generally of the opinion the glass is half-full, so get it down you and get a full one up on the bar. Right now things are exceptionally good, the planets are aligned, but it's only a matter of time before something crappy happens … and then that's gone and good shit happens. "If you can meet with success and failure and treat those imposters just the same …" or words to that effect.

Declan Burke, con't: I quite like those Stoic philosophers, I reckon they nailed it. Although next time around, I might give Buddhism a whirl.

CM: Wouldn't it be better to be a professional heir, pimp or tribunal barrister? A highly-paid position of power and influence that's ultimately of no worth?

DB: I don't know if I'd rather be anyone else, being honest … although I'd rather be a better me, if that can be managed. No, I hear what you're saying … but ultimately-ultimately, nothing is of any worth. I'm not a fan of material stuff, unless it's actually useful – which is my take on art too, as it happens. But tempis does it fugit thing and there you are, gone. I'm fascinated by physics (don't understand much of the detail, but fascinated all the same) especially when it comes to the nature of the universe and time itself. It's a good way of putting everything in perspective. Like, why do I want to write books? It's the best way of killing time, certainly, but there's also that crap about wanting to be remembered after you're gone. Why? Doesn't make any sense. But it's a gut instinct. Childish fear of being abandoned, maybe? Anyway, if one of my books is still in print by the time I kick off I reckon I'll have done exceptionally well … and it won't matter a damn. Although if it does well, maybe my grandkids will get the royalties, get into epic quantities of drugs and ruin their lives and those around them. Still, it can't be Mills and Boon all the time, right?

CM: What's the worst crime you've ever committed?

DB: I'm a placid enough person, theoretically on board with the whole 'law of the land for the greater ghood' thing. Worst thing I've ever done is minor stuff, recreational drugs, busting windows when I was a kid, a couple of street fights under the influence of one Pimms too many … actually, now that I think of it, it's all pretty un-rock ‘n' roll. I hijacked a bus once, but then brought it back because no one noticed. Does that count?

CM: What's the worst crime you've ever had committed to you?

DB: The scandalous, persistent ripping-off under the last three or four governments. A couple of minor assaults, which were met in kind.

CM: So then, why crime?

DB: Jesus, where to start? To me, crime fiction incorporates all the best elements of all other kinds of writing, and generally does it in a more direct way. Crime has that classical Greek tragedy narrative arc, balance-chaos-balance. And most of the writers I read for pure joy (Elmore Leonard, Barry Gifford, Ray Chandler, Ken Bruen) all write crime. I think Chandler is Hemingway with a sense of humour…

DB: Maybe there's a subconscious Dirty Harry element too, the notion that by writing about this stuff, you can play your part in fixing the things that are wrong about society. But mostly because it's huge fun to write. I wrote a novel set on the south coast of Crete about a tourist who stumbles across a Nazi war crime that's been covered up for 60 years, but it took me about 10 times longer to write the first draft than anything else I've ever done because I was deliberately trying to write it in a non-thriller fashion. So my next big project is go back to that and rip out all the bullshit and turn it into a proper thriller.

CM: Are you related to Lisa Burke, voted in 2001 the sexiest news personality on the planet?

DB: Never even heard of her. I like that Francis Wilson, though. I'd buy a DVD of his weather reports.

CM: Lisa Burke is damn fine.

DB: No arguments here.

CM: What pick-up lines and fictions would you use to get Lisa Burke to come home with you?

DB: "It's hot and wet, which is fine if you're with a woman, but hell in the jungle. Want to get tropical?"

CM: What was wrong about the first story you ever wrote?

DB: Christ. Everything. I hadn't read enough by then, for starters. The first short story I remember writing, other than school essays and whatnot, was about a sniper in the trenches in WWI, who spends the whole night watching out for anyone across No Man's Land breaking the ‘two lights from any match' rule. No one did … boring as a dog's ass.

DB: The first novel I wrote was set in the Greek islands, about a crew of lads on holidays, up for a laugh – and then someone gets stabbed in a fight and dies, and the guys have to split up and try to make it home on their own. Now that I think about it, it sounds like it might be a workable story … except in my version, the fight and stabbing happened in the third-last chapter, and then they all fucked off home. Erm, hello?

CM: What was right about it?

DB: I got a novel-length story down on paper. It was rubbish, but at least I knew I had the stamina to go 80-90,000 words.

CM: Tell me about a story that you will never write (a notion, character, situation etc from your discard pile).

DB: I have this m/s called The Roominghouse Madrigal, which is draft of a novel about a hospital porter, Karlsson, plotting to blow up the hospital where he works. The guy's insane but his insanity is that he takes everything to its logical conclusion, and his theory is that the compassion of western civilisation (as exemplified by hospitals) will be its undoing, ultimately (cf keeping people alive beyond their usefulness, MRSA stuff, etc.). Anyway, he wants to send out a message that western civilisation needs to keep an eye on itself, so that it doesn't get too carried away with the whole compassion malarkey. His heroes are the Spartans and sharks. Can't see anyone wanting to buy that. My agent reckoned he'd never read anything quite like it, but he's never asked to see it since …

CM: What do you do differently than anybody else?

DB: In terms of writing? Nothing, really. Just taking my influences and trying to put a different spin on how they come together. Which is what most people do, I suppose …

CM: Name a series of CDs or DVDs that make your particular collection absolutely unique in all of Ireland.

DB: No one series. There's a lot of old noir stuff in my DVDs, and a lot of the Coen Brothers, but that's a long way off unique. I do have a VHS which is probably unique – a tape of Zorba the Greek, with Anthony Quinn, which a Spanish friend of mine (Enrique Galindon – novel coming out this month, for any of your Spanish readers) anyway, he sent me Zorba after taping it off Spanish TV. There's one scene where the English is being translated into Spanish subtitles, except there's Greek being spoken, which is subtitled in English, and then translated into Spanish. The whole fucking screen is subtitled. I love that scene, it's my favourite.

DB: Music-wise, again, there's nothing unique. Where I'm coming from is the dark-ish end of the pop spectrum … right now I'm listening to Scott Walker's Jacques Brel album … I love Leonard Cohen (interviewed him once – he's a total gent), The Tindersticks, Antony and the Johnsons, that kind of thing. Intelligent lyrics about doomed love to moody, atmospheric tunes. Yep, that's me. Did I mention I'm married?

CM: What was your aim/spin/philosophy/inspiration for The Big O?

DB: Long story. My wife (then girlfriend) got pissed off with a chick lit book she was reading and said, "Hey, why don't you write about a 30-something gal who can't get married and likes to rob banks?" Says I, I'll try. I wrote a short story for her, it was coming up to her birthday, and it went from there … I just liked the characters, particularly Karen, Ray and Rossi. I also wanted to do something multi-character, because I'd written a few first-person narrators, private eye stuff (Eightball Boogie was published back in 2003) and wanted a break from that kind of intensity.

DB: Big O was the most fun I've had writing, hands down. I was living in Sligo at the time, my wife-to-be was in Dublin, so I wrote short chapters, sticking a twist into most of them, so we could chat about it every evening … that wasn't the plan originally, but it worked out. Also-also, I reckoned I'd try to do an Elmore Leonard take on Irish crime, and I love the Coens' Big Lebowski and Fargo, which is where the kidnap-gone-wrong caper element came in.

CM: Gimme the one-sentence elevator pitch for that one, while you're at it.

DB: Elmore Leonard's sloppy seconds.

CM: How was your first novel written? How did you get it published? How has it been received? What was your reaction?

DB: The first novel, Eightball Boogie, started out as an exercise in style, a chapter hamming up the Chandleresque private eye, and it spiraled out of control very quickly. I never had any intention of getting it published, it was just a fun thing to do. Then it got to the point where it was novel length and seemed cohesive all the way through, so then it was either stick it in the bin or send it off to someone else for their opinion. I sent off two copies, got back a rejection and nothing from the second agent. Then, when I'd pretty much forgotten about it, I got a call out of the blue – when my flatmate told me who was on the phone, and why, I thought he was winding me up.

DB: Fast-forward (very slowly) about two years and Eightball was on the shelves. The reviews were pretty good, happily enough, and it sold into France and Holland. But it didn't sell. I don't take it personally. The best part of it all was actually being handed the book for the very first time, it happened on a street in Galway, the moment will stay with me until I die. To see it as a book, to feel it and heft it and know it was real, that was monkey off my back that had been there for the best part of 20 years. A fabulous, unrepeatable feeling.

CM: What did you learn in writing the first novel that you used in writing The Big O?

DB: I was a little bit more confident in my ability to write, I suppose that was the main thing. Not a hell of a lot more, but some, and as Mrs Tesco says, every little helps. The fact that people took Eightball seriously, as a credible novel, was hugely helpful.

CM: What did you learn in publishing the first novel that you used in producing The Big O?

DB: I learned that the publishing industry is as commercially driven as any other, at times more so, and in a crude way that I hadn't expected (ah, bless). I also learned not to depend on anyone else until such time as they have already delivered, particularly in terms of promotion. If you're having a book published, and anyone says to you, "Don't worry about the promo end, we'll take care of that," smile and nod like a good peon and then go home and start ringing anyone you know who might know anyone who might get you an inch of print / broadcast / internet space.

CM: What's your opinion on the new technologies like Internet communities, podcasting, blogging, webzines, Printing on Demand?

DB: I'm fairly new to the interweb malarkey, in terms of being hands-on, but the blogging experience has been a brilliant one for me, on many levels. For starters, the interweb community are the total opposite of where I'm coming from (magazines), where things can be a bit cut-throat. On the internet, people are bending over backwards to help – at least, that's been my experience. One dude in particular called Critical Mick has been a true gentleman … In the larger scheme of things, the convenience of email and blogging makes self-promotion a thousand times easier, particularly given that The Big O is published by a tiny Irish publisher, Hag's Head Press which doesn't have vast resources. The blog I run, Crime Always Pays, which promotes Irish crime fiction, is a legitimate tool by which I can contact anyone – and I do mean anyone – in the industry, from PR people to other writers to publishers to journalists to … well, anyone.

CM: Have you found it difficult to get reviews?

DB: I haven't so far, but I've been very lucky. It also helps that I come from a magazine background, so I know people who know people who know people. None of that will guarantee you a favourable review, but getting onto people's radar in the first place is the hard part. After that, it's up to the book you've written – if it's any good, it'll get reviewed. If not, it won't – most mainstream media are so restricted in terms of the space they devote to book reviews these days that they won't bother printing a negative review.

CM: Was it difficult to get your semi-DIY novel into book stores?

DB: Yes, and that continues to be the case. For the first month or so I was literally distributing the books myself, going shop to shop with a heap of books in my bag – and a brilliant experience it was too, a genuine feel of getting off my lily-white ass and hustling for something I believed in. We simply couldn't afford to pay a distributor, their mark-up is too high. As it happens, Argosy (an independent distributor) got a request from Hodges & Figgis for some copies of The Big O, which means they now distribute the book for a nominal fee per copy. So it's getting a little easier, but we're hugely dependent on bookshops requesting the book from Argosy, or people buying copies on-line, either at Amazon or at the Hag's Head website. It's a heartbreaker when someone tells you they've tried to buy the book in a particular shop and were told it wasn't available – and that they've no intention of stocking it, because they've never heard of it. You can understand why, because it's just one book in thousands that are released every month, but it's still a heartbreaker.

CM: Do you read self-published books yourself? What's your opinion of them?

DB: I'll read anything and everything, from fiction to biography, from science to history, to travel … anything. And I don't care where it came from or who published it or how, just so long as it's interesting.

CM: Who does it right? Whose writing do you admire?

DB: Christ, how long have you got? In Irish crime fiction, Ken Bruen, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman, Gene Kerrigan … Seamus Smyth's Quinn is a rough diamond that deserves another shout. Right now I'm reading Michael Dibdin's last novel, End Games, which is beautifully written, God rest him … over in the States I love Elmore Leonard, Ray Chandler, Barry Gifford, Ray Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, Hank Bukowski … English writers I like are John Fowles, Lawrence Durrell, Patrick Leigh Fermor, William Golding … Robert Frost is a wonderful poet, and Paddy Kavanagh too. No, this could go on all night, I'll rein it in …

CM: Who does it right? Whose living do you admire?

DB: For far too many and diverse reasons to go into, and in no particular order: my dad, Roy Keane, Paul Newman … I don't know, I've never really had the hero / person-to-emulate thing going on since I left acne behind. But I suppose I admire people, famous or otherwise, who have the fortitude to take the slugs on the chin and keep on trudging forward, no matter how tough it gets. The character of Rossi, in The Big O, I loved him for his relentless optimism, despite the fact that life had dealt him a hand of feet.

CM: OK, why DID John Banville use a pseudonym for Christine Falls?

DB: I'd say he simply wanted to distinguish between his literary fiction and his genre fiction – presumably he or his publishers, or both, thought readers were to dense to make up their own minds about the distinction. Or perhaps he was afraid they'd realise there isn't one. But I've heard quite a bit in the last while about his sneeringly dismissive attitude towards crime fiction, its practitioners and its readers, and his smugness sickens me. I'm a big fan of moral honesty, although I appreciate that something so crude might be too simplistic a philosophy for some.

CM: What project are you working on now?

DB: Right this moment, I'm not writing at all, I'm dedicating my free time to promoting The Big O, largely through the Crime Always Pays blog. I've scheduled getting back to scribbling again in September, at which point I'll be redrafting a novel – although whether it's a follow-up to The Big O, Eightball Boogie or the novel set on Crete (working title: The Godman of Loutro), I still haven't decided. Knowing my luck, I'll have sucked up a whole new story by then and I'll need to purge that.

CM: I understand you're instrumental in getting CWI off the ground. Tell me a little about this organization (if you won't have to kill me afterwards, that is.)

DB: Crime Writers Ireland (CWI) is a writers association along the lines of Mystery Writers of America and Britain's Crime Writers Association. It's simply a coming together of Irish crime writers to help one another promote their work and maximise the amount of publicity they get. For every best-selling author, there's thousands out there scraping along and trying to write a few pages in between doing the job, kissing the wife and changing the nappies. They're the ones who'll benefit most, hopefully. We're planning on having the first CWI awards ceremony next spring, and the idea of CWI having its own dedicated Irish crime fiction imprint has been mooted, but it's all embryonic at the moment.

CM: What's on your nightstand at the moment?

DB: It's a big nightstand … Michael Dibdin's End Games; Arlene Hunt's Missing Presumed Dead; Adrian McKinty's The Dead Yard; Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's Slide; Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin; The Rash Adventurer: A Life of John Pendlebury, by Imogen Grundon; Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick; Cutter and Bone, Newton Thornburg; Hardboiled Hollywood by Max Decharne; The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet; and The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (the latter two I won't get to, probably, because they're in there as sneaky re-reads … who the hell has the time for sneaky re-reads these days?).

CM: Why aren't you allowed to own a cat?

DB: My wife says she's allergic to cats. I reckon she can't take the competition. Cats like me. The one great unrequited love of my life was a cat, Jinx, who died tragically young. She taught me more about living with women than all the other women I've ever met combined. I think I like it that they play hard to get. I can't stand dogs. Far too friendly. There's nothing as off-putting as someone who's so desperate to be your friend they'll lick your crotch before you've been properly introduced. Unless it's a woman. Did I mention I'm married?

CM: You're from Sligo, huh? What are Westlife like in person?

DB: I only know Shane from Westlife. He's a really nice guy, totally down to earth, no bullshit about him. I was best mates with his brother when I was back in school. I also went out with his gorgeous older sister when I was in school, but she soon got sense. A pity – the family owned a chipper that made the best burgers in town. Shane used to practice his karate kicks on me when he was eight years old. True story –

DB: True story – I was bladdered on one Pimms too many one night in a Sligo nightclub, and Shane came in and told me the band had been approached by Louis Walsh, what did I think? I was editor of In Dublin magazine at the time, which meant that someone, somewhere, thought my opinion on such things mattered. I told him Louis was a bollocks but he'd make him a fortune. No flies on me … well, there was that night, but that's another story.

CM: Many thanks, Declan!

The Big O's style, style, style oozed the novel right onto Critical Mick's Best Book Read in 2007 shortlist. Declan Burke's blog, Crime Always Pays is the only one that Mick reads daily. (And yes, it is updated with at least three articles daily... unlike Mick's site.) Both are highly recommended

Yo! This interview transcript and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2007 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 24 June, 2007.