Dancing
with myself: An interview with Aidan Thorn by Aidan Thorn
It’s a sunny afternoon in Southampton and
Aidan Thorn has decided to turn up to this interview in his underpants - as
chance would have it so have I. We’re sat in Aidan’s living room sharing a pint
glass of water. The sun has just set on the August bank holiday weekend and
Aidan’s far too old for what he got up to during the course of it, he’s a
little tired and grouchy which matches my mood perfectly. Neither of us really
wants to be here but it was the only free slot in the diary that we could both
make work so here we are.
A month or so ago Aidan released a story
collection called Tales from the Underbelly (US) and so I’m going to find out what
that’s all about and maybe, if we’re both in the mood, I’ll ask him some other
stuff about writing too.
For
those few (cough) people that don’t know do you want to tell the readers a
little bit about yourself and your writing background?
What do you want? I like football, tennis,
music and films? That sort of thing?
No,
tell us about you
There’s really not much to say. I’m a
couple of months shy of my 38th birthday, born and raised in
Southampton, England and I remain there to this day. In my younger days I had a
few half hearted (and that’s probably over-egging the effort) attempts at
putting bands together, I dropped out of University, got myself a real job and
have been lucky enough to work for an organisation that put me back through Uni
a couple of times and gave me a great career doing something I love.
That said, the creative part of me always
felt like an itch that I needed to scratch and so in 2008 on my first holiday
to the USA I started plotting out a book idea in my head. I’m a terrible
traveller and when I’m in a different time zone I rarely sleep, I only had one
book with me and it was shite. So, I got out of bed and started sketching out
an idea for a novel on a hotel logo headed notepad. Elements of those
scribblings did eventually see the light of day in the 2015 release of my first
novella, When the Music’s Over – but only elements of it. Turns out writing a
novel isn’t as easy as I thought it would be and I made a right old meal of it.
I decided that by way of practice I’d write a few short stories and see how
they went. Turns out it went OK, my first ever attempt was published by Byker
Books in their Radgepacket series and then I had story after story published
online and in collections and for a while I forgot about trying to write a
novel. I was enjoying the near instant recognition and reaction to stories I
was putting out through various channels. But eventually I did complete a
novel, Last Request. It was a decent story, but the writing was clearly in need
of a polish and I was unsuccessful in trying to get it published, so I kept
plodding away with the short stories until I came across Number 13 Press who
were publishing great novellas and so I dusted off Last Request, trimmed it to
novella length, sorted out the clunky writing, changed the title and in Sept
2015 it was published as When the Music’s Over. It got a great reaction, I knew
the story was decent and once it was polished up I knew it would do OK, and the
reviews have proven that to be the case.
So
you’ve never written a novel then?
Well I have, but I cut it back to make it a
novella
That’s
a no then
I suppose so
Short
stories have become your thing really and that’s basically what Tales from the
Underbelly is right, a short story collection?
Yes and no. It’s a collection of stories of
varying length, from very short to novella length that are all linked by
characters. The whole thing revolves around two rival gangland bosses, Tony
Ricco and Jimmy O’Keefe, but it’s not so much about them as the people whose
lives they touch. Some of these people interact with them willingly, some by
horrible accent and some don’t even know that they’re involved with them but
have to deal with the consequences of their presence in their lives.
So,
it’s a short story collection then?
Depends on your perspective I suppose,
would you call Pulp Fiction a short story collection?
Oh
behave, you’re not seriously comparing your work to Pulp Fiction are you?
I’m not making any comment on the quality
of the work here, more the format. In Pulp Fiction everything that happens does
so around or because of the mysterious Kingpin figure of Marsellus Wallace,
he’s not in all of the scenes, and not all of the characters or stories in that
film are linked but the thread that holds it all together is Wallace. In Tales
from the Underbelly it’s Ricco and O’Keefe’s enterprises that weave the thread
between the scenes that unfold. For me Tales from the Underbelly is more like a
collection of linked scenes and stories that tell a bigger story about a
criminal underworld, than a simple short story collection. That said, each
story stands alone, but if you read the whole thing you’ll hopefully find it
more satisfying that a standard collection of tales lumped together to make a
book.
You
self-published this collection, seem a bit sure of yourself, who are you to say
people will want to read what you put out?
That’s a fair question, but strictly
speaking I didn’t self publish this. The stories in Tales from the Underbelly
have all been published before in various collections and ezines. I just put
them together into something that makes the whole thing link up. That said, a
lot of people are self publishing these days and whilst there is some absolute
shite out there some of the best work I’ve read in recent years has been self
published. Sadly I haven’t had a lot of time to read this year but two of the
best books I’ve read were self published, one by Robert Cowan (The Search for
Ethan) and the other by Ryan Bracha (After Work Call). When I first got into
writing I thought self publishing was bullshit but guys like Bracha and Cowan
and many more have proven me wrong, it’s just a way of getting work that
probably wouldn’t be picked up by mainstream publishers out for an audience
that’s looking for something different from the run of the mill stuff you’ll
see on the shelves and for me that can only be a good thing – as long as the
quality is good.
Tales
from the Underbelly is done now so what are you working on right now?
Right now, nothing. I haven’t really
written an original word in 2017. It’s been a very strange year, I’ve been very
busy in the real world and so writing has taken a back seat. I hope to get back
to it again one day, but at the moment it’s just not happening for one reason
and another. That said I do have another novella, Rival Sons that I finished on
the last day of 2016 that I’m hoping to find a home for soon. I spent what
spare time I had in the first half of 2017 tidying that up with edits and
writing a synopsis getting it ready to send out to publishers – I’ve had a
couple of nibbles on what I’ve sent out so far, so I have my fingers crossed that
something might come of it, but I’m not holding my breath – never a good idea
in this game.
Thanks
for taking the time to talk to me, Aidan now go and put some clothes on
