Today SFFWorld.com interviews Peter McLean, an SFFWorld.com forum member and contributor to our first anthology. His newly published book, Drake, is available through Angry Robot Books.
Peter McLean was born near London in 1972, the son of a bank manager and an English teacher. He went to school in the shadow of Norwich Cathedral where he spent most of his time making up stories. By the time he left school this was probably the thing he was best at, alongside the Taoist kung fu he had begun studying since the age of 13.
He grew up in the Norwich alternative scene, alternating dingy nightclubs with studying martial arts and practical magic.
He has since grown up a bit, if not a lot, and now works in corporate datacentre outsourcing for a major American multinational company. He is married to Diane and is still making up stories.
Welcome Pete. I’m excited about having you with us today! I’ll try to curb my enthusiam, but excuse me if I gush. So…I’m familiar with Drake, but not all our readers are. Please tell us a little about your story.
Hi, thanks for having me here!
Drake is a noir urban fantasy thriller, something I like to describe as “a Guy Ritchie movie with demons in it”. It’s set in the ganglands of modern-day South London, but instead of a gangster my central character Don Drake is a magician. He’s an alcoholic, hard-gambling hitman who uses his magical abilities and the power of an enslaved Archdemon to summon demons and set them on people.
After losing a game of cards to a demon, Don is forced to carry out one more assassination to clear his debt. In doing so he unwittingly kills an innocent child and brings the Furies of Greek myth down upon himself. From then on he’s on a quest for redemption, in equal parts helped and hindered by his magical accomplice the Burned Man and a murderous, chain-smoking angel called Trixie.
Drake is the most lovable diabolist I’ve ever met. Did you base his character on someone you know?
Not on any one person, no. He sort of came to me fully formed but he’s definitely a blend of various people I’ve known in real life. Don is an absolute screw up – he’s a magician and a fairly accomplished one at that, but in almost every other aspect of his life he’s a disaster. His lovelife is a trainwreck, he’s a drunk, he’s a hopelessly bad gambler, and he’s basically a coward until he’s backed into a corner.
Take away the magical trappings and Don is every guy who tried to make his way in the world and made an almighty mess of it. But that said, when he is backed into a corner he finds some backbone and he does his best, which is really all any of us can hope to do I think.
I guess that’s why I like him. There are a lot of magical/alternate reality books set in London (i.e. The Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch and The Courts of the Feyre series by Mike Shevdon). What makes Drake different?
I must confess I haven’t read Mike Shevdon but if you compare Drake to the Peter Grant books I think the biggest difference is in the main characters themselves. Peter Grant is a police officer whereas Don Drake is a criminal, and Grant starts out as a magical novice while Drake has already been a professional magician for fifteen years at the start of the book. They live in very different worlds, one in the world of law and order and helping people, the other in the dog-eat-dog culture of London’s gangland.
London’s a big city, I’m sure there’s room for both of them.
There is a lot of Christian iconary (is that a word?) in Drake along with a few other deities and belief systems mixed in. Why all the diversity?
Yeah I do use a lot of Biblical iconography in the book – Trixie is an angel after all, and even Lucifer makes an appearance. I deliberately say Biblical rather than Christian as I’m leaning far harder on the Old Testament than the New. My angels are of the Vengeance of Heaven type complete with flaming swords and everything – no one’s doing a lot of turning the other cheek, that’s for sure.
That said Drake isn’t a Biblical book at all. I’ve got Greek mythology in there as well along with plenty of twentieth century occultism and a lot of stuff I simply made up.
As for why the diversity, that’s such a good question I’ll give you two answers. Firstly because I greatly dislike the dogmatism that goes with many traditional religions, the view that only one set of beliefs can be true and all others are therefore false. And secondly, let’s be honest here – it’s just cool.
One thing I found intriguing about Drake are the recipes and strange rituals. Where did those come from? Did you make them all up?
The recipes yes, all completely made up. I really don’t want anyone trying any of this stuff at home as absolutely nothing will happen except you’ll get toad all over you, which won’t be nice for you or the toad. The rituals… some and some. The grimoire that Don mentions, the Lesser Key of Solomon, is a real book. I actually have a copy of that. Most of the magic in Drake has at least a tenuous basis in real world occultism although obviously wildly exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Drake is the first of a series. Had this world setting and characters always been slated for a series?
Well that was always my intention, and although I was originally only contracted for a single book I pitched it as the first in a series from the start. I’m writing the third one as we speak.
This is your first book with Angry Robot Books and you got picked up through their 2014 Open Door. Can you tell us a little about that process?
It was actually the 2013 Open Door, believe it or not (there’s another Open Door happening right now, by the way)!
Publishers’ Open Calls are never a quick process, and I didn’t actually sign a contract with Angry Robot until February 2015. This was followed by a flurry of activity until I got the final manuscript to them, after which I was taken through the editing process by Angry Robot’s chief editor Phil Jourdan to get it ready for production.
I was also fortunate enough to be given a lot of input into the cover art, and I hope you’ll agree that Chris Thornley’s final design is rather magnificent and I think fits the tone of the book very well indeed.
I’m still working without an agent, something I know not that many published authors do, but Angry Robot are a pleasure to work with and I’ve had substantial help and guidance from the UK’s Society of Authors with things like negotiating contracts and so forth.
What is your favorite and least favorite part of writing?
I enjoy almost all of the process really. I’m one of those writers who can sit and hammer out eight or nine thousand words in a day when I get the chance. As long as I know the story in advance, anyway – there’s nothing worse that sitting there staring at the screen and having no idea what happens next. I must admit when that happens I often find myself turning to the wise words of Raymond Chandler: when in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. Works wonders.
If I had to pick a least favourite part it’d be late-stage editing. I’m more than happy doing revisions and in fact I usually revise as I go anyway, but that last month or so of work on a book when I’m reading it for maybe the tenth or twelfth consecutive time and I’ve got to the point when I’m utterly sick of the sight of it, that’s not fun. There is no book on Earth I’d read ten times in a row out of choice, you know what I mean?
What’s on your to-be-read pile right now? Any favorite authors?
My to-be-read pile resembles a skyscraper as usual. It’s mostly SFF with some crime and non-fiction thrown in as well. I’ve read some really great books this year but if I had to pick two absolute stand-outs they’d be The Death House by Sarah Pinborough, which has the distinction of being the first book to actually make me cry since I was a kid, and Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson which is a just smack-in-the-mouth brilliant post-cyberpunk spy thriller.
What do you do when not writing (or coming up with strange magical recipes)?
Well I work full time as an account manager at a multinational technology company that you’d have heard of, so between that and writing and doing all the other stuff that goes with writing I don’t get a great deal of free time. I try to spend time with my family of course, and other than that I’m usually in the gym or attempting to keep the garden under control.
What are you writing now or what are you working on?
Well I’m currently writing a third Don Drake book as I said, whilst working on final edits (yeah the bit I love best, remember?) of the second one. I can’t really say much more than that at the moment until there’s ink on the contracts but I think it’s safe to say at this point that you’ll be seeing more of Don Drake in 2016.
I look forward to reading more of Don Drake!
You can find Peter online at his website, on Twitter@petemc666 and on Facebook.
© 2015 N. E. White / Pete McLean / SFFWorld.com
Back-handed complement coming here, but: I enjoyed the interview and decided to check out this “Europe in Autumn” thing I’ve heard so much about this evening. Browsed it online for five minutes, then bought it in the middle of a sentence. Looks like a cracker.
Maybe I’ll treat “Drake” the same!