Christopher Fowler Interview

Chrisopher Fowler, the author of the Bryant & May series has a new book out called The Sand Men.

First of all can you tell us a bit about The Sand Men?

It follows an ex-pat family who’ve moved to Dubai and what they discover there. Lea, Roy and their 15 year-old daughter Cara live in a gated community reserved for foreign workers. Roy has been hired to deal with teething problems at Dream World, a futuristic beach complex. There follows a string of terrible occurrences that divide the foreign workers.

Can you give us some insight into your main characters?

Lea is used to being heard and treated as an equal in London, but in an Arabic country she becomes invisible in public. Her husband becomes obsessed with work, her daughter distant. It’s trouble in paradise, basically.

With a setting in the ex-pat community of Dubai, did you do a lot of research for this project?

Yes, I have relatives there and visited several times, talking to the ex-pats, so the background is pretty accurate.

This is obviously a book of fiction, but you also implicitly touch upon what some would say are important environmental and migrant workers issues. Has this been important for you when writing the story?

As I was researching it several bizarre stories emerged about migrant workers, one being that they rupture their bladders because they can’t afford to take pee-breaks. It’s a subject that interests me and forms the background for next year’s Bryant & May novel.

The Sand Men is somewhat different from what you normally write. Why this change and is this something we’ll see more of in the future?

It is and isn’t. Rebellion encourage me to experiment and you could say it bears a couple of comparisons with ‘Nyctophobia’, but I wanted to write in this style for a while, partly out of my love for JG Ballard’s work. I’ll definitely return to it.

We also have to talk a bit about your Bryant & May series. You have a new short story collection that will be released soon, called London’s Glory. What can your fans expect?

These will be some missing cases that have been mentioned in the books, just as Sherlock Holmes used to mention unexplored cases. I had a lot of fun with them and think of the book as a sort of Christmas Beano annual.

You live in London and draw a lot of your inspiration from the city and its history. Seen from the outside this must be a tremendous advantage, but are there also challenges in writing about the city you live in?

Good question – one is that it’s changing so fast as to become unrecognisable. The building work going on in ‘On The Loose’ for example is now all completed. But that adds challenges too – how do you have a murderer act beneath a CCTV network? I tackled that one head-on in ‘Off The Rails’.

Thinking back, how did you start writing? Was there a particular book or moment in your life that spurred you on?

Early reading influences would include Ballard and Peake, especially ‘Gormenghast’. I know a lot of people have trouble reading that but I romped through it. Sometimes you just have to be the right age to be influenced.

What is your favorite and least favorite part of the writing process, and why?

I’m on my least favourite part right now – trying to make a synopsis for a new novel make sense. I love the tidying up, when the blocking is done and you can just have fun with the characters.

How do you develop your plots and characters? Do you use any set formula?

My God I wish – no. Ideas and themes I’ve been thinking about for years slowly surface without me even realising it. Characters just spring from friends, acquaintances, and anything I can nick from Dickens.

You also write shorter fiction. How different do you find writing short stories and shorter fiction rather than novels? Do you have a preference?

Well they’re, er, shorter. Seriously, you try to write a ‘perfect’ short story but I’ve only managed one or two (IMHO) out of 250. I love good short stories and really, really hate bad ones (the lazy horror tales – you know who you are).

For your own reading, do you prefer ebooks or traditional paper/hard back books?

I like both, although I’m on my 5th Kindle, having broken four in two years. I LOVE the old mass-market paperbacks.

What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?

Hundreds, too many to list. Rereading John Dickson Carr at the moment, and Jan Morris, and Lee Child, and Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and Jonathan Franzen.

What are you doing when not writing, any hobbies?

I’m a travel-freak and a movie freak. I also live in Barcelona, which has a more hectic creative scene than London’s.

What’s next? Do you have more exciting new projects you’re working on at the moment?

New Bryant & May novels, plus my first thriller, a non-fiction book and a big fantasy, which I’m still trying to get my head around. You could say I’m creating a world, and I don’t bloody know how He managed it in six days!

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