The Book With No Name Week – Day 5

I hope you have been following along with my The Book With No Name Week. The finale is an interview with none other than Mr Anonymous himself the Bourbon Kid. I cannot tell you how excited I was to do this. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Interview with Anonymous:-

Why did you decide to keep your name anonymous?

I wanted to see if people would buy The Book With No Name without knowing who I was. It was also fun to see people speculate about my true identity. I’ve stayed anonymous for the sequels too because to be honest it’s not really important to me to see my name on the covers. I write because I love to tell stories, not because I want recognition.

What initially made you want to write these stories?

I’d gone through a phase of reading a lot of crime novels that were all really similar. You can usually tell early on in a novel which characters are going to survive and which ones might get killed. I wanted to read something where every character was fair game. I mean, imagine if you were reading The Da Vinci Code and suddenly Robert Langdon got killed in chapter 15, you just wouldn’t see that coming. So I decided I’d write a novel where there was no main character and anyone could get killed at any time. The Book With No Name was a blast like that, because I was killing off the best characters on a whim just to surprise myself. I realised pretty early on that most publishers and agents would turn their noses up at it, so that just gave me the freedom to go nuts and throw stuff like vampires and kung fu monks into the mix too. Who would have guessed it would have gone on to become an international bestseller? Not me.

Have you always been a fan of the horror genre?

My first experience of horror was when I was eight years old. My gran was babysitting while my parents went out and she wanted to watch John Carpenter’s Halloween on TV. She was afraid to watch it on her own so she made me stay up to watch it with her. Obviously I was left traumatised by the whole experience and I was convinced that a masked man was going to try and kill me in my sleep. So my gran told me that if I saw an intruder in the night I should shout swear words at him and he’d leave me alone. Then she taught me every swear word she knew. And she knew them all. I’ve been a fan of horror and swearing ever since.

What was the hardest scene to write?

In The Book With No Name the hardest scene by far was the big showdown at the end. There are about twenty characters all in the same room in a huge Mexican standoff. And they’re all important characters so it was tough working out which point of view to use. That was when I decided to put all the characters into fancy dress costumes. I was then able to describe that scene from the point of view of an onlooker who was baffled by the sight of a standoff between all these people in instantly recognisable costumes.

I love the Bourbon kid, is he based on anyone?

The idea came to me one day when I was thinking about how so many guys think they’re invincible after a few drinks. I thought about how Popeye turns into a hardass after eating some spinach and that got me to thinking about how it was far more likely someone would become a hardass after a few drinks. I came up with the Bourbon Kid almost straight away. I wanted him to be an anti-hero, but not a watered down one like you get in most stories. The modern day anti-hero is full of redeeming qualities. The Bourbon Kid doesn’t really have any apart from the fact that he’s cool.

What is your favourite supernatural creature and why?

I like them all, vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, you name it. They all add great aspects to storytelling. I remember buying a vampire novel in an airport in 2002. I hadn’t ever read a vampire novel before and I thought I was in for some sort of “Lost Boys” type adventure. I was in for quite a shock, because like most modern vampire novels it was actually a romance aimed at teenage girls. Don’t get me wrong, it was a well-written story, but most definitely not my thing. I got half way through it before I started having visions of ramming a shotgun up the vampire’s arse and blowing him away. So, basically I like vampires, but when I write about them, I want to see them get killed.

Who are you favourite authors?

There’s not one person in particular that I read, but I recently enjoyed books by Cody McFadyen, Jay Asher and John Niven. My biggest influences tend to be screenwriters. I have a real ear for dialogue when I’m watching movies or TV shows. My biggest influence is Aaron Sorkin who wrote The West Wing and more recently The Social Network.

What are you currently working on? I’m hoping for the fourth book in your series?

I did write a fourth book in the series. It was called The Book of Death and followed on from the end of The Eye of the Moon. I decided at the end of last year not to release it because it was just a bit too dark and gloomy. I mentioned it in an interview with L’Express in France earlier this year and consequently some fans started up a facebook group demanding I change my mind and release it. They’ve got over 500 members now so I’m feeling quite guilty about not releasing it. It’s beginning to look like I might have to change my mind!

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

I can only go from my own experience, but I’d say the most important thing is to write your story the way you want to write it. When I started out I used to try too hard to sound like a writer. That never worked for me, so I started to write how I talk. That’s how I found my own voice as a writer. The storytelling then became much easier. I just make sure I polish it all up on my rewrites.

The other most important thing is not to give up!

Thank you Anonymous for stopping by and answering my questions. I love your answers, especially the one about why your a fan of horror and about “your” kind of vampires. As an inspiring writer myself, thank you for the excellent writing advice.

I hope you will keep writing and entertaining us with your books for a long time to come. And please bring out a forth book in the series. I am not the only one who wants this you know!