I’ve known Roger
since 2003, when he debuted with a CWA
Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Nomination for his novel Candlemoth. Those who
enjoy literary crime fiction soon gathered at the flame of his talent. He also forgave
the miss-spelling his name when I wrote about that weird novel, archived HERE.
It is hard for debut novelists to get reviewed, and if memory serves, he got
only two initial reviews, one from the late Marcel
Berlins in The Times and one from Shots Magazine.
He is prolific, a complex creative mind and a hard worker providing
Shots many essays to help explain his writing, they can be accessed HERE
He battled the usual slings and arrows that fly by when embarking
on a career in the creative arts. It would not be until 2008, when his novel A QUIET BELIEF IN
ANGELS was one of Richard and Judy’s book-club picks that caused his crime-writing
career to go all ‘bullet-face’ with a mass readership.
I wrote about that remarkable novel, and Roger kindly
answered a few questions for Jeff Pierce’s THE RAPSHEET and the feature is
archived HERE
Like the two protagonists Daniel Ford and Nathan Verney
from Roger’s debut CANDLEMOTH, we have shared much time in America, at various
Bouchercon events, with Mike Stotter, even wandering the halls of 2009’s The
London Bookfair.
Anyway, with the COVID-19 closing
this year’s LBF, due to safety grounds, Roger is oblivious to the threat of
this Coronavirus, playing gigs with his band The Whiskey Poets around the country.
And there’s his foray into cinema….so with a new novel
THREE BULLETS about to hit paperback from his long-time publisher Orion. I
tracked him down after reading his new work in hardcover last year –
The
latest work from this literary crime writer is most unusual. It is a hybrid,
merging conspiracy with an alternative retelling of history. It retains
Ellory’s ability to tell a story that provokes thought and is genuinely
hypnotic. The most incisive fiction holds a prism to our perceived reality
helping us to grapple with all we see and feel, and Ellory’s saga is torn from
that stable. It is also exceedingly
weird, an unusual novel that will stay with you like the memories of that
motorcade, the Texas Book Depository and the sound of gunfire.
Read the full review HERE
Roger kindly put down his Wuhan face-mask and agreed to a
chat about what he’s been up to.
Ali: Yo, Roger you seem to be a man with a lot
of stuff going on creatively…..
Roger: I
guess that’s in my nature. It’s not that
I find it hard to relax, but I do find it hard to do nothing! I really do have to feel, at the end of each
day, that the day has been wisely spent.
My mind is full of ideas and possibilities, and I feel like I want to
realise them all. My maternal
grandmother used to say to me, ‘What if?’ is the question with which to begin
your life, not end it. That has sort of
stuck with me as a guiding principle.
Ali: Thanks to Stephen Knight and his work,
most recently Peaky Blinders, it’s become cool to be a Brummie, or a Black
Country person, so tell us your thoughts on being a bloke from the Midlands who
is love with all things Americana?
Roger: I
have to be completely honest and say that I have never seen an episode of
‘Peaky Blinders’. That’s not for any
reason other than I don’t watch TV series.
Films yes, and plenty of them, but not a TV series. I have an addictive personality, and I know
that if I start into a series then I’ll get nothing done for three weeks! Coincidentally, I have recently moved out to
the Black Country, and it is quite different from Birmingham. Anyway, I have always been proud of my home
city. It’s a city built on innovation
and invention: more miles of Canal than Venice, the heart of the Industrial
Revolution, the Jewelery Quarter, the Shadow Factory and the building of the
Spitfire. In truth, the difference that
‘Peaky Blinders’ has made is that I now say I’m from Birmingham and people
don’t immediately assume I’m from Alabama.
Ali: So firstly, delighted you are writing
away. I loved
Three Bullets, which is out shortly in PB, and a departure in terms
of your writing……would you care to tell us the genesis of the idea that grew to
become Three Bullets?
Roger:
It really came out as a result of my former editor at Orion, Jon
Wood. We discussed all the books I’d
written, and it seemed that I had addressed so many American tropes and
staples: the Mafia, the CIA, the FBI, the KKK, Watergate, the death penalty,
the NYPD, serial killers et al. He asked
me if there was some specific political or cultural event that had occurred in
20th Century US history that I had not written about that I would
like to look at. Even though I had
touched on the Kennedy assassination in ‘Candlemoth’, it really hadn’t been
covered in any detail. My reservation
was that it has been done so many times – well and not so well – and I felt it
was just too cliched as subject. He
asked me to go away and think about it, to see if there wasn’t some other angle
from which I could approach it. It was
on the train back to Birmingham that I wondered about what would actually have
happened had JFK not been assassinated.
That was the genus of the book, and that gave me an opportunity to look
at the other side of the myth, and the simple fact that not only was he not a
very good human being on a personal level, but he also brought the US to the
brink of war with the USSR and made quite a mess of a few other very
significant political situations.
Ali: So, tell us what you think intrigues
people regarding the appeal of conspiracies and conspiracy theories?
Roger:
That there is that unknown. We
stick to mysteries. It’s why we like to read
them, to watch them, to go back over them time and again. It’s that endless fascination generated by
the simple fact that we are asking a very straightforward question and we
either get no answer, or we get an answer that doesn’t feel right. It’s like being told you’re a liar when
you’re a child, and no matter what you say and do the assumption that you’re
not telling the truth continues. It’s an
incomplete conversation. It’s an
undelivered message. It’s knowing what
you should have said in the moment, but you only think of it later. It’s all those things. We have attention, and our attention sticks
to these things and they come back to haunt us.
The assassination of JFK is an unanswered question that haunts numerous
generations, and will continue to do so.
Ali: But at the core Three
Bullets is a love story, and one of loss and redemption, would you
agree?
Roger:
Yes, absolutely. It’s real people
in a ‘real’ situation. I want to write
characters that could be real. I want to
write characters and stories that you think about even when you’re not reading
the book. I want to engage readers on an
emotional level as well as a cerebral level.
I think the way to do that – and the way to create legitimate tension –
is to tell a story that makes a human connection, and incorporating actual
emotions that we have all experienced is the way to do that. Certainly, for me it is.
Ali: I hear despite the tough times in
publishing, Orion have renewed your contract, so we have more novels to look
forward to; care tell us a little what we might expect?
Roger:
Yes, I have a new contract for two books. The first will appear in early 2021 and is
quite a departure. I wanted to write
about the current affairs that populated my childhood, so I embarked upon a
trans-European novel that deals with Baader-Meinhof, Black September, the Red
Army Faction, MI5, MI6, Mossad and the Deuxieme Bureau. This also came out of a passion I have for
Fleming, Greene, le Carre etc. The new
book, currently titled ‘Proof of Life’, starts in Amsterdam, and winds its way
through London, Istanbul, the Netherlands, Berlin and Paris, and deals with a
photojournalist sent on a mission to determine whether another journalist –
believed to have been murdered in Jordan – is actually alive and living under
an assumed name.
Ali: You have a large body of work, and it’s a
tough question but from your backlist tell us your favourite three novels, and
why they are your favourites?
Roger:
That is a tough question, but I would say ‘A
Quiet Vendetta’ for the sheer scope and breadth of the story; ‘A
Quiet Belief in Angels’, simply because of the style with which it is
written, and the fact that it wound up in so many languages and connected with
so many people; finally I guess it would have to be ‘A Dark and Broken Heart’,
for the intensity, the pace of the narrative, and the fact that it’s more than
likely going to wind up as the first filmed adaptation. However, this is a dreadful question! There are fifteen books out there. Asking me which is my favourite as like
asking a father which of his children he loves the most!
Ali: And then there’s the music, so tell us a
little about The Whiskey Poets?
Roger: The Whiskey Poets (the name being an
homage to Dylan Thomas after an eventful trip to New York) was formed three or
four years ago with the last touring bass player of ELO, Martin Smith. Together we have written and recorded three
albums, the second of which was six songs and six instrumentals for use in film
and TV for Universal Records. I guess
it’s a sort of alt. country/blues style, and based on our influences and
passions. We have been playing as much
as we can, both here and in France, and it has been another opportunity to
really express some of the things I want to express.
I guess a song is like a chapter, and an album
is like a novel. There’s a theme, and it
kind of carries through all the material.
All the songs are ours, all the lyrics are mine, and there’s even four
tracks on the last album (‘Native Strangers’) that carry the same title as four
of my books. Again, it’s an emotional
thing, just like writing. It’s a means
by which an emotion can be translated into sound, and then that sound can be
interpreted by the listener into their own understanding of that emotion. Five people read the same book, yet they’re
all reading a different book. It’s the
same with hearing a piece of music.
Ali: As if novel writing, song writing and
gigging around the country was not enough to keep you busy, tell us how you got
into screen-writing?
Roger: I met an actor/director called Michael Keogh. Coincidentally, he had a part in ‘Peaky
Blinders’. He’s Manchester-based, and
runs an acting school across the country.
Anyway, we met and we hit it off, and I put some ideas together for both
short films and feature films. The first
of those short films – ‘The
Road to Gehenna’ – has been made with Michael as director, and we are now
branching out with different production companies to realise the others. I had been involved with screenwriting
before, however. I was commissioned by
Olivier Dahan (‘La Vie en Rose’, ‘Grace’, ‘My Own Love Song’) to write the
screenplay for ‘A Quiet Belief in Angels’.
I did that, but – as is so often the case – the project didn’t get off
the ground for numerous and varied reasons. That may come back to life shortly with another
director, but I am focusing on the work I am doing with Michael right now. We have another short and two features films
in pre-production, and I am very optimistic about the direction this is going.
Ali: I hear you’re about to hit the festival circuit,
so how has the response been?
Roger:
Well, the first private screening was a great success, and we shall see
what happens when it starts going out to Berlin, Eindhoven, Savannah etc. I will keep you posted on its progress, for
sure!
Ali: I was looking for a cameo…..
Roger:
After the last incident when we were with Michael
Connelly at the Bosch set in LA, my insurance agent said it would be unwise
to engage in any professional activity with you. Nothing personal, of course. Just Health and Safety issues.
Ali: And is there more of the auteur we have
yet to see?
Roger: Of
course! Lots of things going on, and I
am forever busy!
Ali: Thank you for you time, as you are busy
bee.
Roger: My pleasure, my mind is a hive of
activity……
For more information about Roger Jon Ellory click HERE for Roger’s writing, click HERE for his musical work and click HERE
for his film interests.
Shots Magazine would like to thank Roger Ellory and Orion Publishing
for help in organising this short chat.
And we’d recommend grabbing the paperback of THREE BULLETS,
and here’s
why
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