[Nick's Writing Blog] An Interview with UK science fiction author Alan Cash

28 views

Skip to first unread message

Nick

unread,

Nov 2, 2010, 1:52:18 PM11/2/10

to my-writ...@googlegroups.com

Today I'm delighted to bring you an interview with my old friend Alan Cash, whose second science-fiction novel The Xandra Function has just been published.

For some years Alan worked as a solicitor (that's an attorney for my American readers!). He now divides his time between writing and working as an adult literacy tutor.

I first met Alan more years ago than I like to think, when we were both members of the Birmingham Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Circle. Both Alan's first novel, The Janus Effect, and The Xandra Function are (to borrow a cinematic term) 'high concept' novels, packed with intriguing speculations about the nature of reality.

To give you a flavour of The Xandra Function, here is a video of the book launch. It's quite short, but includes Alan both talking about the novel and reading an extract from it.

As ever, if you are receiving this post by email, you will probably need to visit my blog to watch the video.

And now, the interview...

ND: Welcome to my blog, Alan. Could you start by telling my readers a bit about your writing background and experience. How did you get started as a writer?

AC: Thanks very much, Nick. It's good to be here.

My mother may have been my earliest source of inspiration. When I was very young she used to make up stories about 'Pink Chicken and the Marmalade Cat', to such an extent that it drove my father bonkers!

At prep school I always used to do best in writing 'compositions', and the headmaster thought I might make a living as a journalist.

It then got left for quite a long time until I wrote my first novel as an escape from the non-creative drudgery of studying for my law exams. I sent it off to an agency but it never got anywhere.

I then used to write short stories to amuse myself, but my big boost was when my friend Chris Morgan (a published writer and now former Birmingham Poet Laureate) and his wife Pauline (who runs Cannon Hill Writers) started the Birmingham Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Group about 25 years ago.

It attracted some very fine writers, some of whom were already published (e.g. Freda Warrington, whose latest novel Elfland has just come out), and some who have gone on to be published (e.g. Justina Robson, who is currently engaged on another title in her Quantum Gravity series).

They have given me a tremendous boost, and over the years through writing short stories and another novel which nearly got published by Birmingham-based Tindal Street Press, I finally got my break with The Janus Effect, a time travel/love/search-for-identity story.

ND: Unlike The Janus Effect, the central character of The Xandra Function is a woman, Fran McCallister. Did you have any special reason for wanting to write this novel from a woman's viewpoint, and did it present any particular problems or challenges for you?

AC: The writers group I mentioned above started out roughly equal between the sexes, but as time went on the men dropped out and left just me! So, naturally I was heavily influenced by the feminine point of view. And as many of them were fantasy writers, I decided to have a go at writing what started out as a fantasy, and then the fantasy part became the virtual reality computer game of Marjalia, and the rest the 'real' world.

Several of Freda's books gave me a real insight into how women thought and felt. Fran is petite, about 4 ft 10, so she also has problems associated with this, being a short, plumpish redhead in a male-dominated company she works for. I have found that women in particular really identify with her.

I also have a number of petite female friends, so I have seen how they react to things (for example, how they sit in furniture made for 'normal' height people), so it was really interesting to explore this.

With all this wealth of experience that had seeped into me over the years, it was relatively easy to show how Fran copes with this and uses it to her advantage.

ND: The Xandra Function is set in the world of computer game design. Did you do a lot of research on this, since as far as I know you have never worked in this field?

AC: I looked at quite a few games online to see how the characters moved and what the graphics were like, but most of them seemed to be bang-bang-shoot 'em -ups or car chases or horror monster menacing the hero (Lost Planet 2, Starcraft 2, etc.), so they didn't really fit my type of game. The only one that was vaguely relevant was Prince of Persia, but practically every route in that game is straightforward.

Marjaalia diverges quite a lot in that it involves all five senses and has two major female characters, both with their own conflicting agendas: Sirios the Thieftaker, who is trying to find out who murdered her brother, and An-Ra the Shapeshifter, who has to bring Sirios before the Emperor in three days, otherwise he will put her lover to death. In the second version Fran is working on, all the characters are to some extent sentient within the parameters of the game. All the characters are powered by nanotechnology, which allows them to learn from their experiences and change. Fran gives the new version to her lover to hide it from her employers - and then the game gets into him...

ND: Do you have any tips or advice for other aspiring science fiction writers you would like to pass on?

AC: Of course. Here are my top ten tips for your readers...

1. Start small. So many people start a novel and never finish it. I have met lots of people who have written the starts of up to five novels and never finished them. Try writing short stories and make sure you finish them. There is a tremendous feeling in just having completed something. If you are determined to write a novel - finish it! It may not be very good, but at least you will have a body of work behind you. Resist the urge to keep going back and polish your opening chapters - you will never finish!

2. Keep at it. Never give up. You need to develop the hide of a rhinoceros to cope.

3. Listen to criticism, good or bad.

4. Join a writing group and get feedback. Friends never want to hurt your feelings!

5. Failing this (or in addition), pay to have it looked at by a literary consultancy, preferably one with links to an agent.

6. Attend at least one writers' conference a year and network, network, network!

7. Build a website or get someone to do it for you. Prospective publishers can instantly judge the quality of your work and decide whether they want to take it further. Mine is alancash.co.uk

8. Be disciplined. A friend of mine who is now a very successful writer went home every night from work and wrote 2,000 words every night for four years! Half of what you write you may throw away. It doesn't matter. It all useful. It's all a learning process.

9. When you've finished, put it away in a drawer for a month and then revisit it. Rewriting is the real writing.

10. If it bores you, it will bore the reader. You must be excited by what you read. There is no right way to write a novel - some people plan, some people just go on a journey with their characters. Just finish the thing!

ND: One question I like to ask all my blog interviewees - could you tell me your three favourite websites and the reasons you like them?

AC: Certainly.

1. Author Advance (used to be LitMatch) - keeps you up to date with news, and is a great resource for researching agents and publishers and what people think of them.

2. Kudos - great site for finding writing competitions to go in for.

3. Any SF-related site, such as the BSFA's online magazine Matrix that keeps you up to date with what's happening in the SF/Fantasy scene.

ND: Do you have any other novels or other projects in the pipeline?

AC: I am currently writing a horror-type SF novel, based on my childhood home in Wales. It's just across the road from the sea...

Fran may return. The novel is left open for a possible sequel. Someone recently commented to me that Fran's lover, Richard Cabot, has a lot of unresolved issues with his wife, Stephanie! And how will Sirios go on developing?

ND: Finally, I know that in the past you've been involved in short film making, so I wondered if you'd like to tell my readers a bit about that?

AC: I have produced, written and directed five amateur SF movies (some people tell me that my novels are a bit filmic!): Vortex (SF short story); The Ripples Beneath - an alternate world fantasy based on my first ever novel (unpublished); The Door Home (a time paradox story); The Felgarn Strategy (fantasy); and The Eyes of Heaven and Hell (time travel SF), made with friends or the local dramatic society.

The Felgarn Strategy was quite a big undertaking, lasting 40 minutes, in which we hired the gardens and exterior of Eastnor Castle for £11! One day, quite soon, I would like to make another. My dream would be to do The War of The Worlds properly, as per the original book, not the first hideous film nor the passable second one.

Many thanks to Alan for his comprehensive and interesting answers to my questions. And in case anyone is wondering, as an occasional actor myself, I have indeed appeared in one of Alan's films - though as I was wearing a monster costume the whole time, it's highly unlikely anyone would have recognised me!

I've recently finished reading The Xandra Function and can confirm that it is an exciting, fast-moving novel of ideas, with some interesting and believable characters (and, OK, some rather unbelievable ones!). I could well imagine it being made into a movie, though maybe not by Alan himself, as it would need a massive special effects budget (and better actors than me, no doubt).

If you would like to know more about Alan Cash, please do visit his website. And if you have any comments or questions for Alan, feel free to post them below and he will be very happy to answer them.