The Second Coming John Niven

[Carolina Bornman]

Welcometo This Is Horror Podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson. And every episode I chat we're masters of horror, about writing, and life lessons, creativity, and much more. Now, today's guest is John Niven, the author of books such as kill your friends, the amateurs and the bucket list, and a screenwriter of a number of films including one of my favorites in recent years the trip. Now John is an author whose fiction is not easy to classify, because he never neatly fits into the genre or literary writer box. But what he is is a writer with an acerbic wit, a master of satire, and an equal to the likes of people such as Chuck Palahniuk, Martin Amis, and Bret Easton Ellis when it comes to delivering social commentary. Now we had a fascinating conversation, in which we discussed his beginnings and ANR his forthcoming releases, and a multitude of other topics. But before we get to that conversation, it is time for a quick advert break.

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is an absolute pleasure. You are one of my favorite writers. So I am honored to get you on the show. And I mean, to begin with, I wanted to know what early life lessons you learned growing up and they don't necessarily have to pertain to writing but anything that you learn in your formative years.

Oh, gosh, life is quite grand, isn't it? I don't. I don't know that these things become apparent to your older life lessons. That's such a big question. What life lessons did I live when I was young? When my father died, I suppose I was relatively young, I was only 26. And then, like a lot of people who lose a parent relatively young, it's a bit of a bit of a starting gun going off for you, sort of telling you that life is short ish, and that you should crack on and try and try and do the things you want to do. And I'd kind of when I look back now, I think to a degree without getting graduates you're either born the rater or you're not you're born with the instincts baked in, and I had kinda think wouldn't it be right since I was very young. And I had sort of put off fully engaging with our thing because it seemed inevitable inevitable that you will feel. And I think that a few years after my dad died, I got a bit more serious about that. I think it was sort of taunting theoretische but the team were really committed to, to doing it properly. And I think it was maybe something to do with the lesson to take away from my father with a movie 68 When he died. So, as you can see, I've always sort of say to you, you better crack on and try and do this. That was the one of the bigger life lessons, I guess, of my 20s. But, but I'm, I guess you're asking my formative years. Each Other No. No, it's pretty stupid up until my 50s.

Right, right. Yeah, I think a lot of us were, I think that's, you know, you kind of learn your lessons through doing dumb shit and making a load of mistakes. And hopefully, as you get older, you make a few less mistakes, or they're less severe or No, doesn't always pan out that way.

No, I'm still fully capable of being very stupid today. But I think, you know, you're, when I was working in music industry, when I was in my 20s, it was a pretty hedonistic time. Then when I started writing as quite, quite clearly on that, I couldn't do it with a hangover. Right? I think because you're, you're trying to let the dream a whole world into being, you know, you're trying to create something out of nothing. And that requires quite a big level of self confidence and self belief. And the kind of hangovers you start getting, once you get into your 30s sort of prohibit that gives you sort of crippled with self loathing and doubt in that's not a suddenly phone, I couldn't rate from that kind of place. So by necessity of trying to become a writer, what I thought was quite late in life, you know, my early 30s, it felt like had left it quite late, I sort of just began living a lot more sensible than I had been in my late 20s. So you know, and they will look back at that period at the time was terrible, because I had sort of been my bridges and left the music industry. So I'm combined no two, but 2002. Three, has sort of been my bridge to the music business. And they was by no means certain that I had succeeded. And writing you know, the great British novel, which I finally thought I'd, you know, I do within a couple of years before I ran out of money. And it sort of took five years in the end. And I was living very hand to mouth and off the challenge of family and friends for a little while, until thankfully, king of all came good. But look back in something shut off thinking going and might not have become good. But that period now in the rearview mirror, I think of quite fine look. So what's very hard, you know? And as anybody who's trying to write that first novel, does, you're working very hard with absolutely no guarantee that, you know, there's always a voice inside. You. See, no one's going to care about this. What are you doing wasting time writing this bloody book that no one's going to publish? And even for doing nobody's going to care about? You have to sort of you know, it's quite a it's a full time job quiet and quiet kid. quietening. That voice though?

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting that you always wanted to be a writer. And of course, you studied English Literature at the University of Glasgow, you read in the likes of Martin Amos from a young age. So I'm just wondering, How did you land a job in a&r in the music business? Because it almost seems like a sideways move from someone who was always interested in literature and writing was

a kind of diversion. Yes, but I've always loved music, too. And so I made my first couple attempts at writing when I was an undergraduate, I have short, short stories on the lake as many an undergraduate before and after me as a but I'd always been in bands since I was a teenager, and I love music and playing guitar. And the band I was in, got a sort of indie record deal, and we were on tour. As best you know, the sort of late 80s I'm talking about. And I took a couple of years at a university where I moved to London and we're, you know, we're trying to we could go with the band. And then it became apparent that wasn't going to happen. Head were really, really poor. Remembering at the London Marathon, they think 1989 And between four of us we didn't have an have money to buy one a scream room, I think voice is a pretty hard relief right here. And I wound up going back to finish my degree. And then after a graduate, because it's two years out, by the time I graduated, I guess I was 2324. And I, I had been broke for as long as I could remember, you know, kill was, you know, a student, then it was an indie band, and there was a student again. And so, when you got to the early 90s, when I was graduating, I was kinda desperate to earn some money. And I was both lazy and greedy. But I got a fast in the future. So I got interviews at the milk chrome with merchant banks and places like that. I remember having interviews with Credit Suisse and Salomon Brothers, Lehman Brothers, and people like that. And then, of course, these are huge salaries, you got to start with these polices. However, it became apparent you had to be in work at like 6am. And you'd be there at nine o'clock at night. And I remember thinking,

lazy. But yeah, I was also greedy, and wanted to make lots of money. So the music industry is somewhere that welcomes lazy greedy people with open arms. So it seemed like a&r was somewhere we could roll into the office at lunchtime. And but if you're successful, you can make a lot of money. So I just grabbed your god, this is getting really specific, but my cousin, Kevin, like then just one song, I literally had a cousin called Kevin Wright, he, he ran a record shop in Glasgow, the early 90s. And it was at the height of the sort of British dance music boom, where, um, you know, there were lots hundreds of 1000s of kids going clubbing every weekend and buying records and wanting to be DJs. And we will electoral nd dance, they will could put a 12 inch single and sell at 10 15,000 copies easily in these sorts of numbers that would put you in the top 10 today. And Kevin wants to set up a record label as well as the shop. And he said, Well, you've been the band user record, do you know how that stuff works? Don't you create manufacturing records and distribution? And I didn't at all, obviously, when I was in the band, I kind of thought was Keith Richards and I didn't have to get involved with that stuff. But I wanted a job so late to Kevin and said, Yeah, I kind of heard a lot. And so the next thing I knew we'd sort of set up this little indie label in Glasgow and maintain 91 to this. And we did very well with a run of releasing some really good singles that did quite well. And you went to conventions, and you know, conferences, and I started to meet people from major labels. And then within a couple of years, some that London Records are from a job. They're an a&r, as you've been at 94 at this point. And so moved to London, again, for the second time, for the first time being with the band a few years previously, and moved down again. You know, just to sort of what we know called Britpop was beginning to explode. You know, it was 94 it with all the rise of ISIS and partly from all that malarkey. And so suddenly, the kind of background I came from, of nd guitar music had gone from being, you know, quiet backwater to moving into the mainstream. So it was quite exciting in that way. There's a lot of connections in that world. So you know, what, to cut a long story short, what wound up happening was I sort of stumbled pretty much at university. And within a couple of years into a major label, you know, job where you were ludicrously well paid any big expense account and company car and travel, you know, yeah, it was pretty seductive lifestyle. So, bubbling away all the time, I have made a couple of other attempts during this period. To write an oval again, I think 1989 At the end of the band before resuming the degree, I got about 100 pages into a novel, which looking back now it was very violent, sort of American Psycho tape novel, which I would have been writing actually, at the same time as British novelist was writing American cycle would have been 18. A. But I just didn't have the self discipline. At that age. When I guess I was 2122. I didn't have the self discipline that you need to finish a project. I wouldn't have that until I was older. In my early 30s, to be honest, I remember read a quote of Debbie Hargreaves and make the book making tracks the rise of Blondie, where she said she had a lot of the same creative impulses, and her late teens and early 20s as the ones that eventually made us successful, but she didn't have the sort of self discipline to have, you know, fealty, and it was certainly similar for me. I had a lot of the same I could probably have done the similar a ton of Ray's in terms of prose, and my early 20s as dead as I could to 10 years later when I started writing seriously, but I just didn't have the self discipline to shut the door behind you for, you know, five or six hours every day that it takes to get a novel written. And so I've never finished anything, you know, which is a common problem. When you talk to people who want to be writers, you need to somehow get to the finish line, and then go back to page one. And, you know, my least favorite part of the whole process is rereading the first draft, you know, write my own phone, I know that I'm sure the summary of his first draft you could probably take to the printers. But my first drafts are always such a mess. And it's just a case. The second drafts were the real work takes place, you know. But yeah, it took me until I was a middle probably 30 to 33. Till I was able to do that.

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