My Next Big Thing

Thanks to Steven Porter for tagging me for this, which is a promotional device which hopefully gets some writers some decent publicity for free. It works like a chain letter, with me tagging the next three people to take part. It's all about what I am working on currently, fiction-wise...

Zack Wilson is the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

What is the working title of your book?

I haven't decided yet. The first chapter is called 'The Big Meet Up', I can tell you that though. I tend to wait for titles to jump at me from the text, to be honest. When a line seems to work well, that's what I'll build a title around. It will be something over-dramatic, slightly baroque and bloody though. Like the best spaghetti westerns.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It's been brewing for years. I've wanted to write a western ever since I can remember, so the idea has come from years of watching western films and TV shows, and reading about the frontier days of America. My interest in the frontier was the main reason I chose an American Studies degree, actually, 20 years ago. I've had a lifelong obsession with the West and this is a logical step for me to take. I wanted to combine my knowledge of the real West with the European mentality found in spaghetti westerns, where the tone is brutal and often overtly political. There's often a more realistic tone in spaghetti westerns than there is in American westerns, certainly about greed, venality, violence and oppression, and I wanted to get that into the work too. I'm also fascinated by the idea of scum rising to the top in the melting pot, which is why the characters will have a diverse set of national and ethnic backgrounds.


 
What genre does your book fall into?

Western. Post-modern, spaghetti, anti-western, whatever. It's a western.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

For the Irish former British Army cavalry officer, Stephen Butler, who also fought for the North in the American Civil War, it has to be Pierce Brosnan, although he might well be a bit too old once it's finished. Naylor, the ex-Royal Marine from Hull, would need to be played by someone who can do a proper Hull accent, which should limit the search a bit. I'd like some hungry unknowns in there, and I reckon American actor James Tropeano could probably handle the part of John Slaughter, the half-Cheyenne, half-Boston Yankee knife fighter. It'd be nice to get Robert Carlyle in there somewhere too, perhaps as the old Texas Ranger in the gang. And as for the women in the book, well, it would be nice to get Sherilyn Fenn and Wendy Robie from Twin Peaks in there. If Kris Kristofferson or Willie Nelson are still alive by then, it would be nice to fit them in somewhere too. Wes Studi would be great as the Kiowa warrior character.

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?

Bunch of trained misfits fall together and make a reluctant living as hired thugs and gunmen, dealing out extreme violence and learning about what makes America in the process.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The whole idea of agents is a load of bourgeois shit. Just another gate to stop characters like me from getting our foot in the door. I'll be looking for an independent publisher like Epic Rites to take a chance with it. But it's going to take a while to write this, so we'll see what happens. If anyone wants to offer me a huge advance on it, I'm open to offers.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I'm still writing it. It might take years. It all depends on what happens this year really.

What other books would you compare the story to within your genre?

Well, it would be nice if someone compared it to Cormac McCarthy, but I think it'll be a lot funnier than him. To be honest, I don't care much for comparisons, they're often very misleading. One writer I would love it to be compared to is Bernard Cornwell, who wrote the 'Sharpe' series. I do read quite a lot of historical fiction, and this is what this is to me, really, so I'll say Patrick O'Brian too.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?



The fascination with the American West and spaghetti western movies I referred to above really. But it was also motivated by a desire to do something entirely different to Stumbles and Half Slips. And, indeed, to do something vastly different to my previous work, which was very rooted in the North and Midlands of England, in the last decade. 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, I would hope that the fact I'd written it might appeal to a few people. The characters are really what I'm all abut as a writer, and I hope that it would be them that would really grab people's attention. I've got two former African-American slaves who might or might not be gay, a celibate lesbian Irish Catholic brothel keeper, an ex-Royal Marine from Hull who has emigrated, a Cheyenne knife fighter who quotes Keats, an anti-slavery Texas Ranger, plus Kiowa warriors, whores, miners, thugs, gunmen and preachers. I might even put a drover called Doyle in there, as a little sly reference to Stumbles and Half Slips. He won't like the West too much and probably wants to go back home as soon as possible...

 My Next Big Thing nominees are:

John Crosbie is a writer from Scotland. His blog, Chaserjay, is a good way to see what John writes. When he can find the time with all his martial arts, running and dancing...

Zarina Zabrisky is the author of 'Iron', also published by Epic Rites Press. A Russian now living in the United States. A review of 'Iron' will appear at Lone Striker soon. It had probably better be good, as she used to be a kickboxing instructor...

Erin Reardon is an Irish-American poet from Boston. A review of her collection 'Meat' can be read HERE. Like me, she is an expert on television, drinking and Ian McShane.

Zack Wilson is the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

Film Review: Seraphim Falls

As this was on the telly the other night, it seemed a good time to re-post this review of what is a fairly good western. It was originally published at: http://suite101.com/article/western-film-review-seraphim-falls-a381484

Remember that my debut novel 'Stumbles and Half Slips'  is out, from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

'Seraphim Falls' (2006) was co-written as well as directed by David Von Ancken. Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan give the film a real bite of quality acting, in their respective portrayals of opposing duo Carver, a former Confederate officer, and Gideon, who fought for the Union.

The two are intimately connected by their respective parts in a terrible, but also unfortunate, atrocity committed at the end of the American Civil. Set in Nevada, three years after the end of the American Civil War, the film centres around the pursuit of Gideon by a posse led by Carver. The story is simplistic and enjoyably uncomplicated, though it is shaded by the back story of Neeson's motivation for his single-minded pursuit of Brosnan.

Captain Ahab & Clint Eastwood

It turns out that what turned Carver into this demented, laconic Ahab of the West was an act of post-Civuil War brutality committed in the name of the Union by troops under the command of Gideon, when Carver's family were burned to death.. By the time film ends, even the shocking nature of this atrocity pales in the hot white desert light of the feud between the two men.

This recent western was said at the time if its release to owe much to Clint Eastwood's 1970s classic 'The Outlaw Josie Wales'. However, with its desert journeys, flashbacks to fill in narrative gaps, its surrealism and its cynical violence, the movie owes much more to Eastwood's 1960s spaghetti westerns, and viewers will be reminded of some of 'The Good, the bad and the Ugly's desert scenes.

Although the narrative is uncomplicated, it is not shallow. Camera shots which rely on space and emptiness help convey the film's existential themes, the idea of man or men, against the unforgiving emptiness of nature and life.

The film references more Italian westerns than just Sergio Leone's work, however. There are hints of 'The Great Silence', both in Brosnan's gruff, almost inaudible portrayal of Gideon, and also in its early snowbound settings. The small child in the cabin in the mountains could almost be Loco the bounty killer as a child with his blonde hair and wide eyes, witnessing the trauma which set him on the road to violence.

The desert shots also recall the Almeria landscape used in many spaghetti westerns, and the individualistic, materialistic motivations and aims of the characters reflect the hard-bitten attitudes of many of the great Italian outings.

The use of colour in the film is evocative and effective. The dream-like transition from mountain to desert is handled with a dawn which drains all the colour from the landscape, leaving the characters moving through the landscape of a dream.

Cormac McCarty's 'Blood Meridian'

There is more dream-like surrealism too, recalling occasionally Cormac McCarthy's novel 'Blood Meridian' as characters spring out of the desert to strike existential bargains with Neeson and Brosnan. Anjelica Houston is a dark lady, appearing like death in her funeral wagon to barter for the essentials of life in the desert as the pursuit reaches its peak. Wes Studi turns in a typically high-quality performance as a wry Native American, dispensing dark desert wisdom along with his take-it-or-leave-it deals on water and horseflesh.

The baseness of the pursuit of Gideon by Carver is exemplified by the minimalist setting of the desert, its white spareness overcut with the panting grunts of the struggling duo, trying to outwit each other like some Old West Spy vs Spy, until the pursuit reaches its sudden denouement.

Revisionist Westerns

'Seraphim Falls' has been described as 'revisionist', an overused term which can often be used to cover inept and violent uses of what have become stereotypes every bit as much as the Hollywood staples they sought to replace in recent years. This film's cynical brutality is actually fresh and spare, sudden in its impact, despite the Hollywood action stereotypes of its opening sequences in the snow.

Certainly there is something of a twist to the traditional western ending in the film's conclusion, when a cliche is turned ninety degrees to the left when we are treated to two protagonists striding, or in this case, weaving, off into the white hot sun. Tthe knife, such a recurring iconic image in the film, the blade on which frontier existence rests, has been spiked in the ground. A hatchet buried, but it was all in the end for nothing, the war just men grubbily clawing at each other's faces in the dirt.

What we are left with is a sense of the uncomplicated nature of life when it is boiled down to its essence. But there is redemption in its conclusion too, and a sense that perhaps life's essential meaninglessness could also be humanity's salvation.

Remember that my debut novel 'Stumbles and Half Slips'  is out, from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.