In past decades he has appeared as a theatre director; as a composer/librettist of stage musicals; as a satirist on CBC TV's The Journal, as a magazine journalist; as a screenwriter; a columnist for The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun; and as the author of five acclaimed novels.
A recipient of many awards including the Governor-General's Medal, he is an officer of the Order of Canada.
He is currently working on Mr. Good-Evening, the third in a series of novels set in 1920s Vancouver, following The White Angel and Vile Spirits.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first novel “Dazzled” was written in 1980, while I was in New York with “Billy Bishop Goes to War.” It gave me something to do during the day. Though delighted that Irwin published it (after many, many revisions), I still thought of myself as a working composer/librettist/pianist & was working on my musical “Rock And Roll.”
Then in the Nineties, the market for musicals (mine at least) tanked.
I started with non-fiction but became bored.
I had learned how to do dialogue and character, so I took up screenwriting (Rock And Roll became a feature video, King of Friday Night ) & got into the craft of it, several scripts optioned, one that actually became a film (Kootenai Brown). In the process I learned a good deal about many things – especially plot and structure.
Then for some reason, I wanted to write a thing. Not a potential play or movie, but a thing. Like a painting – even if nobody sees
it, it's still a painting.
So I decided to write plot-based novels, movies for people's minds, & eliminate the middlemen.
Which also eliminated the camera and microphone – and meant I would have to do that job in sharp, rhythmic prose that kept people awake, interested, fascinated, whatever.
The other thing was that it would have to keep me interested. It's a long, arduous process. As a person somewhere along the ADD spectrum, I like crime novels. Not whodunnits, novels in which the fascinating thing isn't the crime itself, but what it reveals about human beings.
So I wrote A Gift for the Little Master, about a serial killer who goes into management – ie manipulates weak people into becoming serial killers themselves. The main characters are a TV news girl, a multiracial bike courier & a bad cop. I wrote the book in English Prime – minus the verb to be – because this is a world where everything is changing, where nothing is. Random House Canada published it. Yay.
At this point my agent suggested that I write a crime novel set in Victorian London. Which got me thinking about how Victorian my childhood was & how Victorian things still are. (I grew up in a Victorian family, in a hundred ways.) Plus, this was when Vancouver arrested a serial killer who HAD murdered sex workers, in which the police had shown an astonishing reluctance to reach that conclusion – instead, they showed the same assumptions & attitudes Victorians held, about “fallen women – as lost souls who are doomed by their sinful profession.
The Fiend In Human was snatched up by international publishers, who saw it as another The Exorcist; problem was, even Caleb Carr couldn't produce another The Exorcist. Some rave reviews but disappointing sales. They published White Stone Day and Not Quite Dead in fewer numbers, then lost interest entirely. (Publishers used to publish authors; thanks to Conde Nast, now they publish books.)
2 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes me a year to come up with a plot. A plot isn't a story - a cause-effect chain;
it's a petri dish that needs a certain amount of material to grow on its own,
and it all has to interrelate. And even
then it's vague. At some point I always
find I have been wrong about something crucial & have to double back.
3 - Where does a work for page or stage usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
There's a long period of “controlled dreaming.” When I start in earnest I already have a shadow in my mind.
4 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings – especially Q&A.
5 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I'm just the old guy in the basement, working on his model train.
That said, I'm interested in psychopathy (interviewed Dr Hare a few times). Evil as an absence – something trying to complete its self. A Rabbi told me that “The Tree of Good And Evil” in the Hebrew reads as something like The Tree of that-which-is-complete-and-that-which-is-incomplete.”
It's a valid frame for a villain: Something Is Missing.
6 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I don't do “should.” I'm agnostic. In my brain at least, writing has become so intertwined with thinking, that writing has become thinking itself. Things need to be put into words. As opposed to blurting sentences, writing a thought down means you can look at it & decide if that's the best way to say it. There have been storytellers as long as there have been human beings; let's say some got laryngitis or something & wrote it down as they told it. There's a demand for their tablets...
7 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential and fun. My motto is, “I am more than happy to take credit for your thoughts.” There is nothing like being read by a trained reader who's not a pal & who has edited a shitload of material & is basically on your side. Writing is solitaire; publishing is a team.
Lack of editing is the main reason bestsellers are so thick – an A-list author turns in a bug-crusher & the editor says “marvelous,” because they want to keep their job.
8 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given
to you directly)?
Don't push the river, it runs by itself – in other words, Have faith in the process of the universe.
9 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (crime fiction to stage musicals)? What do you see as the appeal?
In my so-called career, I have just kind of backed into things. I have no idea how I became a newspaper columnist; nor how I ended up on national TV for 5 years. Someone may have suggested it – an angel, perhaps. But switching genres has kept me interested, if fear can be equated with interest - there is always an embarrassing ropes-learning period that makes one shudder later on.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I do nothing for a year except accumulate scattered notes. When I decide to put the dream in writing, I give it a couple of hours a day, starting with the packet of scribbles I jotted down on pieces of paper and in a file called “Yet More Shit.”
Once I have a first draft & can see what's there, I work longer hours fixing, re-writing, chopping, etc.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I don't. I do something else for
awhile & let the greater part of the brain work it out.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of creamed salt codfish on mashed potatoes, with melted butter & pepper.
The smell of the Atlantic Ocean. (Smells different from the Pacific.)
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Music is central to my being. (I can't remember not playing the piano.) Going over a paragraph, I hear it - hear it stutter & cack, and I try to make it sing. The music part isn't the ability to play but to listen.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Graham Greene; Richard Condon (Winter Kills, The Manchurian Candidate); Pierre LeMaitre (Alex, Camille); Patricia Highsmith, Muriel Spark.
The Yoga practice that developed out of Covid means I do a couple of hours a day surrendering to Gaia. I'm stretchier than before, but not as wise.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'll write another book, or part of one, whether it gets published or not. (It was like that with The White Angel.)
It's what I do.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it
be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you
not been a writer?
My Grade 8 teacher recommended I take up a trade like welding. And I suppose I could have carried on selling suits for Fred Asher, Stores For Men in 1974. Or I could have worked in a university theatre department, bored footless. And if Billy Bishop had been a hit on Broadway, I could have become an alcoholic screenwriter – or perhaps a crime novelist.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I had nothing better to do at the time. No kidding.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great
film?
Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk. Everything a crime novel “should” be.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I have something going on in my head about the 1934 Bedaux Expedition in northern BC & its connection to Heinrich Himmler's quest for the origin of the Arian Race. Meanwhile in Vancouver, it''s the year before the Battle of Ballentine Pier - Fascists financed the Shipping Federation are preparing for a showdown with Communist Unionists. And a policeman sent to investigate a murder finds himself in the territory of the Nahani, which is literally another world. Am waiting to find out what happens.
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