ROBUST discussion

I try to regularly do interviews with indie authors on my site. If you're interested, get in touch. J. Dean is the latest victim. He writes horror, as well as a sort of fantasy-scifi mix. You can read it here.

Fun interview. :)

Thanks, Mark.

I just did another two. Rory Miller and Glen Krisch. Glen's doing a giveaway of his novel The Darkness Within as part of the interview. If you like horror, head on over and snag a free copy.

Being interviewed by Christopher is highly recommended for refreshing the parts not reached by other interviewers.

Thanks for the compliment, Andre. Actually, I've been thinking lately of experimenting with author interviews that have nothing to do with their books, but more about their philosophy (foundational worldview, perspective on creativity, authorial obligations re effects on readers/culture, etc). However, that very well might scare off a lot of people.

Christopher wrote: "Thanks for the compliment, Andre. Actually, I've been thinking lately of experimenting with author interviews that have nothing to do with their books, but more about their philosophy (foundational worldview, perspective on creativity, authorial obligations re effects on readers/culture, etc). However, that very well might scare off a lot of people."

Douglas Adams and Douglas Sutherland and I had a wonderful afternoon discussing "authorial obligations to culture", lunching on it until after 4pm, taking turns to mimic Malcolm Muggeridge in his late bid for beatification, and A N Wilson (whose bid started in the cradle), and F R Leavis ("who's afraid of Queenie Leavis!"), sticking the Secker/Heinemann combine for the tab at the Venezia. I still giggle when I think of that afternoon. The head of the firm, Tom Rosenthal, was standing on a landing with five or six of Nobel Prize Winners, wanting us to sign on to handle the publicity for some worthy cause, but Douglas waggled his fingers at them. "Can't you see we're busy?" What we were busy doing was following the editorial assistant sent to call us to arms up the stairs past the Klee and the Picasso. She wore a transparent plastic raincoat over a pale tan body stocking, an ensemble which shortly featured in two novels and a notorious short story that had to be published pseudonymously!

Nice interview.

Thanks, J.a.

Douglas Adams? You've been holding out on us. Adams is up there in my short-list of humorists with legs (er, I meant that in a metaphorical way). Interesting that you would mention Muggeridge. My old boss had some kind of connection to him. Can't remember how exactly. Or perhaps Muggeridge insulted him at a lecture. Something like that. You don't happen to know anyone in the Stone/Magnusson media clan, do you?

Everyone who ever set foot inside a television studio had some connection to Muggeridge; the man was a tireless self-promoter.

I met Muggeridge in his extended old age, when he heard the hellfires roaring, repented, and became holier than the Pope. He was the one who at SOS training school in Baker St told the traitor Kim Philby c 1941, in faultless French if you please (which I won't reproduce here because Sierra will complain we're swearing) that, "You come to our house of ill repute as freshly picked country virgins, but we'll soon turn you into a raddled old professionals." Of course, I wasn't born yet, so when I asked Muggeridge to confirm this so I could quote it in my novel Reverse Negative: A Novel of Suspense, Muggeridge said, "It is a lie, and what's more, if you use it to imply anything about my morals at the time, or my loyalty to my country, or any other of your manifold slithering sneakinesses [that's what the man said!], I shall sue you for every penny you own, and that poncey Italian car as well!" You can imagine what Douglas & Douglas (Sutherland wrote the The English Gentleman) made of that hoary old hypocrite, with only a little feeding from me. At one stage the whole restaurant was laughing with us.

Incidentally, Muggeridge when he heard, or perhaps simply out of old man's spite, or a desire still to feel important, dobbed me in to DGSS -- Directorate-General of the Security Service, what common thriller writers call MI5 -- for telling tales out of school by exposing Sir Anthony Blunt, the Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, as a traitor and the recruiter of Philby, Burgess, etc, etc to the Nth Man. When I was next in some out of the way place, Adelaide in Australia, ASIO, the local MI5 flunkies, confiscated my manuscripts, and some of the rougher colonial elements threatened me, until they came short on an overhead solid oak cupboard door which when I heard they were coming I unscrewed from its hinges and arranged just so. It fell on them when they stepped on the wrong (right!) floorboard, and broke a collarbone and some toes while I ostentatiously showed open hands to the regular policeman present, who then took them away swearing vengeance.

I wasn't bosom buddies with Douglas Adams. I ran into him at the Beeb a couple of times and we liked each other, and his popular publisher owned my literary publisher (and probably financed some of my experiments with the profits from Douglas's books, though he was of course never so crass as to mention it). We made agreeable companions for lunch when we ran into each other on the Poland Street/ Bloomsbury Square Axis of Evil (we weren't above sending up a Great President either); Douglas was a metropolitan acquaintance. Ah, later we both were Apple Macintosh enthusiasts; I let Douglas take home for a bit and cuddle an early upright Macintosh that was signed by Steve & Steve (long since sold to a Chinese collector), and he gave me some software he wrote, which didn't work too well, to dim the lights in my study and turn them on their tracks in response to voice commands or (theoretically) movement, though the latter didn't work at all.

Photo of Kim Philby, first illustration, third from left,
http://coolmainpress.com/andrejuteboo...
to which Muggeridge in his disreputable youth bears a remarkable resemblance.