Blog

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Writing Comes From Life

Crime writer Jason Webster talks about his new book, ‘A Death in Valencia’

Much like his protagonist Detective Max Cámara, who solves crimes by soaking up fragments of information and overheard conversations, Webster’s writing owes much to serendipity: ‘I usually have two or three things I want to look at. These are then influenced by what’s happening around me.’ While he does read Crime Fiction he points out that ‘writing comes from life, not other writing.’ Webster maps out all the strands of the plot, a process he compares to the making of the Moroccan carpet in his office. Only when all the loose threads are tied up does he sit down to write – producing an impressive 2000 words a day.

Set in the pulsating city of Valencia, the heat and noise of high summer seep through every page. Max Cámara – a man sustained by paella, café solo and the occasional joint – has been described by one critic as ‘the most enchanting new detective I’ve come across’. He makes for excellent company as you navigate the twists and turns of the plot, as tightly woven as the city’s medieval warrens.

When prompted as to who Cámara would get along with, Webster opts for Fred Vargas’s Commissaire Adamsberg: ‘I think he would hit it off with mavericks who depend on their ability to associate disparate details – gut instinct rather than logic.’ And should Max Cámara make it to the big screen? ‘I have Javier Bardem in mind!’

The expertly researched back-story – the author has lived in the city for over a decade – is a strong part of the appeal. Having tackled bull-fighting in the first Max Cámara book: ‘Or The Bull Kills You’ Webster addresses a number of themes including that of the role of the church. ‘A Death in Valencia’ is set during the Pope’s visit and at a time when the abortion law is under threat.

Corruption is another prominent theme, particularly the abuse of land-planning laws. Webster himself is passionately opposed to the destruction of the city’s historic quarters: ‘The Town Hall want to bulldoze the El Cabanyal (the old fisherman’s quarter)… it’s a tragedy, this area dates back to the 13^th Century and has been deliberately run down,’ he says.

It’s the divisions in society that fascinate Webster:

‘You see it in all aspects of Spanish life; on the one hand parts of Spain are very liberal, it was one of the first countries to accept gay marriage, legalise prostitution and decriminalise drug possession for personal use but the country finds it difficult to break away from the authoritarianism of the Franco era when division on abortion, social rights, the regions versus the centre caused people to kill each other…in historical terms it’s not that long ago.’

Webster brings these issues to life through the experiences and thoughts of his characters: ‘Cámara goes through the mill in this book – still reeling from his ex-girlfriend’s decision to have an abortion, the block of flats he lives in collapses due to neglect and it’s as if his sense of the world also crumbles.’ Fans of ‘Or The Bull Kills You’ will be pleased to see his sidekick Torres, and grandfather Hilario return in ‘A Death in Valencia’.

Webster is already working on a third Max Cámara book, ‘The Anarchist Detective’ and a non-fiction title about Agent Garbo.

‘A Death in Valencia’ will be published by Chatto & Windus on the 7^th of June 2012.

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Influence

I am often asked in interviews about my influences as a writer. Who are the writers who have influenced me? This has become an even more common question since I started writing crime fiction, as, I suspect, interviewers try to get a sense of my books, or give a sense of them to readers who haven't read me. All well and good. But in fact it's a question I've never felt entirely comfortable with. It's the one I drag my feet over and leave till last, like the homework you always left till late on a Sunday night, somehow hoping it would magically disappear. And I usually come up with a list of people who I think may have influenced my writing, trying to answer honestly, but more often than not simply mentioning the last few writers I've read and enjoyed, or whatever jumps out at me from my bookshelves at the time. It's not that I don't think I've been influenced by anyone. I have. But who exactly? And in what way? In effect every book I've ever read has exerted an influence, whether I've liked it or not, feeding into the general pool of stuff that's floating around somewhere inside me. The fact is, I've always thought that writing should come primarily from living and experience, not from other writing. It's what happens and how I digest it that provides the bulk of source material for me. Not what I get from other books, (unless it's straight information). I've always known this, but have never really had the courage to say so, always falling into the trap of thinking that if a question is asked, it must have an answer. If I'm asked for my influences, I should provide a list of them. But today I decided to change that, thanks to a passage I read in an inspirational book called IMPRO, by Keith Johnstone. In it Johnstone talks about his time as a play-reader at the Royal Court Theatre in the 50s. The vast majority of plays he rejected on the grounds that they were 'pseudo-Beckett' or 'fake-Pinter' etc. Only plays that came from the 'author's own experience' were considered. 'It wasn't a matter of lack of talent,' Johnstone says, 'but of miseducation. The authors of the pseudo-plays assumed that writing should be based on other writing, not on life.' Sometimes it takes something like this - a comment or quote - to help see clearly what you yourself really think. I'm there with Johnstone. Which just means I've been influenced by something I've read... But I like these sorts of contradictions. Anyway, next time I'm asked a out my influences, I may just say what I really think.

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Coincidence

Sitting on a plane, reading Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. It's an old second-hand copy I picked somewhere, printed in 1966. It cost me £2.50, judging by the pencil mark on the inside. The original cover price was 3s 6d. In mid-read, I glance down at my neighbour's lap. He's got an ereader (I don't possess one), and I find my attention momentarily drawn to his little screen. To my surprise, I discover he is reading exactly the same book as myself. How strange, I think, that these same words written 130 years before should still be being read, albeit on very different media. Low tech or hi tech, Sherlock Holmes has surely demonstrated his universal and even eternal appeal. Who between these two readers hurtling through the air at 36,000 feet was enjoying the great master more, I wondered. Did it even matter whether he was read on paper or screen? I was about to quiz my travelling companion about these matters, when I noticed his head bobbing up and down. The poor fellow had fallen fast asleep.

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Or the Bull Kills You UK paperback

The UK paperback of Or the Bull Kills You will be published one week from now, on 1 March.

Please help to spread the word!

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Agent Garbo

Today, 14th February, would have been the 100th birthday of the Catalan Juan Pujol. Under the alias GARBO, Pujol was a hugely important double agent working for MI5 during WWII, and played a crucial role in the success of the Normandy landings. He is the subject of the book I am currently working on (and the reason why I haven't been blogging so much in recent weeks.) My book, currently titled AGENT GARBO, will hopefully appear in late 2013 or early 2014.

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Webster's Golden Social-Media Rules for Authors

Rule No.1 (there is only one):

THERE ARE NO FUCKING RULES

It's social, right? You don't have to sing karaoke every time you go to the pub, or play strip poker every time you're invited to a dinner party.

It's the same with social media. If you want to sit quietly in a corner listening to others, that's fine. If you want to strike up conversation with strangers, that's OK too. If you want to talk when you feel like it and then disappear for a few days or weeks, that's great. In fact, as a serious writer, that's not a bad idea at all. It's in those moments of slower quiet, removed from the noise of the world, that real ideas can come, as many others have commented, most recently Pico Iyer in the New York Times.

So ignore the articles out there promising to give you instant publishing success by following a few guidelines for Twitter, Facebook and the rest. Who cares how many followers Neil Gaiman has? So you've only got a few dozen. Let's hope they actually read your tweets. If you generally say something interesting, the chances are that they are.

What's important is authenticity. And you're either being yourself or you aren't. People can generally tell over social media as much as when meeting in a bar.

The thing is, there aren't any rules to be passed on about authenticity.

That's the beauty of it.

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Quality, not quantity

I've finally worked out why I loathe the dominant 'safety culture' of our society so much. It's not just that it limits and restricts, curtailing our need for adventure. Or that it manipulates and conditions (as opposed to educating) us into certain patterns of behaviour. Or that it just makes life dull, giving far too much power to headmistressy busy-body types to tell us what is or isn't acceptable behaviour. Or that it reduces a sense of self responsibility, based instead on the laughable idea that someone else is always to blame (and thereby sue-able) for our misadventures. Or that it infantilises an entire society. No. What really gets me about the 'safety' obsession of today is that it assumes that the objective of life is to live as long as possible. That's it. Nothing more. In other words, that quantity overrides quality entirely. In a society where people live relatively short lives (say an average of only 30 or 40 years) you would be forgiven for thinking that longevity was something desirable in itself, and that anyone who made it to 60+ was probably doing something right at least. Make it to 80+ and you would be considered semi-divine. The Anti-Pope Benedict XIII was almost 90 before he finally gave up the ghost. In the XIV century it was taken as a sign by his supporters that he had been right all along in his stance against Rome. But in a world where life expectancy has risen so much, dying in your 90s or even later is no longer note-worthy: it is becoming the norm (at least in the developed world). So you would think that in such circumstances we would focus less on simply staying alive and more on giving our lives some sort of meaning, or real quality. Yet the reverse is the case. Hence all the laws brought in 'for our own safety', trying to smooth out all the rough edges of life, to help us slither unhindered towards an ever more distant end. All this does, as I think we sense, is to kill us at some level. We may be physically alive, but what kind of life are we actually permitted to forge for ourselves? What is the point of living so long if you never really have a chance to live at all? As a society we have been blinded by greed, perhaps - a greed for more life. Like a kid in a sweet shop, we have a taste of something we like (longevity) and we want more of it, ever fearful that it might be taken away from us. But sweets in themselves are not food. And life should be measured in more than simply years. How awful, we cry, when a talented artist dies young. What a waste. Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

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New cover for the next Max Cámara novel

UK publication is due in June 2012.

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Or the Bull Kills You interview

A new, short video has gone up on YouTube, where I talk a little more about the first in the Max Cámara series of detective novels, Or the Bull Kills You. You can see it by clicking here. The interview was shot by Catherine Tosko, a film-maker currently working on a documentary on bullfighting, called The Bull and the Ban.

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No news

Turn off the news. Just turn it off.

Nothing is more guaranteed to chip away at your energy, life-spirit and optimism.

It's a drip drip effect of poison, slowly and steadily infecting its way inside. We know how it works, how it appeals to our primitive desires for drama and excitement - substitutes for attention, but very poor ones at that. And yet still we come back to it, switching on the radio, the television at set times, in a ritualised behaviour pattern ('Oh, I'll just watch the news and have a cup of tea.'). The very thought of living without the 'news' can even make us feel quite empty, depressed even.

That's because we're addicted. It works like a drug.

I know. I used to work in the news media. I used to feel strange and lost without some news input everyday. Yet at the same time I hated it, and how it was making me stressed and anxious all the time. Which is exactly the same feeling as having a drug addiction - you both want and hate the drug that has taken over your life.

But now everyone is supposed to be a journalist. Not content with having a small clique of addicts, the 'news' tries to suck us all in, encouraging us to take part in it by sending in our photos, videos and comments, with the promise of a few seconds of that other drug that has quickly eaten into us in recent years - 'fame' - if our stuff is chosen to be aired.

Remember what it used to be like going on holiday? You went abroad, not knowing the local language too well. And cut off from your own newspapers and radio stations, (and there was no internet back then) you lived in a curiously blissful state, unaware of the 'world events' going on elsewhere. I think that was one of the crucial things about a foreign holiday - you entered a different space in many ways, and, importantly, one cut off from the angst-machine of the 'news'.

Then, when you came back, you picked up a newspaper and found that not much had changed in the fortnight you'd been away. Life kept rumbling on. And you thought about ways of trying to maintain something of the relaxed frame of mind you brought back with you from holiday, but never quite managed it. Everyday life, problems, worries, the 'news' - all there, bringing you down again.

The thing is, there are problems in life that can't easily be dealt with, or brushed away. But we can turn off the news. It is within our control.