Richard Wright

Here’s the second in a brief series of articles about the creation of the Hiram Grange novellas, currently being released by Shroud Publishing, and due to conclude in April with my own ‘Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow’.  You can find part one here, in which Tim from Shroud Publishing makes mysterious utterings, and lures five writers to him.

Having summoned us to the online equivalent of a darkened room, quietly locking the door when the last of us was in, Tim unveiled his notion.  Five novellas, each twenty-thousand words long, about Hiram Grange.  A man who fights monsters, but who is also a monster.  A scarred, sneering relic, brutally efficient, more than a little misogynistic.  The stories were to be classic pulp fiction, brought bang up to date.

We stared at him for a little bit, in an online, metaphorical sort of a way.

And then we all started to talk at once.  Loudly, and with some waving of arms.  Ideas flew around, steaming hot.  A lot was nailed down, very quickly.  One of the first contributions I made was that the series be properly serial, with each standalone story containing hints of a bigger picture that would play across the five books, and conclude in the last.  As a reader, I love that sort of double engagement with a story – it rewards investment, and has you drumming your fingers waiting for the next part to arrive – and was delighted when the idea was embraced.

We spent a few days emailing constantly – questions and questions and questions.  Who does Hiram work for?  Who are his friends?  Where does he live?  Is he really a borderline alcoholic and habitual drug user?  Were we telling a story that was essentially static, so that the status quo was retained at the end of book five, or were we prepared to set up Hiram’s world, and then explode it around him, ready for something new if the books did well enough for us to take things further forward?  How heroic a hero is he?  What does he wear?  How did his parents die?  Why is one chamber of his Webley filled with a spent shell?  How do confluences actually work?  Who is his real nemesis, and how much do we unveil about him/her in the series?  We agreed, we argued, we nicked each others ideas, changing them and throwing them back into the pot so that somebody else could do the same thing again.

We slaughtered each others babies mercilessly, leaving room for better ones to be born.  Not the most humane metaphor for the writing process, but better than the usual triteness about nurturing a story like a child and watching it grow, etc.  I always find it more like a cull, followed by the brutal conditioning of and enforced surgery on any survivors, until you’ve one left that you think you can live with.  That’s how it works for me, and definitely how I viewed the creation of Mr Grange.

It was bloody exhausting, but extremely exciting.  By the end, we had something to take forward, a world and a man we thought we could tell thrilling stories about.  That’s when we went away into our own little worlds, to make his stories our own.  In a month or so, I’ll tell you about Poland, and the Beast of the Air, and the horrors of continuity, and how we infected each others stories so that each book has a little bit of all of us in it.

In the meantime, for more Hiram you can check out an interview with him, currently running at Choate Road.  You don’t often see your characters interviewed, so this was interesting.

You can also check out this review of Hiram Grange and the Twelve Little Hitlers, Scott Christian Carr’s brutal and twisted second entry in the series (how can you not love the title?).

And of course, you can go to Amazon and buy the first two books.  Just tap “Hiram Grange” into the search box, and get ready for a ride.

I was briefly disturbed to receive a xmas card this morning from Hiram Grange, who you will have gathered, is a character I have written about for Shroud Publishing.  I felt briefly like Stephen King had included me in one of his novels about a writer, which would bode nothing but ill.  I saw the co-signatory before I could get too carried away, I’m happy to say.

The card is one of the interiors from Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned by Jake Burrows, produced in black and white in the book, but in glorious colour here.  Having an artist like Malcolm McClinton work with you on a project is a bit of a dream, really.

Right, tomorrow morning we’re off to Bangkok, oriental setting, and the city don’t know what the city is getting.  The creme de la creme of the…

No, hang on, that’s a song from the musical Chess.

See you in a week or so.

A birthday has happened, and my daughter took me to Pizza Hut.  It’s identical to every other Pizza Hut in the entire world, but surprisingly good for that.  Sometimes, simple things work.

In other news, Shroud Publishing are so determined to hook you early on Hiram Grange, they’re selling the currently available Hiram Grange stories at half the cover price for the next two days only.  That makes them heartbreakingly cheap, and trying one out is like your own little birthday present to me.  If you haven’t done so yet, please buy one.  Or if you were planning on buying one, get in there now, and get both of them for what you would have paid anyway.

Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned

Hiram Grange and the Twelve Little Hitlers

You know what you must do.

Updated to add: Your coupon code is Hiram50 when you make your purchase.  Don’t say I never give you anything…

With the release of the first two Hiram Grange novellas (the first, Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned, arrived in India today) I hope that some of you might be familiar with the titular character by now.  If you’ve been reading here, you almost certainly know that he takes centre stage in five linked novellas, and that the last one, Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow, due in April, is penned by yours truly.  My involvement in Hiram’s scandalous adventures goes a little deeper than that of author though, and I thought it might be interesting, in the run up to that final book, to give you a peek behind the curtain at how it all happened.  Hence this, the first of three or four irregular pieces about the development of Hiram, from my point of view, running up to the publication of Nymphs.

I first became involved with Shroud Publishing when they bought my story ‘Secrets (Never Told)’ for their Beneath the Surface anthology.  On April 8th, 2008, I popped by Shroud’s message boards to see if there was any news on of that book, and saw instead a post from Tim Deal, owner and editor at Shroud, titled An Idea.  It read:

“I have an idea for a novella series featuring recurring characters–pulpy but intelligent and featuring a base but lovable antihero.

The novellas would be generated by a pool of authors.

PM me if you are interested in learning more.

This is all in the idea stage.”

All very mysterious, and I was in two minds about whether to respond.  It felt like being picked up in a bar by somebody who looked normal enough on the inside, but had a strange little glint in the eye.  Glints like that could indicate upcoming fun of the best kind, or an awkward fumble that could only lead to somebody getting stalked.

My first reaction, intrigue, came about because the idea chimed with a project I’d considered embarking on myself, a series of linked stories following one set of characters, at novella or novelette length (an idea that has not been put aside, and may well be something I follow up in 2010).  I’d also recently worked on my Doctor Who story ‘Lonely’, and had a great deal of fun.  The idea of working in another ’shared world’ was appealing.

On the other hand, I’ve been involved in at least three attempts to collaborate in creating shared world projects in the last ten years, in which editors with the best of intentions have gathered authors together for some grand act of collaboration.  They all fell apart.  Get a bunch of authors committed to one project over a lengthy period of time, and there are certain problems that will almost certainly rear their heads. Authors are solitary animals, unlike actors.  I used to be an actor, and they’re pack animals by trade necessity.  There are certainly struggles within that pack, as the hierarchy establishes in each group, and everybody vies for attention, but it’s all underwritten by the knowledge that if people don’t pull together to some extent, everybody will come out of things badly.

Authors, on the other hand, are arch, solitary creatures, used to holding their ideas close to their chest, shutting the world away while they get on with their own business.  Trying to get authors to commit to something, especially something that might not be their idea in the first place, and then getting them to stay committed for the duration… well, it’s like trying to teach synchronised swimming to cats.  Curiosity might draw their attention, but holding it under adversity is a gift few editors can master.  Some will lose interest, others might find themselves with more immediate deadlines that pull them away, the whole endeavour might just run out of steam before it’s ready for the printed page…

The actor in me has taken a long time to die completely, and so I usually say yes to such collaborations before I think it through.  The idea of committing to another such project and have it collapse was not appealing.  Shroud Publishing, at the time, was also a new press.  I liked the editor, and I liked how Beneath the Surface turned out, but the independent press is littered with the corpses of promising start-ups that died within a few books of operation.  At that point, there was no way of knowing whether the company would die before anything saw print.

I ummed.  I aaahed.  Obviously, I eventually sent Tim a tentative message, expressing sort-of-interest depending on what he had in mind.

Others did the same.  Jake Burrows.  Scott Christian Carr.  Rob Davies.  Kevin Lucia.

Then, Tim told us what he was planning, and we found out whether we were going to sink, or (synchronised) swim.

Right, a couple of random things to let you know about, if only so that I can de-bookmark some websites.  Is there a real word for deleting-an-internet-bookmark-that-you-created-to-remind-you-to-blog-about-it-and-don’t-need-anymore-because-you’ve-blogged-about-it?  If not, make one up and let me know what it is.

Hiram Grange and the Twelve Little Hitlers, Hiram’s delirious second outing, is now available at Amazon.  That means it should be on international Amazon sites in another week or two, as the first book, Hiram Grange and the Village of the Damned, already is (USA, UK, Canada).  It’s a huge weight off to see the Hiram books being so well received (the latest review of Village of the Damned points out that it’s “an exciting and pulp-filled thrill ride“, and who am I to argue?).  In the next day or so I’ll take you behind the curtain, and tell you how it all came about.  In the meantime, buy a book, why don’t you?

May this year will see the publication of the Dark Faith anthology from Apex Books, which will include my story ‘Sandboys’.  If you think you’ll end up buying a copy, you may wish to pre-order the book now.  The first five hundred people to do so will bag a limited edition chapbook called Dark Faith: Last Rites for free, containing an additional three tales.  It’s a nice little, utterly exclusive, promotional piece.  If you’re going to read ‘Sandboys’ anyway, and you probably should, because I’m very proud of it, you might as well get the biggest bang for your buck.

I keep forgetting about The Flesh Remembers, a novella you can currently (but not for too much longer) find on my website.  This means that it’s always a nice surprise when somebody else doesn’t forget it’s there.  Author (and friend) Mark West dropped me a line over the new year, to tell me he’d left his thoughts on the story over at Goodreads.  It’s never less than gripping, he says.  You can trust him.  He’s an author… (thanks Mark, glad you enjoyed it).

Right, that’s the deleting-an-internet-bookmark-that-you-created-to-remind-you-to-blog-about-it-and-don’t-need-anymore-because-you’ve-blogged-about-it done (please find a credible word for that).  In other news, I’m taking things easy this week.  No point digging into 2010 quite yet, as we’ll be off to Thailand for a holiday next week, so anything too serious can wait until we get back.  Just before we leave, on Monday, I turn thirty-five.  A couple of nights in Bangkok, followed by several more on a beach in Phuket (I have enormous fun pronouncing Phuket, and now you will too) doesn’t seem a bad way to spend the first days of the second half of my thirties, actually.

Is it still snowing where you are?  Yesterday, here in Delhi, I had to put on a light jacket, it was so cool.  Murder.  I sympathise.