Brit Grit Alley features news and updates on what's happening down British crime fiction's booze and blood soaked alleyways.
Geeeeeezah! One of the up and coming names on the Brit Grit scene is the London based/ Teeside born writer Martin Stanley, whose debut novel The Gamblers is a bit of a corker. He's recently published a short story collection called The Greatest Show In Town. At the moment he's giving a few of his eBooks away for FREE! If you you pop over here to his blog, you can find out more about the giveaway. And here's a short, sharp interview that I recently did with Martin :
PDB: Can you pitch THE GREATEST SHOW IN TOWN in 25 words or less?
A collection of eleven rather dark and sweary shorts, of which your mother probably wouldn’t approve.
PDB: Which tunes, books, films or television shows have floated your boat recently?
Films that have floated my boat recently have included Looper, Argo and Killing Them Softly.
I recently re-read Paul Cain’s Seven Slayers, which is brilliant, and your own 13 Shots of Noir rather tickled my fancy.
Justified and Boardwalk Empire are great and even Dexter, which has been floundering since series 4, returned to form. I’ve heard no music that floats my boat recently, though that might be because I live in a sound-bubble of Buzzcocks, Led Zep, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring
PDB: Is it possible for a writer to be an objective reader?
Sometimes. Depends on the situation and genre. If I’m reading horror, sci-fi, literary fiction or classics then I read objectively, but if I’m reading crime fiction then I will read with one eye on why something works.
PDB: Do you have any interest in writing for films, theatre or television?
I have written screenplays in the past, but they were mostly rubbish. They did help to sharpen my dialogue though. If somebody asked me to write them a screenplay I would certainly go back to it, but I’m more interested in writing fiction and telling stories that way
PDB: How much research goes into each book?
It obviously depends on the story, but a lot of research went into The Gamblers; The Hunters was lighter on research, but I still had to fact check a few things; the shorts in The Greatest Show had a few things fact checked, too. I like to make sure things are accurate, but I try not to let research get in the way of a good story.
If it wasn’t for Twitter and Facebook I wouldn’t have come into contact with a lot of great writers and discovered their work. So very important, I’d say – Twitter especially.
PDB: What’s on the cards for 2013?
Finishing the sequel to The Hunters (The Glasgow Grin), editing and publishing another Stanton brothers novella called Bone Breakers, finishing a revenge novella called Cry Tomorrow, and probably another collection of shorts called Laughter in the Dark.
BIO: Martin Stanley is the author of three crime books The Gamblers, The Hunters and The Greatest Show in Town, a collection of shorts.
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