Every bookworms dream job would be to work in something bookish related right? So how great would it be to work in a bookshop? That's exactly where the story in
Midnight's Chicken takes place, and what a story it is!
Russell Hobbes is the manager of Books-R-Us in Baytown and he has a profound love of the printed word, well, the
good printed words. He often wonders how some books manage to get published at all and that leads him to thinking about his own, uncompleted manuscript, lovingly titled NOVEL.doc on his computer. He was hoping to have completed it before his idol, Internationally acclaimed author Abhinav Raksha comes to Books-R-Us but with everything else that's going on it doesn't look like it's going to happen.
Meanwhile Abhinav has his own problems to deal with, number one being that he's left his wife for a high maintenance nail technician called Madison closely followed by the fatwa that's been dealt to him for misspelling the name of the second prophet's daughter in his book The Devil's Poetry.
If all that's not enough, there's the little matter of the terrorist cell that are planning their own welcoming committee for Abhinav's arrival at Books-R-Us.
I loved reading Midnight's Chicken, it's a book that has a little bit of everything and three strands of a story that smoothly come together for a more than satisfying end. The characters are wonderful and Tom clearly has an eye for detail as the way each person is described, no matter how briefly they appear, conjured up an almost photographic image of them as I was reading. Russell desperately wants to impress people by writing his great South African novel, but he just can't find the time inbetween work and ferrying his tattoo-headed girlfriend Griselda around to her poetry slams. Rafiq, Ali and Kwikspar Muhammad (not to be confused with Autozone Muhammad) are the very inexperienced members of their own terrorist cell and I have to mention the zebra print clad customer who is carrying her Maltese dog, Peekaboo, in her handbag, demanding the hardback version of a book as she wants to read the interviews and the inferior version they have on the shelf isn't acceptable. Talking of books I so want to get my hands on some of the ones mentioned. I'll give you a few examples; Chakra's: Real or hippy bollocks, or how about Fifty More Reasons To Be Glad You Don't Have A Penis (I was left wondering how many reasons there were in the first book!) Maybe I'll google Vagina Press when I've finished writing this and see if I can order a copy of that too, but the one that made me laugh the most was Donkey Hotey - you've heard of it haven't you? It's the one about a donkey who liked windmills. Yes THAT one!
This is a book that will make you laugh one minute and then have you thinking about some more serious and very relevant worldwide issues that sadly we hear about in the news on what seems like a daily basis. It's a fantastic and thoroughly enjoyable read and one that I would highly recommend to every bookworm!
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I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome author Tom Jeffery to The Hippo today for a chat about himself, bookish things and of course his fabulous book Midnight's Chicken!
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| Photo courtesy of Tom Jeffery |
Hello
Tom and welcome to my blog. It’s a pleasure to have you stop by today.
Firstly
can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
My first job was at an Oceanarium, where I worked
with dolphins and seals and rehabilitated injured and orphaned sea creatures. I
loved that, but it could be a bit heartbreaking. I still love animals and
nature, which comes out in my photography. Reading has always been my favourite
thing to do. I have an MA in English Literature, and I was fortunate to get a
job at the South African National English Literary Museum just after I
completed that degree. I work there now as the Curator of Exhibitions, a job I
love. We’re just busy finishing a massive exhibition on the history of South Africa
as told through the country’s literature. I’m working on a PhD in museology,
which I’m hoping to finish at the end of 2018. I’m always writing in one
way or another, either creative or academic.
I am married with three lovely cats. Every author needs a cat. I love Formula
1. I have a plan for a novel set in the racing world, but it’s not number one
in the queue to get written. One day I want to have a house by the sea, from
where I shall travel the world. I am interested in everything except accounting
and Fox News. I don't like fundamentalists of any sort, people who are mean to
other people and animals, or anyone who shouts a lot. Which are often the same
thing. My favourite number is 42, and I am drawn to things that are blue or
green or that say ‘Nikon’ on the box.
How
would you describe Midnight’s Chicken to entice someone to read it?
Midnight’s Chicken will make you laugh. It will
also, if you let it, make you think. I think that everyone can relate in some
way to the experiences of the characters in Midnight’s Chicken, particularly if
you have worked in retail or if you have felt somehow trapped in your life.
Midnight’s Chicken is funny and easy to read, and also has some insight into
what it is to live in the world today.
Can
you describe how your book took shape and how long did it take you to write?
I had the idea for a novel set in a book shop
drifting about in my head for a few years. When I actually started to write it,
it went really quickly because I knew what I wanted it to be, but more
importantly, I didn’t agonise over it too much during the writing process. I
just let it come out. It took probably about four months to get the first draft
down, and then I spent the next six or seven months reading it and rewriting
it. All told I would say it took about a year and a half to get to a point
where I felt that it was ready to go into the world, which I feel is quite fast.
I was helped a lot by a good friend of mine, Jayne, who is an editor at a
publishing house in the UK and was kind enough to read Midnight’s Chicken and
give me a lot of good advice. Sadly, she works for an academic house, so no go
for a publishing deal there. Though of course, we live in a world in which
self-publishing is a respected discipline which, if you put in the time and
effort, can earn you a decent living. Apparently. I’m just setting out on that
road. Wish me luck.
I love
the cover, despite having a fear of clowns, and it perfectly depicts an event
later in the book. Did you design it yourself?
My mum did it. She writes children’s books, and
she is an artist and illustrator. Her work is absolutely beautiful. I wonder
what it is about clowns that is so scary? Personally, I blame Stephen King.
There’s
lots of laugh out loud moments and fantastic characters, but there’s
also some serious issues raised. How easy was it to integrate these into
Midnight’s Chicken whilst still keeping the story humorous?
I’m really glad you asked that. I wanted
Midnight’s Chicken to be funny, but it’s impossible to live in a country like
South Africa, and a world like ours, without the issues we face shaping your
writing in some way, without the experiences we daily have coming into the
stories we tell. It wasn’t hard to integrate the more serious issues, because
they are right there, all the time. It would have been harder to write
characters who didn’t experience them and it would have been, I think, rather
meaningless. Religious fundamentalism is not as visible in South Africa as
elsewhere in the world, further north in Africa for instance, but
fundamentalism comes in many forms and it certainly shapes the way South
Africans live. I enjoyed creating my religiously fundamentalist characters and
telling their story. Fundamentalism of any sort is such an inherently
ridiculous position, so obviously flawed, that it lends itself to satire. Though
of course fundamentalism is also a form of oppression, of tyranny, and there is
the frightening side of it, people killing others who don’t share or who
somehow threaten their narrow beliefs, which I hope I have captured. I don’t
take tyranny lightly, but I didn’t want to come across as too earnest. I don’t
like preaching. I think that planting an idea is more effective than telling
people what they should be thinking, and making them laugh while you do it
helps.
I also feel that the division that exists between
so-called literary fiction and ‘genre’ fiction is in many ways artificial.
There is no reason that writing can’t be simultaneously meaningful and
entertaining, or funny on the surface with serious issues lurking beneath. What
you get from a book depends on how you approach it, and if you dismiss ‘genre’
writing as inherently less worthy, then you won’t see the depths that it may
possess. Surely ‘literary’ writing implies nothing more than the skilled use of
words, and that can be found in any genre. There is an intellectual arrogance in
the division that I find to be shallow and which lacks any sense of irony –
which is a part of Russell’s character in Midnight’s Chicken. Irony is so
important for a healthy world view. Fundamentalists have no sense of irony. This
is what I believe to be wrong with them.
If you
were a character in your book who would you be and why?
It has to be Russell. Some of the things he
thinks and does come straight from me. Not all of them, mind. I’m not as messed
up as he is, hopefully. I suppose his experience of life in South Africa is the
closest to my own.
You
work full time, you write and you take amazing photographs, how do you find the
time to fit it all in? If you could only do one full time which one would it be
and what would your reasons be?
Thank you for saying my photos are amazing, that
means a lot to me. I get up early. I try and structure my time as much as
possible. Get up, work, come home, write, take photographs whenever I see
something I want to photograph. That said, structuring time is good, but it’s
also important not to be too strictly regimented. If I planned to write this
evening, say, but I have a good idea for an exhibition I’m working on, then
I’ll do that instead. Sometimes I have a great writing idea when I’m at work,
so I do that. I try and make as much of my time productive as possible. It’s
not easy though, some days you’re just not up to it and that‘s when I come home
from work, we make supper and veg on the couch with a bottle of wine and the
TV. You have to let yourself chill sometimes, otherwise your brain will melt
and be no use to you. I’ve heard of some superhuman people who never stop, but
that’s not me. I like to stop sometimes.
If I had to do one thing only it would definitely
be writing. That is what I love the most. Ideas. I think that if there is one
thing I do that is most likely to have an impact on the world, it is my
writing. Isn’t that what we all want, to have an impact on the world?
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Photo © Tom Jeffery
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Are
you currently writing anything new that you can tell us about?
Yes. I am busy with a series of three novels,
called The Eden Deception, which are in an advanced draft. They are dark
adventure stories, set in our world but with gods and monsters and the
fantastic. In the first book of the series, Revelation, the central characters
discover the other world and their lives are transformed by it. The next two
books follow them on a journey towards the ultimate truths of human existence.
The story is inspired by mythology, San/Bushman myth for Revelation and
Biblical mythology for the two sequels. The series tag line is: ‘There is a
god, but it does not love us’. So not comedy, but hopefully just as enjoyable.
I also have a plan for a novel with an
environmental theme, but as I said, I don’t like to be too earnest. Like
Midnight’s Chicken, this one will be influenced by some of the serious and
urgent issues we face as a species, in this case climate change and human
overpopulation, but it will also be funny. I hope. This one is next on the ‘To
Write’ list, after The Eden Deception books, and I’m really looking forward to
it.
In the
‘About Tom Jeffery’ section at the end of your book you refer to your time
spent working in a bookshop and you say that we wouldn’t believe some of the
stuff that customers pulled off. Is there any one particular incident that
sticks in your mind that you could share with us?
Well, it might not be very funny in itself, but
the one that really sticks in my mind is the woman I found between two shelves
scanning books with a portable scanner. It was just so balls-out brazen. She
was quite grumpy when I asked her to stop, too. Actually, it is quite a weird
thing to do, isn’t it? A lot of the customer incidents in Midnight’s Chicken
are based on real events, by the way.
Who
are your favourite authors and which book do you wish you’d written and why?
The two authors for whose work I have the deepest
feeling are Clive Barker and Douglas Adams. Clive Barker introduced me to the
dark fantastic, as he calls it, which is the genre to which I would say my Eden
Deception books belong. I love his novels Weaveworld, Imajica and The Damnation
Game, reading those was a formative experience for me. For writing which is
both hilarious and deep, Douglas Adams is in a class of his own. Marvin the
Paranoid Android is one of the best characters ever written. Some say that beer
is proof that there is a god and that he/she/it loves us, but the corollary of
that argument is surely to be found in the fact that a man like Douglas Adams
died so young and yet that orange muppet Trump continues to befoul the planet.
More recently, I was totally captivated by The
Martian by Andy Weir, and also World War Z by Max Brooks. World War Z is
actually a perfect example of ‘genre’ fiction with a profound literary element
and real insight into contemporary issues.
I have to mention The Lord of the Rings. I will
always return to that book.
On
your website there’s a sample of ‘Skrik’ (a South African word for a sudden
fright or panic) which was an experimental collaborative story that started
life on your Facebook page. How did that come about and would you start another
one?
I was looking for ways to get people involved in
my Facebook page, and starting a story on there seemed like a good way to get
people to interact. It turned out to be too cumbersome to work in the comments
field so I moved it off Facebook quite soon after it started. It worked out
that only me and two friends really got into it so we ended up writing it
together. I’d write a bit, email it to Morné and Jonathan, they’d add a bit and
mail it back, like that. I edited the final draft, Morné, who’s a graphic
designer, did the cover art, and there
it was. The whole story is available on my site, by the way. It was a lot of
fun, and I’d definitely do it again. It’s interesting how the people you write
with interpret your ideas in ways you would never have imagined. I suppose the
process of writing collaboratively is so interesting because the people
involved are simultaneously writers and readers of the story, creators and
consumers, so the two perspectives meet and give you a new way of thinking
about what you’re producing.
Is
there anything else you’d like to say to the readers?
Please read Midnight’s Chicken. Is that too
obvious? If you want to write, don’t overthink it, just start. Write something,
anything, and it will take shape. That’s some simple advice that really helped
me, so I hope it will help somebody else.
Thank
you for taking the time to answer my questions Tom.
No worries. Thanks for the interview.
If you'd like to find out more about Tom, his book and his photography you can use the links below:
Facebook
Website
Amazon US
Goodreads
I'd like to thank Tom for the review copy, for taking the time to answer my questions and finally to say sterkte with Midnight's Chicken!
