Roger, what did it take for you to get your break as an author?

I was just bloody-minded!  I started writing on November 4th 1987, and between then and July 17th 1993 I wrote something every day except for three days when I was going through a divorce.  I completed twenty two novels in that time, something in the region of three and a half million words, and at different times I was in discussion with a couple of agents, with one or two publishing companies, but nothing ever really got as far as I would have liked.  I wrote first of all in longhand, and then I got a typewriter, and finally ended up with an Amstrad dedicated wordprocessor that took about half an hour to warm up!

I spent those six years sending material out to British publishers, and received about five hundred  complimentary, very polite ‘Thanks but no thanks’ letters.  I also have two lever arch files with something in the region of three or four hundred straightforward format rejection slips.  This is just from companies that didn’t even look at the material I sent them.  I understand the sheer volume of work that a handful of people have to wade through in a publishing house.  People have given me figures on just how many unsolicited scripts come to the major publishing houses each week, and that figure is astounding.  My belief was that if I just kept on going I would eventually find the right person in the right company at the right time.  I had this datum from Disraeli who said ‘Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose’.  However, after six years of doing this I finally thought ‘Enough’s enough’, and I stopped writing.

I then studied music, photography, all manner of things, and didn’t go back to writing until the latter part of 2001.  It was then that I wrote ‘Candlemoth’.  I sent that to thirty-six publishers, thirty-five of whom sent it back.  All except Bloomsbury, and an editor there gave it to a friend who gave it to a friend, and it wound up at Orion with my current editor, and we have now worked together through eight books.  Since Orion signed me there have been a couple of comments made by a couple of publishers I have met about how they should perhaps have pursued things with a little more tenacity back in the early days.  The earlier unpublished stuff will probably stay right where it is in the loft.  It was a different genre, more supernatural in a way, and I write better now anyway.  I think the time away from it between 1993 and 2001 made me more succinct, gave me a greater clarity about what I wanted to say.  I have gone back recently and read some of my earlier work and it was a little verbose.  But hell, it was good practice!

And what drew me to write?  I loved reading.  That was the simplicity of it.  I just loved reading.  Always had the thought there that it would be great to write something capable of moving someone emotionally, to create that kind of effect, to have someone read something you’d written and be moved by it.  That was the thing: to feel like you had something worth saying.

Tell us about your novels.

The best explanation of the difference between non-fiction and fiction, I feel, is that non-fiction’s primary purpose is to convey information, whereas the purpose of fiction is to evoke an emotion in the reader.  I think great books work on an emotional level.  Fear is an emotion, a very powerful emotion.  Perhaps people read thrillers and horror novels because it is a way of experiencing emotions that you ordinarily don’t experience in life, but without putting yourself directly in harm’s way.  I think, also, that it is an effort to try and better understand the aspects of the human psyche that we don’t have answers for.  The more we ourselves understand about human nature, the better we will survive.  I know we operate that way, so all reading – of whatever genre or subject – has to also come down to the fact that we are trying to understand more to better our own comprehension of life, and thus improve the quality of our existence.

I think I was weaned out of infancy on American culture.  I grew up watching Starsky and Hutch, Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, all those kinds of things.  I loved the atmosphere, the diversity of culture.  The politics fascinated me.  America is a new country compared to England, and it just seems to me that there’s so much colour and life inherent in its society.  I have visited a number of times, and I honestly feel like I’m going home.  And I believe that as a non-American there are many things about American culture that I can look at as a spectator.  The difficulty with writing about an area that you are very familiar with is that you tend to stop noticing things.  You take things for granted.  The odd or interesting things about the people and the area cease to be odd and interesting.  As an outsider you never lose that viewpoint of seeing things for the first time, and for me that is very important.  Also many writers are told to write about the things they are familiar with.  I don’t think this is wrong, but I think it is very limiting.  I believe you should also write about the things that fascinate you.  I think in that way you have a chance to let your passion and enthusiasm for the subject come through in your prose.  I also believe that you should challenge yourself with each new book.  Take on different and varied subjects.  Do not allow yourself to fall into the trap of writing things to a formula.

Someone once said to me that there were two types of novels.  There were those that you read simply because some mystery was created and you had to find out what happened.  The second kind of novel was one where you read the book simply for the language itself, the way the author used words, the atmosphere and description.  The truly great books are the ones that accomplish both.  I think any author wants to write great novels.  I don’t think anyone – in their heart of hearts – writes because it’s a sensible choice of profession, or for financial gain.  I certainly don’t!  I just love to write, and though the subject matter that I want to write about takes me to the States, it is nevertheless more important to me to write something that can move someone emotionally, perhaps change a view about life, and at the same time to try and write it as beautifully as I can.  I also want to write about subjects – whether they be political conspiracies, serial killings, race relations, political assassinations or FBI and CIA investigations – that could only work in the USA.  The kind of novels I want to write just wouldn’t work in small, green, leafy villages where you find Hobbits! So that is where my selection of genre and subject matter comes from, and right from the first book – Candlemoth – I have tried to create real and believable characters and storylines that have this American cultural and political background.

Candlemoth is the story of two boys, one black, one white, who grow up together from the early 50’s in North Carolina.  It tracks through that time period – up through the death of JFK and Martin Luther King, through Nixon and Watergate, all the significant political and social events of that time.  The story is told in flashback from the perspective of the main protagonist, the white boy now in his 30s, who is on Death Row for the murder of his black friend.  The events are recounted to a Catholic priest sent to reconcile the man to his execution, and it deals with the events that brought him there and how he was consigned to such a fate.  Ghostheart is told from the perspective of the central female character, a young woman who – by the discoveries she makes in the pages of a book – learns the history of New York gangland and underworld figures in the 50s and 60s, and ultimately how this history relates to herself and her own life.

A Quiet Vendetta is a five hundred-page epic that deals with seventy years of accurate Mafia history throughout New York, LA, Chicago, Miami, Havana, and numerous other cities, and is a story told through the eyes of a young man who becomes a hitman for organised crime.  City of Lies is a fast-paced thriller that deals with the lives and crimes of a group of elderly gangsters in Manhattan, and how they use their influence to seduce a younger man into a criminal lifestyle.  It concludes with four violent high-powered armed robberies in four different banks in New York City on Christmas Eve.

A Quiet Belief In Angels is the biography of a young boy growing up in Georgia in the 1930 and 40s, and how his entire life is affected by the killing of a number of young girls in his hometown.

A Simple Act of Violence is essentially two stories – a series of contemporary killings in Washington DC and how these killings are linked to the undercover actions of the CIA in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Lastly, The Anniversary Man, just released, is the story of a serial killing survivor who works with the Police to uncover the identity of someone perpetrating killings in New York who is copying famous serial killings of the past and carrying them out on the anniversary of their original occurrence.

How did writing a screenplay for a film adaption of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS come about?

Well, I received an e-mail some months ago from a French film director called Olivier Dahan.  He was the man who wrote and directed the Oscar-winning film ‘La Vie En Rose’.  He had finished reading the French translation of A Quiet Belief In Angels, and he wrote to me and asked whether I would be interested in writing a screenplay for him.  I went to Paris to meet with him, and we got along great.  We had a very definite agreement on how a film could be made of the book.  I left Paris with the feeling that it might come off.  A few weeks later I got word that the production company ‘Legende Films’ was ready to go ahead, and then I signed the contracts to write the screenplay for the film.  I have now completed that first draft and am currently in discussion with the director about how this film can be made.

What awards have your books won and how important are these awards to you?

Well, I have been shortlisted for a great number, but have won only one.  Candlemoth was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2003, as was City of Lies in 2006.  A Quiet Belief in Angels was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction 2008, The Association 813 Trophy, The 7th Prix Du Polar Europeen Du Point, The Quebec Booksellers’ Prize, and went on to win the Inaugural Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur Prize 2008.  A Simple Act of Violence was also shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction 2009, and my novels as a body of work were shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library 2009.  Award nominations are very nice, sort of complimentary, and winning them is even better, but awards don’t sell books, and if you don’t sell books they don’t get read, and this is all about people reading the books.  As Moliere said, ‘First we write for ourselves, then for our friends, and finally for money’.  I am still writing for myself and my friends (readers), and if I ever find myself writing for money I’m going to quit and do something else!

Do you make it a point to network with other authors, Roger?

Well, the sheer number of public events I do enables me to meet a huge number of authors, and there is definitely a camaraderie and fraternity of authors that builds up through constant meetings, co-attendance at events, and social situations.  I do keep in touch, as well as I can considering that all of us have huge workloads and constant demands on our time.

Have you ever thought of mentoring aspiring writers?

I receive endless numbers of e-mails through the website from aspiring authors, and I do my best to answer every e-mail with as much helpful advice as I can give.  I also maintain a blog, and on the blog I have posted many articles about writing, about the business itself, about finding agents and publishers, and I try my hardest to make the ‘mystery’ of the publishing industry as un-mysterious as possible.  The one thing I really don’t have the time to do, however, is reading material.  You have to either read nothing or everything, and if I agreed to read everything that people asked me to read I would never do anything but reading!

Roger, are there any authors you would love to work with?

In all honesty, I don’t think I could co-write a book.  Perhaps a screenplay, but not a novel.  I am very focused and very driven when it comes to my work.  I try to get ten to fifteen thousand words done a week, sometimes more, and I aim to get a first draft done in ten to twelve weeks.  I haven’t found many authors who like working at that pace, and I am so clear on what I am trying to accomplish, and so demanding of myself, that I think anyone else trying to work with me would find me utterly intolerable!

To learn more about R. J. Ellory, visit: http://www.rjellory.com/

Related posts:

1. Cheryl Kaye Tardif – Interview
2. Jennifer Swanson – Interview
3. Chris Howard – Interview
4. Michelle Richmond – Interview
5. Larissa Ione – Interview