Black teeth by Zane Lovitt: 16 March, 2017

Hi Katie,

Yup! That should read 16 March (as it does in the headline). I'll get the date changed in the body text now.

Thanks! :)

Hi Laura

Thank you for the questions.

- What was the most difficult aspect of bringing your book to life?
The research side of things is always hardest for me, or feels hardest. Trawling through, in this case, loads of online conversations and oddities to find that little gem of info...
- How do you find your story? Do you ever try writing different versions to find the right style and narrative voice?
The drafting process is long - I write a lot of drafts and it always changes over that time. I probably wouldn't say that I write a bunch of different versions until I've found the right style or narrative voice, because it's usually the style of voice that's attracted me in the first place.
- How was your editorial process? Any dos and do-nots others might find useful?
Hmmmm. The best advice I think I can give right now is to give your draft to a lot of people and hear their feedback. You don't have to take their opinions into account, but every now and then someone will articulate exactly what the problem is with chapter 14, and set u up to go and fix that problem.
- Can you tell us a bit about how you got published and whether it was it difficult?
I sent the manuscript to publishers and crossed my fingers!
- Do you have general advice for new writers?
Finish the first draft, even if you hate it.
- Any ideas on how to cope with rejection initially?
If you can enjoy the process of writing, then everything else (the rejection, the adulation) will be merely secondary.
- What were some of the best ways of promoting your work? What can authors do themselves?
I am totally not the right person to answer that question! I wouldn't know how to begin to promote a book...
- Have readers in other countries reacted differently to your work?
Only superficially. Americans needed a few hints about what a barrister is and why we use British idioms, but the idea is that the stories are universal...
- Who are some of the writers you’ve learnt the most from?
Cormac McCarthy, Amy Hempel, Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Toni Morrison, Mary Robeson, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Dash Hammett, Richard Yates, Patricia Highsmith. Not a lot of Aussies, I'm afraid.

cheers!

Wow, great answers, thanks Zane!

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer everything! 😘

Hello Jemma

I did find it hard and I think I experienced some aspect of 'the difficult second album', but perhaps I just needed to not overthink and stick to writing stuff that I liked. Which I did. I'm fortunate in that I don't really get writer's block - I've always got a load to write about - but I take a long time to write it. This book took four years. Hopefully the next one will be faster.

As for the genre, I find that suspense is my favourite part of stories. And it exists in all genres. But thrillers are where the writer knowingly set out to create suspense, and so it's easily the most appealing to me, as a reader and a writer.

cheers
z

Greetings, Sarah

The transition was massive for me because I had to accept that writing and directing movies is not something I'm cut out for. The reasons are extensive, but suffice to say that a director thrives on self-confidence, while writers thrive on self-doubt. There's very little overlap in those two kinds of personalities. While self-doubt has its difficulties, I've always found it helpful, in that it prompts you to question every decision, every character, every word you put on the page. A filmmaker can't do that - it's a matter of machine gun decision-making while interacting with a hundred people and self-doubt can leave you for dead.

As for translating skills, my assumption at present is that there's a lot of cross-over. Some of my favourite books started out as screenplays (I used No Country for Old Men as an example at the bookclub today - McCarthy wrote it as a screenplay before it became a novel), so for now I'm happy to apply a visual approach, one that is action and dialogue based, to prose writing, rather than sticking with the traditional dominance of internal monologue.

All the best!
z

Thanks Zane, as an amateur doco maker I'm inspired to try my hand with the pen

Hey there, Cory. Thanks for the question!

The tech and privacy world began as the solution to a problem that a lot of genre writers face, which is how to make something old new again. The war on cliche is a big deal for any author, but especially someone working in the thriller genre, and I wanted to create a protagonist-investigator different to any I'd seen before. The tech and privacy world is the world of Jason Ginaff, who lives online more willingly than in the real world, who rarely leaves the house, who enjoys the variety of identities he can inhabit online and applies that same thinking to the real world, where he uses a variety of names/identities to wring information out of people.

And the privacy stuff was interesting as a background for Jason, because he's obsessed with privacy and keeping himself secret, while his job is to undermine the privacy that other people should be enjoying in the online world. I liked that conflict. It reminded me of Harry Caul in The Conversation - a surveillance expert who doesn't know how to deal with real people, and is terrified of getting spied on.

So that presented itself as a way of writing an investigator protagonist in a new and interesting way, a hyper-updated version of Harry Caul, with an entirely new plot to thrust him into...

cheers
z

Howdy Eoin

There are two things that drove the decision (mine and my Editor's) to stick with the non-chronological structure of the book.

The first is that I just like that kind of story more. I found a million different ways to tell a non-linear story in my first book (alright, about ten different ways) and I value it whenever I come across it in a novel or movie. While I accept that it is most valuable when it complements the content in some fashion (the classic argument that form equals content), I don't accept that that's the only time to embrace it. I think readers get bored quickly because they're not given enough work to do. Readers (like me) enjoy a puzzle, and if you can present a story as a puzzle and which therefore requires a little bit more energy to understand, I think there's an innate gratification that comes with that.

The second is that it suited the opening of the book and the ending. I think there's a lot of interest generated in those first moments at Rudy's house, and I liked the symmetry of presenting the first and last chapter out of order. As for the ending, I would argue that there's more power in it if we find out what happened at Tristan's house, and what 'Benjamin' did at the river, AFTER knowing how things between Glen, Jason and Rudy come to end. I would argue the counterpoint is stronger that way. But I could be wroooo-oooong!!!

cheers!
z

Thanks Zane. Loved The Midnight Promise. And Black Teeth! Looking forward to number three