He’s Only A... Novelist?

By Tony Lee

I write comics. We all know that. But before I wrote comics, I spent fifteen years working in a variety of other areas. I wrote television and radio scripts. I wrote articles and news for magazines and newspapers. I worked in PR and I worked in Marketing. If there's a way to be paid for writing, I've done it.

Except for one thing. I've never had a novel published.

Aha, I hear you say. It's another comic writer who wants to write books, eh? Here we go again.

Well, no actually. You see, I've written books. I've written novels all of my life. The problem is, I just don't finish many of them.

My Dad once said how he enjoyed the fact that as a kid I used to write these stories involving a character called 'J.J Jackson' who every tale ended up at some point diving through a window. I obviously had some kind of broken window fetish or something at the time. And, when I was older I started a book called The Incredibly Exciting Adventures Of Dirk Dyehard And His Amazing Chums. No, I shit you not. And I still love the idea I had back as a teenager for the book and really want to do something with it down the line, the tale of a particle physicist who inadvertently creates a time displacement ray while creating a teleportation device and sends his seven foot, green assistant into the past – 20^th Century Louisiana, actually. And the story followed Dirk as he tried to (first off) find his assistant while the time displaced freak allies with a Roger Corman-esque film director to make the classic movie that he knows Dirk loves in an attempt to show Dirk where he
is. Still with me? Well, Dirk realises where he is and also realises at this point that there's a terrible conspiracy going on and he didn't send his mate back – someone else did. And to keep him from snooping, he's sent four thousand years into the future where he discovers that due to a great war and a 'reality bomb', England now looks like Middle Earth, and he has to go on a quest with a Wizard, an Elf and a Dwarf to find the mystical 'Eye of Anthrax' which is really a teleportation device that he created after he got home and has been in stasis since, just waiting for him to find it.

Yeah, he finds it, brings it back, leaves it for himself... It's never created. I think I'll stop there.

Calvin knows the score...

Anyway, I ended up never finishing it, yet at one point in my twenties I found that I'd started a sequel of sorts while laid up in hospital for a couple of months. And then I was in my twenties I wrote a lot of story starts. There was Time Chase (man returns back in time into a genetically created 14 year old clone to stop a terrorist – yet must go to school), There was Lightblade (a fantasy story / quest thing), there was Kin (boy who can speak to wolves avenges his family's death), Surfboards and Shotguns (bloke in modern day London runs from the mob and hides out in a surfer village in South Wales) – hell, there were loads. But the problem was that apart from Lightblade, I never finished any of them. I would peter out somewhere around the twenty thousand word mark, when I'd realise that a) this story had been done before or b) I just didn't know where the story was going. This is why I like comics far more. They're fast-paced and easier for me to plan through in my head.

But a few years down the line, I'm starting to wonder whether I can make it as a writer of novels. I've even finished a couple of newer ones – Rahbin Hood (what if Robin didn't return from Jerusalem – but it was Azeem instead), which never got anywhere and King Bill – And The Spirit Of Albion, which the moment I finished it, I knew that it needed something more. And for the last year Julian, my agent at the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency has been patiently waiting for me to do something new. And for the last year I have been buggering about with comics instead.

Why no new books? Because I had an idea. Conversations with my Mother. But I'm just not ready to write it yet. I saw Neil Gaiman a few weeks back and he said his Graveyard Book had taken twenty three years to write because he'd known he wasn't a good enough writer to start it when he first envisioned it. And in a strange way, I'm in a similar boat with Conversations. I know the story. I know the ending. And it's solid stuff. People have cried simply by being told the synopsis. But, five thousand words in, I stopped. It wasn't good. I was writing something out of my comfort zone and I needed to prepare a lot more.

But I love to write books. I'm quite happy to do two thousand words a day of whatever I'm doing – but I just find myself writing myself into a corner. The Stage Magician's Nephew did that – I loved the story and some of the writing was my best ever, but a character that's saving the day with stage magician skills? Lame. And so that goes back to the 'look at later' pile.

And then last Saturday – I had a brainstorm. I had a setting. A character. And I knew that this could be an interesting story indeed – as if Neil Gaiman and Tim Burton were meeting in a Goth Bar and were drinking Snakebite and Black. His name was Dudley Nightshade and he was about to discover that he was a child of two worlds. It so took over my time that I spent most of Sunday talking it over with Tracy, always my best critic and by Monday I had a whole list of characters – Advocate De'Ville, Melancholy Hyde, Farringdon, the Tower Bridge Ravens, and a mirror London where the Great Fire of London never happened in 1666... I even had the name – The Dubious Duality of Dudley Nightshade. In fact that it was so jumbled in my head that I realised that I had to exorcise it before I could do anything else. And so I dedicated Tuesday to it, even blogging every hour to give a status. The problem with that was that Livejournal had also chosen this day to go offline for several hours. But by the end of the day and by that I mean around 10pm, I'd written close to ten thousand words. And that included first draft returns and re-writes. Suddenly this world was working. And I knew that there were areas I needed to return to, clean up jobs and all that, but suddenly I had a book that was over 10% finished. And with a further two thousand words a day, I'd have this pretty much in the bag, first draft wise, by the end of the year.

Of course, that all depends on whether I do what I usually do, and get distracted by something new and shiny. But to say I had a blinder of a book and it was almost finished would be a nice Christmas present for Julian...

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So this week has the final ever episode of "Stalag 666" in 2000 A.D., and to be honest, I'm glad it's over. Usually when a book finishes I have a sense of loss, an 'aw, I wish I'd done a bit more in that world', but with "Stalag 666"? I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth and a sense of relief. And people who know my fun with fans over this book will hopefully understand. And to Jon, the ever-stalwart artist and Matt my ever supportive editor, I thank you. And to you the fans, whether you loved it or hated it, thank you for your words on the internet. Whether good or bad, it's made me a better writer by default.

Obviously we've had the insane contingent and to them I give a nice and healthy 'fuck you'. You made "Stalag 666" one of the most notorious strips in 2000 A.D.'s history when we were all happy for it to slide away into obscurity, and the notoriety wasn't in a good way. I hope you're happy. And you're probably not, as you made the bloody thing immortal when all you wanted was for it to stop. Ah well. Boo hoo, dickhead.

But that isn't all from me 2000 A.D. / Meg wise; in two weeks "Citi-Def: Field Trip" starts in Megazine issue #279 and that was a lot more fun to write. And of course coming soon is Necrophim, my comic with Lee Carter, of which I've sneakily attached a concept design he did of Lucifer...

Lucifer, by way of Slash/Keith Richards...

"Stalag 666" is dead. Long live the lizards. No, wait, I mean the Terrans...

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And so we can finally announce the art team on Harker – say a big hello to Neil Van Antwerpen and Peter-David Douglas, who recently kicked the crap out of Starship Troopers #11 with a stunning debut into the world of comics from the world of graphic design. You don't believe me? Check out these two bad boys – first is a pencil of the newly named Countess Von Gratz, aka Countess Dracule and secondly a coloured, six-month dead Renfield, with a collar to stop his broken neck flopping around...



There will be more on this as the months progress, but suffice to say this is one of the most exciting books I've been on for a while – and considering the immense love I have for both Doctor Who and King Arthur, two of the other things I'm currently playing, you can see how much effort and time will be spent on this. It's completely loyal to the original as well, which lets face it is a rarity these days...
Harker. Six months on and the nightmare still isn't over. Out in 2009 from Markosia.

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And so that's another week been and gone, and I'm noting that we're not getting that many people commenting on the boards, even though we have thousands of clicks a week. So this week, I ask a favour. Log onto the forums and leave me a message saying what you'd like me to write about over the next few months. Or, send me an email at itsonlyacomic@gmail.com and let me know what you'd like me to write about.

I'm a marketing whore, you know. I'll write about anything...

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Discuss this column at the Only A Forum forum.
© 2008, Tony Lee

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