with Ben Aaronovitch
Last week novelist Ben Aaronovitch was our guest blogger, telling us about genre confusion and one of the pitfalls of writing cross-over fiction.
His new mystery, Whispers Under Ground (Del Rey, July 2012 paperback and ebook formats), is an example of such, a police procedural/fantasy mystery.
We recently had a chance to follow-up with Ben to talk about his work.
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Omnimystery News: Last week you told us of the the challenges in writing cross-over mysteries. Can you expand on that a bit more here?
Ben Aaronovitch: I've always loved police procedurals, everything from PD James' Adam Dalgliesh to the gang in the bull pen in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books. When I decided to, very lazily, combine my two favorite genres, crime and science fiction, I quickly realized that in order to make the magic credible I had to make the policing as realistic as possible.
Photo provided courtesy of
Ben Aaronovitch
My publishers and I made a critical mistake about who was going to read the book. We thought it was going to sell mainly into an SF audience — that's why Del Rey gave it the Urban Fantasy style cover. However it became quickly apparent in the UK that a large section, if not the majority, of the readers were crime aficionados. Hence the change in the US covers for Whispers Under Ground and subsequent editions of Midnight Riot/Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho.
The moral of that story is that you never really know who you're marketing to until the readers tell who they are.
OMN: Your series character is London constable and sorcerer's apprentice Peter Grant. How has he changed from the first book in the series to the present one?
BA: Traditionally the detective doesn't change much over time, Morse is a grumpy beer drinking snob at the start of his career and stays that way until his dying day, Steve Carella remains the calm moral centre of the 87th Precinct through countless books and 30 years of unprecedented social change.
The genre convention is that the detective "happens" to other people — pushing into their lives, their secrets and, in many cases, the dark secrets of society as well. The practical reason for this is that if you constantly mess with your protagonist you risk your reader's suspension of disbelief as the detective runs out of relatives to be menaced or partners to be shot.
The reality is, particularly with police detectives, is that it is merely the job they do day in and day out. They're human they have to deal with death and trauma but they don't go into a crisis with every case.
OMN: Do you include yourself in any way in your books?
BA: All of me is in the book but it's heavily disguised and leavened with tons of stuff I found lying around in the outside world.
OMN: When you're planning a new book, do you create an outline for the story, or let it evolve as you write it?
BA: When I start a novel I usually know, roughly, how it begins, what happens around the midway point and how it's going to end. Then I start my initial research phase which often suggests events and scenes to fill out the gaps in between.
Once I've finished the first chapter I usually have a better idea of how the first third or so is structured and can organize the next wave of research topics. The book then rolls on from there firming up the structure as I complete each subsequent chapter. Once I'm about two thirds through I usually write a rough draft of the climactic chapter (usually but not always the second from last) and then fill in the gap. This process is far more chaotic and fraught than I've made it sound.
OMN: You mention the "research phase" of writing. What does mean for you?
BA: I basically grab anything I can get my hands on. My first rule is that you must never base your depiction of people, cultures, professions and places on what you've seen in a TV or Film drama. Not even The Wire. Secondly; primary sources are better than secondary or tertiary sources. So, if you can, talk to the police about police work, talk to Nigerians about being Nigerians and walk the streets of the city you plan to depict. If you must trust a secondary source try to make sure it's as close to the primary as possible, read non-fiction by people with direct experience or a specialist level of knowledge where first-hand experience is unavailable. Thirdly; use multiple sources, talk to lots of police, lots of Nigerians, read lots of history books — you get the idea.
Where the internet shines is helping you zero in on sources of information. Wikipedia can outline the areas you need to look at, Google can help locate authors, organizations and experts you can access — Google Earth is particularly useful for locating interesting locations that you can then visit.
The most exciting topic came way back when I got hold of a map of London's rivers and started to relate their courses to the history and geography of the city. Suddenly I was being introduced to new characters with personalities and pasts as complex as any real person — for a writer that's very exciting.
OMN: Tell us about London, the setting for this series.
BA: When you set a book in a city as rich in history, mythology and diversity as London it pays to be more accurate rather than less. There have been a number of times that I've been stuck on a plot point only to have London's history suggest a way forward. That said I'm not beyond creating the odd fictional shop or café or moving same from one location to another – like the lingerie shop in Moon Over Soho — but generally I don't need to. London contains the world; it always delivers the goods.
OMN: What about your life outside of your fictional world?
BA: Besides my responsibilities as a parent I really have no life beyond writing books — it's sad really. Everything I do ends up in my books sooner or later but it's frequently unrecognizable, even by me, when it does.
I am hoping to develop a life now that the books have been reasonably successful and my son is close to going to University. I plan to read more books, see more plays, travel to exotic destinations and meet more people.
OMN: In addition to your novels, you're well known to many as a screenwriter for Doctor Who. What do your fans think of your cross-over fiction?
BA: The readers chase me down the street with cries of "Have at the b'stard!" and I flee for my life across the rooftops of old London town.
I like meeting potential readers because it's very reassuring to know that a potential readership exists — given the alternative.
I do like the unexpected questions, especially on topics I hadn't thought about before. Second best are the questions which reveal the reader spotted something that you were inordinately proud of but nobody else in the entire universe seems to have noticed you put in your book. Thirdly, there's question about process, which can get a bit wearing the thirtieth time you answer them.
OMN: Are there any authors whose books you rush out to buy as soon as they are published? What other types of books/genres do you read?
BA: Terry Pratchett, Jim Butcher, Peter James and Lois McMaster Bujold are my "buy on sight" authors. I read widely in crime, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and history non-fiction.
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Ben Aaronovitch was born in London in 1964 and had the kind of dull routine childhood that drives a man to drink or to science fiction. He is a screenwriter, with early notable success on BBC television’s legendary Doctor Who, for which he wrote some episodes now widely regarded as classics, and which even he is quite fond of. He has also penned several groundbreaking TV tie-in novels.
After a decade of such work, he decided it was time to show the world what he could really do and embarked on his first serious original novel. The result is Midnight Riot, the debut adventure of Peter Grant, followed by Moon Over Soho.
Learn more about the author and his books on his website, The-Folly.com.
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Whispers Under Ground
Ben Aaronovitch
A Peter Grant Mystery (3rd in series)
It begins with a dead body at the far end of Baker Street tube station, all that remains of American exchange student James Gallagher — and the victim's wealthy, politically powerful family is understandably eager to get to the bottom of the gruesome murder. The trouble is, the bottom — if it exists at all — is deeper and more unnatural than anyone suspects … except, that is, for London constable and sorcerer's apprentice Peter Grant. With Inspector Nightingale, the last registered wizard in England, tied up in the hunt for the rogue magician known as "the Faceless Man", it's up to Peter to plumb the haunted depths of the oldest, largest, and — as of now — deadliest subway system in the world.
At least he won't be alone. No, the FBI has sent over a crack agent to help. She's young, ambitious, beautiful … and a born-again Christian apt to view any magic as the work of the devil. Oh yeah — that's going to go well.
