Chissick Chat, part nineteen, with C C Hogan
Welcome to part nineteen of the Chissick Chat blog.
Today, I’m chatting with Chris C Hogan, fellow Englishman and author of the fantasy saga, ‘Dirt’ as well as a number of poems and song lyrics. Welcome to my blog. Please can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself and your books?
Not all new authors are young. Indeed, a growing number are anything but, and I fit into that "older" category. A child of the sixties, I was a teenager in North London in the seventies before joining a band and going on the road. When that failed, I went into the music and advertising business and spent many years working in TV, Film, Radio and other intriguing bits and pieces.
I have written poetry and lyrics for years, but it was only after I decided to move out of London that I tried to write a novel. I kept trying, again and again, for quite a few years until one day I kind of coughed and out popped The Stink, a YA book set in North London in the seventies and all about a group of teenagers starting a band. Now, why didn't I think of taking that obvious route years ago?
For the last couple of years, I have been working on my fantasy saga Dirt. For good or bad, I decided to take a different route to many other High Fantasy titles, and try and make the fantastical elements convincing. So, my dragons really exist. They don't live in damp caves, they have lives and friendships, likes and dislikes, are artists, singers, leather-workers, farmers, brewers, and all the other things that go together with being a community. They don't blow fire, do magic, have heavy scales (so they could never take off) and are never the baddies.
This is also a proper saga following a family and group of friends and their descendants over centuries. They are not kings and queens, they are not ultra-muscled heroes or scantily-clad, big-breasted girls, but ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. They also have great senses of humour and love nothing more than a pie and a pint in a good tavern.
What, or who, inspires you?
I am a very political beast and for several years worked in news as part of my job. It has given me a level of cynicism that sometimes sits uncomfortably with more traditional inspiration; great writers, famous people, world-shattering events.
I am more likely to be inspired by the girl on the train who pulls a face and makes me giggle, or the grumpy old bloke tripping over his own feet. One of my dragons is based on the landlord of my old pub, and my character Silvi is based on a gay girlfriend from school days.
I like humans and I like natural, unpretentious people who are not trying to philosophise about everything they come across. I am also an atheist and have a natural distrust of any attempt to put a god in the way of humanity.
We succeed and fail on our own accord or at the whim of society. I find that fascinating and I hope I get it into my books.
Do you enjoy reading the same genre as the one you write in?
I have to admit I am reading hardly at all at the moment; I am happily drowning in writing.
When I was young I did the sci-fi thing, Asimov, Clerke, et al, and then wandered through fantasy like World of Tiers, Tales of Don Juan, Gormenghast and so on.
Later I found myself far more interested in film and theatre I have done quite a lot of voice directing and love it.
Perhaps it is not surprising that I write in more than one genre, therefore.
Has any of your research taken you to an unusual place?
Good question! I am not sure it has taken me into particularly strange places or thoughts, but having spent 30 odd years in the media and travelling a lot, maybe I am not starting from the right place. Most of my friends have been pretty unusual already!
Researching my Fantasy has, however, made me think about society and the roles we play. I have had to read up a lot on feudalism, speed of travel, they way primitive countries interact, or not, the effect of trade and so on.
In my books, dragon society and human society have grown apart. Now, dragons live hundreds of years and fly huge distances. They are not territorial (for exactly those reasons), do not really understand the need for land ownership and borders and there have never been dragon-on-dragon wars. While they and humans are close, dragons join human society up. Not just over distance, but also over time. We don't see the consequences of our political actions down over the years, but the dragons do. When dragons turn their backs on humans, human society fragments.
Think of what would happen if we suddenly lost our cars, planes, and modern communications? Suddenly, we don't know what the weather will be tomorrow. We have no idea what is happening in the local town. What are our rulers up to. It took us five hours to fly across a continent; now it will takes us several weeks on a horse. Most of us will be on foot.
I had never thought about the impact of all that before. Or what it would be like to live in a land where the population was three million, not three-hundred million.
Interesting research!
What are you working on at the moment and what are your future writing plans?
Having just finished series two of Dirt, I am taking a break. There is a third series planned and I have mapped out several short stories and stand-alone novels, but I need to do something else.
I am also a composer, so I am going to work on getting my music back on track (I need the money), and I will be relaunching my long-neglected, but still visited food blog.
But on the writing front, I am leaping genres and going for a young Science Fiction series.
Dawn on the Rock is one of my abandoned attempts of writing from many years ago. I wrote half the book and having read it back, I have realised that it is rather a good story.
It is about a twelve-year-old girl called Dawn who moves to the moon to live with her father. She goes to school, gets in trouble, tries to get around in one-sixth gravity and has constant arguments with her tiny personal computer; a sugar cube sized device that projects itself as a hologram of an annoying dog.
She also has a big adventure, of course.
This is a comedy, but as with everything else I write, I will not avoid the tears. The Stink is a comedy and has some very painful bits, and the sad bits in the Dirt series have left one of my fans yelling at me for turning her into a wreck.
So, that is what I am about to dive in to. I have just learned to draw dragons; now I have to learn to draw space suits!
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I also need to bite the bullet and record the audio version of Dirt. I am going to enjoy that, but damn, why did I write such big books?
Is there anything you don’t like about writing/being an author?
Several. (Warning; soap-box moment coming up!)
One of my biggest problems is with bad reviews; not just of my own work but of anyone's work.
I do not understand why some people think they have a god-given right to kick the crap out of someone because they didn't like what they wrote.
When it is another author tearing an author apart, I think it is simply unforgiveable.
It is sad, pathetic and gives the indie author sector a bad reputation; a world full of trolling and back-stabbing.
Authors need the support of people, especially other authors. If you don't like a book, stop reading it and read something you do like, just like normal people do. Don't fight to the end and then right a thousand words saying how this person should never publish again. You make yourself look mean, nasty and nothing more than a school bully.
Bad reviews do not help other readers choose what to read; good reviews do. When a reader goes to Amazon, they look at nice covers, good titles and then see how many 4 and 5 star ratings there are. They don't want to wade through essays, especially on a mobile (which is what most now shop on), but rather just look at numbers.
I like to read the odd short story. Recently, I have read a couple that have been emailed to me. The grammar was all over the place and the spelling worse than mine (which is going some), but I didn't care. The stories themselves and the characters were wonderful, and that is what matters.
Books are a relatively modern idea. The true medium of story telling is not in the written word but in the spoken word.
I would never stop someone form telling a story simply because their language skills are poor. That does nothing but stifle creativity, and we have enough problems with that in our schools already.
Quick Fire Questions …
Tea or coffee? Coffee
Sweet snack or savoury snack? Savoury
Real book or ebook? Sexy young woman reading to me
Cinema or DVD? Cinema for blockbuster, Netflix for everything else
Cat or dog? Dog, though I kept rats once.
Weepie or action movie? Er … um.... er.... Action movie with weeping characters? I like a good cry.
And to Finish, What is your favourite …
Food? Sea Bass marinated in spices and roasted over charcoal, though I also cook a mean chicken curry. (I am a better cook than writer and my curries are proper stuff, not restaurant rubbish)
Drink? Flagons of cheap, red wine. Or blonde beer. Rum is nice too
Movie? Casablanca
Book? Gormenghast
Colour? Whatever the eye-colour of the girl I am currently lusting after.
Saying/Proverb? Choose your window; you're leaving.
Song? Magnolia by JJ Cale, but also You've got a Friend by James Taylor.
Pudding/dessert? What, after all that sea bass, curry and booze?
Thanks for chatting, Chris, and thank you for being so honest about bad reviews, I totally agree with you. Good luck with your third series of Dirt, and carry on writing those lyrics!
