About Craig
Interview
When were you born?1963.
So you will be 46 when your first book is published. How long have you been writing?
I remember writing my first “book” when I was five. My family was living in Kumasi, Ghana at the time — where my father was teaching architecture at the university. We didn’t have TV there. My mother read stories to us every night before we went to bed. We had some favorites: Kwaku Ananse the spider, a series of Ghanaian stories by Peggy Appiah; the Grimm fairytales; Hans Christian Andersen’s stories; Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Now that I think about it, all of them were simple stories — fables with a clear though often paradoxical moral. Something dramatic happens to the main character because this is what the main character deserves. The main character brings about his or her own success or demise, or mixture of both. And then at school we were reading these books with Ali and Fatima as the main characters. I don’t really remember them. I think they were essentially Dick and Jane books, with the names changed. But I do remember writing my own and peddling it to my parents for ten pesewas. I look back now and smile, because I think my primary motivation for writing the thing was to earn some money. In my mind at five, ten pesewas made me a millionaire. It bought me everything I would ever want.
What about after that? Did you continue to write after enjoying the success of your first sale?
My next attempt came some years later, when I was twelve. At that point, the Seven Percent Solution was a bestseller, and I was already a huge Arthur Conan Doyle fan. So I sat down one summer with the intention of writing my own Sherlock Holmes bestseller. Again, for the money, I think. The premise of the novel was that, years before the start of the First World War, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson had foiled a first, unknown German attempt to take over the world. Their success guaranteed their own obscurity, at least in so far as this venture was concerned. Hence the title, An Event That History Forgot. Looking back, this choice of name is more than a little ironic. I worked on that book from morning until night, sometimes all night long, for two or three months. This was before personal computers — yes, I’m that old, I guess — and I rewrote the book ten or fifteen times, laboriously, on an old buzzing electric typewriter, keeping the entire house awake. Clack clack clack. Buzz. Clackity clackity clack. And so on. I was determined to get it right. Determined to sell a million copies. In the end, I think I only had one reader — my mother. And looking back, I don’t think she actually read the book either. I remember riding in the car with her one day after she had supposedly finally finished, brimming with the excitement of an author. So? She began with the words we all want to hear, I loved it. It went downhill from there, though. When she couldn’t remember more than a few of the characters’ names — and then when she began calling one by the name of the other, and then when she didn’t realize that I had cleverly called one character by two different names — well, you get the picture. So what did you actually like about the book, then? Probably not having to hear me type any more. I did find the name of the owner of the rights to the Sherlock Holmes characters, though, and by some stroke of fortune these people actually licensed the use of the names to me for $1, should I find a publisher. I guess they understood that the risk wasn’t too huge that they were going to see this thing in print. At the time — another smile — after receiving this news, I sat around for the next month waiting for my license to arrive in the mail. Picturing a driver’s license or something official at least, I guess. Anyway, looking back, it really does make me smile: An Event That History Forgot. It’s more of an epitaph than a title, isn’t it? Clackity clackity clack.
And after that?
I never stopped. People talk about writing being a talent or a gift or a destiny. In the past, I began to think of it more as a mental illness. And I only mean that half jokingly. It’s not a dangerous one, but it is definitely a compulsion, something that a person does to an extreme. What I understand about myself is that I have a desire to express myself. As I grew into the craft, that desire became a desire to create something structured — something of beauty. Over time, that desire has evolved into a desire to create something someone else will enjoy. After writing the Sherlock Holmes novel, I kind of fell off the tracks. I spent years producing books that no one would or should ever read. Every now and then I would remember the larger picture and try to write something for a reader — but that wasn’t my focus. It only occurred to me a few years ago that it would be nice to get published. A lightbulb lit above my head, and I decided to direct my energy into something structured, whose purpose is to thrill and reward a reader. The brilliance of being published is that your mental illness gets magically transformed into a high profession. Now I tend to think of it instead as slow-motion performance art.
You have mentioned money as a motivator a number of times. Care to talk about that?
Hey — I mentioned it twice, in jest. But okay, fair question. First, I would remark that a person can earn money in many different ways. I didn’t see it at the time, but what strikes me looking backward is that I was incredibly narrow in my focus. You could have offered me a billion dollars as a kid — I don’t think I would have taken it if it meant that I couldn’t ever write. That is what I wanted to do from an early age; I wanted to be a legitimate writer. Second, I would point out that money represents a lot of different things. By definition. It is a currency, a quantifier. I don’t think I have ever really cared about money for money’s sake, and I don’t think I have ever written to earn money. I think as a child my desire was to sell the books. I had stumbled upon a truth that I forgot and only remembered years later, that literature needs to be read to have any meaning.
What made you want to write MANIA?
I wanted to write a book that would be read. My primary desire was to write a page-turner. When I sat down with the idea, I made a list of a few things I wanted to accomplish: First, I wanted to write a book that I would like to read. Second, I wanted to develop characters who became real to the reader. Third, I wanted a story that would thrill a reader with its suspense, its imagery and its action. Fourth, I wanted to structure a story that would keep a reader guessing until the very end, but then would seem so obvious to the reader that it couldn’t be structured any other way. And finally, I wanted the story to have a larger, deeper meaning.
Can you talk more about the development of character?
Sure. A book is not real life. That sounds obvious, but in fact that is one of the things a writer has to remember, that he or she is crafting a story. We are creating an illusion — piecing together a mental puzzle with a series of images. Nevertheless, the characters have to resonate with the reader, and to some extent they have to drive the story. The plot depends upon the characters doing the things required of them in a way that the reader will accept. The plot can force the characters to do things we wouldn’t normally do. To some extent, the plot must do that. But once we cross that line, the reader must believe that this character is doing something this character would do. And then to make this process even more complicated, this fictional-character-who-must-feel-real not only has to behave in a recognizable way, he or she must ultimately surprise the reader by doing something unexpected that enlightens the reader. In other words, the reader has to be led to believe that this thing that the character is doing is something that a real person should have done.
What about the deeper meaning of MANIA? How do you understand the book?
Well — I can only speak for myself — what I see in the book. In my mind, Nick is a man who by circumstance finds himself completely alone on the planet. He loses his family, then finally, as the story begins, he loses his brother. What makes this story compelling to me is the battle Nick faces finding his balance in the darkness. In a sense, we are all alone on the planet. In fact, the more family we have, the more friends, in a way the more alone we actually are. Every person close to us is another reminder that we are here by ourselves. But every reader will understand the parable differently. It is not a simple story. Most words have multiple meanings. This is a story with nearly 100,000 words.
Will we see Nick again?
I don’t think so. One of the primary tools a writer uses in writing a novel is exaggeration. How many people see their brothers brutally murdered right next to them walking across a deserted parking lot after midnight? How many of those people photograph corpses for a living? And not only do I as a writer want the reader to accept that this might have happened, and that Nick could pick up and carry on with his life afterward, I want the reader to understand Nick as a relatively normal person. Essentially, the reader is expected to translate something extraordinary into something ordinary. In that sense, by definition fiction must be metaphor. The lesson Nick learns in this story is too large in my mind for him to come back for another. As much as I like Nick and would love to play around with him again, I think it would detract from the essence of what I have tried to create to give him another role to play. And the more “real” Nick becomes — by showing up again and again — the more cumbersome that process of metaphor becomes. That said, in general, I don’t have a problem with characters who show up in serials, even when the circumstances are extraordinary. There are rules we all understand — readers and writers — that allow serial characters to participate in that metaphor. I guess I just don’t want Nick to pass into the realm of a serial character. I like him as a wonderful, complex, tortured figment of my imagination.
What about Sherlock Holmes? Do you think his character was impaired by the serial nature of those stories?
Doyle managed to build his characters into larger and larger figures with every new story. If Sherlock Holmes had been a stand-alone, he might not even be remembered today. His character does not alter over the course of the Doyle stories — at least, it is not destroyed and rebuilt again and again. On the surface at least, the primary focus of the stories is the puzzle Holmes is solving. What fascinates us of course is his character in the end — but the changes are subtle. Fundamentally, MANIA is a different type of story from a Sherlock Holmes mystery. MANIA becomes a journey through Nick’s mind as much as anything else. It becomes the reflection of his transformation. Although I don’t like to pigeonhole anything, MANIA has strong noir elements, in that Nick is as much a perpetrator as he is a detective, and he is somewhat self-destructive. And noir fiction doesn’t lend itself to serialization the same way detective fiction does. In good noir, the protagonist is in a downward spiral. In large measure, this is a deconstructive process. I guess it can be done. Look at Batman. And the genius of The Seven Percent Solution was that it transformed the greatest detective into a noir character. But how far can your hero sink?
How many hours a day do you write? Do you write everyday?
Writing is both an art and a craft. It doesn’t matter how “gifted” you are or how well you can manipulate words. Turning an idea into a readable story takes practice. And it takes a hell of a lot of time to write that story and then polish it into something that demands a reader’s attention. I think it is very important to establish a writing routine and to “write” every day. I like to sit down with my work in the morning, work at least a few hours uninterrupted, then come back to it in the evening — and keep at it until I want to sleep.
Do you outline?
Hmmm. Yes and no. In the end, a book is all about its structure. That doesn’t mean it cannot have a loose structure — but what you are creating as a writer is an interplay with a reader’s memory. A person’s ability to remember a number of different elements depends upon sequence and logic. The more a reader retains, the stronger the experience, the greater a writer’s ability to thrill. So I believe that a book requires structure, and structure doesn’t usually happen by accident. With that in mind, too much structure constricts and bores. A reader shouldn’t be able to see what is coming unless you want him or her to — and if you as a writer know what’s coming, so probably will the reader. So what I usually do is outline and make character notes. Then I begin writing, and I let the story dictate the structure and change the outline as I go forward. Keep in mind that I am sitting with these characters and stories for months on end — not just a few hours. I figure if I can still find fun with them after so much time, then the reader should be able to, too.
What’s next?
I have completed my second novel — which I hope will come out soon! And I am working on a third.
Movies?
I write visually. Yes, I am very much inside my protagonist’s head. But I want to create a visual escape for the reader. I would love to see my books get translated into film.
