"Two brothers who don't want to and don't know how to rob a bank...have to try and rob a bank."
Rich and Dan are two brothers: one is a frustrated and skint graphic designer, the other is a flashy and skint nightclub owner. After a glass of wine and a spliff too many they decide it might be a good idea to rob a bank. Insecure is a wonderfully fast-paced book that has plenty of comical moments and a few shocks along the way. The story takes you from London to Switzerland and back again, meeting some full on gangsters and high-class professional criminals along the way.
Finding themselves way out of their depth with some thoroughly unpleasant people, the two brothers somehow manage to bring on-board some professionals who will hopefully help to keep them alive and out of jail!
You instantly warm to the central character as he desperately tries to back-track and get out of the plan that, for all intents and purposes, will probably go tits up.
As well as reading the book I thought I would fire off some questions to the author about the book and publishing to Kindle. Here's what he had to say:
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How long
did it take you write the book?
That’s a difficult question to answer.
I started it ages ago in longhand and then left it for years.
We moved house and I found it in a box and decided on a whim to ‘digitise’ it and
it sat on the hard drive for a while longer and I forgot about it. Years later
I had a bit of free time and re-read what I wrote, liked it, and then decided
to see where I could go with it.
I completed the bulk of it in a mad five or six months…but
editing has taken at least double that amount of time.
Did you
try and get it published first before you self-published on Kindle?
I did. I managed to get it onto the desk of an editor at a large
traditional publisher and he liked it but he only gets to edit and publish 10
books a year from new authors. He had 20 books on his desk (18 from literary
agents) and mine didn’t make the 10, even though he liked it.
The number of manuscripts they get is truly astonishing and
he said that he personally gets nearly 2000 manuscripts a year (literary agents
get far more than that.) In his opinion 1800 of those are shit, unreadable,
inept garbage. 100 of the remainder are derivative or unwitting facsimiles of
current novels. 50 of what remain do not capture the imagination…are dull…have
no spark at all – however well structured or written.
The final 50 is down to zeitgeist, literary flair, something
original, a great author back-story or pure, unadulterated genius. Sometimes
it’s as simple as an author being able to tell a cracking yarn.
Who are
you most like Rich or Dan?
Dan definitely. The characters are all based on people that I
know. I will, one day, reveal who those people are. I’m not sure they’ll be
happy about that or not.
Doesn’t
Dan do the same job as you? Does this
mean you’re harbouring a secret desire to become a bank robber?
He does something similar. I went by the old writing maxim:
write about what you know.
Would I rob a bank? They seem to spend their time robbing us
so there would be a certain poetic justice about it – but I just don’t think I
could do it. I’d worry about going to prison.
What
would you do with the money?
I would do something good with it – set up a foundation for
disadvantaged families so that they could give their children the opportunities
they wouldn’t normally be able to give.
Failing that I’d buy an island…maybe make it a
sovereignty…design my own flag…get myself a bad-ass army together and wage war
on somewhere small…like The Isle of Man, Greenland or Luxembourg. Then I could
build a monorail and maybe a shark pit.
If Insecure was made into a film, who would
you like to see play the main characters?
I reckon Taylor Kitsch would make a good Rich and…I think
Seth Rogen as Dan. It sounds a bit crazy, but I think it might work.
Did you
set out to write the book with a comedy angle or did it just naturally end up
that way?
It’s just the way that I roll. I can’t help it. It took a
while to find my writing voice (if that doesn’t sound too wanky) and it’s just easier
to write that way.
The
ending is very dark compared to the rest of the book, was this a deliberate
decision from the start?
No. It just felt like the way the story was going. I put a
hell of a lot of thought into that part of the book and I wanted to be true to
the characters and the plot.
Everyone who has read it has something to say about that part.
Do you
have favourite part of the book? - My favourite scene is when Andy the computer
hacker is upstairs doing his stuff and Dan’s mate turns up a bit worse for wear
(pissed).
The parts set in Switzerland. I didn’t even live in
Switzerland when I wrote those sections, but they were really fun to write and
they read back well to me.
Is the Switzerland
scene anywhere near where you live? – It sounds idyllic.
Zurich is about three hours away. We live next to Lake Lemain
and it’s warm and sunny at the moment…but I can drive for half an hour and I’ll
be in a couple of feet of snow and see Mont Blanc and The Alps reflected in the
lake. So, yes, it is pretty idyllic.
Are you
working on another book?
I have four on the go!
I am writing a book about being a stay-at-home Dad. I have also
started a weird book about revenge (that is good in sections, but I kind of
dislike – I don’t know why…). I have drafted out a children’s book that I hope
to illustrate whenever have some spare time.
I am also working on a sequel to Insecure – but it is going
very slowly and I have no idea where I am going with it.
Do you
think Kindle has revolutionised book reading?
Wow, big question.
The Kindle has revolutionised reading and writing. Reading in one sense in that
people can read whatever they want without judgement. If you like reading Tom
Clancy or the odd bit of saucy literature then no one can tell what you’re
reading and there is no stigma attached to it.
The Kindle chart is a really
interesting insight into what really sells.
Lots of fantasy, sci-fi and Young Adult stuff.
The other side is that Kindle gives you access to free
classic novels and a massive catalogue of self published books. The self
publishing phenomena is making the big publishers a little bit nervous because
many books in the Kindle charts are self edited, promoted, marketed, designed
and published with a far larger cut than is usual going towards the author.
Does it mean we have more bad literature to wade through that
was before sifted by editors and literary agents, the gate-keepers of
literature? Maybe. But technology has made this happen and the big publishers
and literary agents either need to get on board and embrace the new way that
words are being consumed or they’ll be left behind holding the paper rights to
a couple of Jeffery Archer novels and some Moleskin diaries in their cold, dead
hands.
Sorry, that was a bit overly dramatic.
I’ll leave now.
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Insecure is available from the Amazon Kindle store at £1.97.
