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NICK SWEENEY
AN AUTHOR AND MUSICIAN LIVING ON THE NORTH KENT COAST, NICK SWEENEY’ S NOVELS AND SHORTER WORKS REFLECT HIS INTEREST IN EASTERN EUROPE AND ITS LANGUAGES, PEOPLE AND PLACES.
Hi Nick. Can you tell us what led to you becoming an author? I was a storyteller from an early age. If I didn’ t know something, my default position was to do what writers call‘ finesse the truth a bit’- i. e. make stuff up. As you can imagine, this made me unpopular with parents, teachers, friends, relatives, shopkeepers, employers and the police. To be honest, I think nobody decides they’ ll become a writer, and I got here by a very roundabout way – observation, overthinking and obsessive scribbling. My early efforts were unspectacular, and deservedly forgotten.
Does your oeuvre lean towards a particular genre or is it varied? People ask“ Why don’ t you write a bestselling detective series?” to which I say I really would if I could. I write what is known as literary fiction, which incorporates elements of different genres but with a strong emphasis on character, a sense of place, history and backstory. Some literary fiction is dismissed as beautiful prose for the sake of it, but for me the story is primary; without a genuine tale, there is no book. I have covered romance in Laikonik Express; the disappearance of Cote d’ Azur gamblers in A Blue Coast Mystery; a family saga with a meeting of arms dealers, a daytime TV dynasty and a serial killer in The Fortune Teller’ s Factotum; and a madcap comic roadtrip in The Dali Squiggle. In theory, I will write about anything.
Tell us a bit about your latest novel, The Last Thing the Angel Said. Narrator Bronia tells the story of her escape from a Pennsylvanian town riven with sabotage, crime and the broken magic its citizens brought from the fringes of post-revolutionary Eastern Europe; places that no longer exist. Her dreams were always set on earnest but hapless cyclist Milo Galitzki, a young man obsessed with racing in the Tour de France one day. Bronia has to navigate lapsed friends, manic rivals, nihilistic artists, masked delinquents and war-damaged bikers to distract Milo, first from the scars left by a spiteful act of gaslit murder that broke the community, and also from his encounter with a very unorthodox angel.
The Last Thing the Angel Said is set in Pennsylvania; has Kent inspired any of your work? How? Kent always inspires me. With a great estuary and sea out there, ever-changing light and a landscape dotted with towns that range from gritty to quaint, picturesque churches and ruined castles, it couldn’ t fail to influence any writer. Kent’ s people are also remarkable in their sense of the region’ s history as well as their enthusiasm for the present. My next book, One Percent Dog, is rooted firmly in Kent, in a coastal town not very far from where I am now.
What do you hope that readers will gain from your latest book? I hope they will see that people can break from the certainties of traditions, which aren’ t always benign, and that there can be redemption and a way out of them. Above all, I hope readers will enjoy the story that drives the novel and the many colourful characters scattered throughout its pages.
nicksweeneywriting. com
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