| | David Milnes
David Milnes has been writing for quite a few years, but has only just managed to publish his first novel The Ghost of Neil Diamond, a lovely, idiosyncratic book that draws on his experiences of living in Hong Kong where he moved in 1992 to take up his ‘dream job’. After going down the usual route of trying to get publishers to take the bait, he finally invoked the ‘If you want something doing properly, do it yourself’ mantra and self-published the aforementioned book and The Ghost of Someone Else. A third book, The Ghost of Jimmy Tarbuck is pretty much ready to go, and so it looks to be a busy time for Milnes. After enjoying The Ghost of Neil Diamond, we asked him if he wouldn’t mind answering some of our questions. He said ‘yes’ – but on one condition – that we said absolutely nothing about novels being like buses ... |
Good Christmas?
Great, thanks. Full family business.
Where do you currently live? What’s the weather like at the moment?
I live near Ronda in Andalucia. Over Christmas it was bright and sunny but now there’s talk of snow and hail.
You moved to Hong Kong in 1992 for your dream job. Can we have a bit more info - What was the job? Did it inspire The Ghost of Neil Diamond at all?
On jobs I need to go back a little, if I may. Until I was thirty I did all manner of jobs, none for long: warehouseman, hospital porter, maintenance carpenter for The London Borough of Tower Hamlets, tractor driver, fertilizer bagman for a bankrupt crop-duster, and so on. The usual stuff. Once I applied to be a train announcer at Brighton Station, but didn’t make the cut. My CV was in tatters by the age of twenty-five and life was getting lonely. No one – certainly no women – wanted to drop by my garret. They didn’t care about the melancholy sea view. So I had to get a career. I scraped my way into teacher-training, but then stalled again and took a TEFL job in Madrid, still thinking a publisher would accept one of my books any day . . . In 1984, just turned thirty and married with two children, I started teaching at a secondary modern school in Mablethorpe, Lincs. After two other schools and eight years’ hard work I got the dream job as Head of English at
King George V School in Hong Kong . I’d just received a review in the TLS for a short story and that helped, I think. Now to answer your question. This was the dream job because I trippled my pay and halved my tax bill overnight, and got the full ex-pat deal with all the benefits. That kind of deal doesn’t exist any more. It was strange and wonderful, as a teacher from England , to be treated with such generosity and respect by one’s employers, and the kids were a delight to teach. I stayed in HK for 13 years, all the time writing at night and in the holidays, at home and in the bathrooms of various Asian resort hotels. My books were a guilty secret, a separate life.
The dream job had a very important circumstancial influence, you might say.
In all, how long did The Ghost of Neil Diamond take you to write?
I wrote the first draft in ‘97. The version I self-published in 2008 had new scenes in it that were only a few months old. So it’s fair to say 11 years, I’m afraid. But during that time I wrote two other novels, one of which (The Ghost of Someone Else) is also available now. Having three mss to work on suits me because one book clears out another from my mind and gives me more detachment. I would be very happy to wait another ten years and publish another three books.
What percentage of the novel is autobiographical?
None, in terms of stage or singing career. But inevitably the characters are driven by the feelings with which I’m most familiar.
The Ghost of Neil Diamond is quite dark, even in its more optimistic patches. That’s not to say it didn’t make me smile a hell of a lot. Did you set out to write a novel which was a bit seedy, a bit gritty, or did it just naturally take that route because of the setting?
I think you must be right about the setting. I didn’t try to write a seedy or gritty novel. I saw an advert for a Neil Diamond impersonator at a poor man’s club in Hong Kong and I thought, Christ – what a life. Hanging on there, hope against hope. Then I realized, of course, that I had some empathy with that character, as do so many people. I asked a friend who was a member of the club to buy tickets and take me to see the show, but he refused. You’ll just laugh, he said. Then he refused to buy tickets for Tony Newley for the same reason. You’ll laugh and we’ll get chucked out and I don’t want that, he said. I’ve never forgiven him.
Do you consider The Ghost of Neil Diamond to be a positive advert for Hong Kong?
No, and I feel bad about that.
Hong Kong was good to me and I’d like to pay back, and hope to some day. I think the book offers true reflections of Hong Kong , but they’re mainly ugly reflections, which isn’t fair. I was limited to the vision of my characters. In many ways it’s an astounding place, without doubt, and brimful with very clever people.
The novel appears to be set at the end of the nineties, just after Hong Kong had been passed over to Chinese rule. Do you think this shaped your writing? Was it a time of uncertainty?
It was a time of uncertainty, yes, but I have so little political awareness and understanding I don’t think such events really get through to the page. An English friend mocked me at the time: ‘Handover? What handover? I’m not handing anything over.’ I wasn’t there for the ceremony. I saw a little of it on tv in
England .
This is probably the most obvious question imaginable, but I’m going to ask it anyway – are you a fan of Neil Diamond?
I hope this isn’t going to get me into trouble, but I have to say that I am not.
There are plenty of references to the folk scene – is that your bag?
No, I know nothing about folk music. Folk songs, ballads, pop songs, raps – you can’t help but be moved by some of them, just for a moment, because of the music – but they all glamorize, in the end. Like films, like most pop culture. I prefer art that doesn’t glamorize life.
Why Neil Diamond? Could he have been replaced with anyone else, or did the story lend itself to him exclusively?
At times I thought a Rod Stewart impersonator or a Roy Orbison impersonator would be better, but they haven’t the culture of impersonators Neil Diamond has stacked up behind him. That retinue tagging along behind. And I have to agree with Iannis in the book, that ND never really made top drawer, which adds something, for me.
At first, Neil Atherton, our protagonist and Neil Diamond impersonator, seems quite prudish. By the end, he’s, shall we say, more sexually carefree. Does Hong Kong do that to a man?
It’s quite well-known that some people reinvent themselves once in HK, as they do, I suppose, in lots of expatriate communities. Both men and women. Lots of marriages break up, for better or worse. But if you’re thinking of the mild sex scene between Neil and the call girl, I’d have to say I see that differently. I loathe the old expat line – ‘There’s a different morality here’ – meaning: it’s okay for middle-aged men to pay to fuck teenage girls and boys - everybody does it here. It isn’t okay, no matter how many people do it. Such men should think of their own daughters and sons and what they want for them, and from them. Don’t care how preachy that sounds.
You moved to
Spain in 2005 and ‘polished your books’. That’s the stuff that budding writers’ dreams are made of. Was that as idealistic as it sounds?
Yes, though I still do a little work – some 4 hours a week teaching English to soldiers in the Spanish Legion, and to a class of 6 year olds in a nearby village. But I’ve earned this time and space, you know. I was a budding writer when I was in that attic in
Brighton applying for the position of train announcer, when I lived in Madrid in 1980, when I began teaching at Mablethorpe in ‘84 and when I left for Hong Kong in ‘92. And when I returned to Spain in 2005 I was still budding. I’ve been budding and budding and budding all my life. I’m fed up with budding. It’s shameful.
Having the chance to do what you want with your life comes down to money and time, of course. My personal answer is, if you want money – go out and earn it. If you want time – mine it from the night. Opinionated, you see. I did mention that. Nothing disgusts me more than giving budding writers handouts or ‘bursaries’ to write their precious books – maybe so they can write them down here in the sun! Besides anything else, if these writers have any talent you’ll ruin it by doing that. You’re cutting them off from the struggle in which everyone else is engaged. They’ll produce nothing but fantasies, not imaginative works.
I would also close down all Creative Writing Courses, by the way, and MA’s and Workshops and Fellowships and all the rest of that nonsense too. Such things only confuse everyone. You’re only building nests for would-be writing cuckoos. Or kooks.
You’ve self-published The Ghost of Neil Diamond. What made you decide to take that route?
I took it as soon as I knew how to take it. 30 years of rejection was about enough, all in all. Legend Press (Tom Chalmers) and youwriteon.com (Ted Smith) did a great job of The Ghost of Neil Diamond and were very attentive throughout. Some are saying that partnership has gone authormill now with their 5000 free titles – one of which is The Ghost of Someone Else - but I think we should wait and see. Certainly they’ve been good to me.
After self-publishing The Ghost of Neil Diamond, sending out submissions to agents and publishers looks like a mug’s game. A book cannot succeed or fail, cannot prove itself one way or the other, until it exists. I’m not leaving that decision, about whether my books exist or not, in someone else’s hands any more. Not when I don’t have to. My books are too important to me, and to the world, for goodness’ sake. I know the internet will soon be swamped by wave after wave of mediocrity and imitative, derivative, talentless fiction, but the bookshops are already like that, in my opinion. Above all I’m convinced of two things: 1) Originality has a market value. If you're an original, your book will find its own readership by word of mouth, and by the good publicity that will surely come its way, in the end. 2) The Ghost of Neil Diamond is going to be the first novel to achieve commercial sales through self-publishing and the literary underground.
You’re publishing three ‘The Ghost of ...’ books. What’s with the ‘Ghost of ...’ prefix?
The three books are very different and I didn't want to tax the patience of people passing by with three very different titles. I thought it would excite more curiosity, and perhaps some amusement, to connect the books in this way, so that potential readers might ask exactly your question – ‘What's with the Ghost of . . . prefix’, and maybe take a look. The ghost idea does have resonance for each book though, I swear, but in a different way. The fact that there is nothing remotely supernatural, fantastical, magical or religious about any of the books will be a bonus for my kind of reader.
I don’t know, I found the character of Elbert Chan to have certain magical qualities. In fact, I smelt a whiff of Murakami in the book, especially in Elbert’s character. Is he an influence at all? Are there any other Asian writers that shaped The Ghost of Neil Diamond ?
I’m afraid I have never read Murakami and would hesitate to do so now you’ve said that. I’m dismayed to learn that Elbert Chan reminds you of anyone from another fictional world. I’m very touchy about my characters and won’t hear a word said against them, or hear that they have forebears or antecedents elsewhere. To me, characterization is everything. That’s the distinctive ability, the bit you either can do or you can’t, and all the rest is biography, autobiography, derivatives, thrillers or whatever.
On other Asian writers, I read Reef because Romesh Gunesekera was visiting Hong Kong and I slipped him $500HK to look at my books, hoping he’d give me an introduction to someone. I enjoyed Reef but I’m a slow reader and have little time for reading anything except my own writing, which sounds awful, I know. I would love to read more widely.
Would you advise other writers to self publish? Do you think the effort has been worth it? Are you an advocate of the DIY ethic?
I wouldn’t advise anyone about this because it’s such a personal matter. But one argument anyone facing this decision should address is: if I do get taken up by a small independent, or a big publishing house, how will they market my book? My research on this says, they won’t do a great deal. Their golden rule is – get the author to market it. That’s actually the first maxim of a book about publicizing books. So what have you gained over someone who has published his own book, on his own terms and to his own deadlines? Primarily you’ve gained the kudos of being with a named publisher, rather than the stigma of being self-published. But as soon as The Ghost of Neil Diamond achieves commercial sales (of which I collect 60% net royalty; not 10, 15 or 20%) and public recognition (which starts here, now) the kudos and stigma issue is going to fade away. I spent many more hours on my cover than any publisher would give a first time novelist, and I’ve spent much more money on publicity so far than any publisher would have spent, and I won’t stop now either. So yes, I’m a DIY man, but I know that isn’t for everyone.
What’s next?
I’m planning a trip to England to try to sell my wares to bookshops face to face - the full Willy Loman. Then I want to get back to The Ghost of Jimmy Tarbuck and see what’s what. Then I want to return to a book I started two years ago.
Finally, if you could have written any book from history, what would it be?
The Trial. Kafka never had a chance to finish that book or to edit it properly, but his was the seminal imagination of the last century, I think, rather than Joyce or Beckett; and I’ve read all that J&B wrote between them, except the dreadful Wake, but only half of Kafka. Cedar J Forrest |
