Born in Yorkshire, England in 1971, Adrian Dawson’s
professional career has spanned design, illustration and animation and he is
now Creative Director at a UK Creative Advertising Agency. Adrian’s first
novel, Codex, was accepted in 1999 by
the first agency he sent it to – at the time, the same agency as J.K. Rowling -
but they were unable to place it. After many years of trying to place Codex, it was ultimately taken on by
Last Passage and became the Number One Best Selling Thriller Novel on the UK
iBookstore of 2010.
Hello, Adrian; your latest book is Sequence; perhaps you’d give us some
insight into it in a few sentences?
Sequence is a book
set in two distinct timeframes. One story progresses day by day whilst another
jumps forward a few years at a time, ultimately landing in 2043. How and why
those two stories converge is extremely shocking. If it’s true, it could change
the face of the planet forever.
How did you come to write this particular book?
I was a little annoyed that ‘Time Travel’ had such a bad
rep., even when covered by well respected authors such as Michael Crichton. I
got to thinking that I wanted to write a time travel novel in which the science
was accurate, the consequences were real and the whole thing held an air of
possibility. More importantly, I wanted to write a novel in which, despite time
travel, not one single event in the past could be changed. Then ask the question…
so why bother? The answer may surprise quite a few people.
Do you have a favourite character from the book? If so, who and why
this particular one?
One of the ‘lesser’ characters in the novel is Tina. She is
autistic, mute and phenomenally intelligent. She can’t communicate with others
not because she is on a lower plane but because she is on a higher one. For the
bulk of the novel she is who she is and perhaps seems a little like a
background character. Through a devastating event toward the end of the novel
she becomes the key to everything that is happening and I feel for her. I did
when I wrote her and I do now.
Where can people buy your books?
Waterstone’s, WHSmith, Amazon, iBookstore. All the usual
places, really. “Available from all good Bookstores. And some bad ones! ;0)”
What qualities does a writer need to be successful?
Luck. When Codex was first rejected by publishers in 1999 it
was because it was deemed to be too ‘millenial’. Then, from mid 2000 (Angels
& Demons) onwards everyone was saying that it was a bit ‘Dan Brown’ and
none of the big publishers would touch it. In 2010 I had a lot of official
reviews saying that it was ‘like Dan Brown but better’. If, in 1999, someone
had seen its potential it could have had an almost Dan Brown like level of
success. Maybe.
What’s your working method?
Index cards. I start with the ending first, and then ensure
that everything tapers towards that point.
I have one index card for every chapter with all the major events listed
out. I need to do this to ensure that every piece of the puzzle arrives on time
and fits where it should. Then I walk the dogs, write the chapter in my head,
come home and commit it to paper.
What’s the single biggest mistake made by beginner writers?
I’ve never copied anyone else, but the years of people
thinking that Codex was copying Dan Brown when it was written years earlier has
taught me that bandwagons don’t take you anywhere nice. I see a lot of people
who want to write copying plots, styles or characters from the big sellers.
Don’t. Write what you want to write, how you want to write it. We need more
rule-breakers coming through.
To what extent are grammar and spelling important in writing?
In the novel itself, hugely. In the way characters speak or
narrate not at all. People use bad grammar in real life and realism comes from
reflecting that. I’m very careful with my speeling though.
How much do you revise your MS before sending it off?
I have a period where I read a chapter at a time, walk the
dogs again and mull it over, then I have a period where I open the MS at random
and tweak. This lasts a few weeks usually.
As a writer of Thriller fiction, to what extent do you think genre is
useful in the publishing world?
I’m not a ‘literary’ writer, and yet one well known reviewer
said of Codex: “The prose is a joy to behold in the early chapters as the
author exercises his literary muscle and produces some of the best crafted
sentences I have read this year.” To me, genre is irrelevant. Genre is what a
book is about, not what a writer is about. Genre is the flimsiest of tags
designed to help place things on shelves.
Many authors see marketing as a bind. What's your opinion on this, and
how do you deal with it?
I’m a Creative Director at an Advertising Agency so I find
it very hard to turn over my publicity to others. On the plus side, it means
that I have the skills to program and control my own web presence. For the most
part, however, I find it a bind. That is
with the exception of Book signings. I
love meeting readers, and talking about the plot of the novel, or the science
behind the story.
What sort of displacement activities keep you from writing?
Anything. Everything. My writing covers a wide range of
subjects because I’m into so many things. I then find it hard to get down to
actual writing because I’m into so many things.
What support, if any, do you receive from family and friends, writing
group, or dedicated professionals?
My three stand-outs are my girlfriend who checks everything
I write and then annoys me by finding things I’d missed because I was in
mid-flow. Then there are two local guys, one in his seventies who is a novelist
himself and one who runs the Nottingham Writer’s Studio and is working on his
first novel. The three of them offer all the help, advice, encouragement and
corrections I could ever need.
Is presentation of the MS as important as agents and publishers
suggest?
Not at all, as long as it’s legible. I’m sure that a lot of
exciting and unconventional writers have been lost in the slush pile over the
years because their submissions followed rules that they were told to follow
and their unconventional nature was lost along the way.
How long does it take you to write a novel?
I have three on the go at the moment – [Sequoia] which is the follow-up to Sequence, plus Memory and
Remote. I only write one at a time
whilst I research and plot the others but it means that by the time I settle
down to write, say, Memory it will be a couple of months at most.
Who or what inspires your writing?
Every strange event I’ve ever read about, every strange fact
I ever learned and, more importantly, every strange person I’ve ever met.
If there’s a single aspect of writing you find frustrating, what is it?
Finding the final piece of some very complex jigsaw.
Is there a particular feature of writing that you really enjoy?
Finding the final piece of some very complex jigsaw.
Do you believe creative writing is a natural gift or an acquired skill?
The gift is wanting to write and the wanting to write means
that you do write which, ultimately, makes you better at it.
What are you writing now?
I’ve not looked back through all the other interviews, but I
guess that the #1 answer to this question is ‘…these answers’. (SA – in fact, that has never been the answer)
Apart from that, I’m working on [Sequoia]
which is immensely rewarding because I’m trying to combine the most accurate
forecast of what 2043AD might be like with the most accurate portrayal I can
muster of 1645AD. In case you were wondering, they’re both dirty, horrible,
wretched places to be.
Do you have a website or blog where readers can visit?
www.adriandawson.co.uk
- there’s a little bit of something on there for everyone from my daily
ramblings, to research, to current promotions (there’s a fantastic competition
running in conjunction with Sequence to locate and find some treasure!) and of
course sample chapters of both Codex
and Sequence.
Given unlimited resources, where would you do your writing?
Anywhere with a stunning view and an MP3 player.
Where do you actually write?
I write in detail in my head, almost 24/7, but the actual
stenography happens in many different places. When I first write a chapter I
like to be at my desk as I have a Mac Pro with two 30” screens and I have the
research occupying all available screen real estate. When I tweak chapters that
can happen almost anywhere: at my desk, Macbook Pro on my sofa, iPad on the
train. Often I have conversations between characters in my head whilst I’m out
and about and by the time I get home, ten minutes will have that conversation
added to the novel.
Adrian is hosting a Twitter Book Club tonight between 8 and 9 o'clock (BST). If you want to get involved, please use the hashtag #Sequence; the link is
http://www.adriandawson.co.uk/index.php/categoryblog/273-twittersequence.htm
