Up on Dec

How an Irish author went from small potatoes to the big time without getting lost in the plot.

by Char Vandermeer

Bubbling with sheer giddy pleasure at the thought of road-tripping through the States in promotion of his book, Irish author Declan Burke talks about starting small and the joys of thinking very, very big; a wife who always knows best; and tireless self-promotion. In town Oct. 8 for the latest installment of Philly's Noir @ the Bar, Burke chatted with us by phone about his latest novel, The Big O (Harcourt, $24), on the day his baby was released.

City Paper: This must be a busy day for you!

Declan Burke: It is a busy day, yes, but the kind of busy you always dream of being. I'm seeing my little baby toddle off across the Atlantic.

CP: This is your first publication in the States, right?

DB: This is the first proper publication that I've had. It's the second novel and we're quite excited about it because it's come from such a small and humble beginning as a co-published, more or less self-published, novel.

CP: How much of the publicity did you do on your own?

DB: The book was co-published with Hag's Head Press in Ireland, and they're what we like to call a boutique publisher — but that's just code for the smallest publisher in the world. We literally had no money to publicize the book and hence I started up the blog Crime Always Pays (crimealwayspays.blogspot.com) to promote both The Big O and other Irish crime writers. So in the beginning I was doing 100 percent of the publicity. I don't know how familiar you are with the crime-writing community, both readers and writers, but it's the most welcoming, generous and friendly community I have ever come across. At this point they're almost doing the publicity on my behalf. It's fantastic, it really is. Now, I'm delighted that Harcourt, this company with a great reputation, well, it's a bit of a surprise to be honest, but I'm delighted, absolutely delighted. It's a great day.

CP: It really seems to have become quite the Little Engine That Could.

DB: It's funny you should mention the Little Engine That Could because I used that in a blog post to describe the book. You know, we're trying to have a bit of fun with it as well as everything else. I mean, everybody likes to get paid for what they do, but there's much more behind it than selling copies and trying to pay the mortgage. There's a lot of faith stuff that went into this. I had just lost my job as a magazine editor when we had to make the decision of whether or not to publish it here in Ireland. We were just recently married and had just recently bought a house so it was just a crazy time to do it. My wife, she was pretty optimistic because she was the one who gave me the idea for the book in the first place. I think she wanted to get the credit for it when it came out. I'm being unfair there, no, she was fantastic!

CP: It certainly was a lot of fun to read. Did you set out to write a neo-noir or a comic thriller or a caper book? It feels like it's a little bit of everything.

DB: My wife — she was my girlfriend then — was living in Dublin and I was living in Sligo. She had said to me that she finds fiction a little too predictable. She'd been reading this book and she just threw it in frustration and said, "Why can't you just write a book about a thirtysomething gal who just can't get married and likes to rob banks?" I said, "OK, that could be a bit of fun." And it was coming up to her birthday so I wrote a short story about how this woman who likes to do stickups in her spare time [who, in the middle of a stickup] meets up with this guy who kidnaps people. I liked the two characters and it just started to go from there. The chapters are very short because I was writing one in the morning and ringing Aileen in Dublin to tell her how the characters were getting on and what they were up to today. She would give me feedback — "Oh, Karen wouldn't say that! No, she'd never do that!" — and so it was a lot of fun and a great thing for us because of the distance between us, the physical distance. It was a great relationship-builder.

CP: So it's actually a bit of a courtship novel.

DB: It was very much so! As I said, we're married now.

CP: You have very a nice ear for dialogue. How does that come about for you?

DB: I like listening to the rhythms of the conversation — the give and take and the back and forth — and how some people start halfway through a sentence and the other person will finish it for them. Clunky dialogue can really put you off a book. I think if you can get the dialogue right, it can really cover up a lot of sins elsewhere in the book. What they say is one thing, but the way they say it will tell you absolutely volumes about the character.

CP: I know you're coming to Philly very soon. What brings you here?

DB: Well, it's a beautiful city. It's always been on my list of top 10 places to visit. Basically, with the novel being released today, I'm going over for the Bouchercon, which is a big crime fiction festival being held in Baltimore this year. I'm going over a week in advance to do a road trip with another writer called John McFetridge. He has been compared to Elmore Leonard and James Elroy, which is almost like a perfect storm as far as I'm concerned. So we're both going to jump in a car and drive down from Toronto through Vermont, Boston and New York. We're doing [Noir @ the Bar] at Fergie's bar. Basically, it's crime and mystery fiction mixed with rock 'n' roll. You get a couple of writers to read their crime and mystery stuff and you get a band to play some songs and people have a few beers — it sounds like my ideal night. ... From the way it's described, Fergie's bar would be my kind of local. On top of everything else, when I think about the 13- or 14-year-old kid that I used to be who wanted nothing more than to be a writer but might as well have wanted to go to the other side of moon for all the chance that he had to be making it ... for me to be going to the States to coincide with the publication of a book of mine, sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure that it's actually happening. It's a terrific feeling.

CP: What's up next for you?

DB: Well, the second book, which is a sequel to The Big O, has gone off to the publisher and that's being published next spring. I really don't know what's going to happen next. It's very low expectations but high hopes.

(c_vandermeer@citypaper.net)

Noir @ the Bar, with author John McFetridge, Wed., Oct. 8, 6:30 p.m., free, Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom St., 215-928-8118, fergies.com.