Interview with Phil Cone, author of Paddy Nemesis
Tell us about Paddy Nemesis. After a little recreational violence, Jack runs into his boss. He is asked to go to his home town in Boyle, in the west of Ireland, and intercept a consignment of drugs. Whilst there, his job is to kill the men who are distributing the drugs. That may be a simple enough task for an assassin, but going home comes with its own problems, and Jack is in for one very long day. The men importing the drugs are heavily involved in organised crime in the area, and Jack’s incentive just went nuclear. Throw in an unfinished love story, a child he never knew existed, a duplicitous friend and a psychotic mother into the mix, and something is bound to blow. Jack only hopes it’s not him. The one-liners in this story will draw you in, and make you smile wryly, while the richly overlaid intelligence and humour will keep you reading. There is a poignant melancholy to the character, which will keep more romantic-minded readers hooked, and the action is delivered in a high-octane thrill-a-minute style, which will satisfy even the lustiest appetites for action. There’s a lyrical charm to the scenic descriptions of Ireland’s lush green countryside, rolling hills and bleak small towns. The action, perfectly described drama, razor sharp humour, knowing winks to works such as Hamlet and Ulysses, add up to a sense that this story is an epic of our time. What genre is it? What kind of readers will it appeal to? That’s a big statement, isn’t it? How long did the book take to write? What was the most challenging part of your creative process? Then I mulled it over during a period of weeks where I had a bit of a block and was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing where the end was and how to get there. Tell us about yourself. He didn’t believe me, thought I was hungover from the night before. I admit I was out for a few drinks but this wasn’t a hangover. I pleaded with him, saying the work I had to do could wait until Monday. He agreed and I got home within an hour and rested up on the sofa in the front room. I went to bed that night with a headache that felt like my head was trapped in a vice and I was so very nauseous. That’s the last thing I remember. Don’t leave us hanging; what happened next? Then the rash appeared on my back. I was diagnosed with having Bacterial Meningitis and was taken to Kings College Hospital in London. There I split my time between High Dependency and Intensive Care Units. The Consultant, Mr Chandler, decided against giving me a lumber puncture because the swelling on my brain was pushing it towards the top of my spinal column and the draining of the fluid would have removed part of my brain and I would have died. My parents, as Catholic as the Pope, got a priest in to administer the last rites to me, it was that serious. A shunt was put in the top right of my skull and in the two weeks I was in hospital, drained 9 litres of infected fluid out of my head. I was then confined to my own room because not only did I have meningitis, but I had caught MRSA, the well know hospital bug that can kill just as well as the meningitis can. When I was discharged from hospital, I had a dent in my head from the shunt and lost nearly three stone in weight. These were the only physical side effects from the illness. I didn’t realise at the time but I was one of the extremely lucky survivors. So how did you start writing? So I started to write. Mainly to alleviate the boredom and just to see what it would be like. I didn’t know at the time that it would finally become Paddy Nemesis. I wrote two chapters, always only two, then I stopped because I got bored and couldn’t figure out a storyline to keep on writing. I bathed myself in action films and read anything for inspiration and nothing came. I knew that I wanted to base the book in Ireland, it’s a country I know very well, particularly Dublin and Boyle in County Roscommon where my family are from. The first rule about writing is write about what you know – I was lazy and didn’t want to research areas, so it became my location. I didn’t know who the protagonist was, but I wanted him to be emotionally damaged, because it was how I felt and I wanted him to be on the fence between good and bad, but ultimately the hero. Then I stopped writing, I was back in work and the idea of writing just slipped to the back of my mind. Every now and again, I would go back to the manuscript, read it, think it was rubbish and write again, making the character harder and more strung out. This would repeat itself until around 2011 when I looked at the 100th rewrite and thought that I had got something there. In the news, the Irish Government and Irish Banks had landed the whole country into a massive recession and I thought I had my perfect muse, the desperation of the people, the undermining of trust and faith in the leaders of the country, the escalation in drug use and rumours of corruption running like a rich vein through all Government Departments. To top it all, people who were once part of terrorist organisations were now running for public office – it couldn’t get any better for me and my story, so I pushed though chapter two and created a story of pop culture, desperation, love, drugs, violence, vengeance and humour, even though it’s the blackest kind. I sent the manuscript out to agents and publishing houses, not expecting to hear back anything positive but I wanted to give it a shot; and then I discovered self publishing, which although risky, seemed more appealing to me as this book was my baby and I wanted to retain editorial control. I did however, get it independently edited and proof read, which is essential to every self published book. How do you promote the book? We’d be only too pleased to. What are your links for Facebook and Twitter? Do you have a website? What’s next? |
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