This is a fantastic follow up interview with an extraordinary author, word craftsman, and one of my dearest friends from across the pond … Marc Nash.

Whispers of the Muse: What have you been doing since last time Whispers of the Muse interviewed you in April of 2009?
Mr. Nash: Videos, podcasting, tweeting like a dervish, writing 52 pieces of flash in 52 weeks, guest blogging on what makes a 21st century novel, had a couple of short stories published in the "Pop Fiction" Anthology, reached 10,000 views of my opening chapter sample of the novel "A,B&E" and then shadowing NaNoWrMo wrote a 75,000 word novel in 2 months which I will go back and redraft soon. But the thing that I have enjoyed the most is live reading. I've performed handcuffed to a mic stand, wearing a bachelorette veil with devil horns, wearing a nurse's dress, lying down prone on the floor with the audience over and around me, though not all at the same time. So kinda busy. Only this week I've come up with the idea for a new novel, but that will have to wait its turn. 

Whispers of the Muse: Let's start at the top. Video and Podcasting. What attracted you to this direction for reader attraction and how has it inspired you as an author?
Mr. Nash: Working backwards, it was forum discussions on writing websites which first planted the idea of them as marketing devices. From that it led to me deciding which of my 4 finished novels to make my self-publishing debut, on the basis that I thought "A,B&E" offered itself up best for vids. If you're looking to put literature on sites such as YouTube, I think you have to find the correct visual language for its audience. A middle-aged bloke reading from his book just won't cut it. So I storyboarded 5 readings with finger-manipulated props. The only frustration is that to date my editor has only completed one of the five. In the meantime, I just recorded myself on my laptop doing a reading that I'd done live and in the same costume. That's the bachelorette veil one.

Whispers of the Muse: Talk to me about your Social Networking. I remember when you first started with Twitter, now you’re a dynamo. Do you use other forms of online social networking? (Facebook, MySpace, email or Yuku groups, etc.)
Mr. Nash: Um no! I cane it on Twitter and contribute to various literary sites and my own blog - that takes up enough time. I'm in awe of all the platforms you manage to keep up with! FB is off limits as my kids are on that and I cede that territory to them. Otherwise I'd feel like I was reading their diaries. They both refused to accept their mother as an FB friend which I found amusing. None of this comes naturally to me, as you say in the beginning. I just wanted to be an author who no one knew what they looked like and had his words do all the talking for him. That may have worked 20 years ago, but now it's all hustle and profile baby! Just so long as we retain some of the literary art in the foreground, that's the hard thing to maintain. I don't want to sell books on the back of my personality and then have the reader disappointed because they turned out to be very different from the image they had of me, which is not that unlikely. The books are heavyweight, the social me is a jocular butterfly.

Whispers of the Muse: You talked about the 21st century novel; can you clarify your vision of it? And how does the current condition of the publishing industry play into that vision?
Mr. Nash: Aw man this is such a big topic. I'm planning on writing a free giveaway pamphlet or short book on the subject. Initially I was going to do it soon after my novel was published, but that seemed crazy to write a theory book to justify the novel. I will still write it one day, and it's radical. It eschews all the current tropes of character arcs, redemption, heroes, plot, conflict etc etc, I have to say most of this stuff came to me after I'd written my books not before. I just let the writing take me where it will and figure out what the heck it's all about afterwards. The theories are part of this as I look back and analyse the processes at work. As to the current state of publishing? Well to me it's bogged down in delivery systems and is thinking nothing about content, Safran Foer's latest book "Tree of Codes" with its visual intricacies is in line with what I'm talking about, just a shame the story was taken from a pre-existing one, not something new for what he was doing with the typesetting and print. I want to do lots with the typography and spatial design of books, so e-versions are unlikely to serve this as they cannot yet do things in 3-D. I not only don't take words for granted, I don't take our alphabet for granted either - this is what I want to explore through typography.

Whispers of the Muse: You certainly are an effective “live” performer. Watching you is like seeing the original Beatniks back in the 1950s! Your writing seems to blast off the page and through your performance. Tell us more about why you do live performances. (Please give us a few links to your favorite performances too.)
Mr. Nash: The way I write is for the main character's voice to be constantly in the reader's head, be it cajoling, seducing, complaining, challenging or whatever. That lends itself perfectly to a live performance where it's directed at the audience. I never ask friends to readings because I want to take on a completely fresh audience who don't know me or what to expect. It's more punk and slam poetry than beat maybe. But having no friends in the audience means no one with video cameras either! As far as I know, the only extant footage can be found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4TfMzil8jk
I've got some vids of me reading shot on my laptop at home.

Whispers of the Muse: It seems you’re the proof of the old adage … creativity and energy breeds creativity and energy! Tell us a little about the book you developed while shadowing NaNoWriMo, and give us an idea of the new book idea that’s waiting in the background.
Mr. Nash: Ha, okay. There's this author called China Mieville who has a real cult following. His fans argue that it's because he writes urban fantasy, he is never considered for the literary prizes when he should be. So I read a couple of them and could see the fierce intelligence that was on display, but felt that he fell between both stools of literary and fantasy. His second book so irritated me, that without any planning or preparation, I launched into my own take on a literary genre book. Can it in fact be done? A genre book with the highest literary values. It's a police procedural (to end all police procedurals?) with lashings of philosophy and big ideas. We'll see if it works. The next one is also a detective piece of sorts, with lashings of the new science questioning the nature of observation, empirical evidence and the like. I've even gone on Amazon and ordered up my old physics textbook from school for research! I hated the subject at school, but now...

Whispers of the Muse: Any last words for an aspiring writer out there about writing, the publishing industry, time managements or simply finding inspiration?
Mr. Nash: While it's a very subjective thing both the motivation and the process of writing, I would say to the writer to consider why you want to tell the tale in the way that you are and why you would ask a reader to read it? Put the reader and your narrator at the heart of the endeavour. Let them duke it out with the tools you provide. 'It's fiction Jim, but not as we know it!' As for the publishing industry, you stand still in it for a week and the grass has grown over your feet already. It's rapidly changing and I don't think anyone really knows how it's going to play out. But that should allow for all sorts of niche opportunities. There are no longer any excuses for not giving it a go and writing that idea you've had all these years...

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Nash: It used to be Hubert Selby Junior and William Burroughs, but then I discovered Don Dellilo who is a master of language and character. I like Jeanette Winterson’s lyricism. I remain a big Franz Kafka fan, both for the alienation he conveys, but also something about his writing projects you effortlessly into his strange world and then transports you rather beautifully within its unsettling borders.

Muse: Why do you write?
Nash: I’m simply going to quote author Steve Tesich here: “The ongoing need to narrate my existence”. Even writers who project themselves through fantasy or chicklit have the same impulse to be heard.

Muse: What is your writing regiment? How often do you work on a novel? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Nash: I’m a spree writer! Very much go with momentum. I have to build up the momentum for each project, eg once I start the 1st draft (after about 6 months of note-making and letting it bounce around my head), I will write it straight through without pause, however long that takes. Equally, I’ve been at this game long enough not to beat myself up if I don’t get down to any writing. I write when the kids are in bed.

Muse: Marc, you have a very distinctive outlook on life and writing. I often think of you as the Word Wizard, as you have an extremely unique approach to communicating your thoughts, characters and plot. How did you develop this writing style? 
Nash: Style, yes hmm… I don’t reflect much on my style, I just riff off words. Any book for me starts when a central metaphor and a voice coalesce and then I just run with it, see where it takes me. But I am always led by the nose to drink at the spring of language. I like words that mean one thing on the surface, but they have secondary implications that cut across their primary meaning in the context of how I use it. Words for me are imprecise, meaning slips away between the cracks. That’s why I like to throttle them into submission, to grab ‘em by the throat and make them do their damn duty to communicate.

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? What triggers your imagination?   
Nash: Everything is a potential touchstone. I am a real magpie. Snatches of conversation overheard on a bus. Books I read are especially provocative in this regard. Music is very important, I need to establish what music I am writing to that fits the book and then play it endlessly on a loop. I just have a lot of interests and a lot of stored up memories of things and it’s like a perpetual repository I can draw on. And then I just make a metaphor out of it. I’m not so interested in the ‘realism’ aspect. I like bringing things together that maybe ordinarily you wouldn’t associate; eg a BJ described in terms of David Beckham and Jackson Pollock … I am an insomniac, so dreams aren’t so big for me. Plus I tend to dream in words far more than pictures – my dreams are narrations. That must mean I’m a writer right ? On it 24-7. Damn I need me more sleep …

Muse: Tell us about the novel you have chosen for your Sneak Peek. 
Nash: Scheherazade meets a Bukowski (female) barfly. A gangster’s moll on the run from her murderous husband who she betrayed between the sheets, has lost everything and has to sing for her supper. She does this by holding court in bars at a holiday resort by day and capturing prey to take her into a hotel room by night. She is like a mythical hydra, with several heads and each time you think you’ve got a grip on her and lop off one of those heads, two more facets of her spring up in its place and she eludes your grasp once again. She is so strong and yet in such a position of weakness, watch the sparks fly.

Muse: What was your inspiration for this particular novel? 
Nash: Watching TV documentaries about how badly behaved British youth are when they go on foreign holidays and descend on each resort like a plague of locusts, completely destroying everything indigenous to the place and turn it into a little Britain like the old Empire builders. This represents the contemporary British soul to me and I wanted to interrogate it and see where it extruded from. I have a love-hate relationship with my country, my people, my culture.

Muse: Which of your characters do you most identify with?
Nash: They are all different parts of me. I like to project out to a character who on the surface is at a very different place in life (job, gender, age, personal habits etc) and this forces me to travel out to discover them and in doing so that part of myself that I might not be so aware of. This is the journey that keeps things interesting for me as I write.

Muse: What is your favorite scene in the book and why? 
Nash: She is on the beach and dissing women’s piercings and tattoos in a very scurrilous way as being unfeminine. I like it simply because these are not my views, yet she holds them with such conviction. Same way as I have written a character beholden to the demon drink, yet I’m teetotal. The Beckham BJ is very rude, mixing highbrow and lowbrow, so that quite tickled me as well.

Muse: Have you written other books? 
Nash: A Brazilian rainforest of them … This is why the planet is in such dire straits. I hold my hand up to acknowledge my part in it …

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace? Nash: I am chagrined that literature is marketed by genre which I think belittles both the writers and the readers. I think there is a dearth of writers who are willing to continue the work of the great modernists like Joyce, Faulkner etc and examine language, to deal in big ideas in their books. I think this comes from a self-censorship believing there is no publisher and no readers out there for this type of stuff. But I am convinced they are wrong and do their readers a disservice. But then I would say that wouldn’t I ?