Vital Crime Fiction: Rival Sons by Aidan Thorn
Had the good fortune to interview a fellow Thirteener — Aidan Thorn. And, beyond that, I received a pre-publication copy of his new one from Shotgun Honey, Rival Sons. Aidan is one hell of a guy and Rival Sons is a story about evil overtaking good, how one brother can corrupt the other, and how the lineage passed to us can be more corrupt than any jailhouse snitch. In this blast of a novella, Aidan delivers — these characters know rivalry and vengeance, guts and glory, failure and worse-than-failure. They also know love and courage (well, some of them do). And like every great noir story, Rival Sons is about a few bad men eating the bullets they so deserve.
Aidan Thorn is from Southampton, England. His short fiction has appeared in Byker Books Radgepacket series, the Near to the Knuckle Anthologies: Gloves Off and Rogue, Exiles: An Outsider Anthology, The Big Adios Western Digest, Shadows & Light, Hardboiled Dames and Sin as well as online in numerous places. His first short story collection, Criminal Thoughts was released in 2013 and his second, Tales from the Underbelly in 2017. In September 2015 Number 13 Press published Aidan’s first novella, When the Music’s Over In 2016 Aidan collated and edited the charity anthology, Paladins, for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, working with 16 authors from the UK and USA to deliver this project.
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You’re one of the infamous Thirteeners, the crew of writers published by the nefarious Chris Black with Number Thirteen Press (now Fahrenheit 13). Tell me how you discovered that publishing project and why — to your mind — it’s representative of contemporary noir?
I have to start by saying how proud I am to be one of the original Thirteeners. That project has produced some of the best books I’ve read in years and introduced me to some fantastic writing talents, as well as given me a chance to read more from great writers who I’d been reading in the short form on webzines like Near to the Knuckle and Shotgun Honey for a few years. Number Thirteen Press came along and gave some of those guys a shot. For example it was the first time I’d read anything longer than a couple of thousand words from B R Stateham and damn was his N13P book, A Killing Kiss, a great read. And then of course there were the likes of Paul Brazill, Graham Wynd and your good-self, all writers I’d followed and read bits of. N13P took those writers and collected them together into something very cool — 13 books only, one published each month for 13 months.
How did I hear about it? Now you’re digging back into the memory banks. I think I just stumbled across the Twitter account (either they followed me or I them) and I liked the look of what they were doing. Short reads were really appealing to me at the time as I love to read but was finding I was increasingly time-limited. The fact that they were publishing novellas, and that these were crime noir really struck a chord with me. They were also cheap: 99p each on Kindle and so I downloaded a few and enjoyed what I was reading. For me it was truly representative of everything I wanted from contemporary noir. Great atmosphere, great flawed characters, gritty stories and great writing. I just had to be part of it and so I dusted off When the Music’s Over—at that time, a novel—and gave it a really savage edit and made it a hell of a lot better than it ever was as a novel and submitted it. Chris Black was incredible. He loved the book and gave it another edit which really made it work — I learned a lot about good writing just from Chris’s notes on the book.
That the Thirteeners are now part of the Fahrenheit Press family just makes things all the more sweet. I love what Chris McVeigh and Chris Black are doing with that press — it feels like a community, a bit like the early days when I first got into writing. There were some great people involved then, many of whom have gradually drifted away from the scene, but Fahrenheit Press is more than a publishing company. I can’t quite capture the words to describe what it is — I don’t want to call it a family —but it’s supportive, inclusive and delivers the goods when it comes to quality reads.
Your work — especially the forthcoming Rival Sons — deals with complexity in family relationships. I happen to read your work as drama drenched in noir. Would you say that’s accurate, inaccurate, or somewhere between? And what compels you to create not only interesting characters, but also interesting relationships for those characters to navigate? What writers (or books) led you to that approach?
I wouldn’t just say that your observations about my work are accurate. I would say it’s a massive compliment and exactly how I want people to read it. I love characters. Without good characters there are no good stories, and for me the most interesting stories are when conflicts are introduced to relationships. When something is going well and something is introduced to disrupt that — there’s always a story in that. How people interact with people is the most interesting and most important thing in the world for me. I try to get to the heart of why people are the way they are, why some people will use people and climb over them for their own selfish ends, why some people are motivated to help others, how people react to situations that are unexpected or difficult for them, and how motivations of greed, love, hate, and selfishness can alter as relationships develop. In my personal life I’m trying to live a more intentional life, to have less of an impact on the environment and yet have more of a positive impact on people, be more present, more supportive, more focused on those around me because I feel like I haven’t been great at that for so long. Life is designed to distract us these days, to keep us busy, often busy doing nothing, and we can miss what’s really important. We can become obsessed with things that don’t matter and disregard those things that do matter… That’s going to be one of the foci of the next book. It’s a tough write and it’s taking a lot of time due to the self-reflection, because I hold a mirror up to myself when I write it and think—fuck.
Who or what inspires me to write this stuff? People I guess. But, in terms of writers who I admire for great character work, one of my biggest influences isn’t a novelist but a TV writer. I don’t know if you get his stuff in the USA but Jimmy McGovern is an absolutely top-class writer. His drama is always dripping in character and conflict.
From the book world, I love so many great writers, look at what you did with Know Me From Smoke for example — a perfect character-driven book wrapped in an atmosphere of noir.
And then there’s the likes of George Pelecanos who has built whole communities of characters around which he tells compelling and heartfelt stories of life from the wrong side of the tracks.
Give me an Aidan Thorn rule (or three) for writing:
I’m nobody to give anyone rules on writing. I barely spend any time doing any writing these days, which is something I do need to remedy, and will, so maybe setting a few rules for myself now isn’t such a bad thing.
I find I write best when I’m writing as regularly as I possibly can. Rival Sons was primarily written to first draft status within about four months. It wasn’t quick, but I chipped away at it most days. I haven’t been doing that lately. When I open the current work in progress I notice that weeks have often passed since the last save date. So one rule has to be write frequently.
It seems like a strange thing to say, but write something you enjoy. So many people—I think—try to write something that they think is marketable under the expectation that they will make their fortune by having a bestseller. The reality is that few people actually make a living from writing. If you can, great, but I will always treat it as a passion rather than a career. To me the best writing I’ve read over the past few years has come from people that do it because they love it—people with day jobs. I saw a great quote this morning: “Forcing yourself to make money from a hobby is a great way to kill your love for that hobby.” That hits the nail on the head for me. So many people ask me if I make much money from writing. My stock answer is “some,” because those people are missing the point.
My final rule is make every word count. It’s a pet hate of mine to have sprawling pages describing the filling of a sandwich and the flavour of a drink. Every word should either be there to move the story along or to generate atmosphere — if it doesn’t then dump it.
You’ve got a blast of noir coming from Shotgun Honey before the end of the year (I know it’s damn good because I got the chance to write a blurb for you). Tell us about Rival Sons. Why in the hell do you think people should buy and read the book?
Thank you for the kind words about the book. It’s one I’m very proud of and, personally, I think it’s my best work. That’s not saying much for someone who has one other novella published and around 50 short stories I suppose, but I stand by it — one of the reasons I’m struggling to write at the moment is that I don’t see myself topping this book. Not right now, anyway. And, the fact that Shotgun Honey is publishing it is a real thrill for me. They published some of my very first short fiction and I have always admired what they do with the site as well as with the novellas they’ve published over the years. As to why I think people should buy it…That’s up to people. I hope they do. I think it deserves an audience, but there are a lot of great books out there so I know I’m competing for space in people’s lives in a very crowded marketplace. What I will say is that if you love books you really should be checking out the small presses of the world like Shotgun Honey and Fahrenheit Press and Close to the Bone — because they are home to an incredible array of talent that you probably aren’t going to find on the shelves of your big chain bookstore. But that talent deserves to sit at least equal with the writers that are on those shelves. And, if you decide that one of the books you want to pick up from a small press is Rival Sons, well, that’s great, and thank you — here’s what you’ll get…
Rival Sons is, at its heart, a family drama wrapped up within a crime thriller. It’s about relationships across the generations of a family. It’s about how two brothers can be the product of the same upbringing and yet be completely different — one a hard, heartless criminal who will literately step on anyone to satisfy his own selfish needs and the other a dutiful son, husband, father and solider. These brothers have made the choice to have no part in the other’s life and the consequences of them being drawn back together after two decades will change the course of the whole family’s lives.
Thanks, Aidan. Thrilled to have read your book. Can’t wait until people get their hands on it!
Buy the Book: Pick up Rival Sons on Amazon US or Amazon UK — you won’t regret it.
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