Tag: Send to Darkness

Q&A part 5: about the novel

PeterLeave a comment

Question: Without giving too much away, what can readers expect from your debut novel?

P.J. Moroney: Hopefully an entertaining read. I think the protagonist is complex and interesting. The themes are pretty universal. And I think it has some good twists and surprises, though I’m not much of a judge of that. I’m told that’s the case.

I set out to write a book I’d like to read, but I hardly considered the audience when I wrote it. It makes the question a bit hard to answer. Readers will get their own thing out of it, hopefully something good – but, at the end of the day, it’s their business. And while I hope people enjoy it and I sell a million copies, I’m not too fussed.

I’ve heard a lot of writers say they write for themselves. I think I have, anyway. But it’s true for me, and think it must always be the case for any attempt at serious literature. It’s different if you’re setting out to write a commercial best-seller, a potboiler or whatever. Fair enough if you do your research to write what people want to read. I’d love to write a bestseller, but the reason I write is not to be acclaimed or make a million dollars or even to be read – though I hope all that happens. I write because I feel like I have something I have to say. Something I have to get out. My process is just the opposite of deliberately writing a popular novel.

I know it sounds a bit pretentious. And I note that I’ve inferred my book is serious literature. It isn’t, though it’s got things in it. It’s a detective novel. It has crime and murders, and it’s even got porn. I think it’s well-written. Some of the dialogue is snappy – it was fun to write it. And it’s got a big sex scene for those easily titillated. That was funny to write also.

Question: The sex scene is quite substantial. Do you have a process when writing sex scenes?

P.J. Moroney: Nothing special. These days, I’m going by memory. I’ve read some pretty ordinary sex scenes in the past and reckon the mistake they make is being too literal. In my experience, anyway, sex is more a series of impressions and sensations, and that’s how I write it. Sex isn’t cerebral; it’s in the body and the sense of self, merging and embracing and shifting, and the sensations, sudden sometimes, and sometimes slow. A build-up that includes anticipation and imagination. The best sex is always a bit of a trip. That’s how I write it. I don’t plan it. I let it happen, like the real thing – impressionistic, edgy, raw, a bit sloppy, but a lot of fun.

Question: Are any characters or events in your book inspired by real-life experiences or people?

P.J. Moroney: Everyone always wants to know this. Most of this story came into being 20 years ago. If there was anyone in mind, they’re long forgotten. Having said that, you borrow people from time to time in your writing. There’s never a complete person, but you might take aspects – the way someone talks or walks, little idiosyncrasies and tics here and there you re-purpose. Sometimes, when writing, I’ll be reminded of someone I know or have met, but it’s that way around. It’s possible they’ve been in my subconscious all this time and come out on the page, but you’d have to ask my Id.

There’s one character in the book who had the physical description of someone I used to work with, though the personality is very different. Sometimes, I imagine faces, and I’ll see someone and think, yep, that’s so and so. For the record, Kurten isn’t me.

As for events? I can’t think of any. Places a bit. Melbourne plays a big role in this story. There’s a pub I’ve described, as well as a bar that fits pretty well with the generic Melbourne bar vibe. There’s Brunswick Street, trams, footy, and so on. But that’s pretty standard.

Question: Was it a deliberate decision to make Melbourne such a character in this story?

P.J. Moroney: Yes. I’m a die-hard Melburnian. Love the place and know it back to front. It’s got a broody face that suited the story well, plus I wanted to show it off a bit. I had a European reader tell me very enthusiastically that they felt like they were walking the streets of Melbourne reading it. I liked that.

Excerpt from Send to Darkness

PeterLeave a comment

No spoilers, you’ll need to buy the book – but here’s a tease:

You might think by the way that Helena Ryle spoke about me that I was a someone, except I wasn’t, not really. It was not fame I possessed but infamy, and even that, after two years, very much faded. People thought they knew me. I was one of those faces that stirred distant memories. Aren’t you that footballer, they might ask? Or was it you that…? And so on. Occasionally, they happened across the right story – oh yes, you’re the policeman, aren’t you, the brother? Even then, though they might look at me sideways, they made little of it – they expected to see something, some evil, horns or something, and instead, they found someone quite normal.

One man’s normal is another man’s weird, of course. It was different for me. I didn’t know what normal was anymore, and even if by now my story was one among millions, it was my story, and though I don’t like to admit to it, as fresh to me then as it was when it happened. It still burned in me, and because it did, it was not something I ever dwelt on. It was one reason why I didn’t stop to wonder why it was important to Helena Ryle, regardless of the clues that it offered to me.

My brother, Ray, was eight years older than me and shone so bright that I was lost in the shadows until everything changed. In his prime, Ray had been the pin-up boy of the force. When he turned it on, he was an oversized personality who was also – as the newspapers loved to proclaim – ‘police royalty’. Not just the son of the commish, Ray was also the decorated head of the drug squad and, to the tabloid audience, the cop they knew best. He was writ large, the police go-to man, the cop every punter related to and rooted for because they knew him and because he spoke their language. For a while, Ray was everywhere. He was a pugnacious, witty, almost comic-book version of what a 21st-century cop should be. None of it was false, but it was not altogether real either. Ray was more complex than that, and not just in the ways we soon learned. He was my brother, and I saw him as the public never did, felt the easy affection of an older brother for the younger, shared with him my exuberant hopes and witnessed the rare occasion when he was less certain or less boisterous.

To the broader world, to the media, to the public who wanted to know which nag ‘Razor’ had tipped for the Cup, and to the police PR department who egged him on, Ray was a commodity. He knew it and lapped it up. “Give ‘em a little of what they want,” he had once said to me with a smirk, “and there’s nothing they won’t give you back.”

Then it changed. There was a tip-off: Ray was dirty. From one day to the next, Ray went from folk hero to public enemy number one. It was a circus. The tabloids shrieked his name, and the talkback lines choked with outraged callers shocked that Ray had not lived up to the image they had thrust upon him. Ray was guilty of the one thing that could not be forgiven: he had betrayed the trust of the people – and the people’s proxy, the media.

Ray became Judas, and not even his death could appease the baying crowd. There was no satisfaction in that. Like a scorned lover, they were furious with their shame. They wanted answers. They wanted to hold him in the palm of their hand, and in their power, they wanted, should the law permit, to hang, draw and quarter the dastardly traitor. They got none of that. He’d played them for a mug and got away with it. Now, he was gone. But I remained.

None of you can understand what it was like. I wasn’t sure that I did. When the blood’s up, when tabloids scream headlines every day, and carnivorous reporters stake out home and work, the presumption of innocence is nothing more than a judicial precept. If I was not Judas, then at least I was Judas’ brother, was I not? I was guilty by association, if not in fact. At best, I confused people. I was the inconvenient reminder of their shame and cupidity. What I said or did or if I was guilty or innocent was beside the point. The point was they needed a living, breathing fall guy, and I was it.

There were TV cameras there the day I left. The sun blazed from a blue sky, and the cameras pointed at me. I stood where I was told, numbed by disbelief. There were speeches made and a presentation while I continued to play my compliant role. I was lauded for my service, praised for my accomplishments, commended for my sacrifice, and publicly consoled for the shame wrought upon the family name. You see, I was one of theirs, after all, officially, but the fine-sounding words did nothing to disguise their smug hypocrisy. As far as the world was concerned, I was innocent only because they couldn’t prove I was guilty, and that was that…