Rising star: author Stuart Neville

LA Times Book Prize winner Stuart Neville is about to drop his second major work – JOE.ie caught up with the author ahead of the big launch.

By Robert Carry

Stuart Neville’s debut novel The Twelve earned rave reviews both in Ireland and abroad before picking up an award from the LA Times. However, Stuart’s path into writing wasn’t a smooth one. “I moved around quite a lot,” says the Armagh man. “I kind of drifted for a few years after college, where I studied music, and I spent a long time working in a music shop.”

Stuart worked as a movie extra for a time before attempting to get into writing music for film. “I found it to be a very, very tough game,” he recalls. “It was both difficult to get into and difficult to deal with.” Stuart eventually established his own web design business but always felt that he had not yet found his calling.

“I was always interested in writing, since I was a kid really,” says Stuart. “I flirted with it over the years but four or five years ago I decided that I wasn’t getting any younger and it was becoming a case of now or never. It was time to sit down and get on with it.”

Stuart’s first attempt at writing a novel didn’t go according to plan. “I almost completed one novel before I realised it was rubbish and scrapped it,” he recalls. His next effort didn’t cut the mustard either: “My second novel was better than the first but still not good enough, so I dumped that too.”

With the dust bin loaded up and still no book, many would have thrown in the towel and went back to the music shop. Stuart however, wasn’t for turning. He held out, and his bid to become a writer received a boost from an unsuspected source: “Between writing the first complete novel and doing The Twelve, I managed to sell a short story. I got paid $20 dollars, but it was enough for me to say that maybe it was something worth pursuing.”

Sales

Further short story sales followed in quick succession and although they didn’t pay a huge amount, they served a more important purpose. “They gave me enough encouragement to keep going,” says Stuart.

Buoyed by his short story successes, Stuart set about writing The Twelve. The book, which tells the story of a former paramilitary killer haunted by the ghosts of the 12 people he killed, was an altogether more accomplished effort than what had went before. “There is a bit of ambiguity as to whether the ghosts are actually supernatural or just psychological representations of his own guilt,” he says.

He was fortunate enough to hook up with an agent who got what he was trying to do with his book. The author recalls, “He was in a position where he didn’t have to limit himself to choosing books which immediately looked like sure-fire hits. The Twelve was a story which was original but also a little bit unusual. It was of interest to him despite the fact that it wasn’t immediately an obvious contender for commercial success.”

The book proved something of a hit, first in Ireland when it was picked up by an imprint of publishing goliath Random House and later in the States where it was distributed under the name of The Ghosts of Belfast.

Strong reviews from fellow writers and critics flowed in and Stuart eventually received a call to say he was short-listed for the L.A. Times Book Prize. He remembers, “They gave me a call to say they wanted to fly me out for the ceremony. I didn’t find out whether I had won or not until the night itself – someone got up on stage, opened an envelope and read out my name. I was delighted – I ended up proposing to my girlfriend. It was a mad night.”

Thrillers

Stuart believes his way of approaching the area of post-conflict Northern Ireland has been one of the factors in his success. “Although there are notable exceptions, there has been a lack of good quality thrillers set in Northern Ireland,” he points out. “It’s not an area that has been very well explored and much of what has been written have been thrashy, commercial thrillers with no basis in reality.”

So is it a subject matter Stuart will be sticking with? “I’m taking each book as they come. Looking at the changes in Belfast, the second book is less politics driven and more crime narratives. There has been a big shift since the first book. There have been changes on the political landscape and writing has to reflect that. If you keep going back to the political conflict it’s going to get to the stage where you’re flogging a dead horse.”

Collusion, Stuart’s latest novel, is a sequel to The Twelve and is due for release in August. With its arrival on shelves now imminent, the wheels have been clicking into gear. “I’m doing a lot of promotional stuff. I’ve several interviews lined up this week and I’ve an American tour in October. It’s building up. It makes it difficult to keep to a routine of writing but I’m enjoying it.”

Keep an eye on stuartneville.com for news of when and where you can get a copy of Collusion.