An author living the life.

Please introduce yourself. Tell us about your personal life, family, education.

I am an Englishman called Nick John. I live with my Thai-Chinese wife, in a small village in the far north of Thailand. I have a degree in social studies and an MA in the sociology of crime and deviance. Most of my adult working life was spent in London, but I lived and worked in Tokyo between late 1989 and the end of 1992. Since leaving England in 2011, I have lived in Portugal and Thailand.

What do you like doing in your spare time?

When I am not writing or editing, I ride a motorcycle. I always have a book to read, mainly crime fiction. I also exercise regularly.

What is your ultimate writing goal as you see it today?

I have one noir crime novel published by Next Chapter called Neon Identity. It is the first of an early 1990s Tokyo Noir trilogy, the other two books being Sin Garden and Sunrise Boulevard. Next Chapter is publishing the whole trilogy, and if it is successful, the second trilogy which spans the second half of the 1990s, all set in London – London Kills Us All; London Crime; London Avenue.

I have just completed the first draft of novel seven in the series, set in southern Spain and southern Portugal, entitled Marbella Delivery. I plan to do a Thai trilogy: Siam Seesaw; Siam Shakedown; Siam Sundown. This will make it ten books in the series. I have also written a collection of short stories which tie into events in Neon Identity. It is called Gas Station Zero. Finally, I have written a standalone novel called Lying for a Living. My goal is to get all these books published.

Inspiration

What inspired you to write your first book?

Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I wrote a trilogy, the first of which was requested in by Sceptre in London, then later rejected. When I took early retirement in 2011 and initially moved to southern Portugal, I read Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino which gave me the idea for Neon Identity in that I suddenly had a vision of how a femme fatale could be represented in my book.

How do you decide on the title of a book?

In each case the title just comes to me. For each book for marketing reasons, I wanted the city it is largely set in as part of the title. The first three novels are each under the heading Tokyo Noir with the individual titles appearing underneath. London is the first word in each title in the second trilogy. Marbella is the first word of novel seven. Siam, the old word for Thailand, appears at the beginning of each book in the to-be-written third trilogy.

How much of your books is realistic and experiences based on someone you know, or events in your life?

Realism is a key element in all my novels. With Neon Identity, I have recreated the Tokyo of the early 1990s. In fact, if I had never lived in Tokyo, I couldn’t have written the first trilogy. However, I was inspired to create the main male character by a British TV crime drama series called The Vice, where the lead actor, a Soho Vice detective is sucked into the sleaze. The femme fatale in Neon Identity was inspired by Natsuo Kirino’s brilliant novel, Grotesque, as I said above.

Who is your favorite writer, and what is it about their work which really strikes you?

I have two favourite writers: James Ellroy and George Pelecanos. Ellroy’s American Tabloid is so brilliantly written. He recreates the America of the early 1960s so well. And I haven’t read another writer who produces books with so much happening on every page. Pelecanos does a similar job with DC, although his style is different to Ellroy’s and the pace of his books is not so frenetic.

First Book Read

Do you remember the first book you read?

I suppose the first book I read must have been one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books.

More significantly, as a young adult of eighteen, I read two books which got me into reading grown-up literature – Alan Sillitoe: Saturday Night Sunday Morning; Graham Greene: Brighton Rock. John King’s The Football Factory, which I read in 1997, got me writing my original trilogy, the unpublished one.

Is there an author, past or present, you would love to meet? Why?

That would have to be James Ellroy. A cult writer with a massive fan base, and the hardest-hitting crime writer I’ve read. I find him fascinating when interviewed.

How do you want others to see you or remember you? Is it important to you?

I would like to be seen as a writer of hard-hitting, well-written noir novels. It is important that readers appreciate the prose as well as the story content. This is because I loathe generically written crime fiction.

Do you have a blog or website viewers can visit for updates, events and special offers? Include HTML links to any and all of your sites.

I am in the process of writing a website. Blogging would be a good idea.

Universal Links: https://books2read.com/u/bMqwXG