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Ken Bruen

AFTER eight years as a full time writer Ken Bruen still found the sight of his published titles astonishing. "There are 15 titles and I have been publishing two a year for the past six years. What I most like is my overnight success after more than 30 years writing."

The year, 2004, saw nominations for both the prestigious Edgar and Shamus awards in the United States. The Edgar was won by Ian Rankin, and Ken was the winner of the Shamus award. Previous winners of the Shamus Award include Sue Grafton; Lawrence Block, and Walter Mosley.

Both nominations were for The Guards, the debut novel of Galway-based character, Jack Taylor, investigator and disgraced cop. That series had reached number four with number five submitted and number six in preparation.

Bruen also had a Metropolitan Police detective series running called the Brant books where Detective Sergeant Brant is of Irish extraction. Channel Four was to screen a TV series based on Brant in early 2005.

Earlier, he wrote three mainstream novels. The first was Funeral about a boy who goes to funerals instead of football matches. Then another about social workers, whom Bruen dislikes. Another was Martyrs about a kid who is obsessed with the martyrs in the Catholic church. The boy is also obsessed with football.

"They were fairly mad. I was not all that happy writing them and I said there was something missing; and then when I came to write the crime novels I said this is what I should be doing. You know when something feels right."

Copies of these early books are reportedly changing hands on the internet for up to $400. However, Bruen still recognises the difficulty faced by authors seeking publication.

He said: "Somebody like Cecilia Ahern will get a million euro for a book and she is 20 years old and the message is that there is great money in writing. But 90 per cent of writers have to do other stuff to survive. I had to stay teaching until I was able to afford to write full time. Then when you realise you can do it, you are almost afraid. What if I am not able to write anymore? What if it stops?"

For a time his life did stop. It was in a South American jail. In 1979, Bruen was in Rio de Janeiro for a teaching job, one of many in a peripatetic lifestyle, when he and four other Europeans were arrested after a bar fight. He was imprisoned without trial and brutalised for four months before being released on condition he left the country:"Part of the deal was we would shut up and get out. I was glad to get out."

The experience did not so much put Bruen off travelling as put him off people: "It took me a long time to get back any sense of trust or balance or anything like that."

One effect was his ritual burning of some 25 journals with stories he had written through his earlier travels through Vietnam and China. "When I came home from South America I burned every one of them; that’s how bad I felt," he said.

By the mid ‘90s Bruen was working amonsg and teaching youngsters from deprived homes in Brixton. He became sick of literary novels being feted, which were of no relevance to the society he was teaching in; so he wrote Rilke on Black for Serpent’s Tail. The story was set in Brixton and was nominated for crime novel of the year, and he was off.

"Definitely, you need some sort of break just to give you a bit of encouragement," he said. "There are about four or five really good writers that I know; and neither love nor money can get them published. Then, a lot of people are just interested in being a writer without writing. If you want to write poetry or romantic short stories or anything it’s the same deal. Writing is a serious business. For me anyway."

Bruen writes every single morning from six o’clock for two hours. "I write every single day, even on the day of my Dad’s funeral. He would have killed me if I didn’t. My Dad died five years ago."

The two hours is the physical putting down of words. During the day, while story and article writing and personal appearances and interviews intrude, book development goes on in his mind. "There is a time in the day that you write. It’s the discipline of it and it’s what you do everyday."

Living in Galway with his wife Phil and their 11-year-old daughter Grace, who has Downs Syndrome, Bruen considers himself lucky to be where he is.

"Writing can be a pretty discouraging business, but for me when I am writing and it is going well, it’s the best feeling in the world. When it’s going well it’s a great buzz."

Then, when the book is published, he walks up and down a shop and looks at the new book on the shelf. "I am still not used to it by now. I go into the shop and I hope no one will see me. And I stand across the bookshop and I think: isn’t that brilliant," he laughs.

"I get a great kick about it and the day I ever get to the stage where I say, 'Ah, I have another book coming out,' somebody should put a bullet in my head. Because I will have lost the run of myself."

© askaboutwriting.net october 2004

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