Interview

[desperance]

I was interviewed last week for the regional morning paper, The Journal, ostensibly about a crime-story competition I'm helping to judge, but the conversation ranged more widely, as you'd expect.

The interview seems not to have gone up on the paper's website, but durham_rambler found the text somewhere on the web, so this is it:



A MAN walks into a bar and finds an award-winning novelist reading a book about Chinese Eunuchs.
This may sound like the set-up for a joke, but it's actually how I met Chaz Brenchley, one of the region's most prominent and prolific authors.
"It's research for my new book," he assures me over a pint.
Chaz is working on his new novel, the first in a new fantasy series set in Imperial China, which explains his rather unorthodox reading material, and has just been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Society Award.
The charismatic writer has also been diligently reading through the entries for The Lit & Phil's Criminal Shorts competition, which announces its "longlist" in The Journal today.
Back in May, the competition challenged the wealth of talented writers in the North-East to come up with an original crime short story set in the region - giving them the chance to have their work read by a distinguished trio of judges in the process.
The Lit & Phil received a fantastic response with nearly 80 entries, which were narrowed down to 14 for Chaz and his fellow judges, Val McDermid and Ann Cleeves, to deliberate over. "I've been a very good boy," Chaz says. "I read them all in one go with a bottle of wine, a few nibbles, and several cats around me.
"The standard was very good and there are three or four I would happily see win. I approached them as I would any other story and was looking to be engaged, excited, entertained, enlightened and informed.
"It's now a case of meeting up with Val and Ann and coming to a decision.
"I'm sure we'll each turn up to the meeting with a different favourite, but I don't anticipate any problems in coming up with a winner. It helps that we're three old friends.
"I met Val during my very first Crime Writers' Association meeting in late 1989 or early 1990 and Ann very shortly after."
Val, of course, is one of the region's most prolific crime writers and the award-winning creator of the Wire in the Blood TV series, which is based on her Dr Tony Hill novels.
Ann, who won the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Raven Black last year, launched her latest novel, Hidden Depths, at The Lit & Phil.
He adds: "I'm really pleased The Lit & Phil are running such a good competition. I love The Lit & Phil and have been a member for years. I have had this ambition that it should become the natural place for any literary event in Newcastle to take place.
"I know when Kay Easson took over as librarian half of her brief was to bring more people in and I thought putting on events like this was the way to do it. I do as much as I can at The Lit & Phil and like to think of myself as its unofficial literary adviser," he jokes.
As well as helping out The Lit & Phil from time to time, Chaz has been busy researching his new novel, Dragon in Chains, which will be part of an epic series called Moshui: Books of Stone and Water.
The author, who has written nine thrillers, two fantasy series, three children's books, a play, and more than 500 short stories, has been planning the novel since a trip to Taiwan in 2000.
"Newcastle City Council's literary officer at the time emailed me about the chance to go to Taipei as writer-in-residence. It was a tight deadline and most writers are not free enough to drop everything at a moment's notice, but I was, so I applied, completely not knowing what I was getting into.
"I went there largely because I didn't want to be the kind of person who turns down that kind of opportunity.
"But when I got there, exhausted after the flight, I discovered it was more of an exercise in international relations. They had invited a lot of authors to basically write nice things about Taiwan.
"I ended up having a completely lovely time, but felt I'd only seen the Government-approved Taiwan. So I went back and basically mooched around on my own for two weeks and that was where the inspiration for the fantasy series came from.
"I was fascinated by the idea of this tiny island facing off against the Chinese mainland.
"The books will be set in Imperial China and there will be plenty of magic and Chinese dragons. I'm hard at work on the first draft at the moment."
Chaz has been so immersed in research for the novel he has not only been reading the aforementioned, Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics, but even tried learning Mandarin.
"It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to bash into my head, " he says. "It's a lifetime commitment."
He adds: "I've also half-written a crime novel set in Taipei, which I'll return to after I've finished Dragon in Chains."
Chaz also popped up as a character in comics genius Bryan Talbot's acclaimed graphic novel Alice in Sunderland, which came out earlier this year.
"I loved being in that, " he says. It's a masterpiece and long after I'm dead and gone I'll exist in that book. It was a privilege to watch it grow and I think it's an absolutely extraordinary piece of work."
Chaz will also be touring his first professional play, A Cold Coming, which made its debut earlier this year. It will now return to the stage in November for a tour, which will start at The Customs House in South Shields.
The play, which takes its title from a poem by TS Eliot, is about Quin, who was diagnosed HIV positive and is now being cared for by a group of old friends and students.
Chaz, who plays the bed-ridden Quin in the hourlong play, says: "It's completely different to writing prose in a scary way.
"Mainly, because you know from the very beginning that you're not in control. There is not a word I haven't written in one of my books, but playwriting is much more collaborative.
"You have to hand your words to the actors and your ideas to the director. But I love the play and I'm really pleased it is being staged again."
Chaz will also be heading off to the British Fantasy Society Awards in Nottingham next month as his novel, Bridge of Dreams has been shortlisted.
The writer, who won the award once before in 1998, says: "It used to be the ugliest award ever. It was kind of an H P Lovecraft monster with tentacles.
"It wasn't the nicest looking thing to have on display, " he jokes. "But thankfully it's been redesigned since then."
Although originally from Oxford, Chaz has been based in the North-East for a number of years and is a prominent figure within the thriving writing community.
"The North-East is a very good place to be a writer and we have some great writers here, " he says.
"There is not a huge community, but it is closeknit and we all know each other and do our best to look after one another.
"One of the great things about the writers in the North-East is that while they draw a lot of ideas from the region they are not afraid to look beyond it at the same time."
I have a feeling that Chaz, who returns to reading Chinese Eunuchs as I leave, is doing just that.