Richard Godwin
Richard Godwin writes dark crime fiction, and he lets it slip the net like wash into horror. He also writes plays and black satires.
His work has appeared in many publications, places like A Twist Of Noir and Pulp Metal Magazine. Stories of passion turning on the edge of a razor, and the lies people tell themselves falling apart at the edge of nowhere, while men and women wander a wasteland looking for their souls.
His play ‘The Cure-All’ has been produced on the London stage. It is a dark satire about a group of confidence tricksters using the New Age to rip off their greedy venal customers.
His first crime novel Apostle Rising was released in March, 2011. His second, Mr Glamour, is published in April 2012.
Are you a bookgeek?
I love books although I am not sure I would refer to myself as a geek.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given (and do you follow it)?
There isn’t one, honestly, I have received advice and it’s gone in but I can’t single anything in particular out.
Which authors do you find most inspiring as a writer?
There are many authors I have found inspiring, but to name a few, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Greene, Leonard, Lee Burke, Ben Jonson, and J. M. Coetzee.
Do you have an audience in mind when writing, or do you just write for yourself?
I started writing stories for myself. When I found I had a following I did consider their tastes when writing my novels, although I think if you focus too much on that your narrative may become stale. Some of the most popular stories I have written, not necessarily the darkest stuff, were just me having fun.
Where do you write, and why?
I write anywhere I can. I do it every day because I see writing like practising your tennis serve.
Tell us the book you most wish you had written.
If you’re asking me what I think is the greatest work of literature ever written it is King Lear by Shakespeare. However I wouldn’t have written it, I would have written what I write.
Most crime writers have had some experience trying to make the distinction between themselves and their works. Given your position at the darker edge of the genre, is this something you’ve struggled with?
No. In my opinion a lot of nonsense is talked about authors and their works. Some authors are writing semi autobiographical prose that stems directly from their experience. That is their selling point. Many authors are not. It may all come from the subconscious but we do not really understand how that operates. I think many authors write because they are interested in experimenting with a genre or ideas. I have never met a serial killer, yet I write about them.
Are you the most noir novelist working today?
I wouldn’t make that claim. I do not think of myself as a pure Noir writer. Noir is about losers, people screwing up. Many of my characters achieve what they set out to, and that includes the killers. I think my writing blends Noir, crime, mystery and horror. I am interested in exploring human motivation and how people refuse to acknowledge their motivation. I think despite our claims to rationality most men and women are driven by irrational urges they spend their lives wrestling with and failing to understand. Literature is a great way of exploring that. I can do that through sci-fi as well as through crime fiction, since sci-fi allows you to take paradigms and alter them, it allows you to explore analogies of the human condition. If you look at the level of pharmaceutical control in the economy you can conclude that the increasing amount of medicated men and women indicates a control program aimed at preventing people from understanding their irrationality and thereby gaining choices. History contains real examples of human darkness. Far worse things were committed by the Nazis than the events that occur in my fictions.
Your publisher, Black Jackal Books, mentioned you’re currently working on a manuscript that is a little more mainstream. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
I am not sure I would call it mainstream. It is lighter than Apostle Rising and Mr. Glamour and possibly more Noir in the sense I have just described. It is a different style. It is also perhaps a story about people who the general public may be able to relate to more, since they are not extreme psychopaths but characters who are driven to acts that are ill-considered. And they are driven to them because they do not understand what motivates them.
What is it about certain forms of sexual decadence that you think appeals to the upper classes?
I think it is tied up in the class system and the need for dominance. Hegel, in Phenomenology Of Spirit, talks about the master servant relationship and the interchangeability of those terms, and Strindberg dramatised it superbly in Miss Julie, in which a domineering lady has a sexual need for her manservant who eventually takes charge. The need to dominate is often replaced by submission, so it taps neatly into the sado-masochistic routine. Most sadists are also masochists and vice versa. England is a country in which class runs deep. It is a key part of our literature and heritage.
Religion is a key theme in both of your novels. Do you think psychopaths find their pathologies are simply best expressed through the medium of religion, or is there something inherently corrupting about elements of religious doctrine?
I think many psychopaths use a simplistic world view because they are emotionally lacking. They use strong language to manipulate, and empty rhetoric that is superficially appealing to exploit others. Psychopaths want to convince others, because they need to. I think extreme religious doctrine may breed mental disease. I would like to point out that my comments are about the radical aspects of religion. Simplistic answers are lies, the world is a complicated place.
Additional questions by Mike Stafford
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Mark Oldfield
Mark Oldfield has worked in criminological research for over 20 years. He has a PhD in Criminology from the University of Kent and has carried out research in the areas of risk assessment and prediction and as well as evaluative research on policing, prisons and probation. He has also taught in various Universities on research, crime and criminal justice.
12 Comments on Richard Godwin
Great interview. I’m reading Mr Glamour at the moment and I think it is a not only a very English novel but also real London novel.
Some profound stuff going on here. Fascinating, as all of Richard’s interviews and works are.
I love the way his fiction fearlessly probes the human condition and seamlessly crosses genres.
Regards,
Col
Mr. Glamour is indeed more than a horror/crime/suspense/thriller novel. It is a very thoughtful examination of severe psychosis; both its generation and its eventual final descent into the pure logic of the psychopath. That it is also a chilling, unflinching and graphic crime novel is a bonus. Throw in a biting satire of contemporary class structure for flavor and you will (almost) have the brilliant second novel of a writer who promises to be one of the newest “must read” authors on the scene today.
Awesome interview!
Excellent interview by a superb author, who explores the dark side of the human mind and creates dangerous characters that could be anyone around us (i.e., in the seat next to us on the train, behind us in the elevator, etc.). It is the sense of reality of the characters he creates that makes them so frightening and what drives us to try to understand them with the hope of being able to identify them before they strike. But his stories’ endings surprise us each and every time, and so we keep reading and trying. Because we must.
Paul that’s a great thing to say. Thank you.
Col thanks. I think fiction has to cross genres to eplore the human condition, since people are not formulas.
AJ thank you so much. Psychosis exists at the edge of most lives, most people will come in touch with it. But what is it and how does it affect us? Criminality may not include it while a normal life, corresponding to the behavioural rules, may, and therein lies the rub.
Thanks Carrie. It’s good to see you here.
Joyce thank you so much. I appreciate all your support.
I find interesting what you say about noir and making a distinction between the ‘pure noir’ writer and yourself [and others], blending noir and other genres to tell some truly unforgettable stories.
I like that your characters are relatable, Richard… human, not some creature up on a pedestal, but flesh and blood… sometimes with feet of clay… with a motivation that we may deny in ourselves yet desire at the same time. You peel back the layers and show us that motivation… the urges that drive your characters.
Many of your characters are very goal-oriented… I like that very much. I think that is a necessary component to a good story… and to bring the reader back again and again. Like you, I tend to have my characters achieve what they set out to do, whether it is within the confines of the law, or skirting the edges to achieve their goal, whether it be for justice, personal gain or simply for the challenge – thumbing their noses at the establishment as well as the ruling class; which are really one and the same, aren’t they?
I think of noir as being about misfits, and yes… losers, as well as the ‘individualist / adventurist’… I hesitate to say opportunist because that is a label that doesn’t always apply.
That is noir to me. I don’t want to write [exclusively] about losers losing; that morality tale has been told often enough. Just as you do Richard, I want my readers to expect more and I want to give them that.
And, I might say… Mr Glamour is certainly living up to those expectations. I am not very far in… so far only a couple of bodies… but I am completely hooked! You pretty much had me with that opening line…
“She has the eyes of a pit viper and the mouth of an angel.”
We may write the story that is in us… the words that demand to be let out… but that story has to be one the reader will remember and want more of. Your stories do that wonderfully.
It seems, in my limited experience, that the class system is really more about dominance than wealth… dare I say that for some wealth is really secondary… a means to an end… to the power that is lusted after? The desire… the deep-rooted need… to dominate and control, while it does cross class lines, is certainly more prevalent in the upper classes and I see a certain irony in this. The need to dominate and control is such a primal, uncivilised urge/need… going all the way back to the cave man… and is really the antithesis of the “sterile, well-bred and oh-so-proper” upper class. Turns out the ‘upper’ class isn’t really, is it?
Phenomenology of Spirit… I need to read that. This is another irony… the submissive becoming the dominant… and then coming around full circle… the dominant is once again the submissive. Yeah… nothing sado-masochistic about that, is there? Haha!
I just popped over to Google and did a quick skim of Miss Julie… okay, this definitely goes on my ‘must-read’ shelf!
I really can’t add much to what you say about religion and how it feeds into the pathology of the psychopath… I’d only be repeating your words, so instead let me repeat my own form the other night…
I like what you say about psychopaths and how they – consciously or unconsciously – incorporate their own twisted views of religion in their pathology… the ‘deceit’ you speak of. I wonder if one would argue that it was an unconscious thing… religion satisfies a need after all and the psychopath’s pathology is about fulfilling a need.
No, I think I lean more toward what you say… the psychopath’s simplistic view and inability to grasp the concept of complex emotions, sees in religion a ‘tool’ to ‘capture’ his audience/victims. It is a conscious process.
Marx referred to religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’, the inference being that the masses, in searching for a ‘balm’ to ease their ‘suffering’, if you will, of their circumstances, turned to religion… escaping from their stark realities to something less tangible… something that required a faith they could not always muster for the true reality of their existence. “Suffering’ for their religion (a construct of man, not God, I should like to clarify. Man ‘proposed’ religion in an attempt to understand the true spirituality of a higher power… our Creator) became a protest for their real suffering.
By taking a basic and simplistic approach to religion and using it to manipulate , the psychopath gives himself an anchor and a sense of conviction of the ‘rightness’ of his actions. I wouldn’t disagree that the pathology of most psychopaths lends easily to the corruption of certain elements of religious doctrine, but you could say that about other facets of our society as well… let’s not blame religion itself, but the manner in which it is applied… or, corrupted would be a better word.
“Strong language… empty rhetoric… extreme doctrine…” It is curious, how those words describe the religious zealot as well as the psychopath, isn’t it?
I’m sure it’s just coincidental.
And, with that… I am going to bid all a good evening. My ‘mistress’ awaits… haha!
Excellent interview! I always take away so much from these. Reading your interviews, Richard, is a bit like a course study. And I’ve not had to pay a tuition!
I so want to take my time with Mr Glamour and savor every single word. I am already intrigued by Gertrude and her role in this odyssey through the dark mind of a killer and the imperfect people set out to capture him (her?).
An author who treats the mind and takes it for a ride, with inspiritu inside from Dickens to Doestoyevsky and some bardy respect for King Lear? A tough, tight scribe whose reading puts the world outside and is sage in admitting we know not all the subconscious stirs and emits?
That guy? Good God, it’s Godwin and stir and emit is what his words do. I was caught off guard at the very first short story of this splendid scribe from the heights of tall building. Seems fitting, that does. I’ll be reading his novel works out of sequence, as MR GLAMOUR has too damn much of a pull to put it on the world according to GARP — uh, my Great Authors Reading Pile.
I salute you Mr Godwin, in this and the multitude of future works.
~ Absolutely*Kate
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