I’m excited to be back on the Urbane Publication’s 12 Days Of Christmas blog tour today bringing you an exclusive Q&A with Mark Pepper author of the intriguing Veteran Avenue. I will also be hosting a giveaway to win a copy of the book.
Veteran Avenue is available to buy now in paperback and ebook here. The ebook is only £1.99 at the moment.
Before the fabulous Q&A and Giveaway here is a little bit about the book!
Book Blurb:
1978. On vacation from England, eight-year-old John Frears is befriended by a stranger in the Oregon wilderness and stolen away from his parents. After a bizarre hour spent in a log cabin, he is sent back with a picture of a young girl.
2013. Since leaving the military, John Frears has been drifting, unable to settle. Then he gets word that a funeral is taking place in LA. Donnie Chester, fellow veteran of the first Gulf War, has been shot dead. He decides to head to the States to pay his respects then go sightseeing. It is a simple plan, in keeping with his life to date.
But his life is about to become more complicated than he could ever imagine. The mysterious event from his past crashes into the present, and could mean the difference between life and death.
Q&A with Mark Pepper:
Q) For the readers, can you talk us through your background and the synopsis of your new novel?
I had no clue I wanted to be a writer until I had completed my first manuscript, Returntime, back in 1991. Initially, I was writing for myself because I was bored and had time on my hands while I waited for Hollywood to call after leaving RADA (it never did), and I had read some published works I thought weren’t that great, so imagined I could do better. But it was only after the book was finished that it occurred to me I could try and get it published.
There was no particular reason for me to think I could be a writer. I’d certainly had a good education, which always provides a firm foundation, spending my formative years at King’s in Macclesfield, before studying history at Royal Holloway College, University of London, but you don’t need to go to Uni to know about spelling and grammar and punctuation. Those things can be taught, or you can teach yourself. A writer is born when a story needs to be told, and Returntime was that tale.
If you’re wondering why I am talking about Returntime when my third novel Veteran Avenue has just been published, it’s because Veteran Avenue would not exist without Returntime. Although my first story got me a literary agent, I was halfway through writing The Short Cut by that time, and that was the novel picked up by Hodder & Stoughton in a two-book deal, completed by the subsequent Man on a Murder Cycle.
Although Returntime must have shown promise to get me a literary agent, it did read like a novice’s first draft and I’m glad it didn’t see the light of day back then. It was, however, the tale I always wanted to tell, and over the years its core concept remained close to my heart, and was eventually transplanted into Veteran Avenue.
Providing a synopsis of Veteran Avenue – of the sort a writer might send to a publisher – would be daft. You can talk through the synopses of some novels and not spoil the reader’s enjoyment, but Veteran Avenue is not just a thriller; it is a mystery, an adventure, and I couldn’t sign-post too far into the book without spoiling what’s to come. I don’t even want to identify the core concept because that would certainly ruin some of its key twists and its denouement.
Suffice to say, the preliminary spark for Veteran Avenue came from an encounter I had with a girl when I was in Los Angeles in the summer of 1987. It was entirely platonic and very brief, but I had never known anything like it before, and never since. It was both bizarre and wonderful, and the kind of incident you never forget and will keep you wondering for the rest of your life.
What I can offer as a synopsis is what’s on the back cover of the book:
1978. On vacation from England, eight-year-old John Frears is befriended by a stranger in the Oregon wilderness and stolen away from his parents. After a bizarre hour spent in a log cabin, he is sent back unharmed with a picture of a young girl.
2013. Since leaving the military, John Frears has been drifting, unable to settle. Then he gets word that a funeral is taking place in LA. Donnie Chester, fellow veteran of the first Gulf War, has been shot dead. They barely knew each other, but it’s a good excuse to visit the States. He can pay his respects then go sightseeing. It is a simple plan, in keeping with his life to date.
But his life is about to become more complicated than he could ever imagine. The mysterious event from his childhood crashes into the present and could mean the difference between life and death.
Q) Can you talk us through the journey from idea to writing to publication?
I have somewhat covered this in the prior question, but there is more to say. The encounter in LA got me thinking. It sat perfectly well with my enquiring view of the universe back then, and some distinctly odd experiences you may describe as premonitions or bullshit, depending on your outlook, but, within the world of weird occurrences, it was certainly a high-point, and it stuck with me.
I returned to the UK in September 1987 and started my three years at RADA, and my eyes were so intently fixed on a successful acting career that it simply never occurred to me that I would want, or need, to write as a source of artistic expression.
Once it became clear I was wrong about my thespian prospects, and horrendously so, I began to think about writing, and it seemed my LA encounter had coalesced with certain other interests – the military, cops, and LA itself – into a viable story, almost without my thinking about it.
So I started writing Returntime, and, even now, I remember how effortless the storytelling seemed. So much so that at one point, working on an Amstrad word processor and floppy discs, I managed to erase 40 pages of my work, without the benefit of backups, but was able to reproduce it almost word-for-word within a couple of days.
Jumping ahead of couple of decades, Veteran Avenue worked out the same way. I did not refer to Returntime in writing Veteran Avenue – it is a 100% root-and-branch rewrite – but it came together in much the same way. Despite being very tightly and intricately plotted, with facts, dates, people and events that all had to gel between the 1978 Oregon incident and 2013 Los Angeles, the storytelling was a breeze. I think it happens that way with a novel you just have to write. Things fall into place, like it was meant to be.
Although Veteran Avenue was largely completed some years ago, I had long since, and quite unamicably, parted ways with Hodder & Stoughton so it was left languishing on my computer. My experience with Hodder was such that I had no real desire to re-enter the publishing world, thus I resigned myself to it remaining unpublished, a box in my life that would remain unticked.
Until Urbane author and old RADA classmate Mark Mayes tracked me down online. We chatted about writing and he suggested I send Veteran Avenue to Urbane’s Matthew Smith, which I did. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Q) What are your favourite authors and recommended reads?
I don’t read very much these days. My regular job is fairly demanding and involves long hours in front of a computer, so I tend to give my eyes a break in between. I did enjoy Stephen King’s early works, and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is always good value for money, but I tend to prefer nonfiction nowadays: military histories, autobiographies, investigative works etc. One of my all-time favourites is Bonar Menninger’s 1992 nonfiction classic Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, which examines the case from the purely factual angle of firearms, ballistics, trajectory, and indisputable photographic evidence, leading to an utterly compelling, shocking, but perfectly credible conclusion.
Q) What were your childhood/teenage favourite reads?
I was brought up in the Enid Blyton era, so I do remember reading lots of Secret Seven and Famous Five stories. I also recall Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which had local interest as it was set in Alderley Edge. Possibly as a nod to that, I set a particularly dark chapter in Man on a Murder Cycle in the same location. Apart from those, nothing much stands out from that time; it’s a while ago!
Q) What has been your favourite moment of being a published author?
The dedication in Veteran Avenue reads: “For my daughter, Jade. Since you, I know why I’m here.” There are many moments that make an author smile – the acceptance letter, signing the contract, seeing your work on the shelf of a bookstore, receiving praise – but nothing could ever top a dedication to my wonderful daughter in the one book I wanted to write, conceived of ten years before she was even born. And once you read the story, you’ll understand a deeper significance.
Q) Who has been your source of support/encouragement, throughout the writing process?
I have been with my wife Jeannifer for over 26 years, and she has always told me to follow my dreams. In the early years I did that in preference to earning a living but she never complained. Similarly, my parents were always there for me, especially after leaving RADA, allowing me the financial freedom to pursue an alternative artistic career – having already paid through the nose for my drama training – rather than forcing me to get a “proper” job. Although I have had a “proper” job for many years now, it was my choice to get one because I wanted to properly support my family. But if I wanted to chuck it all in and get back on the dole and write full time again, Jen would still support me. I think … J
Thank you very much for being on my blog today and I wish you every success with your writing career.
Giveaway!
I am so excited to be able to offer another fantastic giveaway on Over The Rainbow Book Blog. I have one copy of Veteran Avenue to giveaway. In order to win just comment on this blog post! Good luck everyone!
About The Author:
By now, Mark Pepper really should be on his fourth wife and in rehab at some idyllic retreat in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Graduating from RADA in 1990, he believed he would be a Hollywood star by the time the U.S. hosted the World Cup four years later. It didn’t work out that way. His acting career was spasmodic, to say the least. There were high points: peeing on the Aidensfield Arms hearth-fire in the first-ever episode of Heartbeat; taking Lulu hostage in the Christmas special ten years later; acting with icons like Tom Bell and Helen Mirren; and popping up in Coronation Street several times. But there were vast deserts of unemployment between these little oases and Mark quickly turned to writing as an alternative source of expression. His first novel, The Short Cut, was published in hardcover by Hodder & Stoughton in 1996 and in paperback by Hodder’s New English Library in 1997, and his second novel, Man on a Murder Cycle, was released by the same publisher hardcover in 1997 and paperback in 1998. Veteran Avenue was completed a few years later but, as the pressures of earning a decent living and supporting his family took precedence, was placed on the back-burner – although not literally as that would have been stupid. Like any self-respecting struggling actor, he has had a host of jobs, including gym instructor, bed salesman, taxi driver, binman, and even a stint as a Special Constable with Greater Manchester Police. He left when he realised they were never going to give him a gun. Then ten years ago he completed a PGCE in Secondary School Drama, thinking it would be a good idea to be a teacher but not taking into account the problem of OPK – Other People’s Kids. His next move was to get his HGV licences. While happily driving artics around the country he rather stumbled into his current job of Client Intelligence Analyst, which he likes mostly because he can genuinely tell people he’s CIA. After spending seven years living in Murcia with his wife and daughter, Mark recently returned to the UK as he missed the dull skies, frequent downpours, and especially road-rage. He is delighted to have been adopted by the Urbane family, and is looking forward to his resurrected writing career.
Over The Rainbow Blog 