Interview with Remy Porter, Author of 'Dead Beat'

Remy Porters new book, Dead Beat, is due out mid July 2010. Pre order your copy now! He's a genuine bloke and has honoured us with an interview about him and his new book, Read On

Did you ever see writing as your future when you were younger?

I certainly do remember reading all the James Herbert novels in my mid-teens and thinking 'this is cool, I want to write stuff like this one day.' It's a shame in a way it took me to 34 years old to get around to it, although having some life experience does add to your writing. And probably I'm a much better writer now than I would have been 10 years ago. My Mum was also a published poet, and she was always very supportive of any writing I did. Dead Beat is dedicated to her, and my wife Karen.


i was very impressed with dead beat for a first novel, have you written much before? do you plan any more books for the future?

I did write regular short stories from say 20 to 25 years old. They tended to be quite surreal and uncommercial, and I never tried to have any published. I did write a few non-fiction articles for boxing magazines and online sites, and even interviewed former IBF light-heavy weight champion Clinton Woods at one point, but for the 9 years before I started Dead Beat I hadn't written a single story. I kind of started working for the police and put it all to the back of my mind.

I do plan to write lots of stories in the future. There will be a zombie anthology coming out in very early 2011 through my publisher, Wild Wolf. There will be lots of good names involved including David Dunwoody, Gregory Solis, Joe McKinney and Iain McKinnon to name 4. The theme will be 'zombie holiday.' My next actual novel will be a fast paced Australian crime novel set mainly in the outback. Its got the working title of Outpost at the moment. I'm hoping to make it memorable enough that it can lead to a series of novels using the same main character. There may also be a sequel to Dead Beat in say 12 months time, depending how popular this one is. Dead Beat gets it's big release in early July.


Before emigrating I know you were a police officer in the UK. was the character of johnny based on yourself? did you use events that happened during ths time as plots?

I did write Johnny in the first person, but he's really his own entity. I think every writer puts some of his own personality into their central characters, it's probably unavoidable. I suppose with Johnny he did have some of my self-doubt, hatred of public speaking, etc. However beyond that, there is simply a lot of Johnny that is made up and there to aid moving the story along. And I'm certainly not habouring any of the dark secrets that Johnny keeps tucked away.

Obviously in my old job as a UK response officer I did see quite a lot of the flip side of society, violence, death, deceipt ...you name it really! Lots of dark human traits that can feed well into horror stories and decent characterisation. It also helped keep any research I needed for Dead Beat to a minimum. Clearly Dead Beat isn't based on anything that did happen to me, and I was careful not to try and use any real people and place them in my book. Although the physical environment - the village in Dead Beat - does have echos though of the village I grew up in.


what got you interested in the zombie genre? what in particular gave you inspiration?

In my teens I had my own top-loader video up in my room and I think the local video shop was my favourite place on earth pretty much! I must have watched just about every video nasty going. I always enjoyed the zombie films, and Night of the Living Dead, Dawn and Day of the Dead were definitely stand-outs. I think like a lot of people who like horror movies, it was 28 Days Later than re-ignited an interest in that genre, and probably led me to seek out zombie novels such as Len Barnhart's 'Reign of' series.

I think reading Iain McKinnon's, Domain of the Dead, when he self-published, ignited some bizarre catalyst in me and set me on the road to finally writing Dead Beat. Iain's become a great friend to me now, and has actually written the foreword to Dead Beat. And on the weekend of 24th July he's helping film a trailer for Dead Beat up in central Scotland.


There were lots of interesting characters with good back stories. Were they based on actual people?

I'm glad you like the characters and their back stories. It's always a worry for the writer that they're one-dimensional and lack depth. I did make a conscious effort not to start putting offenders or people I've worked with into the book. So basically they all come from my imagination ...well that's my story and I'm sticking to it! But seriously, it's a lesson I learned off Iain. Using real people or real places is never a good idea.


Do you have a personal favourite character?

Lester was a lot of fun. When I orginally sketched out a plot for Dead Beat he was just going to stay a drunk, homeless type person for the whole story. When I wrote the chapters withn him in, Lester just took off in weird and wonderful directions. He seems to be a lot of people's favourite in the book.


is there likely to be a sequel to dead beat?

I would say there probably will be, although Outpost will come first. If I did write a sequel I may attempt to do something different with it, such as setting it in Europe or Russia. Time will tell.

Many Thanks for letting us get an insite into the workings of Remy Porter, Very best of luck with Dead Beat and any future works.

For more information on Remy please go to his site www.remyporter.com