Ask the Author: Andy Luke
Answered Questions (6)
Andy Luke
It most likely would have been the pulp press: the comics of the Sunday Post, that's Oor Wullie and The Broons, with their rhyming intros and outros and tight little adventures. Weekly British boys serials and the Three Investigators series. As I got older it was comedy/drama writers like Peter David, Stephen Moffat and J.M. DeMatteis. Later it was the new breed of TV writers who inspired me to up my game: David Simon; Vince Gilligan, Noah Hawley and Dan Harmon. I'll never do what Simon's team did with The Wire, never will, but it's important to come up with something worthy of an effort.
Andy Luke
A fictionalised account of the Occupy movement in Belfast. Primarily a comedy, with some heart-strings stuff. I'm putting the motherlode into this: every weight of opinion, inventiveness, of love. I'm treating it like the last book I might ever write, though I hope it's not. I want millions of people to be touched by it, and if I was millions of people I'd be lapping up the first draft. 'Occupied' is MASH for the Anonymous generation.
Andy Luke
Prideful narcissism: not great traits they say, but when I write a beautiful piece of prose I can feel myself bathe in its warmth. When I write comedy, I surprise myself and laugh and laugh. It's a joy of the profession to benefit from your own labour in this way. When I create a layered character and bond with them, it's wonderfully surreal. Sometimes I don't even like that piece of my subconscious I've broken off, but I grow towards them. There are some ludicrous scenarios too that create euphoric surrealism. Stories can wrap you up like quantum spaghetti and you ask, how did I get here?
Andy Luke
Recognise it for the manufactured illness it is. Have ten things on the go. If I really can't describe the conditions of the Reichstag, March 1920, then I've got tweets to write, notes to type up, poetry that needs fixed. And if I really must meet a deadline, I put in my knee high leathers and wade the mud. No smoke breaks, no Youtube, just rack my brain, write crap, until the good stuff flows. I hope this helps.
Andy Luke
Keep writing, because writing is a process of answering questions, turning the keys to life's mysteries and misunderstandings. Grow a tough skin, because everyone wants to write but folk are jealous, busy, skint, wanting something for nothing. Being overlooked stings. Write and re-write: re-writing is 80% of all writing. Inspire your readers. Come up with a good answer to this question through experience.
Andy Luke
I was living in a flat below two thick hoodlums. They'd collect their benefits and spend it on tabloids and crack, which they smuggled home in their cracks. We're not talking about craic here. It was around the time of Nelson McCauseland's embroilment in the Red Sky and Giant's causeway fiascos, (Horatio McCarrick is pretty much based on Nelson). when I was on the loo in some deep meditation. When I flushed the chain, the urinal rebelled in a freak monsoon spewing turd and piss and covering the bathroom floor. The tortured jailbaits above me had let out some suppository which got blocked in the pipe. From dark sewage, Spide: The Lost Tribes was formed, and filtered repeatedly over the years to a much lighter comedy.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more