Indie Interview with J.B. McCauley, author of the King of Sunday Morning #mystery
Conversations with authors and writers from the self-publishing world.
Meet J.B. McCauley
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Best Known for: The King of Sunday Morning
J B McCauley is an English born Australian author.
Born in the heart of Essex County U.K., he is a retired Music Journalist/Reporter and House DJ. He has performed as a DJ across 5 continents and has also been a very popular radio presenter.
The King of Sunday Morning is his fictional account of one man's journey through the criminal underworld set against the backdrop of the early dance music scene. Although taking place in an extremely toxic environment, The King of Sunday Morning is a tale of enduring mate-ship and love, a bond that runs deep through the Australian psyche.
Today we have DJ and author Jay
McCauley with us sharing some useful insight into writing and
publishing. Jay is author of The King of Sunday Morning which casts a
new light on ‘broken’ characters.
Dear Jay, thank you very much for
agreeing to participate in the Indie Author Spotlight.
How long have you been writing and
how did you get started?
I have been writing for as long as I
can remember and that is a very long time. From the hapless angst
ridden poetry of a teenager seeking love and fame to the column
inches of a newspaper and music journalist, I have written both for
myself and for the profit of others. My English teacher at school
said I could sell ice to the Eskimos and then sell them a heater to
go with it. He encouraged me to write and to write well but most of
all to love what you write. Journalism and Newspaper Reporting
doesn’t really give you the satisfaction of being creative, it is
after all just reporting. Gone really are the days of the Foreign
Correspondent filing tortuous copy from a far flung venue. The
written word has been replaced by the 30 second sound grab and we are
the worse off for it.
Dance music and the written word are
my passion. Both have to be well cultured and engaging, taking you on
a journey without letting you know where the path may lead. That is
very much the reason behind The King of Sunday Morning. It is tale of
mystery and intrigue based in a world which few ever have the chance
of visiting but which, when revealed, can be as bleak as it is
inspiring.
Your book The King of Sunday
Morning has received a lot of positive feedback, tell us a little
bit about it…
I have been thrilled with the
feedback for TKSOM. When I originally penned the book, I thought that
it would be specifically for people who had been involved in
nightclubs and music and who were interested in that space. The book
itself can be very profane, contains some truly misogynistic
behaviour and sex and drugs galore. To that end I thought that women
especially might be put off but I have been very pleasantly
surprised.
The language, the sex and the drug use all have their place in the book and it is not put in there for effect but represents how these people live their lives. A lot of famous DJs have read it too so that I could get the character just right and they have all expressed how accurate the tale is.
The language, the sex and the drug use all have their place in the book and it is not put in there for effect but represents how these people live their lives. A lot of famous DJs have read it too so that I could get the character just right and they have all expressed how accurate the tale is.
This is not a classic ‘whodunnit’
mystery. The mystery is in how the tale comes together. It does not
lead you by the nose and the beginning of the book represents a
multi-generational explanation of how the main character came to be
the way he is and where he is. It deliberately jumps in place and
time as it represents the scattered nature of drug-users mind.
Although the tale is relatively easy to read, I think novels sometimes need to let you find the story rather than give you a two plus two scenario. So The King of Sunday Morning is like a vase that has been shattered into a hundred pieces. The mystery is how to put the character back together without having a road map. How are the stories connected? Who are these people? Who will survive?
Although the tale is relatively easy to read, I think novels sometimes need to let you find the story rather than give you a two plus two scenario. So The King of Sunday Morning is like a vase that has been shattered into a hundred pieces. The mystery is how to put the character back together without having a road map. How are the stories connected? Who are these people? Who will survive?
Sheer hard work and still working.
There is no such thing as an overnight success and I still don’t
see myself as one yet but I think the story is too good to be
ignored. There are some exciting things in the pipeline but the one
person responsible for my success so far is my wife. She has been the
one who has encouraged me to pursue my dreams. She is the one who
allows me the freedom to do what I do. It sounds like a cliché but
without her I would be writing poems in greeting cards.
If a publishing house turns you down
don’t be discouraged be empowered. They get things wrong so many
times due to overwork and underfunding that they will generally miss
everything. Networking and luck are everything. People will promise
you the earth and deliver very little. Be very thick skinned. Listen
to advice when offered but remember not all advice is good advice.
Fictional writing is the hardest to start a career in.
No one knows you and no one cares. Get a very good PR company behind you if you can and remember you are writing this book for yourself. Edit, Re-edit and proof read like mad but at the end of the day, if for some reason someone is not happy on a personal level with what you have written, remind them they do have the right to reply. As long as it is not libellous or defamatory, stick to your guns. It is YOUR book after all.
No one knows you and no one cares. Get a very good PR company behind you if you can and remember you are writing this book for yourself. Edit, Re-edit and proof read like mad but at the end of the day, if for some reason someone is not happy on a personal level with what you have written, remind them they do have the right to reply. As long as it is not libellous or defamatory, stick to your guns. It is YOUR book after all.
Don’t be reserved. Give The King a
fighting chance. It is what the book is all about after all. Winning
love. Winning Respect. Winning full-stop. Very few of us get a shot
at the title and life passes us by due to one reason or another. The
King of Sunday Morning attempts to take life by the scruff of the
neck and give it a shake. He is a truly flawed character in an even
worse world but very capable of breathing life into a barren
landscape. That is what I would like my readers to take away from
this. That given the chance we can all make a difference.
As I said before this is not an out
and out Agatha Christie type mystery. The intrigue and the plot have
to be slightly complicated to keep me engaged in any novel I read and
so I set out to do the same. If you want to read a commentary read a
biography. Fiction should not be a mindless trudge through effective
comprehension. It should be mysterious both in its breadth and its
content. The reader should be asking “What is that?”, “Why is
that?”, “How is that possible?” These are the questions that
separate a good novel from a great novel and which keep readers
turning pages.
Do you also read? What sort of books?
Yes I read. Not as much as I would
like to. My youngest son is autistic and therefore takes up a lot of
our time. My reading material stretches across so many different
genres it is easier to name what I do not read. That basically falls
under the romance and paranormal category which seems to be the main
focus of literature at the moment. Hunger Games and Twilight are not
my favourite kind of novel. Love a good Iain Banks story and was so
saddened to see his passing. A literary giant.
How did you learn to write?
With a quill and an ink pot. No
seriously, I have always written. My first proper essay at school was
a nine page critique of Mark Twain. My parents said I went from
reading Janet and John type books to serious tomes in the space of
what seemed a week. I was encouraged by teachers at school and given
assistance but I basically plowed my own furrow. I studied
Journalism and History at University and despite all the ‘painting
by numbers’ courses on creative writing, I think it is something
that you are truly born with.
What are your thoughts on self-publishing vs. traditional publishing?
I am glad that traditional
publishing houses are getting taught a bit of a lesson at the moment
but I would be the first to welcome a large company supporting me.
Being chief bottle washer, chef and chairman of the board can be
taxing at times. Knowing which way to jump, who to listen to etc is a
minefield of uncertain consequences but at the end of the day
Independent Publishing means you are accountable to no one but
yourself. There is a brilliant freedom in it.
Now I have written my first novel
the Australian government will give me funding to write my second. It
would be so helpful if they helped with the first but you have to
have success before they will adopt you. So ‘soon’ is a very
subjective term. ‘In the pipeline’ would be more appropriate.
I think The King of Sunday Morning
represents an important commentary on DJ and drug culture. The
criminals which exist in that world are ‘normal’ people who dream
big and sometimes but very rarely win. I would like people to read
this book and not judge the people in it too harshly. They live on
their own code of ethics which whilst profiting from an abhorrent
international trade have at their very core a staunch belief in
loyalty and friendship. Some of the people I count as friends are
like this and I would be a lot worse off as a person, author and
father without them.
Thank you so much, JB!
