Meet the Author: RJ Ellory

R.J. Ellory is a bestselling British author of fiction. Born in 1965, his novels mainly fall into the thriller genre. His full name when not writing is Roger Jon Ellory but he shortens it and uses it as his pen name. His first published book was Candlemoth (2003).

Since then he has produced a stream of acclaimed novels including the award winning A Quiet Belief in Angels which was also chosen as a Richard & Judy book. His latest book is Proof of life.

1. Who were your literary heroes as you were growing up and when did you first realise that you wanted to write?

There were two very different books that had a great impact on me at about the same time. I was orphaned at an early age, and thus most of my childhood was spent in boarding schools and an orphanage. I recall having chicken pox when I was twelve years old. In order to prevent infection of others I was quarantined. The room I was in had ten beds, and I was in there alone. The door was locked. Through the round porthole window of that door was a long black-and-white checkerboard tiled corridor. Every once in a while I would hear footsteps, and I would go to the window, but when I looked through there was no-one there.

I remember being feverish and disorientated. I read The Shining. Half the book I didn’t really understand. The half that I did understand scared the hell out of me. Perhaps that was really the first time that I was truly aware of the power that fiction possessed to evoke an emotional response in the reader.

I have read the book again since – quite recently in fact – and not only is it a good book, but it reminds me of how I felt at twelve years old. Another book I remember being very affected by was The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forysth. It was the attention to detail, the research, the precision of the narrative that really impressed me. This must have been around the same time.

I don’t think it was so much a case of having literary heroes, but more being impacted upon by the power of writing and the huge emotional effect it could create. They are books that really stand out in my memory, but I also recall reading The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, To Kill A Mockingbird, and also being transported by Shakespeare when first we read Merchant of Venice in class. There were a great many books, a great many authors, but those reading experiences are the ones that really stand out for me.

2. Candlemoth (2003) was a breakthrough book for you. How did publication change your life?

I guess it was a breakthrough in that it was the first book published. It was not a commercial success, but it was sufficiently successful for my publisher to give me another contract. It took me a long time to find a publisher. Candlemoth was the twenty-third novel I wrote, and I sent the first twenty-two out to more than a hundred publishers, both here and in the USA. I received about five hundred polite, complimentary ‘Thanks but no thanks’ letters. I also have two lever arch files somewhere with three or four hundred straightforward format rejection slips. This is just from companies that didn’t even look at the material I sent them.

I understand the sheer volume of work that a handful of people have to wade through in a publishing house. People have given me figures on the number of unsolicited scripts that arrive at the major publishing houses each week, and that figure is astounding. My belief was that if I just kept on going I would eventually find the right person in the right company at the right time. Fifteen years elapsed from the moment I first put pen to paper to the moment I received an offer to publish Candlemoth.

And that script had already gone out to thirty-six publishers, thirty-five of whom sent it back. The only company that didn’t return it was Bloomsbury, and an editor there gave it to a friend who gave it to a friend, and it wound up at Orion. And I am still with Orion, sixteen books on! The earlier unpublished stuff will probably stay right where it is in the loft. I have gone back recently and read some of my earlier work and it was a little verbose. But hell, it was good practice!

So, ‘Candlemoth’ was a breakthrough yes, but not in the accepted sense of the word. It was a breakthrough because it showed me that persistence and determination were the most important factors in getting anything worthwhile done.

3. Your next book is Proof of life. Can you give Suffolk readers a flavour of that?

This is a very different book. This is a book I wrote for the sheer pleasure of writing it. I was awaiting the negotiations of a new publishing contract – always a fraught time! – and I have difficulty both with waiting and with writing nothing. I always like to be working on something. I am a 70s child, and I recalled reading the Sunday Times Magazine and watching the news on a routine basis. The media was full of hijackings, terrorist activities in Europe, Baader-Meinhof, the Munich Olympics massacre, the Red Army Faction, Black September etc.

I decided to write a book set outside of the USA, so this book begins in London, and moves on through Istanbul, the Netherlands, Paris and Berlin. It is an espionage story, in effect, but it also deals with the life of a war journalist. Oddly enough, war photojournalism was my first career of choice, but – for many reasons – that never came to pass. Once finished, I sent it over to my agent and he thoroughly enjoyed it. He sent it on to my new editor at Orion, and he felt the same way.

So, for the first time, we have a non-US book with an English central character, and I am very keen to see how it is received. The plot outline is as follows: Stroud is a former war photographer who left the frontline before his luck ran out. His closest friend and mentor, Vincent Raphael, was not so fortunate, and was killed in an explosion in Jordan.

Six years later, Raphael is allegedly sighted in Istanbul. Reluctantly, Stroud is drawn back into a life that nearly destroyed him, and so begins a journey that takes him from the Balkans to the Netherlands, from Berlin to Paris, as he hunts down the truth of Raphael's death, or if - in fact - Raphael never existed at all. With his every move closely observed by Turkish Intelligence, Mossad, MI6 and Deuxième Bureau, Stroud is on the trail of a revelation that will question everything he has ever believed.

4. Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

Well, there have been a number of projects in the last nine months. I have just finished the book that will be published in the UK in 2022. It’s set in Montreal and the very north-east of Quebec – one of the bleakest and most desolate inhabited places on earth. It spans thirty years, and deals with a family that moves out to this place for work. A series of murders befalls this very close-knit community, and it takes three decades for the truth of what happened to be revealed.

There are two films and a TV series in pre-production, the material for which has all been written since March. Both films are original storylines, and have not been adapted from my books. One is cast, and shooting was scheduled to begin back in October. It was then moved to February, and now we shall have to see what happens!

The other film is currently on offer with a lead actor of note whose name can’t be mentioned just yet! Back at the start of lockdown I published a satire called, The Man Who Ate The World. Not a crime thriller, but a blackly-comic comment on the state of the society. The proceeds of all sales of that book are being donated to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. That has now been picked up by a production company, and I have written a six-part TV adaptation.

I have also written a four-part TV series called ‘Long Shadows’. That is pretty much complete, but – as with all such projects – whether or not it will be made is dependent upon funding, and a great deal of investors and production companies are waiting for restrictions on filming to be lifted before they commit to substantial projects.

5. Your books have been published in 26 languages and have been bestsellers. Have you anything you still want to achieve as a writer?

Well, the books haven’t been bestsellers in the way I wanted them to be bestsellers, because I am one of those people that is never satisfied with anything, no matter how good it might be!

As for things I still want to achieve, I haven’t even started yet. I want to continue writing, of course, but there is so much scope for work in the fields of film, TV, music composition, live performance with the band and new albums. I also write for actors in an acting school both here in Birmingham and in Manchester, and acting is something I would very much like to get into myself.

I also am a very keen photographer. I write and publish articles for photographic magazines, and I have exhibited some of my work. That is something I’d like to do more of. I still have many goals and aspirations, and I am never going to ‘sit on my laurels’. From my own perspective, I have yet to achieve many of the things I set out to achieve, so I still feel that there is a great deal of work to be done.

6. What is the best book you have ever read?

An utterly impossible question, but if a gun was held to my head, I would have to say, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I’ve read it four times. I’ll read it again. Genius. Absolute genius. I feel very strongly about this book. This was almost a case of ‘one man had one book as his life’s purpose’. Once the book was written he never achieved anything remotely close to the same success, and he drank himself to death.

For many years – simply as a result of this book – Capote was considered one of the most eminent and important twentieth century American writers. I don’t think anything could ever take that away from him. And then there is the Harper Lee twist. Search out the Norman Mailer essay about the relationship between Lee and Capote (childhood friends – she the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, the only book she ever wrote, Pulitzer Prize-winner, Oscar-winning film adaptation; Capote the author of In Cold Blood, a serialised book that sold more copies of The New Yorker than anything in history, generated four films, two of them adaptations of the book, two of them bio-pics of this period of his life), and see what you make of it.

As William Shawn said, ‘I think this book will change the way people read…it may even change the way people write…’ The perfect combination of fiction and non-fiction, research and narrative. Superb, breathtaking, magnificent. But, once again, this is an awful and impossible question to ask someone who has been reading for more than fifty years!

7. What is the best advice you were ever given?

I don’t think I was ever given any advice, to be honest. I don’t have any qualifications, I didn’t go to college or university. I have never taken a creative writing course or attended any workshops so I’ve never been in a situation where there was someone who could give me advice. I am often asked for advice, and that advice can only be based on my own experience.

I think any creative faculty is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Back in the very early days, I read an interview with an author who was very successful. He worked on the basis of producing 50,000 words a month. I started doing that, and when I am working on a book that’s the rate I go at. I like to get the first draft of a novel completed in about ten weeks.

As for a single piece of advice I could give someone, it would be as follows: The worst kind of book you could write is the book you think others will like; the best book you could write is the one you yourself would like to read. If you have a passion and an interest in the subject about which you are writing, then it will shine through in what you create.

8. Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

I guess that I front a band. I am a songwriter, singer, and guitarist in a band called ‘The Whiskey Poets’. The name of the band is a nod to Dylan Thomas, and came to me when I was on tour in New York. We have recorded three albums, one of which was six songs and six instrumentals for Universal that are now used in films and TV shows around the world.

I have just finished writing the material for the third ‘official’ band album, and we will start the process of recording that just as soon as we can. We’ve played a good deal in the UK and France, and we’re hoping to get back on the road just as soon as travel restrictions are lifted. Music has always been an important part of my life, and it’s something that I will pursue just as long as I can!