Tom Holt: Singing for Nero
01/12/2003 . Source: Phil Jones 

Author Tom Holt on his old life as a lawyer, choosing the right words, falling asleep during 'The Matrix', and why the Roman Emperor Nero may not have been such a bad egg after all.

Tom Holt started writing at an early age. He had his first book of poems published when he was in his teens.

He studied at Oxford and became a lawyer. Leaving this profession behind he has become a full time writer of comedic fantasy and historical novels; the most recent of which was A Song for Nero.

It takes a different slant on the Roman Emperor Nero – was he really as bad as everyone makes out?

SFCrowsnest.com: What made you change direction from a lawyer and become a writer

Tom Holt: Survival instinct. Lawyers tend to die young (though not nearly enough of them).

SFC: Some of your first published work was poetry. Would you consider writing poetry again or including some of your poetry in future novels?

TH: Don't worry, you're safe. I couldn't write poetry these days if I tried. All through our lives, there are always things we've got to say, but as the experiences pile up and the focus shifts, we learn different ways of expressing ourselves, appropriate to the points we've reached and the messages we need to get across.

Poetry is a young man's medium; direct, emotional, a core reaction to the shock of experience. It's also the best basic training in using words a prose writer can have. It's not something you can do in cold blood.

SFC: Do you think your years as a lawyer made you cynical to the world?

TH: Just a bit, yes. Once you've been a lawyer for a few years, nothing will ever shock you again, and you'll have seen, in microcosm, all the very worst aspects of your fellow creatures. Trust me, human nature is scarier than any amount of stage blood, giblets or small plastic animals jumping out through actors' chests.

Seven years in wills, probate and tax gave me insights into human callousness, malice and greed that'd have Stephen King hiding under the bed screaming for his mummy.

SFC: Has it influenced your writing in anyway?

TH: Yes. It's made me want to write very good books that'll make lots of money, so I never ever have to go back.

SFC: Being considered primarily as a comic fantasy author now, do people generally expect you to be funny all the time?

TH: If they do, they're sadly disappointed. Fortunately, most of my friends have only a very vague, inaccurate idea of what I do for a living, and care less. One of the main reasons I took to writing is that I've always been very bad at talking; I have a slight stammer, and I can't think of anything interesting or clever to say, or at least not until much later.

I don't think of myself as a comedian, in any case. My books are (purportedly) funny, but I try and make them other things as well.

SFC: How do you go about building the stories and the humour they contain?

TH: Building is exactly the right word in this context. Typically I start with a character in a situation - the villain coming back, the naive young man who starts a landslide, a hero on the run - and start adding layers of structure, like an oyster making a pearl.

Pretty early in the process I audition for the supporting cast, and once I know who they're going to be I have a reasonable idea of the sort of thing that's going to happen. I always know what the end will be, but only very occasionally precisely how I'm going to get there. After all, you can't know exactly what people are going to do when you've only just met them.

SFC: Does writing just come naturally to you? Your books often contain little side stories or asides and often very loose storylines. Does this reflect your thought processes and do you write your books in a linear fashion or more randomly?

TH: Choosing the right words, largely yes. Building the structures, characters, plots, sadly no. Unfortunately, the words are just plaster and wallpaper, no good unless they've got something to stick to and hang from.

SFC: Your historical novels include a lot of humour and simultaneously deal with some quite difficult themes which often reflect today's society. Do you find writing historical novels very different from writing comedic fantasy?

TH: Yes and no. The historical stuff comes more easily, because I'm not having to make up the whole thing from scratch; I can start with a framework of real events and real people, and I know what's going to happen in the end.

But I always write the historical stuff as first-person narrative, which inevitably restricts me to a single viewpoint; a very useful technique and one that keeps you honest, but it does let you in for a lot of technical problems you avoid when you write third-person. I use the historical genre to write about specific themes, which helps concentrate the mind but reduces the scope for having spiteful fun with the characters. It's like driving a train as opposed to flying an aircraft.

SFC: Many of your fantasy books mix both historical, mythological and famous story characters with the present day. Does this contrast or juxtaposition allow easier comedic writing or do you just enjoy mixing characters and places together?

TH: I chose both fantasy and comedy as tools to work with because they're both a bit like the knight's move in chess; they approach the point obliquely, but they can jump over obstacles. You aren't restricted by boring stuff like the laws of physics when you're writing fantasy, which means you can say things about the real world and everyday life that you couldn't say in mainstream fiction.

For example, you can get a whole load of new angles and perspectives on life in 21st century Britain if you see it through the eyes of a small green furry visitor from Alpha Centauri, or a tenth-century Viking who's been woken up from an enchanted sleep. Comedy provides the same sort of opportunities.

If you take something ordinary and familiar and push it just a little bit into the absurd, suddenly you start noticing things about it that you wouldn't normally see.

SFC: What do you make of current fantasy films such as Lord of the Ring's trilogy?

TH: I thought 'Fellowship of the Ring' was probably the best movie I've ever seen ('Two Towers' was an anticlimax, but still outstanding) and I liked both the Harry Potter films - curious, since large-scale computer generated effects leave me stone cold. I felt that the films cited above excelled in spite of the CGI because they were well-written and well-acted, and the people in charge believed in what they were doing.

  I can't comment on 'The Matrix' because I fell asleep three minutes in and only woke up when people trod on my feet as they left the cinema.

SFC: Have any of your books been optioned?

TH: Astoundingly, the rights are still available. All of them. No reasonable offer refused. In fact, are you looking for a special Christmas gift for the one you love? Give them the film rights to a Tom Holt novel.

SFC: ... and how would you feel if one were made into a film or TV series?

TH: Guess.

SFC: Would you like to see 'A Song For Nero' as a film or TV series?

TH: Too bloody right. I don't think it'd make a good film, mind. It's the wrong shape, and relies too much on the narrative voice.

SFC: You've included numerous Star Trek references in your fantasy books and you're known to be a fan. What would you consider to be your all time favourite film/episode?

TH: Very difficult question. I think DS9 was the best of the four series overall, but my favourite episode would have to be either 'Worst Case Scenario' or the first part of 'Scorpion' - both 'Voyager', which is downright bizarre; it was basically a poor series with a few great moments.

SFC: Do you think the Star Trek universe has become over-saturated...

TH: I think that by the end of DS9's sixth season  the Paramount boys had built a wonderful playground, but they lost their nerve and the plot; they'd started tearing great chunks out of Roddenberry's utopia, and there were all sorts of fascinating dark shadows waiting to be explored. I'd love to see a series set in the aftermath of the Dominion war, but it'll never happen.

SFC: ...and what do you think of the more recent ST series such as 'Enterprise'?

TH: As a 'Quantum Leap' fan I had high hopes for Scott Bakula, but I stopped watching after the first half-dozen shows. The difference is in the writing.

SFC: Comedic fantasy has its roots back in the 5th century BC and is probably the most popular it's ever been. Why do you think that is and what do you think of current fantasy authors?

TH: As I said earlier, comedy and fantasy are both means to an end; we use them to say things about ourselves and the world we live in that can't be said any other way. Put the two together, and you've got the technology to tackle themes that most other genres can't reach.

SFC: You seem to a have a deep love of history especially ancient Greece. Where did that interest first originate from?

TH: History is just the actions and attitudes of people, so how could it not be fascinating? As far as I'm concerned, the past is a wonderful place to visit because a) the people are so different and b) the people are just the same as us. When you put the differences and the similarities together, you begin to understand how human society works. This is useful stuff to know if you plan on living with people.

  Ancient Greece is a particularly worthwhile period to look at because the Greeks invented democracy and took it to its logical and inevitable conclusion. Pretty well everything that's happening to us now happened to them, only about three times faster; and they survived, just about, where we probably won't, because they weren't cluttered up with malevolent technology.

SFC: Your latest historical novel 'Song For Nero' as well as being very funny, is a beautiful study of friendship. What enticed you to the historical character of Nero?

TH: Even people who tell you, proudly, that they know nothing about the Romans and care less know who Nero was, and what he was supposed to have done; he's one of the four or five all-time bad guys. I wanted to write about a man whose best friend was an all-time bad guy.

The other universal villains are either too close and personal - you couldn't write a book like that about Hitler, for example - or too vague, like Attila the Hun (everybody knows the name but nobody knows who he was or what he did). Nero seemed the obvious choice; also, there's a lot of good historical evidence to support the theory that he wasn't nearly as bad as he was made out to be; and he's a complicated figure in his own right.

The pairing I wanted to explore was of a complex bad guy and his very straightforward best friend.

SFC: The main two characters in 'A Song For Nero' seem incredibly real. Did you draw inspiration for them solely for historical material or are any of their facets from people from the present?

TH: For me, the whole point in writing historical fiction is those crucial differences and similarities I mentioned earlier; the key, therefore, is to make people from the past seem as real as people in the present, while highlighting the differences. So the characters must first and foremost be convincingly drawn, they've got to talk and act believably, have the same concerns, preoccupations and reactions as we have.

You complete the effect by creating their context, which is where the differences lie. The end result is that you have people reacting the way you and I would react, but to a different range of experiences; that way, hopefully, the reader gets a taste of what it would have been like to be there.

SFC: 'The Portable Door' draws from the insane office environment (the normal working one not the TV series) was this drawn from personal experience?

TH: You betcha. The names have been changed in order to frustrate the litigiously-minded, but that's all.

SFC: You are also known to be a bit of a blacksmith and swordsmith, Did your interest in this arise from your love of history or elsewhere?

TH: A distant cousin of mine was a blacksmith, and I went to see him in his forge when I was a kid. A few years ago, I got to know a local blacksmith who kindly agreed to teach me and another friend of mine - also a writer - the basics of the trade. I wouldn't presume to call myself a swordsmith; but I've made an axe and a few farm tools.

SFC: You must draw from a huge amount of reference material for your writing. Do you yourself have a large library of books?

TH: One or two...

SFC: What would you say are your all time favourites?

TH: Impossible question. I'm a re-reader; if I like a book at all, I'll read it at least twice, and there are some books I read once or twice a year. My all-time favourites tend to be the last couple of books I've read; so, right now, the category includes all five Harry Potters, E F Benson's Lucia series, John M Ford's 'Final Reflection', Njal's Saga, 'The Hobbit', a fistful of Wodehouses and "Sheet Metal Work" by Wakeford. Ask me again in a fortnight and I'll give you a completely different answer.

SFC: What advice would you give to new and would be authors?

TH: 1. Finish something. Actually write something all the way through to the end.

  2. When you read something you enjoy, ask yourself, 'How did he do that?'; get into the habit of prising the back off and inspecting the mechanism.

  3. Good prose is like a diamond; clear, hard, structured and invariably improved by cutting.

  4. Assume when you write that each noun costs you a pound, each adverb and adjective a fiver; but pronouns and verbs are free.

  5. Don't write what you want to write unless it's also what somebody else is going to want to read.

  6. Get an agent. Listen to what he says.

  7. Writing is a craft. Know and respect your tools, learn how to use them. No amount of genius will save you if you don't.

SFC: How is your next novel coming along and what plans do you have for the future?

TH: Just finished a fantasy, about to start a new historical - which will be a new departure for me, and technically the most challenging project I've undertaken so far. It could be quite good, if I don't screw it up.

SFC: Thank you very much for your time.

Interview conducted by Phil Jones

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