The Spider Truces (38 page)
Writing takes up a disproportionate and unreasonable amount of my time.
How does your background in film inform your writing?
It informs my re-writing. The process of editing film has two significant qualities; firstly, one is ruthless in cutting out material that does not earn its place in the story (I learned that from not being ruthless and making some poor work). Secondly, once a structure is working well in the cutting room, one puts it aside and tries something radically different (when allowed the time). Both these are a part of my re-writing and editing process with a book. As for whether or not being a film-maker makes my prose writing “visual” I think that’s an over-egged idea. I can’t think of any great prose that isn’t profoundly visual, at least in my experience of reading it.
Are you working on a new novel?
Yes.
Men Like Air
, about four men in New York City in April 2006. And there’s also a lot of preparatory work done on a third book,
See You Next Friday
… Set in the small town of Blackbrook, it’s about a drunk, his son and the waitress who serves them every Friday.
Tom Connolly is a film maker.
The Spider Truces
is his first novel. He lives in a remote corner of the Rother Valley, in East Sussex.
First published in 2010
This ebook edition published in 2011 by
Myriad Editions
59 Lansdowne Place
Brighton BN3 1FL
www.MyriadEditions.com
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Copyright © Tom Connolly 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Fifteen lines from “In the Sunset Glow” translated by S. S. Prawer taken from
The Penguin Book of Lieder
edited and translated by S. S. Prawer (Penguin Books, 1964). Copyright © S. S. Prawer, 1964. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–908434–00–5