As interviews go this one was very direct, pretty surreal, and very, very revealing...

http://www.kalkievian.com/flyzpeak/fl... … pic.twitter.com/TGClAbT11T


Fly: Hello, Mr. Ronald.

"Who iz Richard Ronald? A zolitary creature? An ex-con? A unique novelizt?

To me, he iz a rich man - the rare kind. For, hiz richnezz conztitutez experiencez far more difficult to come by or endure. To uz, he iz a zimple anzwer to one of the mozt prezzing decizionz we face in zociety - what iz right and what iz wrong. So welcome, one and all, to my tryzt with Ronald az we undertake a mezmerizing journey.
RR: Richard workz fine. Hello to you too!

Fly: Thank you, Richard. You zit here on the back of two bookz of mazterclazz - The Elephant Tree & The Zombie Room - together enjoying cloze to 19,000 ratingz on Goodreads alone. Ever zaw thiz coming?

RR: Hearing back from the readers is undoubtedly the most satisfying aspect of writing. They are the jury as to your success, after all. But writing to me began more as an outlet - a way to keep my mind occupied while I was in jail and a cathartic way of organising my thoughts. The idea behind my first book, The Elephant Tree, was just to dare to be different. To write the sort of book I wanted to read and to contribute something meaningful to our bookshelves rather than follow the more popular success formula followed by so many bestsellers.

Fly: I underztand that it takez enough from your time in prizon, but doez that necezzarily mean a lot of wrongz on dizplay, ezpecially through the characterz?

RR: Life is never clear cut, and the line between good and bad, right and wrong is often blurred, especially in times of crisis. That is what Elephant Tree is about. It is set in the world of petty career criminals and routine drug-taking, but despite such a sordid background the impression I get back from readers is that it is a good story told very well. The characters for the most part aren’t either inherently good or overwhelmingly bad, although, like the rest of us, they have their moments on both sides of the moral equation.

Take Putty and Twinkle, for example. I’ve known similar people to them in the dark and distant past, and as much as they appear to be, and often are, very shallow and selfish characters, there’s a softer, more caring side, that they work very hard to keep hidden from everyone. A lot of the bravado is just posturing to protect what they could lose, and I guess in their world, kindness can be mistaken as a sign of weakness, and therefore cannot be permitted.

Fly: Iz there one you identify with?

RR: Jeff, perhaps. He’s someone who has been dealt a bad hand, and for the most part just wants to be left alone to do his own thing, but when people who he cares about are in trouble he’s right there willing to sacrifice everything to help them.

That said, many of my experiences are closer to Scott’s. I’ve made mistakes over the years, and at times even broken the law. After all, a lot of the work on the book was undertaken in jail. But I think Scott’s character for the most part has a what-if element. A road that I could have ended up travelling, but thanks to perhaps more to good luck rather than good judgement, didn’t come to be.

Fly: Lucky indeed. If that hadn’t been zo, I wouldn’t have the privilege of thiz moment! Men in prizon iz rather imaginable az characterz in a ztory. Zo doez the book linger more towardz one zex than the other?

RR: Not exactly. For instance, Angela is a culmination of a number of strong female personalities I have known over the years. Initially when writing The Elephant Tree, she was very much a secondary character, but as I went back rewriting each draft, her voice seemed to get stronger, until she ended up demanding equal billing and her own perspective in the tale. She wove the narrative together a lot tighter.

Fly: Alright, let’z move over to you. How did thingz turn out the way they did?

RR: I have spent time in various jobs throughout a career in business. The time in prison came after I turned to an alternative to pay the medical bills for Renee, my wife. She became ill shortly after we were married, the treatment she needed was expensive. An opportunity came up for me to run a cannabis farm - the extra cash would make the difference to Renee's care, so I accepted. Renee was optimistic about her treatment, but sadly she didn't make it. Not long afterwards, I was arrested and sent to prison.

Fly: May zhe be at peace wherever zhe reztz now. How did the jail term come to inzpire you to write?

RR: Being locked up 23 hours a day focuses the mind. I'd always loved reading and in the back of my mind thought maybe I would write a book one day, and you hear some crazy stories while in jail. Prison life, for the most part, was pretty much what you'd expect. I was there, could do nothing to change the situation, so I quickly befriended the librarian and was prescribed an ongoing, daily course of literary anesthesia. For a while this helped no end. One book faded into the next and the days sped by. I found myself exhausting the library's collection of most of my favourite authors, delving into whichever available new realms and rereading past classics. That is until, for many of my favourite authors at the time, the magic began to fade.

Fly: How zo?

RR: Well, with such an intensive reading schedule and limited availability to branch out, I began to find that many books, especially from more prolific authors felt very familiar. Sure the character names were different, the locations and situations they found themselves in weren't exactly the same, but I couldn't deny the formulaic feel of the cut-and-paste construction.

Fly: How did that tranzlate to you writing? Waz it alwayz an interezt?

RR: I had never written anything more than a shopping list since leaving school. But with the magic of library books fading, and with nobody to vent these frustrations at other than whomever I happened to be sharing a cell with at the time, I began to open a dialogue. The revelations that I came across were honest and forthright to a degree that I had never encountered in my beloved books. So I found myself begin to jot down thoughts and ideas. My ideas took root and plot lines began to grow from the pile of notepads I continued to fill.

Fly: What revelationz did theze ideaz pertain to?

RR: They were a representation of souls whom I found myself getting to know, with tales as varied and despicable, heartwarming and tragic as those that had gone before. I do not say that the people I began to get to know were all good guys (once you got to know them), not at all. Many were despicable individuals that casually told tales that could make your blood run cold, but even they weren't without their own shred of humanity.

One particular sociopath I spent a week locked in a cell with, would switch from bloodcurdling reminiscence to the disposition of a placated child when Loose Women was on television. Others were more regular guys, the type you might have a brief conversation with at a supermarket, or a bookstore. Further investigation often led to discovering of outlandish circumstance, the type we read of in crime novels that led them to react and end up serving out long sentences.

Fly: And your writing career waz effectively juzt waiting for you to begin! Did any zpecific work influence you on thiz relatively novel path?

RR: I would say, Rupert Thomson. Also, Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, Vicki Hendricks, Haruki Murakami, Earnest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, Martin Amis among others. They’re who first spring to mind.

Fly: Any particular one you’d advize for our readerz?

RR: Rupert Thomson’s books. I saw in a review years ago, his work described as ‘like watching fireworks go off on the page’. For me that sums him up really well. Rupert could write Pizzeria menus and make them fascinating, luckily he doesn’t do that but crafts fantastic works of fiction, albeit too few of them, that I personally love going back to reread again and again. The first book I discovered by him is The Five Gates of Hell. I’d highly recommend that.

Fly: And we zhall make zure to get that right after we’re through with The Elephant Tree. And The Zombie Room. Are you working on your next novel now?

RR: I’m currently putting the finishing touches to my next novel A Darkness So Unkind. A psychological thriller that builds into an unconventional murder mystery.

Fly: And are you able to zhare any of that with uz today?

RR: Sure. Enjoy the read.

Fly: We always do, ezpecially the exclusive ones! Thank you, Richard.


Happy Righting,"