Neil Cocker
When did you begin writing?
I started in my teens but kept it secret for many years. Going public with any artistic endeavour in smalltown Scotland in the 1980s was likely to invite a monumental who-do-you-think-you-are slagging off from your peers, and I wasn’t brave enough to run that risk. In my twenties I had a story published in the Canongate Prize Anthology and met writers, publishers, and creative folk. It opened up a new world to me and was arguably my coming out as a writer.
I then moved to Amsterdam with work and immersed myself in writing my first novel. As often happens, it was a learning curve and I took many wrong turns, writing maybe five different versions which ultimately came to nothing. But at the end of it all I knew how to write a novel, so that was yet another beginning.
I think that’s a good mindset to have as a writer – you are always beginning, always finding your way.
Tell us about your Call of the Isles story.
It’s called New Brechin and is about an island that appears overnight off the east coast of Scotland. That miraculous image of a newly emerged island was my starting point – I was open-minded about what might come next, but by the end of my first paragraph it was already sliding into dystopia. I loved the idea of attempting a condensed novel in less than 500 words – a world with characters and a vivid setting and a narrative arc that spans the rest of the twenty-first century.
Do you prefer writing short stories or longer pieces of fiction?
I’m a novelist by inclination. It always starts the same way for me – a glimpse of a place, and it grows from there. For my current novel-in-progress Dirty Old Europe, the first sighting came in my garage, which in its former life as a farm building had barracked American soldiers during the liberation of Luxembourg in 1944. Standing in that murky space mid-renovation I imagined those soldiers lying around smoking and playing cards, hiding their traumas behind bluster.
Ideas then come to me on the tram to work or when I’m walking the dogs, and little by little the glimpse becomes something more 3D, a world I can walk into and explore. At a certain point I’m compelled to start writing. I have a busy day job and only write at the weekends so there is a sense on Saturday mornings of unscrewing one head and screwing on another.
Occasionally an idea for a short story breaks in, and it’s refreshing to leave the novel-for a while and dive into the short form. It’s satisfying to work on something that can be finished in a couple of weeks rather than over several years.
What is your favourite novel or short story that has an island setting?
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Denis Lehane’s Shutter Island, and Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory all spring to mind. It’s no coincidence that all three are dark claustrophobic novels – as a reader there’s a really strong sense of being trapped on those islands. Banks has been a big influence on me – his boldness in reimagining Scottish fiction really sets a high bar.
What do you dislike about being a writer?
I love it, but it consumes so much time. Writing novels is a kind of madness. Each novel is a bit like an alien virus that overtakes me as its host, and I’m trapped in that fever dream for a few years trying to find a way out. Once it’s published, it leaves my system. Then another alien bites me and the cycle starts all over again.
What’s your favourite under-appreciated novel or short story?
It’s amazing to me that Robin Robertson’s The Long Take isn’t better known. For my money it’s the best Scottish novel of the century so far (although arguably it’s an epic poem rather than a novel.)
Short stories are in general under-appreciated, I reckon. Very few people read them which is a real shame, because in five or ten minutes you can have your horizons opened and your world turned upside down. I remember a couple from my school days that completely blew me away and might not be so well-known now – Ray Bradbury’s The Pedestrian and Saki’s Sredni Vashtar. My favourite of all time is Vanilla-bright like Eminem by Michel Faber. It’s an absolute heart-stopper.
What are you currently reading?
I tend to have a few books on the go at any one time – often a novel, non-fiction, and a collection of short stories. At the moment I’m reading The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, Audition by Katie Kitamura, and The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel.
I like how concurrent reading experiences interplay with each other and whatever is happening in my life at the time. I work with startups and a big part of this is about storytelling and condensing complex information into compelling language, and reading every day helps keep my mind sharp for the day job (as well as giving my writing life its necessary vitamins).
What are you currently working on?
My latest novel Dirty Old Europe is nearing completion. It cuts between Luxembourg in the modern-day and the first liberation in 1944 and follows three characters whose storylines intertwine. There’s a Scottish startup advisor who has become obsessed with an AI-powered app that tells geolocated stories from World War Two. He meets and falls in love with a young woman who’s in the country to unravel the mystery of her American soldier grandfather, who went missing in action during the liberation. And then there’s the soldier himself, who’s struggling with PTSD and doesn’t know what’s happening to him, called out on a disastrous mopping-up operation to deal with rogue Nazis hiding in a forest. The novel is about memory and erasure, the transience of stories, and the dangers of AI.
I’ve also been working on another novel, provisionally titled Dark Texts. It’s about three misfits in 90s Edinburgh who accidentally invent a role-playing game that goes on to become a cultural juggernaut (game, novels, TV show etc) and tells the story of their volatile friendship over the course of four decades. It’s early days but it has a Succession meets Game of Thrones vibe and I’m having huge fun writing it.
What is the best piece of writing advice you have come across?
I was lucky enough to be taught by William McIlvanney at Aberdeen University. In one class he talked about the importance of pubs as incubators for stories – over a pint people unload their most intimate secrets, we can watch and listen to others telling stories and observe in real life what works and doesn’t, we can workshop our own stories and get unfiltered feedback from our fellow drinkers. Ever since, I’ve always loved this idea, switching my writer’s eyes and ears on every time I cross the threshold of a boozer.
Where can readers connect with you and your writing?
My novels Amsterdam Rampant and The Devil’s Chamber are available on Amazon. I wrote a blog for many years and it’s been a while since I last posted, but you can find it at: https://ncocker.wordpress.com/
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You can read New Brechin in Call of the Isles.