Manchester. Cork. Tokyo. Toronto. Suzhou. Five cities, five countries in three years. One endless broken stoplight. Two broken suitcases. One broken marriage. A hustle here, a hustle there.
The ups, the downs, the ins, the outs, and along the way, a novel called Upperdown.
I started to write this novel in the summer of 2016 in Manchester. I wrote the bones of it in 10 weeks, morning bursts from 7am to 8.30am, in Cafe Nero on Oxford Road. The cafe was usually empty except for myself and a crazy guy named Steve, who spoke and spat, shouted, foamed, machine-gun laughed and broke into song whenever a word in his self-directed diatribe evoked a song. And this guy knew a lot of songs. Eventually, he forced his way into the novel as a character called C-flat Rebecca. Kinda.
I continued to work on it for the next year when I returned to work and live in Cork.
In September 2017 I was back living in Tokyo. From Tsurukawa (Crane River) I posted the first 10,000 words of the novel to the Irish Novel Fair competition. I had previously submitted two times with two different novels. The first time I was sure I would win. The second, not as sure, and the third time I didn’t care. I kissed the envelope, blessed myself and forgot about it.
A few months later, back in Cork, sick in bed, while in the depths of the Aussie flu, I received a call from the Irish Writers Centre telling me that my novel had been selected as one of the winners. I went to Dublin in February to attend the novel fair and met 15 agents and publishers. The novel was rough and far from complete, though I had written 80,000 words. Of course I told the agents and publishers it was ready for the shelves. That night I got an email from Penguin Ireland to send on the first 10,000 words. There were others interested: an agent in New York, another in Ireland, and a small new independent publishing company based in the UK.
A week later I moved to Toronto and lived there for six months. The New York agent got back to me, said she loved Upperdown, but was worried it wandered a little too much from the beaten track and was a touch experimental. It was the same response from Penguin Ireland.
Meanwhile, I continued to write. That’s what I do. That’s what I will do regardless of contracts, success or money. Of course, I want those things. What writer doesn’t? But they are not the main driving force. Writing has become part of my daily routine. I rise early in the morning, have a cold shower, get out of the house, find somewhere that has coffee, check Facebook, listen to the music in the cafe, put it off, diddle dawdle, till I can no longer put it off and then I start tapping away.
Sometimes, like with Upperdown, it explodes out and I can barely keep up with it. I enjoyed writing Upperdown. It’s not always enjoyable. There are days, weeks, months when it comes slow – each word, each sentence makes you wonder why you do it. But with Upperdown, I couldn’t stop myself, I loved the voice of the main character and the way he saw the world.
In July 2018, I went back to Ireland for two weeks before I left to work in China, where I currently reside, in a city called Suzhou about 200km north of Shanghai. I had almost forgotten about Upperdown when I received an email from époque press saying that they would consider publishing the novel and wanted to work with me through a series of suggested revisions. For the next five months I worked on it early every morning before work and in the evenings after work.
At first I recoiled from some of the suggested revisions made by my editor, but the more I thought about them the more I realized they would make the novel more solid and focused. The breaking down of the ego and listening to outside opinion has been a crucial step in my development as a writer. The establisment of a good and trusting relationship with my editor allowed Upperdown to develop to its fullest potential. Independent publishers, such as époque press, are doing vital work in recognizing new writing and working closely with authors to help them realise the true vision of their writing.
On January 4th I submitted the final version, and so five cities and five countries later, Upperdown will be brought into existence and have its place on a bookshelf.
So, is Upperdown set in one of these cities? No. Perhaps it is pieces of these places, just as it is pieces of all the places I have been to and lived in, from Upperchurch, where I grew up, to Suzhou, a beautiful city that Marco Polo waxed lyrical about back in 1276.
And why did I write this book? And what’s it all about? The first question is easy. I didn’t have much choice. I didn’t set out to write it. It started with a sentence that had an unusual rhythm and structure to it, which I liked and decided to pursue. From there it came with such force that I just steered it in a certain direction. The second question is one I may not be in the best position to answer, but for the sake of this piece, I’ll give a few possible explanations:
It is a simple story of unrequited love. It is a story about a mathematician who is threading the borders between sanity and insanity. It is a retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with a few twists. It is a book about the beauty of music and numbers. It’s a book about a lonely loser who talks funny, who can’t communicate with the world around him, a man desperately seeking the touch of the spiritual in a world gone materialistically and intellectually mad. It is, as the name suggests, a study of dualities.
Perhaps, Upperdown is a book about the space between myth and reality, between the material and the spiritual. Maybe, it's a combination of all these things. Or perhaps, god forbid, it's just the ramblings of that mad person, who inhabits your cafe every morning.
Upperdown is out now
