Denis Shaughnessy is
the author of the Awful Truth series of surreal comedies which
introduce a new way of writing fiction. The supposed author, Marco
Ocram, seems to be inventing the stories in real time as he appears
as a self-invented character, sharing with the reader many of his
immediate thoughts about his writing. Since he’s typing the story
as he goes, he has no chance to edit anything or to think ahead, so
he makes all sorts of mistakes. In this guest post, Denis explains
how the books came about.
For
years I had been writing fiction as a means of letting off creative
steam, until the house began to fill to the eaves with yellowing
manuscripts I never did anything with. When I finally decided to have
a serious stab at getting published, I started to browse the internet
for advice. That’s when the awful truth dawned- I realised I would
be one of hundreds of thousands of would-be authors trying to get the
attention of publishers swamped by submissions. How would my books
stand out?
Heading
back to a bleak and forbidding drawing board, I decided I need to
write something utterly different, a book that broke all the rules.
What if I wrote the world’s worst book, as a joke? As an
experiment, I wrote a two-chapter spoof of a book by Joel Dicker- The
Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair-
which had been a popular seller at the time. It was cleverly
atrocious, with the best part being that its purported
author-cum-character, Marco Ocram, was so dopey that he was actually
pleased with the awful prose he’d written.
When
I posted the spoof on Amazon, a number of lovely people said how much
they liked it and encouraged Marco to write a full-length book in the
same style. Since when, he’s never looked back.
Marco
has now written three novels, the latest being The
Awful Truth about the Herbert Quarry Affair. The
surreal premise of the books is that Marco is writing them in
real-time while acting them out as his own protagonist. The books are
impossible to frame, and different readers interpret them in
different ways. What makes them unique is the interplay between
Marco’s simultaneous roles of author and character. One moment
Marco’s wondering what to write, and the next he’s regretting the
crazy situations he’s just written himself into. As he’s typing
everything entirely off the top of his head, he can’t see beyond
the end of his next sentence, so he has no control of his plot, and
he hasn’t any time to correct his mistakes. I like to think his
books are a metaphor for life, in which we can’t control what
happens and we can’t go back to edit our past.
I
can’t guarantee that you will like Marco’s books, but I can
guarantee that they will be quite unlike anything you’ve read
before, so take a free look inside the first few chapters on Amazon,
and please contact me via Twitter or my website if you’d like to
share your thoughts about them. Many thanks for reading!
The Awful Truth About The Herbert Quarry Affair
With a jangle
of keys, a door opened. Herbert clanked in, his arms locked to his
sides, his ankles shackled, his face a Hannibal Lecter mask. He was
overjoyed to see me.“Marco, I’m
jailed day and night with murderous thugs who can’t tell Schiller
from Shakespeare. I’m desperate for intellectual stimulus—but
you’ll do for now.”
TV personality
Marco Ocram is the world’s only self-penned character, writing his
life in real time as you read it. Marco’s celebrity mentor, Herbert
Quarry, grooms him to be the Jackson Pollock of literature, teaching
him to splatter words on a page without thought or revision.
Quarry’s plan
backfires when imbecilic Marco begins to type his first thought-free
book: it’s a murder mystery—and Herbert’s caught red-handed
near the butchered body of his lover.
Now Marco must
write himself into a crusade to clear his friend’s name. Typing the
first words that come into his head, Marco unleashes a
phantasmagorical catalogue of twists in his pursuit of justice,
writing the world’s fastest-selling book to reveal the awful truth
about the Herbert Quarry affair.
Amazon US Amazon UK
Denis Shaughnessy is the author of the
Awful Truth series of novels that send-up bestsellers in a unique
way. With a working-class background as one of eight kids raised by a
widowed mum in Birkenhead, he was guaranteed to go far, as far as
Stoke-on-Trent where he completed a PhD in quantum mechanics. He
immediately squandered his talent for physics by working in business
development for multinational companies, before escaping to run his
own consultancy in 2002. With an innate talent for no sports, an
unmusical ear and too little hand-eye coordination for visual art, he
has always turned to writing for self-expression. Owing to a series
of inexplicable failures of editorial judgement, his has yet to be
snapped up as writer of humorous pieces by top magazines. Fervently
apolitical, he lives on a smallholding in the New Forest with his
lovely wife, Leona, where he devotes his time to an exhaustive study
of literature, cats, craft beer and old tractors.
Little is known
of Marco Ocram’s earliest years. He was adopted at age nine, having
been found abandoned in a Detroit shopping mall—a note taped to his
anorak said the boy was threatening the sanity of his parents.
Re-abandoned in the same mall a year later, with a similar note from
his foster parents, he was homed with his current Bronx mom—a woman
with no sanity left to threaten.
Ocram first
gained public attention through his bold theories about a new
fundamental particle—the Tao Muon—which he popularized in a
best-selling book—The Tao Muon. He was introduced to the
controversial literary theorist, Herbert Quarry, who coached Ocram in
a radical new approach to fiction, in which the author must write
without thinking—a technique to which Ocram was naturally suited.
His crime memoir, The Awful Truth about the Herbert Quarry
Affair, became the fastest selling book of all time, and made him a
household name. It was translated into every known language—and at
least three unknown ones—and made into an Oscar-winning film, a
Pulitzer-winning play, a Tony-winning musical, and a Golden
Joystick-winning computer game.
Ocram excelled at
countless sports until a middle-ear problem permanently impaired his
balance. He has yet to win a Nobel Prize, but his agent, Barney, has
been placing strategic back-handers—announcements from Stockholm
are expected soon. Unmarried, in spite of his Bronx mom’s tireless
efforts, he still lives near his foster parents in New York.
@denishaughnessy
on twitter www.theawfulauthor.com
