Charlie Hill, "Encounters With Everyday Madness"

 

Charlie Hill is a critically-acclaimed writer of novels, short fiction and memoir, whose work has been compared by his peers to Kafka, Georges Perec and Beckett. His new book of short stories, Encounters With Everyday Madness, is published by Roman Books, as part of the Stretto Fiction series. His website is here. 

About Encounters With Everyday Madness, by Charlie Hill

Encounters With Everyday Madness is a collection of short stories about the manifestations and causes of contemporary "madness." Looking at grief, PTSD, romantic obsession, domestic oppression and work, it asks the reader to reconsider what they know about "difference" and the psychological other.

Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories. 

From Encounters With Everyday Madness

A New Job

Today there is a difference. He wakes as usual to a residual fear from dreams that seep and overflow, his eyes are heavy-lidded – it is as if he knows he will not like what he sees when they are open – and yet, despite it all, his heart is light. This is because today is a new day. Today he will catch a bus he doesn’t know and travel to work in a new job in a different part of town. Today he will begin again.

He was in his old job for five years. Five will-sapping, personality-crushing, energy-draining years. People there joked about his leaving. They referred to it as his escape but they were missing the point because this is precisely how he views the change. It has been a long time coming. It is not just the particulars of the position – it is, nominally at least, a promotion – but the fact that it will allow him to make a fresh start. He understands this concept is a loaded one but it is no less a necessary goal for all that, for he was tired. He was tired of his job and he was tired of the people he worked with; he had played out the novelty of spending time with "colleagues" – a word he finds strangely infuriating – who, if asked to name his favourite music or novels or TV, if asked to describe his hopes, dreads and perversions in a sentence or two, would have been so far off the mark they may as well be talking about a different person: he was tired of the fact that the incremental degradations of this supposed familiarity made him somehow smaller and less vital than he was or could have been.

Now fully awake, he is ready to begin the process of renewal. He showers, deciding not, for once, to condition his hair. He dresses in a stripy shirt before choosing to wear instead one decorated with bold flowers; for breakfast, for a change, he takes an omelette, made with a shake of soy sauce, and a hefty dusting of the chilli powder he keeps for every other Friday night. He has never eaten this much spice in the morning and the effect is invigorating; he  blinks his eyes and there it is, his kitchen, hall and bathroom the same of course, but shifted on their axes too ...

The Author as Promoter: A How-To Guide

By Charlie Hill

I’ve always appreciated the central role that promotion plays in establishing and developing a writing career, even if this appreciation is part of a paradox. 

The first piece I wrote for publication was an account of a road trip to the southern United States. I'd flown with some friends to Orlando, hired a convertible and driven round the coast of the Gulf of Mexico - through Alabama and Mississippi - to New Orleans. It was there that, as part of a smorgasbord of non-repeatable jollity, I discovered a weed supplier operating out of a venue I couldn’t have invented if I’d tried: The Chicken Man’s Voodoo Shack.

On my return to Brum, having completed the write-up of my trip and begun the process of submitting it, my imagination leapt ahead to the period immediately following its publication. At the time I lived a shortish distance from Moseley Bog, a patch of greenery popular with young families, that some of you will know as being the inspiration for Tolkien’s Middle Earth. My plan was simple. On the day of publication, I would visit a butcher’s shop, a cathedral and then the bog. I’d find a suitable spot – not too obvious, not too well-hidden - and leave a chicken’s foot, some chicken liver and a miniature statue of the Virgin Mary. The discovery of this collection of horrifying detritus would be at first perplexing. And then, as the reality of the situation revealed itself - why, the bog is being used for voodoo rituals! – a ‘media storm’ would happily coincide with the first reviews of my locally-produced voodoo-centric masterpiece.  

It's probably for the best that my book didn’t find a publisher. And possibly for the best that by the next time I had cause to consider how best to raise my writerly profile, most promotional activity was conducted online. Fully fifteen years after the callous indifference of the publishing industry had spared the world my offal-related nonsense, I finally published my first book. And then set about promoting it in a more traditional manner. 

By this time, Twitter was most successful industry marketing tool. The site was so popular, however, and so full of people tooting their own horn, that I decided the only way to stand out was to undersell myself. To subvert the shrill ‘look-at-me’ desperation of the hoi polloi, and prove instead my credentials as a writer and commentator of considerable gravitas. Not to try to grow my own following but to establish relationships with ‘influencers’ by hitting them with a stream of such irresistible literary allusion they would greet each new exchange by nodding sagely and plugging my latest book.

Mercifully, there appears to be no remaining trace of what I sent to Claire Armitstead, then Books Editor of the Guardian, shortly after I’d opened my Twitter account. She’d made a passing comment about The Great Gatsby and I’d responded with a comment about shirts. An understated comment about shirts. An understated and, it must be said, utterly, embarrassingly baffling comment about shirts. Now as anyone who is over-familiar with The Great Gatsby would doubtless tell you, there is a line in it (from the top of my head it's on page 127 of the 1976 Penguin edition) about Jay Gatsby’s wardrobe. But even so. I wasn’t on Twitter for long.

I’m a fast learner though, and my next foray onto the shaded, shivery uplands of social media was more direct. I became the Facebook friend of a much-lauded writer, and set about establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. At first it went well. I liked some of his posts, he invited me to a festival he ran, and I tapped him for an endorsement. The latter wasn’t forthcoming (he didn’t like the thing) but still; my promotional activities were showing some much-needed signs of progress. Then things took a turn.

The fella posted enthusiastically about a soon-to-be published novel by a Booker Prize-winning author. A post which I, true to my credentials as a writer and commentator of considerable gravitas, judged to be ‘gushing’ and representative of ‘all that is wrong with publishing today.’ The result of this interaction was a summary unfriending and, I presume, several subsequent non-invitations to festivals run by his real friends.  

Chastened by my experience of electronic interaction, I decided on a more direct approach still to the business of literary networking and promotion. Not only that, but I lowered my sights from the great and the good to those who, like me, might consider themselves ‘misunderstood.’ It was from these relationships – defined as they were less by circumstance than shared experience – that I imagined a more genuine camaraderie would develop, and from that, more sales. 

I began a correspondence with a writer from Manchester. Like me, he was wary of promotional efforts that were lacking in integrity (even if, unlike me, he hadn’t arrived at this perspective after spending a decade trying to make them work). We got on. He agreed to review a book of mine and I went to see him at an event. To emphasise the honesty of our connection, I sat at the front and concentrated on making meaningful eye contact throughout his reading. I was sure this was a good idea right up until I saw his review, the opening line of which was ‘I know Charlie Hill ... He once stared at me through the entirety of a reading I gave at Waterstone’s in Birmingham.’

By now, you will have identified the paradox I mentioned at the top of this piece. It is, of course, that although I appreciate the role that promotion plays in the writing life, I am pathologically unsuited to doing anything about it that might have any material value. Oh well. I am further aware that I must persevere. Does anyone know anything about Substack? 

About the author
Charlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. Despite his unceasingly hopeless promotional efforts, his work has been compared by his peers to Georges Perec, Kafka and Samuel Beckett. His latest book is a collection of short stories called The State of Us.

Charlie Hill, "The Pirate Queen"

 

Charlie Hill is a critically-acclaimed writer of novels, short stories and memoir. The Pirate Queen is his first historical novel. His next book is a collection of satirical short stories called The State of Us, which will be published in April 2023, and his website is here.

About The Pirate Queen, by Charlie Hill

The Pirate Queen is set in Mayo in 1650 and tells the story of the Irish clan chief and pirate Grace O'Malley, or Gráinne Ni Mháille, who spent her life fighting the forces of Queen Elizabeth 1st before sailing up the Thames for a summit meeting with the English queen. In the book, Grace's story is being recounted to her great great granddaughter by her tutor, Catherine, who is a native of Dublin.

You can read more about The Pirate Queen on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From The Pirate Queen

It was three years ago now. Catherine, twenty two years old, was living in Dublin. ‘Come to Castleburke,’ Theobald had suggested, ‘and teach my daughters.’ They were talking in The Stationer’s Company, a shop managed by Catherine’s father; Theobald had been thumbing the latest print of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn and Catherine had indulged him in conversation. She was educated but not a teacher and had barely heard of Mayo, yet she agreed to the proposal with scant consideration. Many times over the course of those three trying years she thought back to that decision. 

Because Catherine was born to Dublin. For as long as she could remember she had immersed herself in its manifold charms, the challenge of its filth and dazzle. She walked streets that reeked of fish and human waste, on her way to the orchard at Piphoe’s Park, where she read plays from her father’s shop under laden trees and enjoyed the opining of her contentious peers; she had been euphoric in the gloomy wash of the street lights – whoever could conceive of such a thing! – and shocked by the pity of the city’s crumbling walls. Then there was the theatre on Werbergh Street. That had been a common haunt. The place was run by a serious minded young man called John Ogilby, who was known to her father. Most of the performances were considered unsuitable for a young girl but Catherine was not to be denied and spent many hours enthralled by Shirley’s Constant Maid or Burnell’s Landgartha; on occasion she was allowed backstage or to tread the boards in an empty house she imagined filled with an audience for her own work. The theatre was a short lived enterprise – it closed when Catherine was just sixteen, a casualty of the rebellion – but by then Dublin was in her bones. 

Yet life in the city had its disadvantages too. Foremost amongst these was a lack of free rein. Her father was kind-hearted and encouraged her reading and her interest in Werbergh Street, but Catherine knew if she stayed in the city she was tied fast to the Stationer’s Company and this was not enough. Catherine was ambitious and even if hers was a nebulous want, its presence was no less demanding for that. There were other constraints too. Although she was a confident woman, Catherine could not move about the place unaccompanied – instead she was allocated a chaperone, the wife of a friend of her father’s. Catherine questioned why. It was true there were dangers in the streets of the city, but the woman’s near constant presence was more a sop to propriety; she was employed to safeguard Catherine’s virtue and Catherine resented this and failed on many counts to see the need. 

Her decision to take the role in Mayo then, might have been a whim – Catherine knew she could be inconstant – but there had been sense there too, for as much as she loved the city she was keen to sample something new. Perhaps some time beyond the Pale would provide her with a unique stimulation? A greater freedom? Something new, the chance to live a little differently? Perhaps the need to fit into the moulds of men would lessen and Catherine would be able to abandon herself to an adventure of her own making? It was certainly a possibility. ‘Connacht is different,’ her friends told her, their eyes alight with excitement and alarm, and although she paused to question the evidence on which they had based this judgement, there was an irresistibility to its logic. 

Her father was unconvinced. ‘I forbid you,’ he said.

‘Oh father. We have spoken about that.’

‘Very well. Then I would rather you reconsidered your decision.’

‘I understand.’ 

They travelled to Mayo together. Although Catherine didn’t ride well, they went by horse. It took days. They crossed the Shannon at Snámh Dá Éan and before long her hopes were struggling like their mounts through the cold wet earth. Because Catherine’s friends had been right in their surmisings. Connacht was different. It might have been a different country so far removed was it from the life she had known. Connacht was wild and dark – a deep and ancient dark, a dark both clamorous and hushed – and without the obvious refinement and sophistication of the city. They passed through villages called Annaghdown and Ballinrobe and Kinturk. They stayed in lodgings where they were served curd pancakes, from which Catherine, though game, recoiled. There were abbeys and ruins of abbeys through which howled winds with more intent than even those of the coast back home. There were castles. There was evidence too of the rebellion that had caused so much anxiety in Dublin just six short years before: forts and fortified houses pock-marked by musket fire, disquieting people, harrowed and hollowed-out by war: on the road they saw men with muskets, men on horseback with lances, they saw Scottish fighters armed with long swords and small round shields, mercenaries abandoned by their old paymasters and waiting for their new; they passed brown-robed monks and sisters in black habits; there were townspeople who stood and stared at Catherine’s suede gloves and riding dress – was that envy? mistrust? or disdain? – and she felt alien and unwanted in their eyes. 

The most disturbing encounter took place in a town called Tuam. Catherine and her father were watering their horses when they were greeted by a farmer herding sheep. Her father asked how far it was to Castleburke and the man’s friendly demeanour changed. He demanded to know their business there and when informed that they were to meet with Viscount Mayo, he hurried off without reply. After that Catherine had to remind herself with each passing mile that the journey had been her choice and that it should be considered more of a challenge than a trial. 

On Running a Literary Festival

By Charlie Hill 

What are literary festivals for? What do they do, and why? Are they a fundamentally democratic element of our literary culture, or an adjunct to the marketing departments of corporations? Do they exist to perpetuate or challenge intellectual conformity? Can any of them be all things?

In 2011 I decided to try to find out, and established one of my own. The PowWow Festival of Writing was set up by me and Andy Killeen. We had each just published our first novel, respectively an historical comedy set in 11th-century Baghdad and a fictionalised account of the anti-road building and free party protests of the 1990s. Our books were with small publishers, Dedalus Books and Indigo Dreams Press, and they had yet to reach the bestseller lists. We were interested in creating an event that was an ethical antidote to the commodification of literature, one that celebrated the overlooked and also provided practical support for those who aspired to be disregarded; it was also an attempt to fill the restless emptiness that follows publication of a novel.

The event took place in the back garden of the south Birmingham pub where Andy ran a writers’ group. Its name presented itself to us as if on a gold-tasselled cushion (Prince of Wales Writers on Writing – or PowWow) but we had no money, few contacts in the biz and no experience of organising anything more complicated than a barbeque. The first programme then, was an ‘organic’ affair. Andy knew William Gallagher, who had written radio scripts for Dr Who, a fella from The Fall, and SF Said, a mate from Cambridge who had just won an award for a children’s novel; I met the poet Charlie Jordan at a party, and suggested for the role of host Dan Holloway, a Facebook friend and the author of evie and guy, a wordless novel consisting of ‘the dates, times and duration in seconds (bracketed where the act was interrupted or unclimactic) of every act of masturbation in two lives.’ 

Given that there wasn’t too much content that was actually related to literature, we decided to sell the festival as a ‘Literary Cabaret’ and padded it with a capoeira demonstration and a DJ set. The centrepiece, though, was a writing competition. For this, competitors would produce a number of stories throughout the day that would be judged, live on stage, by me and Andy. It was an equivocal success. In devising the format, I had forgotten that I would be drinking steadily over the course of the do, a circumstance that led to a profound deterioration of my critical faculties. Andy’s contributions were conscientious but by the time we reached the final three stories, my slurred pronouncements were met with incredulity and abuse. 

Despite this, we decided the festival had enough going for it to do it all again the following year. With a few caveats. If the ‘informality’ of our first effort had established our unique selling point, it was clear that we would be ill-advised to attempt to replicate it. It was unthinkable, for example, that we could hold another event without paying either ourselves or our guests. We established an organising committee, drawn from Andy’s writing group, and applied for funding from the Arts Council. This was an interesting process. Although – or perhaps because – we were committed to the principles of ‘community’ and ‘diversity,’ it dismayed me to have to include the words in every other line of our proposal. Still. We got the money we asked for. We also devoted similar attention to the make-up of the programme. Although we were mindful of the need to feature better-known guests, we were keen to avoid inviting anyone too ‘obvious’ and plumped instead for a bestselling writer of crime fiction whose work could also lay claim to that most nebulous of characteristics – literary merit. Unfortunately, four days before they were due to headline our second festival, they found themselves in a little local difficulty, involving pseudonymous praise of their own work - and criticism of others - and bailed.

Me and Andy had no contingency for a turn-up like this. Faced with the possibility of a festival with no headliner – and the logistical mire of refunds – we considered joining our erstwhile star name in retiring to a darkened room. But, true to the DIY spirit that had created the festival in the first place, we hung on and hoped something would turn up. Fortunately, it did. That year’s Booker Prize shortlist had just been announced and on it was Alison Moore’s small but perfectly formed The Lighthouse. I’d read it and loved it, so chanced an email to Salt, her publisher. With barely five days to go, the arrangements were made and we had a more than adequate replacement for our rogueish no-show. 

I’d like to think that Salt saw us as a kindred outfit operating outside the literary establishment. It was perhaps more likely that our timing was accidentally impeccable. Either way, buoyed by our last-minute extrication from a tricky situation, hubris took hold. The next year, in looking to increase our private sector sponsorship, we ditched the coffee shops and vintage toy sellers who had previously backed us and approached a banking and wealth management company. The question of their suitability for an operation as ethically-minded as ours was resolved by Googling ‘are they ethical?’ and spending a full minute on analysing the results (I mean they seemed fine). We also expanded. The Saturday before Sunday’s do we put on workshops at a venue down the road from the Prince. On the day of the event itself we offered merchandise – tote bags and tee shirts – and arranged for each session to be filmed by students of Birmingham City University. All of which served to simultaneously impress and confuse that year’s guests – who included M. John Harrison, Katy Guest and Danuta Kean – for whom the hoopla might have been at odds with the size of the operation.

Because that year’s festival was a bust. The workshops didn’t fly. No-one wanted to Meet the Editor. A quick headcount on the day of the festival proper revealed more paying punters than merch-sellers and film crew and merchant bankers - but only just. Again, we learned. The next year, we were back down to a day and binned the fripperies. 

We continued for another four years. The last PowWow Festival of Writing took place in 2017. I like to think that we gave many writers ideas and a good day out. We were proud to feature guests from communities traditionally under-represented in mainstream publishing. With the exception of our third year, our audiences regularly hovered around the hundred mark. Personal highlights included Alex Wheatle, Natalie Haynes and the publication of an anthology put together from the contributions of guests. Joanne Harris – who we bagged after three years of invites – was a no-bullshit joy. Likewise Kit de Waal. Arifa Akbar was fascinating. Nicholas Royle indulged his affinity for the derive, refused the offer of a bus or cab from town and walked to us instead through the derelict warehouses, the abattoirs and the curry houses of Brum’s unfamiliar inner-city; the screen-writer Andrew Davies asked for payment with a bottle of single malt. Stewart Home read standing on his head and Elizabeth Jane-Burnett was as mesmerising as ever.

The festival’s demise though, was inevitable. In the six years of its existence, the event had outgrown its original model, in relation to both budget and venue and we had neither will nor desire to move premises or apply for the necessary jump in funding. What had begun – at least in part – as a project that might complement our writing now required too much unremunerated time and attention. For all of our comparative pulling power – our appearance fees were a source of much pride – a significant number of London-based agents and PR people were unwilling or unable to sell to their charges a trip to a Birmingham pub. After the boss of our sponsor, the investment company – a man of Quaker sympathies – turned up one year to find me with a pint on the go (ironically enough my first, at 6pm), he pulled the plug. 

There was also the management of the Prince’s daytime drinkers to consider. The festival took place in a marquee, but the pub’s garden was otherwise open as usual. Over the course of a long Sunday afternoon, the regulars could get as lairy as a short story judge, which had implications for the ‘Customer Experience’ of the festival crowd. The needs of the two groups weren’t reconcilable. Even if there was only ever going to be one winner from the encounter between Joanne Harris and the fella in the Villa shirt, who wandered into the marquee and enquired sneeringly of her ‘Am I supposed to know who you are?’ 

About the author
Charlie Hill is the former Director of the PowWow LitFest. His most recent publication is a memoir - I Don't Want to go to the Taj Mahal - and he has an historical novel and a collection of short stories in the pipeline. His website is here.

Charlie Hill, "I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal"

Charlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. He left school at 16 and was self-taught until – after publishing two novels and many short stories – he decided to convert his experience into a qualification. In 2018 he was awarded a Master's with Distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham.

Charlie’s body of work is hard to categorise. His first novel – The Space Between Things – was a love story with allegorical elements, that was set in the 1990’s against the background of the road protest movement and the wars in the Balkans; his second – Books – was a farce about the commodification of contemporary art and literature. After this, he focussed on short fiction, indulging an interest in deconstructing the writing process (here, for example, and here), before becoming preoccupied with the various iterations of early twentieth century Modernism. His most recent publications were an existentialist novella and a pamphlet of short stories. 

If there is a guiding principle that runs through this writing it is Charlie’s fidelity to the idea that whatever the aesthetic challenge or formal purpose of a work (and notwithstanding the contentious nature of the term) it should also try to entertain. 

On Writing I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal
By Charlie Hill

I began writing I Don’t Want to Go the Taj Mahal by chance. Or, at least, not as the consequence of a conscious decision. The form it took – a series of almost self-contained vignettes, that only slowly coalesce – presented itself as the most obvious way of capturing the nature of memory. Likewise, the shifts in tense and perspective: some episodes are recreated with an urgency, others are of a more reflective bent, and others still slight, almost passed-over. Engaging with such technical considerations meant that the book was, in many respects, enjoyable to write. The ethics of the thing, however – which are peculiar to memoir – meant that more than any other piece of writing, it was a lived experience too … 

Below you can read an extract from the memoir.


Extract from I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal
I am a Christmas temp at H. Samuel, the high street jeweller, where a fella called Tahir puts me straight about the low quality of Pakistani gold and someone with blond hair and blue eyes, who looks after the Raymond Weils but is lacking in certain deductive skills, tries to sell me a part-share of a holiday apartment in Fuengirola. 

Another temp lives in a tower block in Five Ways. I go back to his and am told that people who use rolling tobacco in their spliffs are amateurs. At lunchtime I see him in the store room, filling a sports bag full of watches and alarm clocks which he later passes to an old woman, hard-bitten; if I hadn’t been stoned I might have said something to someone, though I think, in retrospect, that’s unlikely.

Interviewed for a Registered General Nursing Diploma, I have a plan to show I’m under no illusions about how hard I’ll have to work and that I haven’t decided to do it just so I can get a qualification, although this is certainly uppermost in my mind. “I know it’s a very dirty business,” I say, “I’m perfectly happy clearing up shit.” And then: “I mean I don’t mind clearing up shit at all, I know that’s a big part of the job. The shit.”

“Any questions?” they ask at the end, perplexed. “Not really,” I say, persevering, about a week before I don’t get an offer because they think I have some sort of shit fetish, “I just want you to know that I don’t mind wiping bottoms and I’m prepared to get stuck in with the cleaning up of all the shit.”

New Year’s Eve, after the pub, I am escorted round the back of an independent bakery, Lukers in Moseley, by a woman uninterested in pastries. I am being forced up against a pile of pallets when the security lights come on and she bails — a circumstance that leads me to question my hitherto rock-solid antipathy to the nascent Surveillance State.  

First love. One day, shortly after the longest Christmas on record, there was a heavy fall of snow in the south west. “I don’t want to go to work today,” I said, and she said, “you don’t have to. Tell them you went to Devon for the weekend and can’t get back.” So I rang a Civil Servant in the office where I’d just been promoted and told him I was snowbound in Tavistock.

We spent the morning warm under thin blankets, feeding each other fresh strawberries dipped in cream, mouth-to-mouth. Later, there was a cosmic blessing. The clouds above the city opened and dropped flowers of snow onto streets of cars and terraced houses and we went for a walk down the middle of Willows Road, linking arms like the Freewheelin’ Dylan and Suze.