Interview: Nathan Burrage

Nathan Burrage is a Sydney writer whose debut mystical thriller novel FIVEFOLD has just been released by Random House. His short fiction has appeared in a places such as Aurealis, Orb, Shadow Box, Shadowed Realms, The Workers' Paradise, and Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror 2007 edition, and has also received Honourable Mentions in the last three editions of the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. You can read Matthew Tait's review of FIVEFOLD here.

You have a steady list of short fiction credits over the last decade but you're only now releasing your debut novel FIVEFOLD. Did you make a conscious decision to switch to the longer form? Please describe your journey from short story writer to novelist?

Hi. Thanks for inviting me to sit on the HorrorScope sofa.

There is a certain degree of circularity in having FIVEFOLD published, because it’s where I started my fiction writing career. I finished the first draft of the novel back in the middle of 1999. Blissfully unaware of how much further work was required, I promptly submitted it to an agent, had it returned to me even more promptly, and then sought a manuscript assessment. The critique was professional and did me the courtesy of being honest; I had a good story but I needed to dramatically improve my ability to tell it.

After some moping, my solution was to join the NSW Writers’ Centre and to start writing short stories as a training ground for longer works. I spent the next few years writing short fiction and slowly built up the bibliography of 20-odd short story credits I have today. Along the way, FIVEFOLD underwent a number of redrafts, slowly tightening and improving each time.

While the short and long forms of fiction are quite different disciplines, writing short stories has been very beneficial to my novel writing in the following ways:
a) Short fiction is a great way to experiment with genre, style, and voice without investing 2 years of effort to see if the experiment worked. In turn, this taught me a lot about my strengths and weaknesses;
b) Writing a short story requires brevity and a strong appreciation for the elements necessary to support characterisation and plot. The same lessons can be applied to novels; and
c) Working with the editors of Australian small press was excellent preparation for having a novel edited, and I’m greatly indebted to them for the lessons they taught me over the years. Particularly for teaching me a story can always be improved.

So novels have always been what I aspired to, but I see myself returning to the short form whenever time and opportunity allow.

FIVEFOLD seems to be getting a big promotional push from Random House. How does it feel to be an 'overnight sensation'?

Random House have been excellent to work with. In terms of promotion, the single most important thing they’ve done for FIVEFOLD is produce an arresting cover that really captures the tone of the book. As an author, you can’t ask for more.

Distribution of the book in Australia has been widespread too, including all the major chains, many of the independent bookstores and even copies at the airports. Having dreamed of such coverage in idle moments, it is a surreal experience to be holding book launches and receiving picture messages from friends’ mobile phones showing your novel sitting on the shelves of their local bookstore.

Do you believe this promotional push signals a greater investment from Random House into Aussie speculative fiction talent?

Yes I do, but I think the trend is wider than just one publisher. The competition to secure Australian talent in popular fiction has become quite fierce in recent years. From a Fantasy perspective, I think this is at least partly attributable to the success, both locally and overseas, of established Australian writers. Names like Williams, Irvine, Douglass, Wilkins, McIntosh, Canavan, Harding, and Masson really have paved the way for the new generation. And compounding the situation is the arrival of a new imprint in the Australian market, which always creates opportunities.

So it’s an exciting time to be writing speculative fiction in Australia, but it’s also worth noting that there is nothing new about publishers being passionate about unearthing local talent.

FIVEFOLD is billed as a 'mystical thriller' and its plot hinges on the mysticism of the Bible and the Kabbalah. What drew you to the Kabbalah as source material?

I think the Kabbalah found me, to be honest. I was entirely unaware of this esoteric tradition until I stumbled across it during the early stages of my research. At the time, the first part of the novel had been written, I had a strong sense of each character and knew the general themes of the novel. I remember reading about the Kabbalah for the first time and I felt a click in my head. The imagery and rituals, their beliefs about the underlying cosmology of the universe, it all just slotted into the narrative, providing an explanation for most of the questions raised in the first part of the book.

I get goosebumps to this day just thinking about it.

Do you fear some religious critics could denounce the novel because of its subject matter?

I certainly hope so! Look what it did for Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code!!

On a more serious note, I would be surprised if the novel was denounced on religious grounds. While I have amalgamated elements of the Kabbalah into the plot, no particular faith or religious institution is singled out. Yes, FIVEFOLD offers what some might describe as an alternative theology of sorts, but it does so only through the narrative journey of fictional characters. When the subject matter of a novel is so clearly fictional, I find it hard to imagine anyone mounting a serious complaint on religious grounds. In some respects, it would almost be a compliment if they did, because an objection would imply a degree of plausibility normally reserved for non-fiction.

You're a graduate (with honours!) of the Clarion South residential writers workshop. How did you find the experience, how did it affect your writing, and how did it change the way you approached the business of writing?

Starting with the last question first, I have no doubt FIVEFOLD would still be sitting in the unpublished drawer if it weren’t for the students, tutors, and convenors of Clarion South ’05. The experience was that profound and provided such an acceleration of learning I owe them all an enormous debt.

But it wasn’t all roses. Clarion South is tough. No sense hedging around it. Set during the height of the Queensland summer, it’s literally a melting pot of ideas, different personalities, and bursts of inspiration and exasperation. Some people thrive in this sort of environment, others don’t. I fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and I certainly had some difficult moments inside the critique class. And I absolutely hated submitting first drafts, but with all the reading and class time, it was unavoidable.

Clarion South was also an invaluable experience. Above all else, it taught me two critical lessons. The first was to step back from my fiction and to read it as a first-time reader might. For me, this involved putting aside the image in my head of a particular setting, leaving aside the research and my knowledge of the character’s motivations, and asking fundamental questions, such as; Have I set the stage sufficiently?; Does this passage or explanation make sense to the uninitiated?; Are my characters acting true to themselves or just kowtowing to the plot? Taken individually, each question probably seems quite obvious. Applying them collectively to my work, taking the authorial lens off if you like, was very powerful for me.

The second lesson was simply this; writing fiction was something I wanted to do for a very long time.

What advice can you give writers looking to follow in your footsteps and publish their first novel?

We could spend the whole interview on this topic, but I’ll try to keep it short.

Perseverance comes first. Plenty of people will tell you how hard it is to get a first novel published and they’ll be right. If you’re easily daunted, becoming a novelist isn’t for you.

Be professional in everything you do. From the cover letter, to formatting the first 3 chapters and synopsis according to the publisher’s preferences, to gracefully accepting a rejection letter, be the consummate professional. Remember that a publisher has to work with the authors they publish. Don’t give them a reason to avoid working with you.

Be prepared to do the hard yards. Novels require a big commitment to finish, an even bigger commitment to rewrite and re-craft, which you’ll do again once a publisher takes it onboard, and then you must help promote it. Like I said, if you’re easily daunted...

Are there any sequels/prequels to FIVEFOLD in the works? What are you working on now?

I must be getting predictable in my old age...yes, a loose prequel is underway but it’s set much earlier than FIVEFOLD and does not overlap with the present crop of characters. If FIVEFOLD is best described as a contemporary mystic thriller, novel 2 would probably fall under the sub-subgenre of historical conspiracy-fantasy, I think.

Aside from FIVEFOLD, what can we expect from Nathan Burrage in 2008?

2008 is shaping up pretty well so far. I have a number of short stories that will be appearing in local magazines and anthologies in the first half of the year. They include:
• A short story in MACABRE: A Journey Through Australian Horror from Brimstone Press
• 2 pieces of micro-fiction in the Black Box e-anthology, also from Brimstone Press
• A short story in The Workers’ Paradise anthology from Ticonderoga Publications
• A novelette in Issue 40 of Aurealis magazine
• And a reprint of my flash fiction piece, "The Sidpa Bardo", in Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror 2007 edition available from Brimstone Press

With my focus on the prequel, there won’t be much room for short fiction until probably the end of the year, but you never know when an insistent idea might blindside you...