{"id":286,"date":"2016-06-04T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T08:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/?page_id=286"},"modified":"2016-06-04T23:32:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T12:32:43","slug":"shaunavery","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/contributors\/shaunavery\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile: Shaun Avery"},"content":{"rendered":"

All The King\u2019s Men is being written by an incredibly talented and diverse team of writers from around the world. The stories in the anthology are informed by their unique perspective on the world, and their own fascinating experiences.<\/p>\n

We here at anthology HQ want to celebrate these writers and their experiences. We not only want to support their other creative endeavours, but we also want to give you some insight into them as people and as creators, and to give you a chance to follow these great writers beyond this anthology.<\/p>\n

Today’s featured writer is Shaun Avery, a writer with more than 40 stories and a handful of awards under his belt.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Shaun<\/center><\/p>\n

Please, tell us about yourself.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hi! I\u2019m Shaun, a crime and horror fiction writer with a penchant also for penning satirical tales \u2013 most often skewering our society\u2019s ridiculous obsession with fame and celebrity. I write both prose and comics, and dabble, too, in writing scripts that I think would make pretty good films \u2013 in fact, I was one of six out of a hundred entries shortlisted for a screenwriting contest a few years ago. They cancelled the contest and never announced a winner, though. Not that I\u2019m bitter about that or anything. Much.<\/p>\n

How long have you been writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seriously, about the last five years or so. I started to really go after it when I wrote my first comic script. Everything just seemed to click then.<\/p>\n

Who is your favourite writer, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In comics, Garth Ennis \u2013 and it\u2019s great to see so much of his stuff getting adapted for TV now, especially the forthcoming The Boys<\/em>\u00b8 which is my favourite comic series of all time. This is a guy who seems to be awesome in every genre he works in, and he\u2019s one of the few comic writers I buy religiously \u2013 an ironic term to use, given the brilliantly sacrilegious nature of most of his work.<\/p>\n

In horror, Bentley Little. A guy who always takes things to the max and does strangeness like no one else \u2013 I mean, who else could make litter into an item of terror? (Don\u2019t believe me? Read his short story Paperwork<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s cool).<\/p>\n

For crime stuff, I\u2019d guess my favourite of all time has to be Ed McBain \u2013 to be that prolific (over a hundred books, I think) and that good is nothing short of remarkable. Plus you can never tell who did it until the end of the book.<\/p>\n

What can you tell us about your writing process? Do you approach each project in the same way?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With prose, it\u2019s usually a first line that just flits in from nowhere and demands a story be placed at the end of it. Or occasionally I\u2019ll read something relating to fame and our obsession with it in the newspaper, and I\u2019ll just have to satirise it \u2013 for instance, I read a few years ago that there\u2019s actually a job title known as autograph hunter. Can you believe that? We\u2019re so fixated on fame that someone out there actually tracks down autographs for a living. That became a comic script, one that\u2019s due for publication next year from 100% Biodegradable<\/a>. I\u2019ve seen the artwork for it, and it\u2019s going to freaking rock. Believe me.<\/p>\n

With comics, it mostly to come as an image \u2013 either a scene, a setting, or a character \u2013 and then we\u2019ll go off from there. It\u2019s got to be a pretty strong visual, though. Oh yeah. Got to reel that reader in right from the start. <\/p>\n

Your pitch for All the King’s Men took one of the more unusual story prompts and turned it into some jet black noir fiction. For my part, this fascinating new direction took me completely by surprise. Can you explain how this story formed in this way? Was this piece inspired by any fictional influences?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, I just love<\/em> noir fiction. I guess the first one I read was Cop Hater<\/em> by the aforementioned Ed McBain, which I suppose is technically a police procedural but still has that old-school, gritty vibe to it. Then there\u2019s the early stuff of Lawrence Block, things like Deadly Honeymoon<\/em>, which is just about the most perfect name for a noir work you ever could imagine. But the biggest noir influence on me \u2013 so much so that he\u2019s namechecked in Just Another Day<\/em> \u2013 is Richard Stark (one of the many pseudonyms of the multi-talented and much-missed crime author Donald E. Westlake) and his frankly phenomenal series of books about master criminal Parker. I love those novels with an unholy passion \u2013 been re-reading them all again recently \u2013 and I never tire of recommending them to people.<\/p>\n

As to how the pitch turned out that way… I guess it\u2019s just the way my mind works. I read the prompt, and saw how the story could go right from the start. I\u2019m very much looking forward to starting work on it, and think it\u2019s going to be something special. Plus I like to think of Diamond and Lennox as being spiritual cousins of the mighty Parker. Grifting all the way.<\/p>\n

\"Diamond

Diamond and Lennox in Just Another Day<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

You recently released a new comic called Spectre Show<\/em><\/a>. Can you tell us about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to be teamed with artist extraordinaire David Broughton<\/a> on a couple of strips for small press UK fanzines Zarjaz<\/em><\/a> and Dogbreath<\/em><\/a> and I was blown away by the quality of his work. So I was a very happy man when he got in touch and asked if I fancied working on something original together. Initially we were pitching to another small press zine, but he suggested we go the self-publishing route. David had some previous experience with self-publishing comics, so he actually did all the hard work \u2013 drawing it, lettering it (really hard \u2013 I\u2019ve tried to letter something myself, and I sucked at it) and getting the thing actually printed. Makes me feel a bit lazy, really. All I had to do was write the scripts, and when you\u2019re into the idea that doesn\u2019t even feel like work at all.<\/p>\n

What was the most rewarding part of creating Spectre Show<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Getting to write the panel description for a full page splash! Honestly, wanted to do that for so long. And for episode two of Spectre Show<\/em>, I picked the grossest image I could think of for that honour. It still makes me smile to think about writing that description.<\/p>\n

\"SpectreShow\"<\/center><\/p>\n

What were the biggest challenges you faced while creating Spectre Show<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had never written, you know, an \u2018origin\u2019 story before, so the first script I sent over to launch the series… well, it would have been great as a standalone, one-off-tale, but as the first episode to an ongoing series it just didn\u2019t cut the mustard. Back to the drawing board. Luckily, David knew what he was doing, and he helped get me where I needed to be. Kept the original title, though. I mean, \u201cThe Origins of Sin\u201d… I still don\u2019t think you get much cooler than that.<\/p>\n

You have more than 40 stories to your name. If our readers want to find more work by you, where do you recommend they start? Spectre Show<\/em> or somewhere else? Do you have a favourite published piece that you feel perfectly encapsulates what Shaun Avery is all about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favourite prose piece published so far is my entry to Demonic Visions Volume Four<\/a><\/em>, a cheery little piece called Apology Addicts<\/em> which starts with a little kid\u2019s arm being sawn off and then goes steadily downhill from there. I think what I love most about that one is that the horror and satire were completely in sync, neither one overshadowing the other. It\u2019s probably arguable whether I\u2019ve hit that with other works of mine. For comics, probably The Worker<\/em> from Spectre Show<\/em>. Another thing I love to write about is work \u2013 people\u2019s attitudes to it, being a workaholic, all that fun stuff, and that\u2019s what this strip deals with. Only with possessed people and demons. Plus, you know, I got to write another full page splash. With stuff burning, this time. So this one ticks pretty much every box for me.<\/p>\n

\"DemonicVisions4\"<\/center><\/p>\n

You write in both comics and prose. Do you have a preferred format? Can you break down the advantages and disadvantages of each form, as you see them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love writing prose… to a certain length. Anything above, say, twenty thousand words, and I lose the gist of what I\u2019m writing, and it stops being fun. I\u2019ve thought about this, and, for me at least, when it comes to writing at the kind of depth you need to make a really long piece work, I only see that in terms of the way people move, the way they look and interact with each other, and that\u2019s the type of writing muscle you get to stretch with comics. So for prose I think short stories and novellas will always be where I\u2019m at, and the longer stuff will be always be comic scripts and (fingers crossed) screenplays.<\/p>\n

Advantages? Well, I love that you can tell a short comic story in three to six panels \u2013 read some great ones like that, and written a couple myself, in fact. I think they work better than flash fiction, which I guess is the closest prose equivalent. Also, I think the greatest advantage to writing comics lie in the mechanics of the medium \u2013 in the same story you could have full page splashes, double page spreads and silent pages… and that\u2019s some freedom to have. <\/p>\n

An advantage to prose is that you can experiment in different ways \u2013 for instance, I think the epistolary format works better with prose. I\u2019ve read a couple of novels written in the modern day version of letters, the e-mail, and they were great. I also wrote something recently myself that was told partly in blog entries, and it\u2019s an as-yet-unfulfilled ambition of mine to write a story entirely in e-mails. <\/p>\n

All in all, though, I really love writing in each medium, and feel blessed to be able to do both. <\/p>\n

Are you working on or planning anything else at the moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yep. Got a long novella in first draft form that tackles bigger and bolder themes than I\u2019ve ever tackled before, so I\u2019m kind of working my way up to that one. More shorts, too \u2013 got a notebook full of hastily scribbled ideas that I\u2019ll have to start picking my way through soon.<\/p>\n

Where would you like to see yourself and your writing career in five or ten years\u2019 time?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writing comics. Getting paid for it. That would do me, I reckon.<\/p>\n

We here at ATKM HQ think Shaun is a writer worth following. <\/p>\n

You can check out his other work here:
\nSpectre Show<\/a>
\nWhat Lou Andrews Won’t Do For Cash<\/a>
\nDemonic Visions anthologies<\/a> (Shaun has stories in Vols 1-6)<\/p>\n

Shaun invites people to connect with him on Facebook<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All The King\u2019s Men is being written by an incredibly talented and diverse team of writers from around the world. The stories in the anthology are informed by their unique perspective on the world, and their own fascinating experiences. We here at anthology HQ want to celebrate these writers and their experiences. We not onlyContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":61,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-286","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-thumb"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6PLsz-4C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286\/revisions\/293"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shanewsmith.com\/allthekingsmen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}