Sean Cregan (aka John Rickards, Mr Nameless Horror) and I had a chat on Friday afternoon on Skype about his book, The Levels, which came out yesterday in paperback.
Sean describes The Levels as “Cyberpunk without the cyber”, and it’s somewhere roughly in the thriller genre. It’s not the sort of book I think I would have picked up by myself but Sean sent me a copy, so I read it and I loved it. (Particularly a bit at the end which I shan’t go into detail about because I don’t want to ruin it for you!)
In our chat, we talked about the world of The Levels, underground tunnel networks, over-researched books, Dan Simmon’s The Terror, the film Split Second, how important it is to give a shit about characters, the sequel to The Levels which is called The Razor Gate, the final scene in The Levels (a masterstroke, I must say), Sean/John’s earlier books written for Penguin, how The Levels is more the sort of thing that Sean wants to read himself, Sean’s last ‘real’ job, Creative Commons, comparisons to the [free] music industry, VAST, Nine Inch Nails, Kickstarter, micropatronage, distribution, economies and diseconomies of scale, status of The Razor Gate, side projects, where the name Sean Cregan came from (great story!), serial bigamists and ‘marriers’ and Larry King.
Please excuse the slightly squiffy audio quality, the rattle of typing and what sounds like seagulls (but which could, I suppose, simply be very loud kittens) in the background. I’ve tried to cut out the worst of the Skype-induced silences, but there are still times Sean sounds like a Dalek broadcasting over AM. Sorry!
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