It’s a real pleasure to welcome you to join me today to celebrate indie publishing with Saira Viola, her novel Crack Apple and Pop was published by Fahrenheit Press in June 2018, and has been the book of the moment with a great blog tour with damppebbles this week.
Description:
Tony is a handsome young boxer is forced into a life of crime after suffering a vicious blow in the ring.
Seduced by the glitz and glamour of London and mentored by charismatic gang lord Don March he rises rapidly up the crime ladder until he spies an opportunity to start a semi-legit Natural Highs business.
Bankrolled by an eccentric British dandy and accompanied by a cast of starry misfits including a 3ft tall blue-haired money man, an Etonian drug mule, two dominatrix debt collectors, a dodgy lawyer and a host of demi-celebs, Tony carves out a roll for himself in a city where money creates its’ own morality.
All seems to be going well until in the shadows, a Bollywood mobster threatens to derail their plans.
Chaos ensues, of course it does – wonderful, beautiful, visceral chaos.
The deft wit of Hammett meets the vivid poetics of Chandler: Crack Apple and Pop is slick smart and razor sharp. A gritty and sometimes metafictive slice of London noir.
A city of artful dodgers, yardie gangsters, kinky aristos, cocaine dusted starlets and social thrill seekers where everyone’s hustling and everyone’s getting high.
Whether it’s law, finance, the music biz, or the boxing ring: money is king. And only the ones prepared to risk everything will survive…
You can buy a copy of Crack, Apple & Pop via:
Author Feature: 
Saira Viola is an acclaimed novelist, poet, and song lyricist. From her early poetic experimentation with language, image and sound (a technique she has dubbed sonic scatterscript) to her novelistic ventures into the dark, absurd world of contemporary crime fiction, Viola’s work pulses with iconoclastic brio that mischievously blasts the golden calves of our times. Literary Heavyweight Benjamin Zephaniah, has praised her ‘twisted beautiful imagination,’ and polymathic genius, Heathcote Williams (RIP) her ‘hypnotic explosive’, writing style. Twice Nominated for Best of The Net 2017 Pushcart Prize Nominee 2017 Rascal Magazine. Viola’s poetry collection Flowers of War debuted at the New York Poetry Festival and published by UB Press. Novels Jukebox (Fahrenheit Press) Crack Apple and Pop (Fahrenheit Press) Viola is a regular contributor to counterculture magazines Gonzo Today and International Times.
What’s your most favourite thing about being an author ?
The sense of the unknown. You can go anywhere your imagination, and your memories take you. A little bit of truth dust and boom: You open the doors to different worlds and immerse yourself in the lives of the characters you’re creating or characters triggered by history, real people, lurid dreams. Even labels for cat food in supermarket aisles can spark a train of thought in your mind leading to a potential story .
What’s your least favourite thing about being an author ?
The horror of sometimes feeling like a naked trapeze artist balancing a coke bottle on your head. Fizz fizz pop! You drop -with absolutely nothing to say.
If you could have written any book what would it be about and why ?
Not a book but :
I wish I’d written, and choreographed the Dance of The Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky or Marvin Gaye’s sublime classic What’s Going On?
How do you spend your time when not writing?
I’m always writing unless I’m sleeping when I’m dreaming in cinematic stories! Much of my work has a visceral, rhythmic feel, and lucid dreams can play a part in the writing process. Although dreams tend to be imagistic, a dream can creep into my conscience, and materialize a line, a sentence, and even a chapter. It seems that everything I do revolves around writing. Even when I’ve volunteered for social causes, I find myself writing: I have worked as a volunteer helping young adults to read and am part of a grassroots initiative providing books to prisons, reform schools, orphanages, mobile libraries, and pop up libraries in socially deprived neighbourhoods. And for years I have been writing letters to prison inmates for Amnesty International .
Do you have a set routine for writing- rituals you have to observe ?
No. No rituals of any kind. I snatch whatever time I can, and scribble away.
Writing where I can when I can . Right now I’m sofa -slumming so I write perched on a cushion laboriously punching words onto my phone. In between subway stops, waiting in hospital corridors (surprisingly tranquil) hoofing to grocery stores. Anywhere -everywhere. It’s not ideal, and Virginia Woolf’s famous quote from her essay A Room of One’s Own still resonates but I’m making good progress.
What’s on the horizon ?
I’m currently writing the closing chapters of a new novel American Scandal . It’s a crime story set in Los Angeles featuring an all female punk band, and a fast -thinking mean- mouthed street-smart female mobster, and entertainment impresario. The book looks at the ugliness lurking behind the celebrity fuelled New Age posturing, and post modern spangle. Some of the characters struggle for identity, and there is an eruption of racism that threatens the fairy tale promise of the American Dream . Everyone’s making deals, and payoffs . Venal reaming makes the world go round. Whether it’s law, sex, or money they all hunger for their fifteen minutes- but riches, and status- changing fame always come at a price.
Any pearls of wisdom for your readers?
Ha! Wisdom comes from experience, not interviews. Just pray your liver holds out!
What’s your current book about and why should we read it ?
Crack Apple and Pop (published by Fahrenheit 13 an impress of Fahrenheit Press) is a prime slice of Brit Noir. A crime story set in the glitzy streets of London. A city of artful dodgers, yardie gangsters, kinky aristos, cocaine -dusted starlets, demi -celebs, and social thrill seekers where everyone’s hustling, and everyone’s getting high. A city where money creates its’ own morality. It may intrigue, disgust, and shock ! Like discovering a bleeding pinkie in a velvet -ribbed chocolate box. Lurking beneath the flashy real estate, high end boutiques and bright lights are some of the most debauched, dangerous and dirty parts of subterranean London . The novel offers a back stage pass to the sleazy machinations of the city’s connivers puppeteers and fixers. Reading about it imminently more fun than living it!
Social Media Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sairaviola
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saira.viola/
Website: http://sairaviola.net/