Steven Hall spoke to Chris Killen about the publication of his first novel, The Bird Room.

S: Hey Chris, it's been ages since we talked properly, how's it going? How are you feeling now that The Bird Room launch is around the corner?

C: I feel really excited. I spent a lot of December panicking, but now I'm just looking forward to it coming out. It's strange, even though it hasn't come out yet there have already been some early reviews -- a couple on websites -- and some Amazon customer ones (from this 'Vine programme' which is, I guess, a thing where they send out advance copies). The reviews have been very mixed; a few people really hated it. That might be why I feel better now -- that it's not all just my imagined, over-the-top reactions any more. Concrete things are happening instead. My parents still haven't read it, though, I don't think. I gave them a copy at Christmas. I'm still a bit worried that they are going to 'disown me' for being a 'dirty little boy' or something when they read it.

S: Can you say a little about the book and how it came about? What interests you as a writer?

C: The novel is about a relationship that falls apart due to jealousy and paranoia, some of which is irrational. I imagine people might read it and think it is about a relationship I had, and while I have had a couple of relationships that ended kind of horribly, it is nearly all imagined stuff -- I sometimes used small instances in my own life as starting points, but I then pushed them to horrible, imagined conclusions. Some really awkward, terrible things happen to the characters.

I guess one main thing I'm interested -- and was especially so when writing The Bird Room -- is irrationality. That someone's actions can't always be explained psychologically. Sometimes you might just have an urge to do something, which seems to be the opposite of what you want. The characters in The Bird Room have urges like that a lot.

The most obvious version of this would be something like standing on a bridge over a busy motor way and thinking 'I could just throw myself off', even though you know you are not going to do it. Nothing suicidal happens in the novel, but that kind of feeling was something I wanted to explore. And also, you know, jealousy, paranioa, etc. The things I mentioned above.

S: You mentioned pushing events to horrible, imagined conclusions and that was one of the many joys of the book for me. I loved it that as bad as I thought things might get, as low as I thought Will could fall, you seemed to always to be able to push him down a lot, lot further, which was both horrible and brilliant for me as a reader. There's so much black, heartbreaking humour in The Bird Room. This might be a crazy question, but did you ever feel bad for putting Will (the narrator) through all that? I guess I'm asking what sort of relationship you have with your characters.

C: I felt worse maybe about Helen/Clair. In the original draft nothing really nice happens to her and she was sort of 'abandoned' in it, still just living a horrible, depressing life. That kind of gnawed at me as I liked her and so it was something I looked into while redrafting and expanding.

For some reason, the scenes with Will -- as horrible as they are -- I feel okay about because they're also funny (hopefully). And also, while he's not exactly like me, he is based on (some of the extreme) elements of my personality. So he didn't really feel as much like a complete, separate character who I should 'look after'.

In the novel I am writing now, some really awful things happen to characters that I like a lot. I feel very bad about this.

S: I have a really clear memory of reading the first chapter of The Bird Room when you emailed the manuscript to me. I was sitting cross-legged on my living room floor and by the end of the first page I was completely sold. I remember looking across to my girlfriend and saying "Oh, shit. This is really good. Like, really good." I was amazed when you told me that you hadn't had any interest from the agents you'd showed it to, because the brilliance of the book is all there the minute you start reading. What the hell's wrong with the publishing industry, Chris?

C: Thank you. That's very nice of you. I don't know. I don't want to sound full of myself but I think The Bird Room is maybe not like other 'popular' contemporary novels, or at least not ones in this country. My influences are mostly cult writers. So maybe it was something that people (agents) looked at and were unsure where it would fit in the current scheme of things. It is not set in an exotic location. It is not a coming-of-age novel from a young foreign woman's point of view. You don't 'learn anything'. I don't know.

I think there are some good small presses in this country -- Social Disease, Snowbooks, Salt -- that are willing to take some risks.

And there's Canongate, of course. From meeting them and talking with them, they genuinely seem excited about the idea of taking gambles on things -- publishing because they are passionate about something, more than because they think it will sell thousands of copies. I feel very lucky that they read my novel and liked it.

S: Care to take a guess on what's the most annoying question you're going to be asked over and over and over?

C: I think it's going to be 'You did a Creative Writing MA, right? What do you think when people say, 'Writing can't be taught'? I have already answered that one maybe 4 or 5 times. 

S: I think maybe it's important to have a really extravagant lie of an answer in reserve for questions like those. I remember telling a few people that I bought the central idea for Raw Shark Texts from someone at a circus, that made me happy.  Anyway, I've been lucky enough to see a few different drafts of The Bird Room, but we've never really talked about that process. How have you found the editing process and working with the folks at Canongate?

C: Working with Francis -- my editor at Canongate -- has been a really good, interesting experience. I feel like it has improved my writing a bit. I feel like I know how to 'structure a novel' slightly better now. And then all the other parts -- the proofs, the cover design, the foreign sales and publicity stuff -- it's all been great. It's taken quite a long time to get from the first offer of the deal to right now. It's all felt very organic; I've never really felt like there was something that they wanted me to do that I didn't want to. If I was going to describe the people at Canongate in an informal way, I would call them 'sweethearts' or something.

The last few months have been very exciting. I received the final copies of the novel. I did some interviews and things. It's all been really good.

S: Francis is great, isn't he? (Hello Francis). I don't know if you've found this too, but it always seems to me that he has this wonderful way of getting you to explain something from the manuscript to him and in doing so you find yourself telling him exactly what he wanted you to realise was wrong with it in the first place! How are you finding the interviews?

C: Yes, you've nailed it there. Working with Francis has been a really interesting experience. I never felt pushed to do anything I didn't want to do. More that through very natural conversations, I would seemingly reach conclusions or have new ideas that I would never have come across if I was just thinking about it on my own.

The interviews have been fun so far. The book in some ways feels quite old and far away to me now, but it's been good to go back and think about it again.

S: Thanks Chris, I hope The Bird Room brings you all the success you deserve, it's a wonderful book. See you at the launch on the 27th.

Next: Chris Killen talks to Tao Lin.

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