Hello there,
And welcome to this top secret page of Caimh’s website. Below are the spoiler titbits regarding the writing of Angels in The Moonlight. Please, whatever you don’t Don’t read this if you’ve not read the book – it won’t make sense and you’ll ruin the book for yourself. There’sa reason they call them spoilers!
So, that warning out of the way, join me behind the curtain. (Is it just me, or does that sound a bit creepy?). Anyway.
Origins
I should start with giving you an idea of where the story came from.
While I was writing The Day That Never Comes – I became ever-so-slightly obsessed with Bunny’s backstory. I really wanted to figure out what made him tick. I spent an awful lot of that summer walking around my local park thinking about precious little else.
I had the storyline of Simone and Bunny pretty much nailed in my head long before I’d finished The Day That Never Comes. In fact, it is weird how real something like that becomes. I actually have enormous chunks of Bunny’s life story figured out in my head, most of which will probably never make it into a book.
So, I knew the Simone storyline and then I started to gradually build up the storyline regarding Tommy Carter and his gang. That took a lot more figuring out. A fair chunk of it is actually loosely based around a famous Dublin real-life criminal called The General, Martin Cahill. He was primarily the head of an armed robbery gang and he did delight in trying to make the Gardaí look foolish – so much so that they resorted to the unprecedented step of overtly surveilling him every hour of the day. The cops literally followed him around in the street. I read every available book on him, as much to understand how the Garda organization and politics behind something like that might work.
I decided pretty early on that there would be a rogue element of Gardaí trying to rob Carter too. Figuring all of that out was the bit that took the longest time. Without giving too much away, some of you might have wondered how Gringo and his two co-conspirators thought they might get away with such an audacious plan – while it isn’t revealed in the book, they had some help. I’ll not say anything more than that for the minute – don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, or indeed toss it off the balcony.
What didn’t happen?
There was one big event that was on the planning board for the novel for ages and I changed my mind about it really late in the process. When we meet Magpie Mary – the homeless woman early on in the story, she served two purposes. Firstly, I needed to set her up for the role she would have later in allowing Bunny to know what really happened in the shootout between Carter’s gang and the police, and secondly, I wanted Gringo to step up and help her out when he and Bunny found her in the street bleeding. Gringo is obviously a deeply flawed character, but it was really important for the story that you the reader liked him and could see why he and Bunny would be friends. That incident allowed you to see him as the good guy he is, before seeing how much he would later mess up.
The big thing that didn’t happen was this.
I had planned on Bunny telling Gringo that he knew what really happened at the shootout thanks to Magpie Mary and then they were to have a big falling out. This still essentially happens. What almost happened but didn’t, was Magpie Mary turning up dead! The idea was that Gringo would’ve said something to one of his co-conspirators and they, without him realising, would have gone and ‘dealt’ with poor Mary. When I came close to writing that, it just felt too dark. It felt that not only would it be a permanent break between Bunny and Gringo, something that Bunny could never have forgiven, even if Gringo had only inadvertently caused it to happen – it also felt like it would’ve been way too far for things to go for Gringo. At that point, he would have gone to his bosses and confessed everything I reckon. He was flawed after all, but he was still fundamentally a good guy.
The trickiest thing
I think the trickiest thing with the whole novel was balance. As I knew the storyline with Simone very early in the process, I knew this was going to be a much darker story than the other two books. I always considered the other books to be a mix of comedic and dramatic but I was concerned that readers might find some of the very dark stuff in this one jarring. I decided early on, that I just had to trust in the story. If you notice, in the truly dark moments, like Simone explaining what happened that caused her to flee New York, I kept the humour well away from that part as it just wouldn’t have been appropriate. With stuff like that, I guess I wanted to stretch myself as an author and I just had to hope the audience would go with it.
Similarly, I was aware that the pretty damn unhappy ending would catch people who had read the other two books by surprise. Sure, the ‘bad guys’ get dealt with but at a very high cost. Gringo, Bunny’s best friend, dies and Simone, the love of his life, disappears entirely out of his life. My thinking behind this was, believe it or not, fairly heavily influenced by Game of Thrones. I’m a massive fan of the books and the TV show and the best thing about it is the fact that anything can happen. Popular characters die, evil triumphs, and brilliantly drawn complex characters make decisions based on greed and ambition one minute and then morality the next. It is why it is so compelling, because there are real stakes in play.
I similarly didn’t want people to read my books and feel like they know how it was going to end. I think the best thing about the ending of Angels is that it will hopefully make readers a lot less certain as to what is going to happen in the next book. Not to give to much away, but let’s just say that the final book of the trilogy will see a lot of chickens coming home to roost.
The Funny bits
The question I probably get asked most is, how do I come up with the funny bits? In all honestly, I kind of don’t. I mean, I do write them obviously but I just let them happen really. I plan out what needs to occur in each chapter in term of plot development and then things being funny I guess is the route my brain naturally takes between points A and B. I never have a character do something or go somewhere just because I think it will be amusing. I stick to the rule of trying to develop the plot and the character and the funny just seems to be a by-product of that. I then, of course, go back and edit hard, to chuck out any bits that don’t work, but I don’t recall ever sitting down with a chapter and thinking ‘I need to make this funny.’ Often when reading over it, I’ll rework it as I’ll have a better idea but a lot of it is I just set the characters off running and see where they take me.
Nice surprises:
While I had the Simone storyline pretty early, I initially had an Irish nun helping her get out of New York. The idea that there could actually be a whole organization aka The sisters of the Saint, was a nice surprise when it popped into my head. The sisters rather took on a life of their own, hence the novella. Thanks to all of you who e-mailed about it. Once I’m done with this current book, I might well do something with the sisters, but I’ve not decided yet.
The other thing which admittedly right now, is probably only fun for me – is something that Bunny explains to Gringo near the end of the book. The idea that he is effectively the latest in a long-line of Bunny McGarrys as the Bunny name has been passed down through generations of the family. I always thought it would be fun to write a Western short story where Bunny would be the lone stranger riding into town on horseback(and being him, serious saddle-sores) to clean up this damn town. Bunny is at his core, a lot like one of the classic cowboy heroes. Who knows, if I ever get the time I might write a whole bunch of short stories of “Bunny McGarrys in history!”
Research
A couple of you have asked what kind of research I do for the books. Well, when I started off writing the first one, after an extensive search and a fair bit of begging, I did manage to find a Garda detective who I could pester with questions. He was very patient with all my queries. It’s hard to find out about policing in Ireland as there has been a lot less written about it than there has in the states or the UK. There’s a great Irish journalist called Paul Williams who writes about true Irish crime – I’ve devoured all of his books.
I have noticed that it is a lot harder to get people to help with research on your first book. The good news is that once you’ve written a couple, it gets a lot easier. I guess people then consider you to be a “proper author”. As I’m currently working on the finale of the trilogy, I’ve already consulted a pathologist and a barrister, and I’m very probably going to need to talk to a psychiatrist too.
So there you go, whether you wanted it or not, there is an inside view into my creative process. Let me know what you thought, as if enough people find this interesting, I might do one for every book.
As always, thanks for reading and reviewing.
Cheers,
Caimh