The Suggestive World Of Steven Porter

The Suggestive World Of Steven Porter

Scottish writer Steven Porter's spooky 'Blurred Girl Diaries' was one of my favourite stories in Byker Books' Radgepacket Volume Four. He has recently published Blurred Girl & Other Suggestive Stories- a short and bittersweet collection of tales seen from the corner of a bleary eye.

Blurred Girl & Other Suggestive Stories by Steven Porter 'is a window into a series of imperfect relationships with a Dusty Springfield soundtrack and cameo appearances by Dustin Hoffman, John Denver’s double and lots of influential writers and books. The cast of everyday outsiders dream of what could be. Some just want to get the hell out but will the next place be any better? Some win consolation prizes, others are right out of luck. It’s a rollover for sure. This chapbook contains a collection of short stories and flash fiction that explore the writer's solid sense of expatriation and use of language.'

Steven is a Scot living in Spain and I'm an Englishman living in Poland so it seemed  sensible  to have a chinwag over in cyber space. 

PDB: What's the best thing about flash fiction?

SJP: Capturing a moment or telling a story in a few hundred words is not something every writer can do. Some take about 50-100 pages just to get tuned up. A lot of modern novels leave me with the impression that they should be shorter, but many readers have bought into the idea that quantity is more important than quality or even entertainment. Sometimes I read novels that seem as much as a third too long, with some writers churning it out to reach a certain word count. 

If Death in Venice or Slaughterhouse 5 came out today, they’d be dismissed out of hand by many publishers as too short. Have you always got the attention span and time for a huge novel? The majority of reading I do now is online and I have to be really convinced that a long novel is worth weeks of my time. Flash fiction is well suited to the internet, just like the three minute pop single once was to radio. 

Gone are the days when I used to send off flash fiction only to be told, “Send us your story again when it’s finished”. I’m hopeful too that e-books will make it easier for concise writing to become more economically viable. Flash fiction is a good exercise for any writer to see if they can get to the point that quickly. Worth mentioning that it shouldn’t be seen as just progress towards longer stuff. 

Borges, one of the 20th century great, never felt the need to publish a story longer than 14 pages. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s 500 words or 500 pages, as long as it’s good.

PDB: What's the best thing about living in exile?

SJP: I’m tempted to say living quite far from Easter Road so that I don’t have to witness the horror show that is Hibs 2010 in close-up. But exile sounds very dramatic. It always makes me think of writers or other political exiles that were forced to flee for their lives. 

For some reason, writers always seem to be in exile while other folk just live abroad. I blame Joyce. I can go back whenever I feel like it, if finances allow. I had a good grip on the language when I arrived in Spain in 1998 and obviously more so now. I like it that I’m able to enter into other linguistic cultures without great difficulty and maybe the influence of some Iberian and Latin American writers who are not so well known in the UK can give something a bit different. I’m still very aware of being a foreigner but feeling a bit of an outsider is nothing new for me. 

Sometimes when I go back to Scotland now I feel removed from that, although it’s very familiar at the same time. I’m more of an observer than a participant in many ways, so I’m fairly comfortable with life on the margins. Oh and getting used to eating octopus and actually liking it surely merits a Jim’ll Fix It badge.

PDB: One of my favorite stories in your collection is The Voyeur. Can you tell us a bit about that?

SJP: Really? That’s interesting. It’s much older than some of the other stuff. I wrote it sometime last century! It was published in Bad Marmalade about three years ago. BM had some very interesting writers on board for a while at the height of the MySpace thing. Pity that blog out of Manchester didn’t last longer actually. A few expressions from the 20th century version needed updating. I’m happy for any of my stories to get a special mention. If it was the same one all the time that would be worrying and if I didn’t think The Voyeur was up to scratch then it wouldn’t be there. I feel no need to embarrass myself by digging up old stories that are better forgotten. There are a couple of other older ones in this collection. I’ll let you try to work out which. The Voyeur is maybe linked in a way to Blurred Girl Diaries, written some ten years later. I like to observe. Some might say I’m a bit of a perv. But people seem to get it so does that say as much about them as it does about me? The Voyeur turns out to be an inanimate object. I often look to add a bizarre touch to stories that are often about pretty mundane things.

PDB: How did you choose the stories for the collection?

SJP: In reality it wasn’t that difficult. I don’t write that

many short stories or flash fiction. I’m more focussed on longer prose projects most of the time and am not prolific by any stretch of the imagination. I do have two or three new short stories in the pipeline though, either finished or half-finished. Writing the odd story or poem is a welcome break of sorts. But they go through quite a long gestation period. I don’t like to rush anything!

PDB: How did you stagger into the people from Byker Books?

SJP: Ha ha! Stagger is a good choice of word because I can’t really remember. I came across the Radgepacket series somewhere and thought it might be a good outlet for some of my stuff. “Tales from the Inner Cities” appealed to me as a title, as does their slogan “Industrial Strength Fiction”. I like gritty stuff but preferably something with a bit of humour as well. I sent them my story Blurred Girl Diaries and it was accepted for Radgepacket 4. It’s a story with no fixed setting as such – there’s no reference to any particular city or even country – but it’s quite feasable that it could be somewhere like the north of England where they are based. I might have a go at Radgepacket 5. I’ve got something else in a similar vein that might suit and the deadline is 26th November, so I’d better get it sent.

Are you sending another submission?

PDB: I sent my submission for Radge 5 during the summer!

SJP: Ah, you’re ahead of the game and prolific as usual. 

PDB: How is Lulu treating you?

SJP:  To be honest, I’m not that sure. The book was published through Lulu by Thunderclap Press which is based in New Jersey. I have no direct relationship with Lulu but I am coming round to the idea that self-publishing is the way to go. My main reservation about it is that I’d prefer at least some of my stuff to be endorsed by others. That turned out well since Amanda Deo of Thunderclap decided these stories were worth publishing. It’s a relatively new press and I think all the other books they’ve published so far have been poetry, so I’m honoured in a way.

PDB: What's next?

SJP: Christmas, apparently. I saw a flat with all the lights up yesterday, flashing away. No, in terms of writing, I'm putting the final, final touches to a fictional memoir "Countries of the World". Numerous excerpts have appeared at my World of Books blog. I plan to self-publish some paperback editions soon and maybe an e-book version too. I was aiming for the Xmas market, but I might leave it till early in the new year so I don't get caught up in the rush. I want to get that done and dusted since it's been occupying my time for over two years now. 

Hopefully I'll get back to other things that have been put on the back burner, another wee book of poetry (possibly a bi-lingual edition) and a series of female monologues based on the life of a Spanish poet. Rather than dealing with publishing issues, final drafts and proofreading, I want to get back into the creative side as that's where the biggest buzz is for me.

Thanks, Steve.

Steve Porter's blog is here. 

Back in June, Steve did a guest blog for me. Read about B.S. Johnson Here 

He's also on Twitter & Facebook.