Author's Notes Pt. 4 - Joshua shot first

This is a spoiler section for a bunch of parts, if you have not read them then I recommend you go back and do so to avoid spoilers for the main story. This is mainly to write about the changes made and the some of the inspirations or stories behind some of the characters.

If you are interested read below, otherwise go to the index and read from the beginning before coming back to this.

Read below for more spoilers. That is the third warning.



Dan is a difficult character to write as a protagonist. They are meant, generally, as a crutch for the narrative and he is just a little too wishy-washy for that. Certainly, it is fair to argue that he is still recovering from the death of the love of his life so  this is something that has left him feeling pretty empty. My problem is that I spent lots of time asking myself ‘why would anyone bother talking to him?’. For all the moping around he does it is hard to justify why anyone outside of his circle of friends would even talk to him let alone like him.

So, as I have been editing the book there are things I’ve been changing in terms of Dan and how to make him look, at least, a little more proactive and less… flaccid.

In the original draft for Part 4, Dan tells Joshua to get the gun and shoot Denny. The point was to illustrate that the household hung on every decision that Phillip makes and don’t make their own choices. With him not around they turn to Dan.

Instead I decided to have Dan shoot Denny himself in an attempt to make him look less like a complete tool. Hope it worked.

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DJ Henry Kissinger’s excerpts started happening independently of what I was writing in Neurons Like Brandy. I did the same with the first novel wherein I would write shorts that were never meant to be in the book but allowed me paint pictures of the world and the people. They were meant as a diversion and were inspired by the Disc Jockies from films like ‘The Warriors’ and ‘Vanishing Point’ as well as Peter Finch’s character in ‘Network’.

The chapters are slap dash and erratic but I liked them enough that I wrote HK into Neurons Like Brandy and as I wrote more about it, DJ Henry Kissinger’s story became more fully fledged and eventually it tied into the main plot by mirroring the main thread.

As for the name, Henry didn’t get the moniker until I had written about two of the chapters. I was working two jobs at the time. Part-time in an off-license  and full-time in a car park. I was frequently sleep deprived and half delirious. Around the end of the second DJ rant I just picked the name out of the air. It was familiar but I had no idea why.

I called up my friend Gabriel at around midday,  he was groggy and displeased at being woken up at the time.  I got him to look up Henry Kissinger. His response to the name was almost identical to mine:

                “That name is really familiar, is he a writer or artist?”

                “Yeah, I think so.”

                “Oh no, wait.” Gabriel said from the other end of the phone. I assume that he was waiting for the page to properly load as well as read its contents. “No, he is some kind of fuck head.”

The real Henry Kissinger is fascinating. He started off as a Democrat and switched to Republican to join up in the mess that was Richard Nixon’s presidential tenure. Kissinger is widely considered to be the one that sabotaged peace talks between the French and the Vietnamese, this breakdown of communication leading to the Vietnam war. His signature was on papers that led to the ‘strategical’ bombing of Laos and Cambodia. He has been linked to Pinochet and Pol Pot, with the latter he was an open supporter of the Khymer Rouge – in the hope that they would oust the filthy reds in Vietnam.
Kissinger has never been taken to task for any of this, despite pretty much all of his co-conspirators having done jail time.

To top it all off he is Nobel Peace Prize winner, looking at his Devil’s resume it makes the whole thing more tragic.

The more I have read on him the more he fascinates me. His ability to avoid persecution despite clearly being involved in some the biggest war crimes of the last century. He is a ghost to so many with my generation only knowing of his existence because of episodes of Futurama.

As Elias Koteas said in the film ‘The Prophecy’ once said:

'The devil’s greatest accomplishment was convincing everyone that he didn’t exist.’

Finally, the top image is of the top of the laptop that I wrote most of my first and second novel on, I have been using it as headers for the last few episodes.