A former student at the University Of East Anglia, Leicester-born novelist Chris Farnell is contemplating a future in literature. The release of Mark II, a witty sci-fi drama for all ages, has seen him become an inspiration for young writers all across the region. The 21 year old is combining his hectic life of book readings and interviews with a job at the well-known Fat Cat pub in the city. So as we delved into the life of an author, his inspirations and his hopes for the future I listened with fascination and quiet jealousy. You’re so young, and yet you already have a critically acclaimed book – what does it feel like? Well, mostly, it’s seemed kind of unreal. I’m living this weird double life: at night I’m working a pub sweeping ashtrays, and then I’m coming down to the BBC for interviews and talking to my agent. It’s all a bit weird. So you have aspired to be a writer from an early age. When I was very little I wanted to be a mad scientist! Eventually I decided that making up stories would pay better, foolishly. The book has been compared with The Curious Incident Of The Dog At Midnight, the best-seller by Mark Haddon, so I gather that was an inspiration? I hadn’t actually read the book when I was writing Mark II, but a friend read a first draft and gave me a copy. It was only later on that the publisher made that comparison. Are there any references or influences for the book? I’ve read an awful lot of the older fifties and sixties sci-fis, such as Frederick Pohl. The kind of things with sci-fi elements but it’s all very rooted in reality and with very ordinary characters. Have you lived in the Norwich long? I came here to do a creative writing at University Of East Anglia, and since graduating last year I have just stuck around here as it’s such a nice city. It is! Were there any regional influences in the book? A lot of the re-drafting whilst I was writing the book was helped a great deal by the people I met at the university, and the environment around it. I was constantly surrounded by people who were as passionate about writing as I was, and so they gave me a lot of help on the re-reading and re-drafting stage of the book. So the readers and writers at the university knew straight away that the story had the potential to be a success? I’m sure if you asked them that’s exactly what they’d say! Did you go anywhere around the county whilst writing the book, or was most of the writing stage spent at home? I pretty much stuck to my bedroom whilst I was writing Mark II. These days when I’m writing I tend to get a bit of cabin fever, so I take my notebook out and find a pub somewhere to sit and write. One of the book's main themes is about cloning, what are your thoughts on this topic? It’s like any kind of technology. It can be used to do bad things to people, but we can also reap a lot of benefits from it as well. Obviously what happens in Mark II is kind of weird and a bit wrong, but using cloning for stem-cell research or fertility treatment – sure, why not? Mark II was never meant to be a technology horror novel. The book also talks about the pain of death, was it difficult to write some of the scenes? Yeah, it’s very tricky. It can be very difficult to get your head into that place without sounding like a TV movie. When I was doing it, I tended to call on to the few experiences I’d had myself. Nothing as severe as what Phil goes through in the book, but times when I’ve had to deal with that sort of thing – I try to extrapolate that sort of thing and stay respectful of it. Do you have advice for young authors and writers across the region?
 | | Chris is a graduate from UEA, in Norwich |
Oh, that’s a hard one. Mainly, just sit down and actually get the stuff onto paper. You’ve also got to develop a bit of a hard skin, because if you write anything and want people to read it then you’re going to get a lot of rejections and a lot of people telling you that what you have written isn’t very good. Unfortunately, half of the time they are probably going to be right! You have to write an awful lot of bad stuff before you write anything good. How did you go about actually writing the story to getting it published? Sending it off to everyone and anyone! I spent a summer just writing letters to all the literary agents that were into that sort of story, and got a wealth of rejection letters. Rogers, Coleridge and White finally agreed to take me on and we went through the whole cycle again with publishers. Eventually Tindal Street took an interest. Do you have any ideas for a follow-up? I’m working on another book at the moment, it’s totally unrelated to Mark II – so they’ll be no Mark III! It has a similar style, but it’s very left field to what Mark II was about. It’s going to be a very different sort of book. As you’re writing a book, is it difficult to keep up to the same high standard throughout the whole thing? Well, generally you don’t. You write some good stuff, and some scenes that completely suck. Months afterwards you go through to sift through the stuff that sucks to re-write it and make it better. What was the most difficult part of the book to write? When you’ve been writing for a while and you suddenly hit a wall and the plotlines begin to tangle up. You sometimes spend weeks with the story in one place, and you’ve got to turn it over in your mind to find a fresh way to get over it. That’s the most frustrating bit. As this is you’re chosen profession, are your parents supportive of this? Oh yeah, they’re over the moon about it. So the future’s looking bright for you, hopefully? Yeah, I’m just amazed I’ve got this far already. I’m going to keep writing and see what happens next. Where can we get a copy of Mark II? In all good bookstores - if it doesn’t have the book then it’s not a good bookstore! | 
