GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2024/25
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author Gerard McKeown
(1) HELLO GERARD, AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR LONGLISTING FOR THE GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE. CAN YOU GIVE OUR READERS A TWO OR THREE SENTENCE INTRODUCTION TO ‘DRUMCREE BALLEE’, AND WHAT YOUR STORY IS ABOUT?
Thank you. It’s a very welcome boost for my writing. ‘Drumcree Ballee’ is a story about a night during the summer holidays, where a boy has a school friend stay over, that goes violently wrong due to events outside of the narrator’s control. It’s set at the tail end of the troubles in Northern Ireland, at a time where things seemed to be calming down, but there was still a lot of tension.
(2) PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR ‘DRUMCREE BALLEE’ TOO: HOW AND WHEN DID IT COME TO YOU, AND HOW DID YOU SET ABOUT WRITING IT?
The original spark was from similar experiences I had growing up. I condensed several things into the one night when the story is set, but I’ll stress this is a work of fiction, and although I experienced similar things to the narrator, he’s not me.
When writing the story, I wanted to focus on the fear the characters experience. The first draft was written around the time my story ‘The Quizmasters’ (originally published in Blackstaff Press’s The Black Dreams: Strange Stories from Northern Ireland) was selected for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fourteen. That gave me the confidence to explore the psychology of the narrator further than I’d originally intended to, which led to the development of the character who waits outside the front door after the main rioting finishes.
(3) CLASS AS WELL AS RELIGION SEEMS TO BE QUITE PIVOTAL TO THE STORY. (THE CASUAL – AND ALTERNATIVELY, QUITE DELIBERATE – SNOBBERY CAN BE EXCRUCIATING.) CAN YOU SAY A BIT MORE ABOUT THAT?
My school was the one the richest families in town sent their children to, so I was around extreme wealth and saw how different it was to my situation, being working class. Some people could be snobs, but some also didn’t seem to realise that their wealth provided them with safety nets other people lacked, a sort of ‘let them eat cake’ attitude. For the story I wanted to use extremes, so Warren isn’t just from a wealthy family, he’s from the wealthiest, while the narrator’s family is so poor they don’t even have a landline, which, given we all have mobile phones nowadays, hopefully makes the readers feel how trapped the characters are.
(4) (WARREN. WHAT'S HIS DEAL? IS HE GOING TO BE A STOCKBROKER WHEN HE GROWS UP?)
He’s certainly starting off a few laps ahead of the narrator. If Warren doesn’t mess it up, money won’t be a problem for him. He has both the connections and the sort of personality, where he can be whoever he needs to be depending on who he’s talking to, to take him far. I knew people who acted out as teenagers, who now work for their family business, or people I met while working in the City of London, who, after a few drinks, would tell you stories that didn’t sync with the ‘Company Man’ image they projected in the office.
(5) THERE ARE SOME WONDERFUL – AND PAINFUL – DETAILS IN ‘DRUMCREE BALLEE’. FOR INSTANCE, WHEN THE FAMILY ARE SITTING ON THE LANDING, PLAYING CARDS, THE MOTHER CHOOSES THE KIND OF GAMES THAT WON’T REQUIRE TOO MUCH TALKING, SO SHE CAN STAY ALERT TO WHAT IS TRANSPIRING OUTSIDE. HOW DID THIS COME TO YOU? (IT’S SUCH A TINY THING, BUT IT SAYS SO MUCH.)
I always look for these details when writing a story; they’re so important for making it feel real to a reader. As a reader, they’re often the details that stay with me after characters and plot twists have been forgotten. With the card game, I needed the characters to pass the time until it was morning. I thought the mix of them needing to keep alert, plus their fear and, for the mum and the narrator, their embarrassment would make them look for ways to avoid talking.
(6) HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WRITING?
Really since school. I always enjoyed creative writing assignments, and I missed them when I got to an age when teachers stopped asking us to do them. I wanted to write but I didn’t really know how to go about it. When I started reading the Beatniks, I realised that the likes of Kerouac and Bukowski basically wrote autobiography, so I started looking for experiences in my own life I could turn into stories. Novels seemed too much of an undertaking, until I read Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and realised short stories could be threaded together to create a novel.
(7) DO YOU HAVE A DAILY ROUTINE?
I try to write at least 3—4 times a week, whether that’s creating something new, redrafting another piece, or reading over a printout of a short story and marking it up (I write every draft in a fresh document with an annotated printout of the last one beside me). If I manage 500 words, I’m happy.
(8) AND ARE YOU WORKING ON SOMETHING AT THE MOMENT?
I’ve just finished a novel, which I’m pitching to agents. While I’m waiting to hear back, I’m reading through my unfinished stories, to see if I can turn them into completed first drafts. I always keep unfinished pieces, because sometimes you can take months, or even years, to figure out how to make them work.
(9) WHAT’S THE BEST WRITING TIP YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED – AND THE WORST ONE?
Some writing tips don’t work for me (write the first draft in longhand, only ever use said when attributing speech), but these tips aren’t necessarily bad as they make me consider my writing (do I need to use asseverated when attributing speech?). The best tip I’ve received is to give tips a go. Every time I read a writing guide, I try out the tips and keep the ones that work for me (I’m currently reading, and learning a lot from, Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft).
(10) WHAT ABOUT OTHER WRITERS? CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME AUTHORS YOU ADMIRE, AS WELL AS SOME THAT YOU ARE INFLUENCED BY?
There are a lot of great Irish writers out there at the minute, that are too many to list here, but if you pick up an anthology like Being Various, The Long Gaze Back, or Still Worlds Turning (I’ve a story in that last one), you’ll not be disappointed. Other writers I love include Kurt Vonnegut, Donna Tart, and John Irving, but even they’re just a tiny selection. I’d love to be able to write something similar to Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart.
GERARD MCKEOWN holds an MA in Creative Writing from Queens University, Belfast. His work has been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize and longlisted for The BBC National Short Story Award and The Irish Book Awards’ Short Story of the Year, as well as featured in a number of journals and anthologies, including The London Magazine, 3AM, Still Worlds Turning (an anthology of new Irish writing from No Alibis Press) and The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Fourteen (edited by Ellen Datlow); and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is currently working on his first novel. More of his writing can be viewed at www.gerardmckeown.co.uk.