An Interview with Keith Austin

After attending a grammar school in the East End of London, Keith joined the East London Advertiser newspaper at the age of 20. After working on newspapers in Oxford, Sheffield, Cardiff, Bristol, and Essex, he eventually went to work on The Sunday Times in London.

After stints at the Daily Mirror and the China Daily newspaper in Beijing, he emigrated to Australia in 1994 and stayed for 28 years, working on the Sydney Morning Herald and then becoming a freelance travel writer. It was while in Australia that the inspiration struck him to write the YA horror story GRYMM.

Keith returned to the UK in 2022 and then relocated to Albania for a few months to write. He now lives with his wife in the Cotswolds.

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What inspired you to start writing this book?

My first two books were set in very different but contemporary backgrounds—one in a boiling hot desert and the other in a freezing snowstorm—so I wanted to try my hand at something very different. So, maybe something historical? And it occurred to me that I could marry that with the sort of fairy tale ideas I’d used in GRYMM and SNOW. And so I came up with the idea of juxtaposing the harsh reality of life in 1880s East London with a beautiful, mesmerizing, iridescent lizard. It seemed like a fun thing to explore. Colorful chalk and smelly cheese, if you will.

Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

Many, many years ago, I’d read a book called A Child of the Jago, which was a fictionalized account of a young boy growing up in an East London slum known as The Jago. This was based on a real slum area around Old Nichol Street, near where I grew up. And that was that. Plus, Jago is such a cool name.

Describe your dream book cover.

I’ve got it with the front of JAGO! My son, Calum, who works in the film business, designed all three of my covers from vague, stumbling concepts of mine, and did a great job of tying these three very different books together under the Fractured Fairy Tales banner. I like how clean but menacing they are—each one is similar but also separate, with their own story and imagery.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Oh, it would have to have the “Liberty of Norton Folgate” by Madness, because it’s set in the area of Norton Folgate, where the City of London butts up against the East End and the Cockneys (like myself) that live there. It’s also a song that’s a celebration of that part of London. “Ghosts,” by Japan, because it’s so eerie and so, I hope, is the book. I’d want “Sunset” by Roxy Music because I quote some lyrics from it on the first page. And maybe “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary (there’s a spoiler right there!). Pretty much anything by David Bowie, but certainly the long intro from “Station to Station,” and ANYTHING from the Low album.

What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?

My reading list is quite eclectic—I’m as happy with something literary as with a crime potboiler, a sci-fi epic, a horror novel, or another YA book. At the moment I’m reading AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book as well as Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain. I research ideas and factual stuff online when I’m writing. Though at the moment I’m writing about evil clowns and farts and, oddly, there’s not much out there that connects the two. Not yet anyway…

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

1. I’ve been a journalist pretty much my whole working life, but from the age of 13 until 20, I worked every school holiday and every weekend at a pie, mash and eel shop in East London. One of my earliest jobs was to clean the blood spatters off the live eel stall and empty the bucket of eel guts at the end of the day. Is it any wonder I write the bizarre stuff I write?

2. I was a restaurant reviewer for six years when I worked in Australia.

3. Growing up, I had a very bad stutter.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I think having a bad stutter when I was a kid helped very much. If you can’t express yourself verbally, then writing is the next best thing. Plus, I was always fascinated by books and was a voracious reader from a very young age (and still am). I had exhausted the local children’s library pretty quickly and moved on to the adult section soon after. My family wasn’t big on reading and I think that helped, oddly. They had no idea what inappropriately weird stuff I was getting out! I remember being enthralled by the Narnia books, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. I loved Asimov’s Foundation series and went down a deep rabbit hole of 60s and 70s sci-fi classics such as Stranger in a Strange Land. Stephen King and Neil Gaiman are firm favorites. I think King, especially, is the finest chronicler of modern Americana and horror. He is Horror’s Dickens. Shadowland by Peter Straub is one of my favourite books of all time.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Anywhere quiet with no distractions. I find it very hard to write piecemeal and really do need hours and hours left alone to create my worlds. It’s why I decamped to a cramped apartment halfway up a mountain in Albania for 3 months to start the latest book.

What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?

Have patience, develop a thick skin, and be aware that the writing is the easy part. Getting published and getting noticed is sometimes soul-destroyingly difficult. Also, read, read, read and write, write, and write. Writing and the imagination are like muscles and you need to keep exercising them.

What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?

I want them to think they’ve read something startling and original, something that fooled them right up to the last words – and I think they’ll find that with JAGO particularly. I wrote all my books with the intention of making sure nobody could say “Oh that’s like Harry Potter strained through Hunger Games” or “it was a rip-off of X, Y or Z”. I want people to experience a thrill ride read, get scared, get tripped up by the plot, and come away away thinking ‘now THAT’S a Keith Austin book’. To me, one of the magic things about writing is the ability to engender a physical reaction in another person you’ve never met. To make them happy, sad, upset or scared. When parents have contacted me to say their child/children had nightmares after reading one of my books, I think “YES! My job here is done!”

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