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Maya left her car a half mile from the waterfront and took a cab the rest of the way. The river district was usually safe, but even if no one stole it, there was no guarantee she’d be able to navigate the cluttered streets that radiated out from Port Blackwater like fat-clogged arteries. The lights of the harbour settlement gleamed in dull Technicolor projection on the fat, heavy night clouds, orange and yellow flecked with just about every other tint imaginable, a shadow play of a disco somewhere in Hell. Thin trails of smoke drifted up into the few lazy flakes of snow still falling. A couple of times she caught glimpses of the Murdoch River running sluggish, black and cold. No ice on its surface. Not yet.

“First time in the Port?” the cab driver said. “You picked a good time; rest of the city might be shutting up, but the Port’s open all day, every day, right?”

“No,” Maya said. She could smell, or imagined she could smell, grilled fish, gritty acrid black coffee. Algae, river mud, photochemical pollution. See the slowly decaying drifts of packing waste and plastic netting and the shrieking clans of gulls that lived on them. “No, it’s not my first time there. I grew up in Port Blackwater.”

“For real?”

“Haven’t been back in years.”

“How come? How come you’re going back now? Going to see the old place, huh?”

She hadn’t gone back because there was nothing there to go back for. Her dad dead and gone, and she’d taken so long and worked so hard to escape the place’s gravity well that even going near it now made her wary, afraid of falling back in. The scent of her dad grilling whatever he’d managed to pick up cheap from the market that morning, busy in the tiny galley. The regular Sunday treat of lunch at old Thierry D’ Croix’s place and what he always swore, in his broken mix of English, Spanish and some obscure Haitian dialect, was stew made from river rats, and maybe it had been. Sitting on mismatched plastic stools on the deck of Thierry’s ancient tug, its surface protected from his customers’ feet by tightly compressed strata of newsprint, a Burroughs cut-up catalogue of five years of history in half a dozen languages. Something she could feel, but was too young to understand, between her dad and Thierry. She knew then that her father had worked for the Argentinean government, knew now that he’d been in intelligence, but what that meant to Thierry or why he’d ended up living in a floating refugee ghetto in America was, and remained, a mystery to her.

(Raw, un-copyedited, blah blah blah.)

Garrett, a half-drunk pint of Rolling Rock and another likely to follow hard behind. Moisture gleaming on the side of the glass and a bubble of quiet around him. The Vines was busy, night rolling on, but no one much bothered him. Up on the makeshift stage at the far end of the room, a heavy-set transvestite in a red garter belt calling himself ‘Heavenly Kevin’ was murdering an already wounded Barry Manilow number. Garrett wanted a smoke, but not badly enough to stop drinking.

He stared into the mirror behind the bar, remembering the long grey-lit table he’d sat in front of that afternoon, Lieutenant Saganowski, Lieutenant Morgan, two suits he didn’t know, probably from the OPC, all of them with flat, dead eyes.

“You left your post,” Saganowski said. “You left it and Officer McDermott died from his injuries. If you’d rendered assistance, he might still be alive.”

“That’s speculation,” Morgan cut in. “We don’t know that.”

“It’s irrelevant.”

“Officer Garrett was in pursuit of a suspect.”

“He didn’t radio it in. He didn’t call for backup. He didn’t even report the explosion at the site or summon help for Officer McDermott. He hasn’t been able to tell us anything about this suspect.”
Garrett said nothing. It went that way for a long time.

“Trouble, Charles?” Back to the present, and the bartender, Marcel. A tall, elegant man whose parents had fled war in the Cote d’Ivoire when he was a child.

“Why do you always call me ‘Charles’, Marcel? No one does that.”

“Your parents did. I’ve always assumed they were people of intelligence and decency and so they must have had good reason.”

“Dad got his kicks cracking skulls on Union Plaza with the 7th and Mom was a Vicodin ghost. I wouldn’t set much store by their opinions.”

Marcel shook his head softly. The movement was like the mating dance of a stork. “Painful memory, Charles?”

(Unspellchecked, check label before washing, investments may go down as well as up, etc.)

Garrett found himself a sheltered spot against the wall, tucked between a drainpipe and a snow-covered steel housing, and waited, smoking. Occasional squawks on the emergency wideband, undirected radio traffic from the rest of the city. Chatter from dispatchers and responders, reporting conditions, traffic, situations cleared and those still unresolved. Cops, paramedics, and firefighters reassuring one another over the ether that they weren’t alone. They’d reached the blast site on Green Street, talk of dozens, maybe hundreds dead, more injured. Buildings shattered, vehicles tossed around like litter, fires from spilt gasoline and broken gas pipes. Nothing about further explosions so far, but there’d been several scares, stampedes, some enterprising looting. Bomb squads were out at dozens of suspect packages, vehicles and the like. No word yet on who might have been responsible or what they wanted, whether there was more to come.

In the shadowed dark, radio ghosts dancing quietly in his ear, he thought about Emi, and how long it would be before he’d see her tonight.

(Unspellchecked, raw, not yet fit for public consumption etc. Context, also, is for the weak, but this is early on in the book.)

Breaking the surface of the edits on the sequel to THE LEVELS, which has the working title of THE RAZOR GATE for what it’s worth, to firstly reveal that I will be going to Harrogate in an unofficial capacity – that is, I’ll be in the bar, but I’m not registered for the festival. See you there. Secondly, Sandra at Spinetingler has posted a very whizzy review of THE LEVELS, bless ‘er.

Some types of novels feature such a strong location that the place itself becomes its own character. That is certainly the case here. I think one could easily place The Levels in a particular architecturally crumbling gothic literary lineage with books like Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake and the novels of Jack O’Connell. It doesn’t take much to feel as if the castle Gormenghast lies in the distant past of The Levels and Quinsigamond is the next town over.

As atmospheric and strange as The Levels is Cregan never loses his way. He exhibits just enough of a light touch to not make his presence felt as he immerses you in this filthy world.

Page proofs for the paperback of THE LEVELS arrived in the post today, so if any of you have spotted any typos that made it into the hardback (and typos only, really; altering anything once we’re at the galley stage is a fiddly process), do feel free to drop me an email via sean [at] seancregan [dot] com.

This, courtesy of the elegant Sarah Weinman:

It’s a new name, a new style, and a new publisher for the man once and still known as John Rickards, and I think the change on all writerly fronts is absolutely the right one to make at this point in his career. THE LEVELS is dystopic without being obvious about it, instead creating a tangible, darkened world each of the seemingly doomed characters inhabits, tries to escape from and ultimately accepts in one form or another. It’s the written version of the burnt out, empty buildings captured on film by Godfrey Riggio with Philip Glass scoring underneath – a landscape that repels and attracts but is too busy moving and changing to care what you think or are uncomfortable with.

(I should confess that I’ve never heard of Godfrey Riggio.)

And this from the Australian Senior newspaper group:

SEAN Cregan’s debut novel, The Levels, is a maze of complex characters, intricate sub-plots, and mind-bending suspense. There’s a thrill on every page.

Set in a derelict housing project known as The Levels, on the outskirts of Newport on the US east coast, it opens with ex-CIA agent Nate Turner trying to track down his would-be murderer. As Nate’s quest takes him to The Levels, he encounters a host of characters with names such as Sorrow, Ghost and The Beast. Suspended cop Kate is also there trying to find The Beast, the serial killer who infected her with a deadly virus that is due to kill her within days. This urban gothic thriller will keep the reader spellbound until the last page.

Steve Mosby interviews me and I interview him at Crimeculture. In reality it was a three-hour freewheeling chat over IM, which only goes to show the capacity we both have for talking shit.

A rather spiffy review for THE LEVELS is up at Crimeculture:

The novel’s body horror works both on the level of individual scenes and as a larger metaphor for the breakdown of society. The rollercoaster plot is shot through with themes of insidious infection, incurable disease and poisoned hypodermic needles. These motifs are so pervasive that they’ve transmuted into parts of landscape, such as “the Needle”, a boarded up ex-church where Sorrow’s slaves congregate. Other victims have “burrowed into the broken concrete like termites”, becoming an infestation, a disease, at the same time that they are grotesquely entrapped. Cregan thrusts us down there with them. Down into the “subterranean night beneath the world” and his taut prose propels us through to the explosive ending of this gothic-punk thriller.

Modesty compels me to admit I wasn’t planning anything metaphorical – I just make this stuff up as I go along – and that I don’t know who wrote Akira; I can just yell “KANEDAAAAA!” or talk about being attacked by giant toys. Barbarian in Rome, and all that.

Congratulations to Sarah Callaghan for the marvelously ambiguous and UNKNOWN ARMIES-ish Ken Sheridan, and to Jason Bull for the strikingly mental ‘Auntie’ Long. An honourable mention for Kate Horsley’s ‘Sugar Goodrich’; it was, frankly, a toss-up between all three and I’m still not sure which order they’d go in, but since I know Kate has the book already… There were some wonderful suggestions – and some that were, frankly, batty as hell – so thank you all for playing!

Well, here we are at the official launch date for THE LEVELS (though I know Amazon and other online retailers started selling it when they got their stock a couple of weeks ago). To celebrate, and to give you sexy, wonderful, intelligent people the chance to get your mitts on a copy gratis, amongst other things, here’s a competition for you.

I’m in the middle of first draft edits on the next book, THE RAZOR GATE, and this is your chance to contribute and get a cameo. Write a 3-4 sentence description of an unusual/eccentric character who may or may not be based on your good self (there’s a lot of these individuals in both books) and email it to sean [at] seancregan [dot] com with “COMPETITION ENTRY” in the subject line. For (a poor) example…

“Birds” Cregan is a man of indeterminate age, usually to be found wandering the streets in a battered opera coat and top hat, pockets stuffed with dead birds and seemingly endless scraps of paper. He makes a living of sorts batering messenger services using the flock of mangy pigeons housed in cages on the roof of his home. Rumour has it he was a respected zoologist who cracked following the death of his wife from cancer.

The best two entries, as picked by a panel of experts*, will win their lucky creators signed hardbacks of THE LEVELS as well as – the cruel pen of my editor allowing – seeing their creations make cameo appearances in the next book**.

You’re welcome to make as many entries as you feel like, but I’ll still pick two people to win. Deadline for entries: whatever time I crawl out of bed on Feb 1st and check my email.

** By entering this competition you grant implicit consent for me to use or not use the character you create in any and all future works without pay, thanks, entitlement to vacation or dental insurance, a statue erected in your honour or the like, blah blah blah.