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C. K. McDonnell is an Irish writer and comedian living in Manchester. This Charming Man is the second novel in The Stranger Times series, an urban comic fantasy detailing the investigations of a team of journalists into the weirder side of Mancunian life. C. K. took some time out to sit down with us to discuss where his inspiration comes from, his process, and writing about fashion.

STARBURST: Reading your books, and reading about you, you get a sense that there are bits of your personality in your characters, although we’re not sure that’s a compliment.

C. K. McDonnell: [laughs] Yeah, I think there probably is. You sort of have to, as you’re in a room on your own. If you’re not using yourself then what are you using? I use bits and pieces from people I know as well, and its generally people I like. Villains are easier to write in some ways as they’re more fun. For the people in the office, you have to be more rounded but for a villain, you can just go ‘crazy batshit’ and it works. The best thing in my writing is dialogue and character comes from dialogue for me. So, there will always be a bit from your speech patterns in there. I also think my books are warm which you need for a series. Put it this way, in crime books there’s always a ‘twisty twisty’ ending you’ll never see coming. That’s always the tag line. For me, reading, you want to find out what happens to the people and so you need to care about them, otherwise it’s an exercise in futility. Until you have the people you don’t have anything.

I’m an enormous Terry Pratchett fan. But I defy you to point out the Discworld book that had the shocking ending you never saw coming. Because that’s not what he did.

How do you structure your books, then, if the ending itself is almost secondary?

The story structure is very important. I have on the wall beside me, the third book in the series all mapped out on cards. This Charming Man has two distinct stories that intersect in places. It’s not so much the ending but you have to keep things going and there is a lot of plate spinning. I literally have them all colour coded. So, I can see if there’s not enough green, or if I need to balance the story there. But I agree – if anyone is waiting for the shock ending it’s not really what I do. I think there’s a danger you could just end up using cheap tricks and so on.

Would you say you’re like Max Brooks say, who plans more than he writes or more organic like Ian Rankin who often simply runs with an idea?

Ian Rankin is amazing. I remember a video of him talking about the process. And he says he gets to a point in the book where he thinks he has to stop, and it isn’t working. So, he goes and talks to his wife and tells her he’s going to bin it. And she’s ‘you’re 60,000 words in, and this happens every time’. It’s amazing when you see an all-time great like that.

I’m sort of like an honest planner and pantser, which is a phrase writer’s use. I think when you’re getting into a series with multiple characters you kind of have to plan it out a bit more just because there are a lot of plates to spin and make sure you have enough story for everyone. With the next book, I’ve probably planned more than I ever have before. Not really sure why. I sort of always have the corners, and I need to know where I’m going for the first four or five chapters. And then I might stick up a couple more cards, so I know I need to come back to that. I’m sort of a weird mix where I’m maybe planning a few chapters ahead all the time. As long as when I go to bed at night, I know what I’m writing the next morning, I’m fine. As long as I don’t run out of track, I’m okay, but I’m maybe laying track in front of the train all the time.

Does that become more difficult as with each book you’re adding more to the mythology, as there are elements in This Charming Man that remain unresolved?

And to be honest, I keep picking things up like that. Without giving too much away there were things in the writing of This Charming Man which I thought were interesting, and I wasn’t planning to keep, but are now another plate to spin. Stella, for example. I knew early doors there was something in her history and I was working it through in the process of writing, so now I have a much firmer idea where things are going. I think you end up opening certain loops, and you have to be fair to the reader so when you open something you have to close some too.

I have rough ideas for things, but the plan can change. No plan for a book has ever survived the actual writing. I have a podcast series where I’ve written loads of short stories that happen in The Stranger Times world and it’s really just me figuring out the world. I’m still discovering things. The great thing with fantasy is you can keep building out, there’s so much mythology you can use. And my books exist in a world where all films and books exist, such as vampires and zombies, so that’s fun to play with.

Reading your books you sense similarities with a writer like Neil Gaiman perhaps, of another world within our world. Is it important for you to ground your novels in reality, providing some familiarity?

I think it is, because when something is amazing it’s amazing in the context you see it. If you go to a fireworks display and they’re all going off, then it’s nice and everything. But if you wake up at night and one goes off over your head that’s much more amazing. If you’re in the real-world things become more magical. It’s ordinary people reacting to amazing things, it gives great context and adds a fun element.

Because a lot of humour comes from your characters and their interactions. Do you find dialogue easy to write?

Dialogue is always the easiest thing to write for me. It’s the most fun. If you want to tell the reader something, then have two people have an argument about it. What I’m bad at, and I probably shouldn’t point this out in interviews, is describing architecture. When I do, it’s just like someone trying to describe a building. My wife’s my first reader, and something she pointed out was that I hardly ever point out what someone is wearing. And it’s because, frankly, I don’t care about that. I only ever wear shorts and T-shirts. I went out the other day and I had to dig out a pair of jeans just so I looked like a grown-up. So, because of that, I don’t put it in my writing. And instead of trying to fix the things I’m not good at I stick to things that I am.

Have you always been a fan of fantasy, as we recall a magazine called The Fortean Times…?

(Holds up a pile of magazines) The idea for The Stranger Times comes from The Fortean Times. Oddly, the original idea was a sitcom, about a decade ago. I liked the idea of a small, local newspaper reporting weird news. And I’ve looked and couldn’t find the script. Then one day, I woke up thinking about it. And as I walked to my office in Manchester I was still thinking and by the time I got there, I was running to find a pad and pen as I had all these ideas.

I’ve always been a fan in the sense of reading books and watching television. But the newspaper element was always appealing. And then if you start thinking about some of that stuff being real. Newspaper first, then this is the world we’re off into.

This Charming Man is out now. You can read our review here.

The HBO Max series, Peacemaker, the spin-off from director James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad has become a massive hit for the streaming service, and not a small amount of its popularity comes from its deft use of music. However, while much as been made of the series’ use of under-the-radar or forgotten rock ‘n’ roll and hair metal, composer Kevin Kiner’s work on the series, alongside Clint Mansell, helps set the tone for a show which is by turns outrageous, violent, and surprisingly introspective and thoughtful.

Ahead of this week’s Peacemaker series finale, we spoke with Kiner about his work on the series, as well as his past compositions for the Star Wars and DC universes.

STARBURST: Given your work on both episodic TV and history of weird films, it seems like this is a perfect fit for you. Did it feel like that when you were first approached?

Kevin Kiner: Yeah, in a way, you’re exactly right. I have done weird things like Freaked and Tremors and also a lot of superhero stuff, with Titans and Doom Patrol and even going back to Superboy – way back in the ’80s, I was doing that. Yeah. It felt like a really great fit.

Hair metal is a very important part of Peacemaker‘s storyline. Were the heavy guitars of the score determined from the beginning?

That was a big discussion with James and Clint [Mansell] and myself. I’m not a hair metal aficionado at all, but one of my good friends is Fred Coury, who’s the drummer for Cinderella. He actually played on the soundtrack. He’s all over episode two and other places. I am a little older. I grew up on Led Zeppelin, mostly, and maybe Black Sabbath and even Uriah Heep.

It’s not the same as Led Zeppelin or Sabbath or whatever, but that’s the roots and really, it’s so easy to get there once it’s in you. That’s where it comes from, hair metal. It’s a very easy transition from what I grew up with and even Van Halen or Hanoi Rocks – I mean, the roots are all in the old days.

James Gunn is very much noted for his use of needle drops in his projects. Is that something you have to take into consideration when you’re composing your score?

Again, it was a discussion from the very beginning of how much of the score was going to reflect the needle drops. James Gunn’s knowledge of bands and music is encyclopedic, so he started talking about these things. He started sending us playlists. The entire score, as the show evolves, becomes more orchestral, although the drums are still there – all the way in through episode eight – but not all the time, and the heavy guitars are, are there too, but it becomes more of a hybrid as the drama and the action escalates.

But early on, we really did want to incorporate that sound and I mean, I’m so into it, because, I just loved it. I’m a guitarist and it was so much fun playing. Every kid goes into Guitar Center and starts to get all shreddy and stuff, but nobody really gets to do that for a living. It’s very rare to just be able to shred and, and man – I mean, it’s a guitar player’s dream, right?

Getting to let your inner Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen freak flag fly seems as though it’s a lot of fun.

Yeah, it really was. I mean, gosh – again, I sit around and play those licks all the time and I played them in bands when I was in high school but you very seldom get to do that for a living.

Working with a previously extant property is nothing new for you, obviously. How do you approach the challenges of creating new music which fits within an existing milieu?

Each one is kind of case by case. When I started on Star Wars, George Lucas specifically didn’t want to overuse the John Williams themes. In fact, he didn’t want to use them very much at all, but the style still had to say Star Wars and it still had to come from the Williams well – the way he is, his motifs work and his orchestration, his sensibility.

I studied that a lot, you know, and it was a much bigger challenge for me, studying John Williams. That took way more years than Peacemaker, which was just like, “Oh, I got this.” I didn’t have to really study anything. I just turned it up to 11 and, and, and broke the windows out.

What’s interesting about this is, as you’ve mentioned several times, you collaborated on this score with Clint Mansell, which is a very interesting pairing. Were you excited to collaborate with Clint on the score for Peacemaker?

Clint and I’ve been working together for five or six years now. We started on Titans and went to Doom Patrol and we’re still doing those shows. The collaboration with Clint is – I mean, he is such an interesting writer and he comes from such an outside perspective. That’s what I really dig about working with him, is because he has ideas that nobody else has. You can see from his songs and you can hear it from his soundtracks. I mean, it’s, “Where did that come from?” It’s a different way of looking at the world and hearing things.

Having said that, he really has an encyclopedic knowledge of music and stuff. He knew way more about the ’80s and early ’90s hair metal than I did, and the bands and stuff like that, and their origins and where they were going. It wasn’t difficult at all. Clint’s really into electronics as am I and so, early on in Titans, that became part of the thing: again, the orchestra is still there because it’s superheroes, but it’s really a very heavy electronic score.

That was the concept, especially in Doom Patrol and we brought some of that to Peacemaker. It’s not just hair metal. There’s a lot of electronics going on throughout the score, as well. I think that’s the one thing Clint and I really brought to the property that pushed us in a new direction.

What are the challenges for you as a composer on a streaming series such as Peacemaker, when it’s a mini-series, as opposed to an ongoing series like Titans or Doom Patrol?

Well, first of all, I don’t know that Peacemaker is not continuing. I actually think it might. I don’t actually have any information, but I sort of assumed that it might. I imagine that depends on James Gunn and what he wants to do with it.

But you know, Peacemaker was just like a long movie. It was like an eight-hour movie or it may be a seven-hour running time or something like that and we had quite a lot of time to do it. It was a comfortable schedule. They gave us an orchestra and we got to really do what we wanted. The feedback from James was really positive and when he had notes, they were super intelligible and we understood why he wanted it to change in certain areas from what we’d done. It was one of the most delightful experiences in my career, really.

I mean, you know, Clone Wars was a fantastic experience as well. It’s very seldom when you start to really connect with somebody and you are able to kind of speak in shorthand and deliver what they’re looking for. That was my experience on Peacemaker.

Part of composing is coming up with themes and motifs. Were you mildly bummed you didn’t get to create an opening theme, given the use of Wig Wam’s “Do You Wanna Taste It” or it was just like, “I can’t compete with that”?

That’s one of the greatest openings in the history of television. I defy anybody to find a better one. I mean, it’s up there with any great opening ever and especially in comedic terms. So no, I wasn’t bummed at all. And, and you know, we did get to write a theme and it’s a pretty strong theme, which plays throughout the show. Once we saw that, I’m like, “Holy crap.” It was so fun and I still watch that.

Peacemaker is now streaming in the US on HBO Max.

STARBURST reports from the set of G-LOC, from director TOM PATON, which is currently screening on Horror Channel. We caught up with him and the cast, including CASPER VAN DIEN, to find out what to expect…

We ventured into the wilds of deepest darkest Yorkshire to take a look at the set of G-LOC, the latest genre movie from one of STARBURST’s favourite directors, Tom Paton. This time around, it’s an actual studio, rather than an adapted forest or improvised battlefield. This is because G-LOC is a movie about space and spacecraft. G-LOC is a piece of classic science fiction, using the fantastic and forward-looking to tell stories about the modern-day. Set in a distant future, G-Loc is the story of Bran (True Blood’s Stephen Moyer), a man who is fleeing the dying Earth to make a new home of the distant human colony of Rhea. Alas, they are not open to the sudden rush of refugees coming to their world.

The set designer’s office is plastered with photographs taken from real-world space stations. Though G-LOC is set quite far in the future, the aesthetic is meant to be one that’s lived in. The Rheans prefer more mechanical and cruder approaches to technology, so the entire ethos behind the set design is to make the whole thing lived. The office is littered with tiny models of the set and countless rejected ideas. The set designers have spent hours poring over old archive footage of the Space Race, and are cleared inspired by the MIR and SkyLab, but more towards the end of those station’s lifespan.

The set is busy; one small area is a full spaceship console, complete with switches, pilots chair and the like. It looks amazing once the lights are turned on. Another set is a generic control room, one that has been redressed more than once throughout filming. Finally, we make it to a classic sci-fi corridor. Actors Casper Van Dien and Tala Gouveia are gearing up for a day of action-heavy filming in the claustrophobic sci-fi corridor that makes up much of the movie’s set.

We caught up with director Tom Paton to learn more about where the idea for the movie came from: “I was looking at the whole Venezuelan crisis, and I watched the documentary about this family that was travelling from Venezuela and how they were full of all these better life dreams that we’re going to be there waiting for them. And when they get to the American border, they weren’t allowed in. So they spend three years in this detention camp in horrible conditions. All these people with their hopes and dreams ripped away from them. And then you look at the world today with Trump and Brexit, and I wanted to tell a story that reflected our times. I wanted to take a fantasy film and make it relevant to now.”

“So, G-Loc is about that.” Paton continues, “In this movie, Earth is heading toward a second Ice Age, and suddenly this gate pops up in space and on the other side is a habitable world called Rhea. But one year on Earth is 18 years on Rhea. People from Earth are migrating through, but by the time Stephen Moyer’s character tries to get to Rhea, settlers have been there for hundreds of years. And they don’t want any more refugees.”

Tom describes Moyer as a “phenomenally powerful actor.” He continues “You know, you write these things, and they sound good on the page. But when you hear them coming out of somebody of his calibre, he elevates the material and is really, really impressive.”

It’s a fantastic cast; Casper Van Dien is perhaps best known for his role as Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers. In G-Loc, he plays Decker, part of the crew of the ship bringing supplies to the Earth refugee camp. We caught up with him in his trailer, still as energetic and sparkly-eyed as he was back in the Johnny Rico days. We asked him what kept bringing him back to sci-fi. “I’ve done a lot of work, including many westerns and I’ve made enough of movies for a lifetime, but I keep coming back to sci-fi – I just love sci-fi films. I think early on people associated me with Johnny Rico, and that’s okay, I like working in the industry. I just recently had a small part in Alita Battle Angel, and it was a lot of fun to do that. And that was because of Starship Troopers.“

Casper continues, “I read Starship Troopers as a kid. I went to military school and grew up in a military family, so it was one of the books everyone around me liked to read. And I watched a lot of propaganda films and war films. And I just enjoyed them. The Starship Troopers is an amazing book, but the script was completely different. When I read the script, I was like, ‘wow, I thought I’d missed something from the book’, but it was all the genius of Ed Neumeier and Verhoeven. But it’s not just their satire alone, Robert A. Heinlein’s sense of humour is still there. I think a lot of Americans missed the satire when it first came out.” The actor smiles, “One of the things that I like about that movie is that people on the far right in America and people on the far left love it. And they love it because they think it’s their film. And, you know, it’s quite interesting to have both sides like it, but I like that they can have a discussion and say why it’s theirs. And I think that it’s better to have films that bring people to table being able to have a conversation.” The parallel to his latest film is clear “That was one of the things that appealed with G-LOC. I liked working with Tom, he’s great. I would love to work with him again. I know that he’s just a film buff and he’s passionate and young is exciting. He’s you know, it’s awesome to be on set with him. And I think he’s got a huge career ahead of him.“

Mike Beckingham is no stranger to readers of STARBURST, with credits including Tom Paton movies such as Black Site and Redwood. G-LOC sees Mike take on a different sort of role. “I play the role of Edison, Bran’s computer. It was fun to do but challenging because I’m only a voice.” Edison is also the movie’s comic relief of sorts; a rather self-centred AI that provides sarcastic commentary throughout the film. As usual, Mike is modest about his talents; despite a lack of a physical presence, the charisma of the character shines through.

The other main character is Osha, a native of Rhea. She’s played by Tala Gouveia, best known for her work on kids sci-fi shows such as Thunderbirds and Scream Street. We asked what she thought of the character. “She has to fight quite a lot of big guys. She’s very scrappy. She’s sarcastic – funny hopefully! She’s written very well, and I love sarcastic characters.” The movie puts Tala through her paces, “there’s a lot of big, exciting action, and it’s my first time doing my own stunts, so that was a fun challenge, which I’m really enjoying.”

Of course, Tom Paton is better known for creating horror and action movies. We asked him why he felt this story needed to be sci-fi. “Telling current stories is the point of science fiction, at least it is to me. It’s it takes the world as we know it and repackages it into something different. For those of us that are politically engaged anyway, we understand what they’re doing. But there’s this great trick in basic sci-fi. Things like the Battlestar Galactica take somebody on a Friday night who wants to enjoy themselves. And the next day, they’ll feel like they’ve changed their opinion on something, but can’t quite understand why they did it. And it was because sci-fi makes it the right size, gets them to ingest it in a way that they find palatable, rather than feeling like you’re being told off or lectured. And I think that’s kind of was the whole thing about this script was making a movie that feels entertaining – like you’re having a good time while you’re watching it. But hopefully, you’ll come away from it and think about the message as well.”

G-Loc screens on Horror Channel on Friday, February 11th at 4pm and the following day at 8am. 

Article originally published in STARBURST Magazine, Issue number 474