Rob Reports: Robert Shearman at West Port Book Festival 2011

The Edinburgh Book Festival may be the biggest literary event of the year in Scotland’s capital, but don’t think for one minute that outside of August Edinburgh is bereft of any decent book events. There’s plenty going on all year round (it is a UNESCO City of Literature after all), and a mouse with a big voice (it’s not quite a roar but it’s getting there), has let itself be heard over the past four days in Edinburgh’s historical West Port; home to nine independent book shops (a quite remarkable amount given the small size of the area) and one rather competent bookbinder.

Now in its fourth year, The West Port Book Festival is going from strength to strength, and this year the festival, whose events are always free, was stronger than ever. Unfortunately I could only make two of the multitude of the events on offer, the first of which I was incredibly excited about, an audience with Robert Shearman.

If you don’t know who Rob Shearman is then you really should do. Not only is he an exceptionally talented and prolific short story writer – having now produced three short story collections to date (Tiny Deaths, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical and his latest Everyone’s Just So So Special) – he’s also a theatrical playwright and soon to be debut novelist. Currently, London-based Shearman is also acting in the role of writer-in-residence at Napier University, where he advises students enrolled on the university’s MA course in creative writing. Shearman is perhaps best known however, for his stint as a Dr. Who writer. He’s the man who wrote the highly popular Daleks episode in 2005, which saw the Doctor’s deadliest enemy reintroduced into the TV series. As such this has brought Shearman huge recognition, and something of a cult following.

So on to the event itself which was staged at the newest bookshop to open its doors at the West Port, Pulp Fiction. Chaired by Stuart Kelly, literary editor of Scotland on Sunday (always a bonus because Stuart is an exceptional literary host, as proven many times now at EdBookFest), the venue was certainly compact and bijou (although more spacious than many bookshops), but oh so warm and inviting. And when Shearman took to the floor to deliver a lively reading from his newest short story collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special (Big Finish Books), the place just got warmer, and remained so throughout the entirety of the event.

If you’ve ever read any of Rob Shearman’s stories then you will know that they are unique, thoughtful, often dark and, more often than not, liberally doused in humour. The man is exactly like his stories (although probably not so dark ). Shearman gave an animated and theatrical reading of his story, Coming in to Land, which was every bit as good as any live performance as I’ve seen from a writer. Anyone having never read Shearman before would be tempted to go and pick him up straight away (the books not the man), based solely on the strength of this reading alone. And I’m willing to bet that the assembled crowd of around 30 – all of who seemed equally titillated and entertained by Shearman – would agree with me.

Following Shearman’s reading Kelly opened up with questions, first asking Shearman what it was he brought from his theatre writing background into his prose writing. Shearman responded by talking about Alan Ayckbourn and his dictum that one can write as creatively and as cleverly as one wants for theatre, around any theme, provided one gives the audience a reason to come back after the interval. This is a philosophy that Shearman likes to apply to his prose writing. “In theatre you try to do anything you can to not make the audience feel bored”, said Shearman. “I try to apply the same idea to my prose writing, to hopefully not bore people; to have every paragraph do a job. If it doesn’t have a job then cut it because that’s when people say they’ve had enough of a story and throw it away.”

Noting how performance-enriched his reading was, Kelly asked Shearman about the transition from dialogue to monologue and how he invested a sense of personality. Shearman revealed that although he went to drama school he was never really good enough. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he would never be more than ‘stunningly mediocre’. As a consequence and because of a bad stammer (which he still claims to still have even though it’s not in the least bit apparent), Shearman admitted that he doesn’t like performing much. At first he always tried to avoid it, until he realised that he was being called on more and more as a prose writer to give readings. Standing up to his responsibilities, Shearman wrote particular stories as performance pieces, which he would perform comfortably (provided his wife wasn’t there. Coming in to Land is one of those stories.

Considering many of his stories to be quite dark, Kelly asked Shearman if black humour was a necessary part of telling these stories. “I think of them when I write them as funny stories,” responds Shearman. “They always start for me as being funny ‘what ifs’ and as I write them the humour becomes more blackened sometimes. They begin as gags but then I consider ‘gags’ to be too flimsy a reason for writing them and I look around to find another reason for writing them, and often the horror thing comes into them, but from the other way around.”

Of course it’s difficult to ignore and Kelly eventually brought up the thing that Shearman is most noted for – his writing for Dr. Who and the episode which brought the Daleks back to cult TV series. Mentioning that a radio station had suggested that when he dies he will probably be given a Dalek tombstone, Kelly asked Shearman if the whole Dr. Who thing was an albatross around his neck. “Once in a while,” Shearman responded, “but you can’t knock it. It was a fun job. I’m proud of it I really am, and my first book was published in part because the publishers believed I had a big following after the Dalek episode.”

For me, Shearman isn’t about Dr. Who or even science fiction or horror. As I said earlier this man is an extraordinary short story writer and if this thoroughly entertaining hour showed me anything it was that Robert Shearman is as cordial and as engaging as his stories are original. This is a man of comedy and sharp-wit and that much came though during this event. It was a pleasure to be in the man’s company, and I thank West Port Book Festival and the Pulp Fiction bookshop for making that possible.

To finish, although it’s not from the West Port Book Festival (there’s an official audio podcast of the event pending, I’ll update when it’s available), I bring you a recording of another event in which Rob Shearman reads the same story, ‘Coming in to Land’. This was recorded earlier this year as part of the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, in Toronto. Enjoy: