Thomas Trang is a French/Vietnamese writer currently living in the UK after stints in Australia, New York, and Singapore. His stories have previously appeared in FutureQuake, Full House Literary and the Revolutions 2 anthology. He is currently working on a SF trilogy which mixes cyberpunk with the gritty realpolitik of The Wire and Cold War spy fiction.
Hello everyone, and welcome to "1 on 1 with Me!" In this series, I highlight a new author and engage in a thoughtful conversation about who they are, what they care about, and their perspectives on various topics. I start with standard questions and then move into tailored follow-ups based on their responses.
I find the format to be conversational, and I truly enjoy it. My primary focus is to highlight the author I am interviewing.
Who am I? I am an author known for creating crime fiction, with a particular focus on complex characters, engaging dialogue, and narratives centered around crime themes. I genuinely enjoy listening to people and letting them share their stories.
If you are interested in being a guest, please reach out to me on social media or email me with the subject line: "Author Interview." This initiative is my way of giving back to the writing community. The guests you’ll hear from in these interviews come from diverse backgrounds, and they may or may not be familiar voices in the writing community. That’s the beauty of this platform on Substack—it's free!
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On to the interview!
Thomas Trang, writer and really good dude. I can’t wait to check out his novel. I discovered his insightful commentary on one of my favorite characters Luke Fischer when I read his Forward to Craig Terlson’s rerelease of Surf City Acid Drop.
Who are you and can you tell me a little about your work? What drives you? What do you hope to accomplish?
My name is Thomas Trang and I'm a writer based in London. I have a debut novel out in March - Dark Neon & Dirt. It's a crime novel set in LA. After that is a science fiction trilogy that I've been working on for a very long time, much to the annoyance of the publisher. It is almost done and it is dense and weird and violent. I've described it as "The Wire in space" which gives you some idea of its scope. James Ellroy’s Underworld trilogy was also an influence. I've also written a handful of stories that run the gamut from crime to horror, and something closer to 'literary' - whatever that means.
I was born in London, but ended up moving around a lot before settling in the UK again. Paris, Sydney, US, a bit of time in Singapore and Malaysia. Some other places too. I think that this almost definitely shaped the work. The science fiction stuff is very expansive. A polyphony of cultures and voices, with a story that digs into 'macro' themes like politics, the media, and how societies rise and fall. That makes it sound dry! There's also action and romance in there too. Most of this is baked into science fiction I guess, but even the LA crime novel ends up sprawling over a larger canvas than just the one city, as huge and diverse as it is. Los Angeles is a global city that lends itself to this kind of storytelling. I couldn’t have set it in Wyoming.
This is the kind of writing I want to do - big and ambitious global books. I want them to be plot driven too, not some highbrow professorial 'state of the world' thing. My working mantra is "transnational scumbags". Because I moved around so much growing up, I never really felt like I had a hometown in the traditional sense. I'm always slightly in awe of writers who can drill down into a place. Crime writers in particular are very good at this type of intimate relationship, be that with a specific city or a rural location. I'm thinking of how Bobby Mathews writes about Birmingham, Alabama in Magic City Blues,or the way Sara Paretsky writes about Chicago. I'm thinking of authors who are synonymous with a city. Dennis Lehane and Boston. That kind of thing. A lot of the grit-lit and Appalachian writers are masters at it. I've never been able to do that, so I am moving in the opposite direction.
How do you see your relationship with the reader?
It is still very early days in terms of my work being out there and visible, and we will have to see how the novels are received. People have responded well to the stories, and other writers seem to like the novel that is out in March. That's the usual back and forth involved with publication, the blurb-industrial complex. I'm looking forward to seeing unfiltered reviews on Amazon and places like that, be it glowing praise or a one star hatchet job! People will say anything on the internet, so you take the good with the bad and don't take any of it personally. Or even that seriously. This is something I sat down and conjured up in my imagination. Once it is out there, it's beyond your control.
I guess that I have to put my reader hat on and think about what I always want from a book, which is to be entertained first and foremost. That doesn't mean pure story or action. It could be through ideas or even just the language. Ideally a book should give the reader all of this. And it should be at least a little bit funny too. That's what I want to give a reader.
How do you view your characters? What has changed over time, and what has stayed the same? How do you develop complex characters?
My biggest fear is that all my characters essentially sound like me. Maybe with a funny accent, or maybe they have boobs, but they speak and think like I do. Most writers probably feel this way to some degree. I don't know if much has changed about my approach to characters, because everything I write starts out differently. It might start with a character first, but most of the time it will start with an idea or some sort of thing I want to write about.
Usually the character gets built out of expediency to make the story work, in terms of what they do and how they move, what kind of skills they have and so on, and you have to fill it out from there. For me this takes time and numerous drafts. I have to live with them for a while to figure out who they are and what they want.
What is your version of success? Has it changed during your writing journey? How so? What’s different now versus when you started?
Fame and fortune! Or at least I want to be successful enough to keep doing what I do. That’s always been the goal. I want to write books that I would want to read. I wish that someone else would do it, because you never really get to read your own book for the first time. Plus writing books is hard. You have to be a little crazy to do it.
But even then, I’d really like to connect with other people through my books. It’s not just about writing them for me. I’m a habitual email sender to different authors I admire. Crime novelists, or more literary writers. Whatever speaks to me. And I’m sure that any author would tell you that this is what it’s all about. That shared connection through words on a page. It’s magic. It’s alchemy. So, if you like a book, tell them! Leave a review. Don’t worry about being weird. All your favorite authors are weirdos. But be polite. That goes without saying.
What type of reader are you? How do you view books you read, and how do they affect you and your writing?
A deliberately voracious one. I have certain tastes and preferences, which are regrettably a bit skewed towards male authors and I’m working on that, but I will read across genres. Life must be boring if you don’t.
As a writer, I’m almost always reading with one eye on what works for me and what doesn’t. What can I learn in terms of technique and the different ways of telling a story. What not to do. It’s almost like how athletes will watch tapes of their competition, except that I’m only competing against myself. I wish that I could turn this off sometimes. I’m always looking for how the magic trick is done instead of just enjoying the show.
I recently wrote an intro for a great PI novel by Craig Terlson called Surf City Acid Drop. That was an interesting process where I started talking about the book but then got sidetracked into a bigger discussion about detective fiction. I think about this stuff a lot, how books are always in conversation with other books. That definitely informs my work. For some reason, this intro was a lot easier for me to write than a story of my own. Probably because I was writing purely in my voice as me, not through the prism of some fictional character.
How do you find readers? What works and hasn’t worked for you? What resonates with you when readers share thoughts about your work? And where do you see yourself in the writing community and publishing world?
My entire writing life has been online up until now. Most people I know aren’t aware that I’m writing at all, with the exception of a few close friends. I’m just not that vocal about it. It’s not something I bring up in conversation, and I don’t know any other authors in my day to day life. Writing books is a very solitary pursuit which suits me fine. It’s a bit like having a secret superhero identity, but without the obligation to fight crime and save the world.
Now I’m getting published, this is changing. It's getting harder to hide from people. Maybe I’ll start doing things like book readings, and that will force me to engage more. Who knows, it might even be fun. I’m not a social media person. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but it’s how I’ve made some great connections and relationships that extend beyond 280 characters and self-promotion.
I honestly don’t know where I see myself in the writing community, and it's not something I have really thought about yet. That sounds like a question for someone else to answer, and it’s too early to say. I just want to keep writing, making each book a little different from the last but still recognisably mine.
Tell me something interesting about yourself that these questions stimulated thought about. And tell me something you want others to know.
I haven't really done interviews until very recently, so this was a real learning experience for me and made me realise that I'm still not entirely comfortable or confident enough to talk about my writing yet. It still feels a little weird that my work is getting read and people are responding to it, because it has been a very solitary thing until now.
I've also talked smack about Wyoming in another interview this week, and I have no idea why. I've never been to Wyoming, and I don't know anyone from Wyoming. I'm sure it has its charms.
What is something I want others to know? Well ... other than my love for the Equality State, there's my website thomastrang.com which is updated with links to different short fiction I've written, the various anthologies I've been a part of, and anything else I'm up to.
I was first introduced to you by the whispering and cheerleading of Craig Terlson. How did you come to write the intro for Craig? What was the hardest part about writing the introduction and how did you come to find Luke Fischer?
I heard about Craig through Twitter, because he definitely has his fans and cheerleaders too, and at some point I picked up Surf City Acid Drop and was blown away by the voice. I wrote a very long-winded but positive review of Three Minute Hero which he loved, and it was similar to the intro in its style. Verbose but casual. I think that is my natural writing voice when it comes to non-fiction. Craig is a very talented author and we have lengthy unfiltered and hilarious discussions about different things. I forced the novels of Charles Willeford onto him, which - despite channeling the ghost of Hoke Moseley through Fischer - he’d never actually read before. So when he asked, I was more than happy to write something.
The hardest part for me was trying to give it some structure so that one section led to the next, and trying to not go off on a million different tangents. Which I did anyway, but I’m really happy with how the intro came out.
I know you said that LA is a global city, but why LA as a setting and not—say—London? What else drew you to the city?
Los Angeles has this mythical status in my head, which might be true for anyone who grew up drowning in Hollywood films and American TV. I was born in London but spent a lot of my childhood in Sydney, Australia which is way more “Americanized” than the UK in terms of culture. Maybe it’s a Rupert Murdoch thing, I don’t know, but I watched a lot of US sitcoms and cartoons as a small kid which never caught on the same way in Great Britain. The British have the BBC and their own cultural reference points, some of which made it to Australia too, but the American stuff was always more exciting to me. More pulpy and garish. Maybe it is as simple as the color gradient. I grew up with Knight Rider, 21 Jump Street, The A-Team – that Stephen J Cannell logo is seared into my brain.
Even later when I was living in Paris, I was still watching a lot of US stuff. They were totally obsessed with reruns of shows like Miami Vice and Hunter. I’d never heard of Hunter until I got to Paris! They love noir and cheeseburgers and trashy Americana. They love CSI and NCIS.
It took a little while for me to get fluent in French, so I would also watch movies in English with subtitles. A lot of movies. You could sneak into cinemas very easily. I’m certain it was an actively encouraged pastime for errant and impressionable teenagers. Like smoking. You know how the French are with film and nicotine. To this day, my spoken French is a hybrid of first-generation Vietnamese immigrant and hacky 90s Hollywood screenwriting. Hip-hop back then was another influence. I love the wordplay and the craft of it.
I would always read American authors too. Elmore Leonard, Stephen King. This definitely shaped my own internal voice. Once I’d decided on writing a crime novel, it didn’t occur to me to base it anywhere but the US. Maybe I’m too close to London, so writing about it doesn’t give me a sense of fiction and escapism. Maybe I’m working my way up to it.
How has the process been with Shotgun Honey? Ron gave you a great cover so let’s talk a little bit more about esthetics. How important are book covers to you? What do you see as a book cover failing? What grabs you about a cover?
Ron is kinda famous/infamous for his covers. I spoke to other Shotgun Honey authors before I jumped on board, and they all said the same thing. The whole process has been great. I worked with an editor who is based in Southern California, so she was instrumental in making sure I wasn’t talking out of my ass when it came to certain places and street directions. It’s probably different for each project, but Shotgun Honey was very hands off when it came to stuff like the plot or different idiosyncrasies around the characters. Ron liked the book, and I guess he had trust that I knew what I was doing. I hope it’s warranted. My initial impression of Shotgun Honey was that it focused on rural and grit-lit writing so I wasn’t sure if this novel was a good fit, but if you look at the back catalog there’s all types of stuff there.
He was open to my ideas when it came to the cover, but thankfully he did his own thing. Some of my input made it into the final product in subtle ways but my suggestions were pretty corny if I’m totally honest. That whole LA neon at night vibe – again, the influence of TV and Hollywood – and it has been done to death by now. You get a hint of it there, but Ron made it darker and moody. And even then, the thing just leaps off the page. It captures the spirit of the book. He’s genuinely one of the best at it.
Book covers are everything! “Never judge a book by its cover” is great life advice but it’s bullshit when it comes to actual books. What makes you lean in and pick up one book over another? Forget about if it’s an author you know or something that was recommended. I mean going in blind. For me it has to be eye-catching, which seems obvious. Something that’s visually striking or cool – whatever that may be. It’s like that definition of pornography - "I know it when I see it". Against my better judgment, I am still a sucker for the vaporwave or cyberpunk aesthetic. I’m also a collector of those Vintage Contemporaries paperbacks with the Mondrian style. I like Chip Kidd covers too. The guy is a legend.
https://talkingcovers.com/2012/09/12/vintage-contemporaries/
http://www.designishistory.com/1980/chip-kidd/
So many book covers now are super generic. Police procedural novels might be the worst culprit, if you’ll excuse the pun. The same font, the same visuals. You can totally judge these books by their covers, and that might be the point. Readers want the same thing each time. I understand that impulse for familiarity, the comfort and pleasures of a series character, but it does make for boring cover art.
Because the people in your life are discovering your talent, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but since I’m also new to this side of you, what’s next? What excites you about the writing process? And how does your family respond?
My wife is reading Dark Neon & Dirt now actually, and her one refrain is that the characters often sound just like me! I mentioned that earlier. She likes the prose though. Other readers have really responded to the dialog and the humor, but then they don’t have to listen to my nonsense 24/7.
Next up is that sci-fi trilogy, once I’ve finished the last book. The problem is – aside from the usual challenges of having real world stuff to deal with – I am very slow. I am a procrastinator too. I’m also writing some more short stories and flash fiction, which is a good palette cleanser (or some elite level procrastination). This is where I can experiment with different styles and see what I can do. I have plans for another novel, which is only at the very early stages. It is only scribbling in notebooks so far, some timelines and some character bios, but I have a good idea how it ends.
That might be the most exciting part of writing for me, when it is still nebulous and I haven’t screwed it up yet! I’m sure you know the ups and downs of the process. It alternates between those moments when you are stuck and that rush when everything is clicking.
[Not original ending but a pretty good one]These are some tough questions! But insightful. I've had to really think about my responses.
Thomas Trang is a French/Vietnamese writer currently living in the UK after stints in Australia, New York, and Singapore. His stories have previously appeared in FutureQuake, Full House Literary and the Revolutions 2 anthology. He is currently working on a SF trilogy which mixes cyberpunk with the gritty realpolitik of The Wire and Cold War spy fiction.
If you are interested in being a guest, please reach out to me on social media or email with the subject line: Author Interview.
Mark Atley is known for writing crime fiction, with his works often characterized by complex characters, engaging dialogue, and narratives that build tension towards explosive climaxes.
Atley's approach to writing often involves creating intricate plots where characters' histories and motives are deeply interwoven, providing readers with both entertainment and a commentary on crime and morality. His work has been featured on platforms like Audible for audiobooks, indicating a broad reach in the crime fiction genre.
Mark Atley also engages with his audience through social media, where he can be followed for updates on new releases and insights into his writing process
Excellent interview- have just ordered the book.
"The Wire in space" - sign me up!!!
Excellent interview... and I'm about to start reading the book!