Financial Fallout! 21 Futures Podcast S2 E3 - Graeme Shimmin talks 'Infinite Debt'

Yeah, yeah. I was interested in writing something that sort of met the brief really, because there was— it seemed quite— when I saw the competition, it had a long list of things like that we don't want, which I thought was quite unusual.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I thought, right, they're obviously looking for something quite specific here. And so I very carefully read the sort of instructions of what they were looking for, which was something where the finances have kind of gone wrong. And I think it did mention they wanted emotion in it and families and some hope as well, which I think the story has.

Just a tiny bit.

Yeah, just a tiny bit. Yeah, because realistically, these kind of things don't collapse. You know, in 3,000 words.

Yeah,

yeah, it was a very, very tight, um, uh, word limit. That was the main problem. Yeah, no, I could have written 30,000 words of that story.

Yeah. See, that, that's the reverse problem to what a lot of writers have.

Okay,

okay. So a lot of people look at 1,500, 2,000, go, God, that's good, that's quite a lot, it's gonna, it's gonna take me a while. And I wonder if it's perhaps more experienced writers that sort of think, I can do that in an afternoon, you know. And it's not about competition at all, but I think to be unintimidated by word count is good, right?

Yeah,

sure. So to fit into the parameters, I agree. I mean, when you think sort of Stephen King-style short stories, you're looking at sort of 5,000 up to 25,000, 30,000 words, right? Like short novellas.

Yeah.

But really, our editor Phil did a tremendous job with the submissions. This is a second collection. The first one was called Tales from the Time Chain. This one's Financial Fallout, and it's a little broader than the first one. Yeah. And the idea and how I describe it at least is this is a possible future that we can explore for us as humans living on Earth. There's gotta be a little bit of grounded real world. Although having said that, some of our stories were tremendous fantasy-based ones and they were so good. We wanted to give them a shout out. But your story, I mean, wow. Uh, you blew us away. I'm, I'm very lucky. I feel very grateful to have been one of a, a few people to have read it so far, and I'm looking forward to everyone, uh, getting their copy of the collection and, and having a read. Thank you. Would you like to, uh, give us a little excerpt of Infinite Debt?

Sure, yeah, I can read a little section from it. This is from near the start. Hang on, I'll just get it. Okay, yeah. So the world of Infinite Debt is a kind of world, as you might imagine from the title, of overwhelming debt and also this kind of environmental catastrophe. The main characters are Della Cruz, works for a megabank called Elysium Trust Finance. And in this extract, she's traveled to an unofficial skyscraper called the Vertical to talk to one of the debt engineers about their own enormous debts to the bank. So this is the extract. At the base of the Vertical, enforcement drones had surrounded a family. Citizens hurried past, eyes downcast, neural interfaces blinking. The father pleaded with the drones. Please, we just need more time. My daughter, she's near graduation. The lead drone's sleek shell was cold sapphire blue, its voice crisp. Mr. Singh, your 3rd zone dwelling license has been revoked. I will guide you to a relocation center. Please don't make difficulties, or you'll force me to add another penalty to your family's debt profile. Zara pushed past the drones and started climbing. Zara staggered onto the 47th floor, her legs burning. In front of her was a bootleg loan company operating out of a storage unit. Scribbled above the door was Liberty Finance Cooperative. Microloans, not pesky drones. Try us. A petite dark-haired woman wearing blue shorts watched Zara as she stood at the top of the stairs, gasping. You back to shut us down again? she asked. Does Shanice live here? Zara gasped. The woman pointed to a unit at the end of the walkway. The door was ajar and the sound of someone retching was coming from inside. Ms Vega? Zara called, pushing the door open to find Vega crouched over a bucket, Her body wracked with spasms. An obsolete interface jutted from the base of her skull, its status lights flashing as she vomited. Vega looked up. If you're here about my debt, I've already sold everything. My organs, my avatar, the whole shebang. Her eyes were bloodshot. Ms. Vega, I'm here to help. Our customer options program— Vega laughed. A broken sound that turned to coughing. I'm already grinding 20 hours a day. My baby girl can't afford school, so she'll inherit my debt with no way to pay it except turning tricks. I can't even buy a ticket for the debt cancellation lottery. What options have I got, for real? Aye. There was a thump on the door. Enforcement? Panic flashed across Vega's face. No, no, no! The door burst open and an enforcement drone floated in. Shanice Vega, your debt. Zara stepped between the drone and Vega. Zara de la Cruz, Elysium Trust Finance. I have priority. She held up her ID for scanning. Check your logs. Drone lowered its manipulators. Zara de la Cruz, you have 10 minutes to conclude priority debt rescheduling. Outside, please. Client confidentiality. The drone backed up, pushing the broken door shut. Zara delved into her bag and brought out 2 small gadgets. She activated the first, a signal jammer. Its green light indicated 60 seconds of unmonitored communication before the surveillance system adapted. Vega looked at the jammer. What? Zara kept her voice low. Alex Riviera says hello. Vega's eyes widened. Alex? There's no time, please just listen. He's hacked your records and added a life insurance policy from your former employer. It's worth $10 million. You're dying anyway, months to live. The jammer's light blinked. 30 seconds to go. He says he's sorry, this was all he could do. It has to look like an accident. Think of your daughter. She held out the second gadget. Go to the window and hold this to your interface. The light on the jammer turned red. Zara took a breath, raised her voice. Sign here, please. Tears streaming, grabbed the gadget, moved towards the window, and held it to her head. Fuck it all, she said, and pressed the trigger. Zara dropped her bag, the noise as it clattered to the floor masking the sound of the gadget sparking against Vega's interface. Vega jerked and folded over the windowsill, her eyes rolling upward. With a last effort, she threw the gadget out of the window. The enforcement drone stormed in, crackling red. Stop! But Vega was gone, screaming all the way down.

Oh, tremendous, tremendous. How did you feel writing that?

Yeah, I was really pleased with that bit. Yeah, yeah, that's like a— it's not the exact start, but it's basically the first 500 words of the story. And then that incident snowballs until we find out what's really happening.

I mean, you can imagine scenarios like this playing out in the future or even in the past in certain places, right? And there's a kind of Um, are you familiar with the term grimdark? It's, uh, from, from Warhammer 40K, this, this kind of bleakness that I, I personally love. Um, and I often think, you know, how do the good guys win? And the answer is they often don't, right? But, um, ah, so good, so good. Your, your writing style, um, it's quite inspiring actually. I, I want to write more, more like that. It's almost noir-y. You know, yeah, I think it's quite a noir-esque element to it. Fantastic. And look, you know, it's a great opportunity to speak to a writer such as yourself who's been doing this for a long time, making a living from writing. You know, our submissions process is open to everyone and anyone can enter. And indeed, we've had established writers and some debut writers and some people that might work like you did previously in IT or in data and things thinking, Do you know what? I'm going to do something creative and fun. And I used to believe anyone can write a story. That's starting to change as I get older. But in theory, if you can read and write, you can tell a story, right? If you want to tell a good one—

I think people can write. Not everybody can write something I mean, clearly there is people, some people are more talented than others, but people can be taught to write to a reasonable standard.

That's right.

Yeah, of course there's a role for talent, but talent is a little bit overrated, I think. I think there was an article on my website I wrote called The Amadeus Myth, which is the idea that, I don't know if you've ever seen the film Amadeus.

Of course, we watched it at school.

Salieri, who's his rival, picks up some of Mozart's music and it's just written out perfectly first time, and he's so jealous. And, um, that's the idea that a lot of the media have about, um, any kind of artistic work, that it's all about genius. But that's not true, and it wasn't even true with Mozart. Mozart wrote his music the same way everybody else did.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I, I like what you're, you're talking about there because there's a, there's an intersection, isn't there, between acquired technical skill and natural talent.

Yeah.

And some, some people have one of those things.

Yeah.

Um, and really, you know, the, the exceptional writers have a, have a blend of the two, and, and that should be the, the sort of goal for everyone. Um, but if, you know, if, if people wanted to, uh, learn about writing and, and, and get better at it, I mean, there are, there are tremendous books like On Writing by, by Stephen King. Um, I know you publish writing advice on your website. Do you have a, I mean, I often say we don't have very long because a lot of people say, oh, you know, you've got to spend ages slowly incrementing. Whereas my style and my approach is, well, actually we have to quickly shift perspectives and just eradicate bad habits immediately.

Yeah.

You've got to suddenly level up really fast.

Yeah.

If you wanted to Give some of our listeners some writing advice. What sort of wisdom might you have for them?

Okay, I think what you're saying is right, that you need to learn quickly, and the best way to do that is to do courses and read books. Well, I know a lot of people are just like, oh, just write and just write, and that will work, but like you're saying, that'll take years and years and years. Learn from other people's mistakes and Yeah. Yeah, I could probably put a list together of books that people should read. I'm trying to think of some. Robert McKee's Story is a fantastic book, and that would give a lot of people a really good start on writing because that gives you the structure of a story. A lot of people think that you can't really be taught to write dialogue because some people just don't have an ear for how people talk. And I think that might be true to an extent, but anybody can be taught to write a story that actually has a structure that makes sense and, um, and is interesting. For sure.

I like that you mentioned dialogue. Um, a lot of, a lot of writers, especially, um, less experienced ones, tend to fill their stories with just exposition to hide, to hide from dialogue. Right. And they break that classic rule of telling instead of showing. And the best way to show is, I believe, through dialogue.

Sure.

What I would say is, you know, people are very interested in scriptwriting and writing movies and TV shows. And of course, a script is what, 90% dialogue?

Yeah, you should, in a script, you should really, everything should be, has to be shown. It's one of the key rules of scriptwriting is if you can't show it on the screen, then it shouldn't be in the script because you can't, so for example, you can't explain anything. You can't explain what people's state of mind is. You've got to show it by their— you can say he looks cross, but you can't say he is cross.

Yeah, because that—

yeah, you know,

how would you show that? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And it's— that's one thing from, you know, screenwriting advice that I think can play into normal writing, is it's a really good idea to say, just imagine that you— there's no narrator You cannot explain anything. You've just got to, you've got to show it all. You've got to have it in people's mouths or written out, but you can't just say blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, I like the old, you know, the old gangster movies with characters like Steve Buscemi who talk quickly and there's a lot of dialogue happening and that's called stichomythia sometimes, where it's rapid-fire dialogue. Looking at that written down and thinking, well, someone wrote that. I can write that. You know, I, I think that's tremendous writing advice. Dialogue is something I love doing because it's a great way to move the story along. And what I talk about with, with stories, especially short stories, is they're about movement. And that can— it can be literal and physical, but it can also be about a character's development, right? So you're moving from point A to point B with a beginning, middle, and end.

Yeah.

And that sounds really simple, But a lot of people get stuck, don't they? And my advice is normally, well, someone should be saying, and what happens next? And then what happens? And you've gotta keep answering that. You gotta keep the movement. If you lose the movement, you're dead in the water and your story stalls. And you can see even with huge publishing phenomenons like Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin kind of says, well, I've got myself stuck. Like the movement—

He's written himself into a corner.

That's right. Yeah. I think he, got a special name for it, the Myronese Knot.

Oh, right. No, I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah. He's come up with all sorts of excuses as to why he still hasn't done it. But yeah, I mean, it happens to everyone. But like you're saying, and we did talk a little bit about, I love this idea of, you know, finish stuff. Like, write something to completion and move on and write something else to completion. Yeah,

definitely.

That is so key to progressing as a writer. I mean, when you think social media is huge now, music is huge now, you're only as good as your last hit in music.

Yeah.

But in posting reels on Instagram or YouTube videos, you've got to keep chugging them out, you know. Writing, writing's exactly the same.

Yeah.

So I think, I think we've covered a lot of, a lot of really tremendous tremendous writing stuff in a short space of time here, so we're doing what we talk about, which is good. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what's next for you as a writer?

Yeah, sure. I'm working on a novel at the moment that's not a spec fic novel for me, which is a bit of a change. Most of what I've written has been speculative fiction, almost all of it really. Most of my stuff's sci-fi or alternate history. No, it's the one I'm working on at the moment. It's called Tiger Day, and it's a modern-day whodunit.

Oh, nice.

Which starts with a guy being found run over by a tank.

Wow.

And then it delves into all the— he's the owner of the tank museum himself, and there's a cast of people who may well have killed him.

Amazing, amazing. Did you see those, um, uh, those funny films with, um, uh, Daniel Craig playing Benoit Blanc?

Yes.

I

mean,

those are fantastic modern—

yeah, the first one was really good.

Yeah, I, I agree, I agree. I thought that was fun. I am— I'm getting a bit of that vibe. Um, that's it.

Yeah, it's just a little bit like that. Yeah.

So you mentioned, uh, you know, looking at writing a different type of novel. Um, you know, my first 3 novels were all Gothic literature, and then my 4th was a young adult country music romance, and I really went, went different. Um, some people might be quite intimidated by that. How do you— how did you make or decide, you know, let's do something a little different?

Okay, um, I think it was to an extent a sort of commercial thought. That, you know, sci-fi does sell, but murder mysteries do sell a lot more in general. On the other hand, there's a lot more competition. I mean, sci-fi is my first love, I guess. But no, I had this idea and I had some points I wanted to make, and it was— I came up with a plot that I felt was quite interesting. And so, but yeah, it's easier in some ways to write something set in the modern day Because you're not having to invent an entire world. So that does save a lot of time and you can just bang on with it.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you look at some of these sort of big popular writers, because I love going into a bookshop, right, and looking at the charts, and then there's a new chart called like BookTok or TikTok Made Me Buy

It.

And I have a read of the back covers of those. There's one writer called Colleen Hoover. I think she's done about 40 or 50 novels. one of them just was a big film. And I feel like, because my wife loves all her writing and then she loves like Harlan Coben crime thrillers. And I sort of think there's this great formula you can follow and you're absolutely right. You set it in a modern day and you can just follow the steps. And, you know, when we were in writing school, we learned about the 7 basic plots, right? And you're always kind of There's nothing new under the sun, right? Yeah, it's your telling of the same story that is different. You see a lot of, uh, Greek myth being rehashed at the moment, right? And even into Norse myth and Egyptian myth. Um, and that's really interesting. But I think the, you know, the ultimate thing is just making people feel something, like how it, how it resonates with them. And I, I love, I love that you were sort of courageous enough to talk about the commercial considerations there, because writing, of course, is an industry. It is a business, and at the end of the day, we've all got to eat. And I have my own views about making money as a writer, and obviously one of the great things to do is submit to competitions and call for submissions. Yeah.

And

I understand you've been shortlisted not just for 21 Futures, but you've had quite a few come about that way. Is that something you recommend?

Entering competitions?

Yeah,

it's a very good way of raising your profile on the assumption you can at least get shortlisted. I don't personally enter competitions that you have to pay to enter, particularly if the prize— particularly if the entry fee is too high. I just think some of them are kind of, it's kind of exploitative when they're charging you, you know, a large amount of money to join and they're getting tens of thousands of entrants. But yeah, I definitely enter anything that is free to enter.

Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I, when I was younger, there's a prize in the UK called the Bridport Prize. Yeah. I think it's £10,000. And when I was younger, I thought that was an infinite amount of money. And I really wanted to win this prize. So I wrote my first book thinking specifically about winning that prize. I did not win that prize. I didn't even enter.

But the thing with any competition is there's a lot of competition. That's the whole thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had hundreds of entries and narrowing them down, especially to sort of, you know, we actually expanded the prize winners from sort of 3 to 5. Absolutely. Such tremendous stories. Um, and you

know, I'm sure picking between the last sort of 10, I think it's probably from what I've done when I've worked as an editor on— I've done published 2 anthologies myself and we got hundreds of submissions. And yeah, you can get rid of 3 quarters of them because they're just not actually very good. But that still leaves you with more than you can really use. And then just choosing the last few is really difficult.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm happy to say we have had a lot of fun and we've been spoiled by how good some of these stories were. But when it came to sort of the final 3, there was very, it was very clear, but then figuring out that next bit. And it was a great conversation. Maybe we should have recorded it, but me and Phil were talking to Niko, who runs ConsenSys Network, the publisher. And it was just an amazing conversation to have. And I'm very happy that, you know, you came first with your story because it is so good. And I'm really looking forward to people reading it and giving us feedback. And should we hypothetically do a third collection in the future. I hope you'll come and submit again. But in the meantime, because we've taken enough of your time and wisdom already, in the meantime, how would you like people to stay in touch with you or find you online? You know, I understand you have a website, right?

Yeah, that's the best way to see anything about me. It's just my name, grahamshimmin.com. I post stuff on there pretty much weekly, so.

Excellent.

Yeah, that's mostly writing advice. I was thinking of writing something about entering competitions shortly, so.

Oh, oh yeah, so yeah, please do.

Some ideas about that.

Yeah, well, let us know when you, when you publish that and we can share it with our community. We've got a great growing community on Telegram and Twitter,

right?

And, you know, we can We can make sure everyone has a little read of that. And I encourage everyone listening to this to come and join me in Telegram, and you can ask writers and editors all sorts of questions about writing. But Graham, thank you so much for your time and for your story. And I'm really excited to hear that there's more coming from you in the future. So please stay in touch.

Yeah.

And for now, I will let you get back to your day in lovely Ireland. And I hope it's better weather than it is here in Blighty. But yeah, it's— oh, and also a real pleasure to meet you, my friend. You know, like I said, I've been following you for a long time and it's been quite a special conversation for me to have. So thank you very much.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Okay. We'll talk soon. Take care, my friend.

Bye.