Interview: Author Simon Lendrum

Lockdown labours pay off for first-time author

When the pandemic struck, Devonport’s Simon Lendrum got cracking on a novel, since published to rave reviews. He tells Helen Vause about grabbing his chance and getting lucky.

We’ll never know how many manuscripts were toiled on during those long lockdown days, or how many unpublished novels have been lurking in bottom drawers.

But Devonport’s Simon Lendrum is one author already reaping the benefit of his pandemic writing project.

He’s now on to his second book after his efforts during the autumn of 2020 caught the interest of a publisher.

Lendrum is the author of The Slow Roll, a fast-paced yarn about gambling, crime, life and love, which became one of New Zealand’s top three new releases earlier this year.

The positive reviews for his debut novel have been so encouraging as to have him now well into a sequel, tapping away in weekends at home in Huia St.

His publishers launched him to New Zealand readers as “an exciting new voice in commercial crime”.

And on the front cover, one of the country’s top crime writers, Paul Cleave, offers an emphatic endorsement: “One hell of a debut – Lendrum is a writer to keep an eye on.”

As a Cleave fan, Lendrum says he couldn’t have hoped for better.

The Slow Roll is a story that Lendrum says had been shaping up in the back of his mind for many years. But until he found himself with weeks of spare time on his hands, he’d never managed to knuckle down and start putting it into words.

A couple of false starts were quickly deleted, he says.

The story is set in the sleazier parts of Auckland and the main character, O’Malley is a good-looking Irish-Polynesian poker player and self-appointed private investigator.

A missing girl, a murder, gambling and a cast of characters and their mysterious dealings all form part of the backdrop.

And O’Malley’s girlfriend, Claire, who between bloody noses, the odd beating and other skirmishes, keeps him coming out of his many scrapes the right side up, often on the edge of daybreak.

Readers who have already discovered O’Malley and Claire are likely to hear more of them soon.

But the pair may never have made it onto the page without the restrictions of the pandemic.

Lendrum was between jobs when lockdown struck. After decades managing advertising agencies and herding teams of creatives, he’d decided to take a break.

And since he’d often wondered whether he had a novel in him, he saw lockdown as demanding a serious effort from him to produce one.

“I didn’t have work or young kids underfoot to keep me busy at home, like so many other people. I really didn’t have anything useful that I had to do, so I knew this was my chance.”

Lendrum says he told his family the plan, and went upstairs to his desk, to get started.

Showing his hand... former adman Simon Lendrum has published one novel and has a sequel in the offing

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Later he’d dedicate the book to his wife, Claire, and son and daughter, Jack and Chloe, thanking them for not laughing at him at the beginning of his writing journey.

“One bad word,’ he chuckles, “and I would probably have folded. That would have been the end of it.”

But after a few days at the desk and a bit of “mucking around”, he was soon meeting a target of 2000 words a day and O’Malley and Claire were starting to have lives of their own.

Lendrum is no stranger to the world of gambling and had seen a bit of action at tables and casinos around many cities before he came to Auckland from the UK nearly 20 years ago.

He recognised rich characters, intrigue, thrills and the sort of daily drama from which he could make up some ripper yarns… once he got into it.

He is also an avid reader of many crime writers be they British, American or homegrown – like Cleave and Paul Thomas.

But taking the first steps to follow in their footsteps was a big learning curve for Lendrum, who’d started writing about O’Malley and Claire without much idea of where they were going after the opening pages of his manuscript.

Lendrum says he found making the story up as he went along worked well for him. So did figuring out what they would do next, what would or could happen and if it was time for more characters to be brought into the story.

“By the time I got up from my desk most days, I left it with some idea of what they would be doing, tomorrow.”

Lendrum made sure early in his story he’d created plenty of action and characters – enough for all sorts of scenarios to evolve.

He’d set the story up with enough possibilities that each morning, when he got to his keyboard, he could race on at pace with O’Malley and company, gathering impetus and picking up the action.

The Slow Roll title is a reference to what’s considered a breach in poker etiquette, when players with the winning hand vex the others around the table with a provocatively slow reveal of that hand.

When Lendrum emerged after weeks of almost daily writing, and announced he’d finished his novel, he had a very important card up his sleeve – the UK Crime Writers’Association (CWA).

The association promotes and supports crime-and-thriller writers, running the ‘Dagger’ awards to celebrate the cream of the crop. The CWA also has a service providing feedback and professional criticism for new manuscripts.

Lendrum’s book was well received. He took on board the encouragement, and the critical feedback he got from a CWA mentor, and then sent his work off to a selection of publishers.

In the silence that followed, Lendrum got on with life and tried to forget about getting The Slow Roll published and onto the bookshop shelves.

Luckily for him, after some months had passed, his CWA contact with the expert eye asked what was happening with the book, endorsing its quality and prospects.

Lendrum tried again and once more luck was on his side, when his work reached the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sitting with a local publisher, and finally got the big tick.

It is already in its second print run.

“There is so much luck in getting your book published,’ says Lendrum.

“I’m sure there are so many great drafts out there that never get into print.

“When you think about it, what are the odds of your book landing on the desk of a publisher when they are in the perfect headspace for it to resonate? Any other day, they might just pass it by.” While Lendrum is still on a roll as a fledgling crime writer, he has a new day job.

Instead of running an agency he is now chief executive of the Commercial Communications Council, the industry body for New Zealand advertising agencies.

British-born and Cambridge-educated, Lendrum and Claire discovered Auckland and Devonport when they first came from London to check the country out.

They were ready for a change from life in the UK and they loved what they found here.

Says Lendrum simply, “We found a nice place to live and there was no going back.”

He is now at the time of life when making a living in his day job still takes precedence.

With just weekends to get back to the goings-on of the likeable O’Malley and Claire, this sequel will be longer in the writing.

“I just love doing it, and I always look forward to sitting down to it again. But for the foreseeable future, crime-writing is my side hustle.”

“I didn’t have work or young kids underfoot to keep me busy at home, like so many other people. I really didn’t have anything useful that I had to do, so I knew this was my chance.”

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