What is the significance of the book’s title?
It shows the collusion between technology and spirituality in the stories. It also hints at two key interpretations of many of the stories; that the best we can get of heaven is just photocopies of it, i.e. something insubstantial and something that is less than what it was, something reduced by trying to talk about it, and reduced by the way we experience it; and secondly, more optimistically, that to be able to photocopy heaven is fantastic because we can at least see a version of it - and if that’s the best we get, so be it, but at least we get that.
How long did it take you to write it?
About two years, on and off. It was published in the U.K. by Elastic Press in 2006.
Which aspects of the work that you put into Photocopies of Heaven did you find most difficult?
There are cartoons in the book - well, sort of a graphic story told with imagery like in plane safety cards or in self-assembly furniture instructions. Finding the right people to do them was hard. Then I found rm*, Gaylie Runciman and Debs Norton, two very talented artists based in Glasgow - and I couldn’t have been happier.
They tend to specialise in installation art and digital media, but they’re also animators. They won an award just recently: The Scottish Style Awards ‘Taste Maker of the Year’.
What was it about the work rm* did that you found particularly pleasing?
They just immediately got what I was talking about - and that was such a delight. They never forced the imagery — the story they worked on ("The Amazing Adventures of No One in Particular") needs the imagery to almost strike you as bland — and it’s the collision between the words and pictures that gives it its heart. They also really liked the story too and found the same things funny in the same kinds of ways as I did, so that made things trip along very nicely for all of us.
What did you enjoy most during the process that led to Photocopies of Heaven?
I liked working on all of it - I really set out to have fun with storytelling and to experiment with techniques and ideas. For example, the Amazing Adventures I just mentioned. There’s one story written entirely in text message form, because there were lots of characters and I wanted them all to speak with their own voices and for the sense of an authorial voice controlling them all to be masked.
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