Authors Chris Sugden and Jen Sugden in conversation about their new release High Vaultage
Both originally from Yorkshire, Chris and Jen met as undergraduates at the University of Oxford. They hold PhDs in Science and Technology Studies (Chris) and Victorian Literature (Jen), which goes some way to explaining Victoriocity (at least in part because of the mixture of books cluttering up their home). The pair were part of the writing team behind the BBC Sounds weird fiction anthology series Murmurs, and they have also spent many years writing and performing scripted and improvised comedy around the UK.
About High Vaultage: From the creators of the acclaimed podcast Victoriocity comes a hilarious novel set in the greatest, most chaotic city in history. Twisty, inventive, and joyously funny, High Vaultage is perfect for fans of Ben Aaronovitch, Tom Holt, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett.
Jen: Hello, Chris.
Chris: Hello, Jen.
Jen: I just want to say what an enormous pleasure it is to interview you, my husband.
Chris: I’m sure it is.
Jen: Thank you for being here.
Chris: You’re welcome.
Jen: This is strange and great. Let’s get to it. We are married to each other but we also write together, and our debut novel High Vaultage has just been released in the USA and Canada, which is why we’re doing this interview. Why don’t we catch readers up: tell them what the novel is about, Chris.
Chris: High Vaultage is a detective thriller comedy set in a reimagined, technologically advanced Victorian London. In this world, two private investigators – ex-Scotland Yard detective Archibald Fleet and journalist Clara Entwistle – have set up the first detective agency in the city and are trying to solve a mysterious kidnapping. The person who witnessed this kidnapping has turned to Fleet-Entwhistle Private Investigations because the police are too absorbed by a series of impossible bank break-ins across the city to help.
Jen: You mentioned our setting is an advanced Victorian London, and I think that is one of my favourite elements of the book. The London of High Vaultage is called “Even Greater London” and is essentially a megalopolis that never stopped expanding and has grown to cover the entire lower half of England. That was your idea originally. Where did it come from?
Chris: I think it’s from a mixture of things. I was reading some Victorian sci-fi, including HG Wells, and so I was very in the mindset of that Victorian sense of technological ambition where anything seemed possible, and I started to think, well, what if there was a Victorian world where they really did have something close to our technological capabilities. Beyond that, I think the idea was also sparked by a more biographic psychological place, which is the presence of London in the United Kingdom. For people reading outside the UK, it’s hard to overstate the degree to which London dominates the UK economically, culturally, politically. It would be like if, in the USA, instead of Hollywood being in LA, your government being in Washington DC, and finance being in New York, it’s all in one city and it’s all at one end of the country. This tends to have the effect of certain institutions (the government or media, for example) treating London as by far the most important, or even the only important, part of the UK. And I think I thought it was interesting to play that idea out physically with a city that, instead of metaphorically reaching across the country, in fact physically did span across a huge part of England.
Jen: Yes, that idea fits very well with the Victorian spirit of ambition and technological possibility you mentioned earlier – the idea that the Victorians absolutely would just have kept building until they hit the coast if no limits had been placed on them. And, in the world of Even Greater London, a lot of limits are removed by the fact that the city itself is powered by a tower that beams wireless electricity out across London and has effectively allowed the conditions for this expansion. I also really love this world as a playground for our detective protagonists who have just set up their detective business together in this bonkers city. For me, that is a big source of humour in the novel: a grumpy detective and his upbeat, sunny detective partner solving crimes in a completely baffling and overwhelming city.
Chris: Yes, when we describe the setting it can make the book sound quite serious, but it is principally a comedy. Where else do you see the humour coming from, and what were your influences, Jen?
Jen: Oh, great question. In terms of our influences, comedically, I think The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a huge inspiration, as well as British comedy shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Blackadder, French and Saunders and The League of Gentlemen, certainly for me anyway. I should add we also love our American comedies too! And in terms of the humour, we tend to write a lot of character-driven comedy, I think in part because we are interested in human foibles, but also because we have a background in improvised comedy and are so used to dreaming up funny and ridiculous characters. A lot of the humour comes from these characters clashing against the mad world we have created. I think we kept asking the question: what if the Victorians but, you know, even more bonkers. And that led to the creation of so many fun locations in the city, like our reimagining of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as a 19th century Disneyland on acid. We’ve also got the Midlands Boundary Forest, designed to keep Northerners out of London, not least because it has been populated with 33,000 wolves to discourage crossings.
Chris: And the Thames Glacier.
Jen: Oh yes! The Tower which beams electricity through the city and is responsible for its prosperity and progress comes at the price of the River Thames becoming irrevocably frozen. So the Frost Fairs – which really did happen in the past when the Thames froze over in the winter – are now a permanent feature and people can go down on their lunch breaks for a bit of skating and hot chocolate. Or, you can go at night and bury bodies so deep in the ice that no one will ever find them. Chris, you are also responsible for a lot of humour in the novel through your depiction of a series of increasingly rubbish automata.
Chris: Well this is the thing, I think it’s very important to know that just because you have unlimited electrical energy to power your ideas, it doesn’t mean things are going to work. Fundamentally it’s still humans making them, and it’s still companies cutting corners, and so if you buy a robot receptionist, it’s going to speak to you in exactly the ways it’s been programmed to, because it’s not worth anybody’s time making it so intelligent that it can actually converse like a human, or help detectives figure out what they’re trying to figure out. So yeah, everything’s simultaneously amazing and half-broken.
Jen: Queen Victoria is also mostly a robot now. How many times has she been assassinated and revived by her Royal Medical Engineers?
Chris: Eleven and counting.
Jen: So, we’ve talked a lot about what’s in the book, but we often get asked about our writing process, because we write as a team.
Chris: I think there’s two or three stages to our process. The first one is outlining a structure. Although we write comedy, the structure of the novel is a detective mystery and escalating thriller, so the first stage is us brainstorming ideas and coming up with a complete plot and character arcs that would work effectively for a straight mystery-thriller. The comedy is layered on after that. When we have that outline, the next stage is to divvy it up, with each of us writing different chapters before handing them to each other to see what we think. We will then either give some notes on the chapter or edit it directly ourselves. We go backwards and forwards like that until we’re both happy with all of it. And that’s the key thing: we both have to be happy with all of it. It’s both of our work, so if one of us doesn’t like something, and can’t be convinced, it doesn’t go into the book.
Jen: I think it works really well. I mean, we’re not divorced yet so it can’t be working too badly.
Chris: ‘Yet,’ is crucial there.
Jen: Ha! Indeed. We’ve got a second book in the series to write so let’s see how that goes before making any grand claims.
Chris: Joking aside, I have really enjoyed working with you on this.
Jen: And I’ve enjoyed working with you. We do keep doing it – working together I mean – which must be because we enjoy it. What readers might not know is that the book itself is set in the same world as the audio drama podcast Victoriocity, which we also created and write together. You don’t have to listen to the podcast to read the book though, it’s completely standalone, but if you’re reading this thinking you’d like to listen – for free! – to a neo-Victorian detective comedy fiction podcast, then check it out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast app. But we’re not here to talk about the podcast – Chris, tell people why they should check out our debut novel High Vaultage.
Chris: I think these are dark times. Dark, dark times.
Jen: Strong start.
Chris: And High Vaultage is a light-hearted, funny detective mystery set in a bewilderingly chaotic Victorian megacity. So there’s lots of fun to be had.
Jen: Yes, I feel like we have written something that is a fun time. So if that appeals, it’s out now!
Chris: Thanks for reading, everyone.
Jen: Yes, thank you!
