AT LAST – A NOVEL SET IN THAILAND WITH BITE!
Meet the man who has given us a black comedy that gets you in the neck!
An interview with Jim Newport – author of The Vampire of Siam, a novel published by Asia Books.
It’s kind of ironic that a guy who lives and breathes the movie industry should find himself looking at producing his own movie in a genre of film that he might otherwise avoid like the plague.
Vampires are for other people, he says, but when you have been pumping out scripts and screenplays for past dozen years and you keep hearing –“well if it was about vampires or some other kind of crowd-pleaser, we would love to talk.”
This all-too-familiar response to his scripts got Jim thinking, and so the next time he attacked his word processor during his annual winter retreat to his home in Phuket, Thailand, he created the characters that today star in their very own novel, the black comedy “Vampires of Siam”.
But wait a minute, I thought we were talking screenplays here?
“Well once I sat down and started laying out the plot and the central characters and the settings and all the rest of the cinematic detail a good screenplay suggests, I got to realizing that the storyline needed a lot more than just a rough outline. This was getting very interesting.”
Jim is a bona fide Hollywood film production designer by trade, and has spent his life traveling the globe helping design and produce movies that you can find in most DVD libraries today.
“I love my work but I always wanted to write a fine movie and a great novel or two. This book is the third I have completed but the first to be published. And although I was kinda railroaded into writing about vampires and stuff, I love the characters now and I am delighted I managed to set it in Thailand, a place I know and love. And let’s face it, a vampire story set in Bangkok, the modern-day equivalent of the writhing megalopolis of sin and darkness in “Bladerunner” – how perfect a setting could I get?”
And yes the story is a very engaging account of the life a modern-day vampire and his new buddy (or nemesis without giving too much away) set here in the Land of Smiles. And low and behold, not a wooden stake, silver bullet, guilded cross nor any other Prince of Darkness vampire cliché in sight. And the story gets you smiling and looking once again at the fishpond of weirdness that we often find ourselves in, and for those of us who live in the City of Angels, there is a ready resonance in Jim’s well-crafted detail and evocative background.
“Lord save us from the ill-conceived Bangkok thrillers so many seem determined to thrust upon us,” says the weary resident of Bangkok. And he has because this is a very good book, and if you met the author you would understand that this is a book for the thinking man too with a great eye for the cinematic that gets you quickly and more deeply involved with the characters and the great story that they produce.
A book review this is not, but those that have reviewed the work and some often did with a jaundiced eye, have praised the book as a great read, a good laugh and even as something of a classic in the genre.
Hardly surprising then that publishers in America are chasing the rights down, and Jim and his literary agent there are considering offers including options to turn the book into a movie of the same name.
And good news for the readers who enjoy this first effort – it is number one in a trilogy, with the second book already finished and due for release in November Asia-wide by Asia Books in Bangkok.
The books are rich in cinematic imagery taking the reader in and out of the rich and fascinating details of Thai history, whisking you in flashback from royal palace to coronation to Angkor Wat to brothels and back to the present, spanning the years as Ramonne the vampire ‘hero’ of the piece paces and stalks and plunders his victims’ blood to stay alive. Sounds familiar right? There’s that resonance with the details again!
Jim’s first two books have not yet been published but the ‘birth’ of Ramonne might just prompt publishers to look again at his work and he is already discussing the possibilities of getting “Yankee Dragon” – a novel prompted by the trials and tribulations and joys of making a Hollywood movie “Mr. Baseball” starring Tom Selleck, in Japan.
“Now that was interesting and fun and fascinating and frustrating and if ever an experience in my life demanded a book, this was it,” he chuckled.
His second manuscript is a dark, psychedelic murder mystery featuring a real friend who Jim paints into the book and who gets caught up in a bizarre murder that totally changes the friend’s life.
“I was fascinated how I could take an otherwise perfectly normal person personally known to me and watch how their involvement in a harrowing murder mystery might change their lives, And I was in the driving seat,” he says gleefully. This is a guy who really enjoys his craft and loves the fact that his life is changing to embrace his first love – writing.
“By the way, the friend featured in my unpublished second novel is Eric Burdon who once sang with the Animals and War and was staying with me at my house on Laurel Canyon way back then. We are still best friends today.”
The two met when Jim was playing gigs on Sunset Boulevard with one of his legendary blues bands which he fronted under the name of Jimmy Fame.
“Boy, those were the days and every time I left to film a new movie somewhere around the globe, I had to come home months later and form a new band all over again as my guys always drifted on to something new whenever I was gone.”
Jim writes songs still today and when in Bangkok, he jams with his buddies over at MOJOS on Sukhumvit Soi 33/2 where his friend and fellow blues fiend Doctor Blues is a regular feature.
“If I was a not a writer or a movie designer I would be blues singer for sure…but that’s another story.”