Better Know An Author – Ben Tallon
Our weekly spotlight series on authors from around the world. This week we sat down with Ben Tallon!
Please give a brief introduction, including your name and where you are based
My name is Ben Tallon. I am a UK (currently Salisbury) based writer. I’m an unusual mix – a professional freelance illustrator of thirteen years for clients including The New York Times, The Premier League, Russell Brand, and The Guardian, and a writer of six. Some have pointed out that I am Ralph Steadman and Hunter S.Thompson in one… It takes time to understand ourselves, but somewhere around the age of 35 (I am 38 at the time of writing) it became crystal clear that I have always had a writer’s mind. Never was I able to forget a character, a funny comment, a strange moment/behaviour, or resist stopping to appreciate the layers in underappreciated things which others just walk on past. Illustration is beautiful, but just one storytelling artform, and it was the idiosyncrasies of that job which presented the opportunity for me to start documenting them. Writing told it best. Now, doing both roles, the possibilities are endless. Life happens in its own time.
What book or books have you published or are working on at the moment?
My debut book was Champagne and Wax Crayons: Riding the Madness of the Creative Industries: a brutally honest personal account of turning creativity into a career; the highs, lows, and sheer surrealism of that experience. It was a cathartic blog-based vent for an embittered young freelancer which evolved to become something more objective and insightful. I felt it might benefit others who wanted to lead their lives with creativity. While biographical, the idea was that if nobody knew who the hell I was (99.9% of people), and didn’t care, they could still apply their own particulars and the story/lessons would still work.
I stumbled upon my first fiction book via a combination of coping, and observing the unprecedented lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation Watch is the account of one fictional suburban community’s descent into domestic disarray; a behavioral study via a fictional lens, black comedy amplification, and a nod to the search for inner strength we all felt to a degree. This ebook is available for free for those who join my mailing list at bentallonwriter.com!
YA MUM and Other Stories from the Backstreets of Britain is an illustrated anthology of 21 flash fiction stories, each based upon a commonly found item on British streets. I have a long-standing fascination with abandoned items, and the story behind them. There is no judgement in the exploration of these items. I simply wished to present the readers with questions they may otherwise never have asked of these overlooked facets of our streets and neighbourhoods, to encourage them to see the details in their own worlds in a different way.
The Elf in the Delph is a single short illustrated story in zine format, and the first of a series of this kind. A combination of my two core skills: writing and illustration. A rural village implodes when a Christmas toy elf washes up murdered (?) in the canal water at the local Delph. This is a murder mystery of a different kind.
In 2022 I have two new short story collections lined up. Stories for the Apocalypse: Notes on the New Normal, and Outliers. Both are very raw, and dig deeper into the aspects of being human we try to escape; something which is the core foundation of my writing.
What drives you to write?
This fucked up world and the human condition. I have always been an observer, a connoisseur of eccentricity, and oddity. It took 35 years for that to burst out of me in prose, but now I cannot stop. It is my way of coping in, and recording these crazy days.
Where can folks find you online and on social media?
@bentallonwriter on Instagram/FB, @bentallon on Twitter.
What is one piece of advice you would give to another author out there who might be struggling?
Look within: your feelings, passions, and instincts. Once you trust your view on the world, the rest tends to make itself known. Draw upon your priceless, unique story. We all have one, but society has a way of telling us we should aspire to something out there, because that’s the done thing. Ian Brown of The Stone Roses wrote, “How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t have to wait to die. You can have it all, any time you want to, yeah, the kingdom’s all inside.” There’s great truth in that lyric.
What are some of your five-year goals with writing?
To be more curious, more observant, more at peace with my inner weirdo, and hopefully to have my work read by a few more people.
Final Thoughts?
Why haven’t I seen a ghost yet?
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