The novel Sushi Central, also known as Dance, Recover, Repeat, centres on a young Australian teenager, Calvin, who is living his life in a haze of teenage angst.

Those reading the story are invited into Calvin's world. He listlessly floats through day-to-day life, lacks authoritative figures, direction and purpose; until one day he stumbles onto an adult internet site and finds his sweet prince. What soon ensues is an all-consuming obsession with the boy of his dreams. However things only become more difficult when fantasy becomes reality. Can repeated nights of clubbing, staying up, sucking and fucking to all hours satisfy his needs? In a blur of obsession and intense physical attraction will Calvin ever find the deeper understanding to life that he so desperately seeks and will he be satisfied with all that awaits him?


For Placebo [and suckerlove] fans, the relevance of this book does not merely end with this young gay male in the throws of ‘teenage angst' Apart from the appropriate nature of this book the reason suckerlove has chosen to review this novel is the fact that the central character has a passion for Placebo. He carries around a folder with a picture of Stefan Olsdal plastered across it and from time to time even holds discussions with our Stef in his head. Throughout the book Without You I'm Nothing is continually referenced along with Black Market Music…the soundtrack to youthful fanaticism and lustful obsession. Though these elements are not designed as the focal point to the novel, I think many will agree that it is great to read a novel where the main character shares a similar passion and has elements of the band surrounding him in day-to-day life. Reader's will get a kick out of Placebo referencing chat names and email addresses, the mention of our beloved Velvet Goldmine, mixed tapes containing Depeche Mode and Carbon Kid.


At the end of the day this is not a book about Placebo, but I'm sure author Alasdair Duncan would invite you to read for the fandom references, but stay for his own unique characters and story.

Your style of writing for Sushi Central is very unique. It is constantly changing formats. Was it a conscious decision to be different, or were you just following the natural flow of the story as it came to you?

The style really wasn't a conscious decision, it was more the form that the story took as I was writing it. I guess that the way in which 'Sushi Central' was written (it's quite fragmented and has a lot of cutting-and-pasting) felt natural in that the story was all about what goes in inside the head of a mixed-up teenager. The form kind of reflects the content, if you know what I mean. When the novel was all edited and finished, I was glad with what I'd been able to achieve with it, but I haven't written anything like it since. The second one, 'Metro', has a much more traditional 'novelistic' feel to it ... this is for a number of reasons, not least of all the fact that I've grown up a fair bit since the first, and the vague idea I have in the back of my mind that 'Sushi Central' is an experience that need never be repeated ...





A lot of bands are name-dropped in the novel. Is this something you 'researched' specifically for Calvin's personality; or does dispassion for Eminem and fondness of Placebo reflect some of your own musical preferences? [It's okay if you answer the former ;)]

I've always been a pretty big music geek so the idea of namedropping a whole lot of different bands in the book was something that was probably always bound to happen. I thought about making up fictional ones, but decided to use real ones instead, for the simple reason that a lot of my favourite books (I'm a big fan of 1980s literature) reference pop cultural phenomena from their own era, and while that dates them in some ways, it also makes them stronger. The Placebo references in the novel are something I've been asked about before ... I guess that the most honest is that while I've always liked them - 'Without You I'm Nothing' was and still is a killer album - one of the things I wanted to do with the book was to explore the crazy and all-consuming obsessions that teenagers often have, and I guess I used Placebo as a means to that end. Placebo's music has an intensity and a dark humour that I really admire - they carry the kind of pop-cultural torch that people like Bowie and Oscar Wilde did before them, and inspire a lot of fanatical devotion. Calvin, the main character of the book, is the kind of brainy and slightly messed-up kid who doesn't really know his place in the world yet, and attaches himself to pop culture as a way to try and define himself (the novel predated the whole 'emo' explosion by literally about six months, which might give you more of an idea). The movie 'Velvet Goldmine' is a pretty good example of what I was trying to get across - there you had a mixed-up kid who was obsessed with the glam rock of the 70s, and through that, managed to figure out his own place in life. I wanted a well-known band onto whom Calvin could project his confusion, and the idea of referencing Placebo seemed both logical and too amusing to pass up ... I was a bit wary about using real people, but I was 19 and I never thought the book would be published, so that may have influenced my decision a bit.

That was an unnecessarily wordy answer to that question but there you go.




Without giving away the plot, at the close of the novel readers are not given complete closure with the characters. What was the reasoning behind this? Do you feel that it's more effective to leave the reader with questions, to keep the story alive off the page?

I guess there were a few reasons behind this, but most of all, it was because I felt kind of attached to the universe of the novel, and Calvin himself. At the end of 'Sushi Central', Calvin is in something of a bad way (his self-created angst reaches its logical conclusion) but I still have an idea in the back of my mind that he will one day sort himself out and become a happier, worldlier adult. I don't think I'll end up writing about Calvin again, but I like the feeling that the universe he exists in is still there and still open ... The next novel, 'Metro', takes place in the same world as the first - the central character of 'Metro' was actually a minor one in 'Sushi Central' - although it's a very different book.

The other reason, as you pointed out, is that I like the kind of books that make you ask questions - where the author doesn't hold your hand and everything is not immediately laid out for you. I like them, firstly because the characters feel more alive when they can exist off the page inside your head, and secondly, because there are no neat endings in the real world. One thing that people sometimes ask me is for the story of what happened to Calvin's brother, but I always tell them that it's up to their own imagination.





The suckerlove community has many hobbyist writers, and several trained aspiring writers. Do you have any tips on how to get work published either independently or commercially, and do you think graphic literature of a homosexual nature is more difficult to have published?

I think it helps to write without the idea of publication in mind ... 'Sushi Central' was written without any self-consciousness because I was never expecting it to be read beyond anyone but me and maybe a few of my friends. I sent the manuscript out and was a bit shocked when publishers actually took an interest (I still had the opportunity to back out, but when you're 19 and an aspiring writer and someone offers to publish your novel, you're hardly going to say no). It is quite explicit in places, and to be honest, I need to have three or four stiff drinks now before I can even open it, but hey ... Everyone does crazy things when they're a teenager. Some people have big parties and trash their parents' house, I published a novel with a thirteen-page blowjob in it.

Okay, so I've digressed pretty radically from the actual question, so to get back to it, while I feel pretty unqualified to be giving advice to others, I guess the best thing I can say is that you should just Keep Writing. By that I mean that your brilliant novel will never be rejected by anyone if you've never actually sat down and written the thing. Beyond that, I've seen various sets of statistics and I know it can be difficult for young writers (or writers of any age) to be published, so the best thing to do as an aspiring writer is to get your name out there, be persistent, but most of all, make yourself write and every day so you can get refine your craft. The more short story competitions you can find to enter, the better (I mean, they can only take you so far, but even getting shortlisted for one can really help you get your name recognised). Hmm. That all sounds a bit arrogant now I read over it. Anyway, remember to always keep trying.

As for the last part of the question - literature of a graphic nature ... I really have no idea. A lot of the stuff in 'Sushi Central' seems pretty shocking to me now and I am vaguely mystified that someone actually published the thing, but there you go. I guess that if your story is universal enough and your writing is good enough that you can get readers in (and if the sex is secondary to what's really going on in the book, which I think was the case with mine) then you probably have a shot. These are conservative times, but like I said, if your story is good enough, and if there's a moral, then you shouldn't be afraid to put it out there.


To purchase ‘Sushi Central' [aka, ‘Dance, Recover, Repeat'], visit amazon.com