Ray Shell talks about his star debut and the long-awaited sequel

Ray Shell’s début novel was first published in 1993 by HarperCollins imprint Flamingo. The book is the diary of a crack addict, Cornelius Washington, and follows his trajectory downwards. Shell was an actor—the original Rusty in “Starlight Express”—but despite his initial success, he fell off publishing’s radar. Thirty years on, here’s how he is getting a second chance with Iced...

You published Iced in 1993. What prompted you to write this story?

I was in the US, on tour with “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber”, starring Michael Crawford, and I stopped to see a neighbour. This man was the smartest guy in the hood. He’d been accepted into Columbia University at 16; he had everything going for him. I was surprised he was still in my East Brooklyn hood; I thought he’d be in Washington DC as part of President Clinton’s administration—that’s how brilliant and charismatic he was—so I went up to his apartment to find out why he hadn’t moved on. When he came to the door, instead of my handsome, big-brother-friend, a satyr or some kind of beast appeared.

When he invited me in, there was no furniture in the flat but you could see the shadow spots where the furniture and pictures had once been. I didn’t want to embarrass him so I jokingly asked: “What happened to your stuff?” He said: “They took them...” I asked him who these people were and he said: “I never see who they are, I only see what they’ve done to me...” I didn’t understand, so I joked again, “You mean like ghosts?”, and he said, “Yes. Ghost people.” I was freaked... in fact, a lot of what became the language of Iced came from that conversation. I left there feeling that someone had died and I decided that day to find out what had happened to my friend, what this “crack” was, because it hadn’t yet appeared in the UK.

When the tour got to Ohio, I went into a library to do some research. There was tons of stuff about the sociological effects that drug-dealers had on American neighbourhoods but nothing about the addicts, so I started interviewing the addicts. We were in a different city each week; the addicts were everywhere and what they told me provided the menu of behaviour that became the story of Cornelius Washington Jr, the anti-hero of Iced.

What happened after publication?

Overnight, I was this star author. I was used to being a star actor on stage but Iced received the kind of reviews that I could never have dreamed of... better reviews than I ever received as an actor. Lee Daniels bought the film rights and Iced was translated into several foreign languages. I attended international book fairs on the strength of my début novel. It was unbelievable.

Then two things happened: Jonathan Warner, my publisher at Flamingo, died a few days after Iced was published, and my US book tour was sabotaged by O J Simpson. When I got off a plane at LAX the entire news cycle was focused on the alleged murder, so all my US book media events were cancelled and it severely hurt my American book sales.

You have written a number of books since then, put out via your company Street Angels Books. Why the move into (self-)publishing?

My original agent, Mary Clemmy, advised me to self-publish my current novel Carolina Red. I finished it during the pandemic and nothing but books about Donald Trump were being published in the US. So I took Mary’s advice and I’m having a great time! I love the freedom of creating my own publishing schedule, not having to wait for anyone’s green light.

It is 30 years since the publication of Iced. What plans do you have for its birthday?

There are several mainstream publishing companies, including Canongate, interested in publishing the 30th-anniversary edition. I am chuffed because my little imprint was going to publish this anniversary edition but I wanted some heavyweight marketing and publicity power, and lightning seems to have struck again in that several mainstream publishers are interested in it. It may even go into auction, like the original edition did. I am thrilled and excited to be getting this second bite of the cherry.

My agents, Crystal Mahey-Morgan and Jason “Cuba” Morgan at OWN IT!, are experienced, astute and very on the case, and I am looking to them to help me choose the right imprint to take Iced where it’s never gone before. I am currently writing Iced 2: Lateral Flow, which places the 70-year-old Cornelius Washington Jr in Kemptown, Brighton, battling a new addiction of sugar diabetes, learning about and from a daughter he never knew he had, holding his grandchild’s hand as they walk the complicated and stressful road to trans-land, seeking redemption from his tragic and chaotic past sins. This is all set against against a background of a politically confused United Kingdom, feverishly attempting to tame media dragons. I’m having mucho fun getting back in the mind of a dried-out former crack addict.

You were Rusty the Steam Engine in the original musical “Starlight Express” and have had a 50-year career in acting; might the two strands come together one day with an adaptation of Iced?

Street Angels Media is developing a new stage production of Iced called “Black Thoughts in an Early Moon”, which I am extremely excited about. Once a publishing home for Iced is identified, we can move onto getting Iced onto a streaming screen or a silver one.