I write books. I also read them. Sometimes I write reviews of what I read, and publish them, so that I can share my feelings with others. One such book was DESERT GOD by Wilbur Smith. Let me say immediately that I am a fan of Wilbur. I’ve read a lot of his stories and, believe me, he’s one of the best writers I know. But in publishing DESERT GOD he crossed a line, and I still refuse to read anything produced in his name since that date. Why? Because I felt cheated. And that is a terrible thing for an author to do to his readers. I’m not alone in feeling this way.

The date was September 2014. I remember it well because I was just about to go on holiday to Turkey for two weeks. There was a special promo on Wilbur’s new book just before I flew, and it was the latest instalment of his Egyptian series that had enthralled me for years. So, I bought a copy and soon got engrossed. For those who don’t know it, this is an adventure series set in ancient Egypt that cleverly weaves historical fact with the intervention of a fictitious character whose influence is far-reaching. Smith has (or had) a style of writing that seems to flow effortlessly, capturing vivid images of place and time, and so rich in description that his characters live and breathe with the reader. This is how it was for the first few chapters of DESERT GOD, but then… Oh dear! The plot took some fanciful turns. The descriptions were sketchy and the characters became two-dimensional. Wilbur Smith had evidently left the room.

I was bitterly disappointed, and although I did finish the book, curious to see how it would end (badly), I honestly felt cheated. How could this wonderful writer have lost his talent in such spectacular form? The answer can only be that Wilbur did NOT write it! I believe he started it off and then handed the whole thing over to a ghost-writer. Only he knows why. But his name is still there as author and creator. My review, published on Goodreads, was scathing.

I still receive messages today (almost six years later) from people who have read both the book and my review, and who agree with me. I’ve not received any taking the opposite view.

I would be mortified if I cheated my readership. I make special efforts to bring my drafts to a level I feel my readers will find “satisfactory” or better. I may never reach the heights of writing a blockbuster, but I do believe that is something to which I should aspire. In one sense, it is helpful to me that even the best get it wrong sometimes – and maybe I can learn from their mistakes.

At the time of writing this I am about two weeks off finishing the first draft of my second novel – a long-awaited sequel to The Murder Tree. Then follows a period of edits and re-writes that will be demanding, but ultimately satisfying. Two adjectives that describe my objective, but in my book, you can only be satisfied, if you make the demands on yourself.
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Sadly, Wilbur did not.

“OUT OF LEFT FIELD” is an (American) expression that is familiar to most, based on baseball terminology. As a form of slang, we use it to indicate an event that occurs unexpectedly, or as some form of surprise. It can be pleasant, or not.

Like many of us at the end of the year, I look back at the events of the last twelve months with a mixture of pleasure and sadness. Inevitably, there were occasions affecting me personally that invoked both those emotions. The death of my friend Colin Skipp, referred to in the last post, was
one of those. Balancing that was the discovery of two former friends of my wife, back in touch after nearly twenty years. Renewing and building friendships is hugely rewarding, and I look forward to future opportunities in the years ahead.

When something unexpected rocks our world, it can take time to adjust. The brain is accustomed to dealing with routine, and when that “curve ball” arrives out of left field, the instant reaction it needs is sometimes lacking. By the time we realise what is happening, events can move on. A drip from the ceiling? A crack in the windscreen? A pain in the leg? We weren’t expecting it, so our slow reactions can sometimes lead to a more serious problem.
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To a writer of thrillers, left field is great methodology for plot development. I started writing my present project Sisters more than two years ago, but various events in my personal life have impacted on its progress. “Left field” events included. But all writers use life experiences to good effect, and it is often those twists and turns in the storyline that take the reader on a more enjoyable path. Believe me, it works for the writer too! I am presently writing a BIG twist towards the end of my story.

But here’s one LITTLE “twist” I will share right now: I’m changing the title.

Sisters will be re-titled The Titanic Document. Why? Well, because it is a more descriptive title for the subject matter within. There are still plenty of “sister” references within the plot, which was the reason for my first title choice, but the catalyst for murder, rape and political fallout is essentially one document relating to the tragic ship that sank in 1912. Historical facts are hugely relevant – as they were in The Murder Tree – but it is how they influence (and blend into) the fictional parts that occupy me as a teller of stories.
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Not long to go now! (And keep an eye on that left field.)

It is almost 47 years since I first met Colin Skipp. I was an apprentice adult at the age of 20, and had just been persuaded to join an amateur dramatic society. Colin was directing a play by J B Priestley (An Inspector Calls), and he was no amateur. He was a hugely experienced professional actor, and at that point in January 1973 he had been regularly appearing as Tony Archer in BBC Radio’s The Archers for six years. He retired from that engagement forty years later, in 2013.
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Colin became a close friend, and it would not be an exaggeration to say he was my acting mentor. He had a laid back, hands-on approach as a director, and he had a mischievous sense of humour I found I could easily relate to. We both loved books, and he actively encouraged me when I started my first attempts at writing scripts for performance. I often performed on stage opposite his lovely wife Lisa Davies, the last occasion only 10 years ago.

Always there with a word of encouragement, or a practical note to help improve my performance, he continued to offer constructive advice when I showed him early drafts of my first novel. He has always been there for me, my sister, and my children, and it is time to say “Adieu, old friend”.

Colin died peacefully in Lisa’s arms on Tuesday 19th November at the youthful age of 80. I remember one of his regular gags was “I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate!” But it will be no exaggeration to say that I will miss him, as will so many more.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)

I’ve never been to Australia, but I know many of those who read this will have been there, either to visit relatives or for a holiday. Maybe you even live there? But this week my mind has been very much focused on Australia for a very good reason: Because of what was happening in my family seventy years ago.

If you’ve read my book A Kangaroo In My Sideboard, you will understand what I mean. On the 29th of October 1949, my parents and my sister first set foot on Australian soil in Fremantle, Western Australia. It was not their final destination, but it was their first taste of what they hoped was to come. Sadly, the reality brought something very different. That was not Australia’s fault. The blame for the misconceptions comes down to human failings that we all encounter even today.

They were promised things that could not be delivered. They were given false assurances that their hard work would be rewarded. They were left stateless and in debt by someone they had trusted.

That kind of story might sound familiar, because there are still many of us out there lured into ventures at our own (unexpected) expense by others who happily spread misery through their own actions. So be warned! It can be a cruel world out there.

But then the opposite is also true.

Through research into writing my parents’ story I came across some Australians who were prepared to be supportive and industrious with their generosity. And next March, seventy years to the day since Mollie, Eric and Susan Veale arrived in the little community of Delamere SA, their son and little brother will be there to shake hands with the current residents. It’s a big thing for me. I’ve had this trip on my bucket list for over thirty years, and you might wonder why it has taken me this long. Suffice to say the time has not been right before now. But this week the flights are booked and the hunt for that sideboard is well and truly on!
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Anyone feel a sequel coming?

Okay, I know that’s a cliché, and writers really ought to avoid using them – but I’ve a good reason for introducing this blog that way. It’s all about IMAGE.

Look at the photo here. I took this at the filming of the BBC Antiques Roadshow in June this year. The guy carrying the picture frame has a story to tell. The subject of the painting is clearly a family ancestor, and this is a family visit, judging by the girl at his side and the baby in her arms. They probably told their story to one of the team of experts, and are now on their way home. I don’t know them. They don’t know me. But each of us have stories to tell – and you don’t need to be a writer to tell one!

I love this picture because it excites my imagination. Who are these people? What kind of history is there behind the painting? Is it valuable? Will they get much sleep tonight?

When I read a book, images tend to fill my brain. I see the story visually – assuming the writer has the skill to induce those images in my mind. So, this is my point: As a writer I have to use words to paint the pictures I see in my own mind. If I do it right, then the reader will be able to interpret those pictures in much the same way.

Suppose you lost your sight. A blind person cannot see the text on a page, but once taught how to use braille, they can visualise what has been written. Images are important to us all, because they are a fundamental part of the story-telling process.
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So, to digress slightly, one of my passions in life has been photography. I’ve used all manner of cameras in my time, but since the digital era and the arrival of smartphones, I can enjoy the facility of being a photographer at any moment of the day. All it takes is to pull my phone from my pocket. I’ve now joined the Flickr community, and started to make some of my efforts public – but only those that tell a story! The first 25 are on there now, including the antique one, so if you’d like to sample more of my creativities, click on the Flickr logo below.

Writers tend to be solitary creatures. It takes a little effort to tempt us out and actually talk to people – but when we do, it’s often difficult to shut us up. Especially if we’re talking about our own work.

That was in my mind when I went to a literary festival recently, and sat through two very different talks given by two very different writers. One spoke quickly, almost desperate to provide us with as much information about his work as he could. The other spoke in more measured tones, seeking eye contact, and making every effort to explain the processes that went into her work. Neither wrote full time, having another profession to help with income. Now, one was a teacher, and the other a solicitor, and I’m inviting you to guess which was which? I’ll tell you the answer later in this blog.

I’ve reached an important point in my present project. The last bit! Three quarters of my story has now been committed to the keyboard, and I’m faced with pulling together all those little ‘threads’ that were sown into my plot over the last 65,000 words. This is intended to be a thriller, and so there are revelations ahead, probably a couple of deaths, and a surprise or two while I quietly inform the reader what precisely has been going on since they started at page one. Speaking of which, you may like to know some statistics from my writer’s toolbox: The overall length of my first novel was a little over 85,000 words, and I intend this one to be similar. That means around 250 pages in the paperback edition. Putting the number of words in perspective, the length of this blog is 500 words, so my finished novel should be 170 times longer than the piece you are currently reading! Incidentally, while the chapters in my first book ran to 27, I estimate there will be around 52 in this one – so considerably shorter, as befits the genre style today.

My background is in the theatre, and the civil service. Does that come across in my work? Possibly not. But I do feel that the former helps me create realistic dialogue, and the latter has been good training for being methodical in my planning, and able to work with a fixed target in mind. So, what of those other authors I spoke of earlier? Their manner of presentation did not match their professions, in my view. It was the teacher who came across better, with her natural communication skills (she told me afterwards she was extremely nervous, which didn’t show.) I thought a solicitor, with the demands of court appearances and a need to interpret complex legal processes, would have been more disciplined and measured in his speaking style, but no. I’m sure that doesn’t reflect in his writing, but it just goes to show how our initial perceptions can be deceptive.

Here’s an original thought: Don’t judge an author by his cover.

WORDS have been a fascination all my life. I would haunt the library as a kid, and as we didn’t have a television until I was in my teens, I very much depended on books to fire my imagination. I was always good at spelling at school, and even achieved a good ‘O’ level pass at Latin because I appreciated how this ancient text had influenced so many of our present-day European languages.

Think about it – what kind of a world would it be without words? Especially English ones. Our language is spoken throughout the globe. Even in Japan you can find English translations alongside all public signage. Pop songs the world over sell best if they’re performed in English. Our language, our words, are essential for communication, and are familiar to the vast majority of the global population.

But I love it when I see words being used with humour – often in a commercial way. There’s a hairdressing salon not far from me with the name “Cutting Corners” – perfectly named as it sits on the corner of two streets. In a pub where I had a meal recently, I saw a sign on the wall that read “Despresso: the feeling you get when you’ve run out of coffee”.

Do you have a favourite comedian? Those professional punsters could not ply their trade without a talent for taking words and using them to great effect. Their vocabulary is necessarily economical, and is combined with careful pitch, enunciation and timing. But the choice of words is the most critical element.

As a writer I pay particular care to how I use words myself, and I love spotting the ways in which words make us laugh. I travel a lot, and it is always a delight when I see how the English language is unconsciously mis-spelt, sometimes to hilarious effect.

But my favourite was a guy in Central Park, New York, who sat in the shade on a bench reading a book with a suitcase propped beside him. His choice of words was grammatically correct, practical, honest – and humorous. He had a brown paper bag covering the retractable handle and a single dollar bill trapped in the zip. On the bag in plain view he had written the following: WHY LIE? I NEED A BEER.
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Now that’s the last word in street humour.

“Action, not Words!” That’s a political quote, and at this unsettling time in the UK, perhaps just as relevant a mantra as it was in 1966 – when Ted Heath used it as the theme for his election manifesto. Those of us waiting to see what Boris Johnson might bring to the feast, may indeed hope that he can honour his spoken intentions with a practical result.

But here’s another version: “Life is words in action, literature is action in words.” That one came from a contemporary of mine, Turkish actor and playwright Tarik Gunersel. I like that one because it encourages me (as a writer) to ensure that the words I put on the page serve a purpose. By that, I mean that they drive the story forward, taking the reader on a path that leads to a satisfactory destination. I hate it when (as a reader) I find the plot of a novel to be wallowing in literary treacle as if the path I’ve taken is consumed by inches of sticky mud. Sometimes it happens simply because the writer wants to apply a richer description than the reader needs: “his craggy features, heavy brows, piercing eyes and Roman nose gave an impression of impatient senility in a way I found impossible to ignore in a teacher of classical studies”; “all about me were scattered the detritus of nature at its angriest – snapped twigs of elm and sycamore trees, copper and russet leaves both old and new carelessly swept into untidy hillocks several inches high”. This is self-indulgence from a writer that adds very little to help the narrative, and potentially smothers the interest that may previously have been piqued. (Those two “quotes” are my own invention, by the way!)

A writer has a similar job to do as a painter: to produce a work of art that allows us to focus on the subject inside the frame, rather than the frame itself.

So, when faced with writing Novel Number 2, what had I learned from Novel Number 1? (The Murder Tree)

In a nutshell, I’ve moved away from the restrictions of following the elements of a True Story. Both my previous projects have been largely governed by historical record. This time, like my play Rabbit-Chasing For Beginners, I have been free to use my imagination. While the events of The Murder Tree were centred around the City of Glasgow, this time I have featured places nearer to my present home in the Ribble Valley of Lancashire. Manchester (my place of birth) features strongly, as do London and Liverpool, Belfast and Northern Ireland. The plot is exponential, meaning I let it develop in its own way. Characters often influence a plot because of their personal motives and interests, and that has become the deciding factor for me in writing The Titanic Document. The chapters are short, and the pace is quick. I want my readers to stay on a path that has many twists and turns – but it is all the more fun if there’s an ever-present risk of them taking a corner too fast…
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Action? Yes – plenty. Words? Yes – but only the ones deemed necessary to complement the action!

HOW? WHY? WHAT? WHEN? Four perfectly reasonable questions. So here come some answers (but not necessarily in the same order).

My present writing project is called Sisters, and I am around two-thirds of the way through – so with tempus fugit-ing faster than I would like, I thought this Blog might be a useful opportunity to tell you a little more about it.

Okay – let’s start with HOW I came to write it:

My first novel The Murder Tree came about because I had a great idea for a story, but couldn’t find any other way of telling it. I learned some hard lessons turning from script-writing to prose, and I made any number of mistakes in the writing process. But I learned from those mistakes, and the number of sales of that book have at least proved to me that (with a promising debut) I did have a future as a writer. People liked it enough to ask me when there would be a second book. Thank you, people.

I almost started writing Sisters straight away, because I had an idea in my head that I felt would be suitable for my central character (Billie Vane) to get involved in. But something held me back. There was another project I felt had to be completed first: I wanted to tell my mum’s story about Australia. A Kangaroo In My Sideboard kept me busy for another couple of years. I have one more ambition to achieve in that area: to follow in my parents’ footsteps (and maybe track down The Sideboard). In March 2020 I expect to be able to tick that one off the bucket list.

Before that, I intend to publish Sisters.

So – WHAT is it about, and WHY did I want to write it?

Like The Murder Tree, this has a true story at the heart of it: the disaster of the Titanic. But it is not another re-hash of the tragedy that claimed so many lives. Those expecting dramatic re-enactments of survivors’ stories, or yet another conspiracy theory, will be disappointed. Ultimately, Sisters is about Politics – then and now.

We face some incredible events in British, American and European politics today – but that was equally the situation in 1911: Trouble in Ireland, trade disputes and political egos at odds with each other. Nothing has changed! So, I’ve linked the events just before the onset of War in Europe with those in 2016, immediately before the European Referendum. But Sisters begins in 1985, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and when the wreck of Titanic was discovered. I’ve created a fictional member of Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet who carries out her orders to ‘remove a threat’ and by doing so, avoid further trouble in Northern Ireland. The consequences of that action, plus the Minister’s paedophile activities, form the background to a plot where ‘National Security’ is ostensibly more important than accountability. Billie Vane takes up a challenge to research facts around Titanic and debunk anything else, but all is not what it seems. A document comes into his hands, describing events that led up to the sinking, and implicating present day political figures. Then he begins to realise why the body count is still rising…

As for the WHY – like Billie (and many others), I have been fascinated by the Titanic tragedy for many years, and I’ve read all manner of books about it. There are incredible claims made by some authors, including the popular one that Titanic was switched for her sister ship Olympic. I put as much credence in that one as I do in the claim that the moon landing was faked, but I do believe something was going on. There are too many unanswered questions about why certain people behaved as they did, even influencing the two public enquiries into the disaster. Oddly, I came up with my own theory – one that does answer all those questions, if it happens to be true. I felt Billie (and another strong female character) could get their teeth into that particular angle, and pre-supposing my own theory is correct, face the consequences from those still holding political power.

Paedophilia? We all know it goes on, and after the legacies of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith, I’m convinced there have been many more acts of shameful abuse by past (and possibly present) political figures. It is their very position of power and influence that made it easy to abuse the system to their personal ends. So, while my Cabinet Minister Peter Gris is definitely fictional, and not based on any living person, he does represent a faction of powerful men I believe exist today. As Sisters will demonstrate, the abuse of power was just as self-evident in 1911.

Finally, I used to be a Civil Servant, and in my time I’ve had several occasions to hold members of the government to account, even a high-ranking policeman. Cynical I may be, but they do tell newbie authors to write from experience.
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As for the WHEN, I still believe in Democracy in Britain, but I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to see it actually happen.