Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
With two parents generally away on business I was something of a solitary child; a dreamer who invented his own friends and on those occasions when real life ’embodied’ friends did materialise, I tended to observe and absorb rather than to participate. I was ill-equipped to socialise and so met most of my friends as characters in books and this, together with an early reading of Daphne Du Maurier’s highly atmospheric “Rebecca” completely kindled in me a fascination with observing characters, particularly troubled or ‘haunted’ souls, in the broadest sense.
I have written six books, my inspiration from the lonely, the outsider and those driven to extremity in different plots, locations and emotional settings and relationships.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
A Child from the Wishing Well
The setting is the spa town of Great Malvern beneath the Malvern Hills, England, a town dear to me for its links to the hills and for its relevance to A Child From the Wishing Well and in particular to Ruth the music tutor; in its links to the once violin tutor and composer Edward Elgar who also lived in Malvern.
As a private tutor myself and with a daughter who I once took to a private music tutor for violin lessons, I was able years later to take an imaginary leap from that reality to a ‘what-if ‘ scenario in which to produce the fictional story. I was however inspired by an admiration for the personality and musical sensitivity of my daughter’s tutor and it was then possible to construct the story of a father’s consuming need to protect his child in a narrative where real danger loomed for a child I called Rosie and the childless music tutor I christened Ruth Stein.
So while this novel took two years to write, the seeds of its conception haunted me for many years and, I trust, that much of the appeal of the work – a literary suspense with a poignant emotional core – will continue to convey itself to readers who like what is colloquially called a ‘moving’ story.
I opened this description mentioning the link between Malvern and the composer Edward Elgar and if I was to say that hearing the Nimrod theme from his ‘Enigma Variations’ kindled in me a similar feeling and one that I have tried to explore in the lonely child and the clumsy love of her father in A Child from the Wishing Well, then it is this that made me sometimes work well into the stillness of the night where I could best deliver the final draft.
The Book won the Harper Collins gold star award in May 2010 and I was thrilled that they liked the current of suspense which builds gradually through the story.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Rules are made to be broken – but judiciously. If writing comes from the heart and is done with the greatest integrity one can muster and then several drafts/edits, then I have found that I do not self-consciously follow any do’s and don’ts … until the end of the 2nd draft!
I do confess to being a my own worst enemy when it comes to savaging my own text and will cut ruthlessly until I get to the most honest emotion (raw or tender) and the truest scene or setting.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Most certainly D. H. Lawrence. I have to confess that there are many, including myself, who would have criticised aspects of his own lifestyle, perhaps others would have added that he lacked ‘pedigree’ and had too much of an obsession with gamekeepers seducing/being seduced by Ladies with capital L’s or men and women.
It is never so much Lawrence’s subject that fascinates me as his most extraordinary sharp and raw observation of personality.
His prose often rises to poetry and yet it is rarely ‘purple’ or decorative but entirely captures the essence of memorable characters.
Daphne Du Maurier has had an equally powerful influence upon me and if I had the tiniest fraction of the talent of these two writers put together I would thank God.
What are you working on now?
Like many of my fellow authors, in the absence of any engine of a mainstream publisher under my bonnet, and being distinctly ‘unsavvy’ with marketing, I’ve gone though years of endeavour to become visible under the millions of titles beneath which I am buried and so I’ve found that far too much time is spent in the drudgery of self-propulsion than in returning to my first love – writing.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Yet to discover, but my hat off to awesomegang.com
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Whatever the genre, whatever the plot, use something of your own experience of life and, above all, with all the integrity you can muster, strive to find a form of wording that will express the emotions of your characters, however raw or tender those feelings are.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
It is better to try and fail than not to try at all.
What are you reading now?
The Talented Mister Ridley by Patricia Highsmith.
What’s next for you as a writer?
To become truly ‘visible’ beneath the intense marketing competition that leaves so many books – good or less so – buried beneath the millions and millions.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”, Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” and, most of all, “Message in a Bottle” by Nicholas Sparks
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