Interview With Author Reed Stirling
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am known in literary circles as Reed Stirling and live in Cowichan Bay, BC. I write when not painting landscapes, travelling, or taking coffee at The Drumroaster, a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Before retiring and taking up writing novels, I taught English Literature. Several talented students of mine have gone on to become successful award-winning writers.
My wife and I built a log home in the hills of southern Vancouver Island, and survived totally off the grid for twenty-five years during which time the rooms in that house filled up with books, thousands of student essays were graded, and innumerable cords of firewood were split.
Literary output:
Shades Of Persephone, published in 2019, is a literary mystery set in Greece.
Lighting The Lamp, a fictional memoir, was published in March 2020.
Set in Montreal, Séjour Saint-Louis (2021), dramatizes family conflicts.
The Palimpsest Murders, a European travel mystery, was published in September 2023.
Shorter work has appeared over the years in a variety of publications including Dis(s)ent, Danforth Review, Fickle Muses, Fieldstone Review, and Humanist Perspectives.
Intrigue is of primary interest, with romantic entanglement an integral part of the action. Greek mythology plays a significant role in underpinning plots. Allusions to art, literature, philosophy, and religion serve a similar function. I sit down to write every day and try to leave the desk having achieved at least a workable page. Frequently what comes of my effort amounts to no more than a serviceable paragraph, a single sentence, or a metaphor that might work in a context yet to be imagined.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Palimpsest Murders, my latest release and what I call A European Travel Mystery, is literary in tone. In some ways it fits the cosy murder genre but in no way is it all that cosy because it necessitates travel, even in the imaginative sense, and a basic familiarity with characters in Homer’s The Iliad, especially with the royal murders involved in the aftermath to the Trojan War.
The idea for this novel arose when I took a one-week Boat & Bike excursion through Holland and Belgium. All was agreeable among the thirty guests onboard. Very enjoyable. But why not, my imagination prompted me, introduce the clash of different personalities in close quarters and have that lead to inevitable conflict that would result in two murders?
Thus plot.
In this fictional setting, many obvious questions are asked, but few answers truly satisfy collective curiosity. Why the first body in the canal? Is the second death related to the first and is it suicide or murder? Why two coins for the ferryman? Who among the cyclists is hateful and motivated enough to kill? Twice. And why? Is the Phoenix jug, both admired and hated, merely symbolic?
My fascination with ancient Greek lore inspired me further. Thus, palimpsest and understanding how the gold death mask of Agamemnon leads to resolution.
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Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I read and then I write, usually over coffee in the morning. Notes, I keep copious notes: observations, insights, related ideas, dream-state inspiration, word play… I can work in the quiet of my home or in a crowded café. I write when travelling on a train: at least my brain is moving towards some relevant stop.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I read widely, and have done so for decades, the classics included. At present, works by Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes are in the queue. The muse visits me most often when I read the novels of John Banville.
My reading has definitely influenced my writing. Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandrian Quartet provided the impetus for Shades Of Persephone (2019). John Fowles’ The Magus gave me the Greek setting. Joyce’s Portrait inspired more than one scene in Lighting The Lamp (2020), as did the philosophical musing of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Marcel Proust plays a part here as well, as do Richard Dawkins, Emily Dickinson, and Albert Camus. The poems of Émile Nelligan worked thematically into Square Saint-Louis (2021).
Teaching literature has had an influence on my writing. When you introduce young minds to the great works of great artists, (e.g., Hamlet, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Portrait of the Artist As A young Man, Gulliver’s Travels, The Handmaid’s Tale), you are constantly challenging yourself to get it right, to understand not only who, what, and when, but also how, and to elucidate on these considerations as discussion ensues. In your own writing, you want to emulate, difficult though it is to do so, but you have to try.
What are you working on now?
I am working on another European Travel Mystery tentatively entitled Bouquet of Darts. The narrator is none other than Eros and he has a few tricks in his quiver.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Awesome Gang is very helpful. Goodreads as well. There are many Facebook literary sites that I use to promote my work, including that of BWL, Inc.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Read, read, read. Learn from established authors. Observe everything with the eye of a painter and the impulses of a word-smith.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
It’s been said that you should write about what you know. That’s a good starting point. Write about what you don’t know: there is so much out there in the world at large that will provide background, atmosphere, character, storyline, theme, and point of view. Dig into things and expand your basis.
What are you reading now?
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Getting beyond the task of promoting my latest release. Eros, my new voice, has much to say and as a potentially very active character, he has much to do. Right now he is just hovering impatiently.
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?
Shakespeare in any form.
James Joyce’s Dubliners
John Banville’s The Sea
Author Websites and Profiles
Reed Stirling’s Social Media Links