Another great aspect of this writing life of mine is that I occasionally get to use my blog to host an author I really respect and admire. So today is a good day for me, as I’m delighted to be joined by John Baker on his virtual tour to launch his new book, Winged With Death.
You know what I said above about some books being extraordinary? Winged With Death is a prime example. With a narrative that weaves between Uruguay in the 70s, the present day and the narrator’s childhood, it takes real craft to hold the clarity of the timeline, maintain the disparate threads, mesh them together seamlessly and ensure the reader is always enthralled but never confused. And of course, threaded throughout the book is the
Let me come clean here. The scenes set in the brutal dictatorship in
He’s got it so right, you see. If I hadn’t written my posts before reading Winged With Death, I might question that I was unintentionally plagiarising the book. Similarly, if
WELCOME, JOHN. COME ON IN AND PUT YOUR FEET UP. COMFY? THEN LET’S
YOU'RE
WHAT'S IT LIKE TO WRITE A
In a way Winged with Death is a result of writing several serial novels. I wrote the Sam Turner novels; and then the Stone Lewis novels initially because that's what my publishers wanted from me. (They still do, which is one of the main reasons I've moved to a new publisher).
I don't think that there's anything wrong with writing serial characters, although it does become limiting after a while. The Stone Lewis novels emerged because of Sam Turner's limitations. I wanted to write more overt political novels and Sam was too laid back and too damn old to change his ways.
What's it like to write about completely different characters and settings? In a word, it's liberating. It's also frightening, as any writing is frightening until it begins to fly.
A writer has to remain flexible; once he or she becomes stuck it is the end of the road. And that stuckness or not stuckness is a subtle thing. Some writers (I'm thinking of
My way (and I'm not comparing myself to the greats) was to leave the series characters behind and strike out again, as though with a first novel, with nothing to help me but some stout shoes and a toothbrush. And that was a whizz. I loved it. I want to do it again (and again).
YES, THIS HAS
DEPENDA
WHAT MADE YOU CHOOSE
First I brought some photographs of the city up on the internet, then began reading about its history. I knew there was a tango connection, and that it was there, in
In the
I looked up people who lived in
Through a book site I met a wonderful contact in
A lot of people were involved in the writing of Winged with Death.
THIS IS AMAZING, JOHN. WHAT A GREAT INSIGHT INTO YOUR WRITING PROCESS. AND OF COURSE YOUR NARRATOR HAS A SIMILAR DREAM OF
TALK A
SO - WERE THE STRANDS OF PLACE, TIME AND TANGO ALWAYS MESHED TOGETHER FOR YOU RIGHT FROM THE START? IT SOUNDS LIKE THE DANCE THEME AS A METAPHOR PRECEDED AND THE DREAM GAVE YOU THE STAGE ON WHICH TO SET IT. AT WHAT POINT DID YOU REALISE THIS?
It's a difficult question, Debi, because I can't honestly remember exactly how the novel developed. The
Perhaps the first time I realised this was a preconscious realization? Reminds me of this, from Flannery O'Conner writing about her short-story, Good Country People.
"When I started writing that story, I didn't know there was going to be a PhD with a wooden leg in it. I merely found myself one morning writing a description of two women I knew something about, and before I realised it, I had equipped one of them with a daughter with a wooden leg. I brought in the
And this, of course, is what most writers know, or come to know at some point in their writing career; that the creative process represents, more than anything else, an act of faith. The first draft of a novel – perhaps of any creative work, is to discover what it is going to be about – and it requires a special talent. The ability to accept and live with something that is wholly imperfect – until you can make it better.
JOHN, YOU’RE SUCH A TALENTED WRITER,
It has never been an easy thing. I was lucky to get my first novel published. It was sifted out of the slush-pile in a backroom of the old Gollantz offices by my first editor, Mike Petty. In those days there was still a glimmer of the traditional publisher about. They didn't expect a first novel to be a resounding commercial success, still believed that you had to nurture a writer along, have patience, wait for a breakthrough to take place after a few years. If the breakthrough didn't happen it was not regarded as the end of the world, there were many writers regarded as mid-list authors, they didn't make big bucks but they covered expenses and brought in some profits if you paid attention to their backlist.
That's all long-gone now, of course. Publishers are run by men in suits who have to justify every penny they spend. If an author doesn't show an almost immediate good profit he or she will be unlikely to secure a new deal.
They come up, sometimes, with weird formulas. I have been asked more than once by an editor to write a novel close to or exactly like (put your own favourite and commercially successful author in this space) - which, of course, is fine if you're a hack but in creative terms is an impossibility. A good writer spends years developing an individual voice and at the end of the day, that is all he or she has.
Am I answering your question? It has been difficult to secure new publishing deals, and in the present climate it is certainly not getting easier.
SO TRUE, JOHN. I NEVER THOUGH I’D MORPH INTO A PERSON WHO SIGHS A LOT AND MURMURS ‘THOSE WERE THE DAYS …’ AT REGULAR INTERVALS.
John Baker's blog is here.
Read reviews for Winged with Death here.
Details of the virtual tour with dates and links can be found here.
17 comments:
Thanks for this, Debi, especially the review. It was so good that you enjoyed the book, and that it had the possibility of chiming with your own experiences in Grenada. It hadn't occurred to me that that might be the case when I was thinking of people who might host the tour, but of course . . .
I wanted to elaborate a little on the concept of time. Because it seems to me that one of things that make it so complex is that it has so many directions. It is always, for us, both a linear and a circular experience simultaneously. We all see and even experience the line from birth to death, experience that linear inevitability in our own lives and in the lives of our friends and relatives.
But at the same time we witness a constant array of circularity. The sun rises and sets every day, the seasons always come around again, we consume and excrete, we laugh and cry and know we'll do it again.
So it's not that we live with linearity of circularity, but with the two of them (and more) together; as we live with the past and the future all wrapped up in the present moment.
A writer like Flannery O'Conner, for example, who I quoted above, hardly left the house during her short life, but this did not stop her discovering and engaging with the wonderful complexities of our experience.
I too am fascinated by the concept of time, John. One of the (many) things you do so well is the exploration of how it works and how we experience its passage in our own lives.
Oh - and I should also say that I remember hearing about a tribe who had a completely different concept of time. (Sorry - details of who they are escape me ...) Anyway, they live entirely in the present. They have no oral history at all as the past simply doesn't exist for them and the concept of the future is unthinkable and alien.
Mindbending but fascinating, eh?
I believe the modern sense of time only begins to develop when people move beyond agrarian communities.
But your remarks also made me think about something else.
The concept of inexclusion, a term was coined by Sanjoy Roy to describe the sense of being inside and outside at the same time, with particular reference to non-whites who have been subjected to the mapping of a white cultural identity.
A similar experience is described by second and third generation British Asians, who feel inexcluded by both the British and their parents or grandparents country of origin.
But it also works the other way around, as was discovered by those white Britons who returned to the mother country after spending their working lives in the colonies. I think it must have been your reference to the ex-pat experience that brought this back to me.
It seems to me that inexclusion is, in its widest sense, one of the salient and important experiences of our time. There is no way we can go back home. Apart from the one in our memory or in our fancy, there is no home to return to.
So true, John. And as we journey through life, the changes that result from our experiences add new layers.
Someone once asked me what the attraction was for me about being in Grenada. I said that I'd always felt like an outsider - not quite belonging in either the British or the Jewish communities. In Grenada, my outsider status was in-your-face and obvious, so in some ways the discomfort was comfortable - if that makes sense.
For me, the hardest part of my experience was coming back 'home' and trying to fit in. It's taken me a very long time to feel ok with my status of unbelonging.
hi debi, concept of time,being in a homeless state of time involves living one day at a time..plenty of time to look back..no time to look forward and plan..tribal or what..xx homelesschicken
There is a way of seeing that feeling of unbelonging as something akin to essential for a writer of fiction.
Many novelists and poets have spoken about being compelled to write. About the process of writing beyond their will to control.
When I hear that I often think of someone who does not really have a secure place in the world, and perhaps someone who is driven to create an alternative world or alternative worlds in which he or she might have a place in which to live.
OK, bedtime now, but thanks for hosting me on the tour, Debi. It was a real pleasure to be here.
Pleasure's been all mine, John. Thanks for being such an interesting guest.
Great 'interview' Debi. I finished the book a couple of days after hosting John, and have recommended it to many others. Well done, Mr Baker - hope it gets the success it deserves!
Thanks, Minx. It's good to hear that you read right through to the end. I always think a book must have something going for it if that happens.
Thanks for the good wishes and the recommendations.
This was a really entertaining and interesting interview, and I now want to read the book.
The publisher looks very interesting, and I'm now racking my brains trying to remember where I've seen Nail Astley's End of my Tether, published by the same people.
Inexclusion is an interesting concept. I feel it myself, purely as a result of being brought up in a community my parents didn't fit into, and therefore neither did I. I've always felt like an outsider, but I think that's a terribly common experience for a lot of people, and I often wonder whether there are in fact more outsiders than there are in. That feeling of being excluded from the in-crowd, for instance... in fact most people feel this way, even the ones who appear to be right there in the thick of it.
Hi and welcome, Secret Squirrel. You're spot on re the inexclusion concept, I think. Few people recognise themselves as part of the inner group. It's more a matter of how people perceive their status ie whether or not it's problematic to feel that sense of unbelonging.
You weren't by any chance a red squirrel and have found a way to blend in by the judicious use of a bottle of fur dye ...?
I agree with you, Debi, about the Uruguay parts of the book (I was on the blog tour a while back). The scenes that are set there really are very strong (and easily my favourite sections...despite some of the cruelty they contain). It's very impressive to do that from a distance too...shows ambition, talent, imagination and labours-done (should all writers show these...perhaps but I'm not sure all do...I'm not sure I do!). I think John deserves to do really well with this book.
Hi and welcome, Rachel.
He's a clever boy, our John, isn't he? Those scenes in Uruguay are so strong - yet he created them entirely from within his own head. Seriously impressive writing.
Hey, look at this; everyone's being seriously kind to me.
I just need to get in with the in-crowd now.
You're in, John. In fact, you personify it ...
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