Monday 10 November 2014

Turkey

OK.  This new Falconer I keep on talking about is set in Trebizond, which is now Trabzon in modern-day Turkey.  I could say my recent trip to Turkey has been for the purposes of research.  But it hasn't.  Lynda and I have spent two weeks in the opposite corner of Turkey on a walking holiday.  The first week we were in Torba, which is close to Bodrum on the Aegean coast of Turkey.  From Bodrum you can see the Greek island of Kos, and realise how odd the border is between the two countries.  Islands closer to the Turkish mainland and far from mainland Greece are Greek.  We were amazed by the remains at Ephesus of a major Greek city.

The countryside around is very like Cyprus, where we lived for seven years.  Turkish and Greek Cypriots lived closely together and shared culinary techniques and some words.  But all that was destroyed when the strife over Cyprus resulted in a Turkish invasion.  Forty years on, and the rift between Turkish and Greek Cypriots is still too huge for many on the island.
Our second week was spent close to Olu Deniz and Fethiye on the Mediterranean coast.  Once again, the walking was great, but the outstanding memory was of an abandoned village.  Kayakoy is the village on which Louis de Berniere based his novel "Birds without Wings".  It is the tragic story of Greeks and Turks in that region living side by side until the Turkish war of independence in the 1920s resulted in a mass exchange of peoples.  All the Turks living in Greece had to relocate to Turkey, and the Greeks living in Turkey had to relocate to Greece.  Despite the fact that Greeks had lived for generations in Kayakoy, they had to go.  The returning Turks who were relocated in Kayakoy could not settle down there and left.  The village stands deserted.
A Turkish guide took us round the village and told us personal stories of his family - how Greeks begged not to leave, and how arriving Turks yearned for their old life in Greece.  He is part of a movement to have the village stand as a memorial to peace and tolerance, and a monument to the stupidity of ideology and political expediency.

Tuesday 9 September 2014

The Italian Job

I am in the process of signing a deal to publish my back catalogue of Falconer stories (and maybe the short Zuliani series) in Italy.  The publisher is Mondadori, who have a series of detective novels under the name of 'Il Giallo'.  This has a curious symmetry as the word means 'yellow' in Italian and derives from the background colour of the early editions.


My first publisher was Victor Gollancz, and though my books were too late for the treatment, early Gollancz crime and SF books were, of course, always published in a yellow cover.


I always recall as a young teenager (though the name was not used in my day) that I scoured the public library shelves for yellow spines as my primary means of book selection.  I was later very proud to become a Victor Gollancz author, though rather disappointed my crime stories would not be 'wrapped' in yellow!  There was some talk, I suppose in the late 90s, of reviving the yellow cover.  I think some Gollancz books did come out with a yellow spine.  But none of my titles.
Now, at last, I will be published in yellow.  I will keep you up date concerning the progress of my Italian editions.  If you want to read them in Italian, that is.

Thursday 3 July 2014

Chicago

I am breathing a sigh of relief.  The hectic time of directing "Taking Steps" is at last over.  Eight weeks of intensive rehearsals led to the opening of the play in Hastings, and eight performances at the Stables.  These were well received, and we had an average attendance of some 70%.  After a mere week's break, we were on a flight to the USA, and performances in Chicago Heights at The Drama Group.  I had been working on the set with the crew in the USA by email.  I liken it to building a set by remote control!  But it worked.  IN The Stables, we had a stage about 20ft wide.  In Chicago Heights, the width was almost 50ft, so we had to do some adjusting to stage positions.  Also, the audience was so close to the actors that we were afraid the fight scene would result in one of our actors plunging into the laps of the front row.  We did manage to avoid that, but with the stage on the same level as the two front rows, people coming in often walked acros the stage itself.  Very disconcerting.
Our hosts were the epitome of hospitality, taking us to and fro in the delightful suburb of Chicago Heights.  This involved taking each of us from our temporary home to the theatre, and after each show to a wonderful tavern at Flossmoor, as well as to a station to allow us to travel into Chicago itself.  They could not have been more accommodating, and generous.  Many a boozy hour was spent at the Flossmoor Tavern testing the 16 beers that were brewed on the premises.  My favourite was BAD (barrel aged Dubbel).  I am not sure what the specific gravity was, but two glasses were enough!  The shows went down a storm, and we even got a standing ovation one night.
Chcago is a wonderful city, set on the shores of Lake Michigan, with spectacular skyscrapers all around the central area.
I went up to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower and stood in a glass box projecting out from the side of the building.  You can look down below your feet for over 1300ft to the street below.  Chicago also boasts several museums - the most impressive for me being the Art Institute, which housed many works of art from Europe.
The old town area - which is not very old, as Chicago burnt down in 1871 - has some very graceful houses.  And in the suburbs are areas where Frank Lloyd Wright plied his trade.  Ernest Hemingway also lived in the same suburb as a child.  The city is bursting with parks which host festivals.  I was lucky to get to see the Blues Festival, which was a completely free event.  The other jaunt which I must mention was a trip down part of Route 66 in Model A Fords organised by one of the Drama Group members.  That was quite a memorable event, ending up in Pontiac.

It was altogether a memorable two weeks, and lasting friendships were made.  The Drama Group of Chicago Heights comes over to Hastings in 2015.  But for now, I must get back into the groove and continue writing that new Falconer.

Wednesday 30 April 2014

Ancestry

Doing genealogical research is a drug.  I cannot stop following up leads, even though the person I am researching may be the brother-in-law of the sister-in-law of my second cousin four times removed!  If the information is there, I must have it.  I am now tracking down hints provided by the Ancestry.com website on existing members of my family tree - all 3,000 of them (the hints, not the people).  I am disciplining myself to only get birth, marriage and death of remote relatives, but even so this will take months.
The lighter side of this research is that I find literary links.  So far, I have relatives called Walter Scott, William Faulkner, Thomas Hardy and Edward Lear.  Naturally, they are not the famous ones, and most of my relatives - including these - are generally labourers.  I come from a long line of agricultural labourers, interspersed with coal miners and iron workers.  The latter two occupations explain why my ancestors moved between Derbyshire and Yorkshire - where there were coal mines - and from the Forest of Dean to Derbyshire - to find jobs in iron works.  In fact I have many Welsh ancestors whose families slipped over the border from the Forest of Dean into Monmouthshire to work in Blaenavon and Abergavenny before trekking on to Derby.
Some adventurous souls emigrated to Canada, and some found work in the USA. Of course - in this anniversary year of the outbreak of World War One - it is sobering to find records of those young men who died in Flanders and other foreign fields.  Some of course left no direct ancestors, but a few married, had a child, and died soon afterwards.  I saw a Great War cemetery a couple of Christmases ago.



The impact then was tremendous, but the cold facts of an individual's death are just as great.  What a tragedy.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

No excuse

I have no excuse for leaving it so long between blogs.  Except I do.  I was heavily involved in my other hobby of amateur dramatics.  I played the part of the drunken photographer, Henry Ormonroyd, in J B Priestley's "When We Are Married".  Take a look at some of the pictures on artypharty.com, Peter Mould's website.  Click on the relevant play and look for the red-faced man!  The play went down well, and we all got plenty of laughs - all for the right reasons.
And now I am embarking on directing an Alan Ayckbourn play called "Taking Steps".  We present it in May in Hastings, then take it in June to our sister drama group in Chicago Heights, USA.  These are Alan Ayckbourn’s words about the play.
“In the first act you take the audience by the hand and lead them across the floor.  In the second, you start to walk them up the wall.  And in the third act, you begin to walk them on the ceiling, so they end up hanging upside down saying ‘Hey, what am I doing?’”



I am working on some new books also - honest!  As well as the Georgian novel with Joe Malinferno and Doll Pocket, which will revolve around grave robbers and surgeons - I have an idea for continuing the Falconer series.  I know I had bade him farewell in book nine, but I feel another one coming on.  This one will be set in Trebizond, and William and Saphira are on their way to far-off Cathay.  It is a location I have used in the latest Medieval Murderers book "The Deadliest Sin", in a story told by their son David Falconer.  So, you see, there is more story to tell about them anyway.   I want to fill in the gaps, as it were.
I have also had some interest in my stories in Italy, so there is a chance that they may appear in Italian in the future.  There are some editions in German and French out there too, though they may only be available second-hand.
And there I must leave it, as I am soon to go to a rehearsal of "Taking Steps".  If you want to buy tickets for the show, go to stablestheatre.co.uk.


Tuesday 14 January 2014

A New Year

Happy New Year, everyone who reads this blog...and to everyone else who doesn't!  Last year, my agent and friend, Dot Lumley died.  I sincerely hope better things will happen this year.  She was someone who kept me on the straight and narrow - from a writing perspective - and was always optimistic about my work.  Without her, some of the later Falconers would not have come about, so I have a lot to thank her for.  I am now beginning to plan out the full-length Georgian novel I have been thinking about.  Using my characters from short stories - Joe Malinferno and Doll Pocket - I will start what I hope might be a new series taking them through the events of the 1820s in England, and off to Egypt in pursuit of their interest in all things Egyptian.  The life of Giovanni Belzoni will be my guide to the times and the place.  A real-life (even larger-than-life) character, Belzoni was responsible for bringing some of the first artefacts to England from under the noses of the French in Egypt.  In return he was poorly treated, perhaps because he was not a gentleman, and a foreigner to boot.  He died in Africa, searching for Timbuktu.

This year heralds the arrival of the tenth Medieval Murderers book "The Deadliest Sin".  Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins are swapped by pilgrims in Norfolk, as they vie to claim the deadliest of them all.  Look out for it.  Plans are afoot for the next book.
That's the new year for me as a writer.  My enthusiasm for amateur drama will also take up some time, as I will be acting in a play at the Stables, Hastings in March, and directing in May.  I also have the trip to our 'sister' drama group in Chicago coming up in June.  Lots to look forward to in 2014.