Literature . Novels . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Writing
What’s in a name?
On 10 November 2010 by Admin‘What’s in a name?’ asked Shakespeare – ahead of the game as usual – and it’s certainly a question I’ve been asking myself a lot recently, with regard to titles. Ah yes, titles… that most difficult of things to get right. Perhaps only naming a rock band is more fraught with complexities, and potential pitfalls…
A Mild Suicide . Historical Fiction . Literature . Novels . Research . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Variable Stars . Writing
Writing Historical Fiction
On 1 September 2010 by Admin‘I don’t like historical fiction,’ a friend said recently and, until a few years ago, I might well have agreed with him. I mean – what’s the point of setting your story in the past, when there’s so much about the present that’s worth describing? Of having to go to all the trouble of recreating
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Literature . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Venezuela . War . Writing
Writing about War
On 9 August 2010 by AdminI don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been affected by war. In fact, I’d go further and say that there can hardly be anyone alive today whose existence isn’t a consequence of war. War has shaped human society for thousands of years, and it’s impossible to think of a time – our own most of
A Mild Suicide . Literature . Novels . Sex . The Dark Tower . Undiscovered Country . Writing
Writing about Sex
On 2 August 2010 by AdminWriting about sex is hard, as everybody knows. Unless you’re as breezily unafraid of double entendre as Kathy Lette, or as secure in the knowledge of your own literary genius as Philip Roth – whose depictions, in successive novels, of liaisons between septuagenarian men and thirty-something women, are offered without a trace of humour –
Novels . The Dark Tower . Writing
On Not Being Stephen King
On 20 July 2010 by AdminStephen King and I have quite a lot in common. We’re both writers, for a start – although, admittedly, his sales are rather better than mine. We both have names that mean the same thing, and that begin with the same letter: he’s just before me on the shelf half-way along the ‘Fiction’ wall in
Literature . Novels . The Dark Tower . Writing
Other Dark Towers
On 29 June 2010 by AdminChoosing a title for a work of fiction is always tricky – especially when, as is the case with The Dark Tower, your title is one that has been used by many others for their, otherwise entirely different, works. If, as I did, you’ve chosen to call your book after the title of a famous
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Literature . Research . The Dark Tower . War . Writing
Literary models for The Dark Tower
On 4 May 2010 by AdminWriting The Dark Tower necessitated a good deal of historical research – not all of which was factual. Novels, such as The American by Henry James, The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope, A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, The Egoist by Meredith – all of which were
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Isandlhwana . South Africa . The Dark Tower . War . Writing
The quest for Isandhlwana
On 15 April 2010 by AdminIf the starting-point for The Dark Tower was a few handwritten pages in a long-dead woman’s diary for 1879, the process of writing the novel brought in many other elements. There was the fact that the story was set at a particular time in history; that it was set in a country I had not at that time visited; and that it was about war. All these facts, I knew, would involve me in a good deal of research, both of the kind that involves sitting in libraries, and the kind that’s about going to see for oneself. It wasn’t the first time I’d done such research – a previous novel Fabulous Time, part of which is set in Shanghai in 1911, had necessitated a visit to China – but it was the most sustained and ambitious work of its kind I’d so far attempted.
Anglo-Zulu war . British Army . Historical Fiction . Isandlhwana . South Africa . The Dark Tower . War
Isandhlwana – The Dark Tower
On 19 March 2010 by AdminIsandhlwana is a disturbing place. Even if one knows nothing of the grim events enacted here, a little over 130 years ago, it still leaves a powerful impression – with its barren outcrops of low hills, surrounding a grassy plain, seamed with dry river-beds, and with the squat, tower-like shape of the mountain, from which it takes its name, looming overhead. It is the landscape evoked, with eerie prescience, by Robert Browning, in his 1855 poem, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’, which supplied me with the title, and epigraph, for my novel, The Dark Tower.