Cruising for a bruising? Out of the crucible and into the fire...

Now, I'm a man of many principles. I don't stick to a lot of them, but I do have them neatly stored away, stacked on my shelves of morality, with my jar of pickled eggs.
You'll see the pickles are flanked by two groups of books. On the right are my signed-by-the-author copies of books, some self-published and others mainstream. I'm passionate about reading & writing and a big supporter of anyone who wants to get their story out there. On the left is some of my Africa collection.

As an Englishman, living here in Ireland, I'm reminded with decreasing frequency about the eight hundred years of oppression visited by my country upon the island of Ireland. In speeches, at leaving parties and randomly in the streets of Kilkenny I will stand and shout 'Yes! I take full responsibility for all that. On behalf of whomever I apologise to whoever about it all. And in compensation I offer this token of [insert beverage, bite of my sandwich, discounted copy of my books].' However, the British imperial rule of Ireland was oppression lite compared to that perpetrated by Western Europe upon Africa over the past centuries. Martin Meredith's The State of Africa is a great account of pre and post-colonial rule in Africa, but suffice to say I'm not proud of how things went on and neither should you be if you're a European. If you're an American then you know the whole other Africa story but that's not for today.

I lived in Zurich, Switzerland for seven years and saw first hand the enormous wealth coming out of African countries that are at war, enduring famine and generally making a cock of the whole running-a-country business. Limousines, robes of many colours, unimaginable wealth decanted from sub-Saharan African countries rich in natural resources but poor in ethics. I'm not a real socialist but a firm believer in absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There's something about Africa that drives a continuous cycle of altruism, nepotism, corruption, despotism, coups and idealism, with very few exceptions. And what does the western world do about it? Unless oil or other key natural resources are under threat, we assuage our consciences by sending gap year students in SUVs to deliver vitamin enhanced porridge wet feeds to villages that really need electricity, water and slightly less despotic governments. Or we go and build bungalows in slum townships that are a direct result of local government policy. We apply a sticking plaster of conscience to the gaping wounds of the country we likely all originated from. Well, that's my excuse for not giving to charity. In a cosy world where my apoplectic fits of rage are mostly directed at people hanging the toilet paper in the incorrect manner, I know how fickle my principles are.


But there's a far worse area of neglect in Africa that has to be owned up to. When I was working for an international engineering company we had factories all over the world. The three factories in South Africa had an HIV prevalence of over 45% among the workforce. These were trained mechanical and electrical manufacturing employees, normal people, not underprivileged or in remote villages. The rate of HIV in African countries is huge. What is the western world doing about it and how much of the huge profits in the pharmaceutical industry are invested in solving the problem? Let's just park that where our conscience can't see it, behind the pickled eggs.

To distract your thoughts from these difficult subjects I'd like to throw religion on the table. Christianity was tempered in the fire of the crusades and its sharp edge brought down on the heads of innocents once the West had learnt how to travel in numbers to distant shores inhabited by 'heathens'. Islam and Christianity fought tooth and nail over symbolic goals throughout the last two millennia (ok, I'm not a historian, but you get my drift). It's still going on, with George W's claims that he acted in God's will, Iran talking about being the Gatekeeper of Armageddon, and latter-day crusades wrapped up in rhetoric of all kinds of complexions. There's a strong evangelical Christian movement and great interest in the Rapture, as evidenced by Tim Lahaye's Left Behind series of books which have sold tens of millions. Hal Lindsey's earlier predictions identified the European Union as the 'seven-headed beast with ten horns' cited in the Book of Revelation.

These three worrying aspects of humanity are the setting for The Crucible. When I first started bouncing around early chapters of the book I had some interesting reader feedback:

'The idea of an insanely evangelicized America is ludicrous.'

'AIDS isn't a conspiracy.'

'Love, sex, murder, romance; James Bond meets Tom Clancy.'

I've used the background described in this post as the setting for an action adventure novel. Take a look, see what you think and let me know. Am I cruising for a bruising from our evangelical brethren? Is Iran going to level a fatwah and I'll have to take refuge at the bottom of Bono's garden like Salman Rushdie did? I think the aspirations of Europe are far more worrying. But it's just fiction. Or is it?

Southern Cameroon, West Africa 1936
A virus mutated and crossed the barrier from primate to human. In less than a century it had claimed the lives of twenty-five million people. Africa, a land of natural beauty and riches, ripe for plunder, full of dark menace.

Read more of The Crucible ...

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Dare to dream?

Does your book or the book you're reading contain a dream sequence? More than one? Nice. Isn't it a great way to show the subconscious anguish your protagonist is enduring? You can break the laws of science, introduce fictional (hah!) characters, bring people back from the dead or the future, have your characters act out of character, and live out fantasies. Dare to dream.

Everyone has dreams. Well, I know one guy who claims to never have had a dream, but he probably just doesn't remember them (he wears odd socks).

We can be scared, stressed, excited, even titillated by our dreams. Dream components often comprise events, settings and people from real-life events of the preceding day. The plot of the dream is usually fantastic in some respect. In dreams we can have sex with, fight, kill or are pursued by people or things in a way that isn't likely in normal life.

So, start your novel with a dream sequence and use dream sequences when you want to give the reader real insight into the subconscious, right? Wrong, according to Mittelmark & Newman's How Not to Write a Novel:

 Early twentieth century fiction was newly awash in Freudianism, and no respectable novelist would send his book into the world without a layer of symbolism, dramatising the unconscious fears and desires of his characters. This was often accomplished by presenting the character's dreams, usually in a font called Stream of Consciousness Italic.
 Science rushes forward, and it is now understood that reading page after page of characters' dreams about building walls with bricks of anguish is about as interesting as, well, listening to an actual stranger tell you about his actual dreams.
 A good approach is to allow one dream per novel. Then, in the final revision, go back and get rid of that too.

Mittelmark & Newman's book is hilarious and, in between trying not to snort my cup of tea up my windpipe, I try to remember the book's extensive 'not' guidance when I'm writing my novels.

So, life being short and this being the e-revolution and all, I decided to pull out a couple of my early action adventure espionage novels from under the bed and polish them up for ebook release. I mean, how bad could they be? As well as the electronic files (I'm a compulsive e-squirrel) I also found a paid-for critique from a London agency. Here are some choice exerpts from their report.

• The prologue needs to set the tone, provide a crucial piece of information to be recalled later, introduce a character, or have an event that sparks off all resulting events. What it really shouldn’t be is a pointless action sequence involving apes.
• I’m surprised a Swiss banker is happy to be so closely connected to a murder. While I don’t know any I can’t imagine it’s their style particularly, so I’m rather doubting what I’m reading since I’m given no reason to accept it.
• This suffers from the most common error of first novels; you tell more than you show.
• The quality of the text is passable, but doesn’t do much for me. 

Looking back, and looking at the manuscript, they could have said it differently and made more of a monkey out of me (hey, I want my money back!). They might have shared the following findings:

• A ponderous, almost pompous, literary style.
• Florid speech tags and adverbs that would have delighted Enid Blyton.
• Improbable dialogue wherein two characters explain to each other everything they know just to inform the reader.
• Wandering point of view that buzzes around inside the head of a character, then another, and then reports stuff that neither character could possibly know or see.
• Judgemental voiceover sections explaining factual background in a near academic style.
• Cringe-worthy attempts at humour, mostly trying to embed vaguely amusing real life occurrences for which you had to be there to get them (if they were even funny the first time).
• Dream sequences by the bucketful.

I'm 51,000 words through the rewrite. It's the first of two books in a series and I'm determined to get both books rewritten, edited, proofed, covers designed and e-published before autumn (not to mention charging ahead with the sequels to Peril and The Baptist). The second book starts with a dream sequence (instead of a pointless action sequence involving apes). Am I going to edit out all the dreams? Hell no! Or maybe. I'm not trying to write a Booker Prize Winner, my aim is to entertain. Does entertainment have to follow literary rules?


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