George,
Who are your influences?
When
I was young, I enjoyed authors such as Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Adam Hall and
Alistair McLean with their adventure-spy-action thrillers. Later, middle age
drew me into John Le Carre’s morally uncertain characters in his more psychological
espionage dramas and Graham Greene’s international stories of the “ambivalent
moral and political issues of the modern world”. Recently, I’ve loved reading Philip
Kerr and Robert Wilson and I think that’s because I’m British-born so I share
those authors’ humor and understand their style of English. I enjoyed Deighton’s
insubordinate Harry Palmer far more than the superficial, cool James Bond and
that has extended into the darker worlds of Kerr’s German detective, Bernie
Gunther, and Robert Wilson’s fixer in West Africa, Bruce Medway. It shows in my
protagonist in Blood Rain in Trieste,
Milo Marchetti: witty, morally pragmatic, tough but still emotionally
vulnerable.
When did
you begin writing?
When I was
about fifteen, I started typing stories that lasted about a page or two at best.
Copies of James Bond and war stories, they had no plan. I think I liked playing
with the typewriter more than anything else.
How do you
come up with your stories, characters, character names, POV, etc.?
I’ve
always enjoyed adventure stories of any kind, be it climbing mountains, sailing
around the world or historical battles. As a teenager, I bought old National Geographics so I could tour the
world cheaply in my living room. My stories are playing out my need for
adventure and to entertain myself and others at the same time. For fun, many of
the names I use for characters are from people I’ve met on my trips, friends
and family.
So far, stories
have emerged from my travels, during which I’ve visited so many remarkable
places and met so many interesting people from all over the world. Blood Rain in Trieste is based upon a
trip with my wife around central Europe in 2010 while the soon-to-be-published
thriller-romance Recycled Love is
based on a 2009 trip to fabulous India, traveling from Kolkota to Mumbai and back
across the subcontinent to Nepal, where I ended up at 18,000 feet, above
Everest Base Camp. Adventure!
I switched from
third person to first person for Blood
Rain since I felt more comfortable being the character. In Recycled Love, I use third person and
first person (although that might change) since it contains one part of the story
bookended by another.
Do you work
from an outline?
So far, I’ve
worked from vague outlines with a beginning and an end and let the stories
develop as I think of twists and turns I can incorporate. The final stories are
light years away from my original concepts as the characters and situations
take over. Including one false start with Love
and Death in Trieste (2013), it took almost five years to get Blood Rain to a level I considered good
enough so in those years a lot of new ideas and writing experience crept into
the story. I now know it’s far more efficient to write around a defined plot
structure and I’ll move in that direction but I enjoy being spontaneous in my
writing. I like to surprise myself and, as a result, the reader too.
Tell me
about your favorite scene in your novel(s).
I worked hard
on the prologue where Milo is waiting to kill Ajmal Ghaznavi then attempting to
kill Brooke. I wanted to paint a dramatic opening, plenty of action to engage
the reader—it wasn’t going to be a dull book. But perhaps my favorite scene is the
one in The Blue Note music club in which I wanted to get the reader interested
in the mysterious femme fatale,
Clara, and the witty, hard Milo, a man who enjoys the company of women and is vulnerable
to their charms. It would be a fun read too.
Can you
tell us a little about your writing philosophy?
I write what
pleases me and that means entertaining adult readers with action, adventure,
humor and a bit of romance: realistic characters in a plausible story set in interesting
locations. “Adult” in the sense of mature and worldly, not erotic or
pornographic. The banality of so much mainstream writing dismays me but it
appears to reflect the need of much of the market for inoffensive, puerile
stories, especially in the romance area. I don’t like “sanitized” writing where
violent characters only say “Darn!” between shooting people and sex, if even
dared, is hidden beneath bed sheets of euphemisms.
Have you
ever tried writing in any other genres?
I’m impressed
by authors such as Wilson and Kerr who write very good books in several genres
but I think I’ll remain a thriller writer since it’s the genre that excites me. Blood Rain is a thriller with a bit of
a colorful, noir style, a struggling romance at its core and without a pat
ending. The reader is left wondering what’s going to happen next. I’ve tried to
be a bit different with Recycled Love,
a “one off” with no sequel, more romantic, less violent, with a pleasing but
unexpected ending and some thrills and mystery along the way.
Do you have
any interesting writing-related anecdotes to share?
Nothing
amusing. Sometimes, I’ve found learning to write and publish the antithesis of
amusing.
Do you
listen to music as you write?
No. I don’t
like being distracted by anything when I’m writing. I concentrate on the story
until I have it done or I lose the thread.
Thank you George for
taking the time for Buttonholed Book Reviews
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