Well, been a while since I’ve done any sort of diary-type entry, so here goes:
Did a bit of a tour for BLOOD OIL, which I’ve told you about I’m sure. Did a gig at Inverloch library to a lovely (and surprisingly large, and not just because my step dad was there – he looks a bit like Peter Jackson you see, circa LOTR filming) crowd. Anyway, hello Inverloch people! I judged a short story comp for which I’ll be attending an awards ceremony next weekend, and I don’t have much to say about the entries other than kids can write and most adults can’t. Caught up with John Birmingham and some of his blog buddies – Burgers to those in the know. Birmo has a new novel out, WITHOUT WARNING, which is kinda like every novel I’ve written wrapped between two covers – it’s huge, and it’s good. I’ll read it in the new year when I can dedicate that kinda time and headspace. Been having a Radiohead revival lately, lately my iPod seems to play nothing but, and IN RAINBOWS is particularly good. Cleaned my office, put all my papers in neat piles which I might go through one day but doubt it, got some big fruit trees for my balcony (two pear, two orange), watched a few DVD’s but nothing stand-out, re-reading (nice and slow) TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Each year I auction off a couple character’s names in Fox books, for charity, and this year both are going to the Cancer Foundation. One sold a couple weeks ago, the other auction/charity event is this weekend, and I’ll do a blog post later in the year with these character’s names and their roles in the books (basically, the more they pay at the charity auction, the longer their character lives). Doing a launch at Scotch College this Friday, which I guess I’ll shave for – did I mention I’ve grown a beard? I’ve had not much else to do lately, so I’ve been learning piano and growing a beard, both activities that I can do at home with minimal fuss. Later this month I am talking at the Balwyn Library, and Box Hill TAFE, the latter with my mate Andrew Hutchinson who’ll be crashing here so I really should sort out the spare room (it’s something of a music, papers, and yoga-ball room at the mo and has not benefited from my cleaning mood). Oh, and a week or so ago I gave a six-hour class to a group of young teenagers at the Queensland Writer’s Centre – it was brilliant, the kids were far smarter than most adults I’ve met and the day flashed by at warp speed, certainly faster than Virgin took off from the airport on the way home (I mean really, did we need to turn around and go back just because the weather computer was out? Look out the window. And really, can’t a fifty million dollar jet fly through any and all Australian clouds???). Anyway, hello Queensland kids if you’re reading this – you are all stars.
And with kids in mind, my new book ALONE has been read by a few pro-readers and the response has been better than expected. Two of them said it’s the best book I’ve written, which is a bit worrisome as it took me 16 days to write compared to 3 months to write BLOOD OIL but then it is a very different book: it’s aimed at teenage readers but these two adults (Tony and Em, if you must know) enjoyed it as much as they’ve enjoyed pretty much any book, and they read more books than most people I know (funny, typing that then I was thinking about how Harper’s Scout speaks – it’s been great to go back into that world, those summer’s making fun with Jem). Anyway, I’m still waiting to hear from a select few teenage readers, then I’ll make any changes in a month or so and get it in to the publishers as a good, solid first book in a series. Meantime, I’m tapping away at Fox 4, and I’m very happy to tell you all that my writing has really moved along since writing this kids book (yes mum, you were right). Watch out for more info coming here soon…
Oh, and for readers in Sydney who saw a Sun Herald profile on me a couple weeks back, the journo got quite a lot wrong, which is not unusual with any profile piece – I might make a perpetual list here one day of all the wrong stuff they’ve written about me over the years. Anyway, it happens to us all and the stuff-ups are only getting bigger and worse as journalists are getting lazier and more time-poor - I’ll leave you with a little snippet from Ricky Gervais’ blog:
During an interview in America recently the subject came up about me ad libbing in all my film roles and what it’s like for me not being in charge as usually I write and direct myself.
I explained that I’m usually taken on with that remit and I said that directors usually hire me knowing that I will bring something to the role. I said, “If they wanted someone to stand where they’re told and just say the lines as they’re written in the script then they should chose any other actor to do that.”
Obviously that was taken out of context by an english news site. i wont embarrass them as they are going to right the wrong, but this is the headline they went with. “Gervais admits he is the worst actor in Hollywood” Gervais admits he is the worst actor in Hollywood Brilliant. The thing that annoys me is this. They know exactly what they are doing. It’s not a mistake. It’s deliberate. The world would be a different place if things had always been like this.
Martin Luther King - “I have a dream.”
TheDailyShit.com - “Lazy black man always sleeping”
Jesus Christ - “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
WeeklyRumour.co.uk - “Scruffy Jew starts riot”
Elizabeth I - “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”
InternetCuntWhoCan’tGetArealJob.Net - “Scrawny cannibal lezzer eats own father”
Can’t wait for tomorrow’s headlines… Gervais says he’s as misunderstood as Dr. King. Virgin Queen and Son Of God.
It’s been a busy few weeks for me. The third Lachlan Fox novel, BLOOD OIL, came out late August. I’ve toured for it and I’m happy with the final product and the feedback from readers is so far, so good. Other than that, I started another novel late August, and finished it mid-September. It’s outside the Fox series and it has 15 year-old protagonists, so I guess it’s a teenage-audience book, but I like to think that all ages will read it as it’s an archetypal story of identity and survival told in a way I’ve never seen or heard. I wrote it un-contracted and it will be interesting to see what publishers think of it.
Highlights from what I’ve been reading…
James Frey’s BRIGHT SHINY MORNING. He’s described it as a love letter to LA, only the kind of letter you’d write to a lover you’ve been with for ten years. It’s that and more. I caught up with Frey when he was in Melbourne and he mentioned that he’s very much carrying the torch of Norman Mailer which was nice to hear because that’s exactly how I think of Frey’s writing: he works in prose but he’s essentially, like Mailer, an essayist and chronicler of the self and the times around him. His best subject has been himself, much like Mailer, a man I never met Mailer and it’s a regret because I sense that he, the artist, the observer, was the most interesting part of his fictional creation. Mailer never really had the big novel that I’m sure he’d hoped for, certainly not as big as his precursor Hemingway. Much of his best work are now period pieces, which is not a bad thing in itself and they were important and current and immediate reads at the time I’m sure (AN AMERICAN DREAM, and WHY ARE WE IN VIETNAM?). In this regard he was closer to Orwell, who was an essayist better than a prose writer and his books lacked any real future importance. Frey mentioned that in a discussion he had when dear old Mailer was still alive, that the man said to him and I may paraphrase: “You’re it now. It was Hemingway and then me and now it’s you.” I think that anxiety of influence crippled whatever real originality Mailer might have developed, as it did to Hemingway with his artistic competition to Tolstoy. Hemingway’s greatness was his short stories, which rival any other master of that form, Joyce, Chekhov, Babel, and he’s certainly the best short story writer we’ve seen since Joyce’s DUBLINERS (although my readers will know I have an affinity for Proulx and Winton as modern virtuosos of the sublime). Hemingway was the master of ellipses and his longer works, particularly THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, misses this virtue of aesthetic economy. William Faulkner praised this book as Hemingway’s best but then his taste was a little off some of the time. It’s at once a Christian parable and a work of sentimentality and it’s far too much for the novel to bear. To Frey’s credit he has none of that. I’d not say Frey’s strongest point of writing is his brevity for he details his prose as a painter might paint a canvas and apply stroke after stroke to built a picture that’s as rich as it is intriguing but what he achieved as a writer of literature is develop a parataxis that is at the forefront of achievement of 21C writers. I have no doubt that one day in the not too distant future, should Frey tackle an issue that strikes a chord with a time or generation, such as Mailer did with his VIETNAM etc, then he will receive the recognition that he deserves and strives for. He will be studied at universities, they will no doubt incorrectly read his work, but he will be appreciated as a poet observer beyond the limited view we have of Mailer, because he’s capable of better writing. Frey has written about his writing process that he approaches the page and task much like a method actor, to really get into the mindset that the given scene requires. I’ve tried that with some of my works but have found it to be too self-destructive and dangerous to everything around me. I do hope, and I trust, that Frey will get to write a canonical novel beyond the immediate that will last the ages and place him in his country’s best writers, to make them, as he says, insignificant. The danger, if he does not achieve this, as I believe that Hemingway realized he had not produced a novel to beat Tolstoy (THE SUN ALSO RISES came closest, but even it was beaten by Hemingway’s own short work, seen in much of the FIRST FORTY-NINE STORIES). In a letter to his publisher Charles Scribner, Hemingway wrote: “Am a man without any ambition, except to be champion of the world, I wouldn’t fight Dr. Tolstoy in a 20 round bout because I know he would knock my ears off. … If I can live to 60 I can beat him. (MAYBE).” Hemingway’s suicide at 61 had its reasons beyond anything hereditary and more than any sickness, like we saw only a few years ago in Dr Gonzo, another genius journalist-writer. Sadly, that door in the psyche is still an option for too many talented, ambitious artists, particularly and usually young men, which I might discuss in detail another day.
If we look at 20C American literature Nathaniel West’s MISS LONELYHEARTS rates right up there. Pynchon couldn’t touch him, only Faulkner holds the higher title. Of living writers, McCarthy’s BLOOD MERIDIAN ranks, as does DeLillo’s UNDERWORLD. Steinbeck was crippled by the shadow of Hemingway, as I believe Mailer was crippled to produce a work of sublime aesthetic achievement by Mailer himself, a Mailer constantly sparring with both himself and Hemingway. I mention these writers because of this: Faulkner’s AS I LAY DYING, West’s MISS LONELYHEARTS, Pynchon’s GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and BLOOD MERIDIAN, UNDERWORLD, etc, go on through time to prove to us what literature can do, and these works go on harming and teaching and killing us with every read.
I don’t think that such a canonical work is beyond his reach of Frey and it’s certainly within the scope of his ambition. He has the ambition to be heavyweight champion of the literature world, to obliterate the others - if there are any remaining with similar ambitions - into obscurity, and I love him for it. The best I can hope to muster would be to muscle up and fight these guys, as Hemingway did against Stevens - which I’ve written about here before - and I like to think I’d be able to rank pretty high in those stakes. Sure, it’s been tempting to me as it is for so many young writers to write something of such worth and greatest that it will be remembered through all time as something of the finest aesthetic beauty, and maybe one day I’ll dedicate the time to do that but maybe I’ll just keep at my thing, whatever that is. At any rate, Frey’s proved with his third novel that he has reach beyond himself, and produced something that isn’t too restricted to time and place, which is a reach greater than Mailer could ever muster as he placed himself too near events time and time again. Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES is Mailer’s ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF and BRIGHT SHINY MORNING could well be THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG. Mailer was his own best fiction complete with every nuance New Journalism brought along. Frey was there and now he’s broken the mould and stretched his wings. Mailer wrote in ADVERTISEMENTS: “…I pointed to the farthest fence and said within ten years I would try to hit the longest ball ever to go up into the accelerated hurricane air of our American letters. For if I have one ambition above all others, it is to write a novel which Dostoyevsky and Marx; Joyce and Freud; Stendhal, Tolstoy, Proust and Spengler; Faulkner ad even old moldering Hemingway might have come to read, for it would carry what they had to tell another part of the way.” Hemingway characterized ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, in a letter to George Plimpton, “as a sort of ragtag assembly of his rewrites, second thoughts and ramblings shot through with occasional brilliance.” It’s easy to read Frey and say that he might share much with Mailer, much more than we may ever realize. Mailer as described by Richard Poirier: “…insists on living at the divide, living on the divide, between the world of recorded reality and the world of omens, spirits, and powers, only that his presence may blur the distinction. He seals and obliterates the gap that he finds, like a sacrificial warrior or, as he would probably prefer, like a Christ who brings not peace but a sword, not forgiveness for past sins but an example of the pains necessary to secure a future.”
Over the coming years I’m excited to watch just how far the reach of James Frey can go, and I look forward to him carrying the torch another leg of this great relay, to hit the ball out of the park and show the world what literature can still achieve.
What I’ve been writing…
My newest novel, titled ALONE.
I’ve read a heap of “Young Adult” fiction because I’ve just written my first, a little break in-between writing Fox novels. I read like 50 or so, from Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl (a couple of my childhood favs) to Robert Muchamore and Matthew Reilly. The older books still hold up, even Marsden’s TOMORROW Series reads well, so does OSC’s ENDERS GAME. I flinch at a lot of Blyton, as I’ve done with other period pieces of fiction that I’ve re-read as an adult like LORD OF THE FLIES and KING SOLOMON’S MINES, and while there’s still something to like in them they never live up to the memories of the first read when I was full of youthful ignorance and ready to be carried away. Contemporary YA fiction, with the exception of perhaps Jasper Fforde (if you’d call his stuff YA) is so utterly boring. It’s action and thrills but it’s hollow and doesn’t say much about anything. Golding’s first novel in LORD OF THE FLIES is relevant today but only if you are a teenage private school boy, likely an English one at that, who identifies with those weak characters; that’s all those characters were, private English school boys, and that’s all they ever will be, products of an author who had been through that system and continued a similar one by serving in the Navy and further residing in that system in teaching. I just now re-read Huck Finn, and yes, again I flinch at the language that we now know to be very non-PC, but Huck has so much more depth than any of Golding’s characters. Huck has irony, not seen in Ralph et al, and Golding’s “creations” are no more than humourless names with embarrassingly small views and ridiculously limited minds. There’s nothing universal about LORD OF THE FLIES, it certainly is not an allegory of moral depravity, it’s nothing more than a story of a few cardboard private school boys continuing their existence in a situation that a mature writer would have explored and mined for richness beyond the literal and expected, making names on a page resonate through the ages.
Now that books are marketed to kids like never before we need some bright shiny voices and stories available that are beyond the ordinary. We need the KIM and HUCK of today. So, I’ve created Jesse, in my first YA novel, ALONE. It’s McCarthy’s THE ROAD but set during the apocalyptic event rather than years after, with four teenagers at the centre as seen through Jesse’s eyes and without the overt writerly influences that hampers McCarthy’s effort. ALONE is a product of today and written for today’s readers and like THE ROAD, LIFE OF PI, THE BOOK THEIF, THE ALCHEMIST, ENDERS GAME, THE HOBBIT, THE LITTLE PRINCE, and SIDDHARTHA, I can see it will be read by adults as well as teenagers as well as advanced kids, and I hope they all identify with the archetypal qualities in the story. We follow four teenagers for three weeks and we see how they cope and survive in a city that has been attacked, and through it Jesse struggles with his identity and ego and self as much as his friends’. It holds no punches. It’s raw and it’s real and it will be interesting to see what publishers think of it. Clearly I’m biased - but I’ve admitted on many occasions to not liking my previous work when I’m working gone the next project - and this has not happened with ALONE. I’m writing FOX 4 and 5 back-to-back, as the storyline and through-arcs carry through them both and I figure it’s smart to mine this creative zone that I’m in while it lasts. But when I think back about those four lonely characters in ALONE, I still love them and I love their story and it was a great month of writing. I’ve looked back and felt that way about anything I’ve ever written. Usually I’m glad the writing ordeal is over and the world I’d created and lived in for months on end is behind me.
What I’ve been watching…
A few DVD’s.
GONG BABY GONE. Enjoyed it about as much as the book. The twists still worked, even though I expected what was coming. Ben Affleck did a great job of directing. The only thing I had issues with was the small jump cuts in the scene where they were in the house of the mother - they worked fine, but it seemed out of place as a device and the first couple jarred until I was used to it. Still, it’s a little thing, like the little things I pointed out with Tony Gilroy’s first effort in MICHAEL CLAYTON. Make no mistake, both these guys can direct better than most, it’s just my super-critical eye because I expected so much. What pleased me the most with both their efforts is that they have such a minimal, old-school approach that is not reliant on any visual gimmickry.
STREET KINGS. I like David Ayer and I expected so much from this film and it didn’t deliver. TRAINING DAY was a deceptively good script and well acted and executed. In fact, I didn’t love it that much on the first run through but after reading the script and re-watching I got so much more from it, but perhaps that’s either me not being in the mood in the first instance to take it all in, or they filmmakers didn’t do a good enough job putting the script to screen. I suspect a bit of both. HARSH TIMES remains my favourite Ayer film and it’s small-budget genius. Chris Bale and Freddy Rodriguez were perfect; Bale’s character was utterly riveting and frightening and most importantly incredibly empathetic, which cemented Bale in my mind as one of the best actors around. Anyway, STREET KINGS could have been the story that I wanted to write, and when I’d read early news about it I was disappointed that I’d never get to write a similar novel that I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while, the third of a cop trilogy. But, I will write that novel one day soon, about a cop who’s hard and tough as can be because of the two novels before it (both storylines of which came to me in separate dreams with the same cop characters – go figure), because STREET KINGS and its ridiculous cast did not deliver.
Here’s some upcoming events where anyone can come along and say hello and get a book signed.
18 Sept, INVERLOCH.
7:30 pm @ the Inverloch Community Centre
Author talk and Q&A
Gold coin donation, refreshments supplied.
(note: limited amount of books for sale on the night)
20 Sept, WONTHAGGI
11am - noon @ Wonthaggi Big W
Book signing
Free event
22 Oct, BALWYN
7.30pm @ Balwyn Library
Author talk and Q&A
Readings Books proving books for sale on the night.
Free event, bookings advised via the library.
Here are a few of the bookstores where you can find copies of signed Fox novels.
Brisbane:
Dymocks Brisbane
Borders Brisbane
Dymocks Indooroopilly
Mary Ryan Milton
Dymocks Chermside
Riverbend
Mary Ryans Bulimba
Sydney:
Newslink store, Qantas Domestic
Angus & Robertson, Bankstown
Borders, Rouse Hill
Dymocks, Rouse Hill
Dymocks, Penrith
Dymocks, Parramatta
Dymocks, Castle Hill
Dymocks, Sydney
Pages & Pages, Mosman
Next Chapter, Warriewood
Melbourne:
Borders Camberwell (Where I had a big signing afternoon - they have heaps of signed books.)
Dymocks Melbourne at Australia on Collins
Borders Melbourne Central
Dymocks Camberwell
G’day readers,
Chances are that your local store in Brisbane, Sydney, or Melbourne now has signed books - while stocks last!
I have been on a whirlwind book tour of the east coast capital cities and have signed copies of the just-released BLOOD OIL, as well as some of the paperback editions of FOX HUNT and PATRIOT ACT. Along the way I’ve met dozens (perhaps hundreds!) of wonderful bookstore owners and staff, which as I publish more and more books they are feeling more and more like my extended publishing family.
Early this coming week I will post a list of the stores that I visited, as well as my upcoming public appearances.
Thanks for your continued support in buying my books, and I do hope that you enjoy this latest Lachlan Fox story. I’m very pleased (and as usual, somewhat surprised!) that the feedback so far from early readers, bookstore staff, and media, has been brilliant.
Cheers,
JP.
This week I’ve given two talks at very different schools, one in Melbourne, and one in country Victoria. Both audiences where great, and eager to know about BLOOD OIL. Well, we’re two weeks from publication and the first review is in. Also, I’ve done my first press interview, for Sydney’s Sun Herald. Both the review (pasted below) and the interviewer from SH liked the book, so I now feel somewhat vindicated in thinking that this novel is my best by far - you know, third time lucky and all that. Having finished BLOOD OIL this past February, then having a couple months of edits, it’s always a nice feeling when objective feedback starts trickling in from the media and my readers. Meanwhile, I’ve been tapping away at FOX 4… better get back to it.
The first review for BLOOD OIL, from Bookseller & Publisher Magazine, August 2008.
BLOOD OIL – Four Stars/an excellent book.
Melbourne-based author James Phelan continues to redefine the often stale and cliché-ridden political thriller genre. The setting of this third novel is present day Nigeria. Australian journalist Lachlan Fox is assigned to cover a devastating terrorist attack on an oil refinery, and the resulting turmoil on oil markets. The trail leads to a plot to overthrow the Nigerian government, take over the oil reserves, and eventually destabilise America. Although BLOOD OIL relies on conventional ingredients – Arab terrorists, corrupt politicians, ruthless Russian businessmen, a maverick ex-CIA agent, a gutsy hero, and an action climax – the author refreshingly re-invigorates them without resorting to the predictable political agenda of writers such as Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn. Because Phelan’s hero is an investigative journalist rather than a gung-ho Rambo type, the author seamlessly integrates factual background without interrupting the narrative flow, and injects a serious moral component usually missing in most thrillers. The genre is in safe hands – Phelan proves again that “intelligent thriller” is not an oxymoron.
You’ll recall I recently compared McCarthy’s Boy IN THE ROAD to the Son of Macduff. It seems it resonates with me to this day; perhaps I am growing something of a paternal nature. Maybe it’s an awakening of the anxiety of influence. Certainly, I am always not too far from Shakespeare in my thoughts, writerly and otherwise. Still I cannot comprehend much of what makes Hamlet such a character at what, twenty years of age? Perhaps it’s that I see Shakespeare’s own son in Hamlet’s eyes, as I see the Bard as the Ghost, who we know he played on stage. This has been on my mind for years now, and I release upon rereading my own text that there’s the skeleton of both Hamlet and his father’s Ghost in the Lachlan Fox we meet in BLOOD OIL. I’ve written in such territory before, only it’s more thinly veiled now; Shakespeare, who named both father and son Hamlet in that play, lead to germ of an idea in a short story that I wrote titled “Soliloquy for One Dead.” Indeed it is a soliloquy, because if there is one thing that I am more keenly aware of over anything else, it’s that Shakespeare taught me this: how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves.
I don’t follow a particular faith. My parents were raised Catholic and decided to teach me all religions, something that I am eternally grateful for. There is suppressed Judaism in my ancestry and I attended a primary school where we sang Hebrew folk songs in class more often than any Celtic traditionals. As an adult, I’m probably more drawn to Buddhism that any other organised belief, though not without subjectivity. I take few pains to point out that I am open to all reasonable beliefs of faith and respect all those before me; I’m sure this is evident to those who know me. All this said, I am a steadfast follower of Bardolatry, the worship of Shakespeare, which should be even more of a secular religion than it already is. His plays are the outward limit of human achievement, never to be reached by us mortals, and I belong to the school, of which Harold Bloom must be the headmaster, that acknowledges Shakespeare as the inventor of humanity. Bloom posits this by saying that his plays abide beyond the mind’s reach, that we have no hope of catching up to them. But more on that another day.
I bring up religion here because I went to a christening the other day, the Catholic baptism of an infant. I can’t agree that babies are born into original sin (which is the one element of baptism that I am talking about here); it seems to me odd that such an innocent should pay for sins that Jesus himself paid the ultimate sacrifice for, let alone the fact that a months old human has the capacity to sin. After the christening, I said this to some of the attendees, and when pressed I gave the age that I thought such a cleansing of the soul to be seven. This is the age of mens rea, I said, to which they looked dumbfounded, which disappointed but didn’t surprise me. I joked that I could perhaps be baptised that day as well. They laughed and said: you’re too old. I’m twenty nine, I said. Far too old, was chorused, even a couple laughs. Jesus was twenty nine when he was baptised. More dumbfounded silence, accompanied with uncomfortable looks. I was left wondering how many of them knew the Book by which they lived, and which version they knew. Instead, I quipped that Christopher Marlowe died at twenty nine, and wondered aloud what would have happened had John the Baptist accidentally drowned Jesus at twenty nine. Or if Marlow’s friend Shakespeare had left us at twenty nine, how the world would be a different place because we would think and feel and speak differently. Our ideas would be different, particularly our ideas of the human, since they were, more often than not, Shakespeare’s ideas before they were our own. Bloom taught me that much and Shakespeare has proved it to me time and time again in ways that go beyond literal meanings. Frye too has added to my understanding of the symmetry of verse in almost every text I read, stemming from the work of Blake that Frye took to the point of conviction by articulating that the Bible provided Western societies with the mythology which informed all of Western literature.
Most of us, like those present that christening day, would probably cite the King James Bible as the version de jure, even if it is the product of the Church of England and the Book of protestants. In true Australian form, most of my ancestry hails from Ireland, so the irony here is not lost. Certainly, I find the KJ version the most lyrical of biblical prose that I have read, and it seems ingrained in my consciousness as I hear its metre when I read Hemmingway and Steinbeck and Lincoln and now in Obama’s oratorical timbre in the audio book version of his refreshing “An Audacity of Hope”. That this version of the bible was written in Shakespeare’s time fascinates me to the point that I will write about it fully some other day.
This thinking about the purity of children’s souls had me thinking as I watched two films the other night: The Kite Runner (2007) and The Italian (2005). There’s something in the performances of these child actors that belies their age and in their inherent innocence something transcends expectations and moves me so. The two young actors in the Kite Runner were more than worthy at playing the roles of Hosseini’s creation and their portrayals will stay with me for some time. I am a fan of Marc Forster and he did exceptionally well here. The Italian, part of a recent vanguard of remerging brilliance in Russian cinema, was not as technically proficient as Forster’s film but then I didn’t expect it to be. The boy in this film carried the beauty against the beast of the system that was necessary to make us care beyond the ordinary; the final shot of the film, in the context of the story, was perfection.
Reminiscing here, some of my other favourite child/adolescant performances have been Salvatore Cascio as the little boy in Cinema Paradiso (1998 – original version only), Giorgio Cantarini as the son in La Vita e bella (1997), and Oksana Akinshina in LILJA 4-EVER (2002). Each one of these performances has had that artistic quality that like Shakespeare, like Mozart, like Caballet, like so many great artists, has emotionally moved me in ways that literal meanings can’t. Without Shakespeare, without the writers of what became biblical texts such as the J writer (who I love to believe was a woman), without Aristotle and Plato, I can’t imagine we would have had the cognitive power to comprehend such emotions, let alone have the ability to create such artistic material. And it’s in this artistry that defines us as human. Indeed, in my career as a novelist, every day I am working within the limitless confines of the novel, which can, beyond any other art, encompass all the various disciplines and interests of humanity. I am, forever, deeply entrenched with an anxiety of influence of genius that I cannot know how to touch but I’d hate to live a life without the hope of attempting to try.
I’ll leave the last word here to Bloom, on the study of Shakespeare… “We have to read Shakespeare, and we have to study Shakespeare. We have to study Dante. We have to read Chaucer. We have to read Cervantes. We have to read the Bible, at least the King James Bible. We have to read certain authors…They provide an intellectual, I dare say, a spiritual value which has nothing to do with organized religion or the history of institutional belief. They remind us in every sense of re-minding us. They not only tell us things that we have forgotten, but they tell us things we couldn’t possibly know without them, and they reform our minds. They make our minds stronger. They make us more vital. They make us alive…Shakespeare is universal. Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage…I don’t know who Shakespeare was. He has hidden himself behind all of these extraordinary men and women…One cares about wisdom, and in the end one wants to be judged by wisdom. If one hasn’t got it, one has to ask the biblical question “Where shall wisdom be found?’ And I suppose, for me, the answer is: wisdom is to be found in Shakespeare, provided you get at it in the right way.”
Final quote from: “Harold Bloom Interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel”
Queen’s Quarterly v102, #3 (Fall 1995) PAGES 609-19.
Here is a loose collection of notes from my research on oil.
Fact: oil is a fungible global commodity. Any change in supply or demand ANYWHERE affects prices EVERYWHERE.
In 1999, oil was $8 per barrel. As I write this, less than ten years on, oil is over $138 pb.
Since the end of World War II, we have lived in three geopolitical regimes, broadly understood:
- The Cold War: between the United States and the Soviet Union, in which the focus was on the military balance between those two countries, particularly on the nuclear balance. During this period, all countries, in some way or another, defined their behavior in terms of the US/Soviet competition.
- Globalization: the period from the fall of the Berlin Wall until 9/11, when the primary focus of the world was on economic development. This was the period in which former communist countries redefined themselves, East and Southeast Asian economies surged and collapsed, and China grew dramatically. It was a period in which politico-military power was secondary and economic power primary.
- War on Terror: the period from 9/11 until today that has been defined in terms of the increasing complexity of the U.S.-jihadist war - a reality that supplanted the second phase and redefined the international system dramatically.
Obviously, the winners in this game are those who export oil, and the losers are those who import it. The victory is not only economic but political as well. The ability to control where exports go and where they don’t go transforms into political power. The ability to export in a seller’s market not only increases wealth but also increases the ability to coerce, if that is desired.
Certainly India and China are driving the demand. China is facing higher energy prices at a time when the U.S. economy is weak and the ability to raise prices is limited. As oil prices increase costs, the Chinese continue to export and, with some exceptions, are holding prices. The reason is simple. The Chinese are aware that slowing exports could cause some businesses to fail. That would lead to unemployment, which in turn will lead to instability. The Chinese have their hands full between natural disasters, Tibet, terrorism and the Olympics. They do not need a wave of business failures.
Therefore, they are continuing to cap the domestic price of gasoline. This has caused tension between the government and Chinese oil companies, which have refused to distribute at capped prices. Behind this power struggle is this reality: The Chinese government can afford to subsidize oil prices to maintain social stability, but given the need to export, they are effectively squeezing profits out of exports. Between subsidies and no-profit exports, China’s reserves could shrink with remarkable speed, leaving their financial system — already overloaded with nonperforming loans — vulnerable. If they take the cap off, they face potential domestic unrest.
Most OPEC countries have experienced their own huge growth in the use of oil domestically as their economies are expanding and opening up. Nigeria is no exception. More on this next week.
I’ve just finished editing my third novel, BLOOD OIL. As a small teaser, I can tell you that this story is the first in a trilogy concerning a major plot-line, something that was hinted at in PATRIOT ACT… more about this at a later date. It will be published by Hachette in late August 2008, with a simultaneous audiobook release by Bolinda. The audio of FOX HUNT is out now, and the audio of PATRIOT ACT will come out around June/July at the same time as the paperback release (which will contain a sneak peek of BLOOD OIL). All audio books are available on CD and digital download at www.bolinda.com
BLOOD OIL is slightly longer FOX HUNT and PATRIOT ACT, the final word count being around 100k (probably just under 500 pages). I knew going into the story that it was a bigger playing field, and it could have easily blown out to 120-140k had I not from outset written it lean. To do this, one of the main stylistic points of my writing is in the slow evolution (some might say deterioration) of my syntax. If you read the books in chronological order you’ll see it present: I’ve been chipping away at sentences to get them to the point where I now feel they’re pretty reflective of where entertainment’s universal grammar currently resides. As more and more of the global audience is consuming their writing content via film, television, and new media, why shouldn’t novels keep pace to the grammatical style that we are increasingly comfortable with. I’ve said this before on this blog - novels, particularly commercial fiction, are snapshots of the time they were written in and as writers we are biologically bound in our minds to write what we can. The one and only time that I will ever quote Zadie Smith here on this site is from a Guardian artile she wrote back in 2001: “We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.” Ultimately, I’m thrilled with the final outcome of BLOOD OIL and can’t wait to see it in print.
Below is an author Q&A my publisher is including in the advance reader copies - they print a thousand or so of these a few months before the public release date, to send to media and booksellers. As with my previous two Fox novels, this advance print run is not the final edit and it’s a great opportunity for me to get pre-publication feedback from a test audience. Fingers crossed they like it!
When did you realise you wanted to be a writer?
As a teenager (around 15) when I read my first few current adventures and thrillers. I played around with some ideas through high school, but it was not until 2001 that I decided to dedicate the time and effort to see if I could do it. Prior to this I had started two novels which were at various stages.
What were those books that inspired you?
I can’t remember the titles but the first couple were Alistair MacLean’s UNACO series, which featured the fictional United Nations Anti-Crime Organisation as his protagonists. I’d been a big fan of the classic adventure stories and this was eye-opening as it was present day and dealing with pertinent topics – I remember thinking, “Writers can do this?” From that point on I’ve been keenly aware we read to inhabit time, not to pass time, and a good book can take you places you could not have imagined on your own.
Around that time I read Patriot Games - it got a huge amount of publicity thanks to the movie and I bought the first of the prints with Harrison Ford on the cover - proof of how much a movie deal can boost sales! Subsequently I read and enjoyed all of Tom’s stuff up until his lead character became President.
The real spurring of interest to become a writer came when a friend introduced me to Clive Cussler’s books. This guy writes purely and simply to entertain, and I believed I could write in the happy medium between he and Clancy. I was 14 or 15 and was hooked. From there it was Grisham/Follet/Archer/Crichton - anything similar.
Looking at my reading habits lately, some of my favourite novelists are Elmore Leonard, John Steinbeck, James Ellroy, Cormac McCarthy, Hermann Hesse, and Dennis Lehane. That said, some of the best writers in the world are working in Hollywood, which is hardly new but as a novelist I’m glad I’m not competing with these guys for shelf space! The likes of the Carnahan brothers, Tony Gilroy, David Ayer, Brian Helgeland, Charlie Kaufman, Aaron Sorkin, et al. They all write to entertain while making the process for us as readers and the audience to get so much out of their multi-layered stories.
And that’s why you write - to entertain?
Predominately, yes, that is the objective.
If a reader gets involved and engrossed in my story, or attached to a character, then I have done my job. Like watching a movie, I want the reader to finish up thinking it was money well spent in the entertainment department.
I say predominately, as there are other elements that drive me - writing a novel is like a drug, so amazing and addictive when you get in the creative zone - and perhaps with some other, future works, it (entertaining) may not be priority number one. To entertain is paramount in popular fiction and the most blatant key to success in this area.
How do you create characters?
In many different ways. When it comes to naming them, I quite often cheat by using names of friends or fellow writers. Sometimes even their descriptions play a part but usually I let the reader make their own picture of each character rather than really spell out how each person looks.
The journey of Fox has been fascinating for me as in ways we’ve grown up together and just when I think I completely know him he surprises me! In this book I get to explore some of the darker areas of the human psyche set against the times we are in now. This journey was important to make at this point in Fox’s life. I’ve always been interested in the grey areas of life, particularly the notion that we all have the ability to take a step too far and be perceived as the ‘bad guy’ or whatever. Fox finds himself in Nigeria, which on one hand is such a rich, interesting and exotic location and on the other it’s all poverty and desperation and someplace you don’t want to be. It’s really a clash of the cradle of civilization against modern money and power, and it proved to be a wonderful backdrop that mirrored every storyline that I wanted my characters’ journeys to go through. In the end, for Fox, it’s something of an awakening.
When and where do you write?
Mainly from my home office, a converted warehouse in Melbourne. I’m seconds away from heaps of great cafes, restaurants, bars and pubs which can be a bit of a distraction at times!
The process has been different for the three novels. One thing has always been constant - I’ve had a deadline. Usually, I like to be two sets down, to really be backed into a corner and write my way out of it. I think I like to translate that pressure into my writing, to make it faster and more immediate. I write anywhere, anytime. Home office, cafe, library, hotel, bed, wherever. Nights used to be my writing playground but for some reason I’m more often than not being more creative in the early morning and then just switching off from the afternoon onwards. Maybe I’m getting old and can’t work eighteen hour days anymore. Probably I’m just lazy.
BLOOD OIL was a dream to write, the words just poured out. I’d kicked the idea around for over a year, and I wrote it in ten weeks, which is quick for me. I probably cut out about ten percent before sending it through to the publisher, which is my usual target to trim out of my own edit. I should say that for those ten weeks, writing this novel was all that I did. Sure, I lived a life, but in terms of work, that was it. I pushed everything else out of my life and said “Nothing else matters now, this is it.” And there’s something in that kind of creative space that’s really special to have experienced. It was a profound experience, the whole thing. I look back now and think that it was a measurable accomplishment, a real peak in performance and achievement of creativity. Each novel any author writes is somehow a little snapshot in time of where they were, and I’m happy with the little snapshot of my life that this is. It was a good time but that said I’m glad it’s behind me. Bring on the next deadline.
Where do you get your ideas from?
I try to carry a notebook around at all times, in case inspiration strikes or an idea comes to me. It’s a great tool for a writer, as I can jot down overheard conversations or record something that I have seen. Every now and then I’ll flick through my notebooks and find something really useful that I’d completely forgotten about.
The central ideas of my books generally come from world news and current affairs, such as Chechnya and the Star Wars Missile Shield in FOX HUNT, to the scope of the Patriot Act and the capabilities of the UKUSA intelligence agencies in PATRIOT ACT.
So, I start with the big ideas and themes and work backwards, figuring out what it all means for my characters. Generally, I’ll have three pillars in the story that everything works around. Then come all the minor setbacks and roadblocks along the way that Fox has to overcome in order to get what he wants. And each time it’s not a very pleasant journey for him.
What research and planning do you do for your novels?
I love the research component that goes into writing thrillers, and each new book means another world that I get to inhabit for a while. I read heaps of non-fiction, which I generally buy (I am a bibliophile) but sometimes find at a library. I go over interviews with people who have been in the situations that I am depicting in the pages of my books, and I talk to them if I can. With the military pieces I am lucky enough to know some people who have served, and since publication I have some military fans and I’ve even visited some bases. I’m forever asking questions of people to fuel my stories.
The internet is an amazing tool if you can find your way around. Online newspapers are great. There are heaps of honest and often very sad blogs of soldiers and civilians that are directly affected by the circumstances that I write about, and they are something that keeps me grounded. I try harder and harder in each book to get an accurate portrayal of the lives that I am writing about. Suspending the reader’s disbelief, keeping the facts within the realm of entertaining fiction, is the fun part.
I make sure I know who’s who, where they’ll be going, what they are after etc. I need to know my characters motivation, the stakes involved, the hurdles ahead of them, and above all, I need to know where my story is going. I need to be sure that before I type anything, that I’ve written down what the feeling at the end of the story is going to be. Once I know that destination, I may deviate from the hundred or so pages of notes but I will eventually get there. And there’s no feeling like writing that final scene and seeing everything come together.
Why have Lachlan Fox working with the Global Syndicate of Reporters (GSR)?
I figure being in that job, Fox can be in all the hot spots that a spy or soldier could be in, yet he is not bound to serve his country like a spy or soldier would be. I don’t like the idea of being constrained like that, to have to have a character that is working for the government that is often complicit in the events that I am writing about. And let’s face it, people are now distrusting their governments more than ever. Not that all journalists and news services are infallible but I do like that idea that Fox is just after the truth and through that he finds out so much more. I love watching Fox at the start of BLOOD OIL set off on his quest for truth only to discover that this story, for him, will be about forgiveness and identity. He attempts to escape many of his demons yet still has to go down a romanticised version of an act of violent redemption. He seems destined to learn the hard way and I hope that readers like that.
Tell us about your cover designs.
I love them. With FH and PA, the covers were done after I submitted my manuscript to the publishers. The design team read the books and designed several covers to suit the story. My original ideas seem to always end up on the back cover - the world on FH, the Statue of Liberty on PA, the oil derrick on the back of BO. Then we (staff at Hachette, my agents, me, and some family and friends) all weigh in with our views and we choose one, often with the end product taking the elements that worked from two or three covers. BLOOD OIL was a different process in that the cover was designed based on an outline that I wrote for the story. We wanted to keep to the theme of the others, and again we went through a few good ones and picked the most eye-catching and thrilling. As the previous two covers had a helicopter and a fight jet that appeared in each novel’s storyline, I decided to write the Humvee into BLOOD OIL. So, because of this backwards process, the characters of Nix and Top were created, and their epic journey across Nigeria became a storyline. And, like so many of my storylines, I liked that their journey played out to be a plan dubious in its effect, something which turned on its head and reflected one of the moral questions in the book.
Any Lachlan Fox movies in the works?
No, as of April 2008 we have not had the right offer. I’d like to see BLOOD OIL as the first of a filmed trilogy but it needs to be the right film. While there are some screenwriters, directors, producers, and actors who I really admire, there’s still a sense that this book is my baby and I’d like to keep it that way. If I write a book, it’s filtered through my life experiences, what I think is important, how I see the world. And handing that over to someone else to adapt and apply their own vision to is a double edged argument. A film is the product of many people, which is something that does not particularly appeal to me just yet. That said, part of me would be very happy to take some studio’s millions and run! Seriously though, being a novelist is a dream job - I get to write what I want to write, how I want to write it.
Is there a political heart in the books?
This third novel is a much more emotional story than I’ve written before. There’s more morality too. There is a great appetite in the world right now to look at anything cultural that’s American, English and Australian and try to figure out who we are and who we have become in this War on Terror age.
My novels aren’t written with a political agenda in mind. With Fox’s involvement and the perception of the work he’s doing as a reporter, he’s not a piece of the political system. I don’t see this as a political novel at all, in that it’s not left or right skewed. But to me it is about morality. It’s about the way that work and the demands of work can bend people’s personal morality. About the hubris attached with absolute power. About exploring how far is too far. That’s the territory that I’m interested in looking at here.
I think that we are in a time of empathy deficit. Too often we do things without thinking of how those actions will affect others. With this book I wanted to really put the reader in Fox’s point of view, to understand what he was going through. Sometimes, sooner or later we come to realise what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes. I wanted the reader to think, how would this make us feel. That’s why the book ends like it does. It’s not entirely neat; we are left in a position where we are still questioning. Perspectives are turned on their head as we think back and reconsider the story and perhaps ourselves. Empathy calls us all to task, shaken out of complacency and forced beyond our limited vision.
Where can I get a signed copy of your book?
I frequently travel the country attending writer’s festivals and visit bookstores for signings. If you have no luck on that front, Hachette, my publisher, has bookplates on file. They’re basically official publisher’s stickers that I have signed and they can send them to you to insert into the book.
