AUTHOR'S CORNER;

SECRET OBSESSION

I have been often asked by friends and family, am I writing about things I myself have been through?  The answer I unreservedly give is no, of course I am not writing about myself! But if truth be told, this in itself is a half truth.  You see, the half truth of it is, unlike my novels, I have not done outrageous things such as kill somebody or scheme a tragedy or held someone up to ransom!  The half truth of it is, I have not cheated, nor did I lie to get someone into trouble nor have I ever been in trouble.  That's the half truth, the fictional part of my writing.   The half lie?  the half lie I tell is when I unreservedly give people the impression that all I write about is detached from anything that I am!

Let me explain; in my first Novel, for example The Misfortunes of Ellie May, where my main character is a young girl from a troubled family who finds herself trapped in a pimp gang and has to find a way of freeing herself, so she plots and schemes and lures members of the gang in with her beauty and charm, and turns them against each other, thus, mistrust seeps in as some believe that they are in love with her and fight for her amongst each other.  Where those who stood in her way were destroyed and met a fatal end.  

Of course, I have never been in a pimp gang, I have not plotted and schemed and lured pimps into my sordid web of lust and debauchery.  But amidst this cleverly written piece of fiction, there is a fair bit of me and, let's say, drawing on personal experience.  'The gang' was finding myself in a world of strangers, 'the plotting' was the inner struggle of survival, and the 'violence and pain' was my inner flitting self destroying thoughts, that passes through the mind in crisis! All combined, sieved and churned into a fictional plot.  

My second novel, The Devil's Truth, where Satan himself plays upon the lives of innocent, yet suggestive people, where there is emptiness in lives and a lusting for something more. Where the beaches of Marbella create an alluring setting for sin to take place.  Was I lured in?  Was I influenced by Satan himself....would I write about it if I was?  No!  But once again, emotions that characters felt were drawn upon from personal, deep seated, mind numbing trials.  'the Spanish seductress' secret desire, 'the poor fat woman who wanted to be loved' invisible moments.  I can go on, but you get the picture?  Have I been to Marbella and felt the Spanish sand beneath my feet? Yes.  Which character am I?  None of them and all of them!  

 As Virginia Woolf once said, every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written in his work! Which to me means, not just their experience, but their way of thinking!  In my first novel, my temptress prostitute was not a bad person, because if truth be told, I don't believe in an all bad person, just bad circumstances and bad actions!  Though status quo would not permit me to say so in real life!

Even those of us who write science fiction, or vampire novels or comedy or whatever!  We all have our secret opinions, experiences, beliefs firmly woven into the fabric of our work! That's what compels us to write and what allows us to be good writers; because you can only truly write well about what you believe in!  That is part of the reason we become so nervous when giving a public reading.... because unbeknown to the eager public, we are being asked to share a part of our inner deepest self!