It’s very difficult to describe the inward emotion I feel when I enter the conference room where authors unfold their experiences and explain the work behind their amazing books. The queue of people at the entrance, the check of the tickets, and the warm welcome of the bookshop staff may seem normal rituals, but, for me, they have a special meaning; they permit me to plunge into fascinating worlds and meet incredible writers.
The first event of the New Year was a pleasant conversation with three stunning thrillers authors. Will Dean (Dark Pines and Red Snow), Abir Mukherjee (Smoke and Ashes), and Anna Mazzola (The Unseeing and The Story Keeper) – in the role of mediator - talked about their latest novels and the hard job of being an author at Waterstones Piccadilly. There was no time to waste; the event had to start at six-thirty in the afternoon, and, at that precise time, the writers walked into the room under the craving glances of the members of the audience. Anna Mazzola, a short, pretty lady with waving thick blonde hair, led the company, followed by Will Dean, a tall, robust, bearded man with salt and pepper hair and two piercing blue eyes, and Abir Mukherjee, a black-haired man wearing an elegant dark blue suit. “I’ve always been a weird kid,” Dean answered the initial question. “I used to pass my spare time alone by reading and writing.” As many authors claimed in previous events, Dean said he had always had the story for his novel buzzing in his head. It was inside his mind, willing to come out and get created as soon as possible. “I’ve worked as a lawyer as long as I could, then, when the right moment to be an author came, I decided to write down my story,” he concluded. “I had to do that because I promised to myself that the day I had quit my job, I would have started writing. So it happened.” The spark that ignited the need to write came to Mukherjee in a quite unusual way. The author said that he had never felt sure about his writing abilities, so he decided to put on the side his passion. “Until, one day, I was reading a book, written by an American author who became a millionaire, and it was awful,” Mukherjee told the audience, causing a general chuckle. “I thought that, if that writer could publish his stories, I had to give a try to mine.” Mukherjee got motivated by another author: Lee Child. “I had heard about Child a lot, but I had never read any of his books. Besides I read an interview in which he said that he had started writing when he was forty because he had lost his job. That was what motivated me.” After his answer, suddenly Mukherjee turned to Mazzola and, taking her completely aback, asked why she had begun writing. The mediator opened his eyes wide, her cheeks blushing slightly. “That’s an unexpected question to me.” The audience guffawed, enjoying the funny exchange. “I think it happened because I also was a weird kid. I used to read a lot, and the stories suddenly popped out of my mind.” Despite reading and being a weird kid were common reasons for becoming writers, the authors had different methods to create their novels. “The voice of my characters sounds in my mind during the writing process,” Dean said. “I don’t plot a lot, and usually I write down the story, then, after having finished the draft, I go back to read it, changing what I think doesn’t work and polishing where it’s necessary.” “I actually do plot my novels,” Mukherjee interjected. “I can’t create anything without planning what happens. I tried with my second novel, but it didn’t work out, and I ended plotting.” The creation of the characters and setting of the novels involved massive research for both writers. Dean’s main character is a woman who works as a journalist for a local newspaper in Sweden. She’s deaf, and, because of her disability, her life is more intense than a person who can hear. Mukherjee’s characters may seem less demanding, but the historical period they live in - India during the British colonialism - led the author to do intense historical research. The very enjoyable conversation rapidly came to an end, and the authors dealt with the last question regarding the creation of the characters. “Writing on a feminine point of view was challenging because I had to use a different and unusual point of view.” Dean then concluded, smiling, “If I had written something which I was comfortable with, it probably would have been boring.”
0 Comments
|
Archives
November 2020
Follow me on: |