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Everything and Everywhere

Posted on April 29, 2022

The other odd Thursday I stopped in at a Barnes & Noble to sign some first editions of THE GIFT on the quiet. A reader caught me mid-signature and asked I would sign his book. I happily obliged over a bit of a chat. Eventually, he got round to asking how a mind can conceive of  depravity and beauty, sometimes within the same sentence. At first I thought they were taking a shot, until I worked round what I think he really was asking—from where do I draw inspiration? As clichéd as it sounds, inspiration – both for depravity and beauty – is found in everything and everywhere. 

In Book 1, as an example, there is an entire chapter on the fight for Kinuwai Station, a fictional trading station in the backwaters of a very real Ituri River in 1920’s Belgian Congo. It is a stand alone where Eleanor learns from the Belgian how he came to know Balthasar. 

By no means, though is this the end of that story. In point of fact the original Belgian Congo incident was written as an entire book of 280 pages. As much fun as I had researching and writing the journey from England to the Belgian colony, it cluttered and slowed Book 1. So, the fight was preserved and the rest got chucked. 

But. 

There’s always a “but,” isn’t there? 

But, the set of events leading to the fight for Kinuwai Station includes a remarkable confrontation between Balthasar and the captain of the RMS Berengaria. This Cunard liner was skippered by none other than Arthur Rostron in 1921 and made for an opportunity to this author too good to pass on. If Captain Rostron sounds familiar he should. He was captain of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued Titanic survivors including Balthasar and Mahmoud.

So then, the remains of the Belgian Congo expedition was preserved for Book 3. And once out in print, you’ll learn all about Mssr Gaelle and more fun and all too bloody games with Hamish Taggart. And of course, Balthasar. Whilst he’s an essential character to the Congo story, his part to play in it is as a support character. 

All of this leads back to my inspiration. This morning I was at my writing desk just before the sun rise. It’s humid here in Miami this time of year. I sea mist heavy like a sodden eiderdown hung low over the water and I continually had to wipe the condensation off my writing desk on the outdoor terrace. Moments such as these bring my history close to the present. October 1985. Thirty-seven years gone. I was a student at Brigham Young University in Utah then. Near as far from home as I could get. Didn’t mind it mind you. Great snow skiing to be had. I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that term for a course requirement and it filled me with curiosity about the Belgian Congo and the depravity of its colonials as they forced both Christianity and King Leopold’s whims upon the Congolese. I spent hours upon hours, day after day and week after week reading everything I could find in the university library with regard to Congo. I happened upon a mapping expedition journal from the 1890’s in the card catalogue (remember the Dewey Decimal System?) that explored up the Ituri River, a tributary of the mighty River Congo. The journal including gloriously detailed fold out maps that just sent my imagination alight. I decided to write a story about a Royal Geographical Society expedition to the Ituri Rainforest that was lost and the subsequent rescue operation that also vanished.  All long hand and in pencil If you read Book 1 you’ll find this familiar. It’s explored in blood curdling detail in Book 3. 

There is something more to this memory of thirty-seven years gone than just writing. Hardly related. Yet still relatable. I was living in a Brigham Young University dormitory. DT. Deseret Towers. Q-Hall. My roommate – a surfer in a Cookie Post t-shirt from Manhattan Beach – was making ready for bed at 22 hours. As I pulled on a black cashmere trench coat to ward off a September evening chill, I looked at him in utter disbelief. ‘What you doing?’

‘Getting ready for bed,’ he explained.

‘No, no,’ I replied. ‘That’s simply not done.’ No, indeed. And with good reason. We were young, you see. Not yet twenty. Our salad days. Night had long since fallen over the campus. It was the 80’s. We were away from home and free to take on whatever adventure took our fancy. There were dance clubs to visit. A long abandoned BYU Academy to explore. Slices of pizza to be consumed at The Pie. I convinced my inexperienced roommate that running wild was the thing. In the mid-80’s, it was the only thing. The best of things. And looking back at all the running wild I did in those oh so charmed years, I realise  now inspiration lay everywhere and in everything. 

 

The journey – you see – is everything.