The Research

I've spent the last week trying to fill in the research blanks on The Unquiet, the Parker novel that should, God willing, be published in 2007. I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy research, in part because The Book of Lost Things was such a different novel and its research, old folk tales and some World War II stuff apart, centered more on my memories of my own childhood than anything else.

I brought with me to the US the initial draft of The Unquiet. I imagine it would be almost unintelligible to anyone who tried to read it as a coherent narrative. My first draft tends to be a little rough. There will be inconsistencies of dialogue and character. Some characters will appear in the early stages only to disappear later, their failure to manifest themselves once again left entirely unexplained. Some things seem like good ideas at the start, but quickly prove to be distractions from the main thrust of the book, and as soon as that realisation hits me I tend to let those elements slide.

I don't fret too much about how untidy the text may be (although, in my darker moments, I wonder what might happen if I didn't live to finish the book and someone else, for whatever reason, decided to piece together whatever was left behind. I wish them luck. I mean, I've written it, and sometimes even I'm not entirely sure that I always look forward to trying to put all of the pieces together). After all, there's nobody looking over my shoulder, and my main aim is to get the plot and characters from A-Z, even if that means bypassing Q and R entirely, and occasionally having to loop back to P just to reassure myself that I have a vague notion of what I'm doing.

I'm always curious about how other authors do their research. I know quite a few who don't bother too much about going to the places featured in their books. I suppose they feel that it is, after all, fiction, and a fictitious street in a real city doesn't have to capture too much of the reality of the city itself. To be honest, I sometimes see their point. After all, I've never been to Boise, so if I read a novel set there I'm likely just to take the author's word for what it's like. Even citizens of Boise itself might be likely to give the author an occasional "Get Out of Jail Free" card for the odd lapse as long as he or she doesn't locate Boise in, say, Alabama, or have its inhabitants extolling the virtues of morning dips in the ocean.

On the other hand, I really feel that I have to know a place to write about it, even if my knowledge is never going to be quite as deep as those who have lived there all their lives. The Unquiet is set very much in Maine, almost as a reaction to The Black Angel, the plot of which spanned continents and hundreds of years of history. A portion of it is set in and around the town of Jackman, which lies just below the border with Quebec. (As someone remarked to me over dinner, it's where Americans go to throw rocks at Canadians.) I've been up to Jackman a couple of times now, and each time I learn a little bit more. On this visit, I made a 400 mile round trip in a day just to talk with a lovely lady from the town's historical society, and it was worth every minute of the journey.

Along the way, I passed a museum, one that I had never visited but which had always aroused my curiosity. I took a little time out to visit it and, in the process, discovered a little nugget of Maine history which corresponded perfectly with a significant part of the plot of The Unquiet. I would never have encountered it had I not taken the time to travel and explore.

Perhaps I'm fortunate to have the luxury of being able to poke around in a place far from home, to walk to the library of the Maine Historical Society and spend a day requesting old books and manuscripts, following up one story after another, slowly tracing the history of people and places that seem at once alien yet strangely familiar. Most of what I find I won't use - in the past, perhaps particularly with Every Dead Thing, I was reluctant to throw away research that I'd painstakingly amassed, but now I think I'm learning to keep only the good stuff, to separate the wheat from the chaff - but everything that I've seen or read about helps to make the people and places in question more real to me, and in that way I hope I can make them real to those who read my books.

Now I'm heading for home, with a notebook jammed with jottings and a folder packed with photocopies and newspaper cuttings. I will sit down at my desk, go back to the start of the draft, and slowly begin to rewrite. In a sense, the hard work is done. I know that I have the skeleton of a novel. Now it's time to add flesh to it.

Oh, and a little blood. Just a little. . .

This week John read

Pig Island by Mo Hayder
Bradenburg by Henry Porter

and listened to

Broken Boy Soldiers by The Raconteurs
Cannibal Sea by The Essex Green
Living With War by Neil Young

The Man Out of Time

Someone told me recently that she couldn't do what I do for a living. She didn't mean that she couldn't imagine writing for a living; rather, she meant that she would hate to feel that she was constantly living in the future. It took me a moment to see what she meant and, although it had never bothered me before then, I thought about what she had said and started to realise that she was right.

I am currently researching The Unquiet, a book that will not appear on bookshelves until April or May 2007, at the earliest. I have been having meetings with my various publishers about The Book of Lost Things, which will make its first appearance in September of this year. If I glance at my diary, I find that my movements and whereabouts are pretty much mapped out from the middle of August until the middle of December.

I will try to deliver The Unquiet by the start of September, as the touring and publicity commitments will probably prevent me from getting much writing done for a good three months after The Book of Lost Things hits the shelves. But even while I'm touring that book, I will be thinking about the book to follow The Unquiet. I will be letting it simmer, hoping that my unconscious will do some of the groundwork while I talk about one of its predecessors. If it is to be published in the first half of 2008 - which may not be possible, given that I will be publishing and publicising two books in the space of six or seven months - it will have to be delivered by October 2007. Already, I am thinking nearly two years in advance.

The woman in question asked me if I ever thought about what I had achieved, and I had to answer no, not really. I tend not to dwell on it. Perhaps I believe that the books written are less important than the books yet to be written, but that's not true, not really, and neither is it fair on those books. Each one has been a stepping stone to the next, and each has been as good as I could make it at the time. Yet still I tend not to look back on them in the way that she meant.

She asked me if I had ever read one of my own books. I explained that I read each one a number of times while preparing it for publication, from reviewing my own manuscript to checking the final pages for errors. She clarified the question, asking if I had ever read one for pleasure. I told her that I had never done so. I could not explain why. I think I am afraid of what I might see in them. Would I only see the flaws, the elements that I wish I could change? And would I be unusual in that? I think not. I suspect a great many writers would prefer not to review their own books in such a way. But I think perhaps the woman was right when she said that there was something a little sad about that.

So I'll keep looking to the future, to the books that I hope to write. Maybe there'll come a time when I'll look at the copies of my books on the shelf in my office and feel something more than a strange mingling of stifled pride and gnawing doubt. Maybe someday. But not yet.


This week John read

Birds of Prey by Wilbur Smith

and listened to

It's Never Been Like That by Phoenix
Cost by Patrick Phelan