Up Close & Personal with 'Naked in Havana' Colin Falconer
Up Close & Personal is one of The Writer’s Life newest features. Here we feature authors who don't mind spilling the beans and telling what it's really like to write, get published and sell that book. Today's guest is Colin Falconer, author of the romantic suspense, Naked in Havana. Visit his website at www.colinfalconer.org.
My
primary school teacher’s name was Mrs Boyne.
She
told my mother at a parent interview: “Your son is a complete dreamer. He’ll
never amount to anything in this life.”
I
still think that was a pretty harsh judgment on a seven year old. But she was
right, of course, I was a dreamer.
It
was my greatest asset.
It
was about the time I first read Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff. To get my hands on it, I had to endure a slobbery
wet kiss from my Aunty Ivy, but I considered it well worth it.
By
the end of that first afternoon, I was hooked on stories, broad canvas, epic
stories.
Every
week my Aunty Ivy took the train down from London to visit with us in
(what was then) rural Essex,
bringing with her a collection of Classics Illustrated comics. She must have
picked them up in the flea markets in London.
There
were some Beanos and Victors mixed in, but I threw them out.
My treasure was the cartoon versions of some of the world’s greatest
literature.
I
read all of Jules Verne in an afternoon.
And
so began my love affair with stories. By the time I was eight I had read Moby Dick, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, The
Moonstone, The Black Tulip and
Ivanhoe, was familiar with most of the major works of Alexandre Dumas
(Père), Mark Twain and William Wilkie Collins and had even read most of Homer’s
Odyssey (although I never found out how it ended because the last page had been
ripped out.)
I
don’t think that back then Aunty Ivy knew she was giving me primers for my
future career, for no one in my family had ever used their hands for doing
anything other than making pies or fixing corner cupboards.
But
those comic books were vital to me. I was an only child and though not
particularly bookish – I wanted to play for Manchester United when I grew up,
an ambition only narrowly foiled when it turned out I was a crap soccer player
- Classics Illustrated stirred my nascent imagination and gave me a thirst for
big stories.
My first story was
also in a magazine! I was about 19, I had a short story published in a
particularly grubby men’s magazine. I didn’t care, they paid me! My mother
found out about it and went into the local store and asked for a copy. She got
a hell of a shock.
It was another ten
years before I had my first novel published, a crime thriller based on my
experiences traveling rough in South
East Asia. It was
called VENOM and was based on the life of an French-Indian serial killer called
Charles Sobrajh.
I guess it did
okay; I have now published over 40 books and been translated into 22 countries.
Thanks Aunty Ivy!
On Being
Published…
I wish I could say
it was about the money and the fame but then I would be getting mixed up with
being an actor. I always wanted to be commercially successful; I figured if I
wasn’t earning enough to live on then I just hadn’t learned to write well
enough. My writing heroes were all megasellers; Wilbur Smith, Ken Follett those
guys.
There has always
been this voice inside me that insisted that I write. I cannot turn off story
ideas; they’re at me the whole time and I have a compulsion not only to write
them, but write them well. After thirty years I still read how-to books on
novel structure, or on screenplay writing, looking to learn more about the art
of storytelling.
It means a lot to
me to get feedback from readers. That’s the part of writing that I love the
most. In fact that’s how the NAKED series was born; I got a letter from one of
my readers wanting me to write about that whole era, about Kennedy and Castro
and Monroe and the nightclubs and the boleristas and
the gangsters. That’s what started it.
On Publishing
Industry…
I love eBooks and I
love the freedom to write more than the traditional one book a year, I love
being able to write what I want to write instead of being hemmed in by what
editors think I should write - and there are some really great editors out
there, and some who are really not so great - and I have a brilliant online
publisher who has designed fantastic covers and promotional campaigns. But I
remain a hybrid author, and the problems of publishing eBooks is the same as
publishing in print - discoverability.
Mistakes Along
the Way…
Mistake #1: I
thought about me first before I thought about the reader (you know, that poor
benighted soul paying money to buy the book!) It was all about what I wanted to
express so consequently it took a while to get published.
Mistake #2: Was
Mistake #1 all over again. After I did get published I started experimenting
with different styles and genres so the reader never knew what they were
getting. Some writers call it artistic freedom. These days I call it
professional suicide. Fortunately I learned my lesson in time.
Mistake #3: Having
my life fall apart. Well, I didn’t do it deliberately - but it was my fault it
happened, so it counts as a mistake. When the dust cleared, writer’s block
rapidly set in, and as it was no ordinary meltdown, I didn’t write at all for
about four years. That badly interrupted my career but taught me who my real
friends in the business are because I had to start all over again. The downside
was a number of people I knew well had already written me off and didn’t answer
my calls or emails. The upside was that
I came back with a new attitude and different perspective and started enjoying
writing more than I had ever done. I wrote faster and better. It worked out in
the end but I wouldn’t recommend having your life implode as a way of
revitalizing your career!
On Marketing…
Discoverability is
always a problem, whether it’s a print book or an eBook. In print, unless
you’re way up the food chain, chances are your book will sink without a trace
unless you get very creative and don’t do anything else for six months but
promote it yourself. The publishers just aren’t going to do it for you, and
that surprises many new writers, who think that once they’re published, it’s
all champagne and talk shows. In fact, unless your book performs, it’s the
beginning of the end. Or midlist, which is much worse.
When I published
NAKED IN HAVANA I decided on a blog tour, backed up with some online
promotions. My online publisher handles most promotions for me, but they can’t
do it all; especially as I have a backlist of almost thirty books.
On Goals and Dreams…
I guess I have
already gone further than I thought I would; when my mother came home clutching
that men’s magazine with my story in it, she said: ‘Son, if the Conservatives
get in, you’re going to jail.’ So a life time career of 40 or so books and traveling
round the world has just about topped the dream. It sure beats sharing a cell
with a tattooed biker.
Tips? I would say
that in my experience determination and persistence trumps talent much of the
time, as does a real willingness to learn. And remember what Bob Mayer says:
‘the Reader is God.’ Don’t ever forget it.
About the Book
18 year old
Magdalena Fuentes is lying naked next to her perfect lover when he tells her he
is marrying someone else. It is soon clear her destiny lies with another man,
even though she says she doesn’t believe in fate.
But fate
doesn’t care whether we believe in it or not...
Havana, 1958. Magdalena
Fuentes knows that Angel Macheda is the only man for her, even after he takes
her virginity and then tells her he is engaged to someone else. She knows they
are meant to be.
So why can she not stop
thinking about Reyes Garcia? From the moment I saw you, he says, I
knew there would be no one else.
From the moment I saw
you, she
tells him, I knew you were arrogant, conceited and rude.
Magdalena is a girl who
will not let sentiment stand between her and love. But as Fidel Castro’s rebels
tighten their grip around the city and she watches her family and her whole
life come apart, she learns hard lessons about love abd about life.
Against the backdrop of
the boleristas and the gangsters, the music and the guns, Magdalena
discovers just how dangerous love can be.
Naked in Havana is the first in a three
part series, a sprawling epic of passion and destiny, stretching across three
decades and two continents.
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