Ask the Author: Jeff Dawson
Answered Questions (8)
Jeff Dawson
Hello Stuart, Really sorry. I've just been on Goodreads trying to sort out a new edition of my novel and only this very second saw your question from 5 month ago. Aaaaargh! Please forgive me. Thank you for your kind words about Back Home. The book got great reviews and coverage when it came out, though it wasn't a huge seller. I did have another one lined up about the decline of the England national team in the 1970s – Poland, the sacking of Sir Alf, the Don Revie betrayal, etc. but no publisher was interested. I think in the premier league era all that stuff is just pre-history now. Funnily enough, a producer friend took Back Home to the BBC with the intent to make a dramatisation of the Bogota bracelet incident and Bobby Moore's days in captivity in Colombia. A 12yo commissioner looked up from his skinny latte and said, "Who's Bobby Moore?" Which tells you all you need to know! Maybe I'll get the chance to write another sports book. Who knows? Perhaps I should show a publisher your email! Once again, thanks very much. It's greatly appreciated. And absolutely not a saddo! Best wishes, Jeff
Jeff Dawson
Now here's a thing, a mystery that has been bugging me for years, decades even. It goes like this: I put a pair of socks into the washing machine yet, almost without fail, only one of them ever makes it out alive. In our house we have a massive spare laundry basket, our "sock orphanage", which is home to, literally, hundreds of single socks -- Dad's, Mum's, kids', anyone who's ever stayed. As a cosmic conundrum it is matched only by the Great Ballpoint Pen Riddle. You buy a packet of, say, fifty Bic biros, open them for household use, and within a few days they have vanished, not a pen to be found anywhere. I just don't know... Got to be a story in there somewhere.
Jeff Dawson
Kind of goes back to the first question here, really. Inspiration can strike at any moment, but not always at the most convenient time. Know your own mind's fertility cycle! Writer's block is an abstract concept usually brought about by the pressure of a deadline (as in the Coen Bros' wonderful film, Barton Fink). My advice, just go around the side or climb over it.
Jeff Dawson
Doing stuff like this. Seriously! I've written three books previously, which I'm very proud of, but they were all non-fiction, essentially works of extended, in-depth journalism. Fiction is something else -- entirely the product of your imagination. If someone wants to publish your mental flights of fancy and others are enjoying reading them, then there's nothing more flattering.
Jeff Dawson
I think everyone, or nearly everyone, is a writer in some fashion, especially in the digital age. For me, being an author has sprung from working as a journalist over many years. My career has been very serendipitous. A lot of happy accidents. Was it Michael Owen or Gary Lineker who said "a striker makes his own luck"? Well, being lucky is one thing but making your own luck is another. I've said this to journalism students before but don't just sit there waiting to be discovered. Take the discovery to them.
Jeff Dawson
Book-wise I'm planning out the next Ingo Finch adventure. He's the star of No Ordinary Killing btw.
Jeff Dawson
By staring for hours and hours at my laptop screen, going off to have a cup of tea (Earl Grey brewed 3mins minimum, splash of milk), a quick noodle on the guitar, or doing some exercise. I was a very keen runner till I did my knee in. Running was always good thinking time. Hopefully it will be again. A very learned fellow once told me that you can't write a book until you have the book inside you. Someone else, an esteemed writer, said something about an author being pregnant with an idea -- all these terrible female analogies drawn by male authors! So anyway, whatever it takes to get yourself mentally pregnant.
Jeff Dawson
Gosh, well... I had been to South Africa a few times in researching my last book, Dead Reckoning, about a shipwreck that occurred off the coast of Namibia in 1942 and found it a very intriguing country. Coincidentally, I happened to be living at the time in St Albans in a road called Ladysmith Road. Up and down Britain there are hundreds of Ladysmith Roads and Kimberley Roads and Mafeking Roads, all built around 1900. They are dedicated to towns besieged during the Boer War, this absolutely massive, very modern conflict that was of great pre-occupation to late-Victorian/early-Edwardian society but has almost disappeared from the history books, eclipsed just a few years later by the Great War. It got the cogs whirring. I love stories not necessarily about war, but ones using its heightened reality as a backdrop -- Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms is one of my favourites. I also love crime/spy thrillers, especially stories where the protagonist is an unwitting pawn in a bigger game -- I'm thinking of things like The 39 Steps and North By Northwest. All these things just sort of came together in an almighty collision.
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