Ask the Author: Timothy Jay Smith
Answered Questions (3)
Timothy Jay Smith
For the last 20 years, every spring I’ve been going to the same Greek village: Molyvos, on the island of Lesvos. In 2015-2017, Molyvos was ‘ground zero’ for refugees crossing a narrow channel from Turkey. The village of approximately 1500 people had an estimated 500,000 refugees land on a nearby beach in one 12-month period.
My first job after college was in Greece working for a sociological research institute. That was 1972, and I spent over two years there, primarily on the island of Santorini. I fell in love with the country and have returned so often that cumulatively I’ve spent close to seven years of my life there.
Experiencing the refugee crisis inspired me to write a novel about them. Ultimately, though, that novel - Fire of the Island - evolved more into an homage to Greece than a story about the refugees per se. They’re in the story, but more as a backdrop fueling conflicts between the Greek villagers.
The more I thought about it, I realized I could describe every step a refugee took from the moment he or she landed on a Greek beach until settled somewhere in Europe. What I didn’t know was how the refugees actually got on the rafts that brought them from Turkey to Lesvos. So I went to Istanbul, contacted a refugee aid organization, and hired someone to show me Istanbul from the refugees’ perspective. He was a people smuggler himself, and after spending a couple of days with him, I had enough of a story to start Istanbul Crossing -- which is, indeed, a refugee’s story.
My first job after college was in Greece working for a sociological research institute. That was 1972, and I spent over two years there, primarily on the island of Santorini. I fell in love with the country and have returned so often that cumulatively I’ve spent close to seven years of my life there.
Experiencing the refugee crisis inspired me to write a novel about them. Ultimately, though, that novel - Fire of the Island - evolved more into an homage to Greece than a story about the refugees per se. They’re in the story, but more as a backdrop fueling conflicts between the Greek villagers.
The more I thought about it, I realized I could describe every step a refugee took from the moment he or she landed on a Greek beach until settled somewhere in Europe. What I didn’t know was how the refugees actually got on the rafts that brought them from Turkey to Lesvos. So I went to Istanbul, contacted a refugee aid organization, and hired someone to show me Istanbul from the refugees’ perspective. He was a people smuggler himself, and after spending a couple of days with him, I had enough of a story to start Istanbul Crossing -- which is, indeed, a refugee’s story.
Timothy Jay Smith
I have two published books that are written in very different styles or points of view. ‘A Vision of Angels’ looks at a planned terrorist attack in Jerusalem from the perspectives of four different characters and their families. ‘Cooper’s Promise’ is told entirely from one character’s perspective.
I learned in a screenwriting class that the former is called an open mystery, wherein the audience/reader knows more than the protagonist. Cooper’s story is a closed mystery, wherein the audience/reader knows only as much as the protagonist. The latter is a rarer approach to telling a story and in some fundamental ways more challenging to write. It’s far easier to have lots of characters moving the story along.
Both formats work for me. But I will admit, I have always been partial to Cooper’s Promise. Cooper is a great character. By keeping it a closed mystery, I was able to really get into his head, and I like him. I was also more comfortable exploring Cooper’s sexuality, and letting him have a real gay love affair, than I was with my protagonist in A Vision of Angels.
I see that you write politically incorrect military thrillers, and Cooper’s Promise might appeal to you because of that. It’s the story of a gay deserter from the war in Iraq who’s ended up a mercenary in a war-torn African country, where he vows to save a young girl trafficked into prostitution to redeem himself for an earlier promise he couldn’t keep.
I learned in a screenwriting class that the former is called an open mystery, wherein the audience/reader knows more than the protagonist. Cooper’s story is a closed mystery, wherein the audience/reader knows only as much as the protagonist. The latter is a rarer approach to telling a story and in some fundamental ways more challenging to write. It’s far easier to have lots of characters moving the story along.
Both formats work for me. But I will admit, I have always been partial to Cooper’s Promise. Cooper is a great character. By keeping it a closed mystery, I was able to really get into his head, and I like him. I was also more comfortable exploring Cooper’s sexuality, and letting him have a real gay love affair, than I was with my protagonist in A Vision of Angels.
I see that you write politically incorrect military thrillers, and Cooper’s Promise might appeal to you because of that. It’s the story of a gay deserter from the war in Iraq who’s ended up a mercenary in a war-torn African country, where he vows to save a young girl trafficked into prostitution to redeem himself for an earlier promise he couldn’t keep.
Timothy Jay Smith
My most recent book is The Fourth Courier, due to be released in April 2019. This book goes back a long way for me. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and Solidarity won the first free election in Poland. In the same year, Mikhail Gorbachav introduced new cooperative laws in the Soviet Union, which was an area of my expertise. I was invited to the Soviet Union as a consultant, which eventually led to my consulting in six of the former Soviet republics, and ultimately living for over two years in Poland, where The Fourth Courier is set.
At the time, there was a lot of smuggling across the border between Russia and Poland, giving rise to fears that nuclear material, too, might be on the move. While on an assignment in Latvia, I met with a very unhappy decommissioned Soviet general, who completely misunderstood my purpose for being there. When some official meetings concluded, he suggested we go for a walk where we could talk without being overheard.
I followed him deep into a forest. It was strange but didn’t feel unsafe, and I couldn’t imagine what he wanted. When we finally talked, he told me, “I can get you anything that you want.” I must have looked puzzled, because to clarify, he muttered, “Atomic.” Then I understood. In a conversation, there had been some passing remarks about the nuclear arsenal in Latvia, for which he had some responsibility, and he was trying to take advantage of still having access to it. While I was actually in Latvia to design a business program for Peace Corps volunteers, he assumed that was a front, and my real motive was to spy. Or perhaps he thought, I really did want to buy an atomic bomb!
I made it clear to him I was not in the market for nuclear material and I wasn’t a spy. I never forgot the incident, and some years later, when I decided to write a novel set in Poland, that was the kernel I used to develop a whole story that springs from a nuclear smuggling operation.
At the time, there was a lot of smuggling across the border between Russia and Poland, giving rise to fears that nuclear material, too, might be on the move. While on an assignment in Latvia, I met with a very unhappy decommissioned Soviet general, who completely misunderstood my purpose for being there. When some official meetings concluded, he suggested we go for a walk where we could talk without being overheard.
I followed him deep into a forest. It was strange but didn’t feel unsafe, and I couldn’t imagine what he wanted. When we finally talked, he told me, “I can get you anything that you want.” I must have looked puzzled, because to clarify, he muttered, “Atomic.” Then I understood. In a conversation, there had been some passing remarks about the nuclear arsenal in Latvia, for which he had some responsibility, and he was trying to take advantage of still having access to it. While I was actually in Latvia to design a business program for Peace Corps volunteers, he assumed that was a front, and my real motive was to spy. Or perhaps he thought, I really did want to buy an atomic bomb!
I made it clear to him I was not in the market for nuclear material and I wasn’t a spy. I never forgot the incident, and some years later, when I decided to write a novel set in Poland, that was the kernel I used to develop a whole story that springs from a nuclear smuggling operation.
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Jul 05, 2024 07:43AM · flag