I first started sketching out the story for Refuge in November 2006. (As I sit here writing this I have to pause - six years - bloody hell!)

I had an urge to write a love story, and if I could be so bold, a classic love story. It wasn’t that I thought I could ever write something on the level of a Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy or Louis de Bernieres, I doubted anything I wrote would even exist within their shadows, however those were the novels I always loved the most - grand, sweeping, romantic epics - Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Love In The Time of Cholera, Corelli’s Mandolin, Anna Karenina - novels which had an intense central love story but which at their core were about so much more. So being utterly foolhardy that was the perilous journey I decided to take.

I wasn’t a writer, I was a film producer, and I think much of the urge to write a novel came from the frustrations of being a producer. That topic, in of itself, deserves a post all of its own, but it’s suffice to say that a film producer at the end of the day is creatively subservient to both the director and studio. Most frustrating of all your influence over the project only diminishes the further along it progresses. “Why didn’t you write a screenplay?” some people have asked me and the answer’s simple. Film writers lose control over their work even quicker than film producers. No, only a novel would allow me complete creative control from start to finish.

And so then the question was what was my story going to be about? Some wag once said that writers spend the whole of their lives writing about their twenties and to a certain extent I agree. It’s the time when you’re most idealistic and adventurous, the time that leaves the most lasting impression on you and if there was an event that had a lasting impression on me it was the twelve months I spent working in Peshawar, Pakistan (though technically I was only 18 / 19 at the time). The added advantage was that it took note of that age old admonition to “write what you know” and while I had never had a passionate affair with an Afghan refugee I did know that world and that culture intimately.

So that’s how it all began. I quickly fixed upon the characters of Charlie and Noor - a young, confident American aid worker and a fiercely independent Afghan refugee - and within a couple of months I had the whole story laid out in treatment form. It would take me another two and a half years to finish the first draft.

Now there are some good reasons that it took that long. First and foremost I was running a humming production / management company at the time. I worked a 12 hour day and the only time I had to write was from around 9pm to 11pm every night and on the weekends - something that became increasingly hard after Harry, my son, was born in July 2007.

The other reason was that the book truly had taken on epic proportions. The treatment, you see, was a love story that spanned a decade. “A decade?” you say. “But Refuge only takes place over a period of six months.” Well in its original iteration the end of Refuge is only a third of the way into the book. 

My momentum wasn’t helped either by Remember Me getting green lit by Summit Entertainment. I don’t know if you know the film but if you don’t it is a love story (do you detect a theme here?) starring Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin, and co starring Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper. I was determined to finish the book before we went into the insanity of full pre-production and I managed to pull off that feat in April 2009. 

The book was 250,000 words and was entitled Haraam - The Memoir of Charlie Matthews. (Haraam means forbidden in Arabic). As I typed the last sentence in a coffee shop in the West Village I thought I had written a masterpiece! Hell I was writing in the West Village, how could it not be?

Stephen King in his book On Writing suggests that all authors, especially the ones who are newer to the occupation, put their manuscripts in a locked box for at least four weeks before re-reading them. It allows the author perspective and is in his view vitally important. I was lucky. Remember Me was a very intense production. With Rob in the lead role we had to contend with 1000s of fans some days and often 50 paparazzi. I totally forgot about the book and it wasn’t until I returned to my home in Los Angeles in September that I read my “masterpiece”.

Perhaps 4 months away from the book was too long for all I can say is that I hated it. I would read it in the bath (yes, I am an avid bath reader) and despite the heat would feel a chill run down my spine and a cold sweat on my brow. How could I write such dog awful prose? Why didn’t I care for my characters? What on earth had I been thinking?

At that moment I was tempted to chuck in the whole enterprise, but I didn’t. I suppose if there is a quality I’ve been blessed with in this life it is perseverance, so I sat down and tried to work out what to do.

The major thing that stuck out at me is that I was as much if not more interested in Noor as I was in Charlie. Yet we never saw Noor’s point of view because I had written the novel from only Charlie’s perspective. (It had after all been constructed as his memoir). Noor was going to be given her own pages from now on. The book would go from being told in the 1st person to the 3rd person.

I then read Sol Stein’s great book Stein On Writing which convinced me to chuck vast chunks of narrative summary (the book was overwhelmed by it) and try and write as much as I could in a more present fashion; this was something that suited me fine coming from the film world. 

And I made the decision to focus any rewrite on just the first third of the book - the time Charlie and Noor spend in Pakistan. The idea of rewriting the whole book was just too overwhelming. I also felt that it was asking a lot of readers to commit to a 250,000 word book from a first time novelist.

So once I again I plunged in. Writing scenes from Noor’s point of view really opened up the story and the more I wrote her the more I fell in love with her. She owes a lot to my wife, Clarke, who is fiercely independent and strong in her views, but she also owes a lot to my daughter, Frankie, who had just been born. I wanted Noor to be someone whom my daughter could learn from and be inspired by. By writing her it also opened up the character of Aamir Khan who I suspect encapsulated the father I wanted to be to my daughter - someone who would never allow her to believe that she wasn’t utterly equal to men and capable of anything. What made Aamir Khan so radical was that he was this type of father in a society that was so patriarchal.

The second draft was swiftly followed by a third draft and by December 2010 it was complete. Finally it was time to get some reads - I gave it to a few close friends, Clarke and my mother (who’s been a tireless advocate on the book’s behalf) and waited for feedback. To my immense relief everyone seemed to really like the book but something Trevor, my business partner at the time, said stuck out. He felt that it would be good to see Tariq’s side of things. Initially the comment irritated me - didn’t he understand that the whole construct was to see it from purely Noor and Charlie’s point of view? - but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. And hell if we were going to see Tariq’s side of things, we might as well see Elma’s and perhaps a little of Aamir Khan’s and Ivor’s too.

Once again another character came to life. As I delved into Tariq’s story I came to understand him better. A young man still wounded by the loss of his mother, who growing up in a war zone shrunk from his father pacificity and embraced the certitudes of a highly regimented and fundamentalist mujahideen organization. A young man whose family had lost their station in life and who now desperately wanted to rise socially once more. A man of ambition - a man who would marry off his sister to an awful man if it meant he, himself, advanced. By increasing Tariq’s role I also enabled there to be a thriller element through the tale.

The fourth draft was swiftly followed by a fifth draft where I added in the subplot regarding Kamila, and Noor’s desperate attempt to save her. It also afforded Charlie the opportunity to do something that Noor would love him for doing. I also changed the book’s expositional tense from a past form to a present one. (i.e ‘Charlie ate an apple’ became ‘Charlie eats an apple’.) Between the two drafts I had read Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and loved it. It was written in the present voice and I thought it gave that period tale a very modern and immediate feel. I embraced it wholeheartedly.

I also embraced the note of my good friend, Will Fetters, the writer of Remember Me, that the book needed to begin with a bang. It was here that I wrote the opening escape from Kabul. It had always been a part of Noor’s history but now I wrote it as if it was happening in actual time.

By now the book was also called Refuge after going through a very awkward stage of being entitled The Prerogative of the Brave. The book went out once again to friends, I got more notes and a sixth draft was produced.The book, in my opinion, was finally finished. It was August 2011. I had high hopes.

The book was sent to agents in both the UK and the US. Charlotte Boundy at Harper Collins was a huge fan, as was Jon Kassir at CAA, and they helped me get the book out to literary agents. (Bizarrely having been in the film business for 15 years I didn’t know any.) These were exciting times; not every agent wanted to sign me but three did and their enthusiasm for the book seemed palpable. How could I not sell the book if three agents wanted to sign me?

I elected to go with Jon Elek at AP Watt, a venerable old London literary agency. It was then that I embarked on the seventh draft. A note I had received from many agents was that Charlie wasn’t very sympathetic. For a while I got on my high horse - sympathetic? Who cares? As long as Charlie was empathetic that’s all that mattered. But then I re-read the novel again, and I came to conclusion that they could be right. I didn’t particularly care for Charlie either.

You see the Charlie of the first six drafts was a bit of a hound dog, to put it lightly. In many ways I thought this was cool - it gave him an arc. Between drafts three and six he and Elma had a very intense sexual affair at the beginning of the novel before he fell in love with Noor. Something else also stood out - someone told me that they saw no reason why Noor would fall in love with him - they had too little in common. 

And so in the seventh draft, I drilled down into his character. I finally discovered his backstory - the story of his mother’s death, his falling out with his father. He became a softer, more sympathetic young man. A man with a hidden artistic and intellectual core. By extension Elma also changed considerably - now that she wasn’t having an affair with Charlie her whole story was different. She became an ambitious aid worker determined to get a job at the UN who along the way falls in love with a journalist.

The book was once again done. Finished - at least until a publishing house editor gave me some notes. In April 2012, Jon Elek took the book out, first to publishers in the UK and then in May to publishers in the US. The book came oh so close. First we had an offer from Italy - Jon assured me this was great news but for it to close we needed an offer from the UK too. Then he called me excitedly one morning to tell me that a senior editor at one of the houses loved the book and wanted to buy it. If she wanted it then the deal was as good as done. But then a week later the news came back that her marketing department weren’t into the book - as far as I could tell they thought that Afghan stories didn’t sell.

I once read a book that said in imperial Japan they never told the condemned the day of their execution. Rather you just knew that if they hadn’t come for you by 8 am (the time of execution) that you had at least another day to live. That was somewhat my situation - except in reverse. You see with Jon eight hours ahead in the UK if I didn’t see an email from him when I woke up then I knew there was no news to be had for another day. 

As May stretched towards June I knew the book wasn’t going to sell. As a producer / manager I had been to this rodeo many, many times in Hollywood on behalf of other writers. Jon’s emails became sporadic at best and finally I emailed him and said I was done. I was going to take it out myself under my own imprint.

Once again another project came in the way - a Conquistador TV show I was developing. (By now I had sold my share of my company to Trevor and fully committed to being a writer.) But when there was a lull in the proceedings I re-read the book once more and the startling realization I came to was that I had made Charlie too soft. Yes he had been a horn dog before but at least there had been something fun about him.

And so into the eighth draft I strode and truly only in this draft did Charlie finally become fully formed. (Noor had been so for a number of drafts). He didn’t lose his deeper qualities, he just was more laid back and chill. I also took a knife to the text. I had reduced the 7th draft from 150,000 words to 125,000 words and this draft came down to 110,000 words. At least to me there was no longer an unnecessary moment or word.

There is so much I haven’t discussed - how Wali was conceived, the fact that I went wobbly on the ending for the briefest of moments only for Laura, an old intern and fan of the book, to set me straight, the writing of Noor’s essay, the endless rewriting of Charlie’s relations with his students, the maturation of Wali and Bushra’s turn from being a villain to a more sympathetic figure.

What is astonishing, however, is that despite all the changes the basic structure of the Refuge never altered from that first treatment. And I suspect that will be the case with books two and three. I am lucky, I have a first draft to work from, however flawed it may be, and while all my characters have changed and deepened along this journey I have taken them, I, as their creator, know their destinies and I’m determined to write them down.

I promise you, I just won’t take so long this time!