J. G. Sandom ~ Author

The Big Thrill -- International Thriller Writers

January 1st, 2010

Recently I sat down with J.G. Sandom to discuss his latest, The God Machine.

J.G., can you tell us a little about yourself beyond the short bio submitted?  In particular I would love to hear about your experiences and/or travels while researching in preparation for this phenomenal novel.

While I was born in this country, I grew up primarily in Europe -- in England, Italy and France.  My mother was Danish, and my family was transferred to England when I was only 9 months; my father ran Amex in Europe.  So, when I had to begin researching Gospel Truths and then The God Machine, I was already familiar with many of the landmarks featured in the novels -- from the soaring Gothic cathedrals of Chartres and Amiens, key locations in Gospel Truths, to the Hell-Fire Caves of West Wycombe in England, and the Passy section of Paris, where Ben Franklin lived while he served as American Ambassador to France, which are central settings in The God Machine.

I read over 30 books while researching Gospel Truths, on subjects ranging from mathematics and topology, to medieval architecture and Freemasonry, to early Christian theology. I spent several months in Paris, Chartres and Amiens. I asked for and received special access to the cathedrals. I pored over the labyrinths that are carved into their floors. I studied ancient texts.  Gospel Truths came out in 1991, more than a decade before Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code blew the lid off the genre.

The same is true for The God Machine.  I had to read dozens of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, since he is a featured character in this novel, plus works on inventors Da Vinci, Alan Turing, George Boole, Nichola Tesla and Thomas Edison.  I also had to read books on such arcane subjects as microchip design, Masonic rituals, and the construction and layout of Washington D.C.

Readers of theo-thrillers like to learn something new and interesting when they read books like The God Machine, something that challenges their existing assumptions, defies expectations.  And they enjoy following smart, even nerdy characters who are thrown -- often against their will -- into action.  But all the research and history has to be channeled into an interesting narrative.   In the end, it's an exciting story that fuels a great thriller.

 What life experiences inspired you to go down the theo-thriller path?

I first got interested in writing theo-thrillers due to my cousin, Paul Marcinkus.  The character of Archbishop Grabowski in Gospel Truths is based loosely on Marcinkus.  He'd come over for my mother's dinner parties when I was a boy in Italy, which were famous in Rome, overflowing with film producers and fashion designers, business tycoons and media barons -- Felliniesque affairs.  Marcinkus was a regular at these affairs. We introduced him to everyone as our Cousin Paul. They knew him as the Mayor of the Vatican City and head of the IOR or Vatican Bank.

Marcinkus was a very practical man, once quoted as saying, "You can't run the Church on Hail Marys." And I always wondered when I watched him at our dinner table --- just as Koster does in the novel, as he sits across from Grabowski --- how did this man of God, of faith, who had worked in the slums of Central America as a young priest just out of seminary, become a man of numbers, of provable verities, God's banker? This was the central question that intrigued me, the journey from Gospel Truth to Gospel Truths.

In The God Machine, I explore the connection between divine inspiration and technological genius.  Protagonist Joseph Koster and high-tech Indian mogul Savita Sajan enter into a quest for Ben Franklin's copy of a lost Gnostic Gospel of Judas which, it turns out, also features a kind of schematic design for an electrical device - a machine designed to open a doorway directly to God, hence the title.  The novel is an exploration of the relationship between science and religion, proof and faith, and how our culture has turned technology into a kind of 21st century deity.  Here's how the publisher describes it:

The Church insisted it didn't exist.

They Lied.

They said it was just a Masonic legend.

It wasn't.

A two thousand year old secret.

Revealed.

The coded journal of Benjamin Franklin. A hidden map. A legendary gospel. These are the first pieces to an ancient puzzle so powerful it could destroy the very foundation of Christianity.

Once before, Joseph Koster unearthed one of the Church's most deeply buried secrets...and it almost cost him his life. But some treasures are too hard to resist. And as Koster puts the pieces of Franklin's puzzle together, he discovers something even more startling...and infinitely more deadly.

Now, along with beautiful Indian high-tech mogul Savita Sajan, Koster must race to decode Franklin's journal before it falls into the hands of those who would do anything, kill anyone to suppress it. But in a world of secret societies, ancient conspiracies and Masonic puzzles, locating the prize is one thing...staying alive, another.

For as Koster and Sajan are about the learn, the same key that unlocks the doorway to Heaven...could open the portals of Hell.

Caroline Thompson (author of Edward Scissorhands) said, "Move over, Dan Brown..." when reviewing your novel.  What a compelling compliment!  For most authors the most difficult struggle when writing a novel is capturing on the page how the story "feels" deep inside.  Those sensations and emotions you perhaps can't quite define but you instinctively understand are the true essence of the story.  As you were creating this novel and its characters was there a pivotal moment when you sensed that you had truly captured that essence...that "feeling?"

Yes, I have been very fortunate with reviews.   Booklist called Gospel Truths, "a splendid, tautly woven thriller...(and) an intelligent mystery of tremendous spiritual and literary depth." Library Journal said, "A masterful first novel, based on a true incident, which spins a complicated web of corruption, greed and deception." And Mostly Murder characterized it, "A fascinating mystery ... captivating and engrossing."

The God Machine has also generated a lot of positive critical attention.  In particular, Historical Novels Review said, "History galore, violence, and intrigue fill the pages of this tightly plotted, twisting and turning adventure story . . . Those who love numbers, physics, and a truly unpredictable, suspenseful mystery will relish the facts and ponderings replete in this well-written, mysterious spin-off of The Da Vinci Code.  The God Machine is a very impressive historical thriller!"

Finding the true essence of a story is less about the search for something external, and more about letting yourself be discovered.  For me, there is a time in the development of every book when one of my characters refuses to follow the outline I've painstakingly developed. I tell them, "Hey, you have to go over here and do this."  And they say, "No way.  I'm not doing that." While that may be a problem, on some level, it also bodes well for the book. It means that the characters have progressed enough to think for themselves. I never win those arguments. In some ways, I'm just the instrument that the novel and the characters use to liberate themselves.  Like searching for gemstones, I mine words.

But, ultimately, success is most resolutely drawn in the responses of readers.  When people say that they couldn't put the book down.  When they confess to you conspiratorially that they were up late, or all night, just to finish it.  When they ask you what's going to happen next to the characters.  The true essence of a story is found in the connection that it has with its readers.

What's coming next?

I'm working on a number of projects at the moment.

One is a sequel to The God Machine, which will feature many of the same characters -- like Koster and Sajan, Nigel Lyman and Nick Robinson.  I'll also be going back to the Countess de Rochambaud from Gospel Truths, when she was much younger during WWII and knew Nick Robinson's father.  As with my other theo-thrillers, this sequel will feature another lost religious text, and another machine designed -- at least in part -- by Ben Franklin.

I'm also working on a new thriller that's closer to another one of my books, The Wave.  It features an NSA cryptanalyst forensic examiner (i.e. code-breaker) who comes across what appears to be the cyber penetration of DOD systems by terrorists, but which turns out to be something far bigger and more sinister.  The novel again explores our relationship to technology, especially social media, and the way we represent ourselves online.   It deals with issues of privacy and freedom.  But, in the end, it's a breakneck chase, a rapid-fire techno-thriller where the fate of the world as we know it hangs in the balance.

Finally, I'm co-authoring a non-fiction title about . . . well, a subject about which it's always satisfying to end an interview . . . sex!

Interview by Debra Webb

 

What do you think of this interview?  Click on Comments, below.

Bookreporter.com

February 2, 2007

Bookreporter.com: Can you describe for us the true incident that GOSPEL TRUTHS is based on?

J. G. Sandom: All of the details concerning the Banco Fabiano scandal at the beginning of GOSPEL TRUTHS are based on real events. Banco Fabiano is modeled on Banco Ambrosiano, which was at the center of the largest financial scandal in banking history. The head of Ambrosiano was a gentleman named Roberto Calvi, who --- like Pontevecchio in my novel --- was disgraced when it was learned he had secretly transferred more than $1 billion from his bank and used it to make illicit investments overseas. Calvi later made his way to London, where he was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge. The first City of London Police inquest ruled the hanging a suicide, but since then, people have come to believe it was probably murder. To this day, the case has never been solved.

Calvi was being manipulated by the leader of a secret pseudo-Masonic Lodge called the P2, or Propoganda Due, which in the book is named the IQ, Informazione Quatro, led by a real former Nazi Black Shirt and arms dealer, Licio Gelli. And at the heart of the scandal was the head of the Vatican Bank (the Istituto per le Opere di Religione --- IOR), Paul Marcinkus. The character of Archbishop Grabowski in GOSPEL TRUTHS is based loosely on Marcinkus. In fact, it was Marcinkus who inspired me to write the novel.

I grew up in Europe, spending almost five years in Rome as a boy. Archbishop Marcinkus was my cousin. He'd come over for my mother's dinner parties, which were famous in Rome, overflowing with film producers and bishops, fashion designers and executives, media barons and movie stars --- Felliniesque affairs. Marcinkus was a regular at these parties. We introduced him to everyone as our Cousin Paul. They knew him as the Mayor of the Vatican City and head of the IOR.

Marcinkus was a very practical man, once quoted as saying, "You can't run the Church on Hail Marys." And I always wondered when I watched him at our dinner table --- just as Koster does in the novel, as he sits across from Grabowski --- how did this man of God, of faith, who had worked in the slums of Central America as a young priest just out of seminary, become a man of numbers, of provable verities, God's banker? This was the central question that intrigued me, the journey from Gospel Truth to Gospel Truths.

Marcinkus "retired" to Sun City, Arizona, after the Vatican was forced to pay creditors around $200 million as a result of the scandal. He worked there as a parish priest until his death in '98, of undisclosed causes, at the age of 84.

BRC: The plot centers on a quest for the Q document, the intriguing gospel upon which scholars believe the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke may have been based. What prompted your interest in Q and the other Gnostic gospels?

JGS: One of my sisters is a born-again Evangelical Christian. We've had long debates about her immovable faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible. I was raised Roman Catholic but now attend an Episcopal church. We sing the same hymns that I sang as a youngster when I attended English boarding schools, and in a world of impermanence, there's a lot to be said for such rituals.

Perhaps because of my personal feelings about my cousin, Archbishop Marcinkus, all that I knew about him, the myth and the man, coupled with the Church's political stance on certain issues, I eventually developed a crisis of faith in the Catholic Church. It also didn't help that the incense made me nauseous. In my quest for some religious truth, I studied the gospels and how they've been passed down to us. I asked questions.

This brought me to the early history of the Church, and I read Elaine Pagels's seminal work, THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS. I became intrigued with the way in which some gospels were blessed by Bishop Iraneus of Lyon, validated for inclusion in the synthesis of the Bible, while others were expunged, deemed heretical. Leveraging a technique known as form criticism, I studied how passages in the Bible are made up of various Gattung --- modes of speaking --- that enable us to calculate their age. The Beatitudes, for example, existed as logoi (sayings) long before the Sermons on the Mount and Plain. The sayings of Jesus were dropped into the narrative framework of the gospels of Matthew and Luke some time later.

As a novelist, the notion of layers is something familiar. Books don't spring forth --- from the head of Zeus, as it were --- fully formed. They're built and re-built, civilizations of letters, laid down over time.

Scholars believe the Beatitudes were present in the Q, Quelle (Source), an ancient document used in the construction of the gospels. This led me to the notion of a source manuscript, something so old that it would more truly reflect the words Jesus spoke. And I wondered, what if Iraneus got it wrong? What if some early Gnostic gospel, based on the historically accurate logoi of Christ, also revealed Him to be a heretic? This was the MacGuffin I needed. For I asked myself, as Lyman does in the novel, after the collapse of his bank, why did Calvi --- or Pontevechio --- go to London? Why not to Buenos Aires or someplace else? What did he have to trade in London that was so vital it could rehabilitate his career, force the Church to cover his massive debts? Thus, the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas became the focus of the quest. In the book I'm writing now, THE GOD MACHINE, it's the Gospel of Judas.

BRC: The book also weaves in fascinating detail about freemasonry and medieval architecture, specifically that of cathedrals and labyrinths. You clearly spent a great deal of time researching this book. What did that research involve? Did it include visiting the sites, poring over musty volumes in church libraries, or reading far less romantic reference books?

JGS: Anyone who has ever stood in one of the cathedrals of Notre Dame --- in Paris or Chartres or Amiens --- knows the power of their beauty. For the mostly illiterate people of the Middle Ages, the cathedral was a book in stone. And like peeling back the layers of the Bible to expose the more primitive texts beneath, studying the cathedrals required me to understand the history of their construction, and the masons who built them.

I read over 30 books while researching GOSPEL TRUTHS, on subjects ranging from mathematics and topology, to medieval architecture and masonry, to early Christian theology. I spent several months in Paris, Chartres and Amiens. I asked for and received special access to the cathedrals. I pored over the labyrinths that are carved within their floors. I studied ancient texts. (Thanks to my classical British education, I took seven years of Latin and Greek as a boy, and do a bad job of speaking five languages.) Like Koster, I'm convinced the labyrinths share a mathematical kinship with the layout and construction of the cathedrals themselves. They also reveal a more fundamental secret about the nature of the universe, but you'll have to read GOSPEL TRUTHS to discover what that is!

BRC: Which of the characters do you best relate to? Nigel Lyman, the British detective; Koster, the American mathematician…or perhaps another character altogether?

JGS: I spent the first 15 years of my life in Europe, mostly in England, and I have a special relationship with Lyman and his natal city of Winchester, where I went to boarding school. Perhaps my favorite section of the book is at the beginning of Chapter XIII, when Lyman and his childhood friend Teddy Bashall poach that 5-pound rainbow from the River Itchen, one of the best trout streams in all of Britain. The two sides of the moral river are more easily defined in our youth, but as we get older it gets harder to know where to stand, which side is right. That uncertainty, reflected in the uncertainty of the Gospel Truths themselves, is what makes Lyman resonate for me as a character. It's what makes him human.

Koster, on the other hand, is all about definable truths: his mathematics, his architecture, his regulated life. It's his journey from a man of numbers and provable verities to one of faith through his unquantifiable love for Mariane that balances Grabowski's journey in the novel. The archbishop and the architect start at different points, at opposite ends of the same continuum, but their journeys are integrally connected.

As one partial to villains, I also find myself drawn to Scarcella. The scene in which he listens to the rape and torture of that young girl in the next room, I find particularly chilling. "Scarcella is not like an ordinary man, Mr. Lyman," says Mrs. Pontevecchio, the dead banker's wife. "He is pestilenziale…like a disease. There is something about him, something of the devil, I think. Something evil. It was never what he did to my husband. It was what he made my husband do." And she says this to Lyman, who is forced to snap the neck of his son's dog with his own hands after Scarcella's henchmen feed him glass.

I enjoy revisiting the Countess de Rochambaud from time to time. She's so no-nonsense and intelligent, so quirky and surprising, so full of life, although a wisp of an old woman, so unambiguous and mysterious all at once. And then, of course, there's Guy Soury-Fontaine and Mariane. I guess I should warn you here and now. This new edition of GOSPEL TRUTHS has a markedly different ending than the original. And it's rather grisly, I'm afraid.

BRC: GOSPEL TRUTHS was first published in 1992, long before THE DA VINCI CODE. Your book is far more complex, but also is a thriller that centers on the pursuit of an ancient religious artifact. How would you describe GOSPEL TRUTHS with regard to THE DA VINCI CODE and so many of the novels it inspired?

JGS: First, I have to admit that I'm one of the dozen or so people on the planet who hasn't read THE DA VINCI CODE. GOSPEL TRUTHS may have presaged the genre, but it was Dan Brown who launched it, made these concepts accessible to millions of readers. I wish him nothing but the best and hope that his next book does well. A rising tide lifts all boats.

BRC: GOSPEL TRUTHS is such a visual novel with a compelling storyline that it seems a natural for a film adaptation. Any chance we'll see this made into a film one day? And what's the production status of another of your novels, THE HUNTING CLUB, which Warner Brothers optioned?

JGS: You never know in Hollywood. The HUNTING CLUB was optioned by Warner Bros., and two knock-offs were made: Very Bad Things, a very bad movie with Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater; and the made-for-TV and more derivative Stag. The movie Ron Bass wrote for Warner Bros. based on my book, which Joel Schumacher was scheduled to direct, never got made; the option went into turnaround. But the book sold pretty well in seven countries. Since then, other producers have shown interest.

GOSPEL TRUTHS, on the other hand, was a first novel. It received great critical acclaim, but no interest from Hollywood and no foreign sales, even though the book is set largely in Europe. My new agent is looking to change that as we speak. He's received a lot of inquiries about THE GOD MACHINE too, the sequel to GOSPEL TRUTHS, which I'm working on now for Bantam.

BRC: You also write YA fiction under the name T.K. Welsh. Tell us about THE UNRESOLVED, your award-winning 2006 YA release. Share with us what you see as the differences of writing for adults and YA.

JGS: After I left the world of Internet advertising and sold my loft in New York, I moved out to the country, went through a divorce and became a single, stay-at-home dad. My daughter is six. I'd already given some thought to writing for younger readers, so when my agent at the time at ICM encouraged me to write something for young adults, I jumped at the chance.

I've written three YA books to date: THE SEED OF ICARUS, which I wrote as a practice novel back in high school; plus THE UNRESOLVED and RESURRECTION MEN, both from Dutton/Penguin.

Inspired by the tragic events of 9/11, THE UNRESOLVED reaches back into history to explore what was, until recently, the greatest disaster in New York City history. Based on the sinking of the General Slocum steamship, which caught fire in New York's East River in 1904, THE UNRESOLVED is a decidedly unconventional ghost story. It's also a courtroom drama, an examination of immigrant life, and a tale of love, redemption and revenge. THE UNRESOLVED dramatizes how a single life --- and death --- can have a powerful influence on history. Think of it as Ghost or THE LOVELY BONES meets Titanic.

RESURRECTION MEN is my second Young Adult (YA) novel, to be published by Dutton/Penguin this April. Inspired by the 1831 "Italian Boy" trial of body snatchers in London, England, it's a murder mystery that pits a beggar boy named Victor against a nefarious group of Resurrection Men. In this tumultuous dark underworld, where a "fresh subject" can fetch as much as nine guineas --- the yearly salary of a working man --- Victor must risk his life to uncover the identity of the murderer who is at the heart of London's furtive trade in human corpses.

Although THE UNRESOLVED and RESURRECTION MEN are being billed as young adult novels --- since the protagonists are teens --- I think they work just as well for adults. I don't "write down" for YA. That said, I do pen my young adult novels under the name T.K. Welsh because some of the novels written under my birth name are inappropriate for younger readers.

In the end, I think the issues that concern me, the themes I like to write about, are prevalent in all my work --- thrillers, mysteries, YA --- no matter how the market carves them up. My characters are all people who are tested by life, oftentimes harshly, and who are forced to make difficult moral decisions. Through faith, sometimes lost and rediscovered, relying upon their own personal moral compass and hard work, they generally manage to break through and overcome their hardships. Despite my European upbringing, these are particularly American themes.

BRC: You're known as one of the pioneers of Internet advertising, dating back to 1984 before most of us knew there was an Internet. How did you make the transition to fiction?

JGS: Yes, there's a listing at Wikipedia. I founded the world's first interactive advertising agency, Einstein and Sandom Interactive (EASI), back in 1984. It grew to become the largest digital marketing services firm when it was purchased by DMB&B (MacManus Group) a decade later. I continued to manage EASI on behalf of DMB&B through 1996, and then became Director of Interactive at OgilvyOne Worldwide.

OgilvyInteractive was named the "Number One Interactive Ad Agency" by Advertising Age magazine in 1999. It was a rocket ride. Unfortunately, by the time we grew to that size, I no longer knew everybody's name. I would walk down the halls and see strangers nodding at me. I missed that entrepreneurial feeling from the early days.

From November 1999 through 2001, I served as President and CEO, and then Vice Chairman of a new start-up --- RappDigital Worldwide, the interactive arm of direct marketing/direct response agency giant Rapp Collins Worldwide, an Omnicom Company. While I was running these agencies, I used to write on the weekends. That's when I produced and sold THE HUNTING CLUB and GOSPEL TRUTHS.

I'm proud of my role in helping to monetize the Net through advertising. In my small way, I helped to create the economic engine that powered the growth of the Internet.

Then came the birth of my daughter, 9/11 and my divorce. I reevaluated my priorities and determined to move out of the city, to find someplace and raise my daughter where she could catch fireflies at night. I exchanged client conference calls and brainstorming sessions for play dates, sandwich making and chauffeuring my daughter to riding lessons…with a little writing in between.

I still consult in the interactive realm. And I'm Chairman of CDIP, a Web 2.0 holding company. We're launching a vertical market, healthcare search engine and Net community later this year.

The interplay between my digital world and my world as a writer is interesting. While new digital media and Web 2.0 enterprises such as MySpace, facebook and YouTube are assisting to democratize media development, while they are helping to bring people together in unprecedented ways, they've also spawned the anemic language and idiom of the instant, text and email message. The way we read, and the way we write, is changing as a result of new technologies and these new communications vehicles. But there is an intimacy available only to the reader of novels, to those who care to spend some time within another person's mind, to live somebody else's life, inside another world.

BRC: Tell us what you can about your next book for adults, THE GOD MACHINE, which is scheduled for release in 2008.

JGS: When Ben Franklin's coded journal is accidentally unearthed in Philadelphia, it reveals the presence of a secret map, hidden by Franklin at the birth of our nation, a map to the possible resting place of the Gospel of Judas --- a 2,000-year-old Gnostic text that threatens to unravel Christianity and to undermine the very foundation of the Church.

Working unwittingly for a secret Gnostic Masonic lodge, mathematician and architect Joseph Koster (who appeared in GOSPEL TRUTHS), accompanied by the beautiful and intelligent engineer Savita Sajan, begin a quest to discover the gospel's hiding place, a quest that takes them from Philadelphia to England and France.

But they are not alone. For the Knights of Malta, military agents of the Catholic Church in Rome, joined by minions of the Evangelical Christian right, are right behind them...and they'll do anything, kill anyone, to prevent the discovery of the Gospel of Judas.

All seems lost when Koster realizes that Franklin's map leads not just to the Gospel of Judas, but reveals a plan for the construction of a terrible device --- a God machine --- that, if completed, would open a doorway to heaven itself...or to hell.

 

What do you think of this interview?  Click on Comments, below.

Wordswimmer.com

January 20, 2008 -- T.K. Welsh Interview

T. K. Welsh's imagination is inhabited by ghosts and filled with mysteries.

His first book for young adults, The Unresolved--an "unconventional ghost story" (Horn Book) which the Washington Post named one of the top ten children's books of 2006--retells the sinking of the General Slocum steamship from the point-of-view of a fifteen year old girl who drowns in the 1904 calamity considered one of New York's great (but forgotten) tragedies.

"I do not understand it all," the ghostly Mallory Meer declares from her watery world between life and death. "Nor can I move on to the great beyond until my family and friends have mourned me, until some justice to the guilty has been meted out. It seems that only then will I let go."

Welsh's most recent novel, Resurrection Men, is equally harrowing, a tale that follows a beggar boy named Victor as he risks his life to uncover the murderer responsible for trading in human corpses.

Described as "a haunting tour of London's underclass in the 1830s" (Publishers Weekly), Welsh says that Resurrection Men, was inspired by an 1831 trial of body snatchers in London.

Some reviewers (VOYA) have compared the plot and writing style in Resurrection Men to Dickens, "but far more graphic."

Others reviewers (KLIATT) have noted that "Like M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, this look at sinister events in history makes the era come alive and linger in the memory."

Welsh, who is currently working on an adult novel to be published under his birth name, J.G. Sandom, was kind enough to take a few moments from his current project to share his thoughts on writing with Wordswimmer.

Wordswimmer: How do you get into the water each day?

Welsh: First comes the coffee. I’m pretty useless without it. And a good breakfast. I’m also a single, stay-at-home Dad, so getting my daughter washed, fed, dressed and ready for school is a big part of the morning. She’s just turned seven. After seeing her off on the bus, I’m generally at my desk by around 8:00 AM. I’m a morning person. That is, I like the idea of being a morning person, but there are really only two things that get me up early: fishing and writing.

A long time ago, a friend of mine named Robert Nathan told me: A writer is someone who writes. Seems pretty straightforward. When I first start a book, I’ll set a minimum threshold of words for myself – say 500. No matter what happens that day, I have to complete my 500 words. Later, as the book progresses, the threshold might increase to 1,000 or even 1,500 words a day. And on good days, it could be more.

But, to alter my friend Robert’s maxim, it’s really about re-writing. On good days, I may keep nearly everything I’ve written. On bad days, very little remains. I start again. But, before I begin, I re-read the last few pages I’ve already written, to try and pick up the rhythm again. The sound of the language is very important to me.

Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat?

Welsh: I am a pretty self-disciplined person. This is not due to some inordinate rigor on my part. It’s mostly guilt and anxiety. If I’m not writing, I feel guilty. And writing is far cheaper than therapy. Frankly, when I don’t write, I’m unable to exorcise the demons that plague me.

Generally, all of my books begin with a question. For example, I was living in New York City when 9/11 occurred. I saw the towers fall. It was such a monumental event that I began to ask myself, has anything like this ever happened to this city before? And, if so, how did people--especially young people, teens--cope? Whom did they blame? How did it change the way they looked at tragedy and loss? So I researched the city's history and came across the sinking of the General Slocum steamship, which caught fire in the East River in 1904, resulting in the death of over 1,000 mostly German immigrants on a church outing.

At first I didn't know how to tell the story. I wanted to investigate this tragedy from several viewpoints, and yet I also wanted a strong central character and a single voice. That's how I came up with the idea of Mallory, who dies in the first few pages of the book on the Slocum, and returns as a spirit to see that those responsible for the tragedy are brought to justice. Because Mallory is a spirit, she is able to move into the minds of many of the city's citizens, with all their different points of view. And since she's a Lutheran German immigrant, and the boy blamed for the fire is a Jew, it also enabled me to examine issues of prejudice and religious animosity which, clearly, played a role in the tragedy of 9/11. As a 50-year-old white male, it was a real challenge to put myself in the mind of a teenage, German immigrant girl. Having a young daughter of my own proved to be an unexpected boon in helping me find Mallory's voice.

Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming through dry spells?

Welsh: I must admit that I’m lucky when it comes to writer’s block. Even when things are not going well, I still produce. As I mentioned above, I may not keep much of what I’ve written, but I still do my words. That rule is inviolable.

Wordswimmer: What’s the hardest part of swimming?

Welsh: Writing is, by nature, a solitary act. I find that I have to get up and look out the window periodically to make sure the world outside is still spinning.

Since I’m not that social, I often have to force myself to get out of the house and mix with people. Having a 7-year-old daughter helps a great deal. I have to take her to her equestrian classes, to play dates, etc. If she weren’t in my life, I might never leave the house. I’d end up with a Gollum-like pallor and lose a lot of weight.

Wordswimmer: How do you overcome obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?

Welsh: Most of the problems I face are corrected by my characters. That is, there is a time in the development of every book when one of my characters refuses to follow the outline I’ve painstakingly developed. I tell them: Hey, you have to go over here and do this...and they say, no way; I’m not doing that. While that may be a problem, on some level, it also bodes well for the book. It means that the characters have progressed enough to think for themselves. I never win those arguments, nor should I. In some ways, I’m just the instrument that the novel and the characters use to liberate themselves.

Wordswimmer: What’s the part of swimming that you love the most?

Welsh: I must admit that I don’t particularly care for most of what I’ve written. When I re-read my work, I constantly re-edit. I say to myself: My God, what were you thinking here? This is pure drivel! But, once in a while, I come across a phrase or sentence that is absolutely true. Perhaps this comes from my legacy as a poet. (That’s how I started as a writer, and why the sound of my work is so important to me.) When that happens--when I read a passage and think: Yes, that’s it; that gets to the heart of that character’s true nature--I find myself soaring. Strangely, I don’t feel much pride in discovering these passages. It’s almost as if the words were written by someone else, some higher power, and I just happened to have channeled them to the page. But it still fills me with a kind of bliss that is unavailable through any other endeavor I’ve experienced.

For more information about T.K. Welsh, visit his website: http://www.tkwelsh.com

And to read a handful of reviews of his work, visit:
http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/2007/06/review-resurrection-men.html
http://theyayayas.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/under-the-radar-resurrection-men-by-t-k-welsh/
http://wakecounty.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/book-of-the-day-the-unresolved-by-tk-welsh/
http://www.bookslut.com/bookslut_in_training/2007_10_011785.php

 

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