Ask the Author: Jason Hewitt
Answered Questions (5)
Jason Hewitt
1. There is only one way of guaranteeing that your book does NOT get published, and that's if you don't finish it. It sounds flippant but write, write, write and don't give up.
2. Someone (it might have been Sebastian Faulks) once said: don't write what you know, write what you WANT to know. A book takes an eternity to write so my philosophy has always been that you might as well write about something that you want to learn about. That way you kill two birds with one stone.
3. Be prepared to be rejected. It happens to everyone and will continue to happen no matter how successful you are. It's also worth bearing in mind that whatever you write you won't please everyone. Writing is not for the faint-hearted. You need a thick skin.
2. Someone (it might have been Sebastian Faulks) once said: don't write what you know, write what you WANT to know. A book takes an eternity to write so my philosophy has always been that you might as well write about something that you want to learn about. That way you kill two birds with one stone.
3. Be prepared to be rejected. It happens to everyone and will continue to happen no matter how successful you are. It's also worth bearing in mind that whatever you write you won't please everyone. Writing is not for the faint-hearted. You need a thick skin.
Jason Hewitt
I'm currently editing my second novel which will be published in the UK at the end of July. It's called DEVASTATION ROAD and is set in Europe at the end of World War Two. It's about a man who wakes in a field. He doesn't know where he is or how he got there, and as he tries to make his way home through war-torn Europe he tries to piece together the story of his life and his war. It's not just about a man struggling back to consciousness, but indeed a whole civilisation as millions of people across Europe find themselves waking from the nightmare of war.
Jason Hewitt
Earning a living from my hobby, and not having to battle the London early morning commute. Anyone that lives in London will know exactly what I mean.
Jason Hewitt
I take my inspiration from all manner of things. If I am formulating a new idea I read as many books as I can on the subject – both non-fiction and fiction – as well as watching films or documentaries or visiting museums. Most of my ideas come on location, so once I have a vague idea of what I want to write and where the story might be set, I always take a trip there. For my first novel, THE DYNAMITE ROOM, I travelled around Suffolk, as well as visiting Berlin and Narvik, in northern Norway (140 miles within the Arctic Circle). I wander about taking photographs and copious notes on what I see and find that pretty soon the ideas start to come. If I am writing about a particular period I listen to the music of the time. Music is a big theme in THE DYNAMITE ROOM so before I started writing each day I would listen to any classical music mentioned in the book or 1940s swing to get me in the mood. There’s nothing like a bit of Joe Loss or Ben Goodman’s ‘Let Dance’ to propel you into the atmosphere of wartime England. If you want to know what else I listened to whilst writing the novel, why not check out my playlist on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Jason Hewitt
THE DYNAMITE ROOM really was the result of many interests simultaneously coming together. I have a History and English degree and I knew I wanted to write a World War II novel, but it is a well-trampled period for novelists and so I wanted to find a new and interesting angle. I toyed with the idea of an alternative history – what if the Germans had successfully invaded Britain in 1940? Then, in a public library I stumbled across a book called Where the Eagle Landed by Peter Haining. It is a book that looks into some of the mysteries around the German invasion. In it I found a story about German bodies in the summer of 1940 being washed up on Shingle Street beach in Suffolk and the fear the locals had that some were still alive and loose in the Suffolk countryside. That was it. I had it. This was the start of the story. I wanted to keep the characters enclosed in one space so that I could build a claustrophobic tension. The house, Greyfriars, came from my love of gothic horror. It is a house that is haunted but not in a traditional sense. I then needed to put someone else in the house with my Nazi officer – the most unlikely person for him to be ‘trapped’ with. From that eleven-year old Lydia was born.
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