Tim Ewins's Blog

Writing Dementia Well – An article written for The Bookseller

We all know the adage, write what you know. But how do we write about, and publish stories on, subjects we can never truly understand?

This is the question I faced when writing my second novel, Tiny Pieces of Enid. The main character is based on my own Nanny Enid, who suffered with dementia in later life. My ultimate goal was to raise awareness of the disease and to offer some familiarity and support for those with family members who suffer from it.

The question of how we use personal experiences in writing has plagued author and publishing communities. We know how important it is, but the boundaries for what that actually means are blurry. Writing about a character living with dementia increases this challenge. In the case of people living with advanced dementia, we can’t ever truly know how they feel. So how can we be true to their feelings? We know more than ever that people from diverse groups need to be represented and I think that goes beyond providing the platform. For many, such as people with certain disabilities, victims of abuse or sufferers of diseases such as dementia, the opportunity to speak just isn’t there.

As an author, I believe it’s important not to be overly sentimental. I didn’t want the novel to be indulgent, I wanted it to be true to a lady that maintained her somewhat-blue-sense-of-humour throughout the course of her disease. Dementia couldn’t take that away.

Having been close to my Nanny Enid (I’ve literally known her all my life), I could try to see her predicament with pragmatism and truth. People with dementia aren’t just suffering from a disease, they’re living with one too, just as their loved ones are often living as carers. It’s a truly rotten experience, but one that so many families are facing with determination to share happy moments even on the bleakest of days.

Immersing yourself in your subject through lived experience and wider research is key to doing justice to those who can’t tell their own stories. Not only does this give your story credibility, but it creates an honest narrative that resonates with people. While writing I was lucky enough to have a consultant geriatrician working with me to ensure that the story remained true to the disease. This was invaluable as, although I had my own experience to draw from, for me it was limited to one person; my nan. It also helped that the consultant was my sister, so we could be really honest with one another throughout the process. Perhaps too honest. Dr Ewins wasn’t afraid to tell me when I was duffing it up.

Olivia, Enid’s partner in crime in the story, is another character who wouldn’t be able to tell her story, and sadly she is representative of many in a similar situation. Olivia is a victim of domestic abuse, but I found that by taking the time to speak to people with diverse lived experiences and consulting them helped to represent these stories authentically.

When we’re writing narratives that belong to somebody else, I found that consultation was key. Nanny Enid may not have intentionally provided insight into her dementia, but she outwardly worried that she was trapped and often expressed her desire to escape. She was frustrated that words came difficult, but she’d still use them to re-share her best memories, and to relive the most important moments of her life.

While my name is on the front of both my novels, I had friends, family and acquaintances involved in the writing and publishing process, all with different life experiences. Exploring these unique perspectives and channeling the energy of my consultees, gave Enid, along with all the other characters, a life of their own.

Being able to write a character authentically takes a certain level of understanding, but of course, there’s always the 10% that’s completely made up, or that comes from other people’s experience, be that your editor’s, your wife’s or even your dog’s.

I’ve found that capturing these experiences is far more compelling than writing my own limited experience (a book about “Love Island” with a cup of tea, anyone?)

Nanny Enid gave me the pieces of her whole life, so the book isn’t about dementia, it’s about a person who just happens to suffer from dementia. Olivia is a person who flourishes through her friendship with Enid; her controlling relationship doesn’t define her, it’s a piece of her. It’s our job as storytellers to put those pieces together, to tell stories that matter without making those pieces our own.

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Review by the Book Decoder

Thank you to the Book Decoder for this lovely review:

We are Animals by Tim Ewins is a hilarious and enjoyable journey of a man called Jan.

Well, it’s not just Jan who’s in the story. There’s Shakey, Pricha the cow, an overenthusiastic puppy, happy-unhappy-happy-unhappy man, Michael, Hylad and another Jan. The Jan who tells Shakey his story is ManJan. He’s in search of LadyJan, the love of his life. Fate brings the two together. The same Fate breaks them apart. They again meet years later, only to break up again.

Fast forward to the 2016 and here’s ManJan, at the Pololem beach in Goa, waiting for LadyJan to appear out of nowhere. (But she’s no Houdini)

Tim Ewins takes his readers on an exciting, hilarious and adventurous journey of ManJan. From being pickpocketed at Sweden (not Norway) to drinking wine on a beach in Goa, ManJan’s been there, done that.

I will not talk much about ManJan. I want you guys to read about him and enjoy the story. 

Book Reviews by Satabdi

Thank you to Satabdi for this review:

I jumped at the chance to read this book because it was set in India–my home country. I was so happy to see that much of the action takes place at Palolem beach, Goa, one of my favorite beaches.

Essentially, this is a story of love, loss, and longing. “ManJan” travels the world with a feisty “LadyJan,” and they forge many friendships on the way. In a bizarre twist of fate, ManJan rediscovers each of these friendships as he revisits all the places he had gone with LadyJan. Only this time, he is looking for her and hoping that fate throws them together again.

I’m not sure how to go about describing the book because I’ve never read something like this before. The author writes in a most unconventional manner. He finds humor in the tiniest details, such as a cockroach constantly turning to its right, banging its head on the “same bit of boat” and wondering why it can’t escape.

At first, it seemed to me that the story was just absurd. But then it proceeded to become a most tender and endearing tale about friendship, love, and heartbreak. The pace is leisurely, and this may be a bit of a challenge if you’re looking for something to happen quickly. In the latter half of the book, you begin to see the connections between the seemingly isolated events happening in each chapter.

I loved the fact that there’s some commentary on homosexuality quietly tucked into the story.

Each chapter features a different creature. You read about a cow’s predilection to look at sunsets, crabs rolling sand balls (because that’s just what they do!), cockroaches taking wrong turns and getting confused, quails losing their precious eggs, and so on. The stories of the creatures have a sort of parallel to the happenings in the chapter.

The passion of youth (Shakey) and the fatigue of old age (Manjan) is well-contrasted. Manjan’s journey from “a poxy vest” to “a mustache” forms the basis of the story.

I particularly enjoyed the hilarious portrayal of things that are uniquely Indian, such as bathing in the filthy Ganges river, the holy status of the cow (until it is too old to be maintained), the “spiritual” aura of Goa’s beaches, and adults bathing in the ocean fully clothed.

We Are Animals is a sparkling debut by Tim Ewins laced with wit and humor and features some marvelous storytelling!

Bookish Jottings Review

Thank you to Bookish Jottings for this lovely review!

A quirky, uplifting and emotional tale of love lost and found, unexpected twists of fate and the power of friendship, Tim Ewins’s We Are Animals is a thought-provoking and heart-warming read that is wonderfully written and beautifully vivid.

Jan finds himself staring out to sea in Goa thinking about his life and what might have been and what has been lost. He still finds himself thinking fondly of the passport-thief he had met nearly five decades ago. Back then, fate seemed to delight in going out of its way to bring the two of them together, yet lately the two seem to have gone on different paths and have seldom been in contact; something which Jan has grown to regret. Jan has led quite an active life in between reuniting and losing the one who had stolen his heart. He has never given up hope that he might end up reuniting with the passport thief who had changed his life – but in the meantime he has got plenty to keep him busy, including a rather unexpected arrival in his life.

Amidst the many countries he has travelled, the many animals he has adopted (or that have adopted him), Jan finds himself crossing paths with a very annoying teenager who simply will not leave him alone. Jan cannot help but find the teenager totally and utterly infuriating, but should Jan be so quick in wanting to be shot of this aggravating companion he has acquired? After all, if he wants to be reunited with the missing thief, Jan needs all the help he can get – and maybe this time fate has opted to send him assistance in the most unlikely of packages!

I wasn’t sure what to make of We Are Animals at first as it was rather different to the kind of books I usually read, but I couldn’t fail to be charmed by Tim Ewins’ vivid and engaging voice. A talented author with a magical gift for deftly and effortlessly transporting readers to the places described in the book, Tim Ewins has written a captivating, enjoyable and poignant read with We Are Animals, a fantastic novel that will make readers laugh, cry and think.

Author Interview with The Magic Wor(l)ds

Thank you to The Magic Wor(l)ds Blog for having me on. You can read it here:

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

Hi Stefanie, thank you so much for having me as a guest blogger! I’ve always wanted to be an author…in fact, eight years ago, I started writing a book called ‘How to Write a Book,’ but after starting the first chapter I realised that I probably wasn’t the right person to write that book. Oh, and I realised that it probably already existed, and that I should probably read it.

Since then, writing a novel has always been in the back of my mind. I embarked on a stand-up comedy career (alongside a more normal career in finance) and then left it all behind and went travelling with my wife. When I came back, I started working on my first novel; We Are Animals, which is largely set in the countries we visited.

Which books did/do you love to read as a child/now as a grown-up?

I was big into Roald Dahl when I was a kid, always dreaming of all the magical crazy worlds he concocted. The beauty of his writing is that it can appeal to every age; I remember starting young with The Enormous Crocodile and then moving onto George’s Marvellous Medicine and Matilda. As a teenager I carried on, reading The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Boy and Danny the Champion of the World. In a similar vein, I remember my grandad reading Spike Milligan poems to me and both of us loving the nonsensical whimsy in them.

My tastes probably haven’t changed much as an adult. I love Jonas Jonasson (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared) and Andrew Kaufman (All My Friends are Superheroes) so it’s all slightly surreal humour.

More than anything now, as an adult, I love reading books to my two-year-old. I bought him The Enormous Crocodile just last week in fact, or, as he likes to call it, ‘big snap snap.’

Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?

He is a totally different type of author to the ones I’ve discussed so far, but I would love to have a chat with Khaled Hosseini. His novels are so desperate and tragic, but also completely engaging, hopeful and full of beauty. I’d love to know more about his inspiration and the process he uses. I’d also like to tell him how A Thousand Splendid Suns had me in floods of tears on a crowded train in India, and how I hold him directly responsible for that.

If you could, which fictional character (from your own book(s) or someone else’s) would you like to invite for tea and why?

Oh, I’d have Professor Dumbledore over for sure, if for no other reason than the feasts at Hogwarts always sound amazing. I’d like to think he’d be able to create one of those feasts round at my house, although I suppose that wouldn’t make me a very good host, and I’d need to buy a bigger table.

From We Are Animals I think I’d like to meet Hylad; a big, soft, northern bloke who spends most of his life living in Sweden looking for someone who isn’t there. I think he’d be good company!

Do you have some rituals or habits whilst writing?

In all honesty, I wrote almost all of We Are Animals during my lunch breaks at work over a period of four years so I guess my biggest ritual was to make sure I’d prepared a packed lunch the night before so I didn’t have to leave the office. Occasionally I wrote on a bus or on a train, and then I liked to try and get a seat to myself. Reading that back, I certainly don’t write in luxury, do I?!

Where do you come up with your idea(s)? Do people in your life need to be worried? 

Author Interview with Herding Cats

Thank you to Herding Cats Blog for having me! You can read it here:

What do you think makes a good story?

Hi Herding Cats! Thank you for having me. Like most writers, I’ve spent most of my life reading. When I was a child, I was a big fan of Roald Dahl (and I still am). I liked the suspense he created in ‘Matilda’ and ‘The B.F.G’, and the whimsical nature of ‘The Twits’ and ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’.

Now, as an adult, I like books like ‘The Girl on the Train’ (Paula Hawkins) and ‘An Isolated Incident’ (Emily Maguire) because I still love that suspense, and I also love reading more whimsical books such as ‘The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’ (Jonas Jonasson) and ‘Elefant’ (Martin Suter).

So I think, for me, a good story has suspense, whimsy and heart (because every story needs that right?)

Let’s talk about We Are Animals. There are 22 animals in the book. Why?

There are two answers to this question. The first is simply due to my love of animals. There are a group of crabs in the first chapter, and I found myself researching sand bubbler crabs for about three hours after watching them on a beach in Goa. It was the enjoyment of that research that persuaded me to incorporate as many different types of animals as possible. The characters go to ten countries in total, and I’ve learnt a lot about some fairly niche species.

The second answer goes back to the first question. Some of my favourite books as a child were about animals (Charlotte’s Webb, The Sheep-Pig etc), and I thought, maybe adults would enjoy the same kind of surreal escapism that animals can bring in literature.

What themes do you explore in your writing?

When I first started to write We Are Animals, I didn’t know what genre I was going for. Now I’ve finished it, I still don’t really know what genre it is. It’s probably literary fiction, because that covers all strands of fiction, right?

I used to perform stand-up, so the one genre that is present throughout is comedy. There are plenty of emotional chapters in We Are Animals, and there are quite a few dramatic scenes that hopefully wouldn’t be out of place in a thriller, but I’d like to think that the humour comes through in all the scenes.

What does your family think of your writing?

I’m very lucky to have a very supportive family. It was my wife who, after she had read the first few chapters, convinced me that I should keep writing. At one point she also reminded me to add a plot, which, although obvious, was probably the most crucial piece of advice I ever received!

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Probably location. I’m one of those writers that you see writing on busses and trains. I book meeting rooms during my work lunch breaks and tap away on my iPad before going back to my desk in the afternoon. I don’t have a ritual as such, or a writing space, I just do it where and when I can.

Where can people find out more about you?

I have an Instagram account which I set up as a reader rather than an author (@quickbooksummaries) where I make inaccurate but humorous book reviews.

As an author, I’m on the usual social media sites; Twitter (@Ewinstim) and Facebook (@timtewins).

Author Interview with Donna’s Book Blog

Thank you to Donna for having me on the blog. You can read the whole interview here:

When did you know that you wanted to be an author?

Hi Donna, thank you for being a part of the blog tour for We Are Animals!

I remember being set homework by my English teacher when I was about thirteen. We had to write a short story and I went to town on it. When my mate read my homework the next day, he joked that I’d, and I quote, ‘written it like it was a book.’ At thirteen, this was clearly a bad thing, but I’ve pretty much carried on writing since then; short stories, songs, stand-up comedy sets, ideas for plays… We Are Animals is my first attempt at a novel though, and whilst I love all writing, I’ve found writing a novel easily the most enjoyable.

What inspired you to write this book?

Writing a book was always something I was going to do at some point. When I went travelling with my wife, we kept a regular blog and I always liked the idea of creating some sort of a plot around it. We Are Animals is set in many of the countries we visited, and it has an exaggerated version of some of our experiences during our travels. When I went back and read the old blog, I noticed how much of it was focused on wildlife, and I wanted to get that into the book somehow. There are so many animals with their own little plots in We Are Animals, it’s like a children’s book for adults.

If you could sell this book in one sentence what would it be?

We Are Animals is a quirky, heart warming tale of lost love, unlikely friendships and fate. Oh, oh, and it’s cheap… 

Babbage and Sweetcorn Review

What a lovely review from Babbage and Sweetcorn, and can I just say, what an excellent name for a blog.

The review is here:

A wonderful blend of different encounters, both good and bad, humour (I was chuckling out loud), love, friendship and fate, We Are Animals is really something a little different.

Written with great tenderness, truth and sprinkled throughout with some great comic one liners, I found this a truly joyful read.

Present day, Goa:  Jan, much to his disappointment, ends up chatting to ‘A Vest’ (young person, on holiday/gap year,  trying to ‘find themselves!) on the beach one day. His name is Shakey and when he asked Jan what he’s doing sitting alone on the beach, Jan begins to tell him his story.

We learn via flash backs of the tale of Jan’s life over the last 54 years. From his childhood back in Fishton, England where he dreamed of travelling, to Sweden, Russia and onto India. We read of the wonderful encounters he has with many different people, from pick pockets to murderers, fishermen to old married couples.  Each story is different yet many are set off by the simplest of actions and somehow along his travels across the world he also managers to keep meeting the same people!  Fate perhaps?

I found this book very original and at the same time told with much warmth for it’s characters, (and animals!), who are, at the end of it all, just ordinary people trying to get on in life.  Each story has a tale of it’s own with much emotion that pulled at the heart strings.  I loved the way it shows how each connection between two people can spark a chain of events that span out like a spiders web, yet somehow still leaves a path back to the start.  I loved it’s humour and found all the the characters such a delightful bunch of personalities.

Guest blog about a research battle

Thank you to Mai’s Musings for inviting me to post a guest blog, which you can read here:

A Research Battle (and my delightful day at the zoo)

 Every writer will tell you how important research is. It can make or break a story. A novel set in history needs the right context to make sense, and a character that isn’t well researched, isn’t always believable. My wife, who works in marketing and has spent a good portion of her career as a copywriter, once reeled off facts about peat to me. To be clear, that’s peat, the substance that accumulates in bogs and out on the moors. She’d spent a week researching it and, to her surprise, she ended up finding it fascinating (I didn’t).

So, when I started researching for my first novel, We Are Animals, I was excited. I wasn’t going to write about peat (or indeed any type of turf), I was going to write about animals. This was the kind of research I could get on board with.

Chapter one. A crab. Not any kind of crab though; a sand bubbler crab, the type of crab that rolls sand into balls whilst scouring the sand for food. You wouldn’t believe how much information there is out there about these crustaceans. I lost a whole morning. Chapter one includes the line:

‘In both directions, he saw several gatherings of bubbler crabs, all rolling the sand into tiny balls behind them. That’s what bubbler crabs do.’

Later in the chapter it says:

‘I’m sixty-four!’ said the man, as a small wave washed away hundreds of the bubbler crabs’ small balls of sand.

One morning of research, right there in two sentences. To be fair, those sentences weren’t all that I gained from that research, I also confused a group of friends in the pub as to why I kept trying to drop sand bubbler crabs into the conversation.

As the book progressed, I learnt about different types of fish, the various religious beliefs surrounding cows and the eating habits of cockroaches. I also got invited to the pub less frequently. When I found that a sub-plot in the book required me to write about otters and their parental relationships, I opened google and typed ‘Otters’…

I called to my son.

‘We need to go to the zoo. It’s for research purposes.’ It’s strange, he doesn’t normally show much interest in my writing…

It turns out that the otters at Bristol Zoo Gardens are brothers. Me and my son watched them together. When one was in the pond, they were both in the pond, when one was relaxing on the little island, they both were. They seemed inseparable. We didn’t learn much about their parental relationships, other than that they leave their mothers around the age of one. After that we researched chips and a small helicopter that moves if you put a pound in it.

The zoo offered a boar, a quail and a rat to add to the book. In this instance, the research had changed the narrative of the book. It’s nice when that happens. It feels productive. (Often, the narrative of the book dictates what you research, and that’s why I spent a month reading various memoirs of everyday life in Soviet Russia).

Eventually, I put the final full-stop on the last sentence of We Are Animals. I sat back looking at the screen. It was an odd feeling. I’d spent four years writing the document in front of me, and four years learning about animals. What would I do with my time now?

I opened google and typed ‘types of cockroaches’ again. I wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

Two hours later I sat next my wife on the sofa.

‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘cockroaches can survive a month without food, and can survive underwater for half an hour. They can hold their breath for up to forty minutes!’

I looked at her expectantly. Why wasn’t she sharing my enthusiasm?

‘Forty minutes?’ she asked and then thought for a second. ‘Did you know that peat can burn underground for over a hundred years.’