Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "david"

David Liss is the author of classics of historical fiction from his Edgar Award-winning debut A Conspiracy of Paper, which was rooted in his academic studies, through the fabulous tale of the Portuguese Inquisition and the Amsterdam commodities exchange, The Coffee Trader, and on into his compelling portraits of real historical figures like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in The Whiskey Rebels. It has always seemed to me that his masterful use of the historical mystery allows him to get to the heart of political and social issues that remain with us today – anti-Semitism, the morality of finance and of punishment, and much more. That’s why I asked him to tell me about his Writing Life. It turns out a lot of it takes place while most writers are asleep…

How long did it take you to get published?

Even though it felt like a very long time while it was happening, the process actually went very quickly. I sent out a ton of query letters and received a ton of rejections. About the same time, however, an old friend of mine published her first novel, and she offered to show my manuscript to her agent – who then became my agent. After that things went very quickly. I started sending out my first letters in March of that year. I had a contract in August.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

When I teach creative writing, I often use On Writing by Stephen King, though part of the reason I use it is because -- while he says some very smart things about writing -- I disagree with about a quarter of the advice he gives. I think it is important to recognize that there is no one right way to do things, and that in the end the only real rule is that each writer should do what works for him or herself.

What’s a typical writing day?

I am an early riser, and I can only do my best work in the AM hours. These days I get up at 4, go to the gym, come back home and get the kids ready for school. I drop off my daughter and go to a coffee shop with my laptop and write until about noon. After that, I spend the day running errands and doing research.

The Whiskey Rebels is the only book I’ve ever written under deadline, and at once point I realized I had far more work to do than I had time to do it in. I started getting up at 3 every morning, working until the children woke up, getting them off, and then having another writing session. I ended up doing this for a year, and though it was a hard year, it was also a very productive time.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?

The Devil’s Company will be published in July. It is essentially a novel about the 18th century origins of the modern corporation. In this case I am writing about the British East India Company at a moment when it has to change its entire corporate model. We tend to associated the East India Company with tea, but in the early 18th century it was best known for its textile imports. In the 1720s, Parliament finally caved to pressure from the native wool and silk-weaving industries, which were suffering from having to compete with cheaply made foreign imports.


Like several of my previous novels, this one deals with a pivotal moment in economic history, but I also like to emphasize that I don’t write dry, ponderous books. I see my first responsibility as entertaining the reader, and I always do my best to write a story that is engaging, exciting, suspenseful, often funny and filled with engaging characters. My second responsibility is to say something worth saying.

How much of what you do is:
a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?
Some, but not much. I don’t write within the genre mystery format any longer because I found it too constricting. I consider what I write now to be more in the thriller camp, and the only real requirement of that genre is that the material be fast-paced, exciting, and suspenseful – which I think ought to be true of pretty much any traditional narrative.

b) formula you developed yourself and stuck with?
I primarily write historical fiction, but that is always my choice. My publisher may not like it, but they know I will always write what I wish to write. I probably could have made choices early in my career which would have made me a more commercial writer, but I feel very lucky that I can make a living doing what I love, and I get to write the books I want to write. Also, I am very open to branching out. I recently wrote a short story for an anthology about zombies, and I just finished my first comic book script for Marvel.

c) as close to complete originality as it’s possible to get each time?
Some of my books are entirely unlike any of my other books. The Devil’s Company will be my third novel with a continuing protagonist, Benjamin Weaver, but while the first two were very much like genre mysteries, this one is not. I do not reinvent the wheel each time, but never want to be guilty of writing the same book over and over again.

What’s your favorite sentence in all literature, and why?

I don’t really believe in exclusive favorites, but one thing that comes to mind is the final sentence of Paradise Lost:

The World was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

I know it is a sign of mental illness, but I love Milton, and I think this is the most powerful conclusion to any long work in English letters.

Who’s the greatest stylist currently writing?

My vote is for David Mitchell.

Who’s the greatest plotter currently writing?

No one does the twists and turns better than Harlan Coben. Sometimes his choices verge on the totally implausible, but he provides such a great ride that I honestly don’t care.

How much research is involved in each of your books?

Depends on the book. If I am writing about 18th century Britain, I’ve already done most of the leg work, and those books only require specific research into the particular topic of the book. If it is set in a different time and/or place, then I have to learn an entirely new culture, and that is a fairly demanding and time-consuming process. I always like to do enough research to get me to the place where what I don’t know is no longer keeping me from writing the story I want to tell.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character?

Novels almost always begin for me with an idea for an opening scene. I think of something dynamic and exciting, and then I try to decide who the characters are who would inhabit this scene and the world in which it belongs.

What’s your experience with being translated?

Right now I have to say pretty good. I am writing this interview at an outdoor café in Piacenza, a town in northern Italy, where I am attending an arts festival. I became involved with this festival thanks to my Italian translator, one of the organizers. I’ve been translated into about 2 dozen languages, and I do better in some countries than others. Someday I would like to be translated into Icelandic, but so far, no luck. I have a theory that if I include a character from a particular country in a novel then the rights will be picked up there. The only one of my novels to be translated into Turkish, for example, is The Coffee Trader, which includes a very minor Turkish character. I plan to put an Icelandic character in my next novel in order to test this theory.

Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before could make a living at it?

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to live off my writing since my first book.

How many books did you write before you were published?

I attempted a novel right after I graduated from college, but it was really, really bad. A Conspiracy of Paper, my first novel, was the first book I tried to write when I gave it another shot ten years later.

What’s the strangest thing that happened to you on a book tour?

Once I flew into Milwaukee and as soon as I got to my hotel I went out for a run. It was a beautiful day, and I was running by the water, so I lost track of time for a while. When I decided I needed to return to my hotel in order to get ready for my reading, I realized suddenly that I did not remember how to get back to my hotel or what its name was.

What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?

I plan to publish all my weird ideas.

I don’t like soccer, but I do have a soft spot for David Beckham. Let me explain.

My father-in-law told me the other day he was looking forward to relaxing in front of an American football game. The New York Giants were playing another group of steroidal mutants. Though it was the end of the season, eight teams were still in for the playoffs. “So the games have some meaning,” said Ike.

Of course, I know about meaningless occasions—I covered the Mideast peace process for more than a decade. I saw what Ike was getting at, but it made me think about the way we search for meaning in life.

Which lead me to David Beckham.

Some of you (New York Giants fans, for example) may have no idea who he is. Well, he’s a soccer player. His teams: England, Manchester United, Real Madrid, and presently the LA Galaxy.

Some of you (Giants types, again) may have no idea what the LA Galaxy is. Frankly neither do I. They play soccer. Not so very well, compared to Manchester and Madrid, but well enough to make the final of the US Major League Soccer thingy this year.

What’s a nice boy from the East End of London doing prancing about in a second-rate league in a country that traditionally requires its major sportsmen to be either 300 pounds, 7-feet tall, chewing-tobacco addicts, or toothless? (You know which sports I mean.)

The answer: he’s having a bloody good time.

I made the connection recently while heading through Rome’s Termini rail station. The main concourse was plastered with enormous billboards pushing a particular brand of underwear. Sporting their skivvies, tanned to an unnatural degree, from platform 1 to platform 25: David and his distressingly ferrel wife Victoria, probably the least interesting of the group of singers once called The Spice Girls. (The most interesting ones have, since splitting up the group, appeared on the London stage and claimed to have fathered Eddie Murphy’s love child.)

David, or “Becks” as he’s known to British tabloids, squeezed his chunky little abs and had his hair slicked down for the photos. He looked like Herman Goering’s wet dream. Right down to the strange traces of a Hitlerian mustache and the feathering of pubic hair creeping over the top of his tightie whities.

My first instinct was to be thankful that Israel’s train system is so bad I never find myself on a station concourse, forced to regard the posturings of ill-educated millionaires and their over-priced grape-smugglers.

But as my train rumbled south to Naples, I reconsidered.

I like the fact that Becks has, essentially, put football behind him and gone off to ply his trade in a country where his celebrity is all he has. Only when you’ve left the youthful urge to “compete” can you uncover what really makes you tick. In my case that meant ditching journalism for fiction; for Becks, it was dropping out of European soccer.

He isn’t competing for “meaningful” goals like the European Champions League. He played in the final of the MLS, but to most of the world’s soccer buffs that’s somewhat less important than women’s beach soccer.

It’s a sharp contrast to his former teammates who slog through the English winter for the chance to get kicked black and blue by the best defenses in Italy, while enduring a spray of spittle and swear-words each time they approach the “fans” at the sidelines.

No one wants to see them in their underwear.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that Becks has something in common with we International Crime Authors on this blog. We’ve eschewed the traditional writing route (whatever that is, but it seems to involve going to the University of Iowa—no, thanks) and we often write about obscure places and un-American people that make our agents groan. That is, as Colin Cotterill wrote here last week, heroes who can’t reasonably be played in a movie by anyone on the Hollywood A-list for reasons of ethnicity. (Though my wife maintains Al Pacino would do a good job as Omar Yussef, my Palestinian detective.)

And so Becks has taken himself off to a place where he can live a life more interesting than the one he left behind. Not a smart career move, many journalists wrote, when he crossed the Atlantic. Like writing a novel set in the Palestinian town of Nablus, which apparently is a gap on the map to most Americans.

So I say, Becks, try putting together a slim volume of noir. Throw in a few lines about “heading south on La Cienaga,” dropping in at a boutique on Rodeo Drive, and winding along Mulholland for a party at Madonna’s place. Some nude sunbathing with Nic Cage on a deck overlooking the beach at Malibu. Oh and it’s a mystery, so don’t forget the victim: maybe a former British pop singer found dead in Emporio Armani underwear, preferably in the first chapter before we have to hear her speak.

Do this, and we’ll be prepared to offer you a spot as a guest blogger.

As for me, I’ve been working out, swimming, doing some pilates. What about a contract for underwear modeling? I currently wear Celio, but I’m prepared to endorse a wide range of “banana hammocks.” Offers to the comments section of this blog, please.

In the documentary “Imagine,” John Lennon comments that his song “Starting Over” was a message to fans his own age in which he aimed to ask them: “Hey, how’re you? Weren’t the Seventies a drag? Let’s hope the Eighties will be better.”

If John had lived on through the Eighties to experience the decade just gone, I’m sure he’d have used a stronger word than “drag” to describe it, and it would’ve been an adjective that came easily to his lips. The noun, however, would’ve been harder to place in that sentence.

What to call the first decade of this century has been the subject of numerous articles, all of which seem to me to reflect a desire ultimately not to name the decade at all. To forget it. To put behind us its litany of disasters (Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina), terrorism (9/11, Madrid, London, Bombay, every third city block in Pakistan), war (Iraq, Afghanistan, the intifada) and assorted horrors (Depression, Darfur, Dick Cheney).

Op-eds opine about whether to call these 10 years the “Aughts” (an American-English misapplication of the word “nought”) or the “Naughties” or the “Zeroes” or the “Ohs.” But no one seems able to name the decade authoritatively.

That desire to forget suggests to me that the secrets of this last decade – the nastiness lurking beneath its ugly surface, the things we’d like to escape simply by refusing to name even the time in which they took place – will be perfect material for fictionalized history in years to come.

I’m thinking in particular of the kind of books James Ellroy has written about the Sixties and Seventies or David Peace about Britain in the Seventies. In “American Tabloid,” “The Cold Six Thousand” and “Blood’s a Rover,” Ellroy mined the suspicions we all had that Kennedy was really a poonhound murdered by the mob with the FBI’s connivance, that Martin Luther King went pretty much the same way, and that a group of drug-taking, pinko-fearing psychos were the engine of history, rather than people like John Lennon.

The first decade of this century seems to me prime Ellroy territory. Halliburton, Blackwater, rendition, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security all seem geared toward the secret, second history that makes Ellroy’s novels so fascinating. And the characters? Wouldn’t you like to know what really drove the recovering addict who stole the world, and what he heard from the tight lips of Uncle Dick?

In the case of Ellroy’s style, which involves using real public figures, writers have to wait for them to die, so that they can’t sue. That could hold things up. My money is on W living to be a hundred and being laid to rest in a casket made out of one of the last trees, while bloggers tweet their tributes directly into our “iFrontalcortexes.” (If I’ve violated an Apple trademark here, I apologize. Sorry, iApologize.)

So I’ve tried to get rolling on the job of fictionalizing this decade early – to show, through the prism of fiction, what really happened, and what the newspapers missed.

My series of Palestinian crime novels is intended to show the reality of life in the West Bank and Gaza during the intifada. To unveil the tribal conflicts and the battles over corrupt cash that truly dictated the course of the “uprising.” To contrast with coverage by news journalists who only got at the tip of the real meaning when they portrayed it as a struggle over a “peace process.”

I used real characters – their names changed either to protect them from attack, or to protect me and my sources from reprisals and law suits – to show the very things that journalists, who use “real” named figures in their work, failed to demonstrate.

Next month, the fourth book in the series will be out. THE FOURTH ASSASSIN takes my Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef abroad for the first time — to New York. My aim is to examine the way the West looks at Muslims and how Muslims become marginalized or turn to extremism. To confront what we all know to be the most important issue of the decade that dare not speak its name.

You won’t find Dick Cheney in the book. But his fingerprints are all over it.