Northern District Times

Transcription

[pause] [applause] Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Thanks for coming out. I wanna thank the Toronto Public Library as well for inviting me here. I flew in from Calgary last night on the Red Eye, and actually before I start, let's talk about something that happened a couple of years ago. I was doing an event in Burlington, Ontario, quite a few years ago actually, with Stuart McLean and a fellow named Richard Buckman, who wrote a book Can We Be Good Without God? So, I had written Canadian History for Dummies at that point. So, I was a professional dummy. There's a lot of amateur dummies, but I was a professional, and so that was the lineup. So you had Stuart McLean, you had Canadian History for Dummies and Can We Be Good Without God? This was the lineup, and we were sitting on a kind of a raised platform, and the audience was looking at us, it was on a Sunday afternoon in Burlington, and Stuart leaned over and he whispered to me, he said, "Second row, first guy on the right," he goes, "That's the guy." I said, "What do you mean that's the guy?" He said, "That's the guy who is gonna fall asleep." [laughter] S1: So, there's always one, and they always sit really close so you can see them. [laughter] S1: So, here's what we do. We all put in $20, and if he falls asleep when you're talking, you have to give the other two $10 each. So, I was first. So, I thought I can't lose. I thought this is a mills lock. I can do this. So, I got up and I said, "Canadian history is a fascinating subject," and his head started to bob, he was starting to nod off, and actually later I asked Stuart, "How did you know that was the guy?" And he said, "Well," he said, "What you look for, is you look for an older distinguished looking gentleman, who is not talking to anybody, who is sitting beside a woman, who is talking to everybody." [laughter] S1: "Because that's his wife, and she's taken him there to improve him. So, that's why he's there." So, I was talking, and this fellow was starting to fall asleep, so I started to kinda clap into my microphone, I would say "Well, so that's why history really matters, and it's an important," and his head kind of jerked, and I kept him awake. I just kept this one fellow awake through the whole event, and then I sat down, Mr. Buckman got up, and said, "Can We Be Good Without God?" And he was asleep. The guy was gone. He was gone. And the strange follow-up to that story is that after the event was over, Mr. Buckman got up and said, "I'm terribly sorry, I can't stay to do signing or talk. I had to leave," he left, and Stuart looked at me and said, "Did he give you the money?" And I said "No, did he give you the money?" And he said "No." He said, "The man wrote a book on ethics". [laughter] S1: Okay. Anyway, so I wanted to get that out there before we start, and no pressure, sir, but there's money riding on you today. Okay? There's money riding on you, just to let you know. I'm gonna do... It's a very short talk today and a very short reading, 'cause I think we wanna do more question and answer, this is a good room for it. It's not dark, and I'm not looking into lights, and I'm not on a raised platform or anything. So, this is a great chance if you have questions or anything you wanna talk about. So, I'm gonna try to do just a short reading and a short talk. One of the questions... Other authors puzzle me. I'm puzzled by other authors. I don't know why they said... And one of the things that authors, when they get together, they complain like any job, right? You get together and you complain. S1: And one of the things that authors always complain about is when they get interviewed or even at parties or an event like this, they said, "Oh, people always ask me, where do you get your ideas? It's such a dumb question." I don't know why that bothers them. I know where... I find it fascinating where ideas come from. Sometimes you don't really know, but I've written three novels, and in each case, I can remember exactly where the idea for each one came. So, I'll quickly tell you just so you don't have to ask that at the end. [laughter] And I really don't know why that bothers authors so much, but just so you know, a lot of authors don't like it when you ask that. I don't know why. I don't know. So, if you don't like an author, ask that question. [laughter] S1: If I meet an author or somebody who's doing an event, I don't really like the guy, I'll say, "Where do you get your ideas from?" I'd been writing history and humour and travel. I walked... That was a good line by the way about "how else do you walk across Northern Ireland except in the rain," but I switched to fiction based on an off-hand comment by a publicist, just a comment that she made. And publicists, when they send you on a book tour so you have to go and do all these interviews and you're flying around, it's not at all glamorous, it's quite tiring and kind of strange, and they hire these educated young women generally to drive you around, and they are called publicists, and they're there to make sure you don't get lost and wander off, and make sure you actually show up. 05:17 S1: And when you're doing a book tour, you often meet the same author again and again because they're touring at the same time. So, with one book, and I think it may have been the Dummies actually, there was a woman who wrote a self-help book. She wrote a book on how to connect with other people, and wherever I went, I would run into her again and again. She wrote a book on how to connect with other people. I met her four times in three days, she did not remember my name one time. [laughter] S1: It's true. And I was so mad, I got in the car with the publicist and I said, "That woman's driving me crazy," and I said "She's mad," and she was "Yeah, self-help, you know, self-help authors have that reputation." And I said, "Well, why? Why are there so... Then there's so many of them, why is self-help... Why are there so many self-help books out there?" And she said, now I remember this, she said, "The reason there's so many self-help books is because they don't work." [laughter] S1: I thought that was brilliant. I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Well, if they worked, there'd be one self-help book." [laughter] S1: Right? You'd walk in. There you go. Thank you. And you'd be done. So I started to think, what would happen if someone wrote a self-help book that actually worked? That allowed you to get financial security, improve your love life, stop smoking, lose weight, empower your inner child, all that stuff. So I thought, well, it would be a disaster, it would be awful. The world would just grind to a halt. So that's where Happiness, my first novel, came from that idea. And, the second book... Speaker 2: Does it work? S1: Does it work? Yes, Happiness absolutely works. You should buy it. [laughter] S1: It's about a self-help book that works and then ruins the world. It destroys the world. And the second book came out of my dad. I had an older dad who grew up in the Dust Bowl of Saskatchewan in the '60s, in the '30s, sorry. And my father was suspiciously well-informed about con artists, which was never explained to my satisfaction. And he used to tell us stories about guys like Henry the Horse and Suitcase Simpson who could switch suitcases, and so I always, always, always wanted to write a book about this golden age of con artists. An education, a young man who gets educated as a con artist. And that's where Spanish Fly, which is my second novel, came from. S1: While I was researching Spanish Fly, I was reading up about cons, different cons, scams, swindles. And I came across a reference to 419. It said 419, and I was not interested at all. It didn't catch my attention, because it's an email scam. You know, "I'm the son of an exiled Nigerian diplomat, I need help moving millions of dollars into your bank account." So I wasn't interested, but there was a footnote. So this 419 really starts with an asterisk. Because there was a footnote and it said, "419 is the modern variation of the Spanish Prisoner swindle, which goes back to the Elizabethan era." S1: Now that got my attention. I thought, how can an email scam go back to Elizabethan era? It actually goes back to the Spanish Armada, 15... Someone will know, 88? Yeah, I knew somebody would know. 1588. And so even though England won and defeated the Spaniards, a lot of ships were... A lot of English noble men drowned, disappeared, died. And in the wake of the Spanish Armada, pen... Not emails, obviously, but pen and ink letters began to circulate. And if you read them, they're eerily familiar. They say, "Dear Sir, I am the daughter of an imprisoned English nobleman. We need just a little bit of money upfront to bribe his evil Spanish prison... Captors." S1: And of course, you give a little bit of money, then you'll be rewarded, of course, because he's wealthy. But then, wouldn't you know it, they get caught again. Then they have to escape, then they have to pay for passage to England. Then, oh wouldn't you know, there's more complications and more complications, and they... That's why it's called an advance fee fraud. The fraud is the money that you pay. They bleed you dry. So that's where 419 came out of. And my original idea was... My instincts are comedic, and my original idea was I thought, what if there really is this poor, Nigerian diplomat... [laughter] S1: Nobody will take his money. He's got 65 million dollars. These idiots won't take his money. But that fizzled quite quickly, and I started to research it. And the more I researched it, the darker it became. It's a very, very dark story. And I came across a man, a story of a man who embezzled a bunch of money from his church, a pastor. He thought he was helping somebody. Embezzled the church, killed himself over it. I thought, well, this is not funny in the least. And I found a story in England, a fellow who tried to kill himself by setting himself on fire, and failed, and didn't succeed, which in many ways is worse, I think. S1: So I started to read about the victims. And then I got interested in Nigeria. And I thought, well, what's the other side of the story? What's the other side of the mirror? And that's how 419 kind of took shape. And people often say it's a progression, not a progression, a digression, or a departure. But I'm gonna argue today that it's not. I'm gonna give you two short readings to illustrate this. Because I think, as authors, certain themes obsess you or fascinate you or grip you. Certain... You keep returning not necessarily to the same topic, but to the same themes. S1: So I'm just gonna a quick reading, one from Canadian Pie, which is an anthology of my humour writing and travel writing. And then I'm gonna read a short passage from 419. Canadian Pie is kind of... It includes the very first thing I ever wrote, which was a travel article in 1995 when I was living in Japan right up to the Olympics. Do you remember the closing ceremonies? The Vancouver... [background conversation] S1: Yeah, I was the head writer on those. So you remember the giant beavers and they're dancing, and voyagers and remember William Shatner? Yeah. [laughter] S1: In my defence, okay? [laughter] S1: Let's be clear on this, in my defence, as I discovered, there are the words, there's what you write for William Shatner, and then there are the words that he actually speaks. [laughter] S1: And there's really only a coincidental relationship between those, and they... And it's a very different process. They vetted it, and then they punched it up and they... At one point they brought in a guy from the Jay Leno Show to punch up my material for me, so it was very... By the time it was done, I barely recognized it. Although I did get a great date night, because they flew my wife and I out to Vancouver for the ceremonies. And as a writer I had nothing to do. I just watched while the performers were coming and going, and the producers were getting all nervous. And I was sitting across actually, there was the VIP booth was about from here to you, and it was jutting out. And it was... Harper was there, and the chiefs from the First Nations. S1: And I was watching, and I looked over and I thought... 'Cause they were giving us snacks, it's like a private booth, and they had peanuts there. So, I was looking over, and I said to my wife... And she's been... We've been married almost 20 years, I said, "You know... " She said, "Don't even think about it." [laughter] S1: And I said, "I didn't say anything," she said, "Don't even." I said, "No, I was just saying that... " I bet if I... [laughter] S1: I could like... Not for a political reason, just to... I would throw it, and then I would look away is what I would do, but I thought I could just throw peanuts at them all night. Anyway, which is I made a career out of doing that actually. So, Canadian Pie includes my original scripts, so if you ever get a chance when you're in the library, you can see what the original scripts were. They're very different than what you saw. So, this is me getting the last word, but today, I'm gonna read a passage about reading the Hardy Boys to my son Alex. I'm just gonna get a drink of water. [pause] S1: I'd been reading the Hardy Boys books to my son. Alex was 8 when we started, he's 10 now. There are approximately 98,000 books in the series, so by the time we finish, I figure he'll be reading them to me. Aside from their classic literary stylings, this is an actual quote from volume 10, What Happened At Midnight "I'm awfully sorry, Chet said apologetically." [laughter] S1: Let's just take a moment, and really appreciate the fine writing, "I'm awfully sorry, Chet said." How... How did he, "apologetically", okay. "The Hardy Boys books like all great literature raise more questions than they answer. Questions such as, 'What is it about the Town of Bayport that attracts smugglers so much.' It's often commented upon that in the world of the Hardy Boys, the worst one has to face is illegal importers lurking in the shadows, ready to evade regulatory government tariffs, at a moment's notice, usually with a hearty laugh, head tossed back, fist on hips. There are no financial meltdowns, no random terrorist attacks, no West Nile mosquitoes, no home invasions, no environmental carcinogens, no gang swarmings, just smugglers." [laughter] S1: "Less commented upon is the intelligence of said smugglers, especially as, mark this, they always get caught. You would think their word would have gotten out by now. You'd think there's got to be some sort of smugglers grapevine, ' Psst, whatever you do, avoid Bayport, pass it on'." [laughter] S1: "Equally odd is how Frank and Joe Hardy are always rubbing their jaws, and trying to figure out what's going on this time around, all these mysterious comings and goings, what could it possibly mean? Smugglers, I'll tell you right now." [laughter] S1: "You would think by now, every time a scowling man in an overcoat shouldered passed them on the street, Frank and Joe would look at each other, nod, and say 'Smuggler, we'd better nab him now.' My son, Alex, had this figured out by the third book. 'I bet it's the stranger who pushed past them on the street,' he'd say breathlessly at first, and then with less whim on each passing tale. Reading the Hardy Boys as an adult is very different from reading them when you're 10. As a 10-year-old, you say, 'Hooray, Mr. Hardy is away again. Frank and Joe will have to solve the case on their own again!' Whereas as an adult, you'd find yourself wondering about Mr. And Mrs. Hardy's marriage." [laughter] S1: "So maybe there's a reason Detective Hardy is always out-of-town on business." [laughter] S1: "For Alex, that doesn't matter. For Alex, The Hardy Boys are all about possibility. The possibility of adventure hidden in the day-to-day details of life. When you're 10 years old, life is an open promise, it's an age where astronaut, archaeologist/cartoonist is still a viable career path. The past is so small, the future is so overwhelmingly large when you are 10. I remember Alex at age 4, rummaging through the leaves, searching for lost treasure. These would be leaves that I had just raked 10 minutes before. And there's me, in spite of myself, hoping maybe he'd find something. Or Alex at age 3 sitting on my lap as I read him a story about a little boy who makes friends with a duck. Now the little boy visits the duck every morning at the pond, and one day the little boy gets sick and doesn't show up, so the duck leaves the pond and comes to the boy's house and goes up to the stairs to the boy's room to cheer him up." S1: "Alex became very quiet. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, 'How come in story books ducks and little boys are friends, but when we go to the park and I try to say hi to the ducks, they just run away?' Why? You wanna know why? Because life doesn't work that way. Because there are no little friendly ducks who come to visit you when you're sick. There are no smugglers lurking in the coast. There is no treasure hidden in the leaf pile except maybe what the neighbor's cat has left. That's not what I tell him, is it? That's not what I said. What I said was, 'Well, I think the ducks in the park are a little shy, how about some ice cream, you want some ice cream?' S1: "As a father, one of the hardest burdens you have to bear is the wonderfully heartfelt and wholly unjustified faith your children invest in you. The teenage years are coming, sure enough, and with them the inevitable discovery that far from being a paragon of manly perfection, I am in fact little more than a walking compilation of flaws and foibles, but not now, not yet. When I took Alex to the Calgary Stampede, he was 5 years old and wearing a hat with a plastic whistle. I wanted my son to see the bull riders and the Chuckwagon races. I hadn't thought about the calf roping. By the time the second calf had been yanked off it's feet and tied down, Alex was in tears. He said, 'Make them stop. Daddy make them stop.' S1: It's a burden and its a glory being a dad. It's the one time in your life when someone really believes in you. They really believe that you can stand up in the middle of a grandstand filled with 20,000 people and say loudly and firmly in the same manner as you'd announced, 'It's time for bed and no more dilly dallying.' He believes that you can stand up and say, 'This has to stop right now. I'm sorry but I am the dad and you have to stop hurting those little cows.' But I can't. I can't stop it any more than I can stop the pain from coming or the heartaches or the darkness from falling, or the sadder truths from dawning. All I can do, I suppose, is make the landing a little softer." Thanks. [applause] S1: And now I'm just going to read, just as to compare and contrast. I'm just gonna read the opening page, page of the book. So this is 419, and actually, does everyone kind of know this story? It's about a man who, her father... A woman, sorry, her father gets caught up in a 419 scam and she decides to track down the people she thinks is responsible for his death. So this is just the opening page and a half of 419. And as I read it, I think you will see the connection between the humour column on the Hardy Boys and the novel 419. I think there's... I don't... Myself, although the style and the tone maybe different, I think it's clearly the same author and the same concerns. S1: "Would you die for your child? This is the only question a parent really needs to answer. Everything else flows from this. In the kiln baked emptiness of thorn bushed desserts, in mangrove swamps and alpine woods. In city streets and snowfalls, it is the only question that needs answering. The boy's father, knee deep in warm mud was pulling hard on fishing nets that were splashing with life. Mist on green waters, sunlight on tidal pools. S1: Chapter one. A car falling through darkness, end over end, one shutting thud following another. Fountains of glass showering outward and then a vacuum of silence collapsing back in. The vehicle came to rest on its back at the bottom of an embankment below the bridge, propped up against a splintered stand of poplar trees. You could see the path it had taken through the snow leaving a churn trail of mulch and wet leaves in its wake. And then into the scentless winter air, the seeping odour of radiator fluid, of gasoline. They climbed down on grappling lines, leaning into their descent, the lights of the fire trucks and ambulances washing the scene in alternating reds and blues, throwing shadows first one way and then the next. Countless constellations in the snow, glass catching the light. S1: When the emergency team finally arrived at the bottom of the embankment, they were out of breath. Within the folded metal of the vehicle, a buckled dashboard, a bent steering wheel, more glass and in the middle something that had once been a man. White hair, wet against the skull, matted now in a thick red mud. 'Sir, can you hear me?' His lips were moving as the life poured out of him to wherever it is that life goes. 'Sir.' But no words came out only bubbles." Thanks. [applause] S1: One of the questions that they ask you is, "Do you write for yourself or do you write for other people?" This is a question, "Who do you write for?" And I think the answer... I don't think we really have a choice. I don't think authors, if they're honest, really have a choice or should have a choice, I should say. I think what you write, what you write about, you write for yourself. It's the things that hold you. We all have things that grab us and hold us. How you write is for the reader. This is my rule of thumb is that what I write about is for me, how I write it is for you, is for the reader. Because you have to convey that to the reader. And you have to always keep the reader in mind. S1: If you reverse it, it can easily become very self indulgent or esoteric. If you reverse the order. If how you write it is for yourself... Or if how you write it is for yourself, it's very easy to become either self indulgent or esoteric. If what you write is for the audience, you become your on the brink of selling out or writing stuff purely for the market. Being market driven. And a lot of authors do a very good... Earn a very good living doing that. So you can write what... You can decide, "I'm going to... What I'm going to write about is for the market." I don't do that myself. S1: I think I'm going to open it up for questions then. I think, like I said I will keep that part of the afternoon kind of short. So if people have any questions other than, "Where do you get your ideas from?" [laughter] S1: I had one guy do that once, those smart-ass guys. "Excuse me, where do you get your ideas?" So please don't do that. But any other questions. Yes? S?: I've, uh, I've read the book and enjoyed it and certainly value that you've written. I feel much more educated about Nigeria which I appreciate. My question is, and you obviously did a ton of research, and forgive me if in your narrative you alluded to this. S1: That's Okay. S?: What... Are there... Is there a typical profile or two or three profiles of those people in North America who do actually get fished into these scams? S1: There is. There is very much. Could everyone have... Do you want me to repeat his question? Could you hear? So he's asking me, how did you get so good looking? [laughter] S1: I am summarizing, right? I am summarizing. No, no. He is... He is... He was asking if there's a profile of a kind of a classic victim in 419? And actually there is, and Henry, the father, is based on a kind of profile. This very common, it's often a retired... It's often seniors retired. Often I don't... I mean, I can guess why, but often it's people involved in like churches, pastors, people who have... Member of a small community who have access to funds. No one's really... There's no real monitoring or auditing. A retired shop teacher would be a classic profile of a victim. They often target seniors. Is your husband retired? [laughter] S1: Actually, it's great to know that, because I've got this, I'm sitting on $60 million. [laughter] S1: And I wanna put it in your bank account. But that actually... And what happens is... Oh, actually, have you read the book? S?: Started. S?: Just started. S1: I was gonna ask you if it's accurate, how he portrays being a retired shopkeeper, 'cause I am not a retired shopkeeper. But the reason they target seniors, and the reason they do that is seniors tend to be more trusting, they tend to be from... They don't slam the phone and hang up when you start... 'Cause they do pester you with phone calls, too, that's what people don't realize, it starts on the Internet, but it moves into the phone very quickly. They badger you, and they tend to have be sitting on savings. They tend to own their own home which they... They will steal your home. They will take your home, because they will run you into the ground, and then what they do is they throw you a lifeline at the very last moment, just when you can't take anymore, they say, "Look, we've cleared it all up, here's a check for... " So he's pumped in $40,000, here's a check for $100,000. Take about 50, pass the other 50 back, and of course it's a forged check. S1: And people don't realize that clearing a check doesn't mean the check is real. If your bank clears a check, what that means is they can get the money from you. That means that they have looked and, "Yes, if this check is bad, we can get the money back." That's what clearing a check means. It doesn't mean that... They are not criminal investigators. They don't go in and say, "This is, oh this is a real check," and they often will put errors in the tracking codes, on those checks that they take a while to... 'Cause eventually if you get caught, this is a fake check. And they'll do errors in there, so that they know it gets held up at some clearing house. And then gets moved to another office, and that somebody has to sign off on it, so they drag it out. 26:37 S1: And what happens is of course now you're in the hot for $50,000, and you'll end up taking out a second mortgage in your house or re-mortgaging your house. So they do tend to target seniors. So if you have a relative who mentioned something, or is excited about something on the Internet, then be really aware, be really, really aware of that. No, it can happen to anyone. One of the most heroine accounts was a young engineering student in the UK who got taken for everything. I read his... He wrote a book about it. And he was a young tech savvy guy. So most of them are tech savvy. What happens is even, if you click on that email and say, "Leave me alone," or "You got the wrong guy," well then they've jumped. Because today it's very, very easy to create a profile of you. I could probably find anyone here, and if I got your name and knew just a little bit about you, I could put together a profile. And I saw emails. S1: The emails in the book are cut and pasted from real case studies that the police gave me. And even like the one where... One guy got taken in, because he was a fellow bird watcher. He got an email, "I'm a bird watcher, too. I've always you know I've always wanted to see the," whatever it is, "Red Breasted sap sucker in South Carolina too," and they had, they built up this relationship on bird watching with this older fellow. Because he was just Googling birds and agreeing with whatever he said, and then, well you know what, he had an accident, he was in Indonesia, and he had to send the money right away, and anyway. So there is... Unfortunately, Henry is very, very typical. He is a very typical case. S?: Can you describe how you deal with your creation of thought, do you have a critical paths for example, if you take Laura and the two Nigerian principals, and have a rough outline about how they are going to do eventually and why at the beginning, or is that something much the same as character development, or it evolves over the you develop the plot about how they are going to get together... S1: Yeah, he is asking how do I create a through line, a plot through line for each character, like how do I develop the plot? And it's a good question, because plot is really undervalued, I don't know why. Go to creative writing classes, they always have a character development, and themes, and plot is so crucial, that's the skeleton that you hang the story on. Huh, sorry? [laughter] S1: So yes I spend... My background was originally, when I studied in university, was screen writing. So they... And screen writing is so disciplined, it's so unforgiving and it's all about structure, it's structure and dialogue and you don't... You can't... It's so... The structure is... So it's like writing a sonnet in poetry you can't fake it, you can't argue your way out of a... You can't write a one-line sonnet, and you can't write a 50-page sonnet. There's structure and form you have to conform to. So I outline... I have coloured... Habits I picked up in film school, so I had index cards, so Laura is like green and Nnamdi is blue, and then I write up their stories. I wrote all their stories separately. And then I kind of outlined them. S1: It was a 80... I should have brought it today. It's an 85-page outline that I did. I spend more time outlining a book than writing it. The reason is, one, that's the cure for writer's block by the way if you are wondering. Writer's block is jumping in when you don't really have an idea where you are going. So I... There were days, there's often days where I don't want to write, almost every second day actually. But I sit down, and when I... Specially in the middle of a book and like, "Ah," so you flip it open, "Oh, where am I? Oh, this is the scene where Nnamdi's father falls in the swamp and goes blind." Ah... If I don't wanna read it, I could skip ahead. But usually I try to write, I kinda try to stick to it. But I'll write it. I might not even do a good job, but it's there on the page. I don't... And then I'm done. I figure, "I thought through that scene today." And some days if I really don't feel like writing, I'll skip ahead, look for a really short scene, and I'll write like you know those little one... You know every time you see a chapter that's one paragraph? Those are a day that I really didn't want to write. [laughter] S1: So I do, I structure it out and I lay it out all over the floor. My wife thinks I'm crazy. She comes home and goes "Aw, this again?" Because it'll be all over and I'll have... 'Cause you don't want a bunch of blue and you try to... And you look, you just look kind of free associate. So if the police officer, the officer's looking at the bridges that lead into Calgary, well then you can use that visually to go to the bridges in Lagos, into the... That type of thing. So you look for if Laura's mentioning her dad... And the images come out of that. You don't start with the motifs and the images. So, as I was writing, Nnamdi's father was a storyteller. So I thought "Why, shouldn't I have a scene where Laura's father tells her a story?" So, he tells her about Rapunzel. I don't know if you remember that? S?: Yeah. S1: He tells her the story of Rapunzel. And Laura says, "Why didn't she just climb down? Why didn't she tie her hair and climb down and cut off her hair and run away?" And that's great. You reveal the character and you also... So now you have an image of towers. And I realized Laura lives in a tower. She's Rapunzel. I just... It's right there in front of me, I didn't realize. So Laura is the girl in the tower. And Brisebois is the prince who... She doesn't need rescuing, but he wants to rescue someone who doesn't need rescuing. Poor guy. I know that feeling. [laughter] S1: Every man knows that feeling. So, the images come out of the plot, what I'm getting at. And then, so now when she's in Lagos and she's looking out the window, you add towers. So she's looking at the tower, and it becomes a search light. She's still looking at the airport tower, remember? And she's... There's... It's just an image. It's not like a key plot point. But that came out of... Now I recognize that there's a tower, that Laura's tied with towers and being alone in a tower. So, I will go back and will be rewriting around that. So, I think plot is primary. I really believe that, that theme and stuff comes out of the plot and you don't get writer's block. It's... S?: But it's evolving. It doesn't... S1: Oh no. You keep moving it around constantly. Yeah. Yeah. And you go back and rewrite stuff. Like, for example, near the end I went back. I went way back and added the scene where the 20... I don't know how many people read it, but you know the $20, she's at the stampede? My editor kept saying, "Will, you haven't signalled." 'Cause I thought it was clear with the, "let justice be done till the heavens fall," that Laura has this really rigid, actually limited, she doesn't think so, but limited view of what justice is. Laura has this image. And my editor said, "You haven't set that up, Will. You haven't set that up." So this is near the second draft of the book, or third, way late in the... I said "Well, what can I do?" S1: Anytime you're trying to solve a problem, if you can solve more than one problem at the same time, that's good writing. If you can solve... So I thought not only will I explain that, I'll show relationship with her dad. I'll also reveal her dad. So, the scene with the $20, for those who don't know it, she's in the Calgary stampede and they're standing in line for the doughnuts, and she found $20. And she tells her dad, and her dad makes her go down the line and ask everybody, "Did you lose $20? Did you lose $20?" And some teenagers go "Yeah, that's ours." [laughter] S1: "Thanks." And it's obviously not theirs. And it really bothers her. And she says, "That wasn't their money." And he says, "Probably not, but it definitely wasn't ours." And so in his mind, the difference between probably and definitely. So, that's something that came out later. That's a plot point that I added much, much later. So yeah, you evolve. It's not rigid but you do... I do lay it all out on the... Like I said when my wife comes home, she always... She hates that sight. And I put it on the walls and I try to look... Try to alternate the characters. 419 was really tough 'cause of the plot, 'cause there was really four stories that went like this, and it was really, really tough. S?: Well, just coming off that comment, that's... And what you said earlier about how you write is for the reader. One of the things I loved so much about this book was the way you had these separate characters and their stories all came together to really make a point about the global politics of oil. And it was much better than any kind of didactic lessons about the... S1: No, you don't wanna preach. You don't wanna preach. S?: You know like these... It was just... I loved that about that book, was the way the people's lives and the ramifications for each of these individual's lives went back to this central... S1: Yeah. That was... And living in Calgary, we're very much aware of that as well. So, I was talking about the way the characters interconnect, the stories interconnect and... Well, thank you for that. It was a lot of work, and... I mean, Laura's a copy editor and she talks about how life is... She's trying to sort out life. So the book starts very fragmented. And it's kind of funny, the one thing I find that I've had people say to me, "Well I... It was strange. I didn't know how these stories were gonna connect." But I thought, "Well, trust the author. He put it in for a reason." [laughter] S1: I was kind of... That was like, "Clearly, if we jump from Calgary to a woman in the desert, there's a reason." And surely... And the ideas that these lives are... The ideas as a reader you think, "Well, what is the connection between someone in the Delta, this boy in the Delta, in this oil ruins landscape, this woman from the Sahel, this kid... What's the connection?" And that's kind of the point. These lives are incredibly connected. They're directly connected and they all come together in that. So, I mean, give the author some faith. Put faith in the author that there is a reason why we're in the Delta now and not in Calgary. S1: There was someone in the back, yeah. And then I'll get. She's asking about the sense of place. Travel writing and screen writing are great disciplines towards fiction. Travel writing, you have to be aware, you're constantly aware of the place. You're evoking a sense of place through description, trying to look for that telling detail. You're not... Travel writing is great for that. It teaches you... I was at Mount Royal University, just doing guest course, just a guest lecture and I told the students there, I said, "Description is not about... You're not explaining a scene. You're evoking it. You're making that person feel, hopefully, what you feel." S1: "If you're writing description and it feels like you're describing a photograph, that's bad writing." For example, this room, you wouldn't say, "Well, there was two doors on one side and the windows faced left. There was a podium... " That doesn't matter, that's a photograph. You want to explain the energy of the room and the feel of the room and you take a checklist of the senses. When you're travel writing, you're always doing a checklist of your senses, the smell the sight, what's hitting you first, what are people doing? As a travel writer... I'm always amazed when I read travel writing where it looks like it's empty. They're in a piazza in Italy and they explain the architecture, I say, "But, there was no one there? It was empty?" [laughter] S1: "You were there on the... " So, travel writing really came in handy. It is fiction though. This isn't a travel book about Nigeria and there is... So far, we've isolated two errors. I'm quite proud of this, two mistakes in the book. Those are not water buffalo. Those are African buffalo. Thank you, I've got lots of emails about that. If one of you wrote me that email, thank you, I know now, because they were called buffalo. But I've been in Okinawa and I've seen them. They're huge and they're water buffalo. And I saw a photo of what was in Nigeria and I assumed that was a water buffalo. It's an African Buffalo. So, that type of thing and also there is, by the way, for any of the gentlemen in the audience, there is, I do know, there is no such thing as a Pontiac Oldsmobile. Please stop writing me emails. [laughter] S1: We've fixed it. We've fixed it in the paperback. We fixed it quickly and it's... Oh man, I've not received a single email or letter from a woman saying... Because even if they know, they don't really care. So, the first notice I got about that as I was, "Really?" I did research with the police officers. I went around with Collision Reconstruction Officers in Calgary. It was great. It was like being a little boy, like driving around with the Police. It was the best day ever. I drove around and we drove around looking for a place we could kill somebody because they were trying to find... And actually, it was fascinating for me, because they're empirical minded, these collision reconstruction. And I will get to the point, yeah, it just ties in. They look at an accident scene, just a mangle of metal and then, in their mind, they unwrap it. They kind of go back and they're completely fact oriented, these guys and they're brilliant at what they do. S1: And they asked me, I said... What I want to talk about? "I want an accident where this guy dies and it looks like an accident but there has to be something." And they told me what they look for, by the way, that second set of tire tracks, that was from the police. That actually happened, that happened once. So, I don't know anything about collision reconstruction or police investigations, so, they said, "Where was the accident?" I said, "I don't know. Like a road, with maybe an embankment," and they said, "No, where was the accident? What was the address?" I said, "Well, I don't know, like a hill." They said, "What hill?" I'm like, "Well, like it could maybe be a curve." "What curve, where is the place?" So, we drove around Calgary and we ended up on Ogden Road. That's a real place in the book. You can stand there and see exactly what they see. And Ogden Road comes on the 50. There's a sharp corner and they said, "You know, if the car had just missed the guardrail, he would go over," and they would say... They argued like it would turn like two or three times. And in the book "he goes two, maybe three times," that's why. [laughter] S1: So, I was covering my bases 'cause one guy said, "No, it would flip. It would hit over." And as we're standing there... Actually, it was a blistery day in January, this car came flying down and fishtailed and the cops go, "Ah!" They said, "You almost got lucky," that's what he said, "You almost got lucky." [laughter] S1: But anyway, in my interviews, I ask them, what would an... They say, "Who is the victim?" I said, "Well, it's an older, retired fellow," and he says, "Oh, so driving a big car." And he said, "Pontiac, Oldsmobile," meaning, Pontiac or... I don't know anything about cars, so I transcribe my notes. I have them transcribed for me because I don't type very well. So, they were transcribing and it comes back, as she didn't hear the comma either, so it comes back as, me asking, "What type of car would you drive?" "Oh, Pontiac Oldsmobile." So, not knowing that's like saying Toyota Honda. "He was driving a Toyota Honda, a famous Toyota Honda." So, it's now changed to an Oldsmobile Cutlass, thank you. So, please stop sending me emails about that. I do know now that Pontiac and Olds... There's no such thing as a Pontiac Olds... S?: I was interested in the fact that when you read the opening part of the book, that was the part that interest me throughout, the whole idea, what a parent would do for a child and it was very clear to me, in the case of the character of Nnamdi, that what a parent would do for a child and would you die for a child? Would you kill for a child? Can you talk about the other parent/child relationships and where you saw that working there? S1: Well, my editor, the first thing my editor pointed out to me, was that all the Dads die in this book. She thought I was very cruel. All that... The nicest people die. I just spoil it for anybody who hasn't read it yet but she said, "Couldn't you kill one of the a-holes? Couldn't you kill one of those guys?" But unfortunately, in life it's the Nnamdis of the world who dies. It's not the Winstons. The Winstons survived. The Warrens, her brother, Warren and Winston are kind of mirror images. They survive. Those are people all... They do okay, it's the Nnamdis who don't. And the question, yeah, 'would you die for your child?' Because, I'm assuming women lie too. I don't know, maybe not. But men lie, we lie all... "Oh, I would die for you. Honey." You would not die for your wife, you wouldn't die. You say that, "Oh, I will die... " S1: But you would die for your child. That's the only person and that's amazing, huge epiphany when that hits you that you'd actually die for this person, this little person, you would die for them. That's an amazing thing and I don't know... Like I said, because we say that to our spouses, "Yes, I would die for your, honey. I would die for you." There are cases where, you know, in a pinch but... [laughter] S1: And maybe I would, I don't know. I shouldn't say I wouldn't, I don't know. I shouldn't say I wouldn't. I might, I don't know but definitely with my kids, I would. But then I thought well, that's... What's... The harder question is, would you kill for your child? So, let's take it up a notch. Would you kill for your child? And that's what Nnamdi has to face, right? Would you kill for your child? So the book is about parents. It's about fathers, specifically. In the book, fathers figure very big. Nnamdi's father, Laura's father. S?: What about Winston's? S1: Oh, Winston's parents. Well, one thing... Actually, that came out of an interesting thing. I said, I didn't want Nigeria... I didn't want... I want to present upper middle class Nigerians because they live on Victoria Island. They're very well-to-do. They're very anglophiles. So I put them in there and, you know, Winston's father was... I never thought of him as a major character. That was my favourite scene to write, by the way, the dinner scene? S?: Yeah. S1: I like that because one of the other rules in screen writing, they tell you is if dialogue is about what it's about, you're in trouble. That's bad dialogue, if it's on the nose. If someone... If you wanna show that this person resents this person, and this person always loved this person, and that person says, "I resent you," and he said, "I've always loved you," that's bad writing. That's called on the nose writing and it's not good. So, if the dialogue is about what it's about, that's not good. So why I enjoyed that scene, is on the surface, they're just talking but there's all these agendas underneath. Her mom's trying to marry Laura off. Laura's sparring. Laura's slowly tightening the noose on Winston, and about halfway, he starts to get a tingle that something's wrong. And you realize that the power has shifted. And I don't know why, what this says about me, but I love those moments when the power shifts. For people who've read Happiness, I don't know, has anyone read Happiness? So you read... You remember at the end with the trailer, he goes in with... The young guy goes in with the old man? S?: Yeah. S1: I thought of that as a boxing match. Edwin lost the first round. He went outside, remember? And he comes back in. It's an old guy in a trailer park and it's a battle of wills. And when he realizes there's nowhere to spend the money in this town, all the power just shifts. He comes back in and he goes, "Where's the money?" Remember he comes in? "I spent it. I blew it all. I didn't care. Spent it on women and wines." "No, you didn't. Where's the money?" Like he knows there is something more. And I love those moments when everything shifts, when the power shifts from one character to another. And that's what happens during that dinner, is that it shifts to Laura. Are we up till 1:30, is it? I wanna make sure. Am I late? Am I over already or not? S?: No. S1: Okay, no. We got lots of questions. The lady here and the lady here. We'll start here, I think. Yes? S?: I just wanted to ask you the second most obnoxious question that has been asked, and that's what country are you getting interested in now? S1: Oh, I'm going to Rwanda in... She's asking where I'm going next? S?: Your next book. I can't wait for your next book. S1: It's a travel memoir. I try to switch between fiction and travel. The anthology in between and there was a little Christmas book I did but generally I do... The big projects are Beyond Belfast, also Happiness, then Beyond Belfast, then Spanish Fly, and then Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, I think, and then... So I go back and forth. So the next book is a travel memoir based in Rwanda. I'm going to Rwanda with a friend of mine whose family got wiped out in the genocide. But we're gonna write a fun book about Rwanda. We're gonna get a big SUV. It's called Road Trip Rwanda. It's gonna be... We're gonna... We're not bringing in the wives. We're gonna go... It's gonna be him and me driving around. The mountain gorillas are there, where Dian Fossey was there. And I think this lady here. Yeah? S?: This is a comment, not a question. I found that your explanation of the whole politics of the oil companies and what was going on in Nigeria really... It really clarified all the different parties, the oil companies, the people, and everything that was going on. And also, with respect to when I was reading it that what was happening in Algeria was happening at the same time. So I thought it was extremely timely and really shed light on politics. S1: Oh, thank you. She was saying that, she found the picture of the politics of the oil industry in Nigeria. Well, that was something I didn't know about until I started writing it and I was horrified. I was just mortified. I think... Who is next? In the back? Yes? S?: Hi. Katimavik, by the way. S1: Katimavik. Yes. Fellow Katimavik. Katimavik was a youth volunteer program. Going through Katimavik is like going to Vietnam. You see, like veterans, "I was in 'Nam too, man. I was representing." [laughter] S?: I have a question. First of all, before I ask the question, I thought I'd let you know, I'm one of the original members. 14 final warnings and six TTIs. S1: Are you serious? Like, you guys are out of control. That's like a code about what... Sorry, I should explain. She's talking about what her group did, which makes my group look... S?: These aren't actual numbers, though. S1: Oh wow, okay. S?: Yeah. I just thought I'd let you out there. So a couple of questions. First of all, that was my first book of yours, so I think every Katima-victim reads it. S1: It's a book I read. It's out of print now. It's called I Was A Teenage Katima-Victim. S?: That like initial... That's the initial book of yours. Everyone who read your books who's from Katimavik, that's the like initiation run... S1: So many people start with that book. It's funny. It's like the gateway drug to my books. [laughter] S?: So first of all, I guess, Katimavik-related, if the federal government didn't pull it off, would you let your children go? S1: Oh yes. S9: Would you push them and make them have their own... Be Katima-victims? S1: I don't know if I'd push, but I would certainly encourage. My niece went on it. My niece was on the last Katimavik before it got cut. She was on the last... She was a star 'cause I was her uncle. They all had the book. So, no, I would definitely put my kid in Katimavik. Katimavik, I should explain, that was based on my journals and I... Over time, and I wrote it when I was 19, and over time, I kind of put rose-coloured glasses on and then I went back to my original journals and I realized how mad I was all the time, and all the conflicts over there. I'd forgotten about that. So when I went to write it, I decided, "Are you gonna be honest or... " Like how I remembered it is much more positive than being in there. So... S?: I was reading parts of it last night and I was just cracking up, 'cause I was like, we just compare notes 'cause I kept a journal of it too and yeah. So my other question is, I've read books like Happiness and I've read Spanish Fly, so how do you think you've evolved from your earlier works to 419, how do you... S1: Well, I'll give you a short answer, 'cause I think we're... I'll give the short answer, how have I evolved from the earlier writing on. This is a strange thing to say but when you start out... I mean it's a craft, so hopefully I'm getting better every book, hopefully, you try to hone your craft. You try to... Every book, you try to improve what you're doing. I'm still not where I want to be, I'm still like... Every time you start out with a book you have the idea and it's never quite as good, not quite what you wanted it to be. But when you start out early on, you have this weird mix of arrogance and insecurity. It's a very strange mix. So, you know, my writing is, "No, don't muck about with my writing, don't edit it", you won't brook any editorial changes or suggestions. And yet, you're also very insecure about it. And as I go on, I become more confident about my writing, but I've also become more open about changing it. So, I think it's more personal evolution than an artistic, I'm not sure. I think there's one more question? Do we have time? S?: Okay. S1: Or is it 1:30? Is it done? S?: Okay, uh if it... S1: Just how you've slowly come out, so I'll just... Yes. She's been waiting. She's been waiting and waiting. S?: I know, I'm just always inter... What... I would like to know who you... Who are some of your favourite writers, fiction-wise? S1: So, she's asking what my favourite authors are. S?: Well, yeah. S1: I read way more non-fiction than I do fiction, I should confess, first of all. There's, I'll quickly answer, I'll answer this very quickly 'cause I... But there's actually there's two ways to answer that. There's two... There's authors that you like and authors that influence you. And it's a little different. S?: Authors you like. S1: Authors, I like Milan Kundera a lot. But he hasn't influenced me, I don't think. I don't see a lot of Milan Kundera in my books. I love Milan Kundera, you know, The Unbearable Likeness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. His later stuff got a little bit... He needed an editor later [laughter] because Slowness, I just... That was aptly named book Slowness. But then there's the writers that influence you, like Pierre Berton or Bill Bryson, who I also admire. But there's books you admire and that you try to emulate and there's books that you just admire. S1: Probably the one single book, I'll end with this book, 'cause it's a book that no one knows about. It's the one book that influenced Katima Victim and has influenced me more than any other stylistically, it's called Red Sky at Morning, by Richard Bradford. Red Sky at Morning, it's brilliant. And if you read it, you're gonna say, "Well, wait a minute, this is... " 'Cause you'll see how, especially my early writing, how much he influenced me, Richard Bradford. He only ever wrote two books, but Red Sky at Morning. And we'll end there, thanks so much. [applause] Thank You for choosing Scribie.com Cross-check this transcript against the audio quickly and efficiently using our online Integrated Editor. Please visit the following link and click the Check & Download button to start. https://scribie.com/files/2a944d94576ca10f602d566f4b32480390a4a04d Will Ferguson - eh List - April 16, 2013 ND 04/23/13 Page 1 of 19