Yes, we live on a boat – NEW!
Some time ago, I was let down quite badly by someone who had been a friend for something like 30 years. It was one of those friendships where there had been friction, but that’s something that is ignored in most friendships. On this occasion it became clear that the person was toxic to my mental wellbeing, and in any case was dropping the friendship like a stone. After a period of anger at disloyalty I felt really quite glad not to have contact.
The emotions surprised me, and I started to look at them dispassionately. Author mode took over and I applied some of the thought processes to the relationship between a man and his brother. The usual “what if…” came into play and soon I found myself writing about a rocky marriage – of which I have no personal experience, happily – and the waves – storms – that it causes on a previously placid lake of life. Combined with stress and a particularly tiring visit to the States for my main character it threw him into a mental breakdown.
A confession: here is where my imagination took over. Though I have endured stress because of someone else’s mounting business financial troubles, long hours and an overload of practical issues, I have never had a full-scale breakdown. So it maybe that my description of poor Jack Dyer’s reaction is unlikely, but I think it would be a possible reaction.
His sons’ part in the recovery process is based on the knowledge that good, grounded youngsters can be very focussed and extremely serious when it’s needed. Maybe this has been apparent in my other books too.
“Write about what you know” is an old saw. Well, I know the canal system pretty well, so I seized on a canal basin, an inland port, in Birmingham as a starting point. The advantage of Birmingham is that it has a cobweb of canals of its own, but is also a hub from which a boat can access almost every part of the country without going to sea. Given that the locks on most canals are just 7ft 2in (2.15m) wide but up to 72ft long, that’s probably just as well. We have experienced choppy conditions on the Tidal Thames, so seagoing seems a bad idea – though people have done it.
The danger was that the book could become a canal guide book. To avoid that I had to introduce some less than savoury characters, but to meet them you’d need to start clearing out the cupboard of my imagination, and maybe some old memories as well. I hope that the flashes of intra-family and other humour help to lighten the book, the more so as the story proceeds.