The process of finishing writing
a novel is an oddly protracted sort of affair, a bit like the aftermath of
throwing a party. The last guest leaves an hour later than you'd really hoped,
but when you finally close the door it's over: the end.
In the same way, after six
months or so of partying with the characters in your novel, you finally write
the denouement, you think up the curtain line and type The End. You have a book (in this case The Fire Pit) and you've told your story. That's it.
Except it isn't really.
Just like the party, you still have the clearing up to do: the glasses to wash
(the copy edit); the empty bottles to recycle in the morning (the proofs); and
then – a long time later – the credit card bill comes in (publication day) for
all that beer and prosecco you bought for festivities you can now barely
remember.
Well, that's how it is for
me, anyway. I've never had much difficulty in wiping the details of the last
book I wrote from my memory and moving on to the next. At editorial meetings I've
been known to forget the names of central characters and who did what and why,
which can make people suspicious that I didn't actually write the book at all,
but maybe hired someone to do the hard work instead. Unfortunately, not so.
I think the memory-wipe
thing stems from years spent writing TV scripts, when there was no time to sit
back and ruminate on what you'd just written. Instead, as soon as the last
draft was complete, you'd be given a new brief and a new delivery schedule to
be met.
The same was true in some
ways of the Faroe Islands trilogy. For the last three years (longer if you
count the research time before I started writing) once one book of the series was
finished the next was there, waiting to be tackled.
Of course, given that the central
characters – British DI Jan Reyna and Faroese detective Hjalti Hentze – and
much of the setting remained the same in the books, moving from The Blood Strand to The Killing Bay, and then to The
Fire Pit was more like picking up where I'd just left off. True, the plots
and the crimes in each book are different and mostly unrelated, but I'd had all
three mapped out from the start so I suppose I never got to the point of memory-wiping
because what had happened before was still germane to what was happening on the
page now.
But more than three years
spent in the company of the same characters is a long time, so it's not unreasonable
when people ask if I'll miss them now that the party really is over.
Like most novelists, I
suspect, the truthful answer is both yes and no. When a character is familiar
enough that you can have fun writing them it's harder to let them leave than
the ones who are argumentative and awkward. You may even invite the entertaining
ones back again – once you've cleared up, naturally – but the others, not so
much.
What I will miss, though –
and without reservation – are the Faroe Islands themselves. I went to some
pains to represent them as accurately as I could in the books, from the high,
brooding mountains to the fog shrouded or sun-saturated fields and beaches, and
in the course of my visits there the place got under my skin. In many ways the Faroes
became as much a character in the books as the people I created to populate them,
but because the islands are overwhelmingly and dramatically real they've
stamped a very definite impression on me.
So, although the exact details
of murders, deceptions and who did what in the Faroes trilogy will inevitably
slip my mind now that I've moved on to a new project, it just so happens that a
Danish friend recently invited me to a reunion party in the Faroes next year. A
reunion with the islands is something I'd never pass up so I've already said
yes and it's in my diary. Not that I'm likely to forget.
The Fire Pit, the final
novel in the Faroes series is published this week. Together with The Blood Strand (2016) and The Killing Bay (2017) it is published
by Titan Books. Chris Ould is on Twitter @WriterChrisOuld
The Fire Pit by Chris Ould published by Titan Books
In
the wake of a dying man’s apparent suicide, the skeleton of a young woman is
discovered on a windswept hillside. Detective Hjalti Hentze suspects that it is
the body of a Norwegian woman reported missing forty years earlier, while a
commune occupied the land, and whose death may be linked to the abduction and
rape of a local Faroese girl. Meanwhile
British DI Jan Reyna is pursuing his investigation into his mother’s suicide.
But as he learns more about her final days, links between the two cases start
to appear: a conspiracy of murder and abuse spanning four decades. And as
Hentze puts the same pieces together, he realises that Reyna is willing to go
further than ever before to learn the truth…
