In writing my new novel “The Daemon in Our Dreams” I had the intention of writing a new sub-genre of the novel. I didn’t wish to write a novel with a setting; I wished to write a novel in which the setting was the novel.
Most of us like to travel, to talk to others about our recent trips, often to the point of boring our listeners, and we like to read travel articles and books. Look at the size of the travel section in any major bookstore, count the number of travel bureaus in a city, and notice the number of newspapers that have travel sections. There are innumerable travel websites, travel programs on television and radio, even travel networks.
For my entire adult life I’ve been a traveler not a tourist. I love to take notes on what I see and what I hear. We learn through travel. On an Alaskan tour a female guide said, “There are nine men for every woman here in Alaska. The odds are good, but the goods are odd.” But the male guides fight back in this battle of the sexes. One male guide up there said that he had a tee shirt made with inscription, “Girls, remember when you get back to the lower forty-eight, you’re going to be ugly again.” Another male guide said, “Here in Alaska, the men are men, and the women are too.”
In 1997 I took a ship, the Marco Polo, on a cruise from Singapore to Mumbai, India. Then it became a land tour to Delhi with a stopover in Agra to see the Taj Mahal. On my way back to the states I made a stopover in London-everything as it happened in the novel. Before I left for my Asian tour, I thought up the novel’s beginning and end, the plot, and the characters to fit my plot and setting.
I invented a hook to get readers into my story. In this case it was multiple assassinations, something bloody and violent to get the readers’ attention, to get them hooked. I was going to tell a good story, but mainly I was going to recount my trip to Southeast Asia. That’s why I say that the setting became the novel. The sense of place dominates the book. It is the place that makes the book, and it could not have happened anywhere else.
When I returned from my Asian trip, I had enough memories and notes to write a travel book, but that was not my intention. I wanted to lead my readers into my travel experiences in the guise of a novel. Originally the book was entitled “Last Passage to India” because it contained several references to E.M. Forster’s “Passage to India. The words “last passage” also seemed appropriate to the tragic plot of the book.
In my previous novel Nine Lives Too Many, a terrorist thriller, I used my novel to immerse my readers into the world of my beloved Manhattan. The city became, in a sense, the leading character in the book. The city became the force that drove the plot. The book’s characters could not have existed without the rich New York background.
It’s not so much what you see on a trip, but it’s what you smell and taste and particularly what you hear as you travel. You must be a good listener. You learn so much from your travel guides. You learn their pet peeves, their prejudices, their politics, and who their scapegoats are. Wherever you travel throughout the Pacific, you will hear guides bashing the Chinese. Almost everywhere the Chinese came to the countries as workers, coolies, and became rich and envied entrepreneurs because of their great work ethic. One Tahitian guide said, “The French bake our bread, The Chinese deliver it and sell it, and the Tahitians pay for it.”
From your fellow travelers you learn whether they can empathize with the people they see. You learn if they are well-meaning, feeling, generous, self-centered, pampered, or selfish. Maybe you learn that some of them are the ugly Americans we used to talk so much about.
In 1998 I made a South American trip which included a week in Buenos Aires and a two week trip around South America ending up in Valparaiso, Chile. In Argentina’s capital were the haunting melodies of the tango, the greatest steaks in the world, and a cosmopolitan city much like Paris. On the sea trip were the enormous penguin colonies, the wind-swept Falklands, the treacherous currents of Cape Horn, Chilean glaciers, and so many delights for the travel writer to recount.
I am now working on a novel called “Last Passage to Santiago” which again makes the sense of place the hero of the book. It has a gripping kidnapping hook, three-dimensional characters, vivid dialogue, but it is the setting that propels the narrative and the sense of place that is crucial to the book.
The stories that you hear as you travel are dying to be recorded, and the travel novel gives you an opportunity to share the humor you may come across on a journey. In Skagway, Alaska, a guide brought me to an old graveyard where Soapy Smith and Frank Reid were buried. Soapy Smith was the leader of a gang that terrorized the town in Gold Rush days. Reid shot Soapy and, in turn, was shot. On Reid’s grave is the inscription, “He gave his life for the honor of Skagway.” Nearby is the grave of a woman of pleasure. Her grave stone reads, “She gave her honor for the life of Skagway.”
With my sub-genre, the travel novel, I intend to tell good stories with narrative drive, have credible and believable characters, but entice my readers into the rich and rewarding world of the journey, the trek, the trip into a new world of smells, tastes, sounds, and sights.
About the Author
John (Jack) Rooney’s latest novel is “The Rice Queen Spy.” His first book was the thriller “Nine Lives Too Many” featuring his series detective Denny Delaney pitted against the arch-terrorist Felix the Cat. That was followed by the suspenseful “The Daemon in Our Dreams” a blend of the naturalistic and the paranormal. His work schedule includes “Clawed Back from the Dead” a new Delaney effort.
He was born and educated in Springfield, Massachusetts (Classical High and American International College), went on to receive a master’s degree in English from Columbia University, and finished course work for his Ph.D. at N.Y.U. He has written book reviews, and feature and travel articles for newspapers and magazines. He served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman in AWOL apprehension and in Times Square and Vienna, Austria.