A Little Fact, A Lot of Fiction by Deborah Abela
www.deborahabela.com
I am a coward.
I always have been, but I'm a coward who loves to be told scary
stories. Not a good fit, I know, but one that has kept me glued to
spooky takes over many, many years. From Bloody Mary, to the Flying
Dutchman and those spooky disappearances that have occurred over the
Bermuda Triangle, I loved them all and I guess from a young age it
wasn't about knowing had had occurred but the delicious possibility of
what could have happened.
For a writer, the idea of what if is a constant question, swooping
around in our heads like unruly magpies. It's how we operate every day
and fashion stories from a tiny miniscule idea. We look, we ponder, we
ponder some more and the beginnings of an entire novel emerge from
those wonderful lovely two words. It thrills and terrifies me even
after having written twenty novels.
Writers often start from a point of reality and fascination, and
meander or sometimes run from there to create their stories. My novel
Grimsdon began with my frustration about the reluctance to
believe the
science of climate change and became a book about flooded cities and
brave kids fighting sea monsters and evil harbour lords. Max Remy
started from real adventures I'd had, a love of cartoons from my TV
producing days and Mel Brooks' ever funny, Get Smart. The Ghost
Club
series was inspired by my love of Charles Dickens, which led me to the
discovery that he had set up his own Ghost Club in England in 1862. A
club that still exists today.
For Dickens, it began because of a belief in ghosts, of which he said
he saw plenty, but also from his enjoyment of the fact that not
everything in the world could be empirically explained.
This is one of the joys of writing . . . the possibility of what could
happen
next and where your characters could end up? There is a lovely moment
in writing where, instead of me directing the characters, they begin to
move by themselves. They talk and have conversations I'd never
anticipated, they may adopt a stance or attitude or share a belief with
another character that seems to come from them and not me. Peter Carey
calls this the osteopathic click, when all your hard work and thought
that has gone into a character creates a person who feels real and
fleshy, with all their faults and flares.
I borrow from people, too, to help create my characters until they come
into their own. It takes time and patience, throwing ideas and
sometimes characters out who just aren't working.
So from that group of men who came together to discuss ghosts, came my
discovery of them almost 150 years later and the question of . . . what
if I
created my own club that believed in ghosts and two of the youngest
catchers were kids? 11-year-old twins, Angeline and Edgar Usher and
together with a series of misfit characters they help to keep the world
free from pesky and sometimes bad tempered ghosts.
'You can pick on me all you like and tell everyone you know that I'm
weird, but what my family does is no more surprising than someone's mum
who's an accountant or dad who's a fireman. One fixes numbers, the
other fixes fires, our family fixes problems with ghosts.' Angeline
Usher to bully Travis from Ghost Club The Haunted School.
Small scribblings, a series of what ifs and another novel comes to
life.
Visit the next stop on Deborah's blog tour:
http://jackiehoskingpio.wordpress.com/
Did you miss the previous stop? See http://www.writingbar.com
To see all the stops on the tour see http://www.DeborahAbela.com
The Ghost Club picture source:
http://www.armchairparanormal.com/a-short-history-of-the-original-ghost-club/
Read our reviews for Deborah's books:
Grimsdon
The
haunted school
The new kid
The
remarkable secret of Aurelie Bonhoffen