I don’t write from a premise. I generally start with two or three (usually incompatible) ideas that are bugging me and then ask: How can I build a story out of this mess?
In this case, the ideas were:
- The possibility of armed civil strife in this country not unlike the Troubles that afflicted Ireland from 1970-1998.
- The “wondrous and strange” atmospherics of Irish myth, specifically the Fenian Cycle featuring Finn mac Cumhal (Finn McCool).
- “The love that dare not say its name,” i.e., genuine Platonic love between a man and a woman.
It’s often said that you should write about what terrifies you, and the possibility of violence to achieve political ends here in the United States genuinely causes me no small degree of angst.
There are a lot of guns in this country, many of them owned by people who believe the right to keep and bear arms is a right to armed opposition to the government and the law. As absurd and unconstitutional as that notion is, it still animates a considerable segment of the population, and it doesn’t take a lot of people to create a great deal of havoc in the way of assassinations, kidnappings, intimidation of voters, poll workers, court personnel, teachers, etc.
Specifically, if car bombs enter the picture as they did in Northern Ireland—and Oklahoma City—we’re in for a very dangerous time of uncertain duration.
But I didn’t want to write a book grounded only in terror. I wanted to expand the story with not just historical precedent but a sense of the mythic. The Fenian Cycle in particular contains numerous stories of internecine conflict, from betrayals to battles. I wanted to show how the kind of conflict we’re facing not only has historical precedent but has a mythic resonance as well, reflecting a deeper sense of what it means to be human through the magic of the old stories.
Given that, no one should be surprised this is a journey tale—specifically a cross-country trek with the country descending into violent civil war, with our intrepid couple, Shane and Georgie, in search of their personal Grail: a book Georgie wrote as a gift to her professor and lover, who then viciously broke off the affair, sending Georgie into a deep, depressive tailspin.
The professor then published the work as his own and it became an international sensation—as well as the inspiration for a video game that has become a watering hole and recruiting venue for militia members and other malcontents performing some of the worst atrocities in the national conflict.
Beyond the external challenge of making it all the way to California from Philadelphia to confront the plagiarist, Georgie struggles with her susceptibility to depression and the lack of self-confidence that goes along with it. She also needs to believe that everything they endure to expose the truth is worth it.
For Shane, there’s an element of his past he must fiercely keep secret, and as aspects of that past surface in the course of their journey, Shane has to face squarely what his real motives are for remaining so devoted to Georgie.
I got the idea of the purloined book while writing my last novel, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday. I did a lot of research on forged artworks and was somewhat astonished by the degree to which forgeries of all kinds pass for authentic in the general marketplace.
The fact the forgery occurs when Georgie is being treated in an asylum echoes what happened to my favorite American painter, Ralph Blakelock. He too spent time in a mental hospital, creating such an opportunity for charlatans that he became the most frequently forged painter in American art history.
Finally, I’m something of a missionary on the subject of male-female friendship. I weary of the sad old trope that every time a man and a woman in a story have feelings for each other it represents either a romance-in-waiting or a failed romance in search of rekindling.
Men and women can indeed be friends, despite what the “romance” naysayers claim, and I agree with Epicurus that friendship is an “immortal good that dances around the world.”
It’s also the human bond most compatible with democracy—in contrast to the patriarchal family—which brings us back around to my fears concerning violence and our political system. We could use a lot more friendship and less raw exercise of power in our lives. If my humble little book helps bring that point a little further into the cultural forefront, I’ll consider the writing of it time well spent.
David Corbett is the author of seven novels, which have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar®. His second novel, Done for a Dime, was a New York Times Notable Book, and Patrick Anderson of the Washington Post described it as “one of the three or four best American crime novels I have ever read.” His latest novel, The Truth Against the World, is out now. Corbett’s short fiction has twice been selected for Best American Mystery Stories, and a collaborative novel for which he contributed a chapter—Culprits—was adapted for TV by the producers of Killing Eve for Disney+ in the U.K. His non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Narrative, Writer’s Digest and other outlets. He has written two writing guides, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible”) and The Compass of Character; and he is a monthly contributor to Writer Unboxed, an award-winning blog dedicated to the craft and business of fiction.
