Writing the Dead Path
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My first page of notes on The Dead Path
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In late 2006, I had just finished a large consultancy job and had three months before our home budget dictated I needed to get back to work. I wondered if I should use the time writing job applications or a screenplay. Then struck the idea of writing a novel. I had newfound (read: blind) confidence born of winning a few short story competitions, but no real idea of how difficult or easy it might be … so with my wonderful wife’s blessing, I decided to give it a whirl. What kind of novel, though? I love so many genres. I decided to write what I thought would be most fun for me at the time: a ghost story. And I would set it in my home town of Brisbane. The old axiom says: Write what you know, and I know Brisbane; I’ve lived here all my life. Ghosts, check. Setting, check. But those two ingredients didn’t quite feel enough. Another element felt needed. So I read books and scratched around the Internet – rambled, really, because I didn’t know quite what I was looking for, what this missing element was. Either I found it, or it found me. It was a photo of a stone corbel in the medieval Bamberg Cathedral, Germany. This bracket was carved in the likeness of the Green Man. As soon as I saw that face made of leaves, I knew I had my missing element. The pagan deity that symbolises death of nature in winter and its rebirth in spring has found its way into churches across Europe, and into Asia as well. So many Celtic pagan rituals and celebrations were appropriated by the early Christian church that it was no surprise to see ‘Jack the Green’ in churches, but importing him into Australia was a fun challenge. This ‘wood spirit’ that has close resonance with the ancient Greek god of the wild Pan would inform the key setting of the novel, the 'woods': a large tract of rainforest tucked at the edge of the fictional Brisbane suburb of Tallong. An unexpected byproduct of the inclusion of the Green Man was the permission it gave me to include ‘magic’ into The Dead Path; magic that would become embodied by the witch-like character Mrs Quill. Quill was one of the first characters to form in my mind and I'm glad she arrived fairly much whole – after all, a strong antagonist is the key to many a good story. In my early notes I called her Cole, but Quill worked better once the theme of birds emerged. On the US cover, you’ll see a mutilated bird (it’s a lovely cover, despite the gruesome image; Michael Windsor at Doubleday rocks). This talisman features in a scene that falls about forty pages into the book, and it recalls something that happened to me when I was about the same age as the protagonist Nick Close is in that chapter. One of my routes home from primary school took me and my sisters (neither of whom were with me that afternoon) through a vacant lot. There is a retirement village there now. Then, it was a sloping expanse of dry, overgrown grass criss-crossed with walking tracks made by short-cutters like me. I used to find all sorts of oddments there, and still have a pair of pliers I picked up from the dust. But on this particular afternoon I found a dead cat. Its fur was orange, and all four of its feet had been cut off. The memory of it stuck with me, clearly; I changed the cat to a bird, because birds are at once more fragile and more enigmatic than cats. In the wake of the phenomenon that is Harry Potter, magic has taken on almost new meaning in fiction which, in some ways, removes it even further from our real world; which is, in some ways, is as it should be (don't we read to escape the real world?). However, I for one still think twice when walking under a ladder, and say 'bless you' when someone sneezes. What are these thoughts and words, if not a deeply buried belief in magic? Where the names of Ms Rowling’s magic are rooted in Latin, the sorcery in The Dead Path harkens to the same pagan roots from which sprouted the Green Man. I had fun researching Scandinavian and Germanic runes, characters that were overtaking by aforementioned Latin with the Christianisation of Europe. This was not just a form of writing; some ancient users believed these symbols were charged with magic. And I used two of them in the book: Thurisaz (related to the god Thor, from which we derive Thursday) and Ihwaz (meaning Yew Tree – nice tie in with the Green Man and the themes of the wood spirits). Oh, and I put spiders in the book. I harbour a lifelong aversion to the critters. Never quite a phobia, but I think you could see that border from where I used to stand. I don’t mind them so much now, but I still can’t sleep comfortably knowing one is loose in the bedroom. Before I started writing properly, I spent a few days making notes in a journal. The first page of my journal entry for what was then called The Ghost Man is here – if you can read my handwriting (don’t worry if you can’t; I struggle myself) you’ll see some of my notes made it in and some didn’t. Names were changed. But at the bottom is a précis of one of my favourite scenes in The Dead Path, when Gavin McIntyre (renamed Boye in the novel) visits Nicholas. This scene arrived in my head even before the character of Gavin’s brother Tristram, who plays an even more important role. The Dead Path took me about three months to write, and few more weeks tacked on for edits after feedback from my wonderful publishers. Receiving news from my lovely agent Selwa Anthony that Hachette was going to publish it resulted not in whooping and champagne-cork-popping, but a very odd feeling that I had come quite late to a very special party, in so doing missing some wonderful moments, and had best keep my eyes open if i didn't want to miss more. My absolutely lovely publisher at Hachette Vanessa Radnidge asked if I could come up with some alternative titles to The Ghost Man. Among options (including Samhain’s Child and Blood Mark) was The Dead Path. I still don’t quite know what its Chinese title translates to – I welcome anyone able to translate to drop me an email. But isn’t it a lovely cover? |
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