Let’s talk research.
The Guardian of Lies
It sounds dull, doesn’t it? Dull, drab and dusty. Trawling through a never-ending pile of books and documents, trekking up to London to scour the hallowed shelves of the British Library. Jotting fiercely into notebooks. Not exactly a thrill a minute, right?
Believe me, research is the most fun-filled part of novel-writing. Because once I have been through all the books and the photos of my chosen setting for my new story, I toss my mozzie-cream into my wheelie case and off I go to explore. It might be Italy, France, Russia, the Bahamas or the captivating ancient secrets of Egypt. It’s time to get my hands dirty. To smell the earth and taste the local delicacies and literally lose myself in mysterious alleyways that lead … well, who knows where? I don’t plan. I go with the flow.
It usually starts well. When I land at the airport I proffer my passport with a polite smile and try not to look like a drug-donkey. I check into a comfortable hotel, no problem. Except for the time I dived into a creaky old lift – the cage sort with a grill for a door that snaps at your fingers - in an equally creaky Montmartre hotel in Paris. Halfway between floors there was an ominous clunk and the electricity shorted out. I was stuck. In the dark. For an hour. Merde!
But wait. It gets weirder. There was the time I stopped off at what was labelled a lavatory on the side of a Russian motorway – one of the hole-in-the-ground variety perched over a smelly stream. Yes, they DO still exist over there. Admittedly it was in the middle of a vast pine forest. But still. As I emerged I found myself face to face with a skinny pale-eyed wolf. We both froze. Stared. Showed our teeth. I don’t know which of us was more terrified. An oil-black crow dropped down from a branch, flapping its wings like a policeman breaking up a brawl. The wolf fled one way. I fled the other, and you can bet that at the next hole-in-the-ground I kept my legs crossed.
These things have a habit of happening to me, as if I slip down strange wormholes. On another occasion for research purposes I went up in a flimsy pre-war open-cockpit Tiger Moth biplane. My intention was to immerse myself in the authentic feel of the experience for The Betrayal in which my main character was a flyer. At two thousand feet in the air the pilot’s voice trickled through the intercom.
“Would you care to take over the controls and fly the plane?” he asked.
“Oh yes, please,” I heard my own voice reply. Aghast, my stomach did a handstand.
But Reader, I lived to tell the tale.
It was my research trip to Egypt for Shadows on the Nile that turned out to be the cherry on the adventure cake. As arranged, I was met at Cairo airport by an amiable long-faced man who shook hands with so many people over the next few days while guiding me around the pyramids and the delights of Cairo that you - like me - would probably be thinking how friendly Egyptians are. Until I discovered he was a drug dealer passing his wares and the police came knocking on my hotel door.
On the same trip when the Tahrir Square riots erupted around my ears right next to my hotel and the night sky burst into flames, I watched with open-mouthed horror. I was besieged by family text messages convinced my research had finally done for me. Yet only a week later I was aloft in a hot-air balloon floating majestically through an oyster-pink dawn over the somnolent desert at Luxor. A long-held dream come true for me.
But suddenly a man’s voice shouted from within the basket. “Crouch! Grab the rope! Don’t let go.”
I crouched. I grabbed. The balloon was descending much too fast. We hit the ground with an almighty crash and, with the basket tipped on to its side, we were dragged along at speed through a field of bright green sugarcane. I clung ferociously to my grubby piece of rope to stop myself falling out and didn’t let go. So yes, if you’re asking, I am still alive and I am planning my next research trip.
Another adventure? Bring it on. Where’s my wheelie case?
The Guardian of Lies by Kate Furnivall is published by Simon & Schuster on 31st October (price £8.99 in paperback)
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