Ask the Author: P.J. MacNamara
Answered Questions (15)
P.J. MacNamara
I don't know whether this applies to everyone that writes fantasy (in the broadest sense, not just with elves and goblins!) but part of the reason I write is because I want to take time out from real life. It's escapism. For me at least, reality and fantasy are always intertwined to some extent, but the truth is that in my opinion, any book based too closely on any aspect of my real life would turn out to be a bit of a downer, and who needs that? I don't want people to think I'm looking for sympathy or something, and beyond that, there is no denying that two or three billion other people in this world have probably suffered more rejection, failure, underachievement, pain, loneliness, disappointment, despair, injustice and so on than I ever will, so have I really got the right to complain? I don't think so. If you're going to single out something relevant and compelling from your life to write a book about it needs to have closure, resolution; it needs to end well in some sense, it needs to offer hope, show that a corner has been turned - it can't just stop abruptly for no good reason or linger on ad infinitum. In a book, there has to be something to gain from the suffering one endures, and in real life, sadly, one often gains nothing from specific incidents, except perhaps experience and wisdom. It's often been said that before you can write well you really need to have lived, and I think I can safely say I've done that, but the more unpleasantness and uncertainty I'm forced to live through, the less inclined I feel to write about any of it. I can only hope that the current chapter of my life ends more happily than most of the previous chapters did.
P.J. MacNamara
Like most writers, YES, I definitely am embarrassed about some of my early work, but, unless I forget to burn it all before I die, nobody is ever going to see any of that. I certainly won't be looking to have it published.
I think I've said elsewhere that YES, again, it is difficult mixing the old with the new because - even if you thought something was brilliant when you wrote it - 20 years later, when you've read it and rewritten it 100 times over, it seems trite, obvious, unsubtle, boring, derivative and all the rest of it. You have to have a lot of faith. If you thought it was good in the first place and you've spent 20 years improving it, logic dictates that what you have is likely to be better than it was originally, not worse. Someone who has never read a particular piece before will see it in a completely different way to me. If you look at it that way, everything in every book is on a level playing field.
I did toy with the idea of including the year of composition of each piece, if not on the individual title pages, then on the contents page, but in the end I decided against it because I think this work needs to be approached in a certain way, and to add those dates was contrary to my ideas about that. The dates are not a secret though. A 30 year period is covered in Book 1, from 1988 to 2018. In subsequent books I include a few things from 1987, and I was still writing new stuff for Books 3, 4 and 5 in the January and February of 2021.
If there are any particular dates you are interested in, just ask.
I think I've said elsewhere that YES, again, it is difficult mixing the old with the new because - even if you thought something was brilliant when you wrote it - 20 years later, when you've read it and rewritten it 100 times over, it seems trite, obvious, unsubtle, boring, derivative and all the rest of it. You have to have a lot of faith. If you thought it was good in the first place and you've spent 20 years improving it, logic dictates that what you have is likely to be better than it was originally, not worse. Someone who has never read a particular piece before will see it in a completely different way to me. If you look at it that way, everything in every book is on a level playing field.
I did toy with the idea of including the year of composition of each piece, if not on the individual title pages, then on the contents page, but in the end I decided against it because I think this work needs to be approached in a certain way, and to add those dates was contrary to my ideas about that. The dates are not a secret though. A 30 year period is covered in Book 1, from 1988 to 2018. In subsequent books I include a few things from 1987, and I was still writing new stuff for Books 3, 4 and 5 in the January and February of 2021.
If there are any particular dates you are interested in, just ask.
P.J. MacNamara
When I was about 12, in our English class at school we read a book called "The Phantom Tollbooth" which took place in a magical land I don't remember the name of now that was ruled by King AzAz The Unabridged. Like a lot of the books I read as a boy, I bought a copy of it a few years ago that I don't dare to read. I just feel happier knowing it's around somewhere.
It's hard to appreciate "The Phantom Tollbooth" at age 12 without having most of its incredible cleverness explained by your English teacher, but that land beyond it seems to me like the ideal holiday spot for a writer because it's so full of juicy puns, in-jokes, plays on words, and good ideas One can't help but be inspired by. I'm probably too old and world-weary to appreciate it now, but I remember it fondly as a new take on "Alice In Wonderland". As far as I remember you can get to that magical land in a pedal car, and you don't even have to ask your parents' permission.
It's hard to appreciate "The Phantom Tollbooth" at age 12 without having most of its incredible cleverness explained by your English teacher, but that land beyond it seems to me like the ideal holiday spot for a writer because it's so full of juicy puns, in-jokes, plays on words, and good ideas One can't help but be inspired by. I'm probably too old and world-weary to appreciate it now, but I remember it fondly as a new take on "Alice In Wonderland". As far as I remember you can get to that magical land in a pedal car, and you don't even have to ask your parents' permission.
P.J. MacNamara
I can't answer this question. But I very much wanted people to know you'd asked it.
P.J. MacNamara
You are quite right, there will be around 100 pieces in the Legacy Series in total, and I do have some particular favourites. I have been very careful not to put all my best eggs in the first basket because I didn't want the subsequent books in the series to disappoint anybody who enjoyed the first one. Some of my very best stuff is as yet unpublished.
Everyone will have their own particular favourites. That's only to be expected because we're all different and we all appreciate and resonate with different things. As the author it's slightly different for me, because I remember the circumstances surrounding each piece's conception and I remember how each piece changed in the pre-publication stages. My single greatest achievement ever as a writer, I think, is a piece called "As Easy As ABC", which is scheduled to appear in Book Three, and I'm also extremely proud of Book Two's "Love Will Keep Us Together", but chances are that neither of those will make the top ten in many people's lists. It's all about opinions. Some people will doubtless prefer pieces I slipped in almost as afterthoughts, such as "Fringe Theatre" in Book Four. Every book in this series contains several pieces I'm immensely proud of. My favourite from MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA is "In The Heat Of The Morning".
Everyone will have their own particular favourites. That's only to be expected because we're all different and we all appreciate and resonate with different things. As the author it's slightly different for me, because I remember the circumstances surrounding each piece's conception and I remember how each piece changed in the pre-publication stages. My single greatest achievement ever as a writer, I think, is a piece called "As Easy As ABC", which is scheduled to appear in Book Three, and I'm also extremely proud of Book Two's "Love Will Keep Us Together", but chances are that neither of those will make the top ten in many people's lists. It's all about opinions. Some people will doubtless prefer pieces I slipped in almost as afterthoughts, such as "Fringe Theatre" in Book Four. Every book in this series contains several pieces I'm immensely proud of. My favourite from MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA is "In The Heat Of The Morning".
P.J. MacNamara
I got bored with writing in third person and left it in my wake very early on (around 1990, I think). In my experience, what a person is thinking and feeling and believing at any given moment is often in total contrast to what they are saying out loud, and if you really want to get inside someone's head and heart and see what kind of a person they really are you have to BE them, not just observe them.
If you can be anyone, and you get bored easily, which I do when I'm writing, it's an obvious next move to put challenges in your own path. Putting yourself in someone else's place is always a challenge. Whether they are a different sex, different race, different mindset, different level of intelligence, whatever, it's always interesting to me. People are interesting to me. It's like dressing up. Put on a funny hat and a false moustache, walk with a limp and talk with a Scandinavian accent and it's easy to believe you're someone else.
As far back as 1988, people were reading some sexual ambiguities into my writing that never really had any basis in real life. I've never been gay or bisexual. I don't feel like a woman trapped inside a man's body or anything like that. But I have had a number of friends in what has become known as the LGBT community in the last 35 years, and pretty much all of them have asked me this same question you've asked. Yes, it does come quite easy to me writing as a woman. Yes, I enjoy it. And I think once I realised I had a natural aptitude for it I ran with that particular ball further than I've chosen to run with some balls that were a little less interesting. All my LGBT friends love Maria. She's become something of an icon, a standard-bearer for me, and I'm thrilled to bits by that. But there really isn't any more to read in to it.
Anyone who knows anything about astrology can probably sense the powerful presence of Venus at work in me. That's where my strong feminine side comes from.
If you can be anyone, and you get bored easily, which I do when I'm writing, it's an obvious next move to put challenges in your own path. Putting yourself in someone else's place is always a challenge. Whether they are a different sex, different race, different mindset, different level of intelligence, whatever, it's always interesting to me. People are interesting to me. It's like dressing up. Put on a funny hat and a false moustache, walk with a limp and talk with a Scandinavian accent and it's easy to believe you're someone else.
As far back as 1988, people were reading some sexual ambiguities into my writing that never really had any basis in real life. I've never been gay or bisexual. I don't feel like a woman trapped inside a man's body or anything like that. But I have had a number of friends in what has become known as the LGBT community in the last 35 years, and pretty much all of them have asked me this same question you've asked. Yes, it does come quite easy to me writing as a woman. Yes, I enjoy it. And I think once I realised I had a natural aptitude for it I ran with that particular ball further than I've chosen to run with some balls that were a little less interesting. All my LGBT friends love Maria. She's become something of an icon, a standard-bearer for me, and I'm thrilled to bits by that. But there really isn't any more to read in to it.
Anyone who knows anything about astrology can probably sense the powerful presence of Venus at work in me. That's where my strong feminine side comes from.
P.J. MacNamara
A lot of people who don't really know anything about astrology get angry and contemptuous at the very mention of it because it has a real stigma in certain circles and they feel embarrassed by association, but fortunately I was never brainwashed into being prejudiced against it by anyone. I'd heard of it, of course, and I knew that one or two of my elder siblings had shown an interest in the subject some years earlier, but the whole thing had completely passed me by until one day in the summer of 1987 I was talking to a work colleague about a difficult romantic entanglement I was having at the time and she asked me what our star signs were. I really was not expecting that. I told her, and she instantly summed up all my problems for me and explained them. I was dumbstruck. Over the next week or so I pumped my colleague for more information, and when she had no more insights to offer I went out and bought 3 books on the subject. When I'd read them and had my mind blown I sought the services of a professional astrologer and had my mind blown all over again. By 1989 I had become a practicing astrologer myself. I went as far into it and as deeply as I could over the next few years, and then I pretty much moved on. But it's always with me and it always will be. What I learned changed me and my perception of Humanity on a fundamental level. It's part of my DNA. I cannot imagine life without it and I feel deeply sorry for all those that deprive themselves of it. I am a keen student of Human nature, and astrology has enabled me to not only understand myself and my relationship to the outer world, it's allowed me to see things in others that most people are oblivious to. Astrology is the most useful tool in my box and if for some reason I had to manage without it I would be less of a man. Sometimes I think I'd rather lose my legs or my eyesight than lose what astrology gave me.
Being creatively inspired by astrology is a whole different matter. I think I would have to take a stab at 1998, when KILLING TIME ON THE OTHER SIDE was originally coming together.
It might interest you to know, however, that "Down There, Among The Stars", the oldest prose piece in MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA (written in January 1991,) was inspired by the "Wheel Of Fortune" card in the Swiss Tarot deck. I did dabble with pretty much all of the so-called "esoteric sciences" in the late 80s and early 90s, but for me, as interesting as things like numerology and the I Ching are, there is nothing that can compare with western astrology in terms of practical applications. Now it's all online, it's very different. The new ways of doing things have their plusses as well as their minuses. I think a lot of younger people who never had to do it all the old fashioned way with pen and paper can get too bogged down in detail and miss the message of the big picture. I am very much a big picture kind of guy, and astrology was just one step for me - albeit a very big step - towards a greater enlightenment, awakening, nirvana, transcendence, elevation, or whatever else you'd prefer to call it. I like to think I have learned what I needed to learn and moved onward and upward.
Hey! Who'd have thought this was going to get so spiritual, eh?
Being creatively inspired by astrology is a whole different matter. I think I would have to take a stab at 1998, when KILLING TIME ON THE OTHER SIDE was originally coming together.
It might interest you to know, however, that "Down There, Among The Stars", the oldest prose piece in MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA (written in January 1991,) was inspired by the "Wheel Of Fortune" card in the Swiss Tarot deck. I did dabble with pretty much all of the so-called "esoteric sciences" in the late 80s and early 90s, but for me, as interesting as things like numerology and the I Ching are, there is nothing that can compare with western astrology in terms of practical applications. Now it's all online, it's very different. The new ways of doing things have their plusses as well as their minuses. I think a lot of younger people who never had to do it all the old fashioned way with pen and paper can get too bogged down in detail and miss the message of the big picture. I am very much a big picture kind of guy, and astrology was just one step for me - albeit a very big step - towards a greater enlightenment, awakening, nirvana, transcendence, elevation, or whatever else you'd prefer to call it. I like to think I have learned what I needed to learn and moved onward and upward.
Hey! Who'd have thought this was going to get so spiritual, eh?
P.J. MacNamara
That's a great question!
I didn't have that many proper books as a kid. People used to buy me a lot of annuals. But I was quite advanced as a reader. They used to test us every year at primary school and I remember regularly being told I had a "reading age" that was 6 or 7 years in advance of my actual age. Fortunately we had some proper books at school, and we were visited by a mobile library too. I really did read a lot more than most of the children I was around until I was about 12. It tailed off a little after that, and by the time I was about 17 I hardly read at all. I became much more interested in music and film and that's really never changed. But I'm rambling. Sorry, I do that!
I remember teachers reading to us at school when I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old. There was a wonderful illustrated series about "The Giant Alexander", and "The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen" I still recall being thrilled by.
The first book I remember reading from cover to cover at home of my own free will was one of Michael Bond's Paddington Bear books. He was fishing on the cover, so I'm assuming it was "Paddington Bear Goes Fishing". I read that several times for practice between the ages of 7 and 9. I did the same with one of Enid Blyton's "Secret Seven" books (can't remember the title) and some little fairy tale books. By the time I was 8 (and I remember that because we moved house at that time,) I had read Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped". At around the same time we read a couple of the "Narnia" books in class, and then "The Goalkeeper's Revenge" and "Stig Of The Dump".
Other books I picked out for myself to read before I left primary school included "Snoggle", "Trillions" and "The Old Powder Line". When I moved on to secondary school the first book we did in class was "The Phantom Tollbooth".
I remember all these books with great affection, but in all honesty, being a writer never crossed my mind until I was almost 17 and studying A-Level English. I hadn't realised it would just be reading books and writing essays on them. Almost the entire syllabus bored me rigid. I needed some kind of a creative outlet, which was what I thought I'd signed up for. The lad sat next to me in class suggested I might try writing poetry. That was what he was doing, apparently. I thought it sounded like a stupid idea at the time, but look at me now!
Strange as it seems now, when I was a kid I actually wanted to be a dancer. Or maybe a scientist of some kind.
I didn't have that many proper books as a kid. People used to buy me a lot of annuals. But I was quite advanced as a reader. They used to test us every year at primary school and I remember regularly being told I had a "reading age" that was 6 or 7 years in advance of my actual age. Fortunately we had some proper books at school, and we were visited by a mobile library too. I really did read a lot more than most of the children I was around until I was about 12. It tailed off a little after that, and by the time I was about 17 I hardly read at all. I became much more interested in music and film and that's really never changed. But I'm rambling. Sorry, I do that!
I remember teachers reading to us at school when I was perhaps 5 or 6 years old. There was a wonderful illustrated series about "The Giant Alexander", and "The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen" I still recall being thrilled by.
The first book I remember reading from cover to cover at home of my own free will was one of Michael Bond's Paddington Bear books. He was fishing on the cover, so I'm assuming it was "Paddington Bear Goes Fishing". I read that several times for practice between the ages of 7 and 9. I did the same with one of Enid Blyton's "Secret Seven" books (can't remember the title) and some little fairy tale books. By the time I was 8 (and I remember that because we moved house at that time,) I had read Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped". At around the same time we read a couple of the "Narnia" books in class, and then "The Goalkeeper's Revenge" and "Stig Of The Dump".
Other books I picked out for myself to read before I left primary school included "Snoggle", "Trillions" and "The Old Powder Line". When I moved on to secondary school the first book we did in class was "The Phantom Tollbooth".
I remember all these books with great affection, but in all honesty, being a writer never crossed my mind until I was almost 17 and studying A-Level English. I hadn't realised it would just be reading books and writing essays on them. Almost the entire syllabus bored me rigid. I needed some kind of a creative outlet, which was what I thought I'd signed up for. The lad sat next to me in class suggested I might try writing poetry. That was what he was doing, apparently. I thought it sounded like a stupid idea at the time, but look at me now!
Strange as it seems now, when I was a kid I actually wanted to be a dancer. Or maybe a scientist of some kind.
P.J. MacNamara
There is something in what you say, to be sure, but I'm not quite that cynical. Just as important in my thinking were the size of the US population and the fact that practically all Americans speak English. As two of my leads are English and the third is a multi-lingual Brazilian, I needed fellow English speakers for them to interact with. Every time they went to a country where English wasn't spoken I found myself summarising instead of playing out scenes. It became tiresome and predictable. In due course I settled for three power blocks, one in the UK, one in the USA and one in Japan, with a few non-affiliated persons floating around in between. The USA group self-destructed early on but I saw to it that there were a few random survivors scattered across the globe. I managed to wangle it somehow that the Japanese group mostly spoke English too, if and when they did actually speak.
P.J. MacNamara
I started writing at someone else's suggestion when I was 16. I didn't start coming up with stuff I thought was really good till I was 21. I wrote really because I felt both compelled and obliged to. I got a real buzz every time I came up with something I had thought was beyond my abilities, but I can't say I ever really enjoyed it. Even now, at 54, with a book published, I'm still waiting for the appreciation, respect, kudos, and of course monetary rewards that I always thought I deserved. I have sacrificed just about everything to give myself this chance. There is nothing all that good about being a writer unless you're a SUCCESSFUL writer. Sorry this is such a downer, but it's the truth.
P.J. MacNamara
Wow, that's a good question! In the last year I have contacted her in three different ways to let her know but I can't say for sure if she received my messages. I have to try to slip them under the radar and it really isn't easy. It never was.
I intend to keep her name out of it and I'm not expecting any kind of a reward for that. If her identity ultimately becomes known somehow I will feel bad about that - and partially responsible too - but at the end of the day she is a big part of my story and it would not be the same without her. She knows that. I believe she has always been prepared for the worst, but so much water has gone under the bridge now that the worst is pretty insignificant in comparison to what it would have been way back when.
I intend to keep her name out of it and I'm not expecting any kind of a reward for that. If her identity ultimately becomes known somehow I will feel bad about that - and partially responsible too - but at the end of the day she is a big part of my story and it would not be the same without her. She knows that. I believe she has always been prepared for the worst, but so much water has gone under the bridge now that the worst is pretty insignificant in comparison to what it would have been way back when.
P.J. MacNamara
I was originally hoping to have book two out by the end of 2021 but for a variety of reasons it's now looking like summer 2022, sorry! It's about 300 pages. It goes further and deeper than "Man Struggling With Umbrella" (which I see as a "gateway" book) and it takes more risks. I have working titles for all the books in the series still to come but I'm keeping them under my hat for now. I have been very careful not to put all my best eggs in one basket. Believe me, the best is yet to come. Every book contains some new material. I wrote quite a lot of new stuff in January-February of 2021. There is only one "new" piece in book two (called "The Last Can Of Worms") and it's a couple of years old now, but there is a new foreword too. The subsequent three books contain more.
P.J. MacNamara
This is a tough question. I've been writing since 1983 and, apart from a couple of poems in the 1980s, I've never had anything published until now. I have perhaps been too unwilling to compromise, And I have definitely not submitted frequently enough because I find it very irksome when an agent hangs on to your work for nearly three months and then rejects it without a single word of explanation. Having said that, if I hadn't been snubbed and had the door slammed in my face so many times I never would have set myself the task I did. I went from poetry to songs to screenwriting to non-fiction, dipping into prose several times along the way, trying to second guess the market to some extent, trying to give them what they seemed to want without completely sacrificing my artistic visions, and it was only when I completely failed at everything and convinced myself (partially) that I really didn't care whether my work was ever read, let alone recognised by the world at large, only when I forgot about all the petty, annoying "rules" I'd been trying to follow, that I came up with something really original that I was really proud of and is now finally going to be available for real people to buy in real shops.
Does that actually count as advice? Perhaps not. So I'll end with this, that definitely is: Unless you have good reason to believe you are accidentally duplicating another author's work, don't take too much notice of what other people in your field are doing. If you're not careful you'll do a lot more reading than writing and you'll get so paranoid and depressed you ultimately might not want to write at all. There is a lot of competition out there, but THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU. You are unique, and somehow you need to turn that to your advantage.
Does that actually count as advice? Perhaps not. So I'll end with this, that definitely is: Unless you have good reason to believe you are accidentally duplicating another author's work, don't take too much notice of what other people in your field are doing. If you're not careful you'll do a lot more reading than writing and you'll get so paranoid and depressed you ultimately might not want to write at all. There is a lot of competition out there, but THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU. You are unique, and somehow you need to turn that to your advantage.
P.J. MacNamara
My first book is really just the first in a series of five that I have lined up, all of which are drawn from the same source material (an enormous unfinished trilogy I worked on from 1996-2014). I have made my plans for the remaining four books, ie what I'm going to put in each of them and in what order they will run, but I am taking a break from all that right now while I'm working hard to promote the first book, which is out on 10th December.
P.J. MacNamara
Having been a writer since 1983, with all the reading work that involves, I can't say I get much pleasure out of reading anymore. I tend to avoid fiction altogether. I'm more drawn towards non-fiction and poetry. But most of my inspiration comes from other art forms, especially music and film. I don't have a rational approach or any kind of a timetable for writing. When I'm inspired nothing can stop me. When I'm, not I do the more mundane tasks, like rewrites, and they often get me back into it unexpectedly.
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