Ask the Author: C.G. Fewston
Answered Questions (6)
C.G. Fewston
If I am not writing, I am reading. Reading has helped me to write more times than anything else I know.
C.G. Fewston
The best thing about being a writer is getting to work with words and characters and stories and imagine and sit back and watch.
C.G. Fewston
Write. Write. Write. Read. Read. Then Write Some More.
C.G. Fewston
I am writing a Young Adult novel about Obsidian Pinchbeck, who is a normal eighth grader interested in magic when one day he discovers his Beginner’s Guide to the Hocus Pocus Manual has actual spells and powers.
When Obsidian and his friend Madi, from Kazakhstan, return to the bookstore to get some answers about the magic book, they find that the book had once belonged to the immortal German alchemist, Comte Saint-Germain, who—until his unexplained disappearance in 1784—dined with kings, manipulated metals and pearls, and who maintained an amazing youthfulness; Voltaire even once remarked that the alchemist was someone “who never dies.”
Obsidian and Madi then begin to uncover more mysterious clues each time Obsidian uses the spell book, until finally Obsidian’s destiny is revealed.
When Obsidian and his friend Madi, from Kazakhstan, return to the bookstore to get some answers about the magic book, they find that the book had once belonged to the immortal German alchemist, Comte Saint-Germain, who—until his unexplained disappearance in 1784—dined with kings, manipulated metals and pearls, and who maintained an amazing youthfulness; Voltaire even once remarked that the alchemist was someone “who never dies.”
Obsidian and Madi then begin to uncover more mysterious clues each time Obsidian uses the spell book, until finally Obsidian’s destiny is revealed.
C.G. Fewston
Why I Write
There is a true memory I must set to paper, and though I have failed many times to do so, I will try once more.
It must have been in the late 1980s and I was no more than eight years-old. It was to be our family winter vacation, and it was the first one I can recall. We had lived in Brownwood, Texas then and we were still a close family—that was a time before the divorce—and love still filled the home with laughter.
The trip began by meeting relatives in Andrews, Texas and then all together driving overnight to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the ski trip. The adults were warm in the front of my dad’s gray truck while the children were freezing in the back of a camper that was strapped over the back of the truck’s bed. The children had on many sweaters and shirts, and sleeping bags and blankets covered them in attempt to retain heat, but the cold was too intense the closer we drove toward our destination. I remember the cold as yesterday: it was the first time I had to endure a thing of Nature I could not control. It was not long after the children began to complain that an adult opened the truck’s back window to allow the main compartment to warm the children in the back, and as the hot air surged through the back camper the feeling of snugness quickly brought sleep. Back then no one considered the dangers of a bunch of kids in the back of a truck driving up an icy roadway. I suppose that was the beginning to my luck: a balance of good and bad, but alas I am a Libra.
When we arrived in Santa Fe and I escaped the camper I opened my young eyes to a brand new day and to a two-story log cabin; it was then that the longing began in me to live far away in a cabin covered with snow, but the desire to write still had not come.
The day we all went skiing I had wanted to stay behind in the cabin and enjoy it all to myself, but my parents refused. I’m not sure why I had wanted to stay there. I felt compelled, perhaps, by a future memory or my older self and I wanted the feeling to last. I didn’t stay, and that is just the beginning.
At the mountain slope, after everyone was geared up to ski, my parents left me in the guardianship of my older brother and sister; there also was an older cousin, and he has since passed away, God bless his soul.
Since everyone was in full ski gear it was very difficult for me to recognize who was who and so I tried to match color coats with faces, but it soon failed my untrained mind.
After a time of playing on a practice ski lift I had found my dear-hearted companions had vanished and the sky beginning to release soft petals of snow. I looked around and could only see masked people and calling out names became useless. By this age I was familiar with being abandoned by my older siblings, but never in a strange land with so many harsh conditions to face alone. Utmost, they had left me to die in earnest efforts of their own personal pleasures, and I suppose that feeling of separation with all mankind set in there and then and stayed with me. I became lost to my family and to this world.
After a great long time of crying and not knowing what to do, it seemed like an hour or more, my instincts began to control my thoughts. Somewhere deep down inside a thought came: if I stay out here, I’ll freeze to death. I understood completely and I listened to a new, profound voice within.
My body was numb, my face hard from the frozen tears, and the snow coming down in great, freezing lumps. I decided to go in search for shelter: a car, a blanket, a cave, a body, something, anything. Eventually I skied to a small café and stood outside watching the people stopping, removing their skis, and venturing inside to warmth and safety. I watched and did the same.
As I walked in I felt relieved by the heat, and I knew I would live. I started walking around the place, taking in strange faces enjoying laughter, hot cider, and an entire family having a lunch. When I saw them I imagined they would see me and beckon me over like a lost hero coming home from a dangerous journey and then we would all sit and laugh together about the hardships I had faced, but that didn’t happen and I became more alone. I searched for any sign of my family and found none.
Then it happened as sure as if anything has ever happened in my entire life: I became a writer, or what was the beginning to the writer inside.
The emerging writer inside me saw a man and woman sitting by a frosted window. Outside the glimmering window shadows of skiers passed by in slow motion. The couple was smiling and enjoying hot coffee, and the steam drifted up and became lost. The man appeared to be in his early thirties with short, light brown hair and he wore a gray scarf about his neck, and his coat was hanging on the back of his chair. To this day I half imagine he was my future self sitting with my future wife, living as I have lived. The woman had long, curly, dark brown hair and she wore a gray wool sweater that came up to her chin, and she was beautiful. Her coat was also on the back of her chair. On the table were the drinks and I thought how nice a hot drink would feel inside me, and then I also realized that I had no money. I understood then I was poor; not my family, but I was penniless.
When I saw the couple sitting there at the table laughing, the scene filling with quiet chatter and the busy skiers and travelers hurrying onward, I found myself being left in a different time and place. Everyone in the world moved onward and I was left behind to watch from a distance. I saw the couple. I saw the future, all of it slowly moving ahead as I followed in silent observation. I began to absorb it all, and commit it to memory and the words my mind and vocabulary held. It was then my perception changed of how people sometimes want to be someone else. I didn’t care to be anyone else, not even them. I wanted to tell their story as only I could.
Often I had indulged in reading at that age: Edgar Allan Poe, The Hardy Boys, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s enigmatic dilemmas of Sherlock Holmes, and the Encyclopedia Brown series of a boy genius (the mysteries captivated me in suspense and wonderment). My favorite childhood reading was called My Teacher is an Alien by Bruce Coville. I read it at least ten times, and I never thought I would become a teacher myself.
When I learned to read it was like blackness inside quickly turning into bright, white light, and this waking desired to be filled with knowledge. I read complicated things, fun-hearted things, deep things, and it all came easy to me. Reading was easy, and the interpretation was also easy, but what was difficult was not reading enough fast enough.
As I was lost and alone in the café I somehow became aware of what reading and writing was all about: people can read life the way others read a book. The moment I saw the couple in the café I began to need to place the visions into words and onto empty page. My experiences from then on have captivated me into writing.
Coming from that place I realized I was still alone and lost (perhaps I will always be that way). I had forgotten it all and so I went back out into the cold as a new boy, brave and unafraid, and I knew that I would live for a very long time.
I went outside into the freezing snow and went back to the practice lift and waited. Of course everything rushed upon me after a time and the tears began again in streams, and after about another hour standing in the falling snow I saw a person skiing toward me with outstretched hands. The masked figure was my mother, or what I am to believe was my mother, and I knew that she would find me, but what she found was another child that was no longer her own. I had become an individual and he was to become a writer.
Why I Write
There is a true memory I must set to paper, and though I have failed many times to do so, I will try once more.
It must have been in the late 1980s and I was no more than eight years-old. It was to be our family winter vacation, and it was the first one I can recall. We had lived in Brownwood, Texas then and we were still a close family—that was a time before the divorce—and love still filled the home with laughter.
The trip began by meeting relatives in Andrews, Texas and then all together driving overnight to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the ski trip. The adults were warm in the front of my dad’s gray truck while the children were freezing in the back of a camper that was strapped over the back of the truck’s bed. The children had on many sweaters and shirts, and sleeping bags and blankets covered them in attempt to retain heat, but the cold was too intense the closer we drove toward our destination. I remember the cold as yesterday: it was the first time I had to endure a thing of Nature I could not control. It was not long after the children began to complain that an adult opened the truck’s back window to allow the main compartment to warm the children in the back, and as the hot air surged through the back camper the feeling of snugness quickly brought sleep. Back then no one considered the dangers of a bunch of kids in the back of a truck driving up an icy roadway. I suppose that was the beginning to my luck: a balance of good and bad, but alas I am a Libra.
When we arrived in Santa Fe and I escaped the camper I opened my young eyes to a brand new day and to a two-story log cabin; it was then that the longing began in me to live far away in a cabin covered with snow, but the desire to write still had not come.
The day we all went skiing I had wanted to stay behind in the cabin and enjoy it all to myself, but my parents refused. I’m not sure why I had wanted to stay there. I felt compelled, perhaps, by a future memory or my older self and I wanted the feeling to last. I didn’t stay, and that is just the beginning.
At the mountain slope, after everyone was geared up to ski, my parents left me in the guardianship of my older brother and sister; there also was an older cousin, and he has since passed away, God bless his soul.
Since everyone was in full ski gear it was very difficult for me to recognize who was who and so I tried to match color coats with faces, but it soon failed my untrained mind.
After a time of playing on a practice ski lift I had found my dear-hearted companions had vanished and the sky beginning to release soft petals of snow. I looked around and could only see masked people and calling out names became useless. By this age I was familiar with being abandoned by my older siblings, but never in a strange land with so many harsh conditions to face alone. Utmost, they had left me to die in earnest efforts of their own personal pleasures, and I suppose that feeling of separation with all mankind set in there and then and stayed with me. I became lost to my family and to this world.
After a great long time of crying and not knowing what to do, it seemed like an hour or more, my instincts began to control my thoughts. Somewhere deep down inside a thought came: if I stay out here, I’ll freeze to death. I understood completely and I listened to a new, profound voice within.
My body was numb, my face hard from the frozen tears, and the snow coming down in great, freezing lumps. I decided to go in search for shelter: a car, a blanket, a cave, a body, something, anything. Eventually I skied to a small café and stood outside watching the people stopping, removing their skis, and venturing inside to warmth and safety. I watched and did the same.
As I walked in I felt relieved by the heat, and I knew I would live. I started walking around the place, taking in strange faces enjoying laughter, hot cider, and an entire family having a lunch. When I saw them I imagined they would see me and beckon me over like a lost hero coming home from a dangerous journey and then we would all sit and laugh together about the hardships I had faced, but that didn’t happen and I became more alone. I searched for any sign of my family and found none.
Then it happened as sure as if anything has ever happened in my entire life: I became a writer, or what was the beginning to the writer inside.
The emerging writer inside me saw a man and woman sitting by a frosted window. Outside the glimmering window shadows of skiers passed by in slow motion. The couple was smiling and enjoying hot coffee, and the steam drifted up and became lost. The man appeared to be in his early thirties with short, light brown hair and he wore a gray scarf about his neck, and his coat was hanging on the back of his chair. To this day I half imagine he was my future self sitting with my future wife, living as I have lived. The woman had long, curly, dark brown hair and she wore a gray wool sweater that came up to her chin, and she was beautiful. Her coat was also on the back of her chair. On the table were the drinks and I thought how nice a hot drink would feel inside me, and then I also realized that I had no money. I understood then I was poor; not my family, but I was penniless.
When I saw the couple sitting there at the table laughing, the scene filling with quiet chatter and the busy skiers and travelers hurrying onward, I found myself being left in a different time and place. Everyone in the world moved onward and I was left behind to watch from a distance. I saw the couple. I saw the future, all of it slowly moving ahead as I followed in silent observation. I began to absorb it all, and commit it to memory and the words my mind and vocabulary held. It was then my perception changed of how people sometimes want to be someone else. I didn’t care to be anyone else, not even them. I wanted to tell their story as only I could.
Often I had indulged in reading at that age: Edgar Allan Poe, The Hardy Boys, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s enigmatic dilemmas of Sherlock Holmes, and the Encyclopedia Brown series of a boy genius (the mysteries captivated me in suspense and wonderment). My favorite childhood reading was called My Teacher is an Alien by Bruce Coville. I read it at least ten times, and I never thought I would become a teacher myself.
When I learned to read it was like blackness inside quickly turning into bright, white light, and this waking desired to be filled with knowledge. I read complicated things, fun-hearted things, deep things, and it all came easy to me. Reading was easy, and the interpretation was also easy, but what was difficult was not reading enough fast enough.
As I was lost and alone in the café I somehow became aware of what reading and writing was all about: people can read life the way others read a book. The moment I saw the couple in the café I began to need to place the visions into words and onto empty page. My experiences from then on have captivated me into writing.
Coming from that place I realized I was still alone and lost (perhaps I will always be that way). I had forgotten it all and so I went back out into the cold as a new boy, brave and unafraid, and I knew that I would live for a very long time.
I went outside into the freezing snow and went back to the practice lift and waited. Of course everything rushed upon me after a time and the tears began again in streams, and after about another hour standing in the falling snow I saw a person skiing toward me with outstretched hands. The masked figure was my mother, or what I am to believe was my mother, and I knew that she would find me, but what she found was another child that was no longer her own. I had become an individual and he was to become a writer.
C.G. Fewston
When I began writing A Time to Love in Tehran, it had many names and many versions. The first time I became inspired by the idea that ultimately took the shape of this novel was in February, 2011. I had just enrolled in a distance course at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro called Current Problems in the Middle East: An Historical Perspective with Dr. Ann P. Saab as the principle professor. I spent the next year of my free time studying as much as I could about ancient Persia, modern Iran, and the history of the Middle and Near East. But all that research began with a dream.
I was living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam when one night in February, I had a vivid dream of a beautiful Iranian woman. I opened my eyes and on my lips was the name “Leila.” After months of research, probably sometime in June, I uncovered who that woman was. I was sitting at my desk and clicked on a link to the funeral of the Shah’s daughter that took place in London in June, 2001. And there was this same woman from my dream. Her name was Princess Leila Pahlavi, and when she passed away she was 31 years old, the same age as I was when I started writing this novel. I have often felt her guiding-hand over this story.
I was living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam when one night in February, I had a vivid dream of a beautiful Iranian woman. I opened my eyes and on my lips was the name “Leila.” After months of research, probably sometime in June, I uncovered who that woman was. I was sitting at my desk and clicked on a link to the funeral of the Shah’s daughter that took place in London in June, 2001. And there was this same woman from my dream. Her name was Princess Leila Pahlavi, and when she passed away she was 31 years old, the same age as I was when I started writing this novel. I have often felt her guiding-hand over this story.
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