Felix Long's Blog

It occurs to me that Agatha Christie’s novels are about to start turning 100.

I missed chance to fire a popper for her first work, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’. It was published in 1921. And we have a fair way to go before we get to Agatha Christie’s most famous, and most celebrated work, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ which was published in 1926. I better take up some good habits if I want to make it to 2076 and honour her final work ‘Sleeping Murder’.

What never ceases to amaze me about Agatha Christie’s work is the clarity of the pictures she paints and what she leaves just out of sight. Christie is writing in the roaring twenties where people paint over the scars of the Great War and dance the charleston with great abandon. But behind the glittering façade of silks and jewels, tweeds and trilbys, lurk imposters, bankruptcies, and individuals of inferior social standing inheriting vast wealth.

A world where a great number of social constructs have been overturned and an establishment is fighting to put them back in place.

Agatha Christie was writing at a time when women rarely did. And she didn’t use a male pen name.

She is a master of misdirection, of language and of characterisation. Even the porter whose walk on role is three sentences feels like a real person.

I love to try and work out the ending of a film, or a book or a TV show. And I love being wrong. I also love reading a story written by someone smarter than me. And my goodness, Agatha Christie was a bloody genius.

I have just finished ‘The Mystery of the Blue Train’ and I didn’t see the ending coming. And yet, with her timeless aplomb, Agatha had seeded all the clues and then, with literary slight of hand, made them invisible.

So tell me folks, who is your favourite detective? Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple?

The new Spiderman: No Way Home movie is coming soon. And I have a fan theory to float.

In the recent trailer, Peter Parker has been unmasked as Spiderman and framed by Mysterio. Peter is quickly working out why secret identities are so darn important. Luckily Dr Strange can fix all that … or will he just make everything worse?

One of the worst things about being a writer is that you can spot subtle clues that other writers leave. If the writer is better than you are, you gain insight into someone’s finest work before your fellow audience members. If the writer is worse than you, you have to sit through an hour of half of yawn until the ending you predicted in the first five minutes finally eventuates.

I strongly suspect the writers of Spiderman: No Way Home are better than me. But I think I got their number.

Here we go …

There are several inferences in the trailer for Spiderman: No Way Home that I will now weave into a fan prediction.

Thanks to Dr Strange everyone forgets that Peter Parker is Spiderman, including Peter’s best friend Ned and his recently found love MJ. Both of whom are, as Ned describes it, Friends of Spiderman.

And so Peter will have to face his new swag of foes by himself or quickly reassemble his team (Friends of Spiderman! Reassemble! – Doesn’t quite have the zing of Avengers Assemble. – But then again, that one wasn’t very good either).

Like Romeo and Juliet, the long running plot of Spiderman through its various manifestations (comics, TV shows, and films) is a feud between two Houses. But in Spiderman’s New York, these two houses are not ancient noble families. These two houses are tech companies.

A single deep chuckle and a green grenade are all the clues we need.

The Green Goblin – Norman Osborn himself – founder of Osborn Enterprises. The Capulets to Stark Industries’ Montagues. They compete over everything: market share, most unethical lab experiments, most promising interns, including Peter Parker himself.

The last time we saw Doc Ock was the magnificent Doctor Olivia Octavius in Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. And the multiverse of spider-peeps is an already confirmed theme. No point expounding on it here.

Doc Ock in the live action MCU is played by Alfred Molina. Molina features very briefly and menacingly in the new trailer. And for some reason, all my writer intuition gave me this brief insight.

Doc Ock is Flash’s dad!

You remember Flash. The nerdy classmate and self-appointed nemesis of Peter Parker in the junior league supervillain arena of high school. Flash hates Peter for reasons that are never really explored. Flash also has a distant relationship with his parents. When Peter and the crew return home from Venice at the end of Spiderman: Far From Home, Flash is met by the family driver and asks mournfully “Could Mother not make it?”

When Peter steals his car in Spiderman: Homecoming, Flash whimpers that it is his father’s car. All minor things really, but why include them unless Flash, and his parents, make a future appearance?

I’m anticipating a ‘befriending the bully’ arc in the next Spiderman film, where Flash is accepted into the re-formed circle of ‘Friends of Spiderman’.

Flash will have to face up to his daddy issues (and where would MCU be without daddy issues?), and side with the kid he hates from high school against his own father.

Roll on Christmas. Can’t wait to find out.

There have been many takes on this argument over the years. My favourite is Terry Pratchett’s view that inspiration is a subatomic particle like the neutrino. It zaps through the universe like a star-seed until it collides with the fertile ground of a mind and germinates its payload. A tiny particle hitting a tiny object in a vast and infinite universe. And some people are more prone to inspiration impact through having a mind that exerts an attraction field upon incoming inspiration particles. Of course, sometime the inspiration particle will miss an ideal target and a nearby tortoise will suddenly know how to play the flute.

In The Library of the Unwritten, A.J. Hackwith’s expresses a unique take on this eternal conundrum of the source of inspiration.

All books yet to be written are kept in a library in Hell. These books press upon their author’s minds until piece by piece they earn their birth. But sometimes they get impatient and go looking for their authors.

Add a sassy librarian with a sack of secrets, a neurotic muse assistant librarian, a recent demon confused about his damnation status, an old school angel uncertain which side he’s on and a trip to Valhalla into the mix and you’ll see why this book is so much fun.

It is also a brilliant kick in the pants to a procrastinating author.

Write your stories before they come looking for you.

I am extremely honoured to be named the Laureate of my hometown for this entry in a short story competition.

‘Why do you write?’

My daughter asked me this in her quiet insightful bombshell manner. And so I did what most parents do when blindsided by a big question –  I asked her why she was asking.

‘Well ,’ she replied, ‘you are the last person to go to bed and the first person up in the morning. You write before getting me up to go to school and then you go to work. And at dinner time you sometimes say how hard it is to get people to pay for the books they read. So why do you do it if it is so hard?’

To say I was floored by the question is something of an understatement.

I gave a pretty standard reply about the importance of persistence to achieve your goals and that the things really worth doing in life are rarely easy. We said goodnight and I sent her to bed.

I pondered on that question while doing the dishes and my subconscious supplied an answer. This answer was in the form of a memory.

In those pre-Covid times not all that long ago, I had a call back on a routine cancer screening.

Long story short, the call back was a false alarm. So three cheers for the Australian medical system and the medical services businesses that underpin it.

Because I was called back, I was squeezed in between other appointments. I waited for doctors to review the images. More images were ordered. Rinse and repeat.

I was Schrodinger’s cat for four hours. Caught in a moment that would decide which path would open before me, and which path would spawn an alternate timeline down which another version of me would walk.

Which me did I want to be?

And in that moment, the same moment that thousands of people face every year, I should have been pacing, muttering and regretting every bad decision I had made up until that point.

But luckily, I had brought a book. And a darn good one.

It was MR Carey’s Fellside, the follow up to his smash hit The Girl with All the Gifts.

I read and I read and I read.

MR Carey’s Fellside held back the crushing question ‘Do I have cancer?’ for four hours.

And that is why I write.

Because my goal is to write a story so absorbing that it staves off whatever shitty reality the reader has to face today. Even if that moment lasts no longer than their bus journey.

Most truly excellent books start as a single question. The question that birthed this excellent book must have been: what if someone was trapped in one of Piranesi’s prisons?

I had never heard of Piranesi prior to reading this amazing tale by Susanna Clarke. And so I am doubly enriched.

A mysterious amnesiac protagonist is trapped in the sort of labyrinth Daedalus might have built for King Minos. He obsessively maps the halls of the House for his friend, whom he calls the Other. The Other calls him Piranesi.

And hall by hall, statue by statue, piece by piece, an extraordinary story is revealed.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian Renaissance-era artist and architect who was most famous for his drawings of fantastic ‘prisons’. These prisons combined elements of classical architecture, ancient Greek culture and myths.

Susanna Clarke’s novel breathes a third and fourth dimension into Piranesi’s extraordinary art creating that rarest of all rare things. A fantasy so vividly drawn that it remains behind your eyes when you close them.

I read this novel as part of a side-quest. I am attempting to get representation for my Fae DNA trilogy and wasn’t having much luck. Asking some knowledgeable people for some insight revealed that the titles I was using for comparison were too old. And so I set aside my current book pile, got some suggestions and started reading.

Piranesi can hopefully serve as my ball of string to lead my out of my own maze to the prize of publishing.

When a character on a TV show or in a book goes on a solitary quest, they usually take an animal along. Have you ever wondered why?

Is it because the animal possesses a quality that the main character lacks? Is it because the animal can help the character achieve their main goal?

Sadly, it is a mostly a literary plot device. The animal companion keeps the journey going by guiding (or possibly hindering) the character toward the internal realisation or crucial item that they seek. They up the stakes if they become lost or captured. But mostly, the animal gives the main character someone to talk to. Verbalising the character’s inner monologue makes the journey and its discoveries more relatable to the audience.

Philip Pullman pulled this off spectacularly with His Dark Materials trilogy. In his parallel world, people’s spirit animals are called daemons, and are a separate but deeply connected entity. An externalised part of their soul. The type of daemon a person has gives insight into their personality. A butler’s daemon is a dog. A thief’s daemon is a monkey. And a sailor’s daemon is a dolphin meaning he can never stay long on land.

What is your spirit animal?

Apparently, I’m a turtle.

Answers please to felixlong888 at gmail dot com.

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For me it is Hedwig Kiesler otherwise known as Hedy Lamarr.

This lady was not just any old sultry screen siren of the 30s and 40s. Her life story would make an amazing movie in its own right.

She was the first woman to appear nude on screen in the controversial film Ecstasy (1933).

She was an Austrian Jew who affected her escape from her arms-dealing first husband by wearing all her jewellery to dinner and then disguising herself as a maid before disappearing.

She made her way to America where she became a superstar of the silver screen.

She supported the war effort by selling $25 million work of war bonds in just 10 days.

With composer George Antheil she invented a radio guidance system for torpedos that used a frequency hopping spread section technology to avoid signal jamming.

That invention formed the basis for Bluetooth and was later incorporated into Wi-fi.

And when you add three kids and six ex-husbands to the mix, her feats are all the more remarkable.

And so dear reader, who do you look up to?

Do tell me.

felixlong888 at gmail dot com

I read every reply.

What book did you read as a child that influenced the adult you have become?

For me, it was Hating Alison Ashley.

You see, I was a sun hating kid.

Australia is a magnificent country. But in summer, the heat is oppressive to the point of tyrannical. I envied the more fire-resistant kids running around outside in the playground in 40 degree heat. No hats. No sunscreen. No worries. I got over my envy by embracing the nerd shrine that is the school library.

Cool and quiet and about as reverential as an Australian state school can get, the library was my refuge against the ferocity of the elements outside. And as I patiently processed its shelves, I found this gem.

Robyn Klein clearly drew heavily on her own experience as a state school teacher to bring us this slice of authentic 80s Australiana. It was a time when Kylie Minogue was still safely tethered inside the fourteen inch colour TV confined to conquering Britain as Charlene Robinson in Neighbours. Her tinny tyranny of the soundwaves was still a few years off.

And in Robin Klein’s Hating Alison Ashley the main character, Erica Yurken, was busy hating her life with the sort of passion only twelve year old girl can muster. This book held such appeal for me as a child. The characters, whilst larger than life, were definitely drawn from real life.

The squabbles, the struggles, the joys, the utterly devastating embarrassments.

Erica Yurken felt like the best friend I never had. I empathised with her ham-handed attempts to befriend the posh kid Alison Ashley, I cheered her tiny victories, and felt the devastation of her failures and her barely acknowledged loneliness.

At the time, I didn’t really know how to feel about the ending. Where [spoiler alert] Lenny, the 24-carat truck driving new stepdad, saves the day. It went over my head at the time. There was clearly a moral lesson that I was missing. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it stuck with me.

And then I rediscovered the book as an adult and as an author.

Reading it again was not just like bumping into an old friend in the street (although it certainly was that), it was an author masterclass in characterisation and authenticity of voice. And I also worked out what the moral of the tale was.

Accept your family. They are your people. Utter embarrassments though they may be.

Hating Alison Ashley was about a pretentious little snob of a twelve year old realising that her lot in life is not so bad really. And her family are a lot more awesome than she gives them credit for.

And so, dear reader, tell me … was there a book that spoke to you as a kid? A book that opened your eyes to a whole new world? Or a concept you had never encountered before?

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Those of us of a certain age will remember the 80s phenomenon of The Twilight Zone. Creepy, uncanny stories that always made you think.

Do you remember this one? I of Newton in which a maths teacher bests the devil in a game of wits to liberate his soul from an accidental bargain.

I love this episode because it is one the finest examples of a short story. It spouts from a single question and leaves a single thread hanging.

The single question it sprang from is this: “What do you devils do with all those souls?”

And I love the delicious single hanging thread of the demon’s glasses left in the wastepaper basket. Like the best short stories based on a single question, it begs another: “If tried on those glasses, what would I see?”

I found a curious coincidence today.

I went to see a movie with a few friends. One of my fellow cine-buffs turned up a bit under the weather. She was recovering from a tooth infection.

When the young chap at the cinema snack bar took our order, I noticed an interesting tattoo on his forearm. It was in the shape of a tooth. How curious.

And so, I asked him if there was a story connected with the tattoo. From the look he gave me, the answer was affirmative, but the associated memory was painful.

It turned out it was a ‘survival’ tattoo. He had suffered a dreadful tooth infection that had nearly spread to his brain.

My friend and I were quite taken aback by that curious coincidence.

As a writer, I enjoy hearing the stories around me. The curious coincidences and odd parallels that just might mean nothing or everything.

So tell me, what is the most curious coincidence that you have encountered?

Answers please to felixlong888 at gmail dot com

I read every reply.