Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "dan-williams"
New Mideast thriller parallels mad reality
Dan Williams blows the lid off the Middle East with his new thriller STRIP MINE
Dan Williams is a leading foreign correspondent covering the Middle East. He also has a profound background in fiction writing which he lets rip in his new novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller. What's it about? Check this out for a fine example of what in the business is called a logline:
"A Mossad spy. A Hamas detective. An unthinkable alliance, to thwart an unthinkable crime."
Try telling me you don't want to read that.
Here Dan writes about how he got the idea for his thriller.
In May 2002 I was among foreign journalists staking out Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where a band of Palestinian gunmen were holed up, surrounded by the Israeli military. The siege became almost routine.
Then, something extraordinary happened: A dozen foreign activists dashed across the plaza and right into the church, eluding Israeli troops who had - presumably - sealed off the area long before.
It was one of those double-take moments with which Middle East geopolitics bristles. One of my colleagues turned to me and quipped about the activists: "I bet they're Israeli spies or something, sent in to finish off the resistance."
They weren't, of course, but the idea stayed with me as a kind of parallel perception of what might have happened. And it evolved into a pivotal scene for my novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller .
Seasoned journalists, returning from the field, speak of "emptying their notebooks" onto the page for fresh, first-hand reportage. Perhaps the fiction-writing version of that involves emptying out your imagination - all those shelved conspiracy theories, fancied snippets of conversation, and backstories applied to actual people who, with just a little extra color and contrivance, make great characters.
I worried, for a while, about whether writing the novel necessitated a strict right brain/left brain separation from my journalism - say, by fictionalizing the names and locations of security agencies in Israel or Gaza. I eventually relaxed, realizing that real events in the region were such an unpredictable jumble that they might end up hewing, by sheer happenstance, to my plot.
That happened, arguably, in regards to the theme of Hamas and Israel finding themselves equally challenged by radical Salafist Muslims, or of the Jewish state feeling lethally penned in by sectarian bedlam on its borders.
But things may eventually improve, in which case I hope the book will serve as a snapshot for the Israeli-Palestinian mood at a tumultuous time.
Related articles across the web
Gaza left out of Mideast peace talks
Kerry, Abbas to Discuss Mideast Peace in Paris
Dan Williams is a leading foreign correspondent covering the Middle East. He also has a profound background in fiction writing which he lets rip in his new novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller. What's it about? Check this out for a fine example of what in the business is called a logline:
"A Mossad spy. A Hamas detective. An unthinkable alliance, to thwart an unthinkable crime."
Try telling me you don't want to read that.
Here Dan writes about how he got the idea for his thriller.
In May 2002 I was among foreign journalists staking out Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, where a band of Palestinian gunmen were holed up, surrounded by the Israeli military. The siege became almost routine.
Then, something extraordinary happened: A dozen foreign activists dashed across the plaza and right into the church, eluding Israeli troops who had - presumably - sealed off the area long before.
It was one of those double-take moments with which Middle East geopolitics bristles. One of my colleagues turned to me and quipped about the activists: "I bet they're Israeli spies or something, sent in to finish off the resistance."
They weren't, of course, but the idea stayed with me as a kind of parallel perception of what might have happened. And it evolved into a pivotal scene for my novel Strip Mine: A Jodie Moore Thriller .
Seasoned journalists, returning from the field, speak of "emptying their notebooks" onto the page for fresh, first-hand reportage. Perhaps the fiction-writing version of that involves emptying out your imagination - all those shelved conspiracy theories, fancied snippets of conversation, and backstories applied to actual people who, with just a little extra color and contrivance, make great characters.
I worried, for a while, about whether writing the novel necessitated a strict right brain/left brain separation from my journalism - say, by fictionalizing the names and locations of security agencies in Israel or Gaza. I eventually relaxed, realizing that real events in the region were such an unpredictable jumble that they might end up hewing, by sheer happenstance, to my plot.
That happened, arguably, in regards to the theme of Hamas and Israel finding themselves equally challenged by radical Salafist Muslims, or of the Jewish state feeling lethally penned in by sectarian bedlam on its borders.
But things may eventually improve, in which case I hope the book will serve as a snapshot for the Israeli-Palestinian mood at a tumultuous time.
Related articles across the web
Gaza left out of Mideast peace talks Kerry, Abbas to Discuss Mideast Peace in Paris 
