Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? DOWN A DARK RIVER. For the first time ever, I knew the title from very early on, and I never changed it.
Not so for my first book, A Lady in the Smoke, about a young woman who nearly dies in a railway crash but goes on to solve a mystery involving railway sabotage; we must have toyed with somewhere around 50 different titles. First it was The Viscount’s Daughter (“No, nobody will pronounce ‘viscount’ correctly”); later, taking an image from a gold ring that the love interest Paul Wilcox wears, The Golden Kestral (“No, that sounds like those horsey animals in Harry Potter”).
Marketing, editorial, my agent Josh Getzler (BELOW), and I went around and around. It became so fraught that my agent started calling it, Choo Choo Go Boom. (Josh still calls it that, as a joke.)
https://www.hgliterary.com/josh
Coming up with a title for book 2, A Dangerous Duet, was another ordeal.
A Trace of Deceit I found early on, with the help of my title wizard friend Anne Morgan (archivist and writer—always good to have a friend like that on your lifeline speed-dial), and we stuck with it.
https://www.facebook.com/anne.morgan.980
Titles are a challenge for many authors, I think, because it’s difficult to take a complex, 100,000-word book that you’ve labored over and come to love (and partially memorized) and reduce it to four or five words that somehow capture the heart of it … while also pleasing the genre and publishing gods and goddesses!
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? About 8 years ago, I found an article about race and the law in the US. One of the small stories featured was about a young black woman in Alabama who’d been crossing a quiet street when she was hit by a speeding, expensive car driven by a white man who was DUI, although not quite over the legal limit. She was in the hospital for months with her injuries, and the judge awarded her $2,000—justifying his decision by saying she was jaywalking in the first place. It was infuriating! I felt my blood heating up as I read the story. The girl’s father was understandably shocked and horrified and angry at the injustice … but instead of taking out his anger on the judge, he threatened the judge’s daughter.
This started me thinking about the nature of revenge. I believe sometimes we think about it too simply. It’s not always merely the proverbial eye-for-an-eye event. Sometimes it’s a way of communicating our lived experience, by putting someone in our shoes. It’s a raw, rough, physical form of commanding acknowledgment when symbolic restitution (money, a verdict, an apology) fails. So I began my story with that kernel of an idea, somewhere around 2013, and I finished final tweaks to the manuscript this month, June 2021. It takes that long, sometimes, for what I want to say to make its way onto the page to the best of my abilities.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? Most of my writing is done in my cozy home office (BELOW), where I have a map of 1870s London on the wall, my reference books on a shelf, and my beagle Rosy in the chair nearby. I can write pretty much anywhere, though, so I’ve been known to whip out my computer on planes, in dentist offices (waiting for my kids), and elsewhere.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? Whenever I begin a new novel, I write longhand, with a sharp pencil, on lined paper, in a cheapie notebook. Writing longhand connects me more directly to my characters, and that is always where stories start—with people who want something. Badly. More precisely, stories begin with three or four people who all want things that are mutually exclusive. Once I have three or four of my characters and some of their wants and assumptions and backstory on the notebook pages, then I turn to my computer and start writing scenes. I’m very old-school, though. Especially for a novel with a plot, a subplot, and a main character emotional arc, I still scribble pieces of the story on notecards so I can shuffle them into their proper places.
As for time of day, I usually begin work around 7 am. I have my coffee, flavored and caffeinated. (A friend once bought me a small plaque for my office: I DRINK COFFEE FOR YOUR PROTECTION.)
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
From pages 59-66.
By the time I returned to the Yard, it was nearly four o’clock. Sergeant Cole stopped me on the way in with a letter, and as I recognized Ma Doyle’s handwriting, my insides clenched in preparation for a blow. The last time Ma had sent me a message at work, back when I was on the River Police, was the day Pat had been killed. I tore open the note, ripping the paper in my haste, and had to piece the sentences together: “Mickey, could you come see me, soon as you can? Not to worry. We’re all grand. Ma.”
My sudden, sharp worry dulled, but still, it had to be something important. I usually took Sunday tea with the Doyles at least once a month, and I’d planned to go this week. But whatever Ma needed didn’t sound like it could wait. I headed back out and found a cab to Leman Street, where I disembarked and walked east, crossing over into the Chapel. It was easier and shorter to walk to the Doyles’ house than to direct a cab down the few navigable streets.
When my real ma vanished, I was not quite twelve. For the first few weeks, while I searched Whitechapel for her, friends looked after me. But soon I realized it wasn’t fair to take food out of their mouths when my ma had taught me reading and ciphering, and I was strong for my age. So I took to star-glazing for a man in Chicksand Street. Johnny—the crow—would keep watch while I’d break into a shop, sliding the blade of my knife in by the corner of the window, forming a crack in the shape of a star, and soundlessly removing the pane. Then Danny would take everything worth stealing. What we brought in was usually enough for food in our bellies and a corner to sleep in. Things went on that way for a while until one day, I came upon three ratbags beating up a fourth in the alley. I would’ve walked by, maybe, except that they were calling him “dirty Irish.” I don’t even remember whipping out my knife, but I found myself holding the tallest one from behind, the blade pressed against his throat, and me hissing in his ear, “Let him bloody be, or I’ll cut you.”
All of them froze. We stood measuring one another, until the one I gripped said a surly, “A’ right.”
“Now, git on. All of ye,” I said. I took my knife from the tall one’s throat and shoved him. But maybe because my thoughts were on the bloke in the dirt, I didn’t push as hard as I should have. His hand slashed a blade toward my face, and it seared my forehead. But my knife was still at the ready, and I stabbed his shoulder hard enough that he screamed and dropped to the stones. Then the one with the cap was on me, his fist flying toward my head. I ducked and spun, coming round as he pummeled my back with blows heavy and hard enough to halt my breath, but my knife, reaching low, found his thigh.
And they were gone, shouting curses as they went.
Bent over, with my hands on my knees, I gulped for breath. The boy was bleeding from his nose and mouth but more angry than afraid. “Bloody buggers,” he spat. As I stood, he studied my forehead. He was about my age, a few inches shorter but sturdy. “M’ name’s Pat Doyle, and that’s bad,” he said, tapping his own head above his eye. “Come on. My ma’ll fix us.”
As I followed him down narrow alleys, jiggering left and right, he asked where I lived and how I learned to handle a knife like that. When I merely shrugged, he gave a sidelong look out of eyes as Irish blue as my own and let me be. Finally we reached a shop with a set of stairs leading to the living space above. After his ma had seen to our cuts, he asked if I could stay for dinner, and then, later, if I could stay, just for a while. I could tell this troubled Mrs. Doyle.
“Don’t worry, mum,” I said. “I don’t need charity. I’m all right.”
She tipped her head. “How old are you?”
“’Round fifteen,” I hedged.
“You say you’re all right,” she said. “Doin’ what?”
When I didn’t answer, her face fell and she sighed.
“Please, Ma. I’d be dead as Francis, if it warn’t for ’im,” Pat said soberly.
After a minute, she pulled Pat close, kissed him hard on his forehead, and nodded at me. “Thank you for taking care of my boy. Couldn’t’a borne to lose him.”
After supper, as the fire died down, we gathered around the bed she shared with the twins, Elsie and Colin, and she related one of the legends of the warrior Cú Chulainn. If my mother knew those old Irish stories, she never said so. Over the years, Ma Doyle told us about Lugaid, Abhartach and the banshees, the fairies and Johnny Freel, and though Pat and I would smile indulgently, pre- tending the tales were just for the twins, I loved hearing them. Her voice lilted the words into the air, and they hung there for us, sparkling as spinning coins. If I have any ability whatever to tell a story, it comes from her.
Moving in with the Doyles put an end to my star-glazing. Ma Doyle made that clear from the start. But she hadn’t flourished in Whitechapel by sitting about, and her children did their part. I was expected to work in the shop, run errands, teach Elsie her sums. I might groan about sweeping the floors and toting heavy bags of tea from the wharf to the storeroom, but I took a secret pride and pleasure in it, too, knowing that I was no burden.
A year or so later, two of Ma Doyle’s nephews were finally old enough to help with the shop, so Pat and I went to find work at the docks. We loaded cargo for ten hours at a time until I was promoted to lighterman, moving cargo by small boat. It was hard work, but it changed me into a young man who could sling a hun- dred pounds from a dock to a deck without thinking about it. And maybe that was a good thing, and maybe not. Because one day, Seamus O’Hagan came down to the docks, saw me carrying one of the burlap bags of tea over my shoulder, and asked if I wanted to make some extra money.
“Doing what?”
“Fightin’.” His dark eyes held mine. “You done much?” “No.”
“Willin’ to learn?”
By then I worked it out that he was talking about bare- knuckles boxing. It was dead illegal, and when the police raided the places, they put the boys away for weeks in rotten Chapel prisons. With me being Irish, they’d be twice as glad to do it. “How much?”
“Share of the profits. I’ll guarantee a quid a week to start.” He spat his tobacco to the side. “Bein’ new, and with those shoulders, those hands, you’ll make more.”
Four quid each month?
I didn’t even try to hide how much I wanted that money. I knew what it would mean. To Ma Doyle. To me. To all of us. He saw it in my eyes and smiled.
“Why me?” I pointed my chin toward the docks where dozens of other men were working, most of them stronger than I was, though they were older, too.
He handed me a scrap of pasteboard with an address. “Don’t say nothin’ to no one. Just come tonight at half past eight.”
I didn’t like the looks of him. His eyes were like a snake’s, hard and shining, but I was only seventeen, and his choosing me out of the lot pleased me more than it should have.
The whole rest of the day the pasteboard burned in my pocket. At six o’clock I told myself I wasn’t going. I’d fought plenty on the streets, but I didn’t know anything about fighting in a ring. And it could be a trap. I could get killed. Knifed. Left for dead, with nobody knowing where I was. And I knew nothing about this man O’Hagan. I’d never heard of him. I wished I could ask around about him. But that would have tipped my hand.
At half past seven, I saw Ma worrying over the sums in her books and decided I’d go. What was the harm? If I didn’t like what I saw, I’d leave.
At eight o’clock, I remembered the snaky glint in O’Hagan’s eyes and changed my mind again.
But then I watched little Elsie mending her skirt with bits of thread and her single precious needle that she secured every night in a scrap of brown felt, saw Pat run his crust of bread round the edges of his plate to sop up every last drop of gravy, thought about what Ma Doyle had done, taking me in, probably saving my life— and quarter past eight saw me out the door.
Sometimes I still wonder what my life would be if I hadn’t.
Bare-knuckles boxing clubs are dark, ugly underground rooms, filled with the smell of rotgut and sweat and more blood than a dirt floor can soak up. But it was intoxicating, entering that room, seeing men eyeing me sideways, and then, as O’Hagan came over to greet me, looking me over with what appeared to be approval. The air was charged with men greedy for a fight and for betting.
O’Hagan put me in the ring, and I won three matches out of three that night, against blokes who were smaller than I was. The odds were in their favor, though, because I was new. I won two quid six that night, and I was hooked. Easiest money I ever saw.
I did that for nearly a year.
Until one afternoon, O’Hagan told me he needed me to throw a match. Lose on purpose.
“What the hell? Why?” I demanded. Truth be told, I had lost only one match ever, and I was proud of my record. My fists were fast, I’d never been knocked on my head, and I was large and strong enough to take on almost anybody.
“Odds are no good anymore. You win so much, nobody’ll bet against you.” He spat tobacco at my feet. “You ain’t makin’ me money. Gotta do sumpin’ to change ’t.”
I hated the idea. Still, last month the Doyles’ roof had leaked so badly that the rain had come through, moldering the rug and fall- ing down into the storeroom, spoiling three barrels of tea, so the boxing money from this month was going to pay for the new roof. By the time I was standing outside the ring, I’d reconciled myself to throwing the match, just this once.
O’Hagan had put me up against a tall, wiry kid named Dev- lin who looked a lot like I did when I first came. In another year or two, he’d fill out and be a good, dependable fighter. But just watching the way his bare shoulders moved, I knew he was no match for me now. One of the other fighters, Murphy, tapped me before I stepped out and muttered, “Make sure you get in a punch or two so it’s not obvious.”
Startled, I turned. “What?”
His snort ended in a mocking grin. “You think you were win- nin’ your first matches by yourself?”
The words hit me like a blow, hollowed me out.
His eyes widened. “Jaysus. You’re more fool than I took you for.”
The shame of it rolled over me like a tide. Had I won any of those early matches on my own? But surely I had. The look of approval on O’Hagan’s face when I beat Joe Kelly and Tommy Mackey and Lem Shanahan . . .
But maybe not. As I caught sight of O’Hagan sliding past the bookie, nudging him with an elbow, the cold truth hit me: I was nothing but a beast to be worked, a means to fill their pockets. And for a second, I thought to myself, It needs to be just business for you too, Mickey. Just do what you’re supposed to do. Lose the match, col- lect your money. Then you can get out for good.
But when I got into the ring, I was stupid. I try not to judge myself too harshly now; I was young, hot-tempered, and hurting with mortification. Within ten seconds, my intention to throw the match was gone. Devlin threw a good first punch, and I went after him with everything I had. If it had been a day I was tired from working the docks, he might have managed to land a few blows. But that night, Devlin didn’t stand a chance. He was on the ground in twenty seconds, back up, then motionless on his back another minute after that.
With the back of my hand, I wiped the corner of my lip, tasted salt and blood, and looked over at O’Hagan. He was standing there with his arms across his chest, his expression stony. He turned and spat the tobacco out of his mouth.
I knew what I’d done. Still, I’d earned him plenty. I figured he’d give me another chance, like he’d done when I lost to Gahan. I approached him, and under cover of wiping my face as I put my shirt back on, I muttered, “I’ll throw the next one.”
“Get the hell out.”
Suddenly Ma Doyle’s face appeared in my mind. I knew exactly how she’d look when I told her my boxing money had evaporated. Disappointed, though she’d try not to let me see. I felt a wave of remorse. “Look, I’ll throw it next time, I swear.”
“I said, get out.” His face was implacable.
Surprised, I blurted, “But—but I need the money—”
“You fecking idjit!” he hissed. “I’m short on earnings this month, and now I’m even shorter.”
I blew out my breath and drew myself up. “What about my quid for this week?”
He barked a laugh. “You’re lucky I don’t beat the shite out of you. Now, for the last time, get out!”
Stunned by how quickly everything had changed, I climbed out of that hole and went home.
When I told Ma Doyle what happened, her jaw slacked with dismay, just as I knew it would. But a moment later, she patted my arm. “We’ll manage the money, Mickey. I just don’t want him coming after you.” She sighed. “It’s a bloody hard line he took, to toss a boy after one mistake, after all this time. But some folks are made of granite. Ye can’t move ’em, no matter what you say.”
“I told him I’d throw the next one. Hell, I’d throw any match he wants, now that I know everyone does it.”
She clicked her tongue against her mouth. “Well, the O’Hagans have always been rubbish Irish. No loyalty to them.”
And as she used to say, loyalty was what separated the potatoes from the rot.
By the next morning, my shock had worn off and been replaced by anger. For days after, I had raging fantasies of revenge, of reporting O’Hagan to the police, of having him run up against the granite force of the law himself. Ma caught me meditating on it, and she asked, “What has you scowlin’ so?”
I was on the floor, a chair turned over in front of me, reattach- ing a wooden leg. “Nothin’.”
She put a hand under my chin to make me look up at her. “O’Hagan. Wish I could hurt him back,” I admitted.
Ma looked troubled. “Ach. Mickey, you know better. That’s how you’ll end up dead.” Her expression softened, and she knelt beside me. “I know it hurts, but he’s not worth it. He wasn’t any- thin’—wasn’t family, wasn’t a friend.” She was shaking her head. “We both know he didn’t do right by ye. But I’m glad you’re done with it. Something else’ll come along. You’ll see.”
Her words comforted me, and my anger began to subside.
Maybe that would have been the end of it, except that two days later the police raided the boxing hall, arresting the lot of them, including O’Hagan. They relished catching one Irishman with his hands dirty and a pile of money and books that implicated another dozen. O’Hagan figured that I’d been the one to rat him out for revenge, and the afternoon he was put in prison, Ma Doyle found me at the docks and put some coins into one hand and a sack with my clothes and some food into the other.
“O’Hagan’s passed the word you ratted on him.”
“But I didn’t!” I protested.
“You swear?” She gazed up at me searchingly.
“I swear! I know you were right. Revenge isn’t worth dying for!” She sighed with relief. “Then, God willin’, the truth’ll out someday. But you need to go tonight, Mickey. Send word where I can reach you.” She gave me a quick embrace, a murmured bless- ing, and a push toward Leman Street, from whence I found my way down to Lambeth, where my size and strength proved to be assets in the Metropolitan Police, too.
Once in uniform, I was able to ask a few discreet questions. I found out that young Devlin didn’t recover from the fight, not right away. His father found out how he’d been injured, and it was he who’d reported O’Hagan to the police. I sent word into the Chapel, and eventually a message came back from O’Hagan conceding I was probably telling the truth, but he still blamed me for beating Devlin in the first place. That was over a decade ago, and we’d never exchanged a word since. Still, an unspoken deal had emerged. He knew I could’ve arrested him a dozen times over, but I hadn’t. And I’d been in and out of the Chapel dozens of times since then without incident. Still, there were probably other people who thought I’d been an Irish rat and might have enjoyed knocking me about. So whenever I crossed Leman Street, I kept my hand near my truncheon.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This is backstory to the novel, but it begins on the day my protagonist Michael Corravan meets Pat Doyle, who will invite him into his home in Whitechapel, getting fourteen-year-old Mickey off the street. For all intents and purposes, Ma Doyle adopts Mickey, and though she is a plain talker and can be blunt, it is she who teaches him some of the values that later make him a good man and an effective Scotland Yard inspector, including mercy and generosity of heart. In this scene, we see Mickey’s instinct to help people who are ruthlessly outnumbered and disadvantaged, and we see his fierceness, his impulsiveness, and his physical strength, which he will eventually have to learn to manage.
Maybe part of the reason this scene was so emotionally charged for me is that I wish I were that courageous—that at age fourteen (BELOW), I’d step in and stop someone bullying someone else. Or maybe it’s because at age fourteen, I was being bullied myself by girls at my high school. What is it that causes some people to be bullied (or exploited), others to bully (and exploit), and still others to be the heroes who step in and stop it? Now that I reflect, that theme ran through A Trace of Deceit as well. Hm. And A Dangerous Duet. Hm.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I revised this scene so many, many times, but always just overwriting it on my computer. However, I will share a photo of the notes and scribbles and visual aids I used!
Most of the Inside The Emotion of Fiction LIVE LINKS can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html