We are delighted to welcome back author Dan Newman to Omnimystery News.
Earlier this month we introduced you to Dan's new suspense thriller The Clearing (Diversion Books; April 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) with an excerpt and today we had the opportunity to follow up with him to talk more about his work.
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Omnimystery News: How did The Clearing come to be titled? And does the title relate tot he story?
Photo provided courtesy of
Dan Newman
Dan Newman: The Clearing describes a location central to the story, to the development of the characters as kids, and in the ultimate resolution. The small dome in the forest was a place where the characters faced a truth in their lives that defined them. And for some, it defined everything from that point on. The title is also a nod to the main character's journey, and his compunction to return to that place to set things right — in whatever ways he might be able to; a kind of clearing of what has haunted him his whole life.
OMN: Was The Clearing your working title as you wrote the book?
DN: It was the title right from the first draft, and I think it was an important part of the development of the story as a whole. I had a very strong idea of what that place looked like, what it felt and smelled like, and the things that existed there. And because the story called for a place that defined the lives of the kids who once played there, it made it a simpler exercise to build a story having already been so familiar with the place — almost a mechanism itself — that was responsible for affecting the characters going forward.
OMN: Into which fiction category would you place this book?
DN: Ah, categorization. Genres. Pigeon holes. Oh, man.
This is one of those elements of the publishing world that I didn't account for when I set out, and something that continues to trip me up to this day. My novel The Clearing is marketed as a thriller, and there's certainly good reason for that, but it's always felt like a tee shirt two sizes too small. It doesn't quite hold everything in. Even the world of cross-over rarely allows you to bridge more than two clearly defined categories. But I get it — categories are very important in the "business" of books; publishers use them all the time to parse out markets, identify readerships and ensure salespeople know exactly what they're going in to sell. It solves very real problems for the business of books, but as a writer, I don't like them.
One of the big disadvantages of genre is that while it may help readers of that category find you, it will also steer those who don't subscribe to that category away from you — and the latter set is almost always a larger group. However, despite my bitching, I recognize that no one has come up with a better alternative yet. Books are a business, and business loves process. So for now, we're stuck with it. Of course the real question is this: as writers, do we evolve in such a way that we end up pandering to the genre models, so that we fit the boxes literary reps are trying to sell against? And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Honestly, I'm not sure. Here's a thought: apparently you can buy cube shaped watermelons now. Why? Because they're more efficient to ship that way, and it solves a problem for the agricultural business. Is changing the shape of the product so that it addresses the concerns of the distributor a good thing? Is anything lost along the way? I'm not sure I know the answer.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
DN: This is a question that — if I answer it honestly — generally goes one of two ways: either it garners the book a bit of new interest, of it has people thinking "ooooookay … let's remember to cross the street if we see that guy coming". The reason for this polarizing reaction is the fact that a number of the more astonishing elements of the story are not just based on real events, but for all intents and purposes, describe them. Chief among them is the question of the Bolom, and the night the protagonist, Nate Mason, spends in an old plantation house. The Bolom is part of the folk lore of the Caribbean, and local belief in it is as natural as their belief in, say, wind. You might not be able to see it, but it's widely accepted to exist.
Nate's experience of brushing up against something that hovers just-this-side of supernatural is drawn from my own childhood experiences on the island of St. Lucia, and was basically the nut at the center of the novel. And while the events of that night cosey'd right up to the edge of what you might be willing to believe, there was more that went on in the real life event. That part never made it into the novel, simply because it would fall, for many folks, squarely into the realm of that which is simply too farfetched.
Now, before you go crossing the street to avoid that guy, let me just say that I consider myself a pretty regular person, and I subscribe to the buffet of things we all agree to as real within the world of our western education. That said, my experiences as a kid in St. Lucia have left me open to the possibility that perhaps not everything has been categorized and described by science. At least not yet.
OMN: How did you go about researching the plot points of the story?
DN: For The Clearing in particular, much of the foundation upon which the story is constructed — that is to say, the sense of place that needed to exist for the story to hang together — is a function of memory, and of my own experiences growing up on St. Lucia as a kid. All the places in the novel are real, although some have had their names changed. I lived on the island for 5 years and left when I was about 14, and so my memory of that period is a consistent and persistent one, like a snapshot of a single moment. My image of the island was never diluted by the act of living there longer and seeing it change. It was never eroded by the passage of time. St. Lucia in the late 70s is perfectly preserved for me, and I think having that clear access was very useful when it came to putting it all down in the novel. However, that kind of life texture only gets you so far. For the story two work, I needed to have a better understanding of Obeah, a west Indian practice that we all had a vague understanding of as kids, and of which we were quite careful around. Obeah is an important element of the book, and so getting it right was going to require more detail, more authenticity. The same went for patois — the pigeon French that's spoken on the island — as expressions and local slang handled poorly can kill a book like this by slashing at the sense of distance between what happens on the island and that comfy little spot on your sofa.
The web is always a great starting place, but the real juice came from people — people who lived there. Speaking to St. Lucians was of course important, and while most of the information was anecdotal, what it lacked in annotated detail it made up for (in spades) in authenticity. Grandmothers were the key. Once you find a St. Lucian with a grandmother, you've hit the, well … the grandmother-load.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
DN: There's really two pieces of advice I've received that stuck. One was more general and life-oriented, and the other based squarely in writing. The first was this: You can do anything; you just can't do everything. For me, it's a message about focus. If you want to be a rock star, and you're willing to give it your singular focus, I'm a believer that you'll achieve that goal. Just don't try to be a lawyer at the same time.
The other bit of advice I've held on to — and this was directed at my pursuit of being a published novelist — was simply this: Be persistent. Everything associated with publishing takes an inordinate amount of time. It moves with glacier-like speed and has just as many crevasses that will happily swallow your hopes and dreams — if you let them. The trick is to bullet-proof yourself. For a long time I hung onto the rejections I received in the query process, seeing them as hard proof that I was committed to my publishing dream. But in reality I was only reinforcing the failures. And if there's one thing you don't need in a business where you're exposing yourself daily to the world and saying, "hey what do you think of my creative ability?" it's being reminded of those who don't think much of it at all.
If I have any advice at all for folks who fall into the category of "aspiring authors" (and I still put myself in that group because like all of us, that next book still needs writing), it's to remember that publishing is a business, and as writers we disregard our part in the "business" of books at our own peril. Once you have that first publishing contract in hand, and once you've come back down to earth off that rather amazing and unforgettable high, begin to immediately transform into your book's marketing team. The publisher will be there to help, but it's a lonely truth that there is no larger fan of your book at this point in time than you. So remember — publishing is a business. Abandon the Hemmingway-esque idea that your role is to be the creative force and that the publishing machine is simply waiting to launch your genius to the world. Those days are gone. You are indeed the creative force, and hell — you might even be a genius — but it will serve you well to remember that you're also the machine. So get busy.
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Dan Newman is an Englishman by birth, a Canadian by immigration, and amalgam of several wonderful places in Southern Africa by virtue of the time he spent there growing up. He's a citizen of the beach thanks to his formative years spent in the Caribbean, and is a self-described Australian enviator, which means he envies all that someone else has, thanks to the time he spent there at Grad school, and the hours and days he spent trying desperately to look like he knew what he was doing on a surfboard.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at DanNewmanBooks.com or find him on Twitter.
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The Clearing by Dan Newman
A Novel of Suspense
Publisher: Diversion Books
Some moments linger forever. Some curses can't be broken. Some crimes refuse to stay buried …
A young man returns to St. Lucia, where he grew up, and where his guilt for the part he played in a murder continues to haunt.
Now, thirty years later, Nate responds to his father's suicide with a trip back to St. Lucia, the land where he was raised as an outsider, tolerated but not accepted. As a boy he ventured out to the plantation of Ti Fenwe with three others — weak-willed Pip, and cousins Richard and Tristan. Surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, the boys explore, their only rule to be back in the house before nightfall. Because at Ti Fenwe, something ancient stalks the jungle, its reputation more horrifying than any of the boys can comprehend.
But it's a very real enemy who changes the boys forever, and snuffs out a life. Decades later, Nate comes back to finally gain a measure of peace over his role in the killing, and to uncover the deadly secrets of St. Lucia once and for all.
— The Clearing by Dan Newman
