Happy Saturday!

Today I’m thrilled to have the chance to sit down with one of my favorite authors of historical mysteries, Olivier Bosman. Bosman is the author of the DS Billings mysteries, among others, and if you haven’t read them yet, you should!

We’ll talk more about the books in a mo, but before that, let’s get to know the author a bit first, shall we?

JF: Right, so five quick facts about you. Go!

1. I am tri-lingual

2. My impossible wish is to have a time machine and travel back in time. Not to change anything. Just to see what things were like.

3. Last great film I watched: Hereditary (so creepy)

4. Last great book I read: The Public Image by Muriel Spark (such economy with words!)

5. I’ve been at my current home now for nearly 5 years. In 47 years of life, that is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place.

JF: Do you have a day job? If so, what is it? What other jobs have you held? Have they influenced your writing?

 I teach a little English online to help make ends meet. It’s only this last year and a half, that I’ve been able to devote most of my time to writing. Prior to that I spent many years working in call-centres, which I hated, but it has taught me to persevere. It was that desperate desire to do something else with my life which egged me on to keep on writing in my free hours, and now I am finally able to enjoy the fruits of my efforts. 

JF: What experiences in particular have inspired your writing?

I think growing up in Colombia has inspired a lot of my Victorian mysteries. Colombia is a country where the very rich and very poor live side by side. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood and had live-in servants, but had to pass slums and begging children on my way to school. The social structure, the rigid class system, the entrepreneurial spirit of a developing nation are things which Colombia has in common with Victorian Britain, and this has really informed my writing. 

JF: Wow, that’s fascinating! What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Taking the dog for a walk, watch old films and Netflix series, and of course reading. But most of all, I enjoy sitting on the window sill, looking out into the distance and daydreaming.

JF: Now, a bit about your writing, if you please. Describe your process. Are you a plotter or a pantser, or something different altogether?

I do plot the whole story before I start writing, but the act of writing usually inspires new ideas, or exposes plot holes. Also, characters have an annoying habit of behaving in unexpected manners, which means that I always end up having to re-plot everything half way through the first draft.  

JF: I can definitely identify with that. What about reviews? Do you read yours? How do you handle ones that are not so great? 

Yes. People don’t relise how valuable reviews are to writers. Writing is a lonely profession and reviews are the only way for me to know how readers are reacting to my stories. Bad reviews don’t tend to bother me much. When I do get a bad review, it’s usually because the reader had different expectations of what the book would be. That’s why it is important for me to make sure that the book’s cover and blurb accurately convey the feeling and genre of the book. 

JF: Are you traditionally published, self-published, both or neither? Why did you choose that path? What are some of the good things and bad things about doing it that way?

I’m self-published. Prior to writing my first novel, I spent years trying to be a screenwriter, and sending unsolicited scripts to production companies and agencies without result, until I reached a point where I just wanted people to enjoy my work, and I didn’t have the patience for the whole waiting game that comes with going the traditional route.

JF: What is the one thing you wish you’d known about writing before you started doing it seriously?

I have learned a lot since I started publishing; how Amazon works, how to find good cover designers and editors, how to look for your audience, how to market your book, how to do promotions efficiently – and I’m still learning. It would’ve been great if I’d known all of this beforehand, but learning is part of the fun of doing something new. And the industry is constantly changing anyway, so the learning never ends.

JF: Now let’s hear a bit about your work. Tell us about your latest book.

The DS Billings Victorian Mysteries are a series of detective novels set in late Victorian England. The protagonist, Detective Sergeant John Billings, is an honest and hard working man who has risen swiftly through the ranks to become one of Scotland Yard’s youngest detectives. But in his private life he struggles with the demons of homosexuality, loneliness and morphine addiction.  He is a complex man who always tries to do the right thing, but often makes reckless and impulsive decisions which land him in deep trouble.

JF: Where did you get the idea for this story?

I was inspired to write a Victorian Gothic story after reading “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins. There is something irrepressibly appealing about dark gas-lit alleys, and sinister men in top hats, and shifty looking maids lurking in corridors, and enigmatic damsels with long dresses and hidden pasts.

JF: What idea would you like your readers to take away from this story?

Two things: One that the late Victorian era wasn’t really that different to modern times. 

Two: that having a gay detective as a protagonist does not make this a gay novel. I see no reason why straight people cannot relate to a gay character the way gay people have been able to relate to straight characters for so many years. I really hope that in the near future we can have more gay protagonists in mainstream fiction.

JF: Me too! So, what’s next for you? 

I am currently writing the fifth Billings mystery. 

I also have a light-hearted romantic novel coming out on April 7 (see below).

You or No One. 

Is the world ready for an openly gay king and his prince consort?

Joel is happy, confident and working class. 

Eric is shy, insecure and a member of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Europe.

When they meet in university sparks fly. 

They say opposites attract, but when Joel discovers that Eric is the crown prince and future king of Doggerland, he starts having doubts.

They want to get married. They think their greatest battle will be convincing the King and the Prime Minister to give their consent. But estranged relatives coming out of the woodwork, intrusive tabloid press, and the traditional, stifling lifestyle of the aristocracy conspire against them. 

Are Joel and Eric secure enough in themselves and each other to overcome a world which is not as tolerant as they thought?

JF: Now that is one that I’m definitely going to check out!

Readers, be on the lookout for You or No One by Olivier Bosman, coming on April 7!

Had a chance to sit down with the wonderful A.L. Lester the other day. Curious what we got up to? Check it out here.

Also, have a look at her magnificent paranormal historical romance series. Where? Right here.

Surprise! My four volume historical series is available now on Amazon!

They say behind every great man is a great woman. But behind the legendary Arthur Conan Doyle stood an entire great family. Great, not in the sense of prominent, though his lineage did include a number of prominent people in artistic fields. No, when I say “great,” I mean significant to Conan Doyle’s development as a writer. And though his mother, Mary Foley Doyle, was neither a prominent artist nor a person of great social influence, her influence on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is inarguable.

Mary Foley Doyle, depicted above in a sketch by her brother-in-law Dicky Doyle, married Charles Altamont Doyle in Edinburgh in 1855, when she was just seventeen. The couple had seven children who survived to adulthood.

Mary was well-educated, and herself a gifted storyteller. Arthur would describe her as “the quaintest mixture of the housewife and the woman of letters, with the high-bred spirited lady as a basis for either character.” She was partial to dramatic stories of chivalry, knights, and bravery, and had a knack for oral storytelling.

“In my early childhood,” Conan Doyle would later note, “as far as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life.” He would also say, “Looking back…it was in attempting to emulate these stories of my childhood that I began weaving dreams myself.”

The stories would eventually serve an important purpose for the family — not just as entertainment, but as distraction from the uncertainty and tragedy of their everyday lives. Charles Altamont Doyle was not a well man. Though an accomplished artist from an artistic family, Charles was forced to neglect his art in order to support his large family. He would later develop an alcohol addiction, and would spend much of his life in and out of asylums, leaving the family’s day-to-day support and management to his young wife.

Mary’s strength and steadfastness in the face of the family’s adversity would leave a lasting impression on both her husband and Arthur. Throughout his life, Arthur would remain close to his mother, seeking her advice in all things. It was a sentiment shared by his father.

 

 

When their extended family chipped in to send Arthur to boarding school in England — by all accounts a gruelling and unpleasant experience —  Mary’s stories helped Arthur to endure. There, Arthur discovered that he, too, had a talent for weaving spellbinding tales, which he would often do for the amusement of the younger students.

When Arthur’s boarding school education finished, it was Mary who insisted he enter medical school at the University of Edinburgh. There he met not only other writers, including James Barrie (Peter Pan) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), but also Dr. James Bell, whose deductive method of diagnosis would inspire the creation of Sherlock Holmes.

This period would see Arthur Conan Doyle’s first published works, short stories that included The Surgeon of Gaster Fell (inspired by the events surrounding Charles Doyle’s commitment to an asylum), The Mystery of Sasassa Valley (written during his early studies), and Captain of the Pole-Star, which arose from his experiences as a ship’s doctor in the Arctic.

Was it any wonder that Dr. Watson’s beloved, long-suffering wife would take her name from the heroine of Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life? Or that he would pass that name on to his own daughter?

A lot has been made of the professional influences on Conan Doyle’s life and writing. But one can’t forget that it was Mary who started him down the path — boarding school, medical school, and his subsequent medical career — where he encountered those influences.

It’s clear, also, from the words of Conan Doyle himself, that it was Mary who taught him the importance of stories — as well as how to create them. And for that we owe her a great debt of recognition.

And I think Arthur Conan Doyle would agree.

Featured Image: Public Domain by Dicky Doyle

 

If one has to emigrate, it’s a fortunate thing to be able to settle in a country where you speak the local language.

We landed in Scotland, though.

All joking aside, it’s been one of the best things that’s ever happened to us in so many ways. People have been kind, welcoming, and loads of fun. 

And they have a lot of interesting ways of putting things.

A Disclaimer

Full disclosure: I have a master’s degree in linguistics. This means precisely squat. Actually, what it means is that I have a basket full of analytical tools that enable me to make observations that probably only I find interesting — but not the actual ability to find a job in my field.

The more one learns about any field, though, the more one realizes how little one actually knows, and how much there is left to learn. And this means that generalizations are dangerous and often wrong.

For such a small population — there are more people in my native Los Angeles than in the entire country — Scotland has an unbelievable amount of linguistic diversity.

We have Scots speakers, Gaelic speakers, and people who grew up speaking only English. There are islanders. And other sorts of islanders. There are English-from-England speakers, as well as folk from all across the English-speaking diaspora.

There are quite a few regional accents as well, and within those, accents touched by social class, education, generation, and a number of other factors. And there are probably lots of other divisions I haven’t even thought of.

What does this mean? It means that after two years my American ears can hear perhaps a dozen distinct and unique accents and identify them as being from Scotland, but not much more specific beyond that. So I won’t try at this point.

So, instead of generalizing my observations to all of Scotland, it would be more accurate to describe my observations as pertaining to “People that I have spoken with in Edinburgh.”

That said, today we shall discuss…understatement.

(And, yes, I realize that understatement is common all across the island. But this is…special.)

Wee Bumps on Wee Dugs

The first thing a visitor will notice upon conversing with the native population is the ubiquitous use of “wee.” Folk here use it a lot as an American might use the word “little.” Wee is essential in the Fine Scottish Art of Understatement.

Recently I took my pup to the vet for a checkup. The vets love my “wee dug.” My wee dug is a 100-pound German Shepherd. He’s a gentle giant — which I think is what one of the techs meant when she described him as “a be’ of a woos fer setch a big boy.”

Later, I received a call from my vet. They had found “a wee speck tha’s a be’ worryin’” Translation? It was a malignant melanoma half the size of my thumb that needed to be immediately, invasively, and expensively excavated.

A few weeks later, I received a call from my children’s high school. One of my children had experienced “a wee fall” and had “a wee bump” on their knee.

My first response, as you might expect, was, Why on earth are you calling me about this?

Then the school said, “An ambulance is on the way.”

WHAT?

Turns out, my child had dislocated their knee. The kneecap was actually sitting on the side of their leg. Emergency treatment was required, as well as physio, and a dire warning that this may happen again.

A wee bump indeed.

Silly Behavior and Weaponized Disappointment

Someone else we know (also an American transplant) went to pick up their child from a high school trip to Europe. The teacher in charge of the trip pulled them aside and said there had been “a be’ of silly behavior” and that it was possible the headteacher might want to have “a wee chat” about it at some point.

The headteacher called promptly the next week.

Turned out, the “silly behavior” was something which, in the States, would be seen as jerky and inappropriate. However, in Scotland it could have been seen as a criminal offense.

The school went easy on the student, however, seeing as they were still acclimating to the culture. The student got off with writing a heartfelt letter of apology to the school community, and a year-long ban from school trips, including the long-anticipated end-of-the-year jaunt to an amusement park.

The disciplinary head who hosted the “wee chat” was a master of Weaponized Disappointment. I have experienced this myself, and can say that American schools would do well to put away every other disciplinary tool at their disposal and develop this.

Weapons-grade Scottish Disappointment is the single most effective tool I have ever witnessed. The quiet, sad tone. The heavy sorrow that is palpable in the air. The slowly shaking head. The doleful, soulful eyes. The sigh, followed by a statement to the effect that we know you’re better than this, but you really slipped up, mate. 

It will scare you straight like nothing else.

So, Now What?

When learning a new language, one tends to generalize outward. Which means that I have to wonder…what dire warnings have people been trying to transmit to me that I’ve been too thick to heed?

When my doctor said, “Och, yer blood pressure is a wee be’ eleva’ed today,” did she really mean “Nae worries, I’ve got the defibrilla’or charged and ready tae go”?

When the mechanic said “there’s a wee be’ of a ping under the bonnet” did they mean it’s time for a new engine?

One thing’s for sure, though. If my neighbor knocks on my door to tell me “there’s a wee zombie havin’ a butchers through yer back windy an’ i’ looks like it could use a cup of tea,” I’m outta here.

Alternative Truths III: Endgame, the last of the Alternative Truths series is here, and it’s fantastic!

I had the privilege of co-editing this anthology of wonderful, imaginative stories by some of today’s best and brightest names in fiction and poetry. We had hundreds of submissions, and it wasn’t easy to choose. But we’ve brought together the best of the best, just for you.

And if you like this one, check out the other anthologies that B Cubed Press has put out.

If great fiction isn’t enough, many of the authors from this anthology (and the others) are donating their royalties to various charities, including the ACLU.

So, what are you waiting for? Check it out!