My Guest this week shares a couple of things with me: First she's a lover of hard-core Spy thrillers, having cut her teeth on Ian Fleming just like yours truly, and second, she uses strong female protagonists in her novels. Ladies and Gentlemen...
Jaye Rothman
Love and Cold Wars
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written
yet, you must be the one to write it. ~ Toni Morrison.
I grew up in a sleepy little town outside London, England during the
Cold War. Perhaps because of that, I have always been fascinated by life behind
the Iron Curtain.
When I was just a teenager, I watched my first James Bond movie. It was one of the very early
ones – I can’t remember which one, now – and I vividly remember being
absolutely mesmerised by the action, the intrigue, and the exotic locations.
The next day I rushed to the library and over the next few weeks I devoured all
of Ian Fleming’s books. Shortly after that, I discovered Len Deighton and John
Le Carré – and so began my lifelong love affair with espionage novels and
movies.
In particular, I think Deighton’s three trilogies, featuring Bernard
Samson as the disillusioned MI6 spy, perfectly capture the era and the paranoia
of the Cold War during the 1980s. They are still among my favourite books.
One thing that always bothered me as a female reader, though, was
that most of the protagonists in spy thrillers were men. I desperately wanted
to read about a female James Bond–type character, but there was nothing.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War officially ended
– but my fascination with it did not. Nor did my quest for stories about female
Cold War protagonists.
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Fast forward again to 2012 when, like many people in our middle
years, I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with my job. One evening after
I’d had a particularly horrendous day at work, my partner turned to me and
said, “You spend hours reading thrillers. Why don’t you write one?”
Why indeed? I wondered, and the die was cast.
But where to start?
When I was at university I had written papers, of course, but I had never written anything fictional. So I Googled “writing classes in New Zealand,” and came across a correspondence writing course with the intriguing title “How to write a thriller in 10 weeks.”
When I was at university I had written papers, of course, but I had never written anything fictional. So I Googled “writing classes in New Zealand,” and came across a correspondence writing course with the intriguing title “How to write a thriller in 10 weeks.”
I enrolled, and four days later a package arrived. Eagerly, I ripped
it open, read through the contents and began my first assignment.
First, of course, I needed a protagonist. That part wasn’t actually
all that difficult: during my years of searching in vain for a female Cold War
spy/protagonist in other people’s books, I had been constructing “what if”
scenarios in my head, imagining a female character I would have wanted to read
about. She even had a name: MI6 agent Nikki Sinclair, the heroine I write about
now. But writing a believable
character proved to be more of a challenge: I had to give her a past, a life
story, lay out the reasons for why she behaves the way she behaves and does the
things she does.
Next, I needed a plot.
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All of us white passengers had to surrender our passports, and we
were then bundled into a clapped-out bus manned by armed soldiers and told we
were being taken to a hotel outside the city.
I tried to remain calm as I stared out the windows at the streets
and the people – not an easy task. We passed an army camp, and the soldiers
barked at us not to take photographs or we would be arrested – believe me,
photography was about the last thing on my mind!
Eventually we arrived at a run-down hotel in the middle of
the rain forest. The soldiers jumped down first and ordered us all off the bus.
Among other instructions, we were given explicit orders not to leave the hotel
grounds. Someone asked to use the telephone, and we were told that all the
communications had broken down and would be fixed in a few days – long after we
were scheduled to depart again, of course.
We all settled in as best we could, and then descended en masse for
dinner. The dining room at the hotel and the uneasy small talk we made among
ourselves are what I remember most vividly about that first evening; the forced
camaraderie and simultaneous anonymity of hotel dining rooms are a feature in
many of my books.
And if you’ve read my book 'The Hell of Osirak (Betrayal)', my
description of the route my characters take through the streets of Kinshasa is
actually the route our bus took on that night in the 1980s.
Back to my assignment: to add to the visuals of the Kinshasa plot, I
recalled reading in a newspaper about the shipment of yellowcake uranium from
South Africa to Israel. Once again I started Googling information about it, and
came across the back-story of Israel’s bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor
called “Osirak” in 1981 during Operation Opera
(a.k.a. Operation Babylon). Although there is not much verifiable information
on the build-up to the actual bombing, it didn’t matter: I had found my story.
It took me about a year to write it, then to rewrite it and rewrite
again – this is a fact of life for most authors. And like many of us who are
just starting out, I worked full time during the days, and wrote at weekends,
during the evenings, and in any and all down-time I had. Towards the end, I
started to get restless, which is usually a good sign: I just wanted to finish
the thing and get it published!
When I could see light at the end of the tunnel, I employed an editor
to clean it up and a graphic designer to create a cover. When the text was
finally ready, I had it formatted and then, heart in mouth, I self published
it.
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By now I had caught the writing bug in earnest. During my research
for Osirak, I had stumbled across the
so-called “Umbrella Murder” of Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978. The
details were gruesome, of course, but also fiendishly clever, and I had another
one of those “what if…” moments: what if my heroine Nikki Sinclair were to be
tasked with investigating a similar murder? What if there was not one victim
but two – say, two Soviet defectors? And what if they were working away in a
secret facility right under the noses of their British hosts?
And thus the plot for 'Murder by Umbrella' was hatched.
I had actually intended for it to be a stand-alone book, but as I
wrote it, more ideas popped into my head for yet another book (did I mention
that writing bug??), so I decided rather ambitiously to write a quartet.
As part of my own career development, in July of this year I
attended Thrillerfest in New York City –
it was my first trip abroad in ages, and although (thankfully!) there were no
gun-toting soldiers on rattle-trap buses or isolated hotels, I did come away
with some excellent ideas, and some solid advice: Write, write, and write some
more. Write a quality book that has a good story and is edited well, and then
repeat and repeat again.
Easier said than done, of course, but I am most definitely
up to the task. Stay tuned!
Bio:
London-born author Jaye Rothman is a seasoned explorer, having
travelled all over Europe, as well as to the United
States , Australia ,
and Africa . She has also lived on a kibbutz in
Israel
A long-time lover of Cold War espionage stories, Jaye brings her own
brand of unique wit and sense of romance to other fans of this genre. Her first
book, The Hell of Osirak, features
British agent Nikki Sinclair, a tough and uncompromising hero for all lovers of
exciting spy drama.
Jaye currently lives in Auckland
When Jaye is not penning fast-paced, action-packed Spy Thrillers she can be found here:
Blog: goo.gl/rWXlND
Website: goo.gl/Yv82s9
(Many of her boards relate to her books.)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaye.rothman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jayerothman
Thank you, Jaye. Reading the above was like deja vù all over again (to quote Yogi Berra). My own trajectory is so similar to yours in so many respects, it was spooky. I strongly recommend 'Murder by Umbrella' to lovers of great spy fiction - I read it last year and it was outstanding!
Eric @ www.ericjgates.com
