Why write? For a privileged few, journalists, columnists and the like, the answer is to pay the bills. For an even more fortunate élite of best-selling authors, writing can provide a very pleasant lifestyle. It is a dream of many budding writers, very few of whom will make more than a few hundred pounds from efforts if that.
Why write? For most writers the answer is simple, they have something to say and they want people to hear it, it may be simply the desire to entertain or it can be something more profound, a desire to influence others or change the world in some way.
Literacy is at the core of civilisation, what separates humans from animals is not using tools, not awareness of death, not fighting wars, nor is it killing for fun, there are examples of animals doing all those things. Humans are the only creatures that can record and pass on their thoughts to others across distance and time. No other form of life can do that. Writing is also an art and like all art it should touch others in some way, the reader should be informed but also, in the case of fiction, feel something.
Why write? In my case, I enjoyed writing at an early stage. I enjoyed the challenge of being given a random subject by a teacher and then creating a story from it. I make no claim to genius but if I wasn’t the best in class then I’d at least be in the best two or three. Also, it has to said, when the words come, and they don’t always do, it can be fun to put thoughts onto a page, especially when the words come easily in a stream page after page .
I have now written three books, one factual and two fiction. The history book was self-published and the two novels have both been published, the first twice by two different publishing houses. Each was a challenge I set myself, the first was simply to see if I could actually write a book.
They say ‘write what you know’ which is certainly sound advice, at least for a beginner. My first novel, Nights in Armour, was the story of a group of RUC officers in a fictional town during the Republican Hunger Strike of 1918. I intended to write something different to the prevailing nature of Troubles fiction which tended to be of the love across the barricades variety, thrillers or from a pro-IRA slant. The book was initially published by David Trimble under the auspices of the Ulster Society in 1993. He was not yet leader of the UUP at the time but was becoming more prominent within Unionism and I had some reservations about the book being perceived as propaganda. I couldn’t have had a conventional launch at the time and it was published under the nom de plume of Blair McMahon. I remember David saying at the private launch it brought home the true horror of the Troubles. I like to think it might have influenced him a little for the need for peace. Trimble also gave President Clinton a selection of Ulster Society books and I hope mine was among them. Again, I have no definitive evidence that was the case but it is nice to think a president of the United States might have at least glanced through it.
Nights in Armour is a more sympathetic portrayal of the men and women in bottle green than was usually the case but the characters are no angels. The public are no fools, no one is going to buy a Dixon of Dock Green type yarn. I was pleased with the reviews and the comments of one reader, if I paraphrase him correctly was, ‘I almost felt sorry for the RUC men’ made me laugh.
The book was reprised by Mercier Press, a Cork based publisher in 2019, which introduced it to a different, southern-based audience. I had to make some minor changes for the second edition and bring the ending up to date but 95% of the book is the same as the first edition. The process was interesting as there was no electronic copy of the original so I had to photograph all the pages and email them to a virtual office in the Philippines that typed them into a Word document. I had some interesting exchanges with the office manager as her typists struggled with the vernacular of the dialogue – ‘You have referred to this characters as a boy but he is clearly a man’ was typical of the questions, but she said the women enjoyed typing something different from the usual business documents.
The current book, The Birthday Boys, was a departure from the rules. Once more, I set a challenge for myself. I wanted to try my hand at literary fiction, a book about ordinary life and about subjects and situations I know next to nothing about. I therefore invented four main characters in totally different walks of life. They are old school friends who know each other by nicknames and call themselves the Birthday Boys because they kept in touch by meeting up on their birthdays.
The first Birthday Boy, Marine Boy is a former Royal Marine haunted by his experiences in the Falklands. To compound his PTSD, he has a disastrous personal life and is crushingly lonely. CARP is an acronym of the initials of his three forenames and surname, he is fairly successful career but feels his family, particularly his teenage daughters are drifting away from him. No matter how he tries, they are moving into their own worlds. The third, Fabulous Fred is a former professional footballer who has had to struggle with his latent homosexuality, coming out, and the desire to be treated as an equal in the eyes of the law as his straight friends. Finally, we have Dodgy Doug, a successful second-hand car salesman who seems to be winning at life until he has the type of conversation with a doctor none of us ever want to. He faces the biggest challenge of his life and the Birthday Boys support each other as they all seek their own redemption.
The book examines middle-age angst and what masculinity means in the 2020s. there are themes of reconciliation, friendship and other topical issues, including the pressures on teenagers and young women, it is a story about the curve balls life throws at us and how we handle them. I hope you will read it and that it touches you in some way.
You are invited to the launch of the Birthday Boys book tomorrow night (Thursday) upstairs in the Duke Of York Pub at 7:30pm. All welcome, free to attend
Sam Thompson’s books are as follows.
Nights in Armour
https://www.mercierpress.ie/books/nights-in-armour/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nights-Armour-Samuel-Thompson/dp/178117699X
The Lesser Evil: A Political and Military History of the Second World War 1937-45
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lesser-Evil-Political-Military-History-ebook/dp/B00KLC8KX6
The Birthday Boys
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/BIRTHDAY-BOYS-THOMPSON-SAMUEL-Greenisland-Press/32493630671/bd
Also available at the usual on-lines outlets and bookshops.
Sam Thompson is an occasional blogger, writer and historian, his latest book is ‘The Lesser Evil: A Political & Military History of World War II 1937-45‘.
You can find him on Twitter at: @JarrieSam
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