Craft Your Stories Without Fear

I love Science Fiction...always have.

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As a Dyslexic child I stumbled my way through every SciFi book in my local library...a timber panel walled institution that had a heady aroma of well thumbed books, dust and wood polish.

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I simply couldn't get enough of SciFi!

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Distant and exotic imaginary worlds beckoning me away from my inner city existence.

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My first attempt to actually write a book was a pretty epic attempt (I don't do things by halves.)

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It was a handwritten SciFi  tome of some 500,000 words.

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Yes, really, a half a Million words!

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A hefty manuscript that if dropped on my foot would have shattered it into more pieces than there were planets in our Solar System!

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In those days, pretty close to when Dinosaurs walked the Earth, there were very few Literary Agents representing writers in the field of SciFi.

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So... with fear and trepidation I came to the worrying conclusion that I would have to, need to, change the genre that I intended to write in.

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It came as almost a revelation while reading about a murder in the press, that it was the crime genre that also fascinated me. I was drawn to reports of crime. I was almost steeped in it, being born just a 'stones-throw' away from the East End of London, where the notorious gangsters, the Kray Twins, ruled and terrorised with their particular brand of terror.

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So, I came to the conclusion that for me, it would be a crime not to write about crime!

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But what a crowded genre the crime-thriller field was!

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A huge, well selling field that had an army of well known authors fuelling and supplying it.

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How could a new writer in this genre stand out and elbow his way in?

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How could such a manuscript raise a Literary Agents eyebrow, or two?

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The answer in my, at that time very brave mind was simple.

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I had to find a gap in the market of this huge genre, if one existed?

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An angle, which had never been written about?

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Or maybe a setting in which no fictional detective had ever ventured?

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One night, while tucking into a Chinese takeaway meal, a thought process was born that was to change my writing journey.

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A simple question filled my mind: Was any author out there writing books about a Chinese detective?

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Did The People's Republic of China even have detectives, in particular Homicide  Detectives?

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I knew of a platoon of raincoat wearing New York based fictional detectives. An entire cohort of English detectives with perfect diction and driving iconic cars. Even a smattering of Dutch, Belgium,  Italian and Scandinavian Detectives, who all seemed rather exotic!

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But a Chinese Detective?

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My path was clear, and as the mists rolled away revealing this new and what I felt was a unique  tributary of my writing journey, the stars seemed to align.

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Life, as it can sometimes do, had winked at me and paved the way. I had been given the opportunity to work in China in my particular and specialised field of Engineering—an 18 month contract had fallen in my lap.

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I was to go to the country that had spawned a Million food takeaway shops. A vast mass of a country that I knew nothing at all about, except that I loved it's cuisine, or at least the Anglo-Chinese version of it.

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Did China have Homicide Detectives?

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Did they in fact have murders that needed to be investigated?

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Over the next year and a half, being partially shadowed by my Chinese Communist  party minders, I would be able to put answers to those questions.

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But how?

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By taking risks, which was difficult for me as I'm not a risk taker by nature.

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I talked to political dissidents in the half shadows. In messages that I received from intermediaries from those who had been illegally imprisoned. In hastily arranged meetings in very obscure locations with the relatives of those subjugated by the Party...their human rights stolen away.

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All of these adding to new writing genre to be born.

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'Chinese Noir.'

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The gap in the crime-thriller market that I had been seeking had presented itself.

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A Chinese detective fighting the system, the Party, to unveil murder and corruption.

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Against all odds, a moral loner with nothing left to lose, battling against the institutionalised oppression of human rights in a country that he loved, and in part, hated.

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A hard nosed take on the society that I was now enfolded within.

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Not the Peoples Republic of China famous for its Great Wall, Silk Road and Ming pottery, but it's harshness, it's cruelty, it's piss stained alleys and fetid river banks.

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Not it's great and delicate arts, or it's lyrical countryside.

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But it's broken backed workers, skeletal industrial sectors and flick kniffed neighborhoods.

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It was a great learning experience for me, not only the discovery of China's underbelly...but a writing revelation.

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As a novice writer I'd always been told that every story had been written before. That every possible narrative had been mapped out. That every setting and character arc has been used and re-used. That there was nothing new left to write about.

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Well... I can tell you now, hand on heart, that it hadn't and wasn't.

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I'd been misinformed.

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A vast and unknown continent of storytelling is still out there to be discovered and mined.

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Those gaps in the market are waiting to be bridged and their highest peaks crowned with your flag.

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Those new dramas lay in waiting to be unveiled.

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As a writer, you just need the will, the opportunity and a little insight to mine them and open them up.

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I learnt that as a writer who dreams big, that you should never be afraid to write what has never been written before.

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Never falter in writing in a unique voice that might go against the norms.

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To write without fear and in a boundaryless fashion.

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A story about an Aboriginal Private Detective hasn't been written.

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So write it!

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An exotic tale set amongst the Berber desert community of the Sahara that has never reached the light of day...be it's first author…

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A collection of fables about the various African tribal God's that has never been published before.

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Write it and publish it.

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And now you have VOCATALES to support you totally in this fantastic enterprise.

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To map out these new continents of narratives.

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To explore and peg out these exotic and unread settings.

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To plot the arc of your unique characters.

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And to let the World know about these fantastic stories and impactful human encounters.

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Don't forget to 'buckle-up.'

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Enjoy the ride!

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It's going to be an exhilarating one.

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