“Well its like this your honour. There I was minding my own business, fast asleep when this here Jason Watson turned up and hauled me off to China to see how he helped the East India Company to sell opium to the Chinese in return for silver. No your honour he is not a man you can say no to, and believe me I have tried. Not only did he get me involved with pirates, but wars, bandits and a woman, as if he hadn’t got enough on his hands with his wife in England.
He comes in the night and starts telling me what has happened and what will happen and goes on and on until I get up switch on the machine and write it all down. As if that’s not bad enough he then comes and wakes me again to come here and tell you how it is. He is a good man at heart but can’t sit still I shall be glad when he goes back to sea. Any chance of a war to keep him occupied?”
This is how it felt when I was writing A Bengal Poppy. After a day of writing tweaking and re-writing to make sense of it I would go to bed tired out but content. Then Jason would turn up and either say what he was doing, had been doing, was going to do next or just plain bitch about what he didn’t like in the story so far. (Should have made him a politician!) so once again I would get up and find myself working at god knows what hour of the morning.
But that as they say is the life of a writer and to be honest I would not change it or my characters. All I ask of them is to be allowed to get a little sleep….please.
(c) M D Bosc – Author
Social Freedom. 