Guest Post: From Aunty Ivy to Khubilai Khan

Some great news before we begin. Winds from the North has been released and is now available on Kindle! (Nookbook coming soon) 
 

This week's guest post is lifted from the entertaining blog of Colin Falconer (with his permission, of course). It was first posted on 10/24/11. Thanks, Colin, for making me think back to my childhood and what brought me to where I am today.

My primary school teacher's name was Mrs Boyne. She once told my mother at a parent interview: “Your son is a complete dreamer. He’ll never amount to anything in this life.” I still think that was a pretty harsh judgment on a seven year old. But she was right, of course, I was a dreamer. It was my greatest asset.

It was about the time I first read Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff. To get my hands on it, I had to endure a slobbery wet kiss from my Aunty Ivy, but I considered it well worth it. By the end of that first afternoon, I was hooked on classic literature.

Every week my Aunty Ivy took the train down from London to visit with us in (what was then) rural Essex, bringing with her a collection of Classics Illustrated comics. She must have picked them up in the markets in London. There were some Beanos and Victors mixed in, but I threw them out. My treasure was the cartoon versions of some of the world’s greatest literature. I read all of Jules Verne in an afternoon.

And so began my love affair with literature. By the time I was eight I had read Moby Dick, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde, The Moonstone, The Black Tulip and Ivanhoe, was familiar with most of the major works of Alexandre Dumas (Père), Mark Twain and William Wilkie Collins and had even read most of Homer’s Odyssey (although I never found out how it ended because the last page had been ripped out.)

You can see the still see the whole comic at http://jv.gilead.org.il/CI/28/!

I don’t think that back then Aunty Ivy knew she was giving me primers for my future career, for no one in my family had ever used their hands for doing anything other than making pies or fixing corner cupboards So wherever she is in Heaven, I hope there’s an angel making her a nice cup of tea and letting her rest her sore feet, God bless her heart.

Those comic books were important to me. I was an only child and though not particularly bookish – I was then, and still am, a sports tragic – it nurtured in me a thirst for great stories painted on broad canvas.

This appetite shows up in the movies I love; The Last Samurai, the Godfather trilogy, the Last Emperor, Empire of the Sun. All epics. My favourite author is James Clavell. I love big stories and big characters.

So Aunty Ivy did not just give me the gift of something to read when it was raining too hard to play football. Classics Illustrated stirred my nascent imagination and at the same time gave me an undying thirst for travel and for adventure. These little gems of comics also made me want to time travel, because many of the places I was reading about no longer existed.

The only way I could revisit them was to recreate them in my head. Imagining them onto a page was the next logical step.

When I left school the first thing I did, to the consternation of both my parents, was to go hitch-hiking around Europe. After all, why go to university? I’d read The Iliad and everything Shakespeare ever wrote by the time I was eight. What was there left to learn?

After Europe I headed down to Morocco, where me and my mate were the only white faces (then) wandering the Djema El-fna’a, the Place of the Dead, in Marrakech. Not too long after that I found myself in the middle of a typhoon in the South Java Sea, and wandering the Golden Triangle of Burma, shaking hands with CIA agents and drug smugglers.

All thanks to Aunty Ivy and Classics Illustrated.

http://corvus.shamwana.com/book/Silk%20Road

I guess what Mrs Boyne didn’t account for when summing up my future prospects was what would happen to my daydreams once introduced to the genius who sandwiched Les Miserables into 48 lurid pages with speak bubbles. The invention of the laptop, of course, helped a little as well.

I've never made the NY Times bestseller lists but this month my seventeenth novel SILK ROAD, was published in London. I'd send Mrs Boyne a copy, but we have lost touch.

Would you like to share what your teachers said about you? (Not just the bad ones - you can include the really good teachers as well.) What would you like to say to them if you could meet up with them now?

All this  month, you can be entered to win a free copy of The Faithful Heart by Merry Farmer. Check here for more details! This is a giveaway you do not want to miss! And Warm Hands Warm Hearts still need your help.

All About Colin

Colin is the author of over twenty historical novels, including SILK ROAD which was published in London in October. His work has been published in the UK and US and translated into seventeen languages. (None as yet in his native Cockney.) He has two amazing daughters, one studying English literature, the other manages a pub chain in London. So no influence there, then! See his web page colinfalconer.net.

Join Colin at his blog  or connect with him on Twitter .