The Emperors' New Clothes

Time to come down from the hills...

I hope you’ll forgive the gloating, but we’re just back from a week’s skiing in the French Pyrenees that was everything it ought to be – empty slopes with blue skis overhead and fresh deep snow lying all around. And the piece de resistance? A free emergency helicopter ride down the mountain (in a neck brace).

I am happily kidding about the last part, but not the rest. Although I should say, I’m neither a frequent nor a very good skier, and I’m somewhat conflicted about the ethics of the whole thing. In a world we’re told is warming dangerously because of our antics – such as converting wild snowy mountains into enormous playgrounds – it seems… I dunno, a little hard to justify? But it is breathtakingly beautiful, and I did my best to drink in the snowy vistas in case I don’t get to see them again.

And also to use them as best I can. My other plan for the week was to think hard about what to write next, and I’m happy to say that was equally successful. Since I’m on my sixteenth novel (or thereabouts), I’m very familiar now with what I need to begin writing a story. I start with a seed of an idea and then play around adding characters and places and scenarios. And it’s almost like a puzzle, moving the bits around, testing new ideas (perhaps character A would work better if she had a twin? Or maybe a twin that died? Or maybe – a twin who’s an alien!). But often it’s like a puzzle bought from a charity shop, with crucial pieces missing, or at least which I can’t find no matter how hard I look. Then I’m eventually forced to drop the idea and move onto another. And that’s what I seem to have been doing recently – coming up with ideas, but repeatedly failing to build them into full story outlines that I can sit down and write.

But while driving out to the mountains I dusted off a seed of an idea that’s been bouncing around in my mind for a while and gave it another look. And whether it was the mountain scenery, or the diesel fumes, somehow this time the pieces fell into place. I won’t give away the whole plot for obvious reasons, but it’s going to be set in a remote valley in the Swiss Alps, at an obscure research facility. And it’s a little bit similar in tone to my book The Lake House Children, or if you’ve read or seen Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty – it has shades of that as well. I even have a name: The Angel Project.

But also, as I’ve been working on this, and enjoying the snow, I’ve been following the news from America. And I feel conflicted about this too – a lot of my readers are in the States, and I’m not. And I genuinely wouldn’t think it my business to tell anyone how to vote, even if I was. Plus it’s hard enough to make a living as a writer without giving people a reason not to read my books – because of the perception I’m on the wrong side of a political divide. All that said, it feels like a point has been reached where staying quiet is no longer the right thing to do. Even though I’m well aware my words will have absolutely no effect.

To me it feels like the moment in The Emperor’s New Clothes when the little boy shouts that the beautiful robes we’re all pretending to admire don’t actually exist. Privately I’ve thought as much for a long time, but not had the courage to say so online. Or perhaps I thought it wise not to say so. Or not my business. But now the situation feels flipped. Many of the lies told up to now were vague. It was possible that maybe they were sort of true, or spoke to a core of truth that had been ignored for too long. But when we clearly see a man holding a phone and are told it’s a gun. When we’re told an officer is in hospital after being rammed by a car, yet watch him walk away unharmed after shooting the driver in the head – these lies are no longer vague. If we won’t call out the most blatant untruths imaginable, then what will we call out? I think we all see now that the emperor is naked. As such, we have to say so.

And for that reason, I’ve decided to make the hero in my new book – a fourteen-year-old girl named Megan – from Minneapolis. I don’t know much about the city, so I’ll have to do some research, and as already said, the action is going to take place in Switzerland, so there’s little consequence to this decision from a narrative perspective. It’s simply an opportunity to demonstrate my support in a very, very small way for the people there who are showing such bravery and humanity in standing up for the truth.

I will add that it’s not going to be in any way a political book – in some ways quite the opposite. And this doesn’t mark a shift in these posts towards including more politics. I’ll soon be back to my usual bad jokes, and writing about life as a writer. But on this occasion, at this point, it feels the right thing to do.

Hope you’re well, and thanks for reading.