Author: Jennifer Anderson
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-60693-929-1

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Today, Norm Goldman Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest Jennifer Anderson author of Ill Wind in Egypt.

 Good day Jennifer and thanks for participating in our interview.

Norm:

Could you tell our readers something about yourself, where you were born, your education, and how did you get started in writing and what keeps you going? As a follow up, has your environment and/or upbringing influenced your writing?

Jennifer:

Ava Barby, the narrator of the story, and I have the same occupation -- we are television journalists. And we have multiple nationalities. She is Lebanese, French and American. I am British, American and Australian. Both of us feel uncomfortably adrift at times because nationality doesn't necessarily deliver cultural affinity: we are viewed as foreigners wherever we are. Mainly because of my work, I have resided for various periods in some 15 countries. The longest sojourn has been in the United States, where I went to university in the 1970s and returned to live in 1997.   

I can’t talk about my life without a word or two in praise of happenstance: the memorable parts and the direction of my life have been unplanned. When I was sixteen, a chance met friend introduced me to cave exploring. Some 15 years later, I wrote a how-to book on that bizarre pursuit. A few months after publication, I met a friend for lunch at a University of Illinois cafeteria and fretted to him about joblessness.  He pointed to the  Journalism Department across the quad, telling me it was accepting application for teaching assistantships. Before then, I hadn’t given a minute’s thought to becoming a journalist. The dean looked through my transcripts, but it was the cave book that won my place in journalism grad school. Called “Cave Exploring,” it has been out of print for years, but still can be bought for a dollar or two on Amazon.com.

My Master’s degree led to my first journalism job, at an Illinois daily newspaper.

Soon overcome by an itch to see exotic places, I traveled to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Happenstance next stuck on a government-supplied bus carrying the foreign press corps to an air show in the Egyptian desert. An American working for an international television news agency who, by chance, was sitting next to me on that bus, gave me a job. At first I was his assistant in Cairo. When he was reassigned a few weeks later, the agency gave me his job. I worked in Egypt for three and a half years, and the experience is central to the book.

During my years as a foreign correspondent for the agency, I was often in the right place at the right time by chance. Careful planning seldom yielded the same success. The sojourn covered long and short assignments in other parts of the Middle East, including Iraq, and also in Pakistan, the 13 countries of South America, where I lived for three years, and Russia. It ended with nine years back in Britain, some with the agency and some with a rival. Both had headquarters in London.

My present situation – in the United States and publishing The World News Forecast on www.newsahead.com – resulted from chance-found satisfaction in one of my responsibilites for the rival. As the planning editor, my responsibilities included finding future news stories that might require advance arrangements or special budgeting. When I left, I set up The World News Forecast to follow the same path. The WNF follows news leads into the future and sell the resulting foresight to subscribing editors around the world.

Norm:

I believe Ill Wind In Egypt is your first work of fiction.  Did you enjoy the process?  How was it different from your typical format?

Jennifer:

Yes, it is my first novel. All of my other writing, apart from Cave Exploring, has been news scripts and news features – a few thousand of them, in fact.

There is no more exciting process than writing fiction! I love being able to forget about truth. A fiction writer can live in the mind of any kind of person, in any century, anywhere; and can live any kind of life vicariously.  

Norm:

Did you write your book from your own experiences?

Jennifer:

Yes. Ill Wind in Egypt is built on my professional and personal life as a journalist over more than three decades. The fiction god, a whimsical deity, however, has altered most aspects beyond recognition.

We, the foreign press corps of the 1980s, were often nearly out of our minds because of the exhaustion and innate stress that comes with covering fast-breaking events. Rivalry between our networks and newspapers was vicious. Our employers expected us to be on call 24 hours a day and seven days a week. We were always expected by our employer to be first to a story: exclusive stories – the ones no rivals reached – carried enormous cachet. Many of us – most of us, perhaps -- found relief from the stress, fatigue and the constant demands of our work in opportunistic liaisons and the kind of stupefaction that lives in a bottle of Scotch. I hope this type of pressure on the characters is palpable for readers because it explains many of their actions.

A reader might notice that Ava is two people. Drinking Ava is foolhardy, and the consequences of a particularly ill-advised binge threat through the story.  And as pointed out earlier, she is a cultural misfit, and this stems from my own circumstances.

Egypt’s news became very predictable. After a few years of covering it, I could write the news script about an event before I covered it. I made a game, which my colleagues found tiresome, of writing advance scripts, then crowing a little when nothing had to be changed after the fact. Ava does the same. Events in the story, however, destroy her ability to predict events.  

The book is loaded with civil unrest. I covered none of that in Egypt because protests and large gatherings of any kind were banned under the country’s military law. Demonstrations, and violent reprisals from the authorities, make good television pictures, so we covered many of them during my years in South America. The sights and sounds of the considerable unrest and bloodshed in Egypt were actually a composite of the many protests I covered in Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia and Ecuador.

Chapter Three of the book features a much-embroidered account of the air show that resulted in my job with the television news agency in Egypt.

A truth that I allowed to survive the storytelling was the fine character of my real-life cameraman in Egypt. He is named Mohammed in the book. Mohammed helped to steer Ava around pitfalls when he could and helped to pick up the pieces when he couldn't. My cameraman did as much for me.

Another truth that I hope has survived the storytelling is my huge regard for Egyptians. The culture, past and present, inspires nothing less than awe. 

Norm:

Are the characters in your book based on people you know or have encountered or are they strictly fictional?

Jennifer:

Many characters started as individuals I have known. Storytelling reshaped some personalities slightly and others considerably. Some characters are composites. In Siggy, for instance, I have combined the most unpleasant traits of several former bosses. It’s as difficult to pinpoint the genesis of some characters – and situations – as it is to pin down the origins of people and situations appearing in dreams.  

Norm:

How did you create Ava Barby in your book?

Jennifer:

In the search for a convincing POV for Ava, it was just too tempting not to start with myself. Somewhere in the storytelling, though, our personalities diverged. Her voice is my voice, and my reactions could well be the same as hers in the same imaginary situations, but Ava Barby ceased to be me after the first few lines of the book. 

Norm:

How did you come up with the title Ill Wind In Egypt?

Jennifer:

It refers to the unpleasantness of the 50 (khamseen) days of Egypt’s windy season. The low barometer and almost unceasing discomfort from wind and dust give rise to a pervasive madness. The events of the book would have been less likely during the other 315 days.

Norm:

Was Ill Wind In Egypt improvisational or did you have a set plan?

Jennifer:

There was a careful plan to start, but the characters, including Ava, began sabotaging the plot as soon as I began writing. I let them decide how it would end.

Norm:

What was the most difficult part of writing your book?  As a follow up, did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

Jennifer:

Ill Wind in Egypt is all but wrote itself. The characters raced each other to tell the tale. I felt like a mere conduit for their thoughts and actions. The headaches arrived with the editing. Each sentence has to be reworked for clarity. Paragraphs need transitions to help the story flow. There was always the question of how much detail is needed to explain anything that would be unfamiliar for the reader. I had to check that the appearance and traits of characters were consistent, and that their behavior was in character. That said, some of my story was about characters behaving atypically.

This painstaking part of the process is deadening. I worked on it by myself through what seemed like countless drafts. A professional editor helped me fine tune the manuscript.

I’m less happy with the first paragraph after perhaps hundreds of rewrites than I am with any other part of the book. Grabbing the reader in that first chapter is such a formidable challenge!   

The publisher of Cave Exploring paid advance royalties. I understand now why one royalty check arrived when the contract was signed and the other half after the final editing was completed: it would be just too easy to balk at the immense work of fine-tuning a book.       

Norm:

Many writers want to be published, but not everyone is cut out for a writer's life. What are some signs that perhaps someone is not cut out to be a writer and should try to do something else for a living?

Jennifer:

I’m sure I would ignore the signs: the urge to write fiction is just too compelling.    

Norm:

What is next for Jennifer Anderson and how can our readers find out more about you and Ill Wind In Egypt?

Jennifer:

I am writing Black, Like Velvet, a novel about a cult and four people who escape from it. Some three quarters of it will draw on my experiences exploring caves – the thrills and chills, as well as the personality changes that occur and the relationships that develop in extremely frightening situations. I also plan a sequel to Ill Wind in Egypt. I’m hoping readers will want to know how Egypt’s and Ava’s stories continue.   

Norm:

Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?

Jennifer:

Yes. Ill Wind in Egypt is a far-fetched tale with a serious heart. My future books probably will be more of the kind. H. Rider Haggard, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut and Salman Rushdie – my favorite writers – are masters of the hyperbolic tale. Where they go, I would like to follow.

Click Here To Read Norm's Review of Ill Wind in Egypt

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