Naked in LA (32 page)
Colin went to Sydney and worked in TV and radio and freelanced for many of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines. But he got his dream, publishing over a dozen novels in the UK and US and having his work sold into translation in Brazil, Belgium, the Czech republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey.
He lived for many years in the beautiful Margaret River region in WA, and helped raise two beautiful daughters with his late wife, Helen. While writing, he also worked in the volunteer ambulance service. "I'd be at my desk typing, then thirty minutes later I might be crawling into an overturned car or running along a beach with the oxygen for a near drowning. It was an interesting time."
His marriage ended in tragic circumstances, a story he has told in 'The Naked Husband,' and its non-fiction sequel, 'The Year We Seized the Day,' written with a writing partner, Elizabeth Best.
He travels regularly to research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in La Paz. (He was actually trying to cycle down the Death Road. In the end he had to abandon the attempt and take the bus down.) He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.
A few years ago he stopped writing. 'I suddenly found I couldn't do it anymore. It was after'The Year We Seized the Day.' I was ridden with guilt and I remember standing on a beach in Thailand late one night, and I said to God: 'Okay I've had enough now.'
A week later I was in a Thai hospital, only time in my whole life I've ever been sick, I'd got some sort of tropical infection and I was close to multiple organ failure. I remember praying again (that's twice in one year!): "Hey I didn't know you were listening, Big Guy! I didn't mean it! I have two girls to look out for!"
"I survived but when I got home I started drinking too much and I couldn't find my writing mojo. It got ugly there for a while. Thought I'd never write again."
Then he published SILK ROAD, and got a three book contract in London, and his love affair for life and for writing returned. "For me, the two things are inseparable. My passion for one infects the other."
His fiction comes from dedicated research and what he calls a quest for Hemingway's ghost; characters with a passion for life, for love and the courage to face down their demons.
Istanbul, Bucharest, Colin Falconer'When I was walking through that graveyard I made two promises to my gawky 18 year old self; one - that I would not die feeling that I had not lived, and two - that I would follow my siren call to write, no matter where it lead. I feel like so far I have kept that promise and I intend to see it all the way through.'
You can now find Colin's books on Kindle where his entire list will be available by the end of the year; SILK ROAD was published in hardback and paperback by Corvus-Atlantic in London in 2011 and his new novel STIGMATA has just been released.
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Colin Falconer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance of fictional characters to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author and publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
ISBN 9781621251101
Colin Falconer’s blog at:
http://colinfalconer.wordpress.com
or on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/#!/colin_falconer
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