Ripley Hayes, Author at Ripley Hayes

I like people. One of my favourite activities is a meal and a few drinks with good company. I have friends. I have a terrific housemate. I’ve been in happy long term relationships. But at my core, I am a solitary, introspective person. I can easily spend weeks completely alone, only staying in touch with messages and social media. Or not, if I don’t feel like it.

I don’t know if all writers are like this, but I suspect a lot of them are, at least in part. Writers generally read a lot, and reading is a solitary activity. Locations are important in my books and I spend time taking pictures so that I can describe a location well enough to put my readers ‘inside’ it. Companions are contra-indicated for taking endless photographs of run-down buildings. Companions also quickly run out of interest in hearing about what my characters have been up to, and they even more quickly get bored spending time with someone who is stuck in her own head and itching to write things down.

Some writers probably have regular mealtimes, and maintain normalish 9-5 working hours. Not this one. I work best between 1pm and 9pm. As the day progresses I feel my creative brain coming to life. It would be a lot easier to get up at 5am and write then, but that’s not how I am and at age mumble, mumble, I’ve come to terms with it.

So, what with one thing and another, living alone is the way to go … for me. Alone =/= lonely. I know that for some people, being physically alone is deeply miserable, but I’m not like that. My characters and stories need time to gestate and grow while I am undisturbed by other humans. Don’t be surprised if I’ve left the country, alone but for a spare pair of jeans, a computer and a pile of notebooks.

This week saw an outbreak of the recurring online ‘discussion’ about women writing gay male characters. I’m not going to rehearse the arguments here, they are easy enough to find. However one point did set me thinking … my pen name is non-gender specific, (though I’m upfront about my pronouns being she/her). So why choose Ripley?

Tom Ripley is the creation of lesbian/bisexual author Patricia Highsmith. If you haven’t read the The Talented Mr Ripley, look away now and go and read it! Tom Ripley is, amongst other things, a murderer, and a thoroughly unsympathetic character. But by the end of the book, readers are rooting for him which is both counterintuitive and a tribute to Highsmith’s brilliance.

I fist came across Tom Ripley in a writing class. The class tutor is a marvellous writer of literary fiction and I disagreed with them about pretty much everything the class discussed. One of those things was Ripley. I think he is a gay man. The tutor thought he was straight. Highsmith never said one way or another, although in later books, Ripley has female partners. The tutor said this was decisive, as if no gay man ever had a female partner/friend/lover/beard. I relied on the text for my argument. See what you think.

This is from the opening section. Ripley realises he is being followed. The book was published in 1955.

”Automatically, as he strolled to an empty space at the bar, he looked round to see if there was anyone he knew … The red-haired man waved a hand, and Tom’s hand went up limply in response. He slid one leg over a stool and faced the door challengingly, yet with a flagrant casualness.

“Was this the kind of man they would send after him? … Was that the kind they sent on a job like this, maybe to start chatting with you in a bar, and then bang! the hand on the shoulder, the other hand displaying a policeman’s badge. Tom Ripley, you’re under arrest.”

Gay or straight?

I’m firmly on Team Gay (in every sense). I think Highsmith was a lesbian/bisexual woman writing about a gay man in the Ripley books. She wrote about lesbians too, (The Price of Salt filmed as Carroll) and about straight people (Strangers on a Train).

I will never be the writer Highsmith was. All we share is that I am a queer woman writing about gay men. And lesbians too, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Becoming a better writer is an endless process. Most of my books have a lot of things happening but if they were all ‘action’ the reader would get bored very quickly … even though they want lots of action.

Reflecting on this, I thought about how authors need both light and shade. Each of my chapters, regardless of length, is essentially a single “scene” with one main character, in one place, doing or saying something to move the plot forward. As they do so, they reveal more about themselves. Some chapters contain more than one scene, but let’s put those aside for a minute.

To keep the reader’s interest in the scene it needs “depth”, by which I mean the author gets the reader inside the character’s head so that they see the scene from the character’s perspective. The best way to do this is to use the senses to allow the reader to experience what the character experiences. This can (should) be an intense experience for the reader — in mystery the author will want to invoke curiosity, fear for the character, excitement. In a romance, the emotions would be different, as they would in speculative fiction (SF/fantasy). But we don’t want the reader in a perpetual state of nervous tension. Which is where light and shade come in. So, some of the text is intense, and some is relaxed to give the reader chance to take a breath.

I’ve illustrated this with some analysis of Wool by Hugh Howey (Chapter 1)

“The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death; he could hear them squealing as only happy children do. While they thundered about frantically above, Holston took his time, each step methodical and ponderous as he wound his way around the spiral staircase, old boots ringing on metal treads.”

This is the opening paragraph, as as well as it being lovely use of language, it also invokes three senses (hearing, feeling, sight). It contrasts death (Holston) and happiness (the children), and the children moving quickly, with Holston moving slowly.

More description of the staircase follows: …”Traffic elsewhere on the staircase sent dust shivering off in small clouds. Holston could feel the vibrations in the railing, which was worn down to the gleaming metal. That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet could wear down solid steel…”

We are experiencing the staircase as Holston does, sharing his reflections.

The chapter continues in this vein: contrasting the hope and excitement of children with Holsten’s bitter reflection about his life, his wife’s death, their failure to have children of their own. As the story proceeds, it becomes darker.

“Holsten turned away from the games … and walked towards his office … As he covered that ground, his thoughts went to the struggle that once took place there, a struggle of ghosts he’d had to walk through every day for the last three years. And he knew that if he turned and haunted that expansive view … his wife could be seen. She lay like a sleeping boulder, the air and toxins wearing away at her, arms curled under her head … He walked through that place of his wife’s ghostly struggle, where memories lay eternal, that scene of her sudden madness, and entered his office.

“Well, look who’s up early,” Marnes said, smiling.”

And then, we get a single line that completely changes the tone. All the tension of the last several pages is instantly dissipated by Marnes and his smiling comment. The reader has a momentary feeling of relief. The next section returns to the slow build up of tension.

That is light and shade!

So, I enjoyed Casey McQuiston’s original book, which I hadn’t expected to, given the unlikely premise. But I loved the movie even more, and I’ve been thinking about why that might be.

Leaving aside the great loveliness of Alex and Henry, and the wonderful representation of people from different ethnic and cultural groups, what I liked best was the clarity of the storyline. In the book, the secondary cast is larger and all the characters are more complex (except perhaps Henry). In the movie, one event led seamlessly to the next. Events were foreshadowed in ways that writers can only dream of…the calculating way Miguel Ramos looks at Alex would take a better writer than I to communicate in words.

Every single one of my books runs into the sand at one point or another. I describe it as writing myself into a corner. Getting out of the corner involves a lot of staring into space, scribbling in my notebook, and deleting thousands of perfectly good words. What I am always trying to achieve is that single narrative thread — often with deliberate side turnings and rabbit holes, but a main plot line that moves inevitably from beginning to end. The RWRB movie does that beautifully.

That must be the reason I’ve watched the film many times. Mustn’t it?

Did you know about the Welsh woollen industry’s connection to the transatlantic slave trade? No, me neither. But there is one. You can find out about it here: Welsh Plain It is a fascinating, if horrifying, story. Many of the woollen mills around Wales made this cloth, and it was exported from English ports as well as places like Barmouth (which I don’t associate with exporting anything to the Caribbean).

Having found it, I couldn’t not write it into a book. You’ll find it in Interwoven (pre-order up soon). This book began as a short story, then grew and grew, until it decided to be a full-length novel featuring Daniel Owen.

In the middle of moving from the cabin-in-the-woods to the-house-in-the-town I had to take one of my dogs on her final journey. I still haven’t completed the move, but we’re getting there. So, probably no surprise that I’m reflecting on the effects of stress on creativity.

One of the things writing has taught me is the importance of accepting something is OK and moving on with it. I am the world’s worst decision-maker. Give me a simple choice between two items and I will call a friend, look it up online, ask the audience, anything rather than decide, because a decision might be the wrong one… I’m working on it.

Writing mysteries requires a lot of decisions. I’m a pantser, aka a discovery writer, which means I have only a vague idea about what the story is. I make a lot of notes and then just begin at the beginning. Inevitably I write myself into a corner every few thousand words. So, who did kill x? Why the h… would he go there? Surely they would just have rung up? I find that the best way to solve these problems is to write them down, do something else and wait. The answer often appears. If it doesn’t I scribble every possible solution until I get the right one and then I carry on until the next problem.

That’s the creative process. I try to transfer the same techniques to real life, but what about the other way round? Turns out the lesson is the same: wait.

So, I didn’t write for a few days. I sat in my new house and watched the rain. Took the other dog for lots of little walks and in the fullness of time, the urge to carry on with my story came back. The house move will get done. Jelly-dog and I will get used to not having Hetty around and the story will get written.

Apologies for the miserable post. Normal service will return soon.

I have always wanted a long case clock, aka a grandfather clock. I have no idea why, and I have never shared a house with anyone who understood my craving. To be honest, I’ve never lived anywhere that such a clock would fit. All that has now changed. I have a clock, and it will be joining me in a new (to me) house, where I will take pleasure from looking at it every day. It won’t fit – the clock is from 1938, and the house from 1960-something, but I don’t care.

I find as I get older that I care less about whether things fit, or whether other people will share my taste in objects, clothes or furnishings. So for my new house I have not bought anything sensible. I have a canteen of silver plated cutlery, which I will be using every day. I have a collection of willow-pattern china, which I will also be using even though no two pieces match.

The local antique emporium will be providing a dressing table and a couple of dining chairs. I will buy a bed and a sofa. The previous owner is leaving a ginormous fridge-freezer and a range cooker large enough for a restaurant. As the owner of the grand total of three saucepans and a wooden spoon, I probably won’t get full use from the kitchen…

But who cares? I have a long case clock.

I had a plan to write a book about Charlie, Daniel Owen’s frequent sidekick and friend. I started the book, and I have a clear story that I want to tell. I have the book cover (which is gorgeous). But then Paul Qayf got in the way, and insisted that I told his story first. Now I know and you know that these people aren’t real, but Paul didn’t get the email, and kept banging away until I agreed. That meant another book set in Kent, though a different area this time.

I used to live in South London, and Kent was the nearest area of wild country, so I spent a lot of time exploring. Even after I moved to Wales I visited regularly, including spending time in the Medway area. I’ve messed around with the geography to obscure where the events in the book take place. If Dickens can do it, so can I. Ledmarsh does not exist, except in my imagination. But the river and the forts are real (although the fort at Ledmarsh is a mash-up of several real forts).

Forts of all ages cover the Medway–and the whole coast of Britain, and the more I researched them, the more obsessed I became. Many of the forts have simply been abandoned to the urban explorers and the sea birds. Some have been turned into houses, holiday destinations, or museums. At the time of writing there is one for sale off the south Hampshire coast for £3million–and you need a helicopter to get there. Great views though.

The forts built to repel Napoleon’s ships are the model for the fort at Ledmarsh. They were built (with obvious care, and lovely details) and then hardly used.

The forts in my picture were used, not just in war, but also by pirate radio stations. I think they look like alien invaders, and I can’t imagine how frightening t must have been to have served in one, high up above the waves, with only the spindly legs to keep you safe. By contrast the Napoleon-era forts like my imaginary Ledmarsh fort, were massive and heavy, built on solid ground.

I did most of the research for this book online, but I have a firm plan to go fort-visiting next year. But first I have Charlie’s book to finish.