Here is the old adage in new form: “Behind every great man is a surprised mother-in-law,” says Jeffrey Archer. And no wonder, for Archer says he began writing only when he was 34 and his first book went down without a whimper. “I can’t remember what it was when my first book was out. All I remember is that my first book ‘Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less’ only sold 3000 copies in the first year. I keep reading in the papers that it was an instant success, it was not. It took off after ‘Kane and Abel’. For any author, seeing the cover is a big day, getting a copy of the book is a big day and the publication day is a big day and they do not get any less nerve racking. You wonder if anybody will read the book. You will be sitting there with the publisher who is saying no one bought this one, it is still in the shops. I get nervous every time. ‘Kane and Abel’ came in the fifth year of my writing (he has been writing for 39 years now) and those five years were difficult.” He adds that the greatest influence over his life were three women; his mother, his wife and Margaret Thatcher.
His mother-in-law must have been completely wonderstruck by the time Archer decided to write his Clifton Chronicles. He says, “At the age of 70 I wanted to write five book series to drive myself, so decided to write the story of Harry Clifton, a boy born in the back streets of Bristol and in love with Emma Barrington, the daughter of a man who owns the docks and her brother Giles. It is their story over a hundred years, goes from 1920 to where we are today and was originally meant to be five books and now that I have come to the fifth Harry is only 40, Giles is only 40 and Emma is only 38 and to kill them all off seemed impractical so I went back to my publishers and said it has got to be a seven book series if I am able to get them through a sensible age of dying….”
Archer says he had planned to cover 20 years in each book but it had not worked that way. “I have not a blooming clue on what happens next …I got to an ending in the book I am writing …a cliff hanger ending and my agent said how does that solve itself, I said I don’t know. If I don’t know, the reader can’t know and that keeps us on the edge…”
Archer says believes one should write about what one knows well and so he located Harry in the region where he grew up and about things he knew...“There is a lot of me in Harry Clifton. I took advantage of my 38 years as a writer and decided to make Harry a writer…so I could tell the world…as I had lots of questions on e mail on how it is to be a writer…so I thought I would make him a writer and pass on to everybody what a person goes through when he is published for the first time, speaks for the first time. Equally his wife is strong woman like Mary (his wife of 48 years)…”
Archer’s favourite author is Stephan Zweig, favourite book is Dumas’s ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, Charles Dickens’s ‘Bleak House’…”…to go through life not having read them is sad... “Archer says he had a very bad review once and he had to remind himself that the reviewer was a failed story teller…“Writing is not easy as it looks…”
Archer would have loved to captain the cricket team, “I have made it clear to the Chairman selection that I am available but he has not returned my call. I would still like to be Prime Minister but I think I have missed that one too. So what I would like now is this series to be the best thing I have ever done in my life.”
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