The debut novel by Ken Lussey EYES TURNED SKYWARDS the gripping WW2 novel published by Fledgling Press
My review of the book can be found here, and the author granted me the opportunity for an interview with him, for which I am very grateful.
How
did the character Bob Sutherland come to you?
I
needed someone who I could maintain interest in and enthusiasm about to carry
out the investigation at the core of the book. Bob Sutherland evolved as an
ex-fighter pilot no longer able to do what he really wants to do because of an
injury sustained right at the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940.
I
based his career up until that point – though not his life - on that of a real
Scottish Battle of Britain ace who was sadly killed on the day that Bob
Sutherland was injured.
To my
mind it’s slightly ironic that although Bob is the character I started with and
who I ought to be able to associate with most closely, my favourite character
in the book is Monique Dubois, the MI5 agent with an exceptionally dark story.
Hers is also an incredibly improbable story, until you know she was closely
based on a real woman who disappeared during the war after the two German spies
she landed with in Scotland were executed.
What
was the genesis of Eyes Turned Skywards?
I’ve
always been fascinated by the way that World War Two had an impact on Scotland
and I’ve always been interested in military aviation. Reading about an incident
late in the war at an airfield in Aberdeenshire led me to think there was the
basis of a “truth is stranger than fiction” novel in it.
Then I
realised that writing a novel set in late 1944 might be rather limiting if, as
I hoped, it became the first of a series. I’d only have a few months of the war
left to mine for material and settings.
I
therefore began to look for intriguing real-life stories from earlier in the
war. When I came across an account of the crash of a flying boat in Caithness
in August 1942 in which the Duke of Kent, the younger brother of King George
VI, was killed, I knew I had my starting point.
Your
first book was a guide to Great Britain, and you are a non-fiction writer; so
how was the transition to historical fiction?
Why
the long gap from 1983 to publish your next book?
Writing
‘A Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Great Britain’, published by Penguin in 1983, seemed
a natural thing to do after mis-spending my student days hitch-hiking around
Great Britain. But factual writing, though a skill in its own right, was not
what I really wanted to do. Meanwhile, the real world had intervened, and I had
become a civil servant, doing lots of factual writing!
I
always wanted to become a novelist and made a couple of abortive attempts to
write ‘the great novel’ over next few decades. When 'Eyes Turned Skywards' was
published, 35 years and 5 days after 'A Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Great Britain',
I did wonder whether it might be some sort of record for the gap between first
and second books by an author. Not a chance. It took Harper Lee 55 years to
publish her second book, and there are a few other very long gaps too.
As for
the choice between historical and contemporary fiction, it was simply a case of
finding an idea that really appealed to me; and that led me in a historical
direction.
How
much research did it involve?
More
than I could ever have believed possible. These days, there’s a huge amount
available online, from websites setting out conspiracy theories about the Duke
of Kent’s death through to Google Earth and Street View. But to my mind there’s
no substitute for actually going and walking the ground your characters walked
and looking at what they were looking at.
That
becomes tricky, of course, when your characters were seeing the very different
world of 1942. Then it becomes necessary, for example, to visit and work out
what the road at the bottom of Berriedale Braes in Caithness looked like before
several later generations of road realignments. And it was equally important to
make a winter yomp across boggy moorland to find the memorials at the site of
the air crash. Sometimes local knowledge is the only way forwards. For example,
I had to ask local experts whether Wick had a municipal electricity supply at
the time. The need to guard against assumptions about people, about places, and
even about the use of language nearly eight decades ago is vital to get the
sense of realism I am looking for.
One
moment stands out as sending chills up and down my spine. The official account
of the cause of the crash that killed the Duke of Kent was given in a written
answer to a parliamentary question on 7 October 1942. I’d realised early in the
research that the online version of Hansard showed that the answer gave the
date of the crash as 15 August 1942 instead of 25 August 1942, but I’d put this
down to an error that arose when the records were digitised. It was only when I
visited the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh that I realised that the
wrong date was given in the original written record, which is truly remarkable
given it was about what would have been at the time a very recent and very
high-profile event.
What
comes easier, the dialogue or the action?
I
enjoy both, though perhaps dialogue flows more easily. I set my characters up
in a situation and let them have the conversation I want them to have. I hear
their voices in my head and simply transcribe what they are saying. I always
have an idea of where the conversation is meant to go, but my characters will
often surprise me by adding detail or heading off in unexpected tangents. For
me this gives a sense of discovery and is one of the joys of writing.
Can
you describe the area of Scotland the action takes place, it sounds wondrous
and vast?
Scotland
is indeed wondrous, and it is pretty vast. I used a number of different areas
of the country in ‘Eyes Turned Skywards’. The action moves from Oban in Argyll
on the west coast to the east side of the far north of Scotland. Scenes are set
on the coast of Caithness at the fictional Sarclet Castle and inland at the
real Loch More, and pretty much all the way down the coast to Inverness.
Did
you want to do a sequel?
The
sequel to ‘Eyes Turned Skywards’, called ‘The Danger of Life’, has also been
published by Fledgling Press. It again features Bob and Monique as its two
central characters and its central strand takes place at and around the
Commando Basic Training Centre in Lochaber.
Book
3, set mainly in Orkney at the end of 1942, was completed last year and Book 4,
set mainly in Stockholm early in 1943, was finished a few months ago. But like
everything else, the answer to the question of how they will emerge into the
light of day will have to await the world's return to something a little closer
to normality.
How
long can you write about Bob for?
There’s
two years of World War Two left after the as yet unpublished Book 4 in the
series, so Bob and Monique have plenty of mileage left in them. I’ve even got
the opening few pages written of a book that would see them visiting Soviet
central Asia in 1972, when they are both 60.
As
someone with a long career and long gap in publications, what advice would you
offer
Keep
on trying. At the end of the day, all you need is one person – the right person
– to believe in what you have written as much as you do.
Eyes Turned Skywards is out now from Fledgling Press now on all formats
