Born
in London, now residing in Gloucester, England, David Page is the
author of over 6 books. He is a talented writer, writing complex plots with
funny and provocative scenarios. A veteran of the Royal Navy, David spent 8
years in Her Majesty’s Service, including 2 years in an ex-Japanese Execution Camp
in Singapore. For the past 30 years he has been a successful accountant and IT
professional in Europe, the UK and the Far East. Currently in the process of
writing a new novel, David took the time to talk about his writing and much
more…
Welcome David!
At
what age did you realize you wanted to become a writer?
I
don’t know that I did realize I wanted to become a writer until rheumatoid arthritis
finally started to physically affect me, and at 60 I found that driving
hundreds of miles a week with the stress of working on client sites and looking
after complex financial databases, was not something I could continue to do.
I
had written a lot of poetry between 1998 and 2002 and even had a publisher
interested at one point, but there is no money in poetry, even if successful,
and it was always my first love so I stayed in it and cut the poetry out
although I am playing about with it, nowadays.
After
I left the Royal Navy, I completed a fill-in editing and structure of English
course at college - back in the 70s - that gave me the ability to edit, create
digests, understand the structure of writing and write a 15,000 word essay, so
I knew I could do it. It was to be honest, just a requirement to do something
in English with the rest of subjects for the first year.
How
do you maintain thoughts and ideas?
I
do edit several times during the course of a book for different reasons and my
wife reads various random printouts for ease of reading, flow and continuity
and she has pushed me to include more dialogues.
I
am able to switch hats for editing even though I am obviously not independent
of the writing but by the same philosophy I know what I meant to say and how it
fits in with the story so it is not a series of disjointed activities as can
otherwise happen.
Once
I have the main idea for a book I usually just start writing, and eventually I
will at some point use a free-mind map and record the major elements, the
characters, relationships, possible future flow and this gives me the
discipline of working through the book and recording my thoughts and the flow.
Mind-mapping
makes me think about the book structure, but also documenting it means I am
able to later return to check names, research, what was the structure of a
previous book and I hope makes me consistent across several books – such as the
Parky Espionage Books.
There
is in every book’s time a place when you come to a dead halt. I try to get
around that but often it is only by taking a break and then starting as if I
was beginning anew that I can break the block and by doing this on my last two
books I felt I produced better second halves for both Parky’s Teatime and FYOG – I
May Be A Long Time.
Tell
us about your books…
My
Poetry Book is comprised of the poems I wrote during 1998 - 2002 and was a task
undertaken when the writing dried up and I took a break. The title was meant to
be humorous and was partly because I could have improved the poems but I liked
them as they were, and I didn’t want to go back after a long time and start
changing them. The difference in time would have meant they became different poems,
although in the end, I did change some of them.
The
Parky’s Series title originated when I started to think that Parky’s real name
was Peter Pettigrew and I wanted him to have something that would embarrass the
hard man. I have originally planned to have him as a Security Agent working in
a BR car park who found the Minister of Defence’s daughter in a position that
would allow Parky to blackmail the Minister for a better job.
I
didn’t really develop that idea but the name Parky stuck and became the name of
the series. His history was with the Royal Scots – also known as Pontius
Pilate’s Bodyguard – I decided to leave that even though they were later merged
(Motto, Nemo me impune lacessit. Latin: "Nobody harms me with
impunity".).
The
Royal Scots and the motto later provided a background for Parky that leads to
him being blackmailed in Parky’s Afters. Parky and Bishop met up in Malaya
where both formed part of a killing squad run by the Major, who was
subsequently jailed for embezzlement, and in Parky’s Lunch they set up the
Major and his Batman together with an Irish gunman, a bent lorry driver and the
Boy – all hunted – to be killed. The CIA get involved and so does a Chinese guy
– Mr Hoo, and another CIA guy – Huron, but none of them realized that the organizers
of the hijackers are an Insurance guru, the Minister of Defense, an industrialist,
an international banker and other top people who have bought into the
syndicate. Will all of the guys survive ‘The Lady’ exploding and achieve their
final aims?
Parky’s
Afters covers that the boy survived and stupidly returns to England despite now
also being a CIA Agent and holding a US Passport. He is picked up at Heathrow
and vanishes under the Defense Minister’s instructions as a traitor where he is
held in a secret prison in Kensington and tortured by a team of guys and also
by a woman – Gris – who he subsequently finds out, works for Parky.
In
breaking him out the Defense Minister is killed and so is the Prime Minister’s
fund raiser and to this total is added the Insurance Guru from the previous
book. The Boy is finally forced to marry Gris and join the UK Security Service,
which has at least five moles operating and a useless Director and Assistant.
Can
the moles be found, and added to this, can Neville – a Police Inspector cum
drunk – now involved with the Insurance Guru’s wife, stop a serial killer on
the loose in London?
Parky’s
team has once again been successful; put out to pasture, and held there until
the head of Security is changed once again and brings the team back. This time they become involved with the
National Crime Agency and helping to combat organized crime, but is ‘Owley’ –
the Met Police’s organized crime Commissioner seconded to the NCA – what he
seems?
This
time the team is forced to rescue an agent from Russia; fight organized crime
in the UK and in France; rescue kidnapped women and the finale is set in the
Provence area of Southern France – so where does the black magic come in. Will
they win and will they still manage to survive as they are finally caught up in
crossfire between the CIA and Gangsters?
England
is under a Dictatorship with four families effectively controlling the
Dictator. Acton Kade is unaware he is
the son of a Resistance Leader assassinated by the Government and is now
classed as an Outcast working in a Computer Centre. As part of a project he secretly upgrades a wall communication
device with more CPU, Memory, Artificial Intelligence and together they start
to learn. Deep down Acton just wants
to go to work, come home and find some women to relate to although that finally
drives him and Wall to start to take on the State.
The
Public Safety Correctional Consultants have now taken over from the Brands led
Dictatorship with the ex-executives locked away without trial – as is Acton
Kade. Sken like Acton is also the son
of a dead Resistance Leader and wants nothing to do with a revolution but like
Acton is forced again and again to be some kind of hero. In the meantime, Wall seems to have gone berserk and decided he wants
an electronic mate, robotic children, and he wants Sken to build them. Sken has fallen in love – he thinks –
with Pearlie but now has Mum illegally living with him as well and Mum can’t
stand him.
The
treatment of Lauryn by her unknown father has made this an Adult book although
not in the personal sense of the word. What will happen; will Sken survive;
will his relationship with Pearlie overcome his relationship with Royal Naval
Experience?
You were in the Navy and have traveled to many
places. Which place interested you the most?
The
most interesting has to be my two years in Singapore in the mid-60s, although
the two Royal Tournaments in the 1970s were also unusual. I was a volunteer for the Far East but due to my age and the
Communist Emergency in Malaysia, plus the wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Lagos,
Borneo; the trouble in Rhodesia; the possible invasion of Singapore by
Indonesia, which was actually expected as they were already causing and
supporting trouble in other countries, meant that I had to wait until a
ceasefire was agreed on the Emergency before I could be drafted.
I
arrived in Singapore as it was then – still with jungles; wide open in every
sense of the word with curfews, Riot Squad training, Service Patrols and
Gurkhas stationed in Nee Soon garrison. I was based in Sembawang in a Naval
Base about a mile into the main establishment.
It
was a very lively place. I was there
to work on the wages for the locally employed personnel who were either
Singapore or Hong Kong Chinese. One
of the issues for me in working with the Chinese was that Chinese people have a
Tribal name as in Wong, a Family name as in Kee and a third name, which in the
case of my girlfriend, was Joon, who preferred to be called Susan; rather than
Wong Kee Joon. I did feel a bit silly
one day, when I asked someone why it was called HMS TERROR and he pointed out
that it had been a Japanese Execution Camp and the block we worked in was the
Execution Block. Given some of the complaints on our calculating pay, some
still thought it was.
I
did read something later in a book about Mercury 2, which was associated with
it, and had been a wireless transmission facility – there was one opposite us.
The Sick Quarters were apparently the torture chambers and when they built the
swimming pool they kept finding bodies buried. I did get the chance to travel
around Singapore although I also was beaten up and robbed.
The
monsoon ditches varied between 5 foot wide by 6 foot deep and 1 foot by 6
inches but the only umbrella that could take a monsoon when it struck was a
Chinese wooden umbrella. We had a golf course in HMS TERROR, down by the old
swamp, and if you were playing in a monsoon you had to watch for the water
coming up, to see where your ball landed.
Part
of the locally employed personnel stilled lived in the jungle, and we also had
people to pay in Malaya so Taff, my senior hand, would drive a Land Rover to
them and I had to sit there with the money and the book for them to sign. Given
the recent trouble it did get a bit nerve wracking driving through the jungle
areas and every place we visited would insist we had a bottle of anchor beer
and sat down with the family – at times we were lucky to get back as Taff
swerved the Land Rover.
One
final piece of funny news was about Chinese names – I am not being racist on
this, just recounting the humour – on a formal pay parade an officer stood
beside me as I called out 3 names for each person plus any short names and
aliases, and with 300 people to pay, I called out nearly a thousand names and none of the Chinese guys could
understand me. They looked up at the Chief Steward; he knew what I was trying to
say and nodded and then they were paid.
Who
is your favorite author?
Terry
Pratchett. His sense of humour, ability, and the ease of reading make him
someone to treasure. I have attended several Discworld Conventions, met him and
people associated with him, and it was an interesting few days.
What
are you currently reading?
Terry
Pratchett’s Raising Steam and MSDOS
manuals.
What
are you currently writing?
Having
spent two years non-stop writing Parky’s
Teatime and FYOG – I May Be A Long
Time, my wife has insisted that I take a break from writing and I am
currently retro building an old machine from the parts of three different
machines.
My
next book when I start will have the Series title of Micky Lofts and The Promise
Ring will be the first book in the series. It will be set on another world
and a thousand years ago and will probably be a ‘blood and thunder’ action book
– still to develop it, find the ideas I wrote years ago and the maps and other
stuff. Potential
characters include a Priest who is partnered to a Lady who prefers to be a
Hawk; a psychic who was being hatched in a cave when she was frightened and has
ended up in a man’s stomach and a guy who watched his village burnt down after
they threw him out because he wanted to fight.
Do you have advice for novice writers?
Learn
all you can and don’t expect that the world to beat a path to your door for
your first book. Keep writing; keep developing and remember your first draft
maybe the point at which you start really writing.
Keep
your connections with other writers open; use the Internet for research; plan
how you set up your computer for writing – I tend to have a Book, Marketing and
Research directory for each book under a top-level Writing directory and BACKUP
your machine and writing on a regular basis. Don’t discard work or ideas and
maybe have a 4th Directory – Director’s Cuts.
Connect with David…
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