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It's with some satisfaction that I've contracted "And they danced under the bridge" to Creativia Publishers - available on AMAZON KINDLE and all other major e-book platforms.
Its research, preparation and writing has, in truth, consumed the last year, but that's the nature of the beast! So, why did I write it?
From childhood I've been in the business of communication. I learned the piano and violin from 9 years of age and taught myself guitar, forming a 'beat group' in the 60s. At college, in Nottingham, I played in a very successful folk group - singing and double bass - would you believe we played on the same bill as The Drifters, Mungo Jerry and Deep Purple, on separate occasions! There followed the Mercia Jazz Band, the best in the region, on bass guitar. I formed my own dance quartet and was a founder member of the Stapleford Big Band. The point being, music and performance is essentially communication with the listener.
I was editor of the weekly college newspaper; Head of Modern Languages; President of the Nottingham teachers' union; GCSE French examiner; European Editor for the largest Asian translation company. Again, communication with the reader is at the heart of all these.
I saw writing this novel as a genuine test of my ability to communicate. Last year I read Samuel Pepys' Diary for London 1666, when the Black Death took hold. Perhaps my favourite Albert Camus work is "La Peste" (The Plague), set in the Algerian port of Oran circa 1942. Both the Diary and Camus' novel fascinate me: the ordinary citizen engulfed by catastrophic horror. Through family holidays, I'd grown to love Avignon and the Provencale region. A less-documented plague than that of the sixteenth swept through fourteenth century Europe and all this combined for "And they danced under the bridge".
There are few French towns to boast unbroken surrounding ramparts - perhaps Carcassonne, Aigues-Mortes, St Malo, Vannes - but of them all, Avignon is the jewel with its continuous walls and four gates. They were built, of course, as defence against marauding armies. But they could also imprison the inhabitants: in my novel, hardly anybody enters or leaves for fear of the plague's contamination. How they deal with this predicament is my central theme.
Therein would be fertile material in which to weave a story. And there is the Papacy that ruled from Avignon's massive Palais des Papes for sixty-seven years, with six popes. Pope Clement Vl is embroiled in the plot - religious men weren't always the celibate figures they liked to appear.
So, I hope this provides an insight into my writing of "And they danced under the bridge". I've learned a good deal about myself through its creation.