Today we talk about The Snow Making Machine, a book by Ian Duckworth published with our publishing house Europe Books.
Europe Books had the pleasure of interviewing the author Ian Duckworth to get to know him better, where he found the inspiration that brought him to the writing of his book The Snow Making Machine, as well as if he sees some similarities between him and the three main characters of his book.
Below you can find our interview. Take a seat and enjoy your reading!!!
- Where did you find the inspiration to write this book?
I wanted to write a book about living in Europe in the present day, especially after the Brexit débâcle in 2016. Having given myself a continent to work with, I hit upon the idea of three main characters who didn’t meet each other for almost all of the novel. This was the key moment in getting the book up and running because I ended up with, and it’s very unusual to end up with, a form that wrote the book. Three characters with three sections each separate from each other, and a coda of a chapter at the end where the three characters come together. It’s great when you get an idea that writes the book itself. The settings? Well, I’ve been to Stockholm and its Archipelago of islands in the Baltic. I’ve been to Berlin quite a few times, and I’ve been in the Theatre School in Barcelona where the action happens at the end.
- What are the crucial themes of your work?
I want to convey an approximation of what it is like being alive in Europe in the first decades of the 21st Century. Around and about these details, I also want to define what such existence and experience takes place within at the largest dimension – the universal level – which is essentially an infinite sphere with no circumference and where everywhere is the centre. The critical mass of the characters within the novel might be termed ‘alone but not lonely’ in that everyone operates on their own terms largely from scratch, but their motivations, actions, and psychology are social and poetic. These characters all have strong identity, excellent cultural reference, and vivid imagination. No one is in a dark silo because they are illuminated on the inside by what happens to them on the outside. Underneath, above, or else, throughout this, among the locations depicted, perhaps the theme that remains unplayed could be called ‘The European Endeavour.’
- What do you want to communicate to readers with your work?
I want to communicate a sense of fun, humour, inventiveness, and sophistication to the reader, but with a set up that takes itself seriously. Fundamentally, I want the reader to have enjoyed the book. Other than, that my job is done and it’s over to the reader to make the best of what they’ve been given. I hope the reader finds important things that I didn’t think were. As a former Art Gallery curator, I expect people to put together their own exhibition from the ‘paintings’ I’ve put up on display. It is not a novel that you need to agree with – the fictional characters do what they do in a fictional way, sometimes literally. None of the book seeks to impose a reality on anyone. Having said that, the one thing I would like the readers to agree with me on is how the form of this novel is really really good.
- Do you see any similarities between your and the three main characters of your book. What are they?
I have been operated on by a Neurosurgeon and have been in a coma but I am not a Neurosurgeon. I know actors and actresses in Girona and Barcelona but I am no actor, and I can’t balance a tray with drinks on it to save my life. The book being in the third person, I’m in some sort of geostationary orbit above the scene. The novel is never anywhere near becoming first person, so the answer must be ‘No.’ However everything in the book has gone through the Ian Duckworth filter so the décor in any scene in a café/bar may bear some resemblance to me (there being a few such scenes in the book), after all I’ve spent enough time in them to leave my fingerprints all over the place. And the Swedish flag on the island of Vaxholm in the first section, all blue and yellow has something very me about it. But these things are background details soon passed by.
- Are you planning to write more books? Can you tell us something about it?
Cards on the table time. I have a few books that I’ve already written. But putting those on one side, I am writing two works, one a novella/long short story of about 60 pages, set somewhere high up in an Alpine hotel where a Youth Hostel manager meets up with an African Princess at the same time as the hotel is hosting both a cultural conference and a murder mystery enactment group. I haven’t got a title for it yet, maybe ‘Hotel Terminus.’ The other work is a novel – working title ‘Elephant Tracks in the Gravel,’ set in Girona City and Girona Province. This book is in the first person, which makes it easier for me to see how the main character has similarities with that person who goes around under the name of Ian Duckworth. At the moment it’s running to around 270 pages in 42 compact chapters. I’m not too far off a proper draft of it – that is, all the text links up without any gaps I need to go back and fill in.
Europe Books thanks the author Ian Duckworth once again for taking the time and answering our questions. We are really pleased to have walked alongside him on the editorial path that led to the publication of his book The Snow Making Machine. We wish him the best of luck for his book and for his future works.
To you, my dear reader, I really wish you will enjoy the book and have fun while reading it; let it make you think and, possibly, resonates with your life experiences to the point of providing you with new and interesting insights.
So, my dear reader, all I have to say is enjoy you reading!
Your Editor!