Someone new to the Scribbler!
Let’s
welcome Gabriel as he shares the news of his intriguing novel.
Read on, my friends.
Gabriel Tait is a Toronto
novelist and the author of Meeks and The Ranleigh Tapes. He began writing
fiction at fifty, after carrying the original idea for Meeks since his early
twenties. Sober since October 27, 2001, he brings that perspective to his
fiction about addiction and identity. Echo will complete the Meeks trilogy.
Synopsis:
Ranleigh Meeks is twenty-seven, working nights in
a Toronto warehouse and living far below his potential. When he discovers a way
to experience the life he believes he should have had, the temptation to escape
becomes increasingly difficult to resist.
But escape comes at a
cost. As addiction takes hold, the boundaries between his two lives begin to
unravel.
Moving from the Canadian
Prairies in 1979 to Toronto in 1997, Meeks
is a dark psychological novel about addiction, self-deception and the pursuit
of an imagined better life.
The
Story Behind the Story:
I didn’t start writing
fiction until I was about fifty. But I’d had the idea for Meeks since I was about twenty. It had what I thought was a good
hook and a strong pivot, and those were the things that kept it alive in my
head. I carried it around for the next thirty years without doing anything
about it.
A year or two before I
started writing, I told my children the story. They thought it sounded
interesting and encouraged me to write it. So when I began thinking about doing
something completely unexpected at fifty, the idea was already there.
I wouldn’t call it a
midlife crisis. I don’t subscribe to those. I wanted to do something I hadn’t
done before. Something that would surprise my family, but more importantly,
surprise me.
The first thing I did was
reread Stephen King’s On Writing. I
figured that if I followed his advice closely enough, I might make it through a
first draft. The working title was The
Desert. It eventually became Meeks.
I didn’t have a detailed
outline, and I didn’t really know who Ranleigh Meeks was. The characters, structure and much of the story
developed as I went along. There were Post-it notes everywhere around my desk,
mostly to keep the timelines straight.
Even the opening got away
from me. What I thought would be a short prologue set in a Canadian Prairie
town became thirteen chapters covering roughly two days in nine-year-old
Ranleigh’s life. I eventually wanted that section to work as a story in itself,
a Prairie Gothic with a beginning, middle and end. It grew considerably darker
than a visit to Grandma might suggest.
I started writing in
October and finished the first draft in May. It was around 130,000 words.
Following King’s advice, I put it away for six weeks. When I picked it up
again, parts of it felt as though someone else had written them. Some passages
were surprisingly good. Others were almost laughably bad. But the bones were
there.
Over roughly six drafts, I
cut material, removed characters, changed settings and reworked the structure.
I also typed the entire novel out again with each new draft. That gave me
plenty of opportunities to become thoroughly sick of the main character’s original
name, Raymond. Eventually, I found his replacement on a Toronto street sign:
Ranleigh Avenue.
The settings changed too.
I’d originally tried to put the story in the United States, despite knowing
very little about the places I’d chosen. I moved the story to the Canadian
Prairies and Toronto, places I knew. That allowed me to concentrate on telling
the story.
Looking back, I don’t
think I could have written it when I first had the idea at twenty. I needed the
thirty years in between. By fifty, I’d experienced addiction, hit my own bottom
and spent almost two decades in recovery. I’d also listened to thousands of
other people’s stories.
That experience helped me
write Ranleigh as a human being who was struggling. I didn’t want to lecture
readers or turn him into a caricature of an addict. I wanted to tell a
psychological thriller that kept people turning the pages.
When readers in recovery
told me I’d got it right, or said the book had changed how they understood
someone in their family with addiction issues, it surprised me. These were
people I’d never met. Something I’d written had connected with them. That has meant
an enormous amount to me.
Website – Please go HERE.
A question before you go, Gabriel:
Gabriel: I got into Stephen King
probably a bit too early, like a lot of us did in the early eighties. My
parents had a weekend farm property, and I distinctly remember reading Cujo in the back of an abandoned car
behind the barn on a very hot, humid summer day. Given what happens in that
book, it was a surreal experience. It’s stayed with me ever since.
Thank you for being our guest, Gabriel. We wish you continued
success with your writing;
And a HUGE thank you to all our visitors and readers.
Feel free to leave a comment.
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