Click here for the Bigtime Blooper podcast

3 minutes 9 seconds

A home made recording by Tom and Ingrid during their book 3 (untitled as yet) writing spur in Scotland; January 2019.  (with a wee apology for the sound quality. It was a sponteneous act)

Location: Bargany’s B & B, Troon

Continue reading for the full text:

Tom narrating: One of the joys of writing as co-authors is that you get to laugh at your own writing mistakes. Three examples spring to mind that left us simply in stitches; serious laughter, tears in our eyes, hiccups, The Lot!

Here’s example blooper number 1:

Ingrid narrating: We are in the habit of reading finished chapters out loud to each other, so the other author can listen intently for errors, sentence structure and so on.

It so happened that Tom was reading out a chapter where character Laird Gordon Macpherson was explaining over dinner what had happened to the gamekeeper’s son, Alexander Stewart. Suddenly, halfway a sentence Tom stopped, looked at me if he’d seen a ghost and said:

“Ingrid, this is not right; this can’t be happening’

‘Why?  Ingrid asked, a bit annoyed (sounding like Cathy the cop) What’s up? It’s good! I heard nothing wrong!

‘ Except for the fact Gordon can’t be making this speech’ Tom replied. ‘He died two chapters ago”.

Ingrid narrating: Bloopers Number 2.

Another blooper that got us into a fit involved a chapter about Laird Angus Macpherson. Whenever we read a chapter out loud we very much follow the exact spelling without thinking too much about what we literally read. All went fine until I came to a line where a typo had left the G out of Angus. So here I was; reading out very convincingly what supposedly this Anus Macpherson had said. We laughed till our jaws ached.

Tom: ‘Those Scottish lairds are so clever! I’ve heard of the expression, talking out of your backside but we sure had to correct this error.’

Ingrid narrating: A third example of what can go wrong is when we were reading out a long stretch of narrative on Alexander Stewart; just to see if the chronological order of events had been put in the right chapters.

Tom continuing: Alexander’s Journey was quite arduous, leaving Ballindalloch, visiting the Lagmore Stone Circle, boarding a train; sailing across the Atlantic. It was when we were reading all these adventures in one go that we discovered Alexander desperately needed a doctor.

While writing, we had failed to notice that if Alexander’s stomach churned once, it gurgled twice, it heaved three times and his belly ached at least four times, he felt sick, his skin was sticky and moist, he must have a fever, his throat was sore and as the Scots would say, he had ‘the dry boke’. How he ever made to the other side of the ocean in one piece was basically a miracle.

Ingrid: And we never used the expression ‘his stomach churned’ ever again.

With Family History Greetings,

Tom and Ingrid

••••••••

It all started because authors Tom McKerley and Ingrid Schippers, each in their own way, have an interest in family history. Tom researched his ancestry going back to northern Ireland circa 1780, while Ingrid has a natural  and partly professional interest in people’s life stories

In 2009, following a conversation between Tom and Ingrid on how ancestry influences who you are today, Tom came up with a synopsis about a feisty American cop, Cathy Macpherson who gets lured to the Scottish Highlands where her husband travel writer David Stewart wants to find out what prompted his great great great grandfather, Alexander Stewart to leave Ballindalloch Castle in 1895. In turn this inspired Ingrid to create the lifetime of Victorian character Katherine Macpherson, daughter of the Laird of the estate where Alexander was born.

It is all pure fiction, yet to the authors it became very real. They felt the characters tugging at their sleeves as if they were real and wanted their life stories told. Sometimes it seems to be the story that seeks the storyteller.

In these blogs and podcasts, Ingrid and Tom recount the high’s and low’s they’ve encountered du quest of writing.

To listen to the recorded introduction click here: introduction bloodlines blog

I caught myself right in the middle of it this week.
Me, in one of my other lives an energy counsellor, telling people how to relax and use their energies effectively,
stressing out over the publication of Bloodlines-Traces.

‘Tom!’, (over Skype) ‘we promised our readers the sequel would be out May 16 2016. We can’t postpone again.’ (rolling eyes)

The almost 5 year path since publishing Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat, November 11 2011, seems to be riddled with delays.
This time, at the very very end, the last few meters of the marathon, it’s getting the proof copy done that  has been delayed, for reasons known only by the uncontrollable forces outside of us. 
We expected it to arrive end of last week, but so far Tom has been stalking his mailbox for nothing.

Along the way of writing Bloodlines -Traces we’ve felt embarrassed a number of times  when we had to postpone publication, having been far too optimistic on when we would finish the novel.
Most of the delays were caused by reasons too personal to display on Facebook.
Yet the advertising world of today, or maybe I could even state – today’s world -, expects precision planning.

30 years ago, when I was doing my very first marketing course, it was Mr Kotler who taught me that when you bring a product on the market you need to make sure all watches are synchronized.
Don’t start advertising when the product isn’t available yet, and o dear, did this conviction latch on to my conscience.

It was Joe Marich, long time publicist of Michael Crichton, who taught me this rule doesn’t entirely apply with books. With books you start advertising half a year ahead of publication.
A little voice in my head however is telling me those books are most probably already written and printed when advertising starts.

With Tom and me it was a totally different process. Toddlers we were in the way we played around.
As ‘accidental authors’ when writing Bloodlines -Touch Not the Cat, the learning curve was already unusual. We didn’t have an audience yet; we didn’t even know we were going to be published authors; it simply was a lot of fun and inspiration.
With ‘Traces’ we did have people waiting for the sequel, even more so , it is thanks to readers asking for more, that we decided to go for it.
The way we went about producing ‘Traces’ however, was as inexperienced as the way we jostled writing our debut.

Having said all that; what I do feel good about, is the blunt honesty of our process.
Personally I resent the commercials in which life is pictured as one golden glow.
‘As long as you use ‘this or that deodorant’ or drive ‘such and so car’, life will be perfect.’
Or the  articles in flight magazines, showing off overpriced suitcases, silver clean holiday beaches and sunset minarets of exotic destinations. They never show you the plastic bags homeless people use to carry their belongings in, or the whales’ carcasses  stranded  because of  plastic polluted oceans; or the poverty of the people who live in the backstreets behind the sunset minarets.

At least, I tell myself , we have always been honest about being new kids on the block and never pictured ourselves any better than what we were capable off. We openly showed, we were first timers at writing Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat and first timers at writing it’s sequel Bloodlines – Traces.

It was a huge learning curve, actually more of a roller coaster ride with double looopings (yes 3 o’s), Double Axles, Triple Toeloops and Flip Jumps (all terms derived from ice skating) that left us in different states of well or not so well being, at times even  affecting our co-authors relationship.

To be honest; in retrospect it is nothing short of of a miracle we actually ever came to a point of publication and that our friendship came out stronger at the other end of the tunnel.

Now the question may rise…will there be a third one.
The answer: not telling

Bloodlines – Traces however… will be there … in May… bare with us… just a few more days

picture: courtesy of www.freepik.com

This week we were interviewed by Lily Anne Stroobach,the founder of Dutchbuzz, in honor of the due publication of Bloodlines – Traces, the sequel to our 2011 debut, Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat.

Our novels are a mix of historical fact and fictitious characters, switching back and forth between 2011 and Victorian/Edwardian times, where we have our historical characters interact with the fictitious ones.

This always raises the question where fact ends and fiction starts.
or, to put in the words of my favorite American author Michael Crichton:

This is a work of fiction, except for the parts that aren’t

While it is true the characters in Bloodlines – Touch Not the Cat & Bloodlines – Traces are products of our imagination; their actions are very realistic.

And just as a fox can relate to the behavior of another fox;
authors relate to the characters they create;
to which in turn, the reader relates to what he or she recognizes as ‘true’.

In that sense, anything that happens in a book, is as much fact as it is fiction.
It all depends on who is doing the storytelling.
The author holding up the mirror? Or the reader recognizing the face?

When an individual lifetime is reflected as a character in a book, the reader filters this character through personal interpretation, lined with cultural conditioning and self inflicted convictions.
In that sense we are all the Storyteller of both our own life and the lives we observe, whether these lives are real, or created in a novel.

Storytelling is as old as humanity and has always been used to reflect the adventures life brings.
From Beowulf and Shakespeare, to fairy tales, parables, anecdotes (jokes!), Tarot cards and modern day blogs;
they all mirror how we observe life and how we want our personal story line to develop;
whether we are seeking Justice, True Love, Fulfillment or any other Human Grail.
In that sense we are all characters in the book of life, at the same time owning the capacity to write our own life story.

Tom and I have experienced the correlation between fact & fiction a number of times while writing Bloodlines-Touch Not the Cat and Bloodlines – Traces;
the coincidence of writing about a person drowning in the river Spey; and finding a newspaper article on an American tourist being swept away by that same river only days later, being only one example.

It is when Reality and ‘Make Belief’ rub shoulders like this, that we as authors feel we are drifting into the twilight zone; the corner of life where creation takes place, no matter whether it is fact or fiction.

February ’16
Ingrid Schippers

‘How do we proceed on the story line without repeating what already has been said in Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat‘

Or, related to this:

‘Should we write a sequel in such a way it can be read independently?’

In that sense Bloodlines-Traces is just as much of an accident as the first book.
What started Traces off were the leftovers.
It seemed a shame to toss them out, plus holding back certain parts of the story lines had not gone unnoticed to some of our readers.

‘What happened to Katherine after Alexander left?’, we were asked many times,

as well as:

‘How, (or even why!) did Alexander die?!’

The good news is historical fiction offers ample opportunity to bring characters back to life.
As a result, Traces reveals what happened to Katherine and Alexander while offering a look into the early hours of feminism and the atrocities of World War I, including the enormous mistake Churchill made in his younger years.

We take you sightseeing in Victorian and Edwardian New York, Chicago and Edinburgh, in times when people still stopped to watch a car ride by, the telephone was an invention only used by few and communication and connectivity in general offered a totally different perspective.

As with Bloodlines Touch Not the Cat, writing Traces was a joy. Researching historical fact, fine tuning language, phrasing sentences in Victorian, American or British (Scottish) English and discussing character development, proved to be fulfilling ways to spend our leisure time.

End of 2013 we had a draft ready. Inspired ideas for a book cover popped up spontaneously and set designer Graham Booth to work, while we asked our Facebook followers to help us choose the right cover by publishing a short list of examples.

Then the draft was sent to our editor Hans Offringa, who did a great job pointing out story line glitches and language bloopers, which was enjoyable as well, as some were very funny.
Did you for instance ever hear of ‘the clinking of knives and forks finding their way over the breakfast plates’? Well we did in our creative minds☺. In retrospect we had to admit it resembled the description of a skating ring.

‘Traces’ became as much part of our lives as its predecessor had been, co-authoring a creative effort in need of attention and on our minds even when we were living our other lives in our separate countries.
It never occurred to us the pink bubble could burst, which teaches you never to take prosperity for granted.

At the beginning of 2014 reality intervened with fiction through personal circumstances forcing us to slow down.
While activity flared up in October of that same year; it was stalled again in March 2015.
Perhaps this should teach us to be less forthcoming on our Facebook page about book cover samplings and promises of publication, for isn’t it one of the first rules of marketing to make sure to have your product ready once you start advertising?
On the other hand, this is a creative process we are talking about, not a bag of beans. The actions of sharing information with our audience are based on genuine enthusiasm and a feeling of being connected to our readers; like family, the genealogy of our book.
Our page would have been a whole lot less entertaining if we hadn’t shared our proceedings the way we did.

We still aim for 2015 to publish Traces,
but ask you humbly to bear with us a little while longer.

Ingrid Schippers