Malcolm Havard's scribbles

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March 01, 2012

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Biggles Flies...in the face of realism

(or the perils of trying to write about what combat flying in WW1 was REALLY like) Like many men of my age (no, I'm NOT going to say what that is), as a boy I read Biggles. I know I'm not alone in the fact that my interest in aviation in general and WW1 aviation in particular comes from reading Captain WE John's stirring stories of derring do from the age of about six onward. It seemed to real, so vital, so exciting. Biggles has got a lot to answer for! As I got older and read in more depth on the subject it became apparent that things in WW1 were very different. Yes, compared to the squalid nightmare that was trench warfare on the Western Front, the war in the air was glamorous, the pilots - particularly the Aces - were the knights of the air. But, that's only comparative; for far too many life for the aircrew was short, brutal, very uncomfortable and incredibly stressful. The aircraft were often unreliable, some were structurally unsound. Early ones could bare...

Interesting Strategy

I came across an interesting twitter post last week - though I've been so busy it's taken me until now to comment on it. The poster was another indie author. She was recounting how she had just put her new novel out on Kindle (nothing unusual there) but was continuing to send it to agents (which I think IS unusual). I have always held the view that it was either/or - you either independently published or you went down the publisher/agent route. Am I wrong? I'd be interested to hear views on this.

The Narrow Margin

or, writing good fiction about WW1 aviation without falling into the boy's-own-adventure/troubled pilot cliches Unless you're an aviation buff or a movie fan you may not get the reference in the title. It's to the book the film The Battle of Britain was based on and refers to how close the margins between victory and defeat in the battle was. It is also a useful analogy for what the movie tried to do; tread the line between entertainment and historical accuracy. It's also a useful starting point for this blog. I write literary fiction. But I also write about aviation in WW1. To some that's an oxymoron. Although the world has accepted some WW1 books as literary - Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong and Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, for example, as well as the classic Remarque All Quiet on the western Front - so far, aviation related books have failed to make a breakthrough. It's fairly easy to see why. Most falls into a few categories; 1. ...

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