From the Spring 2011 issue of the CIG Bulletin
Take me for instance.
I was born in Greece, raised and educated in Canada and now live in Greece. What am I, Canadian or Greek? Let's look at my professional life. I am a practising electrical engineer who writes mystery thrillers. Am I a realist or a dreamer? And what am I doing here, rubbing shoulders with the archaeologists on the adjacent columns of the bulletin? It doesn't make sense, does it?
Most of life's mysteries don't make sense. But as soon as we learn a thing or two, lo and behold, the oddest item suddenly becomes the most natural. I mean heavier than air flying machines didn't make any kind of sense two hundred years ago, but when we discovered the venturi principle and jet propulsion, they became flying buses.
My first contact with archaeology came on May 10th, 1957 when I was hardly four. I know the exact date because I have a photograph with a date. I am the little guy in the picture. The big guy is my Dad. It was a very eventful day. It was the day I visited the temple of Olympian Zeus, the day I first set foot on the Acropolis, and the day I saw my first real snake as I was looking down from the ramparts. I saw a much larger snake made of marble, inside the Acropolis museum. “I don't know what's so important about all of this,” Dad had said, “but people come from all over the world to see and admire these stones.” Well now, what was this, that even Dad couldn't explain?Many years later, I was a fourth year engineering student looking for an interesting non-technical course I had to take. 'Psychology' was filled and 'African politics' seemed boring. One of my friends came to the rescue.
“There is this course” he said, “where 90% of the class is women.”
My God, what an incredible figure. After three whole years in the engineering desert of 3% femininity, here was an oasis! I attended the next class, and it was only after I checked the audience, that I wondered what the course was about.
“Fa something,” said my friend. “It fits right in.”
The course was FAH 101, Ancient Art History. At the end, I had no time to date the girls I had met in class. But I did have to pass the exam, so I learned all about pediments and metopes and even Hermes of Praxiteles. What Dad couldn't explain, Professor Shaw had absolutely no difficulty with.
Time passed on. I moved from Canada to Greece, I earned my living as an electrical engineer and I started writing mystery thrillers as a hobby. It was just before the 2004 Summer Olympics that I started to think about my third novel. My first one, The Edge of Oblivion, had just been published in Greek as The Adventures of Asher, Frude, Bonham, and I had just completed my second one, Fantasy Land. So as I embarked on my third novel, besides the characters which I had already sketched out in my head, I wanted an interesting environment. Something I would love to research and enjoy writing about. This had to be archaeology.
What happens in any novel is extraordinary. It has to be, to hold our attention. We don't want to read about John taking the garbage out and Mary cooking, we can see them doing that next door. So to offset the extremities in character and plot, and to make the story believable, we need an authentic setting. Internet and library research can provide information, but archaeologists move in a human environment not easily accessible to those outside it. If my characters and their academic world were to be real, I had to gain access to it. I had to meet the appropriate people and visit them at their place of work.
I write in the first person and my narrators are much like myself: Canadians who find themselves in Greece. If my characters were to be English speaking archaeologists, they had to operate within the international archaeological community in Athens. I 'googled' my enquiry, and being Canadian, I found myself on the doorstep of the Canadian Institute in Greece. From there on, things moved very quickly. Dr J Tomlinson gave me the e-mails of archaeologists and I attended a few events given by the CIG and other schools. I had a lively four hour lunch with Dr Mac Wallace, sadly no longer with us, who filled me in on real archaeology and numismatics. I visited the upper story of the Stoa of Attalos II and walked on the grounds of the British and American Schools. I found myself listening to archaeologists and talking with archaeologists. I noticed how they dressed and how they behaved. I began to understand what they were like. All this study was probably enough for an actor, but certainly insufficient for a writer. You see, a writer must proceed even further, he must convince his readers that he is an archaeologist himself.
It took more work to manage that, and when I thought I had grasped it, I started writing my new novel. And the people I had met in their professional lives soon stood in as my characters. I gave them fictional private lives of course. It's one thing to be muddled-up personally and quite another to muddle the very people who have helped you. The result? My new book, Bird of Prey, is now available from Amazon.com. Dr G Schauss and Dr J Tomlinson have said some nice things about it, but more important, they offered me the chance to write something in the CIG bulletin.
You may feel that I am out of place. What am I doing writing something in here? Call me a fake, if you like. I won't be offended. A story-teller is a fake by definition. But in writing a mystery thriller with an archaeological and numismatics background, I was given a very real place in your world. I am being treated like I am one of you. Do I deserve this honour? Well, you should be the judge of that. Buy, borrow or download my new novel, and read it. Hopefully I will not only convince you that I know your world and its sinister side, but make your heart beat a little faster, make you miss your bus-stop, force you to sit up while you are reading it in bed. And after you read it, you may pass your verdict. Am I a convincing fake, or not? Does my place here make as much sense as heavier than air flying machines?
But even if I am a poor fake archaeologist, I did do one thing properly. One day, not too long ago, I took my father up to the Acropolis. I stood him on the corner of the Parthenon and showed him the stylobate curvature and the columniar inclination and spacing. I didn't take a photograph and I have truly forgotten the date. There's one thing though I will never forget:
The smile on his face.
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