JAMES GAULT MEETS AN AUTHOR ... TED BUN
Ted Bun is an author of naturist fiction, a blogger and regularly contributes reviews and articles to The Voice of Literature.
He combines his active writing life with running a holiday facility in the South of France.
Thanks for joining us, Ted. Can I begin by asking you how long you’ve been writing and what got you started?
Most of my working life I was a Medical Rep, which meant hours in the car, stationary on the M25. I would listen to stories and plays on the radio and miss the endings, so I would have to make up my own.
I was writing technical material for several web sites for 20 years, and have had several articles published in medical journals. Later after a change of job I had to write lots of project documents and bids for funding, some of which got close to fiction.
I started to write fiction in a more formalised way after stopping work and moving to France in 2015. We run a small gîte which kept me busy during the summer months apart from when it didn’t. When the autumn and the shorter days arrived, I had another story ready to tell and typed this one up.
What do you hope to achieve by your writing?
I just want to amuse and entertain If a reader tells me I’ve made them laugh, I consider my job done. If a bit of education or self-improvement occurs that is a bonus.
A lot of your stories feature characters from the entertainment and music business. Where does your interest in this come from?
I am a failed rock star. I was part of a band that nearly made it into the 2nd Division except we kept losing members just as things were starting to happen. However, I got to play with some people who never had a real job in their lives.
I’ve heard you describe yourself as a ‘storyteller’ more than an author. What do you think is the most important thing a novelist has to do to tell a story?
I am not the person to answer that question.
I have a group of characters, all of whom are composites and exaggerations of real people. I then start with a “what if?” question then I let my characters make a journey from the start to the end. I try to stay within the bounds of conventual behaviour and settings, which means I tend to end up with very character driven stories. Tales that depend on the reader becoming engaged with character rather than the plot.
If pushed, I’d say you need a clearly defined Starting Place and End Point. Characters with the skills and attributes to make the journey and enough imagination to construct interesting obstacles to put in the road and solutions to these problems.
Did I say I ended up working as a “Change Manager” I think I just described the Novel as a change process.
Your books are always light-hearted and full of optimism. Have you never been tempted to explore the dark side of humanity in your writing?
No, there is too much darkness and violence in the world I don’t want it in my entertainment. I’ll be sticking to the escapist uplands where the sun shines all day and the evenings are warm. Having said that, the next Rags to Riches story has a lot darker plot, but it is still an optimistic story withvery positive outcomes.
You’ve written a large number of novellas and fairly short novels. Would you ever think of writing a great long epic like ‘War and Peace’?
Ha-Ha, No. I lack the skills for that sort of writing. Too much plotting, research, attention to detail and continuity required for the way I work.
Although I suppose if I rewrote the Rags to Riches stories into a single narrative I’d have enough words. Then Conan-Doyle could have done that with Sherlock Holmes and didn’t.
Isaac Asimov, of course, wrote the first three Foundation books as part works, which were combined to novel length, (as was most of Dickens’ best work) but Asimov never sanctioned a big “All the Days of The Foundation.” book.
Without a strong external narrative in the background, the war does that for Tolstoy’s epic, slavery for Alex Halley’s Roots, not many stories have the legs for such a long journey.
What advice would you give to a new young writer?
For a budding writer of any age, get a note book (or a voice recorder if you drive a lot!) and make notes. Use it to record; snippets of story, bits of dialogue (real or imagined), people’s reactions to events around them (Do they wade in to stop fights? Stand and watch? Pass by?) and situations that occur.
What are you currently working on?
Too much!
I always try to have a couple of projects on the go. How do I choose what to work on? I follow a story until it gets a bit sticky. Then move on to one of the others while I resolve the obstacle in the first.
I have a short story that is built around a scene edited out of an earlier book. (I never discard anything completely. I cut and paste “edits” into a “Spare Scenes” document, it seemed like a good idea once, maybe it will work better somewhere else.) Currently I am moving the focus of the narrative to a different character, so that the story can have a different ending to the book.
A follow up to New House … New Neighbours, which continues from where the first story stopped. This one is charging along, unless it gets derailed, it will be the next story to escape into the Amazon jungle.
A new “Time travellers sent back in time to save the world by changing history” story, which might be about to take a new structural tack.
And an almost completely plotted and written tenth novella in the Rags to Riches Series. This caused real problems while writing The Uncovered Policeman: Made for TV because it kept distracting me! Watch out for this one around Christmas time.
Ted Bun is an author of naturist fiction, a blogger and regularly contributes reviews and articles to The Voice of Literature.
He combines his active writing life with running a holiday facility in the South of France.
Thanks for joining us, Ted. Can I begin by asking you how long you’ve been writing and what got you started?
Most of my working life I was a Medical Rep, which meant hours in the car, stationary on the M25. I would listen to stories and plays on the radio and miss the endings, so I would have to make up my own.
I was writing technical material for several web sites for 20 years, and have had several articles published in medical journals. Later after a change of job I had to write lots of project documents and bids for funding, some of which got close to fiction.
I started to write fiction in a more formalised way after stopping work and moving to France in 2015. We run a small gîte which kept me busy during the summer months apart from when it didn’t. When the autumn and the shorter days arrived, I had another story ready to tell and typed this one up.
What do you hope to achieve by your writing?
I just want to amuse and entertain If a reader tells me I’ve made them laugh, I consider my job done. If a bit of education or self-improvement occurs that is a bonus.
A lot of your stories feature characters from the entertainment and music business. Where does your interest in this come from?
I am a failed rock star. I was part of a band that nearly made it into the 2nd Division except we kept losing members just as things were starting to happen. However, I got to play with some people who never had a real job in their lives.
I’ve heard you describe yourself as a ‘storyteller’ more than an author. What do you think is the most important thing a novelist has to do to tell a story?
I am not the person to answer that question.
I have a group of characters, all of whom are composites and exaggerations of real people. I then start with a “what if?” question then I let my characters make a journey from the start to the end. I try to stay within the bounds of conventual behaviour and settings, which means I tend to end up with very character driven stories. Tales that depend on the reader becoming engaged with character rather than the plot.
If pushed, I’d say you need a clearly defined Starting Place and End Point. Characters with the skills and attributes to make the journey and enough imagination to construct interesting obstacles to put in the road and solutions to these problems.
Did I say I ended up working as a “Change Manager” I think I just described the Novel as a change process.
Your books are always light-hearted and full of optimism. Have you never been tempted to explore the dark side of humanity in your writing?
No, there is too much darkness and violence in the world I don’t want it in my entertainment. I’ll be sticking to the escapist uplands where the sun shines all day and the evenings are warm. Having said that, the next Rags to Riches story has a lot darker plot, but it is still an optimistic story withvery positive outcomes.
You’ve written a large number of novellas and fairly short novels. Would you ever think of writing a great long epic like ‘War and Peace’?
Ha-Ha, No. I lack the skills for that sort of writing. Too much plotting, research, attention to detail and continuity required for the way I work.
Although I suppose if I rewrote the Rags to Riches stories into a single narrative I’d have enough words. Then Conan-Doyle could have done that with Sherlock Holmes and didn’t.
Isaac Asimov, of course, wrote the first three Foundation books as part works, which were combined to novel length, (as was most of Dickens’ best work) but Asimov never sanctioned a big “All the Days of The Foundation.” book.
Without a strong external narrative in the background, the war does that for Tolstoy’s epic, slavery for Alex Halley’s Roots, not many stories have the legs for such a long journey.
What advice would you give to a new young writer?
For a budding writer of any age, get a note book (or a voice recorder if you drive a lot!) and make notes. Use it to record; snippets of story, bits of dialogue (real or imagined), people’s reactions to events around them (Do they wade in to stop fights? Stand and watch? Pass by?) and situations that occur.
What are you currently working on?
Too much!
I always try to have a couple of projects on the go. How do I choose what to work on? I follow a story until it gets a bit sticky. Then move on to one of the others while I resolve the obstacle in the first.
I have a short story that is built around a scene edited out of an earlier book. (I never discard anything completely. I cut and paste “edits” into a “Spare Scenes” document, it seemed like a good idea once, maybe it will work better somewhere else.) Currently I am moving the focus of the narrative to a different character, so that the story can have a different ending to the book.
A follow up to New House … New Neighbours, which continues from where the first story stopped. This one is charging along, unless it gets derailed, it will be the next story to escape into the Amazon jungle.
A new “Time travellers sent back in time to save the world by changing history” story, which might be about to take a new structural tack.
And an almost completely plotted and written tenth novella in the Rags to Riches Series. This caused real problems while writing The Uncovered Policeman: Made for TV because it kept distracting me! Watch out for this one around Christmas time.
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