Interview with Richard Tomlinson, Author of First Violin

Read on for an interview with Richard Tomlinson, author of First Violin. Thank you to iReadBookTours for the tour spot!

What was the inspiration for the book?

Every now and then I dream a book, a movie or a play. I can always trace the dream to

something I have seen or read. I cannot explain why I dreamed First Violin as there is nothing that I read or saw that might have seeded the dream. I was sleeping in a hotel in Japan and at 2AM got up and typed the essentials of the dream/story. Subsequently, I was captivated by the history, memoirs and novels I read and communications with people, and the story was embedded in history and the experiences of many persons.

Background Research

The research, academic and in the form of novels, novel length memoirs and memoirs found on foundation websites, with thanks to Wikipedia and Google as well, lasted for well over a year and gave rise to many ideas. There were also some persons, identified in the Acknowledgements, who were a great help. Writing this makes me wonder whether I should also have acknowledged the staff of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Library of Congress was essential for providing maps for the period, tram routes, and so on. Using those maps I walked and dallied in all the streets and parks mentioned in the novel. Vienna is a wonderful city and I enjoyed this ‘research’.

One finding was the absence of steps at the entrance of buildings that I was using for ‘sitting on steps’ scenes. Yet more editing.

Additional obligatory research required my attending wonderful concerts by the Vienna

Philharmonic and Symphonic Orchestras at the Musikverein and the Konzerthaus.

What genre do you write and why?

The genre question is not straightforward. My dreams include comedies and dreadfully serious material. It seems to me that it is by chance that this book is historical fiction. Note, though, that some have commented that the genre for First Violin is romance first and historical fiction second.

A novella is forthcoming. I read a physics article about time travel and dreamed The Bologna Miracles, 1498, which is an irreverent commentary on the present.

I am presently writing Concertmaster, which follows on First Violin and is the second novel in an intended trilogy. No dreams here. Imagination and research are driving it.

What is your writing schedule?

The schedule is affected by the weather, with waves and wind critical for deciding whether or not to go kayaking (in the Atlantic), wind and heat and rain significant when it comes to hiking and mountain climbing, and cold unpleasant when it comes to swimming. If not prompted by the weather, I generally head straight from breakfast and a cup of coffee to my laptop and type in the mornings. Research generally occurs in the afternoons. Ideas, though, can occur at any time in the day and night and I whisper them into my mobile phone, or perhaps in the afternoon or the middle of the night get up to type them if they seem really to matter.

A question that some have put to me is the use of certain words

The word ‘race’, nowadays, is easily taken amiss. The Nazis used the pseudo-science of eugenics to rank races, with Jews being ranked as sub-human. It is for good reason that one worries about referring to a ‘race. But, at the time, Jews referred to themselves as a race. Primo Levi wrote that “I am an Italian citizen of the Jewish race”, this without racial ranking in mind. How can I not use the word ‘race’? Perhaps of interest is that the word ‘racism’ started to be widely used in the 1960s.

Similarly, I was advised to remove the reference to the ‘sanity’ of a person in a concentration camp and to write about his mental health. This seemed overly diffident.

This and other comments reinforced my view that I should use words as they were used at the time.

Do I get writer’s block?

No, in that when I am not sure where I am headed I turn to research, trusting that the ideas will arise, and they do. The origin of the ideas is a mystery.

Is this your first book?

I have a number of academic books. Writing a novel is very different and was very difficult. I received a lot of guidance from Barbara Ludman, an award-winning journalist and novelist.