English writer and adventurer Emily Chance talks to us about her enthralling novel, Hermes. The book is called Hermes. Perhaps we should start by talking about the origin and the significance of the title. Hermes is the herald of the Gods. He is the protector of human heralds and travellers. The title operates on many levels with several messengers in the different epochs and of course, the sea creatures are sacred in Hermes world. Using the turtles in the story came from my love of Scuba Diving and the more general ecological message but they play back into the legend of Hermes and Hermes is also a trickster which resonates in the narrative on two levels. I wanted to start by asking if you had the title before you started writing this one? I did and what is odd about the choice, like so many elements of the book, is the synchronicity of the story and why it is called Hermes became more persuasive. What is the theme of Hermes? Oh dear, there are so many, but the central one is we make our way into the heavens to a place that has always known humanity; intimately. They already have a view of us. In Hermes, you explore the essence of what it is to be human. Do you think human beings are ready psychologically and socially to be led (by a greater intelligence) away from their “dark ending?” As the years go by, I become more and more certain we are not. I wrote this book in 2022 and the reality of it, the type of person who would sponsor a mission and that would set out for another world, humanity’s inability to speak with a single voice, state-sponsored industrial espionage, has only increased, life is imitating art. Are you gloomy or optimistic about the future in terms of the way we’re learning, or not, from past mistakes? Do you think we’re hardwired to self-destruct? Do you think it’s time to pause? Pause and soon Are there any experiences that shaped or informed the writing of this book? In each epoch, there are particular ones. Living In New Zealand and learning about the culture, inspired me to begin the story in a location on the Northwest Coast of the South Island among ancient man and their beliefs so nobly expressed in the Polynesian Tribal leader Nikau. My love of the history of Anglo-Saxon and Tudor England which I studied at GCSE A levels, a long time ago. Living in Abu Dhabi has made me intimately aware of the vision of the Sheiks which is beginning to emerge in a vision for a Cultural District, where I live, and extraordinary museums like the Louvre Abu Dhabi which is a location in my book. The hard-working ex-pat communities particularly the Indian one, which is reflected in the opening pages of Movement Three with the death of Elizabetha Chandrika’s father who hails from Kerala. The empty quarter of the Liwa Desert where Space City is located. Tell us a little about your writing process. I write very fast, the spine of the stories of my books are written in about six weeks. I do all my research first and then dip into it for clarification as I go through it. Once the spine of the story is written I polish and rewrite and polish endlessly. Hermes’s first draft was finished in six weeks, but I have spent two years bringing it to the standard it is at today. During that period, I use a reading group some of whom do line-by-line analysis others more general feedback and one in particular proofreads. My location is very important. All of my books have been written in Abu Dhabi and the polishing in Lombok and The Forest of Bowland. What characterises all three locations is I have no distractions. When it comes to this sort of writing, who are you influenced by? I am a very cinematic writer, indeed my writing emerged out of frustrations with certain films. Hermes was influenced by 2001 A Space Odyssey. I wanted to have that relationship with an enigmatic intelligence but tell the story in fine historical detail. So, when an author said to me it reminded them of 2001 but goes much further, I was very satisfied. I see my books as page-turners, so my love of early Wilbur Smith is in there or Dan Brown. I love Hardy, Haggard, Rooney, Fleming but I am not sure they get into my books. I think the film Lion In Winter gets into Hermes. A real love of music underscores the pages of the book. How is music important to you? What music meant the most to you growing up? Music is the soundtrack to my life it’s with me all the time. When I sit down for supper when I am sat under the stars, I play music throughout the day at home in Abu Dhabi. It is a constant oral embrace. Growing up I was a post-Beatles fan so all the music which embraced Jazz, Classical Folk was important to me. The band that took me from pop music to Bartok, Sibelius, Stravinsky the Guitar work of Bream and the Choral music of Byrd was Yes, the hugely successful progressive rock band of the seventies. I still love Fairport Convention for their storytelling and English Tradition, that flavour of Englishness fascinates me Can you tell us anything about what’s next for Emily Chance? The follow-through novel to Hermes is written, called Angelia. It needs a little bit of proofing, but it was written in 2023 in response to the excitement of Foreshore agreeing to publish Hermes. Like Hermes, it is prescient, horribly so, written before the October 2023 attack on Israel and its tragic aftermath. I am currently writing “Isosceles.” It was inspired by the opening scene of a movie directed by Ridley Scott in 2012, Prometheus. Hermes by Emily Chance is published by Foreshore in February in paperback.
There is timing, and there’s timing. HOLY DISORDER, Geoff Smith’s semi-autobiographical novel, is set in a time of change and challenge for the Church of England, the 1970s. The question of women priests is coming to a head, as are issues of human sexuality and union with the Methodists. The protagonist Dave, a working-class lad from Manchester, is on his own star-crossed trajectory from theological college to ordination through a parish curacy to becoming senior curate at a cathedral and eventually rising to the dizzy heights of being chaplain to the local bishop, with a bit of extra-pastoral sex thrown in for good measure. The protagonist in Geoff Smith’s follow up, THE GORTON GOSPEL, is no less troubled, if not far more controversial. The story of Grace Givens, a non-binary lesbian, who returns to the struggling Manchester community of Gorton amid claims of them being the new Messiah, is braced for maximum impact at a time when the Church of England is facing its biggest crisis in modern times. The archbishop of Canterbury has been forced to resign, other senior figures are facing calls to quit and the church is reeling from its shameful failures over a prolific and sadistic child abuser. Smith, who remains, for now, an Anglican priest, insists THE GORTON GOSPEL is, first and foremost, a hymn of praise to the Manchester he remembers. “I was born and brought up in Manchester,” he says. “When I was five my parents bought a house in Gorton opposite Sunny Brow Park. “I have always been proud of my Manchester roots, the football teams, the Free Trade Hall, the Ship Canal and more recently the music. I went to school in the centre of the city Manchester Central Grammar School in Whitworth Street. I moved away from Manchester, where I was Vicar of St John the Baptist, Little Hulton, in 1978, two years before Shaun Ryder formed the Happy Mondays, also in Little Hulton, bad timing on my part?” Quite possibly. The timing of the publication of THE GORTON GOSPEL, however, could not be any less premeditated. “It’s a challenge for our times,” Smith says, “and a challenge which stems from three concerns that I have. What would happen if Jesus returned today in what some evangelical Christians describe ‘The Rapture’. Would he be welcomed rapturously? How would he present himself? Jesus brought a challenge to the spiritual leaders of his day as Grace Givens brings a challenge to the Church I describe today.” Smith, who was ordained in 1969 in Sheffield and has been a curate, a vicar and a cathedral canon, says his main inspiration for THE GORTON GOSPEL story was Professor David Ford’s commentary on John’s Gospel with his emphasis on love at the heart of the Gospel. “There is a story I love to tell about the elderly St John, asked to speak to his congregation in the first century AD, he simply says, ‘little children ‘love one another’,” Smith said. “In my understanding of the story the Gospels tell us that love is always redemptive and in the character of Grace Givens in the Gorton Gospel, I try to show that to be true. I made my main character a non-binary woman using the pro-noun ‘they’ purposefully. I made Grace the person they are in my story because ‘they’ are a challenge to the church today. The world is changing and for the better. As an early Methodist Church report describes it, alongside tradition and scripture, the Church needs to recognise ‘the spirit of the age’. The Living in Love and Faith debate in the Church of England is so important to the future of the national church and the church is getting it so very badly wrong. I hope that my story helps people rethink their prejudices.” In THE GORTON GOSPEL, Grace Givens is born and discovers Jesus in a mobile cinema showing a film about the life of Jesus. As ‘they’ grow older their understanding changes as they begin to cause a reaction in their neighbourhood by performing miracles. Eventually, Grace leaves Manchester but then returns to fulfil the mission they believe has been given to them by God. “The Living in Love and Faith debate in the Church of England is so important to the future of the national church and the church is getting it so very badly wrong. I hope that my story helps people rethink their prejudices.” Geoff Smith. In THE GORTON GOSPEL, Grace Givens is born and discovers Jesus in a mobile cinema showing a film about the life of Jesus. As ‘they’ grow older their understanding changes as they begin to cause a reaction in their neighbourhood by performing miracles. Eventually, Grace leaves Manchester but then returns to fulfil the mission they believe has been given to them by God. The narrative follows much of the life of Jesus but has been translated into Mancunian. Approaching Jerusalem Can life be lightly discarded? For Grace, returning to Manchester, to Gorton, involved risk. They knew that ahead of them was the risk of rejection, like Jesus two thousand years before them, they were returning to the place they had left. They knew that it was time to witness the truth at the heart of a lie, shared all those years ago on a dusty road on the way to Emmaus. The question: Who do you say that I am? It was, as Grace knew, deep in their heart, an almost unanswerable question. But as they headed towards the City they were setting in motion the wheels that would lead to confrontation and possibly death. From what they knew, had studied, had considered, they were fully aware, as Tim had explained in conversation, and declared from the pulpit, the church was called to discover ways of dying creatively in order to transform the world with love. Such a creative death was to be found on the cross, in the passion, this they both knew and yet feared, as they
Duncan Fraser describes the inspiration behind Terrarium Hostel – a story of ordinary lives against a backdrop of cosmic stakes, exploring themes of connection, belonging, and self-discovery. “Ultimately in this book I am concerned with the question: Is it wise to try and communicate with technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilisations?”. Duncan Fraser An odd little incident many years ago provided both my motivation and the germ of the story. I lived in hostels when I was 18. One of my roommates saw a science fiction short story competition advertised in a newspaper. He cut out the entry form and presented it to me saying that I should write a story and send it in. This took me by complete surprise because I had never expressed any interest in science fiction or in writing. He seemed to have an inexplicable confidence that I could do it. I thought it strange for him to think of me like that because at the time I would never have passed for an artist or an intellectual or even as someone vaguely intelligent. A few years later I did have an intellectual awakening and I did start writing but I wasn’t interested in science fiction. However, as the decades passed, I remembered the incident and felt a nagging compulsion to accept what I began to think of as my inescapable fate. And so, about forty years later, I started to contemplate writing a science fiction story. I have been fascinated by the idea of extraterrestrial civilisations for a long time. In recent years, as I would be standing at a bus stop on my way home from work on wintry evenings, my attention would focus on a particular star in my line of sight. I would begin to daydream about an alien civilisation around that star. It would be at about the same stage of technological development as ourselves, maybe slightly ahead. And rather than weaving a story about its leaders or warriors or astronauts, I imagined what the lives of its ordinary workers might be like. Perhaps workers living in a hostel. A hostel in space. A hostel in a city in space. I later discovered that the star I was focussing on at the bus stop was called Zeta Herculis. Intelligent alien life forms will almost certainly be so dissimilar to us that mutual understanding might be very difficult. In the story that was forming in my mind, I came up with a solution to this problem by introducing the device of an artificially intelligent technology that translates the utterly alien communication into a comprehensible message in our own idiomatic language and with every detail of the alien world given a recognisable correlate in ours. BUY THE BOOK Dollop, a homesick young man, keeps a diary of his life in The Terrarium, a vast space city, as part of a groundbreaking extraterrestrial project. Living in a hostel with two peers, Backlog and Methane, and the enigmatic older man Octave, he feels uncertain about his future and lacks ambition. But after slowly building up his confidence, a shocking truth emerges that compels Dollop to reassess his identity. TERRARIUM HOSTEL is available on back order in paperback £9.50 Add to Cart ABOUT THE AUTHOR DUNCAN FRASER is an award-winning Scottish writer and poet and the author of the sonnet cycle The Campus of Love (Matador, 2018).
