News Sunday’s Guest is Will Pearson… Questions, Please!

[AgentPete]

We have another new guest for you on this Sunday’s Pop-Us… in addition to Litopia’s very own Geoff Sullivan, whose distinguished narration has been a long-standing feature of Pop-Ups.

Please meet one of Britain’s most successful ghost writers and author of a string of top ten bestsellers, Will Pearson.

After joining the Royal Navy at 15 (yes, he really did run away to sea) Will later forged a roaring career writing uncompromisingly tough, real-life non-fiction hits such as…

• Death Warrant: Kenneth Noye, the Brink's-Mat Robbery And The Gold
• Go! Go! Go!: The Definitive Inside Story of the Iranian Embassy Siege
• Tornado Down: The Unputdownable No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller
• Black Water: By Strength and By Guile - My Secret Life in the Special Boat Section
• The Shooting Gallery - The Elite Within the Elite - One Man's Secret Wars

And many more.

Would you like to lob me some questions / topics to throw at Will on Sunday? Thanks! p.

 

[Hannah F]

Which did he do first? Ghost writing or writing his own books? And does he find that one helps the other?

 

[JohnBertel]

Has he not written fiction in his own name? Why not?
What sparked his interest in unexplained mysteries? What's the most mysterious mystery he has come across?
Maybe a little too much about detailed craft, but does he have any tips on writing action scenes in fiction? (I assume that he has ghostwritten thriller/action fiction).

 

[AgentPete]

Has he not written fiction in his own name? Why not?
What sparked his interest in unexplained mysteries? What's the most mysterious mystery he has come across?
Maybe a little too much about detailed craft, but does he have any tips on writing action scenes in fiction? (I assume that he has ghostwritten thriller/action fiction).

Thanks, John. Actually - no - he's never written fiction!

But I'll definitely ask him about action scenes, which frankly I don’t think are so very different, fiction or n-f. He’s famous (in publishing) for his muscular prose, can definitely get you into the centre of the action. I’d like to know how he does it

More about him here.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Without it being political, and with a focus on fiction, what are his thoughts on the idea of the writer as a shaman- phenomenon of fiction as a reading or preempting of a zeitgeist - 'prophecy'? Writers as prophets of a change in the wind. Tom Clancy RIP wrote a techno-thriller book Command Authority...co authored and published posthumously 2013 in which he seems to envision Putin's present actions. Russia invades Ukraine. US comes to its aid as a NATO ally (which of course Ukraine isn't) Russia has a former KGB president with a dark past...

Command Authority - Wikipedia

 

[Hannah F]

I see he does translations too (Franz Kafka). How easy is it to imitate the author's voice, especially if there is a cultural difference between translator and author?

 

[Julie]

How did he approach his translations of books such as Kafka's Metamorphosis? Was there anything he had to regard in terms of nuances of language that would make them more accessible to the contemporary reader? And if so, how did he go about balancing his own interpretation with preserving the original author's voice?