Hotels and Gangsters: Elements of Research in the Writing of Escaping Reality

By Geoff Nelder

When you teach more than 5,000 young people over a thirty-year period, you have touched and influenced the lives of a considerable cross-section of society. So, it is upsetting when your congenial and positive teaching style, combined with citizenship lessons, team spirit, and bonhomie results in a few school leavers opting for a life of crime.

Contact opportunities

On the other hand, if you are a teacher-turned-writer, it gives you contact opportunities you feel obliged to use. A case in point is ex-pupil Daniel (name obscured for my protection). At the age of 13, when his parents were away, as they often were on lecture tours, he would invite his peers to sample the family drinks cabinet. Before long he had upped his entertainment fare to drugs. A pusher at 13. Bright, streetwise, and cunning, he was a likeable rogue. Falling foul of so many school rules led to his expulsion from one academy after another. He didn’t qualify for university entrance because of his certificate shortfalls so he moved to one of Britain’s largest cities and looked for employment that suited his particular skills. Within eight years he was a section head of a crime syndicate.  Daniel kept in touch with me, his former teacher, through another ex-pupil.

He knew killers

I prefer my fiction to have authenticity wherever possible, and since my humor thriller Escaping Reality explored elements of crime syndicates in the UK and Amsterdam, I contacted Daniel. I fully expected him to ignore my request for a meeting but there he was, in the pub, cheeky grin as ever. No, he’d not killed anyone, though he knew killers. He didn’t deal in drugs personally, though he took his percentage. His main income was from legitimate sources, in property (real estate), gilts, and high-risk investments. The original funding for such investments is more difficult to pinpoint. And money laundering was a topic I was keen to interview him about.

Dashes

Surprisingly, both this crime syndicate manager (posh talk for gangland leader) and another I had a contact with cheerily chatted about procedures, routes for drug “dashes,” and about the way the alternative society operates. Rather like a shadow of aboveground society, the syndicates had their own finance structure, training programs, recruitment drives, insurance, and travel arrangements, some of which found its way into my book, presumably because the details would be changed post interview.

Cell experience

To balance the informational scales of justice, in my research I interviewed the local and national police as well. Schools in the UK have police liaison officers. I found they were very keen to take me on patrols, elucidate arrest procedures, explain forensic details for procuring and protecting evidence, and lock me in a cell-- for the experience. As a computer science teacher, I contacted the police's national computer offices to mine them for information on the new methods of collating statements, the use of mobile phone locations, car registration numbers, digital traffic cameras, and town center CCTV. They fell over themselves helping me, even to the extent of pointing out weaknesses in certain regions that would make good stories.

Logic behind providing fiction

One meeting with a crime syndicate leader occurred in a prestigious hotel. Ironically, the discovery that most hotels do not sell books, even though their clients often read on holidays or stopovers led to a distribution chain for my book. Two coincidences had their part.

As a part-time journalist for a cycling magazine, I researched a cycling forum for one of my earlier posts. Nelder is an unusual name so I was surprised to find a post by another Nelder with the same first names as my son. I sent a sarcastic e-mail to him out of fun. The reply was from a different Nelder. A few e-mails later we find that we shared a great-great-grandfather! Better still, this Nelder is a hotelier.

Half of Escaping Reality is about a fugitive hiding in Cumbria, UK. My long-lost hotelier relative has two large hotels in Cumbria. One and one made two displays of my books on sale to his clients in both hotels. But although he might have been helping out a newbie novelist because I filially shared his surname, he was a shrewd businessman. The pitch needed to be there too. The logic behind providing fiction books to clients trapped in the hotel on typical Lake District rainy days and nights, and particularly a book with that region for its background, became compelling. Many hardworking people are just too busy to lose themselves in a book in their normal lives, but on holiday or a business trip, with long evenings to fill, or poolside sunbathing to endure, they reach for a book.

My next book is science fiction. No, I am not waiting for a hotel to spring up on Saturn’s rings. Some of the action takes place in North Wales, Canada, and the Pacific Islands. Are there hotels out there? Are there criminals? Yes, but leave them to me. Outer space? Give it time.

Geoff Nelder escaped from his roots in the south of England and now lives in the north. He would do most things for a laugh but had to pay the mortgage so he taught IT and geography in the local high school. After thirty years in the learning and wild-animal control business he nearly became good at it.

 Geoff has published a couple of climate books, several academic articles in journals such as Weather, Teaching Geography, Primary Geographer, and RM User Group magazine. His articles have been published in Cycling World and BeWrite, and his short stories have been published by Gatto Publishing, Jupiter Magazine and Bewildering Stories as well as at BeWrite, Toowrite, and a variety of literary magazines. He had fun as a lead scriptwriter for the experimental Internet TV sitcom, "Lush." His first novel, a thriller with humor, Escaping Reality (Brambling Books, ISBN 095495632X) is available as a paperback or ebook from the publisher, www.bramblingbooks.com, and through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other online bookstores.

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