Balochistan And The Vanishing of Ruth

Much of the inspiration for The Vanishing of Ruth came from the overland trip I made from the UK to Kathmandu in 1976. I kept a diary, and wrote letters home, using aerogramme stationery. You wrote on the special, lightweight paper, which you then folded up to make the envelope – like this one I sent from Kabul in Afghanistan:

As you can see, I had a LOT to tell the folks back home!

When I came to write The Vanishing of Ruth, I had plenty of source material, but still needed to do the things that every author has to settle down to sooner or later – mapping out the overall plot and characters, in this case with a mind map:

I also needed to fill in a whole bunch of gaps – I’d travelled just one route through Afghanistan and Pakistan, and for certain key events in the book a LOT more detail was needed. I spent many hours hidden away in Newcastle’s Lit. & Phil. Society library, poring over Stamford’s Compendium to get the details right on Balochistan (it’s the south west corner of Pakistan, where some critical twists in the plot take place):

I’m not entirely sure that my handwriting’s improved over the years!

The Vanishing Of Ruth: Exhibition Material

I’m really pleased about this – some of the original research materials for The Vanishing of Ruth is to be featured as part of the Lit & Phil (that’s the Literary and Philosophical Society) exhibition on North East authors.

The exhibition – Creative Passions: An exhibition celebrating literature in portraits and words runs from 1st February to 3rd March 2012.

Hopefully if you’re in Newcastle in February, you’ll have time to pop into the Lit & Phil – it’s one of my favourite buildings in the North East, and a great place to work on my writing. The materials I’ve submitted for the exhibition include:

• Diary extracts from Day 1 and Day 53 of my overland trip of 1976 from the Isle of Skye to Kathmandu.
• Day 53′s entry was written in Balochistan, which formed one of the key settings for The Vanishing of Ruth. I refreshed my knowledge on the area some thirty-odd years later with the help of the Lit & Phil’s copy of Stanford’s Compendium on Balochistan.
• A letter written home from Afghanistan. Beautiful country, and wonderful people!

More on the Vanishing of Ruth later in the week…