The Making of The Falls: An Introduction

This book was long in the making. I first had a crack at it when I was sixteen years old, only to give up or become interested in other ideas (I can't remember which) so it was banging about for a fair few years. When I finally got to writing it, ten books in, it was like going through a greatest hits tour at first. By the time I got to where I finished the last time, in that last outline of the story, I found myself with a book that was unrecognisable from the one I had written when I was sixteen.

For starters, that book concerned an American family who moved from New Jersey to the midwest or the American south. Again, I can't remember which. I listened a lot to Bruce Springsteen at the time so that informed what I was writing. The tone was far less cynical -- and maybe less humorous -- than it was when I wrote The Falls, I can tell you that much. When I wrote The Falls, I was listening to Eminem, and that atmosphere in the first few months of 2021 was the worst I've ever felt in my life. There's a lot of grim stuff in The Falls: the portrayal of a dysfunctional family slowly falling apart and killing each other. It's a complicated book juggling issues of race, family, culture and history, things that any writer dreads to tackle, but I dived head in and tackled it like a drunk driver falling through the windscreen.

The book was the closest look I've ever taken on race with a focus on British imperialism and the Hebrew slaves in Ancient Egypt. I'd like to address something. The family in The Falls were originally Jewish, and I was proud to represent a fine community for the first time in this book. Once the book was done, I looked back and grimaced. Much of the plot was about lone figures manipulating and controlling history, and, unconsciously, my main characters were Jewish. That wasn't what I wanted. So, I changed the characters to my own background -- Catholic -- to avoid controversy. I'd like to write a book with Jewish main characters one day, and have a few ideas, but I'd need to undertake proper research and respectful consideration to accomplish that feat.

My favourite scene in the book, and one that was great fun to write, was with Robert having a breakdown at the county fair when he sees all these enemies in the crowd. That was a delight, coming up with this various historical figures.