Going on vacation to Europe? How to add zest with an obelisk hunt

Ever since we wrote Obelisk Seven, we have been surprised by the number of people who have raved about their first encounters with an obelisk while holidaying in Europe.

We tell them of our first encounters with these ancient pillars of red granite, and they tell us of the ones they've seen, and the ones they've missed.

Our website and blogs just for you!

When we finished our thriller, and started our quest for a publisher (check our Obelisk Seven website for more details), we also started a blog to use some of the material we had but which did not fit into the 84,000 novel.

Our novel started with an interesting tour guide from Trafalgar Tours. He was a Dutchman who left the pursuit of law to become a tour guide of major European cities. He and his wife enjoyed travelling, and he was an artist as well: whenever he had some time off from guiding tourists through London or Paris or Rome or Venice or other cities, he would sneak off and sketch street scenes and buildings.

Nefertiti - Take her a rose in Berlin

And did he know a lot about the history of these old cities, and the buildings and statues in them! He was fascinated by the past, both the politics and the people, and able to convey to us interesting snippets which made our visits to the tour sites so much more intriguing.

Jack Whyte and Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Continuing our quest for a publisher for Obelisk Seven, our thriller, Loraine and I attended the Surrey International Writers Conference.

The conference had arranged a superb roster of presenters, and the quality was of a high order. Then on Saturday night, at the close of an interesting evening, a brooding Scot with a deep, deep voice made his way to the podium, while five hundred expectant writers and aspirant writers suddenly hushed themselves, and watched the slight figure expectantly.

Jack Whyte was born in Scotland in 1940, and migrated to Canada in 1967, where for twenty years he earned his keep as a professional singer, an actor, a musician, advertising man and an entertainer, including a one man show on Robbie Burns, which he took on tour throughout Canada.

In 1978 Whyte figured out the mystery of the sword in the river, and from that came a desire to write about King Arthur. This lead to the Knights Templar Trilogy, and more than one million books sold, just in Canada  alone!

Jack inherited his stubborness and determination from his father, who was blinded in the Second World War and told that he was only fit to weave baskets – his father disregarded this advice and wound up as a successful physiotherapist.

As for Jack, he is a disciplined writer, as Fiona Morrow wrote in a 2009 Globe & Mail article:

A hint - Dan Brown's Seven Points for Writers

In 2005 Liza Rogak published The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code – An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown.

She describes the outline for Seven Powerful Tips used by Dan Brown on his website (but since scrubbed from that site).

She writes that the outline provides a revealing look at how Brown "plans and crafts the flow of his own novels."

Here, briefly, are his Seven Powerful Tips:

Setting – reveal new worlds to your readers.

In and out scene building – keep things moving.

A sole dramatic question – use a single brick for your foundation.

Tension – create it with the clock (fast passage of time to speed the novel); the crucible (apply your heat to your constrained characters); and the contract (make promises to your reader and keep them).

Research – learn the specifics you will need for your novel.

Weaving of information - dole it out in small bites.

Revision – go back and play with your first draft.

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A hint - Dan Brown's Seven Points for Writers

In 2005 Lisa Rogak published The Man Behind The Da Vinci Code – An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown. 

She describes the outline for Seven Powerful Tips used by Dan Brown on his website (but since scrubbed from that site). 

She writes that the outline provides a revealing look at how Brown "plans and crafts the flow of his own novels."

Here, briefly, are his Seven Powerful Tips:

Setting – reveal new worlds to your readers.

In and out scene building – keep things moving.

A sole dramatic question – use a single brick for your foundation.

Tension – create it with the clock (fast passage of time to speed the novel); the crucible (apply your heat to your constrained characters); and the contract (make promises to your reader and keep them).

Research – learn the specifics you will need for your novel.

Weaving of information - dole it out in small bites.

Revision – go back and play with your first draft.

If you would like to read about Dan Brown hanging upside down in gravity boots while writing, click here.

In the Beginning: A Da Vinci in Da Vinci

How does one suddenly get struck by the idea of writing a novel? What stars must line up just so, at just such and such a time, for just so long, for this crazy idea to take root in one's mind?

Loraine buying The Da Vinci Code at Da Vinci airport in Rome

For us, the stars lined up the day we settled into our chairs at the Da Vinci Airport in Rome, waiting for the final leg of our holiday tour through Europe.

We had gone on the Trafalgar Tours high speed rail tour from London through the Chunnel to Paris, then snaking through France to Nice, Monte Carlo and on to Venice and Florence.

It ended in Rome.

Our Eurostar steed

We had extended the tour by bookending a few extra days in two of our favourite cities – London and Rome.

Our tour guide was superb – a former lawyer who decided to switch to guiding tourists and indulging in his hobby of painting the magnificent views in the cities he toured, he had a wealth of knowledge about every city we visited and the history of the countries and places. If asked (which we did often) he would dive into all types of topics.

He had studied the tours and figured out exactly how to optimize the time available.

He had us running early in the morning to be the second tour group lined up to explore the Vatican, for example; when we came out, he showed us the huge queue which snaked all down a long, long block. We had avoided wasting hours of idle time because he had studied the logistics of each visit.

We also had local city guides in London, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome.

Dan Brown

Now back to the airport.

Loraine glanced at the small bookstore and spotted a copy of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

We laughed, because it seemed that in every big city we went to our guides would end up quoting from this novel, using it as a kind of guide book. The bishop was killed on the second floor of the left building, one would say, and we would all crane our heads to see where Dan Brown had offed the  man.

We had not yet read The Da Vinci Code, but Loraine noticed in the newspaper she was reading that the Pope had once again condemned the book.

On the spur of the moment she bought a copy, and immersed herself in it on the plane going home, handing it to me when she finished it.

We sat down one morning on our terrace, nursing a cup of steaming coffee, and talked about the many photographs we had taken on our trip. Dan Brown's book came up. We both agreed that it was not the greatest writing we had ever read, but he had a hook – the wrapping of cities around his plot. Memories of the tour guides using it as part of their schtick came roaring back.

We can do what he did – wrap a thriller around a guide book - Loraine said off handedly, and the idea was born.

Diving Crow

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