by J.M. Donellan

I was dancing at a rooftop masquerade around 3000 meters above sea level when a friend gripped my arm and pulled me aside. “Don’t dance with that girl again, or he’ll throw you off the roof.” He nodded towards a stranger in a garish black feathered mask that was doing nothing to conceal his wrath. “You’ve been dancing with his girlfriend. Someone said he’s some sort of gangster. He’s seriously pissed. We gotta get out of here. NOW.”

I stared down at the cobbled streets of Quito several stories below, looked at the gangster, then back at his alleged girlfriend waving to me from the drinks table. I felt untethered to the mortal world, like something had been shaken loose, like anything could happen. Part of me felt electric. Not because I wanted any kind of real-life altercation, but because I could feel the delicious thrill of a new story being born in my head.

Most of the time, getting a story on the page is the stuff of anguished machinations and perspiration. As much as we’d all love it to be like the movies, where inspiration strikes and uplifting music swells as the montage begins, our hero pounding away at the keys, mumbling fervently to themselves, its usually far slower and more quotidian. Once in a while, though, inspiration really does feel like an otherworldly force hitting you like a Miley Cyrus-adorned wrecking ball.

When writers are asked ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ the person asking is usually referring to plot, character, or setting. What we often miss is the importance of feeling and tone (or ‘the vibes’ if you were born after the bursting of the dotcom bubble.) Ultimately, feeling is the most important experience of reading a book, even the most ingenious plots or clever characters aren’t going to count for much if they aren’t presented with a distinct tone that readers will feel on visceral and emotional levels. Think about the times you’ve heard a mediocre cover of an iconic song, hitting all the right notes isn’t enough, the feeling has to be there in the execution.

At that terrifying, exhilarating moment on the Quito rooftop, I felt a heavy pour of dread garnished with the thrill of my inadvertent transgression, served in a tall, cold glass of being a stranger in a strange land. I knew this was something I wanted to distil and serve up to others. It’s laughably easy to become someone else when you’re in a foreign country surrounded by strangers, all the impediments and securities that moor you to your real life are now in a distant time zone.

The protagonist of Rumors of Her Death, Archie Leach (bonus points if you get the reference), has completely embraced this feeling of endless reinvention, leaving his home country for Australia where he’s adopted an array of identities and discarded his old life completely. All this reinvention, however, can’t silence the memories that haunt him, or the guilt of what hides buried in his past.

A few weeks after the rooftop masquerade fiasco (feel free to use that for your next band name), I ended up in Bogota and found myself in a bizarre three-story bar where each level reflected Dante’s Inferno, Paradiso, and Purgatorio, complete with outré costumes and extravagant, grandiloquent ornamentation. I took that basic concept and spun it out a little further to create the nine-story palace of excess and hedonism called the Orrery, where each level reflects a circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno.

I’d been gifted the inspirations for tone and setting within a few weeks, but it would take me years before I’d manage to finally pull it all together into a novel. I’ve been writing for long enough now that many aspects of the job that used to feel mystical are now more or less mechanical, and parts I used to think mundane now seem magical.

Obviously, I didn’t get thrown off that roof, and I sincerely hope that no one ever throws you off any kind of roof either , but I do hope that this book grants you the same dizzying rush of adrenaline, fear, and excitement that I felt all those years ago. Plus, the cover price is much cheaper than a ticket to Ecuador.

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J.M. DONELLAN is a writer, musician, poet, radio DJ and teacher. His other published works include A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India, Zeb and the Great Ruckus, and the poetry collection Stendhal Syndrome.?

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