I’m delighted to introduce one of my favourite fun travel memoir authors this month. Simon Michael Prior has not been writing all that long (his first book came out the same year as mine) but has already produced five cracking travel books with more on the way. If you’ve not begun his South Pacific Shenanigans series, then put this blog down and go find them, right now; they’re that good!
Hi Simon, thanks for agreeing to chat with me. Can you start by telling my readers a bit about yourself?
Hi Lisa! And good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. It’s wonderful to be here to present this award for best actor, and the nominees are … oh, hang on, that was last week’s speech. Ahem. A bit about myself? Right. I’m Simon, I live in Australia and I try not to break anything. I’m a search-and-rescue skipper for the Australian Coast Guard, I support England and Australia at rugby and I write crazy fun travel adventure stories about my life lurching from chaos to disaster.
You certainly seem to be a danger to man and womankind in your books, Simon, which is partly what makes them so good. You’re a naturalised Aussie, though I like that you still support both sides at rugby. I daren’t ask what happens at England-Australia matches. You left the UK many years ago now, but is there anything you still miss from ‘home’? (And I know it’s not the sunshine 😊).
England. But Australia if they are playing anyone else! There’s one thing that every English immigrant to Australia makes it their life’s mission to find: a good curry like you get in every English High Street. Bonus points if it tastes like one from Bradford, Birmingham or Leeds. And y’know what? I haven’t found one yet. So I guess I must miss a good curry. But it’s not like I sit at home dwelling on my loss. That and those Muller Light apple desserts. You can’t get them here. I’m not going ‘home’ though for either.
I’m amazed that Melbourne doesn’t have fabulous curry houses. I can tell you that here in Galicia we actually have a genuine Bradford curry house recently opened. Sadly, I’ve not tried it yet as hubby hates spicy but I’ll let you know!
You’ve lived and worked in a number of places around the globe, as well as visiting many more (and I’m sure many of them do a fabulous curry). If you could live anywhere, without need of money or working, where would it be and why?
Simon and family in the Moselle, 2022.
Sorry Lisa, I’m going to cheat with this answer, because I’ve been planning just this, for when my long-lost reclusive great-uncle Hubert Farnsworth finally leaves me his billions. I’d rent The Regent Suite on the Seven Seas Splendor cruise liner. Yep, for US$11,000 per night, you too could travel to every country on the ship’s itinerary and luxuriate in 4,443 square feet of space with your own swimming pool, private dining space for twelve people and a grand piano. The downside to this plan? They probably wouldn’t have good curries on board either.
diving with turtles, and sharks!
Yeah, right! I look forward to the ‘crazy fun travel adventure’ about that particular trip, Simon!
Your South Pacific Shenanigans series are travel adventures worthy of Clive Cussler or Desmond Bagley (I’m showing my age, so please feel free to add in any adventure authors under the age of eighty). Obviously, your stories are all true, but they read like a novel. In fact if I hadn’t seen photos, I’m not sure I’d believe some of them were possible! I’ve read that the best non-fiction books grip the reader, just like a novel. How do you achieve this in a true-life story?
I suppose I need to give a serious answer to this question. Maybe three answers. Firstly, I read fiction. I analyse thrillers, crime stories, gee, someone even gave me some science fiction last week (aside: why is ‘science fiction’ called ‘science fiction’? I mean, we don’t call thrillers ‘thriller fiction’ or romance books ‘romance fiction’) ahem, sorry, back on track, and I work out what makes great stories so great. And the answer is: anticipation. Anticipation pulls you through the whole book to the end: what’s going to happen next? Was it the butler who killed Lord Farquar? Or was it Lady Farquar, when she discovered Lord Farquar’s affair? Who was Lord Farquar having an affair with? And is the butler actually their illegitimate son? Etc etc. Then, and this is where we segue neatly into my second answer, I work out what the reader’s anticipating. For instance, in the first book in the series, we’re never quite sure, all the way through: Are we going to find the Queen of Tonga, or not? And along the way, there’s a few other sub-mysteries we have to clear up, all of which add to the anticipation. And lastly, my third answer to your question, and this may seem odd for a travel writer, I write about people, not about places. The places form a framework to give the people a purpose, a meaning, but the people are the stars. Have a read of some of the greatest travel books written. Were Gerald Durrell’s books about Corfu? Nope. Corfu formed the framework, but his family, along with a host of Greek characters from all backgrounds, formed the story. In Peter Mayle’s books, Provence gave a setting, but the books are about restauranteurs, peasants, viticulturalists and tradesmen. Phew. That was a long answer. Can I grab a drink?
Simon, signing his latest book; The anticlockwise proposal
Yeah, help yourself. You deserve one after that comprehensive (and illuminating) answer. On the science fiction question (one of my other favourite genres), I guess calling them science books would sound like they were about Newton or something. Or science people are just more pedantic? Have you ever considered moving into fiction writing? What genre would you write in if so?
I read absolutely every type of fiction except horror (‘cos I get scared and hide behind the sofa) and erotica (‘cos I get scared and hide behind the sofa) and I’d love to have the imagination some of my favourite writers possess. If I honestly felt I had the capability, I’d follow in the footsteps of Frederick Forsyth and write political thrillers. Who can better the first line: ‘The man with ten minutes to live was laughing.’ ?
Excellent first line. My favourite is a Desmond Bagley one: ‘To be encumbered with a corpse is to be in a difficult position, especially when the corpse is without benefit of a death certificate.’
Out of all your adventures, what has been the scariest moment?
A tiny plane to Stewart Island, New Zealand
Oh, gosh, there’ve been so many. Scuba diving with huge bull sharks in Tonga, plummeting hundreds of feet in a tiny plane crossing the strait to Stewart Island in New Zealand (whose pilot died with his passengers on a subsequent run!), even playing my first gig to an unforgiving crowd who wanted to hear Kenny Rogers, all of these scenes have appeared in my books, but probably the time I’ve most feared for my life was in Dubai. I stood outside our hotel with Fiona and my twin daughters who were about eight at the time, trying to flag down a taxi. Almost immediately, a cab shot up to us across four lanes of speeding traffic, to an accompaniment of a car-horn symphony, and a Captain Ahab-type man with a massive Roman nose lowered the driver’s window. “Zjump in,” he said. “Hwhere hyou wanna go?” Anyway, Fiona and the girls climbed in the back seat and I sat next to him. For the next twenty minutes, as we swerved along the freeways at top speed, screeching around other drivers, missing their vehicles by inches, this taxi driver proceeded to give me a detailed blow-by-blow account of all the near-fatal car accidents he’d been involved in. The climax of this narrative was when he tapped the side of his nose and said “See zis nose?” Well I mean we couldn’t help seeing it; it was about the size of the sail on a toy boat. “Zis not my nose,” he said, his finger making a hollow doink-doink sound on the side. “Zis not my nose.” It transpired that during one of his more spectacular car crashes, his real nose had been sliced off, and had been replaced by an artificial appendage. The relief once we reached our destination and exited his cab could be tasted.
Brilliant! You’ve definitely had your share of adventures; I’m surprised Fiona travels with you at all! Your father was also an adventurer, wasn’t he? Your first published book is a memoir of your father’s letters home from New York as a young man. How did An Englishman in New York come about, and was this your first venture into writing?
I can clearly remember my first venture into writing. I was four years old, and I was very proud of a drawing I’d done at school for my father. Unfortunately, I’d spelt my name on it ‘NOMIS’ which, as my teacher didn’t hesitate to point out, rather took the shine off my achievement. But yes, An Englishman in New York was my first foray into professional writing. My father passed in 2014, and among his possessions I discovered this collection of letters sent by him to his parents, still in their original envelopes, bound with an elastic band. I opened them, and, although his writing was fairly impossible to decipher, I gathered that they were letters from his time studying in New York in 1948-9. I knew he’d lived there, but he’d never imparted any details. Reading some of the stories about cocktails with the Roosevelts and dinner with the Rockefellers, I realised the letters were an important historical snapshot of 1940s New York life, and if I replaced them in the box they’d come from, no-one would ever read them again. So I decided to turn them into a book. My father’s writing was so impossible to read, this took me another five years, then once I’d removed the family parts and other sections that really would interest no-one, I joined up with the Facebook group We Love Memoirs, whose members were invaluable in helping me publish. In fact, I think that you, Lisa, were my very first reviewer and I remember my jaw hitting the floor that anyone who hadn’t known my father personally could be interested in the book.
I remember being fascinated by An Englishman in New York. I think personal letters appeal to our voyeuristic side; it’s a shame that with the arrival of electronic mail, those precious memories will vanish forever. By the way, I once wrote a story where all the characters had names spelt backwards. I shall call you Nomis from now on.
I know you are always honing your writing skills. What sort book would you like to try and write which is different to anything else? I remember you talking of writing a book about a five-minute time period…that fascinates me.
I seem to have gained a reputation (not deliberately, may I add) for creating detailed scenes involving a lot of dialogue. One of my kind reviewers said I could probably make the act of eating an apple into an interesting story. So, yes, I have this goal to write an entire, full-length book about a five-minute period of time. I’m not sure yet if this will be fiction or non-fiction, and it’s queueing up behind several other projects I’m working on. As my mother used to say when I inquired about the contents of forthcoming meals: “wait and see.”
Ooo, dangling a carrot there, Nomis…or an apple!
I sincerely think that each of your books is better than the last, and that your talent as an author is immense. I know that you work hard at your craft, as well as being incredibly talented; do you have any writing tips for new authors? What resources have helped you grow?
Shucks! (as the Americans say, and hey, I’ve learnt the extent to which we’re two nations separated by a common language with my latest book’s title), you do flatter me, Lisa. I do work hard at my craft, if you can call it that. There’s a number of people I thank in every book’s acknowledgements who have been instrumental in teaching me, and I know I have masses to learn. I’ve bought several books about writing, watched countless videos and browsed through hundreds of online posts. If I was to give a new author one tip, it would be what I have pinned up next to my desk (because procrastination is my superpower), and it’s attributed to Jodi Picoult (I’ve read all her books, by the way. Very unusual style). It says: “You may not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” And as I’ve progressed through my books, I’ve discovered that the worse the first draft is, the better the end result. No idea how that works.
Ha! So true, about the editing, and the common language. The Anti-clockwise Proposal, Simon’s latest travelogue memoir, was published in February 2023 and is a corker. I’m not convinced the counter-clockwise proposal would have worked as a title (any more than a plum, zucchini and green bean tart would have for yours truly. Though it did teach me about our ‘two nations separated by a common language’, too.)
I still find it amusing that we both launched a round-the-world tale within a month of each other, without the other being aware. As a true clockwise girl, who can’t survive jetlag going the other way round the world, I have to ask; do you prefer anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise) travel? If so, why?
It's like the plugholes. Have you ever watched which way the water goes down in the Northern Hemisphere, then compared it to the Southern? I often wonder if that’s actually dependent on the shape of the sink, rather than the rotation of the earth. In fact, the vast majority of flights from Australia and New Zealand fly anticlockwise (your readers in the US, by the way, will think I invented this word – two countries separated by a common language!) as they stopover in places such as Dubai, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong so you’re much more likely to fly anticlockwise than you are clockwise from here. And flying anticlockwise has the effect of lengthening your day. So you get to live longer too! Follow me for more zero-effort health tips.
Gosh, my readers are getting their money’s worth today, Nomis. Health, language and writing tips in one blog! By the way, watching water whizz down plugholes is a major preoccupation of mine when we go down under. I find it mesmerising.
Where next for Simon Michael Prior? You have a new series in the pipeline, I believe. Can you tell us anything about it?
I have a massive TBW (to be written) list. Massive. Currently I’m sitting on three half-written books. Not literally. That might be sore. What I think I’ll be releasing next is the first two in a goodness-knows-how-long series about travels with my family. I said, before we left, that I wasn’t going to write about these adventures, but we had so many chaotic disasters and mishaps the books are almost writing themselves. Then I’ve finished what will be the first in a future series about something completely different, suffice it to say we’ll meet an effeminate cabaret performer, a disgruntled Liverpudlian pizza-shop manager and an African prince all within the pages of book one. Oh, and Paul McCartney puts in an appearance too. Watch this space.
That’s far too many teasers, Nomis. You’ll have to get writing quicker, or clone yourself ‘cos I can’t wait to read these continuing adventures!
So, final question, then you can get back to writing. If you were to come back as an animal, what would you be and why?
Easy. I’d be a Capybara. And if you want to find out why, you’ll have to wait for book two in the forthcoming series.
And that is a perfect cliff-hanger ending, folks! You can follow Simon Michael Prior’s adventures and sign up to his monthly newsletter HERE. Thank you, Simon, for being entertaining and informative. ’Til next time, here’s a Simon sunset.
