Big Al 'elps Archer Flog His New Book

The Age

Friday April 11, 2008

Ray Cassin

SOME writers are famously reclusive, unwilling to discuss their work or their life. Jeffrey Archer is emphatically not one of them.

In the three decades since his first thriller, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, propelled him on to the airport bookstands of the world, he has become almost as well known for his sometimes dubious deeds as for his words.

Most notoriously, Archer served jail time for perjury, and some of that experience has been recycled in his latest novel, A Prisoner of Birth.

The book, whose plot will remind some readers of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, is about an illiterate Cockney youth unjustly convicted of murder, who finds himself sharing a jail cell with an aristocrat and an avuncular old crim.

The latter, named in the book as Big Al, is based on a character whom Archer met at Her Majesty's Prison "North Sea Camp".

Yesterday, Archer recalled the encounter in 2001 at an Age/Dymocks Book Event.

"You'll be very 'appy at Sea Camp," counselled 'Big Al'. "You'll love Monday nights, we have a video night, we all watch the videos.

"Tuesday nights? Yes, you'll be very 'appy on Tuesday night, it's drinking night . . . I think you're probably a red-wine man, which means I'll have to go down to the Cash'n'Carry - not so much cash, but a lot of carry.

"You'll be very 'appy on Wednesday night, that's gambling night . . . I suspect you're a poker man. We play the officers, we fleece them . . .

"By the way, are you a 'omosexual? No? Ah, well you won't be very 'appy on Thursday nights . . ."

It was a party anecdote from an urbane raconteur, and Archer's audience lapped it up.

But he gave some serious observations on writing and publishing, too: "A lot of young authors say to me, 'Jeffrey, I've written a book', and what they actually mean is that they've written the first draft."

The published version of A Prisoner of Birth, he said, was actually his 17th draft, which had taken him 1000 hours of writing to produce. And how does a newly published writer find his or her readers?

"The way to get to number one? It ain't the advertising; they (publishers) can only afford it for a couple of weeks. It's you, the people, telling each other 'You've got to read this book' ."

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home