Nick Hunt, author of 'Red Smoking Mirror' - Travel writer discusses blending experience into fiction, debut novels, and how to travel and write for a living
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2023
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
This week, we're joined by Nick Hunt. He's worked as a journalist and travel writer, publishing 'Outlandish', 'Where the Wild Winds Are', and 'Walking the Woods and the Water'. We discuss how he fell into becoming a travel writer, and how in reality it got in the way of his novel writing.
He's published 'Red Smoking Mirror', an alternate history set in 1521, in the Mexican City of Tenochtitlan, in which 29 years earlier, Islamic Spain never fell to the Christians, and Andalus launched a voyage of discovery to the New Maghreb. We talk about how he blended his own experiences travelling, with historical fact, to create fiction.
Also you can hear why it surprised him to not be in control of everything, why writing and plotting feels like travelling, and why he's passionate about page-setups.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of writer's routine. |
| 0:12.1 | This week we're chatting to the travel writer and now novelist Nick Hunt. |
| 0:16.7 | His debut is Red Smoking Mirror. |
| 0:19.6 | We talk about why writing felt a lot like travelling, |
| 0:23.5 | also how he blended experience and factual history into fiction, and why something that he was |
| 0:30.6 | always told about writers actually started to happen to him. |
| 0:35.6 | I'd heard before novelists saying, |
| 0:38.7 | oh, and then, you know, this character started doing this, |
| 0:41.7 | and I didn't expect, or this person popped up, |
| 0:44.0 | and the novel starts misbehaving and doing things that you didn't, |
| 0:48.1 | the writer didn't expect. |
| 0:50.2 | And I think maybe I'd never entirely believe that. |
| 0:52.8 | It always sounded like this kind of lovely, romantic image where the muse kind of takes over and, you know, the author starts losing control. |
| 1:02.3 | But that's what happened with Red Smoking Mirror. |
| 1:05.2 | It's all on the way in a brand new episode of writer's routine. |
| 1:15.5 | Yeah. new episode of Writers Routine. Yes, welcome along to the show. |
| 1:17.5 | This is Writers Routine, where we take a look through an author's working day. |
| 1:20.7 | We see how they plan their life, their work and their space to get stuff done to give |
| 1:26.3 | them the best chance of getting that idea down onto the |
| 1:28.9 | page. |
| 1:29.9 | My name is Dan Simpson. |
| 1:31.6 | Thank you so much for listening. |
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