Watching Television Can Change Your Life.

Let me explain the title of this blog. About eight years ago I watched a TV series called Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe  it is a four-part  BBC television series hosted by  Francesco da Mosto In the series he drives his  Red Alfa Romeo Spider the length of Italy from  north to south exploring the architecture and traditions in different regions. The final part in the series is about southern Italy and in one scene he is in the Puglia region which borders the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, Its southernmost portion, known as Salento  peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy.

He walked through Alberobello a town which is famous for it’s unique trulli houses and he explained a little about how and why they were constructed. I was fascinated by these strange fairy-like looking dwellings and suggested to my wife we should have our next family holiday in Puglia. A few months later my wife, daughter, and me touched down at Bari airport the capital of Puglia. We had rented a trulo near a town called Cisternino for a week and then planed to drive north and visit Pisa. The next morning I opened the door and looked out on the Italian countryside and felt instantly at home.

When I left school I started working in the catering trade and cooking was my life for the next twenty-five years. Working in hotels and restaurants in he UK and abroad, I meet lots of Italians mostly waiters but some cooks. I always got on well with my Italian work-mates and over the years made some lasting friendships.

We didn’t go to Pisa for the second week and stayed in our little fairy house near Citernino. We toured the area in our hire-car with a few mis-haps but that is another story. When we arrived back in the UK, I couldn't stop thinking about Puglia and the little trulo we had stayed in. I came back to Cisternino a while later and rented an apartment in the old town, so that me and my family could come and stayed on and off throughout the next year.

The year after me and my wife decided to move to Italy and stay for a year so we could experience the four seasons and them make a decision on our future. We rented a villa with a four coned trulo attached and settled in. We live in the country with seven dogs, two cats, chickens a turkey called Debbi and a cockerel called Harry. Our home is surrounded by over three-hundred olive trees we have almond trees, pear trees, pomegranate trees and cherry trees. I could write chapters about the food and wine and about my mad Italian friends. There are lots of strange and wonderful experiences I could tell you about our life living in Italy but after being here for nearly six years now most of the time it has been a delight.

Puglia is like living again when I was a child, people sit on chairs in the streets on the warm summer nights, children still play outside their houses, everybody knows everybody else there is a real sense of community. Technology is starting to creep in and young people do use mobile phones but it is not as invasive as it appears to be in other places.

We are quite settled here now and look forward to everyday with delight.

A Questionable Hero for sale on Amazon

BookDaily.com - A Questionable Hero by Stephen Gane

BookDaily.com - A Questionable Hero by Stephen Gane

A LITTLE MORE

Welcome to my second blog, I was beginning to think my first blog had disappeared into cyberspace. Then I had a comment, it made my day to hear from someone who read my story. Anyway, onward and upward!. I left school when I was fourteen years old, I should have stayed until I was fifteen, I ran away to London and lived with my uncle. My Mum and Dad worried about me, they knew the problems I was having at school and that I was safe with my uncle and aunt. My uncle had a shop and I helped stacking shelves and we went out in his old van delivering orders. This was when I began to realize I was not as stupid as my teachers led me to think. After about nine months I returned home to Mum and Dad. I got an apprenticeship working in a kitchen. This was when I knew I was not stupid, I just had problems with words and reading. What I learned working in a kitchen is if you listened to people with more experience and knowledge than you I could learn. I could never get on with recipe books but if someone showed me I was OK. I then got a job in The Merchant Navy working for P & O. I travelled the world on an ocean liner working in the galley. It was great getting paid to go to exotic places, we did the Australia run, we cruised from Sydney to New Zealand, Fiji and Japan. You need to have a certain type of mentality to stay at sea for long, and I didn't have it so after a while I left.

Back To The Novel

After I had my dream about the start of my novel, I couldn't think of anything else, compelled to write, I got up most mornings before six am. Made a cup of coffee and started writing. It was not hard finding the words to write, but with my lack of writing skills and my dyslexia I just wrote what I was thinking. So the first 25000 words were one long sentence, no punctuation or paragraphs, I had never heard of a speech mark or dialogue tags. I then showed it to a friend, he pointed out the obvious. So I started looking on the Internet and read as best I could about punctuation. It took a long time to go through all I had written. Then I was soon back on track and started writing again. I found Scrivener and that helped me, I only use the basics and look on You-tube for tutorials which are helpful.

I am not a planner when writing, I am a panster, I become the character I am writing about. I see the story through their eyes, I never know what will happen next in my story. This works for me and I find it exciting. Sometimes I find myself in a place where it is hard to see the way through but something always shows me the way forward.

It took me seven weeks and three days to finish my novel. 93000 words I thought that was all I had to do. Through the Internet I found someone who gave me advice. She explained about developmental editors, copy editors and proofreaders. She also said I needed to get up and running with social networking. This was all new to me. I had a Facebook page which I looked at once a month. No Twitter account and as for other social networking. Google plus, Pinterest, Linkedin and Instagram I had never heard of them.

When I was an antique dealer I had a website so I did know a little about that. Luckily I kept my domain name www.stephengane.com so on need to buy a new one. Social networking takes up so much time, hours go without being aware of it and not seeming to achieve much. I started a twitter account and lots of people followed me. I thought This is great, but after doing it for a couple of months I wonder what advantage there is. It’s great getting in touch with other authors on twitter but it’s impossible to read every tweet. I have started a list of the followers who give good advice and that is working better but I am sure I am missing a lot.

I downloaded a book from Amazon, "How To Write A Novel" by Nathan Bransford. I had to read it a couple of times to understand it. I found it interesting, it seemed to be saying there is a formula to writing a novel, but I just write what comes into my head.

Welcome to my first blog, and I never thought I would be writing those words. I have thought long and hard about writing a blog as I do not want to start something which I am not fully committed to. I have decided to go for it with a slowly, slowly approach, so I will write at least one blog each month.
What am I going to write about? Well, about myself, and how I came to write my novel, A Questionable Hero. 
Writing has come as a big surprise to me. Ever since I left school at fourteen, I have not written anything. I do not read many novels either: in fact, I have only read five novels in my life: Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, twice; Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon by Thomas Harris and Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock. 
The reason I don’t read much is because I am dyslexic, so I have problems with words. I do not know my right from my left, I can spell the same word differently two or three times in the same sentence, I read what isn’t there –  it all gets a bit mixed up in my brain.
My school days were the worst days of my life (so far!) because I had problems reading and because dyslexia was little known. My teachers assumed I was stupid, and when I left school I thought I was stupid. It was only when I started work I realized I was not as daft as my teachers led me to believe.
I wanted to be a vet but there was no chance of me ever going to university so one day I went to the school’s careers office with my Mum. The woman behind the desk asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea, but then my Mum said, “He cooks the dinner at home sometimes.” Four days later I started a six-month trial at a hotel to be taken on as an apprentice, and for the next five years that is what I did. I went to college one day a week and passed my City and Guilds exams with distinction.
How I came to write my novel is an odd tale. Over Christmas last year I had a really bad infection. I went to the doctor’s and he prescribed for me some strong antibiotics. The third night on the medication I had a vivid dream; I am not sure if I was asleep or daydreaming, but I saw in my mind the vivid beginnings of my novel. It was like watching a video. When I woke up the next morning I had forgotten all about it, then that evening I was chatting to my step-daughter, and she mentioned something and it all came back to me, like a bolt from the blue.
I told my wife and friends I was going to write a book. They all thought I had gone crazy, and to be honest, I thought I had as well! But that is how I started writing; I just had to do it.
Please feel free to comment on my blog. I am open to any constructive criticism. Thank you for reading this post. More to come next time.