From War Correspondent To Fiction Writer

WENDY HOLDEN, also known as TAYLOR HOLDEN explains what it’s like to be a war correspondent and how the legacy of her experiences unwittingly provided rich material for her first novel.

THE IMAGES on our television screens or in our newspapers are frighteningly familiar – Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq – carnage, misery and bloodshed everywhere the camera points. Images so powerful and so brutal that sometimes we have to look away or turn the page.

But what of the people behind the lens, or the reporters standing next to them, whose job it is to record every grisly detail on film or in their heads so that the truth can eventually be told? When do they get to look away? Journalism is still widely regarded as a glamorous and exciting profession in which reporters travel the world, witness incredible events and return home to kudos and plaudits.

For many, though, the reality is quite different. Not for them the lengthy debriefing offered to servicemen and women returning from the fields of conflict, or a period of rest and reflection spent to dissipate their most gruesome memories. More often than not, no sooner are they back from one catastrophe then they are despatched to the next, until the sights and sounds and smells that stick in their minds and the membranes of their nostrils meld into one.

Journalists have the dubious distinction of achieving one of the highest incidences of divorce and family break-up. Many are legendary for their drinking -propping up the bar and regaling wide-eyed colleagues with tales from the front line. When you consider for a moment just what the average war correspondent has to experience in the normal course of his duties –witnessing death and destruction on an inhuman scale – it doesn’t seem so shocking.

One former colleague of mine could only sleep through the night if he took the heroin that eventually killed him; others seek oblivion in the bottom of a bottle, in cannabis, or through gratuitous sex. I, who took nothing but sleeping pills, thrashed about so violently in my nightmares that I twice broke my husband’s ribs.

To retain my sanity and my marriage, I eventually left the occupation I had once loved. At first, it felt like giving up a seductive drug that lured me away from monochrome normality to a high-octane world of danger and drama, foreign hotels and like-minded adventurers. It was many years before I was finally able to see that instead of the courage friends and family assumed me to possess, it was actually foolhardiness and a sense of insecurity that led me, time and again, to places that seemed to validate me in their eyes, and my own.

For a while after I turned my back on news reporting, all the colour seemed to seep from my world. Everyday tasks seemed mundane and people’s complaints about ordinary life petty. How can you care if your best friend’s nanny isn’t doing a great job, when you’ve just witnessed the gassing of dozens of innocent women and children? Or be upset if another friend didn’t get the job they wanted when your mind is endlessly playing images of a brutal missile attack on a convoy of vehicles in Basra? What credence can you give a husband who complains of a head cold when you’ve held a dying child in your arms, and heard the sigh of their final breath?

Nobody forced me to do the job that I was proud to do. No one made me run for a flight to some Godforsaken country, or sprint towards a terrorist explosion when every sane person for miles was running away – but the legacy of those experiences stayed with me.

When I stepped to the edge of an open burial pit in southern Iraq – a place of such horror that no imagination could invent it – little did I know that I would live with the stench and a pathological hatred of flies for the rest of my life. Sensing fresh meat, the insects swarmed around my eyes and mouth. Uttering a cry of revulsion and batting them away, I startled a wild dog in the pit below. It scurried off, its tail between its legs, a half-eaten human hand in its jaws.

It was years before I felt able to write about some of the things I’d seen and done. I had a hurt locker of secrets inside my heart – secrets I never thought I’d tell. But when I did, as I was writing my first novel The Sense of Paper, they poured from me in a cathartic purging of my past. I’d never intended to share these memories with the rest of the world. For the same reason my father never spoke to me about his time fighting the Japanese in Burma, and Holocaust survivors found it so hard to talk of their experiences, I feared the harm they might do to others too.

But then I realised, that in the context of a novel, I could create a young woman whose psychological scars from her experiences as a war correspondent set her on a path towards mystery and obsession. There was another surprising consequence for me.

By revisiting the scenes that played on a loop in my skull, I finally came to realise that these experiences, however dreadful, had made me what I am; they were part of my fabric and the reason I’d ended up a compassionate listener, writing mostly inspirational non-fiction books I cared about in an idyllic rural setting with the husband who refused to give up on me. Without the brutality of my former life, I might never have found such beauty in a sunset, or noticed the way the sand on the shore resembles the ribbed roof of a dog’s mouth.

 Cleansed of my memories I emerged free of the ghosts of my past, and better able to enjoy the next phase of my life with a renewed sense of freedom. Now, at last, I can allow myself to look away.

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The Sense of Paper by Taylor Holden is available as an ebook across all formats, priced at £2.99 –

Watch the booktrailer HERE

A lush and intoxicating blend of art history, eroticism, and suspense, Teylor Holden’s The Sense of Paper is like no other debut novel you’ve ever read. An enthralling exploration of the role of paper in art, it is also the sumptuous story of a woman living on the dangerous edge of obsession, passion, and murder.

From The Sense of Paper: “Think for a moment what paper means to people. How ubiquitous it is in everyday life….A material of paradoxes, it can be used and abused in a thousand ways and still be the same under its skin. It is the embodiment of man’s achievement, yet it is as transient and as flimsy as tissue…. In its strengths and weaknesses, faults and flaws, it is intensely human….”

View the trailer for the book! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTRCrTys21I
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“British journalist Holden delivers a superior novel of suspense in her well-plotted fiction debut. …Readers who are interested in art history and artists’ lives will find themselves enthralled with the depth and scope of information.” – Publishers Weekly

“A lusciously textured novel of suspense and discovery, full of emotional nuance as accurately and delicately rendered as Turner’s clouds.” – Booklist

“Every once in a while I pick up a book by an author totally unknown to me,.. for which there has been no buzz or recommendation …Whatever it was that drew me to this book, I am forever grateful… [Holden’s] writing is exquisite—rich and textured…this is a fine character-driven suspense story that envelops the reader in a world where passions run deep and hope and life is renewed….” – Mystery News

“With this appealing debut, journalist Wendy Holden turns to fiction,… the story revels in its ability to suspend us for pages in its own thoroughly diverting obsessions.” MA. Library Journal

‘A fascinating novel – one that will hold your interest throughout the book. The two main characters are well drawn and the reader will feel the mystique and wonder about each of them as they read (on). For anyone who is an art historian, this book will be a double treat. An engrossing read and one that I highly recommend. To top it off, it is Holden’s debut novel!” – Bestsellersworld

“Unfolds with a lushly detailed pace… gripping not just for the story and its wringing suspense, but for its art history and its richly detailed story of papermaking, paper in all forms for all purposes but especially its use in the art of JMW Turner.” – The Poisoned Pen

“Holden weaves a story about papermaking in a novel that will expand your vision and your sense – not only of paper but of some important realities…. Holden again and again startles us with how close at hand unexpected life-extinguishing cruelty can be found…..Not only will you come away with a greater appreciation for art, you will be prodded to consider love and war and our imperfect selves. But you’ll also find reason to hope that, even when life’s journey leaves you off balance, you can find your footing.” – Asbury Park Press (New Jersey)

“There are many lessons to be learned from this read. Lessons in art history, the process for producing quality handmade paper and the importance of that quality in the production of great masterpieces by artists such as Turner. A remarkable and engrossing story. I doubt if you will find a more interesting and compelling read this year.” – Bookworm

Reviews: “A book rich in history and war, love and obsession, yet intertwined with thrillers mysterious undercurrent. This novel is designed to run set the reader time and again.”

“A lush and intoxicating blend of art history, eroticism and suspense. Taylor Holden’s The Sense of Paper is like no other debut novel you’ve ever read. An enthralling exploration of the role of paper in art, it is also the sumptuous story of a woman living on the dangerous edge of obsession, passion, and murder.”

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Wendy Holden was a journalist and foreign correspondent for eighteen years, covering news events at home and abroad, including the Iran/Iraq War, the Gulf War, as well as conflicts in the Middle East, Communist Europe and Northern Ireland. THE SENSE OF PAPER is her first novel and was published by Random House, New York to widespread acclaim. It is now relaunched as an ebook.

THE CRUELTY OF BEAUTY, her second novel, is to be published soon.

For more information, go to www.wendyholden.co.uk

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers