Books - Mark Jones

Lancashire and Worldbuilding by Mark Jones

In the summer of twenty-seventeen, plate glass frames a view of the Irish Sea. The early morning light gives its waters a tint of aquamarine mixed with emeralds. I’m looking at the view from a table in the South Shore branch of McDonald’s in Blackpool. The table is clean, except for an empty cup. It may have had a chocolate milkshake in it once. I take a sip of coffee, look at my watch and wonder where the time has gone. I’ve spent the last few minutes thinking about a children’s book. It’s one I wrote fifteen years before, and a story that no publisher wanted. I’ve considered rewriting it, but it seems like a waste of time. The story is weak, and the characters are not convincing. I consider buying another coffee, and I think about how time can fly. To myself, that especially applies to my writing. For many years I’ve struggled to place something. There have been some wins along the way, a job as an editor and a published poem or two. However, it feels like a protracted losing streak. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth the bother. It then occurs to me that fifteen years isn’t a long time. When you walk along the beach at Blackpool, it’s quite incredible to think some of the golden sand there could be eighty million years old. It’s been created as a result of rocks, and the shells of marine organisms, eroding. If you pick up a small amount, you can see the tiny multi colours of quartz, chromium, and mica. On a lucky day, you might see white, green, or pink in those tiny grains. Blowing across the sand is the salty aroma of the Irish Sea. Somewhere — under its waters — are basking sharks, jellyfish, starfish, and octopuses. Above it are wind turbines, as well as gas and oil drilling platforms. Annually, the contents of this attractive watery economy are worth six billion pounds. Each year, its views bring in a variety of tourists. In the summer months, even the Leatherback turtles like to spend their holidays swimming through it. As the seasons slowly change so does the clientele of Blackpool. Every September, tourists flock to see the illuminations now powered by one million lamps. In the early nineteenthirties, Blackpool’s landscape was drenched in multi-coloured neon lights. Across the black vista, whitehot light glowed from glass tubes filled with xenon gas. Green — the colour of renewal — was created using green coated tubes filled with argon. Pink neon light was made possible by mixing argon and xenon. My visit to Blackpool is just one spot I intend to pass through during the summer of twenty-seventeen. At a career crossroads, I decide to spend a few days on my own. The purpose is to consider my next move and get back on the rails. My thinking is to embark on a railway tour of Lancashire. Most of the places I intend to see are old family favourites. There is one location that I am particularly fond of. On a humid Saturday morning, I board a small two-carriage train from Lancaster station to Morecambe. The journey takes around ten minutes. The interior of the train is polished and old fashioned. It almost seems to transport me back in time to a bygone era. The simple cloth seats and unaesthetic windows remove me from the modern world. As the train rocks from side to side, I’m comforted by the lack of digital boards. It seems there is a soothing pathos in being withdrawn from the twenty-first century, even if it is temporary. Morecambe, on the northwest coast of England, has an incredible collection of Art Deco buildings. The most alluring, and striking, is the Midland Hotel. Morecambe Bay also has a fabulous view of the Lakeland Fells. As a spectacle, the bay is both ethereal and rich. Even on a misty day, the scenery can cast a hypnotic spell. I have always felt, even as a teenager, that this charming seaside town has yet to see its golden age. Two years after visiting Morecambe, I finally decided to rewrite my children’s book. After reading through it, I realised its world-building needed improvement. The characters also needed to be refined and renamed. As with most stories, the first two opening chapters set the tone for the work. In chapter two of the book, I tried to think of a location that could be a metaphor for a dragon called Lester Thyme. As one of the heroes of the story, Lester has never had the break he deserved. He’s worked a series of dead-end jobs for very little money. The bank account he has is drying up, and there’s no pension scheme coming to save him. On a whim, Lester decides to visit an old childhood holiday spot. Hoping to regain his youth, he gazes out at Morecambe Bay. Looking into the waters, he watches a narrow current of water that moves directly away from the shore, slicing through the breaking waves. To Lester, the powerful riptides symbolise time running out. Just like Morecambe, Lester Thyme has untapped potential. However, he is almost at the end of his losing streak. All it takes for his luck to change is one person who can see the dormant talents within him. Only then does his life become one of excitement and intrigue. As I progressed with reshaping my characters, I began to consider the world my story would take place in. I created a hard-boiled setting called Neon City. Its rain-drenched streets, just like mirrors, reflect the colourful lights around them. Those streets are seductive. But despite being framed by a white, green, and soft pink, they are also dangerous. There is a little bit of both Blackpool and Morecambe

RITA WONG AND THE JADE MASK by Mark Jones is out now in paperback (£7.99, Everything with Words)

in those streets, but they are not yet complete. My past will fill in the cracks. In looking at the world, a creative author will try to imagine what is behind locked chrome doors and closed Venetian blinds. They might see an assortment of high-level criminals, or a femme-fatale looking to wager thousands of pounds on a game of Baccarat. Behind the facade of Neon City, I have added a sprinkle of Art Deco furniture that adds a touch of class. The doors leading to it are covered with gold leaf and studded with pearls. Then comes the colours, sounds, and smells of that imaginary world. If they are not there naturally, then the writer will have to draw on their own experience. I think of my own time in the thick humidity of Singapore, which is undercut by airconditioning. I recount the few times I mingled in a thronging casino with its kaleidoscope of colours. The white Delrin pill, or ball, that circled the roulette wheel. The green baize that covered a table hosting a game of Singapore stud poker, or a pink bow tie worn by a croupier. The weather of Singapore becomes the climate of Neon City, where there is the rhythmic drumbeat of a monsoon every morning that heats up into a sticky vapour. Although it sometimes also has the blazing sun of a summer day in Blackpool, one where you can eat fish and chips wrapped in white paper, followed by mint green ice cream, or a large pink candy floss on a stick. The world of Neon City, like many film noir sets, is overflowing with mirrors. As a child, I remember seeing a small casino in Blackpool with an odd-looking glass front. The lookingglass was covered in chromium. I imagined Mick Jagger was sitting behind the mirror: looking cool, sipping champagne, and playing roulette. A large nightclub, formerly a bomb shelter, also comes to mind. It was buried under a street in China and was covered from top to bottom in gold-framed mirrors. Amongst the smoke and mirrors were those crafting the elaborate stage illusion of having money to burn. The sound of jazz music also fills my first novel. There is an assortment of coffee shops in my mind. I distinctly remember one in Morecambe, where I can hear Miles Davis playing the trumpet. I remember meeting a femme-fatale in a coffee shop in Delhi. That experience creates a character who helps Rita Wong make it to the streets of Neon City. How does Rita Wong leave our world and enter a hidden magical place? In twenty-fifteen, I visited a shrine in southern Kyoto. It contained thousands of crimson torii gates. The torii define the boundary between the sacred space of the shrine and the unconsecrated space of the world. When I had been to Morecambe, I am sure I had also seen one in the Japanese Garden at Happy Mount Park. It seems a nifty coincidence, and I decided to use something similar. As Alice chased a white rabbit then fell down a hole to reach Wonderland, Rita Wong will chase a green dragon through a gate and arrive at Neon City. Rita soon discovers that Neon City is divided. There are the have-nots, the have-everythings, and the wantmores. It’s a divide I’ve seen myself. I think of my wages as an English teacher compared to the private students whose fingers dripped with aquamarine and emerald rings. Their kitchens were fitted with expensive quartz worktops, and their high-priced make-ups contained mica and were imported from Switzerland. The colours of the streets and buildings in Neon City are also from memory. White like a Sunday game of dominoes in a Lancashire pub, green like Mahjong tiles played in a park in Hangzhou, or candy floss pink like Blackjack chips in a casino. The colours are surrounded by foghorns in the distance like those heard in the port of Singapore. The smells are both sharp and tasty: the charcoal smoke of winter street fires in Delhi, spicy seafood noodles like those in South Korea, bitter south Indian coffee, and the raspberry fragrance of a candy floss bought in Blackpool. There is also the pungent smell of durian: a tropical fruit so pungent that carrying it in the wrong part of Singapore carries a fine of nearly three thousand pounds. All of these coastal areas came together and helped me — I hope — to create a convincing fictitious world. What makes me so happy is that it all started in a place I love very much: Lancashire. Colours may seem the same the world over, but the sights, sounds, and smells of Blackpool and Morecambe are uniquely British.