How Lucifer’s Shadow came about…
With most of my books I can pinpoint one particular ‘what if?’ moment that has given me the germ of the story. Lucifer’s Shadow came from a couple of questions that popped into my head one day on the graveyard island of San Michele, a small, very quiet place situated between Venice proper and the glass-making island of Murano.
As any student of the city knows, San Michele is the resting place of some famous people – Ezra Pound, Stravinsky and Diaghilev – and whole generations of locals. It is also full, which makes for a very curious burial process. Should you wish to be interred there these days, the city authorities will allot you a slot in the ground for a mere ten years. After that, your coffin will be disinterred to make way for another – and your family will have to decide what to do with the remains.
There was a disinterment happening the day I was there – you could tell from the discreet canvas hiding the workmen slaving away in the sun in that part of the cemetery. And the questions that popped into my head were these: what if someone who wasn’t a relative turned up early and asked for a disinterment, with forged papers and a hidden reason to peer into the San Michele earth? And what if, when the coffin was opened, there was something unexpected there?
I went back to my apartment and played with a few ideas. By the end of the week I had a rough plan for a story, and five opening words: He remembered to wear black.
I like opening words. These five told me a lot. Something to do with a funeral was happening. And the person from whose point of view we would see the scene really wasn’t terribly nice or engaged with it, since he had to make a conscious effort to put on black clothing for the event.
The first draft required another 160,000 words, slimmed down to 145,000 for the final book. What I ended up with was possibly the most ambitious book I’ve ever written. Lucifer takes places in two different eras: the Venice of Canaletto and Vivaldi, in 1733, and the city of the modern day. In the period era, we follow the tale of an ingénue who’s been deputed to look after a female musician desperate to hide her Jewish ancestry, because to admit it would cause outrage over her regular presence in church with Vivaldi’s orchestra. In the modern one we meet another ingénue, a British student, Daniel Forster, who is brought to Venice supposedly to catalogue an old antique dealer’s library, but finds himself, instead, in the middle of intrigue about an anonymous piece of music and a famous violin.
I’d never tried to write a story with a historical setting before. It came about pretty much by accident. I began with the modern element of the novel, but the more I got stuck into that, the more I realised I needed to know the detail of the historical events to which it referred. The only way to get to those was to write them. So the story of Lorenzo Scacchi and Rebecca Levi, the musician from the ghetto, began as research notes, until the two of them engrossed me so much I decided to incorporate their entire tale into the book itself.
A confession: I started writing the historical section when I was about a third of the way into the contemporary. Since the book bounces between eras, a certain amount of handing off is needed between each from time to time. So for a few weeks I tried to do one modern chapter then one historical one.
The trouble was I really itched to know the fine detail of Lorenzo and Rebecca’s story. So after a while I gave up on the contemporary side and simply wrote that, winding up with 80,000 words – enough for a novel alone – on them. Only when that was complete, did I return to the modern side of things. Since these are two related stories – about love, ambition and temptation – this seemed to work pretty well.
Why did I try such an ambitious (aka lunatic) scheme? Simple: I was at the end of a five book contract with my then UK publisher and the vibes I was getting told me this relationship wasn’t going any further. I had a book to deliver and no guidance on what, if anything, they expected. So I thought: what the hell? I’ll write what I want to write for a change, not what I think they want to receive.
My then editor loved it all the same. But the publishers were in managerial turmoil so, in spite of great reviews, it didn’t get much of a push when it first came out. In fact, it was pretty much dead in the lagoon by the time Random House picked up the first in my Rome series, A Season for the Dead.
A little while after that happened I found myself in the Manhattan office of my US editor, Kate Miciak. I just ‘happened’ to have a copy of Lucifer which I left on her desk. A week later she was on the phone wanting to buy that too. So, a book that had been firmly rejected by a bunch of US publishers in 2001 got a second chance a few years later, and some of the best reviews I’ve had in my life.
Lucifer taught me several things. You have to chase your own ideas, not try to second guess those of other people. You have to work to stretch yourself sometimes, by tackling subjects with which you’re not familiar. And you don’t have to go straight from A to B to tell an interesting tale.
More than anything, though, it taught me that I get ideas from places and people, not sitting at a desk punching a keyboard. And if you like Lucifer here’s a little secret – next year Nic Costa and his crew get despatched to Venice for one book.
What if they met people you have encountered before?
David Hewson has written several wonderful suspense novels and happens to be one of my favorite writers.
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