C.C. Humphreys: Istanbul/Constantinople

Chris (C.C.) Humphreys was born in Toronto, lived in Los Angeles until he was seven, and grew up in the UK. A third-generation actor and writer on both sides of his family, Humphreys has appeared on stages ranging from London’s West End to Hollywood’s Twentieth Century Fox. As C.C. Humphreys, Chris has written six bestselling historical novels. He now lives on Salt Spring Island, B.C. with his wife and young son.

I enjoy a good blogging. (My wife suggested I substitute “f” for “b” but I said we shouldn’t air our predilections in public). I keep a blog but don’t get around to it very often. I find that when I am done with a day’s writing, the word well is usually dried up.

What I enjoy most about a blog is the opportunity it gives to focus on an aspect of my life or my craft. (My wife suggested the phrase “pontificate about” but again I declined).

I have always been a wanderer, from a family of wanderers. Nowadays, I wander most for my work. I have to go where my novels are set. Research for me is not so much about getting the facts right, important though that is. A fact is dry unless it is put into the context of character and action. A fact needs to be used as a springboard for imagination. And the “facts” I pick up in the place where my actions have happened usually give me the biggest bounce of all.

This has never been more true than in my latest novel. Where would I have been without my two visits to Istanbul? The first was tacked onto my 2007 trip to Romania when I was researching my novel on the real Dracula: Vlad: The Last Confession. I was so close, why not see this fabled city? A Place Called Armageddon was not even glimmer in my mind then. I wandered about, visited all the key sites – Topkapi, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Cisterns. I went out to the Theodosian walls and, knowing something of the great siege of 1453, marveled at the courage it would take to both assault and defend them. I smoked apple tobacco in narghile, played backgammon in Pera alleys, drank raki. Left, sated.

Inspiration is often not a lightning bolt but a thing of stealth. Istanbul had me and this idea crept up. I found myself reading ever more about the place until the moment came when I knew I had to tackle 1453. Once committed, I knew I had to return. I view a place differently when I have a story in mind. Different senses operate more fully – especially the sixth one. I long ago discovered that there is a resonance in stone where extraordinary – often violent – acts have happened. Walls give off a special energy and I just have to sit still long enough near them to channel it.

I prize imagination above most things – but imagination stimulated by the senses, grounded in geography and history… ah, there’s the ultimate! On my second visit to Istanbul I discovered a location for part of my story and the whole novel changed. I’d read about it, the tiny church of St Maria of the Mongols. It’s not on the tourist track, tucked away in the labyrinthine streets of working class Fener. I found it eventually, thanks to my Turkish publishers – who, in a wonderful example of Humphreys’ serendipity were just publishing Vlad the week I was there. (Doing a book signing in that city of words was truly one of the greatest buzzes of my life)

It is rarely open to the public. But 20 bucks to the caretaker got us in. I gasped when I saw this exquisite jewel box with its vaulted roof, its gilt and silver ikons, its teak altar screen. It had survived the sack that followed the Turkish conquest of 1453; spared by special order of Mehmet “fatih”: the conqueror. Why? No one knows. But it is into the gap between facts that the historical novelist leaps. I was free to speculate – and did. This glorious place became crucial to my characters’ very survival and, back at my desk on Salt Spring Island, I reshaped the novel around it.

via C.C. Humphreys: Istanbul/Constantinople | Afterword | National Post.