John Lathrop

Bach and The End of the Monsoon

Can music and spirituality have a place in a political thriller?  I think it can, if transcendence is a sub-theme illuminating character.  In The End of the Monsoon, Mrs Ambler, an idealistic lawyer, is also an amateur musician and practicing Buddhist.  Her guilt over her illicit affair strengthens her desire for at least a breath of transcendence.

In 1983 I thought I had such a breath in the wee small hours of the morning, while playing the clavichord in my third world luxury apartment in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

In my novel I transferred this experience to the character of Dr White, a no-nonsense, middle-aged expatriate English doctor in Phnom Penh.  read more »

I loved them when I was thirteen

Want a story to grab you by the neck–but tired of getting it in the neck?

How about a sexy, adult, political thriller?  No virginity.  No teenage angst.  Plenty of adult angst.  Setting?  No, not Utah.  The tropics.  The End of the Monsoon.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, today.  Hot, humid nights at the Foreign Correspondents Club overlooking the Mekong.  Businessmen and tourists, both a little on-the-make.  A cosmopolitan in your hand and frangipani on the air–with a whiff of sewage from an outfall by the National Theater down the quay.

A contemporary story.  The lovers: a British professional woman of Sudanese ancestry, and an American, formerly on Wall Street, now a diplomat. Their affair is illicit, as is his latest assignment: do what it takes to ensure an American oil company is granted a concession to drill in Cambodian waters.

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Writing The End of the Monsoon

In March of 2007 I sold my first novel, The Desert Contract, in a two book deal, which meant I had to write another political thriller.  But about what, and set where?

That summer, while finishing the publisher’s suggested revisions, I read Karen Armstrong’s  A Short History of Myth.  The final pages held my attention.  She suggests that read more »

Background

In October 2005 my late wife, Mariann, was hospitalized in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This being Canada, that meant that she entered, as a patient, a nationalized health service. Canadians are proud of their health service, their ‘public option’. In fact its quality is variable. Canadians can be even more cut-off from the rest of the world than is the US.

After six weeks, two CAT scans, two misdiagnoses and three weeks in hospitals (two hospitals–she spent two weeks in the wrong one by administrative accident), she was finally diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Unless you’re the CEO of Apple, this is a death sentence with a six month time frame. read more »

Mohammed as a Swedish roundabout dog (rondellhund): cartoon by Lars Vilks

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s response to western apologists

While blogging with a very articulate lady from the UK, an evangelical atheist and retired high-level worker for the Labour Party–in other words, to the left of most American liberals–I was struck by her efforts to let Saudi Arabs off the hook read more »

Music and civilization

I’ve just reread, from cover-to-cover, for the first time in years, Lang’s Music in Western Civilization–first published in 1941. My edition dates from 1969. I’m more impressed than ever.

His authority runs through all 1,030 pages. Here are the first lines of the Introduction: read more »

Get an agent

That at least is my advice for novelists looking for a publisher. My first book was non-fiction and I sold it directly to a major publisher’s acquisitions editor. That was eleven years ago, and I’m not sure it could be done today, because I don’t know what the submissions policies are for major non-fiction publishers. I do know the policies for major publishers regarding fiction. They don’t want to look at unsolicited manuscripts. A novelist needs an agent. How do you get one? read more »

Five octave, unfretted clavichord after Friederici, 1765

I had owned and played a small fretted clavichord since 1982, and in 2004 I started researching five octave, unfretted clavichords, with the idea of building an instrument suitable for playing all of J.S. Bach, and Haydn’s F Minor Variations from 1793. read more »

How The New York Times contributes to government abuse

In articles written for the public by respectable journalists, in respectable papers, we find the terms, ‘extraordinary rendition’, ‘detained’, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. When in fact, we should be reading, ‘kidnapped’, ‘imprisoned without charge’, and ‘torture’. read more »

We can begin to end this ‘war’ now.  By withdrawing our support for its cause.

First, we have to admit the fact that the vast majority of ‘terrorists’ have come from dictatorial Arab regimes which America supports.  Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.  The other four were from Egypt, the UAE, and Lebanon The 9/11 Commission Report.  Notice that these Arab states are all American allies in the War on Terror.  Neither Iraq, the one Arab country we invaded as a result of 9/11, nor Syria, the one Arab country we currently consider a supporter of terrorism, were in any way involved.  Read the report.  Also notice, from the article on this site’s blogroll, that the largest single group of suicide bombers in Iraq are in fact Saudis.  And, of course, Osama bin Laden is Saudi. read more »