Today I am going to share a guest post by Deirdre Quiery, who is the author of the book The Painter. In this post, you will get to know about the challenges she faced while writing the book. I would recommend this as a must-read for those who aspire to be a writer because the experience is equally informative and inspiring.
AUTHOR: Deirdre Quiery
TITLE: The Painter
BLURB
In a desire to impress the people who visit his workshop, renowned artist The Painter employs a gardener to create an inspirational landscape which includes a labyrinth, an orange grove and Moorish-inspired fountains. They develop an intimate relationship and the Painter, whose life and talent had become increasingly dissipated, finds himself slowly recovering his original innocence and talent. However, the relationship is tainted by the Painter’s jealousy when visitors express more interest in the magical garden and mysterious labyrinth than in the Painter’s art. That jealously blossoms into a deadly rage when The Painter catches the gardener changing one of his paintings… Deirdre Quiery’s compelling new thriller explores themes of love, life and deceit, and examines the lengths we will go to pursue and protect our passions.
CHALLENGES IN WRITING THE PAINTER
I can’t blame anyone other than myself for the challenges I faced in writing The Painter. I chose to write it.
I wanted to give myself a BIG challenge. Otherwise, life can become dull and faded – like a painting hanging on a wall with too much sun shining on it; colours fade and have to be restored.
I didn’t want life to be like that. I wanted to splash my words onto the pages of a book, vibrant and unfading.
How could I do that? Use my life experiences. Why not? I believe that if you go to the depths of yourself you find something beyond it. In one way life is a particle but if you look deeply enough you can find the wave. Everything is in that combination of particle becoming wave and wave becoming particle. Confused? How do you think I felt like the author taking on that challenge?
So I started with this little particle of “me” and I created a second particle Augustin Silvero – The Painter. Then I wanted to connect him with other particles like Picasso whose quotes are
scattered throughout my novel and Saint Augustine of Hippo – the famous Saint who said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” I thought “That’s OK” I have worked in 35 countries and so can create a book.
Then I liked the quote of Saint Augustine, “This is the very perfection of man, to find out his own imperfections.”
I thought, “Now I am getting somewhere. The Painter – Augustin Silvero has to discover his imperfections. Brilliant.” The story is born.
Then another quote from Saint Augustine helped me, “There is no possible source of evil except good.”
Now I knew I had the story – The Painter had to be both evil and good.
A challenge for any author!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Belfast born Deirdre Quiery is based in Mallorca where she runs Seven Rocks Consulting. Not just a writer, Deirdre has not only painted with Argentinian artist Carlos Gonzalez in Palma and Natalia Spitale in Soller, but she is also a winner of the Alexander Imich Prize in the US for writing about exceptional human experiences, and the Birmingham Trophy Prize in the UK. The Painter is her third novel for Urbane following the Irish thriller Eden Burning and murder mystery The Secret Wound.
