Confessions of an Author

'   "I came to the city when I was a girl," said Rashi, folding her thin hands in her lap. Her voice was quiet but clear, her words sure. She had told her story many times, you could tell; the emotion was gone out of it, but the sentences were easier to say. Below us, in the street, someone was laughing.' Rashi was bought, for £100, by a man who promised she would be educated. Instead, she found herself forced to work in a brothel in the slums of India. She was trapped, with no means to escape, and nowhere to go. You can read more of her story in CLARA - A Good Psychopath? Can Clara, born with all the traits of a psychopathic disorder, help Rashi? She is selfish, glib, lies easily and manipulates situations to suit herself. But can those traits also be a strength?    All the characters are fictitious, all the situations are very real. The compelling new novel from Anne E. Thompson is uncompromising, sometimes uncomfortable, always exciting. An ea...

Writing About a Different Culture 2 It was with some trepidation that I began to write CLARA. I had recently returned from a visit to see the work of ActionAid in the slums of India. I had visited women who have incredibly tough lives, sat in their homes, listened to their stories, and it affected me. I wanted to tell the world what I had seen and heard, and weaving it into a story seemed the best way for me to do this. Over the next 18 months, I visited India several times. I contacted Tearfund, and they showed me the work they are doing amongst women in the Red Light District. I met women who had been trafficked, I chatted to sex workers, I wandered through slums. My eyes were hungry, as I absorbed what I was seeing. However, how does one write about a culture that is vastly different to ones own? Does an author even have the right to try and describe things that they have never experienced? Well, yes, obviously – otherwise all crime writers would be convicted crimi...

The Red Light District of Mumbai 3 So, deciding to be brave, I went to the red-light district of a Mumbai slum. Husband was working, so I contacted Tearfund, and they arranged for me to visit one of their projects. Beforehand, I was very nervous about going on my own, but I am so glad I did it. I was met by Max, who is the director of Sahaara. We’ve never met, so it was a little like a spy story -“I will be under the arch with a pink carnation in my buttonhole” (Well, actually, he just told reception who he was and we met in the hotel lobby, but you get the idea.) We then got a taxi to Turbhe, the area of the slum he works in. We chatted in the car, and I could check on a few things I’ve included in my latest novel (which is set partly in the slums of Delhi). As we walked through the slums, it was all very familiar to places I saw in Delhi. Homes made from scavenged materials -uneven walls, unglazed windows, corrugated iron roofs. The hard mud paths were litter strewn...

Fri 19th June Just got back from visiting the slums. We started off going to Instituto Solidare. This was on the edge of the city and was a concrete building with big gates that locked. We could see teenagers playing football in a large covered area. We were taken upstairs, shown into a classroom and joined by about six of the workers. We all introduced ourselves – I got to use my Portuguese, very exciting! We then learned a little of their work. They began by having different projects, run by the church but then realised that actually there was a disconnect between what they believed and what they were doing. They needed to be part of the community, not just doing the odd project, they wanted the projects to BE the church. They see their worship as what they are doing. They began with working with children, this extended to teenagers, then whole families and then the community. There is a huge problem with prostitution, drugs and the violent crime that goes with it. They ai...