Welcome back novelist Chet Nairene! We’re chatting about his new travel adventure, Pacific Odyssey – The Curious Journey of Lew 2.0.
Bio:
Chet Nairene is an American writer who truly qualifies for the honorary title of “Old Asia Hand”.
Chet resided in Southeast Asia nearly three decades, during which time he ran barges and tankers up the coasts of Malaysia and directed retail businesses in the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
During his youth, fresh from college, he worked as a journalist at a midwestern USA daily newspaper.
“We’ve all read books that were so good that we didn’t want them to end,” says Chet. ” Among my favorites are many by my hero, Paul Theroux, all set in far-away lands. In many ways, he inspired me in life and now, as a writer. My goal is to utterly delight my readers, taking full advantage of the many astounding things I’ve witnessed during my long stay in Asia. I attempt to parachute my readers directly into alien experiences in those exotic lands and always keep the fascination level high. Here’s hoping my readers all enjoy my first offering, PACIFIC DASH, and the amazing travels across Asia by intrepid young Dash Bonaventure!”
Chet will soon be following up PACIFIC DASH with more travel adventure novels set in Southeast Asia.
Read this excellent interview with Chet that appears on TALES OF THE ORIENT, a travel-related blog on substack.
Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Chet. Please tell us about your newest release.
Pacific Odyssey is a comic fantasy where Western business intellect comes into collision with Eastern occult belief and powers. A mashup something like Poltergeist meets Wall Street in Remote Tropical Asia. The story follows a New York business superstar, Lew Clarke, after he becomes involved with a quirky supplier company beyond the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Once Lew’s customers in American begin suffering calamitous events, seemingly linked to Lews imported products, he is forced to travel to the little-known Kingdom of Amazia to sort things out. Things spiral out of control there, where he finds all his Western modern knowledge and skills useless.
What inspired you to write this book?
My long career residing in Southeast Asia presented me with many insights I would have never experienced, had I lived only in America. I have always been fascinated by cultural collisions, both the humor and mystery therein. It’s a rich field I like to mine as my backdrop for amusing stories of Westerners gone amiss in Asia.
What’s the next writing project?
The third of my novels in what will be called The Pacific Trilogy deals with a young American woman who comes to operate an orphanage in rural Thailand, quite on an unplanned basis, and how this informs her life.
What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)
The biggest challenge for me in writing a novel is knowing when it is finally done. I normally can complete a first draft in nine months to a year and then immediately head back to the beginning and rewrite the entire thing. PACIFIC DASH involved eight rewrites over about four years. And PACIFIC ODYSSEY involved at least that many and another three years of work. Usually the last couple rewrites are all at matter of cutting away fat and verbiage, ensuring all sentences are straightforward and clean and in the active voice, etc. Many of my reviewers compliment my writing by saying it flows nicely and is easy to read. That is my top goal – to create a story that ‘reads itself’ in the reader’s head. When I hear those comments, I know I have succeeded.
If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?
The basis for my novels is my twenty-five years living in Malaysia, Hong Kong, S Korea, Philippines, Laos, South China and Thailand. I have a mental storehouse of places, smells, events, people, stories and the like. Of course, sometimes a story leads me to arcane issues that need more study. For instance, in PACIFIC DASH, I spend months reading the details of the Macau casino junket business, since that was where Dashiell’s unconventional career led him. I wanted any reader of PACIFIC DASH to fully understand what that fascinating business looks like, hooking ‘whale’ gamblers across Asia and luring them to Macau’s casinos in the 1990s.
What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.
I have a comfortable little office littered with artifacts from my life in Asia – a huge gong, embroidered tapestries of dragons, brass temple bells as large as a fire hydrant, photographs of an elephant round-up, and so forth. As soon as I sit down in that setting, I am immediately in the mood to write!
What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?
I enjoy Jake Needham’s wonderful mysteries set in Singapore; anything by Paul Theroux; the incredible FLASHMAN series by George MacDonald Fraser; Maugham’s wonderful colonial expat stories. I recently re-read Gregory David Roberts’ magnificent ‘Shantaram’ and then was disappointed to see what Apple TV+ did to it.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?
Thank you for reading my novels, and especially thanks to those of you who take the time to put a brief review up onto Goodreads and/or Amazon. That is coin of the realm for authors and is much appreciated. When I read that someone enjoyed something I wrote, that makes all the effort worthwhile.
Links:
Banana Leaf Books | Facebook | Amazon
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