Guest Blog: Leo Salter

This week, we're welcoming author Leo Salter, whose latest title is Molot, Book 3 of the Pathways to Revenge series.  The author will offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog visitor. Here's the blurb:                  

Molot was born in Siberia in 1922 and brought up by Sofiya and Alexei in Moscow during the Stalinist terror.  He is an honest man who sacrifices his humanity to survive.  He fought in Mongolia, lived amongst the Mongolian tribes, took part in the slaughter of the Winter War in Finland, faced the German invasion in the Ukraine and was with the Russian delegation at Nuremberg.  His first love was a shaman and his wife was a whore; when he left her he fell in love again and forever.

Molot’s story is interwoven with that of his grandson Gunther who leads Sofiya’s criminal empire into the 21st century.  As befits the young Achilles, Gunther’s story is full of lust and killing as he travels from the Crimea to Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and Chechnya.

Molot fights in the Russo-Japanese war in 1939 and it is here that he makes his first contact with the Mongolian tribe who parallel the Myrmidons – the men who followed Aeacus's grandson Achilles in the Trojan War and who have been described as the 'Special Forces' of the Greek Army.

The Pathways series is set in the 20th and 21st centuries and although it isn't important to know anything about the Trojan War to read it, knowing about the original story adds a lot to the reading experience.  Readers unfamiliar with the Trojan War may like to check out www.leosalter.com and see how the Pathways Series uses the characters and actions in it.

**Q&A with Leo Salter**

Why do you write?

This is a complex question.  I could say it’s because I enjoy it (which I do) or that it gives freedom to imagine (which it does) but I guess in the last analysis I like telling stories.

When they were small my sons told me I was good at story-telling and although this is a different kind making from writing, I felt the urge to try my hand at being an author.

I’ve spent most my life as a physical chemist investigating chemical reactions in the environment and the human body, but I’ve always immersed myself in literature.  Writing a novel offers a freedom of style and content which is hard to realise in science.

What was your first novel?

I wrote a novel in Africa back in the eighties which didn’t get published.  Looking back on it I guess it was a typical post-colonial story full of the codes and language of Europeans in Africa, but it was also full of truth; and since it was set in the time of the Rhodesian War there was plenty about that too.

I was a little disappointed when one publisher wrote back and said, “We don’t believe Africa is like that.” and I was also surprised when a novel was published a year or so later set in Rhodesia with a main character who had the same name as mine.  Considering the time I gave to naming the chief protagonist this seemed an unlikely coincidence but not impossible of course.

I didn’t write again until after my retirement . . . .

What is your series about?

The series is called “Pathways to Revenge” and it’s a modern version of the Trojan War.  Book One (Golden Boy) is about Helen and Paris (aka Nomea and Christian) which in one way is where it all kicks off.  When I read the opening paragraph to my son (now an adult) he said “At this stage I would read on.”  Looking at Amazon, some people loved it but others did not.  It does require the reader to come to it and read through the temporal and point-of-view shifts.  (I’m a big fan of “The Alexandria Quartet”.)

Book Two (Sofiya) is set in Russia during the post-revolutionary years – compared to Book One, some people said it was much better but others preferred Book One.  I didn’t purposefully change the style but I did write in a way which I thought better fitted Sofiya’s story.

Book Three (Molot) carries on the historical narrative from Sofiya through the Russo-Japanese War, the Winter War, WWII and Nuremberg, and since Molot is the son of Sofiya and the Grandfather of Gunther (aka Achilles) his story parallels the myth; there are some pretty powerful women involved too.

I’m writing Book Four now and it’s based on the story of Thetis and Peleus, the parents of Achilles.         

Why the Greek Myths?

They’re full of everything that humans do today.  Love, war, trickery, politics, tragedy . . . I find it both amazing and reassuring that the way the myths frame the human predicament has been exactly true over the last three thousand years, though sometimes the magic is a bit hard to explain away in a 21st century version.    

How do you write?

I’m quite structured in my writing.  Having the Trojan War as a template gives me plot lines but over the last three thousand years there’s been an awful lot written about it and researching that and then trying to fit it all into contemporary events is exciting but difficult.

I live in Cornwall, a part of England hidden behind a Celtic Mist which is lovely, and it’s also much warmer than anywhere else in the UK which is even lovelier.  It’s not a difficult place to live and allows plenty of space for reflection and contemplation.  I write in my study which has a view over woods and green hills and sometimes the muse visits and sometimes she does not.  When she doesn’t sit on my shoulder writing is slow.

When I begin a new book I think about the ‘who’ and ‘what’ of the large scale plot and then begin to write a little, then read the myths (again) and research contemporary history, then write a bit more and get some basic timelines going, sketch out the chapters and then I find there’s always something that calls me back to write more or in one of those moments of self-critical clarity says “Delete.”

There’s lots of coffee involved in this process.

What’s your ambition?

I’d like to see the stories made into film.  Like many people in the 21st century I cannot think without my interior vision being filmic and so it’s there in the way I write.

I’d like to be able to spend more time in the places I write about and

I’d like to live in a warm dry place (but not too warm or too dry) with excellent food and without violence . . . (thinks rural Italy).

But seeing as ‘Pathways to Revenge’ is about the start of the (Trojan) war and the actual war will be the basis of the next series (‘Revenge’) I draw great contentment from the fact that there is enough material to last me well into my dotage and beyond. 

About Leo Salter

I am a retired academic with a PhD in Physical Chemistry and an MA in English Literature, and have published papers in both disciplines.  In 2011 I gave the D H Lawrence birthday lecture in Eastwood and was invited by the British Council to speak on air pollution at the Café Scientifique in Madrid.

I spent the late seventies and eighties in Africa and now live in Cornwall where my wife is a GP and where I sail dinghies and surf and where, since my retirement, I’m busy writing “Pathways to Revenge” a contemporary version of the Homeric Cycle; “Molot is the third book of the series and more are underway.

LINKS

Website:  www.leosalter.com

Email:  leosalterauthor@gmail.com

Excerpt Thursday: Molot by Leo Salter

This week, we're welcoming author Leo Salter, whose latest title is Molot, Book 3 of the Pathways to Revenge series.   Join us on Sunday, when the author will offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog visitor. Here's the blurb:                          

Molot was born in Siberia in 1922 and brought up by Sofiya and Alexei in Moscow during the Stalinist terror.  He is an honest man who sacrifices his humanity to survive.  He fought in Mongolia, lived amongst the Mongolian tribes, took part in the slaughter of the Winter War in Finland, faced the German invasion in the Ukraine and was with the Russian delegation at Nuremberg.  His first love was a shaman and his wife was a whore; when he left her he fell in love again and forever.

Molot’s story is interwoven with that of his grandson Gunther who leads Sofiya’s criminal empire into the 21st century.  As befits the young Achilles, Gunther’s story is full of lust and killing as he travels from the Crimea to Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and Chechnya.

Molot fights in the Russo-Japanese war in 1939 and it is here that he makes his first contact with the Mongolian tribe who parallel the Myrmidons – the men who followed Aeacus's grandson Achilles in the Trojan War and who have been described as the 'Special Forces' of the Greek Army.

The Pathways series is set in the 20th and 21st centuries and although it isn't important to know anything about the Trojan War to read it, knowing about the original story adds a lot to the reading experience.  Readers unfamiliar with the Trojan War may like to check out www.leosalter.com and see how the Pathways Series uses the characters and actions in it.

**An Excerpt from Molot**

(Molot, Finland, 1939) At ten degrees below we had to keep the tank engines running so they wouldn’t seize up; it wasted fuel we didn’t have.  At fifteen below the gun oil for the Mosin-Nagant rifles froze and at any one time only a few of the infantry had rifles that were operational – not they were much use in the thick forests that surrounded us.  At minus twenty and below even the smallest wounds went gangrenous and heaps of frozen amputated limbs were stacked up outside the medical tents.  It was minus thirty-five centigrade when the Finns started mortaring our field kitchens so there was no hot food until our men lit fires and then they were shot down day and night by snipers who picked them out against the flames.  When it was dark the Finns swept in silently on skis dressed all in white and firing from small Suomi machine pistols.  Then they were gone, leaving our men to waste their ammunition firing into the woods and at each other.

Our one and only Siberian ski battalion was obliterated when the Finns caught them on a frozen river bed.

The Finns intercepted our radio messages and ambushed the roads.  Since the roads were nothing but narrow paths chewed up by our tanks and the huge petrol-eating caterpillar tractors pulling our artillery, stopping movement on them was not difficult – especially when the surfaces were frozen into iron-hard ruts and ridges.  The Finnish engineers blew up trees along the roads to dissect our convoys into what they called motti, a word used to describe piles of wood cut and prepared for burning when the time is right.  And burn us they did as machine guns laced the air around each isolated segment of the convoys together with mortars, snipers, satchel explosives and Molotov cocktails for the tanks.  The tanks seemed to burn forever.  In places the single file of backed-up nose-to-tail vehicles stretched all the way to the Russian border like an elongated scrapyard of burnt out tanks and trucks.  Our heavy equipment was turned into a long line of charred metal.

Our own troops became mutinous.  Commissars were murdered, officers couldn’t handle their men; the Ivans from the steppes were hungry, cold, tired and scared.  An officer told me that “They are frightened of the forest and cannot ski.”  Meanwhile under the system of dual command the politruki questioned all military decisions for their political correctness before they were ratified and the inertia, confusion and chaos this bred was unimaginable.  I heard later that Mannerheim said our troops milled around in front of the Finnish lines like tourists.

The use of camouflage was forbidden by some senior officers because it was thought to be a sign of cowardice.

o-o-o-o-o

(Gunther, Berlin, 1990s) I put the manuscript aside and tried to picture the stupidity of it all and then I must have fallen asleep because it was early evening when the bell to the suite woke me and my new clothes were delivered.  I showered and dressed for dinner and I wondered what Nicole was doing.

I recognised Siskim as soon as I entered the Lorenz Adlon restaurant.  I should have known there would be nothing like a simple R&R experience when Sofiya was involved.  She selected this city and the hotel and she knew Siskim would be here. 

He was with a young woman, a girl, his daughter.  I recognised her from some airline magazine where she’d been held up as an example of the jet-setting classes – my six most favourite cities or shopping malls or some such rich people jabber.  And then I think we may have met at a wedding or funeral when we were kids – there is always a crossover of interests and friends between the families. 

She sparkled.  She was dressed in high couture euro-muslim style with a Barjis night-black dress which fell down in light flounces to the top of her high-heeled Jimmy’s.  The dress showed little neck and no bosom but her forearms were brown and naked except for a small silver and diamond bracelet.  Her hair was up and thickly braided round her head, and the sapphire earrings sparkled too, and on the back of her chair I saw a light grey silk scarf which could have been a hijab.  It was intricately woven with small pearls which caught the light and from the corner of my eye I watched their shimmer as I walked to my table.  

I nodded to them across the restaurant as gracefully as I could and as I sat down Siskim spoke to a waiter who came across to me and said that the gentlemen knows you and your father, and would be honoured if you would join him and his daughter.  Well, yes, I would.  How could I refuse the main man of the Clans when he invites me to dinner, when he invites me to dinner with his daughter?  Therein lay the peril.  It was Iphigenia his daughter that lay astride the paths and tracks to the future.  Iphigenia.  Iffy.

“Welcome Gunther.  You remember my daughter Iphigenia?”

I walked over to her and kissed her hand, the one with the bracelet loose on the brown soft skin of her wrist.

  

About Leo Salter

I am a retired academic with a PhD in Physical Chemistry and an MA in English Literature, and have published papers in both disciplines.  In 2011 I gave the D H Lawrence birthday lecture in Eastwood and was invited by the British Council to speak on air pollution at the Café Scientifique in Madrid.

I spent the late seventies and eighties in Africa and now live in Cornwall where my wife is a GP and where I sail dinghies and surf and where, since my retirement, I’m busy writing “Pathways to Revenge” a contemporary version of the Homeric Cycle; “Molot is the third book of the series and more are underway.

LINKS

Website:  www.leosalter.com

Email:  leosalterauthor@gmail.com