The White Rajah was the first book I wrote. Naturally, it has always been my darling – first-borns are like that. But, as with most first novels, it’s unlikely that it’s my best work. This has always worried me. Although The White Rajah was originally conceived of as a stand-alone novel, it ended up being the first of three books narrated by the fictional John Williamson. When people asked me which books they should read first, I always wanted to say Cawnpore or Back Home, both of which were better reviewed and which, I think, were better books. But surely it would be best to start at the beginning with The White Rajah? Except that they might end up being put off the series.
Endeavour are now in the process of republishing all three books. Cawnpore and Back Home are unchanged from the editions published by Accent, but I asked for the chance to make changes to The White Rajah.
When I sat down to read it again for the first time in years, I was nervous. I thought it was going to be an embarrassing experience and that I was now committed to months of rewriting. To my surprise and delight, I found myself really enjoying it. By now, with the trilogy completed, I knew what the book was really about. Because I write fiction that is very closely tied in with historical facts, I have to plot my books very carefully and, because all this was new to me when I started The White Rajah I remember writing a very detailed plot outline before I started. Back then, though, I didn’t even realise that John Williamson was the most important character in the story. I thought it was a story about James Brooke, the White Rajah of the title and a real person.
It’s odd that you can write a book and only afterwards realise what it was about. Rereading it I was able to move the focus at some key points onto Williamson and show how his experiences with James Brooke shaped the man he was going to become in the next two volumes. I was pleased to realise that these changes didn’t take months after all. The basic structure of the plot still worked – it seemed only to need tweaking here and there.
It’s still not the Great British Novel that I wanted to write – what first novel ever is? (All right – I can think of several, but you don’t have to rub it in.) But it is no longer a book that I feel uncomfortable recommending. Some people have given it quite remarkably lovely reviews and I’m happy to recommend anyone interested in John Williamson’s adventures to start here at the beginning.
The young John Williamson meets James Brooke in a London tavern. He’s poor, not long out of Devon with little experience of the world. He can neither read nor write and he is nervous of those he sees as his social betters. From that meeting he sets out on a journey that will take him half way round the world, only to end up back home in Devon, a vastly different person from the young lad we met at the start of The White Rajah. It’s a journey that has him meeting head-hunters in Borneo and a rebel prince in India. Along the way he faces horror and loss and has to come to terms with the things that set him apart from the men he lives and works with before he returns to England and, in a London slum, finds the possibility of some sort of salvation.
I grew very fond of John Williamson. With the new edition of The White Rajah, I hope you will get the chance to grow fond of him too. Wherever you are, you should be able to find the book on Amazon using the universal link mybook.to/TheWhiteRajah.
That’s nice, isn’t it? When you assume an earlier novel will be cringe-making, but you find yourself enjoying it. My first published one, ‘You Wish’, was an unusual plot and I still like it, but, boy, would I edit it more tightly now, and also (can you believe this???) I didn’t understand about professional proofreading until a couple of books later!
It was written 10 years ago, before the world and his popular fiction-writing partner was writing novels from multiple POVs. I sent it to Eve White literary agency, who read the whole thing and were most keen, but wanted me to re-write it from one POV, so that they could sell it to a publisher. I didn’t want to change it, and was most fed up, then someone told me about Amazon Kindle. Thus, I started on my self-pub thing. It actually did massively well for a time, even getting into the top 100 for a week or two, but in those days it was a whole different ball game – I had 1k Twitter followers, did a free promo, and, whooosh, it took off. Those were the days!!
5 or 6 years later, multiple POVs became so popular that writers were including them even if they weren’t necessary. Duh-uh. Btw, it wasn’t the first novel I wrote. Happily, I realised that Amazon Kindle was not just a chance to publish every rubbish novel you wrote 25 years ago, some of which were so bad that they never even got sent to agents!!!
Congratulations on the success of TWR at the weekend – I saw how high it was, and do hope it gets all those buyers eager to read the other two!
Thank you. Obviously I wrote this before Endeavour put the push behind ‘The White Rajah’, so I was really thrilled when that happened and it suddenly shot up the chart.
It is interesting re-visiting old work. And, yes, it wasn’t the first thing I wrote. ‘First novels’ seldom are, are they?