David Turnbull

Allow me to introduce you to David Turnbull. A member of the Clockhouse London group of SciFi and horror writers, David has had numerous short stories published in magazines and anthologies. His stories have also been featured at Liars League London events and read at other live events such as Solstice Shorts and Virtual Futures. In addition to being an author, David is also an accredited tour guide for the Lambeth Tour Guides Association.

I have a few questions that I would like to ask David:

Despite not being encouraged in schools, and frowned upon in social situations, do you think daydreaming can be valuable?

I think daydreaming should be on the national curriculum. Without imagination we would have made no progress whatsoever as a species. Inventors need to daydream about the possibility of their inventions before they get down to inventing them. Explorers need to daydream about new worlds before they go off and explore them. Reformers need to daydream about righting wrongs before they begin to campaign for social justice. Daydreams are the foundations upon which our history is built.

If you happened to be called upon to be a supply teacher for a short period (à la jury service), what would you teach (other than creative writing or English)?

I would devise a lesson on healthy scepticism. There are a lot of politicians these days who are very keen on children learning 'facts'. But whose facts? Facts are often just one person's version of events alongside the exclusion of alternative viewpoints. With all the fakery circulating on the internet these days, accepting facts at face value without subjecting them to some sort of scepticism can be very dangerous. Look at the recent history of America. As George Orwell once wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." (Party slogan in the novel 1984).

Could any of your characters be teachers? If so, what would they teach?

There's a character in my fantasy novel The Dragon Breath Chronicles named Hari. She's the niece of a professor whose inventions are inadvertently contributing to the potential extinction of dragons. She changes the outlook of the main character, Euan Redcap, towards the taking of dragon breath for airship fuel by explaining the importance of conservation. In today's climate of global warming, I think Hari would make an excellent teacher of social studies.

If you could go back to school, what would you like to study that you didn’t originally?

I would probably try to be a bit more sporty. I was quite a fast runner at school, but I really wasn't that interested in P.E. or team sports. I suppose there could have been healthier pastimes than reading pulp horror novels under the blankets or smoking behind the gym block.

Thinking back to your time at school, might there have been a book in your satchel that wasn't on a reading list?

There was a series of alleged non-fiction books by an author who went by the name of T. Lobsang Rampa. I used to be quite into those. He claimed to be a Tibetan Monk and wrote books exploring concepts such as astral travel, telepathy and levitation, which he called 'the wisdom of the ancients'. When a journalist exposed him as a plumber called Cyril Hoskin from Devon, he explained that the spirit of Tuesday Lopsang Rampa had possessed him after he'd fallen out of tree, and then went right on selling books in large numbers.

What else would have been in your satchel, and what are you carrying around at the moment?

I had a newspaper round at school and I had a little notebook of names and addresses with the daily papers people had delivered and the magazines they subscribed to, along with the day of the week they came out. I also had a note to remind myself of those who were good tippers at Christmas.

These days, like most people, it would be my mobile phone. I remember seeing a television interview with sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke in which he said that in the 21st Century everyone would have a personal communication device and that they would be able to access an instant encyclopedia of information. That turned out to be a pretty accurate prediction.

School’s out! If you had 24 hours to do anything you wanted (with unlimited funds and none of your usual responsibilities), what would you do?

I'd probably book myself on one of those orbital space flights being offered by the likes of Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Going back to Arthur C. Clarke's smartphone prediction, we used to be told regularly that space flight and trips to the moon and Mars would be common, everyday events in the 21st Century. Seeing Earth from an orbiting shuttle would hopefully quell my disappointment that this hasn't come to pass in my lifetime.

What was the latest daydream of yours that made the leap into the real world? Here you can promote your work!

Back in 2012, small press publisher Wyvern Publications released my novella The Tale of Euan Redcap. The idea at the time was that it would be book one of a trilogy. But, as is the way with a lot of small press publishers, Wyvern went to the wall before that idea came to fruition. The daydream I nurtured since then was that the whole of Euan's story, which features airships, dragons, kidnap and adventure, would somehow find a new home where it could end up in print. Earlier this year, that became a reality when the trilogy, renamed The Dragon Breath Chronicles, was published as a single volume by the Fiction4 All imprint Dragon Claw Books. While it is intended as, what the American's call, a middle-grade book, it can also be enjoyed by adults who are fans of the fantasy and steampunk genres.

It's probably time for a lesson. What single piece of advice would you like to share with people who want to write?

Read and write every single day. Read a chapter from a book, a poem, newspaper or magazine article. Write a couple of paragraphs for a novel or short story, a poem, or article about something that interests you. If you can fit in half an hour of reading and half an hour of writing each day, you will read a lot and write a lot. The more you read the better you'll write. The more you write the more confident you'll become. I usually read before I go to sleep and write after I wake up in the morning. Both of these I do in bed, which is where one of my literary heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote a lot of his classics.

Now for the Random Question. If you were in charge of a TV channel for a day, what would you broadcast?

I'd have a 24 hour, back-to-back marathon of every single film featuring, or made by, Charlie Chaplin. Not just the silent slapstick comedies, but also the groundbreaking talking films he made later in life. My particular favourite is Monsieur Verdoux in which Chaplin skillfully manages to create a sympathetic character out of a serial killer who marries wealthy widows in order to poison them and benefit from their wills.

I'd like to thank David for taking the time to answer my questions. Below are links to some of his books and his blog:

One Hundred Predictions by David Turnbull - A collection of stories which are 100 words or less
https://fiction4all.com/ebooks/b18236-one-hundred-predictions.htm

The Dragon Breath Chronicles by David Turnbull
https://fiction4all.com/ebooks/b18435-the-dragon-breath-chronicles.htm

Lambeth Fantastical - author blog
https://lambethfantastical.blogspot.com/

And here is some bonus reading - a Guardian article about Tuesday Lobsang Rampa a.k.a. Cyril Hoskin https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/may/17/tibetan-lama-who-was-a-plumber-from-devon-1956-bestseller-the-third-eye