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Episode 139—Dane Huckelbridge and the Deadliest Tiger the World Has Ever Known
119 Plays6 years ago
"The freak-of-nature-tiger was actually a man-made disaster," says Dane Huckelbridge, @huckelbridge. You’re here because you love listening to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers talk about the art and craft of true stories. I try and unpack their journey and how they go about the work, so you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and hand this episode over to a friend you think would benefit from it. If you want to leave a written review please do. Feel free to email me with kind words or questions. I might just read them on the air. And keep the conversation going on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod. You are the social network. Subvert the algorithm, man. Rage against the algorithm (great podcast name by the way). If you need any more evidence of Dane’s cool, check out his Twitter handle is simply @huckelbridge. Dane has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Beast, Tin House, The New Republic, and New Delta Review. He is the author of Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit; The United States of Beer: The True Tale of How Beer Conquered America, From B.C. to Budweiser and Beyond; and a novel, Castle of Water, which has been optioned for a film. He grew up in Cleveland. Went to Princeton. And he lives in Paris with his French wife. Happy Valentine’s Day, holy shit. Dane’s book was originally going to be a chapter in a book of man-eating animals, but this story got bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s a brilliant exploration of the tiger as well as British colonialism and how the this tiger was a man-made disaster. Let’s get it on, here’s @huckelbridge, the coolest dude living in Europe.
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Transcript
Introduction and Tribute
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello there CNFers. Before we get to the meat of this episode, before this train leaves the platform, gotta say something. Because my friend Maggie Neset of Episode 8 fame posted on Instagram and Facebook about this. I feel like it's fair game for me to say something.
00:00:20
Speaker
She had to let go of her dog, Shinga, recently. Shinga led a very long and very loved life, from what I understand, and I'm deeply, deeply sorry for Maggie's loss.
00:00:35
Speaker
It's in unrivaled pain, especially when you have a sidekick that travels around the country and the world with you. The dog doesn't reach its teens unless she's deeply, deeply loved. We here at CNF Pod HQ are thinking of you, Maggie.
Guest Introduction: Dane Hucklebridge
00:00:53
Speaker
Alright, let's go on to the show.
00:00:58
Speaker
Today's guest for episode 139 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is Dane Hucklebridge, author of No Beast, So Fierce, the terrifying true story of the Champawat Tiger, the deadliest animal in history, published by William Morrow. Initially, anytime, you know, for me, when I start a nonfiction book, there's always initially this uncertainty because you want to be sure you can actually write a whole book about it. Before we hear more from Dane, first, we must hear from today's sponsor.
00:01:27
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you
00:01:43
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishments who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni.
Podcast Announcements and Guest Background
00:01:56
Speaker
Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:02:05
Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction.
00:02:22
Speaker
So like I said, Dane Hucklebridge is our guest today. We'll get to more of Dane, who, in my opinion, is the heir apparent to the most interesting man in the world. Just go to danehucklebridge.com and check him out. It's the best author site I've ever seen. Anyway.
00:02:43
Speaker
You're here because you love listening to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers talk about the art and craft of telling true stories. I try and unpack their journey and how they go about the work.
00:02:56
Speaker
so you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. Be sure, of course, to subscribe wherever you get your shows, wherever you get your podcasts, and hand this episode over to a friend you think would benefit from it. If you want to leave a written review, please do. That's cool. Feel free to email me with kind words or questions. I might just read them on the air as a
00:03:20
Speaker
as a token of my appreciation. And keep the conversation going on Twitter at Brendan O'Mara and at CNF Pod. I'd love to hear from you. You, my friend, are the social network. Subvert the algorithm, man. Rage against the algorithm. Great podcast name, by the way. If you need any more evidence of Dane's cool, check out his Twitter handle. It's simply at Hucklebridge. How badass is that?
00:03:51
Speaker
Dane is written for The Wall Street Journal, Daily Beast, Tin House, The New Republic, and New Delta Review. He's the author of Bourbon, A History of the American Spirit, The United States of Beer, The True Tale of How Beer Conquered America, From B.C. to Budweiser and Beyond, and the novel Castle of Water, which is optioned for a film.
00:04:13
Speaker
Damn, he grew up in Cleveland, went to Princeton, and lives in Paris with his French wife. Happy Valentine's Day. Holy shit.
Journey to Writing 'No Beast, So Fierce'
00:04:26
Speaker
Dane's book was originally going to be a chapter in a book of man-eating animals, but this story got bigger and bigger and bigger. It's a brilliant exploration of the tiger itself, as well as British colonialism, and how this tiger was actually more of a man-made disaster. You know what? Let's get it on. Here's at Hucklebridge, the coolest dude living in Europe.
00:04:55
Speaker
And now you're living in Paris with a lot of time in between there. What was your childhood like? And do you identify as a Clevelander still? I do identify as a Clevelander still, although it's been a while since I've lived there full time. I mean, I left when I was 18 to go to college and I went off to Princeton, New Jersey.
00:05:18
Speaker
Then after college, I went to New York for a number of years and I was, I was very young and naive and I was convinced that I could, that it'd be easy to make it as a writer. And eventually I did become a writer, but it was a lot of, it was considerably more difficult than I anticipated and took a lot longer. But so I lived in New York for a number of years. I was writing on the side and also doing some advertising work and kind of started to get my foot in the advertising, you know, industry world as well.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, I did that for a number of years. I got transferred because of an advertising job to Puerto Rico for one year, so that was very cool and very interesting. I ended up back in New York, then ended up in France. I eventually ended up in France. I've been here the last few years. I guess it was always kind of a dream to come to Paris, and I was finally able to do it. Yeah, I've been staying here ever since.
00:06:08
Speaker
I guess the long answer to your question is I do consider myself a Clevelander and profoundly Midwestern too. I have kind of deep rural roots in the region through my parents. But yeah, I grew up in Cleveland. I still have a connection there. But I've spent a big part of my adult life living elsewhere as well. So I've gotten to see a little bit of the world and experience some things I feel very fortunate to have seen
Discovering Literary Fiction
00:06:33
Speaker
and done. So yeah, I guess that's the answer.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, and there was a time, too, where you caught yourself an unfortunate illness from the Dominican Republic and shipped home, of course. And what was that experience like having gotten back home and then you sort of discovered literary fiction at that time? So what was that period of time in your life like? Sure. Well, that's sort of a weird chapter in my life, because right before my senior year of college,
00:07:06
Speaker
I actually, I did kind of volunteer work as with a literacy program in the Dominican Republic, and it was in a very rural region, which is in the Sibao, which I love. And I had a Sibayeno accent for the first few years when I spoke Spanish, because I kind of learned it there. But I still to this day don't know what it was, and the doctors couldn't figure it out either. And it's even possible it was something totally unconnected that just happened to happen at that time. But I started feeling sick when I was down there.
00:07:33
Speaker
Kind of just figured it wasn't, you know, it was nothing to, it was something that would eventually go away or they could get fixed at a doctor's office, ended up eventually coming back, coming back home and it just never get a, got a, you know, went away and end up kind of getting progressively worse. And so, yeah, I barely finished college. I remember, I remember it was kind of a barely got my senior thesis done. And when all my friends were interviewing for jobs in New York or what, you know, what have you, I was kind of too sick at the time. I went back to Cleveland, Ohio, stay with my folks for a while.
00:08:02
Speaker
and hopefully kind of recover from this thing. And it was, I guess it was then when I was just feeling, you know, none of the doctors could figure out what was wrong with me and, you know, I didn't know, but I felt just awful and it was kind of, you know, it wasn't really clear what was wrong and I was pretty depressed about it at the time. I just started walking up to the local library and, you know, kind of started checking out some of these old, you know, old books, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Henry Miller and stuff like that. And I guess that kind of sparked my interest in,
00:08:31
Speaker
in literary fiction.
Life in New York and Writing Inspiration
00:08:34
Speaker
And I'd always liked writing. It'd always been something I'd done. But up until that point, it'd always just been kind of like a little hobby I did once in a while or something for like a class in school, not something I actually considered as a career. But I don't know, something clicked at that moment when I started reading more literary fiction, like these kind of old time stuff I was finding at the library. And then, yeah, and then I decided I wanted to do some writing. And I'm sure my first efforts were
00:08:58
Speaker
extremely amateurish and kind of silly, but I was, like I said, I was young and naive. And luckily I didn't know, I didn't know the odds that were up against, up against young people who moved to New York to become writers. And I ended up designed to give it a try. And yeah, so I ended up moving to New York. I still felt a little bit sick, but I was kind of getting slowly starting to get better and feeling more normal. And yeah, I, I, I had a, like a very shoddy draft of the silly first novel I wrote.
00:09:25
Speaker
And I had it on a floppy disk. That's how long ago it was. I had a novel on a floppy disk and a suitcase. And I hitched a ride with a friend to New York City. And years and years and years later, after tens and tons of rejection, I finally sold my first book, which was nonfiction. And then a few years after that, I finally sold my first novel. So that's sort of the strange story of my mystery illness and how it kind of helped lead me towards writing, I guess.
00:09:55
Speaker
And it's one thing to read and consume a lot of stuff, and then it's another thing to read and consume a lot of stuff and then want to become a writer. So what was it about the reading you were doing at the time that suddenly made you think like, oh, this is the sandbox I want to start playing in? That's a good question. I think...
00:10:18
Speaker
I would say, well, one thing I remember is, this might sound, this might sound very cliche if it does, I apologize. But I remember one of the first, one of these first kind of books that made me, made me want to be a writer was reading, The Sun Also Rises. And I remember just one of the things that kind of, you know, and again, this might be very cliche, but it was just something I could sort of relate to.
00:10:45
Speaker
in a way, certainly not that I'd been in World War I or anything like that, but having to go back home to the Midwest after being far away and kind of being ill and kind of depressed about everything and lost in life. There's something, I guess, about those lost generation writers that I could kind of relate to, just kind of feeling like everything's pointless and kind of feeling lost
00:11:11
Speaker
possibly drinking too much as well. I guess there's something about that that I could relate to. Hemingway had some of those short stories about people who went home to their Midwestern towns and didn't know what to do and didn't fit in or whatever. I guess there's a little bit of that.
00:11:31
Speaker
I think even then I've sort of had dreams of living abroad and seeing distant capitals and possibly even New York. I mean, it all seemed very distant and kind of inaccessible. But, you know, there's something about some of that kind of like lost generation type writing, I guess I found appealing. And I really, I had very little background in sort of literature or anything like that. I mean, I'd always liked
00:11:57
Speaker
reading books just, you know, recreationally. And I, I enjoyed writing from time to time, but, you know, I hadn't studied literature in college or anything like that. So I was, I was totally like a blank slate. I was totally, totally naive about all this stuff. I'd never, never taken writing classes or anything of that nature. So it was all kind of, which in hindsight I think was good because if I think I'd known how difficult it is to, to actually reach the point where you can make a living as a writer, I don't know if I would have been bold enough
00:12:25
Speaker
to have attempted it, but luckily, like I said, I was very young and naive and kind of a little foolhardy, I guess you could say. And what drew you to Princeton and to study history at Princeton? Well, it's not the greatest answer, I guess, but my older brother went to Princeton
00:12:47
Speaker
And, uh, you know, he went there and played football and had a great, had a great experience. And I guess before that, it had never, it had kind of never occurred to me that, uh, yeah, it kind of never occurred to me to, to go off to a place like that, to go to school. I didn't really know what I was going to do, but I thought I'd probably stay in the, stay in the Midwest. But I visited him at a college there and just, I don't know. It just, it just seemed like a.
00:13:11
Speaker
seemed like kind of a neat place. And I, you know, I kind of followed in his footsteps. I guess I wasn't nearly as good as football at football, but I did play a little bit. I never played in college though. I wasn't, I guess in hindsight, I wasn't good enough. But yeah, I think because of that, I ended up trying to go there and was very lucky and somehow actually got in. And history, this again, this isn't a great answer either, but I do like history. Like I do have a passion for it, but I,
00:13:39
Speaker
I'm not sure there's any one thing that drew me specifically to history. I think more than anything, I'd taken a few history classes and they seemed interesting and it was almost a lack of other options because at that age, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't really have any grand plans. I think at the time, I figured I would go to college and then go back to the Midwest and just get
00:14:02
Speaker
kind of a regular nine to five job and go about my business. I don't think it necessarily occurred to me. At that point, the idea of moving to New York and being a writer and eventually moving to Europe, I think that hadn't really occurred to me yet. I was still kind of very much in a Cleveland mindset. What were your early growing pains when you moved to New York?
00:14:29
Speaker
Oh, I mean, I think everyone has these sort of similar experiences, particularly when you come from, you know, kind of a more provincial part of the country. Just but it was wonderful. I remember just I remember the first time I ever actually visited New York, even saw it. I was in college. I think one of one of my roommates was from there. And like over Thanksgiving break, we kind of went up. But I remember it was just, you know, it was just absolutely eye opening. It was just all the things my whole life I'd kind of on some level hungered for.
00:14:56
Speaker
You know, just exposure to different people and different cultures and different experiences. I remember walking down the street the first time I was there and just grinning ear to ear because I heard so many different people speaking different languages. You know, and that was something when I when I was a kid growing up, I had this shortwave radio I got as a Christmas present. And it was just the greatest thing in the world because then I could listen to
00:15:17
Speaker
salsa music from Cuba, or listen to Chinese music from Voice of Free China, or listen to serials on the BBC, or just these broadcasts from all over the world, just music and language and things like that, that I'd kind of always been starving for, I guess, growing up in Ohio. And I remember, but I just had this instant love affair with New York, because suddenly it was such a cosmopolitan place, so culturally rich and diverse. I remember it was just sort of the,
00:15:45
Speaker
Nirvana, I guess, for me. And at the time, you know, now it sounds kind of silly, but just the smallest things at the time were so amazing for me, just to be able to, you know, just having a Turkish restaurant, an Irish pub, and a, you know, and a guitar store next to each other, just this sort of like incredible mixture of opportunities and
00:16:06
Speaker
and cultural experiences was really neat for me. And I loved it right out to get going. I continue to love it. I haven't lived there in a few years, but I think New York's still my favorite city in the world. And so you get to New York, and you have the dream of becoming a writer. And so what were you doing? You've already alluded to it to some extent. What were you doing to sustain yourself as you had to keep your dream alive?
Balancing Structure in Writing
00:16:35
Speaker
Oh, so right. A number of different things over the years. I mean, I've done a little bit everything, but probably the most steady job I had in New York. There was just no way when I first moved to New York that I could have, you know, I couldn't even get people to publish things I wrote for free, let alone, let alone, you know, let alone pay me for it. So I just had real kind of gopher type jobs in advertising, like real low level, just kind of, you know,
00:17:01
Speaker
Nothing glamorous at all. The pay was terrible. Somehow, I managed to find one of the last cheap tenement studio apartments in the Flatiron area. This was back in 2001, 2002. Even that, the price was ridiculously low in hindsight. You wouldn't believe it. Even then, I could barely afford it.
00:17:26
Speaker
You know, I had this very small paycheck I had for this terrible advertising job I had to begin with. And I was just barely able to afford living in Manhattan at the time, which was just fantastic. I mean, I absolutely loved it. It was just such a great experience and so much fun. And so, you know, I mean, there's a lot of shenanigans too. It wasn't all, you know, kind of cultural, responsible cultural activities. There was lots of late nights and shenanigans and whatnot too.
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah, it was just a wonderful time. And I still remember those first few years in New York were some of the best years of my life. I just really, really loved it. And as you were, how were you building writing into your life at that time around the shenanigans and around the work? I mean, at the time I was very motivated. So I'm probably more motivated than I am now even. So again, possibly because I was so naive about what was involved in actually making a living as a writer, just making it as a writer.
00:18:25
Speaker
I mean, at the time, I think I would try to come home from work, maybe not every night, but almost, you know, quite a few nights. And I would just try to write for a couple hours after work and on the weekends. And I did that for a while. Eventually, there was a point where I tried essentially, I mean, there was a few years that were very lean, where I wasn't really doing much outside work or freelancing just a tiny bit and trying to write more full time.
00:18:53
Speaker
I've always kind of learned, unfortunately, and even even here when I first moved to Paris, I, you know, I was only writing for a while and not doing any sort of freelancing or anything on the side or anything with structure. And I've sort of learned, even though I don't like to admit it, that I think I do need something, something besides just writing books at home to add some structure to my life. Otherwise, otherwise, I kind of slowly start to go nuts. And I just think it's not a very, even though even though my dream was always to write full time, I've kind of learned the hard way that it's not necessarily the best thing in the world for me.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's I think a lot of people and myself included to you. You think that this is something you that only if only if I could do this full time, I would be fulfilled and happy and but then you realize like you need some sort of an externality to to actually have something to write about, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think my experience just was there's there's also that issue just that I think if you're not really interacting with the outside world, then you'd kind of it's easy to
00:19:54
Speaker
to miss out on the experiences and lack the insights where you actually have things to write about. And also just, I don't know, I guess just in terms of kind of, I guess you could even say like mental health or something. I just, even though at first it was great. I remember when I first moved to Paris, I was only writing, you know, I was writing full time and did that for a couple of years. And the, and for the first few months, it was fantastic. Like I love
00:20:15
Speaker
sleeping a little bit later than usual, taking walks, having a coffee, doing this and that. But then, yeah, it's sort of caught up with me. And now I'm doing some more freelancing and other projects on the side of a bit more of a structure and swing by offices and stuff, in addition to just doing books. And I think that, I don't know, I think even though I don't like to admit it, that's probably
00:20:38
Speaker
It's probably better for my well-being. Maybe I'm not quite as productive as I would be otherwise, but I don't know. I found that's just about balance, I think. I mean, you have to have some kind of structure and some kind of balance in your life and you need to interact with other people and have also just have things happening in your life besides just writing. I mean, it's kind of a sad existence, I think, if writing is the only thing that matters. And I think that, you know, if something that was written by someone who only cared about writing, it's kind of
00:21:08
Speaker
I don't know, just seems like it wouldn't be effective.
00:21:14
Speaker
It's not the best way to go about it. Exactly. You need to replenish the well at some point. But speaking to balance, you once said that now I'm fortunate to write both fiction and nonfiction, which I think is a nice balance. One is more creative, the other is more analytic, and together they keep me from going nuts. So in what way does it keep you from going nuts to be able to dip into both pools?
00:21:44
Speaker
I think in a way, maybe it's just different sides of my own personality and my own interests. Because as I mentioned, writing novels is very creative. And there's something very beautiful and fun about that, just creating this imaginary world, just purely conjuring it from thin air. There's something very special and magical about that. But at the same time, I think there's another side of my personality. I did study history in college.
00:22:13
Speaker
It's sort of been a thing where I, it's sort of like, I guess you could say maybe it's like exercising different parts of your brain, you know, the same way, like when you have a, you know, when you're doing exercises, you're supposed to exercise both sides of the muscle, you know, if you're doing triceps and biceps, otherwise something's off and your arm won't work quite right. So I think, yeah, I think that kind of the creative side and the analytic side, they're both muscles that are nice to work out.
00:22:38
Speaker
And, you know, my experience has been if I'm only doing one or the other, it's again, it goes back to the question of balance and kind of equilibrium that if I'm if I'm if I'm only focusing on creative artistic stuff, I think I tend to get a little too caught up in that. And I don't know, just, you know, it's just maybe a little bit too, you know, just abstract or something like that. And then but then also if I'm only doing, you know, kind of
00:23:06
Speaker
hard analytical type stuff, then that sort of creative itch isn't getting scratched, and I start to get jumpy. So I've just found doing both is kind of a nice balance. And I've been kind of switching off, where usually I write a nonfiction book, then work on a novel, then do a nonfiction book and work on a novel. And yeah, so far it's worked pretty well for me. I really do enjoy doing both. And I think it feels like it's kind of rare in this day and age too. It seems like usually kind of agents and publishers often
00:23:35
Speaker
expect you to do one or the other, which for me, I don't know. For me, it kind of makes sense to do both. It's both ultimately, to me, writing is just storytelling. I don't really fetishize books and paper and ink and that stuff like that. Writing is just a form of storytelling through a specific medium. It doesn't matter whether that story is historical, you're telling a story that actually happened, or just creating a story. Either way, it's just the act of storytelling. To me, there's not really
00:24:04
Speaker
much difference between the two. So that's why I always find it kind of peculiar that there's always this strange kind of invisible barrier between writing novels or writing non-fiction or historical books. In either case, it's just about telling a story. Have you had the experience in writing a novel, for instance, where you're like, oh, this would actually be better as a non-fiction book? Or vice versa, doing a non-fiction book, and you're like, you know what? I would like to take this in a more imaginative way.
00:24:34
Speaker
I wouldn't say that, per se, where I... Well, I would say one thing, for example, in the last, one of the reasons this last nonfiction book that just came out, No Beast So Fierce, about this man-eating tiger in India, is so, I find it such to be an interesting project, because it really allowed, it is nonfiction, it's historical, but just in describing these sort of very vivid, gripping events that occurred when, you know, face-to-face with
00:25:01
Speaker
the people eating tiger as it were in the bottom of a ravine or whatnot. It just presented opportunities where it really was almost like writing a novel. I knew you were writing what happened. It wasn't making anything up, but just it allowed for these kind of creative uses of language and sort of exciting sentence structures and things like that. And that I really enjoy sort of incorporating some of the elements of fiction into nonfiction. And I'd say also vice versa. And in the novels I write,
00:25:28
Speaker
you see this Castle of Water, which is my first novel, and then I'm working on another one now. I do kind of work in lots of little historical references and kind of, I don't know, just the type of stuff that I in my own weirdness find interesting, like obscure languages and strange diasporas, and just how weird and interesting and rich the world is historically and culturally. And I tend to work in quite a bit of that into the fiction I write too.
00:25:57
Speaker
Again, it goes back to the idea that for me, the two fiction and nonfiction build off each other. It's not a binary thing in some ways, it's a spectrum. At one end you have fiction and one end you have nonfiction, but they can play off each other in different ways. You can use skills and techniques from one to enhance the other, I guess you could say.
00:26:22
Speaker
And with the latest book too, I think you had some moments too where you could, you know, based on your research and just based on the nature of, pardon the pun, nature of the beast, you were able to imagine based on your research what the beast could be doing. And also based on Jim Corbett's writings, you could say this is
00:26:44
Speaker
likely how he felt too. So even though it was grounded in something real, you could at that point make that extrapolation that does get into some foggier areas but grounded in research nonetheless. Sure, yeah. That was something that was kind of fun about the book and I always very clearly sort
Colonialism and Tiger Behavior
00:27:04
Speaker
of marked those probably by saying like one can imagine or we can imagine to make it clear that this was sort of
00:27:10
Speaker
You know, it's almost like an educated guess, I guess you could say, at what occurred, but making that clear that it's not factual, but hypothetical, but then using what we learned about, you know, from the historical sources, from the firsthand accounts, things like that, to sort of recreate a scene and describe it very vividly. And then, you know, that was something I thought was fun. It kind of goes back again to what I was saying about incorporating, you know, incorporating some elements that usually would you associate more with fiction writing with nonfiction too, and sort of giving it
00:27:40
Speaker
You know, I really don't think that, I guess sometimes there's this reputation that nonfiction is kind of less interesting or exciting than fiction, but I think it's quite the opposite, or at least they're even in some ways that, you know, there's not, you can have prose that's just as thrilling and scenes that are just as exciting in nonfiction than fiction, and in some cases even more so because you're talking about things that actually happen. So that adds this whole other element to it where, you know,
00:28:09
Speaker
might be an exciting scene in a novel, but ultimately you know it's fiction. But when you're writing an exciting scene about something that actually occurred, it's sort of enhanced and spiced by this realization in the back of your head that this really happened here, that this isn't just the figment of some writer's imagination.
00:28:26
Speaker
And early in the book, when I was underlining certain passages and circling various things that stuck out to me, the first thing I circled was a tiger's roar being 114 decibels. And imagining that if a tiger is going to be roaring at you, it's going to be likely in point blank range also, which is up there with a jackhammer, a heavy metal rock concert.
00:28:54
Speaker
Um, that really surprised me. I knew it was loud, but, um, so in the course of your research and keeping something like that in mind, uh, what really surprised you about, you know, tigers or just the story in general? I think in regards to it surprised me about tigers or the story in general. Let me think a second.
00:29:17
Speaker
I mean, one thing, the most obvious thing that's shocking is just the sheer number of reported victims. And that was kind of an interesting project, trying to determine if that number first, if it was even possible, if this is theoretically possible for a tiger to eat this many people in this amount of time, which is sort of macabre, I guess, but it's what the book is kind of about, just the story of this tiger that started eating people.
00:29:44
Speaker
essentially for reasons that were ultimately man-made. That's another central thesis of the book, that this wasn't a freak of nature, this was a man-made disaster. Right, it was kind of illogical that the tigers would gravitate this way based on what was happening in India at the time, which of course we'll touch upon. Sure, yeah, that's the central tenet of the book. Like I said, it's how it looks like this freak of nature, this tiger that started eating people by the hundreds,
00:30:14
Speaker
actually was a man-made disaster, what was happening with colonialism, with environmental destruction, with deforestation, over-hunting. All these factors contributed to create this perfect storm. Tigers are normally very elusive, shy predators. You can live in tiger country in India or Nepal and never see a tiger because they're very shy creatures. They want nothing to do with people normally. This tiger, something was so off-kilter in the natural balance of things that it just became this killing machine.
00:30:45
Speaker
have killed tons of people. So I guess that was probably the most surprising thing when I first was sort of confronted by the subject, just the sheer number of victims, which is 436 as the reported total. So a big project in the book was seeing if that was feasible and then seeing what kind of evidence there was to support that. So go look at that number quite a bit in the book. And besides that, things that were kind of surprising or shocking
00:31:15
Speaker
I guess also just learning about tigers and learning. I mean, I knew beforehand that tigers were these sort of ultimate predators, these immaculate creations of evolution that had just evolved to the point where they were really fine-tuned for hunting their prey. But just reading what they're actually capable of is just extraordinary when you read it. They can run as fast as a thoroughbred racehorse and they can jump over a basketball hoop and they can crush a
00:31:43
Speaker
you know, like a bison's head with a single swat of its paws and all these things that you just realize how, how just incredibly awesome in the, you know, in the sort of original sense awe inspiring that these animals are. And then also, also comparing that to how incredibly feeble human beings, you know, when they don't actually have weapons or anything of that kind, how unbelievably feeble a human being is next to a, next to a creature like that.
00:32:07
Speaker
was kind of shocking, but also I guess inspiring in an odd way. And something else too, just about how evolutionarily engineered tigers are to hunt is not only their sheer physicality, it's also
00:32:22
Speaker
how unbelievably stealth-like they are, and that's really their superpower on top of the physicality, but that they can creep up on prey probably within two bounds of them without the prey even knowing they're there and then just totally wallop them. Yeah, and that's their strength, and that's the difference between some with lions, for example. They're sort of, I guess you could say, the closest predator to tigers.
00:32:50
Speaker
Lions, you know, they live more in these kind of open savannas in Africa, and they evolved as social creatures where they learn, you know, a bit like wolves, I guess you could say, to kind of live in prides or, you know, packs with wolves, prides with lions, and hunt cooperatively. And they developed this social structure and hierarchy. And because of that, their behaviors, you know, revolve around that, this idea of the sort of collaborative hunting and socializing.
00:33:20
Speaker
Whereas tigers, which are more kind of deep forest jungle predators, they evolved in an evolutionary matrix where it was a disadvantage to be social. And it was much, when you're in a dense forest, it doesn't really help you so much to have that same kind of relationship. It's really about stealth and about ambushing prey. So they tend to be much more solitary than lions. Except when mothers are rearing cubs or during mating, they're almost always solitary creatures living on their own in the forest.
00:33:49
Speaker
And how they, they hunt is they ambush. I mean, they, they've evolved to live in this dense brush and they, you know, know how to camel, you know, they camouflage well with the background and they're just very, very skilled at getting very close, staying very low. And then just in a blind rush of power and speed, overwhelming their prey before they even know, even know what hit it.
00:34:10
Speaker
And how did you arrive at this particular story? And then at what point did it really just start to unfold and unpeel to you? Sure. I think I've always had this fascination with apex predators. And for some of the reasons I described, just their power and their grace and just the awesome things that they're capable of, sort of admiration, I guess you could say. And I did have an idea initially to do a book
00:34:40
Speaker
just about man-eating apex predators in general, just because it was just sort of an intriguing topic. The idea I had initially was to do each chapter a different animal, a different species, great white sharks or wolves or tigers, and talk about historical instances where this had occurred. It was like the Beast of the Gevaudan was this famous wolf that
00:35:06
Speaker
ate over a hundred French peasants or the Jersey Shore shark attacks from 1916. I was going to ask you if you had read Capuzzo's Close to Shore. No, I haven't actually read it. I think I may have skimmed a few parts just to learn about sort of the incident, but I haven't actually read that book. But it's something along that vein that was just entire ideas of kind of the same idea as habitat destruction, things like that.
00:35:33
Speaker
you know, how apex predators kind of transform, you know, gain this capability to hunt human beings when their prey species are diminished and their habitats are destroyed, things like that. And that idea didn't really work out. And I think I think my publisher at the time, you know, kind of said it just seemed a little too broad or whatnot. And I hadn't didn't really think about it for a while and started looking at other things. And then and then my editor got back to me at some point a couple of years later and said that he'd he'd just read an article or something about this chompawat tiger.
00:36:03
Speaker
And, you know, I think you remember it. I'd been interested in this. And actually, I think on the chapter about tigers, I even wanted to write a, you know, just that chapter about this tiger, but he was his idea to actually write a book just about the Champa lot tiger. And initially, anytime, you know, for me, when I started nonfiction book, there's always initially this uncertainty because you want to be sure you can actually write a whole book about it. I mean, 300 pages is a lot, is a lot of materials. You know, you're always a little bit.
00:36:30
Speaker
iffy at first, just want to make sure that there's actually a story to tell that can fill up a book. But what I found, the more I started reading about this tiger, the more the story started unraveling. It was a humongous story because, like I said, it became this idea that this freak of nature tiger is actually a manmade disaster. All these strings started unraveling about the history of colonialism in India, the history of some of the dynasties in Nepal and how that affected treating how they started clearing some of the jungles and things like that.
00:36:59
Speaker
just the history of agriculture in the region, of industry, all these different strings, and then it became this much bigger story. And then there's always this kind of aha moment when you realize, wow, not only can I write a book about this, I think I could write a pretty interesting book about this, because there's a lot of material and it's a great story to tell.
00:37:20
Speaker
The fact that it was really a product of the British's colonialism in India and made an animal that was human averse, a stealth animal, like it turned it into a manhunter was really
00:37:41
Speaker
Something that stood out to me, and like you write in the book too, the existence of tigers and the wild was viewed both symbolically and literally as a direct challenge to British hegemony. Overcoming that challenge was an act of conquest, of colonization, and it was very much encouraged by the colonial government.
00:38:01
Speaker
As you were doing your research, how much did that theme just keep coming up as you were researching Corbett and tigers in India of this time? Well, I think when you're talking about the colonial period, you confront it quite a bit because the tiger was such a powerful symbol associated with India. And even before the British, just with the Mughal Empire and the kings that had been there prior,
00:38:31
Speaker
You know, tiger hunting had always been this sort of semi-sacred ritualistic activity that only kings were supposed to participate in. And they did hunt tigers, but usually at a pretty sustainable level. I mean, they were never interested in, like I said, it was sort of this sacred thing. They weren't interested in exterminating tigers the same way the purpose of a Spanish bullfight isn't to make bulls go extinct.
00:38:57
Speaker
regardless of how you feel about it, because understandably a lot of people don't like bullfights. But the purpose isn't to wipe bulls off the face of the earth. It's sort of this ritualistic killing of a bull. And that's kind of what tiger hunting was like in a way for these kings as well. And with the British, when they came, they adopted
00:39:17
Speaker
the Bhagshikhar, which is the traditional tiger hunt from atop elephants and whatever. But you start to notice that the way they write about tigers is that sort of the purpose of it changes. And instead of it being sort of this ritualistic activity for a Maharaja or an Indian king showing sort of reaffirming their place in the
00:39:40
Speaker
in the sort of order of, you know, the grand order of things in India, it became just this kind of symbol of conquest, that this quote unquote civilized hunter shooting this wild, like savage creature that was associated so much with India and with Asia became, you know, it was still kind of ritualistic in a way, but the meaning of the ritual changed and became very much about exerting sort of conquest and dominance. And also ultimately,
00:40:07
Speaker
you know, to kind of wipe tigers off the face of the earth. I mean, there was, when you read these accounts, it's almost the way they describe tigers is, you know, just it's sort of like the way, you know, Europeans describe wolves or things like that, just, you know, Hans, you know, Little Red Riding Hood type stuff, just these evil, sneaky, you know, villainous sort of demonic creatures that were, you know, that were dead set on just, you know, killing every human they could find, which when you actually read things that were written by
00:40:36
Speaker
accounts written by people, actual Indians, or even today when you talk to people in Nepal or India who live alongside tigers, you never encounter anything like that. That was very much a sort of a Occidental Western way of looking at something they didn't understand, these wild tigers. And yeah, you read accounts of people who sort of talk about wiping tigers. Wiping out tigers was synonymous with sort of
00:41:04
Speaker
clearing the jungles, cultivating the land, making it, quote unquote, more civilized and more farm-like and more European, I guess you could say, and in their eyes. Unfortunately, they did a pretty good job of that over the years. In the year 1900, I think the population of tigers in Asia was around 100,000, and in India, it was somewhere between 70 and 80,000.
00:41:30
Speaker
And by World War II, by the 40s, which was right prior to Indian independence, it was just down. I mean, the population of wild tigers in India was down to the thousands. I mean, it had been wiped out. And that's when people started to think that, wow, tigers might actually go extinct. And it was kind of in the 30s and 40s when Jim Corbett, who was the hunter I talked about in the book, actually really started turning his efforts more towards conservation because he realized that tigers were
00:41:59
Speaker
were on the almost certain path at that time to extinction if something didn't change.
Challenges in Hunting the Champawat Tiger
00:42:05
Speaker
And with the tiger too, you had written that in a way it had become a symbol of a British hegemony or a challenge to it. Yes, exactly. And then in a way it pivoted in my head too, especially given that the
00:42:23
Speaker
the Indian people were not allowed to arm themselves that these tiger attacks in a sense became a symbol of that hegemony in a sense because the tiger then became a threat to them in a way that was more challenging to them than it was to the British. Is that something that occurred to you or is that kind of unique to my experience reading it? I think that's a
00:42:52
Speaker
that's an accurate reading. And what you had was, there was the famous kind of Indian rebellion of 1857, what the British called the mutiny, when a number, you know, Britain, India was a British colony, and you had, you know, whole regiments composed of Indian troops. And there was this uprising where, you know, and that spread beyond the sort of military and started spreading to the populace, where
00:43:17
Speaker
You know, I mean, you could argue in some ways it's kind of like the American Revolution, but it was essentially, you know, this colony, people rose up against the British Empire and eventually it turned into a very, you know, violent, you know, rebellion and there was atrocities committed by both sides, pretty unpleasant period in history. But once the British reasserted control over India, one of the results was this arms act that essentially banned any sorts of weapons, including hunting implements among the local population without
00:43:47
Speaker
a permit that was very hard to get. Probably some maharajas and things like that could get them for hunting, but your average person wasn't allowed to own any sort of firearm or weapon. What that meant was in communities that did live in proximity to tigers, even though tiger attacks, mandating tiger attacks historically were very rare,
00:44:09
Speaker
In previous times, if there had been an issue like that, the local population would have had the sort of hunting implements, the weapons and the know-how to as a community, you sort of corral the tiger, trap it and kill it if it was needed. And because of these British regulations, the people were essentially rendered helpless. And then in addition to that, you also have these sort of forest acts that the tracks of forests that remained where the people were no longer permitted to go into the forest.
00:44:37
Speaker
which meant that things like gathering animal fodder, firewood, foods from the forest that in many parts of India, in India, people have been doing for thousands of years, they suddenly couldn't do anymore.
00:44:48
Speaker
And, yeah, you just had, you know, in the case when you have a tiger like the Chompawat that comes about, the people were kind of sitting ducks and they, you know, this knowledge and the means of defending themselves had essentially been lost and they no longer could come together as a community to defend themselves against a tiger like this.
00:45:09
Speaker
And given the climate and the tensions at the time, how surprised were you that Jim Corbett was able to engender any trust at all to recruit hunters with him and to try to fulfill the mission? Sure. And that's an interesting part of the book is one of the things Jim Corbett learns very quickly is that
00:45:36
Speaker
hunting a tiger like this, it's not a solo endeavor. And I think when he set out, he kind of had this idea of him confronting it like Beowulf or something on his own. And he actually tried and very nearly got killed. He chased it into a ravine by himself and was almost killed in the process. It had just run off with a girl. This tiger had sort of snatched a girl from a village and gone deep into the woods into this ravine. Jim Corbett chased after it, went down into it,
00:46:04
Speaker
just before nightfall and realized very quickly that had been a huge mistake. And he comes very close to getting killed at that moment. He luckily makes it out. And from then on, I think he has this revelation that this is going to be a community endeavor, that it's not something that he's going to do on his own. And the challenge at that point is winning the trust of the local population in the town of Champa lot, just because it's a region that's historically been pretty hostile to the British. And when there were these uprisings in 1857, it had been kind of a
00:46:34
Speaker
you know, a center, a hotbed of anti-British sentiment. So I think that was a challenge. But one thing, one of the things I thought was very interesting, and he, that's one thing I would mention too, though, is when it comes to sort of the political situation, Corbett doesn't talk very much about it. He kind of, you know, glides over the sort of friction with the local Indian population and things like that. He doesn't mention the forest fires that were being lit in protest and, you know, these different protests.
00:47:02
Speaker
things like that. It was a tense time, I guess you could say. And there was a pretty tense relationship between the people of Kumon, which is this region of India, and the colonial government. He doesn't talk very much about that, which probably isn't that surprising. Because I noticed when you read colonial narratives, that's very common. I mean, oftentimes, the kind of the things like atrocities, or tensions, or whatever, sort of a light it over. You don't get the, you kind of have to read between the lines sometimes to figure out what's actually going on.
00:47:33
Speaker
But Corbett does figure out eventually that's going to be a, you know, a collective endeavor that is you need the help of the whole community. And ultimately the reason he's able to do that is because there is a sort of a local official, the Tassildar, who decides to help him, who decides that Corbett's the one chance they have to get rid of this tiger. And it's interesting, it's sort of mischievous in a way that Tassildar effectively manages to get the people on the side
00:47:59
Speaker
by telling them that in this one instance, they'll be allowed to use all of their illegal weapons. Because even though weapons were illegal, many people still had these very outdated blunderbuss, musket loading rifles and things like that hidden away under the floorboards. In some cases, even going back to 1857, to the uprising. And then suddenly, all these local population hadn't been allowed to brandish any sort of weapons or protect themselves up to this point.
00:48:29
Speaker
comes out in mass with spears and swords and muskets and things like that that previously had been hidden because they weren't allowed to use them. That's ultimately how they do it. The local population working as beaters meanwhile armed corrals the tiger and drives it out of this ravine where Corbett's waiting at the other end with his rifle.
00:48:51
Speaker
And when you were doing the research for this book, some of the research took you to India. What was that experience like and how were you able to corral all this information and then make sense of it?
Research in India and Nepal
00:49:07
Speaker
Well, I went to India and Nepal both to do research for the book.
00:49:11
Speaker
And it was interesting because quite a bit of the book was archival research, quite a bit from the various kind of national art, British archive, British library archives, things like that about this period. And you can find tons of stuff there. So quite a bit of it was archival, but then there is another part that was more on the ground where I needed to see some of this for myself in order to write about it well, I thought. So I did go to Kumon and I had a guide who took me to some of the sites where all this had happened to the
00:49:40
Speaker
the villages where the tax took place and the ravine where Corbett eventually confronted the tiger. And that was an incredible experience. And then I also spent some time in Nepal in a community of Taru, where the indigenous people in the Tarai, which is sort of the flat jungle region at the base of the Himalayas, where the Champa Wat tiger almost certainly started out. And I stayed just outside of Chitwan with the Taru community to kind of learn about the attitudes people had about tigers, their relationship with tigers,
00:50:10
Speaker
tigers figured into their spiritual beliefs and, you know, things like that. And that was also, I mean, both, both going to Kuman and going to Nepal. Same with the Taru was really just an incredible experience. And, you know, sort of as I hinted at before, I think one of the most eye-opening things for me was coming in with my own, you know, kind of preconceived Western biases. I expected going to Chitwan, which had had some man-eating tigers recently and tiger attacks, expecting
00:50:38
Speaker
you know, the sort of local population that was angry at the tigers or, you know, kind of, you know, I expected kind of Western conservationists saying, no, like you always read, you know, like gorillas in the mist type things where you have a Western conservationist saying, you know, trying to urge the local poachers not to kill the tigers. But you know, what I discovered is I was really, I felt like that view was really through a Western lens and it was quite the opposite.
00:51:04
Speaker
The Taru people don't, you know, my experience didn't have any animosity towards tigers, didn't have any, you know, they weren't the ones who were interested in hunting tigers. If anything, it was the opposite because, you know, they'd been living with tigers for thousands of years and they knew that.
00:51:19
Speaker
tigers help keep the population of deer and wild pig under control, and deer and wild pig were the animals that would eat all their crops. And that, for them, the very unlikely possibility of being eaten by a tiger was nothing compared to the very real possibility of having their crops, their harvest ruined by wild pigs and having their family go hungry. That was a real, being eaten by a tiger was not a realistic problem, being able to feed their family and keeping their
00:51:49
Speaker
their harvest free from ravaging pigs and deer was a real concern. So that was very eye-opening to me. And I realized too that even the way I'd been looking at this was sort of biased in a way by this Western conception of predators and wildlife and relationships with local people. And yeah, I mean, yeah, I didn't encounter any sort of animosity among Taru towards tigers at all. I mean, they think seeing a tiger is lucky that it's good luck.
00:52:18
Speaker
They do understand that tigers are potentially dangerous, but it's not their sort of way of looking at it. As long as you respect the forest and you do the proper ceremonies and puja and things like that, religious ceremonies, everything's in order, then the tigers won't bother you. It's only when you somehow offend the various spirits or the forest or the deities, that's when tigers pose a problem. So I didn't encounter any of that sort of
00:52:44
Speaker
any of that desire to hunt tigers or poach tigers or see tigers removed, quite the opposite.
00:52:50
Speaker
And then over the course of the writing and rewriting of this book, I'm sure you had a number of opportunities to start it at a different place or end it at a different place or take something you had from the middle and put it at the start or the end. And how did you approach the structure of this book? So it had the right amount of proportionality that pleased you and ultimately pleases the reader. In terms of structure,
00:53:18
Speaker
I think fortunately the story I was trying to tell kind of lent itself to a certain structure because part of it takes place in Nepal and part of it takes place in India and it just kind of made sense to start in Nepal with the wounding of the tiger because you learn that's kind of what initially provokes its man eating is that a poacher shoots out two of its teeth and unable to hunt its normal prey because its jaw is injured, it starts hunting people instead to keep from starving to death.
00:53:48
Speaker
You know, it just kind of made sense. In this instance, the structure I didn't think was terribly difficult because essentially there was already a story in place to tell that of this tiger having his teeth knocked out in Nepal, being hunting people, then eventually chased out in Nepal across the river into India, across the border, where it commences, and then having this hunter Jim Corbett kind of get recruited to track down the tiger. So structurally, in this instance, it wasn't very difficult
00:54:16
Speaker
overall, I'd say what was a little trickier was, was the kind of jumping back and forth in time when you're in each chapter when you're trying to tell kind of a specific portion of the story. You know, when you're when you're talking about, you know, when you're talking about, it's when it gets to when the tiger gets to India, and how the government approached it, then even though this is 19, you know, around 1907, or is 1907,
00:54:42
Speaker
You kind of have to jump back in time to explain the colonial attitudes toward tigers, which go back a couple hundred years. So I'd say in that regard, that was maybe a little bit trickier within the chapters kind of jumping back and forth.
00:54:54
Speaker
through history. But in the end, this wasn't the hardest thing structurally to do, I don't think.
Organizing Research and Writing Methods
00:55:02
Speaker
And when you have all the research that you did, archival and even speaking to people on the ground, how do you, with respect to this book, how did you organize your notes there so then you had access to it when you were ready to get to the writing?
00:55:21
Speaker
For this one, I think when I was in India, Nepal, I mean, this was pretty straightforward. I think some of it, I either record it in a notebook or in some cases, like when we were interviewing, interviewing some of the gurus in Nepal to talk about sort of the spiritual leaders in the community to talk about things like that. I think I recorded some on my, just on my, you know, my mobile phone. So it was really just that. It was really just writing things in notebooks and, you know, when it was something longer, like an interview or something, recording it on the phone. So it was pretty straightforward.
00:55:49
Speaker
And do you have a certain filing system that you adhere by in your workspace so you're able to be able to pull from a certain cluster of files? Yeah, I mean one thing I'd confess is I'm not the most organized person in the world. So that's probably a area where I have some room for improvement. But in this case, because there was so much material, I think I did
00:56:14
Speaker
I think I just had a file on my computer on my desktop that was kind of research materials for book, divided into a few sub files. One file of various colonial accounts of tiger hunting, another that just had photographs from different period. I think another one that was maybe kind of scientific or biological articles about tigers.
00:56:37
Speaker
just to sort of keep some structures. I think in this case, I did a little bit of that just to keep it together.
00:56:45
Speaker
And earlier in our conversation, too, you talked about how specifically day jobs and stuff of that nature actually helped create some structure around your life that made the writing more accessible.
Maintaining Balance and Inspirational Authors
00:56:59
Speaker
And given it on a project of this nature, when it basically is your job to do, how do you build in a schedule and a structure so you can progressively progress through the work?
00:57:13
Speaker
Well, that's a good question because with this book, actually, I wrote most of the book when I was only writing full time. So in that regard, it was good. You know, it was probably on a professional level. It was good because I was able to get a lot of work done on a personal level. I don't think it was the. Yeah, I just like it wasn't the best. It didn't feel like it was the best psychologically to be to be spending so much time alone and writing. And I think that's kind of a trade off. I mean, that's something I don't know the answer, honestly.
00:57:43
Speaker
that I struggle with is trying to balance that, trying to balance writing the things, having the time to write the things I want to write about versus sort of having an ordinary life and having structure and doing other jobs. I don't know. I've sort of seen both extremes. Sometimes I've had a full-time job that was very consumed a lot of time and just tried to squeeze in writing in the evenings or in the weekends.
00:58:09
Speaker
I've also had the opposite where I had nothing but free time and was only at home writing. And yeah, I'd say that the best though was a situation probably I had my last few years in New York, which is in the middle. And I was very fortunate. I was doing some copywriting a few days a week for a company, which is actually pretty fun. I enjoyed the job. And then two days a week I was home. I had, you know, I could spend at home writing.
00:58:31
Speaker
And that was the perfect I found arrangement just in terms of having structure, but also time to write. But that's hard to come by. I mean, I felt very fortunate that I was able to have that arrangement for a couple of years.
00:58:42
Speaker
And with respect to a project of this nature, you've written several books, several nonfiction books. Where do you feel most engaged in the process? Like the writing, the rewriting, or the editing? Where do you feel most tethered and engaged when you're working on a book like this? I think for me, the different steps, I find all of them fun and engaging at first. And then by the end, it gets excruciating. So for example, I find just when I first start
00:59:11
Speaker
writing a book and it's moving along, it's very exciting. But then when I'm, you know, for example, right now I'm working on another novel and I'm kind of, you know, three quarters done and I'm just, you know, and I've sort of got the whole structure, just a few holes I have to fill in the chapters that I wasn't so excited to write. And that's, you know, at this point now it's, it was fun initially and now it's kind of, you know, I kind of just want it to be done with and it's kind of excruciating. And the same thing's true with kind of initial edits. Like once a book is written and I go through and start, you know, tightening it up, tweaking it here and there, sort of,
00:59:41
Speaker
editing it, getting it into better shape. At first it's very fun. I mean, it's very exciting at first, but then after, you know, you've already read through a book five or six times, then, you know, I know that I still needs work and I still needs to tighten it up, but at that point it's, you know, the novelty and the excitement of worn off and it kind of becomes a chore. So, I mean, I would say each, each of the different steps of writing a book, I find very fun at first and then, you know, kind of grueling a little bit toward the end. So it can be tough sometimes to get motivated to finish.
01:00:10
Speaker
Who are some writers and books that you kind of model your historical narrative nonfiction after? And maybe writers and books that inspire you to write in this genre. Well, for nonfiction, I have very different answers for fiction and nonfiction, but for nonfiction, like a writer, I kind of got into that, you know, started to show me how you could
01:00:39
Speaker
you write nonfiction and historical books in a way that's pretty exciting and engaging. It was Mark Kirlansky, you know, like the salt and cod and the big oyster and the Basque history of the world, I think was one. Like I always thought really found those very, you know, very entertaining that they're very informative, very well done, you know, historical books, but they're, they're engaging to read. And I thought those for me were kind of a good example of, of, of how to do that well.
01:01:06
Speaker
But also too, I've sort of, I feel like with this with No Beast So Fierce, this tiger book, I kind of went a little bit beyond what I've done before and started to venture into slightly more creative nonfiction categories at times as well, where you're sort of recreating some of these moments. And like I said, it feels almost like you're writing a novel when you're trying to recreate these events that happened. And for that, I don't know. I'm sure there are nonfiction writers who do that very well, but I can't think off the top of my head
01:01:36
Speaker
you know, off the top of my head, ones that, you know, ones that, that I would say had had like an influence, I think more so for me for that, that's kind of a, that's just kind of a melding of what I had done previously with nonfiction, but also working in some of the stylistically working in some of the things I like to do with with fiction as well. Where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work if they aren't already more familiar with it?
Where to Find Dane's Work
01:02:05
Speaker
Sure. Of course, I have a website, danehucklebridge.com. I'm all the social media stuff like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. It's not exactly my forte, but I do that as well. If you want to get a copy of my latest book, No Be So Fierce, you can go on Amazon or to your local bookstore. The same is true of the last novel, Castle of Water. You should be able to find those in the same places.
01:02:31
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for doing. Thanks for writing the book. The book is an amazing account. It's super engaging, informative. It checks all the boxes for historical nonfiction. So thank you for that. And Dane will have to have you back on for a round two at some point down the road so we can dig into some other granular natures of the writing life. Oh, sure. It would be a pleasure. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.
01:03:00
Speaker
Alright, how was that man? Thanks Dane for the time. What did you take away from the show? What was the big take away for you? Keep the conversation going on Twitter at cnfpod and at Brendan O'Mara. I'd love to hear it. Thanks again also to Goucher's NFA Nonfiction for the support.
01:03:21
Speaker
No, and I'd be honored if you share the show with a fellow CnF-a. That's how this thing grows, man. Hand by hand, we'll do this. We'll do this. What else? Is that it? I feel like I'm forgetting something. If I am, well, there's always next week. When I talk to James Carl Nelson, author of the Polar Bear Expedition. See what happens when I've got shows in the can? That's a tease, baby. All right, last thing. If you can't do interview, see ya.