Welcome to my website Stephen. Thanks for taking part in an author interview.
Please tell us a little about yourself
I’m Stephen Deutsch, novelist, composer and filmmaker.
I was born in New York and moved to the UK in 1970, becoming a naturalised citizen in 1978. I was trained as a pianist and composer, spending the first part of my career composing music for concert hall, theatre, television and film. I have been a lecturer in film sound and music, and have edited a journal on that subject, The Soundtrack, and later The New Soundtrack. My first novel, Zweck, a historical comedy about music, was published in 2016. I am the co-author of a coming book – Listening to the Film: A Practical Philosophy of Film Sound and Music. I have written plays for television, broadcast on the BBC.
Thank you. I’d love to know more about your writing process and inspiration. For example, do you like to reflect a sense of place in your stories? If so, how?
As I write historical fiction, a sense of place and time is essential. I try to immerse myself in the lives and times, the locations and events through which the characters lived. Researching this gives me much satisfaction.
What’s your earliest writing memory?
I seem to remember singing a song with made up lyrics in school. I was about six years old. The teacher took it down and put it in the school yearbook. I can’t remember it now, but I think it had to do with rain.
If you were encouraged to write/create – who encouraged you and how?
My mother groomed me to be a famous musician, encouraged to perform, play and sing. Not to write. It didn’t quite work out the way she imagined.
What was your favourite childhood book and why? And do you still read it?
I loved Alice in Wonderland. I was lucky enough to compose music for a TV adaptation some years ago. But the book is far better, I still read it from time to time.
What did you get in trouble for at school?
Talking too much. Nothing has changed.
How do you keep yourself motivated when your writing doesn’t flow?
I trick myself. I come to the desk thinking that I would just review the previous day’s work, and before long, ideas begin to arrive. Even though I know that this is a subterfuge, I fall for it every time.
Can you visualize your characters? If so – which actors would play your two favourites?
I do visualize my characters, especially because they were real people and I know what they looked like. Any casting, however inspired, would distort their reflection.
How much of yourself is in your stories?
Hard to say. I write every single word, so my own voice must penetrate through…
Do you like town or country?
Both
Why did you pick your genre?
The cliché is ‘it picked me’, but clichés become clichés because they are most often true.
If you like to write to music – what do you choose and why?
I never write to music. Either it’s too interesting, so it distracts, or it’s simply banal, which distracts me even more.
If you had to pick five pieces of music to sum up you and/or your life – what would they be and why?
- The B minor Mass by J.S. Bach, because I simply can’t imagine the mind that created this monumental, overpowering work.
- “Hit the Road, Jack” as sung by Ray Charles. Part of the music which resonated in my childhood.
- “Here comes the Sun” by the Beatles, reminding me of the happy two years I lived I San Francisco.
- Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Piano Concerto as played by Yuja Wang. Reminding me of what I aspired to, and how sensible it was for me to stand back and let a real genius play it. I also would never have been able to carry off the frocks as she does.
- My own String Quintet. Because it’s the best music I have ever composed and I’m proud of it.
What makes you happy?
Work. Thinking, reading, talking to friends.
If you could go anywhere (real or fictional) – where and why?
I’d like to revisit Orvieto, Italy when the plague ends. The most magical place in Italy, especially at sunset.
What could you not live without?
Optimism. Fortunately, I still have some lying around somewhere.
Who are your two main characters in your latest book Champion?
Herschel Grynszpan was a slightly built lad, 17 at the time of the assassination, he had dark hair and deeply-set eyes. As an undocumented Jewish adolescent living in Paris just before the war, having left Germany because of the persecution he felt as a Jew, thinking to emigrate to Palestine (as it then was). In October 1938, he receives a postcard from his parents – they had recently been bundled with 25,000 other Jewish residents of Hanover, put on a train – but not in the same way as Jews were later transported to the Ghettos and the death camps; they were in 3rd class compartments – then dumped in the rain on the Polish border.
Herschel was so enraged that he bought a gun and murdered a minor German official at the German Embassy in France, and this act was used as the excuse for Kristalnacht. He was arrested and was being prepared for trial, when the Germans invaded. And his adventures after that form a big part of the story.
Max Schmeling was a Nazi icon, not altogether wholeheartedly. And especially after his spectacular defeat of Joe Louis in 1936, he was feted everywhere in Germany, even having tea with Hitler and watching the fight film with him. His wife, Anny Ondra, who had starred in Hitchcock’s Blackmail – as well as many German films – was also similarly celebrated as part of this ideal Aryan couple.
Like many Germans, Max was uneasy about the regime – so many of his friends, artists, writers, musicians had disappeared, so much of what the Nazis stood for went against the sense of honour with which he had been raised. But ethics and morals, however resolutely he held them, did not prevent him from capitalising on his fame. But he was not a racist, of this I have no doubt. He defended his Jewish manager and was a major benefactor of Joe Louis in retirement – as well as after his death. During Kristalnacht Max sheltered two young Jewish lads in his hotel room until the violence subsided.
Will there be a sequel?
Hope not. Not by me, in any case.
Where can we find a copy of Champion?
Champion can be found at Unicorn Press – https://www.unicornpublishing.org or Amazon UK or Amazon US or can be ordered from good bookshops.
Thank you Stephen. I wish you every success with Champion, which is a great book: well researched and beautifully written.
