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Interview with Helen J Beal, author of Riding A Tiger

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Riding a Tiger is a contemporary novel about a super yacht, Talisman, that is hijacked along with its crew on its way home from the Seychelles to Cyprus after a long charter.

Tell us more.
I set out to write Riding a Tiger as a character driven novel – I wanted to steer away from creating the captors as simply criminals. I wanted to try to give them more dimensions, and explore how our experiences and expectations as Westerners color our opinions of people born in countries so vastly different than ours. I hope the reader feels an urge to influence global thinking, then, when they finish the book, and that they have hope that we can help people everywhere lead better, more peaceful and prosperous, lives.

What genre is your book?
Riding a Tiger is a work of literary fiction.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
Readers who enjoy original and unusual literary fiction are likely to enjoy this book – it’s not a thriller or an action novel, but a fast-paced portrait of disintegration – one reader said: “I loved the contrasts at the heart of your narrative – luxury vs poverty, privilege vs privation, power vs impotence.”

Whose eyes do we see this world through? Tell us about them.
Rachel Lassetter is twenty-three, has dropped out of her biochemistry PHD and spent some time traveling aimlessly around Asia. A chance meeting with a secret half-sister lands her on Talisman along with the other nine crew-mates when disaster strikes. Rachel is clever – but naive and lacking in direction and conviction. I enjoyed exploring how her youth and innocence were affected by her experiences aboard and what coping mechanisms she employed to survive her incarceration.

What’s the story behind your book’s title?
As well as writing, I sell computer software. I once had a lead come in for a company I wasn’t familiar with, a company called Satyam, and doing my due diligence to find out more about them before following up on their enquiry, I stumbled across an interesting little story. In a piece of their recent history, an Enron-like moment had occurred and the then CEO disappeared for a few days in the wake of the scandal. On his reappearance, he said that his experience had been: ‘like riding a tiger – I didn’t know how to get off without being eaten.’ I found the metaphor compelling and it stuck with me. Even though there are no (naturally occurring) tigers in Africa, where most of the book’s action is set, I felt it worked very well for one of the characters in particular caught in the situation. It’s origin is in a Chinese idiom concerning warfare and it has been used by politicians such President Truman to describe their own situations. The solution is to kill the tiger – but is this what happens in my story?

Complete this sentence for us: if you like _________________, you’ll love Riding A Tiger.
If you like Lord of the Flies or Bel Canto, you’ll love my book.

Tell us a bit more about yourself.
I am British born and bred, have a degree in English Literature and Language from the University of London and a professional background in Information Technology. I am addicted to Scrabble, love llamas and have a seagull chick called Ruth growing up on my roof (I live near the South Coast in England). I also look after a pair of tortoises called Apollo and Artemis and am obsessed with aquariums (my favorite, so far, is in New Orleans).

Have you written any other books that we should read next?
I have previously published two novels – Thirty Seconds Before Midnight (a modern retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in a menagerie in the English countryside and featuring a narrator called Herbert who is a giant land tortoise) and Rich in Small Things (a novel about poker, vodka and driving a Land Rover ambulance to Mongolia). I have also published a collection of short stories called Half a Dozen Star Jumps.

Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work?
I certainly do! You can find it at: www.helenjbeal.com.

How can we follow you on Twitter and/or Facebook?
Here I am on
Twitter: @helenjbeal
And here I am on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/helenjbeal.

What’s next?
I am currently writing my fourth novel which is concerned with human overpopulation, conservation and the anthropocene mass extinction event we are currently living through.

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