John Goodall on the problems and challenges of writing the creative non-fiction romantic memoir, The Infallible Fortune Teller.
Initially I was reluctant to publish the true story revealing the most intimate aspects of my life and marriage, and for that reason my manuscript started out as a novel with the title The Goddess of the Assassins.
I decided from the outset to explore and exploit what I considered one of the most intriguing aspects of Mahin’s family history, namely that her family traced its heritage back to the so-called Valleys of the Assassins (the title of Freya Stark’s account published in 1934 of her intrepid travels around Iran) high in the Alborz mountains. My research on this fascinating topic led me to discover another amazing book, Alamut written by Vladimir Bartol. Alamut is a brilliant paradox in which a twentieth century Slovenian novelist living in Trieste drew characters from eleventh century Persia and wove an allegory of the fascism engulfing Europe at the dawn of World War II. This masterpiece has been translated into nineteen languages and has sold in excess of twenty million copies.
What I found particularly attractive about Bartol’s novel were his descriptions of the stunningly beautiful virgins in Hassan-i-Sabah’s (the leader of the Assassins) garden of paradise and the truly tantalising descriptions of how the drugged and brain-washed young men fell in love with whichever houri they happened to choose, only to be discharged out of the garden some hours later to be persuaded by Hassan that if they followed his instructions to carry out an assassination and died doing it, his houri would be waiting for him back in paradise. The book describes in detail how Hassan had these houris trained in the art of seduction. Such had been my experience of being seduced by Mahin that I was instantly convinced that she was the perfect reincarnation of one of these irresistible women and that I had been the victim of the very same process!
I do not hesitate to admit that some of the passages in my manuscript were significantly inspired by Alamut. With Alamut open in front of my keyboard, the words I wrote quite literally flowed off the end of my pen! It was a truly stimulating experience! It was as though I was reliving what had truly happened to me back in 1969: I was falling in love all over again with the most beautiful woman I had ever met.
Learning to write romance
So, I joined the Romantic Novelists Association and for some years attended local monthly meetings to learn how other authors – all women – wrote their novels. I studied books about writing romance, all written by women mostly for women.
Returning from Alamut to the twentieth century, I expanded my novel with a series of sub-plots in which Mahin was employed by Savak, the Shah’s secret police, to seduce young men into revealing their dangerous political affiliations that could constitute a threat to the Shah’s regime.
Mixing the truth with fictional sub-plots, I thought I had written a brilliant novel. I submitted to agents, and it fell over at the first post: ‘But John, manifestly most of this story is true! You can’t do this; it must be drafted as a memoir!’ Worse than that, one of the editors I employed said that I should take out all the rubbish about the fortune teller. But that was the true bit! I nearly exploded and immediately changed the title to The Infallible Fortune Teller and after much reflection grudgingly acknowledged that I would have to write the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not long afterwards, after fifty years of marriage, Mahin died and gradually it became easier to redraft my work as a romantic memoir.
I went online and began looking for ‘romantic memoirs’ but found nothing. Would I be the first to publish such a book, I wondered? Could it be that no other author had ever published a romantic memoir? Certainly, there are memoirs that describe romantic experiences, but hardly any that fall under the non-fiction sub-genre ‘romantic memoir’.
Two authors instead of one
I decided that the memoir should have two authors, myself and my late wife, Mahin. This solution had a number of advantages: it would immediately solve what is known as ‘POV’ or ‘point of view’: the reader would always know which of us was speaking. Secondly, it would put the reader in a privileged position in which he/she would be privy to the undisclosed thoughts of each of us. Thirdly, much of the manuscript has been drafted in the first person in the present tense in the form of dialogue which brings the scenes described vividly back to life.
Finally, I was anxious to make Mahin’s part of the manuscript as distinguishable as possible from my own. To this end I employed a ghostwriter, Josephine Galvin (Josephine Galvin – Short Story Author | Fairlight Books) with the near impossible task of getting inside my late wife’s head, redrafting Mahin’s part of the manuscript based on my outline text. Josephine finally edited the entire book.
That left the question of finding a publisher. In common with so many authors, I failed to find an agent for my work. I took an online course on self-publishing with Jericho Writers and simultaneously I took another extraordinary initiative. In the light of my personal experiences described in detail in the book, I was convinced that some ‘unseen hand’ was at work that would ensure my book would be published. This story began with a fortune teller: let it end with one! I decided to consult another fortune teller and went online to find The Psychic Sisters (https://Psychic Sisters) in Selfridges, Oxford Street, London, where I came across another Iranian fortune teller, Naz Alibaghi. Naz was stunned by my story and when she finally dealt her tarot cards, the first one to come out was the Ace. Naz almost fell off her chair! A few weeks later I hired Troubador Publishing and then Cameron | Book Publicity | Book Marketing | Book Promotion to run a month long promotional campaign.
About The Infallible Fortune Teller by John Goodall
This true story recounts how 3 young Iranian women consulted an Assyrian fortune teller in Tehran in the late 1960s and how all the fortunes told that day, both terrifying and romantic, all came true. It was hardly surprising that when, a few months later, Mahin saw me with my blond hair and blue eyes – just as the fortune teller had predicted – that she immediately sensed what would happen next. When I saw Mahin – a stunning Sophia Loren look-a-like that exceeded my wildest dreams – it was perhaps not surprising that on just our 3rd date I impulsively and unpremeditatedly asked for her hand in marriage. When I awoke the following morning as if from a dream that I knew to be true, I was in a state of total shock. My recollection of the previous night was that I had been in a trance and that ‘someone’ had intervened. I was desperate to extract myself from my promise, but all my efforts were to no avail.
A few months later we were married and not long after that another prediction came true: an impending death! Only then did Mahin tell me the story of the fortune teller. Many years later, still convinced that ‘someone’ had intervened, I consulted a professional astrologist who confirmed what I had always suspected.
This book provides a tentative explanation to that unanswerable question: ‘Are we really in control of our destinies?’
For more information about the book, its authors and where to purchase go to: https://www.infalliblefortuneteller.com
And see more Writing.ie articles on writing memoir here.
