Stephen Edward Paper

Imagine growing up in a small town in northern Minnesota, where I spent a lot of my early years tying bowlines and trimming deer hides for my dad, reading comic books, shoveling snow, canoeing, scouting and driving my mom crazy while fighting with my two brothers. The town, Wadena, only had 4500 people, and to me, the teachers, businessmen and families and friends were all amazing and inspiring; the place was like an Eden.

My parents fostered a love of reading in my brothers and I at a very early age–most likely to get some peace and quiet. From regular Superman and Batman type comic books we graduated to classic comic books such as Ivanhoe, With Fire And Sword and The Count Of Monte Cristo. Around the age of thirteen, I began to read the actual books that the classic comic books condensed. When I read these and others like Lord Jim, Moby Dick and The Colossus of Maroussi, I knew I had to travel to Greece, Africa, and India, everywhere, and I had to write something. I still think the beginning pages of Lord Jim and of Moby Dick are the best two opening pages I've ever read. Although one can only aspire to reach those heights, if you don't try, you'll never come close. Many of these books have inspired my writing.

Where does one get his or her ideas? The book Waiting On Fidel came from hitchhiking through Mexico, and although there aren't many reviews, someone on Goodreads compared the humor to Mel Brooks. That can keep me going for a long time.

Another trip:a few years ago I was invited to northern India to coach an aspiring professional tennis player on the Indian Satellite Circuit--I had played in southern India in my younger days and also traveled around the south when I wasn't competing.

A small but very important tangent: Tennis is a wonderful sport, rigorously engaging your physical and mental abilities and doing so for a lifetime. I have enjoyed playing and coaching tennis around the world and now want to use tennis and my writing to help others. I am donating a portion of the royalties from An Army Lost, The Hostages, Highgate and Waiting On Fidel to Wounded Warriors of San Diego:http://www.sdwoundedwarriortennis.org. They teach tennis to wounded veterans and in doing so have saved lives.

Back to me: My player got injured right off the bat so I decided to journey around the north, visiting Ahmedabad, Delhi, a tiger reserve where I found fresh tiger spoor right outside my cabin after being woken up three times in the night by something hungry and trying to pay a visit; also a walled city or two. It was a time of great freedom. I'd reach a place, stay a few days, all the while consulting my map and guidebook and new acquaintances to see what was near and interesting, and then take off in that direction. After Agra and the Taj Mahal, I headed west to Rajastan--a newly made friend had given me a contact number of a poacher-smuggler who routinely snuck back and forth across the Pakistani border, cross point for gunrunners, dope smugglers, poachers, bandits and kidnappers. Normally, I would have taken a train, but I'd been warned too many times of lone travelers having a cup of drugged tea on a train and waking up a day or two later without their belongings, money, passport, even their clothes, and I was traveling alone. You could lose your things just taking a nap. When I was in the south I took a train from Bangalore to Madras, fell asleep and woke to the noise of four gray langurs going through my bag. When I got to Madras I was missing my shampoo and speculated that now there were some pretty good looking monkeys hanging out, and doing well with the lady monkeys--either that or they were pretty ill.

So I hired a car. I had a driver who spoke about ten words of English and his friend who spoke less. We drove off and they pointed out nothing to me as we made our way west. Well actually I think they pointed out a lot of places of interest. I just couldn't understand them. There were a lot of changes in landscape as we traveled from Uttar Pradesh to Rajastan, but what stood out for me was the traffic. You have four lanes of traffic on a twelve-foot wide piece of pothole marred road and that's going in each direction. There are lorries piled high with loads so large it's amazing they don't tip over; buses packed with so many people, not to mention those riding on top and hanging on the sides it's amazing they don't tip over; there are scooters, cars, motorcycles, bicyclists, pedestrians, people with push carts and pull carts, oxen pulling larger carts, rickshaws, motorized trishaws and the occasional elephant or cow, and all the while my driver trying to pass them in the face of the same four lanes coming at us: he was paid by the trip not the hour. As he swerved in and out of traffic, he missed carts, buses, cars, lorries and people by inches. When he couldn't pass right away, he pulled up bumper to bumper or bumper to tail. Other cars and trucks and buses were doing the same thing, and in both directions. I still can't figure out how I never saw an accident. After crossing the border into Rajastan, we were following camels and trying to pull around them. Also, every few kilometers or so there would be a guy holding a large brown bear on a rope on the side of the road. When we'd near these guys would get their bears to jump up and down, trying to draw our attention and get some baksheesh.

Our first stop was Jaipur, the Pink City, but I only stayed long enough to visit the Pink Palace as my driver found out if we rushed to the other side of the city, I could catch the last plane flying out to the west to Jodhpur. We made it by about ten minutes before take-off. Only in India would they hold a plane back for you--and it was the second time for me. From there, after some spicy Chicken Tikka Masala and enough tea (not drugged) to keep me awake for a few days, I boarded an overnight bus to Jaisalmer Fort, an almost nine hundred year old city nestling along ancient trade routes.

Another jaunt and I was only 60 K from the Pakistani border. The smuggler-poacher I was supposed to tag along with was nowhere to be found so I hired a guide, Selim, and a camel for each of us. Then we swayed up and down and back and forth on our camels as we trekked out into the Great Thar Desert.

I was warned that the night fell abruptly in the desert and it did. We made camp below a large sand dune and ate curry and drank tea. Selim and I cleaned the cooking utensils and cups with sand, and then I climbed up the highest nearby dune to watch the sun set over the desert. Night fell abruptly. I got into my sleeping bag but it was only about 5 pm. There was no way I was going to fall asleep that early.

I had secured an agent for Highgate, my first novel, just before I left for India, but I wasn't certain it was finished and I decided to rewrite it twenty times--I hate it when that happens. So I started telling Selim the story. I find that telling a story out loud to someone is a good way to iron out problems. It's a long book and I should have taken notes. About three hours later, Selim woke and asked, "Are you still talking?" I gave up editing for the night and tried to sleep. Many times that night I woke up to desert sounds. Once I woke up just in time to see six deer scamper away--they must have been investigating the forengi. The night sky was dark and clear and for much of the time I just stared at the stars until I dozed off again. We didn't have tents and my sleeping bag was soon soaked on top from the moist desert air.

And then I heard the gunshots.