The Interview: Derry Sandy
Trinidadian author Derry Sandy shares how he balances his professional career as a Corporate Lawyer and being a writer. He made his debut with his novel 'Greyborn Rising', where he used the myths, legends, folklores and oral traditions of Trinidad and Tobago, to create his own fantasy world.
What has been your favorite element of doing fictional writing? Writing in legal corporate practice is strictly limited to business language, so I enjoy fictional writing’s lack of limitations. Fictional writing allows me to be descriptive and the universe of ideas that can be included is constrained only by one’s ability to figure out how to weave those ideas and concepts into the storyline. Fiction also lets me employ words that would seem silly or pretentious if used anywhere else.
If you could tell your younger self anything, what would it be?Hmm. I attended an all-boys catholic high school on Mucurapo road where discipline and academics is strongly emphasized. I wish that someone had told me that “the academics are important, but the relationships are equally important”. I think high schoolers tend to default into cliques; you’re a footballer or a bright-boy or a chess player or a pan player or an east man or a west man or a south man or a rich boy or you went to this primary school or that primary school. As a teenager you are largely incapable of seeing the long game, the five year plan, you live day to day, class to class, term to term and by the time you realize that you are going to spend seven years with these other young men, you are basically already out the door. If I had to do it again I would spend more time building relationships. I would also advise my younger self to savor every stage in life. My first job was as a sales agent/data entry clerk at the Unit Trust Corporation and in retrospect, it was a wonderful environment to work in, some great people work there, in the moment it was sometimes tedious, but as a first job, you couldn’t really ask for more. In comparison to some of the larger companies I have worked at since then, UTC takes care of its people. Shout out to all the people who started with me in 2003 and are still there today.
What inspired your book ‘GreyBorn Rising’ When I started writing this book, it was winter, I was a banking analyst (basically the opposite of being a fiction writer). I would leave my Brooklyn apartment in darkness and cold and I would return in darkness and cold. I was very homesick and I wanted to write a book that reminded me of home and I wanted to write the type of book that I would want to read. Additionally, I have always entertained the idea that human beings exist like fleas on the back of a horse, having no ability to comprehend the whole, unable even to form an opinion about whether they believe horses are real or not. Four hundred years ago the earth was flat. Twenty years ago, a video call was a Dick Tracy trick. A blood transfusion, organ transplants, things that would be considered high witchcraft in times past are commonplace today, so why not write about things that may be?
What has your experience been like with our local folklore?
I have had three experiences that I think were occult in nature. Forgive the following lengthy set up. The first happened when I was seventeen or eighteen…old enough to have a driver’s license (but barely), my father was working abroad and my mother went to visit him, taking my sister with her and leaving me and my brother home alone for a month (shenanigans ensued).
One morning my brother tells me that a girl invited him to visit and asks me to drive him to Arima…Girl? Drive? say no more. We get in the car, and it immediately starts to rain. About fifteen minutes later he tells me he needs additional directions so we pull off the main road into the carpark at Cleaverwoods and my brother gets on the phone to get clearer directions.
Once he ends the call I start backing out of the carpark and there is a crunch, I had to get out to see what it is, because the rear windscreen of the car is completely frosted. I had crashed into the French Ambassador to Trinidad’s car, a big blue Audi sedan. The damage was minimal but the chauffeur insisted that we make a report at the Arima police station. During this entire occurrence, the French Ambassador and his little wife are sitting in the back seat looking shaken.
None of us realize that that day was Arima Borough Day. Meandering to the police station through the crowds, took another hour. Finally, we make the collision report and of course my brother still wants to see the girl, so he gets her on the phone again and she directs us. We end up somewhere in the back of Arima, we pull up to a house and my brother gets out of the car. I can see behind the house there is a group of people conducting some sort of ceremony. A woman is collecting blood from a goat’s neck in a bowl, my brother has not seen this yet and is walking towards the gate. Before I could say anything another woman appears, comes toward him, grabs him by the wrist and says, “This is the boy.” He yanks his hand away and says, “I am not the boy.” By now he has seen the goat and the blood. He jumps back in the car and we get the hell out of there. We never met the girl and she stopped taking his calls…odd. The lengthy set up is to show that sometimes the universe will send obvious signals that the journey upon which you have embarked is ill conceived and you should probably turn around and go home.
My second experience happened when I was ten years old, I got lost on a hike between Balandra and Matura. Whether it was from exhaustion or the lack of food, I swear that I saw something in the bush that was unlike anything we should expect in Trinidad. Upright and hairy, but smart enough not to let itself be seen completely. I was not scared but maybe I should have been. Papa Bois..is that you?
My third experience was maybe two years ago. I was cycling in the hills in Lopinot, up past the complex just before the main road becomes unpaved. I stopped beside the road to take a photo and a random man walked out of the bushes and says to me;
“Good morning, yuh want to see my minion?”
I say, “Your what?”
He says, “A minion, it right in the back here, the eye tun up and ting.”
And I say “No thanks sir, I am not in the mood to get raped today.” I think a minion is what they call a buck in Lopinot.
Who is your favorite folklore character and why? To me Trinidadian folklore has always been more melancholy than scary; The soucouyant is the ostracized old woman, the La Diablessee is the vengeful spirit of a woman who in life was mishandled by men, Duppies are the spirits of the dead, trapped in this realm, unable to move on. The Duen are my favorite because they are quintessentially melancholy, they are the remnants of childhood interrupted, remarkably unfortunate even among a cast of otherwise unfortunate characters.
Do you think that folklore should be a part of Trinidad and Tobago Schools’ English and Literature curriculum? I think that there are three things that every Trinbagonian should, as a matter of law, be required to do. The first is to play mas at least once, the second is to visit Tobago or Trinidad at least once every two years (obviously this depends on which island you call home) and the last is to develop a functioning understanding of our culture including its oral traditions. If adding folklore to the curriculum helps advance the culture then I support such an inclusion. However, I also fear that the mystery and magic which shrouds our oral traditions may not survive the scrutiny, rigor and distillation required to make them suitable for inclusion in the school curriculum.
What is your favorite book series that was made into a movie? Game of Thrones. At the risk of being lamely cliché it is one of the few television series that I felt was better than the books. The casting was excellent.
Do you have any suggestions to help aspiring writers? I am not a writing expert so I feel odd making suggestions to aspiring writers. Also, when does one stop being an aspiring writer? I will say this, I know a lot of people who “want” to write a book. If you want to write a book, start writing one. Make a habit out of writing, be disciplined about it. Eventually the accumulated words will be worthy of being called a book. Writing is not something that can be phoned in, you cannot plant a seed and come back in a couple weeks to see that a book or even a paragraph has sprouted. Sometimes I stop writing for a week or two and then I open the word document and to my disappointment the plot has not advanced during my absence…despite my best wishes. If you want to write, write and keep on writing until the job’s done.
Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?I do not have a website or a fan page, there are a couple of my readers who are personal friends, (shout out to Natalie, Amanda and Theodora) I speak to them almost daily. I am not emotionally attached to my writing to the extent that I seek out fan feedback for validation. When I ask for feedback it is with respect to the technical aspects of writing so that I can improve current and future work product. Do not get me wrong, I welcome feedback and it is nice to hear what people liked and informative to hear what they did not, Amazon reviews are helpful as well. But I think if you peg our value as an author to third party validation you will be putting yourself on a roller coaster that will inevitably lead to ulcers and lost hair.
How do you balance being a writer with your professional career and everyday life? As a corporate lawyer there is not really much “balancing”. My day job takes the lion’s share of my day. Then I hit the gym. I write during my commutes or on weekends. The pandemic has shaken that pattern up a little bit. I have more time for writing and gardening, and that is nice.
Tell us an interesting fact about yourself? I am a minimalist. The less things I have, the more comfortable I become. I like the freedom of the outdoors, the bush, the mountains. If all I had was a bike, a tent and a pot to piss in I think I would be just fine. (The pot is optional).
Do you have any interesting writing quirks?I am not sure this is a quirk. But I have never suffered from writer’s block (I swear this is not a humble brag). Ever since common entrance, through A’ Levels to today, every time I sit down to write I find that I have something to write. I also never plan the story; the story takes itself where it wants to go. I think I will start planning though. This “quirk” might also explain how I wrote a whole book on train commutes.
What do you enjoy most besides writing? Ohhhh easy. Cycling alone in the hills of Trinidad; Lopinot, Caura, Mount St Benedict, Blanchicheusse, Toco, Maracas…early in the morning, when the dew is still wet on the grass and the minor deities of the forest are still whispering. I also have a new-found love for gardening and an old one for fish keeping.
What was one of the biggest lessons learnt from being a writer?
Procrastination is a high-ranking devil in hell’s army. See also the response to #8.
My writing is not perfect, it WILL be criticized some of that criticism will be sharp, some of it might be unfair, but a lot of it will be helpful. Having a work of fiction in the public domain has taught me how to take criticism a lot better and to take myself less seriously.