The True Hero of A CHRISTMAS CAROL
an interview with Mark Hazard Osmun
by B. Lynn Goodwin

Charles Dickens' England was fraught with turmoil. In MARLEY'S GHOST, Jacob and his twin brother, Ezra, are prodigies who communicate in a language of their own. At their mother's request they stay close together when life takes them to a back-breaking job in the mines. Ultimately violence separates them, but the beauty of his brother's music haunts Jacob almost as much as his own evil actions. Jacob's journey, which covers two worlds, finally brings him to a place where he is able to make the impact as a ghost that he could not make as a man.

Imagine seeing England through Dickens' eyes in order to create the backstory for a minor character in a major classic. Mark Hazard Osmun brought Marley's hidden motivations and horrific background to light in MARLEY'S GHOST. In the process he created a world of violence and struggle punctuated with moments of brotherly love. His work is   powerful.

As I read the well-researched, descriptive prequel, I couldn't help thinking what a marvelous tool Osmun was using. Why hadn't I ever wondered about Marley's background, about how Scrooge and Marley came to know one another, about why they were so bitter, about why Scrooge's name came first on the door? The story, which Osmun says came to him from an advertisement he saw while riding a commuter bus, is a wonderful exploration of what might have been.

I was eager to interview the author who delves into the history of Marley's ghost. Although he did not deliberately imitate Dickens style you will find a similar use of specifics, equivalent characters, and an echo of Dickens' social conscience. You can learn a great deal from the experiences and insights he shared with me in our conversation.

LG: Tell us a bit about your background. When did you know you were a writer?

MHO: I always liked stories so I always liked English class. I did well on essays. I wrote for the high school newspaper. I decided then to be a writer and/or reporter.

I became a journalist right out of high school, writing features for a weekly newspaper in Virginia, then covering sports for a daily paper in Colorado. I then went to college and studied creative writing and English. Following graduation in 1975 I moved to Honolulu where I became a sports writer. Lippincott published my non-fiction, "new journalism" view of marathon running in 1979 (THE HONOLULU MARATHON). I then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I worked as both a freelance writer and as a marketing executive.
   
I worked as a foreign correspondent and travel writer for The San Francisco Examiner and became a west coast correspondent for USA Today, and contributed features to publications such as Rolling Stone, Playboy, The Boston Globe, The Orange County Register, The Dallas Morning News, Sacramento Magazine, Honolulu Magazine, The Yacht Magazine, The Marin Independent Journal and The Runner Magazine.  My six-part series for The San Francisco Examiner on South African apartheid became a finalist in the 1987 H.L.. Mencken Awards of the Free Press Association. MARLEY'S GHOST is my first novel.

LG: How did your journalism background affect your ability to investigate Jacob Marley? Even though I know it is fiction, I cannot help feeling that some of your existing skills must have helped you develop the story.

MHO:  While doing work onthe novel, I never stopped to wonder what past skills contribute to this orthat. I always preferred feature writing to news reporting because it was always more like writing fiction (and with some journalists it is the same). I
always liked Tom Wolfe's old  "New Journalism," in which journalists (if permitted and if capable) would employ the techniques of literature to tell perfectly factual stories -- putting an eye to real life details to amplify the point of the story. In fiction that is more difficult, because you have no real life details with which to begin. You must either imagine them and/or do enough research so that they become evident to you. With MARLEY'S GHOST, it was a little of both. Most of that period is   documented well enough for one to imagine that world fairly well.

LG: How did you pick A CHRISTMAS CAROL and Jacob Marley as the subject of your story?

MHO:  The impetus for writing MARLEY'S GHOST came while riding a San Francisco commuter bus three years ago.  Daydreaming, I saw a billboard for a  production of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and began recalling the classic. The words of Marley's ghost suddenly seized my attention:  "... you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring...." At that moment, I realized that Jacob Marley was the true hero of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and Marley's saga -- who he was, how and why he arranged for Scrooge's redemption -- could be a fantastic story.

LG: What a wonderful moment of discovery. What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing a prequel or sequel?

MHO: There are great advantages to writing a prequel, the first of which is that you know where it's going the minute you decide to do it. Prequels, however, pose interesting technical problems. One occurs when one arrives at the moment when the prequel overlaps the original. Do you rewrite the original? If so, do  you faithfully rehash it? Do you change the original? If so, how do you reconcile those changes with the original?   One solution is to change the original as you wish, keeping in mind that you (and the reader) are pretending that this prequel actually preceded the "original." Therefore the original could be a reinterpretation of your "prequel." This is part of the solution in MARLEY'S GHOST.

LG: I agree that a prequel presents interesting problems and feel you handled them with great finesse. How did you organize your ideas to keep them consistent with A CHRISTMAS CAROL?

MHO: In doing several careful readings of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, I made note of every reference to or utterance by Jacob Marley. I wanted to be consistent with the original novel only -- not the subsequent popular film versions --many of which give Marley a bigger role than he had in the novel. (Marley appears only once in Carol and very little is said about his past).

The time frame had to be worked out -- how long were Scrooge and Marley partners? How old was Marley when he died? When did he die?  We know that A CHRISTMAS CAROL was written during October-November 1843 and presented as a contemporary tale. Therefore no events in the prequel could happen after that. If we placed the events of A CHRISTMAS CAROL in December 1842, then Marley would have died seven years prior in December 1835. We can pick an age for Marley to be when he died and work backward from there. Once the time period is established, you know where to look for historical background and details.

The organization of ideas is a harder question. I use a plot summary chart and a structure chart and yet, with MARLEY'S GHOST, still ended up throwing away most of the first draft and reorganizing  all of the second and third.

LG: The plot summary chart and structure chart sound like excellent tools. Where did you find them? 

MHO: I just invented my own. The plot summary was a very short, scene by scene synopsis --- bullet points really --  of what was going on, so that if I changed one thing I could look around quickly to see what else that might affect, or what might be needed where.

LG: What kind of additional research did you need to do?

MHO: The scenes I proposed to myself dictated much of the research which, in some cases, inspired wholly new scenes. If I knew I wanted a coal mine scene in the 1790s then I had to find out about mines at that time (not a well-documented segment of mining history by the way. But old drawings and engravings of those mining conditions were very helpful). I wanted some prison scenes from roughly the same period. The prison research revealed an interesting scam used by some prisoners to exploit the poor laws -- that scam became an important element. You end up reading many historical works: Dickens' biographies, other Dickens' works, visual dictionaries, illustrations of clothing, historical timelines. All of the research helps the creative process, spawning new ideas as well as keeping the tale true.


LG: I love that your research generated new scenes. Excellent! Could the story exist today or is it dependent on the times and social conditions of England in the 1800s?

MHO: The story does exist today. I wrote an essay for the San Francisco Chronicle about that. The essay posited that Dickens' Britain circa 1843 is not so different from the world today.  Social ills persist -- a fact that no doubt would make Dickens mourn.   There remain: homeless poor living in the streets, high crime, deadly epidemics (cholera then, AIDS now), public assistance (workfare now, union workhouses then), imperialism (empire-building then, a U.S. global police force now); big business, capital punishment, and deep class divisions, to name a few. If Dickens hoped that, 150 years down the road, his work might have helped eliminate the plight of the poor, he should be disappointed, because certainly it has not.

LG: That is a powerful, accurate statement. How did it feel to climb inside a character written by another author and bring his backstory to life? What obstacles did you encounter? What did you learn about Dickens, about your writing skills?

MHO: The great thing about Jacob Marley as a subject for a prequel is that, despite his importance, Dickens left him alone -- he had almost no backstory. Marley was nearly a blank slate upon which I could write almost anything. One thing I decided early on was that I would not ape Dickens; that I would avoid any Dickensian style. The reasons for this I think are obvious (but since one publisher complained that it "wasn't Dickensian enough," I shall enumerate them). If I reader wants to read Dickens, there are libraries full of him; nobody writes Dickens better than Dickens. Second, many modern readers don't like Dickens' verbosity: after all today's readers are not the readers of the mid-1800s. Third, to simply ape another writer's style is not offering much of a contribution; borrowing his premise is enough of a steal. Fourth, I doubt I could do Dickens very well.

Regarding Dickens himself, I learned a great deal about him and found him to be much like most writers I know: sweating about money, about what he'll write next, about whether he's good enough, being torn between worldly comforts and a job that promises little. Like everyone, I cannot believe the amount of work he produced.

LG: Do you have a favorite piece of writing advice to share?

MHO: Write about what interests you. Write to create something you're proud of. Only write when you want to.

LG: Great, solid advice. Thank! Did you find Twelfth Night Press or did they find you? What tips can you give us about marketing? When does a writer need an agent?

MHO:  I found TNP. Always use an agent. Regarding marketing: pretend your book doesn't have a publisher and that all the promotion must be done by you. Then do it. If you don't know how, there are books that will teach you.

LG: Where will we be able to find your novel in September? What are you working on now?

MHO: MARLEY'S GHOST is being distributed nationally by Bookpeople and Ingram. It will be in independents and the big chains like Barnes & Noble, and Borders and online at Amazon.com. It can be ordered from any store after September.

I am now working on another historical, 19th century novel. This one, however, is not a prequel and is set mostly in the west.

LG: The 19th century west was a little like the Internet in terms of people carving out the rules as they staked out their own patch of land. I look forward to reading it.

Thanks for your clear, articulate answers and insights. You have a special slant on the stories behind the stories and your work shows a unique blend of creativity and discipline.  Because I live in the San Francisco Bay Area I have a vivid image of you riding that commuter bus and seeing the ad, a plot forming in your mind while others around you napped.

I compliment Twelfth Night Press for publishing your novel and look forward to your upcoming work.

©2000 B. Lynn Goodwin, LGood67334

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