Q & A with Robert C. Parsons

1. What is your favourite book(s)?

I have read Isaac Asimov’s two-part biography—In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt—at least three times, so I would say that would be it. His clear and concise writing style coupled with stories of how he became one of the world’s most-published and most-read authors makes his massive bio a personal preference.

2. What are you reading now?

Here lately I have been reading much true crime in preparation my soon-to-be-published Courting Disaster: True Crime on Land and Sea (Flanker Press, fall 2009). Right now it’s a book by Joseph Wambaugh entitled Echoes in the Darkness.

3. When do you like to write (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your writing (location)?

I am able to write any time throughout the day, usually while listening to light and easy music, say from VOWR. In the morning, I answer e-mails and letters and make general enquiries. In the afternoon, I consult my research, write and/or edit, and revise. I can also work well from 7:00 pm to 10:00 or 11:00 pm. Actually, I can work anytime in what our family calls the computer room, just off the kitchen. I can easily pop out to get a cup of tea, dry the dishes, mow the grass, shovel the driveway, etc. Reference books are within arms’ reach above my head; scores of Newfoundland Labrador related material are on shelves behind me.

4. What was your first piece in print (book, review, or article, etc)?

In 1986, I began to get an urge to write, to get words on paper. That year I had a student intern working with me (in education). Based on that experience, I sent my professional organization a five-hundred-word article entitled “Who Me? A Co-operating Teacher” for their journal. Much to my surprise, they paid me $100. That was all the inspiration I needed, and I haven’t stopped writing since.

5. What other jobs have you had besides being a writer?

After high school, I worked in a fish plant filleting fish for a year and a half. Since then, I have had only four different jobs: I was a life-guard/instructor in an outdoor swimming pool; I spent a brief period as a clerk in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Finance; I was an educator for many years; and my latest occupation (I wouldn’t call it a “job”) is sitting at the keyboard putting words on paper.

6. If you could live during any time period and in any place, when and where would you choose?

Since I’ve never travelled much outside Newfoundland, I can’t vote for any exotic locales. I wouldn’t change my present hometown, Grand Bank. If I could re-live a decade, it would be the 1950s—there were so many sailors, shipbuilders, and survivors that I would like to talk to and that includes my own grandparents. I never knew any of them personally.

7. What is your favourite movie(s)?

It would have to be one of greats from the late 1960s when, as a student in St. John’s and living on Circular Road, I was regular at the Paramount Theater on Harvey Road to see Dr. Zivago, Vanessa Redgrave in Blow-up, The Sound of Music, The Lion in Winter, etc.

8. What is your favourite food?

Anything home cooked—Jigg’s Dinner, Turkey Dinner with all the fixings, Fried Fish. Another great favourite is Spanish Rice. Lately, someone gave me a quarter of moose meat. So meat from that animal will soon be at the top of the list.

9. What kind of music do you listen to?

I love easy listening from the 1950–60s, rock ’n roll, country music, Newfoundland and Irish music, instrumentals, gospel, and the blues. Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, and Elvis were stamped on my mind from the late 1950s.

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

Where did you get your inspiration to begin writing? (taken from an interview with a student not long ago)

Several years ago I saw a list of ships that were once owned in my hometown Grand Bank. The list had the ship owner, the date lost, and a place for a comment or remarks on the ship. Very few had comments, except perhaps something brief like “Burned at Sea” or “Abandoned in the Atlantic, 1936” or “Sold to the Northeast Coast.” I tried to fill in brief notes on the comments, about the owner, the captain, the date lost, the crew, and so on.

            The most intriguing ships were those (and there were about twenty or so) that said “Lost with Crew” for example the Partanna, and the Nellie and the Maggie Foote in 1892. These last entries were merely the name of the ship with no indication of who the unfortunate crewmen were. That seemed disgraceful to me. Here was a record of our town and Newfoundland history, our seamen who had paid the ultimate sacrifice at sea, and no one had recorded their names.

            For about six years, it became my goal to interview, search out, and record as much about the ships and local seamen as I could. Needless to say, a couple of lines in an exercise book was not large enough to write the longer stories; in fact, as time passed, file index cards weren’t large enough either. I eventually used a binder with a page or two devoted to each ship.

            I recorded information on about two-hundred of the three-hundred plus ships—some stories were long, tragic, heroic, and very interesting (to me at least). Other stories were short, two or three lines, but still unique. I went to archival newspapers and conducted more interviews to find out missing information.

            In the meantime, while recording Grand Bank stories of heroism and tragedy, I found tremendous sea tales out of Burin, Garnish, Fortune, Burgeo, and Placentia Bay. All those went on paper as well.

            I also discovered it was not easy or appropriate to write about the loss of a ship or its men without putting the event in historical context. By this I mean I had to research and write about the times, conditions, and circumstances in which the ships were lost, e.g. World War I, the American Prohibition, the bank fishery, and the foreign trade.

            By the time I wrote on all that, the information had grown into book-length material. But could it be a published book? The story of visits to potential publishers and lessons on how to write a sea story evolved in the 1990s.