Gary Kemble’s Strange Ink is published on October 9 by Titan Books. When washed-up journalist Harry Hendrick wakes one morning with a hangover and a strange symbol tattooed on his neck, he shrugs it off as a bad night out. But soon more tattoos appear: grisly, violent images which come accompanied by horrific nightmares – so he begins to dig deeper. Harry’s search leads him to a sinister disappearance, torment from beyond the grave, and a web of corruption and violence tangled with his own past. One way or another, he has to right the wrongs. Kemble, himself a journalist, talks about the shifting sands of credibility…

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” – Stephen King

I’m a journalist. Lies are not a valued commodity in my world. Unless like Strange Ink’s Harry Hendrick you’re uncovering other people’s, lies are a good way to get fired.

(In Harry’s case, uncovering other people’s lies is a good way to get killed).

So if I’m a journalist, what am I doing telling lies in my spare time? Well, as it happens, truth and fiction aren’t as far apart as you might think.

Jerry Jenkins, author of the best-selling Left Behind series, says the definitions of nonfiction and fiction have flip-flopped. “Nonfiction has to be unbelievable, and fiction has to be believable,” he says.

Every event portrayed in Strange Ink has happened in real life.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a lie.

But at each stage of fleshing out Strange Ink’s plot I asked, “Has this ever happened in real life?” If I could find a real-world precedent, I would mould those true events into the lie I needed.

Have Australian Defence Force personnel ever been implicated in drug smuggling? Yes.

In 2010 the Australian Defence Force confirmed it was investigating allegations members of the navy were involved in a drugs ring supplying Sydney backpackers with illicit substances. Adds a whole new dimension to the expression ‘high seas’, right?

Have outlaw motorcycle gangs ever been used to traffic drugs? Absolutely.

And there are also strong connections between the military and bikie gangs. In 2015 a former ADF sniper and member of the Comancheros bikie gang was sentenced to close to a decade behind bars over drugs charges.

More recently former soldier Stevan Utah (whose non-fiction book Dead Man Running I drew on for Strange Ink) was given refugee status in Canada, after years on the run from the Bandidos.

Have property developers ever laundered money? Oh yeah.

Just check out the Trump Inc podcast if you don’t believe me!

Did a Black Hawk carrying SAS troopers crash during an exercise off the coast of Fiji? Yes. (The tragic, true version of that incident is detailed in Rob Maylor’s excellent book SAS Sniper).

Are there symbols created by Afghan Mullah Sensees, designed to protect people from harm? Yes.

Of course, at some point as a writer you need to go off the beaten track and just make shit up.

No-one has ever had tattoos spontaneously manifest on their body.

As far as I know.

Dreadnorts MC and Dead Ringers MC are fictional outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs). I didn’t want any Hells Angels or Bandidos knocking on my door, accusing me of giving their club a bad write-up. (And it was actually quite difficult finding ominous-sounding names that aren’t real OMGs).

The protective sigil on Harry’s neck was originally going to be African in origin. The Australian SAS has deployed to various parts of Africa over the years, but it suited Strange Ink better to shift Rob’s story to Afghanistan.

And while the Mullah Sensees did indeed create protective sigils, generally they were written on a piece of paper or scratched on a wall rather than tattooed on a person’s body.

So what’s the secret to telling convincing lies? Let’s hear from a guy who’s made a career out of it: Stephen King.

As King suggests, you should wrap your lie around a truth. Whether it’s characters, locations, or plot developments, thorough research can make the reader care.

“Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything,” King told Writer’s Digest.

“Or a broken billboard. Or weeds growing in the cracks of a library’s steps.

“Of course, none of this means a lot without characters the reader cares about (and sometimes characters—“bad guys”—the reader is rooting against), but the details are always the starting place in speculative or fantasy fiction. They must be clear and textured.

“The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.”

Many of the characters in Strange Ink started out as people I know. It’s no coincidence that Harry and I both started out as journalists on local newspapers. But through the rewriting and editing process, multiple characters are melded together, details changed to suit changes to the story, and elements added because of something that happened that day.

In a similar way, many of the events in Strange Ink are inspired by things that actually happened, or based on real-life research (I spent some time in a couple of tattoo studios), the end result is a blend of lies and truth.

Truth isn’t truth, you might say.

Strange Ink is published by Titan Books on October 9, and check out the rest of the blog tour here: