The Ride to Work

I invite you all to meet Anthony Speed. Anthony has a lot in common with me. He is similarly aged, lives on my street, works where I worked, uses the same mode of transport as me on his daily commute, and has lived through several similar experiences to me. Some people will thus consider Anthony to be based on me, and for his story to be mine, but this is very much not an autobiographical story.

For more than two decades I worked in an office environment within the South Australian public sector. I commuted to work each day by bicycle. Whether it was common amongst bicycle commuters or not, I regularly engaged in conversations in my head throughout my ride. People I saw, cars that passed me, shops, signs, or anything else that I passed would often inspire thoughts from the past. Usually on the ride home, incidents from the day at work tended to play in my mind more than the sights surrounding me. Sometimes I had imaginary arguments in my head with people from work where I was able to say exactly what I wanted. I debated points with so much greater clarity than I ever could face to face. After years of this daily commute, I imagined connecting all the different types of conversations into one complete narrative. The concept of a novel that takes place in the course of an hour, was intriguing to me. It sat in my head for a long time without cohesion, until finally I saw what was missing.

Turning my commute into a viable novel required something more than me, and from this, the character of Anthony was created. From physical features to hobbies and interests and from traumatic experiences to addictions and afflictions, Anthony’s life began to move further away from mine. The character, as he has become, is possibly very similar to who I may have been had I experienced the pain, heartache and turmoil that have followed him. I think it’s safe to say that I am a vastly better humoured and happier person than Anthony. Despite the origin of the character, I feel now there is little we share. Some of the experiences are directly from my life. Anthony’s heart surgery, for example, was the same operation I endured in 2020. It was pivotal in my decision to pursue the path of writing as a career, and as a result it was something I wanted to add. Approaching it, on the back of all else Anthony had been through meant his attitude towards it was incredibly different to mine. Much of the story is built around the principle that we are the products of our experiences. How two different people approach the same situation comes from the experiences they’ve lived on reaching that same point. Anthony arrived in hospital with nothing left to lose and no fear. I couldn’t have been more petrified!

Anthony narrates the entire story, and as we are seeing life entirely through his eyes, other characters are portrayed not as they are, but as he sees them. With the cynicism and anger he has, none of them can be seen as completely accurate pictures. Anthony is an imperfect narrator, so whether a character is as good or as evil as he portrays them is uncertain. Every character I write originates somewhere. A person I’ve known or a person I’ve seen tends to be a starting point. Like Anthony’s evolution from me into a stranger, these other characters may start as a vision in my head of a given person, but they morph into a fictional character as needed to fill the relevant role in the plot. In The Ride to Work, the key characters of Terry and Madeleine were originally based on specific people I had worked with. As the plot evolved, the original two inspirations were almost completely written out of the characters. The final characters, rather than specific people, present as every positive, and every negative piece of workplace leadership respectively.

There are important people in my life who are represented within characters. When I wrote Anthony’s family, I envisaged mine. I added a brother, which I always wished i had, though his role in Anthony’s life has me a little less disappointed that I never had this relationship. Characters were not developed for Anthony’s mother and sister, though reference is made to the mothers love of travel and the detailed letters that she sent back home. My mothers letters from overseas became the template I used to record my travels. Years later, that is what has inspired me in this direction.

My aim in The Ride to Work is to demonstrate the spiral that life can become. All of us are the product of the experiences we have had in life. One tragedy or traumatic experience can create a vulnerability within a person. When the unscrupulous seek to take advantage, they seek the vulnerable as the easiest targets. Frequently it means that being a victim is one of the great precipitators of later becoming a different kind of victim. I also wanted to explore the concept of good and bad within people. We instinctively tend to group people into one of these two categories, but there is good and bad within everyone. A villain can perform a heroic act.

The story is confrontational. At times, I had to put it aside as it dealt with topics that stirred emotions deep within me. Some of these came from experiences I’d had, others from experiences of those close to me. Even without an immediate connection, there are challenging topics addressed that would impact anyone. Addiction, abuse, death, heartbreak, suicidal ideation. For most people it won’t all be easy reading. I don’t want it to be. I want it to be rewarding, and I believe most people will find it as such.

As a writer, you don’t always know the destination when you start and you very rarely know the map of how you’ll reach that destination. My daily ride to work followed a standard daily route, but for a long time, I had no idea where The Ride to Work would take me next. Suddenly one day I saw the ending, and from there the directions flowed. I had envisaged The Ride to Work as a one-man stage play. The character of Anthony would sit on a grounded bike, pedalling and telling the story exactly as its written. It still may end up being reproduced this way, with just the one actor needed and a very simple set.

The Ride to Work was released in June 2022 and the paperback addition is available on this site or through various online retailers. There is also an e-book version available now on Amazon.