literascribe

In Memoriam

2012-01-21T19:08:00.000Z

So many years have passed now, but you are still loved, still remembered.

George Johnston Fergusson

Elizabeth Hay Findlay

21.1.72

The To-Be-Read List - Tyranny and Temptation

2012-01-07T16:20:00.000Z

During 2011, I read a heck of a lot and enjoyed some wonderful books, as I reported in my last post. However, I start 2012 with a familiar sense of guilt about my level of literary consumption. I keep a record, you see, every month, under two headings: Books Bought and Books Read. No prizes for guessing which list is longer! As we move into the new year I feel the anticipation of reading books which will be published during the course of it, but there's also the awareness that I need to catch up on my To Be Read list, a list of almost unassailable proportions, growing like the national debt. Last year I even moved my desk in the study so as to turn my back on the wall of bookshelves there, because every time I looked at it that guilt would wash over me, that hunger to grab and read the lovely stories I brought home from bookshops, stories I was desperate to read in the way you want to put on a new item of clothing as soon as you've bought it, stories which I'd been drawn to by enticing covers, intriguing blurbs, fascinating subjects, familiar voices. It's like the best friend you always mean to ring, the location you always mean to visit, the diary you'll faithfully keep, the diet you'll never deviate from - we all tread on that path paved with such good intentions.

The new books are unwrapped, stroked, turned in the hands, the first few paragraphs or pages read. Then something happens. Life happens. The dinner needs cooking, the clothes need ironing, the tax accounts need compiling. Earning a crust takes precedence. Vegging out in front of the TV after a hard day seems an easier way to deal with exhaustion. Children have exams. Bus-stops must be waited at, the telephone must be answered. Shopping must be bought, unpacked, consumed, renewed. Lists are made and checked off and yet like the overflowing pot in the fable, endlessly restore themselves. When you wake you wake with the vibrant anticipation of all you will achieve in the day ahead. The day rolls to its close and all that grew was The List. The next day follows and the next and the next ... Life happens and keeps happening. 'What are days for?' Philip Larkin asked. 'Days are where we live.'

So, in January, that ambivalent ambiguous month, that junction of looking back and looking forward, I hear myself making the same promises to the god within my head, the god of getting-things-done. I will eat less, do more, write more, read more. Before 2012's To-Be-Read list starts to grow like Topsy, here's a selection of last year's - if you like the sound of these books you can add them to your own TBR list (and I know you've got one!) - hah!

This is just a selection, mind ...

Non-fiction:

James Shapiro: Contested Will (people who were drawn to believe in that farrago of nonsense, the film Anonymous, need not apply) - about the debate about who wrote Shakespeare's plays arose, the various schools of thought on that vexed question.
Don Paterson: Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets
Matthew Hollis: Now All Roads Lead to France - about the poet Edward Thomas. This book has just won the Costa Biography Prize.
Andrew Turnbull (ed.): Dreams of Youth - the Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brian Cox: Wonders of the Universe
Claire Brock: The Comet Sweeper (about Caroline Herschel)
Siddartha Mukherjee: The Emperor of All Maladies
Marie de Hennezel: The Warmth of your Heart prevents your Body from Rusting - subtitled 'Ageing without Growing Old' - now there's a promise!
Candia McWilliam: What to Look for in Winter
Jeannette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (which also gets my vote as the best title of the year)
The last two are memoirs so I'll deliberately deny myself the pleasure of reading them as yet because I'm still working on my own.

Fiction:

Judith Allnatt: The Poet's Wife
Adam Foulds: The Quickening Maze (both of these deal with the life of the poet John Clare)

David Vann: Caribou Island
Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett
David Almond: The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean
Stef Penney: The Invisible Ones (I got distracted from this one when I was a third of the way through it last November so am now getting back into it)
Jane Harris: Gillespie and I (I loved her The Observations so expect this one to be excellent - I just wish they hadn't given the paperback a virulently pink cover!)
Kathryn Stockett: The Help (one of my students is writing about this for coursework)
Karen Maitland: The Gallows Curse (I met her at the Goldsboro books event in the autumn - she was absolutely lovely. I highly recommend her previous books, The Owl Killers and Company of Liars)

On Kindle, as I said in my previous post I'm looking forward to reading Linda Gillard's Emotional Geology and Untying the Knot, and also Lycopolis by Ali Luke. I've just finished Louise Voss's sparky To Be Someone, which rang the changes of tone between comedy and pathos very well. The coming week sees the book launch for Catch your Death which she co-wrote with Mark Edwards, landing a four book print deal with HarperCollins after very successfully self-publishing to Kindle (my interviews with them are here, here and here).

Finally, I'm delighted to announce that Lynn Shepherd will be guest-posting on Literascribe later this month: she'll be talking about her use of location in her forthcoming novel Tom-All-Alone's, inspired by Dickens' Bleak House.

Succumb to temptation - get reading!

Fictionfire in 2012:

Focus Workshops: Cracking Openings 2 (Jan 21st); A Sense of Place (Feb 4th); The Inner Lives of Characters (Feb 18th).

Fictionfire Day Courses at Trinity College: Write It! (May 19th); Edit It! (May 20th); Publish It! (May 26th); Market It! (May 27th)

Full details of these and of the mentoring, manuscript appraisal and editing services I offer are on the website: www.fictionfire.co.uk

Book and Writing Review of the Year

2011-12-29T17:09:00.000Z

Everybody's doing it, of course: listing their books of the year, assessing the progress they've made with their writing, summing up 2011 as good, bad or indifferent. Everybody's looking back and looking forward as we approach that ambivalent transition point between this year and the next. So here's my contribution, as I look back over my Literascribe and Fictionfire year.

Those of you who are regular readers will know how disillusioned I've been for quite some time with the A Level system here in England and how I've struggled with the tick-box examining system and the undermining of those aspects of literature teaching I always valued. (Don't worry, I'm not going to get onto my high horse about it just now ...). This is not to say there isn't still a great deal of pleasure and fulfilment to be had from sharing my love of good books with my students and helping them to understand the hows and whys of great writing. However, it's been all the more fulfilling for me this year to have continued to develop my Fictionfire activities. I've met some lovely people and have read some fascinating manuscripts: I've done more mentoring and appraisal work than ever and I've started up the Focus Workshops, which have gone really well. At its best, a workshop or class is like a wonderful get-together with friends, all sharing and exclaiming over literary discoveries. Plus Fictionfire is my baby - when I'm raging against the dictats of this or that exam board, it matters hugely to me that I've set up, designed and run my own business my own way - and to know that there are writers whom I've helped and encouraged. It has become another form of creativity for me. Thank you to all my clients - I look forward to more enthusiasm, fun and industry in the coming year!

On Literascribe, I've interviewed writers who are tackling varied ways of getting their books out to potential readerships. This has been an amazing and often confusing year in the world of publishing. I interviewed Bobbie Darbyshire (http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/06/hand-selling-phenomenon-interview-with.html), who has made a great success from hand-selling her books, which are published by Sandstone Press and Cinnamon Press. I interviewed Mark Edwards and Louise Voss (http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/05/kindle-publishing-interview-with-mark.html), who published to Kindle so successfully that they landed a deal with HarperCollins - Catch Your Death http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catch-Your-Death-Louise-Voss/dp/0007460708/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1325175801&sr=8-2is coming out on January 5th. John Harding guest-posted (http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/10/john-hardings-guest-post-apprentice-wh.html), having been published mainstream, about the challenges of ensuring 'discoverability' for his book, and Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn guest-posted back in February about publishing her novel, Pentecost, as an indie publisher: http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/02/indie-publishing-what-it-is-and-why.html. The second in her series, Prophecy, will be on Kindle any day now!

It's also been another year of buying too many books (!) and reading too few, so I want briefly to talk about my favourites of the year. I'm not picking a single Book of the Year because my reading is so eclectic it doesn't seem fair. So what have I enjoyed in 2011? In non-fiction, Jackie Kay's Red Dust Road stands out for its warmth and humour and James Attlee's Nocturne for its quirky poetic celebration of the moon. (See my blogpost here). Good reads have included historical novels (of course!) such as Arianna Franklin's The Assassin's Prayer - I'm so sad that Diana Norman (Arianna Franklin was a pseudonym) has now died and we will hear no more of her heroine, Adelia Aguilar - and C.J. Sansom's Heartstone, with its powerful depiction of the sinking of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose. I've loved re-reading Helen Dunmore's Zennor in Darkness and Ann Kelley's The Bower Bird, with their wonderful descriptions of the far west of Cornwall. In children's fiction I enjoyed Philip Webb's Six Days (my review here) and Martyn Bedford's Flip (my review here). Other damn good reads included Zoe Ferraris' fascinating and compelling City of Veils set in Saudi Arabia, Michelle Paver's ghost story in the Arctic, Dark Matter, Rachel Hore's A Place of Secrets, Emma Donoghue's unsettling Room, Mark Edwards' and Louise Voss's dual-narrator Killing Cupid, Linda Gillard's poignant family mystery House of Silence, and John Harding's quirky and chilling Florence and Giles (my review here: http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/10/florence-and-giles-by-john-harding.html). On Kindle I've caught up with books I read in childhood - all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian series, for instance, and Jeffery Farnol's Black Bartlemy's Treasure, which my mother loved. I've also had the pleasure of seeing a book I helped edit, supernatural fantasy Lycopolis, published by my friend Ali Luke to Kindle.

By the way, my favourite covers of the year were those of Florence and Giles, Nocturne and Dark Matter. Follow the links above to see what you think.

Finally, it's not just a case of 'What have I read?' - it's also 'What am I going to read?' In my next post, I'll tell you about my top To Be Read titles, all jostling for precedence! In the meantime, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a very Happy and Totally Fulfilling New Year!

Announcing new Fictionfire Focus Workshops

2011-12-14T10:07:00.002Z

I know we're all completely embroiled in preparations for Christmas right now, but the new year is approaching fast. A new year marks a time for new beginnings and new commitments to what we feel is important to us. If you're thinking of maintaining or renewing your commitment to the writing life, I'm delighted to announce my upcoming trio of Fictionfire Focus Workshops. I really enjoyed the autumn ones and have, I hope, come up with topics you'll be keen to explore.

Here are details of dates and topics - please cross over to the Focus Workshop page of my Fictionfire site for further descriptions of the workshops and booking information:

January 21st: Cracking Openings 2
February 4th: A Sense of Place
February 18th: The Inner Lives of Characters

I hope you can join us!

Teenage Identity Focus: Martyn Bedford's 'Flip'

2011-11-16T10:43:00.001Z

One of the pleasures of giving talks and workshops is the chance to meet other writers. I met Martyn Bedford back in October, when I gave a talk at the Calderdale Writers' Roadshow in Halifax. Martyn has published five adult novels and has now written a YA novel, Flip. After my talk, he very kindly allowed me to sit in on his fascinating workshop on writing for teenagers. (And by the way, some excellent pieces were written by students on that course - I was so impressed by how they were able to recapture the teenage mindset with incredible wit and sympathy).

I was curious about how writers make the transition from writing adult fiction to children's fiction and Martyn agreed to guest-post about this on Literascribe. Since then, I've read Flip and loved it: he succeeds so well in getting inside the head of his teenage hero, Alex, who, poor lad, has inadvertently got inside the body of another boy... The novel explores how Alex wakes up in another life, with another family, and with the kind of good looks and health he's always longed to possess - and how he copes with this abrupt and scary transition, how he learns what has really happened to the Alex he once was, how he sets about taking charge of his life - his real life. The story covers all the emotional angles and I felt the attitudes and dialogue rang very true. Even minor characters are depicted with realism and sensitivity. There's humour, pathos and a great deal of suspense - I wondered how on earth Martyn was going to resolve the central issue of the plot: he pulls it off magnificently.

It's wonderful to learn that Flip is now on the running for two major awards: it's just been shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book prize and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Respect! I wish Martyn every good luck with both of these. His work is yet another example of the very high quality of current children's fiction. Here's his guest post:

There's no such thing as an advice-free lunch (or how I came to write my first novel for teenagers)

I have a former editor to thank for my first novel for teenagers ... I wrote it because he advised me not to. Back in 2005, he took me out to lunch to celebrate the deal to publish The Island of Lost Souls, my fifth novel. We went to Pizza Express in Leeds. Towards the end of the meal he asked what I planned to write next. Up to then all my novels had been for adults, straddling the border between mainstream literary fiction and psychological thriller. But I'd an idea for a story more suited to a teenage and young-adult audience. When I mentioned this, the editor shook his head.
'You don't want to write one of those.'
'Why not?' I asked.
But, beyond a mumbled platitude about my strengths lying elsewhere, he didn't really give a reason. Thanks to Rowling, Pullman, Haddon, Sachar et al, the teen/YA market was buoyant back then (and remains so today), so it seemed unlikely that he was being dismissive of the genre. Perhaps he suspected me of jumping on the bandwagon, or that I wouldn't be able to turn my hand to that type of writing. Maybe he foresaw a 'rebranding' problem for his sales and marketing people. I don't know. Whatever his rationale, I came away from that lunch feeling miffed that he'd tried to discourage me from writing the book without even asking what it was about. Like any author, I also resented being told what to write; in this case, what not to write. I decided to go ahead with my teen novel and to hell with him, even if he had just paid for my pizza.
In the end, for reasons which are too convoluted to go into, it was 2008 before I started work on my teen book, called Flip. It tells the story of Alex, a 14-year-old who wakes up one morning to find that his soul (consciousness, spirit, psyche, or whatever you care to call it) has switched to another boy's body and he faces a life-and-death quest to return to his own skin or be trapped for ever in the wrong existence.
As soon as I had the idea for Flip, I realized it was a book for teenagers - not just due to the age of the protagonist but because of the story's themes. Issues of identity, self-awareness and self-image are at the heart of the novel and I drew on some of my own experiences of being Alex's age. That difficult transition from childhood to adolescence, where you have to reinvent a sense of who you are and how you relate to people, and where you worry so much about your appearance and what your peers think of you.
So, having decided to write teen/YA fiction, I read more than a hundred novels for this age range in preparation, immersing myself in the genre to get a feel for the tone of voice, style, characters, stories, settings, themes and subjects that are to be found in modern teenage fiction. I also read other novelists' tips on the Dos and Don'ts of writing for teens. Youngsters, it seems, are more inclined than adults to give up on a book, so I gave the storyline a strong forward momentum and incorporated twists and turns, end-of-chapter cliffhangers and the like. I placed my hero and the other teenage characters at the centre of the action, with adults (parents, teachers) at the margins. And I used very few expletives and avoided sex scenes altogether - not because today's teenagers don't swear or have sex, but because I copped out. Publishers of 12+ fiction are still uneasy about these issues and, as a newcomer, I wasn't ready to test the boundaries. Similarly, I chose a 3rd person narration rather than adopt the 1st person voice of a teenager, for fear of sounding like a middle-aged writer trying to be down with the kids. Of course there are plenty of very good 1st person teen novels but I wasn't brave enough to write on on my first foray. What I didn't do was dumb down the vocabulary, or the ideas which the novel explores. Young people are brighter than we give them credit for and I was determined not to patronise my readers.
Along the way, I received helpful feedback on various drafts of Flip from a handful of teenage readers - a niece, and a neighbour's son and daughter - and from my wife, who is a high-school librarian. but the funny thing was that, as I sat tapping away at my PC, I never really felt like I was writing 'for' a teenage audience. Writers write to please themselves, first of all. So you could say the only teenager I was writing for was the teenager I once was.
With the manuscript completed, I sent it to Jonny Geller, my agent at the Curtis Brown literary agency in London. I knew he didn't represent teen/YA fiction but I hoped he might pass the typescript to a colleague at the agency who specialized in that area. He did and, fortunately, she liked the book enough to take it on. That agent, Stephanie Thwaites, has been brilliant. Firstly, as critic - the novel is much better for the revisions I made in response to her feedback; secondly, as a wheeler-dealer. Flip went to auction on both sides of the Atlantic and was published in spring 2011 by Walker Books in the UK and by Random House in the U.S. and Canada. It has also been translated into German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Thai. At the time of writing, Flip is on the longlist or shorlist for a total of five prizes for YA fiction - including a longlist nomination for the prestigious Carnegie Medal - and is a Red House Children's Book Awards 'Pick of the Year' title in its age category.
Naturally, I'm delighted and thankful that my first teenage novel has gone down so well. But perhaps the greatest debt of gratitude is owed to that editor, in Pizza Express, whose advice was the best I've never taken.

Thanks so much for this, Martyn! I find this article both informative and inspirational, especially as I'm currently engaged in revising and adapting a children's book for a slightly higher age-group. The main lesson that emerges (apart from ignoring editors!) is that you need to be aware of market-considerations but also remain true to your own aims. Because, as Martyn says, he was 'writing for the teenager [he] once was', his story rang true.

Martyn's website is www.martynbedford.com and Flip is available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flip-Martyn-Bedford/dp/1406329894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321443513&sr=1-1

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

2011-11-11T11:23:00.001Z

Wilfred Owen

I'm writing this a few minutes after 11.11.11 - and like many others, feeling the need to acknowledge the significance of the day and the hour. I'm currently teaching Wilfred Owen's poetry and remember as a fifteen year old schoolgirl encountering war poetry for the first time. I reacted as we all do to the absurd hubristic nonsense of human aggression and its justifications. The poem that struck me then more than any other was Owen's 'Futility'. More than the visceral horrors of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' or the plaintive Keatsian melancholy of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Futility', in its simplicity, brought home that essential message of WWI. The waste. Owen said that his subject was war and the pity of war, that the poetry was in the pity: well, it's here, in a poem that questions the purpose and meaning of individuals coming into the world, being nurtured to maturity - only to be slaughtered. He even questions the cosmic purpose of the sun in warming a planet into organic life - if all that results is pointless destruction.

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France.
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Owen's poetry is famous for its superbly shocking images: the soldier floundering in the 'green sea' of gas, the sentry reeling from the blast, his eyes 'huge-bulged like squids'', the God's eye view of the battlefield where lines of men are like 'caterpillars' and he sees how they 'ramped' on one another. His sensory language is muscular and gripping: the gassed soldier is 'guttering, choking, drowning', the weapons of war are spiteful and gleeful - 'How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood:/Blue with all malice'. The sounds of blast and gunfire echo over the decades to us with their 'rapid rattle' and 'whizz-bangs' through the 'shrieking air'. In 'Exposure' he shares with us the bone-aching cold and long suspense, waiting for the signal for battle:

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.

He haunts us, as he was haunted, in the halls of hell in 'Strange Meeting', where he encounters the dead German he has killed and listens to the lesson we hear now, and every year, and yet never act upon:

For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

He also, like his mentor Sassoon, lets us know how angered and bitter he feels, how nothing back in Blighty can match the camaraderie of the Front, how no immature concepts of romantic love and fleeting beauty can compare with the fellowship he has found: in 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo' he lists the paradoxes of finding exultation in the berserkr mood of battle, the 'passion of oblation' on the faces of his fellow soldiers, how he:

heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.

It's ironic that when he died, one week before the Armistice, he was little known (ironic, but not unusual - so many times the long trajectory of fame only starts to climb after the artist's death) - and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Rupert Brooke would have been better known back then. Nowadays, it's Wilfred who is the poster boy for the Great War - it's his words that are most familiar to us. This should not devalue them. I've taught these poems so many times but still somehow there's the shock of the new.

Siegfried Sassoon

I want to include in this post, however, one of my other favourite WWI poems - Sassoon's 'The General'. It's a wonderfully spiky little verse, dealing with one of the themes of the literature of war - that soldiers are 'lions led by donkeys':

"Good morning, good morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

In our current conflicts, conflicts which we neither seem to understand nor see a way out of once embroiled, conflicts where all sorts of moral muddiness is stirred up in what seemed to be the clear pool of heroism, the poets of nearly a century ago still have much to say. And it's sad that they still have to say it.

Harry Patch

Here's a link to the post I wrote in 2008 about the wonderful Harry Patch, who was one of the last survivors of the Great War. Now Claude Choules, who had emigrated to Australia, is gone too - and there's no one left to bear witness with living breath to what was done and seen and lost. But we have archive film and audio recordings and the printed word.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Last day to book Focus Workshop 5th November!

2011-11-02T00:36:00.000Z

This is just a brief reminder - as I'm deep in the throes of National Novel Writing Month composition - that this Saturday's Focus Workshop will be on Sourcing and Growing Ideas. Booking closes today - 2nd November - so if you're interested, check out the details on the Focus Workshops page of my website, http://www.fictionfire.co.uk. On the 19th November, the subject will be Cracking Openings, and on the 3rd December, Dynamic Dialogue.

Now, off to write my NaNo quota - if you're not familiar with how NaNo works, here's the link to one of my posts about it last year: and I'll be letting you know later in the month how I'm getting on with this year's ~~torture travail~~ experience!

John Harding's Guest Post: 'The Apprentice', W.H. Auden and Me

2011-10-25T00:31:00.000Z

Last week I posted my review of John Harding's novel Florence and Giles - and with Hallowe'en fast approaching, nothing more suitable for reading at dark o' night!

Here, as promised, is John's guest-post for Literascribe, a cogent, thoughtful and spirited exploration of the strictures and challenges of author 'branding': enjoy!

The Apprentice, W.H. Auden and Me

At first glance there doesn't seem to be anything to link the poet W.H. Auden and the reality TV show The Apprentice but there is and it's me. Leaving aside Auden for the moment, let's talk about The Apprentice which, as anyone who's ever seen it will know, isn't anything to do with learning a trade or making something, but all about selling. And the key to success there, as Lord Sugar hammers home every series, is not the product itself, but its branding. Branding means creating an individual identity for a product that the consumer will instantly recognise, be attracted to, and buy. It's the thing that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd on the supermarket shelf.

These days of course books are sold in the same way as baked beans (although Waterstone's has just - somewhat belatedly - realised that selling three very different books by different authors isn't quite the same as selling three perfectly identical packs of washing powder). And in confirmation of this, read any of the growing number of books about how to market your novel and they all talk about the brand. As the author, the brand is you.

Play the branding name association game. Say Heinz and you think of baked beans; say P.D. James and it's crime; Stephen King and horror: Joanna Trollope and Aga saga; John Harding and ...? This is my problem. Even if you've heard of me, even if you've read all of my published books, you won't be able to fill in the blanks. I don't have a brand.

The reason is that I've written four very different books that are difficult to find a common slot for. I've had two publishers and both have been frustrated by this and I sympathise. It makes me difficult to market in an age when everything is pigeonholed, where there's so much out there that you get lost if you don't have a niche.

Increasingly publishers rely on the brand to sell the book. They're reluctant to spend money on advertising, with some justification. It's rarely cost effective. The only one of my books to have any advertising recorded my lowest sales. Marketing strategy seems to be left with two prongs. In my experience in-store promotion is the most vital. It's the main way the reading public is going to be made aware of your book. Publishers will always tell the author, 'We think this is a book we think will sell by word of mouth', but for the elusive word of mouth to happen some people have to see it and read it first, so they can talk about it and spread the word. If the book isn't prominently in the shops, this doesn't happen.

My current publisher didn't manage to get Florence and Giles into the shops in any great numbers. Smiths took 300 between their 600 shops, and it was only in 100 of the 300 or so Waterstone's stores, and then not very prominently. Even if this isn't the case and the book gets into shops, it's extremely difficult to establish a title in the public's mind, as publishers now believe books have such a short shelf life, typically three weeks to three months. After that all but the bestsellers disappear from view. By the time your first readers have actually got round to reading the book and telling their friends about it, it's no longer in the stores. Word of mouth is silenced before it begins.

One publisher I was speaking to recently questioned the wisdom of this, especially in the digital age, reckoning that these days new books have a much longer shelf life - he reckoned it at 18 months rather than three - even if they're not actually on bookstore shelves. And you can see the wisdom of this point of view. Some of the bestselling books on Amazon Kindle recently have been books that came out not last month or even last year but several years ago. There's a new equalising process happening on Amazon, where age matters much less than quality.

Talk to any author who's not a major seller these days and they will tell you the same. Publishers do virtually nothing in the way of promotion - the only thing I can think of mine doing with Florence and Giles was sending out copies wrapped in black paper with a wax seal (it's literary Gothic thriller) to a few celebrities and bookshops, with predictable results - and increasingly the task of selling the book is left to the author, who may be a good writer, but is not necessarily a good salesman.

If an author is clued up about Internet book sites - by which I guess I really mean Amazon - and has a Kindle (every author should these days) and is a consumer rather than just a salesman, he or she may know more about how things work than the publisher, who is often too busy to engage at this level. So it was that I suggested to my publisher than they lower the ebook price of Florence and Giles to 99p. On Amazon it's the publisher who fixes the selling price of ebooks. The point was that at nearly the same price as the paperback it was selling virtually nothing on Kindle. As a Kindle reader myself I understood that it goes against the grain for readers to pay the same price for a virtual book as for one that has paper, printing and shipping costs factored in. At 99p a throw the publisher makes very little and the author virtually nothing on each copy sold, but that's not what matters. Cheap ebooks attract casual browsers who will often take a punt on a 99p book that sounds good. If they like it they tell their friends - and that can be a lot of friends if they use social networks - and you start to get word of mouth. A 99p ebook isn't a profit maker, but it's a terrific marketing too. As word of mouth has started to spread about Florence and Giles, I've seen not only an increase in ebook sales, but in paperback sales too, as some of the people who've heard about it from their Kindle-reading friends have gone for the print copy. Fortunately I'm able to engage in a dialogue with my publisher, who readily accepted the suggestion, and it's working well.

At the same time, they had a digital idea of their own that I wasn't impressed by, which was to launch an ebook edition of Florence and Giles, combined with the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw which inspired it, priced at £2.99. I can see this might have seemed a great idea to anyone who doesn't spend time researching their book on Amazon, but I predicted it wouldn't succeed as a simple search reveals you can download Turn of the Screw for free on Kindle. they were charging an extra £2 for a book readers could buy for nothing. Predictably the rankings for this edition show it's sold virtually no copies. But the good thing is, other than that, my publisher is supportive of my online campaign, retweeting reviews, and responding to my suggestions about Amazon categories - it's better to put your book in a category where it can make the top 100 rather than one where it won't.

In the dozen years since I was first published, the Internet has opened up and it's much easier for writers to publicise their books via social media. In the last two or three months Florence and Giles has really started to build a buzz on Twitter after some great reader reaction and wonderfully positive reviews which have added to the good reviews it had in the national press.

For the author, engaging with social media is both a joy and a burden. A joy because I've met some terrific people on the Twittersphere, many of them other authors or aspiring writers, and have even gone on to turn a couple of those virtual friendships into actual meetings. It's also proved to be a great way to engage with readers who otherwise would never have the opportunity to have an exchange with a published author, except at the rare public appearance, and the feedback has been wonderfully supportive for someone like me, who, like many authors, finds self-doubt and insecurity a constant problem when writing a book. Every compliment on Twitter helps shore up self-belief for the book I'm currently working on.

I said online social media was both a joy and a burden. The burdensome part is that it's incredibly time-consuming. It can take up several hours a day, just responding to all my new friends, writing blogs like this one, doing podcast interviews and the like. And all of this time has to be factored in over and above my normal life, mornings spend writing a novel, afternoons reviewing and writing reviews, and of course, family life. Since I started promoting the book online a few months ago, I've hardly managed to get out to the cinema (a great passion) or to see old actual friends as opposed to tweeting to new virtual ones.

What I haven't managed to do is create that elusive brand although I have at least identified for myself what I would like that brand to be, which brings me back to Auden. Writing on the death of the Russian composer Stravinsky, Auden made the distinction between craft and Art: 'the draftsman starts work knowing exactly what the finished result will be; the artist doesn't know what he is making until it is made.' When you set out to make a table, you need to have a precise plan from the outset. Get your measurements wrong and the top won't be level and your freshly heated bowl of Heinz tomato soup will slide off the edge and hit the floor. When you release a sculpture from a block of stone, the excitement comes from not knowing quite what will emerge. It's the not knowing that's the whole point.

Auden goes on to say that an artist is always refining himself; once he has done something to his satisfaction, he forgets it and attempts next to do something new that he has never done before. This strikes at the heart of why I've never wanted to write the same book, or even the same type of book, twice, commercially sensible though that might be. Now I'm not making any claims for my books as works of art, nor am I presumptuous or pretentious enough to describe myself as an artist, far from it. But it's what I aspire to and for me that ambition is critical to writing a good book.

So there we have it, the pigeonhole I would like to create for myself, the brand I would like to establish: someone who will always do different from before, who will always attempt to do better next time, and, above all, will always try his level best to write you a good book. Is there a section for that in Waterstone's?

Thank you so much for this, John. Now some readers may have found some of the things John has to say as chillingly unsettling as his character Florence (author shelf-life, anyone?). However, I think most of us who are writing these days know that publishers have been known not to deliver quite as strongly as promised on the marketing front, that publishers often do want writers to keep churning out essentially the same or same type of story as first garnered them success, and that for any one unknown writer to make their voice heard is the biggest challenge of all. Last week, Mike French, editor of The View from Here magazine, memorably said this is 'like standing out in a storm trying to make yourself heard to someone standing ten miles away or asking someone to hit you in the face with a large stick all day' (He's drawing attention for his novel The Ascent of Isaac Steward, by the way.)

So it's all the more heartening when the efforts of writers and publishers pay off and the readers do hear the murmur, the whisper in the grass. A few months ago I interviewed Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, who published straight to Kindle and went on to win a publishing deal with HarperCollins. John Harding has shown the acumen to advise his publishers to take a hit on the profits on Florence and Giles in order to raise public awareness of his book - and by Jove it's working!

Looking forward to your next one, John, in the sureness that it will be joyfully unpredictable. Oh, and by the way, I'm one of those readers who came across Florence and Giles on Kindle and have since bought the print copy, to have and to hold.

The link to my review of Florence and Giles is here. John's website is here. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnRHarding.

Meanwhile, my new Fictionfire Focus Workshops are coming up in November and December - go to the Focus Workshops page on my website for details of dates and topics. Booking is also open for my spring day courses: Write It!, Edit It!, Publish It!, Market It! - details here.

Florence and Giles by John Harding: mastery of language and narrative voice

2011-10-18T00:19:00.000Z

I'm so delighted that the lovely John Harding is going to guest-post on Literascribe, but before he does, I thought I'd say something about his latest novel, Florence and Giles, which I read a few months ago and have been recommending to everybody ever since. John has written four novels, all very different from one another, which can be a problem, given publishers' preference for writers who plough one furrow and one alone. Florence and Giles is a Gothic story: The Times said of it 'imagine The Turn of the Screw reworked by Edgar Allan Poe.' Yes, it has elements of Henry James (but is, thank God, far more readable!) and elements of Poe - but its appeal is more subtle and original than that of pastiche Victorian creepy story.

John says that 'the first thing that came to me was Florence's voice' and for the reader, this is what captures and holds the attention. His central character is a little girl living in the standard-issue Gothic mansion, orphaned, forbidden to learn to read - though she circumvents this by sneaky visits to the house's library. She devours books and acquires a strange language all of her own, part-naive, part-scarily adult, which breaks grammatical rules all the time. Nouns become verbs, verbs become nouns - ordinary language is subverted and refreshed for the reader. You become alert to nuance and shades of significance because you are constantly being startled by these small linguistic ambushes.

At first I feared I'd find such verbal precocity an irritation - or even twee. But before long I was totally seduced and enchanted. Like her language, Florence inspires sympathy and wariness - her preternatural calculation of meaning and intention is unnerving, her vulnerability makes you want to protect her, her love for her younger brother, love which drives her to extreme actions, is utterly believable.

You find yourself beginning to think like Florence and to find her phraseology natural and right. John achieves the same sort of economy Shakespeare achieved when compressing whole clauses into single telling words: Shakespeare's Antony, facing defeat by Octavius Caesar, asks his servant whether he'd want to be 'window'd in great Rome', his lover Cleopatra fears that 'rhymers' will 'Ballad us out o' tune' and that she'll see 'some squeaking Cleopatra boy [her] greatness/I' the posture of a whore.' With similar economy, Florence refers to how her first governess 'tragicked' in a boating accident. She talks of a 'puzzlery of papers' and a 'twiddlery of thumbs', of how she and her brother, when happy, 'had halcyoned it for four whole months', how in the isolated house, she 'fairytaled in my tower, Rapunzelled above all my known world'.

The novel is peopled with strong characters, my favourite being Florence's gangly asthmatic friend Theo van Hoosier. The scariest is the second governess, Miss Taylor, who tries to take control of Florence's life and rob her of that which is most dear to her. The duel between the intense, resourceful young girl and the chilling determination of the older woman is absolutely riveting.

The other focus of interest in the novel is the question of Florence's reliability as a narrator. As with The Turn of the Screw, there is doubt for the reader about what is and what may be. We are shown and told a great deal but we have to make judgements and discriminations. We're desperate to know and wonder if we ever will know. Florence and Giles is rich in atmosphere and description, has twists and turns and genuinely scary moments. When you've read it, you'll be very careful about looking into mirrors ...

In my next post, John will talk about his experience of promoting Florence and Giles and the whole issue of author 'branding'. John's website is http://www.john-harding.co.uk
You can also follow him on Twitter @JohnRHarding
Florence and Giles is available on Amazon and has been a great success on Kindle.

Meanwhile, my new Fictionfire Focus Workshops are coming up in November and December - go to the Focus Workshops page on my website for details of dates and topics. Booking is also open for my spring day courses: Write It!, Edit It!, Publish It!, Market It! - details here.

Historical Novelists event at Goldsboro Books

2011-10-01T16:06:00.000Z

It was a week for getting out to listen to and meet other writers: on Tuesday I was at Kellogg College, here in Oxford, where students on the M.St. course in creative writing read their poems and excerpts from their fiction. They were incredibly young and incredibly confident in their delivery. Really impressive stuff. Dr Clare Morgan, who is in charge of the course, read from her novel A Book for All and None, which involves an academic quest for the truth about Virginia Woolf and Nietsche. The guest reader was Philip Pullman who, as ever, gave wonderful readings from The Amber Spyglass and from his new version of selected Grimm's fairytales. He set about enchanting us all with his verve, his sense of pace and pitch - and doing the voice of Iorek Byrnison in a startlingly loud growl that contrasted dramatically with his usual urbane huskiness!

Underside of St Martin's portico

On Thursday I set off for London, not the place I'd normally choose to head for on a day of extraordinary heat ... Goldsboro Books were holding a special event in and outside their shop in Cecil Court, near Leicester Square. I arrived mid-afternoon, so amused myself by visiting St Martin's in the Fields and the National Portrait Gallery.

Interior of St Martin's in the Fields

Chrysanthemum in the NPG cafe

In the NPG, it was great to rediscover my old favourites - although one of those, the portrait of John Donne, had been taken off the wall for conservation, dammit. Went round Glamour of the Gods, the gallery's exhibition of photographs from the golden age of Hollywood. Gorgeous, dahling! Loved the pictures of Gloria Swanson - wearing an extraordinary white peacock headdress - , Louise Brooks, Garbo and Gilbert, Clark Gable with a young Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor while filming Suddenly Last Summer. Harlow, Dietrich, Rita Hayworth (starting to sound like Madonna's lyrics for Vogue!), Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner ... Too, too delicious! Both disconcerted and reassured to see an example of the huge amount of retouching that went on, back in the days before the digital airbrushing of looks, to create that Hollywood gloss, that ethereal supramortal glamour. My favourite was the show's centrepiece photo of Rock Hudson in his heyday, looking haunted, vulnerable and utterly, gorgeously male.

Early evening, then, and on to Goldsboro Books, and its gathering of authors and readers devoted to writing about and reading about earlier times. It was an extraordinary event, bringing together writers who write about everything from the ancient Romans through to the middle of the 20th century, by way of Anglo-Saxon warriors, Crusader knights, Tudor detectives ... in fact, detectives of pretty much every era. Writers devoted to intrigue, crime, adventure, religion and romance. Writers bound to justify and explain their knowledge of background to fans eager to adore and equally eager, perhaps, to catch them out!

Copious quantities of wine were drunk and 'medieval pie' was served (like a blend of mince pies and bread and butter pudding!), books were bought and signed. Everyone was happy. Luminaries like Bernard Cornwell were there. I tried, and failed, to see C.J. Sansom (regular readers of this blog will know how keen I am on his books). Stella Duffy, Laura Wilson, Barbara Erskine, Michael Jenks, Elizabeth Chadwick, Robyn Young, Harry Sidebottom, Manda Scott ... that's just a selection.

Karen Maitland

Well, I wasn't going to come away without buying a book or two, now was I? I treated myself to Rory Clement's latest Tudor mystery, Prince, and to Karen Maitland's The Gallows Curse - and I had excellent chats with both of them. I've read Karen's two previous medieval novels, Company of Liars and The Owl Killers - and think they're superb. She knows her era in exquisitely horrible detail! She pulls no punches in the depiction of the dark and superstitious lives of her characters and her stories are rich in texture and voice. She's especially good at depicting the lives of women and the spiritual oppression of the time. Rory's books - Prince is the third in a series featuring John Shakespeare, brother of the more famous Bill - are going from strength to strength. They're dynamic, pacey adventures which make full use of his knowledge of Elizabethan intrigue and treachery, featuring famous characters like Drake, Essex and Cecil.

Doug Jackson and Robert Fabbri - through a lens darkly:
forgot to use flash because I'd had too much wine!

I was also delighted to make the acquaintance of a fellow-Scot, Douglas Jackson, who writes both thrillers and historicals (The Doomsday Testament, Caligula - part of his Roman trilogy) and of Robert Fabbri, who writes about the Emperor Vespasian, starting with Tribune of Rome.

So many books to read, so little time! Visit the Goldsboro Books website to find out more: the bookshop is an excellent source of signed first editions if you're a collector. I'm sure after the success of this event and of their previous Crime in the Court evening, there will be more opportunities to meet and greet the authors you love!

Finally, I'm delighted to announce that novelist John Harding will be guest-posting on Literascribe in the next few days, talking about his varied output as a writer and his latest (absolutely brilliant) novel, Florence and Giles.

Vibrant Voice: Review of Six Days by Philip Webb

2011-08-22T12:37:00.001Z

As a creative writing teacher I'm so often asked about the secrets of constructing the perfect plot: it's a core area of fiction writing and it's an aspect that new writers (and experienced ones!) find daunting. However, another crucial area when it comes to creating reader-involvement is the use of voice. If you get this right, the reader is fascinated and feels an emotional connection with the story. Voice can replace ten pages-worth of external description of a character: it takes you straight into the character's mind, attitudes and soul. It's about immediacy and intimacy, it's about contact.

It's interesting, then that my two most recent reads have worked for me by just that: a convincing, engaging, often quirky use of voice. (They're also good on plot too, by the way!) The first is Florence and Giles, by John Harding - and I'll be saying more about this book very soon as John will be guest-posting on Literascribe. The second is Six Days by Philip Webb, which I won in a prize draw run by those lovely people at Chicken House Publishing. So thanks, Chicken House, for a great reading experience!

Six Days is a YA fantasy set in a dystopian future: the heroine, Cass Westerby (described by one of the other characters as 'Mad, brave, headstrong'), lives in a post-apocalyptic London, a London being torn down and chewed up, bit by bit, by 'scavs' - scavengers and their crushing machines, frantically searching for a lost artefact with amazing powers (and you always need an artefact in a sci-fi story ...). I found the descriptions of a London slowly vanishing, building by building, landmark by landmark, into the jaws of industrial destruction, very moving, very graphic. Next time you're near the Houses of Parliament, you'll value them more, I assure you. As buildings, anyway.

The scavs are searching for the artefact while under the control of the Vlads, their Russian masters. Cass has become inured to their bleak existence and has a can-do pragmatic approach to life: no point repining, just get on with things. Her brother Wilbur, though, is different: he's a dreamer and he is searching for his own clues as to the artefact's location. Cass feels a mixture of tenderness and exasperation towards him, all through the novel, and that impatience with a sibling, mixed with total loyalty, is one of the convincing aspects of the characterisation.

Well, whaddya know, Wilbur's on the right track: they meet some strangers and join up with them on a quest which has all the usual selling-points, not least the ticking-clock aspect. Yes, it's called Six Days for a reason. The story broadens out historically and cosmically and those days start passing more and more quickly - can Cass and Wilbur save the world?

I thought the book was very well-constructed and its tone meshed poignancy and humour effectively. There were moments of real beauty and of grotesque horror. Philip Webb comes up with some original variations on familiar riffs from science fiction and the plot was fast-paced and gripping - I also felt he left the way clear for a sequel and I really think that would work.

But I started this review with the idea of voice - and it was that more than anything that brought Cass to life for me. She speaks directly to us in an impatient teenage semi-Cockneyese (ain't, gunk, gob, pigging, gaff, bonce, flippin', zit, gut rot), full of physical texture, slang and some swearing, her wise-cracking asides and exclamations used as a reinforcement of her own courage. The slang is very contemporary and there were occasions where, given the fluidity of street-language, I wondered if the notion that it would continue so far in the future was altogether convincing. Ultimately, though, I could hear her, I could believe in her: the carapace of cynical bravery, the exasperated love for her brother - they were all there from page 1. She blusters and threatens but by page 14 she's risking her life for Wilbur. When she rescues him and he bursts into tears, she says, 'And I don't know whether to shake him to death or hug him.' I think we all, parents or siblings, have been there! (Well, not clambering about on the face of Big Ben, but grabbing your kid as they dart out onto the road - that kind of thing.)

The book has wit, pace and pathos - I recommend it. It will make you chuckle and it will make you cheer: go Cass!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/1906427623/ref=dp_image_z_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

Cornwall Inspiration

2011-08-10T17:33:00.001Z

The Men an Tol

Cornwall. In the early days of our relationship, my husband would often rave about holidays he'd had there and tell me how much I'd like the place. Loyalty to my own Scottish cliff-and-sea-and-fishing-village heritage made me baulk at this: nothing could be more beautiful than the Moray Firth and the sunsets and the wild white horses in the bay. Nothing.

Pendeen coastline

Ten years ago, though, we had our first Cornish holiday, staying at Hayle on St Ives Bay. I was hooked, I was smitten, I was entranced - and have been ever since. And this is no disloyalty to Scotland, because on every subsequent visit to West Cornwall, I've been struck by the similarities in the landscapes and seascapes, the seafaring heritage and the mindsets of the people who in times gone by had to struggle for their living in a place of wild and often hostile beauty.

The Longships Lighthouse at sunset

Sunrise over Hayle

There are differences of course: the temperature, for a start! The old engine houses of tin mines dotting the landscape. The extraordinary proliferation of ancient monuments. The granite outcrops studding hillsides clad in gorse and bracken. But the beaches of St Ives and Carbis Bay, Porthkidney and Hayle Towans are like those of Cullen and Sandend and Lossiemouth: palest gold and silky. There is the same sense of being under a big sky and at the end of things - it's a pioneer feeling, somehow. It's more accentuated, though, when you stand at Cape Cornwall or Sennen and know that nothing will get in the way if you start sailing for America. That's an extraordinary sensation. There's the fluctuation between grey and gurly seas and Mediterranean waters in rich tints of jade and aquamarine. There's mizzle and mist that come down in an instant to soak and bewilder you. There's the disappearance of the everyday world - this is so precious - because once you cross into West Penwith or motor down the Lizard, you've put yourself out onto a limb of the world and you've entered a place which takes you out of your quotidian routine. It puts you in touch with the timeless.

I certainly don't want to come across as all New-Agey because I'm not that sort of person - but at the same time there's the temptation, to which so many incomers have succumbed, to chuck aside all normality and practicality, to up sticks and take refuge in this magical location. So far my rational self has prevailed: I have the sense to know that I couldn't make life work for me here, not really - and I would miss Oxford terribly.

The Merry Maidens in a mist

I'm posting a very tiny selection of the many photos I took, some of which have great significance for my current writing. I also include the Merry Maidens circle looking very spooky in the mist and an offering of a potato and some corn in a hollow at the centre of that circle, deposited by those who are indeed New Agey. In St Ives I very much enjoyed meeting up with writers Marion Whybrow and Sarah Duncan. At the Penzance literary festival we attended an evening at the Admiral Benbow in Penzance to enjoy Cornish tales, readings from an old miner's diary and the marvellous singing of traditional songs by Boilerhouse, a quartet of male singers.
We had coffee in the lovely airy white cafe of the Tate Gallery in St Ives and we had pub lunches at the Tinners' Arms in Zennor (where D.H. Lawrence once drank) and at the Old Inn in Mullion. We walked the cliff paths and we breathed in the air as if to aerate polluted alveoli and cleanse them for the city winter.

We revisited old haunts and explored some new ones - and all the time inspiration and ideas rose like a silent stream within me. Cornwall does that to me, every time.

St Ives and Godrevy from the Tate Gallery

If you've emailed me, try again!

2011-08-08T15:51:00.000Z

This is just an interim blogpost, now that I'm back from Cornwall - I'll be posting in full about our holiday there very soon. However, I just wanted to say that if in the past couple of weeks you tried to email me, either directly or at fictionfire (info@fictionfire.co.uk), some of my emails have been irretrievably lost while I was away, so would you please resend your message?

Thanks! And here's a lovely Cornish photo to keep you going!

Fictionfire announcement

2011-07-20T22:36:00.000Z

Last week I taught, for the tenth time, a summer school in novel writing for Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education. As usual, my students came from a variety of backgrounds and locations, from an 18 year old Australian on a gap year to a Vietnam veteran from Las Vegas. The mix this year was particularly good and I very much enjoyed their amazing company and their fascinating stories!

This ends what is always a very busy section of my year, pretty much from Easter onwards, a period filled with A level exam preparations, fictionfire courses, Winchester and OUSSA (the summer school). Now it's time to step back and take stock. My next creative writing gig will be in Halifax, giving a talk during the Calderdale Writers' Roadshow. Fictionfire courses will resume - and I'll post more details of this in late August. I was going to announce on my website that I'm not accepting editing/critiquing/mentoring commissions from now until 15th August - but, with the usual incredible sense of timing technology exhibits, the website is down and the host is experiencing 'technical difficulties' - so I'm announcing it here instead. I'll also be out of email contact, though you can still call me on 07827 455723 if you have any fictionfire enquiries. If you're off on holiday, I wish you a wonderful, relaxing time, time to take stock as well, time to recharge your batteries, time to observe and absorb the material that will go towards making new stories. Have a wonderful break - you deserve it! We all deserve it!

Winchester Conference Write-Up: Barry Cunningham, Barbara Large et al

2011-07-11T17:36:00.001Z

Well, I'm a bit overdue on my annual review of the Writers' Conference at Winchester, because I'm currently engaged in teaching a summer school for Oxford Uni's Dept for Continuing Education. Here we are, though!

As ever, it was a wild and whirling weekend, fast-paced and exhausting (the vertical hill-location doesn't help). I was delighted to meet up with old friends, especially Sally Spedding, Teri Terry, who was basking in the glory of a book deal with Orchard, and Ali Luke, who's already blogged about my course on character at her site aliventures. Thanks for the kind words, Ali!

I taught that mini-course on the Friday, to an absolutely delightful group of people. We had such fun that it didn't seem like work at all! Apart from the new faces, Ali was there, and so were Paul Budd and Mary Durndell, who've been attending my courses for several years. We had a great time talking about our favourite literary characters and examining all the ways you can bring a character to life, from names to clothes, from habits to catchphrases, from coming at character from the outside to focussing on their internal lives.

On Saturday, this year's Plenary Speaker was publisher Barry Cunningham - a great coincidence given I'd met him in London only the week before at the Times/Chicken House Masterclass (see my previous post). It was also appropriate that he should be speaking because the final Harry Potter film has just come out, with the usual three-ringed circus of publicity going on - and Barry was the publisher at Bloomsbury who first signed her, having been sent Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by her agent Christopher Little. He talked about how J.K. Rowling had been turned down by the world and his wife, and said that 'rejection is part of the process of publishing'. Oh yes. Sadly yes ... (By the way, because I was published by Bloomsbury, I once stood right next to J.K.Rowling at a publisher's party. There you go. My claim to fame. Probably the closest I'll ever come to the megabucks!)

Barry was interested in her but worried about the title including the great big daunting word 'Philosopher'. He invited her to discuss things and although she was extremely nervous, what comes across from Barry's description is her strength: she outlined the plot of the whole 7 book series, and she wanted her hero to grow up during the course of the story, not be locked as most children's series' characters are, into a timeless statis at a certain age. She also refused to change the title. Yay!

What did he do? He told her to get a day job. She wasn't having any. He signed her. The rest, dear readers, is history.

What did he see in her, apart from that single-mindedness and that vision? First of all, a really authentic voice. Then, a story that conveyed the values of friendship and courage. Finally, humour.

He also talked more generally about publishing, about the exciting times ahead: that authors can have a dynamic relationship with their readers through websites and apps, through insights into the process of composition, the alternative endings a book can have. And he feels strongly that kids look to books for their 'anonymous friend' - the friend they can confide in, the friend who shows, by the story they've written, that they still know how it is to be a child, to feel rage and frustration, loneliness, self-questioning, the desire for adventure, the desire to be tested and not found wanting. He said how important it is for children to meet authors and how they rely on 'the still small voice that comes into your head, the author's voice'.

He talked also, very entertainingly, about his early career, where he was in marketing and had to dress up as a Puffin! His first boss, Kay Webb, editor at Puffin, said to him that in a children's book, 'You can get away with one big lie but after that everything has to be true.' I loved that quote: so true that the fictional world you create, whether it's beyond the stars, back in the past or down at the bottom of your garden, must have its own internal consistency, so that your reader, the child you are befriending, can crawl into that world as they would into a den, and feel that it's a special place and that it's their place.

After the Barry Cunningham talk, I had various one-to-one appointments with aspiring writers - and two of them had produced work which I was really impressed by. It won't take much to make them publishable. In the afternoon, I gave my talk, 'Place is Paramount', where I examined the importance of setting in fiction: all the uses you can make of it, all the methods by which you can make it live for the reader. The title of the talk was a phrase Annie Proulx, one of my favourite writers, used in an interview I once saw.

Had a little lie-down after that! On the Saturday evening, it was time for food, drink, speeches and generally making merry. Jane Wenham-Jones bravely battled with a recalcitrant microphone to entertain us with her after-dinner speech and the toastmaster gave us collective heart failure with his over-enthusiastic banging of the gavel. Finally, many thanks were given to Barbara Large, who founded this conference decades ago (this was its 31st year!) and who is unfailingly idealistic in a cynical world and indefatigable when an event of this demands organisational talents of a high order. I've attended the conference both as a delegate and a teacher for so many years now and she is always warm and welcoming: congratulations, Barbara, on another year, and may there be many many more!

Times/Chicken House Masterclass in Children's Publishing

2011-06-27T13:26:00.001Z

On Saturday I nipped up to London to attend a masterclass held by Chicken House Publishing at Waterstone's on Piccadilly: an event I'd heard of because I follow the head of Chicken House, Barry Cunningham, on Twitter. There were fifty places available at the masterclass, and unsurprisingly, the vast majority there present - whether delegates or representatives of the publishing world, were female.

The event began with a panel discussion: the members of the panel were Barry Cunningham, Neil Blair (a partner in the Christopher Little literary agency which represents J.K. Rowling), Amanda Craig (The Times' children's literary critic and novelist in her own right), Sarah Clarke (children's fiction buyer for Waterstone's), Sophia Bennett (past winner of The Times/Chicken House Fiction Competition with her novel Threads) and Michelle Paver, author of the children's series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, set in the Stone Age.

Quite a line-up, you'll agree. Why did I choose to go to this event? Well, I wanted (after being out of the loop for a little while) to update my awareness of current children's publishing. I was interested in the balance of publishing professionals and writers. I wanted to meet Michelle Paver - I have all her Chronicles books and think they're wonderful - as is her recent adult novel, Dark Matter. Nobody does descriptions of nature like she does. She's steeped in arcane knowledge and knows how to tell a pacey, gripping yarn. I hadn't read Sophia Bennett - because I have two sons who aren't much interested in novels about the fashion industry: but she was sharp and witty and, having written 17 drafts of Threads, had clearly paid her dues and deserved her success.

What struck me most, as I look back on the class, was the tone of it: so often when you attend publishing-related events, the atmosphere is one of gloom and doom. God knows, the industry is in a phase of intense self-questioning about the direction it takes in these days of recession, poor literacy levels, e-publishing and the like. Chicken House, which calls itself a 'plucky publisher of children's books', is cheerily crowing from the heights. There was a genuine sense of enthusiasm and positivity, a can-do attitude, an 'isn't this exciting' message - and I found that so refreshing. All too often you get the feeling that publishers really don't like writers (especially writers who may have their own opinions about how things should be done!) - but Barry and his team actively welcome interaction and debate with writers. They're actively looking for fresh new voices and seem keen on building a good editorial relationship with those writers they take on. If you're interested in seeing Barry's five top tips, go to his video on YouTube.

Anyway, if you're setting out to be a published children's author, what salient points were being made on Saturday? Neil Blair stressed that from the agent's perspective, it's a good idea to have international appeal and also for your work to have the potential for digital enhancement (graphics, animation, apps). J.K. Rowling's announcement of the 'Pottermore' site is a case in point: it will allow fans to interact with the stories and characters and it will be a platform through which she can sell e-books. There's been a big fuss in the press about how she has turned to 'self-publishing' but I'm sorry: I do see a huge gap between what I define as self-publishing and what she, a 'brand' author with massive backing and audience awareness, might call self-publishing! When it was pointed out that there's nothing more English, less international, than Harry Potter, Barry came up with a great phrase which suits HP and other standard British texts which sell worldwide: 'universally English'!

Barry is less interested in the internationality (though Chicken House has very strong links with Germany) and talked with huge enthusiasm about the importance of voice, of being able to take yourself back into the thoughts and feelings of the age-group you're writing for, of the 'cracking big idea' you feel passionate about. He quoted Roald Dahl as having stressed the importance of employing 'the valour in children'.

Michelle Paver, who took sixteen years to be published (and I don't know whether to be heartened or discouraged by that!) said 'If you over-analyse the market you kill the story stone-dead' and that what 'matters is to write what you want to write'. Indeed, but this really is a case of steering between Scylla (cynical writing to an imagined market) and Charybdis (writing self-indulgently and irrelevantly). The balance between being in tune with the industry and fulfilling your own personal objective of writing your story is always so hard to achieve. I myself feel that in recent years, because I've been professionally involved in teaching writing and in editing, I've gone over to the dark side rather too much! I know too much and it's inhibiting. I need to get back to my first fine careless rapture ...

It's interesting that Michelle does not use the internet - gasps of disbelief from the audience. How is that possible, girlfriend! The irony is that I wouldn't have been sitting in that room listening to her, had it not been for Twitter.

Michelle's novels are set thousands of years ago, in the Stone Age. Previously, she'd written a book set in Viking times, only to be told the foreign setting and period detail would alienate readers. Doesn't that just make your heart sink? This is what they mean when they say 'write the story you want to write': who knew the world would love a boy and his broomstick at boarding school? Who knew the world would love a boy and his friend Wolf roaming the forests and glaciers of six thousand years ago? As Michelle says, 'Is there no market - or is there a gap in the market?'

Amanda Craig, after movingly describing what books meant to her as an asthmatic child, echoed the idea that you do need to know what else is out there when you submit your book and said that she thinks there is a current gap in the market for standalone books aimed at the 6-9 age group, because this is the time when boys often stop reading. Barry and Neil were interested in series books, but Sarah Clarke preferred standalone: after all, a series is a big commitment for a bookshop when ordering.

The panel covered the usual advice about submitting manuscripts: do your research, present your work well, show awareness of others in your field, write an excellent cover letter. Reassuringly, Barry and Neil both stressed how they like to work with a writer, ensuring that the work becomes as good as it possibly can be. You need to be open to this: you'll need to redraft your work more times than you thought humanly possible.

At the end of the panel discussion, we paused for tea, coffee, chat and networking, and then delegates were divided into groups to pitch and ask questions of individual editors. I was with Elinor Bagenal, Rights Manager, who was a lovely lady, kind, responsive and informative. Two or three writers in my group pitched ideas (and one of those stories I think touched us all: I hope to see it published sometime soon!), others were on Creative Writing MAs and were on the point of completing or were struggling with maintaining output once the formal structure of a writing course (and the validation it provides) were over. During all this various members of the panel dropped by the groups to chat: I got the chance to embarrass Michelle with my enthusiasm for Torak and Wolf! I got into debate with Barry about self-publishing, which unsurprisingly, he does not approve of, taking the line that publishers and agents often do: that without the quality filter they provide, the volume of self-pubbed material out there becomes a deafening 'white noise'. I don't disagree (there is indeed a lot of dross out there, a lot of unedited, undisciplined self-indulgence) - but at the same time (as regular readers of this blog will know), given the enormous delays in the publishing process and the pull-up-the-drawbridge attitude of many agents/publishers, I do think that writers have the right to bring the work to the public in any way that works well for them. But please, please, please, if you're considering self-publishing, get yourself properly edited!

What about me? What did I get from the day? Well, I started by rereading my own novel the day before, having not looked at it for some time. I've been through the mill with this one and have spent some time in a dark cave with my hood pulled up over my head. However, this book, this idea, this series: it's The Terrier. It sank its little white teeth into the hem of my jeans some years ago and every so often it gives a little snarl and a shake and worries at me some more. The blighter just won't let go. When I re-read it, a great deal of it still made me proud, excited; some of it called out for restructuring, re-pacing. A work, you see, is never ever done. You just choose to leave it. I left it for three years, but now I'm going back. I'm going to redraft it during August and I'm probably going to submit it for the Times/Chicken House fiction competition. We'll see. If that takes me nowhere, well, it's not the end. You don't groom the Terrier and then not give him his chance to be Best in Show.

I end with two quotes from the panel:
Barry: 'Publishing is a cross between gambling and librarianship.'
Amanda: 'You must above all have faith.'

Thanks to the panel and to Chicken House - I think all those who attended enjoyed the day enormously and we hope you'll run more events like these!

Last minute chance to book Winchester Writers' Conference

2011-06-27T11:08:00.000Z

Just a quick mention before I write my main blog-post of the day: even though booking officially closed last week, I understand the Writers' Conference in Winchester can still take some last-minute phone bookings: call 01962 826367. Check out what's on offer at the conference website.

Writers' Conference Winchester - Last Day to Book!

2011-06-21T08:55:00.000Z

If you were thinking of attending next week's Writers' Conference in Winchester, today is essentially the last day to make your booking, as tomorrow (22nd June) is the latest date for accepting applications.

The conference offers all sorts of opportunities - you can attend for the full week, the weekend or the day. Workshops, mini-courses and talks galore are available, along with the chance to book one-to-one appointments with writers, agents and editors.

I'll be teaching my course on Character Building next Friday (1st July) and will be giving a talk on the importance of location in your writing on Saturday 2nd July. I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and new faces!

Let's hope the weather perks up! Last year was glorious. For my previous posts on the Conference go to 2010, 2009 and 2008, to get a sense of what goes on. Also, get over to the Conference website and enjoy a good browse.

Hand-selling Phenomenon: Interview with Bobbie Darbyshire Part Two

2011-06-12T17:33:00.000Z

It's interesting to return to my interview with Bobbie Darbyshire after posting a couple of days ago about the wonderful success Louise Voss and Mark Edwards have had by publishing on Kindle. This is because their experiences prove there are many avenues open for writers to reach their public which weren't available even a few years ago. Bobbie has chosen to work with smaller, independent publishers - and many of us do now, because there is a sense that their doors are still open while larger, conglomerate firms may well be more risk-averse and inaccessible than ever. She has also decided to create a direct bridge between herself and her readership - just as Mark and Louise have by means of publishing on the Amazon Kindle. In both cases, social networking has been incredibly helpful as a means of getting themselves known, making connections, spreading the ripples outwards and outwards. All of this should give us hope! As I've said before, working like this entails huge amounts of energy and commitment, so should not be undertaken lightly - but what appeals so much to struggling writers is the sense that we can have access, connectivity, control, interaction, autonomy - and an overall acceleration of the usual publication process, which is so often a soul-destroying plod into oblivion.

Bobbie's USP has been hand-selling: getting out there to talk to the public, making the sale of each book a personal interaction with an individual. Here's the second part of the interview:

What sort of advice would you give to someone who's thinking of hand-selling?

Two dos and two don'ts. Do work hard on a short, enticing pitch that encapsulates your book. I promise people I won't take a minute, and I don't. If they can't spare a minute, but look as if they would like to, I give them a flyer with the same pithy words on it. My pitch is 47 words for Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones, 33 words for Truth Games [see the end of this post for those pitches!]

Bobbie Darbyshire

Do smile, whatever happens. It's a bit like speed dating: not everyone you meet is going to love you, and some will be abrupt or hostile. Smile, say 'no problem', get out of their way. The next person you approach will be delightful; you'll soon forget the rude one.

Don't sit by your books and expect people to approach you. A lot of them are shy or will make negative assumptions about Ms Never-heard-of-her sitting there looking bored or desperate. Approach them politely, seek leave to tell them briefly about your book, be happy to take no for an answer. When they say yes (most do), deliver your pitch and point to the books. Say you'll be delighted to sign. Then, unless they start chatting, say, 'Thank you for listening,' and leave them alone. Lack of pressure impresses.

Don't expect a queue to form. It is slow, steady work. Sometimes footfall is low, no one browses fiction for half an hour at a stretch, or there's a long succession of people saying, 'I'm sorry, but I only read crime/vampires/biography/history' (delete as applicable). Hang on in there. An hour may go by and you won't get a nibble, but don't despair, soldier on. Three buses will come along at once and you don't want to miss them.

I assume that your publishers are delighted that you've been so proactive? What sort of support have they given you?

They are indeed delighted, which is support in itself. They lack resources to contribute practical help, and I don't expect it. Sandstone Press secured a 3 for 2 deal with Scottish branches of Waterstone's when Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones first came out. That galvanised me to start ringing branches around London, and helped my telephone pitch.

How have bookshops reacted to you? Any horror stories or particularly successful events?

No real Waterstone's horror stories apart from the occasional agonisingly low footfall day, but I do have one from the indie sector. I was booked to talk at a small lit fest last May, and the local independent bookshop volunteered to supply books. The event wasn't well advertised, and oh dear, only three people came and only one bought a book. I felt dreadful as the poor lady lugged the boxes back to the boot of her car. Solution: I offered to spend a Saturday with her. Her lovely shop was tiny, but I managed to sell nearly all the stock for her, hurrah. The moral is, it's often safer to take your own stock to speaking events.

A particularly successful event? Well, I still smile to remember the Saturday before last Christmas in my favourite Waterstone's branch, Windsor. The snow had started to come down thick and fast, and the wonderful manager, Fraser, said, 'I've rung the station. The trains are still running. But I think you should go now, in case they stop.'
I couldn't bear it. The shop was so festive, crowded with happy people with pink faces and snow on their hats, and my books were flying off the table.
'I expect they have hotels in Windsor?' I said.
'Yes,' Fraser laughed.
'And I did bring a spare pair of knickers, in case.'
So I stayed, sold sixty-three copies, Fraser gave me a big hug, and, what do you know, while many lines closed and the south east was in chaos, trains from Windsor to Clapham Junction kept running, and one was waiting to speed me home, no delay, through the stunning winter landscape.

How do you go about approaching bookshops and venues?

With Waterstone's branches, I ring and ask to speak to the events manager if they have one. I have a short upbeat pitch worked out in advance. Most of my signings now are return visits that I can arrange at the previous signing or by email. I got some reading group invitations by doing an email shot to libraries across London. More often now, the invitation comes from a Waterstone's customer. Part of my pitch is, 'And I visit book groups too.' I give away bookmarks with my email address.

One thing leads to another. I was invited to Nottingham University Creative Writing Society after selling my books to the mother of one of the students. And I have just been invited to speak to an audience of a hundred (a pensioners' forum) because one of them met me at a library reading group.
I approach almost all UK literature festivals each year by email. I've had no takers yet beyond small festivals in suburban London, but what's to lose, that may change. If anyone fancies the Oxfringe, I'm in a show 15,16 and 17 June called 'Sex, War and Madness' with two other Cinnamon authors.

What have you found most rewarding about this process?

At risk of being sentimental, I think the best answer is to quote you an exchange I had with the organiser of a writer's group I recently gave a talk to.
She: I'm pleased you sold out of books! The students were really struck by your honesty and the way you approach all aspects of your work, from the discipline of writing every day to 'accosting strangers' in bookshops. In the pub, one of the students said, 'She's not afraid of anything, is she?' Have a productive day!
Me: Wow, thanks! For too much of my life I was self-conscious and shy, and as one of your students said, this new career has trained up a different side of me that I didn't know was there. If only for that reason (though there are countless others) the writer's journey has been the best one I ever set out on.

And what have you found most challenging?

It's been hard to write a new novel with all this going on. For a while, I gave myself time off from it; I had invested so much in Truth Games and Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones, and felt I owed it to myself and those books to put all my energy into marketing them. With more systems in place now for marketing, it takes less time than it did, but some weeks it's still a struggle to find time to write. Also, being a publicity secretary is seductively easier than tackling the next blank page ... I can get sidetracked ...
But I'm nearly there. Four years after starting, I should have a complete draft of the new book by the end of this month, hurrah. It will then need reworking and polishing, but I'm looking forward to that.

Do you see yourself on the hand-selling circuit next time round?

Yes, absolutely. I enjoy it enormously. Sometimes when I pitch to a stranger, they stare with round eyes and say, 'I've never met a real, live author before,' and for a moment I feel like a real, live author!

Thanks so much to Bobbie for these insights - I wish her continued success with her sales tactics and with the new novel! I think we can learn a lot from her experiences. One main lesson is this: the old adage about nothing ventured holds true. Bobbie has had the courage, in spite of shyness, to make her approaches to venue-managers and to customers. The other, perhaps more salutary, lesson is that she finds it hard to balance this outgoing, commercial activity with finding time to write her new work. Bear this in mind if you are considering self-publishing or marketing your own work. In an ideal world, we would turn to publishers to take this load from our shoulders, and certainly there are excellent marketing campaigns run by traditional publishers (though often for writers who are already mega-successful and established in the public eye). Many writers do not feel suited to public speaking or any form of huckstering: they just want to be left alone to write. Think carefully about how keen you are on taking on these challenges. If the very thought of converting your text to Kindle or hand-selling your work to a passing customer in a book-shop fills you with horror, you have a choice: stick to the tried-and-trusted routes to publication and sales, or think of Bobbie, Mark and Louise - they did it for themselves. Maybe you can too.

Bobbie's books are available on Amazon: Truth Games and Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones. And here, as promised, are Bobbie's one-minute pitches for them:
Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones: A comedy of errors. Three troubled people dash off to the Scottish Highlands to find their destinies mysteriously entwined around a reading group in the Inverness public library. Twists and surprises, very funny with also some dark, serious threads, it keeps you guessing all the way through.
Truth Games: We're in 1970s London, the blazing hot summers of '75 and '76, and a group of friends are getting way out of their depth in infidelity. Thought-provoking, amusing and with guaranteed naughty bits.

You can find Bobbie on Facebook and you can follow her on Twitter - @bobbiedar.

Bobbie will be appearing at the Oxfringe festival in Oxford, with two other Cinnamon Press authors, on 15th, 16th and 17th June - their show is called 'Sex, War and Madness', so promises to be lively!

On Saturday 2nd July she'll be giving a talk at the Writers' Conference at the University of Winchester, called 'The Small Publisher Route to Seeing your Novel in Print'. Oh, and I'll be there too: my mini-course on Character Building is on Friday 1st July and my Saturday talk 'Place is Paramount' is about how crucial setting is to the effect of your story. Visit the Conference website for further details - we hope to see you there!

Kindle Publishing Success: Mark Edwards and Louise Voss Follow-up

2011-06-09T19:07:00.000Z

I'm postponing Part 2 of my interview with Bobbie Darbyshire for a day or two (sorry Bobbie!) because I just had to write a follow-up to the interview I ran in two parts back in May with writers Louise Voss and Mark Edwards. (Check out Part One and Part Two). At the time they had published their dual-narrator stalker novel Killing Cupid on Amazon. They were enthusiastic, fired up, hoping for success - and aiming to follow up Killing Cupid with another thriller, Catch your Death, a pacey conspiracy thriller 'involving deadly viruses, mad scientists and robotic killers' - great stuff!

When I interviewed them, Mark and Louise had been working incredibly hard to promote Killing Cupid: and this is what it's all about when you're self-publishing. You have to let the world know, somehow, that your work is out there. That's the challenge - and they were rising to it magnificently. On 5 May, sales of Killing Cupid stood at 800 copies and they were averaging 40 sales a day. Mark said he was 'desperate to hit the top 100!'

Well, what say you to number 1 in that top 100? Yes, that's what's happened: Mark and Louise released Catch your Death and it's gone to number 1 with a bullet (or a viral bug ...). I have to say I had doubts about the wisdom of releasing their second book so soon, but it's turned out to be an astute thing to do. They've capitalised on the success of Killing Cupid, and are clearly building awareness of their 'brand'. I'm absolutely delighted for them. They are proof that this Kindle publishing approach works: I do hope they'll also bring out print copies, keeping the great covers that were designed for the e-books. And I hope that the film version of Killing Cupid comes out: the story is absolutely perfect for dramatization.

I've just checked Amazon: Catch your Death is at number 1 on the main list and on the Crime, Thrillers and Mystery list. Killing Cupid is at number 4 on the main list and number 3 on the Crime, Thrillers and Mystery list. How brilliant is that? Mark wrote for The Bookseller's futurebook blog on Tuesday, describing how Catch your Death 'went whoosh'. As of yesterday they'd sold 10,000 books and 8000 of them had been in the past week!

Respect, Mark and Louise. I couldn't be more pleased for you. All credit to you and all good wishes with your future publications! Thanks for showing us dreams really can come true and for proving what a transformative gizmo the Kindle can be.

Catch your Death on Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0050X8HGG
Killing Cupid on Amazon: http://amzn.to/fnxVQY
Mark's blog: http://www.indieiq.com

Bobbie's Whirl: Interview with hand-selling phenomenon Bobbie Darbyshire

2011-06-04T16:26:00.001Z

I met writer and human dynamo Bobbie Darbyshire at the Writers' Conference at Winchester last June: she had taken a stand at the book fair there and with the help of a staunch friend she was hand-selling her two novels, Truth Games and Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones, with a compelling mixture of friendly charm and commercial relentlessness! I came away, feeling slightly shell-shocked to be honest, having bought a copy of Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones, which is set in northern Scotland - the Scottish connection had given Bobbie the right angle to close the sale with me. Told in various voices, the novel is a lively romp, full of romantic misunderstandings, farcical twists and gentle satire of literary ambitions.
Since our meeting, I've noticed how Bobbie has waged a tireless campaign to get her books out there, into the hands of customers. Her approach is intensely personal. She appears at branches of Waterstones pretty much every weekend and has built up an enviable total of sales simply by being committed, positive and cheerfully determined. When you publish, you can sit back and expect your publisher to do everything for you (with a strong chance that they simply won't) or you can actively contribute to your own success. Bobbie is proof of how effective the personal touch can be in this book-selling business.
Having recently interviewed Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn and Mark Edwards and Louise Voss about independent and Kindle publishing, I thought you might be interested to hear how Bobbie achieved publication and how she got into hand-selling her books to the public. She's very kindly given detailed responses to my questions, so I'll be splitting this interview into two parts.

I see you've had a varied list of jobs in the past, ranging from mushroom picker to cabinet minister's private secretary! Tell us a little bit about how you came into writing.

Thank you so much, Lorna, for inviting me onto your blog. I was keen writer as a small child but somehow I got derailed. My secondary school wanted no fiction: just parsed sentences and essays about the classics, so I got out of the habit. I remember meeting a girl at university who said, 'I'm writing a novel', and thinking admiringly, 'Wow, I'd love to do that.' So why didn't it occur to me to actually do it? My twenties were all over the place; then I spent my thirties living with someone who was trying to write a novel. I was enthralled, gave him comments, but didn't think to write one myself, I was so busy working at the day job and fretting about life.
Gradually life calmed, I was writing some stories, doing some writing courses, and I formed the plan that I would save hard, quit work and write novels. The day after my last 9-5 - bliss! Aged 47, I immediately began to bash one out. Twelve weeks later it was finished. I remember sitting on top of a bus that day, flying along through the sunshine, thinking, 'I'm a novelist!' I soon realised that book was utter rubbish, but it taught me a whole lot about writing the next one, which was Truth Games.

How did you come to be published by two small publishers, Cinnamon Press and Sandstone Press? How has that experience been for you? Do you feel, for instance, that you are treated with more personal concern? What do you see as the advantages and limitations of this form of publication?

Fiction is a tough market to break into. After false dawns with excited agents, the editors at the big publishing houses were complimentary, but none of them offered a contract. I had a stubborn belief in my novels, kept rewriting, improving, resubmitting them. Unless invited to do so, you can't submit the same book to the same publishing house twice, so I needed to look at smaller publishers. Cinnamon, a well-respected small press, runs a regular novel competition, through which Truth Games was accepted.
I couldn't have wished for a more friendly and instructive introduction to the publishing world. Jan Fortune-Wood at Cinnamon taught me so much with her sensitive suggestions for improving the text, and she gave me a say at every stage, even allowing me to reject image after image in her hunt for an apt cover design. I love the one she finally found. It came from an image library, and it took me a long while to track down and thank the artist, who is a white witch living in Seattle!
My second book, set in Inverness, was not best suited to Cinnamon, who are in Gwynedd and supported by the Welsh Books Council. So when I realised that a Facebook contact I'd made, an up-and-coming independent press called Sandstone, were in Dingwall, only a few miles from Inverness, I crossed fingers and toes tightly before, with Cinnamon's blessing, enquiring whether they were accepting submissions. Twelve days later they said they loved the book and wanted to publish it almost at once.

Again, lots of attention from Sandstone, including a three-week, almost sleepless, joint brainstorm for the title - Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones. And so, after years of rejections, I had two novels out within eight months!
The advantages and limitations of smaller publishers? Hard to say as that is my only experience. Yes, I get personal attention, and my writing and my marketing efforts are valued, but might that not happen in a big press too? The print runs of my books are small, but both presses have speedily reprinted when necessary, so no worries there. I've not had much media exposure - independent presses generally don't have the clout to achieve it - but the big houses tend to concentrate their marketing on established authors, so would it have been so different with one of them? Cinnamon and Sandstone are pleased with my steady sales and my work to build on these, whereas I've heard that big publishing houses can pretty much dump you if you don't set the world on fire within a few weeks of launch. But is that actually true?

You've now spent quite some time out there hand-selling your books to your readership. How did this come about? Did you always intend to take this approach? How far afield have you travelled?

I was naive at the start and quite timid. When Truth Games came out, I nervously did one or two small local events, sat in on a few local reading groups, joined Facebook, approached a couple of book blogs, and called on the three nearest Waterstone's branches, who kindly agreed to stock a few copies. Not much came of this, but I was getting practice.
When Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones came out, I got braver. I began ringing Waterstone's branches further afield to suggest that they stock it. Some said no, but many said, 'Okay, we'll order in three or five. We'll see how it goes.'
I imagined this would translate into sales, but it never would have done. Few customers go to the A to Z shelves, and those who do mostly have a specific title in mind. As a new author, the cold truth is you have to be on the 3 for 2 tables, out there hand-selling, or finding some way to draw attention online. Otherwise your book dies.
A few Waterstone's managers suggested I could come in and sign. I was so green, I thought they meant if I happened to be passing with my pen I could sign the copies they'd ordered. Then the penny dropped. They meant come for a day, we'll get a whole pile in, and you can have a go at hand-selling. And we'll order in copies of both your books, not just the new one. I couldn't believe my luck. I was terrified, but determined to do my best.
My first Saturday signing was in Redhill in April 2010 and I sold 32 books. The manager was impressed, told his region about me, and I was on a roll. Since then I've been in a Waterstone's every Saturday, north, south, west, east, from Bedford to Eastbourne, Dorchester to Tunbridge Wells. It really helps that I live in Clapham Junction! And of course it helps to have no day-job, just a Saturday job now, hand-selling my books; and I love it.

What numbers of sales have you achieved in this way? Do you feel it's been worth all the effort?

I've personally sold and signed nearly 2100 copies in 30 different Waterstone's branches. Looking ahead, more than three-quarters of my Saturdays are already booked between now and next Christmas. All absolutely worth the effort, and not just for the sales. It is smashing to meet my readers, to get a better sense of the reading public and of my market, fabulous to get complimentary emails from readers I've met personally. I'm well-placed to notice trends - e.g more people confessing that they browse real books then go home and download on Kindle. I worry about Waterstone's future and hope the new management can find ways to make the chain flourish.

In Part 2 of this interview Bobbie will share her practical secrets for effective hand-selling, her advice for approaching possible venues - and her under-a-minute book-pitches!

You can find Bobbie on Facebook and you can follow her on Twitter - @bobbiedar.

Bobbie's books are available on Amazon: Truth Games and Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones.

Bobbie will be appearing at the Oxfringe festival in Oxford, with two other Cinnamon Press authors, on 15th, 16th and 17th June - their show is called 'Sex, War and Madness', so promises to be lively!

On Saturday 2nd July she'll be giving a talk at the Writers' Conference at the University of Winchester, called 'The Small Publisher Route to Seeing your Novel in Print'. Oh, and I'll be there too: my mini-course on Character Building is on Friday 1st July and my Saturday talk 'Place is Paramount' is about how crucial setting is to the effect of your story. Visit the Conference website for further details - we hope to see you there!

New Courses, New Interview, Renewing the Writing Fun

2011-05-28T18:41:00.000Z

In the Sutro Room at Trinity College

Last week my fictionfire class and I had a great time, playing around with point of view and choosing the right distance, the right perspective, from which to tell a story. We looked at some powerful examples of voice (the voice of the child in Emma Donoghue's Room was considered to be particularly effective, for instance) and we embarked on some fun writing exercises which, as is often the case, threw up intriguing characters and situations and what ifs with potential. I think my students are often taken by surprise by just how exciting their writing can be when they're - ahem! - forced into producing it, on the spot like that!

Both of my spring courses have been an absolute joy: I hope they were helpful to those attending. I certainly know that one by-product for me was a revving up of my own creativity - the past few months have not been conducive to writing in the least! Sometimes you lose a sense of what is at the core of it all: an imagination that will not shut up and lie down, a brain that mints characters, a desire to hold people enthralled while you spin them a yarn. That's the essence of it, under the pontificating and the theorising, the writing manuals and the writing blogs. You need to recapture the love, if you've lost it. The paradox is that you need to be both consciously critical and unconsciously creative - you need to be willing to learn your jobbing skills as a writer but you must also be allowed to tap into the childlike freedom and instinctiveness you once had.

The Sutro Room is on the first floor of the Jackson Building

If you're writing, then, I wish you joy and a constructively playful summer ahead.

What lies ahead for fictionfire? Well, my head is buzzing with new plans for that as well as for my own writing. In the autumn I will be starting up a new kind of course, as a complement to the Trinity College day courses. My new workshops will be called Fictionfire Focus: they'll run more frequently and will offer a wide range of topics and a new kind of flexibility. I hope that makes you hungry to hear more! All in good time ...

Beautiful carved panel, part of the Sutro Room's fireplace

Meanwhile, do keep in mind that I offer editorial, critiquing and mentoring services at fictionfire: go to the website to find out more.

Just time now to announce that next week I'll be posting another guest interview: this time with Bobbie Darbyshire, who has published two novels, Truth Games and Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones. She'll be telling us the fascinating story of how she chose to take an active role in hand-selling her books in bookshops. She's out there tirelessly on the circuit, meeting her potential customers - and what's more, racking up the sales!

fictionfire Courses and a glorious location

2011-05-11T10:34:00.001Z

Trinity's Front Quad from the Sutro Room

Wouldn't you just know it, there was rain last Saturday morning as my students arrived at Trinity College for my day course on Essential Story Construction? However, they were all of a very sunny nature and incredibly enthusiastic and creative. We had lots of discussion, writing exercises and laughter. We started with a discussion of 'Lewis' because one of the returning students confessed to having strayed across Kevin Whateley's eye-line last October when she was attending a fictionfire course at the same time as filming was going on (she was glared at). Indeed, that episode was only aired a couple of weeks ago, so it was great fun spotting the Trinity locations!

No film crews this time. The Sutro Room, though, was worthy of a film location - and everybody found it beautiful and inspirational. We had a lot of ground to cover - plot is always a very popular topic and a daunting one for writers who are just starting out - or, indeed, those who've made progress and then got bogged down.

My next course will be on Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice and I'm looking forward to seeing several people from last week's course again. If you want to join us, you have until midday Friday 20th to book- the course runs on Saturday 21st. We'll do a sun-dance beforehand, shall we?

Details of the course and how to book are on my website www.fictionfire.co.uk.

Kindle Publishing: Part 2 of Interview with 'Killing Cupid' authors Mark Edwards and Louise Voss

2011-05-05T14:14:00.000Z

Yesterday I posted the first part of an interview with Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, whose unusual dual-narrative thriller, Killing Cupid, is available on Amazon Kindle for the stunningly good-value price of 70p. In Part 1, they described how they wrote the book together and opted to publish it on Kindle. We now discuss how things unfolded from there.

Lorna: How did you set about generating interest in the book?

Mark: It's hard work. Very hard work. My poor girlfriend feels neglected as I spend so much time trying to drum up interest in the book and I must admit it's become something of an obsession, especially checking sales figures and our rank on Amazon. I even drive myself crazy, especially on slow days. There is no secret recipe for success. You need to have a great cover, title and blurb, and then you have to let as many people as possible know about the book. We started with our own friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, and I am sure all of our sales in the first few weeks came from them. I have spent a lot of time networking with other writers on Kindleboards.com and various Facebook groups. I interview writers for my blog, www.indieiq.com which specialises in featuring the best indie writers. We have both done interviews and guest posts for other bloggers. (By the way, I approached Mark and Louise for this interview, not the other way about! L.) We have submitted review copies to various review sites. And we generally hustle wherever and whenever we can - while trying not piss everyone off by just trying to sell sell sell. You can buy exposure on sites like Kindle Nation Daily and Pixel of Ink but I have no idea how effective this is. I have also tried Google ads but it's too expensive. I am convinced the only way to really take off is for your book to start appearing in the 'Customers who bought this also ...' slots, which we've just started to do. But it's getting harder and harder to make any kind of impact. When I published Killing Cupid I went straight onto Kindleboards and posted an announcement. Within minutes, 4 or 5 other books had appeared above it and my post had vanished off the page. As Stephen Leather says, 'the slush pile has gone online' and you are competing with just as many writers as you are when you submit to agents or publishers. The world is awash with wannabe writers and getting yourself heard is a hell of a struggle.

Lorna: How well is the book doing now?

Mark: We have sold a grand total of 800 copies now (4th May). Since April 30 we are doing an average of 40 a day. On Saturday we had the thrilling experience of hitting No 1 on Amazon's movers and shakers chart, meaning it was the fastest rising book on Amazon.co.uk that day. We keep floating around the bottom end of the overall top 200 on Kindle. I am desperate to hit the top 100!

(Lorna's note: This is a brilliant result and is a just reward for their astute presentation and the quality of the book they've written.)

Lorna: Do you intend to bring out a print version of Killing Cupid?

Louise: That's a good question ... I think that if Killing Cupid ended up being really successful, and a conventional publisher was offering to publish it, we certainly wouldn't say no (as long as we got to keep the e-publishing rights to ourselves, of course!) But we're not desperate to see it in print at this stage, I mean, we haven't got any plans to go down a Print-on-Demand route or anything.

Lorna's comment: Personally, I feel they should try POD - I think it helps if a book is available in different formats, and there is an increasing sense that readers are quite prepared to buy both an e-version and a printed version of books they enjoy. See, for instance, Joanna Penn, who has also marketed her e-book Pentecost with great commercial savvy - offering a printed version as well. (As for conventional publishers - would they let Mark and Louise do a deal with them which didn't also include e-publishing rights?)

Lorna: Would you e-publish again? Are you hoping that, like Amanda Hocking, your independent route will bring you a conventional contract - if one were offered to you, would you accept it?

Mark: Yes, we are definitely going to e-publish Catch Your Death, our next novel. I would like to be conventionally published, because there are a lot of people who only read print books. But then again, self-publishing puts all the control in our hands and we can get stuff out there much much quicker.

Louise: I've just had the rights to my four other novels revert to me, and fully intend to e-publish these too. Prior to this, the publishers asked if they could e-publish on my behalf and I said no. Knowing that they wouldn't do any promotion for them made me think, well, I'd have to self-promote anyway, so I'd rather not have to give away most of the proceeds ... It would be great to have them readily available at a low price, and hopefully gain a whole new audience.

Lorna: Exciting news that Killing Cupid may make it to the screen! Tell us more about this!

Louise: That whole thing has been quite strange - and fortuitous. What happened was that, a few years ago, a BBC producer read one of my other books and asked for a meeting, during which she said that although she really liked the book, she didn't quite see herself developing it for TV and did I have anything else she could read? At that stage we'd recently finished Killing Cupid, so I gave her the manuscript and to our delight, she loved it, and optioned it for a two-part drama (which was another reason why we thought we might find a publisher for it ...)! Then it went into development hell, and, according to the producer, popularity for two-part dramas nosedived practically overnight. It all fizzled out after a couple of years, which was disappointing, but at least we'd got a bit of cash for the option, and some interest in the book. Fast-forward a few years to this February, in fact, the same day that we put Killing Cupid out on Amazon Kindle, and I received an email out of the blue from the same producer, who was about to leave the BBC and set up her own film company, having won a BAFTA last year. She said she had always seen Killing Cupid more as a feature film and was now in a position to develop it. Plus, last year my partner (a TV director) and I wrote our own treatment for it which is currently out with a couple of other producers, so we are waiting to hear back from them. We'll let you know what happens! Exciting times!

Lorna: Can you tell us anything about your next book? When will it be available?

Mark: Our second book is called Catch Your Death and is a more straightforward thriller than Killing Cupid, which is more a comedy thriller. Catch Your Death came about back in 2006 after Louise started thinking about writing a novel set at the Common Cold Unit, which was a research centre near her hometown of Salisbury. For years, they invited volunteers to stay and be given a cold so the scientists there could carry out research in their quest to find a cure. I had, at that point, just read The Da Vinci Code (marvelling at the awful prose but also the compelling plot) and was also aware of the coming bird flu scare. I wanted to write a fast-paced conspiracy thriller and thought Louise had come across an ideal setting. We decided to have another go at writing together, and created a chase novel involving deadly viruses, mad scientists and robotic killers. Great fun. I had to do an awful lot of research into virology and became slightly more paranoid than previously. Catch Your Death will be released for Kindle in the first half of May.

Louise: It will be interesting to see how this one goes down. As Mark says, we made an effort to write a 'straight' thriller, so it's less quirky than Killing Cupid but faster-paced and more high concept. Hopefully we'll give Dan Brown a run for his money!

Thanks so much to Mark and Louise for these insights - I wish them continued and increasing success with Killing Cupid and look forward to reading Catch Your Death when it comes out! For further discussion of whether to opt for self-publication, please take a look at my second post on the Oxford Literary Festival - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/04/oxford-literary-festival-part-2.html my report on the Kingston Conference on Self-Publishing - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2010/09/self-publishing-conference-at-kingston.html and Joanna Penn's guest post on my blog - http://literascribe.blogspot.com/2011/02/indie-publishing-what-it-is-and-why.html. As I've said before - self-publishing offers you speed and control over what you choose to write and how you publish it. But you do need to be very aware that it demands enormous amounts of energy and commitment and that you will be up against it when it comes to making your voice heard. Without the filtering processes of having to go through agents and editors, a great deal of dross is being let loose on the world. If you choose to go down the self-publishing path, then do it clear-sightedly, and with a truly professional approach to your work. Plan your campaign, create your author platform, spend money on professional services like cover design, formatting, editing. And, as with conventional publishing, don't ever blithely assume you'll make a fortune!

Killing Cupid is available at http://amzn.to/fnxVQY and http://amzn.to/eGhcPxand on Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51410 . Mark's excellent blog is at http://www.indieiq.com

Just time to remind you of my upcoming fictionfire courses: Essential Story Construction this Saturday (booking closes tomorrow Friday 6th) and Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice on 21st May (booking closes midday Friday 20th) - I'd love it if you could join us in the gorgeous setting of Trinity College! Full details are on my fictionfire website

Kindle Publishing: Interview with Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, authors of 'Killing Cupid'

2011-05-04T11:48:00.001Z

Last month I really enjoyed reading Killing Cupid: it's a stalker novel with a twist and an unexpected lightness of touch - and it only costs 70p to download to your Kindle!

The story manages to be both comic and unsettling, frothy on top but dark underneath - and when you read it you're never quite sure how dark it may become. Apart from its twists and turns, its strengths are those of wit, lively dialogue and a well-handled alternating viewpoint. The story is told in the voices of the two central characters, Alex and Siobhan. To convey both male and female perspectives convincingly is a challenge - so perhaps it's appropriate that this is a dual-author novel. I met Louise some years ago and was intrigued to discuss with her how she and Mark came to write the book, so here follows a joint interview with them, which I'm posting in two parts. In Part One, they discuss the process of writing together and how they came to publish on Kindle:

Lorna: I very much enjoyed reading Killing Cupid and am fascinated first of all by how you came to write as a team. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in this way? Were there any moments when you absolutely hated one another?

Mark: We cooked up the ideal of writing together on a boozy night at the Groucho (those were the days!) although because of the booze neither of us can remember who first came up with the idea of a stalker novel first. At that point I had just been unceremoniously dumped by my agent after a string of near-misses and Louise was halfway through her contract with Transworld. Writing together seemed like it would be a fun exercise and respite from the slog of writing solo novels. We were right: it was a dream to write. We did almost all of it by email, made necessary as I moved to Tokyo about two months in. I would write a chapter as the voice of Alex, the male protagonist, then email it to Louise along with some ideas about what happened next. She would edit it, suggest changes and then send it back along with the next chapter, written as Siobhan, the novel's heroine. It was a genuinely easy process and we barely even spoke on the phone during the process. It was all done by email. Pehaps it's the first co-written pan-global thriller. I think Stephen King and Peter Straub did something similar years earlier, actually, in Maine and England. They had to do it by Airmail which is almost beyond comprehension these days. There were never any points at which we fell out. Louise is probably the only person I can take criticism about my writing from without feeling offended or wanting to argue. I trust her judgement. Maybe she hated me though ...

Louise: All true - it was the most fun I've ever had writing a novel - so much easier than going it alone. And no, I certainly never even felt irritated with Mark, let alone hating him! Perhaps the fact that we've always led such separate lives helped - we never had the familiarity that might have led to contempt (or at least preciousness about our own efforts!). I do remember that he came up with the title.

(Lorna's note: other teams that spring to my mind are the husband and wife co-writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French writing as Nicci French, and the mother daughter team who write as P.J. Tracy - who, if memory serves, live in separate states in the USA and email chapters to one another. I recommend both (all four?!))

Lorna: When you completed the novel, did you intend trying to publish it in the conventional way or did you always intend for it to be an e-book?

Louise: Yes we did want it to be published, as we wrote the first version way before e-publishing was even dreamed of. E-publishing has given it, and us, a whole new lease of writing life.

Lorna: How many agents/publishers did you approach? How long did this take? Were there any near-acceptances?

Louise: I have to say that I thought we would find a publisher for it - for some reason I felt more confident about it than I did about any of my own novels, even though at the time I had a publishing deal. But my then-agent and my editor were both quite lukewarm about it when they read it. Perhaps this was because it was in its first incarnation and therefore less polished than it is now. They both said it was partly a genre issue - the publishers didn't want to launch me in another direction while they were trying to sell me as a women's fiction author - and besides Killing Cupid didn't fit into another genre anyway, as it was neither pure thriller nor pure comedy. I actually can't remember if it got sent out to any other publishers. Because I had an agent, I didn't feel that we could go behind her back and send it out ourselves, which must have been very frustrating for Mark. [Lorna's note - how often have we read about the problem writers have when it comes to writing in more than one genre? I remember Joanne Harris talking eloquently about this some years ago at the Oxford Literary Festival. Writer 'Fred Bloggs' ends up writing as 'Fiona Durham' - because publishers feel we readers need to be guided by a separation of writerly avatars when writers branch out into different genres - even though we know it's the same person!)

Lorna: Once you'd decided to publish to Kindle, how easy did you find the process? Did you have the advantage of technical expertise yourself? Have you any advice to give us as a result of your experience? Are there any pitfalls you can warn us about?

Mark: The process seems a little daunting at first but is actually more straightforward than you would expect. The most important thing is to format the book correctly so it looks good on Kindle. For example, it has to be single spaced, you need to remove fancy formatting, make sure it's saved as plain text. But then you just save it as a Word doc and upload it. Easy! You also, of course, need to create a book cover which has to be the right size. And write your blurb. Finally, you will be asked to choose your categories or sub-categories - up to 2. These are important. You don't want sub-categories that no-one ever browses unless you are aiming at a very particular niche. Then again it's very easy to rank in these obscure categories. One thing to note is that it takes 48 hours for the book to be published. It takes 24 hours for them to review it and another 24 for it to be 'published'. After that, you can make amendments at any time but it always takes 48 hours for them to appear. So if you make a typo in the blurb it will sit there for 2 days so be careful. (Er, we did this.)

Part Two of this interview will appear tomorrow - Mark and Louise will be talking about how they promoted Killing Cupid and telling us of their exciting plans for the future.

Killing Cupid is available at http://amzn.to/fnxVQY and http://amzn.to/eGhcPx and on Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51410 . Mark's excellent blog is at http://www.indieiq.com

Just time, then, to remind you of my upcoming fictionfire courses: Essential Story Construction this Saturday (booking closes midday Friday 6th) and Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice on 21st May (booking closes midday Friday 20th) - I'd love it if you could join us in the gorgeous setting of Trinity College! Full details are on my fictionfire website

Oxford Literary Festival Part 3: Romantics, Interiors, Meteors - and David Nicholls

2011-04-30T10:41:00.001Z

Magnolia blossom in front of the University Church of St Mary

After soap-boxing a bit in my last post, this final report from the Oxford Literary Festival is all about fun. In addition to always being on the look-out for information to help my writing students, these events were chosen for my pleasure and interest, starting with Daisy Hay's talk on the Young Romantics, at the Divinity Schools of the Bodleian Library on Sunday 3rd April. It's worth paying for an event at the Divinity Schools just to see the location, with its stone, many-bossed, fan-vaulted ceiling. Daisy's book is about the circle of Romantic poets, with her chief focus on Shelley, so it made a good tie-in with the recent Shelley exhibition at the Bodleian. I have always loved Keats and one day hope to visit the Keats-Shelley Museum on the Piazza di Spagna in Rome - and Keats' grave, with its poignant epitaph: 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'. The book-signing afterwards was in the Convocation House, which was ironic, as this was where, in 1811, the authorities of the University decided to expel Shelley for atheism.

Jacques in the Festival Book Tent

On Tuesday 5th April, my son and I went to see David Nicholls: I haven't as yet read One Day, but Jacques loves it - and as he's not normally into reading, this is major! David's talk was held in the Marquee at Christ Church and was extremely well-attended. He was a witty speaker with a nice line in self-deprecation. He'd tried to make it as an actor, had gone into screenwriting (he was involved in Cold Feet, adapted Much Ado about Nothing as a modern version starring Billie Piper and wrote the recent adaptation of Tess of the d'Urbervilles), and hit immediate succes with his first novel, Starter for Ten, because it was chosen as a Richard and Judy book club read. One Day, of course, is the big one, having now sold 650,000 copies (so glad he was a likeable man as this sort of success is hard to bear!) and, he claims, was a genuine word of mouth hit, which is the best sort.

He talked of the differences between writing novels and writing screenplays - he's adapted One Day for the screen himself, and is currently adapting Great Expectations - and the main difference is that of calculated design. A screenplay demands the blocking out of scenes and sequences in advance of the writing of those individual speeches. With a novel, you can choose to do that too, of course, or you can opt for a more instinctive 'flying by the seat of your pants' approach. This distinction, appealingly known as the 'planner versus pantser' choice, is something I'll be dealing with in my fictionfire course next Saturday, Essential Story Construction, because I feel it's important to explore which technique works best for you.

David also talked of how there's a difference in terms of autonomy between being a novelist and being a screenwriter. As a novelist, your book, he said, is like your house, which you personally designed, and there it is. A film is where you build the house, then a whole troop of people march in, knock walls through, redesign. It's more 'combative' and he dislikes that aspect, though clearly, as a genial and engaging person, I think he has his ways of holding onto his own designs without too much in the way of overt hostilities breaking out.

In the Festival Marquee

In the book-signing tent afterwards, he signed Jacques' books - I look forward to reading them in the summer when I'm allowed to read for pleasure's sake.

The next day, I attended Lucy Worsley's If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home - the TV series of which is now running. She was intensely perky, with blonde bobbed hair and a Head Girl confidence. She quoted Henry James' opinion that 'We're each of us made up of our house, our furniture, our garments ... these things are all expressive of us.' She had an excellent Powerpoint presentation supporting a range of quirky facts about the past - how we slept, how we bathed (or didn't, because of the fear, in the 16th and 17th centuries, that water penetrating the body would cause illness), how the propensity of Victorian females to pass out was not only because of the corsetry but the lack of oxygen in their houses, as the new-fangled gas-lights sucked it up.

Fan-vaulting at Christ Church

Finally, I tacked on Ted Nields' talk, with the superb title (also the title of his book) Incoming! Or, Why We Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Meteorite. When eventually, we got to hear him, after one of those inordinately long LitFest introductions from an aged enthusiast, he discussed the various mass extinctions which have occurred in the earth's long history, and the fear we have of meteor impacts. His view is that we're not at any particular risk as a species from the Big One hitting us and obliterating us - he contends we're managing to do a fine job of self-extinction through messing up the ecology of the earth, thank you very much. He told us there's no evidence that anybody has ever been killed by a direct meteor strike and informed us that the chances of dying as a result of being struck by something from space are about the same as that of 'death by firework' - around 1 in 600,000, apparently. Worryingly, these are far better odds than those of winning the Lottery. Them's the breaks.

So, that's it for another year - as I said at the start, I'd have liked to have attended more events than I did but time and money prevented.

Next week, I'm delighted to announce an interview with Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, who've published their thriller Killing Cupid, on the Kindle - we'll be talking about why they did it and how they did it - and whether they'd do it again!

And here's a crucial reminder that BOOKING CLOSES midday Friday 6th May for my fictionfire course Essential Story Construction, which takes place a week today. Booking for Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice will close midday Friday 20th May and the course runs Saturday 21st May. Full details of the course and how to make your booking are on my website www.fictionfire.co.uk. Do join us!

Oxford Literary Festival Part 2: Publishing Futures

2011-04-23T14:03:00.001Z

I'm following up my last blogpost with a review of the other events I attended at the recent Oxford Literary Festival, starting with a panel discussion at Corpus Christi called 'Publishing Futures'. I went along to this because I was interested in what people at the ink-face had to say about the current state of publishing and in particular the debate about e-publishing and self-publishing in relation to traditional print publishing. The panel included Marcus du Sautoy, who revels in the title of Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, and Cathy Galvin, Deputy Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine. It was due to include Victoria Barnsley, Chief Executive of Harper Collins - and she was my main reason for attending. Ironic, then, that she wasn't there: she'd been 'called away to New York' urgently. Hmn.

Corpus Christi College

The agent Felicity Bryan took her place: her agency here in Oxford has a very good reputation, and represents a number of significant authors - non-fiction, fiction, children's writers. In her introductory talk, she described how publishers have been having sessions with agents where they explain their vision and their plans with regard to e-publishing - and most importantly, the issue of digital rights. I felt she'd been both open and proactive in terms of seeing the possibilities for her clients - she'd been selling apps for people like the science writer Marcus Chown, for instance. Indeed, his app on the solar system is on its way to becoming a book - so the digital highway can be a two-way street. She described how publishers are very keen that writers should make themselves appealing on the internet. Cathy Galvin was interesting but I have to say that everything she said seemed to lead to the notion that we should all be signing up for the Sunday Times online, and particularly on iPad. Hmn again. She said that News International is not a print company but a media company nowadays - and referring back to Felicity's opinions, it seems to me that we writers, whether represented or not, whether traditionally published or not, need to see ourselves as little media furnaces, generating heat and light whenever we can. We need to write, to promote, to interact through social media, we need to see the possibilities of new forms and new markets and be open to them. 'Only connect,' E. M. Forster famously said - never was this more true.

Marcus du Sautoy was the most entertaining person on the panel - you know, the sort of speaker you would like to invite to dinner if only to continue the friendly, bantering, fascinating dialogue. He feels that e-books haven't really fulfilled their potential yet: he'd like to see publishers becoming even more adventurous with them. He feels that authors haven't really grasped the opportunities yet either.

At the end, there were questions from the floor. My hand shot up at every available opportunity - but I was not heeded, alas. All the more galling, isn't it, when you want to ask something and somebody else has been picked and either drones their way through a self-evident observation, or stymies the speaker with a question which is utterly barking-mad (and it always happens, doesn't it?)

What did I want to ask? Well, first the question of royalties on e-books. Currently publishers offer pretty low rates - and if you publish yourself to Kindle, for example, you can take a much larger proportion of the profit. So, given that you're being asked to network, to promote yourself, to involve yourself to a huge degree in the success of your work, what is it that publishers currently offer us that's so good? If Victoria Barnsley had been there I would have loved to have heard a reply. Also, given how incredibly long the process of approaching agents and publishers and then getting your book out to the public can be, many self-publishers are opting for the DIY route simply to speed things up. Self-publishing still carries the aura of desperation about it, let's not beat about the bush - but not nearly so much as before. Yes, people self-publish because they can't get agents/publishers to take them on, but there are now so many other reasons, and debate about this issue is hot, hot, hot. Self-publishing offers control over your work and its presentation, the possiblity of direct profit from your work, the chance to create for yourself your own loyal readership, and all without having to grow grey hairs while you wait! I wanted to ask, given the recent famous examples of people like Amanda Hocking, where writers get their work out there, establish their readership and then opt for traditional publishing deals, what the panel - and in particular Felicity Bryan - felt about a writer who approached them after self-publishing. I did speak to her afterwards and she was friendly but I didn't feel very much the wiser.

Corpus Christi College

Publishing companies will of course say that they can take the burdens of creating the book as tangible product and marketing it off your shoulders. They have clout with booksellers. (Hmn for the third time ... ?) They understand the market in a way that you don't. They have connections.

But I really do think they need to consider, during this bewildering transitional phase, when chain bookstores struggle, when the Little Guy can wield his own megaphone pretty damn effectively, when online sales are directly possible between writer and buyer, where social networking can create a cosy sense of trust and intimacy between creator and consumer, when writers increasingly want two crucial things - Control and Speed - publishers, the big guys anyway, should think about wooing those who deliver the Product. Otherwise, as that choice modern term has it, they run the risk of being 'disintermediated.'

Phew. I think there will have to be a Part 3 to this blog report!

BOOKING CLOSES midday Friday 6th May for my fictionfire course Essential Story Construction on 7th May. All details of this course and Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice on 21st May are to be found on my website www.fictionfire.co.uk

Oxford Literary Festival Part 1: Trying on Voices

2011-04-14T15:19:00.001Z

It's been a mad week (it's a mad time of year) so I'm later than I'd intended in reporting on Oxford's Literary Festival, which ran last week. Before writing this post, I took a look at my earliest report on the festival, back in 2007, the year I set up this blog. The post was called Public Showman, private shaman? Be true to the kind of writer you are. Here's an excerpt from it:
Writers, once elusive, mysterious creatures who retreated from the world to think deep thoughts and emerge with sybilline wisdom every now and again - writers are now unashamed showmen, practising all sorts of huckster-techniques, giving us the well-honed schmooze, the well-turned anecdote (and I've been to enough of these things to have heard the same worn anecdote or witticism trotted out just that once too often). And yes, I know there were always writers-as-performers (Dickens springs to mind immediately) - but the point is that nowadays, published writers are automatically expected to be performing seals too, whether it's congenial to their nature or not; it's part of the pact with the publishing devil, it's part of what a publishing house considers before they take you on: are you marketable?

Well, been nothing's changed, even though over the long-term the festival has transformed itself a great deal since it began in 1997 at the Oxford Union. Back then it involved only a few events held over a weekend. This year's festival involved around 550 speakers at over 300 events, over the course of eight days. Now, that's big.

Every year there are the famous names, the big draws - this year these included Melvyn Bragg, Princess Anne, David Lodge, Philip Pullman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colin Dexter, Joanne Harris, Michael Holroyd. There are the literary big-hitters, the genre masters, the historians, the politicians and polemicists, the poets, the scientists, the celebrities (Stephanie Powers, anyone?), the cooks, the rising stars, the as-yet little-knowns, the locals. It's an almighty melange of literary competitiveness, genuine mission to communicate, strident commerciality, literary envy and dollops of preening self-satisfaction.

Every year I check the website early on, because the printed programme comes out very late indeed and is the size of a brick. I list every event I want to visit and then start to whittle it down to what I can visit, partly because there are other claims on my time at this time of year, teaching-wise, and partly because of the expense. I'm sorry, I understand that setting up and running a show like this must cost a fortune, but most events now cost £10 a pop - and that pretty soon mounts up to a scary amount (not factoring in the books you buy to get signed in the book marquee afterwards ...) So, I have to restrain myself. I hear the same complaint from others and wish the organisers would take that on board - I really would go to more events if the cost was slightly less.

Oxford is seen as a prosperous city and the festival certainly draws the North Oxford ladies and gents out, and the plum Home Counties accents reverberate in hall and tent. Quite a few of the 'introducers' were of a very Home Counties vintage and one or two were so fond of their own voices their introductions ran the risk of lasting longer than the talk they were introducing!

Magnolia by St Mary the Virgin University Church

Before I discuss the events I attended, one thing was particularly striking for me this year. Oxford. Now, I've lived in this city for the best part of thirty years and I absolutely love it, but every so often I'm jolted into a new appreciation of it - the festival, because we were blessed with wonderful weather, gave me the chance to stroll around, look, and absorb all over again how special a location this is. I played tourist, taking loads of photos, as you can see from this blog-post. It felt like one of those renewal-of-wedding-vows ceremonies. I don't see myself ever being able to divorce myself from this city (though the cottage with a sea-view in Cornwall is still a dream!) - whether Oxford, in all its glory, has any time for me, is quite another thing. Oxford is patrician and lofty, completely and supremely pleased with itself. It always has been and always will be.

Corpus Christi College

Christ Church Tom Tower

The festival is centred at Christ Church, the most patrician college of them all. Other events were held at Corpus Christi, in a modern lecture hall, where one wall is the ancient city wall; at Merton, at the Sheldonian Theatre and the Bodleian Library. So even if the speaker is as dull as ditch-water you've got lots to look at.

The first event I attended was a panel discussion involving Philip Pullman, Kate Clanchy (whose book Antigona and Me impressed me so much last year) and poet Patience Agbabi. All are Creative Writing Fellows at Oxford Brookes University and their subject, 'Voice', was of interest to me because I taught a course on this and narrative perspective at Winchester Writers' Conference last year and will be running another as part of my own fictionfire programme on 21st May (course details on the fictionfire website).

It hardly needs to be said that all three were wise and clever speakers with an edge of humour but a deep understanding of their craft. They drew our attention to the main differentiation when we come to speak of voice: you have the 'voice' of your character or narrator within the text you are creating and you have your own voice as a writer. Patience Agbabi talked of 'trying on a range of voices' - and well she may, for she is engaged in a new version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. She has also written sonnets in the form of an agony aunt's replies to writers from history, which sounds really interesting. Philip Pullman pointed out that in some narratives, the narrator purports to be quite a detached third person 'voice' but that voice is as much of a constructed character as any of the others within the book.He said his voice is different when he's writing his fairy tales versus the fiction destined for slightly older readers. He claimed that he doesn't think about readers at all when he's writing: 'It's none of their damn business!' - and that he hears the appropriate voice in his 'mind's ear'. Literature, he said, 'belongs in the mouth and the ear as much as it does in the eye.' Kate Clanchy said we opt to choose a particular camera distance: with some works you feel you're right on the character's shoulder whereas in others it's appropriate to be a long way off. Patience said of her characters 'I don't think of them sounding like me. I think of them sounding like themselves.'

Then there is the other kind of 'voice' isn't there: writers are always advised to find their 'own voice' (as if they'd left it under a cushion somewhere) and this is a daunting idea for new writers. The fact is that you only discover your voice through writing and writing regularly. All writers try imitating the writers they admire and all writers despair at times of finding that recognisable voice which will mark them out as unique: we all know how Dickens wrote, how Hemingway wrote, how Martin Amis writes - how can we find our individuality? Through practice, commitment, experimentation, through being open to new techniques, through not being lazy and settling for the predictable. Through listening to your characters, through playfulness and openness, through time. Through, as Philip said, having the 'silence and secret time' to hear what your true voice is.

And now my voice is going to take a rest: I'll save the rest of this report for my next blog-post!

BOOK NOW for my courses on Essential Story Construction (7th May) and Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice (21st May) - all details and booking form can be found on my website: www.fictionfire.co.uk

Upcoming writing courses

2011-04-01T13:41:00.000Z

I'm very gratified that my week-long summer school course, Writing your Novel - Creativity and Craft, as part of Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education programme, is already fully booked and has a waiting list. This happens every year, which is wonderful!

It's a good time, therefore, to remind you that I'll be teaching my own fictionfire day courses next month: Writing your Novel - Essential Story Construction on May 7th and Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice on May 21st. If you're interested in enrolling for these, all the details of course content and how to book can be found on my website. I'm delighted that several people who attended previous fictionfire courses have already signed up for these.

I'll also be teaching at the Winchester Writers' Conference at the start of July, held at the University of Winchester. The online programme is now up on the conference site and I do recommend that if anything interests you, you should book promptly. This is a huge, long-established conference and offers not only day courses and lectures but the chance to book one-to-one appointments with writers, agents and editors. There are numerous competitions to enter too, which is a great way to build your writing credentials. I'll be conducting a day long course on Character Building on Friday 1st July and my Saturday lecture will be Place is Paramount - discussing how location and atmosphere can reinforce the power of your writing and make it memorable.

I hope I'll get the chance to meet and talk to you at one of these events!

James Attlee's Nocturne and some writing about the moon

2011-03-21T10:26:00.001Z

Here's a picture my son took on Saturday night of the 'supermoon', when the moon was closer to us than it's been in eighteen years, apparently. He's doing GCSE Astronomy and has become far more adept than I am at using my new Lumix camera!

On that evening, under that moon, I went off to Waterstone's to listen to James Attlee talk about his book Nocturne, which is subtitled 'A Journey in Search of Moonlight'. He was a fascinating speaker, with a magpie mind where everything interests him and anecdotes and snippets of facts spill out of him - like W.G. Sebald, he meanders through art, history, astronomy, ancient cultures - everything fascinates him and he makes striking observations and connections. His book explores our attitude to the moon and also seeks to rediscover our lost connection with it. He talks of how we 'simmer in our own electronic bouillabaisse' of streetlighting, how the 'celestial light show' is 'rendered spectrally pale today by the intensity of our self-regard'. After seeing the moon in its full unspoilt glory on a trip to Cornwall, he resolved to get into tune with the lunar cycle and seize every opportunity of getting out there to look at it - really look at it. I'm dying to read the rest of the book - he talked of how he visited such diverse places as Japan and the Arizona desert in pursuit of its 'alchemical light.'

Later, at the bus stop on St Aldates, I gazed at the full moon glowing just beside Christ Church's Tom Tower. So often we're huddled beside the flicker of the TV screen and we miss what's going on out there - and even if we do go outside, the orange glow of city lights, which James memorably described as like being inside a Lucozade bottle, stops us seeing the stars and planets in their full glory. Only the moon survives that blotting out - but the moon too benefits from being seen above a dusty desert or as it rises from the sea.

It was a coincidence that James mentioned that he rediscovered the moon, as it were, while in Cornwall. I've written a children's story, Argentail,  set there - and in it a city boy wrestling with trauma is also part-awed, part-scared, part-comforted by the moon and what the moon brings him:

'The iron latch clattered loudly, like striking a tinder-box. The door seemed to swell towards him. He slipped through into the great echoing blackness of the tower, deep and dark as a well without water.
   And if he had thought it cold back in the cottage, that was nothing compared to the paralysing, brain-aching cold that seized him now. His breath was a vapour, his own personal fog-bank, accompanying him as he climbed the stairs to the first floor, to the second. Stony echoes left him, bounced back to him, like auditory boomerangs.
   At no time could he have said why he was doing this, why he had left the safety of the cottage for this spooky place, where wedges of unearthly blue light from the high windows were laid like stepping-stones before his feet. Up and round, up and round, up and into the great circular room, where the wedges of blue light fused into a flood. He walked across the bare floor and gazed out.
   He'd never looked at the sea except in terms of buckets and spades, rock-pools and jellyfish, lilos and waterwings and splashing your sister in the face until she howls with rage. The sea meant holidays. The sea was warm. The sea was a pet.
   Not this sea. Not this ocean.
   He grasped the windowsill and held his breath, not wanting to fog the glass, not wanting to spoil the view. The sea stretched out, charcoal-dark and glittering, to lands beyond imagination. This was a sea for explorers and invaders. It beckoned and tempted: it said anything was possible.
   It also said it didn't care. It didn't care for lost boys with confused feelings, standing at the edge of the land.
   A panel of bluish-white was laid in a long triangle across the water. Kick looked up.
   The clouds had all gone and the moon was there, huge and pure and nearly full. He felt that the window-glass was acting like a telescope - surely he'd never seen the moon so large?
   As a tiny child, like every tiny child, he'd heard songs and rhymes about the moon. A cow jumped over it. A man came down from it.
   He gazed now at its strange shadows and hollows.
   Then he leapt back, heart racing, a sudden heat breaking out all over his body.'

Shelley's not so blithe spirit

2011-03-18T19:35:00.001Z

Here in Oxford there's an exhibition currently at the Bodleian devoted to Shelley and his circle, which I've visited twice and hope to visit again before it closes on the 27th March. It's called Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family, it's free and it's certainly worth a look. The library has an excellent Shelley archive, so in the dimly-lit room you can see papers, pictures and 'relics' - because as you stroll round the most striking aspect of it all is that of the creation of literary myth. It's part poignant, part-irritating, to see how, in typical Romantic/Victorian fashion, Shelley's friends, relatives and wife set about the canonization of a writer famed for being an atheist.

I was touched by the doominess of it all: the sense of brief lives flaring in passion and self-destructiveness. There's not just Shelley himself, but his first wife who drowned herself, the suicide of Fanny Imlay, Mary Shelley's half-sister, Mary Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft dying as a result of childbirth, Byron's daughter Allegra, taken from her mother Claire Clairmont, only to die at the age of four in the convent Byron consigned her to, Mary Shelley's son William ... a catalogue of morbid melodrama which you wouldn't dare to make up (rather like reading about the Brontes' brief lives).

Linked with it the self-obsession, arrogance and self-indulgence - the posturing opinions, the dwelling on loss which in Mary Shelley's case seems to have reached an almost psychopathic level. Necklaces and rings were woven with the hair of the deceased, a 'shrine' was set up in her house where she could worship the god of her heart. Mary Wollstonecraft writing notes to William Godwin when she was pregnant, telling him she had 'no doubt of seeing the animal today' when she was close to giving birth to Mary Shelley. Fanny Imlay's last letter, full of reproach, emotional blackmail and self-pity. I found myself thinking of one of my favourite scenes in the Blackadder series set in the Regency, when all the Romantic poets are gathered, moaning and groaning, at Mrs Miggins' Pie Shop, and she says 'Ooh Mr Byron, don't be such a big girl's blouse!'

Yet there is much that is inexpressibly moving. Who could fail to sympathise with Mary Shelley when, on her son's death, her father wrote to her like this? 'But you have lost a child and all the rest of the world, all that is beautiful and all that has a charm upon your kindness, is nothing, because a child of three years old is dead!'

I was particularly struck by Shelley's doodles on his various notebooks: faces, trees, and ironically, boats, all sketched with verve. I was moved by a letter from Allegra to her father, Lord Byron.There's Mary Shelley's sense of doom and dread in the last days by the lake in Italy, there's Shelley's last hasty note to her, and there are the books he had with him on his boat, washed up, pages and covers swollen, after he drowned. I was impressed by the pages from the original manuscript of Frankenstein, with Shelley's editorial changes.

However, the artifact I found most moving was a letter from Keats to Shelley, written on August 16 1820, some months before Keats' death in Rome from tuberculosis. Shelley's poetry has never appealed to me in the way Keats' does: ironically, the one poem on display that really spoke to me was 'Adonais', which is Shelley's lament for Keats. The grace of Keats' handwriting and the liveliness of his voice and his intelligence stayed with me longer than anything.

Just Like Heaven Cover (The Cure) by Jacques

2011-03-14T09:20:00.001Z

2011-03-02T10:50:00.001Z

Well, the weather's been so grey and grim over the past few days, we could stand with cheering up, so here are the titles vying for your vote in this year's Diagram Prize, which is awarded by The Bookseller to the oddest title of the year. These are all genuine published books and you can vote for your favourite at www.thebookseller.com. Results are due on 25th March.

Here they are:
8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings
The Generosity of the Dead
The Italian's One-Night Love-Child
Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way
Myth of the Social Volcano
What Color is your Dog?

Current favourite is Managing a Dental Practice the Genghis Khan Way, which I have to say I'm drawn to, especially after suffering years of dentist-phobia (result of cack-handed treatment when I was a child and when I lived in Aberdeen. I remember the lady upstairs from my flat recommending I just have all my teeth pulled - 'Ye'll nae be bothered again. Jist get it a' ower and deen wi'.' There were moments when I was tempted ... )

If you want to have a chuckle at the shortlists of previous years, here are the links to my earlier posts about the competition:
2010 and this - where by weird coincidence I was suffering dental woes -
2009
2008
2007

Let me know what you think and whether, in your opinion, this year's list matches up to those of previous years.

Libraries: not life or death, apparently

2011-02-24T16:01:00.000Z

We're all aware that there's enormous anger about councils up and down the land planning to close libraries to save money. No doubt many of you have signed petitions in protest, or joined in mass book-borrowings and similar gestures. Here in Oxfordshire, 20 of the county's 43 libraries stand in peril - I refer you to my post last month about Philip Pullman's passionate speech in defence of the role of libraries (see also Michael Morpurgo in his recent Richard Dimbleby lecture). Of course, there's some pretty forceful correspondence going on in our local newspapers and even though the County Council has now said they will review the situation (Playing for time? Hoping we'll all go away?), I was horrified by the patronising and complacent tone of leader Keith Mitchell in the letters page of The Oxford Times last week. This is what he replied to a certain Dr Diana Sanders: 'I am only sorry that your love of library buildings, collections, reference books and maps does not extend to the human beings - young and vulnerable, old, disabled, with learning disabilities or mental health problems - who will have to endure extra cuts if we were to exempt libraries. No one will die if there are a few fewer libraries in Oxfordshire.'

I'll give you a few moments, to allow your blood to come down from boiling point, shall I?

Where do I start to describe how wrong all of this is? Why does his tone have to be so sneering? He is a public servant, is he not? I'm sure we're all thinking 'No one will die if there are a few fewer overpaid council officials ...'

Why does he claim that to love books and literary resources somehow makes you misanthropic to the degree that you do not care for the poor and needy? Are the two interests mutually exclusive? Does he view all book-lovers as crouched in candlelit studies, poring over precious manuscripts, pince-nez perched in front of beady eyes, while ragged beggars cluster outside our gates, palms outstretched? Are we saying 'Let them eat vellum?'

The cost of libraries and library services is relatively small in the scheme of things. I'm sure I don't need to reiterate what Messrs Pullman and Morpurgo and many others have said about the value of a professionally managed resource of knowledge, about access to all, about the psychological and cultural importance of books, about our nation's need to take pride in our heritage and its duty to help its people to fulfil their potential. Fulfilling potential and meeting needs is not just about disabled access or council social services (which, by the way, are also taking massive hits, including closures of youth centres in Oxfordshire and the Oxford Carers' Centre), but about hearts and minds, about enriching knowledge, awareness, a connection with the past and with each other.

Ironically, Mr Mitchell had picked on the wrong person. Dr Diana Sanders works for the NHS, counselling the terminally ill. She herself has endured a heart and lung transplant. So she knows about health problems and she knows about empathising with others. He has apologised in this week's Oxford Times, but I do think a more prolonged diet of humble pie would do him some good.

TOC 2011: Margaret Atwood, "The Publishing Pie: An Author's View"

2011-02-18T18:37:00.001Z

Wise, witty and with great drawings! Margaret Atwood's thoughts on the current and past relationship of author (aka 'primary source') and publisher/agent/reviewer/critic/librarian etc (all sustained by said primary source).

Latest Quote of Note

2011-02-16T18:59:00.000Z

I've just posted a quotation by Terry Pratchett and my thoughts on it on the Quotes of Notes page in the Writing Inspiration section of my website so head on over there! Remember also that my Early Bird Booking offer for my spring fictionfire courses runs until the end of this month - full details also on the site.

Joanna Penn Guest Posts on Indie Publishing: What Is It and Why Should You Consider It?

2011-02-07T01:15:00.004Z

I'm delighted that Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn has agreed to guest-post on Literascribe, discussing her experience of independent publishing, focussing on the benefits and the potential hazards of choosing this route. Her thriller Pentecost is now available - you can buy it on Amazon in print and on Kindle today! It's a fast-paced commercial spiritual thriller in the Dan Brown vein - and I have a particular interest because she's set part of it in Oxford where I live!

Here's what she has to say:
Indie or independent publishing is the new name for self-publishing. It's a proactive choice and not a last resort. It's a stamp of pride for online entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of new publishing technologies. It's being embraced by more and more authors who want to receive 70% royalties for their writing and are willing to put in the extra effort to make it work.

I published my thriller novel Pentecost as an indie author and have previously indie published three non-fiction books. Here are some of my reasons:

Speed to market. I'm a fast worker and love to see the results of my work immediately. I also like getting paid for my efforts. Once a book is complete, you can publish it on the Kindle and have the book selling within 24 hours. The money is in your bank account the next month and you can see the sales figures every day. It's immediate feedback. You can have a print book selling in the Amazon store within a month of publishing it with Lightning Source as print-on-demand. Compare that to traditionally published authors who may never see exact sales figures or will wait months for them. That's after waiting 18 months for the book to launch.

Entrepreneurship. I've been a freelance consultant for years now and love the control of being my own boss. I know business and like to control my own projects and finance. I also enjoy marketing and have buitl an online platform over the last two years which means that I have an audience to share my work with. I like to blog, speak and sell as well as write. Indie publishing appeals to my sense of entrepreneurial skill. I like to learn things, embrace technology and try new things out. By being in charge of my work, by owning the rights, I can give books away for free or price them how I like.

I'm not ruling out a traditional publishing deal and increasingly publishers are looking for books that break out by self-published authors. But right now, indie publishing is fantastic for me. My books are out there being read and my efforts are focused on marketing and promotion, a positive energy of achievement instead of the negative energy surrounding rejection and chasing agents with work.

That said, there are criticisms of self-published work that indies try to counteract.

Lack of quality. This is easy to fix if you are committed to a quality product. I engaged a book designer, two separate editors as well as proof-readers for Pentecost and all committed indies produce high quality work.

The "stigma" of self-publishing. As more quality indie titles are published and successful, the stigma lessens. Plus we are trying to rebrand as "independents"! It also depends on who you are trying to impress - publishers or readers? Readers generally don't notice or care who the publisher is and on Amazon.com, the biggest bookstore in the world, my book has the same page space as Dan Brown.

Online sales of ebooks and print books are a huge growth market and it doesn't matter how you publish now as long as it's a great book and you know how to market. So consider indie publishing if you're willing to invest in building an author platform and you enjoy running your own business! I've found it to be fantastically rewarding!

I'm sure you'll find Joanna's comments really interesting - this is such a hot topic just now and it is very much for every would-be writer to weigh up the advantages of speed and autonomy versus the burden of being a self-marketer. I agree that for indie publishing to work, the books need to have the same level of professional care and concern with aesthetic appeal invested in them as with traditionally-published books. I think would-be self-publishers should be prepared to face some tough decisions: is their work of a high enough quality? Are they prepared to edit and rework their writing? Are they being premature in putting the work out there (that's the danger of 'speed to market')? Are they prepared to invest time and money in presentation and marketing?

For further discussion of this topic, see also my blogpost back in September after visiting the Kingston Self-Publishing Conference.

In the meantime, let's wish Joanna every success with Pentecost! (Joanna is also a blogger at The Creative Penn: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing. You can connect with Joanna on Twitter @thecreativepenn)

Joanna Penn guest blogs here next week!

2011-02-03T10:58:00.002Z

I'm delighted to announce that Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn will be guesting on literascribe on Monday 7th February. Her novel Pentecost comes out next week and she'll be discussing the pros and cons of independent publishing, a subject so many of us are fascinated by during this period of immense change in the world of publishing, where alternatives to the traditional routes have never been so accessible or so appealing. Joanna is a hugely knowledgeable and helpful blogger, speaker and adviser on writing, publishing and book marketing so her thoughts on this topic will be of immense interest.

And here's a reminder from me about my fictionfire courses in May: my Early Bird booking fee runs till the end of February, so if you're interested in Essential Story Construction or Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice (or both!), check out the details on my fictionfire website. I'd love it if you could join us!

Philip Pullman's call to defend 'the republic of reading'

2011-01-26T19:08:00.001Z

You're probably aware of the rising tide of bewildered rage and campaigning fury across England and certainly in my local region, Oxfordshire, at the prospect of the closing of library branches. In Oxford city alone, Summertown, Headington, Old Marston, Littlemore, Blackbird Leys and Kennington are due to close - and this is to say nothing of branches outside the city. The Council advocates that everybody makes their way to Oxford's Central Library, blithely ignoring those who are strapped for bus fares, strapped for time, struggle to find child care, or are physically disabled.

Or, maybe they won't close them: a poisoned chalice is offered us. Yes, you may keep your branch libraries, on the condition that you run them yourselves. All very well and good in nice bourgeois areas, perhaps less likely in deprived ones. So, er, what if you're struggling to find a book or a resource? Isn't it fairly important to be able to turn to a professional, someone who is fully trained and cognisant with sources, locations and connections? If I pop up to the John Radcliffe Hospital with heart palpitations, do I expect to be treated by somebody who likes reading medical books and once did a first aid course, but doesn't have any other qualification?

The council will of course bleat that they have to cut such services as libraries in order to preserve more necessary services - but this sort of excuse just makes my blood boil. We never seem short of money to send officials on junkets and fact-finding missions, to advertise non-jobs whose descriptions and pay-rates beggar belief. To say nothing of unimaginable expenditure on bank-bailouts and pointless wars.

When I was a child, it was an utter joy to go down to the local village library and work my way along the shelves, reading anything and everything that came my way. I expanded my imagination and my knowledge. I made serendipitous discoveries. One of my dearest friends has been a librarian all her working life - is all her experience, her dedication, her enthusiasm to be devalued in this way?

We all seem to be existing these days in a state of gasping indignation: What? They're planning what? They wouldn't! They mustn't! We sign petitions against selling publicly-owned forests (if you haven't as yet, please do!), and now to save a service which since the nineteenth century has been a source of national pride: check out The Bookseller's Fight For Libraries campaign - go to http://www.thebookseller.com/ or to the Fight for Libraries facebook page, or follow them on Twitter - @fight4libraries.

Finally, I urge you to read Philip Pullman's speech, given in Oxford last week, and posted at http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/save-oxfordshire-libraries-speech-philip-pullman : it's a wonderfully articulate explosion of indignation, which not only defends libraries but celebrates the power of reading itself. He witheringly condemns the council for its lack of respect: thinking 'the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea', he expresses hate of 'the bidding culture' where all sorts of good causes are forced to compete with one another for limited resources, he talks of his own relationship with libraries, celebrating what goes on 'in that wonderful space that opens up between the reader and the book', and he worries that government and publishers fail to see value in any other than financial terms: 'the only measure is profit'. He reminds us that libraries are a reminder that 'there are things above profit.'

I hope he won't mind my quoting from him: please do read the whole article. Find out what's happening in your locality: libraries are precious. Don't take this erosion of a vital service in our society lying down.

In Memoriam

2011-01-21T12:21:00.001Z

Here it is again, the darkest day, lurking at the dawn of the year.

George Johnston Fergusson
Elizabeth Hay Findlay

21.1.72

'There is a photo of the two of them at some shindig before they are married. My father wears a suit but it looks saggy, bauchled - and under the jacket is a knitted waistcoat. I remember it: dark wine in colour, banded in beige. His lop-sided smile is part Frank Sinatra and his eyes sparkle. His arm is round my mother's waist. She's wearing a frothy creation, with a ruffled bodice that does her no favours and tiers of chiffon skirting, all very Fifties. Her skin is gorgeous: she glows. Her smile has a shyness to it: she looks happy to have his protective arm around her.

Later, in the black and white wedding photo, my Aunt Eunice sits in a froth of grey pastel, my cousin Dorothy is pixie-cute as the flower girl, and the best man, Ecky Mo, looks like a character from a comic-strip with his surprised stand-up hair and his square little face and button eyes. My Dad leans towards my Mum and he is in the full flowering of his handsomeness. My grandmother told me how, at the reception, he was taking a little too much to drink, but when she chided him for it he turned to her and said, 'Ae, Mam, I'm jist sae happy!' My heart clenches at that simple, pure outpouring of joy.'

Booking Opens for my Spring Courses!

2011-01-10T19:16:00.000Z

I'm delighted to announce that I've now posted full details of my next fictionfire courses on my website, http://www.fictionfire.co.uk/ and booking is now open: there's a special Early Bird rate for bookings by 28th February. I do hope you'll join us!

Here are brief summaries:

7th May: Essential Story Construction

As a writer, you're a fabricator: you make things up but you also have to put your invented elements together in a way that will not only make sense to your readers but which will grip their attention. This day course will examine the components you need to build your story - with particular emphasis on plot.

21st May: Creating Narrative Perspective and Voice

One of the crucial choices you make as a storyteller is to choose who's telling the story. The effective creation of point of view will add colour and draw your reader into the world of your characters. In this course we'll use published examples and practical exercises to explore the options available to you when choosing narative perspective, how to convey attitude and voice and the importance of controlling just how much information the reader is given and how it is pitched. You're aiming to use your skills to intrigue your readers and keep them engaged.

New Year, New Beginnings

2011-01-02T15:34:00.000Z

Well, that's Christmas over with - and it was a very good one down our neck of the woods. We're now standing on the threshold of the new year in a month named after the two-faced god of doorways. We look back - with some degree of nostalgia perhaps, although many of us seem to be glad to be putting 2010 behind us (my sister especially, who's had a bad year, health-wise) - and we look forward, perhaps with excitement at the prospect of a fresh start, perhaps with trepidation because the future is uncertain.

I wanted to share with you these brilliant lines from T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding, which Daisy Hickman posted on Facebook:

'For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice ...
And to make an end is to make a beginning.'

Many of us are reviewing what we did, what we read, what we learned, what we lost - and what we wrote, during the year that's gone. If you're writing, take the time to think about how much progress you made, look at what went well, what didn't go so well, the rejections you perhaps had to assimilate - do all that. Taking stock is important. And feeling proud of what you created - whether it was a whole novel or a four line poem - that too is important. But then ... move on. It's a new year: new beginnings come out of old experience. New words await for your brain to mint them.

I wish you all imaginable riches.

Get your metaphors in a twist!

2010-12-10T11:36:00.000Z

Metaphors are incredibly powerful tools, when you get them right - but writers can give too free a rein to their imagination, letting the horse of figurative language have its head (see what I'm doing here?) and they can fall at the Becher's Brook of comprehensibility.

Only Shakespeare can get away with this sort of frantic coinage of the mind: famously, Hamlet talks of taking arms against a sea of troubles, for instance, and Bill makes it work precisely because of the Canute-like absurdity of military action against the ocean.

My favourite mixed metaphors are 'I smell a rat! Shall I nip it in the bud?' and one which one of my students heard in a meeting: 'The road-map is on track to take off.'

And here today is another corporate-speak nonsense: one of Bloomsbury's sales and marketing people, when interviewed about their new deal with Google e-books, describes the advantages (apparently. Hmnn...) to authors and indie booksellers: 'Anyone that has any platform with any legs moving forward is on cloud.'

I leave that vision with you.

Post-NaNo Post: How to Keep Writing!

2010-12-01T11:14:00.000Z

So, 1st December, eh? All you weary NaNoers can down tools - and to those of you who reached the 50,000 word target I send my heartiest congratulations.

Last week, I posted about my NaNo with a Twist exercise, telling you that I'd deliberately set my target at 35,000 words. I'm happy to report that I passed that target two days ago and my grand total is 36,228 words, which is the largest total I've ever reached in a single month!

On the 1st November, it really didn't look as if that would happen: I felt utterly dismal, to be honest, and didn't see how I could achieve a tenth of the output I'd promised myself. So, what turned things around for me? Well, first of all, lowering my sights to a more realistic target. Second, choosing the right project to work on, which for me was memoir.

Third, was the mind game. Mind games are hugely useful to writers: we wriggle and dodge and make excuses for ourselves all the time. (Remember, my nickname is Queen of Displacement Activity.) I had the right desk, the right project, time enough in which to be productive - but still I struggled. Then I came across this article by novelist Drew Smith, which began, utterly engagingly, with this statement: 'The easiest thng about being a writer is not writing. It's also the hardest thing about being a writer.' Absolutely spot on. He went on to advise would-be writers to find a buddy (and, on a larger scale, Nano has been just that, for so many thousands of people.) A buddy cheers you on from the sidelines - but a buddy is somebody who will make sure you toe the line. You need support and encouragement, you need somebody to show tough love if necessary. (I have, by the way, the most wonderful friend who's been reading and cheering all month long!)

Secondly, he referred to Jerry Seinfeld's practice of hanging a huge calendar on the wall and putting a big red cross on every day where he meets his writing target. What happens is that you see a lovely line of red crosses stretching out - a visual reminder of all you have achieved. You become unwilling to 'break the chain'.

Bingo! I got out a calendar, wrote 1700 words on 2nd November, used a fat red marker pen to mark the cross and propped it up beside my desk. Amazingly, given that it's such a simple ploy, it did the trick! I'm now looking at a whole page of crosses - for even last night, after passing my target on the 29th, I still wrote, because I wanted the pleasure of seeing every box on that calendar page sporting its red cross (apart from the box for the 1st, alone and palely loitering ...).

Now, I do know that if I return to fiction after finishing the memoir, things will be tougher because the memoir is like lowering a bucket into a well and seeing what is drawn up - whereas a novel is a piece of architecture and I'm in charge of constructing all the elements in such a way that the edifice doesn't collapse. I can find the words - it's finding the plot that's the challenge.

That's as may be. I'll worry about that later. Now it's December 1st and time to turn to a new page on the calendar. If I put a red cross in the box later today I know I'll have to keep doing it!

So, many thanks, Drew and Jerry!

Now try it for yourself. Here's your mantra: don't break the chain!

NaNo with a Twist

2010-11-24T12:53:00.001Z

Everybody in the literary blogosphere seems to be aware that November is NaNoWriMo month - and many are slogging and swearing and cursing and despairing and celebrating as they write their daily quotas, heading for the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1667 per day, for those of you not in the know.

I blogged about it recently and encouraged you to take part. What about me? Well, on the last day of October, pretty much at the last minute, I had a rush of blood to the head and signed myself up as a NaNoWriMoer.

The first of November, therefore, was hellish. What had I done? What was I thinking of? How could I write so much in so short a time when my life is so busy and my mental energy so low?

As the day headed towards midnight, with nary a word scratched on the vellum, the biggest conundrum I faced was this: what was I going to write? For quite a while now, I've found myself unable to make proper progress on projects because I cannot choose one in particular, onto which and into which I can settle. I have a butterfly mind. I am subject to fierce enthusiasms and sudden burn-outs. So all of that Monday was spent in an agony of indecision blended with a complete lack of faith in my ability to rise to the challenge.

Tuesday morning. NaNoWriMo wordcount a big fat 0. All day Tuesday the pain went on - and my only comfort was that I hadn't really told anybody that I'd signed up (although you're supposed to, as the moral support of others and the Shame Factor of letting them and yourself down are powerful triggers to composition). Nobody knew that I had Failed. Nobody could jeer at my humiliation.

Nobody, that is, but me.

Dear reader, I expect you're hoping there was some sort of breakthrough, some sort of revelation, to turn around the sorry direction this account is heading in. Reader, there was not one revelation, but two.

First, late on the night of Tuesday 2nd November, I chose my project. I chose it because I remembered one of my favourite couplets, from Philip Sidney's sonnet about inspiration: where his Muse rather irritably says to the struggling poet who is 'biting' his 'truant pen, beating [himself] for spite', 'Fool, ... look in thy heart and write.' In my heart and mind, for many years, has been the plan to write a memoir. I've put it off time and again, always thinking there would be a 'later' better suited to its composition. I knew that to tackle it would be difficult, that to engage with certain memories might be traumatic, to find a structure for it a challenge. But I also knew that if I never do this, I will have failed in a much more significant way than in not writing 50,000 words in a certain month in 2010.

Without thinking too much about where it would lead or what the structure would be, I opened a new document and started typing. And it's been a revelation, in many ways. I start each session with the panicky thought that I'm not up to the job, that my mind's a blank, that I don't know how to write the first sentence - but then I do write that first sentence and I'm away. A flood of memory surges through me and is channelled onto the page - some of it will be moved or excised later but that doesn't matter just now. Now is about release and momentum. I had no idea it could be this easy or this fulfilling. NaNo's philosophy is that you should just write, without the internal editor switched on, and this is what I try to follow. What is also liberating is that this is a project for me, without the draining second-guessing of what the 'market' wants - the checking of agent requirements and of book-deals recently done - I am in a bubble of spontaneous creation, ignoring the idea of mainstream publication.

I'm not saying that the thought of publication doesn't cross my mind (what is a writer without a reader?), but what I am saying is that by not making it the be-all and end-all, my writing has been able to stretch its limbs, untrammelled.

The second revelation is to do with productivity. 50,000 words is all very well and good and there are many writers out there who can produce several thousand words a day without, it seems, breaking sweat. That's not me. When I write, I write in a short, fast burst - but if I stop, I lose momentum and the fire cools. So I've come to an accommodation here: I choose not to write 50,000 words. I would have ground out sheer nonsense or clunky uninspired pedestrian prose, in service of that goal. There's a balance to be struck between writing spontaneously and non-judgementally and sweating under the burden of an unachievable word-count. I chose a target of 35,000 words: this seemed to me to be challenge enough and a satisfying quantity to have achieved by the end of the month. Each day, I set my quota as 1,000 words - knowing that once I get going, I'm likely to go over it, and the going over it makes me feel delightfully smug. I do my little running sums: in the first stage of the quota, things are often agonised. Tap tap tap goes the calculator: 361 words. Oh God! How am I going to get to 1,000? Tap, tap, tap. 749 - nearly three-quarters ... then, in the final stage, 'flow' tends to kick in, and I lose all sense of time, of effort, of wordcount. I draw breath at the end to discover I've written 1100, 1200, 1300 ... Bliss!

So, I've broken the rules. I'm writing memoir - and NaNo is about writing novels (although I see other NaNO rebels do too). I'm writing something that even my nearest and dearest may never see. I'm writing 15,000 fewer words than I should - but, at the same time, 35,000 words more than I might have done.

If you're a fellow NaNo-er, good luck! We're on the home straight now! I know I won't get my completion certificate, but, with just over 5,000 words to go, what I have is intense satisfaction and a renewal of faith in my ability to string one damned word after another, page after page, to build something that didn't exist before, to express something which only I can express in this particular way, to leave something, not just of myself but of those I've loved and have lost.

From Luddite to Kindle Lover

2010-11-05T12:57:00.001Z

Well, it's been a long time coming. Back on 18 September 2008 I wrote a post, called 'To e or not to e', looking at the appeal of e-readers versus conventional books. The e-readers didn't come out well: I was prepared to say that there was a certain allure about the Sony and the iLiad but that the prices were far too high. This is what I had to say about Amazon's Kindle:

'My gut instinct is a Luddite one, and when I saw pictures of Amazon's Kindle machine my baseline hostility had aesthetic revolt added to it. The thing looks ghastly. Why do gadget producers think white is a practical colour for a gizmo they hope will be in daily use (cf Apple products)? That pristine science fiction purity will not last - the thing will end up fingerprint-tainted and smeary. Yich. The Kindle's whiteness just looks cheap to me and the design is pug-ugly and clumsy. It reminds me of gadgets sold in the Seventies with cheesy tacky adverts - do you remember K-Tel?'

What a difference a couple of years makes! I'm now the proud owner of a Kindle - so why have I succumbed? In a nutshell: style, ease and convenience, portability and access.

When I started seeing pictures of the new Kindle in the late summer I actually found myself thinking 'I want that!' It is smaller than earlier Kindles, in graphite grey with tapered edges, matt in texture so not showing fingerprints. I find it easy to hold - particularly as with increasing problems with arthritis holding a heavy book open is becoming more and more of a strain (I'll be buying Justin Cronin's mammoth 'The Passage' on Kindle, for instance). If I want to read at table (yes, I'm bad-mannered that way), it lies flat beside me and all I do is press the button to change the page. The Amazon case I bought for it was expensive but it's a classy piece of kit: grained leather with a soft lining and a clever device for hooking your Kindle safely into it. The e-ink display is extremely clear and doesn't tire the eye - coming back from London on the coach the other night with poor-quality light to read by, I simply increased the text-size quite a bit and read on happily. I have had a look at the iPad and it doesn't appeal: yes, I know it's beautiful and it does a lot more than the Kindle. But I wanted a reader - and the iPad is too big and far too heavy, the glossy display too bright and I cannot abide when glare gets in the way of what I'm trying to read. Apparently, most iPads never leave their owners' houses - the Kindle tucks into my handbag and is my companion and resource.

Ease: the Kindle really does work straight out of the box. This is brilliant. When it arrived I spent a happy afternoon downloading loads of free out-of-copyright books - the user manual was on the device should I need it, but really every process is crystal-clear. I bought the 3G version and I recommend that if you're buying one you do the same: if a title interests me I can connect with the Amazon store and have it on my Kindle in a couple of minutes. We were in Paris last week and when we visited the Louvre, I connected and downloaded the opening of 'The Da Vinci Code' to compare the description in the novel with the reality. Done in seconds!

This brings me to another delightful feature - you can download free samples of books so that you can make a decision about whether you'll go ahead and buy. Just as with standing in a bookshop reading the first few pages of a potential purchase, sometimes this leads to a purchase, sometimes not. To any of you writers out there, this is a very important feature: when you're submitting your work to agents it's crucial to get your opening right - we all know this. But it's becoming even more crucial when the Kindle purchaser makes a judgement based on a sample. This is how the modern world works: we want to be hooked instantaneously. Go back and check your story's opening - would you go ahead and buy?

I've organised my books into Collections and have made some serendipitious discoveries in the free book section. I subscribe to a blog, Me and My Kindle. I can travel now without that worry that I may run out of reading matter or that the book I've taken with me will bore me - whatever my mood, I can find something to read. Every time I return to an individual book, it'll open at the page I left it at. If I want to I can bookmark passages, annotate them, hover the cursor over a word and get a dictionary definition of it. I can connect to the internet, though that's rather slow - this doesn't bother me as I bought the Kindle as a reader not as a Jack of all trades.

Do I have any quibbles? Yes, of course. It's rather heavier than I thought it would be, to be honest. The keyboard has very fiddly little keys. In Paris I read Ernest Shackleton's 'South' and the lack of maps and charts (it was one of the free books) was irritating. But the biggest problem I have with it is finding my way about as there are no page numbers. This is because the change text-size facility alters the pagination, so Amazon has gone for a 'location' bar along the bottom, which gives you an idea of what proportion of the book you've read. OK, I'm getting more used to that but if I want to flick back to a previous page or reference, I can't - unless I open the search box and type in a term. That's my biggest grouch with it.

You get past that by realising you haven't chosen e-reader over book - the two are complementary. I can load one-read-only books on my Kindle, or old classics, I can try samples and I can carry loads of reading material around with me. I save space on my overloaded shelves. But I will never never never fall out of love with books themselves: here's what I wrote back in 2008 -

'Books, now. Ah, books ... I sniff at my new books like a Bisto kid. I stroke their spot-laminated covers. I browse in bookshops and buy books by happenstance. I find old books I never knew existed and read notes and signature of people long-dead who also cherished these words. I pick up a book, I put it down, I pick it up again - it is still there for me, patient and loyal, ready to give up ideas, knowledge and felicitious phrases whenever I want. It does not run out of charge. If I lose my place or want to find a previous reference, I flick. I don't scroll or jab buttons. I can find my way about it with ease and there is a democracy of pages at work. In my house, books teeter in piles and are crammed on shelves, their spines a display of colour, of changing fashions in jacket copy, an instant reminder, each one, of when and why I bought it, an instant trigger to feelings I had on reading it, what was going on in my life during that first literary encounter. Some are tucked away, shamefast, like old boyfriends you cannot for the life of you understand once had an appeal for you. Some evoke the safety of childhood. Some scream youthful pretentiousness at you. Some are comforts in the darkest night. Some have stretched your horizons. Some make your heart race. Some lull you with the most beautiful of rhythms, the most beloved of words. Some make you cry. And they're all there, eternally waiting without reproach, just for you. So if someone wants to give me an e-reader for Christmas, well, yippee. It'll be fun. It'll be a frolic. But the love of books, real paper books, tried and trusted (bless you, Gutenberg) solid enduring instant-access books - that love is in the marrow of my bones.

Penguin publishing opportunity and NaNo time!

2010-10-24T16:44:00.000Z

The Sutro Room, Trinity College

I can't believe that we struck lucky with the weather yet again at last Saturday's fictionfire course on editing and making your pitch! Trinity College was glowing again. Once again, I had a truly delightful group of people attending and we had a lot of fun with what could be a dry and challenging area (preparing your work for submission) and a scary area (how to approach and pitch to agents and editors). As a bonus, a film crew set up loads of paraphernalia in the front quad outside. In Oxford, you're always tripping over film crews - here, apparently, it was another episode of Lewis, Morse's successor. I should have been teaching a course in crime fiction! I failed to spot either Lewis or Hathaway - but one of my students was unfortunate enough to cross Kevin Whateley's eye-line when returning from lunch and she got glared at!

I won't be running any other fictionfire courses this year - but am continuing to be involved in editing and mentoring work. I've also got plans for next year - watch this space!

A quick mention, too, for Penguin's current offer to would-be writers, which is about to run out. Till the end of this month they are accepting submissions unagented. Woop! Woop! Go to their website to find out details: it's quite a stringent set of instructions. Essentially, you approach them by email, with a brief covering note and synopsis (not as attachments - in the body of your email) and if they're interested, they'll get back to you. God knows, the editors are probably chin-deep in submissions by now - but let's all be grateful for the chance to circumvent the laborious 'find an agent first' process. If you do go for this, I'd strongly recommend that you follow the submission guidelines to the letter (don't submit your whole book!) and that you research which of Penguin's imprints your work would best suit. A little market awareness goes a long way. Go to http://www.penguin.co.uk/ to find out more: there's a summary of the structure of the company, listing all the imprints and if you go to Question 11 'How Can I Get My Book Published?' in the About Penguin section, you'll find more details about the submission offer.

Now, as we take our half-term break, I find myself dithering - yet again- over whether to sign up for NaNoWriMo this year. On balance, I think it's unlikely that I will, but I do find myself tempted every year. For those of you unfamiliar with the rather clumsy term NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. And it is a Jolly Good Thing. You can find out all about it at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ - it's a wonderful site, chockfull of advice and encouragement. The deal is this: you sign up to write 50,000 words in a month. That's it. Simple as that. Those who do, whose wordcounts are uploaded and checked by Nano's robots, are awarded a certificate. Last year, 165,000 took part (it's growing every year) and 30,000 actually completed their 50,000 words.

Why do it? Simple again. Its purpose is to get you writing, to keep you writing. You stop talking about it (and we writers are so good at that!) and you do it. You tell everybody you're doing it. You stop doing the housework. You churn out your wordcount per day. You can plan what you're going to write but everything you submit to the site must be written during November.

'Oh, but ...', you say. 'It's impossible! How can I write properly when under such pressure?' That's the point: you don't worry about literary perfection, deathless prose, being of publishable standard. You just get the words on the page. There are those who, after NaNO month, rework and reshape what they've written - others don't, but have the pleasure of knowing they have strung that huge sequence of words together, put marks on the page any old how. The site tells us it's about 'Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft'.

So, consider giving it a go. You need to sign up by the end of October 31st. If you do, let me know how you get on - and I wish you fun and fulfilment with it!

Join us before time runs out!

2010-10-14T16:36:00.000Z

Bookings will close at 1 pm tomorrow (Friday) for Saturday's fictionfire course on editing and submitting your work, Shape Up and Make your Pitch. Remember that these days writing your story is only part of the story - if you want to connect with your potential readers, you need first to convince the guardians and gatekeepers of the industry! Join with us as we explore ways to impress and appeal to agents and editors: see full details on the Course Dates and Details page of the website.

You've written it, now sell it!

2010-10-12T08:34:00.000Z

'Stop thinking abut your book as a creative masterpiece and start thinking about it as a product.' (Andrew Therkelson)

Check out my Quotes of Notes page on the fictionfire website to read my thoughts on this and many other inspiring quotations for writers.

The gorgeous Sutro Room at Trinity College

Oh, and you only have three and a half days in which to book fictionfire's day course Shape Up and Make Your Pitch! Learn how to self-edit and pitch your work in the beautiful surroundings of Trinity College, Oxford. Full details are on my Course Dates and Details page on the website. Bookings must be received by 1 pm Friday 15th October!

You've got hours left to book for Making Memorable Scenes!

2010-10-01T00:06:00.000Z

One a.m. Friday - in around 12 hours I need to confirm numbers for Making Memorable Scenes at Trinity College, so if you've been dithering for a while, you need to decide to plump for it and let me know! Contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk or ring 07827 455723. There are some lovely people coming - it would be great if you could join us!

There's a whole load of fun and information on offer - take a look at the Testimonials page on my website.

There's even the chance that the rain might hold off on Saturday!

Making Memorable Scenes course only a week away!

2010-09-24T12:27:00.000Z

You only have a week left in which to book your place on my fictionfire Making Memorable Scenes course at Trinity College!

If you're interested in aspects of plot and story-structure, this day course will guide you towards making the scenes you write work as powerfully as possible to engage and hold your reader's attention. We'll look at published examples, deconstructing them to see how their internal dynamics made them effective - and we'll practise writing our own scenes. We'll cover areas such as pace, tension, creating mood, setting location, using dialogue and placing scenes in your story's overall structure. Getting the individual scenes right will help you grow in confidence as a writer.

A fuller description of the course, along with details of the venue and how to book, are all available on the website http://www.fictionfire.co.uk/ (where you can also see my latest Quote of Note and mini-essay about it in the Writing Inspiration section of the site).

The Sutro Room, Trinity College

Coming up, on the 16th October, there's Shape Up and Make Your Pitch: make agents hungry to see more of your work!

Announcing new writers' services

2010-09-17T17:32:00.000Z

I'm delighted to announce redefined categories, a revised fee-structure and new services for writers on my fictionfire website, along with a helpful list of Recommended Resources for writers which I'll continue to compile.

Self-Publishing Conference at Kingston University

2010-09-05T16:56:00.000Z

Yesterday I attended the second day of the Self-Publishing Conference at Kingston University, which involved no less than four trains to get me from Oxford to Surbiton at the right time! The bonus for me was the chance to meet up with my friend and colleague, Jacqui Lofthouse, who is also a novelist and writing coach.

The day was very well-presented and organised, with Alison Baverstock, whose name you may well recognise from her books on writing and marketing, in charge of the show.

I attended because I've been very interested of late in how self-publishing is going. The conference served to confirm what I'd been thinking - that the rate of change of attitude to it is accelerating, that the means by which to do it are becoming ever-more accessible and affordable, and that the ebook versus printed book debate continues to be dynamic. I was struck by how often people said, during the course of the day, 'I'm going to buy an ebook reader - when the right one comes out.' I certainly feel the iPad is too big and overpriced and I haven't yet been seduced enough by any of the others, but I do feel that the tipping point is coming closer. Samsung is releasing an Android-compatible reader, which is as sexy-looking as the iPad but smaller, more portable, and probably with more functionality.

Don't get me wrong: I have always loved and will always love the paper book. I see ereaders as being useful for research-texts and for portability. But there seems to be a growing consensus that the brave new world will contain not Either/Or but Not/Only/But/Also. We will choose our reading format according to our needs, including cheap downloadable versions on ereaders, eccentrically-appealing nostalgia reads sourced from our own shelves and second-hand bookshops (if those survive, of course) and 'boutique' reads - exquisitely crafted editions which will be cherished as future heirlooms.

As with ereaders, so with publishing. The conference served to highlight that as writers we can now choose the paths we wish to take to publication - and those paths need not be mutually exclusive. The first speaker of the day was Anna Lewis of Completely Novel - one of the companies now offering us the chance of e-publication (compare also Lulu, Smashwords and Createspace). At Completely Novel you can very simply upload your text to be available as an ebook - but you can also opt to have a POD printed version too. You keep your rights and you choose the level of service you want from them. I found it appealing that they do all the tricky formatting of your text and, having looked at their site previously, thought the process was being made as straightforward as possible.

Later Harriet Smart of Anthemion showed another option, software called Judoh which enables you to format your work for all the types of reader out there. Mark Johnson, Community Editor of The Economist, who was involved when employed by HarperCollins to set up Authonomy, discussed how mainstream editors react to self-published authors. As you'd expect, some would run a mile, others are more open to the idea, and indeed some actively trawl the web for talent they can sign up.

Andrew Therkelson, a market research consultant, talked of how book design can sway customer decisions and of how important it is to think of yourself as a 'brand': 'Stop thinking about your book as a creative masterpiece and start thinking about it as a product.' He recommended that you look at your book from the outside in - from the potential customer's point of view - and think of the 'promises' you're making to the customer through your choice of images and colours.

Gareth Howard of Authoright discussed the ways his company can publicise your book for you, given that what he calls 'discoverability' is so crucial to success. This was of just as much relevance to traditionally-published writers as self-publishers, in that marketing/publicity budgets are notoriously low and authors have to do more and more to create a buzz for themselves. Like Andrew Therkelson, he recommends that you think of yourself as the product, in a way: what's the human interest angle to your book? Instead of offering a dry synopsis, excite the reader with the 'juicy story', the personal aspect.

Author Siobhan Curham rounded off the day with the most personal view of all. She had turned down a two-book mainstream deal in order to self-publish, because her previous experience of mainstream publication had been so dire: promises not kept, a ghastly and inappropriate book-jacket which damaged sales, pressure to write a certain type of book rather than the variety of books she wanted to write. Her talk was vibrant, witty, fun - and yet poignant, because she'd clearly been through the mill. She's shown energy and bloody-mindedness, but was candid that she's now being published traditionally again because to go it alone is a 'hard slog'.

So what are the messages to take away from a discussion like this?

First, there's never been a better time for you, the author, to access the public, to do things your way, on your own terms. You can choose your format - ebook, PDF, printed version. You can choose short-run printing or POD. Your book has the potential to look indistinguishable from one produced traditionally. You can choose the level of expenditure you wish to commit yourself to. You can use your own website or blog and social networking to build up your author platform, establishing a dialogue with your readers, creating a buzz around your book. You can branch off in whatever direction you wish as a writer. You answer to no one.

But there are dangers: you may over-value the quality of your work and use self-publishing as an easy way to stroke your ego. You may produce a book which screams 'amateur' because it's badly edited, messily laid-out and has a clumsy piece of artwork on the cover (given to you free by a relative). You may underestimate just how much effort and commitment is required to publicise your book - you need energy, bullishness, passion for your work - and you need to take that work to the world: the world won't come to the work and spontaneously recognise how great it is.

You need spirit and self-belief. You need arrogance but paradoxically humility too, in that you need to listen to advice and be prepared to be flexible. You need to set goals and targets, not faff around. You need to learn skills you may not already possess or buy in services if you can't cope for yourself. You need to think commercially - and that means being economical and practical, but also being prepared to invest enough money to make your enterprise work.

So, you've finished your book. Try the traditional route: send out those submission packages. Roll with the punches - the delays and rejections. Then take stock: if you're being rejected, why is this? Is it a problem with the work? If so, try to fix it. Is it a problem with the market? Maybe it's worth waiting for the market to change, or maybe you should write something new. If, as you take stock, you feel your belief in the value of what you've produced strengthens, along with your indignation and frustration that no publisher is prepared to act as the bridge between it and its potential audience, THEN think about self-publication. Go into it clear-eyed and clear-headed. Make it look stunning, shout about it on Facebook, set up direct sales - and hope that that web-trawling editor comes across it and makes you an offer, and you'll have had the best of both worlds!

Corfu Idyll

2010-08-25T14:31:00.000Z

'July had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky. A sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque grey sheets when the wind caught it. Along the Bournemouth sea-front the beach huts turned blank wooden faces towards a greeny-grey, froth-chained sea that leaped eagerly at the cement bulwark of the shore. The gulls had been tumbled inland over the town, and they now drifted above the house-tops on taut wings, whining peevishly. It was the sort of weather calculated to try anyone's endurance.'

No, this is not my writing - yet it couldn't more perfectly describe our current 'summer' weather. This is from the opening chapter of Gerald Durrell's 'My Family and Other Animals', which hilariously sets out the conditions that led his family to up sticks for Corfu in the 1930s. Durrell was nine or ten and about to experience a magical sojourn in a land of warmth (of climate and of people), colour, extraordinary eccentricity, natural marvels and the kind of freedom a British ten-year-old can only dream of nowadays. He pootled about in his round and unstable boat, the Bootle Bumtrinket, made for him by his brother Leslie. He drove his brother Larry into paroxysms of rage ( 'That bloody boy!') by filling their various villas with animals, birds and insects of varying degrees of aggression or dependency: a matchbox-full of tiny scorpions, a vicious seagull, a tortoise called Achilles, a hoopoe called Hiawatha, a pigeon called Quasimodo, dogs called Widdle and Puke. He wandered through olive groves in the stunning heat, down to rock pools and beaches. He put up with tutors trying to give him an education - an education he did indeed receive, but a far from conventional one. The 'little English lord' was accosted by peasants who fed him gossip and folklore along with olives, grapes and figs. He spent hour upon hour in contemplation of birds incubating or spiders lurking under trapdoors, with a single-minded concentration perhaps unachievable by modern children, if we are to believe current theories that the internet has damaged our capacity to keep our minds on anything for more than a nanosecond.

Months ago, when we were planning our holiday to Corfu, I blogged that I was going to take Durrell's Corfu Trilogy with me and read it while there - and this is what I did. Absolute joy - first of all the joy of rediscovery, as I'd read it when I was a child. The writing holds true: there are scenes of utter farce which would fit well into 'Fawlty Towers'. There is the capturing of an era long gone, where children could roam free without the frowning disapproval of Health and Safety, where the island was unspoilt, following traditional ways of life. There is the utter lyricism of the style: Durrell has an extraordinary eye for detail and ear for dialogue. He teaches you and entertains you and casts a spell with beautiful and observant images which are pin-sharp.

View from villa to Corfu Town

The second joy was the joy of reading it in the place he describes, though sadly many of those places have now changed considerably and I'm sure he'd be horrified at the transformation. The Strawberry Pink Villa where first the family resided was opposite where the modern airport now is: planes roar down over the sea and the lagoon, past the 'Chessboard Fields', the 'intricate pattern of narrow waterways that once been salt pans in the Venetian days.' However, much remains as it was: the olive groves, the dark spikes of cypresses, the phenomenal jades and sapphires of the sea. One of my memories had been of the Rose-Beetle Man: a strange, virtually speechless loner, fantastically dressed, playing a shepherd's pipe as he roamed the hills, and round his hat, anchored by lengths of cotton thread, an aerial display of captured rose-beetles: 'glittering golden green in the sun, all of them flying round his hat with desperate, deep buzzings, trying to excape from the threads tied firmly round their waists.' I had never forgotten the picture of the planetary orbiting of metallic beetles round this weird and compelling character. How wonderful, then, to stand by the railing of our villa, looking out over the olive and lemon trees and hear a deep burr as a gorgeously iridescent beetle droned past, to realise that its emerald glint was that of a rose-beetle.

Wedding party at Agni

We built up our own memories, of course. As the rain comes down I try to hang onto the memory of heat and I picture the snow-white muscular vector of water behind the power-boat that took us across the bay to Corfu Town. I can see the rolled-up black netting under the olive trees, waiting until the fruit will be ripe. I hear the constant rasp of cicadas, an aural shimmer manifesting the heat. There's the wedding party at Agni, the bride and groom arriving by boat and being photographed under a floral arch while the sea turns to milk behind them. There are the terracotta pots of succulents, geraniums and herbs at the monastery at Paleocastritsa. There's the line of silver charms under censers, above the tomb of Saint Spiridion in Corfu Town. I see the moon rise above the hills of Albania while the bright lights of a silent ferry nose past the northern end of the island, seeking passage to Italy. I cherish the hours of reading, reading, reading - for nothing but pleasure - without interruption, without awareness of time. And I'll always remember our two lunches at The White House in Kalami, where that other Durrell lived for a time, Lawrence Durrell, an altogether more challenging writer. What a lovely fantasy: to rent that apartment, look out at the summer pleasure boats bringing people to the jetty so that they can sit and eat and drink for hours into the dusk, and think, and brood, and write, set free from the quotidian world.

Kalami

Sun loungers at dusk, Agni

Now, forgive me for this extravagance. And please read Gerald Durrell - as a stylist, I think he's under-estimated. I could pick all manner of luscious passages or laugh-out-loud moments - but you need to read them for yourselves.

So, before autumn has us entirely in its clutches, and with the hope that you too found your summer idyll, I'll hang onto the memory of what he describes: 'Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.'

(Gerald Durrell: My Family and Other Animals; Birds, Beasts and Relatives; The Gardens of the Gods)

Time for a break

2010-07-20T22:49:00.000Z

Once again, the summer school I ran for Oxford University was intensely rewarding and intensely draining! I'm sitting in the study with files and handouts strewn about - they probably won't be sorted properly until September. I met some lovely people and they produced some wonderful writing exercises, creating fascination and a great deal of laughter!

It really is time now for time out, though. The past few months have been productive but challenging, both on personal and professional levels. I feel I need to take two or three weeks now just for me, to try to gather my thoughts, not about my clients or my students, but about me. Interestingly, both at Winchester and at last week's summer school, I was asked 'What are you working on now?' Well, it'll be a year next month since I set up fictionfire and that has been an all-encompassing project. I've learned an extraordinary amount and have seen the business grow - and hope to see it grow further - but during all this, and with the normal demands of my other teaching, it's been all too easy to lose sight of myself as a writer. I have not been producing very much and what there is is short: poems, a short story for the Bridport competition. Everything else is on the back burner. For some years now I've been wrestling with this: what do I write next? How much do I care? Is my over-awareness of the 'business' of it all cancelling out the once-instinctive joy of it? These are serious questions. Yet, in spite of it all, that sense of an itch, that virus in the blood, that hunger to create is still there - below the surface. I hope to get some mulling and pondering done while I take my break from the professional side of me. Oh, and I also hope to get some reading done. For pleasure, nothing else - how would that be?

Enjoy your summer, all of you!

Summer school and autumn courses

2010-07-08T22:33:00.000Z

Those who follow me on facebook will know I've been having a pig of a time this week updating my website. I needed to put the full course details up for my two courses, Making Memorable Scenes on the 2nd October and Shape Up and Make Your Pitch on the 16th October. Easy-peasy, you might say. Not. I decided to make a new page on the site for the venue for the courses - had terrible trouble with photo-layout: I'm not good at this. Then lost the lot when the internet went down, just as I was about to upload (isn't it always when you're just about to upload?). Tried again the next day - got the page up, but the photos sit in positions which do not equate to how they looked when creating the page, so I'm still not entirely happy with it and will have to have another go. Yesterday I found that by creating the new page, none of the internal links worked properly - had to laboriously go through every page undoing and re-doing the links.

I should have spent today lying down in a darkened room. However, I start teaching on the University's summer school programme on Saturday so am preparing for that. A very intensive week lies ahead but I enjoy it a lot because I've met such a wide variety of interesting people, from all over the world - people with loads of enthusiasm and commitment. This will be my ninth year of teaching this - it's a course that squeezes all the elements of novel-writing into a week. Students also particularly value the two individual tutorials they have during the week: they send an assignment in beforehand and do another during the course. The tutorials are mini-editorial meetings and it's very fulfilling to see people take away advice and suggestions and put them into practice. Some students make enormous progress in a few days and are able to analyse their own work more effectively and make use of new techniques and awareness. Quite a few have kept in touch with me long after the course is done, and this is so rewarding.

So, the website photos will have to wait a while ...

Post-Winchester Post

2010-06-28T14:26:00.000Z

Phew! It was, as it always is, a hectic weekend, made all the more exhausting by the humidity and heat. It was definitely the hottest Winchester Writers' Conference I've attended!

On Friday I taught a mini-course on Point of View in a room where, thankfully, the sun didn't strike directly until late afternoon. The group was a delight - faces old and new, all contributing opinions and questions, and writing beautiful and interesting pieces (I'm only sorry we didn't have time for more writing exercises, as there was so much to get through!).

After the opening dinner, I thought I'd get an early night, but ended up waking up at 5 a.m. and not being able to sleep properly after that. If it weren't for the need to get some sleep for the sake of brain-alertness, I wouldn't complain at all. The hall of residence I was in was up above the main campus (those of you who know the University of Winchester will know its steep topography!), which meant a beautiful view across the valley to the wooded ridge beyond, trees all around and a light refreshing breeze. The morning light was just exquisite. Wish I'd remembered to bring my camera.

The plenary speaker on Saturday was Sir Terry Pratchett. There was great anticipation that he would deliver a witty, fun, yet trenchant speech - and we were not disappointed, except by his tendency to drift away from the microphone. The collective will of the members of the audience urged him to stay where his voice could sound out properly, but no-o-o-o-o-o-o

He was introduced as a speaker with a tower of books sold that would measure a mile high - he told us that his mother told stories to him as a child but that he was initially a poor reader, until he read 'The Wind in the Willows' and then never looked back. He associated school 'with being smacked' and left at the age of seventeen, to become a journalist. His path to publication was an easy one and it all seems to have come naturally to him - he applies this philosophy to his books. He devours history books and came out with extraordinary facts (including the hilarious description of a 19th century financier called Preserved Fish! - an orphan adopted by devout religious people who called him Preserved-by-the-Lord because he'd survived a shipwreck). He said 'I write serendipitously. I've never yet plotted a book.' He navigates his way through 'a valley of clouds' and knows that 'there is a story there in the way that a prospector knows that there is oil under the ground.' His focus is on instinct, on the theme or central idea of the book rather than on a rigid outlining of plot. This dilemma - do I plot ahead, do I fly by the seat of my pants - faces all of us as writers. Usually we reach an accommodation between the two extremes (unless we're screenwriters where a rigid plot structure is crucial) - too much freedom can result in flabby, directionless, self-indulgent storytelling - but too much plotting ahead can result in a tale which is airless and overworked, where you're too tied to structures to take a risk or go where the story is leading you.

As with so many good writer-speakers, Terry knew how to manage an audience. His tone and timing were spot on. The audience not only evinced collective will (get back to the microphone, Tel!) but collective concern. Nobody can be unaware of Terry Pratchett's condition - we were braced for any evidence of the encroachment of his dementia and we all drew in our breaths whenever he paused to search for a word. There were moments when that search stretched out slightly longer than was comfortable - but then who of us does not blank out on occasion, when a perfectly familiar name or reference eludes us? It was just that with Sir Terry we were looking for it, expecting it, reading perhaps too much into those moments. It was striking that he gave the whole speech himself, whereas when he gave the Dimbleby lecture on TV he opted for someone else to deliver most of it. Also, to his credit, he did not mention his condition at all. I'm sure he knows how much sympathy and support there is for him. He chose to deliver a speech as a writer to other writers - although its title was a prickly 'Why are You Listening to Me when you Should Be at Home Writing?' (ah, but Terry, you know full well that we writers are Devotees of Displacement, acolytes in the Cult of Procrastination!)

Because I had one-to-one appointments with writers and a lecture to give, the only other talk I managed to attend was Carol Ann Duffy's reading of some of her poetry, both past (from 'The World's Wife') and current, including a very moving poem about the death of her mother, where, as she did in her poem about the soldiers of the First World War, she imagined time reversed. The poem traced events from the moment of her mother's last breath, which sat cooling in her palm 'like an egg', back through hospitalisation, to arrival with wheelchair and so on. Partly because I thought it was an excellent poem, partly because of the recent death through cancer of my aunt in Scotland, partly because of memories of the death of my mother-in-law, also through cancer, I had tears in my eyes.

I gave a lecture on 'Sensory Perceptions' - the power of imagery - at 5 p.m. A gratifyingly large number of people turned out for this, in spite of heat, exhaustion, and quite possibly heat-exhaustion - thank you all of you for being such a great audience!

The celebratory dinner that evening was great fun. The conference is all about networking and friendship, about learning new things and making new contacts. Every year there is disappointment, every year there is success. People meet people who know people. People meet agents. Agents take people on. And yes, on occasion, eventually publishers take people on!

It was wonderful, as it always is, to meet up with old friends like Sally Spedding and Mike Greenhough, with newer friends like Adrienne Dines and Crysse Morrison, to meet new faces and see students I've taught previously - so hello and thanks to Denise, to Janina (keep belting them out girl!), to Susie, to Paul and Mary, to Ali Hale and Carole Westron, to Teri Terry (good luck with the Greenhouse Agency!) and to everybody else I met and chatted with and who added their names to my website mailing list.

What next? Well, I let myself have the day off yesterday. I need to update my website now and get ready for the summer school I teach in a couple of weeks' time. If any of you were at Winchester and have special memories or anecdotes, do add a comment!

Announcing October fictionfire courses

2010-06-22T23:59:00.001Z

When you work in education, your year doesn't run from January to January: your mental picture of it is from August/September through to the summer, with particular stress points set into it. May/June, in spite of being such a fabulous time of year, is associated in my mind with exam stress, all the more so during the past few years because my sons have been involved in A levels and GCSEs (year one). I immediately segue into going to Winchester to teach at the Writers' Conference, so this week I'm really busy putting my material together for that. If you're going to be there, do come up and say 'Hi' if you see me!

I teach a summer school in July, and then, bliss, oh bliss, holiday time!

However, looking ahead to the next academic year, I'm delighted to tell you about the fictionfire day courses I'll be running on the 2nd and 16th October. They'll be at Trinity College once more - this has proved to be a delightful location.

My first course will be 'Making Memorable Scenes' and the second 'Shape Up and Make Your Pitch'. Here are brief descriptions of each:

Making Memorable Scenes

If you are interested in aspects of plot and story-structure, this day course will guide you towards making the scenes you write work as powerfully as possible to engage and hold your reader's attention. We'll look at published examples, deconstructing them to see how their internal dynamics made them effective - and we'll practise writing our own scenes. We'll cover areas such as pace, tension, creating mood, setting location, using dialogue and placing scenes in your story's overall structure. Getting the individual scenes right will help you grow in confidence as a writer.

Shape Up and Make Your Pitch

You've completed your writing project - congratulations! Now you want to get it 'out there' to a readership. This day course is designed to help you meet the challenge of making your pitch. So that your submission is as polished as possible, practical exercises will guide you through crucial self-editing techniques and show you how best to present your manuscript. We'll explore how to write an effective query letter and synopsis, to make the agent or editor hungry to see more. The marketplace is crowded: here's how to make yourself stand out.

Booking is now available over on my website: you can pay by Paypal or print off the booking form and send a cheque. Each course runs from 9.40 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. and costs £95, including two servings of tea, coffee and biscuits during the day and a useful course pack to take away with you.

I hope you can join us!

A Catty Comment on the Biography Market

2010-06-05T13:49:00.001Z

On the rights pages of The Bookseller this week, the announcement of another major celebrity autobiography acquisition. 'Who could it be?' you ask. 'Who's left, given that we're now on the second volume of autobiographies by such stellar scribblers (dictators?) as Peter Kay, Russell Brand and Chris Evans?'

Well, Ebury Press has acquired the story of Aleksandr Orlov, that's who.

Who?

The answer is, quite simply, 'Simples!' Aleksandr Orlov is the meerkat in the TV adverts for Compare the Market.

I'll give you a moment to absorb that.

Apparently Orlov has 750,000 followers on Facebook (do people have nothing better to do with their time?). Senior editor Andrew Goodfellow says 'Aleksandr's moment is now and he's a dark horse for the autumn.' (But wait, I though he was a meerkat!) Curiouser and curiouser. 'The team here just love him and believe we can make A Simples Life a second Christmas number one in a row for Ebury Publishing. ... the British public have been clamouring to hear his story.'

OK, Andrew, if you say so.

All of which is hugely encouraging to those of us who are flesh and blood examples of homo sapiens, trying to write stories and memoirs and sell them, via publishers who are clearly sensible, feet-on-the-ground, rational channels existing to facilitate communication between author and public.

It'll be the twiddly-moustached opera-singer from Go Compare next. You mark my words.

The Not So Merry Month of May

2010-05-31T16:56:00.000Z

First, the good news: I absolutely loved teaching this month's fictionfire courses and I thank all of you who attended. I hope you took useful information away with you, sprinkled with a dusting of inspiration!

As I'd hoped, the weather for both courses was lovely and this meant that Trinity College was looking particularly fine. There were exclamations of pleasure and delight when my students arrived in the gorgeous Sutro Room and several took the chance to stroll around the college and its beautiful gardens.

This photo was taken last autumn so doesn't actually do it justice - but each day course was so hectic, I didn't have time to take more!

I'm now planning new courses - and here are the dates: 9th and 16th of October. I do hope you can join us. I'll announce here and on my website when the course subjects are finalised.

Sadly, the rest of the month was testing. Between my first course and my second, my beloved aunt died: she was the last of my maternal aunts and although she had been very ill for some time, her death when it came, was sudden. I had hoped to be able to visit her at the end of June when my teaching commitments were reduced, but it was not to be. I feel terrible, of course, that I didn't act more decisively and get myself up to Scotland while there was still time. All I could do was dash up for the funeral, by sleeper train because the Icelandic volcano was throwing another fit and I couldn't risk flying. It was an emotionally draining trip, as you can imagine, and it meant returning the day before my fictionfire course on editing: I was incredibly exhausted. But I'm so glad that I went.

It's not surprising that the throat/chest bug I was suffering from that week attacked me even more severely as soon as I'd finished my fictionfire course. I've been laid low, pretty much, for the rest of the month, ending up on antibiotics. Even after the cough and wheezing had calmed, I couldn't feel any energy or positivity - I only now feel a bit better in myself, with some return of a desire to engage with the world and to catch up all the tasks my lethargy wouldn't even let me contemplate for the past two weeks.

June will be busy too, as I come to the end of the academic year. My A level students have exams and so do my sons. At the end of the month I'll be teaching at the Winchester Writers' Conference - do please visit the website at http://www.writersconference.co.uk/ if you want to find out more - and I hope I'll have the chance to meet you there!

Learn editing techniques with fictionfire

2010-05-09T22:39:00.000Z

In less than a week it will be time for my next course, on Essential Editing, once again at Trinity College - I couldn't ask for a better venue. There is still time to book, if you're interested, and I'd love to see you there. Full details of the course and how to book are on my fictionfire website, as usual.

I'm busy with preparations - but very sadly, a sudden death in the family means that I will need to go up to Scotland this week to attend the funeral. That dratted Icelandic volcano has meant I couldn't book a flight as I absolutely must be back in Oxford on Friday - so sleeper train it is. The online booking experience today has aged me by a couple of years.

fictionfire and May Morning in Oxford

2010-04-29T00:58:00.000Z

Now I did warn you, a couple of posts ago, that I would nag (just a little). I'm looking forward to meeting the people who've signed up for Saturday's fictionfire course on Character Building - and I'm praying that the weather is going to hold, not just because Trinity College will look gorgeous in the sunlight, but also because it'll be May morning here in Oxford the celebration of which is a typically daft but lovely Oxford tradition. Early in the morning, a choir will sing a hymn to the dawn at the top of Magdalen College's tower. Below them, masses of people will gather, though they probably won't hear a thing as the choir's high voices are cast into the wind. There will be townspeople, students, Morris dancers, Green Men, girls in ballgowns and men in tuxes from all-night shindigs. Cafes and pubs will be open. The police will close off Magdalen Bridge to stop people jumping off it (there have been serious injuries in the past because the water below isn't deep enough, really). It'll feel like they're shooting an episode of 'Lewis' - you'll look around for the shifty academic, the eccentric bookshop owner, the tormented student, blundering through the crowds with a look of stricken guilt. Somewhere on the towpath by the quiet green river, far from the braying crowds, the body waits ...

Sorry. Got carried away. I remember one year (in the days when I levered myself out of bed at 5 a.m. to attend such shenanigans!), my college served coffee and croissants, strawberries and champagne for early breakfast - by 9 a.m. I was well and truly pissed, which was all to the good in the end. I had to move lodgings that day - I rocked on home, threw things in boxes, was blithe beyond belief - the most relaxed moving-house day I've ever had (until the hangover kicked in at around 3 in the afternoon).

Anyway - you can still join us on Saturday if you like - but get in touch quickly! And two weeks after that, there's Essential Editing. Here's a photo of Trinity to be getting on with: the room I'll be teaching in is on the first floor - it's the jutting out oriel window between the red creeper and the green.

Dreams and DIY publishing

2010-04-22T17:12:00.000Z

You'll notice, regular readers of mine, that I've been fiddling about with my colour scheme - as if I've nothing better to do! Queen of Displacement Activity, remember! I'm not sure I like what I've done so may revert to the template - let me know what you think.

The good news today is that my fictionfire communications problems are, I think, solved. Site support was there, to a degree, but responses came at the speed of a snail. You can always deluge me with messages at info@fictionfire.co.uk to test it out!

You know how there are certain phases in your year when you know you just cannot afford to let your guard down and relax (apart from fiddling with blog colour-schemes, that is!) - that's where I am now. I'm juggling nagging of A level son and A level students, doing a large amount of editing and report-writing, and getting ready for the May fictionfire courses. I look out at the sunshine and hope this weather holds so that my students can enjoy an Oxford college at its absolute best. Trinity has a gorgeous garden with long open lawns and will be well worth strolling around.

I looked out the window yesterday to see a funny white streak in the sky - oh, a vapour-trail! Planes flying once more, but the London Book Fair was seriously affected by the inability of cohorts of foreign agents and editors to attend. The advantage may have been that some proposals for books got more of a chance to shine, being not so swamped by the volume of meetings and deals there would normally be. I am crossing my fingers really really hard for a couple of friends whose agents intended promoting their books there.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article by Cosmo Landesman about the writer Stephen Benatar, who is about to break through to a wider readership after thirty years in the literary desert. He's a resourceful, bloody-but-unbowed chap, who accosts people, asking them if they would 'care to look' at his book, hand-selling it on an individual basis. Landesman succumbs to what he first thinks is a 'pity purchase' but then realises that Benatar who 'is not one of the deluded; he is one of the talented' - and the world is waking up to that, with a British edition of one of his books, 'Wish her Safe at Home' coming out. Why has Benatar single-mindedly gone on printing and selling his books in the face of indiffference? Not because he wants to be famous: 'he wants to be read.' 'All over Britain there are Benatars - hopeful men and women who, despite critical indifference and commercial failure, keep writing novels.' Landesman recites the gloomy statistics with which we are all familiar: the near-impossibility of being published, of earning a living, of maintaining a toehold in the literary world. He tells us of eleven novels Benatar tried to gain mainstream publishing for, to be rejected by the well-worn phrase, 'Not one for us.' We hear how Benatar married, had children, taught English to survive, eventually was selected from the slush pile in 1982- only to see that temporary success wither away - and still he kept on writing. He got John Carey, a prestigious name, to write a foreword to a reisssue of 'Wish Her Safe at Home'. No publisher would touch it. So he set up his own imprint and went on to sell 4,000 copies himself. He uses charm, a polite relentlessness, a direct engagement with potential customers who feel they've had personal attention: it works. Finally, by chance, he pushed (or rather ushered - 'pushed' is too pushy a word) a copy of 'Wish Her Safe at Home' into the hands of a man who happened to be an editor with The New York Review of Books, who loved it. Now he's getting attention, his now-ex wife says 'I admit there were times when I thought he was wasting his time. He had the talent but not the luck. And now he's been vindicated.'

This is a story of commitment and determination, of incredible resilience in the face of knock-backs. But more than any of that, it's a story of faith. Stephen Benatar believes and has always believed in the worth of what he writes. It's a quiet, prolonged self-belief, quite detached, it seems, from the influence of the opinions of others. He does not care about the success of other writers. He does not care about being 'recognised in the streets.' He does it because he has something to say and he wants people to hear it: he does not want to go into that good night where all are silenced without a fight: 'My greatest fear is that my life's work will just vanish.'

This is a story about modern publishing, about self-publishing and marketing, about happenstance and fate. It's about how writers want to leave their footprints in the sand. It tells us it's never too late, if we are true to the contract with ourselves. As Landesman says at the end of the article, 'don't let your dream die. One day it might just come true.'

Let's all hang onto that thought.

fictionfire communication glitch

2010-04-16T00:04:00.000Z

Just over two weeks to go to my fictionfire course, Character Building, on the 1st of May. If you're interested, do please check out the details on my site and make your booking!

Ironic, then, that I'm being driven mad by failures in delivery by my website email service when I reply to enquiries. It's not always happening, so it's hard to know just how many people haven't heard from me, which is so galling! If you contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk please be assured, I do reply. Please check your spam/junk filter in case that's the problem and add info@fictionfire.co.uk and mail@fictionfire.co.uk to your safe list. If you haven't heard from me within a day do please get in touch again - and you can ring me on 07827 455723.

Winchester Calling!

2010-04-05T10:54:00.000Z

The programme for this year's Writers' Conference at the University of Winchester has now been posted online. This year, incredibly, will be the 30th year of the conference, and it has been organised from the start by Barbara Large who deserves all credit for such a herculean task! She's genuinely passionate about helping new writers and very good at arm-twisting (with extreme charm!) writers, editors and agents into appearing at the conference to dispense invaluable advice. It's not just a conference about advice on how to write, though - it's about opportunities. Here you get the chance to hear what's hot, what publishers are looking for, how best to pitch to them - and you get the chance to pitch direct at the One-to-One appointments, where, in a crowded and noisy room, you get fifteen minutes with a writer, an editor or an agent, to make your mark. So no stress involved, then! Less formally, you get the chance to network at the lunches and dinners, at the bar, in the queue for coffee, while strolling around the Book Fair. You never know who you'll meet, you never know what will come of it. There are quite a number of writers who are published as a result of meeting someone at the Conference.

If you do plan to come, don't wait for the printed conference programme, which tends to be slow to arrive: get online now and start booking, especially for the One-to-Ones which are so popular, they book up very quickly.

I've been teaching at the conference now for over a decade. This year I'll be teaching a mini-course on Friday 25th, 'The Right Perspective and the Telling Voice', and on Saturday 26th I'll be giving a lecture on 'Sensory Perceptions', looking at how you can use imagery and detail to give texture and depth to your writing. I'm always delighted to meet old friends there - and to meet any of my blog readers or fictionfire clients! By the way, I hope that you're popping across to fictionfire often to read my Quote of the Week section under Writing Inspiration. To be honest, I'm not quite managing a literary quote every week, but I'm proud of how this section is shaping up. I don't just give you a quotation; I write a little mini-essay - a riff about what that quote means to me or how it can help you. I'm hoping it provides you with the mixture of inspiration and practical guidance which is my aim with fictionfire as a whole. Enjoy!

Diagram Result 2010 and The Yellow Room Competition

2010-03-30T00:12:00.000Z

For those who are waiting with bated breath for an update, The Whinging Tooth is currently on a stay of execution till next week. I'm currently quite happy to soldier on, on the grounds that a little bit of jumpiness and an inability to put any pressure on it when chewing is tolerable if I can keep the blighter in my jaw and therefore stop my face falling in. My dentist, who's been quite heroic in treating it is definitely of the opinion that we should call it a day and get rid. I think, next week in the dentist's chair, I shall pretend that I can chew perfectly well with it!

Also following up on my earlier post about the Diagram Prize, the results came out last week. I forgot to vote, actually, but you may have noticed a certain dilatoriness in my blogging, the result of too many distractions, too much work, a year, in fact that has spent its first quarter being absolutely manic, absolutely draining. Bottom of the list (ouch) came 'The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, followed by 'Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots' (sorry, Karen, I know you liked that one!), 'Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter' (wouldn't it have been great if the author's name had been Robin), then 'Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich' which initially seemed a strong contender. Second place went to 'What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?', which never did it for me, so I'm glad it didn't win - first place, then, to 'Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes' by Daina Taimina, which definitely has the requisite mixture of the earnest and the surreal. Wooh!

Now, my apologies to Jo Derrick as this is terribly late, but her latest short story competition for The Yellow Room Magazine closes on the 31st of March. So what are you waiting for? Get over there this instant and find out more!

Finally, a gentle reminder that my May fictionfire courses are imminent: Character Building on the 1st and Essential Editing on the 15th. If you're thinking of coming along, I'd love to see you: check the details at the fictionfire website. I'll keep reminding you, you know: you'll have to give in.

The Lights Are On, But ...

2010-03-08T23:45:00.000Z

For those who are interested, the dental saga goes on. In spite of my excellent dentist's best efforts, the tooth won't settle down and I can't put any pressure on it, so its days may be numbered. At this rate I'll be mumbling sops of bread in milk - but should end up a champion gurner, so all is not lost.

A couple of weeks ago the entry pack for this year's Bookseller Industry Awards was included in The Bookseller. It's always salutary, as a cree-aytive person, to keep in mind the hard-nosed business we're trying to supply with 'product'. On the page devoted to Children's Bookseller of the Year, previous winners are listed: 2005 Ottakar's, 2006 Ottakar's, 2007 Borders, 2008 Borders, 2009 Borders.

Aye, and where are they now?

I'm really missing Borders. What makes it worse is passing the store in Oxford with its massive floorspace and all the lights on at full blast, it seems, since Christmas. Somebody said to me that this was probably about security but honestly, every single light is on - have they not heard of global warming?

Well done to Kathryn Bigelow for winning those Oscars and with a film that cost $7 million to make, as opposed to Avatar's $185. I was checking out the awards (and the frocks!) this morning and heard an interview with some chap who'd worked with her on Hurt Locker and seemed to be claiming she was so great it wasn't like working with a woman at all! How patronising is that? No wonder it's taken 80 years for a woman to win best director. Strikes me that the film industry is just one big 'who can pee the highest' competition anyway.

Dental Angst and Diagram Delight

2010-02-19T18:09:00.000Z

Well, God knows I need cheering up. Had root canal treatment on Tuesday. On Wednesday, tooth ached. Never mind, I thought, it's just a bit narky after the treatment: it'll settle. It didn't. Phoned dentist yesterday, saw him today and had an uber-fun session. He extracted the root seals, cleaned everything out. Ow. And Ow. I'm now on antibiotics because there's an infection there and my face hurts lots and lots. Can't even comfort eat - how unfair is that?

So what can lift my mood? Well, first of all, bookings are coming in for the new fictionfire courses in the spring, so I'm delighted about that.

Secondly, it's that time of year again, when the Bookseller runs its annual competition for the Diagram Prize for the weirdest title published during the year. This year's shortlist has just been announced and you can vote at http://www.thebookseller.com/ until 26th March. To be honest, I don't think this year's list is as good as in some previous years (check out my Diagram blog posts under the Quirks and Funnies label) - but that may be the toothache talking.

Here's the shortlist:

Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?

What kind of sense does that final one make? I like the Collectible Spoons - but spoon-boxes featured strongly in a title a couple of years ago, and there was a title 'How Green were the Nazis?' back then, so I think things cutlerian (have I just invented a word?) and Teutonic may well be played out. Currently my frontrunner is The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Sounds like it would make a good Tim Burton movie.

Now, my people, I'm off to take more paracetamol and groan, while clutching my lower jaw. Poor me. Poor poor me.

Fashion statements in man-made fibre

2010-02-02T19:30:00.000Z

The wonderful Sally Zigmond, who blogs at http://theelephantinthewritingroom.blogspot.com/ (see my blogroll to the right), now has a new blog devoted to her novel Hope against Hope, which will be published in April. It's at http://hopeagainsthopebysallyzigmond.blogspot.com/. In it she reveals fascinating facts about the Victorian background to the novel and the Harrogate setting. I popped over to it today and discovered that the man-made fabric Crimplene (remember that girls?) was named after the River Crimple! When I was a little girl, my mother spent a vast amount of her time sewing clothes for herself and us at her Singer sewing machine (which had a beautiful domed wooden case to it and weighed a bleedin' ton) - ah yes, the seersucker nighties, the Crimplene dresses to be worn with white Acrilan cardigans or hand-knitted boleros, the two-piece 'costumes', the delicate tissue-paper patterns folded with fiendish cleverness into the Butterick envelopes, with spiky looking Sixties misses with pointy shoes, standing, hip forward and neat handbag over the crook of the elbow, on the covers. The way the garments never quite turned out to have the glamour of the illustration. My grandmother clicking away at knitted jumpers, scarves and hats, all from patterns in Woman's Weekly. My sister and I, meanwhile, were making pencil-holders that always fell over and model Dougals from The Magic Roundabout and Advent crowns, courtesy of Val and Peter and John at Blue Peter (Get down, Shep!) Heady days, my dears. You have to ask yourself if life is as fulfilling now. At least it's not so itchy (Bri-Nylon sheets, aarggh ...!).

New fictionfire courses - booking now open

2010-01-26T00:10:00.000Z

I'm delighted to announce that details of my day courses in May at Trinity College are now up on my website, http://www.fictionfire.co.uk/ and that booking is now open. The first, on 1st May, will be about creating characters and the second, on the 15th May, is about essential self-editing techniques. November's courses were great fun so I hope you'll be interested in joining us in Oxford at what is usually a gorgeous time of year in this city!

In Memoriam

2010-01-21T11:35:00.000Z

This is the day that lurks in annual wait.

George Johnston Fergusson
Elizabeth Hay Fergusson

Still beloved. Still missed.

Spring courses and summer holidays to beat the January blues!

2010-01-18T12:14:00.000Z

Well, I took more of a blog-break than I'd intended to! Christmas was good but January has been one damn thing after another. I hope all of you have managed to dig your way out of the snow and ice by now. My escape was to spend hours and hours on the internet in The Great Annual Holiday Search. This was made more difficult than usual because we couldn't decide at first where to go! In the end, though, we've settled on Corfu - and I have to say that during the gloom and the frost it's been wonderful to gaze at photos of azure and turquoise Mediterranean waters! We went to Crete some years back and enjoyed that, but I'm looking forward to Corfu in particular because when I was a child one of my favourite books was Gerald Durrell's 'My Family and Other Animals' (many years later I met the man himself at a Blackwell's Literary Lunch in Oxford and he was far more agreeable than the strutting egotistical ('Bankrupt? Go write a novel and make a million! Nothing to it, m'dear') Jeffrey Archer who also appeared.

I went on to read most of Durrell's books but it is 'My Family' that I have fondest memories of - at the time, in my wee fishing village in the north of Scotland, a Greek island was an entirely alien but extremely seductive landscape. I had no real idea what a cicada or a gecko was but I was enchanted by the beetle man with his whirligig of iridescent beetles round his head, each tied round the centre by a thread, I loved the notion of lying under olive trees, I found the descriptions of the various villas the family lived in, daffodil yellow, pink and white, magical. I laughed at the extreme eccentricities of this utterly English, utterly barking mad family as it interacted with equally insane locals. The melodramatic rituals of veneration of saints were to me as fascinating as tribal beliefs in Borneo - as someone brought up a Methodist with dour Plymouth Brethren traditions among some relatives, the notion of Catholicism was very much 'the other'. I envied the near-total freedom Gerry had to wander the island and pursue the passion that would always be his for natural history.

So, I'm going to read it - and also Lawrence Durrell's 'Prospero's Cell' as well - before we go. And if in the paragraph above, I got any details wrong, it's because I'm bringing to the surface memories of a book last read forty years ago!

In my last post, I mentioned Borders closing and how sad that was. I'm doing my tax accounts just now (bleghh) and my God, the number of Borders receipts I have! So, sad though their demise is, it'll probably do my bank account some good! Some wag in the shop left a notice by the door when they shut a few days before Christmas, which said 'Elvis has left the building.' What we have to watch out for now is that he doesn't leave the Waterstone's building too. Waterstone's didn't do well over Christmas, apparently, and have got rid of their CEO - if we lose yet another chain, it'll be disastrous. This is because all bookshops - both chains and independents - are crucial to us as readers. If all we are left with, ultimately, are the supermarkets and Amazon, how will we ever browse? I don't know about you, but browsing electronically is not at all the thing - electronic outlets are where you go with a definite idea of what you want: you find it, check prices and possibly reviews, click buy. Bookshops are where you wander from shelf to shelf, from book to book, where you lose all sense of time, where you find what you want and trip over what you didn't know you wanted, where, quite simply, you ought to be able to enjoy yourself in a way you never can online.

Now, fictionfire: I'm delighted to announce that the next day- courses I'll be running are these:

May 1st: Character Building - a course showing you how to invent and develop characters for your fiction. How to bring them to convincing life and make your readers care about them.

May 15th: Essential Editing - learn the skills of effective editing of your work in order to pitch it successfully to agents and publishers - or even to self-publish!

Both these courses will be held at Trinity College here in Oxford and I would be so pleased if you could come along! I'll be posting full details of course content on my fictionfire website within the next few days. In the meantime if you want to register an interest in attending prior to making a full booking, do contact me at info@fictionfire.co.uk and I'll add your name to the list.

Finally, I'm going to be speaking about my novel 'The Chase' at the Anchor Book Club in Jericho, Oxford, this evening, and am very much looking forward to that!

Writing advice and new fictionfire courses

2009-12-17T23:42:00.000Z

Christmas madness prevails, so I'm a bit behind with blogging. Was downtown today and found the state of the imminently-closing Borders branch terribly depressing. I know that some branches of Borders may find buyers and wonder if the Oxford branch will be one of them: on the plus side, Oxford is a bookish city, on the negative, the shop is a huge retail space so must cost a fortune and it's very close indeed to the local Waterstone's, Blackwells and W.H. Smiths. Sad lines of beaten-up bookshelves and trolleys were for sale (none too cheaply, I thought, given the state of them) and garish discount posters everywhere. Made The Works look classy in comparison.

Borders is certainly not going out of business through any fault of mine! Its disappearance may actually be good for my bank account.

Second item on the agenda - pop over to Tess Gerritsen's blog (listed on my blogroll on the right): having sent off her latest novel to her publishers she writes about the process of writing a novel from idea to final draft. Twenty two novels in, she's knows what she's talking about. Of particular significance is her advice that what matters is not so much idea/theme as the situation/crisis you put the character in. She's right: readers need to be emotionally engaged, they need the human dimension, however worthy or high-concept the notion/message behind the story. Secondly (and I stress this all the time, dear ex-students of mine!) she recommends that at first draft stage you do nothing but write that first draft: you push on regardless until the thing is done. There will be time enough at the redrafting stage to fuss and reorganise, smooth out the prose, enrich the characters, sharpen up the dialogue, tidy up the plot. Don't try to be all things at the same time: just write. Then edit.

Which brings us, happily, to my preparations for fictionfire courses, one of which will definitely be on editing. I intend running them again at Trinity College and they'll be in early May - a time when Oxford looks particularly gorgeous. I hope you'll be able to come! I know some of you were interested in my November courses and couldn't make it, so I hope I'll get the chance to meet you this time. Likely dates are the 1st, 8th or 15th May. If you would like to come, you can always register your interest by popping over to the fictionfire site or contacting me at info@fictionfire.co.uk

What about the writing?

2009-12-11T01:02:00.001Z

First of all, thanks to all those who attended my second fictionfire course a couple of weeks ago - I really enjoyed it and am now planning new courses. It looks like I'll be running them in May next year, so if there are any creative writing subjects that interest you, do get in touch at info@fictionfire.co.uk. Also, do keep popping over to the fictionfire site because I'm having fun with the Quote of the Week section, where I write a little riff on a writing-related quotation that's caught my attention.

What caught my attention today on the Bookseller website was an article describing how Waterstone's Piccadilly held a seminar for agents late last month, at which agents were introduced to the chain's buying team and informed about the firm's buying 'hub'. One of the useful pieces of information they were given was that there are, apparently, four key considerations when it comes to ordering in books for the stores. Here they are, with my understanding of what each means in brackets: track record (i.e. has the author written before, what sort of sales did they achieve?), support from the publisher (is there going to be any sort of marketing spend, the sort of thing where publishers pay for books to go in the window displays, join the 3 for 2s, etc), market context (is the subject of the book 'hot' just now, is it in a clearly defined genre, does it have a clearly defined readership, is it like anything else that's popular at present?) and pricing/cover (no need to explain).

Now, dear readers, you may be feeling there's one other important consideration missing from this list - and the agents, bless them, were alive to this. 'What about the writing?' they asked. One attendee said, 'They reassured us but for Waterstone's not to mention content as a key consideration was a shock. They are not Tesco.'

No, but getting there.

Here, it seems, is how the book industry works: judgement is from the outside in. EPOS sales records, celebrities famous for something else, genre bandwagons etc. As writers who produce, mad obsessional fools that we are, the 'product' for the market, we in our innocence tend to make judgement calls from the inside out: is the writing any good? Have I seduced the reader with gorgeous language, compelling characters, a gripping yarn? Have I expressed my deepest emotions, interests and concerns? Have I actually managed to generate 80,000 words of logical, coherent prose? Yay me! Have I revised and polished that prose so it gleams? It's hard for us to be as hard-nosed as the chain buyers. So, keep on writing what you want to write, keep on caring about its quality - but when you come to send it out, try to define your 'market context' and pray for a publisher prepared to support it so that you get the chance to establish that track record.

Borders bowing out?

2009-11-26T18:45:00.001Z

First the good news: I checked out the website of the Bridport Prize yesterday and yes, my name is indeed on the shortlist; it wasn't all a dream. Very uplifting - I just wish they'd managed to spell my name correctly ...

Today all sorts of rumours have abounded but it does seem to be true: Borders has gone into administration. The signs have been there for quite a while: I was amazed to see more and more floorspace open up in the Oxford store. I kept thinking - if you pay a fortune to rent space by the square metre why wouldn't you want to fill it with goods to sell? The children's department suffered horribly. In the world of books they have a ghastly term: destocking. It strikes a chill into the heart of every reader, every writer.

Then the destocking changed to the stocking of well, what Sir Alan Sugar might call 'a load of old tut'. Shelf after shelf of feather-edged, sequin-bedecked jewellery boxes and stands. Stuff like that. In a bookshop? I have no problem with coffee concessions and stationery and cards being sold in a bookshop - but fluffy boudoir gifties? NO!

The writing was on the wall - increasingly desperate offers, limited range and staff who looked like they'd lost the will to live. Now administration. Echoes of Zavvi and Woolies last year.

Locally, I liked the Borders store. I liked its long opening hours, the author events they put on, the Paperchase franchise, and, when it opened a few years back, the range they had. I also like Waterstone's and Blackwells, both of which are very close to Borders in the heart of Oxford. I like bookshops, full stop, and have been upset at the loss of the range of browsable, eccentric second-hand stores in the city. Chain bookshops have had their faults and still do: the endless 3 for 2s, the lack of daring with range, the frustration with central buying, the treating of books like ...

but wait! Who really treats books like baked beans? Enter the supermarkets, who have squeezed the chains as the chains once squeezed the independents. Supermarkets who with their enormous spending power have made publishers turn craven, granting terms that benefit nobody - not the publisher, not the chains and independents (who often source their books from supermarkets as they can get them cheaper than from the publisher), not the poor bleedin' author - and in the long run, not the reader, who is patronised and swindled, denied choice and range.

So, if Borders cannot be salvaged, this is a sad day, just as it was a sad day when Ottakars went, when Waterfields and Thornton's in Oxford went.

As writers, my dears, not only will we have to write the books, we'll need to self-publish them, market them, and find premises from which to sell them!

OK, now finally - there's still just time for you to sign up for my course on plot on Saturday! You'd be very welcome. See my post below for details or mosey on over to fictionfire!