Women and war: on the sidelines of the action but on the frontline of drama - with guests Richard Buxton and Jasmina Svenne

In 1980, I remember my late friend Catherine Reilly having trouble convincing academics that the anthology she was working on, of women’s poetry of the First World War, had significance. That anthology, Scars upon my Heart, went on to great success and was on exam syllabuses for many years. The poems she sourced reminded readers that the First World War wasn’t all about bully beef and muddy trenches – it was about the experience of loved ones: the women who wait, who grieve, whose experience of war is very different from that of their menfolks.

For today’s post I have invited two other contributors to Distant Echoes, a wide-ranging anthology of historical short stories, to share with me in exploring this topic – the heartbreak and helplessness of women at times of war in the past.

We’re starting with Richard Buxton, whose powerful story ‘Disunion’ introduces us to an American Civil War situation far removed from what we’re familiar with when we watch Gone with the Wind. His focus is on the poisonous breakdown of trust in the community when people take sides:

Richard Buxton

Civil Wars differ from those between nations inasmuch as the wives and daughters were not only waving their menfolk goodbye, but trying to survive in the midst of the war themselves. Disunion is set in Eastern Tennessee, as several of my stories are. What made it so much tougher for those left behind was that, collectively, Tennessee voted to leave the Union and side with the Confederacy, but a majority in Eastern Tennessee wanted to remain part of the Union. It made this part of America a grim place to spend the war (1861 – 1865). Scores were still being settled, usually violently, many decades later.

The other characteristic of a Civil War is that it’s impossible to remain neutral, which my female narrator comes to learn in the hardest possible way. Others didn’t need persuading. Ellen Renshaw House was an ardent Confederate supporter living in Knoxville who referred to herself as ‘A Very Violent Rebel’. While I couldn’t agree with her politics, I nevertheless found her voice hugely compelling. While Knoxville was under Union control she split her time between looking after wounded Confederates and criticising the military authorities. Her diary entries leave no doubt as to the extreme bitterness felt on both sides in the city. Executions were common and Ellen bore witness to many. She was eventually expelled to Georgia.

There were more than two years of Confederate control before the Union took over. Conditions were every bit as harsh, possibly even more so away from the cities where there was no garrison to keep order. Coves (valleys) in the Appalachians held small scale communities that were relatively cut-off from the outside world and wanted nothing to do with the war. Life scratching a living on a one-mule farm was hard enough even when there was a husband and a wife. That was the story I wanted to tell in Disunion: a woman trying to endure with her husband gone but with others to care for, while all around her was suspicion and antipathy.

As the war went on the age range for conscription widened, particularly in the South, and women lost sons and fathers to the army as well as their husbands. Irregulars, desperados outside the sway of the Confederate Army and often made up of deserters, took refuge in the hills and preyed on the weak and defenceless. The women of Cades Cove were driven to form themselves into home guards to protect property and livestock, their children acting as pickets and blowing horns when the raiders were spotted. There was no escaping the war.

Even after the war the suffering went on. It was a time of great displacement. Families sick of the feuding moved away south or west and new people displaced from elsewhere arrived. The women waited for loved ones to return from the war, not knowing if they were alive or dead. Many would never find out.

Thank you, Richard.

My own story, ‘Salt’ tackles the familiar subject of women watching their men go off to war. As Richard has just mentioned, many would never learn what became of their men. That fear hangs over my main character, Ina, and her sister Mary Bella. What’s more, they are in an unfamiliar place themselves. They are Scottish herring girls – their job is to gut, salt and pack the huge quantities of herring caught by fisherman off Great Yarmouth on the eastern coast of England. For many years this was a tradition in Scottish fishing communities – men and women would travel round the coast of Britain, following the shoals of herring. Ina and Mary Bella are dislocated from what is familiar, the hours are punishing, the work extremely hard and their lodgings basic. But what they have is the warmth of sisterhood and friendship – these young women worked in teams with allocated roles and their efficiency was amazing. That female comradeship counterpoints the male camaraderie over in France, in the trenches.

I wanted to write a story that recorded my own heritage (my grandmother was one of those herring ‘quines’) but as it unfolded it became a tale where emotion was heightened not only by that sense of being in a ‘foreign’ place but by the speed of events. Mary Bella meets a man and their shared passion is intensified by its vulnerability. War stories often lead to scenes of parting – no one knows if or when the loved one will come back. The final scene of the story carried me along on a surge of swift writing and the final word fell into place with an almost audible click.

Since then, I’ve wondered what Ina’s life held for her later – maybe I’ll write about that some day!

Finally, Jasmina Svenne’s story ‘Too Late, Beloved’ jumps us to the end of World War I. Her story and my one act as book-ends, showing us the anticipatory dread and the poignant aftermath. Will my man come back, every woman must have asked herself, and if he does, what will he be? What will he find?

Here’s what Jasmina has to say:

Jasmina Svenne

As a writer of short historical fiction, I find that one of the hardest tricks to pull off is to evoke another era in as few words as possible and that the easiest way to do it is to go for a period the average reader knows, or thinks s/he does. So my other passion – the late-C18^th – tends to be put on the backburner in favour of WWI.

The First World War, I think, still has resonance because it’s only a few years since the last of the veterans died and because so many ordinary citizens were caught up in it, in one way or another, which probably makes it easier for readers to empathise with characters that could almost be their (great-)grandparents.

For that reason, a lot of WWI stories tend to concentrate on civilian soldiers – the Pals Battalions and the families they left behind them. I chose not to do so, because it strikes me that sometimes professional soldiers like Edgar in my story – one of the Old Contemptibles who was involved in the Retreat from Mons – tend to be overlooked, as if their sacrifices are somehow worth less, simply because they had chosen the army as a career even before war broke out. (Having said that, I have a sneaky suspicion that, before the war, Victor probably worked in an office or a bank.)

The original inspiration for ‘Too Late, Beloved’ was a story told by one of the 100-and-something-year-old veterans interviewed on a BBC documentary called ‘The Last Tommy’. One of his comrades had been taken prisoner during the war, but had somehow been missed off the POW lists, so neither his family nor his sweetheart was informed that he was still alive. On his return, he went to his sweetheart’s home, only to find she wasn’t there. Instead her father told him that, presuming he was dead, she had married someone else. Devastated, the POW emigrated almost immediately and the young woman’s father never told her that her first love was still alive.

That story, combined with the Vivien Leigh film Waterloo Bridge and contemporary news stories about missing people, made me wonder what it would be like to live with that uncertainty – unable to grieve, unable to trust the spark of hope you would inevitably harbour somewhere in the deepest depths of your heart.

How long would it take before you cracked under the pressure from well-meaning friends and relatives, to accept the unacceptable and try to move on with your life? And what if you discovered you had made the wrong choice – maybe? Because I also believe it is possible to love two people just as much, but differently and for different reasons.

Thank you, Richard and Jasmina!

Distant Echoes is published by Corazon Books, in ebook and paperback and is available here . This anthology contains winners and runners-up of the past two Historical Novel Society’s short story competitions. ‘Salt’ won the HNS Oxford 2014 competition. Jasmina’s The Beggar at the Gate’ won in 2012 and is published in the ebook The Beggar at the Gate, available here – my runner-up story ‘Reputation’ appears there too.

I have also written about Distant Echoes and the small lives on the fringes of great events of history on the Historical Novel Society’s website here.

Further reading: Wake, by Anna Hope, a moving novel about women after the end of the First World War as Britain prepares its ceremonial funeral for the Unknown Soldier; Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, which follows that familiar arc from the pre-war to the post-war experience and which I defy you to read without weeping; The Last Fighting Tommy by Harry Patch – mentioned by Jasmina. I blogged about Harry Patch some years back and you can read my post here.

About my guests:

Richard Buxton grew up in Wales and lives in Sussex. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing Masters programme at Chichester University. His writing successes include winning the Exeter Story Prize, the Bedford International Writing Competition and the Nivalis Short Story Award. His US Civil War novel, Whirligig, which was longlisted for the 2015 HNS award, was released this spring. www.richardbuxton.net

Jasmina Svenne was born in Derby to Latvian parents. Her writing career began with a novel, Behind the Mask, winner of the Katie Fforde Bursary, followed by nine historical novellas. Her stories have also been published in Journeys Beyond (Earlyworks Press), Wooing Mr Wickham (Honno).

Are you a writer - or do you want to be? Visit my website to download your free guide to living a productive writing life.

www.fictionfire.co.uk

What have I learnt from 2014? Sharing thoughts about getting back on track when life derails you.

Sunset at Sennen, Cornwall

So, here we are again, at the cusp of the year, the transition point where we look forward and back. As I review the past twelve months, I rejoice in many things: the love of family and friends, a comfortable home in one of the most gorgeous cities on earth, professional progress, two significant writing competition wins, a growing network of supportive writing allies.

However, 2014 has also been a ghastly year. I started it with fine, overly-ambitious plans. In January a very dear friend went missing. Many weeks of agonising anxiety later, her body was found. I struggle on a daily basis with this, because she was a special, joyous person who’d been such a significant person in my life – and now she was gone, far far too soon, into the dark. A couple of months after her funeral, my brother-in-law, staunch, cheery, loyal and loving, devoted to my sister, had died – his death also completely out of the blue.

Shock and grief derail you. In despair and devastation, work is something to cling to. It gives shape to the days, it provides distraction. However I have at times taken on too much, driven myself too hard. I’m not one of life’s delegators – I always want to do it all myself. Over the past three years I’ve trained myself to work at dead of night – I’m a natural owl anyway. But I’ve taken it too far and for too long, to the detriment of health and concentration. And apart from the spurts of creativity which led to those competition wins, my own writing has ended up like the relative you haven’t rung in ages. Week by week it becomes more difficult to pick up the phone.

So what now? No resolutions – I don’t feel brave enough for those. Resolutions are broken and you’re burdened by that breaking. When I ran my workshop/retreat in St Ives in the autumn, we agreed it was better not to talk of ‘goals’ and ‘targets’ so much as anticipated ‘benefits’ from what we do.

Here, then, are how I hope to create benefits in my life in the coming year:

Balance

I need to find a better work/life balance and a better balance between helping other writers and paying attention to my own creativity. I don’t want to feel exhausted all the time. I want to refill the well and dip the bucket into the well.

Focus

I’ll continue to run my workshops in Oxford because I absolutely love face-to-face teaching and interaction. I’ll be running my second Fictionfire by the Sea Writers’ Workshop and Retreat in April and I can’t wait to see St Ives again. I’ll be teaching at the Writers’ Festival at the University of Winchester in June and in July and August will run creative writing summer schools on two Oxford University programmes. I’ll continue to edit and appraise manuscripts and mentor writers, of course, but will be wary of over-commitment in these areas.

Creation

I have so many stories waiting to be written or waiting to be revised and published. I won’t set specific dates but I will aim to get more of my work out into the world this year, not locked into hard drives and tucked into folders. The important thing, whether I have two readers, two hundred or two thousand, is to make the work available on my own terms.

How to do this? I have to learn to inhabit my own stories once more. When working on a client’s manuscript, in a way it becomes my manuscript – I have to live inside that story to discover its achievements and its flaws, to evolve suggestions for improvement. It’s an incredibly rewarding process and it’s a great responsibility when a writer entrusts their work to me – but at the same time, it puts me at a mental distance from my own imagination and my own plots and characters.

Re for revive

To sum up, 2015 means rebalancing of elements and rediscovering of joy – I hope. I aim to redefine the structure of my time, because I’ve slipped into a habit of being in Fictionfire mode seven days a week. I need to set aside days for my own writing and days for being free of all of it. I want to read more – I want to rediscover splurge-reading, from cover to cover, not getting through a book in sporadic, interrupted segments.

Someone very wisely said to me recently that I need to try treating myself as I would a client. So, balance, focus, kindness, honesty, nurturing myself instead of hectoring myself – I will try to incorporate these into my writing life.

As the New Year dawns, you might like to examine how you balance the elements of your life. Do you give yourself downtime? Have you evaluated where you stand and where you want to go and analysed how to optimise your chances of getting there? Bereavement makes us take a step – no, several steps – back from our own lives. Where are you in your life’s journey? (I hate to use the ‘j’ word, but it actually is the best metaphor for how we see our life-stories unfolding). If you’re young, you see numerous potential routes ahead and the sheer choice may dizzy or alarm you as much as excite you. If you’re older, those choices may have narrowed and you may worry that you chose the wrong paths. Is it too late to retreat? Can you make the best of the path you’re on? Can you choose another?

Sunrise over St Ives Bay

Take the long view of your life. What do you want to achieve with it? Achievement doesn’t need to mean money and glory. Achievement is that sense you have within yourself, quiet and satisfying, that you’ve made progress, that you’ve added something to the significance of your life that wasn’t there before.

I wish you balance, focus and the joy of creativity. I wish you love and fulfilment. I wish you every benefit you would wish for yourself in the coming year.

Fictionfire Literary Consultancy - the new series of Focus Workshops in Oxford will be announced imminently. Fictionfire by the Sea Writers' Workshop and Retreat in St Ives in April - places are already very limited. Sign up on my website to join the mailing list for news of workshops, courses and new developments.

Photographs copyright Lorna Fergusson

Historical Novel Society Conference London 2014 Part 3: Short Story Award and Big Axes to Grind

The first afternoon event on Saturday 6^th September was the giving out of the Conference Short Story Award. At HNS London 2012 my story ‘Reputation’ reached the longlist – later published in the e-anthology The Beggar at the Gate. This year I entered very late on, at the end of a challenging summer, so it was enormously gratifying to make the longlist again with my story ‘Salt’. How much more gratifying, then, to actually win! People afterwards asked ‘Did you know in advance?’ Well, if you take a look at the Society’s photo on the Conference website you’ll see that I’m wearing a bemused rabbit-in-the-headlights expression, so no, I definitely didn’t!

‘Salt’ was a satisfying story to write – I had racked my brains as the deadline approached, searching for an idea, the idea. It’s set during the Great War, but it’s not a war story as such. It was triggered by a single sentence, something my grandmother said to me when I was a child. So it’s based on fact but is, of course, embroidered. I started out with that sentence and wrote with only a vague sense of where it would go, but partway through and without my having planned it, the way to end it arrived with an almost audible ‘click’ in my head. It felt totally right. Especially the final word …

Judge Ian Skillicorn
announcing the results

Thank you so much, readers Carol McGrath, Charlotte Betts and Ouida Tafe and judge Ian Skillicorn, for picking me! I look forward to reading all the other stories, if another anthology is published. (Here’s the link to the competition results and all the stories reaching the top twelve, including ‘The Man with No Hands’ by Anne Aylor, who came second and ‘For Love of Megan’ by Mari Griffith, who came third.)

The Award presentation was followed by a panel debate, ‘My Era is Better than Yours’. Philip Stevens chaired an often hilarious discussion of the merits of various historical periods for writers. Favouring the 12^th century, Angus Donald writer of a series about Robin Hood, declared that ‘this is the era in which the love story was born’, which was a slightly unexpected claim, really, given that he writes about an outlaw and having been a journalist in locations like Afghanistan is well-used to describing acts of violence. Of his hero, he said ‘There’s an internal logic to his actions and that’s more important than likeability.’ ‘If you’re the leader of a gang of criminals in the Middle Ages,’ he added, ‘you’re not going to be a cream puff.’

Giles Kristian is certainly no cream puff, if his assertion that he has ‘a very big axe’ is to be believed. The debate dwelt quite a lot on violence and the size of people’s weapons – one of Giles’ main characters commits rape because that’s what a warrior in his historical context would have done, in all likelihood. Giles sets his stories in the Viking era and also during the English Civil War. The former, he says, gives him more freedom because ‘the history of the period doesn’t get in the way’. That history, indeed, was recorded ‘by the losers’. When he writes about the Civil War, he’s concerned not to ‘chronicle’ it but to let his characters ‘inhabit’ that world.

Harry Sidebottom, advocating Ancient Rome, said that the Greeks had ‘invented extreme violence and love’, pre-empting both the Vikings and the courtly lovers of the medieval period. In the opinion of a colleague at Oxford University, Harry had chosen the 1^st century AD because it was ‘so obscure nobody can prove you wrong’. He referred to Mary Renault saying that the tension between what’s specific to a time and place and what is universal is what makes historical fiction work.

Susannah Dunn spoke up for the Tudor era: she’s fascinated by Anne Boleyn and loves the Reformation – ‘it made us who we are’. She enjoys the ‘soap opera’ element of the Tudor period, with lots of ‘big women’. She likes to ‘bring a modern sensibility’ to her characters because although they lived long ago, she’s ‘drawn to the similarities’ between us and them.

Susannah Dunn, Philip Stevens, Giles Kristian
, Harry Sidebottom and Angus Donald.
Apologies to Antonia Hodgson, who has swapped her head for a lectern!

Finally, Antonia Hodgson advocated the Georgian period. She is a publisher as well as writer, so she knew before she started that the Georgian period doesn’t sell well, but, as she says, ‘if something isn’t what interests you, why write it?’ She described how she loved researching the era, how research throws up stories – including the enormous amount of ‘vomiting in corners’ the Georgians did. She found the era ‘almost more modern than the Victorians’ with the pamphleteering, the irreverence, the bad behaviour. She echoed Susannah, saying that what is striking is ‘how much we’ve changed and how little we’ve changed.’

So, from big axes to big women, from cream puffery to courtly love, from violence to vomiting – find the era that speaks to you, find the common humanity, track down the quirky research facts that trigger story and make it live!

The link to my previous post about HNS London 2014 Part 1, and Part 2. 

Here are my posts on HNS London 2012:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 

My upcoming Fictionfire by the Sea workshop/retreat in Cornwall is here.

My upcoming season of Focus Workshops for writers, from October to December, is here.

Words with Jam competition win and upcoming Historical Novel Society Conference

I haven't posted for a while because the past few months have been quite challenging. However, as we come towards the end of the summer, I'm beginning to look around me and come up for air after several weeks of teaching - first at the University of Winchester's Writers' Festival, then on two creative writing summer school programmes for Oxford University. I'll soon be posting details of the autumn series of Fictionfire Focus Workshops and of an exciting new event I'm planning in October - do please sign up to the mailing list on the Fictionfire website to be kept informed.

I also have some good news to share: the opening of the historical novel I'm working on won first prize last week in the First Page competition run by Words with Jam, a magazine for writers and publishers. I'm honoured and delighted - and even more pleased to see my other entry also made the longlist!

You can read the winning entries and the judge's comments here.

This win couldn't have been better timed, as I'll be attending the Historical Novel Society's Conference in London on the 6th and 7th of September. I'm looking forward to meeting old friends and new, to listening to some great discussions, sharing great reads and recharging my creative batteries! Whether you love to write historical fiction or you love to read it - or both - do come along!

The Writing Process Blog Tour

This week I’ve been invited by Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn to take part on this blog tour, where writers take turns to answer four standard questions about their writing and their writing process. Lindsay’s excellent contribution to the tour can be found here. I’ve invited Essie Fox, Catriona Troth and Sharon Zink to join the tour next week, so look out for their posts on 17^th March (you’ll find more details about each of these wonderful writers at the end of this post).

So, here goes!

Question 1: What am I working on?

 The commissioned cover for the story collection

Currently two projects take priority: the first is a historical novel which I’ve been writing for a couple of years, a story of journeys, secrets and consequences. It’s a dual narrative set in the 1830s and 1880s in Scotland, London, Spain and Canada. I’ve absolutely loved writing it and the first draft is nearly complete, but there’s a lot of work still to come in terms of revision. In the meantime, I’m hoping to publish a collection of short stories about famous writers in the next two or three months, called Informed with Other Passions. The stories are told from the sidelines, presenting fresh insights into the trials and triumphs of literary greatness. The title story was actually written a number of years ago. It deals with Dickens’ affair with Ellen Ternan, so when in January I learned that a film on that topic was about to be released, I thought it would be a good idea to get my story out too – and then I thought it would be a good idea to write more stories for an anthology …

Visit Fictionfire Press and sign up for the mailing list for news and special offers.

Question 2: How does my work differ from others of its genre?

The paperback cover of The Chase 

I swear that everyone who’s taken part in the blog-tour has wrestled with this question! I think it can be hard for writers to define the individual quality of their writing – plus this question uses the ‘genre’ word and to try to locate your work in a particular genre can be a challenge, as I found when I wrote my first novel, The Chase. It was originally published by Bloomsbury and I republished it under my own Fictionfire imprint last year. When it came to categorising it on Amazon, I struggled: the novel has historical flashbacks, it has relationship drama, it has suspense elements and supernatural elements, it is satirical … it is all of these things but none in totality. So the ‘literary fiction’ category is all that it would fit, which reduces visibility to readers who are searching. It’s something of a relief, then, that currently I’m writing what can clearly be defined as historical fiction!

My Bloomsbury editor described the books on her list as ‘literary fiction with a commercial edge’ and I think that’s what I aim to produce: I love to use precise imagery, evoke atmosphere, consider challenging questions, but I also hope to write stories which are page-turning and emotionally involving. The Chase is set in France and I’ve described it as Joanne Harris meets Daphne du Maurier – it’s Chocolat, but with a darker bite!

Question 3: Why do I write what I do?

The magical location of Cornwall 

Writers notice things. Writers make connections. Writers are always saying to themselves ‘What if ..?’ I’m no different. I’m also drawn very strongly to history – how it informs location and event. Contemporary life is influenced by the layers of the past. People of the past were people, in the end, just like us, even though influenced by different ways of behaving or of seeing the world. In the new novel (I’m not giving away the title just yet!) and the short stories, I feature real people interacting with characters of my own invention. In The Chase, historical vignettes reveal the past of Le Sanglier, the French house to which the central characters retreat – and that past reinforces the messages of the main story. Everything is interwoven – that fascinates me. I’m also a writer for whom location works as an inspiration, so I love to anchor stories in both time and place. Even in my as-yet unpublished children’s novel, Hinterland, which was shortlisted for Pan Macmillan’s Write Now prize last year, location (Cornwall) plays a huge part in not just providing a setting but triggering plot and atmosphere. Location should never just be wallpaper.

Question 4: How does your writing process work?

Staying true to my own writing is a challenge: as a literary consultant, I live with other people’s stories in my head and sometimes, because I have to think of their plot issues and possible solutions, they push my own stories out of the way!

I constantly have ideas, whether they’re first lines, newspaper reports, details in biographies, or places I’ve visited, and I keep an Evernote record of every one, plus a notebook, because ideas are slippery customers and will slither out of your brain as quickly as they slipped in, if you don’t watch out.

I know 90% of those ideas will not come to fruition. Some, though, start to burgeon and send out shoots. When it comes to historical writing, once I have my notion and a rough shape of the story, then next process is steeping: reading in and around the topic and the period until I start to think in the cadences and language of that era, until it is as natural as breathing. The risk is that one steeps too long! Research is both friend and enemy: you need to do it to make the work ring true, but too much of it is displacement activity and the story is endlessly postponed. With the new novel, I pushed the story along without knowing all I might know about the subject – as I write, I put in square brackets what I need to check or reinforce with research later.

I’m a night owl: after midnight I find I can enter a different mental state and the words and ideas flow, so that’s when I prefer to write, even though on occasion I have literally fallen asleep while writing – yet the fingers kept moving over the keyboard! When I write, I write fast. There are two techniques I recommend here: one is to set a word quota for each writing session – for me it’s normally 1,000 words. The other is not to worry about the quota so much as the regularity of those writing sessions, so the key to that is to pin a calendar on the wall and draw a big red cross on every day on which you write, even if all you produce is a couple of hundred words. This works brilliantly: as those lines of red crosses accumulate, you really don’t want to miss a day – you don’t want to see a blank, like a missing tooth in a dazzling smile!

Finally, I don’t worry too much when I’m writing that first draft: never try to edit as you write. There are times when the wind is in your sails and the words flow with ease and precision, but frequently when you’re composing you hate the words, they’re coming out in the wrong order, they’re derivative, they’re plodding, and where the hell did your plotline go! Or at least that’s what The Critic inside your brain says to you. Shut The Critic up and let The Creator set to work first. The Critic can join you later as you tackle the next stage in the process – refining the work to publishable standard.

Links:

The current programme of Fictionfire Focus Workshops is here. 

Details of upcoming Fictionfire Day Courses at  beautiful Trinity College Oxford:

May 10^th Writing Fiction: Get Inspired and Stay Inspired  - see more here.

May 11^th How to Publish and Market your Book - see more here.

Early Bird booking discount on these available until March 16^th.

Here are my lovely writer friends who’ll be answering these four questions on their blogs next week:

Essie Fox: http://www.virtualvictorian.blogspot.co.uk

After a career in publishing and then in the world of art and design, Essie Fox now writes Victorian novels which are published by Orion Books. The Somnambulist was shortlisted for Debut Novel 2012 at the National Book Awards and has now been optioned for TV/film by Hat Trick Productions. This novel was followed by Elijah’s Mermaid. Her latest, The Goddess and The Thief, is an exotic tale of theft and grief and obsession that combines ancient stories of Indian myth with the fraudulent trade in spiritualism taking place in Victorian parlours. Follow Essie on Twitter @essiefox and on Facebook at Essie Fox Books. Her website is www.essiefox.com

Catriona Troth: http://catrionatroth.blogspot.co.uk

Catriona Troth is the author of the novella, Gift of the Raven, and the novel, Ghost Town. She is a former researcher turned freelance writer, a regular contributor to Words with Jam magazine, and a proud member of the Triskele Books author collective."

Sharon Zink: http://sharonzink.blogspot.co.uk/

A former literature academic with years of teaching and editing experience for consultancies and publishers worldwide, Dr Sharon Zink’s first poetry collection, Rain in the Upper Floor Café was published when she received the title of Shell Young Poet of the Year at the age of seventeedn. She has also been named as Writers Inc. Writer of the Year and shortlisted for the Raymond Carver Prize and in The New Writer short story competition four times running (including being named as Editor’s Choice). Her fiction has appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK, US and in translation in Mexico and a production of her work at Edinburgh Festival received an award from The Scotsman. Her first novel, Welcome to Sharonville, is being published by Unthank Books in June 2014. You can find more at www.sharonzink.com

Pan Macmillan's Write Now Prize: my novel Hinterland is longlisted

I'm immensely proud and delighted that my unpublished children's novel Hinterland has made it to the eight-strong longlist for Macmillan's Write Now Prize. This process began when I submitted the synopsis and first three chapters back in December. In January, the full novel was called in, and a few weeks later I was notified that I'd made the longlist. I couldn't make this public for quite a while (argh!) but now the competition is heading into its next stage. Independent bookshops and their customers will get the chance to view the longlisted books via extracts and summaries - and they're the ones who'll vote for shortlist of four, whereupon a panel will choose the winner. The winner's book will be published in hardback and available exclusively to independent bookshops initially. I think this is a brilliant idea and hope that as many indie bookshops as possible will sign up - and that you, the customers, will join in with the process!

The other stories in the longlist are briefly summarised on the competition website: they sound dauntingly witty, adventurous and intriguing! I think it'll be a challenge to make the shortlist, but it goes without saying that I'd be ecstatic if it happened!

Here's a brief synopsis of Hinterland, along with a photo of a very significant location far to the west ... Hope you enjoy it!

'I hope you die!' yells Kick Delaney at his sister Olivia. Minutes later she's knocked down by a car. From then on, she's his 'zombie sister'. When the family moves to Cornwall, he discovers Olivia's zombie state is a defence against the Soulbroker, who's seized part of her soul and wants the rest to sell to the Anhungert, voracious entities of the Hinterland, the realm behind our own.

Kick fights to save Olivia, with the help of Argentail, the moon-dragon avatar of a long-dead Cornish mage. Ultimately, Kick must pursue the Soulbroker into the Hinterland itself. And it's there that a shattering choice awaits him.

Finally,  a reminder that my next Fictionfire courses are on the 18th and 19th of May (less than two weeks to go!). If you want to learn how to plot and pace your story, or how to craft a submission, go to my website to find out more and make your booking. Bookings must be made by midnight on 16th May. Also, if you've tried to ring or text me, my phone hasn't been receiving messages for a couple of weeks. I've changed phone and network so contact me again from the 8th, when the new network should kick in.

The Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair 2013: United We Stand

I visited the London Book Fair on Monday and Wednesday of this week, a year on from my first visit for Orna Ross's launch of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), which I blogged about here. ALLi is a wonderful organisation and is going from strength to strength: if you're considering self-publishing I can't recommend too strongly that you should join (there's a link button in the sidebar of this blog if you want to find out more).

Last year, ALLi launched in an upstairs seminar room far away from the hustle and bustle of the main Fair. This year we were down and dirty, on the shop-floor itself (though still somewhat ghettoised away from the Big Guys and the Big Publishing Stands). The Author Lounge was the focus of indie activity, sponsored by KDP, Kobo and Matador, curated by marketing specialists Authoright. A year ago, this would all have seemed ambitious. This year it became clear that maybe it wasn't ambitious enough - the lounge was heaving with people and it was obvious that authors are so keen to join the publishing party a space three times the size could easily have been filled!

The purpose of the Author Lounge was to give writers the chance to listen to talks and presentations - and even to pitch directly to agents. This is unheard of - agents inhabit the International Rights Centre upstairs: an elevator rises like a stairway to heaven from the midst of Earl's Court 1, but no humble scribbler should attempt to mount it. However, in these days of publishing flux and uncertainty (about which I'm writing a separate article), agents are descending from on high, publishing services are touting their wares to authors as well as publishers. Last year we had a toe in the door - this year we've crossed the threshold.

As well as attending talks and seminars,  networking proved to be a crucial aspect of attending the Fair. We all networked like crazy - and it's a process which is not only necessary but can be nerve-wracking. Orna, though, was the perfect hostess and match-maker, ensuring useful contacts could be made in an atmosphere of fun and friendship. I was able to present my newly-republished novel, The Chase, and information about my literary consultancy, Fictionfire, both to published ALLi members and to aspiring writers who're considering self-publishing.

On Monday, ALLi launched its new book, Choosing a Self-publishing Service - the title explains all! It gives advice about self-publishing and service-providers and will be updated regularly. Orna is very concerned to flag up warnings about providers who are out to scam newbie self-publishers and highlight those who provide an honest and trustworthy service. Guest-speaker C.J. Lyons, who's sold 1.3 million 'thrillers with heart' bellowed to the audience 'you're all CEO of your global publishing empire' with the same yee-haw verve that Joni Rodgers had when she told us at last year's launch that 'we're all riding the sand-worm, baby!' (And if you've never read Frank Herbert's Dune you'll have no idea what that meant!)

The crowded Author Lounge

The book-launch came on the heels of talks by representatives of Kobo, Goodreads, Troubador and KDP. I'd arrived fairly late and then couldn't get near enough to the talks to hear - as I mentioned, the place was overcrowded and I think nobody really expected the Author Lounge to be quite as spectacularly successful as it was.

Joanna Penn and Orna Ross at the party

The launch was followed by a party for ALLi members, sponsored by Amazon (!) at the nearby Pembroke Pub - more networking in an atmosphere of excitement and nervous energy.

I didn't attend LBF on Tuesday but on Wednesday I turned up, carrying the new Kobo Mini ereader I'd bought after talking to Shayna Krishnasamy at the Kobo stand on Monday about my plans to publish to Kobo now that I've already published on Kindle. I attended a truly dynamic presentation by Joanna Penn on Advanced Online Marketing. Typically, her talk was full of honest personal experience, solid facts, statistics and up-to-date ideas. She focussed particularly on the importance of keywords and keyword research, talking also about the crucial need for us to have mailing lists and an established social platform. She discussed the 'marketing funnel' leading from attention, through interest and desire, to action. And she stressed the need to build relationships - this, I think, is a central theme of the Fair and of all our self-publishing activities. You can't do it if you lock yourself away. You need to put yourself out there. When I look back at the past five years of my career, everything I've done, every blog I've commented on, every writing event I've attended - everything has led to consequences and connections I couldn't have even imagined at the start. I'm busier and more tired than I can possibly say - but I'm also happier, in the sense that there's adventure and potential in it all and the fulfilment that only comes from being in charge of your own destiny.

Joanna Penn presenting 

Finally, there was a drinks party back at the Author Lounge (though the drinks, even the water, ran out too quickly!). I want to mention all the lovely people I met, old and new friends - and thank everybody who liked the cover of The Chase! First and foremost, there's Orna herself, who is the onlie begetter of the Alliance. I can't wait to see where she takes it in the coming year! Then Joanna Penn, of The Creative Penn (go there for oodles of publishing and marketing advice), the adventurous Dan Holloway, children's writer Karen Inglis, who gave me lots of practical advice. Roz Morris - I was sorry to miss her author presentation at the Kobo stand because I was at Joanna's talk - sorry! Writers Jerome Griffin and Rohan Quine; Stephanie Zia at Blackbird Books, who'll be bringing out my friend Jacqui Lofthouse's next novel; David Gaughrean; Mark Lefebvre of Kobo; Ben Galley and finally the lovely Catriona Troth of Triskele Books - my cover was designed by Jane Dixon-Smith who also designs the Triskele covers. Scroll down for lots more pictures!

Great people, a great Fair - and here's to a great future for us all!

NOTE: there's only four weeks to go until my next Fictionfire day courses! Book now for How to Plot and Pace your Story on May 18th and Perfect Pitch: How to Craft your Submission on May 19th. For full details and to make your booking go to the Fictionfire website. To find out more about The Chase, visit Amazon or the Fictionfire Press website. The novel is now out on Kindle and other ereader formats and a paperback edition will follow.

The moon over Earl's Court at the end of Day 1

Looking out over Earl's Court 2

The unique Dan Holloway

Catriona Troth of Triskele Books

One of the big guys ...

Crowds at the AuthorLounge

Joanna Penn, Brian Felsen of Book Baby and Orna Ross

Author Roz Morris, looking pensive!

With Joanna Penn: she's holding the cover of The Chase and I'm holding my Kobo Mini with her third novel, Exodus, on it

Two exciting book announcements!

This is a very big day for me. Regular readers may have noticed this blog has been quiet for a while. This is because I've been working incredibly hard, not only in my Fictionfire role, but to edit and publish my novel, The Chase. And today's the day! The novel was originally published by Bloomsbury and the rights reverted to me some time ago. I've commissioned a new - and very gorgeous - cover and published it on Kindle, but intend also to publish it in other e-reader formats and as a paperback. I'm going to blog more about the process and about what The Chase means to me and how I came to write it in the first place, but in the meantime I wanted to announce that it's available! Please do take a look and if you read it and like it, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would review it on Facebook, your blog or Goodreads, or mention it on Twitter.

Here's what novelist and historian Alison Weir has to say about The Chase:

'This is a haunting book, skilfully written and tantalisingly unravelled. Lorna Fergusson weaves a vivid but dark tale set in the beautiful Dordogne, where past and present fuse in a page-turning mystery. I could go back to this again and again.'

Now, you know what they say about buses coming along all at once? Well, I have another announcement to make today, which I've been longing to make public for a while. My unpublished children's book, Hinterland, has reached the longlist of eight for Macmillan publishing's Write Now Prize! This is a competition run in conjunction with independent bookshops - so do visit your local bookshop and if there's a chance to do so please vote for me! I'd love to make it to the shortlist of four! I'll be blogging more about this too in the coming weeks but now feel the need to lie down in a darkened room with a bottle of smelling salts to hand - so much excitement!

Next week I'll be attending the London Book Fair, so will be blogging about that. I also have a backlog of posts to write about the Oxford Literary Festival. I'll be interviewing lovely writers Lynn Shepherd, author of A Treacherous Likeness, Tom-All-Alone's and Murder at Mansfield Park, plus Teri Terry whose novel Fractured comes out next week and is the sequel to Slated, her YA dystopian thriller, which I loved.

Now that my spring series of workshops are over, next up are my day courses at Trinity College Oxford: on May 18th How to Plot and Pace your Novel, and on May 19th Perfect Pitch: How to Craft your Submission. Cross to the Fictionfire site for more information and how to book.

Tonight the man and I will be cracking open a bottle of bubbly!