A belated review

The glorious bank holiday gave me the chance to catch up on some reading, in between a visit to Glastonbury, a random steampunk festival in Birmingham and a trip to Ashton Court for a bit of RnR. So I caught up with the rest of the world and read JK Rowling's lastest offering, The Casual Vacancy. 

It was not what I was expecting. But then I read a lot of reviews when it first came out, about the high security surrounding it, NDAs being signed by reviewers, etc. It seemed like a lot of nonsense for a book. And the reviews were mixed as if no one could make up their minds what JK's next book should be about and how it should be written. I think she can bloody well do what she likes, post-Potter.

So, trying very hard not to relate the story to wizards in any way, I read the book. 

Rowling creates an ideal village (Pagford) from the outside and then proceeds to dissect the community and its pettiness and squabbles over small things following the death of one Barry Fairweather. He was in his early forties and leaves a wife and four children. 

His death means there is a vacancy open on the parish council - not the district council - the parish. The powers that rule over the tiny corner of the earth where Pagford lies. There is a problem with an estate built by the nearby town of Yarvil where drugs, prostitutes and problem families are commonplace and intrude on this quiet town, especially in the form of one Krystal Weedon. She attends school, looks after her brother and has a harrowing life. 

Krystal and her mother Terri are the counterblanace to the privileged middle class of Pagford. Her every move is scrutinised and commented on, every by the so-called do-gooders. Some aspire to emulate her life, to live as she lives, while others are scared of what she stands for. 

The story centres around the election for Barry's replacement, and what people are prepared to do to get what they want. This is a study of people more than anything else, how people deal with grief, stress, love, work, etc. Sometimes people find the best ways to deal with things are to drink or take drugs or row or be violent. Rowling has them all covered here. 

The book is slow to start and then everything seems to happen at once in the final pages. Rowling hops between characters to get their perspectives and often pulls away from their viewpoint to comment as the narrator on the character or the situation. 

The writing is cynical, occasionally condescending as she deals with these selfish characters. Not a bad read but perhaps a bit overlong for the story. 

A small fortune

Lists, lists and more lists. This month has seen the start of reading season with the newly named Fiction Prize list featuring the female heavyweights of the writing world, followed 12 hours later by Granta's best young writers' list.

This has also seen a small dent in my savings as I try to keep up and invest in decent literature to kick my brain in again. Bye bye Dexter novels, hello complicated plots and challenging written formats. I now have a large pile by the side of my bed, that seems to be breeding everyday. Probably due to me attending some writing events and buying more books when I'm there so I can get them signed. In the past two days I've bought two. I bought five last Friday. I also downloaded six on Sunday. Herein lies the problem.

I have lots of books, great books. Books that apparently open up whole new ways of thinking / fresh voices / general amazingness, but I don't have the time to read them.

Sad face.

And then there are the books that are hyped up to the max and are so diappointing to read. I had one of those recently. In fact, it was the second book by this particularly hyped author but this one also didn't make the cut with me. Nope. Screw you reviews.

My time is precious and I've learnt my lesson when it comes to self-published authors and their free books. They're crap. I haven't found a single decent one yet. Please, if you know of one then let me know and I'll be happy to take back all these words. But I'd rather spend time reading books I know are good / at least rated as good.

But back to the original problem. Books and time. Working for yourself, writing a novel and generally trying to have a bit of a life, sometimes showing my face to friends so that they know I'm not dead, kinda gets in the way of things. I had two weeks off and raced through as many books as I could but then it was back to normality.

So lists. Are they a good way to emphasise the authors of the moment? But how does one list contain all the authors we like? The answer is it doesn't.

I stare at my pile of books and know there will be one, maybe two, that will be relegated to propping up tables or be given away as presents for someone else to pretend they enjoyed.

A book is in my hand, unread and full of potential. I crack it open, read the quotes, the author's bio, when and where it was published and turn to chapter one. This is the bit I love, the unknown story, the unknown words. Let's see what they bring.

It's time

Finding things to distract myself is never a problem, I can usually find something to do, and I'm going to need over the next or so as you see the book is out there. With publishers and editors right now, as I type.

As you can imagine, my nerves have taken a bit of a beating. Lovely agent has been sending me reassuring emails, talking me down and advising to forget about it for a while, what with Easter and London Book Week coming up. It may be a while before we hear anything.

If I was a cat, I'd be on top of the wardrobe, refusing to come down. 

So now the book is in the hands of people who might take it to the next stage. If they like it, it could be published. 

This is why I'm nervous. The culmination of years of hard work is in those 77,000 words. Years. My forehead has developed worry lines and my nails are chewed almost to the quick. 

So dear reader, I have one thing to ask. Please send out positive vibes over the next month or so, let's find this book a home.

Altogether now....

ooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Bio Punk review

‘An interesting concept’ – Bio Punk: Stories from the far side of research ed by Ra Page

This is an interesting concept – short stories about science are analysed by leading figures in the relevant research departments of universities to see what the probability of them coming true are.

This lends a whole different perspective to the stories and changed how I read them. I paid more attention to the scientific details rather than the story, to make sure I understood it enough for the coming analysis.

The analysis sometimes adds an exciting level to the story, as we find out just how close we are to the reality of the idea. Sometimes it’s a relief, as with ‘The Modification of Eugene Berenger’ by Gregory Norminton, to find out that it’s likely that we won’t be subjected to such horrible things! Thank you Dr Nihal Engin Vrana from Harvard MIT.

The stories and analysis cover everything from anthropology to technology, all set within fictional societies. I have to admit I sometimes kipped the analysis as I wanted to keep the story to myself, for example ‘Madswitch’ by Justina Robson. The drama was enough for me and I didn’t feel it was necessary to read on. It depends on how curious you become after each story. The analysis sometimes jars after the eloquence of the prose, being taken to another world, only to be yanked back to this one.

Any Cop?: What I found most interesting about this collection is that the border between what is real and what is fantasy is becoming increasingly thin, and that many of these ideas have an actual basis in our world.

Find more at the Bookmunch website.

Hilary Mantel at the Bath Lit Fest

On Saturday night I met an idol, Hilary Mantel, at Bath Literature Festival. She was everything I expected her to be, eloquent, gracious, funny, and full of stories. She read a section of Bring Up The Bodies where Henry VIII met Jane Seymour for the first time at Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, only this love story is told from Thomas Cromwell's perspective, rather than the couple's. It lends a different aspect to the situation, and the story, this distance is more intriguing.

The woman can write, of that there is no doubt. Her prose is engaging and brings the reader along on the ride as we explore this complex story. Yes, I am envious, yes, I do have a bit of a girl crush, she's a fantastic character and yet none of this comes across in her writing. We concentrate solely on the characters. This is a woman who at the age of eight memorised part of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare and then read the rest of his works at ten.

She only decided to become a writer after university, when she was 22, and tackled the French Revolution as her first project.

What the hell.

She continued writing it during her life in Botswana and five years later finished the novel. It was then her health crashed, as though the story had been holding her together.

Mantel has a life that is as interesting as the words she creates around the events we know. She was told by a palm reader that she has no imagination, this woman who weaves an intricate world around the Tudor court and retells their stories from an untold perspective.

She likes writing historical fiction because the events have already happened, she fills in the gaps, seeks out the stories around these events. How can this woman have no imagination?

Mantel has done great things for historical fiction, the genre, and for female writers. She has won the Man Booker, twice, the Costa prize and most recently, the David Cohen prize for her entire back catalogue.  These are huge steps for us, and she does it in the most eloquent way.

I bought Beyond Black to read and Mantel signed it for me. Her signature is a medieval script.

Sigh.

Planning the next book

It's been five minutes since I (sorta) finished the last novel (for now) but I'm itching to get on with the next project. There's currently three ideas slowly circling me and I'm working out the stories for each one. My work seems to be particularly character-lead so finding the voice for my narrator is incredibly important. Once I know who she is and what she sounds like then everything else falls into place. Yes, it will be a she again.

I consider that I'm still very much learning my craft and honing my skills, and as my characters are very much at the forefront of the story, I want to ensure accurate portrayals. I'm not sure I could write as a man just yet. Give me time, I plan to write an action boy, third-person story one day.

The voices for my next novels are female. Regular followers will know I'm nearly 40k words into a historical novel but have now realised a) it will be a labour of love, and b) a publisher might not want to have a historical novel from me following my modern-day thriller. This is the world we live in now. If I even manage to find a publisher then they will prefer to have a writer that they can compartmentalise, eg, thriller, chick-lit, literary, so we new writers must join in the game. And hopefully earn some money as a result.

So this narrows the ideas to two - both modern-day, both female. One is pulling at me more than the other, though it requires a lot of research to make it happen. Still, the protagnist is becoming clearer, I can almost see what she looks like, how she acts and where she lives. All I need is her voice. What does she sound like? What does she say? What are her main concerns? Who are are family? This blog post has some great information about developing a protagonist.

To bring this hazy character into focus I want to spend some time sketching out scenes, conversations, suss out her reactions to different scenerios. There is a rough synopsis and I know what the plot is. I have this with both ideas. But this one is definitely intriguing. Lovely agent says she likes it too. I take this as a good sign that I have found an agent I can work with and will help develop my ideas into readable novels. They tend to be a bit dark and not for everyone.

I've also started watching people again. Finding habits, patterns, listening to conversations, looking for reactions to the things life throws at us. It was never a deliberate process but I've become aware of it over the years. I don't know how writers can shut themselves away from the world when there's so much inspiration and so many things going on.

Example. My neighbour's baby screamed all night. ALL NIGHT. Her dad joined her about 3am and snored until 6am. He can sleep through her noise now. So being in tears when the alarm went off, I got up, tried to get my mental processes to work as I sat in my car. It wouldn't start.

How I felt this morning.


Cursing it and everyone around me, I walked to the bus stop to see my bus leave. I treated myself to a cafe coffee and muffin. I put the coffee down on the bus stop bench, turned around and it spilled into the floor. The girl next to me expressed her sympathies and said she'd had a shitty morning too. We got to talking. She's Spanish, recently moved to Bristol. We practised our language skills on each other and laughed all the way to our stops. We swapped numbers and will meet up to practise some more.

Life got better and I got a couple of stories.

The process is kicking in. I'll find her, whoever she is. She's coming closer.

Done and dusted (for now)

The book is finished (again), and with my lovely agent (again). It will be amended at some point in the future, but for now, it means respite from the trials of editing for a while.

Editing is hard work. The book has been edited and rewritten at least eight times. I stopped counting otherwise I'd be in a mini-meltdown. I write because I love it. And I'm not keeping a record!

It was finished for my degree. Then edited and finished before I sent it out to agents. Then my lovely agent found me and we edited the story together, filling out the gaps and characters, plugging gaps and sorting out loose ends. 

Then the line-by-line edit started. Ouch. That's the toughie. This is where we went through each individual sentence and made sure it worked. Yes, it took time, but it's worth it. The book reads so much better as a result. I'm way past the ability to read it clearly and make amends as I think I can recite it off by heart now so a fresh pair of eyes was really needed. 

Lots of people have read the story in its various stages of composition and now it's beginning to read and look like a proper story. 

I feel a bit ashamed of what I produced before.

But with only a bit of tweaking (ahem), it's better than ever. 

The big thing I've learnt along the way is that writing a book is not down to one person's work, well, at least not with me. The more feedback I've received, the better it's been to whip it into some sort of shape. The book wouldn't exist without Jenn Ashworth pushing it and me to work harder, the workshops to drill down into the sentences and structure, friends reading it and giving their thoughts on the story, and now with my agent, polishing the draft into something far, far away from the first few drafts written one crappy Manchester winter. 

I wonder what the next steps will be?