BOOKTRUST - TEN BRITISH SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS...

I am really amazed and delighted that 'Words from a Glass Bubble' is among ten short story collections by Brit writers, chosen by Booktrust, and featured on the Booktrust website. Even more delighted that Salt Publishing have not one but two collections up there - the wonderful 'White Road and Other Stories' by Tania Hershman keeps 'Bubble' company.
Lovely lovely that Adam Marek's 'Instruction Manual for Swallowing' is in the list too, and Clare Wigfall's 'Louder Sound and Nothing' - (it is the Frank O'Connor Class of 2008 - that was obviously a great year!) It is also particularly nice to see the small presses represented well!! Slightly daunting to be mentioned in the same feature as A L Kennedy and James Lasdun, Courttia Newland, Helen Simpson...yikes.

For descriptions, and full details of all the collections, see Booktrust website: HERE

Competitions, collections, Salt Publishing - Interviewed by Jen Campbell

Writer Jen Campbell is running four interviews with Salt writers this month. Up first, discussing everything from my father's influence on the stories in 'Storm Warning', to how I bounced back from potential disaster when writing 'The Coward's Tale' is meself. Plus a lot about the lovely Salt.

Read the interview here.

and scroll down for a great interview with Jon McGregor whose third novel 'Even the Dogs' I am reading at the moment. Fascinating, not the least because we share a publisher in Bloomsbury, and an editor...

Sons and Daughters...

What a week... the arrival of Millie Iris Gebbie is something smashing - she is gorgeous and beautiful and all the things new babies are meant to be.Millie at 20 hrs old with her Dad, Nick, who I think has fallen in love all over again...
Maybe I fell in love a little, too...

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And the return of Toby after two GAP year months in India - complete with new look beard and tache. Very Lawrence of Arabia...
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RULES FOR WRITING NOVELS

Fellow Bloomsbury ‘Baby’, Claire King, writes on her brilliant blog her fifteen absolutely, must follow, rules for writers of novels.

“Once you have rewritten your manuscript according to the above rules, (she says) it will be ready to blend in with others on the slushpile.”

Ha!! Love this.

So here are my own, sort of, think about it, fifteen rules, or not, perhaps. Because as we all know, those who say there are rules, admit there are actually none. And those who say there are none, know there are lots.

1. Begin. It is very tough to write a novel unless you begin. Ergo, a blank screen with the words ‘Chapter One’ in varying fonts towards the top will make a useful start.
2. Save document. External hard drives are good. So is sending every paragraph to yourself via multiple email accounts created for the purpose. Nice to receive all those emails! Writing is a lonely occupation – pretend you have friends.
3. Continue. By this I mean open a lot of different documents with the words ‘Chapter Two’ and so forth.
4. Save all documents again.
5. Time to ring all your real friends, and selected family members, to tell them you are writing a novel!
6. Order new business cards from Vistaprint on special offer, styling yourself ‘novelist’.
7. Look up rules for writing novels. Discover that they all contradict each other. Fall into a depression. Visit GP. Collect prescription for antidepressants. Believe you have joined the ranks of real writers – because all real writers are depressed. (You read it somewhere...). Feel better.
8. Find some slightly more acceptable rules, which chime with what you have been doing anyway. Feel better still. Throw away the pills.
9. Open first document, and delete those headings saying ‘Chapter One’ whose fonts you feel are not quite... you know.
10. Experiment with different colours on the remaining fonts. Decide actually, black Times New Roman 12 point is about right for your novel.
11. Make handwritten list in moleskine notebook bought for the purpose. Characters. Their name, sex, colour hair, and what they wear on weekdays. This is sufficient information for the present. Look up if this is right. Read on Vanessa Gebbie’s blog that you don’t have to describe what characters look like at all. Especially if the novel is a literary one. Feel confused.
12. Decide not to write a literary novel, because you have got all this information (the list is 218 wds – you checked) on what your characters look like.
13. Looking at the list there is a lot about red hair and the men are wearing materials like worsted. Decide these are characters from a historical romance. Or maybe the red is blood. Horror. Or maybe sci fi, or a mix of all these plus literary.
14. Decide you need to decide on more things, like which tense to use. Read on Claire King’s blog that you must never use present tense. This is your preferred tense. You are not sure what the others are anyway. Get very tense.
15. Check word count in computer files for this novel. ‘Chapter One’ and al other headings etc adds up to 64. Add in the handwritten list in moleskine notebook. Total 282.
16. Ring selected friends and family to tell them what hard work this all is...

You are now on your way as a novelist. Enjoy.


(Marvellous photo is from Writetodone, where I found no fewer than 176 real tips for writers... - )

THE TWO BOOK DEAL - Is it always a good thing??

When I knew my agent liked the manuscript of ‘The Coward’s Tale’ enough to send it out to publishers, and when I knew a couple of places liked it enough to bid – I emailed him to say something like this:

"In the unlikely event of a two-book deal being on any agendas, please can you stop the discussions before they start. I could not go down that route."

I have no idea whether either publisher suggested such a thing, but I was and am absolutely serious. I would not have accepted one, even if the figures looked marvellous. And there are good reasons for my taking that stance.
‘But it is everyone’s dream, a two book deal! What’s wrong with you?!’
So, I will try to explain, if only to make people think about their own processes, their own strengths and weaknesses as creators.

But before I do, read this feature by Robert McCrum writing in The Guardian some years back, Caught Between Two Books - basically, he says:

"two-book deals are bad deals, bad for the publisher and often worse for the author."

And he goes on to explain why. Two scenarios – first, the successful first book, and then the unsuccessful one that does not quite live up to its hype.
McCrum says that if the first book does not succeed, the author may write the second novel poorly:

"all the writer wants to do is fulfil the second half of the contract as fast as possible, and be shot of the whole thing. Inferior work is delivered too quickly, contributing to a generally low standard among second books."

And if, in contrast, the first book turns into a bestseller..

"the author ... feels hard done by. In an ideal world, a successful first contract should lead to better terms for the second book. Not in the two-book deal. The author, tied to terms that cannot be varied, feels resentful, at odds with the publisher."

Jennifer Laughran, literary agent, on her blog Jennifer Represents, makes the point that some writers work best to a deadline, in the knowledge that a publisher has guaranteed to publish book two, even if number one flops. But she says, there are three very good reasons not to go for a two book deal.

1. You are locked in...You may deserve a lot more money for book two, but the book is already sold.
2. If you .... think the first book is published badly... you are stuck for another book, with an potentially expensive and hassle-filled nightmare if you want to get out of the contract.
3. There is a sense of ... freedom knowing that you don't have a contract for the next book. You could do anything you want! Some authors work better if they "stay hungry" and free in this fashion. And some authors panic under a deadline.

Yes, I understand that last point! But also, I experienced real downs after successes, whilst building whatever writing career this is. It was not only the bad times that caused long periods of non-writing, but good times too. Win a competition, and I froze. Get a book published? Aagh! A pit of non-production. And that will continue, only worse, I am sure, when ‘The Coward’ comes out.
Anther agent calling herself Kristin, blogging at Pub Rants (Publishing Rants – not drinking-type pubs!) sees a genre divide in the multiple book deal stakes. Multiple book contracts, she says, are good for genre novels, especially romances, and single contracts are best for literary or literary/commercial books. Now that is interesting – I hadn’t really considered that genre writers work differently, but obviously, they do – a colleague - a very successful romance writer who has landed a lucrative three book deal – talks about sitting down with her editor to discuss plans for the next novel, and I am left shaking my head. I don’t get how you can do that – how anyone else can have that much input into a project – but then I am sure she doesn’t get how I work, either.
Kristin of Pub Rants sets out her points for single book deals in another list –

1. Literary fiction takes longer to write. Sometimes it’s not feasible to write a second book on a prescribed deadline ...
2. A one-book contract can alleviate the pressure on the author. The sophomore effort can be a tricky thing. I know from experience that every author hits a stumbling block with that second novel ...
3. Literary fiction—especially those that lean commercial—often get undersold initially and then break out big later. If there is a sense that that could happen, why lock the author in for a certain amount of money?
4. The author might not have a second novel to propose and ...the author might take 10 years to write next literary novel. It happens.
5. If the author’s editor leaves and there is just a one-book contract, it can make it cleaner for the author to follow his/her editor to a new house.

She alo sets out the pros and cons of multiple deals and discusses the genre issue, in another post.

Of course, these scenarios do not work for everyone. But I’m old and ugly enough to know my own processes... I took a long time to write 'The Coward'. I don’t know what I am going to write next yet, even though I may already be following my obsessions. It may take me ten years. I just don’t want any pressure to deliver, thanks.

And if anyone thinks this is an academic argument, I would send you to read the blog of Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, whose collection ‘Elegy for Easterly’ won the Guardian First Book Award among other accolades. (Reviewed by Tania Hershman on The Short Review)
Gappah is to be thanked for sharing the less than kind turn of events when she submitted book two to her editor. Having experienced the highs of success, prizes and so forth for Elegy for Easterly, was she able to enjoy writing book two? No. She puts it like this:

"in the last year, even as I was enjoying public success, I lived every day with private failure. I felt that I was held hostage by this damn book that was blighting my life."

You can read her experience in greater depth on her blog, and discover the happier turn the subsequent discussions led to. I wish the third book, now the second, a happy genesis.

It is not easy, this writing and publishing stuff. And it is both interesting and sad, to note that what sounds like a perfect dream, sometimes turns into nightmare. I did myself a favour, unwittingly, thanks to knowing the weaknesses of my own creative process.
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Edited to add this, sent to me by a writer who wishes to remain anonymous. I'd like to thank them for their generosity in sharing their experience.

This is timely and directly relevant to my situation, Vanessa.

My two-book deal quickly became a nightmare. My editor asked for a sequel, and I lept into the writing, but it wasn't long before I saw the possibility of the "bad second book" phenom hanging over every word I wrote. (I wrote seventeen partially-completed versions, with over 150K words of notes. All freshness and joy was sucked from the doing. I hated it.) I worked my day job. Life pushed in, with family concerns, a death, two major geographical moves, and ever-present financial difficulties. I pushed back book deadlines. I wrote more new beginnings that died too young. I'd never felt quite so stifled and guilty and unhealthy.
Finally, in December, I had a bit of a breakdown. It was probably a bad reaction to the anti-depressant I'd begun taking, but the pressure certainly played a role. When I could speak in complete sentences again, I told the sordid story of my "progress on book #2" to my agent.
And my agent is an angel. She contacted my editor and called me back and offered two options: Cancel the second book entirely, or remain obligated to produce it, but with NO DEADLINE at all. I chose option #2. And, as too much time has passed for the publisher to market a direct sequel to the first book, I can write whatever I choose.

I'm coming alive again, and free-writing again - it might be a few more months before I set out to seriously write another book.
I need to say, I am not a raw new writer. I'd been at this game for more than twenty years, pushing past the dreaded novel-in-the-drawer syndrome and receiving at least 1,000 rejections. I'm extrememly grateful to have landed a wonderful agent and understanding editor. But yes, two-book deals are not for everyone.

WHY THE SHORT STORY? or HOW TO MARRY A WASP?

At the NAWE conference, I met one of the best creative writing teams. They hail from Columbia College, Chicago - and I have attended their workshops, cheating madly (this conference is for teachers of writing) not as a teacher but as a writer, soaking up what they say and do - it feels right at gut level. There may be plans afoot to do a joint something this year - but that's for another post.

We've got nattering, Professor Patricia Ann Macnair and I, about the short story - of course! Now, she is running a fascinating conversation between four short story writers, on her blog, and I am honoured to be one of those writers. This is the start of my ramblings.

Why the short story?
But that’s like saying why the dream?
Or why the root in the ground?
Because that’s what they all do – they act (if we let them) as portals. They grow into something far greater than the wordcount – they are the wardrobe in ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ or the rabbit hole in ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’.
Who needs mind-altering substances when you have stories? Do novels do that quite so well? Mostly, no. because the author is doing the filling of the world for you, to a large extent. They are making you live the dream they had themselves. Whereas with a good, well-written story – it plants seeds. They grow inside you. Its world remains alive after the pages are done. There is less closure, even if the story, that story, has finished. Is that a function of length, of our need to live longer than that? Is it a legacy from our ancestors, telling stories round cave fires, stories that span off each other until the night was filled with worlds..?

Read on on Patty' blog. Read her own starter for this conversation, and keep tuned to catch up with contributions from two exciting short story writers, whose work I am looking forward to discovering. Gina Frangello, author of the wonderfully titled 'Slut Lullabies' who blogs here and who invents titles like 'How to Marry a Wasp'. Can't wait!
Gina is founder and executive editor of Other Voices, an imprint of the wonderful Dzanc Books.
The second writer is Dennis McFadden, whose collection 'Hart's Grove' is reviewed on Haydens' Ferry, here.

And Patty herself is author of the collection 'Temple of Air', forthcoming later this year. Attracting glowing pre-publication comment, such as: "bright, breezy, bold: a riveting debut...” this one will be rather special addition to the terrific collections hitting the shelves this year. Get ready for a treat.


Well here are the covers of these terrific collections - apologies for the differences in size - thats the way they arrived!

The Thorny Issue of Writers and their Muses, and the Sex thereof...

The Thorny Issue of Writers and their Muses, and the Sex thereof...and Writing Like a Man (grrrr...)

I dunno – been reading all these posts from those who must mean well, and no doubt seek to redress a perceived imbalance in male v female publishing opportunities. But really, do publishers seriously discriminate? Don’t they just want to sell books and stay in business? Why would they discriminate if more women buy and read books than men? Doesn't make sense to me. But then, it also does not make sense for people to whinge that more review space is given to male writers. Is it? Pick up a women's magazine and the books reviewed will be mostly by women. Are the blokes screeching about that? Maybe, just maybe the books that came in that week to the broadsheets, by men, were more interesting reads for the reviewers? Oh my gad the sacrilege.
My shelves are groaning with male writers because in general, over the years, and with some notable exceptions, I have preferred their work. Sorry and all that, if I am offending any delicate sensibilities. I am being honest, if that's OK?
But while looking at one of the early articles that flagged the need for female writers to ‘write like men’ if they want to get on, (whatever that phrase means) here, in Washington Post of December 30 2009 the old brain was working overtime... one minute I was wanting to laugh, and the next, not...and at the same time I was also reading about the poet M A Griffiths today, an Anglo-Welsh female poet who published her work solely on the internet, and sadly died early... but her work was so loved by her colleagues that they have collected it all together. ‘Grasshopper’ is published by Arrowhead Press.
But what interests me about her, specifically here is not how lovely her work is (and it is) but the fact that many of her colleagues on poetry forums thought she was a man – when all they had to go on was her work, or her forum monikers – Maz or Grasshopper. Read this here, from one of her female colleagues, Rose Kelleher:
Why did they think she was a bloke? Having read round this a bit - I think it is because of her boldness with language, and her interest in many many things, her need to write about them, from the intimate themes to the wider ones. And no doubt lots more reasons.

I used to take great pleasure in colleagues thinking a piece of my work posted anonymously for feedback, was by a male writer. Why? I’ve been thinking about that – and I think the answer is, because the stereoptype I would least want to fit is ‘ the woman writer’ because that stereotype (in my head - OK...)is a female who is mostly preoccupied with the things I am not.
Yes, I know, I AM a woman and I am a writer. But I would really hate it if anyone said – ‘Oh yes, I knew immediately I read your work – it’s got ‘written by a female’ written all over it.’

But then I re-read Rose Kelleher’s post about M A Griffiths. ‘Maz and the Male Muse...’ and I started thinking about the muses. Mine is not, never has been and never could be a female. Maybe the muses were depicted as females because they were invented by – er- men??

So what sex is your muse? Are you a woman writer who writes with one of the female muses wafting about in your study? Or are you, like me, fed by someone different? Is your muse something intangible, of the air? Or is it a solid person? The great painters had them. Why not us lot?!

Lots of links to M A Griffiths here by the way.

Added:
A quick peek at The Bookseller Top 20 booksales this week shows female writers on 12, men on 8. Maybe the statisticians need to get on with something else. Or get a bloke to do it? We all kow us girls can't add up for toffee....Bookseller.

Congratulations to all on Willesden Herald Short List...

Oodles of congrats to everyone on the Willesden Herald short story comp shortlist, selected by the inimitable Maggie Gee! The announcement was made today, and here is the link to the complete post on Willesden herald blog
Delighted as I am for everyone, I am particularly pleased to see a few names I know on here - Teresa Stenton, whose work rose to the top at Bridport in 2009. Adnan Mahmutovic, who read at Pages of Hackney only last Saturday, and stayed with us on his way back to Stockholm where he teaches at the University. Nemone Thornes, with whom I have crossed writing-swords more than once, Emma Martin, erstwhile writing colleague from New Zealand, and Andrea Ashworth, facebook writing friend. My goodness. The short story world is very small. This is going to be some party!

"Apartment" by Y.J. Zhu
"Blue Raincoat" by Teresa Stenson
"Dancing with the Flag Man" by Nemone Thornes
"Gusul" by Adnan Mahmutovic
"Homecoming" by Alex Barr
"Out of Season" by Mary O'Shea
"Overnight Miracles" by A.J. Ashworth
"Set Dance" by Angela Sherlock
"The Bedroom" by Michael Coleman
"The Place" by David Frankel
"Thingummy Wotsit" by Adrian Sells
"Victor" by Emma Martin

Of book jackets, statues, feathers and so forth

This is 'In Labore Benedictio' by a sculptor named Picciole - a small bronze that stands on an old chest in the corner of my living room. I don't think Picciole is particularly good - most of his other stuff seems to be a bit saccharine, from researching what turns up at auction and in antique/junk shops.
However. I love it - because it was obviously modelled on this: Dalou's larger-than-life sculpture of 'Le Grand Paysan, in the Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

There is a statue in The Coward's Tale. This was at the back of my mind when that statue was there, on the page. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. So Bloomsbury got a photo of the Dalou when wanting to know if I had any thoughts about the cover. of course, I did - this, and what about some feathers?? And bless the designer, he is there, on the jacket, beautiful and absolutely perfect. But I'm not showing it yet, until one tweak is done, I think...

I talk more about the process of The Coward's jacket on his own blog, HERE

Editing, rewriting, revising the manuscript...

I have just finished the little tweakings (sounds like an address in Surrey...) on The Coward. They took me a couple of sessions, one at home, and one at the British Library, to get away from the internet, phone, cat and various others.
And no, that does not mean that was all there ever was to do!
I found myself approaching this piece of work differently - it is the first time I have written anything so long, so involved, and the process became very different to my writing of a short story - something that tended to need to be all there in draft form before I tried to bash it into shape at all, or I'd lose something, freedom, flow, air... something.
Over the four/five years it took to write The Coward, I polished as I went. Literally, and obsessively. I would write the opening to a section and worry at it for days, reading it out loud, changing a word here, there, and only when I had it as right as I could, did I go on to write more of that section. The process would begin again - reading the whole thing, as far as I had it, out loud. Smoothing, changing, swapping paragraphs over to see if that made it different, better, worse -before continuing.
Sometimes, this process was very necessary. There were great gaps in writing anything of the novel, thanks to external factors. No - I am not whinging - just explaining my process, to myself as much as anything. And to be able to return to the place I was at creatively became quite a leap, very often.
I found reading out loud, slowly, really listening to the words, the rhythms, helped to ground me in the work over and over again, and was also a necessary part of the editing process.
The first draft was completed at Anam Cara in February 2010... and when I came home, I sent it to the marvellous Maggie Gee, with whom I was working on final polishing, thanks to an Arts Council grant. This was the first time anyone had read the whole manuscript right through, apart from its author.
'About 80% of the way there. Publishable already, but will be so much better if you do this, that and the other...'
That was marvellous to hear.. I was getting there. I have to admit, looking back, that there was a bit of me that wanted to hear, 'This is perfection. No need to do anything, oh a typo on page 234...' but I knew it wasn't, and never would be perfection - but it absolutely HAD to be the best it could be before sending it out to my agent.
The world is tough. If I sent him a 'less than' manuscript, and he had ten pieces of work whose authors had taken the trouble to polish, polish, polish on his desk - see the issue?

So how did I approach the polishing process? Maggie prepared detailed notes, pointing out those places where her response to the book became 'teachery' as opposed to 'readery'. That I understood completely. We would discuss the bigger issues, and I would go off to sort out the solutions. It took a long time - working up to a final read from Maggie in the late summer, a final list of notes, and a couple of weeks in Ireland, chipping and chipping away.

Many times during the process, I would print off the whole book, read it through, trying to keep a distance, treating it as a whole, to see what effect this or that change had on the whole thing. In this way, reading it through again, and again, I picked up more little nits and nats and changed those too.
And by October I had a piece of work I felt was right to send to my agent. The attention to detail, obsessively ironing out the nits, guided by a seasoned, marvellous novelist, (also, incidentally first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature) paid off. He wanted no revisions, and sent it straight out and the rest is history.

So what tweaks can my editor want? As many as she likes, actually - she is so in tune with the book, I have no qualms about anything, and trust her judgement. But there are so few, thank heavens. The process this time was this - to get Helen's suggestions via email. To read carefully - and sit on them for a few days. Then print out the novel again (!) and consider each suggestion separately. And tweak. Often, all it took was a single phrase added. (But of course, I would always end up reading out loud to make sure the phrase fitted absolutely!)

So the only tip I can end on, is this.

If you are not normally an obsessive personality, there is one time you absolutely must be one. And that is when you are editing a novel.

PHILOSOPHY and THE NOVEL

One of my favourite blogs, where I can always find something fascinating, thought-provoking – is that of Norman Geras. (linked on the right – if you don’t know this one, go and see... it’s the best). Earlier this week, he drew our attention to a fascinating question. The relationship, if any, between philosophy and the novel - let's extend that here to fiction in general, shall we?.
A précis then, here – Gera’s article is much better.

James Ryerson, writing here, in the New York Times,
raises the question, “Can a novelist write philosophically?’ and quotes Iris Murdoch as saying absolutely not. In her view,

philosophy and literature were contrary pursuits. Philosophy calls on the analytical mind to solve conceptual problems in an “austere, unselfish, candid” prose, she said in a BBC interview broadcast in 1978, while literature looks to the imagination to show us something “mysterious, ambiguous, particular” about the world. Any appearance of philosophical ideas in her own novels was an inconsequential reflection of what she happened to know.

I have to say, this fascinates me, and I’m not sure what to think. Here are eminently clever people arguing that fiction and philosophy are polar opposites. The more I do think about it, I come to the conclusion that someone’s wrong.

What is philosophy? I guess we can trust Wikipedia here: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language."
Couldn’t it be argued that if a novel or indeed any fiction, does not touch on issues connected with existence (or otherwise), knowledge (or otherwise), values, reason, mind and language – it’s fairly inconsequential? And actually, even ‘inconsequential’ reads, what are they dealing with if not one of these at some level?

Maybe the issue is one of ‘study’? That philosophers seek to give us the answers themselves. Whereas creators of good fiction seek to open our minds to possibilities we’ve not thought of perhaps, and draw us into the debate?
And anyway – there is an argument that says (re: the Murdoch quote above) that fiction written in unselfish, candid prose works better in many ways than deliberate obfuscation.

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Edited to add: Thanks Tim Love for this link, to an article today (oddly..) in Times Higher Ed Supp, Here.. Fictive Narrative Philosophy... well, hey chaps,, isnt that what strong lit. writers have been doing for ever...?
To quote:"Fiction that only imitates nature or seeks to provide entertainment without making a claim about facts or values in the world is not fictive narrative philosophy. It is just a story."

Reading, reading, reading ...

Oh isn't this lovely! I am reading... no pangs of guilt that I need to be doing my own writing instead. No imp on my shoulder telling me to watch for craft issues - although I do that a lot - I fall into elephant traps easily if they are there. So - on my new Kindle, I have now read 'The Finkler Question' By Howard Jacobson, and 'Room' by Emma Donoghue. Hmm. Which, I ask myself, would I recommend if you could only read one? (That's the test, isn't it?...) And I think it would have to be 'Room'. Not because the other isn't great - but because 'Room' will give you far more to get worked up about - and why bother to read unless it's to shake ourselves up a bit, up and out of little leafy lanes in deepest Sussex, where the most scary visitor is the milkman.
Things you can get worked up about, if you read 'Room': its inspiration - the Fritzl affair, for a start. I've already heard other writers saying Donoghue had no right to exploit the misfortunes of others in this way. Huh? I bet they wouldn't have said that if they'd got there first. Donoghue says 'Room' was triggered by the Fritzl case, after she read about the five-year old lad who had never seen the outside world. It is very good - storywise. Really not easy to write a whole novel from the point of view of a five year old, without it palling badly - and she does it well. the voice wavered a few times, for this reader - but hey - it's a ripping yarn, and I hadn't read a book that kept me up until 2 am for yonks.

Yes, I enjoyed Finkler - it is another eye-opener, in a way, beautifully crafted, humorous, slightly self-consciously clever. Did it make a deep impression on me? No, I can't say it did. Maybe because I didn't 'care' about the subject matter so much, interesting as it is.

I've read Jo Cannon's marvellous collection 'Insignificant Gestures', slowly, cover to cover.
I love Jo's work, and have been watching her successes pile up for a while now. We used to be writing colleagues in The Fiction Workhouse, and when she told me Pewter Rose Press were publishing her collection, and then asked me to endorse it, I was really pleased! Many of the pieces I recognise, of course - and it was simply lovely to be able to read and savour them again, whilst meeting many many pieces that were new to me. Jo is a GP - she has spent some time in African countries during her career as a doctor - and many of her stories explore issues from that perspective. Her characters are so well drawn - there was not one story where I felt wrong-footed - on the contrary, was always surprised when I got to the end, how far away from my settee or study I'd been transported. It's particularly interesting for me, as a writer - Jo works in a very different way to me - we've been on a week-long writing retreat together in 2009 - and to see her moving, beautifully wrought stories emerging painstakingly carefully, was terrific. I will talk about this one again - I'm hoping to get Jo to natter here, if I can drag her out of her surgery...

I'm also reading poetry by Seamus Heaney. I bought 'Human Chain' in e-book format, and know something - I don't think poetry is so successful on the Kindle. Oh, that's not a reflection on the work - here's a review on Guardian Online by Colm Toibin, who says it is one of Heaney's most powerful collections yet... but it's more to do with the coldness of the medium, the screen, it fights the work. Anyone else find this? It ought to work well - mostly the poems fit on a single screen... maybe it's just me.

I have started Dante's 'Divine Comedy'... in the free verse translation as opposed to rhyming lines - I find those so hard to get past..anyway, something I've been meaning to dive into for a while, and again - Dante on Kindle, I don't think so... (Sorry about the 'see inside' sticker - it doesn't work!)
And a teaser...sometimes, reading for pleasure turns into reading for review, or the other way round. I am delighted to have finally sent in to The Short Review my write-up of a collection that I wanted everyone to read when I discovered it a couple of years back. Writing and things got in the way - but finally, I got back to it, and had the huge pleasure of reading again. What is it? Ha! You'll have to wait until the next Short Review -but here's the author...

.......
and money? Oh yes. I sent my final ACE grant budget breakdown to the Arts Council, as reported, ... and had confirmation that the final 10% has been paid into the bank. Yippee.

Author's Photograph

This is copied from The Coward's Journey - a blog following my novel through the publication process...HERE!!
Ahem.
And along came the inevitable request for a high-res photo of meself, to adorn or otherwise the catalogue, the book, the Bloomsbury website.

Oh how tempted I am to copy other authors and dig something out from years ago, when my neck and chin didn't have constant illegible conversations, when there was space enough for a splodge of subtle but glorious colour on the eyelid and the eyebrows didn't insist on dropping in to see what all the fuss was about.
Wouldn't it be loverley to pop down to the local cementworks and order a facial. Then a makeover, where all the lines were filled with filla, hedges clipped, topiary toped. A quick blast of sellotape behind the ears to restore the jawline, a new drenching of the tired old locks. A streak or twain (not in the football sense of course..) and the subsequent hiring of a top photographer for a week.
A week? Oh yes. Then I could have photos of me in every mood. In every item of clothing I posess (a la OK!, or Hello!) black tee after black tee after black tee. Then the green one!
I could have images of moi, sultry in bed in the morning, dog's breath and all, wincyette nightie fetchingly askew. Moi at brekkie, chomping toast. Moi feeding the cat and the husband in that order. (Husband makes less noise). Moi on the phone to the GAP Year son Somewhere in India. Motherly love and red lipstick, black shiny phone. Cool.
Moi in black rollneck, posed lightly over arm of sofa. Taken from above, natch. Or moi carefully posed at desk, fixed, intelligent yet quizzical and beguiling expression on physog. Fingers( light pink nail varnish?) ready to type on keyboard... and on the desk, randomly scattered tomes that always live on my desk, of course, just found in a box in the roof - the poems of John Donne! Shakespeare! Roget's Thesaurus! A carefully angled silver frame, containing, if you look very very carefully, a signed photo of Martin Amis...or yet again, moi, with a wind-up clown, a pile of books, in an artisanal setting and wearing a blonde wig? Yes, I did, and no, never used it.

Oh fer gawd's sake.
I can't find me desk let alone me keyboard. It is under a heap of stuff. Mostly mine. Actually I lie - if I look down, I can see the following:
1. A Ordnance Survey Map of Pulborough, Worthing and Bognor Regis.
2. A pencil sharpener in the shape of a plastic Loch Ness monster wearing a tam, emblazoned Nessie!
3. A copy of 'Contented Dementia' - ( for my Dad's carer - but who knows, soon enough, for moi...)
4)Another pencil sharpener, in the shape of a cat. I won't tell you where you stick the pencil but it miaous piteously. (From GAP Year son, Christmas last.)
5) Papers, papers, papers. More papers. Hiding yet more.
6) A reel of white cotton.
7) A box of earplugs.
8) Nine more books slipping off the side - among them, The Biography of the Bible, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, The Mapmakers of Spitalfields by Manzu Islam..
9) Notebooks, files, more paper.


See, that's me. What would a makeover do except make me look rather daft when I turn up to do readings or somesuch, without the makeup team in tow?
I'm using the same pic I used for 'Glass Bubble' and 'Storm Warning' -here you go. Taken in 2007, it made me look rather grown-up.
I've just about caught up with it.

Modernist Press - Art from Art Anthology

I was very pleased to hear from Steve Soucy this last week, with images of the cover art for the forthcoming Art from art Anthology, from his LA-based press, Modernist. I have a story in here, a reprint of 'The Return of the Baker, Edwin Tregear', one of my favourite stories from 'Storm Warning'. Writers could interpret 'Art' widely - and included in the list of inspirations were museums. The story is based on research done partly at the Levant tin mine in Cornwall, and partly from Lyn MacDonald's marvellous histories of World War I. It was great to know it will be published all the way across in California! It will also be fascinating to see what illustration, if any, the story is given.

This anthology has been on the chocs for a bit - we were paid for our work a while back - and I am excited to hear that it will be coming out in two different editions. Firstly, a limited-edition hardback coffee-table book, and second, a quality paperback with a slip cover. Smashing.

Smashing Reviews for ‘Storm Warning’

My poor little book. It’s got all sidelined in the fuss over the novel. However – reviews are coming in, and are great. Here’s a few.

First, on 'Under The Midnight Sun’ - the site of author Adnan Mahmutovic

“she made every aspect of story-telling appear so natural and unconstrained. It’s almost like slipping on ice...Since I have been through war, I can relate and quite appreciate the way Gebbie treats war...”

That is diamond feedback from someone who has first hand experience of war from a young civilian’s point of view, and it means such a lot to hear this. Read his whole review HERE. Adnan has also put this ***** review on Amazon UK

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Next, on Amazon.com (where the book seems to be unavailable from the publisher, sadly...) a real surprise to see another ***** review from the folks of GUD Magazine:

"Gebbie gives us little slices of insights into people's lives that are often so harsh that you want to look away, but also so honest and intimate that you feel looking away would be a betrayal...
The writing is clean and to the point with few words wasted. ... many of Gebbie's characters (have) something to hide. Out it comes, though, eventually, choking and gasping its way out into the night...
The characters in these stories are ordinary people. They could be us, or our close relatives, our friends, people we meet in the streets. The stories put us into their lives, and make them more real by only offering these slices, by eschewing backstory and long explanations.
With this volume, small but perfectly-formed, both Gebbie and Salt Publishing cement their reputations for producing quality short fiction that demands to be read."

Read the whole review on GUD itself, HERE

Thank you, folks at GUD (pronounced ‘good’ - Greatest Uncommon Denominator) is a fab literary/genre magazine based in the USA - I was lucky enough to be published in here once. Check it out HERE.. terrific stuff. Hard to get an acceptance, but worth persevering!

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On writer Shauna Busto’s site /:

“It is about conflict but at a deeper level than that of the physical battlefield - although "The Return of the Baker, Edwin Tregear" and "Gas Gangrene" among others involve very physical accounts of war - it is about human conflict both interior and exterior.”
And
“A number of stories are outstanding in the relatively slim collection. ... Just don't let the word "conflict" fool you - it is not just about war. It is about all of us.”

Thank you Shauna.

An early review, back in November, came from Judy Darley of the Essential Writers website.

“In a few, brief beautifully spare paragraphs she has the skill to utterly transport you, immersing you in lives that ring out with authenticity and enmeshing you in their emotions - all without a touch of sentimentality.”
And
“the tales bear an uncommon poignancy, subtly altering your perceptions of the world around you. It’s an uncanny power, but a welcome one”

Thank you Judy.

Tim Love, on Litrefs, says:

"In this book victims of military/religious conflict who have a weakened sense of the present become vulnerable to sudden losses of memory and invasion by the past. Dominant themes are beaches, feet/shoes, and smells, with several inter-generational relationships. This collection kicks off with "The Return of the Baker, Edwin Tregear", a strong 15 pager set in 1919. Next is the single paged "Storm Warning" featuring someone on leave from Helmand. Already we note that the theme doesn't over-constrain the pieces in style or content. Later we're faced by the Berlin Wall, S.E. Asia, concentration camps, etc."
and
"I'm reminded of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, Studs Terkel, ghosted biographical material, stories/anecdotes by a guy at my local writers group. It's powerful stuff, though it doesn't have the variety of her first book (note: I overvalue variety)."

That made me grin - thanks Tim.
See the whole review HERE

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and last but by no means least, from Thomas Bunstead, writing in the local magazine, Viva Lewes:

"Powerful...technically adept...hard-hitting...authoritative...rich and deeply moving."

Thanks Thomas.

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Thoughts about theme in fiction...

Oh I spent ages trying to understand what 'theme' was, as opposed to 'subject' in fiction. Then one day it clicked. And much later, when I was asked, 'What's the novel about', I never knew whether people were wanting to know the subject matter, or what it was really 'about'. Maybe, neither did they.
This is the Bloomsbury catalogue entry for 'The Coward's Tale':

Poignant, poetic and spiked with humour: a novel about guilt and atonement, kinship and kindness, and the reverberations of the past.

Bear with me? Now - this is what I was doing in the first week of this New Year. Keep an eye open for things that might shape my view of the world... and might feed into my work?
I drove from my village in Sussex to a village in Suffolk, where for the first time, I met my youngest sister.
Charlie was over from New York where she is a freelance makeup artist, working with the great and the gorgeous, making them even more great and gorgeous. Here's Charlie discovering that I have our father's eyebrows, apparently (!) There are five of us. I was adopted at birth, as I decided to arrive before our parents were married, and that wasn't on back then. A bit of detective work and over fifty years later, we're finally together.
Or, sort of together. Three live in the USA, and have done for years. Susie (California) Charlie (Manhattan) Sally (Boston Mass.) One in Suffolk. (Phillipa). Susie was also over for Christmas. After a while, when the shrieks of excitement died down, we Skyped Sally
And this is the photographic evidence, chaps - all five sisters together... sort of!
What was that about theme? Kinship and kindness. Guilt and Atonement. The reverberations of the past. Only I turned mine into something different. Easy, really.
Cheers!!!

Round Up of 2010 - a bit late!

Novel
Top of the list has to be getting the Arts Council grant that allowed me to work with a superb writer, to shape and polish my 100,000 word pile of words. Enough to work with Maggie Gee for thirty hours - and that was split between full reads of manuscript, extensive comments, and face to face sessions usually at The British Library.
It wasn't without notes of sadness - the mentoring period had to be extended by six months in the end - the decline of my father, for whom the book was written, meant I had to focus on him for a while.
I finally sent it to my agent at the end of October, and had the fantastic but fantastic news within a couple of weeks that he loved it, didn't want any changes, and was going to send it out forthwith. By the end of November, there were two smashing publishers bidding for the book. After meeting them both, editors, sales teams, marketing teams, I decided to go with Bloomsbury UK and USA. And finally, finally, after eight years of slog, I am being paid something nice for my work. Yahoo! It's a bit invidious to say how much but 'solid five figure sum' seems to cover it.'The Coward's Tale' will hit the UK shelves in November this year, and the US shelves the following spring.

Teaching.
I spent a few wonderful weeks in Stockholm in the spring, teaching groups of students at the University. 'Short Circuit' was the intro here - and I used Freedom, the Anthology produced by Amnesty International, as a teaching text. I also led workshops in Ipswich at the University Campus Suffolk, in Exeter for Exeter Writers, and gave the annual Asham lecture at Sussex University.
Poetry
My forays into the poetry world continue slowly. I was lucky enough to have poems selected for publication in the 2010 Ver Poets competition anthology, and in the WordAid poetry anthology to raise funds for Children In Need. I've had a few publications online - at the smashing place, Ink Sweat and Tears. A couple of poems were also shortlisted at Bridport.
Prose
Ive had work published in 100 Stories for Haiti, and was asked to write the introduction for 50 Stories for Pakistan.
Retreats
I've had three marvellous stays at Anam Cara, where most of the novel has been written.

Arts' Council Evaluation

I am putting together the evaluation for the AC - I emailed a week or so back and told my contact the news that 'The Coward's Tale', as it now is, has found a great home at Bloomsbury. It is a sobering thought - I was lucky, and managed to secure a grant before the cuts in spending hit - and it was tough enough a year back, believe me. I can't help thinking that my grant was a tiny sum, relatively speaking, and how many wonderful pieces of work would be helped into the world if it was only possible to give a helping hand more often.
Maggie Gee, in writing her evaluation of the mentoring process, made the point that my grant money has enabled her go to New York to research her next novel. So that's two writers helped in one swoop, two pieces of work given a shove into the world.

I didn't have to send these documents in - but because it has been such a successful project, thought it was a good thing to do so. Who is to say - maybe it will encourage a purse string to be loosened a little? I was always a mad optimist.
Anyway, in the spirit of sharing as much as I could on this blog, here is my evaluation paper.

EVALUATION STATEMENT

When I applied for this grant to work with Maggie Gee, my manuscript was basically a series of short fictions, all set in the same town, with the same set of characters. I had created a thin and very last-minute ‘linking device’ based on conversations between two characters, and I knew that was patently obvious, and therefore unsatisfactory.
Working with Maggie Gee was marvellous. From the first read-through of the work, she seemed to understand exactly what I was trying to do, and saw some of the seeds of the solution in what I had already created. It was under her guidance and encouragement that these linking sections took on a depth and importance that strengthened the rest of the book, as the relationship between the two characters grew in the most surprising ways. The results have enriched the whole far more than I would have thought possible.
Maggie never told me what to do in terms of the plot. She would point out the issues, and we would discuss the implications of various suggestions, or possible solutions that appeared as we discussed. She wrote extensive and extremely helpful notes for all the manuscripts I sent her, showing me her reactions as an intelligent reader as much as a great teacher.
I learned the importance of creating a narrative thread that pulls the reader through a novel, and that events strung together, even though they are ‘saying something’ cohererent, are not enough.
I learned specific craft skills appropriate for a novel-length work, the necessity for example, to help the reader more than in a short story, especially at the beginning, to identify important characters by using small but definite details. That is a good example of learning to see the work from the reader’s perspective. Maybe it is easier to be more self-indulgent with a short story, but if I wanted to keep the reader’s attention for the length of a novel, I had to learn a few different tricks of the trade. There were plenty of places where the reader’s attention might slip – where I had overdone the descriptions and images, and there was not enough happening. That raised several issues - it was clear that I had overused imagery in places, such that one cancelled out another, and the overall effect was messiness, rather than what I was reaching for. It was marvellous to have those places pointed out – not specifics, necessarily, but passages where the tension slackened.
One very important discussion took place - the most uncomfortable - where the central image, a machine, and a marvellous metaphor, became the target of a possible scythe. This really was my writer's darling - the novel was called 'The Man-Engine' and there were careful descriptions of this device, that got clearer and clearer (at least that was the intention) as the book progressed. But... the book is about the echoes of a mining disaster. It is Wales. And this machine was not in use there. Yes, I could have put in an explanatory paragraph at the end to say I was aware, but this is fiction... but after drafting the said paragraph twenty times, I just couldn't do that. It seemed an image to far, finally. And when I realised that the movement of the machine had given me the structure of the novel - something the publishers commented on in the end, positively - it had done its job.
Did I do everything that Maggie suggested, then? No. For example, there were places where Maggie suggested dropping a specific phrase from the prose, here and there, and on consideration, I left some of them in, because to remove them would have had an impact on the voice and the rhythms. In those instances I tried to find another way of sharpening the experience for the reader in a different way. I think I have learned to listen to my own instincts more. To trust my own skills more than before. The seeds of the main narrative thread were all there – Maggie pointed out the importance of these characters, and their interaction – but also the relative thinness of these sections, as well. I like to think that next time, I will trust the process of creation more, and be able to expand on those things that are important more instinctively.
I learned how much work is necessary to create a manuscript I am really proud of, as opposed to an ‘it will have to do’ creation. I learned that when I thought it was finished, but was a little concerned still about the ending – Maggie picked that up, and I was right to be concerned. I learned that what one thinks is the last of all the many rewrites is never the last. Maybe a work is never ‘finished’.

Overall, as well as having tackled the craft issues necessary to turn a series of linked stories into a novel, I think I am a more confident writer at the end of the mentoring process. Working with Maggie Gee was terrific, and I am very grateful for that opportunity.

A Romantic Longlisting for Sally Zigmond

I’m enjoying myself – today I am waving a bunch of red roses in the ether in congrats to Sally Zigmond, for her news, a longlisting for her novel ‘Hope Against Hope’ (Myrmidon) in the Romantic Novelists Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Goodness me! The full long list is HERE.

Hope Against Hope is on Amazon, HERE

How To Get A Literary Agent, by Sarah Hilary

A couple of years back, I persuaded writer friend Sarah Hilary to come with me to the Fish Publishing award ceremony, part of the West Cork Lit Fest. (What, you haven’t been? Well poor you...) Sarah had won one of the prizes – and I could give her a lift from Cork airport to the lovely town of Bantry. We had a very happy drive, nattering away, and went straight to the library for the opening of the Festival. They’d pushed the moveable shelves back to make room for all the rows of chairs, and I was sitting next to one of the said shelves- labelled ‘Crime’.
‘One day, you’ll have a whole row of books in places like this,’ I said. Because she will. No question. How do I know – well, it’s not difficult – she writes intelligent, intriguing crime novels – good enough to be noticed by a top agent, even in those early days – and was stubborn enough, like Yours Truly – not to give up when it would have been so so easy to.
Getting an agent is tough stuff. Persuading someone that your work is good enough to represent, sell, spend time on, is tough. And giving up at the first fence ain’t an option – if you want to succeed.
So I was very very happy to read on Sarah’s blog that she has been signed – and in her inimitable fashion, she relates the stages of How To get An Agent – HERE!!! And not just any old agent, either... oh no.
Read and enjoy. Especially the bit about not giving up...
Many many congrats to Sarah.