Tom Vowler's terrific debut novel, 'What Lies Within'.

Is it a whodunnit, is it a psychological drama, is it a fabulously written insightful novel into family dynamics in the face of deeply hidden secrets? Well, I'm just glad I don't have to find any single box for this novel, because 'What Lies Within' is a bit of all of these, and more. I started to read my pre-publication copy before I went on holiday in early May, and got so into it, if that plane had been a train, I'd have missed my stop. 
      It is no surprise to find that 'What Lies Within' is stuffed full of great writing. Tom Vowler is no raw newbie - his collection of short fiction, 'The Method', won the Salt Publishing Scott Prize in 2010 and the Edge Hill Readers' Award the following year. He can tell a mean story, and this novel is based on one from that collection. 

      The novel is written from a female perspective. Now - that may not be unusual, but the perspective here is so authentic that I never lost contact with the character. The bloke wielding the pen never stood between me and his creation waving a red flag. And that is unusual. Usually, there are points at which the mask slips... but here, despite some fairly tough sexual scenes which might trap a lesser writer into flawed characterisation, my belief never wavered. 
I can wholeheartedly recommend this novel. If you enjoy the twists and turns of a clever and never predictable plot, terrific characters playing out their very real dramas against the most evocative setting - Dartmoor in all its looming glory - then this is for you. 

I asked Tom to write something about working with female characters in such depth - and he contributed the following. It's rather interesting, especially if you are of the school that says you have to write literally what you know! 

Over to Tom.

Tom Vowler

I'M A LADY (SOMETIMES): WRITING FROM A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE

At a recent event an audience member asked me about writing from a female perspective (What Lies Within being narrated largely this way). At the time of planning the book, I’d thought it no different to trying to capture any other voice – a child’s, an old man’s, someone from a different culture or era. But, looking back, I think it presented some interesting and unique challenges. 

The first impression someone gets of a book, before any true sense of plot or setting, is the character's or narrator's voice, so it needs to be both compelling and convincing if it’s to accompany the reader for 300 pages. It must set them at ease, be both resonant and consistent, so that, within a chapter or two, a connection has been made, a trust established.

I'd heard of writers who ‘do the opposite sex well’, as if it was some arcane, innate talent, or perhaps even a module on a creative writing course, and I wondered whether I was one of them. The genesis of my fiction tends to come from an event, or at least a concept that fascinates, appals or terrifies me. This could be something seen on the news, or an experience closer to home, which immediately becomes the fulcrum the story turns on. 

There are certain scenes and themes in the novel that, owing to my gender, I literally could not experience, and so much time was spent in conversation with female friends, as well as conducting interviews with a brave woman in the US, trying to tease out the detail I sought – much like researching anything else I suppose. But it soon became clear it was the smaller things, the intricacies and nuances of my female character, that would give me her voice: her use of language, both internal and external; how she regards herself and others; her mannerisms; how she reacts to all the terrible and wonderful things that happen to her. It was an enormous challenge to put myself in her shoes, to inhabit her world, to try to understand the torment she feels. As was describing the sexual scenes from a female point of view. 

Looking back, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, it feels like a huge gamble (but then writing a novel usually is), the potential for getting it wrong considerable. Yet by the time I was at the point of no return, she was fully formed, living and breathing in my mind, her voice as real as any other I'd written. She accompanied me (or I her?) on vast walks across the uplands of Dartmoor, exploring the beautiful and brooding landscape, where I realised what an important remedy the moor would be for her. 

It’s early days but initial reviews of the novel have expressed incredulity that it was written by a man, which I suppose shows I've done my job. 

Tom Vowler’s debut short story collection, The Method, won the international Scott Prize in 2010 and the Edge Hill Readers’ Award in 2011. Now an associate lecturer at Plymouth University, his debut novel What Lies Within was published in April 2013. Tom is also Assistant Editor for the literary journal Short FICTION. In 2008 he graduated with an MA in Creative Writing and is now studying for a PhD, looking at landscape and trauma in fiction. More at www.tomvowler.co.uk

The launch of Caroline Davies's 'Convoy'

Convoy is published by Cinnamon Press

Monday, 20 May 2013. Ship: HQS Wellington. Estimated time of launch, nineteen hundred hours. Crew, some twenty or so hardy souls. The Captain, poet Caroline Davies, resplendent in a 1940's dress uniform and hair to match, was on board well before, checking that all was ship-shape. The steward, Simon, having responded with all alacrity to orders - 'Move that table. Bring water for the flowers. And water for the reader...' ushered us into the wardroom for pre-launch drinks. But then, he had to sit down when HQS Wellington rocked slightly due to the wake of a passing pleasure craft - 'I'm no sailor. I get seasick.'

How would the captain cope with such dereliction of duty? 'Oh, never mind,' she said, checking she had all the ships logs, the charts, passenger list. Ready to pipe aboard the honoured guests.

Caroline, with HQS Wellington in the background

Caroline's debut poetry collection is no ordinary first collection. You will not find poems here dealing with the usual... no eulogies or elegies to parents, children or lovers. But instead, a carefully researched series of intensely poignant poems based on fact, inspired by her grandfather's experiences in the Malta Convoys in WW11.

I was privileged to be among the crew for the event, and to 'interview' Caroline to provide a framework for her readings. And in case you weren't lucky enough to be on HQS Wellington that night - here is that interview.

V Tell us where the idea for Convoy came from?

C: Didn’t sit down with the intention of writing about Malta and the war. So the first poem I wrote as part of the sequence although it’s not the first poem in the book. It came out of one of Pascale Petit’s poetry workshops at Tate Modern – just across the river from here. It was November 2010 and we’d been looking at a piece of installation art by Ana Mendiata – a Cuban American artist. Pascale would always facilitate the writing by giving you ideas and by sharing poems and we’d read Animal Dress' by Sharon Olds  and ' The World's Entire Wasp Population' by Selima Hill. Neither poem had anything to do with being at sea or being at war and we settled down to write with the brief of using our senses. 
     I wrote a poem called 'Under Fire'. It is set on board a ship which has been under attack There’s been a tremendous bombardment which has left you unable to hear and in front of you is a wounded seaman and it’s 1941 and you are….Under Fire. That was the first poem of what was to become a long project.

(Caroline read 'Under Fire'.) 

V I know that poem came up from old memories, of your grandfather's experiences during WW11. How much did you know at that early stage, about your grandfather’s war?

C: What I knew at the start was sketchy. I knew he’d been involved in the Malta convoys but I didn’t know which ships he’d been on or what was involved in being on a convoy so I was at first base. I did lots of reading, Ian Cameron’s Red Duster, White Ensign, Richard Woodman’s Malta convoys.  At the same time I was studying the final level 3 CW module with the OU which had several assignments which required you to do some research and then write based on the research. 

      I did know a little more about my mother’s experience. She was aged six at the start of the war and her’s is one of the important voices in the book. 

 (Caroline read 'Sirens')

V We’ve heard your mother’s voice - now in contrast - let’s hear your grandfather’s voice? Tell us a bit about this next poem, 'Unprotected Water'.

C: This came out of a conversation with my uncle about his father’s war and is based on a true story of what happened on one occasion, probably the first time when his ship, The Ajax had just berthed in Grand Harbour, Valetta. One of the things I discovered from the research was how fortunate he was in having John Scott as his captain.
   

(Caroline read 'Unprotected Water'.) 

Caroline in The Committee Room on board The Wellington. This is where the readings took place, to a select audience.

V How did you approach the research necessary for this project?  And did you restrict yourself to the accounts of those who had served on the ships, or did you find other interesting sources? 

C: As I’ve mentioned I did a lot of research and a fair amount of reading for many of the poems. There are a number of accounts by RAF pilots who were stationed on Malta in 1941 and 1942, among them Laddie Lucas and Tom Neil. So although I’d set out with the aim of simply writing about the convoys and the experience of the seamen,  I ended up with lots of material about what it was like defending the island from the air which demanded to be turned into poems. 

             However, one of the difficulties with these accounts is that they tend to be restrained  about their feelings – lots of ‘stiff upper lip’ stuff which was how they got through. 

V: Writing about war can  turn into a heavy business. Were there any lighter moments you discovered, to add tonal variation to the mix?  

C: Yes. The Ajax spent three months on Malta from September – Boxing Day 1941. The poem 'Christmas 1941' almost comes directly from the footnotes of one of the maritime histories and is based on a comment by the third officer on The Ajax, Graham Sibly. He said, ‘I have never seen an angrier man than our Number One Greaser, he was literally dancing up and down with rage.’ 

(Caroline read 'Christmas 1941')

V: How did you turn these, and other written accounts into poems? 

C: The accounts of those who served on the ships’ is an interesting phrase because there are very few first hand accounts written by seamen. If there is a book written by a captain of one of the merchant ships on these convoys I have yet to find it! What I did manage to find was IWM interviews and there was a Channel 4 documentary about the last big convoy, Operation Pedestal which includes interviews with a number of seamen. What I did do was put together the historical facts. It was up to me to do the work of imagining how they felt. I found myself seizing upon moments when they let their guard drop.  The poem 'Overseas Posting' is based on a single remark made in an interview by a pilot (I don’t know his name) when asked how he coped with other pilots being killed. ‘I just used to pretend’ he said. This next poem is him, pretending. 

(Caroline read 'Overseas Posting').

V tell us something about Malta itself, and how the island suffered during the war? Do you have any further plans to mine this particular seam in your writing? 

C: By the summer of 1942 the island was absolutely on its knees – they were running out of food, fuel, and ammunition and the authorities are counting down the weeks to the point at which they will have no choice but to surrender to the Axis powers. 

       Things that were never rationed in Britain like bread and flour were rationed on Malta – the bread allowance was 10 ½ ounces per day (flour was unobtainable). There was no olive oil or butter and the fat/lard allowance was 3 ½ ounces per week (1/3 of the ration in Britain). Milk was unobtainable and powered milk was given only to children under seven and pregnant women. Cheese (4 oz in Uk) was 1 ¾ once on Malta. Sugar, jam, sweets were not rationed as they were unobtainable. The authorities set up Victory kitchens which provided one hot meal per day and that was it.  

(Caroline finished by reading from a longer poem, ' Operation Vigorous'. It’s June 1942 and this was her  grandfather's voice again, on his third convoy to Malta, setting out from Alexandria.) 

The queue, and signing books. 

The launch was a very special occasion, and it was wonderful to be there.  Walking back along the Embankment, The Thames at dusk looked rather lovely...

'Convoy' can be purchased direct from Cinnamon Press, or ordered from all good bookshops.

.

A busy month!

I see I last posted on 8th March - goodness. A lot has happened since then:

From 7th to 17th  March I was at Anam Cara, my  (I wish it was 'my - I mean it's where I go...) wonderful retreat in West Cork, Ireland, where I managed to push the word count of the next novel to 92000 wds. No - it's not 'nearly there' as my husband brightly suggested... but it is going in the right direction.

Then there were a couple of visits to some more rather wonderful places - slightly different -and  for different reasons:
18th March, the Mayor's Parlour in Brighton, where a fab tea was served, and I met the Mayor's chauffeur. Good guy - he explained all about the mace - a vast thing which has to be carried upside down if the Queen visits.
19th March, another tea, this time at the House of Lords. This was a fundraising/profile-raising event for the Post Adoption Centre (PAC), a charity that is both wonderful and close to my heart. The tea was punctuated by bells calling the great and the good from their cream scones, to vote.

Then, some food for the soul - an evening with wonderful poet Sasha Dugdale, thanks to The Lewes Monday Literary Club. Sasha read from her moving and wonderful Bloodaxe published translation of the Russian poet Elena Shvartz. She also read from her own collection The Red Book, and from some new work. I now have The Red Book, a new favourite  on my poetry shelf...

Sasha Dugdale, who read from her translation of Russian poet Elena Shvartz

Sticking with poetry - I am tweaking the manuscript for The Half Life of Fathers, which ought to be out in September, ready for the Glad Lit Fest ... see below.

I've been blogger in residence for the Bridport Prize website for three months and have enjoyed that enormously.I'll do another post linking to all the articles and discussions in due course.

Some Coward's Tale news - it seems a long while since the novel came out, and it is still giving me surprises. It has been absolutely wonderful to receive letters and emails for readers who have loved it. Give me love and/or hate over 'It's OK' any day! And thanks to all who give up a few precious hours to read my work.

It was particularly lovely to hear from a US reading group who had been meeting for years. The Coward's tale was voted one of their all time favourites, and they took the trouble to send me a picture, with Welsh flag, singing map, and all. That makes all this worth while!

The Coward’s Tale was longlisted for The Waverton Good Read Award http://www.wavertongoodread.org.uk/longlist-2012.html I was really delighted - didn't know about this award, which is purely reader-led. Good stuff. So here's the info on the award. http://www.wavertongoodread.org.uk/story.html

Recommended in the St Albert Gazette, in Canada http://m.stalbertgazette.com/article/20130227/SAG0308/302279965

Discussed in Cleveland Ohio http://www.cleveland.com/hillcrest/index.ssf/2013/04/sun_messenger_calendar_of_even_72.html

Recommended for Spring and Mum’s day gifts on  the Australian website Books and Music: - http://www.bookandmusic.com.au/images/catalogues/April_13.pdf

Other stuff:

In September, when I'm writer in residence at Gladstone's Library, they have decided to have a literary festival! I am absolutely pixillated and hope to reassemble myself in time to appear alongside luminaries such as Damian Barr, Wendy Cope, Stella Duffy and Sarah Perry.

Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story - is to become even bigger and better - with the inclusion of new chapters - either penned by or interviews with the following: Scott Pack, Tom Vowler, Professor Patty McNair, Stuart Evers. And more... It’s due out in August... watch this space! 

The gorgeous new Short Circuit cover...

 On 19th April, last Friday (phew, nearly there...) I read at the event flagged in the last post here - at The Word Factory,  in Sutton House, Hackney, in the excellent company of  poet Katy Evans-Bush, writer Tom Lee and singer/song collector Sam Lee. The best moment - when Sam responded to Silver Leaves for Judah Jones (an early version of part of TCT) by singing an impromptu, very beautiful song. 

Reading in the Elizabethan Chamber, Sutton House

I taught on Saturday 20th April for London's Spread the Word, at Toynbee Hall.  The day was on refreshing your writing, returning to when it was just fun, exciting stuff. Much enjoyed by the tutor, who shared some favourite writing games and exercises...

Finally - here's a brilliant article sure to get your blood either fizzing with recognition or boiling with indignation!   Dont let me know which, just enjoy. Or not. http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/

I think that's enough...
Happy writings!

Reading in Hackney for The Word Factory - 19th April

The Word Factory #9 Keeping The Flame Alive: Song & Story In Hackney
	Let us seduce you with storytelling and song from award-winning performers and writers in the stunning Elizabethan chamber of the National Trust’s hidden Hackney gem, Sutton House.		Friday, 19th April 7-9pm at: Sutton House 2 and 4 Homerton High Street, Hackney, London E9 6JQ Telephone: 020 8986 2264 suttonhouse@nationaltrust.org.uk £10 on the door

Katy Evans-Bush

Sam Lee

Tom Lee

Sam Lee Mercury Prize nominated folk singer and song collector Sam’s debut album, Ground Of Its Own, comprised of songs learned from the Gypsy Traveller community, haunting tales from history and the heart. His band, Sam Lee & Friends, perform unconventional and contemporary interpretations that challenge our preconceptions of what folk music should sound like.

Katy Evans-Bush Hackney resident Katy is an accomplished poet, critic, teacher and superlative blogger. Don’t miss her award-winning web site Baroque In Hackney. She will be reading from her superb Rack Press pamphlet, Henry & Oscar, in which a delicious and moving encounter between Henry James and Oscar Wilde is imagined.

Vanessa Gebbie Vanessa is a Welsh writer living in England. Her debut novel The Coward's Tale, an exploration of the importance of story in a troubled community, was a Financial Times Novel of the Year, and a Guardian Readers' Book of the Year. She is author of two short fiction collections, Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning, and her first poetry publication, The Half-life of Fathers, is published later this year.

Tom Lee Tom’s stories have been published in the Sunday Times Magazine, Prospect and Esquire, broadcast on Radio 4, and two are being adapted for film. His debut collection, Greenfly, was published in 2009 and he’s currently working on his second collection and writing a memoir about being in intensive care in King’s College Hospital, South London. As far as we can tell, he is not related to Sam.

Salena Godden and Springfield Road!

Salena - "In Godden we Trust..."

Salena's mother - the official pin-up for Springfield Road

One specialest of special guests today - Welcome Salena Godden! Multi-talented, great fun, generous and a fab writer to boot, her memoir Springfield Road is at Unbound right now! I am so indebted to Salena, who read The Coward's Tale and gave me the most wonderful quote for the cover...and it is terrific to be able to do a little summat for her in return. 

I was lucky enough to read Springfield Road a while ago, and loved it. I  heard Springfield Road on BBC Radio 4 and loved it again. It is moving, honest, absolutely engaging, and beautifully written. Do visit Unbound, and see how you might be able to help it into book form... and remember, every little counts!

But before you disappear, enjoy a natter with the writer, here... 

Hi Salena - welcome to the blog. Now, first of all,  tell everyone a bit about Springfield Road.

Springfield Road is a childhood memoir. Its the story of the house on Springfield Road in Hastings, the people that lived there and the stories they left behind. More so its the story of how my parents met - My father was a jazz musician and my mother a Go-go dancer. This is also very much the story of the journey of writing this book too. Its a poetic and universal story, peppered with daydreams, a child’s view, told from the ants in the cracks in the pavement to the faces in the clouds. 

       These are memories of attempting to understand the beauty, the brutality and the contradictions of the adult world.

       This book has been compared to Laurie Lee ‘Cider With Rosie’ and Angela Ashworth ‘Once In A House On Fire’ People have also mentioned ‘White Teeth’ Zadie Smith and ‘Running With Scissors’ by Augusten Burroughs. I suppose elements of this book may be as summer soft and Brit nostalgic as say ‘Cider With Rosie’ but its certainly as gritty and raw as Shane Meadows ‘This Is England’ during some chapters too.

Maggie Gee was so helpful to me, and I know she helped you too - and we both teach and facilitate in our turn - I like that circular movement - is that a deliberate vision for you of how the writing world works best? 

I'm so grateful to Maggie Gee - I cannot thank her enough for her encouragement and support. Maggie helped me very much with the new unseen chapters, the journey of ‘writing the book’ chapters, written in the now.

       I believe writing memoir is like painting a movable feast, a moving object, the subject matter alters and changes as new news comes through. Its very much a living breathing and changeable weather, as people die and people are born, the shape of the nostalgic landscape you are writing about also changes, history warps with time and sentimentality.

      I don't think I have a deliberate vision for how the writing world works - I do have meticulous lists, I even have lists that refer to other lists. I make a point to never forget kindness.

I think its important that writers help each other, show support and share good news. There is plenty of pie for everyone, I think its beautiful to keep passing the ball and to keep the ball in the air, keep passing the conch shell as it were, to share our stories, to listen and learn.

How did you find the time to write with all the other things you do?!

When I wrote the bulk of 'Springfield Road I’d quit everything and everyone. I locked myself away in solitary confinement and pretty much wrote from 4am to 4pm each day. I have a great determination and when I want to do something I will do it. I was monk-like, strict and hard on myself. I went to bed at 9pm and rose at 4am to work at it, to edit and write it all over, again and again. I felt I had a job to do and I wanted to do it well. These are not make-believe characters, this is my family and I love them. Put it like this - I have to have Christmas dinner with these people, I wouldn't hear the last of it if I got anyone or anything wrong. 

       But the greatest moment, illumination, was when I spent a month at a writers retreat, alone up a mountain in Andalusia re-writing this version of the book and it was then I came to the realisation there is no wrong or right way to write it, that we all edit our memories and select what we'll forget of something and exactly how we'll remember something else. 

       I've always lived as though there is not much time, as though we are running out of time, I'm sure you'll agree the most frustrating thing for a writer is the waiting, waiting for people to catch up, waiting for feedback, waiting, waiting. So I counteracted this by keeping very busy. While I wait I write other things – I aim to have something bubbling on the hob ready to serve, something in the freezer for later, something new brewing, marinating, something in the oven, something in the shop window to sell and something to giveaway for free. Put it this way, i have novels and plays that have never seen the light of day. And if you looked in my kitchen cupboards you'd find them stacked with folders and notebooks of unpublished poems and ready-to-read short story collections where normal people keep food and crockery. Finding time to write and making new work has never been a problem. The hardest work is waiting for ‘my turn’ and being patient that’s all.

4. So far you have masses of people queuing up to help a little with the publication process...Tell us about  Unbound and how you came to choose them - and whether there are plans for the book once published - will you take it on tour?

Salena's mother...

I met John Mitchinson and Rachael Kerr at Voewood festival a few years ago. I think the Unbound model could be the future of publishing. Unbound enables writers, it gives them more say and power.

       The other day I said to my friend that "writing a book without a publishing deal can be a bit like walking into a pub, yeah, mopping the pub floor, clearing the dirty glasses and wiping the tables without being asked. But then wondering why you haven't been paid. You'll get popular in that pub, but you wonder why you did that? And where you got the bucket? Ha ha and why you have to mop it all up in the first place." With Unbound I suppose you have the whole pub knowing why you are there and cheering you along...um...as you mop the pub floor.

       Yes, planning parties, events, tours and festivals. I've been working on audio and radio ideas too - But I'm trying to be patient and take one step at a time.

       Unbound is a bit like Roman times. My book is a gladiator. "I am Spartacus" is now "I am Springfield." The book is at the mercy of the generosity of the braying crowds. Thumbs up....or thumbs down and this work is thrown to the lions. 

Seriously though Unbound is all about readers pledging for the books they'd like to read and being able to watch the book they back and support grow and blossom - for the author its both nerve wracking and exciting.

In an email a while back, you mentioned the sad death of your grandmother, and how you felt that you could not properly start or end Springfield Road before that - does she still open and close the book? 

In a way yes. 

       My grandmother looked after me when I was young so that my mother could work. Our dad was off and away and so as a single-parent my Mum found a job stacking shelves in the local supermarket. There is something of Alan Silitoe about that particular era and my trying to capture those early days.

       When my grandmother passed away (about two years ago) it was her wish that we take her home to Jamaica, to Colonels Ridge, Clarendon to lay her to rest with her kin. It was quite a trip, and quite a sight to behold, the old family house and garden with my elders graves.

       I hadn't been to Jamaica before and so I always had an “imagined belonging” to that side of my family, to my Jamaican heritage and roots. My childhood would have been very different if I had gone to paddle in the warm turquoise ocean at Montego Bay for Easter holidays instead of shivering in the cold, sage-green sea and stony beaches of Hastings, East Sussex. 

"Excerpt // "We stood amongst the tombs of our great-grandparents and my great aunts and uncles, beside a house that could not have possibly housed them all. It was derelict and I could see though a jagged window into the kitchen where my great grandmother would have cooked. There was a broken old stove there still. Now the black and white drawings my grandmother had described to me as a girl were technicoloured, suddenly in 3D, moving around me, a living, walking and talking picture. Vivid blue and violet, the world was humming in a hundred shades of life and lush green."

What is it about our grandmothers? (I’m now one myself, so the question is pertinent... I need to know how to be!) It was memories of my own  grandmother in Wales that fed right through The Coward's Tale - it wouldn't exist without my memories of her. Why are they so important to some?

I had three grandmothers. Its a little too complicated to write it all out here but the bottom line is there were three grandmothers.

       There is this great importance of grandmothers – I wonder is it because we are female, and there is a invisible thread from the elder to the younger female in the blood line.

    I am fascinated by the 'third' grandmother nobody knew - a fifteen year old Irish girl that disappeared….and I have started working on a history of her..

I had four - but we'll leave it at that! What are you working on now, writingwise?

I’ve been writing and producing tracks I call "sound gardens" or "radio pictures" My first one, my debut 'If The Heart Is A Bell' was a 12minute remix of a poem I wrote for my friends funeral. I submitted it to be presented at The Londonewcastle Project Space on Redchurch Street in January and then it went to Paris on Valentines night as part of the Trolleyology Exhibition. Its a tribute to my friend Gigi who passed away on Christmas Eve. Its a combination of the poetry, recorded live music, guitars, radio, narrative, borrowed samples and loops and a decade of Trolley Books visuals…

       Book wise I'm editing the new novel – This winter I got obsessed by the life and work of Jean Rhys and those early novels of 1930's Paris. My new novel has a voice that now reminds me of the precarious fragility and destructive hedonism of a young Jean - it is fiction though!  

       Away from that I am busy with the polishing of my BBC work, pitching radio ideas and working on scripts. Plus editing poems ready for the summer chaos and festivals - feels like 2013 is gonna be one helluva summer! See you there!

Salena - huge huge good fortune to you, and to Springfield Road... and now peeps, get over there and contribute.  Good karma - it will come back in the end. Always does... Here is the link -  Springfield at Unbound - it's veeery easy! 

Happy dance for Sarah Hilary! A lesson in not giving up, and a little about itchy wrists...

Happy Dance!

Sarah Hilary

I'm delighted to welcome Sarah Hilary to the blog today, and I can't help doing a happy-dance at the same time...
      If you have ever had your writing rejected, and thought it's no good, I'll just give up now - please read on. Sarah is an object lesson in how things CAN come right if you DON'T GIVE UP! 

Let's start with an announcement on a book-trade information website... Headline Acquires Two Novels from Sarah...  and it's lovely, wonderful, woo hooishly great. But behind the woo hoos is another story, and it's that one  Sarah and I would like to share with you. These books are not her first, and second, second and third, or even third and fourth..

Anyhoo - it was 2008 and I was off to Bantry to the West Cork Literary Festival which always includes the Fish Prize awards event.  I knew Sarah, but only on the internet - and I knew she needed to go too, as she'd won one of the Fish competitions that year - The Criminally Short Histories prize. So I offered her a lift from Cork Airport. We nattered like old mates... and now, five years later, I think we probably are old mates. (Well, I'm the 'old' one, she is the younger, tenacious one...) And here we are, five years later, still nattering...

Hi Sarah! I shall stop the happy dance for a few mins now. 

          I remember listening to the plot of the novel you were working on some years back, in the car on our way to Bantry. I remember wanting to stop the car to be able to concentrate properly, to find out who, then why, then what happens, and how...it was just a brilliant story. I sat with you at some event in Bantry Library, right next to the Crime section, and said, ‘You’ll  soon have a whole shelf...’ and you laughed. 

       Well, five years later, you can laugh for a different reason, with delight, hopefully. But. It has not been an easy ride from 2008 to here, has it. It’s been a rocky road - and I’ve followed your fortunes with bated breath! Can you describe your journey to this point, with regard to the crime novels? Chart the ups and downs, if you like...

Sarah: I remember that road trip vividly. Your interest in the story, and your conviction that I could make it into print, spurred me to Try Harder. My motto for the years between then and now has been (and still is!) Must Try Harder. It’s been a heck of a journey - more twists and turns than the road to Bantry - and I’m a little breathless to have got this far. I think the story I described to you was the second or possibly the third manuscript I’d submitted to Jane Gregory, who’s now my agent. She didn’t sign me until the fourth manuscript - and it’s my fifth and sixth books that she’s just sold to Headline - so it’s just as well I decided early on that I was in this for the long haul. 

The ‘downs’ were each time I heard, “Not this book, maybe the next,” but I was lucky enough to be told, each time, what I could do to improve my writing, plotting and so on. Of course it’s incredibly hard to see any silver lining when you’re right under the cloud of rejection, but the only thing to do is to keep moving forward, and keep believing that what you write next will be better, because it will be. That’s the great thing about writing - you really do get better at it. 

(VG: I liked those quotes - so they're in red. And here is the cloud of rejection covering the light of good things...)

The ‘highs’ were each small milestone – winning a short story contest, getting into a print anthology – and seeing fellow writers break through, or sharing the struggle with writing buddies. I must mention the fabulous Ms Anna Britten, whose sympathy, sage advice and support has kept me going over the last two years. It was during one of my lowest spells that Anna and I settled on the need for defiance as a strategy for fighting on. Not arrogance, but a determination to defy the odds, and the urge to give up. I created one of the characters in SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN in a moment of defiance, and he’s a character my editor loves.

VG: *Waves to Anna Britten* - isn't sharing this thing we do so important, on so many levels? I am so glad to hear that. We all need  supporters...

And here is a pic of one of your top supporters, your daughter Milly, stealing your thunder when you won the Cheshire Prize for Literature! 

 You are just an incarnation of the advice I was given, myself, and which, when I’m asked to give a newbie writer advice,  is the first thing that comes to mind. ‘Don’t give up’. You are the best possible example of the wonderful things that can happen if you don’t give up.  But it ain't easy, is it? What did it feel like to keep going? What was it that made you sure that you would succeed in the end? Or were there times you lost faith and had to pick yourself up again?

Sarah: Crikey, how did it feel to keep going..? This is where therapists will read and weep – that they didn’t make money from my teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling. There were days when I lay on the floor and wept. Days when I was furious with myself for falling short (again), and when I told myself that surely if I had any real talent, it shouldn’t be this hard to get published. I don’t think I was ever sure that I would succeed in the end. At the outset, of course, I had a writer’s ego; I submitted my first film script when I was 15, to a company listed in the Writers and Artists Yearbook (the possessing of which was enough to convince me I woz a Writer). Towards the end, I had virtually no ego (a good thing, on the whole) and was armed only with defiance, being a rarefied version of the bloodymindedness I was born with. My paternal grandmother was fond of telling people, ‘You’ll never get Sarah to do anything she doesn’t want to do,’ which is another way of saying I can’t be talked out of something I’ve set my mind to. 

Most helpfully of all, by this stage, writing is like a tic or a reflex; I can’t not do it. So here I am. Oh and I keep getting ideas for better books! I’m always excited by The Next Book, chiefly because I know it will be my best yet; it’s a fresh chance to do a better job at the thing I love doing. Who wouldn’t want that?

Just one of the many anthologies your work can be found in...

 VG: Yee ha! So - say you have to pick yourself up from a big disappointment. How do/did you do that? What advice can you give to a newer writer who is facing the wall?

Sarah: I suspect I’ve given the answer to this already in my ramblings above. It’s about knowing that what you write next will be better - and therefore the odds of it being published will be improved. I know that what you’re writing Right Now might feel like the best thing you’ve ever written, and so it should. I know you’ll feel proud and protective of your story and especially your characters, and that’s okay. It’s allowed. What’s not allowed is letting that pride and protectiveness stop you in your tracks. 

Always have a Next Book bubbling under, even if it’s just a handful of notes in a pad somewhere. I like to keep a notebook that I flip over so the back pages are like a separate pad (I put different stickers or doodles on the covers of each side to make it look like two pads) and those back pages are my Next Book. This means a) not all my eggs are in one basket, and b) with luck I’ll be hooked on writing the Next Book by the time my current one is being read by agents or editors. It really does soften the blow if the first one doesn’t make it. Just the fact that you’ve stopped thinking about it and given headspace to a new story and new characters - makes the rejection easier to bear.

and another anthology - is the shelf full yet?!

VG: Brilliant. Your sage words are emblazoned in RED! And so - on to the books... Tell me about the novel that broke through for you... how long had you been working on this one? Did you have any professional advice to help you shape it?

Sarah: It took me about a year to write SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN, although the idea had been playing in my head for longer. It’s a story about secrets, and survival. The secrets that put us in danger and the ones that keep us safe. It’s about who we pretend to be in order to survive or simply to get by, and who we really are, under the skin. The blurb reads like this:

No two victims are alike.  

DI Marnie Rome knows this better than most. Five years ago, her family home was a shocking and bloody crimescene. Now, she’s tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim. Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defence. A crowd of witnesses saw it happen. But as the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women’s shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory. A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.

I hope it’s a novel that upsets the traditional ideas about domestic violence – and makes us look afresh at why people commit crimes of this kind, and how society chooses to punish these crimes. I’m also fascinated by the psychology of seeing, the emotional lens that colours everything we witness, and by the role of the witness. This role is vital to solving and prosecuting crimes, but what does it mean to be the witness to a brutal crime – how does it change that person? Is there a sense in which they become responsible for the “truth” of what they saw? 

       Marnie, my heroine, is someone who trusts her intellect first and her emotions second. She’s always questioning the truth of what she sees, and she’s someone who wants to make sense of the world as it is. Of course she’d like to change it, but she understands that mess is part of the human condition. She has a huge capacity for compassion, which I think’s essential for the hero/heroine of any crime novel. I wanted to write a detective who was much more than ‘a woman in a man’s world’. Marnie has a woman’s empathy and intuition, and the intelligence and honesty to know these gifts sometimes lead her astray. 

My first draft got quite a tough reader’s report via my agent, and I realised I’d have to change something to make it work on the level I intended (well, more than work – it had to shine). After that, I spent a couple of months despairing quietly and bending my brain around What To Do. Then a further three months rewriting. The two months where I didn’t write because I was thinking - they really helped. I think if I’d sat down and tried to rewrite straightaway, I’d have made the same mistakes all over again. As it was, I produced a second draft that my agent loved – and so did more than one publisher. It went to auction, which was very exciting, and it’s sold in five other countries already. I’m thrilled to think the story will have so many readers.

 VG: Fantastic stuff - this is the dream, isn't it?  And thank you for your honesty here - I am so fed up with writers who tell others that it was easy, they woke up one day and... because even if that did happen for one writer, for the other 99% it ain't like that! It's a hard old slog. 

      Next question: When do you think it is OK to accept advice, and when to ignore it?

Sarah: That’s a tough one. Tempting to say you should never ignore advice, but since I was once advised to give up writing (by a boss who likened it to his DIY: “We’re neither of us very good at it, but it keeps us out of trouble”) I think I’ll say instead that you need to develop an ear for advice, like an ear for music. I say this as someone who is virtually tone-deaf but who can generally tell when a piece of music is off, even if I can’t tell you why or by how much. 

You might think it’s a good rule of thumb that if advice comes from an expert you must act on it, but this doesn’t quite meet the case, I think. After all, the expert might not be in tune with your genre or your writing. So much is subjective in publishing. SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN went to auction, as I say, but for every two publishers who loved it there were four who didn’t, or not enough to offer for it. ‘All it takes is one’, as the adage goes, and you should certainly never give up – or make radical changes – based on what appears to be a loose consensus. Unless or until your gut (or your ear) tells you that what you’re hearing is the truth. 

I honestly think this is something that only comes with time and experience. I spent years railing against rejections from editors who’d missed-the-point of my writing (show me a writer who hasn’t done this at some point in their lives and I’ll show you a saint, or a fibber). Then I spent a good number of years performing literary gymnastics as I tried to meet the demands of every editor all at once, believing they must know best, or better. 

Now, if an editor is saying something invaluable – something I ignore at my peril – I can hear it. It chimes. 

When my editor at Headline told me I needed to do a bit of work on the penultimate chapter in SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN, I knew she was right. My wrists itched; it’s a physical response – and I think it only comes with long experience. I wish there was a shortcut, I really do. Maybe one of your readers, V, will know a trick for this?!


VG: I love that!  Are there any short cuts worth thinking about when it comes to making a manuscript better? Nah, I don't think so...but as ever, am happy to be proved wrong. So have at it!

Thanks Sarah - I know how busy you are with all the hoo ha - enjoy every step. It is so richly deserved. One more happy dance...la la la...ooops that was my bad leg...

vx