Christmas Weekend, 2009
Go With The Snow
I admit it − I’m a sucker for snow. I know it's causing horrendous problems elsewhere in the world, and I'm not trying to make light of that in any way, but we don't often see such extremes of weather (until lately) over here in the UK. And despite living a thousand feet up in the Cumbrian fells, we haven’t had that much of it over the past few winters. We’ve only been actually snowed in a couple of times since we moved here, but it’s not often we get a proper White Christmas.
Oh, boy, do we have one of those this year.
And it’s brought out the big kid in me, I can tell you − time for snowman building. So, with my copyedits dutifully delivered, on time, I thought I’d sneak an afternoon off to make up for a weekend of working until 3am, and we built a snowman.
But not the conventional kind.
For some reason, a head from Easter Island popped into mine, and this was our first creation. Of course, it would have been better if I’d actually gone and looked at some pictures of a real Easter Island head before we started, but it has a certain rough charm, even so.
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This week’s Word of the Week is omophagia, meaning the eating of raw flesh, especially as a religious observance, from the Greek omos raw, and phagein to eat. But I wouldn’t be tempted to try this with your Christmas turkey if I were you . . .
Weekend, 19-20 December 2009
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
We’ve had two lots of snow this week up in the wilds of Cumbria. The first lot lasted only a day and was entirely gone by morning, but the second lot is made of sterner stuff and has not only stayed put, but called in reinforcements. I’m beginning to think we might just have a white Christmas. If it carries on, we shall be out building a snowman later . . .
I’m feeling slightly liberated by the fact that I’ve just finished the UK copyedits for Fourth Day, which will be out in hardcover in May next year. The edits were due in on December 21st, and I’m told the publishers are hoping to have the manuscript typeset before everyone clocks off for Christmas, so being late would be a decidedly Bad Thing.
This is the first time I’ve successfully had electronic copyedits, receiving one version with the main queries and comments in it, another of all the minor changes and amendments the copyeditors had made, and then a third file of spellings and other queries. I also had some comments in from Stuart MacBride, who very generously provided some Aberdonian information when I was writing the book, and pointed out the geographical errors in that section.
I must admit, I’ve always thought better on paper than on screen when it comes to editing. If I have alterations to make to a chapter I’m working on, I usually have to print it to ‘see’ the whole thing laid out at once. (I do this on scrap paper, I hasten to add, then shred and recycle it afterwards.)
Initially, I was a bit overwhelmed by all this. Particularly as the only time I’ve been sent electronic copyedits in the past, in the form of a Track Changes document, it completely crashed my copy of Word. But, this time everything opened up without unseemly displays of temperament (except for the author, of course) and by dint of hooking my laptop up to a secondary screen, and using my desktop as well, I managed to have three files open at once, including my original file copy, which I’ve modified to exactly match the final copyedited version. It’s also very useful for me to be able to note house style for things like ellipses and the use of short 'n' and long 'm' dashes in the text, in order to try and make the next manuscript cleaner when it goes in.
Speaking of which, now I can get back to working on the next one, with short breaks for mince pies and general overeating.
This week’s Word of the Week is logodaedalus, meaning an artificer − someone who creates skilfully or uses crafty tricks − in words. Also logodaedaly, meaning verbal legerdemain or sleight of hand. From the Greek logodaidalos, from logos, word, and Daidalos (Daedalus), the mythical artist who constructed the Cretan labyrinth and made wings for his son Icarus and himself.
Weekend, 12-13 December 2009
Questions, Not Answers
The topic of eBooks and ePublishing has come onto my radar recently, and I confess it’s something I haven’t yet ventured into. I know I should − like a lot of things − but there’s always the pros and cons to consider. And, for me, the jury’s still out. Hence the title of this post. I’m asking for a consensus of opinion. I have questions, not answers.
It’s a fact of life that eBooks are here to stay. Whether they eventually overwhelm conventional paper publishing is another thing. I hope not. There’s something tactile about reading a book that cannot, for me, be replaced by the onscreen experience. Things just read differently on paper. Maybe I’m just a Luddite at heart.
To begin with, eBooks tended to be used for technical manuals that were for a limited audience and expensive to produce in other formats. I can still remember the joys of my first Amstrad word processor, when it − or I − did something stupid that the manual did not seem to have an answer for, you could throw the heavy tomes against the wall. Many’s the time they landed with a satisfying thump in a corner of the office.
Time’s moved on since then. It’s only two years since the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and Amazon’s Kindle, and then the Sony Reader hit the market earlier this year. The explosion of the iPhone and the iPod has meant that every man and his dog seems to spend half their life with those little white earphones in place. It’s hard to remember a time when it wasn’t so.
But I digress. In theory, the numerous eBook formats that have sprung up to support this growing trend of the digital reader are all protected against illegal copying.
Stealing books is not a new idea. When I used to live in a big university town, the most frequently shoplifted books from our local bookstore were textbooks. The trend towards eBooks has meant that students can obtain required textbooks much cheaper than their print versions.
I can see all the advantages of an eBook. For voracious readers, it allows them to have a huge collection in a very small space. They can search the text for keywords. They can carry a large number of books around at any one time − invaluable for travellers. Video clips can be embedded. Font size can be enlarged to order for the visually impaired. You don’t even need a bookmark to remember where you left off, nor a flashlight to read them under the covers.
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This week’s Word of the Week is an odd one. If you were asked whether the word 'plagiarism' meant 'piracy', 'kidnapping' or 'robbery', which would you choose? To contestants on a recent UK television quiz show, the answer seemed easy and obvious − they opted for 'piracy'. Probably most people connected with the world of literature would make the same choice. Surprisingly, the correct answer is 'kidnapping'. Plagiarism is defined as 'the taking and using as one's own of the thoughts, writing or inventions of another.' At its root is the word 'plagium' − a Latin legal term for kidnapping or man-stealing. Hands up if, like me, you got it wrong!
Weekend, 5-6 December 2009
People-watching at CollectormaniaI’ve spent quite some time over the last week or so people-watching. I was at the Collectormania event at Olympia, November 28th-29th, as part of the Mystery Women presence. Ably organised by Lizzie Hayes, Ayo Onatade, and Sara Townsend, we were given table space on the stand of second-hand booksellers, Partners in Crime, and left to do our thing.
Now, I must confess that I’m not very good at wrestling people to the ground and force-feeding them a book they’re not at least part way interested in to begin with. Fellow crime author Leigh Russell had no such problems, managing to sell dozens of her debut novel to passers by, including a Dalek. The rest of us were in absolute awe.
Mystery Women at Collectormania:
[l to r] Zoë, Suzette A Hill, Ayo Onatade, Leigh Russell and Lesley Horton
[Photo courtesy of Leigh Russell]
A Dalek? Yes, a Dalek. Collectormania is for anyone who’s passionate about collecting . . . more or less anything, it seemed, although sci-fi and fantasy came high on the list. Hence the fact that we watched xenomorphs and Jedi knights pass by, accompanied by a passable Doctor Who (David Tennant era) as well as foxes, the odd Freddie Kruger, Spiderman, Colonial Marines and a large number of Stormtroopers (some of whom even carried the authentic Stirling 9mm submachine gun with the stock folded, as used in Star Wars, I’ll have you know.) Author Debi Alper has some excellent photos on her blog.
My most memorable sale went to a pirate − or the book might have been for his parrot, I wasn’t quite sure.
But the most interesting thing from my point of view was how passionate these people obviously were about the whole thing. To go to the lengths of walking round all day in character and not be thought in the least bit odd. Can you imagine what would happen at crime conventions if the fans turned up dressed as their favourite characters from our books? It would probably be a lot of fun!
My thanks to Lizzie, Ayo and Sara, but also the Partners in Crime crew, and fellow Mystery Women authors including Debi and Leigh, plus Cassandra Clark, Suzette A Hill, Lesley Horton, and Linda Regan and her husband, Brian Murphy.
Mystery Women, incidentally, are running a short story competition for unpublished writers. One thousand words exactly, entitled Mystery Woman or Mystery Women. It costs £10 per entry, with a maximum of two entries per person, submitted under a pseudonym. The winning entry will be published in Mystery Women magazine and the author will receive £100 and a conference ticket for CrimeFest 2011. The closing date is January 31st 2010. More details on the Mystery Women website.
The rest of this week has been spent trying to avoid the still-heavy rainfall up here in the wilds of Cumbria, and getting on with the new Charlie Fox book. I always seem to bump along the runway for a long time while the thing tries to make up its mind if it’s going to fly or not, and I finally think there might be a little bit of air under the wheels. All I have to do now is haul back on the stick and pray!
This week’s Word of the Week is anodyne, which has come to mean rather bland and avoiding controversy, but actually means a medicine that allays pain; something that relieves mental distress; something that prevents, soothes or avoids argument or criticism; as well as harmless, bland or innocent.
Weekend, 28-29 November 2009
Always Happens . . .
The irony does not escape me, as the only non-American member of the ‘Rati crew, that the Thanksgiving blog falls to me. So, Happy Thanksgiving, folks!
I must admit, sitting down and having a family celebration has not been high on the priority list over here this last week or so. Cumbria has been struck by torrential rain and dreadful flooding, and yesterday we had our first power-outs, no doubt as a result.
But, at least we haven’t had to be rescued by breaking holes in the roof of our house and being winched to safety, like others elsewhere in my home county. We’ve had flash-flooding at home in the past, including sudden mud slides, and all the victims have my absolute sympathy.
I could say a lot more about this, but I won’t. I realise that to many it’s a small disaster in a small corner of a small country. It would appear that my attempts at serious, heartfelt blogs are often not my most successful efforts. I’ve tried it a couple of times now and been met with something close to embarrassed silence, so I’ll change the subject and get back to the writing.
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Oh, nearly forgot − if anyone's going to Collectormania at Olympia in London this weekend, I'll see you there on the Saturday. Drop by the Mystery Women booth and say "Hi!"
This week’s Phrase of the Week is to ride roughshod. It came from the practice of shoeing horses with the nails deliberately left protruding so as to provide better grip in icy or wet conditions. In the 1700s cavalry horses were often roughshod or had sharp objects attached to their hooves to damage the enemy during a charge. However, it was quickly discovered that the poor horses did as much damage to themselves, so this idea soon fell out of favour. It’s interesting, though, that if someone tries to ride roughshod over you, they could be doing themselves more harm than they realise in the process . . .
Weekend, 21-22 November 2009
Yes, We Still Have Our Heads Above WaterI know it’s a British obsession to talk about the weather, but we’ve been having more than our share of it in Cumbria this week, so a big thank you to everyone who’s emailed anxiously to find out if we still have our heads above water. Fortunately for us, we’ve escaped the worst of the flooding this time and, although the downpours have been torrential and backed by a rare old wind that’s bent the trees almost double, we haven’t had to do more than a bit of paddling to get out along the nearest main road.
Unlike the unlucky residents of Cockermouth and Workington, further west, some of whom had to break holes in their roofs in order to be lifted out by Air Sea Rescue helicopter. Several bridges across the swollen River Derwent have been swept away − one tragically carrying with it a local policeman − and I hear that tonight they expect more bridges may let go. We just never seem quite prepared for our weather in this country, sometimes with dreadful consequences.
Wild weather is a phenomenon that’s always fascinated me. It’s been one of my ambitions to go tornado chasing in the States, but if things carry on as they are, it would seem that I’ll be able to do it without leaving the UK before too long.
Apart from a jaunt to the East Midlands to do a fascinating interview photoshoot, this week has seen me firmly behind my desk, and the new Charlie Fox book is taking shape nicely − so far. I always find the start of a book the most difficult bit, so I’m no more than cautiously optimistic at this stage that I won’t have to unpick everything and start again. Still, at least there is no temptation to be outside doing much of anything.
Our Internet connection − always a bit temperamental − seems to have been even more tenuous than usual over recent days, and I realised just how much I’ve come to rely on it as I write. Yes, my desk is surrounded by books and maps, but I found myself wanting to know the precise characteristics of an Andalusian horse. And what does a Spanish hat look like? Or rather, is the kind of hat I have in my head and want to describe, a Spanish one? Pre-Internet, it would have been very difficult to answer this without the right reference books to hand, now it’s at my fingertips in moments. It’s horribly easy to become distracted if the muse it not entirely with you, and it also means there are fewer and fewer excuses these days for getting it wrong.
This week’s Word of the Week is cleave, which means both to split, divide, crack apart, or separate with violence (hence a meat cleaver), and yet also means to stick or adhere, to unite, as in cleavers (n) which is goose-grass which cleaves to fur or clothes by its hooks.
Weekend, 14-15 November 2009
All Things Remembered
As I write this, today is Wednesday, November 11th − the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Armistice Day. Remembrance Day. This morning I was in my local supermarket, in a hurry, a thousand things on my mind, buying some flowers for my mother’s birthday. And just as I reached the head of the queue, there was an announcement.
"It’s coming up to eleven o’clock on November eleventh," said the voice over the Tannoy. "We will now have two minutes’ silence."
At the Cenotaph, one would expect that. The Menin Gate, definitely. But Sainsbury's?
The checkout staff stopped scanning items. The customers stopped wandering the aisles. We stood in companionable quiet, without impatience, without agitation, for two minutes.
And then the checkouts lit up again. The murmur of conversations restarted, the rattle of the trolley with the squeaky wheel that I always seem to pick, the mewling of a small child who’d been, until then, strangely silent. (I understand that holding tight onto their nose often has that effect.)
I suddenly remembered a chain email I received from a friend last week. Confession time. I hate those chain emails. I mean, really hate them. They’re usually so full of saccharine sweetness that I go into a diabetic coma just reading the subject line, never mind the contents. Bah, humbug, yes indeed. I don’t respond well to emotional blackmail.
But this one was different.
These are not my words. I don’t claim them to be. I don't even vouch for their accuracy, only their sentiment. And if anyone knows to whom they should be credited, I’ll gladly add their name into this post.
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Weekend, 7-8 November 2009
Writing a Book is Like Watching a Movie . . .The news this week is that I have been invited to join The Curzon Group, who are a group of British thriller writers dedicated to promoting the genre. I only met with some of their number on Wednesday evening, at a very good Turkish restaurant near the Post Office Tower in London. Undaunted by meeting me in person, they still extended the invitation to join their number. Together with another new member, Elizabeth Corley, we shall be ten-strong. I look forward to the involvement very much.
This week has also seen me plunged back into writing. I’ve had the OK from my agent on the outline of the new Charlie Fox book, so all I have to do now is write it . . .
I’ve allowed myself this month to get the start of the book really nailed down, which might seem extravagant but it always takes me a little time to get into the swing of a story. Not only is finding exactly the right jumping-off point vital to the way the book unfolds, I believe it’s also where a reader makes their decision on whether to continue or not.
For some books, the start comes immediately and doesn’t substantially change during the course of the writing. For others, it has to be firmly wrestled into submission before I can go on. The whole of the plot of Killer Instinct altered between the first idea and the final book, so it went through various different guises before starting at the nightclub where Charlie first meets the first victim, but once I’d decided on the plot for the next, Riot Act, it never really changed from a phone call in the middle of the night, bringing bad news.
The beginning of Hard Knocks was originally chapter three, but I realised that the story proper started with Kirk Salter’s funeral, and any events leading up to that could be coped with in small flashback scenes, not requiring two whole chapters to get to that point. I can still remember opening up a file and starting to write the start of First Drop. The scene on the rollercoaster arrived in a rush and just felt right from the outset.
Road Kill, I don’t mind admitting, was a very tricky one. I had numerous false starts for that, some of which I liked much better than the eventual opener − including an inquest scene and a road accident in East Belfast − but which simply didn’t drop me into the right place in the story, so they had to go in favour of Charlie beating hell out of the walls of her cottage when her urgent visitor arrives. For Second Shot, however, the flashforward first chapter of her own shooting was the easy part − it was what happened afterwards that stumped me for quite a while. I went quite a way down a blind alley and had to unpick the story several times and start again from that point before the meeting with the client she fails to save formed itself.
Third Strike was fairly straightforward, and once I’d decided on Charlie seeing her father publicly ruin himself on the TV news, the rest of it unfolded more or less as it should, but my original start for Fourth Day was rejected by my agent on the grounds that it gave too much away. And when I looked at it with fresh eyes, she was quite right − it did. The new flashforward opener I wrote was much better, and gives away much less of what was to come. (To read that, or any of the opening sections for the books, click 'My Books' on the menu above.)
So, I wasn’t intending to do another flashforward for the start of the new book, but was more or less talked into it, and the section of the story I’ve chosen to start with is the right one − I think. The trouble is, I know what happens, but not quite how it happens, which is not the same thing at all. And again, with flashforwards, you can’t cheat the reader at all, but you also can’t give away too much. I often say that writing a book for me is like watching a movie. I simply write down what I see on the screen in front of me and hope, when someone reads those words, they will feel they’re watching the same movie I saw. But at the moment, I fear the projector is stuck on the opening credits and the picture remains obstinately blank.
Still, we’re off to see the Carlisle Fire Show this evening − one of the top ten fireworks displays in the country, and there’s nothing like a drive out and lots of light and noise to distract the rational half of my brain and let the rest of my subconscious chip away at the problem. Let’s hope so, anyway!
This week’s Word of the Week is barrat, meaning deceit, strife or trouble. Also, barrator, meaning a person who vexatiously stirs up lawsuits, quarrels, etc, and barratry, which in maritime law is fraudulent practices on the part of the master or mariners of a ship to the prejudice of the owners.
Weekend, 31 October-1 November 2009
Face-to-FaceBook
This week’s been a bit up and down, in a mild kind of a way. Firstly, I went back to the wonderful library at Poulton-le-Fylde on Tuesday evening to do a talk. One of the librarians there, Ken Harries, has just retired, but turned out for the evening anyway, and Linda Robinson and the rest of the staff made me very welcome.
Always nice when the turnout’s good enough so they have to bring out extra chairs. I think we’ve all done events where the staff outnumbered the audience . . .
It was a great pleasure to pay a return visit to the splendidly refurbished Poulton library, where Ken Harries and Linda Robinson were perfect hosts.
Then, Wednesday, I was due to go to my writing group, which meet in a friend’s house about forty miles away. Long way to go for a writing group, I know, but this is the remnants of the Lune Valley Writing Group, which is now sadly defunct. The little local library where we used to meet in Caton village has even been closed down. It was this group who followed me through the trials and tribulations of writing my first novel and getting it into print. There’s now only four of us who meet with any regularity. They’re all excellent writers, who − vitally − don’t pull their punches when it comes to criticism, and I find their input extremely useful as a book progresses.
As I’m just about to dive into the next Charlie Fox book, I was looking forward to our meeting, even though it means getting home about midnight and I knew I still had this week’s Murderati blog to write (and, if I’m honest, no clue as to a topic). But, I was due a contact lens check in the morning, otherwise they can’t keep supplying me daily disposable lenses by post. I used to wear the permanent tinted lenses, which were brilliant, but eye problems − including a warning that I might completely lose my sight − put an end to that. So, important to have the regular check-ups, just to make sure nothing’s amiss.
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This week’s Word of the Week is postiche, an adjective meaning superfluously and inappropriately superadded to a finished work; counterfeit or false. Also a noun meaning an inappropriate hairpiece or wig.
Weekend, 17-18 October 2009
What's It All About?
As I write this, Bouchercon is here.
And I’m not.
I wish all the best to my fellow ‘Rati who are attending. Have a glass of something non-alcoholic (well, maybe at breakfast?) for me.
You see, I realised quite a while ago that attending conventions like Bouchercon − and the Morley Literature Festival, which is where I was on Monday evening − is all bound up in what I love about being a writer. How good or bad I am at public speaking is another matter but, like someone who sings loud and lusty in the shower, at least I have a good time while I’m doing it.
I was mentioning this to my Other Half, Andy, while moodily clutching a hot water bottle to my busted rib as I contemplated not being in Indianapolis this weekend, and he came out with a question that brought me up short.
"But what is it you enjoy about actually writing?"
Now, Andy has a perfect right to ask that question, because he has to live with me when I’m trying to wrestle a book into submission, and it’s a long drawn-out and often extremely painful exercise. And when we first met I was only just a writer, with a couple of very minor published articles under my belt. In fact, he was the one who encouraged me to throw in the job I was doing and try writing articles full time. Without his support, I couldn’t have done it at all.
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This week’s Word of the Week is periscian, which is a person living inside the polar circle, whose shadow moves round in a complete circle on those days on which the sun does not set. From the Greek peri, around, and skia, a shadow.
Weekend, 3-4 October 2009
Exercising the Mind
Monday, I broke a rib − again. Not the same rib as last time, I don’t think, but one a bit lower down. Probably it was the turn of the next one along. There I was, hanging out of a moving car to do some low-angle tracking shots, we hit a bit of an undulation, and I heard it go crack.
Oh . . . arse.
Last time, it took about three months to mend and, of course, we’re coming into winter, which makes the damn thing ache when I’m outside. I shall have to set out on particularly cold days with a hot water bottle stuffed down the front of my jacket. Not exactly what the fashion mags predicted all the best-dressed people would be wearing this season.
It was my own fault, of course. Not the hanging out of a car bit − that’s considered entirely normal behaviour for me − but the very morning I bust it, Andy and I had been discussing exercise. Tempting fate, you might say.
Well, I’d been promising that I really must build time into the daily schedule over the winter to do some regular exercise again. It’s difficult when you don’t have a routine. We could be at home for days at a time, and then flying all over the country.
And I’m just about to dive into another book, so I know that when the writing’s going well, I won’t want to stop because . . . the writing’s going well. And if it’s being difficult, I also won’t want to stop because then I’ll feel it’s beaten me, and I want to keep worrying at it until I get it right. So, proper Catch 22.
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This week’s Word of the Week is another from my friend, Kate Kinchen. It’s circumferaneous, meaning going about or abroad; walking or wandering from house to house, or from market to market, as in a vagrant. From the Latin circum, around, and forum, a forum or marketplace.
Weekend, 26-27 September 2009
The Best Policy . . . ?Being busy, I think, is one of those odd balancing acts when it comes to writing. Too busy, and you can’t seem to get that vital bit of free time when your mind is clear enough to concentrate on getting on with it. Not busy enough and your mind is so busy worrying about the fact you’re not busy, that you can’t get on with it, either. One day, I will find the place where that happy balance exists. At the moment, I just seem to pass through it, very quickly, on the way from one state to the other.
This week we went down to the 100% Design Show at Earls Court, which was a fascinating experience if only from a people-watching point of view. It was filled with Designers, and I use the initial capitalisation deliberately. Some of the designs were stunning, but impractical, others were just impractical. When does a piece of furniture become so state-of-the-art on the design side that it ceases to be a piece of furniture and just becomes a sculpture? And, equally, when does writing cease to tell a good story, and become words for their own sake?
Equally, this week, I’ve been thinking about critiques. Most people, when they ask for your opinion on their writing, already have their own opinion − that it’s pretty damn good − or they wouldn’t ask. After all, you don’t show someone something you secretly think is awful, do you? So, by the time you get to putting your work out for consideration, you are reasonably convinced it’s the best you can do. Or you should be − else why put it out for consideration in the first place?
And, of course, it’s every writer’s hope that the person to whom they show their work will faint with wonder at its prowess and immediately bring it to the attention of an agent/editor/film producer of their acquaintance, with the glowing recommendation that it’s the best thing EVER, and they should make a substantial offer on it without delay if they want to get in ahead of the inevitable bidding war.
They also hope − although the rational half of their brain accepts that the person to whom they have sent their work is snowed under − that they will read the opening sentence and be so entranced that they drop all other tasks in order to finish the segment, and groan aloud at the end of it, because they’ve been robbed of more.
And, no doubt, occasionally this does happen, but not often.
First of all, the length of time taken to read a manuscript bears no relation to its quality. If something happens to land on a desk that is, by some freak of nature, momentarily clear, then it might be read straight away, but the chances are it will take weeks before it makes it to the top of the TBR pile. That’s just the way it is.
And then formulating a suitable response often takes longer than reading the piece in the first place. How do you tell someone what they, basically, don’t want to hear? That the voice doesn’t grab the reader, that the plot has been seen too many times before, that the characters fail to engage?
If you’re an industry professional, then you’re supposed to have a reputation as being hard to please, of only representing the best of the best, and taking no prisoners. But if you’re just a writer, how can you give an honest opinion without giving offence? Because, unless it’s undiluted praise, maybe with a couple of minor problems pointed out in the guise of stiff criticism, you run the high risk of giving offence.
And the problem is, in these days of Internet forums and on-line anonymous reviews on Amazon and the like, if you’re not careful you could find yourself on the receiving end of a sly hate campaign as a result. The easiest thing, then, is to refuse to critique anyone’s work, because a lame critique is worse than nothing at all. And, worse yet, it may give a would-be author false hope, of which he or she will be quickly disabused when they do finally send their work to a proper industry professional.
But I’m a big believer in pay it forwards. This is a tough business, and one in which having talent is no guarantee at all of success. So, any helping hand that can be offered along the way is worth offering.
If the recipient REALLY wants to receive it.
I recently had a piece of mine critiqued by a friend. I didn’t think it was my best work, because I’d had that proved to me, so I wanted an honest opinion to try and pinpoint where I’d gone wrong. His views were very honest and yes, I smarted a bit, but that kind of honesty is a rare and valuable commodity. Besides, he was entirely correct in the problems he pointed out and, in the long run, I’d far rather have that than a "Very nice, dear" any day.
This week’s Word of the Week comes courtesy of my friend, Kate Kinchen, who suggested parbreak, meaning to throw out or to vomit.
Weekend, 19-20 September 2009
Outside The Box
I spent last weekend at the excellent Reading Festival of Crime Writing (that’s pronounced ‘Redding’, the town in Berkshire, not as in ‘reading a book’) and a comment there by a particular author sparked off a couple of different trains of thought. The first thing was that this author not only used a pseudonym, but several of them for writing in different genres.
The reasons for this seem quite sensible. For a start, the author was often called upon to publish scientific papers under his own name, so when he first embarked on a career as a novelist obviously he did not want to run the risk that the scientific community might take his academic work less seriously because of his fictional activities, as it were.
But, does an author really have to assume new identities if they want to write outside their given field? It would seem the answer is yes.
When people ask what I write, I usually categorise myself as an author of a series of contemporary crime/thriller novels. Not a straightforward thriller, but not quite a mystery either. But perhaps I should just say that I’m a writer and leave it at that. And, if pushed, narrow it down to fiction, or say I’m a novelist.
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This week’s Word of the Week is more of a phrase of the week, it’s force and fear, which is a Scottish term for the amount of constraint or compulsion which is enough to annul an engagement or obligation entered into under its influence.
Weekend, 12-13 September 2009
A Fun Day in ReadingThe last few weeks have been pretty frantic − hence the lack of regular blogs, for which I apologise. But, I had a fun day on Saturday at the Reading Festival of Crime Writing, held in the magnificent Town Hall in the centre of Reading. It was a very impressive line-up, and I was fortunate enough to be on a panel chaired by NJ Cooper, with Simon Beckett, Simon Hall, John Macken and myself, discussing all manner of things from whether it was possible to be born evil, to who you would be prepared to kill and why. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends, too.
Always rewarding − signing books and talking to fans. Here I'm sharing a table with fellow author, Simon Beckett, at this weekend's Reading Festival of Crime Writing.
NJ did a wonderful job keeping us all in order, and our hour-and-a-half slot whizzed by without anyone in the audience nodding off. I have inbuilt radar for that kind of thing, and once you’ve spotted the one person who’s starting to doze, it’s very hard to take your eyes off them. It’s like, occasionally, you get someone who sits close to the front (of course) and refuses to smile at anything you say, however remotely amusing everyone else may have found it. To be honest, though, they’re usually the people who come up to you afterwards and tell you how much they’ve enjoyed it, so you never can tell, can you?
On the domestic front, we’ve been enjoying a bit of an Indian summer after the monsoon season that was August in the English Lakes. Good job, too, because we have the prospect of re-roofing the garage before the winter, which we’d rather not attempt in a howling gale and a rainstorm. Mind you, collecting two eight-foot-long stone lintels from the local quarry was an interesting experience. They got them loaded with a forklift truck, but getting them out again at our end involved a lot of grunting and heaving. I shall retire gracefully when it comes to helping the stonemasons hoisting them up to top-of-garage-door height.
Meanwhile, after a period of what can only be described as malaise on the scribbling front, I’m finally raising some inspiration. Allison & Busby have asked for some edits to the centre section of Fourth Day, just to speed things up a bit, and I’m also working out the final details to the synopsis to the next book. I always find the winter is a far better time to be getting on with things, though. The long cold winter nights are just the time to be sitting all cosy at the keyboard, when there isn’t the temptation to be off outside doing something else.
We’ve also been having a de-cluttering session, which I’m sure has come at the wrong time of year − aren’t you supposed to have a Spring clean rather than an Autumn clear-out? Still, there’s something very satisfying about getting rid of extraneous stuff, and I’ve taken the opportunity to take a pile of clothing that I haven’t worn for years to the charity shop. We still have things in boxes from when we moved in to the house that we have never unpacked nor needed. I feel a long session on eBay coming on!
Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting over to the States for Bouchercon next month, even though Indianapolis has a huge appeal for both of us, but 2010 looks like being a very busy year for travelling, with all of the early Charlie Fox books being reprinted by Busted Flush, plus the new book as well. I’m really looking forward to it.
This week’s Word of the Week is penumbrous, from penumbra, meaning the fringe region of half shadow resulting from the partial obstruction of light by an opaque object. Or, in painting, the area in which light and shade blend. From the Latin paene almost and umbra shadow. Also, penumbral.
Weekend, 5-6 September 2009
Getting The Flavour
Last weekend we were in London, which is a fair old hike from where we live in the north-west of the country, but the more time I spend there, the more I rather like the place. I’m formulating ideas for a book that would be largely set there, so I wanted to just get a real feel for certain areas. I seem to need to do that when I’m looking for a location. A first visit gives me the atmosphere, then I’ll start writing, and a second visit ties down the details and the nitty-gritty.
I particularly wanted to visit Greenwich on this trip, so we took a river cruise from Tower Bridge and gently ambled down the Thames to Greenwich Pier. Greenwich itself is delightful, with a much more villagy feel than I was expecting, packed with small shops and pubs, and all kinds of exotic food in the market hall, not to mention the magnificence of the Naval College, and the rise of Greenwich Park up to the Royal Observatory, which not only contains the official dividing line between east and west, but also gives one of the best views in London, out over the Millennium Dome and across the Isle of Dogs to Canary Wharf. It’s only then you realise what a very flat city London is for the most part.
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This week’s Word of the Week is palliard, meaning a professional beggar, a vagabond; a rogue or libertine, from the French paillard from paille, straw, from the vagabond’s habit of sleeping on straw in barns.
Weekend, 22-23 August 2009
Well Begun . . .
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a sucker for a good opening line. It’s a question I usually ask a writer about their latest book and their answers are revealing, I think, ranging from a word-for-word quote, to a blasé "oh, I really can’t remember" as if they hadn’t slaved and sweated over it for days − or even weeks − to get it right.
When I did a post last year about opening lines, there were a few people who dismissed their importance, and I admit I’ve read a few that seemed to have been written purely to be memorable or shocking, rather than serving their true purpose. An opening line should grab you, yes, but then it has to deliver you into the right place in the story and hold you there.
So, now we come to the importance of opening chapters.
A book rarely, if ever, starts at the beginning of the story itself, and choosing the exact point at which you slide your reader into the tale is a very tricky one to judge.
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This week’s Word of the Week is prolepsis, from the Ancient Greek meaning to anticipate. It’s often a figure of speech in which a future event is referred to in anticipation (as in calling a character ‘the dead man’ before he’s actually dead) or in which objections are anticipated and answered (as in "‘Ah,’ you might say, ‘but that is impossible!’ Not so, because . . .") although correctly this is called procatalepsis.
Weekend, 8-9 August 2009
Working It Out . . .
First of all, I’ll start with an apology. I’ve been kinda quiet these last couple of weeks. (Oh, so you hadn’t noticed I was missing . . .?) Put it down partly to rushing about the country, going to Harrogate, and Caerleon, and partly down to needing some time to reflect on a lot of things. One of which is how we deal with people, and therefore how our characters interact and deal with each other.
Every now and again, somebody explains a theory to me and it just clicks. A little light bulb comes on in the brain and some abstract concept finally takes shape and form. So it’s been this week with something called Transactional Analysis. Not something I’d come across before, but once I had, I realised I was seeing it everywhere.
Now, I know it doesn’t exactly sound enthralling, but stick with me on this. Transactional Analysis, known as TA for short (although that still means Territorial Army to me) is a theory of psychology developed in the 1950s to explain how people are put together and how they relate and function in a group. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all psycho-babble on you. (I’m blonde, remember).
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This week’s Word of the Week is suppedaneum, which is the support under the foot of a crucified person. I’m not sure what bothers me most about this − the fact that such a footrest was devised to prolong the agonies of crucifixion, or that it has a special name.
Weekend, 1-2 August 2009
Stimulating, demanding, tiring, rewarding . . .That just about describes my hectic week. And my life as a writer, for that matter.
First, there was the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate, from July 23-26, which kicked off with my self-defence workshop on Creative Thursday. Andy had bravely volunteered to be my Crash Test Dummy for this, which was great because we could practice the moves beforehand more than I usually can when I’m working with another author and we only meet up on the day of the demonstration. Not that it was a predominantly female audience, but they did giggle a lot every time Andy went ‘Oof!’
(l to r) Stuart MacBride, Megan Abbott, Denise Mina, Zoë and Caro Ramsay, holding forth (but not too explicitly, you understand) on 'X-Rated: Sex, Drugs amd Ultra-Violence' in our Harrogate panel.
The panel was fun, although considering the title − X-Rated: Sex, Drugs and Ultra-Violence − I was expecting a bit more of . . . well, all three, really, although I suppose there is a limit to what you can do on stage. Megan Abbott, Denise Mina, Caro Ramsay and I armed ourselves with a variety of weaponry, just in case, but Stuart MacBride didn’t drop anything too scary on us.
I was also asked to host a table at the ‘Come Dine With Me’ dinner, which included a murder mystery, trying to decide which of the scheming authors present had ‘murdered’ Mark Billingham. I’m not entirely sure why anyone thinks crime writers will be any good at working out this kind of thing over the course of an evening meal, as everyone knows we need at least six months in a darkened room to come up with a believable scenario. I guessed that all of them had done it, so you could say I did indeed manage to point my finger at the culprit, but this blanket method was disallowed, sadly.
Mid-week, I travelled to Writers’ Holiday at Caerleon in South Wales. Part of the summer school activities at the University of Wales, Caerleon campus, this is the 25th anniversary year that Gerry and Anne Hobbs have run this event, and a lot of fun it is, too. I sat in on excellent workshops on crime writing, given by one of my fellow LadyKillers, Lesley Horton, and on romance writing, given by Kate Walker, who has just published her 57th book for Mills & Boon. A remarkable achievement.
It is always a satisfying experience speaking to a keen and knowledgeable audience like the ones at Caerleon.
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I changed my mind completely at the last minute about the subject matter for my own lecture, after reading one of the hand-outs that Kate used in her workshop on character. I’ve never filled in a character questionnaire for Charlie Fox, so it was interesting to go through some of Kate's superb questions and answer them, as a way of not only describing the character, but also tying in the talk to the other courses available. I’m still not sure if she’s forgiven me for stealing her material, though ;-]
On the way home, we called in on friends in mid-Wales, who now run the Mount Severn outdoor activity centre in Llanidloes. Andy had tweaked his back, so we weren’t able to try the rope bridges across the River Severn, or any of the other rope slides or death-defying activities spread through their 14 beautiful acres of woodland. Maybe next time . . .
Now, of course, we’re back home, fighting the tangled mass that used to be a lawn, and trying to catch up with ourselves and get sorted out before plunging into the next batch of work and scribbling. Busy, busy, eh?
This week’s Word of the Week is lucubration − the act of studying by candlelight, hence nocturnal study or meditation, that which is composed by night and, loosely, any literary composition. From Latin lucubratus, with its root in lux, or light. As any writer knows, what is lovingly composed by candlelight often does not look quite the same by the cold light of day.
Weekend, 25-26 July 2009
A Peculier Crime
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Harrogate for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Harrogate is now in its seventh year, and is one of the largest of its kind in the world. It’s very different from the US conventions I’ve attended, as you have to be invited to take part on one of the range of panels, and only one panel track is run at any one time, ensuring large capacity audiences. Fortunately, as the whole thing is professionally miked and lit, you can’t see much beyond the spotlights anyway when you’re up on the stage, which tends to help authors who are a little shy or not used to performing in front of so many people.
Harrogate also differs from many conventions in that you can buy tickets for individual panels, as well as weekend rover passes, although many people never quite manage to make it out of the bar. However, I’m sure the prospect of listening to Lee Child, George Pelecanos, ‘The Wire’ creator David Simon, Mark Billingham, Christopher Brookmyre, Ken Bruen, Allan Guthrie, Stuart MacBride, Denise Mina, Andrew Taylor, Martyn Waites, Caro Ramsay, Chris Simms, Val McDermid, Laura Wilson, NJ Cooper, etc, will be more than enough to ensure packed houses for every event.
Among the silly things I’ll no doubt be doing over the weekend, I’m giving a workshop as part of the opening day, Creative Thursday, on self-defence and writing action scenes. Andy, brave soul that he is, has volunteered to be my Crash Test Dummy for this. Practise for that quickly degenerated into undignified grappling and fits of giggles, I can tell you − there was a water pistol involved − but we shall endeavour to be serious on the day.
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This week’s Word of the Week is deprehend, meaning to catch, to seize, to detect, whereas apprehend means to lay hold of, to arrest, to be conscious of by the senses, to lay hold of by the intellect, to recognise or catch the meaning of, to understand, to consider, conceive or look forward to, and to anticipate, especially with fear.
Weekend, 18-19 July 2009
Sean Chercover Wins Short Story DaggerSadly, I didn’t win the CWA Short Story Dagger for ‘Served Cold’. But, happily, it went to Sean Chercover, who’d made the trip over from Canada specially to be at Tiger, Tiger on Haymarket in Piccadilly on the night. Sean has been winning numerous awards for his two PI novels so far, so he was always going to be a tough act to beat. As, indeed, were all the other names on the shortlist!
Sean Chercover, with whom I did a signing in New York in October 2008 - the launch of his crime
thriller, 'Trigger City', coincided with the US launch of Third Strike.
[Photo: Sandy Morris]
I remain honoured to have been selected from the 125 short stories the judges read. I also found out that my short, ‘Tell Me’ very nearly made the shortlist for the award a couple of years ago. Close, as the saying has it, but no cigar. But Andy and I had a very jolly evening, ending in a meal with Sean; judge and reviewer, Ayo Onatade; fellow scribe, Peter Guttridge; and the Shots magazine pairing of Mike Stotter and Ali Karim. Ali was extolling the virtues of Twitter, and I really am going to have to get on there very soon.
Meg Gardiner and I in our glad rags, at the Daggers.
[Photo: Meg's husband, Paul]
Meanwhile, I’m rushing around the country, doing photo shoots and construction (friends’ ongoing kitchen project) and trying to finish off another short story which was promised ages ago, before the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival starts in Harrogate next week.
Last year I did a workshop as part of Creative Thursday on Improvised Weapons, which was titled ‘How To Kill Someone With Loose Change’. This year we’ve moved on a stage to self defence against more conventional weapons and unarmed attack. After all, if you’re going to write a crime thriller, there’s bound to be a bit of action in there somewhere, and the majority of people in the UK will go their whole lives without ever coming up close and personal to a firearm. Of course, Health & Safety would have a fit if we started bringing real firearms to a demonstration such as this, but we have a cunning plan for suitable substitutes. More detail about that next week.
This week’s Word of the Week is procrastination, which could be defined as not writing a blog until the very last minute. At its heart is the Latin word cras − tomorrow − and thus deferment of actions or decisions until later − a state of mind most writers know only too well. Psychologists define such behaviour as "counterproductive, needless and delaying." As someone so succinctly said, "procrastination is the thief of time."
Weekend, 11-12 July 2009
What Lies Ahead
This week, besides getting some much needed construction work done on the garage − smashing out old window frames with a brick bolster and a lump hammer is so therapeutic − I’ve been Outlining.
Producing an outline for a book not yet written is a contentious point with writers. Some people sneer at the very idea that you can plan a book in any kind of detail before you start. It ruins the spontaneity, they reckon, makes it dull and staid. After all, what’s the point of writing the book if you already know everything that happens?
Well, I’m one of these people for whom knowing the end of the story doesn’t spoil it for me. In fact, I often enjoy a book or a movie more the second time around, when I’m not worrying about what comes next and I can simply enjoy the ride.
And agents and publishers these days like to have an idea of what they’re getting, in advance. Beyond anything else, the basic synopsis gives them − and therefore me − a good idea of whether the underlying idea appeals to them or not. If it doesn’t, then I’m fighting a losing battle before I put the first word on screen.
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This week’s Word of the Week is Juggernaut. With an initial capital, this means a very large lorry, but it also means any relentless destroying force or object of devotion or sacrifice; an incarnation of Vishna, whose idol at Puri is traditionally drawn on a processional chariot, beneath which devotees were once believed to throw and crush themselves. Also Jugannath, from Jagannatha, lord of the world.
Weekend, 4-5 July 2009
Happy Independence Day, Everyone!
Yes, I know it’s an American holiday, but I’m a sucker for fireworks, so I love it. I’m a big fan of Bonfire Night on November 5th over here as well. I just like things that go bang and produce pretty lights, I suppose.
We’ve had a busy week or so, not least of which has been taking advantage of the unseasonal hot weather to get some outside construction work done. And I do mean hot. Our outside thermometer was reading 107 degF (42 degC) a couple of days ago. Give it another day or two of that and the whole of the UK will be on hosepipe bans.
Last week was an interesting one, as I went across to BBC Radio Leeds’ studio in Bradford to record an interview with Steve Bailey on the upcoming Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. Or, more particularly, the self-defence workshop I’ll be doing as part of Creative Thursday. The studio is in the National Media Museum in the centre of the city, a fabulous modern construction, complete with IMAX cinema. Shame we didn’t have more time to see a movie on the giant screen while we were there.
The studio is actually in part of the museum, which was overrun with school parties when we were there. The only disadvantage of this is that the kids tend to bang on the windows of the recording booth while you’re doing your bit. Not that you can hear them through several layers of soundproof glass, but I noticed that Steve sat with his back to it, just to be sure he wasn’t put off by the considerable amount of face-pulling that was going on. I tried not to look. Lizzie, who handles PR for the Festival, very kindly came along to prevent me making too many mistakes in my facts and figures. Good job we weren’t going out live!
And next week, I’ll be giving a talk to Chiltern Writers down in Wendover, which I’m looking forward to. I met Dave Sivers, one of the people from Chiltern Writers, at Harrogate last year, and he extended this invitation to speak. With Third Strike fresh out in UK paperback, it’s an ideal time to be out talking about it.
And, of course, creeping up rapidly are both the CWA Dagger Awards on July 15th, followed by the Harrogate Festival, and then Caerleon Writers' Holiday in South Wales. Somewhere in the middle of this I have to get a short story out of the way and finish my outline for the next book. But more about that next week.
This week’s Word of the Week is jirble, a Scots word meaning to pour splashingly or unsteadily.
Weekend, 27-28 June 2009
What's In Your Bag?
I’ve been head down, full tilt in the latest rewrites which are finally, out of the way. (Hurrah!) Yup, I’m finally in that nice little cosy cocoon between sending off and hearing back, when all things are possible and all hopes are, as yet, undashed.
I have my fingers, eyes, and toes crossed. Which makes it pretty difficult to type, I can tell you.
But, this means I can get round to all the email that’s built up over the last couple of weeks. Most of it is very straightforward, but in among the usual correspondence is the odd little gem, like this request from a local librarian:
"I know this sounds like a strange request and perhaps like your famous character, Charlie Fox, you don’t have a ‘handbag’. Unless she carries her gun around in it!
"I look forward to your reply."
How could I resist something like that? Of course, having the kind of twisted mind that I do, my first thought was, could this information be used for some sinister purpose? Not that I think for a MOMENT that a nice Lancashire librarian has any designs on my handbag, don’t get me wrong. But from such things as this, whole plots sometimes spring. I had a run-in with a car insurance salesman last week, and THAT is just crying out to become the nucleus for a serial-killer book, let me tell you. Oh, boy!
But anyway, back to the handbags.
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This week’s Word of the Week is salto, meaning a daring leap, or (in gymnastics) a somersault. Also, salto mortale, meaning a mortal or fatal leap.
Weekend, 20-21 June 2009
My Summer 2009 NewsletterThere is so much going on at the moment that I thought it was time to issue another of my occasional newsletters. If you're on my mailing list, you will have received the Summer 2009 edition within the past couple of days. If not, and you'd like to receive future issues, do please sign up here.
Weekend, 13-14 June 2009
Don't Miss It
In India, it falls on March 14th. In the United States, on April 13th. In Australia, April 22nd. Us poor saps in the UK have to wait until June 2nd, a little ahead of Canada at June 6th. But for the put-upon folk of Sweden and Norway, that celebrated day doesn’t fall until July 29th.
What am I talking about?
Tax Freedom Day. Officially, Tax Freedom Day is, according to Wikipedia, the first day of the year on which a nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden. The precise date is recalculated every year by the Tax Foundation. April 13th was this year’s average date for you happy Americans, although it varies from state to state. In Alaska it was actually March 23rd, whereas the people of Connecticut had to slog on to April 30th before their federal duty was done.
And no, this isn’t a rant about the level of overall taxation, although according to the Tax Foundation, back in 1900 you would have been all settled up by January 22nd. Think yourself lucky. Over here, income tax was introduced by William Pitt the Younger in 1798 as a ‘temporary measure’ to pay for weapons and equipment for the forthcoming Napoleonic wars. Oh, that old story . . .
But this is not a history lesson, either.
This is a very roundabout way of me asking, "Do you enjoy what you do?"
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This week’s Word of the Week is guarish, meaning to heal.
Weekend, 6-7 June 2009
Two Conventions in Close-upLast week, I did a hasty report on both CrimeFest in Bristol, UK, and Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha, Nebraska. The reason for the haste was simple − on the day the post was due to go up on Murderati, I was (with my usual impeccable timing) in transit from one country to another, returning from the States. We bounced down briefly at home − just enough time to unpack and repack, and then straight off to South Wales for an event at the Pontardawe Arts Centre, and a photo shoot in Ellesmere Port on the way home. Talk about not knowing what time zone we were supposed to be in!
But, I’ve now had a chance to have a look through the pictures that Andy or I took at both events, and thought I ought to put some of them up. So, here they are. Follow the links below to a selection of pictures from each event.
Camera at CrimeFest 2009
Montage of Mayhem in the Midlands 2009
This week’s Word of the Week is opsimath, meaning someone who learns late in life. Better that than never . .
Weekend, 30-31 May 2009
A Tale of Two Countries . . .
On the face of it, it seemed like the world’s worst bit of planning. Two conventions, one weekend after the next. One in Bristol UK, and the other in Omaha, Nebraska. One set of rewrites entering their final throes. The day-job. Not enough hours in the day.
And I know, I know − Einstein managed with just the standard twenty-four, but the relative pace of life, as it were, has speeded up a little since his time.
First up was CrimeFest in Bristol, only in its second year but great fun once again. Organisers Adrian Muller and Myles Allfrey also ran the Left Coast Crime event in Bristol in 2006, which gave them the taste for the job. One of the nicest things is the audio books given away in the book bags. An unusual feature, but a cool one. I wouldn’t go out and buy audio books over their paper cousins, but I’m acquiring a taste for them.
As always, a great deal of time was spent in the bar at Bristol. For someone who doesn’t drink, I do seem to hang out there rather a lot for some reason. It’s great who you can end up spending time talking to, and who you can quietly observe Up To No Good at the same time . . .
The event kicked off with the Pub Quiz on the Thursday evening, which was held across the road from the convention Marriott at the Greenhouse pub. Quizmasters Peter Guttridge and Mike Stotter promised it would be less esoteric than last year, but we failed to appreciate that they make stuff up for a living. Either that, or I fell out of a stupid tree and hit more or less every branch on the way down. If it hadn’t been for the formidable knowledge of Simon Brett and Ayo Onatade on our team − which went by the name MPs On Expenses − we would have been royally stuffed.
On Friday, I had the privilege of interviewing the Toastmistress of the event, Meg Gardiner. Meg was not a difficult interviewee, it has to be said, having such gems in her background as being taken along to an armed robbery during a High School ridealong with the police, and once having been a mime, as well, of course, as being a best-selling author.
Friday afternoon was my panel, which was supposed to be all about the main protagonists of the panellists being ex-Special Forces, and included Matt Hilton, Adrian Magson, EV Seymour and Ruth Dudley Edwards, as well as myself. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but we seemed to become fixated on torture, even though out of seven books so far for me, torture only plays a small, relatively non-graphic role in one chapter of one book. Eventually, a lady on the front row piped up with the comment that she didn’t read the kind of books we wrote and she wanted to know a) how could we do it, and b) did anybody actually enjoy them?
I’m sure you can fill in your own response here, as appropriate. Has anybody ever got hold of totally the wrong end of the stick about your books and refused to let go?
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This week’s Word of the Week is decollate, meaning to behead, and also decollation, meaning the action of beheading, and − in surgical terms − the severance of the head from the body of a fetus. Also, the Feast of the Decollation of St John the Baptist, a festival in commemoration of the beheading of St John the Baptist, observed on August 29th.
Weekend, 16-17 May 2009
Four Meals Away from Anarchy
Monday morning. Just back from a photo shoot over the weekend with numerous images to sort and burn and get in the post on a magazine deadline. I got up with every good intention of getting that out of the way, having my usual blended smoothie for breakfast, doing a few miles on the stationary bike, then cracking on with the rewrites with the iPod on full shuffle in the background.
And then the power went out.
Fortunately, my desktop machine is connected to an Uninterruptable Power Supply, dating back to the time of Windows 95 when, if you suddenly pulled the plug, it tended to get a little . . . sulky, shall we say.
So, much squeaking and bleeping from the UPS, warning me I had enough time to do a controlled save and exit, but probably not enough to start transferring large images to a back-up drive so I could work on them on my laptop.
Seeing various men in hard hats and United Utilities fluoro jackets wandering about down the lane, I ambled out and asked roughly how long it would be before they had the problem sorted. Slightly Baffled Looks were exchanged.
"Erm, didn’t you get the card?" one asked nervously. "They were supposed to send them out last week. This is an organised shutdown for maintenance work. It’ll be off all morning."
No, I didn’t get the card, obviously. And using the term ‘organised’ in this context seemed to be overstating the case somewhat, since none of my neighbours had received notification of this impending power-cut, either.
So, back to the strangely silent study and there my creative side really got to work on me.
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Meanwhile, this week’s Word of the Week is facinorous, which means atrociously wicked, from facinus, a crime.
Weekend, 9-10 May 2009
Full Convention ModeThings are starting to move into full convention mode this week, with the upcoming CrimeFest event starting in Bristol next Thursday, May 14, and then Mayhem in the Midlands in Omaha, Nebraska, the week after.
And, just to get me into the swing of things, I was invited to be the guest speaker for the ladies of Kirby Hill WI in Boroughbridge, last Tuesday evening. Fascinating to hear the inner workings of this august organisation, and a very enthusiastic and friendly audience, even though they were all probably dying for their cup of tea and biscuits by the time I’d finished. I am certainly keen to speak to more such groups, if anyone’s looking for a speaker.
Quite a contrast, really, because we’d just spent the Bank Holiday weekend in our scruffs, putting down an oak plank floor for some friends in York, so it made a nice change to swap a chop saw for a signing pen!
CrimeFest seems to be looming rapidly. I have two assignments there this time, both on the Friday afternoon, May 15. At 1:30-2:30pm, I’m on a panel entitled ‘Born To Kill: If I Told You I’d Have To Kill You − When Your Character is Special Forces Trained’ with debut author Matt Hilton − another Cumbrian − Adrian Magson, E V Seymour, and moderated by Ruth Dudley Edwards, who claims to be quite squeamish. It should be fun.
Then at 4.30-5.30 pm, I’m interviewing Meg Gardiner about her Evan Delaney and Jo Beckett series, both female protagonists after Charlie Fox’s heart. Not only is Meg a terrific writer, she also has some intriguing bits of history, such as having once been a mime. No doubt I will be uncovering more . . .
As for the rest of the time, I’m still ploughing through my latest rewrites, but the end is in sight and I really do think that the story is stronger and more cohesive for the changes, even if the list was a little daunting to begin with. One of the questions that came up on Tuesday night was if I was annoyed by editorial suggestions. My reply was, no. Anything that can be done to improve the book, before it gets into print, is fine by me. The only time I tend to dig my heels in is when someone tries to alter my main character too much, either by suggesting actions I don’t believe she would take, or trying to change her thought or speech patterns, which has occasionally been suggested in the past. After eight books, I think I know her pretty well by now!
This week’s Word of the Week is blague, meaning pretentious nonsense, hence a blagueur, a person who talks pretentious nonsense. Awfully close to blogger, isn’t it?
Weekend, 2-3 May 2009
Being Human
This isn’t the blog I was intending to write this week. (And no, I wasn’t even going to mention Susan Boyle . . . Oh, drat . . .) But, something popped up during the current rewrites. Which are, incidentally, proceeding at the kind of pace that can usually be measured in terms of continental drift.
I have just reached a point in the story where my main protagonist, Charlie Fox, has arrived to see the wife of a client, and discovers the woman was badly injured in a helicopter accident some years previously. At this point, I don’t think there’s any particular reason for this woman to be partially incapacitated, apart from an unwillingness to travel, which has necessitated Charlie going to her. I could have explained this in some other way − that she’s simply too busy running her oil exploration business, for example, or that she has a fear of flying. But when the character came into my head, this back story arrived ready attached.
And now it bothers me slightly. I’m the kind of writer who likes things to have a purpose. In my head, I think of the main strands of a story as different coloured threads, all plaited together, twisting and turning in on one another into a tight mass, so the end result seems stronger than the sum of its parts. The more I can weave those strands back in on themselves, the tighter and stronger the story feels to become.
Of course, you can take this too far, and TV crime shows often do. Whenever you see an extraneous character − the relative of a victim, for instance − who has screen time beyond simply sobbing into the hero’s shoulder as the mortuary sheet’s turned back, you just know they must have had some hand in the crime.
So, this is why I have this niggling doubt about changing this particular character’s back story. Part of me feels it should have some vital significance, while another part of me thinks that, sometimes, you can get away with introducing an accidental injury that really is just accidental, otherwise, every twitch telegraphs to the reader that Something Important is about to happen. I remember years ago reading a book where the main character comes down with a horrible head cold about halfway through − and it plays a vital role in the plot. Every time that character sneezed in subsequent books, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In real life, people do sleep through their alarms, misread directions, or get stuck in traffic. In a crime thriller, such a mundane occurrence usually results in the discovery of a still-warm corpse your hero wasn’t quite in time to save.
In real life, people are sloppy, incompetent or simply mistaken. In a crime thriller, that would often signal a large-scale conspiracy or part of a sinister cover-up.
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This week’s Word of the Week is shambles, a noun meaning to be in a state of complete disarray. It comes from the Old English word ‘sceamul’ (pronounced ‘shamell’) which means ‘stool’ or ‘table’ as in a butcher’s workbench. During the medieval period, most English towns had certain streets occupied by a single trade, and the butchers’ street was known as the ‘shambles’, a street name still found in some old towns like York. Street butchers were supplied by the slaughterhouses and such was the mess of blood and animal parts by the butchers’ workbenches that the word ‘shambles’ became a metaphor for general mess and chaos.
Weekend, 25-26 April 2009
More to Rewrites than Meets the EyeThis week, apart from a bit of flitting up and down the country for the day job, I’ve been cracking on with the rewrites of the latest Charlie Fox book. I must admit that when you first get a response back on an initial draft of a new book, the amount of work proposed can look somewhat daunting, and I was certainly daunted by this one, more than previous books, I think.
red squirrels playing in the tree outside my office window.
Part of the reason for this, I’m sure, was being ill for several weeks before I could make a decent start on it, and not having the energy or the brain capacity to plunge in. I’ve always found that the longer I put something off, the more of a monster it turns into, often out of all realistic proportion.
But, I’ve had one or two puzzled comments about rewrites and how the process works, so I thought I’d got into it in a little more detail.
The rewrites I’m tackling at the moment are from my agent’s editor. No doubt, after I’ve turned in this draft and it gets as far as my publisher’s editor, they will have further suggestions, but I’m hoping they will be minor points by that time, having caught all the major howlers on this pass.
The general rule of thumb with editorial suggestions is the rule of thirds − one third you do without question, one third you consider, and one third you ignore. Working out which third is which, of course, is quite another matter.
For me it boils down to a basic Q&A. If someone asks a question about the story that I either haven’t answered in the text, or that I don’t have an answer to at all, I know I need to make some changes. That can be applied to most things from plot points to character motivations, although when it comes to the character of Charlie herself, I know her pretty well by now, and can say with some certainty how she would or wouldn’t react to different circumstances.
But, faced with pages of notes, from general points to line edits, it can seem an overwhelming task. As I go through the book, I usually make a summary of each chapter as I go. Sadly, by the time I was nearing the end of this book, I let my summary slide, with the result that the first thing I had to do before I could start on the rewrites was go through the typescript and bring the summary up to date. And knowing I had what felt like a lot of questions I’d been unable to answer − and so would need to do quite a bit of fiddling to introduce new story threads − I made the summary a lot more detailed than I would otherwise have done. I’ve noted the main points of every conversation, as well as the rough time and day, so I can check I haven’t tripped myself up on the passage of time. (Like Third Strike, where the initial draft contained a nine-day week.)
Having got my summary, which ran to 26 pages, I then went through the editor’s notes, making pencil notes alongside the chapters where I needed to clarify or add extra description or explanation. I made one run through doing the obvious stuff, and crossing it off the list in a very satisfying manner while I was about it. More complex story alterations were tackled on the second pass, and that just left me with the really awkward bits, or those where I was unsure if I needed to make changes or not.
So, from what seemed like an enormous job, I’m down to shifting one scene from later to earlier, beefing up various other points, and only doing a complete rewrite on two chapters in the middle of the book, to alter the motivations of the second half and make them more believable (I hope).
I now have my time scale for getting all this done, broken down into so many pages a day. I’ve tried to be realistic about the amount of work I can do without going into total brain meltdown, at which point I’m doing nobody any favours, and am leaving myself a full week to rehash those awkward centre chapters.
As for how successful this method proves, well, I’ll just have to let you know when I’ve finished.
This week’s Word of the Week is a jiffy, which has come to mean a slang term for something done extremely quickly − in a jiffy. However, a jiffy is actually a scientific term meaning ‘unit of time’, originally one sixtieth of a second, although now commonly one hundredth of a second and occasionally a millisecond, and some scientists even use it to describe the time light takes to travel one foot in a vacuum, which is a nanosecond.
Weekend, 18-19 April 2009
Whose Voice Is It Anyway?
Something Louise said in her blog this week made me stop and pause for thought:
‘I . . . have actually opened up the Work-in-Progress document on my desktop. (My God, it’s written in third person. What was I thinking? I’ve never been able to write in third person!)’
Like Louise, all my published novels to date have been written in first person, but this was not how I originally tried to go about it. For some reason I had it in mind that a mystery novel, by its nature, was a complex interweaving of different layers that would be far easier told from multiple viewpoints if necessary, and therefore in third person.
When the idea of my main protagonist, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox came along, I distinctly remember making several false starts in third person. I can even remember one of those scenes. A woman, alone, walking quickly at night, high heels tapping out a nervous tattoo as she hurries through the muted cone of a streetlamp. Suddenly, a guy looms out of the darkness, snakes an arm around her throat, pins her arms to her body, and starts to drag her backwards into the shadows. But just when you think you’re observing the first victim, the woman begins to fight back, disabling her attacker. And after she puts him on the ground, the lights come back up to reveal a gymnasium, and there’s applause from the evening class of students who’ve come to learn the gentle art of self-defence from our heroine.
And, I have to admit, as an opening section I quite liked it. It did what it was supposed to do − kicked off with a little misdirection, and introduced my main character as someone very capable of looking after herself. But she just didn’t speak to me, and I was equally convinced that she sure as hell didn’t speak to the reader, either.
The only way I could get around that was to get deeper inside her head, and find out what made her tick. To speak with her voice. So I gave it a whirl, not with an opening, but with a disconnected scene. It had Charlie at a bodyguard training school, forced by her ever-so-slightly misogynist instructors to go into a darkened room and deal with what lay inside. That turned out to be an apparently mortally wounded body, and an ambush, to which she instinctively, viscerally, overreacts, laying out her attacker with an old-fashioned desk telephone, then covers up her fear with dark humour.
Ah, now I was getting somewhere.
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This week’s Phrase of the Week is to win hands down, meaning a comfortable victory. It comes from horse racing, where a jockey who has no need to urge his horse forwards down the finish straight because he has a clear lead, and so can canter over the line with no need for the whip, and with both hands more or less on the horse’s neck, to win with his hands down.
Weekend, 11-12 April 2009
A Fairly Productive Trip . . .It’s been a funny couple of weeks, what with one thing and another. I’ve been struck down with some mystery virus for much of the last month, which put me into semi-hibernation. I call it suffering from cat syndrome − I was sleeping until I was hungry, and then eating until I was tired. Not very productive, on any fronts, and the rewrites on the current Charlie Fox book have been slowed as a result.
Of course, there was still the odd photo shoot to be squeezed in around all this, with the result that a day spent on the Chertsey test track in Surrey meant I lost my voice completely for several days, and when it did return, it was amid prolonged coughing fits. And then last weekend we had a four-day work trip to Ireland to do, fortunately in reasonable weather, although the wind threatened to blow us over on several occasions, but it only rained hard on the last day, so that counts as positively balmy.
And, besides, I’ve always found that I can still work, almost regardless of how ill I am − for short periods at least. In the past, I’ve completed photo shoots while I was coming down with combined pneumonia and pleurisy, and also after my appendix had gone bang, although in defence of this apparent total lack of common sense, I would point out that I wasn’t aware of that at the time.
But, I’m now head down, full tilt on the rewrites. And, as is always the case, other things start happening in my peripheral vision. Ideas for the next in the Charlie Fox series started to arrive, purely because I was concentrating on something else. An article in a Sunday colour supplement about the idle rich sparked it off, and was soon combining with the fallout from the latest book, which leaves Charlie in one of the most difficult positions of her career. Once those two elements got together, it was difficult to ignore them. And when an idea arrives, I always find my best plan is to write it down straight away. Thinking, ‘oh, I’m bound to remember that later/in the morning/next week’ never quite works, somehow.
So, I’ve come back from Ireland not only with the best part of 2000 shots to sort, and a better idea of where I’m going with the rewrites, but also the basic structure of the next book as well.
All in all, a fairly productive trip . . .
This week’s Word of the Week is coruscate, meaning to sparkle and throw off flashes of light, hence coruscant − flashing − and coruscating, which is particularly related to wit. From the Latin coruscare, to vibrate or glitter.
Weekend, 4-5 April 2009
Last week, we went out and finally managed to buy a new car. Well, not a new new car, but new to us. And that meant braving the world of the Used Car Salesman.
This has been a frustrating experience, because, what with the economy being in the state it’s in, we decided to tighten our budget for a new motor, and that has meant we’re not exactly dealing with the cream of the crop. So, off we went to the Autotrader website and entered our particular requirements. From the thousands of cars for sale across the whole of the UK, this narrowed things down to a final choice of just six. Which means it’s very much a sellers’ market.
To be published next week by Crème de la Crime, 'Criminal Tendencies − Great Stories from Great Crime Writers' is an anthology of stories contributed for the benefit of three leading breast cancer charities. My story, 'Off Duty' is a Charlie Fox tale that slots into the time frame between the last two series books and tells what happens should you be foolish enough to try and get between a girl and her motorcycle.
You might have thought, in that case, that there was no need for embroidery in sales technique. You might have thought that a simple, "It is what it is, but there’s not many of them about, so take it or leave it," kind of attitude would work best. Oh no. That would be too easy.
Instead, they have to lie to you.
Now, I expect to be lied to. Not just by used car salesman, but generally. It’s a fact of life. Sad but true.
Everybody lies.
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This week's Word of the Week is zyxt, which is a Kentish dialect word meaning to see. And not a bad score in Scrabble, either . . .
Weekend, 21-22 March 2009
Some people are natural short story writers − I’m not one of them. That’s not to say I don’t write them, but I’m not in the habit of dashing off a quick tale every time I’ve a spare moment. My brain just doesn’t work that way. If I want to concentrate on something, I have to make a conscious effort to open a particular mental door and see what’s inside.
In some ways, I recognise that I went about this writing game slightly backwards. I didn’t have my first short story published until two years after my first novel. And it wasn’t something I’d had lying around in the bottom of a box in the attic, waiting for the occasion. I happened to be at a Northern Chapter meeting of the Crime Writers' Association − which is not nearly as Hell’s Angel-ified as it sounds − when I bumped into Martin Edwards. Martin was editing the CWA anthologies, and he casually suggested, as we funnelled into the dining room for lunch, that I might like to submit a story for the latest collection.
That year’s anthology was called GREEN FOR DANGER. It followed a previous anthology called CRIME IN THE CITY, so the countryside theme was a natural progression. In his introduction, Martin quoted Sherlock Holmes:
"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside . . ."
How could I resist a brief like that? The result was ‘A Bridge Too Far’ about the bridge-swinging activities of a local Dangerous Sports’ Club, some of the details of which were drawn from life − including the fact that the local strict Methodist farmer had banned the club from using an ancient viaduct on his land every Sunday morning because he couldn’t stand the inevitable blasphemy as they launched themselves into the abyss.
I didn’t tell Martin until after he’d accepted the story that it was my first attempt, but he didn’t seem to mind. And no-one was more surprised than me when it was subsequently reprinted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Since then, when asked and given a brief, I’ve written maybe another half-a-dozen shorts, including one for another CWA anthology, ID: CRIMES OF IDENTITY, called ‘Tell Me’, which has been used in a Danish school textbook, and turned into a short film. Is this a good time to admit that I wrote the whole thing during a long car journey?
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This week's Word of the Week is paramnesia, which is a memory disorder in which words are remembered but not their proper meaning; the condition of believing that one remembers events and circumstances which have not previously occurred. Its roots are from the Greek para beside, beyond, and mimneskein to remind.
Weekend, 14-15 March 2009
Has Anybody Seen the Plot?Well, another week spent rushing up and down the country, which has meant yet more thinking time in the car. And that’s fortunate, because I’m faced with quite a bit of heavy-duty thinking at the moment.
Firstly, I’m in the midst of working out my chapter for a round robin story I've been asked to contribute to. The idea is that a selection of writers each produce a chapter of the story. Stuart MacBride kicked the whole thing off and I received his opening chapter of the tale last weekend. It’s proved quite a challenge to come up with something that picks up all the threads Stuart left, and dangles in a few more of my own. And it’s been very good practice for leaving a chapter with a definite hook for the next writer to pick up and run with! I’ve also promised to supply my own little explanation of what I think is happening so far, and whodunit. I thought I’d better do this while it’s still fresh in my mind, otherwise, by the time the story’s finished, I’ll have entirely forgotten where I was going with it.
Then, after a meeting with my agent and editor, I have rewrites on the latest Charlie Fox book to tackle. Some are minor, but some are going to require quite a bit of rejiggling to incorporate. Plus, there is the old ‘rule of thirds’ to consider − that a third of the advice you take on board completely, a third of the advice you consider, and a third you reject. Working out which is which, however, is another thing. The easiest way I can see to go about it is to work through the extensive notes and figure out what my main problems are, then go back to my summary of the book and try and make the changes there, to see how that affects the whole thing. This will not only enable me to present the revised summary, with additions and alterations highlighted in red font, before I start work on the typescript itself, but it will also give me a good idea of just how much work I have to do, and how long it’s likely to take.
Meanwhile, I have two new outlines to prepare. One is for the next in the Charlie Fox series, which in some ways is the easier of the two. I have laid in some definite threads in this latest book which I not only want to come back to, but they need resolution. And a non-fiction article I read last year gave me the bones of an idea for something very intriguing for Charlie to be mixed up in, working as a bodyguard for the super-rich.
The other outline is for something fresh, in third person rather than first. Charlie Fox stories tend, by their nature, to be more linear tales, told from her perspective only. It has been suggested that I include bits of third-person narrative, but so far I’ve resisted that device, mainly because it just doesn’t feel right for the character. After eight books, I know the sound of her voice and the rhythm of her thoughts pretty well by now.
But this new project would enable me to try a multi-viewpoint story, told across a wider canvas. I can drop into the lives of all the main characters far more fully, and therefore I need to know how they think, how they react, not as seen through my protagonist’s eyes, but often from inside the head of that character. That’s quite a new experience for a writer who’s mainly worked in first person.
Mixing in all the different strands is going to take quite some keeping track of, too. I think I may have to invest in a large wipe board to stick above my desk, rather than the scrawled notes on scrap paper, which is the method I use at the moment. Over on Murderati this week, Brett Battles mentioned huge 'Post-it' notes that he’s used to practically re-paper his living room wall, covered in bits of his current plot. But as I do most of my plotting on the move in the car, I fear we soon wouldn’t be able to see out of the windscreen.
This week's Word of the Week is infaust, an adjective meaning ill-omened or unlucky, coming from the Latin in- not, and faustus, propitious.
Weekend, 7-8 March 2009
Several things sparked off this week's post. The first was raised by one of Dusty's excellent questions in the course of his last two 'Rati posts. He asked (and I'm paraphrasing here) if you had ever bought an author's book after visiting their website, or if you'd only visited the website after reading the book.
That got me thinking about what is an author website for, exactly? So, I went looking at a number of different sites to try and answer that question, at least in my own mind. I put my reader's hat on and went surfing. In order to do this, I went mainly (but by no means always) to sites of authors I had certainly heard of, but ones whose work I was not particularly familiar with. What I was looking for was something to really hook me into the writing, the stories, the characters. I was looking for something that would turn me from a casual browser into a fan.
And, I have to say, there are many, many wonderful websites out there. Well-designed, easy to navigate, informative. Most have extracts of the author's work so you can try out their voice, some even have audio extracts, read by the author, so you can hear the words spoken exactly as the author intended, with all the emphasis in the right places.
But one oddity struck me.
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This week's Word of the Week is harbinger. I picked this because I used to know a chap who had a boat called Harbinger and everyone pulled a face when he told them the name, and said, "That's a bit gloomy, isn't it?" because hardly anybody can hear 'harbinger' without the words 'of doom' on the end of it, but this is not the case. In obsolete language, a harbinger was a host, or someone sent ahead to provide lodging. But now it's come to mean not just a forerunner or a thing which tells of the onset of something, but also a pioneer.
It's like the phrase in flagrante delicto, which is simply 'in the very act of committing the crime, red-handed' and does not necessarily mean 'unclothed, with someone else's spouse, in a cheap hotel room.'
Weekend, 21-22 February 2009
It has to be one of the best known classic cliff-hanger endings. The final scene from 'The Italian Job' with Michael Caine. The bus teetering balanced on the edge of the Alpine ravine, with Charlie Croker and his gang of gold thieves stuck watching their bullion booty sliding ever further towards the abyss as the bus rocks gently back and forth. Then Croker turns back to the gang and says, "Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea!"
But what was it? And did it work?
This year is the fortieth anniversary of the original version of 'The Italian Job', and to mark the occasion The Telegraph in the UK held a competition to see if anyone could come up with that grand plan to rescue the gold. The rules were simple − no helicopters, and it must be a scientifically provable theory. Over 2000 people tried their hand, with solutions ranging from the surreal (Superman flies in and saves the day) to the comedic. One gentleman claimed to have "a foolproof way of recovering the gold. However, since the occupants of the truck are a bunch of criminals and the gold does not belong to them, I refuse to divulge the method."
So, how would you do it?
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This week’s Word of the Week is dénouement, which means the unravelling of a plot or story, from the Old French desnoer, to untie, and nodus, a knot.
Weekend, 14-15 February 2009
We’re still up to our ankles in snow at the moment, although the snowman we built last week is now looking a little worse for wear. He’s got a distinct lean on, and appears to have fallen prey to a curse from a tribe of headshrinkers. The lane had turned almost entirely to sheet ice, and getting the car up and down it involves a bit of onward momentum and a lot of slither.
We’ve also been much distracted by the fact that one of the red squirrels has decided to start building a drey in one of the trees right outside our office window and has been bounding up and down the tree all day carrying mouthfuls of moss and twigs. I do hope he had a structural engineer in for a full survey before he picked his spot, though − those trees don’t half get a wobble on when the wind’s blowing hard!
And although I was hoping to have the new book completed by this weekend, I am still in the final throes. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, although I know the what, it’s the precise how that’s proving tricky. I know what happens at the end of the book, but it’s the actual way the scene should best unfold that’s causing a good deal of sitting staring into space, and playing Freecell and Spider Solitaire whilst mulling.
Sometimes I just have to get out of the house with a notebook and try to work things out in rough note form before they’ll solidify at the keyboard. Or should that be flow? Either way, I’m still up to my neck in it, so I hope you’ll forgive the short blog this week, and enjoy the pictures of the industrious squirrel instead.
This week’s Word of the Week is gramary or gramarye, which is an archaic word for magic or enchantment.
Weekend, 7-8 February 2009
I had to laugh − albeit in a groaning, semi-hysterical kind of way − when I saw Dusty's Faster! Faster! post from yesterday about productivity. I'm behind with the new Charlie Fox book. Way behind. I mean, lying awake at night and sweating about it, behind.
But, finally, the end is in sight. In fact, with good luck, a following wind, and half a dozen policemen, as the saying has it, I should have something completed by next weekend. It kind of helps that we've been snowed in again this week, and I've already had to cancel one photo shoot, which has meant more writing time.
Reaching the end of a book is exciting and frightening, both at the same time. I know what is going to happen, but I don't quite know how it's going to happen, not until I actually get there. And it's frightening because then I have to show it to people, and they're going to pull it to pieces and point out all the bits that don't work. But, better constructive criticism than no comments at all.
Endings, though, are a post topic all of their own, and that's not what springs to mind today.
You may recall that I did a post last October called Tricks of the Trade about all those little bits of inside information, which people in certain trades know automatically, and which can really add that authentic flavour to any work of fiction. People came up with some fascinating snippets, and I just love all that kind of trivia.
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This week’s Word of the Week is psychopomp (from the Greek, pompos, a guide) meaning a conductor of souls to the other world. And if I haven't finished this book by next weekend, I may need one . . .
Weekend, 24-25 January 2009
One of the hardest parts about writing a novel, for me, is finding the things that aren't there.
OK, I know that statement seems to make very little sense, and maybe it doesn't. As I keep discovering, there are as many different ways to write a book as there are writers out there. Maybe it's just me.
Inevitably, in any story that has a strong element of mystery or suspense, there will be a lot of misdirection going on. Either towards the reader, or towards the main characters themselves. You have your initial set-up − the discovery of the body, the crime, the precipitating event − which raises the first questions for your protagonist. What's going on?
At the start of one of the earlier Charlie Fox books, First Drop, Charlie has been given the unenviable task of guarding the fifteen-year-old son of a wealthy computer programmer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As the newbie on the team, she knows it's the rough end of the deal − a baby-sitting job. Nobody seriously expects that the boy, Trey, will be a target, and he's a major pain in the arse. But, someone does make a determined attempt to snatch Trey from the theme park where Charlie has reluctantly accompanied him and, from then on, nothing is straightforward.
She recognises the guy who made a grab for the boy, realises she can't go to the cops, and when she ventures back to the house, she finds the place totally cleared out. Trey's father, Keith, and his entire close-protection team − including Charlie's lover, Sean − have disappeared. It's the start of the Spring Break weekend. She is alone and on the run with the kid, in a strange country.
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This week’s Word of the Week is actually two words − conflagrate and deflagrate. Conflagrate means to burn up, with its archaic form, conflagrant − burning. Deflagrate, on the other hand, means to burn suddenly, generally with flame and crackling noise. In chemistry, one would use a deflagrating-spoon, which is a cup with a long vertical shank for handling chemicals that exhibit such properties. Only a small distinction, but such things tickle me . . .
Weekend, 17-18 January 2009
Writing is a Messy BusinessAnd I’m not just talking about the state of my desk although, as I type, it’s a mass of loose paper and draft printouts and scrawled notes. To the point where if someone stole the actual wooden part out from underneath it, the paper alone would probably retain enough structural integrity to hold everything up. For a while, at least.
Every now and again I have a mad tidying session, but a certain amount of clutter is comforting. Writing a crime thriller involves a lot of clutter. It’s an exercise in juggling, for the most part, trying to keep all the balls of the plot in the air until the final page and then − most importantly perhaps − catching them with a flourish at the end.
But finally I think a bit of order is starting to emerge out of the chaos of the latest book. And about time, too. Whenever I start to write a book, I have a rough outline, but other things just appear on the page, without me quite knowing where they’re going to lead. To begin with, it often seems like they’re going to lead nowhere at all.
That certainly happened in the case of the latest Charlie Fox book, which I’ve been battling with for months. An additional character just popped up out of nowhere in the second chapter, and I had no idea at the time if she was just background colour or had a greater role to play. I’ve gradually come to realise that she’s vital to the outcome of the story, and aspects of the story that I thought were completely irrelevant, and might have to be written out, suddenly make complete sense. To me, anyway.
Writing a book is generally a long, involved and fairly solitary process. Occasionally I have to drag my long-suffering Other Half, Andy, away from his own work with, "Can I just run something past you . . .?" But the problem is that he’s so familiar with the plot that sometimes I need a fresh eye to tell me if something’s working or not. Finding a suitable fresh eye, I’ve discovered, can be exceptionally difficult.
Before we moved house, I was a member of a small but excellent writing group, the Lune Valley Writers. There were only half a dozen of us at best, meeting in a tiny local library that’s long since closed down. After we moved, I was delighted to see a card in the window of the local newsagents, asking for anyone interested in setting up a local writing group to make contact. I rang the number, but the conversation I had with the woman who answered did not fill me with confidence. She spent the best part of half an hour telling me all about her own work, and asked not a single question about my own area of writing.
Now, I’ve always worked on the theory that, if people aren’t interested enough to ask, I’m not going to bore them with the details, so I said nothing, but went along to the first meeting, in the local library anyway. There were about a dozen people turned up, including the lady from my phone conversation. It soon became obvious that she wanted to teach a class rather than be a member of a group. I stuck it out for a while, hoping things would improve, but they didn’t. The numbers dwindled and I have no idea if the group’s still going.
So, next week I’m doing the 90-mile round trip to go and meet up with a couple of people from the old Lune Valley group, to read some of the latest work-in-progress and find out what they’re up to. It’s a long way to go, but I think it will be worth it.
This week’s Word of the Week is pungent, which is most commonly used to describe a pricking or acrid taste or smell, but also means to keenly touch the mind; painful or sarcastic. And in botany, it means sharp; ending in a hard sharp point.
Weekend, 10-11 January 2009
We spent yesterday officially snowed-in out here in the wilds of Cumbria, with no mail delivery, no rubbish collection, and temperatures which have been dropping into minus double figures every night. For a country totally flummoxed by its weather, that’s perishin’ cold. And what with the world economy on its arse and the publishing industry sprouting doom and gloom in every direction, there’s not much to smile about at the moment.
If you’re currently sitting at home contemplating your unfinished first novel, you might be forgiven for wondering, "What’s the point?"
But don’t give up, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the Debut Dagger competition from the UK Crime Writers' Association.
I’d never heard of the Debut Dagger when I was writing my first crime novel, or I would have been in there like a shot. Or a stabbing, or a strangulation, or a disembowelment − or whatever other method of murder I could devise at the time. It might even have saved me a good deal of heartache.
The name Debut Dagger is a bit of a misnomer, because that does make it sound as though it’s a prize for first novels, and that’s not quite the case. It’s for the beginning of a first novel. It doesn’t even have to actually be your first novel. You could have written dozens, providing none of them have been commercially published. Short stories and non-fiction doesn’t count. Even some on-line and self-publishing doesn’t count, although it would need to be OK’d by the organisers before you sent your entry.
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This week’s Word of the Week seems almost superfluous after Pari's wonderful post on Monday, but I’ll go for monophthong, a complicated word meaning a simple vowel sound.
Weekend, 3-4 January 2009
New Year, New StruggleWell, it's been COLD over the New Year break in the wilds of Cumbria − close to minus 10 deg C.
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Cold, bitter cold, but with a fleeting beauty which only winter can bring . . .
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But, not venturing out too far has meant that over Christmas I finally managed to catch up with a few things that have been well and truly pushed aside while I've been wrestling with my new book. One of those was writing an essay about an iconic thriller − in my case, 'The Eagle Has Landed' by Jack Higgins.
The book came out in 1975 and I remember reading it years ago. Along with other books of that era, such as Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal', it remains a classic. Eagle's reputation was aided, I feel, by the excellent film version that came out the following year, with a real all-star cast − Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Donald Pleasance, Jenny Agutter.
But by the time Higgins wrote Eagle, he'd already been published numerous times, under several different pseudonyms. The general consensus on his previous thirty-five thrillers seems to be that they were competent, but unremarkable. So, what changed for this one?
I remember seeing a television documentary about Higgins in which he said he'd bumped into an old schoolteacher who was less than complimentary about his fictional work, and told him he needed to concentrate on character. Higgins obviously heeded this advice, because in Eagle he produced some incredibly memorable characters. The plot is relatively linear. After all, we know right from the start that the Germans never succeeded in kidnapping Winston Churchill out of England in 1943, and the mission is going to fail. But still Higgins makes us want to read on to the end, to find out just how close they managed to come, and hope that men − who should have been regarded as villains − got away with it in the end.
Ask almost any writer what's more important − plot or character − and they'll instantly say character. To me that's true − the most important aspect of my series is the character of Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox. A recent review in the Chicago Tribune described her as 'Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic − and coolest − heroines in contemporary genre fiction.'
That's quite a summation of her character traits, and I'm not sure I can argue with any of it. After all, I've been exploring her ability to kill, and the psychological fallout that generates, throughout the entire series. But, plot is also important. The plots are a means by which she is tested to the limit, by which her beliefs are threatened or strengthened. They have to both appeal to new readers − ones who don't know anything about Charlie's history or personal quirks − as well as those who know the character well. They have to be self-contained adventures.
At the end of my last book, Third Strike, I left Charlie in a very difficult situation, one that she couldn't fight or think her way out of. In this latest story, she finds herself isolated, unsure of her own reactions, doubting herself more strongly than she's ever done in the past. To enhance those feelings, the plot I've devised calls for her to go undercover into a cult in California. A situation when she needs to be at her calmest and most resolute, when inside she's feeling anything but. And if she cracks under the pressure, or allows the cult's enigmatic leader to get under her skin, what happens then?
Part of my task with this latest book is to bring the ongoing storyline to a resolution, but at the same time I still need to tell a standalone tale that will engage and satisfy the first-time reader, and make them want to return. Balancing those elements of the plot is proving tricky, to say the least. This is probably the most complex story I've written about Charlie. Before the end of it, she'll have faced a situation that will cause greater repercussions, further down the line. And then I'll have to construct another story that extricates her from that situation, while at the same time providing another independent, self-contained story. But that's all part of what makes writing a series character so interesting.
Let's face it, when life is a bed of roses for Charlie, it will be time to call it a day.
This week's Word of the Week is morganatic, which is a lovely word brought to my attention by fellow Murderati blogger, JT Ellison. It means of or relating to a marriage between two people of unequal rank, where the marriage is legal and the children legitimate, but the lower-born partner is not granted the other's title. It's also called a left-handed wedding, because the groom holds the bride's left hand rather than the right during the marriage ceremony.
There's some confusion about the origin of the word, but it appears to come from medieval Germany, where the bride would receive a 'morning gift' or dower from the groom the day after the wedding, but no further income. This comes from the German term morganitische Ehe as a combination of the ancient Gothic morgjan, to limit, to restrict, occasioned by the restricted gifts from the groom in such a marriage and the morning gift, and Morgen, being the German word for morning.
Zoë Sharp