SCANDAL & HYSTERIA

Fact and fiction

2012-01-07T15:57:00.001Z

It's Fiona Robyn's week as guest editor on She Writes, and both have been kind enough to allow me to contribute something on my major professional learning experience of 2011, which was the challenge of writing about real people and events. It's a hefty responsibility and one I wanted to do my best to uphold, and you can read a few on my thoughts on the subject here.

Guest interview with Laura Wilkinson

2011-11-28T20:09:00.004Z

Laura Wilkinson will be known to many of you as one of the brains behind hagsharlotsheroines, the website which showcased and promoted the work of many female novelists. But she's also a writer herself, and her powerful debut BloodMining was recently published and is available now. I picked Laura's brains about genealogy, the plague and visions of the future...

FLB: BloodMining is set in the near future. Perhaps inevitably given that I also work with time periods other than our current one, I'm particularly interested in the worldbuilding element, so how did you approach the task of constructing Elizabeth's section of the story (which is - scarily, once you've read the book! - just a handful of years ahead as I write these words), and Megan's which is the next generation on? The technology, I noticed, is a recognisable but more advanced version of our own (I'm picturing a mulmed as something resembling a cross between a tablet and a smartphone; and I was amused to note mention of laws restricting paper use, so perhaps it's fitting that I read the book on an e-reader, as I assume most people in Megan's time would!); but how did you go about determining the state of world events and how they would affect the characters and plot?
LW: The finished, published story is not told chronologically, but I did, in fact, write Elizabeth’s section first. Given that this projects only a few years into the future I didn’t feel the need to build a vastly different alternative world. After the cataclysmic event of 2015, on an emotional level things have altered beyond recognition for many people, while the external world remains much the same in many respects. There are no destroyed buildings or vegetation as there would be after war or environmental catastrophe for example. But of course, a world with far fewer people, especially the young and the old, would feel very different, leaving aside the ransacked shops, empty schools and care homes. I looked at footage of villages and towns deserted or abandoned because of conflict or famine, and the film I am Legend was great for inspiration too. This kind of loss, followed by such uncertainty, and quiet, would affect characters deeply – Elizabeth is crushed initially, whereas Hannah demonstrates great resilience (and selfishness) in the way that she bounces back. And this imagined disaster allows unaffected nations and unscrupulous people to profit from others’ tragedies, and bury pretty despicable actions for many, many years, the aftershocks of which reverberate for generations.

For Megan’s sections, which project further into the future I determined the state of my world by preying on our current anxieties. So: Christian Muslim relations are fragile, with the West’s dominance much reduced; China is the undisputed super power with scant regard for environmental protection laws; a nanny state is omnipresent with ‘population protection laws’ controlling how much alcohol people can consume legally and so forth. Megan and Jack are friends, in part, because they rebel against such controls, because they believe in the pursuit of truth. And, I hope, there are some positives in this future world. The environment is treated with more respect for example and people are more co-operative, even if it is forced upon them by poverty!

FLB: Genealogy and the complexities of family relationships are necessarily explored as Megan examines her line of descent in the name of finding a compatible donor to save her son Cerdic, who is born with a terminal and inherited illness. In the 'DVD extras' at the back of the book, you discuss your own experiences with your genes and background. Megan and Cerdic's story is an example of one of the positives that can come from researching one's genealogy - what, in your view, is the flipside to this? How could researching one's family tree - adopted, donor or not - go wrong? How could Megan's attempts have backfired?
LW: The flipside? Good question, I’ve not considered this till now. Finding out one of your parents is a mass murderer? Adopted, donor or biological I imagine this would be devastating news. Meeting one’s biological parents/parent might be a source of disappointment (leaving aside killers for a while)… you might find you have little if anything in common, that you share vastly different and opposing values. In BloodMining Megan never discovers for certain whether or not Owen is her biological father. She does learn he was a pretty unsavoury character, however. If she found out for sure I wonder what she would have made of this? How would it have made her feel? Another possible outcome is one that is explored a little in the book itself, and I don’t want to say too much in case there are readers who have not read it yet.

FLB: You use recognisable names for your characters, which I rather liked (super-futuristic sci-fi names can be quite offputting, I find), but of course trends in given names do change. Was it a conscious effort to stick with names your readers would be familiar with?
LW: Yes, because like you I find super-futuristic names off-putting; I didn’t set out to write sci-fi (and don’t view the novel that way myself) – serious names for serious literature says it neatly, if not one hundred per cent accurately (Ursula Le Guin, anyone?) – and all the leading characters’ names, with the exception of Cerdic, which is an ancient Welsh name, are traditional and, I hope, timeless. My grandmother’s generation used them, and generations before them; we hear them today, and I believe we’ll hear them in the future.

FLB: In Elizabeth's time, 2015 brings a disastrous wave of plague to Britain, wiping out swathes of the population including Elizabeth's husband and sons. You strongly echo the original bubonic plague in this section of the story: 2015's plague is spread by rats (after infected lab animals escape, or possibly are released by terrorists), and the state of Elizabeth's husband's body when she finds him certainly resembles that of a bubonic plague victim. Bodies are collected by government officials in vans (shades of 'bring out your dead!'); and I noted that the authorities evidently hadn't learned from past experiences as they set about slaughtering all animals, including predators like dogs and cats, to deal with an illness that has rats as its main vectors! Completely believable from politicians, but did you have any particular intent in your choice of the method by which Britain's population was to be cut so drastically; in having history repeat itself rather than a more 'modern' disaster?
LW: As you know, I am fascinated by history, and the lessons that can be learned from it, but I’m not convinced that we do always learn from our mistakes. History does have a nasty habit of repeating itself and turning round and biting us on the backside when our attentions are turned elsewhere. During my research into present day diseases and viruses I was surprised to discover that the plague (various forms of it, not just the bubonic) is still very much with us, and it became clear to me that this was the disaster I’d been searching for. And rats are potent ‘baddies’, at least for most people. I suspect you might take a different view, Faye! It resonated nicely with the loss of children, the allusion to the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and so forth. As you’ll have gathered I write my first draft and then research, rather than the other way round.

FLB: You're a mother yourself, and maternal love is a lynchpin of the book. If this question isn't too morbid, how did you find the experience of plotting and creating such a disastrous fictional future which, if real, would have affected the future your own sons face?
LW: Honestly? I never for one moment imagined my little lads living in that particular future. I might be hopelessly optimistic, but I sincerely hope that we will work through many of the issues that could lead to some of the worse aspects of my fictional future. However, I am also a realist and I recognise that the challenges we face today with regards to things like biological warfare, the development of super viruses and challenges around the building of a solid ethical framework for reproductive technology are enormous and we won’t get it all right all of the time. And I don’t believe it’s all bad in my imagined future either. For example, we do need to seriously address the sustainability of our planet’s resources and population control is one aspect of this. Of course, I’m not for one moment wishing for anything as devastating as the events I create in BloodMining, but some good does come out of the bad, and it seems to me that this is true of most things in life. I did bring my own experience of motherhood to the characters and I hope this lends an emotional truth. As a mother of two healthy boys I am very aware of how lucky I am, so it wasn’t easy to write those sections of the novel when children’s lives are threatened. As a writer you become your leading character(s) and so you experience their emotional journey, good and bad.

Thanks Laura! BloodMining is published by Bridge House Publishing and is available in paperback and Kindle format. For more about Laura and her book, visit her website at laura-wilkinson.co.uk.

Android for writers

2011-07-21T08:44:00.006+01:00

I recently got my first Android phone, and therefore have obviously been spending quite a while recently setting it up to best suit my tastes and requirements. Naturally, this meant quite a bit of working out which Android features, apps and widgets are particularly well-suited to a writer's life, and so I thought I'd post my findings in this 'ere blog in case any other Android-using writers find one of my recommendations helpful; or indeed if any of you can recommend something I haven't yet discovered!

First of all, I love the 'scenes' feature in Android OS, even if I dislike the name and think 'modes' would have been more explanatory. For those who aren't familiar with the concept of scenes/modes, think of it this way - you know how, if you choose, you can have more than one account set up on your computer, allowing different desktops with different program shortcuts and whatnot for each member of the family, or you in work and leisure modes? Scenes are essentially that - you set each one up with a different background image (if you like), and different apps and widgets displayed on the home screens for easy access depending on what you're most likely to need when you're in that mode (see why my name's better?), although you can still access all your other stuff as well without changing scenes by going into the 'all apps' page. So, for example, my personal 'scene' is for when I'm in leisure mode, and has things like my social networking stuff and music player and gallery of photos and whatnot; while my writing 'scene' is dedicated almost exclusively to productivity apps. (There are some apps and widgets which appear on both my scenes as they have more than one purpose, but you get the idea.) So, for this post, I'm going to be talking about some of the features which appear in my phone's writing 'scene'.

But before I begin, I should just say a word about the funny little codes which appear below, just in case you're even less tech-savvy than I am (I didn't know what they were until a week or so ago, so you learn something new every day!) - if you're an Android user and want to try out any of the apps which appear below with one of these QR codes, then make sure you have a barcode-scanning app (like Barcode Scanner or RedLaser) installed on your phone, and then use that app to scan the code using your camera's inbuilt scanner. Presto - the Android Market opens on your phone, at the page for the app you're interested in! If you don't want to do it that way, just click any links I've provided or search Market yourselves.

So, what have I found particularly useful writing-wise?

Documents To Go
A pretty obvious place to start - surely one of the best things about smartphones for writers is that you can use them to store and sometimes edit your documents? Docs To Go is the office app you see recommended by pretty much every Android book, site and magazine, and after experimenting with a few before settling on DTG, I've come to the conclusion that this is for a good reason. Docs To Go allows you, while your phone's coupled up to your computer, to drag files across so that once the phone is disconnected, said files can be opened and read on your phone. The basic app (the free one you download first) supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, which means it supports the equivalent files in my productivity suite of choice, OpenOffice, as well, so if you're not a Microsoft person there's no problem there. The add-on key which can also be purchased from the Market (and is currently on something like a 50% discount) allows you (among other things) to work with PDFs too, as well as editing and creating new documents from the phone. Significantly for authors of books, tests I conducted with the behemoth-sized file of my most recently completed book didn't present me with any problems, which reflects well on DTG as many office-type apps do struggle with large documents (some even say so in their descriptions in the Market). Very happy with this app.
Movable to SD card? Yes.
Desktop companion available? Not strictly speaking, unless you count your office suite with which it's sharing documents!

Catch Notes
Is it a diary? Is it a scrapbook? Is it a research aid? It's all those things and more, and it bloody rules. A companion to the web-based Catch website, you don't need to have signed up with the site to use the Catch app, but I highly recommend doing so - for starters, it provides a backup and allows you to update from your computer as well as your phone. So what can you do with the phone app itself? Among other things, create text notes, photo notes, voice notes, alerts, record your location when a note was created (that is optional, I hasten to add), scan barcodes and QR codes (assuming you have a scanner app) and save the resulting info in your Catch archives. (Spotted a book that might be helpful for research but not sure where to buy it or what the best price is? Catch will save the book's title and author info along with the best price it could find.) You get the idea. There's a lot going on in there. Notes can be tagged to enable easy searching by subject, and you have the option of placing a widget on your home screen for speedy updating. You can PIN-protect the app to keep your notes private, and none of them are visible to others unless you choose to share them via email, Facebook or Twitter. The app is free and allows you to save 70MB's work of stuff in a month, but if you subscribe to Catch via the site, for a monthly fee you get 1GB a month and support for productivity documents. Personally, I'm finding the free version more than ample! Great for keeping a diary of the writing process, saving useful articles, documenting research trips and finding suitable books...and that's just what I'm using it for in a professional capacity, and I'm sure there are more things I haven't thought of yet.
Movable to SD card? Yes, but if you do, the built-in homescreen widget (if you choose to use it) won't work. Nil desperandum - Catch have made the widget available separately and it's a much smaller file than the app, so if you want to save space in the phone's internal memory, move the app itself to the SD card and have the separate widget in the phone itself so you can have it on the home screen. I do this and it works perfectly.
Desktop companion available? There's the site itself, of course, and a few add-ons for various web browsers, which I haven't tried out as the Firefox one isn't compatible with the version of Firefox I'm running. Catch say that a proper desktop program is in the works.

Read It Later
A companion to your Read It Later web account, the RIL app allows offline reading of articles you've previously added to your reading list to save for later. Say you're browsing online on your computer and see an article which could be useful later - you'd add it to your reading list (using the special browser button you get when you sign up to your online account), the article would be saved and wirelessly synced to your list on your phone as well, and then you can read it at your leisure, even if you don't have internet access at that time.
Movable to SD card? Annoyingly no, at least not at the time of writing.
Desktop companion available? Works with the RIL website, which puts special buttons onto your web browser for saving articles. Add-ons are also available for certain browsers.

Astrid
Astrid is an octopus/squid-type creature who grins at you from the top of your to-do list. The Astrid app gives you the option of placing your to-do list on your home screen in the form of a widget, and tapping it (or just entering the app in the normal manner) will take you to your full-sized list, where you can add tasks, tag them, set deadlines and alerts and label them in order of urgency, and tick them off as completed, at which point they'll disappear from your list display. If a deadline is set for a task, Astrid will alert you when it's time to start, and if the task becomes overdue, she'll gently prod you into doing it. ("You'll feel better!" "How about a snack afterwards?") If you find these encouragements annoying they can be disabled in the settings, leaving you with the bog-standard alerts, but personally I like having a friendly cephalopod acting as my conscience. One of the great things about the widget, I've discovered, is that you can configure it to display differently in your different 'scenes' - in my personal mode, for example, Astrid shows all my to-do tasks, while in my writing mode only the ones I've tagged 'writing' are visible, meaning I don't have to wade through reminders to buy hair dye or defrost tofu when I'm busy working. Good for keeping note of the next few scenes you're due to write, or reminding you to call your agent or attend to an editor's queries.
Movable to SD card? No, but then if you're a widget user (which makes life much easier), you wouldn't be able to have that and the ability to move to SD anyway.
Desktop companion available? Not as such, although you can sign up for an online account and share your (private by default) tasks using social networking media.

TweetCaster
I know, I know - not strictly writing-related, and if you're the undisciplined sort I can see how you might get distracted messing about on Twitter when you should be writing. However, I'm going to assume here that a) you do have the necessary self-control, and b) part of your online presence as a writer involves having an account on Twitter. (And if you do and you haven't started following me @fayelbooth yet, why not, hmm?!) TweetCaster is definitely my favourite Android Twitter app, allowing you to juggle multiple accounts and colour-code your own tweets and those others make which mention you so that they stand out. You can simultaneously post to Facebook using the app as well, and receive notifications when someone @replies you, mentions you or sends you a message; and you can do all the usual stuff like retweeting, searching and whatnot. Finally, the app icon on your home screen is awesome - an ickle bog-eyed bird!
Movable to SD card? No.
Desktop companion available? No, which annoys me as it'd be nice to be able to sync tweets between my computer and phone. Have suggested it to the developer - hope they're feeling obliging!

Bloggeroid
Again, this one's obviously more to do with promoting yourself as a writer, and if you use another blogging service for your author blog you'll obviously want to look for something for that, but since fayelbooth.co.uk lives on Blogger, here I am talking about Bloggeroid. So this is obviously for updating your blog - you can create and edit blog posts and comments, post pictures and format text with bolding and italics and whatnot. I thought about using it to write this post, but decided that as it's so long I'd get it done faster on my computer!
Movable to SD card? Yes.
Desktop companion available? Blogger, obviously.

So that's the stuff you have to download, now what about what's already on the phone when you get it? There are a few great features in there too which can enrich your writing 'scene'. (No QR codes for these as, being pre-installed software, they're not on the Market.)

Quick Look
This is a small slice of genius - input a search item and you can tab between Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Dictionary and Google Translate to look at what each of the sites has to offer on the subject. Of course, if you want a more feature-rich Wikipedia app, say (perhaps one that allows bookmarking of articles), you'll have to get a separate one; and likewise the Google Dictionary tab is dependent on an internet connection (I am looking at offline dictionary apps, but I haven't found one I really like yet), but Quick Look is a great all-rounder, minus the bells and whistles.
Movable to SD card? As with all pre-installed software, no.
Desktop companion available? Depends which site/tab you mean!

Google search bar widget
You should find this in your list of addable widgets, and it does what you'd expect it to do - puts a Google search bar on your home screen so you can search straight from there. If you're the easily distracted type, I suppose it could also go some way towards keeping you from messing about on Facebook during a writing session: don't have any social networking apps or the web browser on your writing 'scene' home screen, and just keep the Google bar there for if you need to look something up quickly. Same goes for Quick Look.
Movable to SD card? Again, no (partly because it's a widget and partly because it's pre-installed).
Desktop companion available? It's Google!

People widget
This may have a different name depending on your phone's manufacturer, but either way I'm sure you'll recognise it - this widget is the Android equivalent of the 'favourite numbers' list you get on most phones which allow speedy calling of those you want to be able to access quickly. The good thing about the Android 'scenes' system is that you can have a different favourites list for each mode - my personal one obviously has family and friends, while my writing People widget has numbers like my local library, my agent and the Society of Authors.

*

So those are my early tips for making Android work for you as a writer - if I've missed any juicy ones, please do let me know and perhaps one day I'll have enough for a second instalment! By the way, in case anyone was wondering, the Victorian Android logo at the top of this post was made using Google's Androidify app. Useless but fun, it allows you to adapt the green robot logo to look like yourself or someone else - this is me:

Interviews: the best of

2011-06-25T15:13:00.008+01:00

A selection of my favourite interviews and guest posts. Waffling ahoy!

January 2012: She Writes
'Showing respect in one's depiction of someone who actually existed doesn't necessarily mean that you have to admire them or would want to spend a great deal of time with them; or that even if you would, you have to deny all their frustrating, baffling, maddening flaws.'

June 2011: The Victorianist
'I love the characterisation in Jude the Obscure. Little Time is a lot like me as a child (which is a bit worrying, really!).'

March 2011: Dear Author
'So [Henry Shadwell from Trades of the Flesh is] a contradiction, really, which makes him feel real and alive for me, and it’s hard to pigeonhole him as either fitting the classic image of the Victorian man or being more modern – like most people in most times, he’s a mixture of good and bad qualities.'

November 2010: MNWers blog
'I think my Muse wears a waistcoat and top hat and carries a cane. At least, I like to think so.'

April 2010: Normblog writer's choice
'On her way home, [Fanny Stanton of Penelope Lively's Fanny and the Monsters] watches her Aunt Caroline struggling to fit the voluminous skirts of her widow's weeds through the door of the train, noting that she seems 'equally ill-adapted to the world' as the dinosaurs, and Fanny ponders whether Aunt Caroline and women like her are also heading for extinction. But the world is not yet sufficiently in sympathy with Fanny's progressive views as to allow her clemency when she raises the subject of evolution at the dinner table...'

October 2009: Preston Writing Network
'I was a toddler when I saw a cartoon adaptation of The Hobbit, and I zeroed in on the character you'd probably expect to be frightening for a small child - Gollum. I promptly named skeletons "Smeagols", and I was fascinated with them too. (The skeletons in Funnybones were Smeagols to me thereafter.) I read a lot of children's books with witches in them, and despite being a child myself, I was just as enthralled with Roald Dahl's monstrous, child-hating Grand High Witch as I was with friendly witchy protagonists like Meg (of Meg and Mog) and Heggerty Haggerty. As I grew into adolescence, I made my mark in my English coursework by "sympathising with the devil"; looking at the story from the point of view of the characters that were presented to us as villains or antagonists.'

September 2009: Madame Guillotine
'"Oh, I’m a seduced milliner – anything you like." That was the rather cynical and dismissive response Victorian prostitute ‘Lushing Loo’ gave the sociologist Henry Mayhew when he asked her how she had ended up in her profession, and who can blame her? Whether out of genuine social concern, voyeurism or a penchant for poverty tourism, a number of Learned Men of the period, from Mayhew to Charles Booth (no relation to me, at least as far as I’m aware), did seem to enjoy cornering prostitutes in pubs and quizzing them about their lifestyles, which I imagine caused no end of irritation to those who were busy trying to catch a little trade and/or drink themselves silly. Lushing Loo, Mayhew tells us, went on to treat him to a soused rendition of one of her favourite songs – oh, to have been a fly on the wall!'

September 2009: MNWers blog
'I can't understand why we have such a double standard where stereotyping is concerned: if an author were to write a contemporary novel populated with cookie-cutter characters taken from lazy stereotypes of groups of people (based on age, sex, race, sexual orientation, nationality or whatever), any decent editor or agent would quite rightly pull them up on it during the edit or reject the book outright, but when the group of people in question are those who lived at a certain time, it's widely accepted and even expected.'

September 2009: Nik Perring's blog
'I think I avoided one of the common struggles of writers working on their second novels, a lot of whom reportedly find, if they begin writing Book Two after Book One has been published or accepted for publication, that they are consumed with performance anxiety – that "dance as if there's nobody looking" situation no longer applies, and the author is left wondering: will Those In Power like their second novel as much as they liked their first, or will they hear those words that are dreaded by artists of all stripes: "I prefer your older work to your newer work"?'

Uptight Victorian bitch

2011-06-25T14:35:00.008+01:00

I was just buying cushions in Dunelm Mill and spotted these. I love them ~~and so should you~~!

Excuse the dodgy mobile photos, but you get the idea. How cool are those? And only £2.50 each too - I'm well chuffed with them. They are also, it's worth mentioning, more Victorian (as opposed to modern-twist-on-Victorian) than you might at first think. Despite the disapproval faced in his time by Charles Darwin for suggesting the fairly obvious, the Victorians were pretty keen on portraying themselves as animals - the period gave rise to many different artistic depictions of creatures with human bodies and animal heads* (and occasionally vice versa), or beasts in human clothing doing human things; and on the nastier side there were the taxidermied displays of people like Walter Potter, who became known for his pieces featuring stuffed animals in human contexts, such as kittens getting married and guinea pigs playing cricket. Personally, I think the whole dead animal thing negates any cute whimsy Potter's work might have had, but he was a product of his time, I suppose. (Don't think he didn't get complaints from his contemporaries, though - he did. The RSPCA was a Victorian creation, you know.)

Anyway, those are my new dogpeople. I love them quite unashamedly.

* Indeed, anthropomorphic artwork such as this predates the 19th century by a long way - look at the human/animal gods of ancient Egypt, figures like the Greek man-goat Pan, and the so-common-you-almost-miss-them human/animals like mermaids. Something in us has always wanted to pay tribute to our primal nature.

Interview on The Victorianist blog

2011-06-24T16:31:00.001+01:00

Just a note to say that I and a few other authors of Victorian-themed fiction and non-fiction have just had interviews posted over on The Victorianist - check it out if thus inclined!

Form an orderly queue

2011-06-22T10:54:00.005+01:00

Confession: I'm not good in crowds, especially if I have to hold conversations with them. I always think that the exchange of talking to an individual and listening to what they have to say is a bit like throwing a tennis ball back and forth between you, and so holding a conversation with multiple people gets interesting as you have to field multiple tennis balls, adding one more for each new person joining in.

Now what, I hear you ask, does this have to do with writing? Well, over the past few years and in the process of writing several books with varying numbers of protagonists, I've come to the realisation that the tennis ball thing doesn't change just because the people I'm paying attention to are imaginary.

My first two novels (available from nice booksellers now and all that) didn't have this problem as they only had one protagonist each. The third novel I wrote (which may possibly appear at some point in the future in some form) had two, and writing it was hell. I never felt as if I was getting into 'the zone', so I spent however many months trudging through at a slower pace, convinced that I wasn't going to like the finished product. But when I came to read through it again at the start of the redrafting process, I was pleasantly surprised - I liked it a lot, and so I couldn't imagine what had made the process of writing it so difficult.

The next novel I completed was a one-protagonist disaster which I am determined will not see the light of day; and then came the behemoth: my lengthiest and most recently completed book which is now in the capable mitts of my agent and on submissions. That book has five protagonists, and to begin with, writing it was mind-boggling. There was, at one point, another reason for that which isn't related to the subject of this post; but even once that was past, I still struggled to stand in the centre of the circle my protagonists were forming, spinning around at the right moment and for the right length of time to catch the tennis balls they were throwing at me. It was maddening because I had an intimate understanding of these characters and the plot before I began; I knew what was going to happen in the book and had even written a condensed guide to it for my agent, so why the hell was I struggling so much?

Then I had an epiphany - I would write the central protagonist's scenes first (she was always going to get to the head of the queue; she's high-maintenance like that), from beginning to end without interruption; then begin work on the next character's story thread. Repeat the process for each of the five protagonists, then chop them up into chapters and shuffle the order until everything's in place. It sounded a bit scatty, but I was at my wit's end and figured it was worth a try. It certainly was - it worked so ridiculously well, it was as quick, easy and effective as switching on a light. I'd probably still be writing that book now if I hadn't done that.

So, the WIP. A smaller number of protagonists this time than I had then - just two now - but I still started out attempting to write both characters' scenes at the same time. It was like writing my third novel again, so now I'm doing what I did with the behemoth and taking them one at a time, and I don't want to speak too soon, but it seems to be working! I think I've worked out what my problem was when I was writing the third book, and if you find that writing multiple POVs at once confuses you, it might be worth you trying this tactic as well. It's a lot more fun than being pelted with tennis balls.

Character names - intuitive or symbolic?

2011-05-27T16:00:00.003+01:00

There's a link going around on Twitter at the moment to this blog post discussing how authors name their characters, so I thought I'd make a short post myself answering from my perspective.

Overall, I have no hard and fast rules. Ultimately, none of my characters end up with names that just don't 'feel right' on a gut level, so that's a huge part of it, and certainly some of my main characters (Molly in Mirrors, Lydia in Trades) have simply been named on pure instinct; as if I 'met' them and they told me their name. There is some degree of logic and conscious thought that goes into it, too: a person's geographical location and/or ancestry can obviously influence the likelihood of them having a certain first name and especially surname - you'll find quite a few northern surnames in my work (not least the one on the book covers!). In working class characters in particular, trade-based surnames are more likely (hence Molly's maiden name of Pinner, and the 'abbess' in Trades whose surname is Tanner).

There is something to be said, though, for a more artistic choice of names; choosing one or more of a character's names to convey something about them through the meaning of the name itself, and I've certainly done that, too, either to confirm that the name my gut favours is the right one, or as the primary means of naming the character (although as I say, I still have to feel 'right' about any name choices). The main character in my most recently completed novel, Ivy, was an Ivy to me from the moment of her conception, but the context of the story (wait and see) makes a plant-based name particularly appropriate for her. Another one of that book's protagonists was very deliberately given a name that makes reference to one of her less desirable attitudes; and yet another has a name that makes an obscure religious reference to her relationship to Ivy. Anyway. When looking into name meanings, I like Baby Names World for first names and the Surname Database for...well, obviously.

And the WIP? Well, there are two protagonists this time, both of them named primarily on instinct; but in a nifty twist, their first names mean hardworking and fighter, and those descriptions fit their respective personalities pretty well.

So how do you name your characters?

Historical novelists do it with the dead.

2011-05-26T11:10:00.009+01:00

The lovely Melanie over at Madame Guillotine has just made a brilliant post on her 'historical crushes' (or 'dead guy crushes' as I call them), and naturally I couldn't resist doing one of my own (so to speak). So, a few historical personages I wouldn't have kicked out of bed (although I would now - eww):

French stage magician Alexander Herrmann (1844-1896), better known in his day as Herrmann the Great. His wife Adelaide took over his show after his death and went on to become one of the first (and still one of very few) female magicians (as opposed to assistants, in manner of The Lovely Miss Debbie McGee).

Leon Herrmann (1867-1909), nephew of Alexander and Adelaide, who definitely took after his uncle in the looks department! He was also a magician, touring with his aunt Adelaide until 'creative differences' put them on separate paths.

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861). Yes, it's a cliché for a Victoriana junkie, I know, but I can't fault Vic's taste. Something about Albert must appeal to chubby, pale chicks with mops of dark hair.

Edward Elgar (1857-1934). Composer and the man who makes £20 notes even more fun, Elgar is someone whose looks I first found myself paying proper attention to when I was in WH Smith and noticed that the portrait of him on the cover of Classic FM magazine was rather tasty. When image-googling for pics for this post, though, I was even more floored when I found this pic, posed by Elgar in about 1900, because it looks as if ageing made him into an eerie likeness of one of the characters in my most recently completed novel (he needs sideburns as well as a moustache, though). It's not an exact match - outside of identical twinning, two people rarely are, even if one's imaginary - but it's quite uncanny.

And...er...

John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865). Before I go any further, I should stress that this has nothing to do with his politics, which were undoubtedly vile - I'm just putting that aside for the moment and looking at the exterior, because it's much nicer to look at. An actor before he decided to give generations of politicians an uneasy feeling about visiting the theatre, JWB came from a family of actors (including his brother Edwin, who was also quite nice-looking but - cringe - not as attractive, for my money, as his homicidal little bro), and was considerably famous before adding an in- prefix to the word. As one commenter on a pic of JWB on Tumblr recently remarked, it was a bit like Brad Pitt murdering Barack Obama (although I've never really been a Pitt girl, myself). So yes - Johnny's politics and psycho streak bad, looks good (at least before the soldiers got hold of him).

So, like Melanie, I'm looking back over those pics to see if I can identify a 'type'. There is one obvious connection, I suppose, although I hasten to add it's not a requirement, and by no means do I find all moustaches attractive - the droopy handlebar ones beloved of male members of stoner rock bands, for instance, just make me want to reach for bleach spray and a scouring pad, somehow. Still, I do like a well-kept 'tache, possibly because it tends to look quite old-fashioned. As I was recently telling my agent, during the World Cup some of our local buses had photos on the side of the Preston North End footy team circa 1890-odd, and I was both surprised and amused to see that, despite being pro footballers and decked out in their team strip and what have you, the players all still had immaculate hair and well-trimmed 'taches. As I said to Edwin, I was then forced to conclude that the last time a professional footballer was attractive was during the 19th century...

So, who are your dead guy/girl crushes?

Guess-the-book meme: answers

2011-05-25T18:48:00.006+01:00

So, it's Wednesday, and therefore here are the promised answers to my picks for the guess-the-book meme, complete with some juicy extracts just to liven things up a little:

1) The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber (guessed by a couple of people)

A couple of months ago, my agent and I were talking about negative publicity and whether or not it actually exists, and he asked me if I'd ever bought a book because of a bad review. For some reason, I must have been overtaken by amnesia, because I said that I hadn't because I don't read reviews (good or bad) of fiction. This is the case now (I got bored with the comic potential of other people's outrage), but in fact I actually bought some of my favourite books - including this one - at least partly because some shrieking one-star Amazon reviewer was OMGSHOCKEDANDAPPALLED. If I recall correctly, my already-keen interest in Crimson Petal's blurb was tipped into clicking the 'add to basket' button by a very promising claim that one could not be in favour of women's rights and make it through the book. (What can I say - I don't like being told what I will and won't manage to do.) Not only was that statement spectacularly wrong (and incredibly dense: as anyone who's read the book will know, the most intelligent, likeable, compassionate and complex character in the book is a woman), the book swiftly became one of my all-time favourites; so much so, I haven't had the nerve to watch the recent BBC adaptation of it because I've seen too many lousy adaptations and can't bear to find out if that one's bad, too. It's a huge book and populated by many characters - prostitutes Caroline and Sugar; businessman William Rackham, who sets himself up as Sugar's sole patron; Rackham's 'mad wife in the attic' Agnes and his tragically devout brother Henry; Mrs Fox, the object of Henry's repressed affections - so it's difficult to give a neat summary of the plot, but well worth reading. In these extracts, I think you can see Faber's skill in approaching his role as narrator for this story as something like a tour guide, taking 21st century-dwellers for a walk in the Victorian slums of London:

It’s an ashen hour of night, blackish-grey and almost readable like undisturbed pages of burnt manuscript. You blunder forward into the haze of your own spent breath, still following me. The cobblestones beneath your feet are wet and mucky, the air is frigid and smells of sour spirits and slowly dissolving dung. You hear muffled drunken voices from somewhere nearby, but what little you can understand doesn’t sound like the carefully chosen opening speeches of a grand romantic drama; instead, you find yourself hoping to God that the voices come no closer.

Church Lane is the sort of street where even the cats are thin and hollow-eyed for want of meat, the sort of street where men who profess to be labourers never seem to labour and so-called washerwomen rarely wash. Do-gooders can do no good here, and are sent on their way with despair in their hearts and shit on their shoes.

2) We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (guessed by one person)

It embarrasses me that I took so long to read this book. I first picked it up just after I finished the first draft of my most recently completed novel - it was one of those always-thought-it-sounded-interesting-but-never-seemed-to-get-around-to-it jobs. Wow. I was missing out. Those who know me know about my raging tocophobia and utter disinterest in children, and after reading this book, there's no way I'd attempt to write a detailed account of why I'm perpetually on the verge of attempting to tie my own tubes with a kitchen knife and a couple of rubber bands, because I could never top Kevin. A story about a successful career woman, Eva, who from the moment she becomes pregnant has misgivings and when her son is born is herself horrified that she feels nothing, who spars with said offspring throughout his childhood and watches his conduct become gradually malign until as a teenager he commits mass murder; what makes this book even more compelling is the obvious parallels between Eva and her son - intelligent, arch, cynical, witty and often cruel, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree. Kevin is, essentially, a more extreme version of his mother, which even if (like Eva) I wasn't terrified at the prospect of giving birth and bored by small children, I would find decidedly unsettling. I don't want to know what a more extreme version of me would be like, and I'm glad I don't have to find out. Interestingly, Shriver has often remarked that she finds readers of Kevin tend to fall into two distinct camps: those who think Kevin is a demon seed and his mother never bonded with him because she could sense it, and those who think he became that way because he picked up on Eva's coldness (the classic nature/nurture debate). The book doesn't attempt to answer that question - how can one realistically answer such a question? - but that's another thing I love about it: it acknowledges the complexity and mystery of human minds. For the curious, I lean towards siding with Eva, but I freely admit that in that I am arguably as much of an unreliable witness as she is, because I have so many of the same aversions to the concept of parenthood. Speaking of which, as well as an amusing account of the fantasy of teaching versus the reality, the last sentence of this quote was one of those 'YES!' moments for me; something I've always thought when faced with people who 'love children'. As you can also see from this quote, the book is also (and unexpectedly, perhaps) hilarious:

Miss Fabricant was in no mood for drollery. I felt that in general her early twenties exhilaration at molding all those receptive little moppets into multiculturally aware, environmentally responsible vegetarians driven to rectify inequities in the Third World was beginning to fray around the edges. This was her first year of flaking poster paint from her eyebrows, going to sleep at night with the salty taste of paste in her gums and exiling so many children at a shot for a “time-out” that there was no longer any activity to take a time out from. After all, she had announced at our introduction in September that she “simply loves children,” a declaration of which I am eternally dubious. From young women like Miss Fabricant, with a blunt snub of a nose like a Charlotte potato and hips like Idahos, the infeasible assertion seems to decode, “I want to get married.” Myself, after having not a child but this particular one, I couldn’t see how anyone could claim to love children in the generic any more than anyone could credibly claim to love people in a sufficiently sweeping sense as to embrace Pol Pot, Don Rickles and an upstairs neighbour who does 2,000 jumping jacks at three in the morning.

3) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (not guessed)

It's a close call, but this just (just) pips Atonement to the post as my favourite Ian McEwan novel. It's a relatively short book, and on the face of it a relatively 'small', insular story: Edward and Florence, a young, virgin couple on their wedding night in 1962; both of whom are nervous, for different reasons, about their forthcoming sexual initiation. I can't really go into too much detail without spoiling the book, but suffice to say that the narrative switches between their respective histories and the story of how they met and got together, and their exchanges in the honeymoon suite; and the reader watches as a combination of Edward and Florence's personality traits, past experiences and socially-enforced misinformation lead things to go spectacularly wrong. The following extracts say a lot about the say-nothing-and-save-face mentality of the times, just before the advent of the contraceptive pill:

While one heard of wealthier people going in for psychoanalysis, it was not yet customary to regard oneself in everyday terms as an enigma, as an exercise in narrative history, or as a problem waiting to be solved.

It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions. Who, for decorum’s sake, has ever slowed his heart, or muted a blush?

4) Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (not guessed)

Hmm, the second appearance of historical prostitutes in this list - what's going on here? We're heading into the 18th century this time, though, for a story that is loosely based on historical fact - could only be loosely based on fact, given that all we know of the real Mary Saunders, who is the main character in this story, is that she was a London girl who worked for a time as a prostitute in the capital, before somehow ending up in Monmouth as a dressmaker's apprentice (by the way, a slammerkin was a style of loose dress worn in that period, which also gave rise to the term being used as slang for a 'loose woman'); a dressmaker she went on to be executed for murdering. (That's not a spoiler - it's nothing you won't get from blurbs and the like.) Around that skeletal, impersonal snippet, Donoghue has created an addictive tale of a girl fighting to get more out of life as she struggles to fit into a world which, after all she's seen and done, seems stultifyingly innocent and unworldly. Furthermore, Mary and Doll (the prostitute who takes the homeless teenage Mary under her wing) are a great deal of fun:

'Why did you take me in?' Mary asked her on the walk home that evening. Then she wished she could swallow the words again, because she feared they would make Doll turn cold and scornful, or tell her that her time was long up and she owed a pretty penny, by the way.
But Doll gave a peculiar smile, almost sheepish. 'When I stopped to look at you in the ditch, that morning, I was just curious,' she began. 'I was all set to walk on to the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street for my breakfast. But then you bit my hand, and I liked that.'
'You liked it?' asked Mary, bewildered.
'Showed some spirit,' said Doll with satisfaction. 'That's what I'd have done myself.'

5) Angel of Ruin (which goes by the duller title of Fallen Angel in the UK) by Kim Wilkins (not guessed)

This is my favourite of Kim's books, and one I think would appeal to a lot of writers, being as it ultimately is about the power of storytelling, and the alarming compulsion one can feel to tell a tale. Like much of her work, it's a timeslip piece, alternating between modern-day journalist Sophie, who's looking for occult-themed stories to sell to Halloween issues of magazines, and Restoration-era London, with the three daughters of the poet John Milton, whose sisterly relationships are wonderfully drawn. It's a supernatural fantasy, too (I don't think the Miltons actually had a fallen angel living in their house), so that adds another element to the book; making the magic of storytelling quite literal:

'Look, this may sound a little strange,' I said, 'but an acquaintance of mine told me about you. She said you had an interesting story to tell.'
'I do.'
'I'm a journalist. I collect interesting stories.'
'I'm happy to tell you my story, but it may be dangerous for you to hear it.'
'Yes, yes, so I've heard. I'm afraid I don't hold much with such superstitions.'
'Even so, I have cautioned you.'

So yes, I recommend all of those - check 'em out, if you're thus inclined!

A guess-the-book meme.

2011-05-22T15:12:00.001+01:00

A meme, just to pass the time:

List the first sentences of your five favourite books so that people can guess the books they come from. After three days, post the answers.

I'm terrible at coming up with definitive top tens/fives/threes of anything, but here (in a very loose and not-to-be-taken-too-seriously order) are the first sentences of five of my favourites:

1) Watch your step.

2) Dear Franklin, I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you.
(The name should tip off anyone who's read that book.)

3) They were young, educated and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.
(And this one's a minor blurb - again a good memory-nudger.)

4) There once was a cobbler called Saunders who died for eleven days.

5) I came to London to write and found myself practising magic instead.

Any guesses, before Wednesday comes? Comments with guesses will be screened, just in the spirit of the game!

I love this moment...

2011-05-07T11:30:00.004+01:00

...the moment of promise and anticipation, right before a first draft of a new book is started. In the spirit of my continual striving to make life difficult for myself, I'm tackling a project now that should prove challenging in a number of ways. Like the book I recently completed (which is now in the capable hands of my agent), I suspect the new WIP will be a lengthy brute - I'm not certain it will be as long (time will tell, though), but looking at my notes I doubt I'll get everything into a diminutive word count; and while the WIP doesn't have as many protagonists as the last book, the challenge of writing that one has opened up my confidence in many ways, and so now I'm tackling another couple of challenges; namely writing a story that spans over a considerable number of years and writing about people who really existed. I am not, I hasten to add, writing from the point of view of people who really existed - not that there's anything wrong with doing that, but something in me just prefers to really get inside the skulls of people who are figments of my imagination. Still, I could not tackle this subject and realistically hope to avoid actual historical personages making considerable appearances in the narrative, so for the first time I'm going to have to do it.

However, in order to feel more comfortable, I'm establishing some ground rules for myself, and here they are:

When writing about someone who actually existed, I will refer to the research I did on them before starting the book - recorded facts and events, quotes, personality, attitudes both of the person themselves and those of others whose descriptions of the person in question were based on actually knowing them etc - and I will not wander off that path into the realms of complete invention (that's reserved for the characters who are my own creations!). People who make the history books tend to leave us plenty to write about without adding myths to the canon.

In keeping with that, when the circumstances surrounding an event are unclear or unknown and for dramatic purposes I wish to cover them in more detail, I will do so using characters of my own creation. Coverage of actual historical events will be based on the detailed research I did beforehand.

I aim to present real people as accurately I can based on my research, and while that will hopefully give some insight into their perspectives and reasons for approaching things the way they did, that doesn't mean that I won't present them as naive, overly trusting or a complete twunt, should my research have given me evidence to hold such views; and I will not kowtow to the tradition of refusing to view certain people critically purely because they are known for being connected to certain things. Needless to say, I intend only to present such views evidentially throughout the narrative through the person's (historically recorded) attitudes and actions, and through the sorts of opinions about them that were recorded as coming from those around them.

So there they are - my three rules for tackling the enormous responsibility of writing about real people with (I hope!) ethics, honesty and rationality. Now I just have to see how well I do...

Trades of the Flesh competition winners

2011-04-01T12:00:00.008+01:00

Well, it's draw day! Thank you so much to everyone who entered - I wish I had more copies to offer, but unfortunately there were only five books to give away, and so here are the results:

The entries.

My lovely assistant Hugo after drawing the first two winners.

And the winners are...

Rhian from Middlesex
Bernd from Elmshorn
Chris from Alabama
Aaron from Michigan
Michelle from Pennsylvania

Thank you once again to everyone who entered, and I apologise to everyone I couldn't send a book to on this occasion. For those of you who did win, I'll be putting your books in the post tomorrow - four of you are overseas, so I'm not sure how long they'll take to arrive from the UK, but I'll get them to you as soon as I can!

Interview on the Dear Author blog

2011-03-23T10:52:00.006Z

I've just been informed that my interview with the Dear Author blog is up, so do check it out if you're thus inclined. I really enjoyed this interview, actually - there were some nice questions in there that made a change from the usual ones, so I'm pleased with how it's come out. Just one quick correction, though: Trades is set in Preston, not London!

*

In completely unrelated news, in my bid to dominate the publishing industry further (ha ha), I recently qualified as a proofreader and copy-editor, which as you can imagine makes me very happy. I did Chapterhouse Publishing's correspondence course, which I highly recommend as both enjoyable and informative, and one day while studying I snapped a photo on my phone of my cat Lucian 'helping'. My friend Dan couldn't resist turning the pic into a LOLcat, so to celebrate my successful exam results, here it is:

Smart Smut anthology

2011-03-19T17:10:00.006Z

In all the fuss of the competition yesterday (by the way, I'm happy to see the entries coming in!), I forgot to mention that on a similarly risqué note, a short story of mine will, in the not-too-distant future, appear in an anthology of erotica. The anthology will be published by a new American imprint called Smart Smut, which aims to publish erotica with a more intellectual bent (which I think is a wonderful idea); and their inaugural publication is to be a collection of stories with a Shakespearean flavour. As soon as I know more details (publication date, price of the book, where to buy etc) I will of course pass on the information to you all.

Five copies of Trades of the Flesh to be won!

2011-03-18T15:23:00.007Z

As those of you who follow me on Twitter will be aware, I recently received a generous pile of copies of the Tor Forge American edition of Trades of the Flesh. So generous, in fact, that they're threatening to take over, and so I have decided to hold a competition to find homes for some of them.

Therefore, it's competition time! I have five copies to give away, which will be signed and dated; but I also plan to make these five a little bit different by writing in each one a different smutty limerick, courtesy of The Pearl, one of the most well-known 'gentlemen's papers' of the period.

To enter, simply comment on this entry with your name and delivery address (in case you win!). I have to approve all comments on this blog, so there won't be a security risk: I will simply note your details without publishing your comment for the world to see. Two weeks from today, an independent third party (well, my parrot Hugo) will pick five winning entries from a receptacle of some description, and if you are one of the winners I will send your book out to you. Only one entry per person, please, and needless to say, if you're of a prudish temperament neither the book nor the Pearl 'Nursery Rhymes' will be your cup of tea!

The competition is now ~~open until 1st April~~ CLOSED!

EDIT: Several people have pointed out that I forgot to mention whether the competition is open to people outside the UK. The answer is yes, it absolutely is - enter away!

Charming.

2011-03-05T16:36:00.002Z

Writers, you know how you sometimes have those peevish moments when you're in a bookshop and they've got the publication of some obnoxious person (the ghostwritten 'autobiography' of a revolting reality TV celebrity; anything by Jeremy Clarkson* etc), but they don't have your book in stock? Annoying, isn't it?

Well, today in Waterstone's in Wigan I think I found the definitive example of that - they had two copies of Mein Kampf in! Two copies! There's no justice in the book retail trade.

And yes, I know they're there for historians to use as reference. My indignation here is comic license.

* Which reminds me of a joke, actually: did you know that the new dictionary definition of the word countryside is the act of assassinating Jeremy Clarkson? Boomboomtish.

Transatlantic twins

2011-02-15T11:56:00.001Z

I've just seen the cover for the US edition of Trades of the Flesh, and as you can see, it's very similar to its British predecessor!

Above: the UK paperback from Macmillan New Writing. Below: the US edition from Tor Forge.

This is the first time I've seen the cover for a foreign edition of one of my books - exciting stuff.

Twitter competition

2011-02-15T10:08:00.005Z

Twitter users - Cassie, my publicist at Tor, is holding a competition to win an ARC of the US edition of Trades. Click the pic to go to the relevant tweet:

If desired, I'll add something extra to the prize - a signed bookplate. If you win, tell Cassie to pass on your address and I'll send one separately.

Obligatory Valentine post

2011-02-14T10:39:00.002Z

Alchemy

Because of the light of the moon,
Silver is found on the moor;
And because of the light of the sun,
There is gold on the walls of the poor.

Because of the light of the stars,
Planets are found in the stream;
And because of the light of your eyes
There is love in the depths of my dream.

(Francis Carlin)

No, this isn't addressed to anyone - it just seemed like a good opportunity to post a small example of the wealth of romantic Victoriana out there.

1890 Yourself

2011-01-28T14:34:00.002Z

How cool is this?!?!

Of course, that obviously couldn't be me. I'd never wear that much white.

My thoughts on my new Kindle.

2011-01-04T19:57:00.012Z

This is Stanton. I got him for Xmas; and yes, he is a he and yes, I did name him. Ask Quincey the laptop and Cornelius the phone if you don't believe me. Having had a few days to play with him (OK, I admit that sounded a bit iffy), I've composed a few thoughts on the pros and cons of e-readers (or rather, this particular model of e-reader - the Amazon Kindle 3 Wi-Fi - as I haven't had experience with any others) as I see them.

Like many writer/bibliophiles I've observed, I resisted the idea for quite some time, although I couldn't have given you any definite reasons why. Something about them just made me feel uneasy, although then again, that's pretty much par for the course with me as far as new technology's concerned. I used audio cassettes for quite some time after the CD era commenced, and I was convinced DVDs would never catch on. There were, of course, some misgivings I could have named - primarily aesthetic ones - and I was wary about allowing a pastime such as reading to become battery-dependent. Still, I couldn't help but notice, as an increasing number of my friends gave in and got themselves Kindleified, that they all seemed to love them; and even my fellow writers and/or bibliophiles admitted that they liked them more than they'd expected to. My curiosity piqued, I decided I wanted one, and got it for Xmas. Sure enough, I've become one of those liked-it-more-than-I-thought-I-would people.

So, what are my thoughts?

Pros

A huge amount of reading matter can be kept in a ridiculously small, light and slender device. I don't know about you, but I'm one of those people who has to have a book with me at all times, and I doubt the relevant medical authorities would approve if I attempted to carry the OED; Roget's Thesaurus; Writers' Market; Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management and the complete works of Wilde, Poe and the Brontes all at the same time, but I can do that on the Kindle and take up no more space than I would with a single slim paperback. The closest comparison I can find on my bookshelf, size-wise, is a paperback copy of The Crucible: the naked Kindle is more or less the same size, although I do use a case now - more on that in a second. And of course, even if you're reading a lengthy book, you don't have to hold anything heavy while doing so.

If you've never seen a screen display with electronic ink, you can't appreciate how uncanny it is. Quite apart from the optical and ergonomic benefits to reading on the Kindle's screen as opposed to, say, a smartphone or tablet (and those benefits are considerable - look 'em up), after actually seeing a book's pages on a Kindle, my conviction that e-readers are aesthetically much worse has taken a beating, at least as far as the inside of a book is concerned. I don't at this point have any illustrated books on there, but the Kindle displays a range of black-and-white screensavers when it's at rest, and once again it captures them beautifully. Some of them are gorgeous, too - you can see the portraits of Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte and Virginia Woolf in this post (I know the photo of the Bronte one's terrible, but trust me - the screensaver's lovely); and there's one with birds and one that looks like a page from an illuminated manuscript. That goes at least some way towards redressing some of the aesthetic concerns.

You can add and remove bookmarks (although a book will always default to the last page you read upon reopening even if you forgot to bookmark it), search within the book (obviously invaluable for dictionaries and thesauruses, and comes in handy in other non-fiction and indeed fiction, too), and add removable highlights and annotations, which are particularly good if, like me, you're wary of marking paper books. As well as being saved in the book itself, your bookmarks, highlights and annotations from all your books are saved together in a folder on the Kindle's home screen (My Clippings) if you want to access them quickly.

The Kindle comes with two Oxford Dictionaries already loaded onto it - a British one and an American one. As well as being useful in themselves, if you're reading and come across a word you want defined, you can click to it and the default dictionary will give you a little banner with the word's definition without leaving the book. Be warned, though, Brits: for some reason the default dictionary is pre-set as the American one even in Kindles sold in the UK, with UK plugs for the power adapter and everything, so you have to change it if you want it to default to the British one (from the home screen, Menu-Settings-Menu-Change Primary Dictionary).

You can create 'collections' - essentially, folders into which you can sort all your books so you don't have a socking great list on your home screen. Mine are pretty self-explanatory - Fiction, Non-Fiction, Classics, Research; that type of thing - but you can get as intricate and obscure as you like.

It's easier to read one-handed (like if you're eating, you grubby-minded buggers), as you don't have to hold it open or fumble with pages (there are buttons on the sides for paging back and forward).

The third generation Kindle is, in my humble opinion, much better-looking than its predecessors. I mean, I never really find gadgets attractive per se, but gadgets that are white (as the Kindles were in previous generations) just look cheap and plasticky to me (I think it comes from being old enough to remember those big-and-ugly early laptops, which were so often white); and of course white gets grubby sooner. The new charcoal colour is so much nicer. The aim when designing the Kindle 3 was apparently to make it 'disappear in your hands', the way a book does (you become lost in what you're reading and don't consciously 'see' the paper etc), and I find the K3 does do that. And if you want it to look more like a book, there are cases that can achieve that (while protecting the device).

Battery life and charging speed are both great. Full charge is achieved quite quickly, and you don't have to recharge for a while (indeed, you're advised not to top up the battery daily if you want to get the best out of said battery).

Less paper is required for an e-book (or rather, no paper), and e-books don't have to be transported in lorries or stored in warehouses, so that improves their green rating.

You can download sample chapters if you want to preview a book, which has two handy functions: first, the obvious (you can get an idea of whether you want to buy it); but I also use sample chapters as a shopping list; visual reminders of books I plan to buy in the future.

Near-instant delivery of books (under a minute from clicking the 'buy' button, even for huge lummoxes of books!); and the prices of most of them are brilliant. A load of out-of-copyright stuff (quick reminder: to work out whether a book is in copyright or not, go from the end of the calendar year in which the author snuffed it and add 70 years) is completely free (or stupidly cheap: my complete works of Wilde, Poe and the Brontes were 75p, 69p and £1.28 respectively, and you can download individual works by these authors for nowt). For those authors who are still alive, prices are usually still very competitive: to state a well-known example, We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (lovelovelove that book) is £3.20. You do still find the odd e-book that doesn't seem to be much cheaper than a paper book, or occasionally one that's outright expensive, but on the whole Kindle books are cheaper.

Customer services, should you need to contact them, are friendly and helpful. You can either email them through the Amazon website, phone them, or get them to phone you - and when they offer you the opportunity to have them phone you now, they do mean now, not when they get around to it. Chances are, though, the Kindle support section on Amazon will answer your question without you having to contact anyone directly.

It doesn't go into landscape mode automatically when you tilt the device. This is something that really bugs me with my phone, and I imagine it would be even worse in an e-reader, especially if reading in bed. You have to enable landscape reading deliberately, although I haven't needed to.

The wireless internet connection works quickly and efficiently; it clicks on and off. (Best keep it off when not downloading content or browsing the e-book store, though - it'll prolong battery life even further.)

If you want to read PDFs or word processor docs on your Kindle, you can: you get a dedicated email address to which you email anything like that. When you next wake your Kindle and switch on wireless, anything emailed to your Kindle email address will appear on your home screen.

The packaging is all cardboard - no plastic or polystyrene! I'm a hippie, these things matter to me.

Cons

The name! I really hate the name; in fact, I try to avoid calling Stanton a Kindle whenever I can - obviously, in a blog post dedicated to discussing Kindles as a species that would be a bit daft, but generally speaking I don't like using that word to describe an e-reader. Why? Well, apart from finding the connection implied by one of the K3's screensavers (featuring waffle about sparking - or 'kindling' - inspiration and imagination etc) tenuous at best; I think the most obvious association between books and the word kindle is one of book-burning. Don't like the name at all.

Despite being (I repeat, in my view) the best-looking Kindle model thus far, let's face it - no gadget is as attractive as most books. There isn't the same texture (a satiny paperback cover, the grain or weave of a hardback, the weight of paper); or that vaguely vanilla-esque 'new book' smell (and apparently I'm not the only one who feels that way!). And I can't see the same appeal in a room whose walls are lined with shelves thick with e-readers, somehow...

Ultimately, the Kindle is battery-dependent, which of course has its own limitations. As I've said, the battery life is excellent, so with half-competent management of your charging and use schedule it shouldn't pose too much of a problem, but still - paper books don't need batteries, do they? Gadgets seem more vulnerable, too (paper books can't have software failures, either; and although it wouldn't be desirable to drop either a book or a Kindle in the bath, I'm guessing the Kindle would come off worse).

Almost too slender! It's just such a dainty little thing, it felt so slight and vulnerable in my hands before my case arrived. Cases do remedy this, though, as well as protecting it and - in some cases - making it look more book-like. My case is a book-style affair in purple faux leather, and Stanton now feels less precarious in my hands. If the Kindle itself were thicker, then it would be even thicker once a case had been added, so on balance I think it's better as it is, but if you do feel more comfortable holding it in a case, you're not alone.

You can't read in poor light any more than you can with a paper book - although it does make it better for you (see the point about e-ink).

Some of the screensavers are ugly (or rather, they feature pictures of some rather unfortunate-looking authors; and I'm not too struck on the one with the Kindle logo either). You can't opt to use a completely custom screensaver image (well, it is doable, but it involves using a hack that may void your warranty), but I don't think that would even be necessary for most people if you could choose to use one (or a few) of the existing ones, so only the ones you like appear. Yes, that's a fiddly little request, but this is the sort of thing that leads to devices and software being improved.

Not everything is available in Kindle format (yet; although Amazon say this is their eventual aim). I'm gagging to add Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (one of my favourite historical novels) to my Kindle library, and although two of my favourite books on writing are available for the Kindle, Bullies, Bastards & Bitches isn't yet, which is annoying. And the Historical Thesaurus of the OED would be lovely, too. (She said hopefully...) You can, however, request a Kindle format of a book by visiting the book's page on Amazon and clicking the relevant link under the cover art pic on the top left. The requests are passed on to the publisher - you just have to hope they're feeling obliging!

Not everything would suit the Kindle format, for that matter. The electronic ink display is black and white, and therefore anything that relies on colour (books of artwork or photography spring to mind) would be compromised. But such books are a minority, after all.

Despite having two dictionaries pre-loaded onto it, the Kindle doesn't come with an inbuilt thesaurus. You can pick up Roget's from 74p, so it's not an insurmountable or expensive problem, but still, I'm surprised Amazon didn't think of it.

Despite being able to add Kindle books to your Amazon wishlist, you can't actually receive them as gifts from anyone (bluh?). They could give you Amazon vouchers to spend on what you want, though, and the wishlist could form a shopping list, I suppose; albeit a shopping list everyone with access to your wishlist can see, if such things concern you.

Be careful not to buy books by mistake! The buying system on the Kindle store is one-click, and the cursor on a newly-loaded book page in the store is automatically hovering over the 'buy' button: hit return or the centre of the five-way buttons by mistake and you've bought the book! The next page that loads will include a link to cancel such purchases, but hit the thing bloody sharpish - as I said, the delivery time is lightning-fast.

If you like it, you may feel like a bit of a traitor.

So, my conclusions? As a whole, I've been surprised by how much I've loved it, and I'm definitely not regretting my decision. It isn't perfect - but what is? - and it will never completely replace paper books for me, but I can see it playing a much larger part in my reading life than I ever did before. E-books look set to become a key development in the future of publishing, which in itself needn't be a big problem for authors - musicians are doing fine AiT (Anno iTunes), after all.

In summary - thumbs up!

Stick it in your orifice of choice in a suitably tasteless manner.

2010-12-01T12:24:00.001Z

This is an excellent rebuttal of the the censorship-and-stifling-of-creativity-dressed-up-as-humorous-literary-concern that is the Bad Sex Awards. I've been very uncomfortable with the concept of the BSA for a long time, as you probably know if you follow me on Twitter and/or Tumblr. The Bad Sex Awards appear to take little account of the context of a 'bad' sex scene (if the sex being described seems less than stellar, or the character doing the describing does so in an off-putting manner, might that not tell us something about the character/s and/or what's happening to them, rather than automatically being grounds to point and sneer at the author?); and it raises all the usual points about the sort of people who spend their lives knocking down others' efforts instead of actually doing something worthwhile themselves:

Particularly worryingly, suggestions have begun to surface that it might be better to tone down or omit your sex scenes in order to avoid attention from the likes of the BSA committee - and that's what I meant by censorship and stifling. I think that's tragic - makes me want to play Prince Charming at top volume:

"Ridicule is nothing to be scared of..."

My other concerns with the Bad Sex Awards are summed up beautifully in these extracts from the article I linked at the top of this post (which is definitely worth reading in detail):

In the words of its founder, Auberon Waugh, the “prize” is for “redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel” – a perfectly reasonable notion in itself but one that seems to have become confused. What exactly is “redundant”? It seems to me that anything that grapples head on with the sexual act can be considered so.

And this leads to a wider concern of mine: prudishness. There is something peculiarly and pitiably British about tittering along in the audience at the Bad Sex awards as hammed up actors make a mockery of earnest authors’ attempts to render the mystique of the sexual experience. Certainly, it’s a laugh. And granted, bad sex in fiction lends itself to parody and hilarity more than the depiction of most other parts of life. But I think this says as much about readers as it does about writers. After all, shouldn’t sex be a part of fiction just as much as it is a part of life?

In a sense, my question is: what is good sex in fiction as opposed to mere pornography? (Which also leads me to ask: does good fiction suddenly stop becoming good if it’s arousing?)

I've said it before and I'll say it again - ALL fiction is gratuitous, so why clutch our pearls over one element of it in particular? Sheer bloody prudishness. I suggest that any future winners of the BSA should publicly rejoice, because their winning proves that they were not cowed into giving their work a Puritan makeover; nor intimidated by those who style themselves as authorities on what constitutes 'good' art. One thing you do need for good sex (metaphorically and in some cases literally) is balls.

The shape of things to come...

2010-11-18T12:07:00.004Z

The thing about me is that you can usually get a good idea of what I've been up to from the markings on my flesh.

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on. `And how do you know that you're mad?'
`To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'
`I suppose so,' said Alice.
`Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'
(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865)

As was the case with the Lady of Shalott tattoo on my right arm, this was beautifully done by Iain Clark at Aurora Tattoo in Lancaster, and photographed quite appallingly by me (it isn't easy to take a picture of your own arm with a mobile phone, so I had to take one upside-down and rotate it). It's still pink and puffy, but you get the idea. I feel a bit less lopsided now!

Round robin: why I gravitated towards the Victorian era.

2010-11-08T14:22:00.002Z

There's a round robin happening on the MNW blog at the moment in which we're asking each other questions, and I just posted my answers to Tim Stretton's questions, and posed my own questions for Alis Hawkins. Tim asked me why I chose to write about the Victorians and whether I can see myself writing about any other time periods, so do pop along and check that out.

Influential writers part one.

2010-10-29T15:12:00.000+01:00

There's a meme going round on Facebook at the moment asking people to list fifteen writers that influenced them in fifteen minutes, and it got me thinking so I decided to make a similar post here. This will take me longer than fifteen minutes to write as I want to go into a bit more detail and include quotes, and I'm only doing ten writers instead of fifteen; partly so I can go into more detail, but also to avoid repetition of similar reasons for their influence on me, so while this won't be an exhaustive list of my influences, I hope it gets under the bonnet of them a bit more. I'm including writers of plays, comedy and scripts, too - I tend to find that people expect a novelist's influences to consist solely of other novelists, which most certainly isn't true in my case. I count influences in all the arts, and a few scientific ones too, and I most certainly wouldn't be the writer I am without them. So, in no order, here are five writers who have influenced me (the other five will follow in a separate entry so I can post this before it becomes totally stale)...

1) Oscar Wilde. Of course, I wouldn't dare compare my writing to dear Oscar's, but we're talking influences here, and the first time I sat down and really read a piece of his (De Profundis), I was blown away by it. I think it's easy for people, regardless of the time they live in, to stereotype our ancestors and see them not so much as people but as nondescripts in funny clothes; like background figures in a painting or a period drama, who weren't so much individuals as carbon copies of our mental image of the zeitgeist at the time they lives (ALL Victorians were sex-hating prudes, don't you know!), and I defy anyone to continue to hold such a view after reading that essay. The humanity and modernity of Wilde's voice is achingly evident, and the way in which he writes about the torments he suffered following his conviction and imprisonment grabs you by the collar and forces you to see Wilde the human being, rather than just Wilde the legendary, impeccably-attired wit. It's something that stayed with me, and something I try to capture in my own work: the fact that the Victorians were as individual as you or I, and that they had feelings too. That sounds so obvious when worded that bluntly, but I really do think that plenty of people don't really see that, on a deep, subconscious level.

On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob.

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.

Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal, I was in the pillory. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should have known also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. It were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
(De Profundis)

2) Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This is mainly because of The Lady of Shalott (and you all know how much I love that poem); which I first encountered when I was a teenager and off school with the flu and it was read on one of those BBC for schools programmes (do they still do those?). For various personal reasons, it's a poem that means a great deal to me, although for a long time I fought its influence on my own work because I didn't want to 'cut too close to the bone' of my own emotions, as hearing The Lady of Shalott for the first time had done to me, largely because I'm not good with emotions and therefore am a bit scared of them. But I came to accept that in order to get the best out of one's Muse, one sometimes has to be willing to follow it into some uncomfortable, stony-grounded places, and that there is something to be gained from doing so.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
(The Lady of Shalott)

3) Victoria Wood. I've been watching her comedy since I was a child (I've been watching a lot of comedy since I was a child; my parents trusted me with Blackadder and Billy Connolly and the like from a relatively early age, for which I am immensely grateful as I don't know who I would have become if I hadn't been able to cultivate a sense of dark humour before I hit my teens), and I could just as easily have included quite a few other stand-ups, comic actors and writers of comedy, but I chose to include Victoria Wood on this list as I do see her influence in my own work, as different as out ultimate outcomes are. I don't blame you if you can't see it, but I know it's there, at a skeletal level where it probably isn't as visible once the flesh has been laid over the bones. It has often been said that Victoria Wood is often unfairly pigeonholed as a 'northern comedian', when she is in fact just a comedian who happens to come from the north; and that's something I can relate to. Ultimately, it wouldn't be a point for discussion if Ms Wood and/or I just happened to come from Cricklewood, and so in a sense I find it a bit baffling when someone's regional roots are discussed in the context of their work (a northern solicitor/dental hygienist/admin worker?), but then I can also understand it when, as is the case with both Victoria Wood and myself, the writer does choose to write about the areas they grew up in with characters who speak in the local dialect. What can I tell you - for obvious reasons it comes naturally, and I don't see any reason not to. I never really thought about it much as a kid, but later as I realised the relatively smaller proportion of fiction/plays/films/TV/sketches etc set in the north, Victoria Wood's example did prove to me that this didn't have to be the case. In a recent documentary on Wood's work, Celia Imrie also remarked on a 'musical' quality to the choice of her words; something in the rhythm of Wood's sentences, and that's something I also like to do.

(Live at the Albert, 2001. The part on horror films is genius.)

4) Kim Wilkins. I've mentioned Kim before, and everything I said in that entry still holds true, so there's little point in me going over it again now. I think it was reading her work that really gave me the shove and got me to actually write a novel of my own (as opposed to meaning to get around to it one day), so you can all blame her.

I came to London to write and found myself practising magic instead. I suppose they're not so very dissimilar if you think about it - there are words in magic, just as there is magic in words. So be warned. There are a lot of words in this book.
(Angel of Ruin, published as Fallen Angel in the UK, and home of my favourite ever plot twist)

5) Stephen King. Like most writers, I do of course love The Shining - there's something in the idea of a demented author that a worrying number of us seem to relate to, and I actually have a mug that I think is far better than those ones with the word WRITER emblazoned on them; it's got an axe-wielding ant on it with the slogan Here's Johnny!. (Of course, in the book Jack Torrance goes after his family with a croquet mallet not an axe - the axe came from the Kubrick film adaptation, as did the line "here's Johnny", which Jack Nicholson just happened to ad lib on the take they eventually used. Anyway, I got the mug from B&M Bargains if you want one.) But, like King himself, I don't think that The Shining, as good as it is, is his scariest novel - I'm with King in my conviction that his most bone-chilling work to date is Pet Sematary. If you've never read it, or if you've just seen the film adaptation, you probably won't understand why - on the surface, it doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would lead perhaps the most famous horror writer of our time to pen a foreword confessing that he actually put the manuscript away in a drawer for a while because he thought he'd gone too far. But read it, and I think you're likely to understand. This is a novel about perhaps our most primal fear - that of death - and everything that goes with it: the visceral revulsion of decomposition; the eeriness of a stiff, cold body and how different they look from the individual you knew; the crushing weight of grief. That book can reliably scare the hell out of me every time I read it, and that's no mean feat; but it's also achingly sad, and if you've ever lost someone you love, I think the scene detailing the protagonist's inner thoughts as he attends the funeral of his toddler son will be quite a taxing read. But hey, writers are masochists - we have to be.

Louis was told how merciful it was that Gage hadn't suffered thirty-two times by his own inner count. He was told that God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform twenty-five times. Bringing up the rear was 'he's with the angels now': a total of twelve times.
(Pet Sematary)

Stay tuned for part two!

We have a US publication date!

2010-10-14T15:45:00.002+01:00

I've just been having an email conversation with Cassie at Tor, and can now confirm that - all going according to plan - the US edition of Trades of the Flesh will be published on the Forge imprint on 1st March 2011. Alterations to US spelling aside, it will be the same text as in the UK, and it may have the same cover too. I'll be doing a blog tour to promote the book when it comes out, too - will let you all know when and where the 'gigs' are.

I'll let you all know if I have any more news or if anything changes.

The nine-year-old me.

2010-10-13T16:21:00.002+01:00

Just having a clearout and found one of my old school reports, dating from 1989, making me nine at the time. Presented for your amusement:

...

General Comments
Faye is a very pleasant, quiet girl who has grown in self-confidence this year. She is settled in class and is a pleasure to teach. Her work is well organised, planned and presented.

Language
Faye's written work reflects thought and imagination. Much of her work reveals great sensitivity and is beautifully composed. Faye reads extensively and enjoys books. Her spelling is good. Faye still needs encouraging to contribute more in discussion work.

Mathematics
Faye continues to try hard with mathematics, but she does not always find the work easy so she must continue to work at this subject.

Other Curriculum Areas
Faye enjoys science and her written reports are accurate and balanced. Faye has enjoyed the sewing in art and this term has had a more positive approach towards her own ability.

Attitude
Faye is an industrious and diligent worker. Her application is very good, as is her imagination. Faye's work is of a consistently high standard.

...

My high school reports were funnier - my PE teachers made me sound like a performing seal ("Can master simple tasks"), and I once got an art report that made much of the amount of time I took to make a cardboard model of a house ("FAR too long!"), but I tend to destroy anything connected with school, so they're probably long gone. And now, this report will join them...

And yes, I gave her that surname for a reason*.

2010-09-18T18:33:00.001+01:00

Text message I just received from my friend Jen:

I've just discovered that in the ladies' loo at the Lyric bar in Soho (which is one of those pubs that has obviously been a boozer for centuries) there's just one piece of graffiti and it reads "Ketch is a cunt". I am so tempted to leave a message asking "Jack or Lydia?".

* In keeping with the book's title, I wanted to give Lydia the surname of a famous practitioner of another 'trade of the flesh'. The abbess Kathleen has a flesh-trade surname as well (Tanner).

Bloody cheek.

2010-09-17T19:27:00.001+01:00

Religion is marginalised, says Pope.

So let me get this straight, Ratz. You're here on a state-funded visit, despite the fact that you are neither necessary nor relevant to the majority of Brits; your overpriced vehicle is exempt from congestion charges; you have police guards; you've had an audience with our heads of state; you have not been arrested for your complicity in the sex offence coverup scandal (and I suspect will not be); you feel free to insult us while you're here...and you can claim to be marginalised and keep a straight face?! Riiiiiiight.

Character sketches in song.

2010-09-15T12:51:00.001+01:00

As is perhaps inevitable, one of my particular loves in music is when the songwriter sings about or from the point of view of someone else - a real person past or present, a character from literature or one of their own devising - and now that my own characters have been packed off to introduce themselves properly to the agent, I have a few minutes to post a small selection of my favourite character sketch songs in here.

Queen Adreena - Pretty Polly. This is based on an old folk song.

Emilie Autumn - Marry Me. This character is, I suspect, ultimately one of Miss Autumn's own creation, but I see a lot of Henry VIII's fifth wife Katherine Howard in the basic story. It's also a wickedly funny song.

The Dresden Dolls - Missed Me. A dark one, this, but again a brilliant example of the character sketch. This is the sort of dysfunctional trope-inverting character I can imagine appearing in an Alan Bennett monologue (reading Talking Heads for English A Level was a major influence on my love of strange characters).

REM - Tongue. Incidentally, the reason Michael Stipe sings this in a higher key than he usually sings is because the character this song is about is female.

Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat
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Nick Cave - The Mercy Seat. Cave is very good at these rather extreme Southern Gothic characters, and this condemned criminal in the electric chair is a classic example.

Emilie Autumn - Shalott. It's pretty obvious which character and story this is taken from.

Emilie Autumn - Mad Girl. Ditto!

PJ Harvey - Angelene. My favourite PJ song.

REM - Daysleeper. There's something so mournful and sad about this.

The Curse of Millhaven by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

smokeyjoe | MySpace Video
Nick Cave - The Curse of Millhaven. I think this may be the definitive fucked-up character sketch song! Such a brilliantly accurate picture of a sociopath.

Finished!

2010-09-03T15:26:00.001+01:00

Flopping onto keyboard shall now commence.

Just a quickie. (As the bodiceripper said to the...)

2010-08-27T18:32:00.004+01:00

Breaking radio silence briefly to share these photos of the candle holder I use when writing. (I have to have a tealight burning in a particular holder. Why? Because, that's why.)

Saltstone candle thingy. It was an Xmas pressie from the bro.

After use. As you can see, it gets used a lot...

Proper content to follow.

2010-08-24T19:39:00.003+01:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that I'm in the final stages of writing the first draft of my behemoth of a WIP, so I don't have much mental energy for blogging at the mo. I am keeping up with Twitter and Tumblr as not much thought is required, but rather than fill your blog reading lists with fluff I'll finish the WIP and then get back to you when I've finished and replaced a few brain fuses.

For now, here's the recipe for one of my favourite writing session brainfoods. (I usually halve the sugar as it's a bit sickly with the sweet jam as well otherwise.) See you when I've overloaded my hard drive!

Surely this woman must be one of my ancestors?

2010-08-22T19:46:00.002+01:00

The Alot.

2010-08-22T12:25:00.001+01:00

Errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar bug me, one of many being the tendency of some people to write "a lot" as one word ("alot"). The other day, though, my friend Dan pointed me in the direction of this rather glorious piece explaining what people really mean when they speak of Alots. For the first time, Alot makes sense. You can picture that as an Alot writing a formula on a blackboard.

My Dewey Decimal code (meme)

2010-08-18T17:56:00.001+01:00

Faye L. Booth's Dewey Decimal Section:

002 The book

Class:
000 Computer Science, Information & General Works

Contains:
Encyclopedias, magazines, journals and books with quotations.

What it says about you:
You are very informative and up to date. You're working on living in the here and now, not the past. You go through a lot of changes. When you make a decision you can be very sure of yourself, maybe even stubborn, but your friends appreciate your honesty and resolve.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Literally pantswetting. Wait...

2010-08-16T21:21:00.001+01:00

As has been reported previously in these pages, I'm a huge fan of misuses of the word literally (my literal brain at work, methinks), and the other day I found a book of cartoons by Stephen Appleby called Literally Laugh Your Head Off, with illustrations based on genuine examples of misuse of the word in the media. The book's well worth checking out, but here are a small selection of my favourites:

* Space Station Mir is literally a few tin cans joined together.
(Space correspondent for BBC Five Live. That's budgeting for you.)

* In the regiments of the United States Colored Troops, to which he had literally given birth, there was no doubt Lincoln sat at the head of the table.
(From a biography of Lincoln. I particularly like Appleby's cartoon for this: a man with a beard and a stovepipe hat with a regiment of tiny soldiers marching out from between his legs.)

* I saw journalists becoming animals, literally.
(US politician Gary Hart, in the wake of a media storm over his private life. Maybe JK Rowling was onto something with Rita Skeeter and her ability to shapeshift into a cockroach.)

* I literally devoured this book.
(An Amazon review, presumably from a somewhat dyspeptic reader.)

* These triple jumpers are literally human kangaroos.
(BBC commentary on the 2006 European Championships.)

* When Andre Agassi meets a qualifier, he tends to literally steamroller them.
(BBC Radio Five Live tennis correspondent. Not very sporting, Andre.)

* The viewer literally becomes a meerkat.
(Mischievous Meerkats on the Discovery Channel. I gotta try this.)

* The fans in Japan literally inhale Michael Jackson.
(Chicago Sun Times. That's one decadent habit.)

*[Cristiano Ronaldo]'s literally had two big men up his backside for 90 minutes.
(Sky Sports)

* Liverpool have literally come back from the grave.
(BBC sports news. UEFA Champions League Final meets Night of the Living Dead.)

New look!

2010-08-14T20:04:00.003+01:00

Decided the site needed a new look, so fayelbooth.co.uk has now had a mad makeover. It would be a bit embarrassing if I told you just how much thought I put into selecting the new graphics, but it now looks a bit like the inside of my head, reflects the mood of my writing (I hope), and that girl on the right of the background looks quite a bit like the main character in the WIP. So I suppose that'll do, then.

Cabinet of Curiosities

2010-07-16T12:43:00.003+01:00

As those of you who follow my Twitter feed will probably know by now, I recently set up a Tumblr account, which I am using as a virtual scrapbook of sorts; a place to post the many (mostly 19th/turn of 20th C-related) things that capture my attention and which didn't seem to warrant blog entries of their own. Pictures, quotes, links, videos - like the cabinets of curiosities my Tumblr page is named for, it's a jumble of all sorts of oddities, and by giving them a page of their own, I don't need to exhaust my blog readers with my pretty regular Tumblr posting. If you want to see my scrapbook, click away!

My writing, now available on Mr Jobs' Astoundingly Modern Technological Devices.

2010-07-05T15:47:00.006+01:00

For those of you who own an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, Cover the Mirrors can now be purchased as a download for £7.99 from the iBooks store (you'll need to download the free iBooks app first), after which you'll be able to read it anywhere on whichever of the three gadgets you have. Isn't technology amazing?

And as it happens, a short story of mine will be available to purchase in the not-too-distant future from another free iPhone/iPad/iTouch app, Ether Reads. I don't know exactly when at this stage as the contracts are only just being sorted out, but I can tell you that this short is a bit of a departure from my usual writing in a sense in that it's a contemporary piece. That isn't the shape of things to come - I am and intend to remain a bodiceripper for the foreseeable future - but this story came from an idea I had a while ago based on one of my favourite poems, and had to write as a 21st century-set piece in order to make it work, so that's how it ended up being the way it is. It was an enjoyable little oddity to write, anyway, and I'll let you know as soon as it's available to download.

My essential history books.

2010-06-22T13:12:00.007+01:00

Writing historical fiction obviously requires quite a bit of research, and so I have amassed quite a number of books on various subjects pertaining to the Victorian era. Some of them apply more to a specific book (the books I read on 19th C Spiritualism for Mirrors, for instance), but others - the ones covering life in general at that time - obviously come in handy no matter what I'm writing about, and so over time have unofficially moved in beside the computer as I reach for them so often. These are they, in no particular order:

The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed
by Judith Flanders
Room by room, this book goes through the middle-class Victorian home and describes the uses for each room, the furniture and equipment found therein, the average usage of amenities such as water etc; as well as the contemporary approaches and attitudes to certain events, such as pregnancy and childbirth, sickness, death and mourning. Fascinating as well as informative, and I particularly like the way Flanders remembers that just because something was possible or advised during the period, it didn't necessarily follow that all or even most people followed that advice - as Flanders points out, only the particularly well-off could afford to buy all the items on one list of 'essential' baby clothes.

The Worm in the Bud: the World of Victorian Sexuality
by Ronald Pearsall
This came in particularly handy for Trades, for obvious reasons, but being a bodiceripper I get a lot of use out of it for other works as well. Examines the differences in the sexual attitudes and practices throughout the class system at the time; contemporary views of women and homosexuality; courtship, marriage and honeymoons; adultery; the reproductive system; venereal disease; prostitution, pornography and BDSM...it's pretty comprehensive, and again an enjoyable read. It doesn't trot out all the old stereotypical myths about covered piano legs either, or pretend that the Victorians' concealment of sex was akin to their being asexual. There's a section on smutty jokes of the period as well, one of which made its way into Trades...

Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazaar, 1867-98
by Stella Blum
As the title suggests, this is a heavily-illustrated guide to 19th C women's clothing. It's not something to be adhered to without deviation, as the clothing shown in fashion magazines was then (as tends to be the case now) at the more upmarket and expensive end of the spectrum of available attire, and therefore you won't get much of an idea of working class clothing from this. Harper's Bazaar is also an American magazine, so strictly speaking it was not a Victorian publication; but the clothing of the middle and upper classes on either side of the Atlantic was very similar, so there's still a lot that's relevant.

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
by Isabella Beeton
There's been a resurgence of books based on this, the Victorian guide to all things domestic, of late, but this complete version is still the best in my opinion for historical fiction research, as it contains a massive amount of straight-from-the-Victorian-housewife's-mouth information on the arrangement and management of a household, domestic servants and their daily work, and a mind-boggling array of recipes from the still-familiar to the dated to the stomach-churningly revolting (I post a selection of the latter category on my Twitter page under the #RevoltingVictorianFood hashtag). If you're ever writing a dinner table scene and need to give your characters something to be eating while they speak, open this book to a random page - problem solved!

Flavours of Lancashire: the Food and Folk of the Old County
by Malcolm Greenhalgh
This isn't strictly 100% Victorian, nor will it apply to the majority of historical novelists, but because so much of my work is set in my home county of Lancashire, I find this a useful add-on to my copy of Mrs Beeton when it comes to feeding my characters if I want to give them something a bit more region-specific; and a lot of these dishes do date from Victorian times or earlier. Pikelets, Goosnargh Cakes, Manchester Tart, Lancashire Hot Pot - slipping these in here and there just adds a little more local flavour to a piece and brings the setting to life.

A Dictionary of Historical Slang
edited by Eric Partridge
Pretty obvious what this is, really - a dictionary of British slang, some of it still in use and some long forgotten, giving definitions of each term and dating it back to its first recorded appearance. Absolutely indispensable for correcting your own anachronisms and confirming that other words and expressions are perfectly fine to use; and it's a nice thick book so it's also handy for thwapping people around the head when they puff up their chests and try to tell you that the British went straight from prithee and forsooth to LOL and FYI, and so your Victorian characters couldn't possibly have called someone an arsehole, say. (Disclaimer: Joke. Obviously.)

No really, that has always been my happy face.

2010-06-18T18:05:00.005+01:00

Frances Garrood just posted a pic of her granddaughters dressed as Victorian kids (Victorian boys, interestingly), which reminded me to post my own childhood 19th C fancy dress photo. That's me aged about ten or so with the bro, dressed for the school Victorian Day. Yes, I'm on my way to school, hence the tragic Victorian urchin expression. Essentially, the day was spent in a timewarp: terrifyingly strict teachers, the three Rs, time-appropriate toys at playtime etc. To be honest, I think the idea was to show us how good we had it by comparison. I dunno myself - schools are schools, whichever way you look at it. Mum whipped up the outfits, and didn't she do well? I don't think she'd fancy trying to come up with period clothing for me now, though.

It ain't necessarily crap.

2010-06-16T12:19:00.002+01:00

You know how it goes: you're writing a scene, and it just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. You feel as if you're swimming through mud, the words are inching their way onto the page or screen with a lot of thumb-twiddling and gazing around in between, and slowly the dread begins to seize you, and you become convinced that what you're (gradually) writing that day just isn't that good.

Not necessarily.

Having had that panic many, many times myself (and I'm sure it's not finished with me yet), and then later going back over what I wrote during those attacks of the vapours, I'm not entirely convinced that just because a writing session feels clunky and out of 'the zone', it inevitably follows that this is the case, or that it will show in what you've written. So why does it feel that way? The following is a list of some of the possible causes I have observed in myself and/or others, and I'm sure there are more, but this should get you started:

You're writing connective stuff
Sometimes, at least some of the progression from A to B has to be shown in fiction, otherwise point B doesn't make sense. This means that you're going to have to find a way to bridge the gap between the juicy scene at point A and the one at point B, and sandwiched in between those two more interesting parts of the story, the connecting bridge is going to seem less glamorous and sexy by comparison. That's OK - no form of art is breath-baitingly gripping in absolutely every minuscule detail: all films have scenes that are more tense and iconic than some of the others in the same film; all pieces of music have their less distinctive parts versus the parts you can recognise upon hearing them hummed; all paintings have their more obscure details - a blade of grass, the weave of a blanket, somebody's toenail. That doesn't mean that you can't - nay, shouldn't - do everything you can to make the necessary connective stuff interesting to read (you don't want your reader falling asleep, after all), but try not to worry too much if you find yourself longing to get onto the next bit. That's only natural - you know about the next juicy bit that's coming, and you're bound to eagerly anticipate writing it, which is distracting you from the task in hand. Just don't let it distract you altogether - acknowledge it, press on with what you're doing, and you'll get there soon enough. And when you come to read back over what you've done, the connective stuff probably won't seem as bad as it felt when you were writing it.

You're writing chess moves
A close cousin of the connective material, this is the equally necessary and often equally mundane task of positioning everyone where they need to be, whether on a large scale (Miss Protagonist leaving her home in Newcastle to study at Oxford) or on a small scale (Mr Totty walking past her desk in the library at exactly the right moment to get his pants doused with the hot vending machine coffee she smuggled in and knocked over in her sleep-deprived state while reaching for a highlighter pen). Again, this sort of stuff tends to feel smoother to read than to write, unless you do play chess or are an experienced choreographer. It feels as if it's taking longer than it probably is.

That's the point
If your character is frustrated and bored, you can't really relay that properly if you try to make them waiting for a bus, say, into an exciting interlude. Again, let it be what it is, but just don't let it go on too long. Summary is your friend in cases like this. The same goes for scenes that are by their very nature awkward - if two characters are having one of those awful, tense conversations that are really stilted and on the surface dull ("So, Susan tells me you're a doctor and a celebrated artist? Very impressive. I've always been interested in art myself...") because there's some big rivalry going on between the lines that they're trying to mask with unconvincing politeness and small talk, I usually find it as excruciating to write as to witness in real life.

This is just the rehearsal
In the film Shakespeare in Love, the title character advises an actor rehearsing Romeo's lines against putting too much emotion into Romeo's description of Rosaline, saying that "we're talking about a baggage [the audience] never even meet", and that the true feeling should be saved for when Romeo meets Juliet - his real romantic focus in the play. In the same way, because you too know what's yet to come for your characters, you may well feel a certain degree of detachment when describing their earlier exploits. To use the example of lovers once more, I wasn't really into it when I was writing the sexual scenes between Molly and Eddie in Mirrors; partly because Eddie's a silly little boy (the classic 'first boyfriend you grow out of and later wonder what you were thinking' figure), but also because I knew William was coming. Much more fun.

The subject matter in hand is traumatic (for them)
For some writers, including me, the experience of channelling one's characters and recording their experiences can be so real that the characters begin to feel like real people telling you what happened to them. If what happened to them was sufficiently unpleasant (I have more than once felt like a counsellor or a police constable), they may describe it in fits and starts, as real people under strain often do. I am fully aware that sounds absurd and flaky to those of you who've never had that sort of experience, but hopefully those of you who have will recognise what I'm saying.

The subject matter is traumatic (for you)
Likewise, some may struggle when writing something that cuts close to the bone as far as their own unpleasant memories go. I'm not one of them (anything unpleasant I can relate to often flows more easily, I find - my Muse is a bit of a sadist), but you may well be, and you're probably more normal than I am.

Your rituals have been interrupted
You know - you have to banish everything and everyone making a noise from the vicinity, settle down with a drink and a scented candle burning in a particular holder, with your keys nearby so you can save the day's progress on a USB stick when you're done, and your diary so you can jot down ideas for parts of the story you haven't come to yet and don't want to forget by the time you do, and lip balm because you don't seem to be able to go more than ten minutes without the stuff and don't want to have to get up to look for it...if any of that's interfered with, it's bound to be difficult to really lose yourself in what you're doing. Or is that just me?

You're worrying about things you shouldn't be worrying about right now
It could be something unrelated to the task in hand (you got a parking ticket yesterday when you went to meet your partner, and when you got there it turned out they were dumping you) or something related (your first draft is already huge and there's still a way to go, and you don't know whether to call Mr Totty Gideon or Horatio). The former is a valid thing to worry about, but not something you should be distracting yourself with when you're writing (easier said than done, I know, but try to take some respite in your story as a break from your troubles); while the latter is not something that should be given too much of your mental energy until your first draft is finished and the redrafting and editing processes begin.

It was so much better when you first had the idea
It's damned near universal in any creative pursuit, I imagine - your Muse hands you an idea that seems so perfect, so amazing, so incredible that you despair of ever doing it justice, and yet can't wait to have a try. Of course, there will inevitably be parts of the process that just don't seem to live up to that rather high expectation (as I say, no piece of art is flawless and fascinating in every tiny detail), and Gary Larson's Chicken of Depression pays a visit, convincing you that you are indeed making a horrendous mess of that wonderful idea you should never have been trusted with. Reading through a part you are happy with goes some way towards redressing this, I find.

It's just taking longer than you expected
In your head, it can seem fairly concise: a short conversation between a couple of characters to tie up a couple of loose ends and set up for some later goings-on, plus a brief interval in which a protagonist reacts to something that happened to them earlier. You estimate how long it will take you to write, and if it seems to be taking longer, the dragging sensation starts up again. It could be dragging for any number of reasons (including some of the ones on this list), or it could just be - as it often is with me - that you just stink at estimating time. Either way, push on through the barrier, and when the time comes to redraft, you can reassess that section and see whether it could do with being cut down or if it's OK the way it is.

You've spent some time adding stuff to yesterday's material before continuing with the story
Many writers don't do this until their first draft is complete, but some do - I'm one of them, and I know Tara Hanks is as well - and if you begin Wednesday's session by going back and inserting a decent-sized chunk in between Monday's and Tuesday's stuff because you forgot to include it at the time, by the time you get back to the end of Tuesday's material and start to continue the story from there, you may feel as if you aren't getting anywhere very fast, because you've been writing for a while and the story hasn't moved on as far as you'd hoped for the day. Viewed objectively, it's obvious why this happens, and you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that you are still being productive because you did add material that needed to be added; it just wasn't all chronologically up-to-date.

It's not you, it's them
Depending on how vivid your experiences of your characters are, you may find that some of them just don't manage as well in certain scenes. Quieter, more withdrawn characters tend, I find, not to be as easy to write when they're in the middle of a party, because there's a lot of silent observation involved (and even that may be unreliable, again depending on the character in question), and that can feel as if there's nothing happening. A psychopath would probably have little to think or say if their spouse was making an emotional appeal to them to stay in tonight and watch a film instead of going out 'golfing'. ("Actually darling, that's not what those clubs are for...") It's probably wise to make these scenes as brief as you can to avoid things stagnating, but at the same time they may well provide an interesting insight into the character, even if only to show us what they're lacking.

It's not them, it's you
Some days, your brain just doesn't seem to want to play, despite your best efforts, and on those days you probably will struggle to keep your focus on your WIP, which is likely to make you feel as if it's the scene's fault for not holding your attention. It could be - again, this is best assessed during the redraft - but equally, it could be that you are just butterfly-minded that day and very little would hold your attention. Either way, all you can do is push on until you and/or your story get your act together.

You don't want to finish what you're writing
If you're loving what you're doing; besotted with your characters and their story and revelling in the task of writing it all down, there may be a part of you that doesn't want it to come to an end. If everything has been flowing well but the gears start sticking when you get to the last couple of chapters, even though you know exactly what's going to happen, it may be that this is your problem. If you know that something awful is about to happen to a character you care about at any point in the story and you want a different fate for them (but know it cannot be because the one you have planned is necessary for the story), the same can apply as you approach the scene(s) in which disaster strikes. (Contrary to popular belief, not all authors enjoy playing the part of a cruel and indifferent God to their characters; I'm not even one of life's criers, and I wept buckets when one of my characters died*.) It's hard, but in either case you just have to grit your teeth and do it, and hope that your sense of dread and regret communicates to the reader.

* The book in question hasn't been published yet.

Musing.

2010-06-08T11:47:00.000+01:00

I was just pointed in the direction of this link on Twitter: 20 Questions You Can Ask to Tell If You're a Real Live Writer. I was just going to share the link, but then it occurred to me to treat it as a meme of sorts, assessing my responses to each question, so here goes:

1. Can you make time to write most days? I'd be in trouble if I couldn't, wouldn't I?

2. Can you tell stories (or even lie) really well? I'm a terrible liar. As for whether I tell stories well...I tend to leave that assessment to a small number of trusted individuals. I can't really be objective, can I?

3. Can you voraciously learn from other writers' talents? I hope so. I certainly try to.

4. Can you carry a notepad around and write down ideas all the time? Yes. That's one of the numerous things in my bag.

5. Can you stay home and write when your friends are out; not watch TV; not browse the web? Yes, of course. It always rather surprises me that so many treat writing as a chore to be endured: yes, there are days/sessions/scenes that feel that way, but if sitting down to write is usually or always something you do under sufferance, why would you want to be a writer?

6. Can you to put down a story you think isn't going well and move on to something else? Yep, done it - last year, if memory serves. I abandoned something to work on the WIP, and I'm glad I did.

7. Can you pick up a story you put down a long time ago and not think it's total crap? I surprised myself by doing this fairly recently, when I found a short I wrote years ago. Don't get me wrong - it's years old, written before I started writing Mirrors, so I wouldn't want to present it now as an example of what I flatter myself by calling my abilities, but I didn't hate it, and I'd expected to.

8. Can you tolerate jerky rejection slips that say things like "Yup. It's another rejection."? (A journal responded to one of my stories this way. I won't resubmit or subscribe soon). I get/got by with them. Usually I just sighed, cast aside the letter or archived the email and moved on, although occasionally a particularly arrogant sort has thrown my mood out for days. I managed to get back on an even keel, though.

9. Can you not freak when someone you know tells you they didn't like what you wrote? I never ask people I know that question; saves us both being put in that position.

10. Can you put up with people who make reptilian faces when you tell them you're a writer? Yes, I just make them back when they tell me what they do.

11. Can you empathize with with people you disagree with (or even find reprehensible)? In fiction, yes (at least as far as my own characters are concerned). In real life, no. Not sure how that works.

12. Can you promote yourself and your talents without feeling arrogant? No, but fortunately I have someone to do that for me who's far better at it than I am!

13. Can you get over being jealous of other writers' success? It depends on the writer and the level of their success, really, if I'm honest.

14. Can you write about topics that make you uncomfortable? Yes; I'm doing it right now. (Well...not right now, because I'm writing this, but you know what I mean.) As awkward as it is, I find it really helps the words to flow.

15. Can you write about topics that will make your family or friends uncomfortable? When Trades came out, I got a letter from my Nana telling me how much she'd enjoyed it. Imagine that! But it just goes to show you - perhaps the question in my case should be "Can you write things you'll dread your family reading, but that will probably bother you more than them?".

16. Can you write outside genres you're familiar with? I confess I don't fully understand why this made the list. Why is that necessary? Surely you'll make the best job of something you know well - would you want a joiner to install the gas pipes in your home, or would you rather someone with that specific knowledge did it? If I were to try to write sci-fi, the result wouldn't be a patch on the efforts of an aficionado of the genre.

17. Can you read your own work out loud? If I'm alone and 'sounding out' what I've just written, yes. In the sense of giving readings - no, I'm terrible at it, I've discovered.

18. Can you meet the challenge of putting words together to make something beautiful? Again, if I couldn't, I'd have a problem!

19. Can you keep writing even though you don't love the scene you're working on? Ah yes, the connective stuff! I'm germinating a blog post about this sort of stuff, actually - the difference between the scenes you don't enjoy writing because they're not going well and those you don't particularly enjoy writing but aren't going badly; it's just that they're less interesting than some of the other stuff in the story. It's on the way.

20. Can you accept the reality that you may never be able to support yourself as a writer? I'm in two minds about this being included on the list, as well. Of course keeping a realistic attitude is important, but equally I think that in the case of most published authors, telling people this has a tiny element of 'do as I say, not as I do' - if we were all so philosophical and accepting of the reality that publication and earning from one's writing are difficult goals to achieve, nobody would ever keep slogging on through the rejections until they got lucky. I know it could be argued that it's possible to do that with the thought always in the back of your mind that it may not work, and that's probably the balance you have to strike in order to best approach the situation, but again: if you weren't really hoping for success, any sane person would give up the submissions procedure as an exercise in demented masochism. (Try explaining it to an outsider: time-consuming, expensive if you have to pay postage for submissions, extremely wounding to one's pride and confidence and with a very slim chance of success - objectively speaking, who would ever sign up to such a challenge?!) So perhaps my advice would be to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Quote of the day...

2010-05-25T19:08:00.001+01:00

...comes from my Mslexia writers' diary:

It's amazing how often, both giving readings in bookshops or reading reviews on Amazon, or even reading supposedly sophisticated criticism, that charge arises: "You've written somebody that I don't like." And you want to say, well, how do you feel about Iago? I take umbrage at all that...The question is not whether you like them but whether you understand them.
(Zoe Heller)

Testify, sister, testify! I'd actually go one step further and say that it is not necessary to understand a character to appreciate them (how many can truly say that they understood the Cheshire Cat?), but all the same, it's always nice to know that I'm not the only person who finds the whole if-it-doesn't-give-me-warm-fuzzies-it's-bad school of thought uninspired and childish.

Sweet music.

2010-05-14T15:06:00.002+01:00

Chopin's Nocturne in E Flat, Op. 9 #2 (written 1830-32)
Well, I'll never look at that piece the same way again, and I nurture a hope that at least some of those who end up reading the WIP will feel the same way, even if only temporarily.

Trades crosses the pond!

2010-05-13T16:55:00.004+01:00

I haven't mentioned this on here before because in the current economic climate especially, I wanted to wait until all the dotted lines had been signed on, but I am delighted to report that Trades of the Flesh has been picked up by Tor in the US, who will be publishing the American edition. I don't know yet when it will be set to emerge, but I will of course pass on any information as it comes in.

Speaking of international editions, if any of you were wondering about Leda's Romanian edition of Cover the Mirrors, it has been delayed but is still set to be published, and once again I'll let you know when I know more.

Two-fingered typing

2010-05-13T16:49:00.003+01:00

49 words

Typing Test

Not too bad considering I can't type properly and only use the index fingers of each hand. It's not something I've ever felt the need to remedy, really; I've managed to get up quite a speed like this - sufficient for my purposes, anyway - and it would just be an upheaval now to try to master touch-typing.

So that's another thing you don't have to do the conventional way to be a published writer...

Agent update.

2010-04-27T16:37:00.001+01:00

Just a quick note to say that there is now a minor change to the contact details for my agent Edwin, but a big (and wonderful) change for him, as he has now founded his own agency: Makepeace Towle Associates! I am happy and relieved to say that I will continue to be ably represented by Edwin; the only difference as far as anyone wanting to contact him goes will be that he now has a new address, number and email, all of which can be found on his new site.

Congratulations again to Edwin - I'm sure MTA will be a marvellous success.

Dilly dilly ding dong

2010-04-22T18:39:00.003+01:00

Just happened upon a remarkable piece of information on Wikipedia - you know the nursery rhyme Lavender Blue?

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen.
Who told you so, dilly, dilly, who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly, dilly, that told me so.

Yeah, that one. Well, it seems that originally, the lyrics were a little more...well...blue:

The earliest surviving version of the song is in a broadside printed in England between 1672 and 1685, under the name Diddle Diddle, Or The Kind Country Lovers, with the first of ten verses:

Lavenders green, Diddle, diddle,
Lavenders blue
You must love me, diddle, diddle,
cause I love you,
I heard one say, diddle, diddle,
since I came hither,
That your and I, diddle, diddle,
must lie together.

But wait, it gets better (underlining mine):

It emerged as a children's song in Songs for the Nursery in 1805 in the form:

Lavender blue and Rosemary green,
When I am king you shall be queen;
Call up my maids at four o'clock,
Some to the wheel and some to the rock;
Some to make hay and some to shear corn,
And you and I will keep the bed warm.

So there you have it. I think I just gained a new appreciation for the song.

By the way...

2010-04-14T21:54:00.000+01:00

I should point out that I'm having internet problems at the mo, and I can post to my blog easily enough, but until the wireless is operational and my computer's back online, approving and replying to comments is going to be delayed for a few days. I will get to them ASAP though, and hopefully it won't be much longer.

NormBlog Authors' Choice

2010-04-13T16:54:00.000+01:00

Just a quick line to let you all know that guest post is now live on the Authors' Choice section of Norm Geras' blog. I took the opportunity to write about a book I've often mentioned as an influence (the first historical novel I ever read, in fact) but never gone into detail about: Fanny and the Monsters by Penelope Lively. So click over there if you fancy reading it, and thanks to Norm for hosting it!

"Everyone has a book in them!"

2010-04-08T09:41:00.005+01:00

My fellow MNWer Frances Garrood has posted a blog on what has to be one of the most annoying lines thrown at writers; namely that everyone supposedly has a book in them. (I rather like my agent's addendum to that remark - that in many cases that's where the book should stay.)

It's something that drives me absolutely spare, and I always find myself wondering what people who claim that they could/should get around to writing that masterpiece they're certain they have inside them would think if I adopted a similarly presumptuous attitude to what they do. As Frances' actress friend said, we don't all assume that we can do our own medical procedures, and I can only begin to imagine the mayhem that would ensue if people decided to work on their own gas appliances or repair their car brakes without any previous experience. Much to my chagrin, I can't even draw stickmen without making a mess of them, so I wouldn't dream of claiming that I have my own version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling "in me". Why do people think it's OK to approach writers with that attitude?

Love it!

2010-03-29T08:51:00.002+01:00

86% bollocks redux

2010-03-05T08:30:00.003Z

Last week I made a post* listing seven things, supposedly about me, with the caveat that all but one of them were filthy rotten lies. I promised to tell you which were which today, so here goes:

1) I don't frequent any 'big name' food chains.
FALSE. I can't resist Subway and Starbucks, I'm afraid.

2) I don't carry a bag; just purse, keys, phone etc in my pockets.
FALSE. Nobody who's ever met me in the flesh would believe that - I require so much stuff with me at any given time, my bag is actually a messenger bag. (A very pretty one with a Victorian woman and a Pug on it.)

3) I'm a vegetarian but I eat fish.
FALSE. So very, very false! I'm a vegetarian therefore I don't eat fish. One of the quickest ways to earn yourself a lecture from me is to claim to be a fish-eating veggie. Look, I don't mind if you eat apples, soya beans, fish, chickens or cows. That's your choice. Just don't use inaccurate words to describe yourself: a person whose only animal protein comes from sea creatures is a pescetarian. No true definition of the word 'vegetarianism' (this one from the Vegetarian Society, for instance) includes eating seafood (seaweed aside), and to claim to be vegetarian while scoffing cod and chips would be like me claiming to be vegan while eating goat's cheese: wrong, wrong, wrong.

4) I have a completed fantasy novel lurking somewhere on my hard drive.
FALSE. I can't remember the last time I wrote something that wasn't historical fiction, and I certainly haven't written any full-length pieces that weren't in my present genre.

5) Even in cold weather, I can't wear any tops with high necklines.
TRUE. A couple of you guessed this correctly (oddly enough, people who've never met me in the flesh to confirm their theories, so well guessed). I just don't like high-necked clothes: the (daytime) necklines in the Victorian era are the only thing about the clothing I wouldn't want to deal with. They don't feel comfortable or look right on me, for some reason. I do, however, keep my neck warm in cold weather with a scarf (for everyday wear) or a faux fox stole (for occasional wear). That's fine.

6) I'm long-sighted.
FALSE. Short-sighted, like a lot of bookworms and people who spend a lot of time looking at computer screens.

7) I like long hair on men.
FALSE. Not since I was in my teens.

* I love the URL Blogger's given that post. It's automatically removed the % sign, so the URL reads approximately-86-bollocks.html. Approximately 86 bollocks. Supplied, one presumes, by approximately 43 males.

Soundtrack to a demented bodiceripper

2010-03-02T16:32:00.004Z

I'm hoping to have something more interesting for you soon (I was invited to contribute to Norm Geras' Writers' Choice and I've just sent my piece off for approval: I took the opportunity to write in more detail about a book I've mentioned as an influence a few times but never talked about properly), so in the meantime I thought I'd post quickly about the music I'm listening to while working on the WIP. Not that I'm listening to it while I'm actually writing, I hasten to add - I can't tolerate any outside noise when I'm writing - but my music choices during the time it takes for me to write a book tend to be influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the story and characters I'm preoccupied with, which usually leads to certain albums being in heavy rotation in my iTunes for that time. If you were wondering - and I know you were; don't tell fibs - which music is getting a lot of airing this time around, I seem to be spending a lot of time listening to:

The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
sample track:

Hole: My Body the Hand Grenade
sample track:

The Dresden Dolls: The Dresden Dolls
sample track:

Emilie Autumn: Opheliac
sample track:

...and a variety of classical piano pieces, including this one by Chopin:

Approximately 86% bollocks.

2010-02-26T13:02:00.003Z

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
(Stephen King)

Nik Perring just posted a meme based on lying/creative writing, and I thought I'd have a bash at it myself. The idea is that out of the following seven statements, six are complete bovine excrement. Feel free to guess which one is the single truth if you wish. In a week's time, I'll make another post revealing the correct answer.

The list...

1) I don't frequent any 'big name' food chains.
2) I don't carry a bag; just purse, keys, phone etc in my pockets.
3) I'm a vegetarian but I eat fish.
4) I have a completed fantasy novel lurking somewhere on my hard drive.
5) Even in cold weather, I can't wear any tops with high necklines.
6) I'm long-sighted.
7) I like long hair on men.

Things That (Surprisingly, Perhaps) Aren't Necessary For A Published Author

2010-02-21T16:52:00.004Z

It occurred to me today that there are a lot of little things that appear to be tacitly (and perhaps subconsciously) presented within the writing community as just being part of one's 'apprenticeship' as a writer, and indeed one's writing life in general. Very much in keeping with my somewhat contrary character, I break quite a few of these 'rules', so I wanted to compile a list of examples; things you might feel you have to do, but I 'missed out on' and came to no harm.

I should stress before I begin that if you WANT to do any or all of these things as part of your personal 'journey' as a writer, you should of course feel free (not that you need me to tell you to do so!). You know what's best for you. All I'm saying is that I know what's best for me as well, and I just want to point out that these things are not mandatory. Disclaimer over, let's get to the list...

1) Creative writing qualifications
The closest things I have are my English GCSE and A Level, and while I know that plenty of people have got a lot out of doing creative writing courses, it was something I've never felt the need to do, perhaps because I know from doing my GCSE and A Level that I never got anywhere near as much out of that sort of group learning environment as I did from learning by osmosis: reading voraciously and learning from the books I enjoyed and that impressed me as well as those that didn't. As with most of my passions, my instincts have always led me to adopt an autodidactic approach to learning about writing. Apart from anything else, I don't stand a chance of writing anything in a classroom, surrounded by other people. I simply cannot write in company. Interestingly (if you're worried that people won't take you seriously as a writer unless you've done some sort of creative writing course), a couple of people in the publishing trade recently told me that they don't see a creative writing qualification as a point for or against taking an author on. Whether you have a certificate to your name or not, those two people at least will still judge you solely on what they see in your sample chapters, and I suspect they're not alone in that. Writers seem to put more store by writing qualifications than agents and editors, as a whole.

2) Being a favoured student in any of your related studies
This is a sub-point of #1 really, but it's worth mentioning that if/when you do end up in a classroom studying something writing-related, even if it's just your obligatory English GCSE, not being your teacher's favourite pupil doesn't mean that you don't have potential as a writer. I always did well in English exams, but my experiences in the classroom were a mixed bag. There are some wonderful teachers out there who encourage their students and nurture their individual styles (one of my high school teachers, who taught English and French, was brilliant in this respect; and in college I had a great tutor who used to let us read Alan Bennett and had a great casual approach to teaching), but equally, there are plenty who teach 'by numbers' and evaluate all their students against a set model of 'how things should be done', which of course doesn't leave much room at all for individualism. I was once 'taught' by someone who used to quite literally write an essay of her own in response to each of the homework tasks we were set, photocopy it and give us each a copy when we were given our own essays back after marking so we could see how it 'should' be done. She couldn't stand the sight of me, and the feeling was more than mutual. And not to compare myself to any of the greats, but if you read biographies of writers, a lot of them weren't the best students. If you're unlucky enough to get landed with one of the my-way-is-the-only-way school of teaching and your own style is different, you're likely to rub each other up the wrong way, but no matter what they say or imply, that doesn't make your approach wrong.

3) Writing groups and book clubs
If you aren't the type of writer who benefits from being in a classroom environment studying your art, the chances are you won't get a lot out of belonging to a writing group, either. This is something else that a lot of my writer friends do, enjoy and learn from; but it's something I've never felt the urge or need to do, and indeed I don't think it would do my own writing much good. It feels a bit too much like 'writing by committee' to me, but of course your mileage may vary. To a lesser extent, this also applies to book clubs: even if you don't like to study or share your writing in a group session, you may enjoy meeting up with people to read books and share your thoughts on them, but equally you may not. This, once again, is just something I prefer to do myself, and I've found that I can explore and learn from other people's books quite happily and successfully by myself, so if you don't want to join a book group, you don't have to, either. Of course, for some people - most people, probably - the social aspect of courses and groups will be a major plus point. But there are people who don't feel that way at all. I'm one of them, and if you are too, that's fine.

4) Spending a fortune on postage
OK, on second thought, that probably is pretty inevitable, given that the vast majority of agents and publishers (certainly in the UK, although I'm not sure about other countries) only seem to accept paper submissions. I certainly did my share of sending out the big jiffy bags (and wanting to strangle the postman when he returned them to me months later), but strangely enough, the two successful submissions I made (to my publisher and later my agent) were email ones, so I have a soft spot for the electronic submission, and not just because it's much cheaper. It's more environmentally friendly as well, so the sooner it becomes the rule rather than the exception, the better. Get on it, publishing bods!

5) Being a great self-promoter
As I've said, I'm a very private and hopelessly socially inept person. I'm terrified of being the centre of attention (it can wipe me out for days, and I am not remotely exaggerating there - if I wanted to tell you a horror story, I'd tell you what I was like the day after Cover the Mirrors' launch), and I don't think I showcase myself or my writing well when in the spotlight. This is something I really struggle with, and I've often wondered how the many artists of various stripes who are just as withdrawn as I am reconcile that with what feels like great expectations of being a media tart. Fortunately for me, the sensible, wise and rational voice in my ear (better known as my agent Edwin) assures me that my near-inability to promote myself in the sense of making public appearances etc is not a big problem; that my job first and foremost is to write stories, and that it's fine for me to do most of my promotional whatsits online rather than in person. I also have a tip of my own for reclusive scribes: if you want to sign books without sitting at a table in the middle of a bookshop knocking back drink after drink (relax, I'm teetotal; it's just a deflection tactic) and attempting to sign while clutching a pen in a trembling hand, you can just sign copies on a casual basis whenever you visit a bookshop that has copies of your work in stock. I've always found that the staff are quite happy for you to sign their stock (they then put a sticker on them to highlight the fact that they've been signed and usually display them in a more prominent place in the shop unless they were already in a prime spot), so you can sign copies and have signed copies available for those who want them without the big spotlight moment.

6) Keeping a close eye on the media surrounding you and your work
It's amazing how many artists of various kinds and other public figures say the same thing: in order to preserve your sanity, you may well find that it's better to simply not read any reviews of your work, or press articles on you in general. It's something else I used to chastise myself as cowardly for, until I realised that I was far from being alone in finding it stressful to an unproductive degree to read what's being said about me and my books. A lot of authors have Google alerts set up on their names and/or the titles of their books so they know every time someone somewhere on the web mentions them, but although I did used to have alerts in the run-up to Mirrors' release, I soon realised that I was jumping every time an alert email arrived in my inbox, wondering what it might say. (Of course, getting an email alerting me every time I made a blog post was rather irritating as well.) This did me no good at all, and didn't benefit my writing in any way. You may, assuming it's in your personality to do so, prefer to find a way to stop worrying about such things, but my fellow pathologically neurotic scribes will probably find it easier to take the what-you-don't-know-won't-hurt-you approach (or, as Stephen Fry gloriously put it in a Twitter post explaining why he doesn't read his press, "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over and the stomach doesn't heave over") and just stop reading the stuff.

7) Amazon addiction
I'm not promising that you'll manage to avoid ordering stuff from them (I've lost count of the number of books I've desperately needed for research and could only find via Amazon, so huzzah for their enormous range of stock), but it most definitely is not part of having a book published and available for sale to be forever checking your Amazon ranking number (I never did this, in fact I'm still not sure what one's Amazon rank is even supposed to mean), or keeping a vigilant eye on your books' Amazon pages in anticipation of new customer reviews. When Mirrors first came out, I did this for a couple of weeks, before giving up on the grounds that a) it was threatening to become an obsession; and b) it had all the same problems as reading my own press. Not worth it. By the way, if you're planning on avoiding your Amazon pages as well, you might want to give up looking at the 'customers who bought this also bought...' section on pages of other books in your genre. It's only a matter of time before you see one of your own (and its star rating) in there. Twitchtwitchtwitch.

8) Being scared of the publishing professionals in your life
It depresses me how many authors seem to be afraid of their editors and agents. In many cases, this simply makes no sense because so many publishing bods are perfectly nice people, but in the case of those who are sufficiently forbidding as to justify such fears, then I think it's time for a rethink. I simply couldn't cope with feeling intimidated by people I was supposed to be working with, and sanity aside, I don't think such dynamics produce the best professional outcomes anyway. I can't imagine having an agent I didn't feel able to approach for advice or to ask questions, or one who couldn't tell the difference between helpful input and knocking my confidence in my ability; or indeed what the point in having such an agent could be.

9) Writing reviews
I tried this, briefly. It made me feel almost as icky as reading reviews of my own books, and given that I've never been one to read reviews anyway (I've never seen how someone else's opinion on something subjective like the merits of something creative like a novel or a film or a CD could be valuable in my deciding whether that thing was right for me), it seemed rather hypocritical for me to be sounding off with my opinions as if people should take them on board when making their own novel-purchasing decisions, so I gave up reviewing stuff. Every so often I'll recommend books I find useful (like I did in my post on my favourite writing manuals), but I'm done with sounding off my opinions on books beyond saying that I enjoyed them and/or found them useful. I don't believe in karma, but if I did, I like to think that would gain me a couple of author karma points as well.

10) Writing what you know
At least, don't feel you have to 'write what you know' in the sense of having a personal experience of the things you write about; something I've been alarmed to see being promoted on more than one occasion. Writing what you know in the sense of writing about things you know about - now that's cool. Astoundingly, I have never lived in the Victorian era (I promise I'm not just using a really good moisturiser). Stephen King has not (I'm assuming) gone loopy while looking after a hotel out of season and tried to axe his family to death. I'm also operating under the assumption that Tolkein never did battle with any orcs under the surveillance of a giant eye on the top of a mountain, and Douglas Adams never visited any other planets. I write historical fiction because that's what feels right to me, and because I enjoy learning about other eras and using that information in my fiction. If I only wrote about things I've directly experienced, my writing would send me to sleep, never mind anyone else. The majority of genre fiction wouldn't exist if everyone took the view that writers should only write from personal experience, and only narrow-minded snobs would think that would be a good thing.

A brief neurotic interlude

2010-02-13T16:25:00.006Z

"My constant aim is to remain, personally, unknown to the world; consequently I have always refused applications for photographs...as my features...belong to me as a private individual...I so much hate the idea of strangers being able to know me by sight that I refuse to give my photo."
(Lewis Carroll)

Among Carroll's numerous eccentricities was the fact that, despite being a talented photographer, he despised being in front of the lens himself, and avoided the experience whenever possible. I know exactly where he was coming from: I hate being photographed, and so there aren't many pictures of me in existence either. I wouldn't go as far as claiming that the mysterious box will capture a piece of my soul, as some peoples are claimed to have believed throughout history, but it feels damned close.

Does anyone know what a phobia of being photographed is called? Photophobia is a fear of light, so that can't be it.

A quick link

2010-02-11T09:02:00.003Z

Freedom of speech is one of the bedrocks of our culture, and is of course vital to artistic expression, news, blogging and indeed our collective freedom to speak openly. With this in mind, I thought it would be worth providing a link to this petition for those of you who may be interested in signing it:

Libel reform campaign petition

If you want more information before you sign (very sensible), it's there on the campaign website. I also think it's worth pointing out that British libel laws have even been condemned by the UN as a human rights violation. So sign the petition if you want to (they welcome signatures from anywhere in the world); don't sign it if you don't. Either way, it's your right to free expression.

Tennyson, Arthurian legend and my right arm.

2010-02-05T18:22:00.011Z

The Lady of Shalott
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt (1889-1902)
Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the bearded barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly;
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers, " 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott."

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows Said the Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse (1916)
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;
And sometimes through the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
My new tattoo! Done today (hence the flushed and puffy skin!) by Iain Clark at Aurora Tattoo in Lancaster. Pic taken on my phone (hence the less-than-spectacular photo quality and angle).
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armor rung
Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, burning bright,
Moves over still Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot by John William Waterhouse (1894)
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And around about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance --
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse (1888)
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right --
The leaves upon her falling light --
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
The Lady of Shalott by Arthur Hughes (1842-3)
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And around the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
The Lady of Shalott by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1857)
Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott."
Elaine, or the Lily-Maid of Astolat by Sophie Anderson (1870)

That's been one of my favourite poems for some time, so this tribute was well overdue. I just adore the font, too - I wanted something flowing and spidery, with little 'flaws', so it had a look of handwriting about it, and I think this works perfectly.

Hours of fun.

2010-01-31T19:09:00.000Z

One of my new favourite blogs: You Can't Please Everyone. This is a collection of the most bizarre/amusing/hysterical/way off the mark one-star Amazon reviews of books, films and albums generally considered classics. Highly entertaining (I've been giggling like a loon) and potentially quite therapeutic for artists of various stripes.

A few of my favourite diatribes/unintentional comedies:

Book: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Rant: Dahl is a sadistic creep who was severely abused as a child. From reading his Dahl’s biography “boy” it’s easy to see where he, and so many other British authors, get their twisted ideas from; the harsh and cruel British Gulags aka boarding schools.
Roald Dahl loves to write stories about tormented, punished, starving, suffering children (and adults for that matter, too). I don’t think British people like children, period.

Book: The Scarlet Letter
Rant: This book is like a bad soap. No action. No drama. Very predictable. It is about a woman who cheated on her husband with another man. The baby dad is the preacher. Why the couple couldn’t have gotten a divorce is beyond me. (Are you feckin' kidding me?! - FLB)

Book: Animal Farm
Rant (incredulous underlining mine): This book was terible. I was forced into reading this book in school. Which is no surprise, this is exactly the kind of book our government wants to force people to read, so they hand it to schools, and try to force us to read it. This book was written by a insane man named George Orwell, who hated society, and displayed that by bashing humanity, and making people look like lower lifeforms than animals. He used pigs to potray govermnent officials (which isn’t a bad choice if you ask me), horses for hard working people, dogs as SS troops, etc… Throught this entire book, he constantly tries to show that humans are sick people, that will corrupt no matter what happens. To be honest I think this man is crazy and needs to be locked up.

Book: Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)
Rant: This book was soo boring i read 2 pages then i burnt it. If you read this book i will personaly burn it for u……. SHe dint need to rite a fricken diary she just wanted to become famouse and she wanted people to feel sorry for her!!!!!!! (Do I gasp at the boneheadedness of this argument or should I just roll my eyes at the spelling, as I expect Anne Frank would have? - FLB)

Album: Abbey Road
Rant: England’s Fab Bore released this album in 1969, during which the Beatles were falling apart at the seams due to creative, financial, and legal issues. “Come Together” sounds fake, and everything else is tired. Who would buy this when you have Pink? Get her new album instead.

Album: Dark Side of the Moon
Rant: This cacophony of commie buzz words and simplistic, condescending communist ideals both offends me as an American, and as a music listener. Should’ve been called Red Side Of the Moon.

Book: Lolita
Rant: I agree with trauma expert Judith Herman’s analysis of this book, that it is the most beautifully written apologia for child rape ever put to paper. That this book is highly regarded speaks volumes to the hatred of women and of children that pervades our culture. I guess it should come as no surprise that in a culture where 25 percent of all women are raped in their lifetimes, and another 19 percent have to fend off rape attempts, that a book celebrating the sexual abuse of a child would be considered one of the best books ever written.

Book: The Hobbit
Rant: This “book” is a travesty to everything ever written. Swoar, lil’ fools wack for REALL. J.R.R. Tolkien is clearly a man of minimal intellect and an insufficient grasp on what a a real novel is composed of. Boy, ain’t nuffin’ but a playa-hatin scrub!. (Who has a minimal intellect?! - FLB)

Album: The White Album
Rant (apparent time-travelling underlined by me): These old talentless hags will never be as great as their idols Oasis! Oasis are one of the best “classic rock” bands ever, aside from Metallica, but St. Anger is pretty hard to beat. Anyway, this whole album is boring and uninspired with weak songwriting. All of the songs sound the same! Why is this two discs?? It’s two discs full of DUNG!

Film: Schindler's List
Rant: Anyone who makes a feel good movie about the Holocaust is a total crackpot. Move over, Mel Gibson.
Mr. S should stick with kiddie flicks like ET – although even there he was cruel to the actress who performed inside the ET suit.

There are loads more on the site itself - check 'em out if these amused you.

The more things change...

2010-01-31T15:51:00.002Z

This quote is taken from Louisa May Alcott's Good Wives, but I could just as easily have chosen any one of the many descriptions of the writing process that authors throughout the ages have captured.

Every few weeks, [Jo March] would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and 'fall into a vortex', as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for 'til that was finished she could find no peace. Her 'scribbling suit' consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow...This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?". They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low on her forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow did anyone dare address Jo.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times...The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her 'vortex', hungry, sleepy, cross or despondent.

How much of that rang true to the writers among you? The description of the 'vortex'? The inability to settle until and unless you write? The seemingly random attacks of overwhelming and irresistible inspiration? (And the equally random disappearance of said inspiration which leaves the author bereft?) The ritualistic behaviour (the outfit) and presence of objects used to send a 'do not disturb' message to others, or deflect tension during frustrating moments (in this case, the cap serves both purposes)?

I find it quite comforting that although so much of the technology of writing has changed - I can just imagine what my 19th C forebears would think of my rather jumped-up tool of choice, especially when comparing it to a pen and ink or even a typewriter of the sort Lydia uses in Trades of the Flesh (although Lydia would at least recognise the QWERTY keyboard); and then there's the fact that I can send my work to my agent and editor simply by clicking a few buttons - the heart of the process; the human spirit of the affair, clearly has not. There's something grounding and stabilising in that.

Does anyone have any favourite descriptions of the writing process? Fiction, non-fiction - whatever has struck you.

Nothing is sacred...

2010-01-12T15:05:00.006Z

...and nor should it be.

Today's meandering has its roots in something my brother told me over the Xmas break. It seems that one of his clients (he's a hairdresser) teaches Creative Writing at Salford University (I think I got that right) and enjoyed my books, which is always a terrific and surreal thing to hear! Terrific for obvious reasons, and surreal because I still haven't grasped the idea of people I've never met having read my work - I still can't quite believe it when I hear about it. Apparently - and for this I'd write the dear lady into my Will if I had anything worth leaving - she recommends my books to students on her course as an example of not following predictable moral codes and narratives in one's fiction. I'm not planning on having a tombstone, but if I were to have one I hope that's what would be on there.

A short while later - a few days ago - I was reading one of the books I got for Xmas, and I happened upon an excellent point about Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl (1845). In the 19th Century, it was generally held that literature - and children's literature in particular - should be improving, and set a moral example to the reader. 'Bad' characters should get their 'comeuppance'; 'good' characters should be rewarded, and the reader could set down the book with a sense of all being well with the world. Hmm. Right. Anyway, to summarise Andersen's story briefly, his impoverished match girl, no more than a child, walks the snowy streets trying to sell her wares. Finding no buyers, she comforts herself by striking one match after another, and with each little burst of flame she sees a comforting vision: warmth, safety, domesticity, love. She goes on and on with this until all the matches have been exhausted, and in the morning her frozen body is found down a deserted alleyway. (Goodnight, little Tommy-or-Annie, eh?)

A.J. Bayes' 1889 illustration of The Little Match Girl.

This was a shocking departure from the conventions of 19th C. fairytales. In the hands of another writer, the match girl would almost certainly have been rescued at the last minute by a fairy godmother or similar deus ex machina, or her wealthy parents from whom she had been separated at birth would suddenly have turned up and taken their daughter home to a glorious future. How lovely. And how unlike the reality of the poorest classes of the period.

Despite his fantastical genre, Andersen's writing was realistic in a way that so many of his contemporaries would not have been, whether because they believed in the literary conventions of the time or because they were simply afraid to go against the grain. What really happens to a skinny, poorly-dressed, malnourished child in sub-zero temperatures when her only source of heat and light has been exhausted? Andersen knew, and he didn't insult his own intelligence or that of his audience by lying about it.

In the previous century, there had been a little more freedom in the way of artistic expectations, although there was often a literal and metaphorical caveat. Daniel Defoe's The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722) is a gleefully amoral romp, following the adventures of a marvellously badly-behaved female protagonist (the eponymous Moll) who turns everything and everyone to her own advantage and shows little remorse for doing so. And at the end of the book, there's a brief postscript, which could hardly be more disingenuous, stating that Moll saw the error of her ways and lived the rest of her life out in penitence for her previous conduct. It just screams "disclaimer" - it has none of the energy and none of the wanton joy of Moll's previous escapades; it just provided those readers who might have been thrown into a tizz by the rest of the book to be pacified in the knowledge that at least that dreadful, dreadful Moll had seen the light and felt suitably ashamed of herself. But like those "this programme contains scenes that some viewers may find distressing" announcements they show on TV, or the "Parental advisory - explicit lyrics" stickers on CDs, Defoe's "and they all lived prudishly ever after" postscript suggests to me a sense of resigned duty; a way to get the hypersensitive out of the way (or at least calm them down a bit) so the rest of us can enjoy the entertainment properly.

This wasn't just a dilemma confined to the literary world. Artists such as John Everett Millais, who were renowned for their ability to bring even the most sacred of cows to life (flies, piles of dung and all) could astound their audience by showing the grubby reality of scenes and characters that the public had built up in their mind to be shining and untouchable: superhuman, even. Take Millais' 1852 depiction of Ophelia:

There's certainly nothing unusual about a 19th Century artist painting a picture of Shakespeare's Ophelia; they were obsessed with the poor lass. It isn't much more surprising that Millais chose to paint a female suicide, because that was an extremely romanticised, glamorised idea as well. Whether it was Ophelia, Tennyson's Lady of Shalott (Waterhouse painted the Lady in numerous poses and guises) or just an anonymous woman, the vision of female self-destruction was extremely attractive to the art world.

Cover of London by Night by Charles Selby (1886)

However, there is a notable difference with Millais' Ophelia in that she isn't depicted perched prettily on the edge of the brook, adorned with flowers as so many others portrayed her. She isn't even captured in the act of jumping/falling into the water, like the girl in the illustration above (I actually worked a subtle reference to the notion of a suicide gliding prettily through the air as if she were flying into Trades for my own amusement). She's dead in a ditch. (Paul Albert Steck would later paint a deceased Ophelia sinking to the bottom of the river, but that wasn't until 1895.) Yes, to a certain extent, there's still an element of romanticism in Millais' depiction of Ophelia: the heavy-lidded, open-mouthed expression of release could just as well be an illustration of the point of orgasm (the little death) as the moment of actual death; and the Ophelia pictured is clearly either on the brink of death or very recently deceased, as her skin still has the tone of a living person's: she isn't blue, or grey/white, as drowned bodies quickly become. But still, she's dead, or damned close. Millais doesn't hint at the young woman's dark fate: he shows it to us. And whether because of that unflinching depiction of death, or because of the hint of something suggestive in his drowned Ophelia's face, Millais' painting made a splash (sorry) when it was presented to the public. At an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1852, it was one of two Ophelia portraits on display (the other was by Arthur Hughes), but it commanded the lion's share of the attention.

Showing the gritty reality behind a popular image certainly got Millais some attention, but then, he'd experienced that two years previously. In 1850, he showed Christ in the House of His Parents to the world, and if the warts-and-all reality behind one of Shakespeare's most iconic moments had ruffled the Victorians' feathers, imagine their reaction to a similar depiction of the central figure of the era's most popular religion:

To me, it seems an obvious way to show Jesus' childhood. This is a character whose acolytes talked as much then as they do now about how he grew up poor - born in a stable, no less - his family supported only by his father's (or stepfather's, depending on how you view it, I suppose!) carpentry business. So what could be more realistic than a picture of a thin, barefooted, grubby little tyke who looks about as majestic as Dickens' Oliver Twist? But as was often the case, while the Victorians didn't mind talking, reading and singing about Jesus' modest background (actually, forget background: he never became rich, did he?), it seems they didn't want to look at it. Millais' painting of the 'of Nazareth' family household was controversial, and plenty of people felt that it was disrespectful to present the character in such a way.

But here am I, going on about how people in the 19th C. were touchy about morality and portrayal in art, and I started out talking about how pleased I am that someone in the here and now recognises the validity of my own artistic choices in this regard! Surely I'm going off the point? Surely that proves things have changed? Surely we as a society aren't as predictable and narrow-minded as to expect all artists to render certain issues certain ways? We're not like those priggish Victorians, are we?

Er, actually yes, a lot of us still are. The reason I was so pleasantly surprised, when my brother relayed the anecdote about his client noticing that I don't necessarily follow predictable story arcs as far as my characters' moral choices go and finding that a positive thing, was that while I have certainly found that other people have responded in this way (and it always makes me happy); I've had my share of people who have been most annoyed with me for doing things that way too. Topping the charts on the spluttering objection front appears to be Molly's abortion in Cover the Mirrors, a fact that does and doesn't surprise me. What do I mean by that? Well, I suppose I'd like to think that we live in a society in which that isn't the number one act on which a person is judged (personally, I think it's a non-issue on the moral front myself; I don't even class it as a moral choice, just a personal one), but I'm well aware that we don't. Sigh. There are other things too, both in Mirrors and in Trades, that sometimes startle people as far as the lack of subsequent reckoning goes (unlike Molly's abortion though, those things aren't alluded to in the books' cover blurbs and so I won't disclose them as they may constitute spoilers), but again, I can't begin to fathom the mindset of a person who would get angry with an artist of any type for handling those things a certain way; firstly because our right to free expression means that we can handle them any way we bloody well like (and yes, that same right also gives you the freedom not to like it, but there's a difference between not liking the way a piece of artwork is executed and making the leap to declaring that piece bad), and secondly because surely we've moved past the idea of art as a moral sermon? You don't seriously think that my job is to present a world in which pregnant teenagers all go down the Bristol Palin route, do you? And even if you do, I certainly don't. You do what you like when you write your own novel, though.

But as I say, for every person who just doesn't get that, there are people who do get it, and it always gives me a glow when I encounter them. One of my favourite comments came from a friend who remarked:

That's what I loved about CTM! Another author would have had to "punish" Molly somehow for taking charge of her own life.

And my brother's client (if you happen to read this, by the way, I'm sorry to keep referring to you that way, but obviously I don't know your name!) is another example of this wonderful attitude: someone who sees that the way I handle certain things is perhaps a little unconventional sometimes, but who doesn't think that makes it bad. Indeed, she even recommends my stuff to her students, so thank you, thank you, thank you for that.

Just to prove that I'm not the only person in this day and age to occasionally be tutted at for allowing one of my characters to terminate a pregnancy without being punished for it or being forced to self-flagellate over some imagined sin, I present another example, from the music world this time. Here is the remarkable Amanda Palmer with her song Oasis:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the character sketch as it should be done. But rather than me giving my outsider's explanation of why that song is the way it is (and why that's exactly how it should be), here is Amanda herself doing precisely that. It's such a wonderful blog entry (my smile got wider and wider as I read it, and I nearly gave myself whiplash thanks to all my subconscious nods of agreement), and it explains everything so beautifully and eloquently I recommend taking a moment to read it fully before you come back to me.

...

Done that? Good. I told you it was powerful stuff, didn't I? I absolutely agree with her, and I think she makes a fantastic point: a few fundies aside, we're fine with the idea of artistic depictions of abortion, as long as they conform to our expectations of misery and emotional conflict and guilt. This despite the fact that not every woman or girl who has an abortion will feel all or any of those? What's going on there? Art is supposed to tell the truth - but only those truths we're comfortable with, or those experienced by a certain section of the community? And even if we turn our eye to what is (in my view) the real moral issue in that song - that of rape - we still can't force artists to adhere to our unofficial guidelines on how that issue should be handled. Firstly because that violates their freedom to express themselves as they choose, and secondly because, as Ms Palmer points out, there may be other reasons why they're choosing to do things a certain way. In the case of Oasis, the protagonist's upbeat recounting of what happens to her is a subtler form of poignancy, because...well, you read it all in Amanda Palmer's blog, so I won't repeat it again. And remember what she said about the 'acceptable' way to perform lyrics like that? Well here she is at London's Electric Ballroom, attempting to give the censors what they want:

I think that's a wonderful illustration of the ridiculousness of the nannying attitude I've been discussing in this post. Do we really need such a black-and-white approach to art, and are we really so dense that we need to be spoonfed our emotional reactions to things? Sometimes the darkness is obvious without it being highlighted; indeed, sometimes in highlighting it for highlighting's sake we cheapen it. I'm going to finish now with another wonderful musical example of this; namely Emilie Autumn's Miss Lucy Had Some Leeches:

If you can't see how that song not only exposes but condemns the abuses of those committed to psychiatric hospitals in former centuries, I think you're beyond helping.

Thank you again to my supporter at Salford Uni! I'm so glad there are people teaching creative writing students to think for themselves.

Signed copy update

2010-01-03T17:02:00.001Z

Just a line to say that the Waterstones in Manchester's Trafford Centre now has two signed copies of Cover the Mirrors if anyone's in that area and interested in buying! The staff are lovely too (or the one I dealt with was anyway; admittedly I haven't spoken to them all), which is always a bonus.

Victorian Christmas week: part seven - Twelfth Night

2009-12-27T09:22:00.005Z

As this is the last in my series of posts on Victorian Christmases, it seemed appropriate to finish with a little bit of information on the 'official' end of the Christmas season - Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night (5th January) as a festival appears to come from Christianity, marking the Magi's visit to the infant Jesus. In some countries (then and now), gifts were given on Twelfth Night as a nod to the symbolic (and decidedly useless for a poor family with a new baby) offerings the Magi brought Jesus, but for the Victorians, the primary celebration of Twelfth Night came in the form of feasts and parties.

1840s cartoon of a Twelfth Night party

At the centre of the feast was the Twelfth Night cake. This could be purchased from a baker (who would have sold cakes for a wide range of budgets, from the simple to the elaborate; the most expensive being made in the shape of a ship or a castle and decorated with little Union Jack flags), or made in the home. To give an idea of the size of a Twelfth Night cake, an 1874 recipe for baking your own (taken from Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery) calls for 2lb each of butter, sugar and flour, 4lb currants, 1/2lb each of almonds and candied lemon and 20 - 20! - eggs. Spices such as nutmeg and ginger were required in 1/4oz quantities. That's one big cake.

In a twist that owes a great deal to the Tudor 'day of misrule' (which in turn drew from the Roman festival of Saturnalia, previously mentioned in this series), a dried bean and pea were baked into the Victorian Twelfth Night cake. A woman who found the bean was designated 'Queen' for the day; a man finding the pea the 'King'. Alternatively, it was possible to buy decks of Twelfth Night cards depicting an entire royal court of characters from monarchs to maids in waiting, and guests would draw a card each in order to designate their role in the evening's festivities.

Frederick Richard Pickersgill's mid-1800s painting of Orsino & Viola from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

The Victorians also took down their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night in the belief that leaving them up for longer would bring bad luck upon the household, a superstition that still persists to some extent today. Yet this 'rule' did not originally apply to Twelfth Night (5th January) - it was intended to refer to Candlemas (2nd February). Another example of the 'Chinese Whispers' quality of folklore...

Finally, a few words from Charles Dickens' daughter Mamie on Twelfth Night celebrations in her family, which also coincided with the celebration of her brother Charles Jr's birthday on the 6th:

My father was again in his element at the Twelfth Night parties...The cake was cut, and the favours and bonbons distributed at the birthday supper, and it was then that my father's kindly, genial nature overflowed in merriment. He would have something droll to say to everyone, and under his attentions the shyest child would brighten and become merry.
(Penned for the Ladies' Home Journal in 1892)

Enjoy the rest of your Xmas celebrations!

Victorian Christmas week: part six - Boxing Day

2009-12-26T11:01:00.008Z

Today is, of course, Boxing Day - the day when Britons wake up with severe indigestion and/or hangovers, as they have been doing for centuries. The origins of the term 'Boxing Day' can certainly be traced back much further than the Victorians, although we are not sure exactly when it came about. One explanation connects Boxing Day to the Roman festival of Saturnalia, when presents were exchanged (sound familiar?), and servants rewarded for their year's work. Alternately, parallels can be drawn with the breaking open of church alms boxes on 26th December and the distribution of their contents to poor parishioners. Or perhaps the latter was influenced by the former. In any case, the idea of Boxing Day appears to have grown up around the idea of charity and giving.

In the Victorian era, household servants, having spent Christmas Day working particularly hard to make their employer family's Xmas go without a hitch, would get a little perk of their own in the form of a gift of money - a Christmas bonus of sorts - although there are reports of particularly stingy people who, instead of money, gave their servants...a new work uniform to be worn in the next year. Wow, thanks. For me?

A maid lighting the fire

People in other professions, such as chimney sweeps, crossing sweepers (who swept the dusts from the roads to prevent the trailing hems of middle- and upper-class women's dresses from being dirtied as they crossed), dustmen and lamplighters (the men who lit each gas-powered streetlamp individually as dusk fell) were also rewarded with bonuses on Boxing Day.

A lamplighter. Some, like this guy, climbed a ladder to light each streetlamp, while others had a long pole to reach up.

Chambers Dictionary said of the practice of Boxing Day tipping:

Christmas-boxes are still regularly expected by the postman, the lamplighter, the dustman, and generally by all those functionaries who render services to the public at large...the 26th of December being the customary day for the claimants of Christmas-boxes going their rounds...has received popularly the designation of Boxing-day.

A pair of dustmen with their cart

Naturally, the satirical magazine Punch took a rather different view, attacking the issue with its typically bitter humour:

The Christmas Box system is, in fact, a piece of horribly internecine strife between cooks and butchers' boys, lamplighters, beadles and all classes of society, tugging at each other's pockets for the sake of what can be got under the pretext of seasonal benevolence.

Easily said if you could afford to buy (or were even able to read) Punch, I suppose.

Boxing Day also marked the beginning of pantomime season in Victorian theatres. This once again contradicts the idea of the Victorians as a dour and humourless people who never did anything to enjoy themselves: granted, the standard of comedy offered at a Victorian panto, being about the same as one can find in the same setting today, was not high; but all the same, the Victorians seem to have enjoyed themselves. At least, those who attended them did. The cheesy humour didn't appeal to everyone, any more than it does today, and there are scathing accounts of pantomime acting and jokes dating from the period. But still the panto persisted, and as Boxing Day approached Victorian newspapers would carry advertisements for forthcoming productions. Mercifully, there don't appear to have been any has-been celebrities involved, which is more than can be said today.

Illustration from a newspaper advertisement for a production of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

Victorian Christmas week: part five - PRESSIES!

2009-12-25T10:30:00.008Z

Happy Giftmas, one and all! Hope you all did as well as I did for pressies. In keeping with today's theme of avarice and frivolity, I thought that today's Victorian Xmas update should discuss the present-giving habits of the Victorians.

As inevitably continues to be the case today, Victorian Christmas presents were naturally influenced by the income of the people exchanging them. Children of wealthier parents could expect toys such as wooden animals, puppets, sleds, porcelain or wax dolls, toy tea sets and miniature replicas of things their parents would have used, such as canes for the boys and embroidery hoops for the girls. Poorer families, on the other hand, would try to provide little treats such as fruit and/or nuts for their children, and such tokens would be hidden in the kids' stockings overnight, hence the tradition of the Christmas stocking.

The financial factor took on an even heavier significance for the class-conscious Victorian adults. The potential embarrassment of an unequal exchange of gifts seemingly ever in their minds, 19th Century adults were advised not to splurge on an extravagant present for someone of the same "social standing", as it would only make them feel awkward if they hadn't got you anything as grand. Needless to say, though, the very wealthy often purchased expensive presents for one another...

Gender was also a factor, as there was a tacit assumption that a man's gift to a woman would be of greater financial value than hers to him. As such, women were also advised not to go overboard buying presents for the men in their lives, as that would put pressure on them to 'top' those gifts. Therefore, it was not only seen as socially tactless for a woman to buy a man an expensive present, but also somewhat selfish, as the assumption was that she was consciously manipulating him into buying her something extravagant in return.

Mercifully, perhaps, it was also quite acceptable for people from all backgrounds to skirt the issue of financial value altogether by giving their loved ones little token presents; preferably handmade ones, which would show consideration and a personal touch without getting too caught up in monetary value. Women often embroidered handkerchiefs as gifts, for instance, perhaps even using their own hair as the embroidery thread if the hankie was intended for the man in their life. (I doubt this is to be recommended now!)

Finally, a word about that well-established expression "it's the thought that counts", taken from the Victorian Christmas bookazine:

The Victorians believed in the importance of charity as their Christian duty, especially at Christmas. Mrs Beeton advised her readers to visit the poor, the best to understand their predicament and needs, stressing that the spirit in which a gift was given was more important than the actual amount donated.

Such festive charity was known as 'mumping' or 'doleing', hence the modern expression "on the dole".

Enjoy your pressies!

Last-minute pressie recommendation

2009-12-24T14:26:00.001Z

For those of you who didn't see my Twitter announcement, Waterstones in Preston has a few signed copies of Trades of the Flesh in stock now, complete with today's date and Xmas greeting. An ideal last-minute gift for the Victorian underworld enthusiast in your lives, Prestonians! Thank you in advance to whoever buys them.

Thanks also to Waterstones, who have them face-out in section! A lovely Xmas present for me, too.

Victorian Christmas week: part four - Dickens' Christmas Carol according to Nigel Molesworth

2009-12-24T09:47:00.007Z

It's Christmas Eve, and what's Christmas Eve without a reference to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens? Well, considerably less saccharine, I suppose. To be honest, Tiny Tim always rather annoyed me, and so I decided it would be much more fun to post a passage from Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle's How To Be Topp; one of their series of books about Nigel Molesworth, a disaffected 1950s public schoolboy with an appalling grasp of spelling that now seems quite prophetic when I look at the text messages my nephews and niece send. In this scene, Molesworth's father is attempting to get his disinterested sons to listen to a reading of Dickens:

Another thing about xmas eve is that your pater always reads the xmas carol by c. dickens. You canot stop this aktualy although he pretend to ask you whether you would like it. He sa:

Would you like me to read the xmas carol as it is xmas eve, boys?

We are listening to the space serial on the wireless, daddy.

But you canot prefer that nonsense to the classick c. dickens?

Be quiet. He is out of control and heading for jupiter.

But —

He’s had it the treen space ships are ataking him ur-ur-ur-whoosh. Out of control limping in the space vacuum for evermore unless they can get the gastric fuel compressor tampons open.

I —

Why don’t they try Earth on the intercom? They will never open those tampons with only a z-ray griper. They will —

Father thwarted strike both boys heavily with loaded xmas stoking and tie their hands behind their backs. He cart them senseless into the sitting room and prop both on his knees. Then he begin:

He rub hands together and sa You will enjoy this boys it is all about ghosts and goodwill. It is tip-top stuff and there is an old man called scrooge who hates xmas and canot understand why everyone is so mery. To this you sa nothing except that scrooge is your favourite character in fiction next to tarzan of the apes. But you can sa anything chiz. Nothing in the world in space is ever going to stop those fatal words:

Marley was dead.

Personaly i do not care a d. whether Marley was dead or not it is just that there is something about the xmas Carol which makes paters and grown-ups read with grate XPRESION, and this is very embarassing for all. It is all right for the first part they just roll the r’s a lot but wate till they come to scrooge’s nephew. When he sa Mery Christmas uncle it is like an H-bomb xplosion and so it go on until you get to Tiny Tim chiz chiz chiz he is a weed. When Tiny Tim sa God bless us every one your pater is so overcome he burst out blubbing. By this time boys hav bitten through their ropes and make good their escape so 9000000000 boos to bob cratchit.

By the way, speaking of Molesworth's laziness when it comes to the written word, I should probably defend my own repeated use of the abbreviation 'Xmas' in this series of posts. You might think that this isn't very in keeping with the Victorian theme - surely the Victorians never "took the Christ out of Christmas", as so many humourless and culturally unaware critics today might suggest? Think again:

I found that last night and had to scan it in (despite finding the chef a bit scary; he looks like something out of one of my nightmares). Yes, there were Victorian Xmas cards as well as Christmas cards. I feel quite vindicated.

By the way, the lobster salad depicted was one of the most popular Victorian Christmas dinner dishes, served before the main roast. It was pretty cheap, too - both lobsters and oysters were plentiful and inexpensive in the 19th Century, so quite a lot of people would have eaten them. Oysters were known as "the poor man's food", and the working classes ate them in bread rolls on Christmas Day.

Finally, a video clip of my favourite Christmas Carol parody - the Scrooge-in-reverse tale of Ebenezer Blackadder. A very messy Christmas to you!

Victorian Christmas week: part three - crackers

2009-12-23T09:00:00.007Z

Another well-known 19th Century Christmas invention is that flimsy, gaudy source of ludicrous paper hats, useless novelties and appalling jokes - the Christmas cracker. Its inventor, Tom Smith, was a confectioner who created the first crackers after being inspired by the shape of Parisienne bon-bons (sweets wrapped in paper and twisted at both ends) and the crackling, popping sound of a fresh log being thrown onto a roaring fire. He had had some earlier success introducing bon-bons to Britain (and adding his own touch - a romantic motto printed on a slip of paper and hidden inside the wrapping), and in the 1860s, after experimenting with chemically treated slips of paper in order to perfect a startling but safe mini-explosion, he increased the size of his 'bon-bons', replaced the sweets inside with little novelties (while keeping the romantic motto), and the first crackers were born.

These crackers were referred to as 'cosaques' (although the company itself was known as Tom Smith's Crackers), and they were an immediate success with the Victorian public. Inevitably, crackers were soon being made and sold by numerous companies, although Smith was determined to preserve the status of his own branded crackers. An advertisement for them read:

Thomas Smith and Company have endeavoured by employing special artists to produce designs, the finest modern appliances to interpret their work, and combining Art with Amusement and Fun with refinement, to raise the degenerate cosaque from its low state of gaudiness and vulgarity to one of elegance and good taste. The Mottoes, instead of the usual doggerel, are graceful and epigrammatic, having been specially written for Tom Smith's Crackers by well known Authors...

I love Victorian bitchery, it was so haughty and dignified. Anyway, the cracker continued to be a festive success. At this point, the mottoes inside were still written in the same romantic theme Smith had used for his bon-bons (example: The sweet crimson rose with its beautiful hue is not half so deep as my passion for you); while the novelties could be anything from "grotesque and artistic" masks to toys, games and puzzles, as well as "jewels" (?!), flowers (dried or silk, one presumes - otherwise surely they'd wilt?), fans, perfumes (I think I like these cosaques) and "Japanese curiosities".

After Tom Smith died, his sons took over the company and continued to work on the design of the cracker. At one point, the fashion was for crackers themed on current affairs (that must have kept them on their toes), and so Walter Smith replaced the love-themed mottoes with notes on topical events. Later, these too were replaced by little puzzles and brainteasers, and finally the jokes we expect today. According to the Victorian Christmas magazine:

The Victoria & Albert Museum, that home to exemplary style, also has hundreds of Christmas cracker jokes, vast folios of poor taste. The reason for this seemingly bizarre collection is that they are a useful sociological study to show the tastes and fashions of the day...

I should hope so, too. Museums and galleries should not be dedicated solely to the preservation of the highbrow - that doesn't give the full picture of any given culture. We all experience the naff along with the beautiful and inspiring, and in order to really understand our forebears we have to be exposed to the different elements of their lives.

Walter Smith, like his father before him, was eager to provide an interesting variety of novelties to include in the company crackers. After travelling the world for inspiration, his additions included scarf and hat pins from Germany and bracelets from Bohemia (modern-day Czechoslovakia). There were also gifts produced in Britain, such as miniature pots of rouge (complete with tiny powder puffs!). The stalwart tissue paper hat was also a Walter Smith innovation, although they were considerably more elaborate than our modern offerings. I still bet none of them would have fitted my head, though. If I ever find a cracker hat that I can actually wear, I have a feeling it will tear a hole in the space/time continuum. And since that keeps me from wearing them, that's no bad thing.

Victorian Christmas week: part two - the Christmas tree

2009-12-22T09:36:00.007Z

Or should I say der Weihnachtsbaum (Christmas tree) or die Tannenbaum (fir tree)? Prior to 1841, there were no Christmas trees in Britain (although we did have Yule logs) - the tradition that has become so deeply entrenched as a part of British Christmases began when the young Queen Victoria married the German Prince Albert, who brought with him some of his own cultural Christmas staples.

As has been previously discussed in these pages, Victoria and Albert's marriage was not a stereotypically chaste and prudish one. Here is the evidence:

Anyway, technically speaking it wasn't actually Prince Albert who introduced the Xmas tree to Britain. That was Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III - yes, the (diagnosed) mentally ill king - and the then-teenaged Victoria remarked upon Charlotte's Xmas trees in her diaries at the time. However, Albert popularised the practice of decorated trees indoors and made them the staple they are today - he even enjoyed decorating the palace tree himself. Victoria recorded the event in her diary:

[My children] are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and its radiant candles...[the sight of the tree] quite affected dear Albert, who turned pale and had tears in his eyes, and pressed my hand very warmly.

Aww. They were such a cute couple.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.—
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!
Wie oft hat schon zur Winterzeit
Ein Baum von dir mich hoch erfreut!
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Du kannst mir sehr gefallen!

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mich was lehren:
Die Hoffnung und Beständigkeit
Gibt Mut und Kraft zu jeder Zeit!
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Dein Kleid will mich was lehren!
(Original German lyrics to the festive song O Tannenbaum, now commonly translated over here as O Christmas Tree)

Guided tour of a Glitter Bunny notebook

2009-12-21T12:06:00.015Z

I mentioned on Twitter recently that my very dear friend and Good Twin Debbie has opened a webstore on the wondrous site that is Etsy, through which she is selling her handmade notebooks. This morning, I received my Xmas pressie from her - one of the aforementioned notebooks - and I absolutely love it to pieces; it's easily the most beautiful piece of stationery I own. Of course, I realise that it could be argued that I'd be bound to say that, so in a bid to prove my point I thought I'd give you a little photo tour of my notebook. All pics were taken on my phone, so they're not the best, but hopefully they'll give you all a taster.

Front cover. As you can see, this is an Ophelia-themed notebook, and the cover features Alexandre Cabanel's painting of the character, along with a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The little title panel has been left blank for me to fill in as I choose, and the trim around the edges is ribbon printed with dictionary definitions of words that seem apt for an Ophelia theme, like daughter, love and (somewhat ironically) happiness.

Inside front cover - document pocket.

Title page. I love it!

Plain white pages.

A decorative page - illustrated with one of Waterhouse's paintings and another Hamlet quote.

Closeup and rotated.

Another decorative page - same picture, different quote.

A little closer.

More white pages!

Inside back cover. You can see the ribbon bookmark here too.

Closeup - the all-important artist info!

There's an ongoing floral motif throughout the book (paper prints, adornments etc), which is obviously in keeping with the Ophelia theme as well, and as you can see, I'm not just biased because Debbie's my mate - it really is a gorgeous notebook! If you'd like to check out more of her stuff, you can visit her Etsy shop (she has a number of notebooks listed, and she may do custom orders as well, although I'm not sure - you'll have to ask her), and/or follow her on Twitter @theglitterbunny.

Fanks, me Twin! xxx

Victorian Christmas week: part one - the Xmas pudding

2009-12-21T09:29:00.005Z

I decided that I would make a blog post every day this week featuring some little Victorian Xmas-themed snippet, so here's the first one; devoted to the grand tradition of the Christmas pud. I should say to any Americans reading that I have committed the faux pas of using that word to describe the festive confectionery in transatlantic company before today, and yes, it has been explained to me what the word 'pud' means on your side of the pond. I just decided to include it anyway. Well, it is Christmas, and I am a bodiceripper.

So, the Christmas pudding. The iconic spherical pudding is one of many seasonal staples bequeathed to us by the Victorians:

Previously, Christmas pudding had been a considerably sloppier dish, which (somewhat bizarrely) included minced beef as well as the more familiar plums, sugar, spices and the like. Ewww. When the Victorians replaced the mince with suet (ewww again) and began steaming their puddings tied up in bags of muslin, which gave the finished product its shape, the round pudding was born. This is one of the many Victorian recipes for Christmas pudding we can find from their recipe books, in this case Godey's Lady's Book of 1860:

To make what is termed a pound pudding, take of raisins well stoned, currants thoroughly washed, one pound each; chop a pound of suet very finely and mix with them; add a quarter of a pound of flour, or bread very finely crumbled, three ounces of sugar, one ounce and a half of grated lemon-peel, a blade of mace, half a small nutmeg, one teaspoonful of ginger, half a dozen eggs well beaten; work it well together, put it into a cloth, tie it firmly, allowing room to swell, and boil not less than five hours. It should not be suffered to stop boiling.

Partly due to tradition and partly to give them time to mature, Victorian Christmas cakes and puddings would be made on Stir-Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent. According to Victorian Christmas (published this year by Wharncliffe History Magazines - I plucked mine from the carcass of my local Borders if you want to try to find a copy):

It was considered good luck for everyone to give the mixture a stir and make a wish of their own while doing so. So it would be logical to assume that is where the name 'stir-up Sunday' derives. In fact, it comes from the collect of the day that the Victorian family would have heard that morning in church: 'Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people, that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works may of thee be plenteously rewarded.' This would sometimes be parodied by the naughtier boy choristers to 'Stir up, we beseech thee, the pudding in the pot. And when we do get home tonight we'll eat it up hot.'

The name of Stir-Up Sunday may have come from Christianity, but whether the Victorians realised it or not, the traditions surrounding the making of the pudding can easily be identified as hailing from much older Pagan belief systems. While each member of the family took their turn stirring the pudding mixture, they would close their eyes and make a wish - and they had to be stirring the mixture in a clockwise direction 'for the wish to come true'. While the mixture was being stirred, the cook would drop in little charms for the diners to find in their portions on Christmas Day - if you found the ring, you were said to have a wedding in your future; while a coin naturally indicated wealth.

So if you're ever on a time travelling jaunt and you're invited to spend Christmas with a Victorian family, eat carefully to avoid choking. And if you're vegetarian, just pass altogether.

A rare candid snapshot

2009-11-20T13:56:00.003Z

For those of you who missed this very important piece of news on Twitter, I am ill at present. Not the best time to post a photo of myself, you might think, but I think this particular image captures the essence of me at this moment:

Made at zombify-yourself.net

A quick linkshare

2009-11-15T18:23:00.001Z

Well worth a read is Tansy Rayner Roberts' blog post The Magical Writer Journey (or why Stephenie Meyer is a fictional character).

The image of the overnight bestseller who suddenly got it into their head to write a book (having shown no interest in doing so previously) has been mocked before, but it can't be mocked often enough. At least until people stop believing it.

Bring it on.

2009-11-10T13:23:00.000Z

Over the weekend, I picked up a postcard in Borders. The artwork on it is taken from a Victorian handbill advertising...well...these:

BALDWIN'S
-
NERVOUS PILLS
CURES
NERVOUSNESS, IRRITABILITY of TEMPER
WANT OF STRENGTH AND ENERGY,
FEAR, DREAD, NEURALGIA,
HYSTERIA, DISTURBED SLEEP,
MELANCHOLY, INSOMNIA,
AND ALL NERVE PAINS AND DISEASES
---
PRICE 1'1 1/2d. & 2'9 PER BOX
POST FREE.

The notes on the back of the card points out that On the whole, people put their faith into [sic?] whatever cure claimed to be the most beneficial, and vast fortunes were made by patent medicine manufacturers.

Well, I'd give the Baldwin's a go.

Remembrance Sunday

2009-11-08T13:22:00.002Z

With apologies in advance for the picture I've illustrated this with...

2009-11-06T14:55:00.005Z

...but in all fairness, if you're sensitive about language, you might want to beware of my second novel.

But the point of this little postlet, anyway, is to draw attention to this recent blog entry by Aliya Whiteley, about a Royal College of Arts project which will require rejection letters from a load of artists. Click through to Aliya's blog (or indeed the sites she links) to learn exactly why, but I think it's a brilliant idea, and quite lovely, in fact, to make something positive out of something so flame-snuffing and horrible. As I said to Aliya, I actually consign any rejections I receive (and indeed - metaphorically at least - their authors) to the abyss, and knowing me I'd probably be too much of a coward to share my rejections anyway, but I wanted to pass this information on as it is a wonderful idea, and I'm sure there are people out there who will want to participate.

Alternatively, if you want to symbolically show your disdain for your rejectors in a rather more private manner (and have the money to spare), you could always consider this...

Just flying by to say...

2009-11-02T20:10:00.002Z

...happy second birthday, Cover the Mirrors!

If you'd like to buy the book a birthday pressie, I know for a fact it just loves it when people purchase a copy of it. If you've already bought it one of those and don't want to buy duplicate pressies, I'm sure it won't mind if you buy its little sister instead. If you've already bought both, then thank you kindly. I'm sure Mirrors won't mind if you just send a card. (Cue cheesy just-kidding-internet-readers grin.)

Skelekitty!

2009-10-31T17:18:00.003Z

I have Halloween blogging diarrhoea and saw this on a friend's Facebook page - couldn't resist!

This is Halloween

2009-10-31T09:11:00.022Z

Today is Halloween. My favourite holiday, at least symbolically speaking (I don't mind any that involve me getting presents either), but I wonder whether I've made it clear as to why that is. It's certainly not an affectation. As I go through life, I'm finding that a lot of people tend to pigeonhole me in certain ways because of my taste for the darker side of culture, art and aesthetics. I don't actually consider myself a goth, although I've learned to just accept it as shorthand when other people call me that, rather like my mum (whose name is Carolyn) has learned to answer to Caroline as well because so many people make that mistake and it would take too long to politely correct them all. But while 'goth' is not one of the words I would use to describe myself (some of my tastes are gothic, perhaps, but that's another story), I'm self-aware enough to realise that the darker touches to my appearance are probably confusing to those not familiar with the intricacies of such things, and so I don't get too overheated about such things. But the point I'm making here, in my trademark roundabout way (I like to think of it as the scenic route) is that I don't love Halloween for purely shallow spookily-ookily reasons (not that there's anything wrong with loving something for its aesthetic of course).

So what is Halloween and why do I love it so much? Simply put, Halloween is the secular, light-hearted (if the term is appropriate for something like this) incarnation of a concept which appears in a number of different cultures - the day of the dead. That sounds like the title of a zombie film, and that's certainly the way it's interpreted in many modern celebrations of Halloween, but what does that mean really, and why am I so drawn to it? In a bid to explain, I want to talk a little about a few of the related 'days of the dead' that take place around this time, and why they are so symbolic to me and humanity in general.

But first, the idea of Halloween as a jokey costume party of a holiday, complete with costumes and sweets. This isn't a new concept. Once again, our vision of the Victorians and other 19th C. Westerners as entirely straight-laced Puritans who would be appalled to flirt with the dark side even in jest is simplistic - as today, only the most ~~miserable~~ devout would take this view, while the others embraced the idea of Halloween celebrations, whether frivolous (fancy dress parties: note the pretty young witch who appears in one of the 19th/early 20th C. Halloween cards I've illustrated this post with - the sexy witch is not a new costume idea!) or more intense (as in Cover the Mirrors, those Victorians inclined to Spiritualism would have been particularly keen to attend a seance on this night). The strong Christian influence on the culture at the time meant that there was the occasional difference in attitude compared to now - most people now wouldn't bat an eyelid at a demon/devil costume, but to the Victorians it was a rather more 'daring' choice of fancy dress, probably on a par, gasp-and-wide-eyed-look-wise, with dressing as a recently deceased celebrity or a famously evil person like Adolf Hitler would be today. However, that doesn't mean that nobody got their horns on for the occasion - they just wore a rather more mischievous grin when they did so, one imagines.

So where did they - and we - get the idea of Halloween anyway? The primary ancestor of the popular folk festival of Halloween is the Celtic Pagan celebration Samhain (pronounced sow-en; 'sow' as in female pig). Generally celebrated on 31st October, in pre-Christian societies Samhain was considered to be the day of the dead as well as the beginning of winter, and appears to have functioned as a new year of sorts; fitting given its associations with death. How this time of year became connected with death in the minds of people at the time is not difficult to imagine. The harsher weather conditions of winter meant that anyone who was already vulnerable (the elderly, the very young, the ill and infirm) might very well not survive the winter; something that would be echoed in nature around them, with the bare-branched trees and the greatly reduced number of wildlife sightings. Their harvests already gathered, farmers would not expect their fields to burst forth with new crops until the following year, and the older livestock animals would be slaughtered and the flesh preserved to sustain people through the colder months. So the connection between this time of year and death can be seen clearly, and from that we can understand how a festival of the dead becomes a new year celebration - ever seen those illustrations depicting the old year as a frail, elderly man and the new as a newborn baby? In acknowledging the dead, you acknowledge all that is past and passing, as well as that yet to come. Bonfires were a common staple of Samhain celebrations in Gaelic Celt societies (fire is seen as a purifying force in many religions including Paganism), and while the dead were commemorated at this time, they weren't prayed for as such - there is no Purgatory or Hell in this belief system, so why would any soul need to be prayed for? However, the division between "the worlds" (of the living and the dead) was (and is, in many branches of modern Paganism) seen as being particularly hazy at this time, and so it was/is seen as the perfect time to pay tribute to the dead. Because of this blurring between the worlds, Samhain was/is also considered a prime opportunity for paranormal endeavours such as divination (apple-bobbing is a remnant of this tradition, based on the old method of predicting the first initial of one's future spouse with the use of apple peel). Many branches of modern Paganism, which has decidedly eclectic influences, also celebrate Samhain, as suggested in this picture which combines the name of the Celtic festival with the Ancient Greek goddess Hekate:

Like many aspects of Paganism, the idea of Samhain as a day of reverence for the dead influenced Christianity, and re-emerged as All Souls' Day, celebrated on 2nd November. All Souls' is primarily acknowledged in Catholicism, which of course was synonymous in Britain with Christianity until quite a bit later (Henry VIII's creative approach to marital difficulties and so on), although its sister festival of All Saints' Day (1st November) plays a more prominent role in more denominations of Christianity. As the name suggests, All Souls' commemorates those who have passed, and although it isn't entirely inclusive (to be precise, All Souls' acknowledges those of the Catholic/Christian faith who have died - ah, religion!), it's considerably more so than All Saints', which of course focuses on the saints. Prayers for the departed form the basis of All Souls' Day in all denominations, although in Catholicism there is also the added element of praying for the soul of a deceased person to be freed from any lingering sins so that they might pass out of Purgatory and into Heaven. The 1859 painting All Souls' Day by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (left) depicts a woman and child in mourning attire laying wreaths on a grave in a sparse churchyard with autumnal foliage - very Halloweenesque!

Influenced both by Christianity (particularly Catholicism) and the numerous folk religions that are and have been practiced in the country over the years, Latin America takes the concept of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and elaborates on it, resulting in the dramatic two-day celebration el Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), taking place on 1st and 2nd November - All Saints' and All Souls' Days. A bright, colourful festival that primarily acknowledges people who have passed (although I have seen photographs of Día de los Muertos altars commemorating things that are no more: a homage to cancelled TV programmes was one memorable example!), the usual memorials and prayers are offered, with the notable addition of extremely festive altars constructed to honour the dead, bearing photographs, flowers, the deceased's favourite foods etc. Such gifts are also offered to the dead person's grave, and cemeteries are gaily adorned. It's a party in honour of the dead, and every good party needs decorations!

Día de los Muertos imagery doesn't shy away from presenting death in a very literal fashion, either - the classic sugar skull sweets are a staple of this festival, and the honoured departed are often symbolically represented by pictures and statues of skeletons in elaborate attire. This has its roots in a 1913 etching by José Guadalupe Posada, La Cavalera Catrina (the skull Catrina, see right), and has gone on to become a well-established aspect of Día de los Muertos decoration (see also the Catrina statue below). Catrina is an interesting image, I think, because she brings people face to face with the idea of death (her skeletal form) as it relates to their own lives (her clothes). A very vivid reminder of the fate that awaits us all!

Also prominent in Día de los Muertos celebrations is Santa Muerte (Saint or Holy Death). Despite the Santa title, Santa Muerte isn't an official saint as recognised by the Catholic church, although in many communities in Latin America she is treated as one. As with Día de los Muertos, Santa Muerte is an example of the fusing of folk magic with Christianity (particularly Catholicism), and as you can see from the picture of her (left), she is presented in a similar manner to La Cavalera Catrina, as a clothed skeleton, although her robes and the halo/aura around her suggest something more otherworldly than Catrina, who is seen in very human fashions. Not knowing much about the cultures that gave rise to All Souls, Día de los Muertos, Santa Muerte etc, I had to do some research to compile this blog post, and in the course of doing so I happened upon a few facts about Santa Muerte that I found particularly interesting. The first is that the veneration of her grew up in the poorest areas of Mexico, and at a time when mortality rates in such communities were (and presumably still are, in some places) very high. Again, the idea of Santa Muerte is one that came from people who did not have the luxury of denying the existence of death, or sheltering themselves from the sight of it. So Santa Muerte was (and may well still be - as I said, I don't know a lot about this subject, particularly in the way of modern practice) accepted and acknowledged, and rather than shunning something as inevitable as death, people would instead thank that entity for allowing them another day - that it wasn't their time yet. The second is that, as death is the great equaliser and no living thing escapes it, Santa Muerte rejects nobody, despite not being accepted herself by the church. Because of this, a lot of the people who are also rejected by the church - gay people, sex workers etc - were/are drawn to her, because they see her as the only saint (well...not an official saint, but as I say, in Mexico she was/is often acknowledged as one) who will not reject them. Who can death reject? Finally, a third quality of Santa Muerte worship that I found quite sweet - I read somewhere that Santa Muerte acolytes would approach her as someone who has a very difficult and thankless job, and so should be cheered up and offered little pick-me-ups (see the gaily adorned Santa Muerte below). Thinking about it, considering how much loathing is poured on, say, traffic wardens, it's not difficult to see how the idea of the figure of Death became viewed in this way, and it puts me in mind of Terry Pratchett's depiction of the character Death (sorry, DEATH) in his Discworld series as a jaded and weary being doing a less-than-pleasant job that someone still has to do.

So why does all this interest me so much? I think part of it comes from the amateur psychologist in me (there is obviously something in human nature that demands recognition for the dead for that notion to be represented in so many ways throughout history and in different cultures and countries), and partly from my own experiences of bereavement. And I never caught on to the idea of New Year as it's celebrated on 31st December/1st January - I didn't take to the sort of celebrations that are typical around that time, and it seemed a rather random point in the calendar in which to begin a new year. Of course, objectively speaking 31st October is just another random point in a calendar as well, but I like the idea of combining the symbolism of the departed dead with the departed year, and so it seems a more logical time to look to new beginnings for me. I'm sure that my general dislike of New Year played its part in this conclusion too (a night of raucous parties, heavy drinking and hugging and kissing strangers - count me out), but what really set the seal on things for me was, I believe, the way I rang in 2009; namely losing my oldest friend. I disliked the beginning of January before, and now it has anniversary connotations for me as well. You can keep it.

So it's poetic and fitting for me that the traditional festival of the dead as celebrated in the country I live in, way back in the past, also stood as a new year celebration; a time to remember and revere what (and who) has passed, and look forward to a hopefully brighter future. To be honest, my 2009 hasn't been so great. It started dreadfully, as I already said, and didn't really improve - of course, my second novel was published this year, for example, which was a good thing, and it's certainly not my intention to seem ungrateful or play that down in any way, but 2009 has dealt me more slaps in the face than roses, and so I'll be glad to see the back of it. I never thought I'd say that about the last year of my twenties (I'm a bit neurotic about ageing), but there comes a point when one is forced to look to the future and hope for things to improve.

So whatever this time is for you - whether you acknowledge the dead in a religious setting or simply light a candle in their memory (and you don't need to have any spiritual/religious faith at all to do that: mourning rituals are a psychological panacea to the grieving living, whatever their beliefs), whether you see this as a new beginning or a great excuse to get creative with a party, or even if you just like to plonk a bowl full of sweets by the door for trick-or-treaters and veg out in front of the telly with a pile of horror films, have a good and safe Halloween.

Preston Writing Network interview

2009-10-20T13:38:00.002+01:00

I can't believe I forgot to make a post about this until now (well...I can believe it; my brain's been all over the place lately), but there is a new interview with me on the Preston Writing Network blog, focusing on Trades and second novels.

Thanks to PWN, and sorry it took me so long to post the link!

In-out-in-out and shake it all about...

2009-09-18T09:45:00.000+01:00

There is a very interesting discussion going on on the MNW blog about the challenge of writing good sex scenes. (It also provides an interesting snapshot into the psyches of quite a few of us MNWers.) Personally, I'm relieved that I read so much in the way of Victorian smut and advertisements for prostitutes of the period, because (I hope) it allowed me to describe things in a more eloquent way. Describing a man as a "vigorous gallant" instead of a "hot stud" may not be for everyone in this day and age, but I think it's so much better. The language of modern day sex (complete with text message-style misspellings of...er...certain words) sounds like something out of a cheesy 1970s porn flick to me. Perhaps I think too much about these things, but it seems to me that if you use ugly language to describe an act, it doesn't do much to make the act itself seem natural, healthy and normal.

Interview.

2009-09-15T17:46:00.003+01:00

Tradition has it that when a new MNW title is released, the author is interviewed on the MNW blog. So naturally, I'm continuing said tradition by prattling on about stereotypes, paper fairies and dysfunctional bodicerippers.

Cheers to David Isaak for the questions!

Wow.

2009-09-12T09:28:00.002+01:00

My friend Kate really knows how to make my morning.

Woohoo! I know you avoid [Trades'] amazon page*, but there's only 1 left in stock now, and 88% of people visiting the page buy it!

Woohoo indeed! Thank you to everyone who's ordered the book so far, everyone who's planning to, and of course Kate for being considerate enough to report back to me.

* I avoid all my books' Amazon pages, and unlike many writers I don't check my Amazon ranking numbers (they mean nothing anyway) or have Google Alerts set up. OCD waiting to happen.

EDIT: Apparently Amazon have restocked now, so there shouldn't be any problems with shortages like there were last time, which is a relief.

My surname means "hut" in Old Norse, by the way.

2009-09-06T11:37:00.005+01:00

My agent and my editor recently met for the first time to discuss me and my work (a weird thought - is this the author's equivalent of Parents' Evening?), and Edwin (agent) mentioned to me afterwards that Will (editor) had remarked positively on the strong Lancashire flavour my work has. Several people have mentioned this to me as a plus point and it never fails to make me happy, because one of the things I wanted to do when I started seriously working on my own fiction was represent the areas I know best. There are a lot of historical novels (and indeed a lot of novels full stop) set in London, and I enjoy reading them very much, but it always struck me as a bit of a pity that so many other areas of the country were so under-represented, and so I wanted to make my own small attempts to redress that a little.

It's been nice, too, when I've received emails from local people who have enjoyed reading a novel set in a town familiar to them. One lady mentioned Dickens' Hard Times being set in a town based on Preston, and that given that Dickens thought Preston was a horrible place when he visited, the lady who emailed me said she had enjoyed reading a representation of Preston that showed its beautiful mid-Victorian architecture as well as the more deprived areas that existed there at the time.

So I don't mind in the least that one of the first things people associate with me and my writing is our geographical location, because that was always a hope of mine. With that in mind, I bring you a couple of video clips and a bit of waffle about That Whole Northern Thing, chuck.

A clip from Eddie Izzard's fascinating documentary Mongrel Nation on the North/South (Norse/Saxon) "divide"

I should say from the start that I don't like the term "North/South divide". I don't like the choice of words ("divide" seems to me to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you keep telling people they should have an "us vs. them" mentality, then that's what they'll do, in the main), and I don't even find it an accurate reflection of my experiences of reality. I can honestly say that some of my favourite people in the world are southerners, and I've met plenty of northerners whose longboats I'd happily set alight with them still in them. (OK, I'm being stupid, but hopefully you get my point anyway.) People are people, first and foremost, and although I don't deny that there are cultural differences wherever you go, I don't think we do anyone justice when we take those general differences too seriously.

That being said, nobody who knows me will find my interest in this clip surprising; I'm very interested in genealogy and suchlike, and I have mentioned my 'Norse surname' a few times. Not in the "I'm special because I have a certain genetic heritage" way - it's hardly something to write home about when thousands of people share said heritage with you - but because I honestly do come over all awestruck and humble whenever I think about the number of people throughout time I'm related to, and the diversity of any given person's genetic makeup. That disclaimer out of the way, here are a few of my musings on the points brought up by the video:

♣ The place names thing, I have learned, makes for a good car game on long journeys. However, I have not yet found an explanation for the fact that although the Saxon word 'bury' ends many places names down yonder, Bury itself is in the north (Lancashire, to be precise). You might also spot another Norse word in the northern placenames...
♣ Call me dim, but I still don't get this - if the tiny toilet brush test analyses the Y chromosome, does that mean that a woman couldn't be tested for Norse vs. Saxon DNA? Presumably if she couldn't you could test a close male relative of hers, but then given that there are people who are adopted and don't know it, or who haven't been told the full truth about their lineage, that wouldn't really be an airtight method.
♣ Smartarse moment - surely it wasn't just in the 9th Century that Chelsea was in the south and Blackburn the north? OK, I've finished being a prig now.

Now onto the perceived differences between the two geographical/genetic types. The obvious counter-argument here is that any sweeping statement is doomed to fall flat on its face; it's like saying that all Americans overeat, all the French are sex-obsessed, all the English are uptight or all Germans lack a sense of humour - it doesn't take five minutes to blow such arguments out of the water. However, it is equally impossible to deny that cultural differences do exist (albeit to a much less dramatic degree than the comical stereotypes would have you believe), hence my bewilderment at what appeared to me to be absurdly servile behaviour on the part of shop assistants when I was on holiday in Florida. On a more local scale, there was one southern lad in my Media Studies class in college, and when asked he did say that he had observed a difference in terms of bluntness since he'd moved up north.

However, he also said that the difference wasn't as huge as it's sometimes made out to be, and this is where my next points come in.

♣ "Northerners are harder". A tough one for me to rebut, as I don't really have much to compare it to. I can't say I consider myself to be 'hard', but then maybe I'm speaking from the point of view of someone who's never spent any significant amount of time in the south. I don't know if I'm tougher than most southern girls, but I wouldn't risk money on it being the case. As for the bluntness my college classmate mentioned, again, it might just be that I've nothing to compare it to, but I actually think I'm very carefully spoken (if I do put my foot in my mouth, it's usually accidental), and I expect to be afforded the same courtesy. I don't get much of a barbarian vibe from that.
SILLY SIDENOTE - you can still find Berserkers near me; just stand outside any pub at chucking-out time. But then again, I bet the same's true in Peckham.
♣ "Northerners are friendlier". Again, difficult for someone who has spent her life in the north to examine objectively, but I know that I'm rather reserved, albeit polite and accomodating until given reason not to be, and I don't expect a warmer reception from northerners than I do from anyone else. Then again, when a friend of mine came up from London (where she was living at the time) for the Mirrors launch do, she did say that she had been struck by the relative friendliness of Preston's people, with far more strangers than she was used to smiling at her and asking her how she was doing, so perhaps there is a kernel of truth in there. Oh, and just to digress for a moment, the Vikings were far from godless - they had many gods! Not that there's anything wrong with being godless, because I'm pretty godless myself, but I just had to point out the inaccuracy in that statement.
♣ "Northerners are flashier". Everyone I know who's seen this has reacted the same way - what the hell?!? Remind me again where Carnaby Street and Savile Row are? I assume, too, that my disagreement with the idea of northern women all dressing "exactly the same" is a given, although I can't deny that you do see a lot of young women dressed in next to nothing around here no matter what the weather. Isn't this true everywhere, though? And I don't dress like that even during a heat wave - as I say, generalisations about a group of people don't work when examined up close, although I'm probably not the best person to challenge the idea of northerners dressing in an ostentatious manner.

So is there a very noticeable 'northern personality' that I'm not seeing for looking at it? Have I missed my own stereotypical tendencies? If you have experience of living in different parts of the country, have you found there to be noticeable differences? And most importantly, are there special southern manners I should be practicing so as not to commit a hideous faux pas?

To wrap up now, I bring you a clip of a gig by Geordie comedian Ross Noble, and the sort of things grown adults become capable of when they take the idea of "us and them" too seriously. Food for thought.

A spot of regional rivalry erupts at a Ross Noble gig

If I were sufficiently undignified as to throw mud, I wouldn't waste my time throwing it at a wall.

2009-09-06T10:38:00.002+01:00

Interesting interview with my editor Will on the ongoing development of the MNW imprint

It's always nice to hear how things are progressing with the imprint, and Will always does a brilliant job of taking the discussion beyond scandal and misunderstanding to talk about the real focus of MNW, which is, as with most other imprints, the fiction it's producing.

Of course, no article on MNW would be complete without a few patronising or out-and-out venomous quotes from some 'concerned industry insiders', and this one has a doozy. Wow, I never thought of myself as a piece of mud before. Fortunately, that line is laugh-out-loud funny (and I mean that literally; not in the sense of people claiming to have "LOL"-ed when in reality they probably did no such thing), and not something I would ever think of taking to heart, which is probably just as well, really. How anyone can call authors pieces of mud while claiming to be concerned that the MNW imprint is devaluing them blows my mind.

Last link of the day...

2009-09-04T20:05:00.002+01:00

...comes from the adorable Tara Hanks, who presents her account of Trades of the Flesh. Be warned, though - here be MINOR PLOT SPOILERS! Nothing too hefty, but if you're the sort of person who likes everything in a book to be a surprise, you might want to read the book first, then Tara's post.

Thanks Tara!

It's like the first time, only repeated.

2009-09-04T12:44:00.002+01:00

Pardon the double-posting, but I just became the first guest poster on Nik Perring's blog as well. This time I'm talking a bit about the Second Novel Experience.

"Are you good-natured, dear?"

2009-09-04T09:15:00.002+01:00

More about Trades of the Flesh
Buy from Amazon through my webstore

Goodness, it's here. Trades of the Flesh is officially out in the world, making bookshops and webstores everywhere that little bit seedier. I'm sniffing with pride.

To mark the occasion, I have popped the lovely Melanie's guest blog cherry with a little bit of nattering about "ladybirds", "motts" - Victorian prostitutes to you and me. Melanie is also very kindly hosting a little competition in which you can win a copy of Trades complete with a signed bookplate. The rules are in the post, and you can enter in the comments...if you're in the mood to confess your own shady doings!

By the way, Melanie's blog makes for fascinatingly eclectic reading and is always beautifully illustrated to boot, so if history and art are your cup of tea and you haven't checked her out yet, you should. She has also used blogging as a medium to publish the first part of her Journal of Marie-Antoinette series of novels, which is also terrific reading.

Thanks Melanie!