Cover Reveal

I’ve never been involved in a ‘cover reveal’ before. But that’s what the lovely people at AngryRobot are about to do for my next book, the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter. (I feel I need to say ‘lovely’ because if I just said ‘Angry Robot’ it might give an entirely different impression to those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting them.)

My previous covers with other publishers were revealed, of course – in that there must logically have been a moment when they were seen for the first time. But that moment passed un-noticed.

So, when I received an email from AR last week to say they were almost ready to do the cover reveal, my first reaction was to say ‘what’s that?’ My second reaction was to feel a rosy glow of self-satisfied pleasure. They’re doing all this for me? Self-satisfaction is a dangerous feeling for a novelist. It encourages the erroneous belief that we are special in some way and thereby kills the hunger to improve. It is also rather ugly.   

Had I been quicker witted, I would have realised immediately that the cover reveal is not a celebration of the author. It is a hats-off to the artist who designed the thing. In this case that is Will Staehle, a Seattle based designer whose excellent website you can find here.

And... although the cover has not yet been ‘revealed’, I can tell you that Will has done an amazing job for the Bullet Catcher’s Daughter.

 

More of that later. But for now, I'm just off to rehearse the trumpeters.

The Dyslexia Debate

The Dyslexia Debate is a new book by Professor Elliott of Durham University. The mass of publicity surrounding its launch has suggested variously that dyslexia is a 'myth' that it is a construct by middle class parents whose children are not learning fast enough and that giving dyslexics extra help is an injustice to other students.

This has caused distress among a group of people who are already suffering. So I thought I would lay out one of the many reasons that I believe the concept of dyslexia to be useful.

Some process has selected a group of people and given them the label 'dyslexic'. I'm one of them. Whenever I get together with other adults labelled in the same way, we discover many levels of similarity that other people can't even understand.

  "Do you get that thing where...?"
  "You too?" 
  "I thought I was the only one in the world who did that!"

We can all read and write. We are all well practiced at hiding the difference - though it is stressful and we don't always manage it. But when we get together it is as if we have found a family we never knew we had. All those little quirks and stresses that make us feel out of step with the world - in that company they are gone.

I didn't choose the word dyslexia. I didn't choose what family background I came from. But something deep down on the level of cognitive processing is different from the mainstream. It made learning to read and write agonizingly difficult. I did learn, but reading still takes a lot of concentration for me and my spelling is all over the place - even though I am now a novelist.

They can argue about the name. And they can argue about the best method of helping. And they can argue about disability legislation and funding for special needs education. But my experience tells me that there is a real phenomena here and that the process of identification is selecting a group of people with very similar issues.

Perhaps it would be more comfortable for some people to believe that because the problems are invisible from the outside they can be ignored. Just get the kids to read and write and the difference has 'gone away'?

I'm sorry. It is still here after we have learned to pass ourselves off as non-dyslexic. Something about the dyslexia labelling is working. For the time being it is the only thing we have to enable us to find people with the same differences.

Please don't try to destroy the label unless you have something better to replace it with.

Under the Skin (2013)

Under the Skin (2013) is a film that divides opinion. When friends heard that I intended to go and see it they, variously, told me that it was: “A breakthrough in cinema” “The most disturbing film ever” “Misogynistic” “Remeniscent of Kubrick” and “Unimaginably boring”. Could all these descriptions be true?

Phoenix Square in Leicester was showing it yesterday, so I went along to find out.

Under the Skin is a film about... Well, here I run into my first problem. Nothing is obvious. Even by the end, I couldn’t tell you definitively what the story is. We watch as Scarlett Johansson, clothed in a stolen identity, drives around Glasgow at night. In turn, she watches the people on the streets around her. Sometimes she stops and talks to one of them. Sometimes she offers a lift. And all the time, we, the audience, are playing detective, trying to find a story behind these apparently random interactions.



Scarlett Johansson - Under the Skin

Anyone who has seen the trailer will already know that a disturbing fate awaits a man, enticed by her sexuality to enter a surreal black, featureless lair. Then we are back to driving around and watching.

The shots are cut long, giving the film a deliberately slow pace. The camera lingers over everything. And without a clear thread of story to hold onto, the pace feels doubly slow. For many people, it has clearly crossed the fine line that separates ‘enigmatic’ from ‘boring’. And yes, I can see that point of view.

Several things kept me on the enigmatic side of the line. First and foremost was Scarlett Johansson’s presence. Her face is endlessly fascinating in passivity. And her abrupt switches to other modes of expression were disturbing and entirely believable. I hope her performance is not overlooked when the awards season comes around again.

The second reason the film had me hooked were the occasional surreal scenes, which seemed to take place in another reality. They were visually extraordinary. I have not read the book, but it would be very interesting to know what these are the visual representation of in prose. They are certainly a triumph in film making and it is in them that the Kubrick comparison felt most meaningful.

The third reason I stayed with the film was the naturalistic acting style, at least part of which came from hidden camera filming of ordinary people going about their lives. This dissolving of the wall between documentary and fiction did much to heighten the disturbing effect of the film overall. When something bad happens, it feels as if we are watching reality.

I have to address the suggestion of misogyny, which almost put me off going to see the film. I can understand that a story about a woman stalking male victims might be seen as such. But I did not take it that way. For me the character played by Johansson, though presenting female sexuality, was in fact alien from the concept herself. Thus, ironically, her true character seemed androgynous.

However an interaction between a male and a female character at the end of the film – which I can’t describe because it would be a significant spoiler – did leave me very uneasy in this respect. It left issues unresolved – which I think was the intention of the film makers, but which I can imagine it receiving criticism for. It is a fine judgement, but I think that sequence was justified by the story.

Under the Skin is not a film for everyone. Hurrah for that! The astronomical cost of film making naturally pushes producers to try to satisfy the largest possible audience. That isn't a complaint. It is just economic fact. But the net effect of a million economically necessary decisions is to make the film industry institutionally conservative and risk averse.

Here we have a notable exception. Congratulations to all the funders for getting behind it. And to Scarlett Johansson for taking the risk.

Yes, Under the Skin gets a thumbs up from me. But it leaves me with a question - are a strong story thread and this kind of quality mutually exclusive? In other words - good as it was, could this film have been better?

Britons, Saxons, Vikings - who are the English?

“Who are the English?” That good question was put to an audience in Glenfield Library last Saturday by novelist Marianne Whiting. “The Scots seem to have an idea of who they are,” she said. “So do the Welsh. But not the English.”

Novelist - Marianne Whiting

Anglo-Saxons perhaps? Only partly. Drawing on recent genetic research, Marianne told us that in DNA terms, the English population is far more Ancient Britain than Anglo-Saxon.

If this all sounds technical and academic, I am giving the wrong impression. Marianne is an entertaining speaker. Her talk was funny and filled with anecdote as she delved into our mysterious Dark Ages history. Women warriors featured prominently. There were also snake pits and vengeance aplenty. And not to forget the Battle of Brunenburg in 937 AD. Too many people forget it, Marianne said. It was the battle where the idea of Englishness “came of age”.

 

At the end of a very enjoyable hour, the audience crowded round to buy copies of Marianne’s excellent novel, ‘Shieldmaiden’.

I can thoroughly recommend both the novel and the talk.

Document Map, Microsoft Word and Plotting Novels

How to plot novels and other forms of long fiction is a burning question for many of my writing students. I mentioned The Plotting Problem in a blog post a couple of weeks ago, and how it relates to the plot being more than a head-full of information. 

Document Map in Microsoft Word is helpful to me in tackling this problem - particularly in the stage where I have already written some tens of thousands of words but do not yet have the whole structure clear in my mind. I use it to provide a map of the chapters and sections of the novel – presented in a side bar at the edge of the computer screen. Armed with that visual overview I find the emerging structure easier to comprehend. 

 

Clearly, this system won't be appropriate for everyone. But I thought I would share it in the hope that it might be useful to some.

Screen-shot, showing Document Map enabled

In this screenshot you can see my setup for novel writing using Microsoft Word. The first thing you will probably notice is the colour tint in the background of the page. Background colour can be defined as part of the page setup. Like many dyslexics, I get a certain amount of visual stress when reading black text on a white background. Having an ivory, amber or straw-coloured background is far more easy for me to work with.

The document map can be seen down the left hand side of the page. Every bit of text in your document that is defined as a heading will appear there. I use the ‘Normal’ style for the body of each chapter, the ‘Heading 2’ style for chapter headings themselves and the ‘Heading 1’ style to mark out my act structure: Part One, Part Two and Part Three - or more if necessary.

 

Styles are accessed under the Home tab at the top of the page in Microsoft Word. Document map is enabled by checking the appropriate box under the 'View' tab.

 

Styles on the 'Home' tab

In the screenshot, I have clicked ‘Part One’ in the document map to open out that section, revealing all the chapters within it. I could similarly collapse it down with a click and open up any of the other sections.

Document Map close-up

To assist me in navigating the document, I the chapters names. These are memory joggers to help me know what is in each chapter. But once the novel has been written and edited, I remove the names. They are like scaffolding - taken down after a building has been constructed. The act structure markers are also removed at that stage.

 

The screenshot is from the opening page of my novel The Bullet Catcher's Daughter, which is being published by Angry Robot in September.

Tastes and Tales at the Delish Deli

The Delish Deli and Kitchen in Rugby is the sort of place that makes your mouth water. Literally. Just step through the door and inhale.

But last night it served up something different. Tastes and Tales was an evening of munches and moody readings from three novelists: bestselling crime writer Samantha Hayes, dark fantasy author Joseph D’Lacey and myself.

What’s a deli doing hosting a literary evening? That was the question in my mind when Joseph invited me to take part. Readings only happen in Libraries and festivals, surely?

Apparently not.

I arrived to find rows of chairs filling the shop (all tickets had been sold.) With the lights turned down and clusters of candles artfully positioned around the room, the atmosphere was perfect for the dark readings ahead. And did I mention that yummy smell?

 

Samantha Hayes reads from "Until You're Mine"

I don’t want to review the readings here (except to say that I had great fun listening to Sam and Joseph, who are excellent writers. I would happily have sat there listening to each of them for much longer.) What I do want to say is how much I admire the creative thinking of the people at Delish Deli for putting on such an evening.

Between each serving of literature, they circulated with platters of food for the delighted guests. Being unable to eat anything with gluten (and not having told them beforehand) I had to watch most of it pass by. But I must mention the vegetarian scotch eggs which, to judge by Joseph D’Lacey’s expression as he bit into one, must have been exquisite. Happily the strawberries dipped in chocolate were gluten free.    

Joseph D'Lacey at Tastes and Tales



This is a time of rapid change in the world of books and publishing. Our wonderful publishers, bookshops and libraries are having to adapt as they try to find their place in the digital world.  It is a challenging time for those who don’t like change. But for those who embrace it there are new and exciting opportunities. One of the things that has impressed me about my new publisher Angry Robot (who also publish Joseph’s books) is their fresh thinking and adaptability.  

Where do Dark Tales at the Delish Deli fit in to this new world? All I can say is this: they sold all the tickets, the atmosphere was excellent, many books were bought and stories listened to, the authors were paid and everyone went home happy.  All this at a time when writers are struggling to make ends meet, bookshops are closing at an alarming rate and libraries are cutting their hours.

Such was the success of the evening, I feel sure Delish will put on more similar events in future. And if they invite me to go, I will jump at the chance.

Land of Broken Promises - by Margaret Penfold

Patsy by Margaret Penfold is the first novel in the Land of Broken Promises trilogy. On Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the book’s launch in Leicester.

Margaret and I belong to the same writers’ group, so I have seen many extracts from the trilogy over the last few years. I knew roughly what it was about, but I was still in for some surprises.

The three novels are set during the British Mandate of Palestine. Each follows the story of a different woman, one English, one Jewish and one a Muslim Arab. In seeing those formative years from three different perspectives, the series manages to give a beautifully balanced view of what is a tangled and bitterly contested piece of history.
 

Margaret Penfold reads from Patsy - Land of Broken Promises

All this I knew. The surprise for me was learning the lengths to which Margaret went to get to the truth of each story. Part of it was based on memories of her own childhood in Palestine. But the research she needed to do in addition was extensive and painstaking. But even after that she knew that in order to be faithful to the Jewish and Arab perspectives, she would need to find people from those backgrounds to talk help her. This included travelling to Israel.

But the most stunning part of Margaret’s excellent presentation was a reading (one I had not heard before.)  In it she describes the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 from the point of view of someone inside the building. It was an extraordinary piece of writing, made all the more so when we learned that it was based on her father’s first-hand account.

When people describe novels, the word ‘important’ is bandied around quite loosely. But in this case it is appropriate. This is an important book. And an important series of books. Conflict would be easier solved if we all did what Margaret has done so successfully here, and saw the story from the other person’s point of view.

Bravo to the publisher, Bluewood, for grabbing the chance to get this story out.