I'm absolutely appalled to discover that it's been nearly a year since I posted anything here - although hopefully part of that may be excused by the fact that I mislaid the password and only found it again after an extensive search. (The perils of getting older include the infamous Over Fifties Treasure Hunt ... you walk into a room carrying your glasses in one hand and you car keys in the other, and then spend the next twenty minutes looking for your car keys ... )
On the other hand (where the glasses are!), I'm a great believer in not saying anything if you don't have anything to say; a childhood surrounded by people who could talk to Olympic standard left me firmly convinced that it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt!
Plus, it's been a difficult year. I've started - and laid aside - two or three book projects and worked sporadically on another. Fortunately an idea has actually taken proper hold at last, and I'm currently working towards 1 August publication with a story called IN DEEP - which is basically about a former police officer trying to decipher the mystery of his stepson's untimely death on a small Scottish island. I won't say too much about it at this stage, being a bit superstitious, but it's probably as close as I'll ever get to writing 'Nordic Noir'.
However the big news at the moment is that a paperback edition of DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT is currently on its way through the inexorable mills of CreateSpace and Amazon and will very soon be available to buy. This is partly timed to coincide with Manifold Press's fifth anniversary, since it was actually the first title they took on. I'm hoping to get the rest of my titles out in paperback during the rest of this year, too, which is really something to look forward to; no matter how many e-books one may end up selling, there is something unusually satisfying about seeing a row of physical book spines upon a physical shelf - and the Manifold Press books always look spectacular in print!
A couple of people have kindly asked if I'm going to be at the Press's event in Oxford, QUEER COMPANY, but I'm afraid that isn't going to be possible this time. I would urge anyone within travelling distance to take the plunge and attend, though - it sounds as if it's going to be a lovely, low-stress occasion with a bit of gentle networking wrapped around some particularly good food. (In fact, mouth-watering reports of The Jam Factory's marvellous home-made biscuits have reached me and I'm insanely jealous; I'm hoping one of my good buddies on the organising team will endeavour to smuggle some out for me!)
I'll close with a quick plug for A PRIDE OF POPPIES, to which I'm extremely proud to have contributed. A wide and wonderful selection of authors from all around the globe have taken part in this excellent project, all the proceeds of which are to be donated to the Royal British Legion. We contributors have had the privilege of seeing the (almost) finished product already, and it's an extremely impressive body of work with a wide variety of settings and scenarios. I'm not going to say too much as the formal announcement of the contents is due in a few days' time, but it's really been an endeavour to shout about - and I'm sure I speak for the other authors as well in saying that we hope our readers will get behind it and support us in raising funds for a highly respected and very worthwhile cause.
And I promise ... I'll try not to leave it another year before posting here again!
Rainbow Award Banners
Awarded December 2013 for MAKE DO AND MEND by Adam Fitzroy
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Saturday, 29 March 2014
Jim Brynawel
Recently, Brandon Shire asked me to write a post for his blog; this year he's highlighting books his readers recommend as 'gems you may have missed', and MAKE DO AND MEND fell into that category. It was of course a great compliment and I was happy to oblige - but at the same time it reminded me that I've let life overwhelm me a bit recently, and I haven't posted anything here for a very long time indeed. So, with apologies, here's the post I wrote for Brandon in case you may have missed it - it turned out to be all about Jim Brynawel and his conscientious objection - and I really will try to do better in future!
Some authors prepare meticulously when they begin to write a new book, knowing in detail from the outset precisely what will happen to whom and in what order. Personally, I find this approach dampens creativity, and I prefer to take the journey alongside the characters; I will usually know something about the people and their story arc before I start a book, but the way it develops can often surprise me. It's also usually the case that I have to wait until I've finished a book before I can look back on it objectively and say with any hope of certainty exactly what the story is about!
With MAKE DO AND MEND, the initial intention was to describe a growing intimacy between Harry and Jim which would be set against a background of some sort of conflict. In the preliminary sketches for the book the setting was to be the present day and the conflict with land-hungry neighbours who threatened the family's farm. (This aspect of the plot later found a home in THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER WYE, which was published earlier this year and which takes place in a very similar geographical area – waste not, want not! - but there the similarities end.) However a sudden inspiration struck, of unknown origin, and convinced me that relocating the action of the book to the middle of the Second World War would make it all very much more interesting. That way the grit of conflict - which every book needs – could be supplied not so much by the war itself, nor even by the difficulty of maintaining what in those days would have been a highly secretive relationship, but by Jim's status as a conscientious objector.
I know some people think I may have been influenced by Mary Renault's THE CHARIOTEER in this respect. This is immensely flattering, of course, but in all honesty I read the book so long ago that the only thing I remember about it is that one character was called 'Laurie'. I was actually thinking more about Private Godfrey in the TV series 'Dad's Army', who had been a 'conshie' in the First World War but who had nevertheless distinguished himself as a volunteer ambulance driver on the battlefield – for which he later won the reluctant admiration of his Home Guard platoon.
It has always seemed to me that conscientious objection must be a very difficult position to hold. Individually we might well be in favour of peace and diplomacy, but "when the blast of war blows in our ears" there is usually some kind of mass patriotic effusion which paints anyone who dares to express an opposing – or even a slightly less committed – opinion as either a scoundrel or a traitor. With Jim, I wanted to be able to portray a character who loved his country enough to support it in his own way, but who did not necessarily approve of the methods it adopted.
In this context, by the way, it's important to remember that the true nature of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime didn't become common knowledge until much later. Throughout the war even perfectly intelligent people were capable of believing that the rumours of atrocities they had heard were in fact some sort of 'black propaganda', part of what we would now call an insidious media campaign; the actual truth was so far beyond the imagination of most normal people at the time that even if they had heard such stories they would have been likely to discredit them. As humans, we have a tendency to dismiss as fiction anything we don't completely understand or even believe to be possible – a trait which has sometimes prevented us from making progress that we should have a great deal sooner.
So, while in retrospect Jim's position may look hopelessly naïve, at the time it would have been one which required considerable courage and personal conviction to maintain; that was the conflict I found intriguing, not least because it has such obvious similarities to the historic situation of gay men. It takes some strength of character, after all, to admit that one is not like everybody else, and to be prepared to shoulder the consequences. If the majority all seem to think and act in the same way, being the exception can vary from uncomfortable to downright dangerous – as those who stand out from the crowd have often discovered. My interest is in people who are prepared to hold firm against pressure to conform, and who – sometimes loudly, sometimes more quietly – continue to attest what they believe in, even in the face of apparently insuperable odds.
In a way, therefore, Jim in MAKE DO AND MEND is not only someone I would very much like to meet but also someone I hope that – if I was facing a similar set of circumstances – I would have the courage to be. His journey was not at all the one I was expecting to take when I began the book, but it's one I was glad to have had the opportunity of exploring – and one which, I hope, will have raised a comparable series of interesting speculations in the minds of the book's readership. If that is indeed the case, then Jim and I will have succeeded in what – all unknowingly – we both set out to do.
- - - - -
Some authors prepare meticulously when they begin to write a new book, knowing in detail from the outset precisely what will happen to whom and in what order. Personally, I find this approach dampens creativity, and I prefer to take the journey alongside the characters; I will usually know something about the people and their story arc before I start a book, but the way it develops can often surprise me. It's also usually the case that I have to wait until I've finished a book before I can look back on it objectively and say with any hope of certainty exactly what the story is about!
With MAKE DO AND MEND, the initial intention was to describe a growing intimacy between Harry and Jim which would be set against a background of some sort of conflict. In the preliminary sketches for the book the setting was to be the present day and the conflict with land-hungry neighbours who threatened the family's farm. (This aspect of the plot later found a home in THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER WYE, which was published earlier this year and which takes place in a very similar geographical area – waste not, want not! - but there the similarities end.) However a sudden inspiration struck, of unknown origin, and convinced me that relocating the action of the book to the middle of the Second World War would make it all very much more interesting. That way the grit of conflict - which every book needs – could be supplied not so much by the war itself, nor even by the difficulty of maintaining what in those days would have been a highly secretive relationship, but by Jim's status as a conscientious objector.
I know some people think I may have been influenced by Mary Renault's THE CHARIOTEER in this respect. This is immensely flattering, of course, but in all honesty I read the book so long ago that the only thing I remember about it is that one character was called 'Laurie'. I was actually thinking more about Private Godfrey in the TV series 'Dad's Army', who had been a 'conshie' in the First World War but who had nevertheless distinguished himself as a volunteer ambulance driver on the battlefield – for which he later won the reluctant admiration of his Home Guard platoon.
It has always seemed to me that conscientious objection must be a very difficult position to hold. Individually we might well be in favour of peace and diplomacy, but "when the blast of war blows in our ears" there is usually some kind of mass patriotic effusion which paints anyone who dares to express an opposing – or even a slightly less committed – opinion as either a scoundrel or a traitor. With Jim, I wanted to be able to portray a character who loved his country enough to support it in his own way, but who did not necessarily approve of the methods it adopted.
In this context, by the way, it's important to remember that the true nature of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime didn't become common knowledge until much later. Throughout the war even perfectly intelligent people were capable of believing that the rumours of atrocities they had heard were in fact some sort of 'black propaganda', part of what we would now call an insidious media campaign; the actual truth was so far beyond the imagination of most normal people at the time that even if they had heard such stories they would have been likely to discredit them. As humans, we have a tendency to dismiss as fiction anything we don't completely understand or even believe to be possible – a trait which has sometimes prevented us from making progress that we should have a great deal sooner.
So, while in retrospect Jim's position may look hopelessly naïve, at the time it would have been one which required considerable courage and personal conviction to maintain; that was the conflict I found intriguing, not least because it has such obvious similarities to the historic situation of gay men. It takes some strength of character, after all, to admit that one is not like everybody else, and to be prepared to shoulder the consequences. If the majority all seem to think and act in the same way, being the exception can vary from uncomfortable to downright dangerous – as those who stand out from the crowd have often discovered. My interest is in people who are prepared to hold firm against pressure to conform, and who – sometimes loudly, sometimes more quietly – continue to attest what they believe in, even in the face of apparently insuperable odds.
In a way, therefore, Jim in MAKE DO AND MEND is not only someone I would very much like to meet but also someone I hope that – if I was facing a similar set of circumstances – I would have the courage to be. His journey was not at all the one I was expecting to take when I began the book, but it's one I was glad to have had the opportunity of exploring – and one which, I hope, will have raised a comparable series of interesting speculations in the minds of the book's readership. If that is indeed the case, then Jim and I will have succeeded in what – all unknowingly – we both set out to do.
Saturday, 1 February 2014
conversations: between Adam Fitzroy and Julie Bozza
A conversation between Adam Fitzroy, author of The Bridge on the River Wye – released by Manifold Press on 1 February 2014 – and Julie Bozza, author of Of Dreams and Ceremonies. We hope you enjoy listening in! And if you have any questions of your own, please feel free to ask via our blogs, Goodreads or Twitter.
Julie: Where did The Bridge on the River Wye come from? What was the inspiration or motivation?
Adam: It's entirely possible I watch too much 'reality TV'! I love shows where people make something out of nothing – homes and gardens in particular – and bits from them seem to fit together in my mind like jigsaw pieces. I had a plot involving the mysterious death of a brother which had been bubbling under for a while, and although I wasn't quite ready to write a fully-fledged 'whodunnit' I thought it would work within the framework of the organic/intensive farming dichotomy … and everything else just seemed to follow on naturally from there.
Julie: Excellent! I very much enjoyed reading the advance copy you kindly sent, and thought you really made the most of the urban and rural locations in London and the Wye Valley. I can see now where the reality TV comes in. I was left with a real sense of the passion, the creativity and (if all else fails) the sheer cussedness with which people can make things happen. Not to mention the necessary dirt under the fingernails! It was all very well done.
Julie: Do you find yourself addressing certain themes or tropes in your novels, or does that change from work to work?
Adam: I try not to repeat myself too much, but I've had a bit of a theme going lately concerning characters who are either desperately short of money themselves or having to use ingenuity to get by in a time of general shortage. I'm not sure I'd know how to write a really rich or privileged character – not unless he'd originally come from a humble background, anyway. It's a mindset which is very difficult to break, and people on opposite sides of the economic divide always have a lot of trouble figuring out 'how the other half lives'. But I promise faithfully not to do the same thing again next time!
Julie: I am, of course, intrigued to read whatever it is you do next!
It’s an interesting point, about the differing mindsets either side of the economic divide. One of the characters in my next novel, A Threefold Cord, has come from a very privileged position, and is very conscious of his luck, knowing that it has nothing to do with being deserved (or indeed undeserved). I was interested to consider the effects of that on who he is and how he chooses to live. I’m looking forward to discovering whether other people find him interesting as well!
Julie: How do you choose the names of your characters?
Adam: That's a lot like finding a title – either incredibly difficult or incredibly easy! For example, I recently came across the first lot of sketchy notes for my next project (of which more anon!) where I'd written 'POV character's name is Howard'. Well, no, it isn't, because at some point between then and now he's changed in my mind to 'Hugo', and 'Howard' just seems completely wrong! I do think names have personalities of their own, though, and a name will tell you something about the character before you start looking any deeper. I'd expect an 'Adrian' to be clever, for example, and a 'Rory' to be fun, and a 'Christopher' to be quiet – maybe that's just because I've met people with those names who match those descriptions!
If you're wondering about Hugo – he's clever, but muddled and socially awkward and there are lots of things about life in general that he really doesn't 'get'!
Julie: I’m the same with that first point you make – I either know a character’s name instinctively, or I agonise over the matter for ages. Sometimes what makes it hard is that the ‘official’ meaning of a name doesn’t fit with how I envisage the character … It shouldn’t really matter, but I couldn’t give one of my heroes a name that has a negative meaning, even if most readers wouldn’t know or care about those connotations. I agree with the notion that ‘Adrian’ is clever, for example, but there is also a meaning of ‘dark’ attached, so I have used that for a villain – and I named his sister ‘Elena’, which has a meaning of ‘light’, because she’s on the side of the angels … Whether readers mind about me being so pernickety is another matter.
Julie: How would you define your chosen genre, and what draws you to it?
Adam: Basically, I just write the stuff I really want to read. For a long time most of the available fiction about gay men was either so decorous you could have blinked and missed the relationship or it was steaming pornography which was just too exhausting to read. I always felt there had to be a middle ground – where the characters were gay but that wasn't the only interesting thing about them, and where they had something else to deal with as well as their love for each other. Take Doug in Dear Mister President for example; what's interesting about him is that he's President, not that he's gay (or, rather, bi). I don't want my characters to be defined exclusively by their sexuality, in other words, because there are as many ways to be gay as there are gay men - and it's all just part of a wider continuum of human sexuality, most of which I feel we should be accepting without comment as absolutely normal.
Julie: Amen! Over the decades that I have been writing contemporary gay fiction or male–male romance, so much has changed. And I am still very much enjoying the heady feeling of our characters being a whole lot freer to simply be themselves at last. (There you go, I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.) On the other hand, I have to admit I do also enjoy a bit of ‘forbidden’ love in my fiction – so even though are certainly still pockets of that around these days, maybe I will end up returning to historical fiction when I want to explore that trope.
Julie: What do you enjoy most about writing? What do you enjoy least?
Adam: I love plotting. To quote Hannibal in The A Team, I love it when a plan comes together! I love that you can start out with a lot of disparate elements and suddenly realise that there's a pattern to them, and that a narrative thread which starts from Point A will inevitably lead you to Point B and beyond. I also – as I think most writers will probably say – love the days when the words flow like wine and you can be completely intoxicated by the experience. I have a nasty habit of talking out loud as I type when things are going well, and there are days when I just can't get the words onto the screen fast enough.
What I don't like much are deadlines, although I find them absolutely essential. The quickest way to get fed up with a book is to have to race against the clock to get it finished, although fortunately I do seem to be able to do that if I have to. I always feel the composition process is more likely to be successful if it's a little more relaxed, though!
Julie: I find this sort of thing very interesting to ponder, especially relating to the balance needed between instinct and intellect when writing. For example, perhaps it’s the instinct bringing those elements together, and the intellect at first thinking them disparate – and then the intellect finally understanding what the connections are, which the instinct knew or at least guessed all along. Similarly, perhaps the desire for a more reasonable deadline that allows for a relaxed writing process is about giving the instinct enough time and space in which to truly flourish. Would you agree … ?
Adam: Yes, and I like the way you put that! A lot of what I do is 'seat of the pants' (if you'll pardon the expression!) - I don't really understand how or why it works but I do like to have time, if possible, to reflect on things a bit and convince myself that they actually do make sense. To mangle the metaphor beyond redemption, I'm constantly afraid that one day I'll look down and discover that I've sawn right through the branch and there's nothing holding me up any more … instinct on its own is not nearly enough, in my opinion; it requires intellect for reassurance!
Julie: And finally, what’s your next writing project? What do we have to look forward to?
Adam: The next book is going to be Fandango, which is about a ghost writer (Hugo, who we talked about above) sent to interview Vince Bliss, a cultural icon who has only reluctantly agreed to produce an autobiography. (It's still at a very early stage so there are some details I haven't quite pinned down yet.) It's not exactly a match made in heaven but as they get used to one another – and as Vince's two awful adult children make their presence felt – they find themselves sharing experiences and growing closer together.
Boundaries, which I had to set aside last year, is about half-finished, and I'm hoping to return to that as well before the end of 2014; there's a whole subplot which has to be stripped out before I can go any further with it, but otherwise the book's in very good condition and could very well be publishable by this time next year – all things being equal!
Julie: Excellent news indeed. You know how keen I am to read Boundaries in particular, but both of those sound fascinating!
The next book I have coming out is A Threefold Cord, with a likely publication date of 1 May (thanks to Manifold Press). I have really enjoyed writing this one, as it’s a ‘traditional’ romance in most ways except that it involves three men instead of two. I like to set myself some kind of challenge with each book, and that one was fairly obvious.
Meanwhile, I’m just about to launch into Serious Plotting Mode for the third (and final) Butterfly Hunter novel. This will be set about seven years into Dave and Nicholas’s future together – which makes me a tad nervous, I have to admit, as it’s also our future, and who knows what will change between now and then! It will focus on their relationship, of course, but also on issues of ownership and custodianship around the waterhole Dave discovered. And we’ll be finding out more about Nicholas’s beloved nephew Robin, who’ll be in his late teens.
Thank you, Adam, for the awesome chat – and good luck with your new book!
#
If you’re reading this and would like to read Adam’s latest title, ask your own questions or browse for more info, you can find us here:
Buy link for The Bridge on the River Wye
Adam on Goodreads
Adam on Twitter
Adam’s blog
Julie on Goodreads
Julie on Twitter
Julie’s blog
Julie: Where did The Bridge on the River Wye come from? What was the inspiration or motivation?
Adam: It's entirely possible I watch too much 'reality TV'! I love shows where people make something out of nothing – homes and gardens in particular – and bits from them seem to fit together in my mind like jigsaw pieces. I had a plot involving the mysterious death of a brother which had been bubbling under for a while, and although I wasn't quite ready to write a fully-fledged 'whodunnit' I thought it would work within the framework of the organic/intensive farming dichotomy … and everything else just seemed to follow on naturally from there.
Julie: Excellent! I very much enjoyed reading the advance copy you kindly sent, and thought you really made the most of the urban and rural locations in London and the Wye Valley. I can see now where the reality TV comes in. I was left with a real sense of the passion, the creativity and (if all else fails) the sheer cussedness with which people can make things happen. Not to mention the necessary dirt under the fingernails! It was all very well done.
Julie: Do you find yourself addressing certain themes or tropes in your novels, or does that change from work to work?
Adam: I try not to repeat myself too much, but I've had a bit of a theme going lately concerning characters who are either desperately short of money themselves or having to use ingenuity to get by in a time of general shortage. I'm not sure I'd know how to write a really rich or privileged character – not unless he'd originally come from a humble background, anyway. It's a mindset which is very difficult to break, and people on opposite sides of the economic divide always have a lot of trouble figuring out 'how the other half lives'. But I promise faithfully not to do the same thing again next time!
Julie: I am, of course, intrigued to read whatever it is you do next!
It’s an interesting point, about the differing mindsets either side of the economic divide. One of the characters in my next novel, A Threefold Cord, has come from a very privileged position, and is very conscious of his luck, knowing that it has nothing to do with being deserved (or indeed undeserved). I was interested to consider the effects of that on who he is and how he chooses to live. I’m looking forward to discovering whether other people find him interesting as well!
Julie: How do you choose the names of your characters?
Adam: That's a lot like finding a title – either incredibly difficult or incredibly easy! For example, I recently came across the first lot of sketchy notes for my next project (of which more anon!) where I'd written 'POV character's name is Howard'. Well, no, it isn't, because at some point between then and now he's changed in my mind to 'Hugo', and 'Howard' just seems completely wrong! I do think names have personalities of their own, though, and a name will tell you something about the character before you start looking any deeper. I'd expect an 'Adrian' to be clever, for example, and a 'Rory' to be fun, and a 'Christopher' to be quiet – maybe that's just because I've met people with those names who match those descriptions!
If you're wondering about Hugo – he's clever, but muddled and socially awkward and there are lots of things about life in general that he really doesn't 'get'!
Julie: I’m the same with that first point you make – I either know a character’s name instinctively, or I agonise over the matter for ages. Sometimes what makes it hard is that the ‘official’ meaning of a name doesn’t fit with how I envisage the character … It shouldn’t really matter, but I couldn’t give one of my heroes a name that has a negative meaning, even if most readers wouldn’t know or care about those connotations. I agree with the notion that ‘Adrian’ is clever, for example, but there is also a meaning of ‘dark’ attached, so I have used that for a villain – and I named his sister ‘Elena’, which has a meaning of ‘light’, because she’s on the side of the angels … Whether readers mind about me being so pernickety is another matter.
Julie: How would you define your chosen genre, and what draws you to it?
Adam: Basically, I just write the stuff I really want to read. For a long time most of the available fiction about gay men was either so decorous you could have blinked and missed the relationship or it was steaming pornography which was just too exhausting to read. I always felt there had to be a middle ground – where the characters were gay but that wasn't the only interesting thing about them, and where they had something else to deal with as well as their love for each other. Take Doug in Dear Mister President for example; what's interesting about him is that he's President, not that he's gay (or, rather, bi). I don't want my characters to be defined exclusively by their sexuality, in other words, because there are as many ways to be gay as there are gay men - and it's all just part of a wider continuum of human sexuality, most of which I feel we should be accepting without comment as absolutely normal.
Julie: Amen! Over the decades that I have been writing contemporary gay fiction or male–male romance, so much has changed. And I am still very much enjoying the heady feeling of our characters being a whole lot freer to simply be themselves at last. (There you go, I’m getting giddy just thinking about it.) On the other hand, I have to admit I do also enjoy a bit of ‘forbidden’ love in my fiction – so even though are certainly still pockets of that around these days, maybe I will end up returning to historical fiction when I want to explore that trope.
Julie: What do you enjoy most about writing? What do you enjoy least?
Adam: I love plotting. To quote Hannibal in The A Team, I love it when a plan comes together! I love that you can start out with a lot of disparate elements and suddenly realise that there's a pattern to them, and that a narrative thread which starts from Point A will inevitably lead you to Point B and beyond. I also – as I think most writers will probably say – love the days when the words flow like wine and you can be completely intoxicated by the experience. I have a nasty habit of talking out loud as I type when things are going well, and there are days when I just can't get the words onto the screen fast enough.
What I don't like much are deadlines, although I find them absolutely essential. The quickest way to get fed up with a book is to have to race against the clock to get it finished, although fortunately I do seem to be able to do that if I have to. I always feel the composition process is more likely to be successful if it's a little more relaxed, though!
Julie: I find this sort of thing very interesting to ponder, especially relating to the balance needed between instinct and intellect when writing. For example, perhaps it’s the instinct bringing those elements together, and the intellect at first thinking them disparate – and then the intellect finally understanding what the connections are, which the instinct knew or at least guessed all along. Similarly, perhaps the desire for a more reasonable deadline that allows for a relaxed writing process is about giving the instinct enough time and space in which to truly flourish. Would you agree … ?
Adam: Yes, and I like the way you put that! A lot of what I do is 'seat of the pants' (if you'll pardon the expression!) - I don't really understand how or why it works but I do like to have time, if possible, to reflect on things a bit and convince myself that they actually do make sense. To mangle the metaphor beyond redemption, I'm constantly afraid that one day I'll look down and discover that I've sawn right through the branch and there's nothing holding me up any more … instinct on its own is not nearly enough, in my opinion; it requires intellect for reassurance!
Julie: And finally, what’s your next writing project? What do we have to look forward to?
Adam: The next book is going to be Fandango, which is about a ghost writer (Hugo, who we talked about above) sent to interview Vince Bliss, a cultural icon who has only reluctantly agreed to produce an autobiography. (It's still at a very early stage so there are some details I haven't quite pinned down yet.) It's not exactly a match made in heaven but as they get used to one another – and as Vince's two awful adult children make their presence felt – they find themselves sharing experiences and growing closer together.
Boundaries, which I had to set aside last year, is about half-finished, and I'm hoping to return to that as well before the end of 2014; there's a whole subplot which has to be stripped out before I can go any further with it, but otherwise the book's in very good condition and could very well be publishable by this time next year – all things being equal!
Julie: Excellent news indeed. You know how keen I am to read Boundaries in particular, but both of those sound fascinating!
The next book I have coming out is A Threefold Cord, with a likely publication date of 1 May (thanks to Manifold Press). I have really enjoyed writing this one, as it’s a ‘traditional’ romance in most ways except that it involves three men instead of two. I like to set myself some kind of challenge with each book, and that one was fairly obvious.
Meanwhile, I’m just about to launch into Serious Plotting Mode for the third (and final) Butterfly Hunter novel. This will be set about seven years into Dave and Nicholas’s future together – which makes me a tad nervous, I have to admit, as it’s also our future, and who knows what will change between now and then! It will focus on their relationship, of course, but also on issues of ownership and custodianship around the waterhole Dave discovered. And we’ll be finding out more about Nicholas’s beloved nephew Robin, who’ll be in his late teens.
Thank you, Adam, for the awesome chat – and good luck with your new book!
#
If you’re reading this and would like to read Adam’s latest title, ask your own questions or browse for more info, you can find us here:
Buy link for The Bridge on the River Wye
Adam on Goodreads
Adam on Twitter
Adam’s blog
Julie on Goodreads
Julie on Twitter
Julie’s blog
Friday, 17 January 2014
HEROES
With kind permission of MANIFOLD PRESS: here's a copy of the Author Guest post I wrote which has recently appeared on their blog and LJ.
- - - - -
At first, it seemed to me that I might have difficulty deciding on a subject for my guest blog, since my fellow authors have already staked out the territory so ably. I feel much the same way as F.M. Parkinson about proof-reading and editing, for example, and take just as much delight in research as Morgan Cheshire; from that point of view, they've already said more or less everything I might have wanted to say myself on either subject. (Although I do envy Morgan that workhouse trip, despite all the travelling involved!) However I was lucky enough to have one of those great 'light-bulb' moments when inspiration strikes out of a clear blue (well, grey, actually) sky, and it came to me all of a sudden that one subject I have particularly strong feelings about is the heroes themselves.
To me, the very definition of a hero is that he is flawed. Although I grew up on a diet of superhero comics, physical perfection – or any other kind of perfection - in a hero is not particularly interesting to me. After all, if a man has great physical powers and a massive intellect, as well as … let's say … shining azure eyes and a tousled mop of blond curls, he's actually likely to get on people's nerves rather a lot. I suspect that's why as a general rule we expect our actors and sports people to have feet of clay - and why we're never really surprised when we hear that they've been caught out in a sex scandal or cheating on their taxes – because we know that perfection is impossible and we instinctively distrust anything that seems too good.
That's why I prefer heroes who are world-weary, or who have been beaten-up by life to a greater or lesser extent. I like them to have achieved a certain amount of self-knowledge, to have sorted out their priorities, and to be able to recognise the potential for a satisfying long-term relationship when it comes their way – no matter in what unprepossessing guise. You see - and I say this with great respect to those authors who see things differently – I just don't believe looks matter a row of beans; it's what's beneath the surface that counts most.
That's why you'll find very few – if any – gorgeous 27-year-old hunks in my books. (And even fewer who are younger than that!) I won't pretend that at 27 a man isn't capable of being heroic or of making life-changing decisions – of course they are, because men of that age are serving in the armed forces and getting married every day of the week and in every country in the world. They're also, however, wildly over-represented in romantic fiction - to the extent that I'm aware of some people who think romance, heroism and even sex are either indecent or frankly impossible for anybody over the age of 30 or who isn't drop-dead gorgeous. (Or indeed both!) Not only that, but there is a distinct subset of opinion that ugly or geeky or clumsy or unhappy people don't deserve to be loved by anybody, and that's so flagrantly unjust as well as unkind that I'm determined to do anything I possibly can to showcase more unconventional heroes and hopefully redress the balance a bit.
The storylines that appeal to me are the ones in which ordinary men – the sort you might see at the bus stop, or queueing in the Post Office – are presented with situations and choices that they're not fully prepared to meet. I like to challenge them, to shake them up a bit, to move the goal-posts in what might previously have been a generally uninteresting life. Take Chad in DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT, for example; he's minding his own business one day when Fate unexpectedly gives him the opportunity of saving the President's life. If Chad hadn't been at work that day, or if he hadn't intervened, the history of the world would have been very different – and yet Chad's no conventional hero, he's an image analyst with a back-room job and no great claim to personal beauty; he's simply the right guy in the right place at the right time. Those are the people I care about, the ones who make life pleasanter – or even possible - for others in a thousand tiny ways simply by existing, and by doing what they do.
There's a film called 'Something For a Lonely Man', in which the romantic hero is played by Dan Blocker – yes, 'Hoss' from 'Bonanza' of all people - but that doesn't make it any better or worse than your traditional love story, just different. There's also 'Clerks II', which features among other things a love story between ordinary-looking Brian O'Hallorhan as Dante and the stunning Rosario Dawson as Becky; it's believable because we're shown why a beautiful woman might well be interested in a man who doesn't look like a Hollywood star – she can see through the humble exterior and learns to value the person he is inside. These are a couple of examples from the heterosexual world, but the same holds true across the board - whether it's men loving men, women loving women, or a mixture. "We do not love people because they are beautiful," says the proverb, "they are beautiful because we love them." Or, to paraphrase Howard Keel in 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', "If looks were all that mattered, there'd be a power of lonely [people] in the world." Also, if looks were all that mattered, there would be far fewer interesting storylines in the world – and far fewer fascinating characters for authors like me to write about - which is one of the many reasons why I'm profoundly grateful that it isn't so!
- - - - -
At first, it seemed to me that I might have difficulty deciding on a subject for my guest blog, since my fellow authors have already staked out the territory so ably. I feel much the same way as F.M. Parkinson about proof-reading and editing, for example, and take just as much delight in research as Morgan Cheshire; from that point of view, they've already said more or less everything I might have wanted to say myself on either subject. (Although I do envy Morgan that workhouse trip, despite all the travelling involved!) However I was lucky enough to have one of those great 'light-bulb' moments when inspiration strikes out of a clear blue (well, grey, actually) sky, and it came to me all of a sudden that one subject I have particularly strong feelings about is the heroes themselves.
To me, the very definition of a hero is that he is flawed. Although I grew up on a diet of superhero comics, physical perfection – or any other kind of perfection - in a hero is not particularly interesting to me. After all, if a man has great physical powers and a massive intellect, as well as … let's say … shining azure eyes and a tousled mop of blond curls, he's actually likely to get on people's nerves rather a lot. I suspect that's why as a general rule we expect our actors and sports people to have feet of clay - and why we're never really surprised when we hear that they've been caught out in a sex scandal or cheating on their taxes – because we know that perfection is impossible and we instinctively distrust anything that seems too good.
That's why I prefer heroes who are world-weary, or who have been beaten-up by life to a greater or lesser extent. I like them to have achieved a certain amount of self-knowledge, to have sorted out their priorities, and to be able to recognise the potential for a satisfying long-term relationship when it comes their way – no matter in what unprepossessing guise. You see - and I say this with great respect to those authors who see things differently – I just don't believe looks matter a row of beans; it's what's beneath the surface that counts most.
That's why you'll find very few – if any – gorgeous 27-year-old hunks in my books. (And even fewer who are younger than that!) I won't pretend that at 27 a man isn't capable of being heroic or of making life-changing decisions – of course they are, because men of that age are serving in the armed forces and getting married every day of the week and in every country in the world. They're also, however, wildly over-represented in romantic fiction - to the extent that I'm aware of some people who think romance, heroism and even sex are either indecent or frankly impossible for anybody over the age of 30 or who isn't drop-dead gorgeous. (Or indeed both!) Not only that, but there is a distinct subset of opinion that ugly or geeky or clumsy or unhappy people don't deserve to be loved by anybody, and that's so flagrantly unjust as well as unkind that I'm determined to do anything I possibly can to showcase more unconventional heroes and hopefully redress the balance a bit.
The storylines that appeal to me are the ones in which ordinary men – the sort you might see at the bus stop, or queueing in the Post Office – are presented with situations and choices that they're not fully prepared to meet. I like to challenge them, to shake them up a bit, to move the goal-posts in what might previously have been a generally uninteresting life. Take Chad in DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT, for example; he's minding his own business one day when Fate unexpectedly gives him the opportunity of saving the President's life. If Chad hadn't been at work that day, or if he hadn't intervened, the history of the world would have been very different – and yet Chad's no conventional hero, he's an image analyst with a back-room job and no great claim to personal beauty; he's simply the right guy in the right place at the right time. Those are the people I care about, the ones who make life pleasanter – or even possible - for others in a thousand tiny ways simply by existing, and by doing what they do.
There's a film called 'Something For a Lonely Man', in which the romantic hero is played by Dan Blocker – yes, 'Hoss' from 'Bonanza' of all people - but that doesn't make it any better or worse than your traditional love story, just different. There's also 'Clerks II', which features among other things a love story between ordinary-looking Brian O'Hallorhan as Dante and the stunning Rosario Dawson as Becky; it's believable because we're shown why a beautiful woman might well be interested in a man who doesn't look like a Hollywood star – she can see through the humble exterior and learns to value the person he is inside. These are a couple of examples from the heterosexual world, but the same holds true across the board - whether it's men loving men, women loving women, or a mixture. "We do not love people because they are beautiful," says the proverb, "they are beautiful because we love them." Or, to paraphrase Howard Keel in 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers', "If looks were all that mattered, there'd be a power of lonely [people] in the world." Also, if looks were all that mattered, there would be far fewer interesting storylines in the world – and far fewer fascinating characters for authors like me to write about - which is one of the many reasons why I'm profoundly grateful that it isn't so!
Wednesday, 11 December 2013
THE RAINBOW AWARDS
Things were quite a muddle over the weekend, and I'm afraid I didn't manage to get this LJ entry copied over to my blog as usual. I'm only just catching up with myself now!
- - - - -
Believe it or not I had actually managed to forget all about the Rainbow Awards winners being announced overnight, but I can assure you now that the penny has well and truly dropped! Word came through before I was properly awake this morning that BETWEEN NOW AND THEN had been a runner up in the Paranormal Romance category, swiftly followed by the news that MAKE DO AND MEND had been awarded not just Best Gay Historical Romance but also - and I find I'm having a lot of trouble comprehending this and am expecting to wake up from the dream at any moment - Best Gay Novel as well.
At the moment I'm struggling to process the news. I've been writing for many years and have had little or no feedback from anybody in all that time except dear personal friends who are always very sweet - but one does occasionally have to wonder whether or not they're being unflinchingly honest. ("Did you enjoy reading that?" is the literary equivalent of "Does my bum look big in this?" - sometimes a tough question to answer truthfully!) Putting a book out into the big world and knowing that it will be scrutinised in minute detail by people who really know their stuff is a bit like sending your child off to face an especially tough exam; you know you've done everything you can to prepare them, but in the end they will have to stand or fall on their own merits - and afterwards you're balanced between hoping for success and bracing yourself to say something reassuring and supportive should they fail.
Well, this 'child' has exceeded all my hopes and expectations and I couldn't possibly be more thrilled. It's a huge honour, and I'd like to thank everyone who voted and all those who organised the awards procedure. You can be sure that this is a moment I will never, ever forget for as long as I live!
I would also like to congratulate those of my fellow Manifold Press authors who impressed the judges: Jane Elliot for her delightfully kinky MONTANA RED and Julie Bozza for her tender age-gap romance THE APOTHECARY'S GARDEN. I know how hard we all work and how much we all care about what we're doing; it's just wonderful that somebody else has recognised that, too, and has marked that recognition in such a public way.
Go us!
- - - - -
Believe it or not I had actually managed to forget all about the Rainbow Awards winners being announced overnight, but I can assure you now that the penny has well and truly dropped! Word came through before I was properly awake this morning that BETWEEN NOW AND THEN had been a runner up in the Paranormal Romance category, swiftly followed by the news that MAKE DO AND MEND had been awarded not just Best Gay Historical Romance but also - and I find I'm having a lot of trouble comprehending this and am expecting to wake up from the dream at any moment - Best Gay Novel as well.
At the moment I'm struggling to process the news. I've been writing for many years and have had little or no feedback from anybody in all that time except dear personal friends who are always very sweet - but one does occasionally have to wonder whether or not they're being unflinchingly honest. ("Did you enjoy reading that?" is the literary equivalent of "Does my bum look big in this?" - sometimes a tough question to answer truthfully!) Putting a book out into the big world and knowing that it will be scrutinised in minute detail by people who really know their stuff is a bit like sending your child off to face an especially tough exam; you know you've done everything you can to prepare them, but in the end they will have to stand or fall on their own merits - and afterwards you're balanced between hoping for success and bracing yourself to say something reassuring and supportive should they fail.
Well, this 'child' has exceeded all my hopes and expectations and I couldn't possibly be more thrilled. It's a huge honour, and I'd like to thank everyone who voted and all those who organised the awards procedure. You can be sure that this is a moment I will never, ever forget for as long as I live!
I would also like to congratulate those of my fellow Manifold Press authors who impressed the judges: Jane Elliot for her delightfully kinky MONTANA RED and Julie Bozza for her tender age-gap romance THE APOTHECARY'S GARDEN. I know how hard we all work and how much we all care about what we're doing; it's just wonderful that somebody else has recognised that, too, and has marked that recognition in such a public way.
Go us!
Friday, 16 August 2013
BETWEEN NOW AND THEN - the question answered
I was thrilled to see Elisa Rolle's review of BETWEEN NOW AND THEN when I woke up this morning, and in particular I loved her speculation about precisely why it was set in the winter of 1991/1992.
In actual fact - although Elisa's theories are absolutely fascinating and I actually wish they were true - the real reason is a lot more down-to-earth than she imagines. The factors controlling the date of the book's setting were that it needed to have taken place before the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 but after the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987, a very precise window during which Cross-Channel ferries were (barring expensive air travel) the only means of travelling to the Continent from the UK - especially if you wanted to take a vehicle - but were regarded with a certain amount of trepidation by nervous travellers.
Now, add in the fact that the characters would have to be on certain specific roads in order to end up crossing WWI battlefields, and that limited the number of places they could have been visiting; as they weren't likely to be either military history buffs or culture-vultures - they had to be very ordinary, working-class people - football seemed the most obvious reason for the journey. The match between Poland and England, which took place on 13 November 1991, was absolutely ideal - one of those gratuitous pieces of luck which so often elude an author! (It was part of the qualifying campaign for the 1992 European Championship.) November+Flanders added up to "fog" in my mind, giving the time-travel plot both atmosphere and a mechanism, and the fact that it was all a neat 75 years after certain events in the First World War (although the Battle of Torville Wood is completely fictitious) made everything click into place beautifully.
Oh and one more thing; I wanted the guys to be relying on old-fashioned methods of communication like the telephone and the BBC World Service. In an era when everyone has smartphones, problems like a ferry company going bust are so much easier to solve - and so is the business of finding accommodation; when you can just hop online and fine timetables for alternate sailings and book yourself into a nice little guest-house somewhere, everything's just a little bit too safe and predictable to make for a good story!
There are times as a writer when plots/storylines can be extremely awkward to put together - because you want the characters to be somewhere they couldn't possibly have been, or because the situation you want to put them in would be far too easy to get out of. With BETWEEN NOW AND THEN, however, I was very lucky; everything I needed fell into place with very little difficulty - and when a book comes together as smoothly and as readily as that all an author can really do is just hang on tight and let it happen all by itself. I wish more of them would do that, it would make my life a lot easier, but I'm just grateful that it happens that way from time to time; I'll have to remind myself of it, next time I'm stuck with a particularly intractable plot!
In actual fact - although Elisa's theories are absolutely fascinating and I actually wish they were true - the real reason is a lot more down-to-earth than she imagines. The factors controlling the date of the book's setting were that it needed to have taken place before the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 but after the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987, a very precise window during which Cross-Channel ferries were (barring expensive air travel) the only means of travelling to the Continent from the UK - especially if you wanted to take a vehicle - but were regarded with a certain amount of trepidation by nervous travellers.
Now, add in the fact that the characters would have to be on certain specific roads in order to end up crossing WWI battlefields, and that limited the number of places they could have been visiting; as they weren't likely to be either military history buffs or culture-vultures - they had to be very ordinary, working-class people - football seemed the most obvious reason for the journey. The match between Poland and England, which took place on 13 November 1991, was absolutely ideal - one of those gratuitous pieces of luck which so often elude an author! (It was part of the qualifying campaign for the 1992 European Championship.) November+Flanders added up to "fog" in my mind, giving the time-travel plot both atmosphere and a mechanism, and the fact that it was all a neat 75 years after certain events in the First World War (although the Battle of Torville Wood is completely fictitious) made everything click into place beautifully.
Oh and one more thing; I wanted the guys to be relying on old-fashioned methods of communication like the telephone and the BBC World Service. In an era when everyone has smartphones, problems like a ferry company going bust are so much easier to solve - and so is the business of finding accommodation; when you can just hop online and fine timetables for alternate sailings and book yourself into a nice little guest-house somewhere, everything's just a little bit too safe and predictable to make for a good story!
There are times as a writer when plots/storylines can be extremely awkward to put together - because you want the characters to be somewhere they couldn't possibly have been, or because the situation you want to put them in would be far too easy to get out of. With BETWEEN NOW AND THEN, however, I was very lucky; everything I needed fell into place with very little difficulty - and when a book comes together as smoothly and as readily as that all an author can really do is just hang on tight and let it happen all by itself. I wish more of them would do that, it would make my life a lot easier, but I'm just grateful that it happens that way from time to time; I'll have to remind myself of it, next time I'm stuck with a particularly intractable plot!
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Catching up
I'm embarrassingly aware of the length of time it's been since I updated this blog. It isn't because I've forgotten about it, or even - alas - because I'm so busy on a new book that I just haven't managed to find the time. No, unfortunately, it's the outside world that's been getting in the way, and it's caused a radical revision of my plans.
I work several part-time and casual jobs - because my health and my lifelong intolerance for stupid bosses have made me pretty much unemployable in any other form - and one of them has a nasty tendency to get out of hand from time to time and demand energy and intelligence that I don't usually have to spare. I'm sorry to say that this is a job I'm not really in a position to give up or change, either, so when the worst happens I just have to grit my teeth and hang on. If it happens when I'm in the early stages of a new book, though, it's a perfect storm, and that's what it was this time. I emerged from the latest crisis a couple of weeks ago to take a good, long look at BOUNDARIES and admit to myself what I'd been trying for months to pretend wasn't the case - that it would be a much bigger book than I was going to have time to write without losing my present deadline.
That was why I carefully piled all my research notes back into the folder, wrote a synopsis of the next set of plot developments, and reluctantly returned the file to the shelf in favour of something which I know will be a less substantial book but which can easily be ready to be published in February 2014. I should say that I almost always have several books in the preparation stages at any given time, and I'm usually gathering material for more than one, and sometimes writing one and preparing the next simultaneously - but not, I'm afraid, when one of my other part-time jobs gets in the way, as it has this summer.
So, anyway, now we're going to talk about OFF THE GRID, in which Rupert - a chef - returns to the UK after three years in Australia during which his hoped-for new life on the other side of the world has crumbled to dust around him. Fortunately he's still got plenty of friends, though, and a good chef will never lack for employment - but he gets obsessed with finding out what's happened to Jake, who used to sell him vegetables on the local market. Jake, it seems, has gone off the grid and is now running his family's organic smallholding in the Wye Valley - and when Rupert goes looking for him he finds himself getting caught up in a very nasty little local war in which both property and lives are very much at stake.
Barring any more crises, or unpleasant developments in any of my other part-time occupations, it should be possible to have the first draft of OFF THE GRID finished in three months, leaving plenty of time over Christmas and the New Year for revisions. It's supposed to be in its final form by 1 January, but luckily Manifold Press are usually able to be reasonably flexible about that sort of thing and can 'temper the wind to the shorn lamb' if necessary. One thing's for sure, though - BOUNDARIES could only have been ready on that timetable if I'd written three times as fast as I've ever written before, and for a sustained period; since this didn't look likely to happen, I've decided to take the pragmatic view and change direction while I still can. I hate doing it, it feels like failure, but it really is the most sensible course.
I really, really don't like having to be sensible, though.
I work several part-time and casual jobs - because my health and my lifelong intolerance for stupid bosses have made me pretty much unemployable in any other form - and one of them has a nasty tendency to get out of hand from time to time and demand energy and intelligence that I don't usually have to spare. I'm sorry to say that this is a job I'm not really in a position to give up or change, either, so when the worst happens I just have to grit my teeth and hang on. If it happens when I'm in the early stages of a new book, though, it's a perfect storm, and that's what it was this time. I emerged from the latest crisis a couple of weeks ago to take a good, long look at BOUNDARIES and admit to myself what I'd been trying for months to pretend wasn't the case - that it would be a much bigger book than I was going to have time to write without losing my present deadline.
That was why I carefully piled all my research notes back into the folder, wrote a synopsis of the next set of plot developments, and reluctantly returned the file to the shelf in favour of something which I know will be a less substantial book but which can easily be ready to be published in February 2014. I should say that I almost always have several books in the preparation stages at any given time, and I'm usually gathering material for more than one, and sometimes writing one and preparing the next simultaneously - but not, I'm afraid, when one of my other part-time jobs gets in the way, as it has this summer.
So, anyway, now we're going to talk about OFF THE GRID, in which Rupert - a chef - returns to the UK after three years in Australia during which his hoped-for new life on the other side of the world has crumbled to dust around him. Fortunately he's still got plenty of friends, though, and a good chef will never lack for employment - but he gets obsessed with finding out what's happened to Jake, who used to sell him vegetables on the local market. Jake, it seems, has gone off the grid and is now running his family's organic smallholding in the Wye Valley - and when Rupert goes looking for him he finds himself getting caught up in a very nasty little local war in which both property and lives are very much at stake.
Barring any more crises, or unpleasant developments in any of my other part-time occupations, it should be possible to have the first draft of OFF THE GRID finished in three months, leaving plenty of time over Christmas and the New Year for revisions. It's supposed to be in its final form by 1 January, but luckily Manifold Press are usually able to be reasonably flexible about that sort of thing and can 'temper the wind to the shorn lamb' if necessary. One thing's for sure, though - BOUNDARIES could only have been ready on that timetable if I'd written three times as fast as I've ever written before, and for a sustained period; since this didn't look likely to happen, I've decided to take the pragmatic view and change direction while I still can. I hate doing it, it feels like failure, but it really is the most sensible course.
I really, really don't like having to be sensible, though.
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Apologies
I gather some people have received strange e-mails from 'me' containing
just a link. As someone so rightly said, it seems to be one of those
virus things that just runs through a mailbox and sends things to random
addresses; I hope nobody was seriously inconvenienced by it.
- - - - -
I've been absent from LJ, from blogging, and from just about everything else for the last few months. I had a bad case of burn-out after rushing to finish BETWEEN NOW AND THEN to fill a gap in Manifold Press's schedule, and progress on my new book, BOUNDARIES, has been abysmally slow so far. (These things are not unconnected!) However I do seem to be inching forward with it at last, and hopefully after the forthcoming weekend - when I have my last social engagement for quite a while - it will be a whole lot easier to concentrate. Once I'm 'in the groove' I can usually write quite quickly, but getting into the groove seems to take longer and longer every time!
- - - - -
I've been absent from LJ, from blogging, and from just about everything else for the last few months. I had a bad case of burn-out after rushing to finish BETWEEN NOW AND THEN to fill a gap in Manifold Press's schedule, and progress on my new book, BOUNDARIES, has been abysmally slow so far. (These things are not unconnected!) However I do seem to be inching forward with it at last, and hopefully after the forthcoming weekend - when I have my last social engagement for quite a while - it will be a whole lot easier to concentrate. Once I'm 'in the groove' I can usually write quite quickly, but getting into the groove seems to take longer and longer every time!
Saturday, 30 March 2013
What goes around comes around ...
It's coming up to two years now since STAGE WHISPERS was published, and I truly thought that it had failed to find its audience. It is, as Elisa Rolle pointed out in her lovely review at the time,
a very 'English' book, packed with parochial concerns, and is set in
the less-than-glamorous world of provincial theatre - where, if magic
happens, it is often more by accident than by design.
Elisa was in a bit of a minority, though. Other reviewers didn't like it; one suggested for example that the text had been artificially inflated with the addition of borrowings from the classics, presumably to increase the word count/price - a bit of a disastrous tactic if it had been true, since cheaper books seem to sell in larger numbers. Another commenter completely failed to recognise that a period of eleven years had passed for the characters in the book, so that by the end their relationship was much more acceptable generally and Jon's daughter was now a young adult and less likely to be taken away from him if his relationship with Callum became known.
Anyway, as I say, I'd resigned myself to not having made much of an impact with this particular book and had already published three more by the time when - quite out of the blue and within the past few days - the first couple of really enthusiastic reviews appeared.
A reader called Jess Candela on Goodreads seems to have completely understood why the characters spout a lot of Shakespearean lines:
The characters were nuanced and realistic, with no one all good or all bad. Many of them, being actors, had a tendency to pepper their conversations with quotations from and references to the classics. Having spent some time with a theater crowd, I found that very realistic too, and it enhanced my enjoyment of the story.
When I read that, I wanted to leap up and down and shout "Yes, yes, that's what I meant!"; there are some people for whom Shakespeare just seems to leak out of their ears ... they can't even hold an ordinary conversation without quoting something or other. If you've never met anyone like that, then their dialogue would look very strange written down; if you have, however, it suddenly all makes sense.
And then there's bill m, commenting on Amazon, who says:
Adam Fitzroy is probably a pen name for an actor or someone with some acting experience.
Well, I understudied (and went on for) the lead in Rumpelstiltskin at my primary school, but I haven't so much as tried out for the chorus in anything since! However I am completely besotted by theatre and have spent more time and money than I care to admit sitting in various darkened auditoria watching groups of players strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and I also studied Shakespeare at university. In truth, I think I probably would have liked to be a classical actor - but unfortunately such things as looks, talent and opportunities were not forthcoming, and therefore I have had to enjoy the experience vicariously.
Mind you, I do like bill m's suggestion that STAGE WHISPERS:
could be the basis of a script for a fascinating play itself.
Sometimes, in my most extravagant daydreams, I imagine it being made into a movie - and, believe me, I know exactly the right person to direct it! (I could even make quite a respectable stab at casting it, if pushed.) But these are far-off fantasies; we all have them, and perhaps they're better not shared. However if my poor orphan book is at last coming to the notice of people who are prepared to invest a bit of time and effort into reading it, and who actually enjoy it when they do, then it begins to seem as if almost anything may be possible.
Meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity of thanking the two readers who wrote such wonderful reviews; they've helped to restore my faith not only in STAGE WHISPERS as a story but also in myself as an author - which, as I am at a very tricky point with my new book, was more necessary than I feel I can ever adequately convey! You really make me believe that I may be able to cope with this writing business after all ...
Elisa was in a bit of a minority, though. Other reviewers didn't like it; one suggested for example that the text had been artificially inflated with the addition of borrowings from the classics, presumably to increase the word count/price - a bit of a disastrous tactic if it had been true, since cheaper books seem to sell in larger numbers. Another commenter completely failed to recognise that a period of eleven years had passed for the characters in the book, so that by the end their relationship was much more acceptable generally and Jon's daughter was now a young adult and less likely to be taken away from him if his relationship with Callum became known.
Anyway, as I say, I'd resigned myself to not having made much of an impact with this particular book and had already published three more by the time when - quite out of the blue and within the past few days - the first couple of really enthusiastic reviews appeared.
A reader called Jess Candela on Goodreads seems to have completely understood why the characters spout a lot of Shakespearean lines:
The characters were nuanced and realistic, with no one all good or all bad. Many of them, being actors, had a tendency to pepper their conversations with quotations from and references to the classics. Having spent some time with a theater crowd, I found that very realistic too, and it enhanced my enjoyment of the story.
When I read that, I wanted to leap up and down and shout "Yes, yes, that's what I meant!"; there are some people for whom Shakespeare just seems to leak out of their ears ... they can't even hold an ordinary conversation without quoting something or other. If you've never met anyone like that, then their dialogue would look very strange written down; if you have, however, it suddenly all makes sense.
And then there's bill m, commenting on Amazon, who says:
Adam Fitzroy is probably a pen name for an actor or someone with some acting experience.
Well, I understudied (and went on for) the lead in Rumpelstiltskin at my primary school, but I haven't so much as tried out for the chorus in anything since! However I am completely besotted by theatre and have spent more time and money than I care to admit sitting in various darkened auditoria watching groups of players strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and I also studied Shakespeare at university. In truth, I think I probably would have liked to be a classical actor - but unfortunately such things as looks, talent and opportunities were not forthcoming, and therefore I have had to enjoy the experience vicariously.
Mind you, I do like bill m's suggestion that STAGE WHISPERS:
could be the basis of a script for a fascinating play itself.
Sometimes, in my most extravagant daydreams, I imagine it being made into a movie - and, believe me, I know exactly the right person to direct it! (I could even make quite a respectable stab at casting it, if pushed.) But these are far-off fantasies; we all have them, and perhaps they're better not shared. However if my poor orphan book is at last coming to the notice of people who are prepared to invest a bit of time and effort into reading it, and who actually enjoy it when they do, then it begins to seem as if almost anything may be possible.
Meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity of thanking the two readers who wrote such wonderful reviews; they've helped to restore my faith not only in STAGE WHISPERS as a story but also in myself as an author - which, as I am at a very tricky point with my new book, was more necessary than I feel I can ever adequately convey! You really make me believe that I may be able to cope with this writing business after all ...
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Interviewed by Elin Gregory
Recently I did an interview with Elin Gregory which has now appeared on Speak Its Name. It was quite an unusual experience - the whole publicity/marketing thing is completely alien to me, and I've never quite been able to shake the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with talking about oneself. However Elin made it all nice and simple and kindly allowed me to talk about things that are important to me - and it was very good to be able to get in a plug for my all-time favourite book, The Cruel Sea, too. (Not that it needs any plugging from me, I hasten to add.)
I was also extremely impressed that Elin had managed to find a picture looking back from the top of the fictional 'Sermon Pass'; down into the valley which features so strongly in Make Do And Mend - a picture in which the sun is shining, no less! The last time I was up there it was January and blowing half a gale, and the photographs I took largely comprise of very cold-looking sheep and a very cold-looking companion all trying not to get blown off the hillside. We then drove on into the darkness and had the world's largest portion of fish and chips in Welshpool - but that, as they say, is a story for another time.
Anyway, a couple of people left very kind responses to the interview, for which I thank them; writing can be a bit of a lonely and introspective process and it's always nice to be able to remind oneself that there are actually people 'out there' (in the significant proportion of the world that is not my study, that is!) who are interested in the results. It certainly helps to be able to remember that, at times!
I was also extremely impressed that Elin had managed to find a picture looking back from the top of the fictional 'Sermon Pass'; down into the valley which features so strongly in Make Do And Mend - a picture in which the sun is shining, no less! The last time I was up there it was January and blowing half a gale, and the photographs I took largely comprise of very cold-looking sheep and a very cold-looking companion all trying not to get blown off the hillside. We then drove on into the darkness and had the world's largest portion of fish and chips in Welshpool - but that, as they say, is a story for another time.
Anyway, a couple of people left very kind responses to the interview, for which I thank them; writing can be a bit of a lonely and introspective process and it's always nice to be able to remind oneself that there are actually people 'out there' (in the significant proportion of the world that is not my study, that is!) who are interested in the results. It certainly helps to be able to remember that, at times!
Tuesday, 26 February 2013
Here we go again!
I started the new book at the beginning of the month, but hadn't got very far with it when I had to take time off again due to a combination of family illness and real (i.e. paid) work. However I have managed to pick up the threads this morning and now have a much clearer idea of where I'm going with it; the characters, Alistair and Rex, are really beginning to make their presence felt. So are the other people who form their background - family members, the teachers at their school, Rex's landlord, and some of their neighbours. As usual there will be a tight focus on a small community, this time based in the sooty environs of the East End of London as it slowly recovers from the depradations of both the Luftwaffe and various misguided post-War planning decisions.
Whilst doing some preparatory research earlier on today I found myself investigating - among other things - Bengali surnames, the history of heart surgery, and the Morris Oxford J2 minibus. This is one of the more delightful aspects of writing, as far as I'm concerned, and I particularly enjoy the fact that most of what one needs to know can usually be discovered without even having to get up from the keyboard and reach for a book - although that doesn't mean that I'm not habitually surrounded by books, maps and even music for all occasions.
I have no idea how long this is likely to take, anyway, or how long a book it will be, but I'd prefer it not to be another epic-length saga like MAKE DO AND MEND or STAGE WHISPERS; if I can keep it down to under 60,000 words I'll be happy enough, but watch this space!
Whilst doing some preparatory research earlier on today I found myself investigating - among other things - Bengali surnames, the history of heart surgery, and the Morris Oxford J2 minibus. This is one of the more delightful aspects of writing, as far as I'm concerned, and I particularly enjoy the fact that most of what one needs to know can usually be discovered without even having to get up from the keyboard and reach for a book - although that doesn't mean that I'm not habitually surrounded by books, maps and even music for all occasions.
I have no idea how long this is likely to take, anyway, or how long a book it will be, but I'd prefer it not to be another epic-length saga like MAKE DO AND MEND or STAGE WHISPERS; if I can keep it down to under 60,000 words I'll be happy enough, but watch this space!
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Amazon Kindle and other news
A step into the big(ger) time this week, with the Kindle release of DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT. Manifold Press are uploading their titles in batches of three but on an irregular basis, which means that STAGE WHISPERS will follow shortly, and GHOST STATION soon after that. Then there will be a break, with MAKE DO AND MEND and BETWEEN NOW AND THEN being uploaded towards the end of the sequence. The idea is to mix and match so that they don't upload all of a single author's books at one time, which seems perfectly fair to me!
Meanwhile, I've made a tentative start on the new book, which doesn't yet have a title. It's set in 1966, and the main characters are Alistair - a widowed teacher who lives with his daughter and his former mother-in-law in a less-than-salubrious part of London, and whose daily life of trying to get geography into the heads of teenaged boys who would rather be smoking or playing football offers him very little challenge - and Rex, younger, relatively new to teaching and to London, whose darker skin sometimes gets him the wrong kind of attention in a city still struggling to accept multiculturality. Hopefully this will be a book about prejudice of many different kinds, and about learning how to deal with it; choosing one's battles, and making progress slowly.
Meanwhile, I've made a tentative start on the new book, which doesn't yet have a title. It's set in 1966, and the main characters are Alistair - a widowed teacher who lives with his daughter and his former mother-in-law in a less-than-salubrious part of London, and whose daily life of trying to get geography into the heads of teenaged boys who would rather be smoking or playing football offers him very little challenge - and Rex, younger, relatively new to teaching and to London, whose darker skin sometimes gets him the wrong kind of attention in a city still struggling to accept multiculturality. Hopefully this will be a book about prejudice of many different kinds, and about learning how to deal with it; choosing one's battles, and making progress slowly.
Monday, 28 January 2013
Flat spot
I'm in that depressingly flat place between books at the moment. It doesn't usually hit me quite this hard, but rushing to finish BETWEEN NOW AND THEN was such a massive effort and required so much adrenalin - coming so soon after Christmas and a major DIY effort on the house, and then a week's supposed 'break' (through which I worked continually) which also had a major surprise wrapped up in it - that anything else by comparison is bound to feel a bit second-best.
I'm also in the position of juggling two potential plots, both fairly well-developed. One of them concerns two schoolteachers from different ethnic backgrounds who meet in the cultural melting-pot of London in the mid-1960s. The other is about three generations of a family reconciling themselves with their own sexuality - and one another's. The latter is likely to be a longer book, though, and Heaven knows longer books don't exactly seem very popular at the moment. Besides, knowing the rate at which I work, a book the length of STAGE WHISPERS or MAKE DO AND MEND could take me up to a year to write, and that's really not what's needed at the moment. I need to tackle something that isn't going to take more than six months, so effectively that leaves me with the London book - and eventually with writing/having written four historical subjects in a row. Most of the other ideas in my projects folder seem to be historical too, though - there's another World War II piece, and something about the Railways Inspectorate, and a possible mediaeval piece, and something set in 1837 that doesn't take place in Paris or feature revolutionary students.
Well, it's going to be a question of thinking about this quietly over the next few days, and hopefully coming to some sort of decision by the end of the month. I find that if I just do something else and let my subconscious make the decisions I'm usually satisfied with the results, but there does seem to be quite a lot of waiting and displacement activity involved - and that, in my opinion, is almost more stressful than working flat out!
I'm also in the position of juggling two potential plots, both fairly well-developed. One of them concerns two schoolteachers from different ethnic backgrounds who meet in the cultural melting-pot of London in the mid-1960s. The other is about three generations of a family reconciling themselves with their own sexuality - and one another's. The latter is likely to be a longer book, though, and Heaven knows longer books don't exactly seem very popular at the moment. Besides, knowing the rate at which I work, a book the length of STAGE WHISPERS or MAKE DO AND MEND could take me up to a year to write, and that's really not what's needed at the moment. I need to tackle something that isn't going to take more than six months, so effectively that leaves me with the London book - and eventually with writing/having written four historical subjects in a row. Most of the other ideas in my projects folder seem to be historical too, though - there's another World War II piece, and something about the Railways Inspectorate, and a possible mediaeval piece, and something set in 1837 that doesn't take place in Paris or feature revolutionary students.
Well, it's going to be a question of thinking about this quietly over the next few days, and hopefully coming to some sort of decision by the end of the month. I find that if I just do something else and let my subconscious make the decisions I'm usually satisfied with the results, but there does seem to be quite a lot of waiting and displacement activity involved - and that, in my opinion, is almost more stressful than working flat out!
Friday, 11 January 2013
BETWEEN NOW AND THEN
Anyone who's been reading my work for the last couple of years will probably have realised by now that I don't write very quickly. In fact, I generally reckon that 500 words per day is a fairly good rate of progress - especially when you consider that I very often get caught up in quite detailed research, and that tends to take quite a lot of time. (When I was writing MAKE DO AND MEND, for example, I had a delightful couple of hours' diversion to work out how Kitty could possibly have made her own pickling vinegar. It wasn't used in the book at all, but I had to satisfy myself that it could actually be done.)
This being the case, therefore, you'll realise that having to write quickly doesn't really suit me. However when Manifold Press suffered a mini-crisis and ended up looking to me to bring BETWEEN NOW AND THEN forward three months - it had originally been intended to publish it on 1 May - I had a moment of panic and then settled down to do some very quick calculations. I had roughly half a book already; could I possibly write the other half in time? The answer is, it seems, yes. Writing quickly is not my idea of fun but it is, it seems, quite feasible in an emergency!
BETWEEN NOW AND THEN is the story of Dennis and Allan, two colleagues who work together at a Yorkshire hospital. They - and four of their workmates - are on the way home from watching a football match in Poland in late 1991 when their journey unexpectedly takes them through a former battlefield in Belgium, and a very strange sequence of events begins to unfold. It makes them question a lot of things that they thought they knew for sure, like the nature of time and whether or not there is life after death - and if, despite all evidence to the contrary, they might actually end up liking one another.
I've been very lucky to have had the entire editorial resources of Manifold Press diverted in my direction; everyone has been incredibly helpful and supportive, and I've had more kind offers of help than I really knew what to do with. I was also lucky that there was nothing in my schedule for this part of the year that couldn't be postponed; I was intending to devote it all to writing, anyway - just not at quite this pace. Anyway, the worst is over now; I'm just putting the finishing touches to the book - which is why I've got enough free time to write this! - and then it's up to Manifold to put it all together in time for publication on 1 February. But oh, please, dear Manifold Press, no more emergencies! I'm more of marathon runner than a sprinter - and when I say 'runner', I mean it more in the sense of this man, with whom I feel I have a very great deal (at least 130 lbs) in common!
This being the case, therefore, you'll realise that having to write quickly doesn't really suit me. However when Manifold Press suffered a mini-crisis and ended up looking to me to bring BETWEEN NOW AND THEN forward three months - it had originally been intended to publish it on 1 May - I had a moment of panic and then settled down to do some very quick calculations. I had roughly half a book already; could I possibly write the other half in time? The answer is, it seems, yes. Writing quickly is not my idea of fun but it is, it seems, quite feasible in an emergency!
BETWEEN NOW AND THEN is the story of Dennis and Allan, two colleagues who work together at a Yorkshire hospital. They - and four of their workmates - are on the way home from watching a football match in Poland in late 1991 when their journey unexpectedly takes them through a former battlefield in Belgium, and a very strange sequence of events begins to unfold. It makes them question a lot of things that they thought they knew for sure, like the nature of time and whether or not there is life after death - and if, despite all evidence to the contrary, they might actually end up liking one another.
I've been very lucky to have had the entire editorial resources of Manifold Press diverted in my direction; everyone has been incredibly helpful and supportive, and I've had more kind offers of help than I really knew what to do with. I was also lucky that there was nothing in my schedule for this part of the year that couldn't be postponed; I was intending to devote it all to writing, anyway - just not at quite this pace. Anyway, the worst is over now; I'm just putting the finishing touches to the book - which is why I've got enough free time to write this! - and then it's up to Manifold to put it all together in time for publication on 1 February. But oh, please, dear Manifold Press, no more emergencies! I'm more of marathon runner than a sprinter - and when I say 'runner', I mean it more in the sense of this man, with whom I feel I have a very great deal (at least 130 lbs) in common!
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Location, Location, Location
Research for a new book can take a lot of forms and involve a lot of time. In the case of MAKE DO AND MEND the ideas for the plot and characters have been coalescing slowly for something like two or three years, but it was only last year that I started to do anything serious about the settings - or, as I like to think of them, the locations.
MAKE DO AND MEND is essentially a two-centred book. Most of the action takes place in a small Welsh valley, whose inhabitants we come to know in some detail. Finding the valley itself actually wasn't difficult, although of course it's heavily fictionalised in the book. However I needed a model to work from, and it had to have certain characteristics - to be more or less accessible by rail, for example, but completely rural, and to have some ancient buildings and some roads that led absolutely nowhere. I found such a valley simply by poring over maps and road atlases, and I found a house in the valley that was on exactly the site I wanted for Hendra, the family home of the main characters. Google Earth showed me a picture of the house, and when it turned out that the present owners ran it as a B&B and had their own website it was easy to work out that this was precisely the place I wanted, even though the house itself was not the right one. This farmhouse (see below) is on the site of the fictional Hendra.
Another important location is the pub in Liverpool where our hero, Harry, is lodging in the latter part of the story. On a location scouting trip to Liverpool in company with Morgan Cheshire I discovered this pub, the 'Pig and Whistle' in Chapel Street, which was in the perfect location and looked almost exactly right:
However, when I came to write about it, I realised that it had merged in my mind with this former pub a couple of hundred miles to the south of it:
These things happen with fiction, I suppose; recollections of places blend together to create something new which has never existed in any form of objective reality but is nonetheless perfectly clear and vivid in the writer's imagination.
I always do far more research for a book than I ever need - the file for MAKE DO AND MEND, for example, includes pages and pages of information about 'mother of vinegar', the Dornier Do 17, Rupert Lonsdale, Jack o'Kent, and all the words to 'The Skillet Pot' and 'The Last Time I Saw Paris', none of which will feature in the story; I feel that too much research is better than too little! However I do totally approve of the old military saying that 'time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted', and if there is a chance of 'walking the ground' of the places where a book is set then that's precisely what I would always want to do.
MAKE DO AND MEND is essentially a two-centred book. Most of the action takes place in a small Welsh valley, whose inhabitants we come to know in some detail. Finding the valley itself actually wasn't difficult, although of course it's heavily fictionalised in the book. However I needed a model to work from, and it had to have certain characteristics - to be more or less accessible by rail, for example, but completely rural, and to have some ancient buildings and some roads that led absolutely nowhere. I found such a valley simply by poring over maps and road atlases, and I found a house in the valley that was on exactly the site I wanted for Hendra, the family home of the main characters. Google Earth showed me a picture of the house, and when it turned out that the present owners ran it as a B&B and had their own website it was easy to work out that this was precisely the place I wanted, even though the house itself was not the right one. This farmhouse (see below) is on the site of the fictional Hendra.
Another important location is the pub in Liverpool where our hero, Harry, is lodging in the latter part of the story. On a location scouting trip to Liverpool in company with Morgan Cheshire I discovered this pub, the 'Pig and Whistle' in Chapel Street, which was in the perfect location and looked almost exactly right:
However, when I came to write about it, I realised that it had merged in my mind with this former pub a couple of hundred miles to the south of it:
These things happen with fiction, I suppose; recollections of places blend together to create something new which has never existed in any form of objective reality but is nonetheless perfectly clear and vivid in the writer's imagination.
I always do far more research for a book than I ever need - the file for MAKE DO AND MEND, for example, includes pages and pages of information about 'mother of vinegar', the Dornier Do 17, Rupert Lonsdale, Jack o'Kent, and all the words to 'The Skillet Pot' and 'The Last Time I Saw Paris', none of which will feature in the story; I feel that too much research is better than too little! However I do totally approve of the old military saying that 'time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted', and if there is a chance of 'walking the ground' of the places where a book is set then that's precisely what I would always want to do.
Sunday, 10 June 2012
I'm still alive!
I haven't posted here for a long time, because frankly there hasn't been anything much to say. I was quite unwell over the winter and was unable to make any progress on my new novel for a whole six months, which naturally I found intensely frustrating. Now that I'm back working on it again, I'm up against an intractable deadline since it's due to be published on 1 November. Fortunately so far I am managing to meet my targets, and will have reached the two-thirds mark within the next week or so, but the schedule is now rather tighter than I'm used to. The good news, however, is that the next book is likely to be very much shorter and not to take anything like as long to complete; books that require a whole year to write have a nasty tendency to take over one's life, and probably end up longer than the general taste prefers, but unfortunately there's very little that can be done about that!
Thursday, 8 December 2011
STAGE WHISPERS gets an 'Honourable Mention'
To my astonishment STAGE WHISPERS has been awarded an Honourable Mention in the 'One Perfect Rate' category of the Rainbow Awards, which as far as I can see means that one person thought it was pretty darned special! I kind of thought it had dropped off the world's radar a bit, although apparently it's still selling steadily enough. Since the next book, MAKE DO AND MEND, will have a lot of similarities to STAGE WHISPERS, it's really encouraging to think that there is someone out there who is prepared to invest a bit of time into reading something with a slow and leisurely plot development - and probably not a lot of sex!
Thursday, 10 November 2011
GHOST STATION - comments at GoodReads
Not really a review as such, but a reader called Tracey has left the following comments:
This book was well written with engaging characters set in British Intelligence in the 70s. The Ghost Station refers to an abandoned underground station and the agents all have alias names taken from Jane Austen novels which amused me no end. She's not the first person I'd associate with spies! The agents in Ghost Station have to be flexible in their sexual orientation but becoming too attached to fellow agents is frowned upon. As you would expect, there's a lot of cloak and dagger stuff going on but it was all rather too mild for my taste. I really didn't form any kind of attachment to the characters, although they were pleasant enough. There are quite a few cultural references that may go over the heads of international readers depending on how familiar they are with Britain.
Not one I'm likely to read again.
I'm sorry about the last sentence, but can quite understand that it didn't exactly hit the spot where this reader was concerned. It's certainly not James Bond, it's far more about the personal cost of being an agent; in fact, 'the conflicting demands of love and duty' like it says in my bio. It all depends on what you're looking for in a book, I suppose; balancing the relationship-plot with the plot-plot is always a very tricky business!
This book was well written with engaging characters set in British Intelligence in the 70s. The Ghost Station refers to an abandoned underground station and the agents all have alias names taken from Jane Austen novels which amused me no end. She's not the first person I'd associate with spies! The agents in Ghost Station have to be flexible in their sexual orientation but becoming too attached to fellow agents is frowned upon. As you would expect, there's a lot of cloak and dagger stuff going on but it was all rather too mild for my taste. I really didn't form any kind of attachment to the characters, although they were pleasant enough. There are quite a few cultural references that may go over the heads of international readers depending on how familiar they are with Britain.
Not one I'm likely to read again.
I'm sorry about the last sentence, but can quite understand that it didn't exactly hit the spot where this reader was concerned. It's certainly not James Bond, it's far more about the personal cost of being an agent; in fact, 'the conflicting demands of love and duty' like it says in my bio. It all depends on what you're looking for in a book, I suppose; balancing the relationship-plot with the plot-plot is always a very tricky business!
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Interviewed by Chris Quinton
This was fun, since Chris and I have been friends for a very large number of years. In fact, if it hadn't been for Chris I would never have got involved in writing for MANIFOLD PRESS in the first place. I'm not great at being interviewed - it doesn't come naturally - but mercifully Chris made the whole process completely painless. Also, any interview that features tea and shortbread biscuits is one to be enjoyed; Chris certainly worked out a long time ago that bribery and (preferably) corruption are usually successful in my case!
Monday, 31 October 2011
Another review of 'Stage Whispers'
I must confess that after a couple of lukewarm reviews I really thought this one had sunk without trace and that it would be better to just get on and concentrate on future projects, but it seems that good things, after all, come to those who wait!
Elisa Rolle has posted a delightful review in which, among other things, she picks up on 'the small town feeling of the theatre world, where everyone knows everyone else'. This comment has pleased me more than a little, since that was exactly what I was going for - the notion that British theatre is really just one great big extended family in which triumphs and disasters are shared by the entire community.
Thank you, Elisa, you have made a rather grey day very much brighter and given me back my faith in a book I was afraid had completely failed to find its market!
Elisa Rolle has posted a delightful review in which, among other things, she picks up on 'the small town feeling of the theatre world, where everyone knows everyone else'. This comment has pleased me more than a little, since that was exactly what I was going for - the notion that British theatre is really just one great big extended family in which triumphs and disasters are shared by the entire community.
Thank you, Elisa, you have made a rather grey day very much brighter and given me back my faith in a book I was afraid had completely failed to find its market!
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