Scott Pack at The Writer's Summit: Crafting to Sell

On of the best talks at The Writer's Summit was by Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth), the energetic and amusing associate editor of Unbound and editor-at-large of Eye Books and formerly head buyer for Waterstones. Any errors in content are mine alone!

He began by inviting us to imagine a grand entrance onto the stage for him with lights, fireworks and fanfares- which The Writer's Summit's budget couldn't run to. It was an entertaining riff and you could see the audience relax and engage. By a strange coincidence the end of the Writer's Summit was indeed serendipitously marked by fireworks bursting into the sky over Waterloo.

He began with a short history lesson. When the Net Book Agreement existed (a British fixed price book agreement between publishers and booksellers)- from 1900 until the mid 90's- bookshops flourished, as it was a level playing field. Most of the audience were old enough to remember Ottakar's, Dillon's, Borders, Books Etc gracing the high streets up and down the country. Now the NBA is no more, fewer bookshops exist for browsing and people often discover books online. You can read the first few pages of most books on Amazon for free.

And that is precisely why a killer opening is so important.

Here are his top ten tips:

1. Write a great first line. He gave us `The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' This is from `The Go Between' by L.P Hartley (1953) Also `It was the day my grandmother exploded.' from Iain Banks' `Crow Road' (1992). To this I would add my own personal favourite `It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.' from Anthony Burgess' `Earthly Powers' (1980).

2. Make the reader care. Right from the first ten pages. Think of the emotions you want the reader to feel about the people you are writing about. If you give the reader an interesting character who is relatable or striking, then we do care.

3. Dialogue is your friend. It is not an info dump. Exposition and back story are your enemies. Think about the way different people speak and how to progress the plot through dialogue.

4. Introduce conflict. You need to lure the reader in, a trail of breadcrumbs to make them want to read on. He spoke of the importance of cliffhangers- certainly within the first 10% of the book, since a Kindle sample is precisely that. He spoke of a book called `Cliffhanger' which begins with an excellent premise. (Not the action adventure by Jacqueline Wilson.) A husband and wife have a terrible argument and she goes storming off into the night. He follows her out into the pouring rain and finally spots her figure standing near the edge of a cliff. In a moment of madness he pushes her off the cliff. He returns home, paralysed with remorse, only to find his wife warm and dry inside the house.

5. Start as late in the story as you can. This was a particularly interesting point and one I hadn't considered before. I think I may have missed the next few minutes as I immediately started considering this idea in relation to my own books.

6. Make something happen (while avoiding adverbs). He even mentioned doing adverb sit ups (to make you cut them out of your prose, whenever you come across one).

7. Steal from the best. Look at the first 10 pages of a book you love and see what they've done and how they've pulled the reader in. He suggested actually typing up these first ten pages as a way of physically learning how other writers work. And then deleting it all, of course.

9. Don't follow all the rules.

10. Be yourself. Getting published has a lot to do with luck and timing. It's all very subjective. A good book will find its audience.

The Writer's Summit, Part Two

 

The next speaker at The Writer's Summit was the energetic and engaging Sam Missingham, founder of @lounge_books, a home for book lovers (lounge-books.com). The title of her talk was `7 Habits of Highly Effective Authors', key tips on promotion and marketing, building your author platform and more.

We writers need a whole list of attributes: persistence, belief in yourself, determination, belief in your talents, a strong work ethic, commitment, enthusiasm, resilience, optimism and bravery. I felt like adding a few adjectives of my own: `dogged' persistence, `reckless' optimism, `crazed' determination…

Basically, however you get published, whether you choose the traditional route or go for digital self publishing, you have to be the CEO of your own writing career. No one can afford to sit back and think that your books will sell themselves or that publishing houses have anything other than miniscule marketing budgets for all but the big names. This means you need to be active, engaged, skilled and a hustler!

Where are your readers? You should have an account with goodreads, `find and share the books you love', which has 35 million people registered. You also need to be active on Twitter and Facebook, have a website- she recommended using WordPress.com-  and create a newsletter, so that you can attract `cheerleaders for your work'. She cited the author Clare Mackintosh, whose debut novel `I Let You Go' won the Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year award, as someone who writes a brilliant newsletter.

KEEP YOURSELF INFORMED: Basically, she advocated signing up for everything, including BookBub, a free service which helps you discover books you'll love with great deals and recommendations. Foyles also does particularly good emails, as does The Bookseller.

Copy any good ideas on authors' websites and make them better. She showed us Neil Gaiman's impressive page (author of `American Gods'). She particularly recommended The Creative Penn (Joanna Penn), which is a site with blogs, podcasts, courses and her own fiction and non fiction books- totally professional and very impressive. She also mentioned Writer's Digest, an American magazine aimed at beginning and established writers with interviews, tips and helpful articles about self publishing etc.

With regards to Twitter she recommended following Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) and Marian Keyes (@MarianKeyes) in particular, as they have a huge following and use Twitter brilliantly. When using Twitter, you should express your own views, respond to others, share your writing and your hobbies, be generous to other authors, share humour and add value. Hashtags are important.

Who writes the same kind of books as you do? Everyone following them could also follow you, so see who they follow. Who follows your local bookshop? Follow those people. You should be spending at least half an hour a day on Twitter.

Look at bloggers and influencers (blog tours), join author associations as they often have events and the Alliance of Independent Authors gives good advice on self publishing. Go to festivals, events, awards.

I began to feel quite exhausted just listening to her, hadn't quite realised how much time you have to invest and despaired a little, as did several members of the audience, as to how you were supposed to do all this and write and have a full time job to pay the bills!

HUSTLING: she suggested speaking at an event, talking to your local bookseller, emailing an editor. What's the worst that can happen? (I could think of a whole list of debacles!) You should collaborate as much as possible, like Killer Women have or The Prime Writers, an authors' collective, of writers who published their first book over the age of 40.

If you blog, you can do what she called micro blogging (I confess my ignorance of this term), where you post excerpts of your book and ask the reader what they think of a particular character or plot twist, so you can get valuable feedback. Another option is using wattpad, a free online storytelling community where people can post articles, stories or poems.

 By the end of this excellent talk, I was desperate for caffeine and more hours in the day!

The Writer's Summit, Part One

Back in early October I bought a ticket for The Writer's Summit, `brought to you by The London Book Fair and Writer's Digest', held at the Coin Street conference centre, near Waterloo. Its aim was to provide new writers with the insights and advice needed about the numerous publishing options available today.

On Saturday I got up at 5 am and took a horribly early train from Cambridge, as the doors for this one day event opened at 8.45. It was an eco building, which apparently meant only two toilet cubicles existed for women on the third floor, where the summit was being held and no communal basins or mirrors. There was quite a queue at 9 am and I was transported back to school discos as a woman walked up and down said queue asking everyone if they had a mirror, as she couldn't put her makeup on blind.

The chair for the event was James Woollam, the managing director of F & W Media and Writer's Digest UK, who introduced this inaugural summit with great charm. The first speaker was Alison Flood, the book reporter for the Guardian, who was engaging and enthusiastic, but threw hundreds of statistics at us and my pen just couldn't keep up:

The good news is that print books have shown resilience in the past 18 months, whereas e book sales are the lowest since 2011. The bad news is that since 2005 five hundred independent bookshops have closed.

George Saunders, whose novel `Lincoln in the Bardo' was the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2017, was allegedly selling only one or two copies a week until he was shortlisted. I say allegedly because my pen - or maybe my ears- seemed resistant to what she was saying. I believe she stated that even once he'd won the prize, his sales were only around the 3,500 mark.

What are people reading then, if not literary fiction? Sales of thrillers, children's books and non fiction have shown a healthy increase, apparently.

Digital self publishing has really taken off, which was what this conference was addressing. Should you go the traditional route or should you self publish? Definitely not the latter, if you write literary fiction, seemed to be the consensus. You are condemned to poor sales in all corners of the market.

As opposed to the long lead time in the traditional publishing market, Kindle Direct Publishing says it takes only 5 minutes to publish a book. You can also earn up to 70% royalties in a host of countries including the UK and the US.  

Alison Flood said she felt that both parts of the market were here to stay and that traditional editors were now looking at the Amazon charts, where the bestsellers were often self-published, in order to understand what the reading public wants. As a result, the snobbery of what used to be called `vanity publishing' has started to fade and many literary prizes are now open to non traditionally published books, as well. For example, `The Wake' by Paul Kingsnorth was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker prize and won the 2015 Book of the Year Award. It was published by Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher.

Tomorrow's blog will cover Sam Missingham's talk on `7 Habits of Highly Effective Authors'

Why So Blue, Part Two

Why so sad

 My fine young friend

 Why so blue'    (Paul McCartney)

So life may be shit for kids and teenagers in 2017, but bullying in all its forms has always been present. Two things, perhaps, are different…

The internet and social media mean that innocence is often lost at a very early age. Since information about anything is instantly available and comparisons too easily made, arguments in the playground continue remotely long into the night. Kids have always wanted just to be the same as everyone else, not to draw attention to themselves, but this is so much harder now.

The commonality of cultural experiences is also diffused. My husband remembers the joy of watching `Red Dwarf’ and knowing that all his friends were watching it at the same time and they could talk about the best bits the next day. I remember the same about `Dr Who’. The 1986 Eastenders Christmas show pulled in 30.2 million viewers, The `Bake Off’ launch show only managed 10.4 million.

The number of time travelling shows on TV recently seems significant, as adults hark back to better and simpler times, a way of escaping the pressures and speed of everyday life. With so much knowledge so easily attainable it seems to get harder and harder to succeed. My husband plays online poker. If he’d been playing with the same skill as he does now even ten years ago, he’d have made us rich...

I got an agent when I was 29, the first one I approached. I couldn’t believe I’d been taken on by such a great man, Michael Thomas at AM Heath (long retired), who offered me cups of tea and spoke about Alice Walker and Gore Vidal for whom he was the UK agent. I didn’t get anything published through him- I wasn’t anywhere near good enough- but editors got to read my manuscripts and offered encouragement. Now that I’ve returned to writing years later, it seems almost impossible to even get an agent. A 1 in a 1,000 chance to even make it off the slush pile, I’ve been told.

This is the difficult, ever more competitive world our kids are growing up in. No wonder so many movies at the moment don’t deal with the everyday, but other planets or dystopian futures: `Bladerunner 2049',  `Geostorm', `Thor: Ragnarok', `Star Wars', `Transformers', `Cloverfield 3', to name but a few. No wonder so much social `interaction’ is achieved through gaming, rather than face to face and the first thing most teenagers want to do when they get home from school or college or their jobs is to shut themselves away in their rooms.

So what’s the answer? Counselling is extremely valuable, if it can be accessed, although this is also becoming harder with longer and longer waiting lists.

I would advocate three things:

·       Exercise of any kind, preferably outdoors. Whole books have been written about the therapeutic effects of walking (or running).

·       Keeping a journal to pour out all the self-hate and anger at parents, teachers, friends. Writing a letter to the hated person and then burning it can be very satisfying and affect some kind of closure.

·       Get a pet. To care for and train a pet prevents a child/teen from turning ever inwards. Who can give greater love and loyalty than a dog? Roehampton University even has a pair of `therapy’ rabbits!

Why so Blue?

`Why so sad

 My fine young friend

 Why so blue'    (Paul McCartney)

I read in the Guardian last week that, according to research conducted by University College, London, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 10 boys are depressed by the age of 14. This is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that many schools are having to cut pastoral and mental health support services at the very time they are most needed.

I have 6 adopted kids, 4 girls and 2 boys. They went to primary school immediately disadvantaged: one of my daughters had to wear a sticker over one lens of her (thick) glasses due to a `lazy’ eye. The hospital gave us stickers with fairies and princesses to cover the lens. A black pirate patch might have made a bolder statement. Two of them needed grommets and speech therapy, as their hearing loss had not been identified, until we adopted them. Despite my best and lengthy efforts one was persistently sent home- mortified- with nits. And then there was the: `So you’re adopted. My mum says that means your real mum doesn’t want you.’

Bullying is not a new phenomenon. As a therapist, I’ve had a twenty stone builder weep when he remembered how he was made to stand up in front of the class and read aloud.

I didn’t have eye patches, grommets or nits, when I was a kid, but I did have red hair (`Carrot tops’ was a favoured epithet, which used to incense me, as carrot tops are green.) I was also illegitimate at a time when nice middle class parents told their kids not to play with me and to find out whether my mum had lots of boyfriends.

Why are more girls depressed than boys? I doubt this differential has changed much over the years. For a start, girls are meaner. They whisper and exclude, boys, in the main, just slug it out in the playground.

However, the hypersexualisation of girls is a relatively new phenomenon. Again, as a therapist, I have a client whose seven year old daughter attends pamper parties and spends hours in  her room watching YouTube videos about the correct application of make-up. I’ve seen nine year olds roll their skirts over at the waist to make them shorter, flout the school ban on nail varnish, foundation, hoop earrings. Some even have high or lowlights and expensively cut, long, straight hair from the very first day of primary school. Frizzy is never good. A client told me a boy sent her a Valentine card when she was 14: `Roses are red, violets are blue, your hair looks like pubes and no one will ever love you.’

It’s true that clothes and hair styles have always been a source of mockery for both sexes, which is why, again, I have one client who can remember being ridiculed for wearing home-knitted jumpers (I would never send a kid to a school that didn’t have a uniform, for that reason.) Another client had a mum who cut his hair rather than send him to the barber’s and another had a mum who refused to buy him swimming trunks, so he had to wear underpants at his swimming lessons.

My 14 year old son made me watch several episodes of `Catfish’, the TV show. For the uninitiated a catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not, using social media to create a false identity and have online relationships. I was sent to boarding school at 11, by which time I was not only a ginger and illegitimate, I had a new Canadian accent. Inevitably, I got called Canada instead of Amanda for a whole year (the year it took me to ditch the accent). I’m ashamed to say that out of boredom and sick of being bullied, I started writing to a `pen pal’ out of a magazine, pretending to be a boy. I liked the feeling of power, but panicked when she wanted to meet me and confessed, blaming it on a dare.

So life may be impossibly tough for kids and teenagers in 2017, but bullying in all its forms has always been present. Two things, perhaps, are very different… Read tomorrow’s blog to find out what I think!

A Short Blog for a Long Dog

On Saturday my husband, Ben, and I drove into Norfolk to pick up our new miniature long-haired Dachshund puppy, Eric (my husband is a `Lovejoy' fan), born on June 18th. We had decided that I would drive home and Ben would sit in the back seat with Eric on his lap. Perhaps it was Ben's calm voice reassuring him about my erratic corner taking, combined with the anxiety of leaving his mum and dad and little cousin for the first time, but Eric has fallen for Ben big time. I only get a look-in if Ben is out of the house and Eric has already popped into Ben's study to leave a little wee as a welcome home present, marking their joint territory.

The Highlights

*     The first time he crapped outside, after I'd spotted some heavy  sniffing action.

*     He wouldn't drink and became listless on the first day, but upon advice from the breeder I went to buy him some goat's milk to mix with his water and he finished the whole bowl in a lapping frenzy.

*     I gave him an apple from our tree to play with and he pounced on it, rolled it around a few times, then took the stem between his teeth and dragged it back to his den under the chair.

*     The first time we took him onto the (weed-infested) lawn and he started gambolling like a lamb,  biting the heads off  the dandelions.

*      This morning I was sweeping leaves, or trying to. He launched himself onto the broom and hitched a ride with the leaves, then fought me for the bristles. We ended up having a tug of war for ten joyful minutes.

*     Just carrying Eric in from the car (he can't go outside till tomorrow after his second vaccination),  I met someone from the village (only the second person who's ever spoken to me on the street here) who immediately fussed over him and told me he breeds Afghan hounds. Dogs are like babies, it seems, everyone feels entitled to stop, coo and ask very personal questions (like how  much he cost).

The Lowlights

*     When you've taken him outside (in the dark or the rain) and he's played about, but not had a wee and then the minute you're back inside, he looks at you and you watch urine trickle away from his back legs.

*    Following the breeder's advice we put him in a crate at night with water, toys, his mum's blanket, a comfier bed than ours and my husband's sweaty T shirt draped over the top. We put the radio on and a dim lamp. We sat and conversed quietly. He settled down. We tiptoed out and much like a baby- again- he immediately started howling. We were told we had to ignore him or we'd make a rod for our own backs. Very hard, but we obeyed. He fell asleep after half an hour last night, but woke at 1.30 and 3.30 and 5.30 and made his presence known through two closed doors. When we  came downstairs at 7, bleary-eyed, he'd somehow managed to pull  my husband's T shirt through the bars of the crate and staged a (very) dirty protest.

Overall

Although I'm exhausted - and still have to work- and a bit jealous at the adoration in his eyes when he looks at Ben (reciprocated), it's already impossible to imagine life without him. Plus he's helped me rediscover a sense of play and that has to be the most important thing of all.

Grazia/Baileys Prize First Chapter Competition

Maggie O'Farrell wrote the first paragraph and then you had to complete the chapter:
'I was in bed with the viola teacher for what turned out to be the last time, when the doorbell rang. We had moved on to talking about exam pieces, certain pupils of his, whether my daughter would need a new bow soon. He was smoking a cigarette; he would give up soon, he said, inhaling and closing his eyes, his rosin-smelling fingers laced into mine. A languid, hirsute, dishevelled man, he had a habit of leaving the ends of sentences unsaid, of always tripping over the bedroom rug, of walking about the house, barefoot, examining the photos on the walls with forensic zeal.'

This is what I wrote:

I wasn’t expecting anyone at four-thirty in the afternoon.                                                       

           `Don’t go anywhere!’

I rushed across the panelled room, painted toes pushing through the thick rug like a troupe of exotic beetles, and leapt down the curved staircase of this elegant Victorian pile I’ve inherited from Joanna, my mum. I tightened the sash on my kimono and peered through the spy hole. It was my daughter at the door. She was supposed to be having tea with one of her little friends.

`Just a minute, darling!’ The slate tiles felt cold underfoot as I grabbed my purse from the kitchen.

`What happened?’ I opened the door a few inches and crossed my arms to keep myself decent, caught a spike of cold sweat. `Mummy was just having a little lie-down.’

`Hannah wasn’t in school today. Sorry, Mummy. I didn’t know what to do.’ My daughter hopped from one foot to the other in her black Ladybird patents.

I pinched the inside of my lip between my teeth.

`Don’t worry, darling. We’ll have a lovely tea here, instead- I’ve asked Mr Tipaldi over to chat about your bow, so here, take my purse.’

I passed it through the gap. She stopped chewing her fingertips to take it from me. Is lefthandedness genetic? My real parents were both right-handed.

`Pop along to that little patisserie we love on Regent’s Park Road and pick out some cakes, sweetheart. Two each, I think, for a treat, each one different, and get them to put them in a big enough box. And we need some more lapsang souchong tea- you can get it in those darling little tins from the deli? And sugared almonds, all the colours. So pretty in my new glass bowl! Everything must be just right, so take your time! I’ll jump in the shower, while you’re gone.’

`Yes, Mummy. Can I go and see if Sophie wants to come for tea? I’ll pass her house on the way. I know she likes strawberry tarts the best!’

`Good idea- you’ll have someone to play with, after. Now off you go!’

I closed the door, put the chain on and returned upstairs.

The room smelt of the Sobranie Black Russians he affected to smoke. Joanna used to smoke those silly cocktail cigarettes that come in bright shades, mauve, pink and yellow, to match her outfits. And the sugared almonds.

He was already dressed in his crumpled linen trousers and chocolate shirt. He never wore any underpants and disdained socks. He was staring at a framed photo on the wall. This had been my parents’ bedroom and I hadn’t changed much, beyond emptying the wardrobes.

`How old were you in…?’ 

I studied the ringletted child on the bare stage. She’d finished playing, had taken her bow, was standing with her bow in one hand and her viola in the other, head tilted, as if she was wondering what to do now. Funny language, English, two identical nouns, pronounced entirely differently. I didn’t speak much, when I first came into this house, was worried I’d use the wrong words or say them wrong. But I’ve always been a quick learner.

`Seven, I think.’

Except it wasn’t me.

He bent and peered closely at the photo again.

I remembered the first time I laid eyes on her.

There was an old music shop in Camden, near the estate. The owner lurked in the depths of the interior. With his thick glasses and narrow teeth, he looked like a fangtooth fish. I’d never dared venture beyond the door, but in summer he’d sit outside on a rickety wooden chair. One day I tripped over an empty beer bottle and cut my knee. He brought me inside and found me a plaster that had lost its stick.

After that he let me sit on a high stool behind the glass counter and count out the correct change for the customers, who bought sheet music or occasionally one of the instruments that hung on the walls. I’d have to hold the ladder, while he fetched one down. There was a viola a customer decided against and I begged him to give me lessons, instead of putting it back in its place. Instinctively, I took the bow in my left hand, but he said I’d have to play right-handed. If I was any good, I’d want to play in an orchestra, eventually. Left-handed viola players looked so untidy; trying to seat players so as not to collide bow arms was also notoriously difficult.

Soon I’d come in every day after school- anything to delay going home- and as he taught me how to play, he’d tell me stories about being sent to London just before the war, with a label round his neck and a cardboard suitcase.

One winter’s afternoon, my little sister arrived into the shop with Joanna. We looked very similar, except she was a bit taller and sturdier than me and my hair was still in the long plait I had. Before the night when my dad got on the gear and decided to hang me high up on the wall by my hair, like one of those musical instruments.

Joanna wanted a left-handed viola for her daughter, but the old man didn’t have one. I drew my sister outside, already wondering how I could contrive to swap my life for hers. The adults were deep in conversation, discussing addresses, possibilities...

`What’s that, there…?’ My lover pointed to a detail in the picture. `Like a love bite!’

`Allergic to the varnish! I still always get that sore patch on my neck, when I’ve been playing.’

`Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. `The princess and the pea! But you don’t play left-handed…’

`I know that! The mark’s on the left!’ I couldn’t understand what he meant.

`I’m not one of your instruments, Lucy. Don’t try to play me! Cameras always reverse the image.’

That’s when I decided he’d have to go. But then the doorbell rang again.

Erin Kelly's Launch of `He Said, She Said' and Pitch DHH

The email I’d been waiting for finally pinged into my Inbox the week before Easter: I’d been successful in my application to meet Broo Doherty, an agent at DHH, for a 10 minute slot in their three hour #pitchDHH session. Each of the five agents had selected 12 people from the 500 plus who’d sent in a synopsis and the first three chapters of their work.

I had the first ten minute slot and gathered with the other four writers in the entrance of The Library, a hip private members’ club on St Martin’s Lane, around the corner from DHH’s offices in the basement of Goldsboro books in Cecil Court. My fellow writers had all come from out of town- me from Cambridge, others from York, Birmingham and even Cornwall for the day. We were all nervous and unsure what to expect, but Emily Glenister was valiant in her efforts to put us at ease, escorting us up the stairs at the allotted time, making introductions and thoughtfully supplying water. Apparently, one writer arrived with home-baked caramel shortbreads for the agents, a creative improvement on an apple for the teacher!

Broo was very professional and had prepared a long page of comments. I’d prepared a pitch, but was more interested in what she had to say, so didn’t get past the first part of it. The ten minutes flew by. She liked my central character and the ingenious murder, said I had a strong opening, but felt I needed to unveil the mystery more slowly, layer by layer, and not introduce too many viewpoints too soon.

She asked me for my ten word pitch and my mind froze for a moment. She gave me a pen to jot down her comments, but it didn’t work, probably due to the copious amounts of sweat I’d produced in lieu of coherent speech. When we parted, she gave me the (unannotated) print-out of my chapters to keep, but what I really wanted were those notes of hers!

To have someone experienced take your writing seriously and devote their precious time to considering your efforts is the biggest inspiration any aspiring writer can have. I’ve been feeling grateful, invigorated and curiously exhausted ever since…

Another person who took my writing seriously was Erin Kelly, who was our fabulous tutor on the Curtis Brown Creative course I completed. I’ve been a big fan ever since. Last night saw the launch of her new book, `He Said, She Said’, at the Waterstones on Tottenham Court Road. The book is set in the `eclipse chasing community’. A young couple in 1999 are at a festival and later become the star witnesses in a rape trial, so it’s also partly a courtroom drama. According to the recent Guardian review: `She steps it up a level with this creepy, tangled, disturbing tale’ and it certainly looks set to be a huge success.

Ruth Tross, Erin’s new editor at Hodder and Stoughton, opened the proceedings. Someone shouted from the back that they couldn’t hear, to which she replied: `Yes, I’m small. No, I’m not going to stand on anything.’ She had definite `stage presence’ and the room fell silent as she spoke warmly about Erin’s talents- her clever plotting, her devastating twists, her impeccable use of language.

Erin, in turn, thanked Ruth, whom she felt was like a heat-seeking
missile, targeting any weakness of plot or phrase, but also recognising all that was good in her writing. She also thanked Sarah Ballard and Eli Keren at United Agents for sticking with her even in the years when she wasn’t earning them any money, perhaps referring to the period when she was doing a lot of teaching, which interfered with her deadlines.  Finally, Erin thanked her husband, without whom none of her success would have been possible.

I didn’t know whether the bonny baby being passed around a group of people who might have been Erin’s relatives was hers or not. I do know she’s taken herself off Twitter to finish her next book, so maybe there have been several successful acts of creation recently.

April First Monday Crime, Part Two

 

Talking about her writing at the First Monday Crime evening on Monday, Denise Mina declared that swearing adds to the rhythm of her language. She grew up in Glasgow with parents who were very strict Catholics. She was allowed to smoke and drink from an early age, but swearing was absolutely forbidden, so she confessed that she revels in it now. Apparently, `cunt' is not particularly offensive in Scotland. You might say to your kid: `Hurry up. you wee cunt!' In America, however, it's a real no-no, so her American publishers only allow her one `cunt' per book. I feel there's a joke in there somewhere…

Liz Nugent uses a multiple voice narrative. She says it comes from her acting training. She even manages to have three characters speak in the first person, which seems quite an achievement. She revealed that the new Paula Hawkins book has 14 different voices, which seems to break all the rules I’ve learnt about having a maximum of 5 different voices or the reader gets confused. In `Lying in Wait' Liz talked about having a male narrative voice and how in some ways this made the writing easier, as she was able to think: how would he respond to this situation, as opposed to, how would I, as a woman, respond? This was very `liberating'.

Mick Herron's character, Jackson Lamb, who features in his novels, started off life as a two word note `drunken has-been' but has (actually) been so popular that his publishers have decided that his books are now `Jackson Lamb' novels. This, despite the fact that Mick has a full cast of other characters. His publishers also had a stab at hiding his sex, calling him M Herron on the dust jacket, as most readers of spy/crime novels are female. He said that in Holland men actually change their names to women’s to sell more books. 

Sabine Durrant found the two books she wrote for teenage girls (`Cross Your Heart' and `Having It and Eating It') the hardest thing she ever achieved, particularly as girls change so much between thirteen and fifteen and what would be too explicit for one (certainly no `cunts'!) might be too tame for the other.

There was a good-natured and witty discussion about the future of crime novels. Liz Nugent has 21 nieces and nephews and said that all but one had stopped reading by the age of 14, although older generations in Dublin continue to read voraciously.

Is ‘grip lit’ dead? Everyone agree that it is not, that crime is where the good stuff is being written. Readers find things in books the authors aren’t even aware of. As Denise Mina said: `A book is different every time you read it’ (and for every reader who reads it).

The discussion moved to words to be weeded out, when editing. Each writer had personal favourites that had to be eliminated: `just’, `realize’, `really’, `so’ and from Liz Nugent: `penis’. I would add the word `then’, having been advised to read Jonathan Franzen’s `Farther Away: Essays’ in which he states ``Comma-then is a disease specific to modern prose narrative with lots of action verbs.’

Finally, Emily Glenister finished off the round of questions by asking what the assembled company were reading. Often it’s something that is not yet out for general consumption or a foreign writer I’m ashamed never to have heard of, viz: Delphine de Vigan (an award-winning French novelist), Shirley Jackson (an American writer who died in 1965), Lucy Atkins’ `The Night Visitor’ which comes out in June and, finally, Jane Casey’s `Let the Dead Speak’, which came out in March this year. Interestingly, they are all women.

April First Monday Crime, Part One

Last night I again found myself climbing the grand staircase inside Brown’s restaurant, St Martin’s Lane, to the magnificent Judge’s Court, formally the main courtroom of Westminster County Court, from which convicted felons were sent down to the cells below (now the wine cellars). The room even has the original Judge’s bench, a fitting venue for the latest First Monday crime event and their one year anniversary. As I waited for the four writers: Denise Mina, Liz Nugent, Sabine Durrant and Mick Herron, with Barry Forshaw- aka `Mister Noir’- as chair, to arrive, I cast my eye over the old black and white photos of London, adorning the walls of this splendid, wood-panelled room.

Suddenly I heard the most terrible scraping whine. Everyone looked around and clutched their ears, as if we'd just been locked in a room with a particularly sadistic serial killer. Fortunately, it was just the mikes on a feedback loop and the torture soon ended.

The proceedings opened with the promotion of St Hilda's, Oxford, Mystery and Crime Conference 2017 in August (`a crime festival in the garden of Eden') with authors such as Mark Billingham, MJ Carter, Yrsa Sigurdardottir and, of course, Val McDermid.
(For more details, 
see www.mysteryandcrime2017.eventbrite.co.uk.)

We were then introduced to the four writers:

The first was Liz Nugent, whose debut novel, `Unravelling Oliver', was the winner of the IBA Crime Fiction Book of the Year in 2014. She's been hailed as Ireland's answer to Gillian Flynn. Her latest book is called `Lying in Wait' and is a Richard and Judy Spring pick for 2017. In a former life she described herself as a `really bad actress'. She had a brain haemorrhage in the past, as a result of which she can only type with one hand, which means she doesn't like to waste words, she declared with a smile: `It's such an effort to write!'

Sabine Durrant's new book is called `Lie with Me', so there was much amusement that `Lying' or `Lie' is the new `Girl' in crime titles. Sabine Durrant's first psychological thriller `Under Your Skin' was published in 2013. She described herself as having been a journalist, which was good training for meeting deadlines and `getting the story down'. She's also extremely modest, since she was actually the assistant editor of the Guardian and the literary editor of the Sunday Times. Her important advice to fellow writers was: `Don't read reviews. That way madness lies.'

Denise Mina won the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year twice in a row. Her latest book, `The Long Drop' she describes as `making sense of the nonsense of life'. `William Watt wants answers about his family's murder. Peter Manuel has them. But Peter Manuel is a liar. One December night in 1957, Watt meets Manuel in a Glasgow bar to find out what he knows.' The book is based on real life murders. Denise Mina wrote a play about them and the book, she said, is `the story the pensioners told me after they saw the play'.

Denise did a law degree although she found lawyers very stuffy and wasn't sure she wanted to practice, so went on to start a PhD. `I was a rubbish academic, I was just having a laugh'. She `misused' her PhD grant to write her first book and the rest is history: `I was shite at everything except this.'

Mick Herron's spy novels have won the CWA's Gold Dagger and apparently he has a cult following. His novels have been ingeniously described as John le Carre meets Joseph Heller, although Barry Forshaw thought he was perhaps closest to Len Deighton and described them as `off-kilter espionage'. He replied, drily: `I just write the books I can write'.

Part 2, tomorrow

March First Monday Crime, part 2

On the issue of misogyny, Erin Kelly was quick to declare that she objects to strong female protagonists inevitably being described as `feisty’.  Matt Arlidge has a strong female lead in Helen Grace and as such readers often think M. J. Arlidge is a woman! In his book `Pop Goes the Weasel’ a prostitute is taking her revenge, in a reversal of the traditional prostitute-as-easy-victim. He described her as a female Jack the Ripper. Daniel Cole cited J.K. Rowling as his favourite writer, which surprised a few people in the audience, but he then talked about her Cormoran Strike novels, which made more sense, maybe, than Harry Potter. Would she be accused of misogyny, I wondered, for having chosen Robert Galbraith as her pseudonym?

Erin was asked about her novelisation of the ‘Broadchurch’ TV series. She said that when the first episode was shown, her sister sent her a text: `This is just the sort of thing you write!’ She said she wrote the book because she was on maternity leave and out of contract and she wanted to write a book without having to think up a story. This turned out to be a bit of a mixed blessing, rather like the courtroom scenes in `He Said, She Said’, which were very difficult to write.

Matt comes at crime writing from a strong background as a screen writer in `Eastenders’, ‘Silent Witness’ and `Monarch of the Glen’ among others. He loves the power of TV and the joys of collaboration, as opposed to the more lonely life of the writer, although he feels TV is a much more cynical world and he finds the publishing one much `nicer’! There was much amusement about the casting of Emilia Fox as the pathologist in `Silent Witness’ and how her crisp vowels are a joy to listen to as she discusses dead bodies. Another instance of a woman defining the success of a series, perhaps.

Julia Crouch started off as an actress and due to her voice training didn’t need the microphone! She loved directing, but found it too demanding and the pay was `rubbish’, so she gave it up `to be a good mum’.

How do you find a good writer to read? was the next topic under discussion. Largely through word of mouth, is the answer. The crime reading community is a very passionate and loyal one and crime fiction, it was agreed, is among the best writing, because you need to keep the pace going at the same time as having something to say. `Great Expectations’ is really a thriller, it was argued and I would agree. Writing crime fiction is a good way to write a State of the Nation novel. It unpicks the gloss and examines sexual mores and attitudes to marriage, such as in Julia’s book. Other themes in `My Husband's Wife' are social cleansing and housing problems.

Matt did a lot of research about women’s prisons for `Hide and Seek' and was shocked by the number of women with mental health problems who end up in prison, to the great detriment of their children and wider families.

Erin began with an image, when she started `He Said, She Said'. The idea of it suddenly going dark in the middle of the day. And then someone hears a scream. However, when she researched sexual assault, she discovered that you’re far more likely to freeze than to fight, so she took out the scream and began her research on eclipses.

Daniel seemed less concerned by social issues in `Ragdoll', but did say that it was important to ground crime fiction in the details of everyday life that readers can relate to, eg someone worrying about their Tesco Club vouchers. However, having worked as a paramedic, RSPCA officer and for the RNLI, he clearly has a well developed social conscience in real life.

For some each book is a mountain, whether it’s your twenty-something one like Val McDermid or your second, although Daniel said he’s completed book two already. Matt said he wants to create `narrative crack’ and he pitched 7 novels at once in the series to Penguin! The only sour note seems to be that Peter James has allegedly copyrighted DS (Roy) Grace, so Matt frequently hears from Peter’s solicitors in relation to his own DI (Helen) Grace.

And that brings me to the end of a stimulating evening (I had a train to catch back to Cambridge) and this blog. Emily Glenister at DHH Literary agency asked the best question at the close of play. All great crime writers are passionate readers, so what were the (fab) four reading at the moment? The answers ranged from a book yet to be published (June ’17), `Persons Unknown’ by Susie Steiner to recent debuts, like ‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd and `Good Me, Bad Me’ by Ali Land through to the old classic, Stephen King’s `Carrie’, his first novel, published in 1974. Good books don’t date.

March First Monday Crime, Part 1

I climbed the grand staircase inside Brown’s restaurant in St Martin’s Lane, London, to the magnificent Judge’s Court, formally the main courtroom of Westminster County Court, from which convicted felons were sent down to the cells below, where the wine cellars are now housed. The room even has the original Judge’s bench, a fitting venue for the latest First Monday crime event. As I waited for the four writers: Erin Kelly, Daniel Cole, Julia Crouch and MJ Arlidge, with Barry Forshaw- aka `Mister Noir’- as chair, to arrive, I cast my eye over the old black and white photographs of London, which adorn the green walls of this splendid, wood-panelled room.

There was plenty of chat among the audience streaming in, holding glasses of wine and voluminous bags (to purchase signed copies after the event?). I even recognised several people from the pub next door. I smiled to myself as I heard someone assert `5,000 words a day’, whereas I can’t even manage half that. The latest books from the evening’s writers were stacked high on a table at the front, MJ Arlidge’s `Hide & Seek’, Daniel Cole’s ‘Ragdoll’ and Julia Crouch’s `Her Husband’s Lover’, the only book I’ve already read (and greatly enjoyed), as it was inside a goody bag at another First Monday Crime event last year. Erin Kelly was clutching the only copy of her latest book, ‘He Said, She Said’, as it has yet to become available in this country. However, we were all given an exclusive chapter sample to wet our appetites: `We stand side by side in front of the speckled mirror.’ Who wouldn’t want to read on after an opener like that?

The evening began as Barry introduced the `quartet of crime’. First was Matt Arlidge, whom he referred to as a hotshot. DI Helen Grace is on the track of a monster and the writing `grabs the reader by the throat’. He’s been likened to the next Jo Nesbo. `Hide and Seek’ is Helen’s 6^th outing. Her nephew has framed her for 3 murders she didn’t commit and she’s awaiting trial in Holloway prison. There’s now a serial killer on the loose in the prison and she fears her days are numbered.

Erin Kelly often writes about family dysfunction and takes her titles from William Blake, such as `The Burning Air’, which was available in place of `He Said, She Said’. However, the latter is a departure for Erin, being set in the `eclipse chasing community’. A young couple in 1999 are at a festival and later become the star witnesses in a rape trial, so it’s also partly a courtroom drama. I looked at the Judge’s bench behind her and smiled.

Julia Crouch first termed the phrase `domestic noir’ and depicts marriage as a minefield. In `My Husband’s Wife’ the reader is constantly wrong-footed; where should one’s sympathies lie, with the first wife or the second?

Much was made of Daniel Cole being only 34- although he looked even younger. `Ragdoll’ is his first book, described by Barry as a `kinetic thriller’. The detective is called to a crime scene in a flat opposite his own and finds the `ragdoll’ hanging, composed of 6 different people’s body parts, stitched together. The media then receives a list of 6 more names and the date when they’ll die. It apparently reads like a movie and has lots of dark humour.

Erin first went into journalism, because she was told it was easier to get a book published if your name was already known and then `got stuck’ there for ten years. She wrote her first book, `The Poison Tree’, when she was pregnant with her first child. She cited Barbara Vine, Daphne DuMaurier and Patricia Highsmith as influences.

Matt’s initial foray away from screenwriting was `Eeny Meeny’, the first in the D.I. Helen Grace series. The title was chosen by his publisher and it was particularly apt as it concerned two different people repeatedly being abducted and then locked in a room with a gun with a single bullet- whose life was worth more? Did being a parent mean you should be spared? Interestingly, the largely female readership said they actually needed more emotional cruelty in the book! He then kept going with nursery rhyme titles, like `Pop Goes the weasel’, `Liar, Liar’ and `Little Boy Blue’ and, of course, `Hide and Seek’.

Daniel’s `Ragdoll’ was described by his agent as `Like Seven, but funnier.’ He said it started off life as a screenplay. He wrote scripts for 6 years and kept getting through to `the last round’ and then being told they didn’t quite love it enough (Sound familiar?) `Ragdoll’ was his last attempt at getting his work out there and his determination clearly paid off.

Julia said that women are often victims in crime fiction or assistants to drink-sodden detectives, whereas her women are in charge of doing bad stuff. She says she’s channeling the spirit of punk: women behaving badly. This then brought the discussion round to the fact that many women crime fiction writers are accused of misogyny. This will be covered in Part Two of my blog!

Celebrating my Return with `Cambridge Black', by Alison Bruce

I’ve decided to start blogging again after a gap of many months, now that I’ve finally finished the major rewrite of my thriller, Her Silent Throat, with an additional POV. To celebrate this return to the land of the enjoying, I took myself down to Heffer’s bookshop in Cambridge (where I now live) for the launch of Alison Bruce’s new book, Cambridge Black.

This is the seventh and last in the series featuring DC Gary Goodhew and cleverly named, since the first in the series was called Cambridge Blue. She said that despite the title, she hadn’t felt able to kill him off and he would now feature in a couple of short stories. He’s at a crossroads in his life and the cover depicts Alison Bruce herself walking away from the camera, down her chosen twilight path, an elegant and lone figure.

We celebrated the event with wine and- somewhat quirkily- pink and violet-iced cupcakes with a black seven in the centre.

She spoke a little about how she came to write the series. She was walking in Cambridge in 1989 and came up with an ingenious way to murder someone. She imagined this murder as a film plot and therefore went on a script writing course, but learnt that it’s hard to sell a script if the story hasn’t been published as a book first. Her idea eventually became the third in the Gary Goodhew series and may explain her skill in painting such a vivid portrait of Cambridge. She’s been credited with doing for Cambridge what Colin Dexter did for Oxford. As for the character of Gary Goodhew himself, apparently a friend rang her up and asked whether he could be in the book, only he wanted to be younger and better looking than in real life.

And then she needed an agent. She very sensibly made a shortlist of authors she enjoyed reading who loved their agents and Broo Doherty at DHH Literary Agency came top of the list. She then approached Broo, who did become her agent in time and they’ve been together ever since. Cambridge Black is dedicated to Broo: `thank you for having faith in Goodhew, the series and my writing.’

I bought my copy of Cambridge Black- discounted by £4- and stood in the queue to have it signed by the author who sat behind a table with a flower jauntily tucked behind her ear. She clearly has a loyal fan base and some people I spoke to had travelled for up to 2 hours to attend. I found it refreshing that several seemed not to have been to a launch before, but had come to know Alison through her husband’s music and had seen her scribbling away at gigs. Four had clubbed together to buy the hardback with the fastest reader being allowed first dibs. One man was a delivery driver and attested to the accuracy of her settings- he even knew the lockups where several bodies were discovered in a freezer in one of her books.

I look forward to her next book, a new venture, which is out later in the year. As the Independent said of her writing, sounding a bit like Morse himself: `It’s all orchestrated (from opening adagio to allegro finale) with authority.’