by admin | Aug 20, 2014 | Fallout, readers, self-publishing
Two events last week tested my resolve as a self-publishing author. Neither had anything to do with writing, and both were concerned with that other side of the business, the one that starts when the book is finished and printed and needs to be offered to people for them to buy. These two events were both ‘discomforting’, in different ways.
One of them involved sitting in a cold and draughty tent at a local agricultural show for six hours, of which the first two seriously sapped my spirit, although things did improve later. The show actually figured in ‘Fallout’ as the location in 1957 of yet another family row triggered by my heroine Jessie Whelan’s habitual indiscretion. It was a classic ‘set-piece’, in which various characters are brought together to provide an opportunity for things to happen, and the setting provided an opportunity for some local colour too:
“they squelched from tent to tent, seeing onions the size of footballs, gleaming leeks with green fanned leaves, dahlias and gladioli, shortbread and rum butter and knitted jumpers and crowing cockerels. Outside in the gated enclosures there were cows and calves, and big Herdwick tups, their fleeces rouged with raddle.”
When the time for the 2014 show came around it seemed a fitting place to sell this book and the others, and perhaps meet some readers. And so it proved, but not for the first two hours. We arrived at nine and set up the table at one end of the History tent, next to banks of old local photos on boards that drew fascinated crowds all day. It was cold: the wind flapped and roared. I read the paper, I sought out a cup of tea, but still no-one came, and my spirits fell as low as the temperature. I asked myself whether this is what I really wanted to be doing on a Saturday morning; whether this was why I want to write fiction; whether it was all an embarrassing folly. But I stayed put, and stoicism was rewarded.
Actually, it was the rain that drove people into the tent, and it was my partner’s cute collie dog Meg who drew them towards my table. But once they were there, the conversations and the sales became more rewarding. By 3pm I was warmed up but ready for home after six hours at my post.
The other discomfort of the week was less easily resolved as it involved confronting photographs of myself, always a ghastly experience. I’ve needed a new photo for ‘promotional’ purposes for several years. The last one was taken in a hurry in St Johns Newfoundland in 2006. On holiday there I had a call from my Canadian publisher saying they needed a photo immediately for the back cover of a new book. A gale was blowing horizontal rain from the Atlantic as I struggled down into town to find a photographic studio and the next hour was purgatory, an experience best forgotten and not to be repeated. But ‘promotion needs photos’, and last week I had to go through it again. At least this time I was on home turf, but I still hated it, and that was before I’d seen the results. Suffice to say, my body may look younger since I lost weight last year but my face has aged alarmingly. Not exactly like my mother in her dotage, not yet, but I look a lot older than I feel. Out of 50 pictures there are about three I can live with, but that’s all I need. It’s all over for another few years, thank heaven, and I can get on with the fun part of the writing business, the writing.
by admin | Aug 10, 2014 | character, Explicit details, historical fiction, readers, research
Right back to my student days, ensconced in the circular reading room at Manchester Central Library for days at a time, I’ve loved research, digging around, following footnote leads, piecing a picture together and seeing it emerge in all its satisfying complexity. I still love it. The decision to write historical fiction, forty years on from my student days, was partly motivated by the research opportunities. Now the object of my investigation would be the community where I live, a multi-layered fascinating area with a deep dark past in the far north-west of England, too far from the M6 motorway to catch many Lake District tourists. Off I went to the local history libraries and my note books filled up with details of events and people and the way lives were led.
As it turned out, by the time came to write the first novel, I was floundering in the details, which stuck limpet-like and refused to be dislodged, weighing down the action and irritating potential readers. Much of it had to go. ‘Murder your darlings’ I was told on a writing course at the Faber Academy that was too good to ignore. And I did: whole chapters, sub-plots, and characters. Thousands of words fell to the sword.
I read something by Ian Rankin, explaining he does the outline first and then decides what research he needs to do. It made sense, but I think there’s more to the research business than this, at least for me. The first stage is to think, about the characters if they already exist, or the times, or the place, and any potential dilemmas or crises that these might generate. Then for me the first stage of research starts, not looking for details but the the feel of a period or a place. The reading may be wide-ranging, with few notes, just to stimulate and titillate to the imagination. Then an outline begins to emerge: don’t ask me how this works. Ideas just bubble up from somewhere, but there are definitely more of these bubbles if I’ve been reading around, slowly sipping information and letting it ferment.
Then comes the first draft of the outline, usually ‘good in parts’ like the curate’s egg (where did that expression come from?). At this point, as the second outline grows from the first, I begin to realise what I need to find out about. There are specific detailed questions to be answered: how long does it take for a body drowned at that point to wash up somewhere else? Where did ladies go shopping for clothes in Whitehaven in 1937? When did formal adoptions start? and so on. Much of the information is findable on the internet while more arcane details mean another trip to the local history library. Even when the research is limited by this ‘need to know’ process, much of what I find out will never make it into the final text. Too much, too specific, unnecessary, intrusive, cut it out. Out of pages of notes you might be left with a glimpse, a smell, an aside, but it will carry all the authenticity you need and the rest is superfluous.
Is research necessary? Absolutely. One bad mistake and the reader’s trust can be damaged beyond repair. But the most common problem is too much rather than too little. Up to a point, authentic detail is admirable and necessary; beyond that point it’s just irritating. It’s a fine line. Whoever edits your books needs to be alert to the possibility of research overload and use their metaphorical red pencil when the line is crossed. As the author you might be disappointed by this apparent disrespect, but you’ll be grateful later. Beware of any novel where the blurb refers to ‘meticulous research’, which must be euphemism for ‘tedious name-dropping’. I could provide examples, but instead I’ll respect the commitment of the author to historical veracity and then read something else.
by admin | Aug 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
This is the earlier blog post I should have linked to in today’s effort – the link that reviews Ryan and Hall’s splendid writing workshop.
by admin | Aug 5, 2014 | crime fiction, historical fiction, structure
I know I should understand this by now, but I don’t. I’ve asked various people ‘What is ‘genre’ and why do we need it?’ and the only answer that I remember, perhaps because of its absurdity – to me at least – is ‘So that the bookseller/librarian will know which shelf to put it on.’ When I went through the tedious and time-wasting process of submitting my work to an agent, I was informed that knowing your genre was crucially important, presumably so that you pestered the right agent, but that too seems to me like a post-facto rationalisation, a curious case of how the tail can wag the dog.
So here I am, trying to play the game, thinking of a move from one genre (‘regional historical women’s commercial fiction’) into another (‘regional historical crime fiction’). I’ve bought and read the Arvon book on writing crime fiction. I went on a course at Crimefest with Ryan and Hall and reviewed it favourably in an earlier post. Now I’m reading ‘The Crime Writer’s Guide to Police Practice and Procedure’ by Michael O’Byrne (published by Robert Hale in 2009). On the first page of Chapter 1 O’Byrne asks the question I’m asking myself: ‘Is it a crime novel or a novel in which a crime occurs?’ He also makes the assumption throughout that the protagonist of a crime novel must be a ‘detective’.
In the novel I’m now trying to plan, the protagonist is not going to be a ‘detective’, except in the sense that he/she is trying to find out ie. ‘detect’ what happened and why. So no Miss Marple, or Morse, or whatever the Nordic noir guys are called. Does that mean that this story is doomed to be ‘a novel in which a crime occurs’ that will leave the bookseller/librarian weeping with indecision? I stamp my foot. I’m the writer: I don’t want my main character to be in the police force, so there. The story will be what is, so get over it.
Most of the advice I have read and heard about writing good stories applies to any story. The 3 Act structure explained by Ryan and Hall works whether or not crime is involved. It’s about gripping the reader and pulling them into a book they can’t put down. You can perceive this structure in Hardy and Austen, who had the good fortune to write before the strictures of genre were so tight. Did Wilkie Collins know he was writing crime fiction? Of course I’m not comparing my own efforts with those greats, but the whole genre thing feels like a game for which everyone else except me knows the rules. As my kids in school used to say when their glaring ignorance came to light, ‘I must have been away that day.’
by admin | Jul 27, 2014 | promotion, readers, selling
In the past month I’ve done a number of ‘speaking engagements’ with local organisations about my books, both the content and the writing and publishing process. Being a self-published author I welcome and need such opportunities to promote my books directly, as the ‘normal’ channels of commercial publishing are closed to me, although authors who do have a ‘normal’ publisher tell me that they too have to arrange most of their own promotion. I really enjoy talking about my writing work and people tell me I do it well. I’ve been trying to work out what I do that seems to be appreciated.
It took me a while to realise that all I’ve learned about ‘presenting’ as a teacher over the past thirty years can be transferred into this new part of my life. I’ve been designing and running workshops and giving talks of various lengths to various size of audience for long enough to know what works. So here are some of the things I try to do:
1. Think about your audience ahead of time. Find out who they are, what brings them together, what they’re likely to be interested in and expect. That’s not to say that you always aim to do what they expect, but it helps to know what the ‘rules’ are if you want to challenge them. For example, if some of the people in your audience are pretty knowledgeable about your topic already, ask for their questions not at the end but before you start, and then adjust your talk to respond to these questions if you can.
2. If you feel you must use an audio-visual aid like Powerpoint, do so with care and as little as possible. ‘Death by Powerpoint’ is a well-known phenomenon in all forms of public speaking and many people are heartily relieved to be able to look at the speaker and not the screen, and sit in light not in the semi-darkness often required for good definition on your slides. Slides work much better for non-verbal visual images, so leave the words to be spoken not read.
3. Outline briefly what you’re proposing to talk about, and check whether that will suit people. That would be a good time to take a specific ‘requests’: ‘is there anything within that outline that you particularly want me to talk about?’ Listening is so much easier if you have an idea what you’re listening for, and have had the chance to shape it. I’m always surprised how much people appreciate the opportunity to be involved in this way, even if they choose not to take it.
4. Be aware of the time limit you’re working to and stick to it. People have lives to lead and to go on too long puts them in the awkward position of not wanting to tell you to shut up and sit down, even though they need you to do so. If there are essential things to add and your time is up then stop, say that your time is up, and give people the option to move on, leave or ask you to continue for a few more minutes. Here again, giving them the choice is respectful and appreciated.
5. Try not to use notes and never, ever, read from a prepared ‘lecture’. If it’s an academic lecture, or very specific and detailed, you might need the information to hand to ensure that it’s correct, but the kind of talks I’ve been doing to readers’ groups and women’s organisations don’t need that level of attributable precision. It should sound more like a conversation, even if it is pretty one-sided. If you’re reading you can’t be looking at the people you’re talking to and picking up the cues and clues they give you. It’s about respect too: the people are as important as your words. They invited you and don’t want to sit looking at the top of your head or -worse still – your half-turned back as you read off a screen.
6. All this assumes that you really know your stuff, but if you’re talking about a book you’ve written yourself you have been immersed in it for months and know all there is to know about it. The more you talk about it, the more the words flow. Practice, practice, practice: if you need to practice at home with just the cat to talk to, then do it.
7. If you want to read passages from your books, the choice of what to read is too hard – I think- to do on the spot and needs to be thought about ahead of time. You can use extracts to illustrate a specific point as you make it, about using accents in dialogue for example, or writing about weather, or introducing a new character through ‘show don’t tell.’ Plot spoilers are out, of course, and in a good book there might be quite a few extracts that fall within that category and have to be avoided. Some extracts might have particular relevance with or resonance for a particular audience: in my local fiction people love to hear mention of a place or event that they recognise. Once you’ve decided on a short list of extracts, mark them up carefully so you can find them fast, and don’t attempt to read them all, making your final choice according to the people you’re talking to, the circumstances, and what you decide at the time would be most suitable. Two or three extracts, of a few paragraphs each, no more, will be enough. Here again, practice reading them ahead of time. Even though you wrote the words yourself, speaking them out loud for an audience is an art form in itself. Too fast or too slow and your listeners tune out. And leave them wanting more, finishing on a upturn or something unresolved. You would like them to read more for themselves, and you’re providing just an appetiser not the main meal.
8. There’s much more to say hereabout respecting and entertaining your audience, but this is probably enough for now. It’s a blog post not an essay after all. One last thing: you need to be positive toward the people you’re talking to, thank them for the invitation, and for their attention when you’re done. Talking about my books is a privilege for me, and a delight. And, incidentally, I’ve sold more books directly in this way in the past month than I have in the past year on Amazon.
by admin | Jul 22, 2014 | crime fiction, ethical questions, readers, self-publishing, sex scene, violence
Interesting piece in the Telegraph this week about the apparent increase in explicit violence in crime fiction. I read a fair sprinkling of the genre, and know that I have learned my limits in what I choose to read, and to watch. Reading words leaves less of an imprint on my brain than seeing and hearing images on a screen: and it’s easier to skip pages than it is to block both sight and sound. I skipped many pages in the Stig Larsson trilogy, although by the third book I was skipping to avoid badly edited tedium, wondering if it had in fact been edited at all.
Most of the time I prefer my books and films to infer, and avoid excessive violence. Against children the mere inference of violence is too much for me: I even have to avoid some of the NSPCC ads on TV. Violence and cruelty against adults, female and male, are difficult, and even more troubling is the trend towards female victims, where the violence tips over into sadism that makes the reader complicit. Not good. I have no doubt violent scenes in books sell copies – why else would there be such a plethora in these times when sales seem to count more than anything else? I want to sell copies, of course I do, but not if it means writing something I really wouldn’t want to read myself.
One of the beauties of self-publishing is that the author can be under no external pressure as they make choices about content, style and everything else. Instinctively, and without any evidence, I picture the editor of a publishing house whispering in the author’s ear how a bit more explicit sex or violence would catch more readers’ attention, and probably media attention too, cajoling and tempting the writer to go against their own better judgement. Maybe that’s just my ‘don’t even think about trying to push me around’ mindset. Maybe it would never be like that, but for me it’s hypothetical anyway. My editor Charlotte is a fine professional and an old friend who knows there would be little point in pushing me to do anything I wasn’t happy about.
My interest in writing crime fiction for the next book, number four, remains strong, and I’m gradually resolving some of these issues in my head. There are bound to be bad and violent people and actions, or there would be no crime in the crime fiction. But I want to make both content and style more subtle if I can, without sacrificing the grip of the story. I just hope crime fiction readers who pick up a book of mine aren’t so jaded that they lose interest unless the details are laid out, full and frontal and covered in gore.
by admin | Jul 18, 2014 | Lake District, readers
It was my first time. I bought a frock, a summery scarf to set it off, and matching shoes with high heels. My partner came with me. We were both nervous. It was a beautiful day.
OK, that’s the basic background. I’d like to share some details of this new experience without in any way sounding critical, impressed or disappointed, descriptive and without judgement as I’ve nothing to judge it against except my own expectations which were few and low. Reading over what follows, I don’t think this aim has been achieved, but I did try.
It was indeed a beautiful day, and the venue was impressive too, a posh hotel by the lakeside, with large and impeccable rooms and open doors onto the terrace. We weren’t sure which door to enter, but managed to find where the free glasses of prosecco were waiting, bubbles rising lazily. There was no-one there to check us off, explain what would happen, or introduce us to anyone else. The ostensible purpose of this first ‘reception’ was for those who had submitted books to meet the judges, but who were the judges, and where were they? I recognised one of the three, but he remained throughout with people he obviously knew. The second judge, who I already knew, wasn’t there and the third I didn’t know at all. We did not meet the judges. Instead we met someone I had seen recently at a library reading. She was with her husband and they too were also confused about what we were actually doing there, but at least it was someone to talk to.
I did my best to circulate rather than just sit and wait, but huddles of people seemed to be well-established and hard to penetrate, so I gave up. More guests arrived. Still no sign of an introduction or a welcome to the event, or the judges.
It was as if we’d wandered into a strange wedding. Eventually we were summoned by the hotel staff to the adjacent marquee for lunch. On the way we passed the bookstall and I was able to say hello to the ladies from my book distributors. They seemed pleased to see me. My three books gleamed on the table, side by side: they seemed pleased to see me too.
And so to lunch at the strangers’ wedding, and very pleasant it was. Beyond the raised canvas walls of the marquee the lake sparkled and yachts glided past. None of us at the table had been shortlisted, but we’d all come anyway, just to be there and see what happens. We chatted about nothing much, like you do.
It was after lunch when the speeches and awards began that I wondered once again about how some books are chosen over others. My educational specialty is assessment and it raised questions in my head about criteria, weighting, transparency, and so on, none of which were probably applicable. No clear criteria were ever offered, but there was mention of the importance of appeal to a wide audience, followed immediately by praise for the most esoteric book on the list that retailed at £45. There was only one category for fiction among the five for other genres, and I listened with particular care to the deliberations shared by the judges about their choice. No guidance was offered. The winner was a commercially-published crime/thriller/suspenseful piece set in the Lake District. I can’t remember whether it was before or after the author had accepted her award that the speaker asked us to consider whether her novel was really ‘literature’. Some debate at that point would have been interesting and welcome, but it didn’t happen.
At the end of the presentations all the important guests, judges, sponsors and those whose books had made the various shortlists were invited outside to meet the press and have interminable photos taken. Inside the half empty marquee the rest of us sat through an endless raffle, for which the prizes were copies of our own books, sitting on a table like puppies at the dogs’ home, yearning to be chosen and taken home. It was almost more than I could bear. The only person I wanted to speak to, and had come a long way to find, was outside with the important people. It was four o’clock. I’d had enough. I picked up my summery scarf and we headed out into the glorious afternoon.
by admin | Jul 13, 2014 | A Good Liar, Authenticity, character, crime fiction, Cumbria, ethical questions, Explicit details, fact-based fiction, Fallout, research, Windscale fire
After finishing the trilogy based on the life of feisty but difficult Jessie Whelan, ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’, I’ve been thinking about the next book, or possibly the next series, having realised the commercial advantages of a series when each book encourages sales of the others. I’d like to set the series in a location dear to my heart, the west coast of Cumbria, and move towards crime fiction. It’s a well-worn genre, and difficult to do anything entirely new, but that doesn’t bother me: the range is so diverse, and the variables so many that my goal of something suspenseful and fresh will be achievable if I try really hard and use what I’ve learned so far.
Part of the freshness I want would be in the location, a neglected part of the country which has wonderful potential – beautiful, complex, layered, with the inwardness that stems from geographical isolation. It’s also where I live, and that could be the source of dilemmas to come. There can’t be a crime story without bad things happening, caused by people behaving badly. They may not be evil people, but they do evil things, for whatever reasons. I will be setting these evil matters within a community that I’m part of and that I’m very fond of. Do I have the ‘detachment’ that may be necessary, and will I care if what I write upsets those who would rather not have the region’s dirty linen, even the fictional dirty linen, exposed in public?
Hasn’t this been a problem all along? In the three stories so far, bad things have happened, and so far my neighbours are still speaking to me. But the bad things so far have all been external, an explosion in a pit, a fire in a nuclear reactor, neither of them caused by the wanton action of bad people. Blame, if we wish to allocate it, could be placed at the door of a process of cutting corners, or even human error, or the impact of political haste or a flu epidemic, not stemming from from deliberate acts by malevolent individuals.
If it’s crime fiction there will have to be a crime, and probably a series of crimes, and the criminals will probably be local. Not every baddie could be an ‘offcomer’ newly arrived from the distant iniquitous dens of London or even Leeds. Of course some of the evil-doers will be local: even a cursory scan of the local papers reveals plenty of evidence of local wrong-doing, and occasional acts of startling ferocity such as the recent multiple killings by a deranged taxi driver, Cumbria born and bred, who shot his victims both deliberately and then randomly before turning the gun on himself.
What I will need to do is use all the geographical details of my chosen setting but find the crime details elsewhere, to avoid crossing the line between crime fiction and ‘true crime’. As with most local fiction, authenticity will derive from the details of place and time, not from the characters, who remain fictional. The exception to this rule I made myself in ‘Fallout’ – part 3 of the trilogy – in placing known people from the Windscale nuclear plant in 1957 into the story as part of the backdrop. I took legal advice about doing so and was assured that it was acceptable, so long as nothing any of these people were given to do or say was at odds with the known facts, or in any way detrimental to their characters or reputation. It would be a different matter if any of these ‘known’ characters had been given criminal things to do.
In the first part of the trilogy I grappled with these choices, and decided to anonymise the village where most of the action takes place, which was loosely based on the village where I live. I changed its name and tweaked the neighbouring locations too, although more distant locations were left alone, visible on the map and in life. All the characters were fictional, although one – the vicar at the time – did possess some of the characteristics of the actual vicar at the time when the story was set. Even so, some of my neighbours were convinced that some of the characters in the story were real people. ‘You got so-and-so off to a tee,’ someone said to me, although ‘so-and-so’ was entirely a product of my imagination and – as far as I knew – bore no resemblance to any real person, living or dead. When I protested, my neighbour smiled, putting a finger to the side of the nose in the time-honoured gesture of ‘You can’t fool me’.
So, known setting and unknown characters and events will be required to make this work without doing insult or injury to my home turf. That decision helps. For a start I won’t have to spend many hours combing through back numbers of the North-West Evening Mail or the Westmorland Gazette and can let my dark imagination roam a little more freely. Now I have to get on with it.
by admin | Jul 8, 2014 | cover, Cumbria, promotion, readers, self-publishing, writing
Things seem to have gone a bit flat, and I’m feeling that way too. The third book is out, on schedule, in the shops and on Kindle. Now what? I’m schlepping round the libraries and WIs in Cumbria, talking about ‘Fallout’ and how and why I wrote it the way I did. I’m defending my decision to tackle the nuclear issue, and all that follows from that. I’m explaining why I left the ending of this last part of the trilogy somewhat ambivalent, which I did, after worrying for weeks about the final chapter. I get little shreds of feedback: a second hand comment that the book was fine but the nuclear stuff was too technical and boring, followed by another that the scenes set in the Windscale plant are riveting. Different strokes for different folks obviously and you can’t hope to please everyone, but it’s unsettling nonetheless. Today an email arrives saying that there are words missing in the Kindle version, and down I go again into the slough of despond, even before I’ve checked it myself and fixed the problem, if there is one.
I suppose it’s down to my inexperience as a writer. For the last twenty years or so in my other ‘work’ in education I’ve been more certain of myself, the skills I have developed seem clearer and the feedback more immediate. None of that seems to happen in the writing business, or at least not in the self-published writing business. I don’t have the luxury of a publishing team or an agent reassuring me about what’s happening, and that the decisions I/we made about the plot and the cover and and everything else were the right ones. I’m plagued by intermittent doubt, and yearn for someone who understands books to tell me that I’ve done a good job with this trilogy, not just as a testament to life on the Cumbrian coast in the twentieth century but for the writing itself.
Next week I’m going to the lunch to celebrate the Lakeland Book of the Year for 2014. I haven’t made the shortlist in the one category that might apply, but I want to be there, just to be around people who are into books and publishing and this wonderful place where we live. I’ve even bought a dress, and may, possibly, have the confidence to wear it. Maybe that will cheer me up.
by admin | Jun 30, 2014 | character, Cumbria, fact-based fiction, Fallout, Forgiven, historical fiction, Lake District, research, trilogy, writing
Tomorrow evening I’ll be talking to the ‘Friends of Whitehaven Museum’ about the Jessie Whelan trilogy, which has the overall title ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’. It could be quite a large group, some of whom may have read all three books and others may not even know of their existence. My appearance is part of their regular programme of speakers, and I guess I’ve been invited not as a writer but as someone who has researched and recorded slices of local history in fictional form.
So, I’m thinking: what should I talk to them about? The one thing we all have in common is the setting, and the meeting will take place just across the harbour from the site of the major backdrop event in Book 2, ‘Forgiven’, the explosion in the William Pit in August 1947 that claimed the lives of 104 local men and boys. Think of the impact of that on the local community: all those funerals, day after day, and the thousands of people whose lives were affected, children left without fathers, wives without husbands. I’ll tell them how I tracked down the transcript of the NCB report on the accident, including the accounts from the three men who survived, and how I researched another facet of ‘Forgiven’, the lives of the Displaced Persons in their camps in Cumberland in the years after World War Two. Book 3, ‘Fallout’ was set at the time of the nuclear reactor fire at Windscale, just south of Whitehaven, in 1957, and in doing the research for this book I accumulated far more detail than I could possibly have used in the story, much of which was not clear at the time, even to those who were working at the plant. That too will probably be part of what I share with the group. People are usually interested in the past history of where they live, especially when that history is as rich as ours.
As a writer I should be discussing the triumvirate of character, plot and setting, but talking about setting alone would take us far longer than the limited time I’ll have, and I must find time to say something about the process of turning local history into fiction, which presents another set of challenges worthy of conversation. I’ll try to explain how the characters were born and developed as I wrote about their lives, and how I have tried to have both setting and character drive the plot. Looking back, the process of writing looks far more rational and ordered than it felt for me at the time. I’m now learning more about how to structure and plan a work of fiction, but – in the words of the metaphor – the stable door is banging in the wind and the horse has long gone. Maybe it’ll make for a better effort for the next book. In the meantime I’ll reflect on what I thought and did at the time and not pretend that I consciously followed rules that I was mostly unaware of. Considering that admission. the books turned out better than they might have been.
I’m doing many talks to various groups around Cumbria over the summer, and each one will be different, which sounds inefficient but it’s the only way to keep things fresh. If the people I’m with seem willing to talk I’ll ask them right at the start to help me frame our discussion through their questions and interests. Managing those unanticipated expectations, adding important bits of my own and doing it all within a short time frame is enjoyably risky. It’s like really good teaching and I love it.
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