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 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 19, 2014 | Fallout, self-publishing
This week has been ridiculously busy, even by my standards, and the evenings seem to have been divided between music concerts (2), football matches and cricket on TV (too many hours to contemplate) and watering the veggies. After the usual scramble and frustrations of dealing with ebook publishing, eg discovering that my Mac OS x is out of date and Kindle previewer isn’t working etc, the Kindle version of ‘Fallout’ is now available, hurray. By some happy chance this week was booked for a holiday in Swanage, in a cottage without Wifi – which was not intentional but might prove a useful break from all its potential for distraction. The bag is almost packed and I’ll be off shortly.
So for seven whole days I shall leave behind the book sales, Twitter and all things digital and devote myself instead to visiting stately homes and gardens, reading, walking, and few more hours watching football, cricket and tennis too. If the weather does what is predicted I might even venture into the sea for my first sea swims of the year. Bliss.
In the meantime, if you do manage to buy, download and read ‘Fallout’ please tell me what you think, or put a review on Amazon if you can. I love to get feedback, the more detailed the better, and stuff on Amazon always helps. See you in ten days or so.
by admin | May 29, 2014 | character, Cumbria, historical fiction, promotion, readers, self-publishing, selling, trilogy
I searched on the bookshop shelf in a nearby market town but my books were not there. I asked at the counter. ‘Oh, they’re in the ‘local’ section,’ I was told, ‘in the back room’. What could I say? True, my books are set in a recogniseable area, and local people who read them are pleased to find places that they know. But all the fictional characters are exactly that, fictional, and these characters and their stories are actually more important that the ‘localness’. So why are the books ‘condemned’ to the ‘local’ shelves, alongside histories of hematite and Herdwicks?
This could be another example of the tyranny of genre. We are obliged to allocate a genre, that is a label, to our books so that the booksellers know where to put them on the shelf. And as a consequence of being labelled as ‘local’ – by others, not by me – I find myself explaining to someone in Ambleside that the books may be set on the west coast of Cumbria, about an hour away from Ambleside by road, but they can be – and are- read with pleasure by people on the other side of the Atlantic, not the other side of the county. One of the beauties of historical fiction is that – compared with contemporary fiction – it doesn’t date. There may not be a sell-by date, but there appears to be a ‘sell-within’ limitation, and I’m wondering how to get around it. I would so love to see my novels on a bookshop shelf in Leeds, or Newcastle, or even London, but the chances of that appear to be slim to none.
If I were a commercial publisher, I would find editors of the national media book sections who would commission a review, but as a self-published author the review route seems to be blocked. Do nationally recognised reviewers ever get to see, never mind read, self-published fiction, or do they, like the publishers, restrict themselves to reading that which has been already ‘filtered’ by other colleagues in the book trade? Is it worth sending off expensive parcels of books in the hope of a response? There may be a ‘slush pile’ for reviewers as well as for publishers, and I have no particular desire to end up on it. Is there anyone out there, I wonder, who would be willing to take a chance on reading a trilogy by a self-published author with pretty good sales, about an independent woman struggling to survive and maintain her integrity and independence against serious challenges in the early twentieth century?
Let’s say the trilogy is set in ‘The North’, that foreign land known only to pioneers who venture as far as the M6 and keep going past Birmingham or even Manchester. Is there such a genre as ‘northern fiction’? I’d be OK with that: there is something about this half of the country that feels and looks different than the more manicured south. But when ‘local fiction’ comes to mean ‘readable only by those within a thirty mile radius of where I live’ I get a bit fed up.
That’s the end of today’s moan. I resolve to be more positive in future.
by admin | May 25, 2014 | A Good Liar, Authenticity, cover, Cumbria, fact-based fiction, Fallout, Forgiven, Lake District, promotion, readers, Windscale fire
A couple of years ago, when my first novel was in production, my ‘book designer’ asked me to go to a bookshop and look at covers. ‘See what you like,’ he said, ‘and what will make people want to buy your book. Then we can give Kevin the cover designer some direction and criteria.’ So I looked, and felt that most of them were anodyne and boring. Nothing about many of the covers made me want to take the book off the shelf, never mind hand over any money for it. I wanted to be struck by the cover image, engaged, intrigued – some reaction. It wasn’t about liking or not liking, more about curiosity.
The first book ‘A Good Liar’ played safe: it combined three images, all of them aesthetically attractive, which collectively gave the reader a sense of what lay within. The second book ‘Forgiven’, looking back on it now, played even safer. It was a beautiful image of a green valley and distant a distant snow-capped ridge, and in the foreground a gorgeous granite stone wall which epitomises the area where the books are set. We had tried to create a cover image using photos of pit wheels and women with children, but it was too fussy and nothing was working. The running theme of the book was ‘forgiveness’, and in the end I felt that the distant peek of light in the sky symbolised that feeling, but it was a bit of a stretch. Basically it was just a beautiful image.
Now we’ve had to make a decision about the cover of book three, ‘Fallout’, which is set against the calamitous event of the world’s first nuclear reactor fire, in Cumberland in 1957. It’s a tough time for my heroine Jessie Whelan too – no more details! – and I wanted a sense of anxiety in the cover, nothing too soft or bland. A beach scene this time, I decided, to complement the view of fells (that’s a Norse word meaning ‘hills’ that’s commonly used in Cumbria): one of the wonderful west-facing beaches that we enjoy in this region. But it had to be a special beach scene, and we found one, with a red sky, beautiful but threatening too. Still I wanted more: among the photographs I’d found of the reactor fire was one of a group of workers in their anti-contamination suits and helmets, looking like spacemen. The clever cover designer imposed this image on the beach below the red sky and the cover of ‘Fallout’ stared out at me. I loved it: as intriguing as I had hoped for and authentic too.
I made a poster and took it round the local bookshops to alert them to the forthcoming publication. One buyer at a local attraction flinched and literally stepped away from the image. ‘We can’t sell that here,’ she said. ‘It’s too frightening. Not the kind of thing for this shop.’ It’s not a proper bookshop, granted, but other crime fiction books on the shelf have quite graphic images. I was surprised by her reaction and I should have asked her to explain it, but I didn’t. Later she confirmed to the books’ distributor that she wouldn’t be carrying copies, even though the first two books in the trilogy sell well there. Nothing I can do about it, I suppose. It was never my intention to upset anyone, but then the line between curiosity and aversion is notoriously thin. I wanted the ‘Fallout’ cover to convey the danger that threatened my heroine and her community, and clearly it does that effectively. But I think there’s more to it: most people’s impression of the Lake District and Cumbria is green hills, sparkling lakes and Beatrix Potter. For those of us who love the wild west coast, that image needs a challenge, and I think – I hope – that my three novels portray real life here, not some romanticised idyll. If people’s reaction to the ‘Fallout’ cover starts some conversation about this dichotomy, that’s a good thing. It may cost me some sales, but maybe not. I’ll have to wait and see.
By the way, you can see all the covers on the books page of my website www.ruthsutton.co.uk. Have a look and see what you think.
by admin | May 18, 2014 | character, crime fiction, genre, plotting, self-publishing, structure, writing
‘Once a teacher, always a teacher’: I think that’s true, and being a teacher – however long ago – makes you permanently and irredeemably critical of how information and ideas are presented. Although I’ve not taught school students for many years, I make part of my living still through ‘teaching’ adults, and after twenty years of doing so I have an idea of what works.
So a visit to Crimefest in Bristol last week was a chance to learn about writing crime fiction from a brace of presenters I’d never seen in action before – Matthew Hall (the MR Hall of ‘Coroner’ fame), and William Ryan. It was an afternoon workshop, and something about the blurb made me think it might be useful. From Cumbria to Bristol is a long way, but it turned about to be worth every mile and every pound it cost me. What did they do that I found so helpful?
For a start, they told us right at the start that some aspects – but not all – of successful fiction writing can be taught, not just ‘caught’ or developed through some mystical intuitive process. They were well-organised and positive. The room was small, a screen had to be invented using a tablecloth as nothing else was available, a laptop failed to function and had to be replaced. Clearly they had worked together before and in supporting each other they reassured us that they would do whatever it took to give us a positive professional experience. They had two clear foci – character and plot – and some slides to support what they told us and asked us to do. All the materials had been circulated well in advance by email. Obviously they had presented this workshop before, but had customised to fit the timings and the size of the group.
I’ve seen this before as an educator, but it was fascinating to see how the passivity of our group during the previous session – about which more later – transformed into engagement given the opportunity to do so. Each one of us was involved in specific tasks that were clearly relevant to the issues of the three act structure, character development and dynamics, and the protocols of crime fiction as a genre. The time was tight, the pace fast, and intense short group activities were interspersed with more anecdotal and expository slices that had me scribbling furiously, not what was being said but insights and ideas that began to tumble around my mind about my own next writing project. I was clearly learning not just listening and it was exhilarating.
Several months ago I had a similar experience at the Winnipeg central library in a workshop presented by Andrew Pyper. He’s a Toronto journalist turned very successful novelist (latest book, ‘The Demonologist’) and used a similar structure and presentation style that engaged and excited his audience. On that occasion too, in just a few hours, I learned so much which has proved very useful since.
Andrew Pyper was a journalist; Matthew and William Ryan had both been barristers in a former life and are now highly successful authors: all three have a passion for words and stories, both spoken and written. The previous session at the Crimefest day in Bristol provided an alternative – much less satisfactory – experience: the contrast sharpened my understanding of what for me is helpful and what is not.
We were faced with a panel of two professional editors and two agents, who were asked quite good questions about their roles and function first by a moderator, and then by us. If I hear another agent tell me that the criterion for choosing a submission is that ‘they fall in love with it’, I think I’m going to scream. They talked about ‘dating’ to describe the relationship between author and agent, and told us that the process of taking the book from manuscript to publication was like ‘giving birth’. I regard myself as an old-fashioned feminist but this excessive ‘feminisation’ was actually deeply unhelpful. What are we as writers to do with such advice? I was also struck by how all four of the panellists cheerfully informed us that they were too busy ‘going to meetings’ during the working day to read the submissions or manuscripts they were supposed to be working on. All the reading was done in the evenings or at the weekends. Not sure how my fellow participants felt about that, but I found it depressing. How could that make any writer feel confident about the professional attention their efforts would receive?
Even more depressing, but perhaps revealing too, was that none of the four had ever actually written anything, or felt they were capable of doing so. These were not writers, or even speakers of words, these four people spent their time responding to other people’s words but not themselves engaged in creating them. Advice to self: if you want help with being a writer, learn from people who write. Further message to self: whatever the current role of the agent is, I think some of them have lost the plot, literally.
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