Tag: Book

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Three Good Apples and a Lemon.

I’ve read a number of books this year, and the majority of them were well worth it, including the classics The Day of The Triffids and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. So I’ve only selected a few notable ones for this entry. The links go to Amazon, but to paraphrase the BBC disclaimer, other websites are available.

My choice of lemon proves the idiom that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Crawling Round South Oakwood by Stephen Slaughter has amazing artwork, with the words in the title becoming more and more blurred as the rows of pint glasses become emptier and emptier. I thought a story about a group of friends going on pub crawls would be a sure-fire winner.

How wrong could I be? The book seems to be a first draft, going into such minutiae as the details of the TV programme the group watches, and their exact route to the pub. Later in the book, a fight breaks out between the group members, yet no tension is shown to have built up in any other part of the book. I finished it, but I was disappointed.

Now let’s look at what went well. The Dog Stars by Peter Heller had an arresting concept. In a post-apocalyptic world, Hig and Bangley are survivors. The former owns a small plane with enough fuel for years of short reconnaissance missions. When he picks up a long-range radio transmission, he is determined to find its source, but it means using up all his fuel without enough for a return trip.

As well as the immediate problems, it explores the philosophical differences between Hig and Bangley. One asks questions then shoots, the other takes the opposite approach. I also like that the author doesn’t write needless pages dwelling on the causes of the apocalypse, but shows it throughout the story.

I was fortunate to see Iain (M) Banks at two live events before hearing of his illness and death this year. He didn’t fit the stereotype of the introvert writer mumbling answers to questions. Rather, he made a short speech then actively encouraged the audience to join in.

I haven’t read any of his science fiction, although I hear it’s excellent. Having read The Wasp Factory after his first appearance, I then tackled The Crow Road. I have two criticisms about the book: that the flashbacks aren’t as clearly marked as they could be, and some of the writing isn’t as tight as it could be, but once you become accustomed to it, you really believe in those characters and their views on life, as Prentice tries to piece together his family secrets.

I’ve also seen another Scottish author at live events, Chris Brookmyre, who signed my copy of Flesh Wounds. Like Banks, he’s very confident in front of an audience, his main topic discussing the merits of the phrase, “Taking a s***”

As in The Crow Road, the flashbacks are a little confusing, and the Glasgow dialect can be a little alienating. But it’s the attention to detail in a many-stranded story that really drives it forward. I really ought to read more of his novels, as the only other one I’ve tackled is All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye.

But if I was giving out awards for the best book I’d read this year, it would have to go to Layer Cake by J J Connolly, only £1 from a charity shop. As Flesh Wounds is set firmly in Glasgow, this is set in London, and the first-person narrator sprinkles in some Cockney rhyming slang, often without explanation. A, “Mars bar,” for instance is a scar, but it took me a few pages before I realised this.

My enjoyment wasn’t dampened in any way by the Daniel Craig film, in fact they complement each other, sharing several direct quotes. It’s difficult to judge the unnamed narrator for dealing drugs because he has the attitude of a businessman, just one whose activities are illegal. As he sees it: “Until Prohibition ends, make hay whilst the sun shines.”

I hope to read many more excellent books next year.

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You’re The Voice, Try and Understand It.

Earlier this week, I read out a new story, which is still at the stage of the first draft. When I was finished, I was told, “That wasn’t in your usual voice.” I was so pleased, I nearly shouted, “Yesss,” while pulling down an imaginary chain with one hand.

In my short writing career, I’ve developed the view that nobody necessarily has to find their own voice. To some people, it is important to write in a particular fashion, but I contest that everyone is capable of having more than one voice if they want to. I reckon you can pen ten stories in ten unique voices.

I’ve previously talked about how crime writer P D James wrote the science fiction novel Children of Men at the age of 70. Allow me to offer another example, this time from Hollywood, that illustrates my point. You could never mistake the musical Hairspray for black comedy Serial Mom, yet John Waters was behind both of them.

Changing your voice can be as simple as altering the words or the punctuation. For example, two of my own hallmarks are that I rarely go to town on description, and never use brackets. I could alter that by describing something in vivid detail, (adding extra information in parentheses). Done often enough, it would sound like somebody else.

So why not find out if you can write like someone else, but say your own thing? If you’re stuck, here’s a prompt I’ve had in my head over the last week:

Two friends are in a café or a pub. One of them leaves for a lengthy pre-arranged appointment, but returns a short while later. What has happened?

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The End of Days.

I know you can’t see me, but I’m blowing a whistle as we speak, indicating the final dying minutes of National Novel Writing Month. I breached the 50,000-word target by only 29 words; that’s 13 less than my very first novel in 2010.

Last year’s total was 60,000 and I’d barely scratched the surface, but this time around, I don’t have the material to go much higher, so I’m happy with my haul. Many congratulations if you’ve also hit the benchmark.

My aim is for this to be the last time I bore you with this subject for the next eleven months.

I’ve been to a number of literary events this week, including a fiction writing and a life writing class, and I’m pleased to say I’m enrolled in the continuation class for the latter.

On Thursday, I attended a literary salon where I heard current English students read out their best pieces. Then on Friday, a poetry and cabaret event. A number of pieces were in the Dundee dialect, which must have confused the last act, a songwriter from New Orleans.

I’ve lived in the city most of my life and understand most of the vernacular, yet I’ve never naturally spoken it. It inspired me to write a poem exploring the theme, and I completed it before the event ended. I’m not known as a poet, and I’m not at the stage where I would describe myself as one, but I have been dabbling in the form.

I’ve also been working on another piece, but I need to give you a bit of background. If you didn’t know, I’ve only been a writer since October 2010. To put that in context, I was 27 when I wrote a fictional story for the first time since high school. The piece was that first NaNo novel.

However, when I was at school, I fancied myself as a singer-songwriter, not to mention an actor. I’d tried to write song lyrics, and I recently rediscovered a four-line fragment with two internal rhymes. Moreover, I can still remember the tune, and the words still resonate as much now as they did then.

At the time, I tried to expand it by writing extra verses, but nothing seemed to work until I turned to Google+ earlier this week. With the help of a community, I preserved the rhyme scheme but expanded the number of syllables, and I’ve now squeezed nearly four verses out of it. If I keep making progress, I finally hope to perform it on December 9th after all these years.

After a conversation with my former NaNo Municipal Liaison a couple of weeks ago, I raked out my school qualifications. I’d correctly remembered I’d earned only a C for English, although I have criticisms about the way it was taught. Perhaps that’s why I never pursued it, or perhaps I was too fixated on music to realise my strength was in words, not instruments.

I’ve got to make up for the time I wasted setting up blogs writing factual events without realising that I was able to write fiction. I kick myself every day about my late start, although I take some comfort from the careers of Barbara Taylor Bradford and Richard Adams. Their first books weren’t published until they were over 40 and over 50 respectively.

But I need to work fast if I want to reach a state of parity. I want to reach the point where I’ve produced as much work as if I’d started as a teenager. I have around 200 pieces in total, but that could have been 1,000 if I’d begun at age 15.

I won’t rest until I’m satisfied I’ve made up for every minute of wasted time.

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The N-Word.

I’ve a feeling you’re getting sick of me talking about National Novel Writing Month, so I’ll devote only one paragraph to it. To date, my total is 48,711 words, meaning less than 1,300 to go until I hit the target. I have until Saturday to complete it, leaving plenty of time.

I’ve been going to two other classes at the same time, and I seem to be going through a rather philosophical patch as I complete their respective homework.

Class one is Life Writing at the University of Dundee. Our homework is to write a short passage about our lives each week, all focussing on a particular aspect of writing, which might be the use of the child or adult voice, or employing the past or present tense. This week was a little different, where we were asked to choose an abstract noun and write a piece around that theme. Mine was On Solitude, arguing that this is not the same as loneliness.

Number two is my regular writing class with Zöe Venditozzi, held at a new, secret location. One of the prompts led me to write about a floating island and the ideological arguments its inhabitants had when setting up their community. The other is about twins with wildly different reactions: one is always brutally honest, while the other goes into denial when he hears bad news.

Also, my second published story is currently being launched in Australia as part of the FourW Twenty-Four anthology. The Wagga Wagga and Melbourne events have taken place, but the Sydney launch happens this Saturday 30 November. It’s impractical for me to attend as I’m halfway around the world, but if you live there, pop along and let me know what it’s like.

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NaNoWriMo and Other Stories.

Just a quick update to say I’m still alive, but I’m not only taking part in NaNoWriMo, but homework for two other writing classes as well. As you might imagine, this is keeping me jolly busy.

With 33% of the time elapsed, I had reached half of my target of 50,000 words. I think be able to match the target, but not beat it, so I’ve been taking it slightly easier. At a day over the halfway mark, I now have around 33,000 words.

But I’ve also had time to visit the cinema. Last week, I saw Gravity, although I felt that because Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are such famous faces, it distracted somewhat from the story. Yet it remains an excellent film, with the action of Apollo 13 set to the backdrop of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And today, I attended a free screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in Swedish with English subtitles. I enjoyed this for its captivating story, even if it becomes a little muddy towards the end, and I hear it’s much better than the English-language remake. I’ve no current plans to read the book but if I have a chance, I’ll give it a look.

So hope you reach the end of NaNo in one piece, and any other writing projects you may have on the go. I’ll update again when I have the chance, which I hope will be the day I hit the target.

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NaNoWriMo: One Week In.

If Bridget Jones had inhabited me in a Quantum Leap style. I’d say I was typing out a v. v. quick update on my National Novel Writing Month process.

I have a very organised Municipal Liaison, or ML, who gives us writing space in a friary. While I’m not religious by any measure, the calm, quiet sanctity of the place is very conducive to writing.

But equally, so is a certain coffee shop in the town centre, where I tried writing on Sunday. A friend happened to be in the area, and she forced me to go to the pub across the road and drink red wine – forced, no less – leaving me 2,000 short of my intended target.

Despite this small setback, I still bagged a mammoth weekend total. The daily target is an average of 1,667 words, which equates to 11,669 on the seventh day. As of last night, I’ve banged out 12,539. I’m just about to start hacking away at today’s total.

If you should like to follow me on the NaNo website, please do so. It’s helpful if you can also send me a message saying you saw it here so I know where you’ve found my profile.

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NaNo Go Go Go.

I’m just taking a few minutes out of my writing schedule to wish the best of luck to every National Novel Writing Month participant. Thus far, I have a little over 600 words to sling on the pile.

Don’t forget, there are likely to be people in your local area to help you stay inspired, and look out for the periodical motivational e-mails.

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Three Candles, Four Ws.

I admitted in my first entry that I have only been writing for fiction three years. Today marks that third year.

On 29th October 2010, I joined National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on a whim. A lot of online friends seemed to be doing it. Until then, I had written only non-fiction blog entries, so I can’t explain why I’d already had a book idea kicking around for months before this.

I didn’t initially tell anyone what I was doing,except for the active NaNoWriMo chapter I discovered in Dundee. At their meetings, and any moments I could grab, I bashed out my first novel Chris The Girl, set in the year 2525 when only women exist, and reproduce by the use of technology. I reached 50,042 words; just over the punishing target. I’ve successfully tackled it every year since, and will be starting again in a few days’ time.

Then in March 2011, I heard of a new local writing group. At school, I was forever being marked down for not writing long enough pieces, but after a few weeks, I started to think, “Chuffing Nora. I’m finding this easy.” I don’t know what changed in that ten-year gap but perhaps it was because our focus here was how to make the story flow, not on refining the grammar or making it fit an exam question.

Now I’ve written dozens of stories, and had a couple of them published, my first being with The Fiction Desk, while I haven’t really talked about my second, with FourW. My story The Almost Man will be published in their latest anthology. If you live in Australia, you can go along to one of their launch dates:

Wagga Wagga on Saturday 23rd November 2013 at Wagga Wagga City Library commencing at 2.00pm.

Melbourne on Sunday 24th November 2013 at the Robata Bar in St. Kilda commencing at 2.30 pm.

Sydney on Saturday 30th November 2013 at Gleebooks, Glebe Road, Glebe commencing at 3.30pm.

The one good element of starting late is that I’m not embarrassed by my earlier attempts. There are many people who go through their teenage notebooks and cringe at the clumsy metaphors or purple verse, whereas the worst I experience is spotting rough corners that could do with tidying up.

On the other hand, I’m very competitive and find it difficult to accept that I haven’t written nearly as much as I might have by this age. And that means I’ll forever be playing catch-up.

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Teaser Tuesday: Flesh Wounds by Chris Brookmyre.

Note he's now known as Chris. Topher Grace bought the rest of his name.Every Tuesday, the Should Be Reading blog runs a Teaser Tuesday. You choose two sentences at random from your current book and post them. The only rule is that spoilers are banned.

So I grabbed Chris Brookmyre’s Flesh Wounds. I’ve seen him twice at live events, and the last time, he signed my copy of this book. I resisted asking him if anyone ever mistakes him for Irvine Welsh.

Here’s a quote from page 245.

‘The autopsy hasn’t been completed yet, but I think she was murdered. She hadn’t touched a drop in years, but her house was staged to make it look like she was back on the drink with a vengeance.”

I was introduced to him via All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye. In fact, most of his titles are as humorous as his prose, although it helps if you understand the Glasgow dialect, as I do. He’s described as a comedy crime writer, and while Flesh Wounds is an altogether darker story, there’s still a laugh on nearly every page.

I’m open to suggestions for which of his books I should read next.