I am so, so, so sorry to have abandoned you but you just will not believe what is going on in my life now! Talk about Eastenders - I tell you, Albert Square has nothing on me! After months of harping on about how much I loathe, detest, despise and hate my job, guess what? I've been made redundant! Really! I left the Friday before last. It all happened in the space of four weeks - from the first email being sent round to everyone to me walking out of the door for the last time. What a relief!

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Inspired by Tania Hershman's recent posts about ex-pat writers (or in her case, recently repatriated ex-pat writers) I decided to think a little about how the move has affected my writing.

I am currently sitting in my study in my house just outside Washington DC. I put up a photo of this room a few posts ago, but that was before the clutter arrived with the shipping. It is now filled with books, pictures, printers, bits of miscellaneous paper and my trusty Leonardo da Vinci action figure.


Out of my window I can see typical neat suburban houses. A couple of times a day a yellow school bus comes round picking up and dropping off kids. The families here are a complete mix of colours and religions; it’s far more multicultural than where I’ve just left in the West Country. The kids all look like your typical American kids: climbing onto the bus in jeans, sweaters and sneakers… do they realise that most of the rest of the world have to wear school uniforms? It’s a million miles from my old tartan skirt and tie, with regulation bottle green woollen jumper.

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Fact: a proper publisher (book, magazine et al) will NOT charge you to publish your work. It's the other way round.

Yes, there are a good number of very good mags and e-zines who don't pay, but you are getting readership, credits to put on your CV etc.

It's a nice (and rare) thing to be asked to contribute to a magazine. So when I received an email from First Edition magazine earlier asking me to do just that I was chuffed (I thought it may have had something to do with the story I sent them in July - it wasn't and I've since withdrawn it).

And then I read on.

And was not chuffed. I was angry and pretty bloody insulted.

They weren't asking me to contribute. They were giving me the 'opportunity' to have my short story published online as part of their downloadable e-book content.

Customers would pay a nominal fee (based on word count), which sounded okay.

And then:

And all I'd have to do is send them the work. They'd edit it, convert it into their electronic format and pay for distribution (what distribution???) etc

AND IT WOULD ONLY COST ME £25.

Cost. Me.

Nope!!!

As I said, proper publishers do not charge writers to publish their work.



So what's going on here? I thought First Edition was a great idea. A print mag for new writers. Sold on the High Street as far as I remember.

I've just checked their guidelines.

They don't pay contributors (aside from a non-specific cash prize to the best in a category).

The do sell advertising space.

And now they're charging to people to publish something which, as far as I can understand, doesn't have to pass any sort of editorial scrutiny.

Where's the money going, First Edition? And why the sudden change?

I'm going to email a copy of this to First Edition and offer them the opportunity to explain themselves. I hope they've made a very silly mistake because if they've not, it's a pretty cynical exercise in exploiting the new writers they originally claimed to be supporting.

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Sleep; what is that – a novel I read years ago? Oh, sleeeeep, where you close your eyes and drift off into some other world for seven or eight hours – not in this life I don’t. I would pay fortunes (if I had any) to experience unconsciousness for more than an hour at a time. My friend, Sylvia mentioned on the phone yesterday that there is a version of Nightal (don’t know if I’ve spelled that right) that works like a dream, even on the usually impervious. It’s supposed to be natural drugs: not real serious drugs – I thought drugs were natural. Well anyway, I might try it if she can find out the right colour for me.

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I've been a tad busy this last few days, so I'm afraid this is a bit of a catch-up post. First, I've actually submitted my PhD! I can't quite believe how happy it's made me, not just because the last stages of a research project are notoriously fiddly and tedious and so I've been dying to get rid of it, but because, finally, I realise that I'm actually really quite proud of it. As well as A Secret Alchemy, which I can enjoy again now that the tooth-pulling process of writing it has faded from my memory, I do think I've found some interesting things to say about historical fiction and how it works. I celebrated with my very long-suffering offspring, who bear the brunt of whatever's happening in my professional life, by opening the last bottle of the fizz which the Hay Festival gives its authors. It seemed appropriate.

And since then I've been in Spain, giving a lecture (twice) on Creative Thinking: the Darwin family in the Arts and Sciences. After the first, in Valencia, the university had organised a dinner cooked from Emma Darwin's recipe book, which was delicious. I was also given the most beautiful edition of The Origin of Species, made by my hosts, biologists Juli Peretó and Andrés Moya, with exquisite illustrations by the scientific illustrator Carles Puche. Carles even drew me an iguana on the title page of my copy: I felt very inferior in only being able to write words in his.

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Yesterday’s post was cheating; it was half a lie, in that it was all internal – yes, I was talking to myself. My son never heard those words that were screaming in my head that still lurk somewhere seething to get out. I am a calm and lovely mother in my old age, though have to confess to being very un-perfect in days gone by. Looking back on it now I would wish to have been different – a better mother, who put her children first instead of herself. My children deserved more of my attention.

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When I first started taking fiction writing seriously I joined an online group and Emily Gale was not only one of the first people I met there, but also one of the most helpful. Emily was already a better writer than I was (and still is) so I've got a lot to thank her for.

I am really pleased to have her here on the blog to talk about her book. It's a genuine pleasure. This interview is being posted with a smile.



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‘Old people can make ink from those – what do you call them?’ Jose Eladio the headmaster pointed to some strange-looking fungus growing near a tree. In front of the school, one or two trees of the pine variety are confined to square patches of earth. Spindly toadstools with frilly black edges had sprung up beside them.


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Although writing has always been a big part of my life - my song lyrics were legendary at school! - it has only been quite recently that I’ve started writing novels. Knowing that I would need to amass significant knowledge about the publishing industry, I read - all around the internet and beyond - about how to get an agent.

Agents, I discovered, were tricky, difficult characters with exacting standards. Heaven forbid that there should be a typographical error in your submission, or that your query letter (or email) should be too informal or, indeed, too formal. Don’t ask questions; don’t chase manuscripts unless a significant portion of time has passed; revere and venerate agents, and don’t expect them to be nice to you. They don’t have time.

The thought of submitting my first attempt at a proper novel was, to say the very least, daunting in the extreme. But, being of the ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ mindset, I sent out a stack of submissions.



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No it's not that I don't like him; the main problem I have with my son is the way he just blasts out his thoughts and visions as if he's got a court order stating he's right in fact. I know you're going to grab me for using the 'don't like' words so on you go -.in fact I'll take a leaf out of his book and imagine that you couldn't possibly understand what I'm on about. Oooh, he makes me want to slap him. Does he think I'm from another planet or something? That I haven't been changed and battered through the years from dealing with men and teenagers?

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