As some eagle-eyed readers of this blog may have spotted, I am to be found this week discussing how my book came to be published and what happened next over at Jane Smith's excellent How Publishing <span style="font-style: italic;">Really</span> Works blog. I have tried to give as honest an account as I could of the process to date. This is the second, I believe, in Jane's Trios series, where an author, a publisher and a bookseller discuss a book from their particular aspect. Jen Hamilton-Emery from Salt and Sara Crowley, short story champion at Waterstone's will be interviewed there shortly.

And... for all those of you who don't yet have it, I will be giving away a copy of The White Road and Other Stories to one lucky blog reader...What are you waiting for??

Read Full Post

So, tomorrow I'm hoping that I'll have had all the approvals on the proofs I sent the contributors to the photo book. This is good. This is exciting. This means we can get it to the printers and it means we'll be one step away from being able to have the book, to ship the book, to sell the book and to make money for The Alzheimer's Society. The hard work that Katherine and I have put in will be closer to changing into something physical. I am a bit nervous and very excited.

So let me thank some people. Let me thank Katherine for putting up with me and for working her socks off and for having such fab pictures people have been able to write to. And let me thank all who've written something and who've been so quick and so easy to work with.

Those people are:

Read Full Post

I read somewhere that our generation will probably the last to enjoy a long retirement. In future there'll be no time for wage-earners to shake off what Philip Larkin called 'the toad work' and flourish as individuals. It's sad to think of them grinding away into old age in the service of some faceless company, instead of sending metaphorical good wishes to their friends and neighbours in Penge .


Read Full Post

Happy birthday Samuel Johnson, Charles Darwin and Edgar Allen Poe. And here’s some cake for you too, Louis Braille and Arthur Conan Doyle.
This year is chockfull of literary anniversaries. They don’t mean a lot to most of us but they’ve got me thinking about the personal marking of time when it comes to writing. I haven’t wanted to admit, even to myself, how long I’ve been writing seriously without any visible sign of success. Actually, I’m not even sure what ‘writing seriously’ means. I’ve squeezed it in with having two children and some semblance of a career. But I’ve seriously wanted it, so I guess that counts. My youngest child just turned six and it has made me face up to the fact that I sent out my first manuscript when I was a few weeks from giving birth to him.
In those days I didn’t believe statistics about all the people out there trying to get published. This was clearly a lie designed to put off anyone who wasn’t serious. Having once dealt with reader letters on a newspaper, I also thought that the majority of manuscripts would be in green ink, with the occasional random capital letter in the middle of a sentence. They wouldn’t be as good as mine, no siree!

Read Full Post

The first thing that I noticed about Jackie was her necklace. It was spun from strands of fine beige yarn, three or four or more criss-crossing threads each strung with buttons and worn close to the neck choker style. Every button was a different colour from its neighbour – pale pinky pinks to sky vapour blues, soft sage greens to earth cool ochres – each round, and perhaps the size of a penny piece.

Read Full Post

Coming to the end of my very short trip to the UK, here is a quick round up and what I hope is interesting information from my experience of meeting two literary agents.

First, two of my flash stories were shortlisted for the FISH One Page short story competition, but alas once more it was not to be! Congratulations to the winners.

Second, it was my grandmother's 100th birthday yesterday (this is a pic of me and her a few years ago), and the party held in her nursing home, complete with cupcakes with her name on (!), felt like a truly historic event. There was the card from the Queen (no telegrams any more), and many family members, some I had never met. And my grandmother, Zara, beaming from her wheelchair. And this is book-related: My aunt and uncle had made Zara's dream come true by producing a beautiful, hardback book with extracts from the memoirs she has been working on almost as long as I've known her, complete with photos. Totally wonderful, I look forward to getting my copy - and was astonished to be summoned by some cousins and shown a photograph of my grandmother in 1927 which really did look like me. Genes, eh! When I get the book in digital format, I may post the photo here and see what you think. I don't really look strongly like either of my parents, so this was something quite lovely.

Agents. OK. Buoyed by the Orange Award commendation, which gave me the feeling that the world was open to me in a way that it hadn't been before, I had set up two meetings in London with agents who had been personally recommended to me. I was excited yet unsure: how would the meeting go? Who would speak first? What would I say?

Read Full Post

So I've spend a fair few days celebrating the fact that, in the week of 20th April, A Secret Alchemy was the fourteenth bestselling paperback fiction in the UK. Serious celebration, it's been, to top off the pleasure of seeing stacks of it next to The Times it in every W H Smith in the country. Even my agent, who has seen just about every variety of success and disaster the book trade can create, is very, very pleased. And all for that 'difficult' second novel, which has also just had its first advance review for the American incarnation, in Publishers' Weekly:

"Historical sections, filled with allusion and mythology, make breathtaking drama ... Darwin's at her most powerful exploring Anthony's faith or Elizabeth's understanding of women, love and marriage in her time... a satisfying end ties the threads together."

And then today I had a bit of a revelation about the absolutely opposite end of the peculiar spectrum of experience we call being a writer. Anyone who's been hanging around this blog long enough will know that one of the recurring themes is about the difference, and interaction, between process and product. I'm a contrary soul so, because so much of talk about how-to-write, let alone what-editors-want, is in terms of product - what you want to have at the end - I spend a lot of time banging on about how process must come first, and then the product may not be what you set out to produce, but will work, be right, have integrity.

But actually, of course, if you want to produce a coherent story, what's really going on is a constant interaction between product and process.


Read Full Post

With only 4 chapters left to edit (some, admittedly, on the long-ish side), I thought it a good time for another post. I've learnt so much during this edit, mainly, my propensity to overwrite (having nearly lost 40,000 words from the draft has made that painfully clear!!!). It's an exciting feeling, approaching the end, even if I have written a novel to coincide with a worldwide recession and as far as publishing seems concerned lately, it's all doom and gloom! Onwards...


Read Full Post

I've posted a few pics of grandkids going camping.

Read Full Post

When I think back over the last four years, which is how long I’ve been writing seriously, certain episodes flash into my mind - certain events in my personal literary world which have significantly shaped my journey to publication. As most of you know, a journey which I have not yet completed.

The first is the day I sat down at the computer and started to write. My youngest had started school several months earlier, and after years of toddlers group and afternoons in the park - all of which I wouldn’t change for the world – part of my brain suddenly twitched. I needed to write. And write I did. Polished a bit, puffed out my chest and then I remember, like it was yesterday, interrupting my husband on the toilet (he’s going to kill me for writing this.) I knocked and ignoring his indignation, prised open the door a couple of inches and slipped through a sheet of A4.
“Read this,” I said, nervously. “Do you think it is any good?”
Silence. Prompting from me. More indignation then: “It’s good. I like your turn of phrase.”
Phew! He hadn’t laughed. I went back to the computer

Read Full Post