Archive for ‘Publishing’

07
Feb
2010
Categories
Books

The Railway Detective by Edward Marston

It all looked so promising. A Victorian-era murder mystery set in the 1800s. Except the dialogue felt to this reader more like a script from the 1980s.

The Railway DetectiveThe Railway Detective is the first book in a series of novels about Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck. The Great Exhibition is fast approaching when a daring raid is launched on the mail train. Death, theft and blackmail follow as our dashing hero tries his hardest to solve the case.

There are a lot of points on which Marston has hit the bullseye. The plotting is spot on, his unravelling of the story can’t be faulted, the logic behind the investigation is strong and believable. But the main character isn’t particularly likeable, the villain’s motivation isn’t (I don’t believe) entirely plausible, and the words spoken by the characters feel strangely detached from the era in which they were spoken.

That’s where my important lesson lay.

My book is set in the years spanning 1856 and 1871 – almost the same era as this one – and like this is a detective story. The other thing it had in common, in the first draft, was fairly modern dialogue. I had wondered about that and whether it mattered, and having read this book I now see that it really does.

You can paint a scene, describing the look of the characters, the clothes they wear and the utensils they use, but unless the reader believes that they live and act within that scene in a logical and fitting manner, they feel detached and less believable. That, I think, is why I didn’t feel empathy towards the characters in this book – I didn’t believe them, so I invested very little time in hoping for a good outcome for each one.

Needless to say I’m spending a lot of time revising my own dialogue in the hope of convincing more readers that the words spoken – although spoken by fictional entities – really could have been said when I say they were.

And, of course, making sure my (hopefully) published sentences aren’t as tortuous and twisted as that one.

30
Dec
2009
Categories
Books

Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries by Kate Westbrook

It helps to have a couple of weeks off work, but I raced through this book in about a fortnight. What a contrast to the last book I read, which took far, far, far longer than it should.

2009-secret-servant.jpgSecret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries is the second in Westbrook’s Moneypenny trilogy dealing with M’s right-hand woman and James Bond’s sometime muse. Not a great premise, you might think. Apart from a trip to the races in A View to a Kill we never see her away from her desk in the films, even if she is occasionally transported to a snazzy office inside an Egyptian ruin for The Spy Who Loved Me, or a submarine in You Only Live Twice. Oh, and Bond’s apartment, briefly, at the start of Live and Let Die.

So it’s a bit of a relief to find that these books aren’t about ordering paperclips and maintaining the stationery cupboard. In the first, Guardian Angel, Moneypenny played a key role in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis. This second volume, Secret Servant picks up the story a few months later, just as Kim Philby has defected to the Soviet Union, after years of spying on British Intelligence from the inside.

Moneypenny befriends his wife and is sent behind the Iron Curtain to bring them back.

The language very clearly evokes the feel and spirit of the sixties, when a fancy dress was a frock, flirting was discrete and the hotbed of office gossip was the powder room.

It’s as gripping as the original, fast paced and well written, with a real sense of menace running through the Soviet chapters, but in the last quarter relies a little too much on telling the reader what has happened than on letting us experience it alongside our hero. It drops a star for that, unfortunately, but Westbrook (a pseudonym) has nonetheless written a cracking tale that keeps you guessing what will happen to the very end. Indeed, at times the only reason you know Moneypenny survives is that she wouldn’t have been able to retrospectively write her diary had she not.

It’s a worthy addition to the Bond cannon, and a great lead-in to the final volume in the series, Final Fling. That’s on my shelf waiting to be read; it can’t be long before I’m reaching to take it down.

4 out of 5
Price£7.99 (£4.98 from Amazon)
Author Kate Westbrook
ISBN 0719567696

08
Dec
2009
Categories
Books

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

This is a lengthy book. 1006 pages in all, although that’s not the metric I’d use when declaring it lengthy. The Pillars of the Earth is longer, but it isn’t lengthy. That’s because it’s the right length for the story it tells. It was well paced, fast moving, inspiring, engrossing and engaging enough to carry me through its 1100 pages without ever wondering when it would come to an end.

Jonathan Strange and Mr NorrellJonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, though, often had me measuring the bulk of unread pages between forefinger and thumb, asking myself how long it would take me to get to the end. It is, then, both a long book and anlengthy book. Or at least, it was for me.

It’s an impressive undertaking – I certainly won’t deny that. Anyone who can keep track of a story so long and not lose their distinctive voice here and there along the way (Clarke never does) is a truly skilled writer, and on that score this book is a triumph, but clipping away half of the story and removing some of the various diversions would have made it move at greater pace and focussed the reader’s mind on the pertinent thread running through.

So would axing the footnotes, which present in abundance. One – an unusually lengthy one, it must be said – spreads over five pages, and I would argue that if it were really that important, and needed to be outlined in such great detail, it should probably have been weaved into the fabric of the story itself.

But, but, but, I think I may be in the minority here. It’s garnered impressive ratings on Amazon, with a four-out-of-five rating from 290 customer reviews. Professional reviewers, too, have heaped praise on the book, and their quotes are much in evidence on the covers.

So, your mileage may (and probably will) vary.

If that’s the case, Amazon is selling it at a discount right now, so bag yourself a copy and it’ll see you well into New Year.

01
Dec
2009
Categories
Books, Journal, Writing
Tags
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Editing the book

It’s a while since I’ve written about the book, mainly because I’ve been so busy editing the thing.

It’s a big job. Some days I can work my way through three or four pages of the stuff I’ve already written. On others, three paragraphs would be something of an achievement. Am I taking too long over it? I don’t think so. There’s no point racing through and ending up with something you’re not happy with and clearly won’t sell.

I also know that this edit, making a second draft, won’t be the only one. I can see how it has improved so far, but I also know where it could yet be better. Even looking at the first couple of chapters, which I was quite happy with following the first thorough edit, I can see where a few little tweaks here and there could make things better still.

Fortunately I have two very helpful readers who have been running through it with pen in hand to pick out the bits that don’t quite work. It’s been very instructional and incredibly helpful, in large part because their points of concern have pretty much mirrored my own, which would suggest my self-criticism is valid. I’m also relieved that as we tend to agree on the points of issue I’m not kidding myself that it’s all great. That would be awful.

So the book is coming along and I’m now at the end of the second draft of the first five chapters. But that’s not the last chapter, and it’s far from the last edit, too.

28
Nov
2009
Categories
Books

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: review

2009-the-pillars-of-the-earth.jpgI put off reading this one for ages because, let’s face it, it’s long. Very long, if we’re being honest, and the thought of hauling around a 1100-page book for as long as it would take me to read on a daily commute didn’t appeal.

What a mistake. I’ve never read so many pages so quickly.

The Pillars of the Earth is a saga in the truest sense of the word – a sweeping story of the middle ages and the building of the fictional cathedral of Kingsbridge. Hugely frustrating when the villains get their way, genuinely edge-of-seat when the heroes get close to their goal, racy when required – slow when you need it, it’s a masterpiece that had me hooked from about 20 pages in.

Now admittedly with such a long and sweeping story some elements have to be glossed over, and there is a fairly key event close to the start that isn’t entirely believable on account of the fact that our main character doesn’t get enough time to mourn one particular event, but once beyond that it’s a non-stop rollercoaster to the very end.

And there’s real peril, too. This isn’t one of those books where everyone you like makes it through to the end, which is a refreshing, and at times shocking change to the norm.

The story is 20 years old this year and to celebrate, Ken Follett had written a new intro that you really, really, should skip – I can’t stress this enough – as it gives away the end of the book, which is just plain stupid. Nonetheless it remains his best-selling book to date, and I can quite see why.

So much so, that I’ve bought the sequel – World Without End.

Very excited to see that they’re making it into a TV mini-series.

Rating:
Title: The Pillars of the Earth
Author: Ken Follett
Price : £5.25 from Amazon
ISBN: 978-0330450133

29
Sep
2009
Categories
Papers and Mags

Vegans

One of the feeds to which I subscribe is a journalist case-wants lists. Basically, if you’ve got a story to write and you need someone to interview, you post a note and see what turns up.

This one appeared today:

I am doing a feature called ‘SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHAT A VEGAN LOOKS LIKE?’ for the February 2010 issue of a high-circulation glossy.

I am looking for 3 stylish vegans – two women and one man – in their 30s or 40s. We are trying to make the point that not all vegans are mung bean eating sandal wearers anymore but now, urban professionals with style and intelligence who have varied reasons to choose this lifestyle.

Now I’m not a vegan, but please… mung beans? Sandal wearing?

Is that really what the general population thinks?

And most bizarre of all, this article wants to prove that vegans now have ‘intelligence’, as if not eating animal products previously made you somehow mentally deficient.

I really find this bizarre. Almost as bizarre as the classification of veganism as a ‘lifestyle’. It’s not much different to spurning all desserts other than custard, and you’d hardly call that a lifestyle choice, would you.

23
Sep
2009
Categories
Books, Journal, Writing
Tags
,

Finishing up, ready to edit

I’ve finished my book… and I’m one paragraph short.

I swear, finding the right words on which to tie it all up is more difficult than the whole of the rest of it combined. There won’t be a sequel, so I don’t need to find something commercial and open-ended that will bring the characters back. That, at least, is something, but how do you tie up the final loose end when all of the others have been brought to a logical and satisfying conclusion?

Anyhow, 83,464 words done, and in fairly short order. I started the week after Easter, when I’d outlined the premise at dinner in Darlington and thought that if it was ever going to be more than a brief synopsis I ought to put in some work.

Now I need to go back through for the first edit and rewrite and, you know what, I’m really quite looking forward to it. I loved writing it, and actually looked forward to sitting down and getting my fingers on the keyboard, and now that I feel like I know the characters so much better I can direct them more effectively and make their dialogue better fit their personalities.

There will be some cringe-worthy bits, of course, but that’s what rewrites are for: ironing out, rounding off, and excising the worst of your literary excesses before they escape.

22
Jun
2009
Categories
Books

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

No review this time around. Just a quote. This comes from By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho.

Man runs into an old friend who had somehow never been able to make it in life. ‘I should give him some money,’ he thinks. But instead he learns that he is old friend has grown rich and is actually seeking him out to repay the debts he had run up over the years.

They go to a bar they used to frequent together and a friend buys drinks for everyone there. When they ask him how he became so successful, he answers that until only a few days ago, he had been living the role of the ‘Other’.

‘What is the Other?’ they ask.

‘The Other is the one who taught me what I should be like, but not what I am. The other believes that it is our obligation to spend our entire life thinking about how to get our hands on as much money as possible so that we will not die of hunger when we are old. So we think so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And then it’s too late.’

‘And you? Who are you?’

‘I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is in enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do. It’s just that the other, afraid of disappointment, kept me from taking action.’

‘But there is suffering in life,’ one of the listeners said.

‘And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams and to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for.’

‘That’s it?’ another listener asked.

‘Yes, that’s it. When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but I will never let the other into myself again – even though it has already tried to frighten me, warning me that it’s risky not to think about the future.’

17
Jun
2009
Categories
Books, Writing
Tags

Book progress

45,369 words.

Of course I’m not going to gauge success on the number of words I’ve written. Neither am I going to proclaim it ‘finished’ when I hit a certain number. It’s finished when the story is told.

Crossing the 45,000-word mark this morning, though, was a bit of a happy moment as I’ve set myself a vague 90,000 word aim (target is too strong a word, I think), as conventional wisdom appears to be that the count that most publishers are looking out for is somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 for a first-time novelist.

Reaching 45,369, with half of the story told, then, means that I’m pretty much in line to get there without making it unsaleably long, or so brief it would fit in a pamphlet. It’s 50.41% of 90,000 words.

So, what is 90,000 words in terms of regular book print? Well, looking around on the web most people seem to estimate around 10 words per line, with 25 lines per page in the average novel. So that would be 250 words to the page.

On that basis 90,000 words would run to 360 pages.

It’s not an exact science, of course. If you have a lot of dialogue you’ve probably written fewer words on each line with more lines overall, but it’s interesting to do the maths.

13
Jun
2009
Categories
Papers and Mags
Tags

The local paper

I sometimes wonder whether all local papers as parochial as ours, which takes ‘local’ to its logical extreme. There are pages in the middle that report the smallest stories in town. Where else could you read about Joyce’s scones?

DARBY & JOAN – Mrs Ashford welcomed everyone to the meeting held at the community centre and get well wishes were sent to Mrs Barford. Members were thanked for their generous gifts for the club’s stall at the church fete on June 13. The competition for a wedding photograph attracted some lovely entries dating from 1924 to the present day and there were two photos printed on a cushion. Members had to think back to their childhood days to guess the answers to the nursery rhyme quiz which was one by Mrs Tebby. After that, members were pleased to tuck into Joyce’s scones and a cup of tea.

Or the amazing prizes on offer at the Women’s Institute?

WOMEN’S INSTITUTE – …the competition for a table mat was won by Jean Sapsford; and the runner up was Elsie Briggs. Members are reminded that meetings will start at 2.15pm in Broomfield Community Centre when the speaker will be Paul Irvine on health. The competition is for a cereal bowl.

Both of those are in this week’s issue.

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