The Yellow Room Editor

'Sex Change' Author Wins Erotic Writing Prize

2012-02-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

Judges of Xcite Books Escape to Erotica short story writing competition were shocked to discover their prize-winning female author was actually a man – top writer and editor of crime, mystery and erotic fiction Maxim Jakubowski.

Maxim, who reviewed crime fiction for the Guardian and was named in the Time Out top 30 best erotic London writers of all time, decided to enter the competition anonymously by using a female pseudonym.

His story, which told of a romantic liaison between a woman selling olive oil and a journalist at a Paris food fair, was written so sensitively and beautifully that judges were convinced it was penned by a woman.

On notifying the winner that she had won the top prize of a seven-night holiday for two to the Hedonism resort in Jamaica, they were surprised as Maxim revealed his true identity.

He said: ‘Writing can be a lonely and isolated business and I felt I wanted my work to be judged impartially, that’s why I entered under a pseudonym. I'm delighted to have won the Escape to Erotica story competition. Not only do I love Jamaica, but am gratified that a story that I submitted anonymously was judged on its own merits!’

Maxim Jakubowski is one of the country’s leading writers in the erotic genre. He has published nearly 100 books and his short stories have appeared in many anthologies and magazines published by Constable Robinson and Headline in the UK and Perseus and Akashic in America. He has edited best-selling anthologies of British mystery stories and the Mammoth Books of Best New Erotica for Robinson, the Sex in the City series for Xcite Books and contributes to The Times, The Bookseller and The Evening Standard.

Judge and Xcite editor Antonia Adams, said: ‘There was only ever one winner in my opinion. It was so beautifully written and poignant, and it felt so real. It was a contemporary Brief Encounter. It really read like it had been written by a woman, so I was amazed to find out it was by Maxim Jakubowski.’

Maxim’s winning story will now take pride of place in Escape to Erotica, an ebook anthology of the five best stories entered in the competition, published by Xcite Books on Valentine’s Day, February 14 2012. The collection will also feature four stories from the runners-up which include new writers Ellie's Present from Charlie by LW, Swept Away by Demelza Hart, The Flight by Ian Perrott and Escape by Kitty Luscious.

Launched in November at the Erotica adult lifestyle festival at Olympia, in London, the Escape to Erotica competition was a joint venture between Xcite Books and the Erotica organisers. It invited new writers and previously published authors to unleash their creative inhibitions by writing a 3- 5,000 word story on the theme of escape.

Miranda Forbes, Editorial director of Xcite Books, said: ‘Our judges were very impressed by the diversity and quality of writing among the entrants. To be fooled by Maxim only proves what an excellent writer and deserving winner he is.

‘The competition has also uncovered new writing talent among our runners-up and hopefully this competition and the Escape to Erotica ebook will be a great showcase for their work.’

The four runners-up in the competition win a year’s supply of Xcite books.

For further information, interviews & review copies, please contact: Alison Stokes, Media and Publicity Manager, Xcite Books Ltd, Tel: 0207 858 1024 or email: alison@accentpress.co.uk

Website: www.xcitebooks.co.uk

EDITOR’S NOTES

About Xcite Books

Launched in 2007, Xcite Books has become the UK’s leading publisher of erotic fiction for women. Its titles have achieved the Number One position in three erotic categories on Amazon. Xcite Books has won numerous awards including the ETO Best Erotic Book Brand and Jade Erotic Awards Erotic Publisher prizes for 2010 and 2011. It was also short-listed in the Bookseller Awards 2011. Earlier this year it launched the inaugural Xcite Awards to recognise companies and individuals working in erotic fiction. The winners will be announced on February 14 2012.

Writing, Not Reading...

2012-01-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

Last year I read a lot of books, mainly novels, as you'll see by glancing at the list to your left. This year I haven't read one book. This was a conscious decision, as I found reading others' work off-putting. I was constantly plagued by negative thoughts such as, I'll never be able to write as well as so-and-so. I'm not half as talented as him/her. Why am I bothering? You get the idea.

I have written a lot this year. A new short story almost every day. I've also edited old stories and worked on my novel. I've entered lots of competitions and submitted several stories to the women's magazines, mainly Woman's Weekly, as it's my favourite (and I think my stories are more suited to this publication). I've become addicted to the high of anticipation.

I've resubscribed to a few of my favourite writers' magazines such as Writers' Forum, Writing Magazine/Writers' News and The New Writer, devouring their contents at every opportunity. I've sent off fillers to a lot of the women's magazines and one of my 'funny animal' photos is due to appear in Full House Issue 8 (out in a couple of weeks). It's all money in the pot.

I was thrilled to hear that I'd won third prize in the Meridian Writing Competition. You can read my story here, if you wish (you'll need to scroll down a little. My story is called No Oil For Hogmanay).

I love being so proactive and busy. Once I've entered as many of the competitions closing at the end of January as I can, I'll finish my pocket novel set during The Blitz and get the first three chapters and a synopsis sent off. Oh, and talking of synopses, do take a look at Nicola Morgan's How To Write A Great Synopsis. It's only a £1 to download onto Kindle, but the offer finishes at the end of the month.

The Yellow Room Issue 7 is now with the typesetter and I'm a little further forward with finding a new print company. Many apologies to those loyal subscribers who have been waiting so long for a new issue to appear.

Call The Midwife

2012-01-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

Back in 2002 when I was editing and publishing QWF (Quality Women's Fiction Magazine), I got a phone call from a very nicely spoken lady asking if I was interested in reviewing the book she'd just published. She told me a bit about it and I remember thinking, here we go again! Since the first issue of QWF in 1994, I'd been sent many self-published books to review, most of which were pretty dire, both in content and presentation. However, Jennifer Worth sounded like an interesting woman, and I thought her memoirs might be a good read, so I told her to send me a copy. You can read the review, which appeared in Issue 39 of QWF in early 2003 (and reading it now, I'm dying to get my red editing pen to it. I think my writing style has improved since then!) below.

Imagine how surprised I was when I saw a couple of years ago that Jennifer's book, Call The Midwife had reached The Sunday Times Bestseller List, as did the two follow-up books. I was even more surprised when, reading through the TV listings recently, that a TV adaptation of Call The Midwife was going to be shown on BBC1. I thoroughly enjoyed the drama and thought it was very true to the book, as well as featuring some very talented actresses. It was with sadness, however, that after the closing credits, I noticed that it had been dedicated to Jennifer who died in 2011. I had so wanted to contact her again to congratulate her on the book's success.

I guess the moral of the tale is that self-published books, even if they are a little rough around the edges, can go on to be published by a mainstream publisher and reach dizzy heights.

Here is my review (written in 2002) as it actually appeared in Issue 39 of QWF:

Jennifer Worth was a district midwife working in an order of nuns, going around Poplar on a bicycle in the 1950s, when the East End of London was still ravaged by wartime bombs. This book describes with humour and poignancy the experiences of Jennifer, assisting women giving birth in grimly impoverished surroundings.

My first impressions of this book weren't good. The presentation is poor, and I found loads of typos and spelling errors in the first few pages, as well as many exclamation marks. I felt the book would benefit from a good edit. I almost put it to one side, thinking it an amateurish self-publishing venture. However, I was enthralled by the narrative and Jennifer Worth's skilful storytelling technique compelled me to read on. I'm glad I did.

When I first read Call The Midwife it wasn't too long since I'd given birth myself and it made me grateful for all the new technology and sterile surroundings the hospital provided for a rather long and complicated labour, resulting in an emergency caesarean. I don't know how Megan and I would have fared had we lived in Poplar in 1950-something. I'm pretty sure neither Megan nor I would be here now.

This book isn't for the faint-hearted. There are some pretty gory descriptions of childbirth, as well as the general filth some of these women lived in on a day-to-day basis.

Call The Midwife is crammed with delightful characters, however, and you can't help but feel total admiration for the midwives. Once you've read the book I don't think you'd dare complain about giving birth on the NHS again.

There are also some interesting medical and sociological facts in the book. For example, the women of the East End were encouraged to breastfeed, mainly for practical reasons. For example, many found it hard to cope with everyday cleaning, and wouldn't have thought about sterilising baby's bottles for milk.

Jennifer Worth devotes three chapters of her book to stories about the influx of immigrants from the West Indies around that time. Many white women, married to white men, were giving birth to black babies, the consequences of which were heartbreaking in some cases.

All in all, this is an enjoyable and highly informative read, but the book would have been much better had a top publisher's editor worked with Jennifer to make her story the best it could be.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you enjoyed the festive celebrations. We had a quiet time, as usual, but did have a couple more visitors than last year, which was a lovely surprise. I have an inkling that 2012 is going to be a more sociable year for us. Let's hope so!

I don't usually make new year's resolutions, but as the old year draws to a close, my thoughts turn to what has happened in the past year and what I'd like to improve or do differently in the year ahead.

My main focus will be my writing. I realise that I enjoy writing to a set time limit, typing fast and furiously, writing from the heart. Write-Invite is brilliant for this and I shall continue to enter their weekly competitions: http://www.write-invite.com/
I've recently been working with Sharon Birch, a writer I discovered through The Yellow Room. We set each other writing exercises a few times a week, agreeing on a time of day to send each other a list of prompts or themes and to spend half an hour (or less) writing. We then send each other our pieces (although there's no pressure for either of us to do so, if we don't want to) and offer an opinion, if we feel like it. It's quite a casual arrangement, but seems to be working well for both of us. It certainly makes me write something without interruption for at least 20 minutes. I always try to write a complete piece. I know I can then go back and edit or expand whatever I've written. I'm so grateful to Sharon for sharing this experience. It's proving invaluable to me.

I don't really want to write about my novel here, as I'm struggling with it. I had a brainwave today, however. Having discovered I love writing to a list of prompts and can easily produce something half decent of about 500 words in half an hour or less, I've decided to incorporate my novel characters into whatever I write. Hopefully, this will help me to get back into the story and move it forward. We'll see!

Biddles, who printed QWF for many years and have printed all of The Yellow Room issues, have said they're no longer willing to do so. This is after problems with two recent issues when some characters appeared in bold type for no apparent reason. It is going to take a long time to find a replacement printer at a reasonable price. I'm not sure when the next issue of the magazine will appear. All quite depressing, but I'll soldier on!

A resolution I'm determined to stick to is not to diet this year. At all. That's another long story, which I won't bore you with here. However, after being on and off diets since I was 14, I'm living proof they don't work and you end up bigger than when you started!

I plan to keep running, but at my own pace. My foot injury won't allow me to do a huge amount, but little and often will be my new running mantra. I also plan to take baby steps to get our house in order, for example: cleaning out just one cupboard a week. Hopefully, by December 2012 the place should end up looking more presentable.

Guest Blog by Sarah England

2011-12-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

It's very exciting to have a guest blogging for me on here this week, especially as I don't seem to be able to come up with anything remotely interesting to blog about!

I got to know Sarah England via The Seriously Serious Scribes page on Facebook. Sarah is a great source of inspiration, as are the other Serious Scribes. Their output makes me want to go and have a lie down!

Anyway... over to Sarah......

When I turned 40 I changed. Not physically - although nothing improved you understand - but something inside. Suddenly there was urgency and I realised how unwell I was. I had headaches and neck pains and overwhelming tiredness. I couldn’t sit through another meeting or be bored by another manager. All my life I had wanted to write books - to be a paperback writer. I’d read copiously as a child and got my English O’Level at 14. Was it too late?
As fate would have it my husband was offered a job in the South West and I had the ideal opportunity to jack in my sales and marketing job with a major pharmaceutical company. Alas I also had to jack in the hefty salary and the Beamer but - God it was wonderful! I came home on the train with no luggage - free!
The joy, however, was short lived. Convinced I was going to hit the world literary stage with a blockbuster I spent 2 years submitting dire tomes of utter tosh to long-suffering agents. It was then the realisation hit me - this wasn’t easy! So I did a brief correspondence course in creative writing and I started studying short stories in magazines in an effort to learn my craft. I even went to a writing conference with one of my sad tomes and had a 1:1 with an agent. She read the first few lines and said, “My God this is boring.” Crushed? I went home in tears.
There is a happy ending - bear with - about a year after a started writing and submitting short stories I finally got a yes! From a chap called Dan McDaid at My Weekly. I have since had over 100 short stories bought and published in magazines, newspapers and anthologies. Bridge House Publishing were the first publishing company to take my short stories into an anthology and the latest one, Mosaic, is now not only in paperback but has just gone onto Amazon Kindle at a fraction of the price. It’s a pretty classy collection with not only well known authors but also some award winning ones too. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0069BF92S My 2 stories are ‘Adele’ - a glamour puss who has settled for life in a back terrace in Rotherham with a some what ordinary and quite bemused bloke. And ‘Different Colours’ - a bit of a steamy piece - my first and only sex scene!
Then came a bit of a leap - after years of trying I finally made it into Woman’s Weekly Fiction. My story ‘Another Man’ caused a bit of family friction but it was that story, published earlier this year, that was the first to make it. They have since bought 7 and the latest are now out in the current Christmas Special Issue and the Fiction Special (Issue 10) also out now. This is hugely exciting for me and I’ve really felt that I can push the boat out for them - in terms of humour and difficult subjects ie that there is no agenda except an entertaining read. I’m hoping to write a serial for them as my next major project.
But the other leap this year was ‘Expected’. Now this has been a mixed bag. On the one hand I decided, after being told by agent after agent that they really liked it but the women’s commercial fiction market was too difficult at the moment - to market it myself on Amazon Kindle ebooks. Good and bad. I had to do all the editing, presentation and promotion myself - and I knew nothing about fb, twitter, blogs and websites, so I had to learn the ropes and fast. It took weeks and weeks and I’m still not doing well in terms of being known or selling the book. However, my learning curve has been extremely steep and I’m now pretty savvy when it comes to negotiating my way round the internet. I’ve also discovered ether books, which I wouldn’t have otherwise done - and loaded up 4 short stories. One is horror - ‘3am and Wide Awake’ which I have on good authority will scare the pants off you. The other 3 were published in the small press but didn’t see much daylight and so ether has offered a wider audience for ‘Cold Melon Tart,’ ‘Islands,’ and ‘Rough Love.’ As far as I can see they seem to be doing quite well and through ether books I also have an author interview w/c 5th Dec. and a link to the book ’Expected’.
Now before you go I would hate to chat and not tell you just a little about my girl, Sam Sweet, in ‘Expected’. You see - she’s expected to do what other people want her to do - that is to get married to a man she doesn’t love and to have his children. Sam is from a rough working class background and all she’s dreamed about is a career. But now she’s stuck. And said career is sliding away with jealous colleagues and a hateful boss. Miserable, she comfort eats and she shops - don’t we all - thus making her situation even worse. She has to find some power - a voice! If she doesn’t then she will not be free to make her own choices in life. I hope I’ve created a gutsy, funny heroine who finds her way out of the paper bag, and I hope it’s a fast and furious read that the reader will enjoy. Here’s the link : http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005OMBA1C And outside the UK: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005OMBA1C

Next project - well the serial for Woman’s Weekly and also a psychological thriller that’s been spinning around in my head for a while. With a background in nursing and pharmaceuticals a lot of my stories inevitably revolve around illness or mental problems. If you aren’t well then the world is a whole different ball game and that fascinates me. I want to write always - for ordinary people - for everyone. I just need to get my books out there as well as my stories and hopefully that will eventually happen. One day………….
http://www.sarahengland.yolasite.com/

Fired up? Enthused? Er.... no!

2011-11-23T05:58:00.001-08:00

Remember yesterday I was all fired up about my crime novel again and made great progress?

Do I feel like that today? No!

Why?

I'm not sure. This is very typical of me. I'm not sure what to do about this or how to address the problem.

I have worked on the novel today. I've done a bit more research, which felt more like skiving off to read, to be honest.

I've been in a short story frame of mind and the novel feels cumbersome and unwieldy. I feel too bogged down in the detail and 'getting it right'. I rarely feel this way about short stories, because, well... they're too short for this to happen.

I have done some editing work on a story and if I get my skates on before the school run, then I can get it submitted today. That will feel like a job well done. Something complete.

And maybe this is where the problem lies with the novel. I'm being too much of a perfectionist. I can't stop fiddling with the structure. I felt supremely confident yesterday that I had the structure nailed. This is the answer, I thought. This will keep readers on the edge of their seats, burning the midnight oil, dying to know what happens next!

Then a new day dawns and I think, no. By adding those new scenes today, I've bored everyone again. That wasn't a very exciting section, was it? Yes, there was a fair amount of background detail in that section and that's necessary, right? Have I kept that particular section short enough, though? And there isn't really very much in way of vivid imagery or beautiful use of language, is there?

You see all these doubts creeping in? It's all very well people saying (including myself), 'Just get the bloody thing written, woman!', but there seem so many hurdles to jump over. And what do I do when the doubts creep in? Amend my Sainsbury's online order; write in my diary; make a cup of tea; load the dishwasher or washing machine; feed the guinea pigs; read; write this blog. Before I know it, it's three-twenty and it's time to collect my youngest from school.

Constructive advice, please!

Back To The Crime Novel....

2011-11-22T06:10:00.001-08:00

.... and it feels like coming home!

Today is the first day for a long time that I've felt in my comfort zone writing-wise. I've been too focused on 'chasing the money' instead of on my creativity. I guess I went into panic mode, because we're so broke and I feel guilty for not pulling my weight as far as the family finances are concerned. I still haven't resolved that particular dilemma yet, but I'm hopeful I can pull in some cash from article writing at some point. However, doing market research for the latter takes my attention away from my first love, the crime novel.

I now feel that entering The Mslexia Novel Competition was a mistake. It made me rush to finish the novel before I was ready. I like my scenes to develop and evolve slowly; going where my characters take me, rather than forcing the plot. Now the pressure is off, I find I am able to follow a structure that suits the novel better and allow the stronger characters to push their way to the forefront. Doing a little more research into 1972 and the Glam Rock era has also helped flesh out the novel and create, what I hope, is a more authentic setting.

I have The Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Competition in my sights, but unless I'm pretty near as damn it finished with this rewrite, I'm not going to enter. The great news is that today I was able to write a synopsis for the novel. I managed this quickly and easily with the help of the wonderful Jane Rusbridge.

So, in conclusion, it was great to be back in 1972. Great to be working on the novel again. Now, here are some images from that wonderful year for you to enjoy. All the artists pictured (apart from Mott The Hoople) had Number One hits in 1972. Which one is your favourite, I wonder?

Oh, and if you have any memories of 1972 you'd like to share via the Comments section I'd be most grateful!

Now I have to think of a title for my novel.....

Is NaNoWriMo Really My Cup of Tea?

2011-11-18T04:21:00.001-08:00

It is now Day 18 of NaNoWriMo and I'm struggling. In fact, I've been struggling all week. I have lost all enthusiasm for the novel I started writing. I can manage a few hundred words per day, but can't seem to push much above 800 words. I need to be writing just over double that amount to meet my NaNo target.

I'm not beating myself up about it. I have had other writing projects on the go this week and have finished another short story. I have also written a detailed critique for a Yellow Room Short Story Clinic client, proofread a few Yellow Room stories ready for the typesetter and read several Yellow Room submissions. I've also made time to do some reading (short stories, magazines and a novel).

I admit I get much more excited about writing short stories than I do about writing a novel. I also think I'm better at writing short stories, but I have had years of practice. The craft of novel writing seems to elude me. I'm not sure why. I read dozens of novels per year. Maybe I haven't found the subject matter or the characters I really care about? Maybe I just don't have enough to say?

My crime novel is still on the back burner. I need to write a synopsis. Other writers have put the fear of God into me over that particular task. I hope to enter this novel in the Début Dagger Competition run by The Crime Writers Association.

One piece of good news, though. I was in the Top Three of the Write-Invite competition again this week. I think this is the fifth time now. I've managed 2nd place twice and 3rd place twice. That first prize of £50 (and the only prize in the competition :-( ) continues to elude me. One day......

And the Winner Is.....

2011-11-15T04:18:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce the prize winners in The Yellow Room Autumn Short Story Competition 2011!

1st Prize (£80): Anouska Huggins - La Fille Du Jongleur
2nd Prize (£45): Tracy Fells - Fish of the Sea
3rd Prize (£20): Rosemary Dun - Cry Baby Bunting

Highly Commended:

Liz Ringrose - Ma's Trip To Europe
Jo Carroll - Mother Ganga
Jo Waterworth - Accidentals, Guitar Mick-Style
Angela Buckley - The Pick Up Point
Pam Eaves - He Was Beautiful

I chose the winner, La Fille Du Jongleur, because it was fresh, quirky and vibrant. It stayed in my mind long after I'd read it. A really memorable story. There was an explosion of colour in the story (yellow eyeshadow and a spinach-green plait), which perfectly matched the story's theme. It appealed to the senses. Also some wonderful imagery: a tutu of bright shopping bags; chattering like the seagulls outside our old Brighton bedsit; my torso twisting and turning like a rose bush in the wind. This story had a definite beginning, middle and end, unlike many in the competition. A daughter finally breaks away from her overbearing mother and achieves her independence. The story wasn't as technically sound as the story placed second, for example, but it had more appeal. My one criticism is that too many characters were introduced too soon.

The story placed second, Fish of the Sea, was more subtle. A mother and her daughter mourn a premature baby who succumbs to pneumonia. Parallels are drawn when a pod of whales are stranded on a local beach. Mother and daughter are striking out on their own and a potentially new relationship is on the horizon. Again, great use of imagery, and a superbly constructed story.

The third prize winner, Cry Baby Bunting, was another moving story about the end of a relationship and a pregnancy. Milly unpicks the jumper she's knitting for her boyfriend's birthday when he tells her he's leaving to travel the world and uses the wool to knit a blanket for her unborn child. Again, this writer shows excellent short story technique and the writing was flawless with memorable imagery: The sky was soft and plumply dark; Brighton Pier, all-a-dazzle with its garish signs, candy-striped helter-skelter and funfair rides charging the air with an electricity she fancied she could whiff through her window.

The next Yellow Room Short Story Competition closes on 31st March 2012. Email entries only this time.

The Autumn Yellow Room Competition Shortlist

2011-11-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

With the help of Sarah Green, I have now judged the 71 entries in this autumn's Yellow Room Competition and drawn up a shortlist of 12. I am disappointed in most of the titles! Where is the originality? There are only 4 titles here that really grab me. Remember, this is the first thing a judge sees and it should be catchy enough to make a judge sit up and take notice. Your title has to have resonance as well as the story as a whole.

Chocolate by Gill James
He Was Beautiful by Pam Eaves
Mother Ganga by Jo Carroll
Fish of the Sea by Tracy Fells
Captive Audience by Andrew Campbell-Kearsey
One Good Man by Jacki Hale
La Fille Du Jongleur by Anouska Huggins
Accidentals, Guitar Mick-Style by Jo Waterworth
A Family Portrait by Diane Simmons
Grubs and Leaves by Lucy Brown
The Pick Up Point by Angela Buckley
Ma's Trip To Europe by Liz Ringrose

The Yellow Room Issue 7

2011-11-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I've devoted a couple of hours to The Yellow Room, something I'm doing far too infrequently lately. I'm still enthusiastic about the magazine, but my own writing has taken precedence.

I've had fun scrolling through old blog posts here to find previous competition winners. I still have several prize winning stories to publish. I'm in the process of choosing the shortlist for The Yellow Room Autumn Competition 2011. I'm a little disappointed in the standard this time, although I haven't yet finished reading all the entries. The writing is competent, but the same themes crop up over and over again. Illness, death, funerals, marriage breakdown, affairs, infidelity, a childhood anecdote. I don't reject these themes out of hand, but they need to be treated in a fresh way. It is difficult to explain what I'm looking for in a short story, because there are so many different elements that make up a great one.

I read a promising entry this morning. Wonderful imagery and descriptions of a child's bedroom in the 1970s. The writer had perfectly captured that era, and I was right there with her in the room. However, there was no story. It was a description of a time and a place, but nothing happened. The characters remained stuck; freeze-framed in their little world. There was no sense of progression or movement. All the time I was reading, I was thinking 'What happens? What happens? Yes, so, what next?' 'What is the author's message?' 'What is the point of the story?'

There has to be a beginning, a middle and an end for a story to work.

In future blog entries I'm going to take a favourite short story and explain why I like it so much. The story may have been published in The Yellow Room or it may have been published elsewhere. The writers may be well known or they may be only starting out as a short story writer. It would also be great to hear via the comments section on this blog which are your own personal favourite short stories.

Finally, a note on Issue 7. I'm afraid publication has been delayed, because we are in dispute with Biddles over the print quality of the last issue. They still haven't got back to me. I hope to send Issue 7 to the typesetter next week, but I'm unsure how long it will be before it goes to print. Thank you for your patience!

NaNoWriMo

2011-11-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm kicking myself for not updating this blog on a more regular basis, because now I have so much to write about!

I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. Previously I'd always found it a daunting prospect. Now I see it as a kick up the backside to get as many words down as possible in a one month period. As you know from my previous posts, I can plan, make notes, brainstorm to my heart's content without getting very much written. I hope this will change this month.

I'm on Day 2 and have done just over half of the recommended daily word count, which is about 1,700 words. I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I haven't planned a thing. I started with a setting and a character and off I went. The aim is to have the bulk of a novel written by the end of November. For those who don't know, the NaNoWriMo target is 50,000 words. Gulp!

A week or so ago I was planning to write the second in my crime novel series. Then I got so heartily sick of my crime novel while trying to proofread it on holiday in Wales that I decided to write something completely different. For NaNoWriMo I'm writing a contemporary mainstream novel set on Kintyre with a central female character. This gives me much more freedom than the crime novel, and it's fun. I have no idea where the whole thing is going, but it doesn't matter. I'm just immersing myself in the words.

I am writing other things, too. I'm trying to keep on top of my short story writing and plan to look at my crime novel again in a week or so, when I can face it. Maybe I should also aim for a blog post a day?

Busy, busy, busy!

2011-10-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

This week I've been frantically trying to get the final draft of my novel finished. There have been several moments of panic, which totally block me. There have been times when I've had to walk away from the computer and do something else. Those times are much more productive, as a solution to a structural problem will suddenly present itself. Getting the structure right is crucial, if you're going to write a successful crime novel, I feel, which is why I've been fiddling around with scene order for what seems like weeks. I've written scenes in, taken old scenes out and juggled around with the order so many times. Thank goodness for Scrivener, which makes the task so much easier.

I am working to a strict deadline now. We go on a family holiday to Llandysul in Ceredigion, Wales on Saturday. I don't have a laptop and there won't be any Internet access. I'm going to download my novel onto my Kindle before we leave and read it through as if it were a published book. I'll also be making notes. It should then be ready to submit when I get back.

I wanted to get The Yellow Room Issue 7 off to the typesetter before I went away, but the novel has had to take priority. I'm still in dispute with Biddles over the print quality of the last issue, so Issue 7 could be delayed for some time. We're still in the process of judging The Yellow Room Competition. We've read just over half now. My friend, Sarah Green, kindly read half of the entries.

I'm also in the process of collating some of my short stories to enter in The Scott Prize. Some of the published stories are quite old, and it's interesting to see how much my style has changed over the past ten years or so. I tend to go for very different themes now, too.

I do have one success to report this week. I came 2nd in the Write-Invite competition for the second time. Sadly, there isn't a prize, but it gives my confidence a big boost, and I love entering the competition. It makes me write something new every week and it has taught me how to finish a piece to a deadline. I used to be rubbish at endings.

Which reminds me, I still haven't written the very last line of my novel. I wonder what it will be?

2,000 words a day

2011-10-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

There's no doubt about it, having a daily word count target is motivating. About the only thing that does motivate me. However, there are days like yesterday when it's just not possible for any number of reasons.

I was on a roll on Sunday and managed my 2,000 words, then my son got ill. This involved a trip to A&E on Sunday night and a visit to his GP early yesterday morning. Then Matt decided he felt well enough to go back to school yesterday lunchtime, so another trip into town, as I didn't feel he was up to cycling in. And then, of course, I had to pick him up again, as well as my daughter. Then he had a singing lesson and I had to take him there. After cooking tea for everyone, I then had a hygienist's appointment at the dentist twelve miles away. Oh, and I forgot to mention my run and a few domestic chores thrown in. I did manage a few hundred words, however, which is better than none at all.

Today I have hours stretching ahead of me with no plans or duties until school pick-up time. And what am I doing? Bashing out those 2,000 words? No.... I'm mindlessly browsing the Internet (blogs, Forums etc) and writing this blog. I also have to proofread the next batch of stories for The Yellow Room Issue 7 and read a few competition entries.

Don't get me wrong, I love being busy, but I find adding to the word count a real slog. Is it just me?

I've signed up for this year's NaNoWriMo to practise getting the words down as quickly as possible. I struggle with the concept of quantity over quality. I know the quality comes in the rewriting and editing process (the part I love best) and without the words on the page, editing and rewriting is impossible. However, I still struggle like mad to get a first draft finished. Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Sophie Hannah - The Lichfield Festival

2011-10-03T02:19:00.000-07:00

It's funny how things turn out. Yesterday, instead of running a half marathon in Coventry as planned, I was sitting in a rather elegant room in The George Hotel in Lichfield listening to Sophie Hannah talk about her new novel, Lasting Damage. I hope there won't be any lasting damage to my foot, after the marathon training in the summer. The injury meant that I had to defer my entry for The Coventry Half Marathon until next year.

This was Sophie's third visit to the Lichfield Festival and we were told she'd driven from Cambridge that morning. Sophie told us she was going to give us 'the gossip behind the book', her sixth psychological novel. Her first, Little Face, was published in 2006.

The idea for Lasting Damage came to Sophie in early 2009 when she was in the process of trying to move house from West Yorkshire to Cambridge. She'd been Fellow Commoner In Creative Arts at Cambridge University some time before and had fallen in love with the city. The reason for her move to West Yorkshire was her husband's job, which he was all too happy to give up, now that Sophie's writing career had taken off.

In the process of looking at houses for sale in the Cambridge area, Sophie became hooked on the Right Move website and knew the floor plans for every house for sale in Cambridgeshire. She even got dinner party guests to challenge her to match any floor plan with the property in question. It was because of her addiction to property websites that the idea for Lasting Damage came about.

Lying in bed at 1.30am, waiting for her husband to fall asleep, Sophie had the uneasy feeling that something was wrong. She realised she hadn't looked at the Right Move website in the last 24 hours and a new property might have been listed. There was no time to lose! She might miss the house of her dreams. Careful not to wake her husband, she crept down to the office in the dark and opened up the laptop. Her heart was racing. It was like sneaking off to chat to a secret lover on a social network site. Sophie was well aware that her slightly mad compulsion would make an excellent beginning for a novel. Obviously, her character would need a better reason for behaving this way.

Connie, as her character became known, has been stalking a particular house for some time. The reader doesn't know why. In the middle of looking through the virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, Connie sees a dead woman lying in a pool of blood in the lounge. She rushes to wake her husband, Kit, but when he looks at the virtual tour, which has been playing in a loop, there is no dead body. Kit doesn't believe Connie saw it. There is no evidence to suggest there was a dead woman on the website and when Connie contacts the police, they don't believe her either.

Sophie said it took her six months from the initial idea to work out exactly what was going on and how the photo of the dead woman got to be on the website for the few seconds that Connie was looking at it. She said she was determined to make the plot work and one day the whole story came to her. I must admit I was intrigued, so downloaded the novel onto my Kindle. In the meantime, I decided I'd try and work it out for myself and then go back to read the novel to see if I was right!

Of all the novels she's written, Sophie said she enjoyed writing this one the most, as she loves houses. Sophie found a house in Cambridge eventually and now lives there, but she still looks at the Right Move website most days. She justifies her addiction by saying that it's research. She even had to put an estate agent's floor plan at the beginning of Lasting Damage. It is the floor plan of a real house that was for sale, and she says she's waiting for the owner to read her book and recognise it and for them to email her. She promised that if this happened, she'd give the owner of the house signed copies of all her books.

I found it interesting when Sophie spoke about the theme of this book and of all her books - that the biggest threat to someone's sanity and/or safety comes from someone close to them. According to psychiatrists, 99% of the extremely disturbed people they see, are like that as a result of the behaviour of someone close to them. Connie's lasting damage is a result of her psychologically nightmarish parents.

Sophie told us that her publishers deliberately didn't market her first novel as crime. There wasn't a black cover; the title wasn't typical of a crime novel title. Sophie likes to think of her books as more literary than traditional crime, yet believes she is the same type of writer as Agatha Christie, because she has the ability to tell a good story. She admires Christie for her 'brilliant plots' and says, like Christie, that she is 'desperate to find out' what happens in an 'apparently impossible scenario'. Sophie derided the traditional formulaic crime novel. However, her novels follow a set structure. She has a female viewpoint character who is 'having a terrible time' and uses first person present for her heroine. She uses third person viewpoint for her 'police procedural' scenes.

One of Sophie's detectives, bullying Inspector Proust, is based entirely on a real person whom she doesn't like very much. She quotes this person's dialogue directly onto the page, but isn't afraid that he will read her books, as he doesn't like crime.

I asked Sophie whether she started writing while mulling over her plot. No, she said, once she had the plot worked out, she wrote a plan and stuck to it. She has to be in control of her characters and that writing for her isn't necessarily an organic process. I think this shows in her rather clipped and spare writing style. From what I've read so far, I feel her novels lack depth and atmosphere. However, that is personal preference and I know some readers enjoy racing ahead to find out what happens, rather than luxuriating in wonderful writing and characters you fall in love with.

It was interesting to hear how a fellow crime writer works. I've now learned that it's a case of 'each to their own' and that there isn't a right way or a wrong way of approaching the novel. We each have to work out what is the best way for us; mostly by trial and error. I no longer try to copy another writer's methods and finally have faith that my way will get me there in the end.

I had a wonderfully enjoyable hour after the talk, walking around Lichfield, which I used to visit regularly when I lived in the area nearly fifteen years ago. It brought back some lovely memories and it was interesting to see how much the city had changed in that time. It's well worth a visit.

I Got A Kindle For My Birthday!

2011-09-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

I received a Kindle for my birthday yesterday. I love it! Much more than I thought I would. So far the biggest advantage over a book is that you can lie it flat, so that you can read while eating, typing at the computer or peeling the veg! I also like the fact that some books are a lot cheaper to buy and all your fiction is in one place. Like Rosemary, it's great to read a Kindle in bed (I recommend getting a case with a light fitted). So good on holiday, when you may not take the 'real' books you're in the mood for. With the Kindle you can browse and buy while you're away. Of course, the Kindle takes up much less space in a bag or suitcase than several books would. I also like the fact you can transfer your own work-in-progress on to it.

I will continue to read and buy 'real' books, because I love the way they look, smell and feel. I have hundreds of books on my shelves, many unread, and I'm not going to abandon them.

And the first thing I downloaded on to my Kindle? A novel by Penny Feeny, who is a regular contributor to The Yellow Room and who also wrote many stories for QWF. It's a good read so far!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this wonderful little gadget!

Clifton Hall and The Novel!

2011-09-17T05:04:00.000-07:00

Clifton Hall After Restoration

Clifton Hall Before Restoration

Interior of Clifton Hall Before Restoration

Interior of Clifton Hall After Restoration

Clifton Hall (see photos above) has always fascinated me. As a child, I could see it from my bedroom window at the top of Chestnut Lane in Clifton Campville. It had been a ruin for many years, so it was wonderful to see it restored to its former glory at the beginning of this century! Richard Blunt has done an amazing job. He very kindly emailed me a stack of photos of Clifton Hall before and after the renovation work.

The Hall features in my novel, under a slightly different name. I had no idea what it looked like inside, having never even got close to the building. I simply used my imagination. So, it was rather spooky to see the photos of the interior yesterday and realising that the rooms were just how I imagined them to be!

I'm now working on the final draft of the novel and want to try and secure an agent for it by Christmas (ever the optimist!).

The new Short Story Clinic is going well and I have lots of paid editing work to do. I’m just about to start proofreading stories for Issue 7 of The Yellow Room.

Lacking Focus

2011-09-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get those days when you can't settle to anything for very long and you can't decide what it is you need to do first? I can't stand those sort of days and I get them often.

My mind is jabbering away in the background, nagging me and reminding me of all those jobs that need to be done. I just want to put my hands over my ears and yell, Stop!

I made sure I did some writing first thing, however. Once the children had got off to school, I printed off a list of flash prompts and wrote straight onto screen for about half an hour, using most of the prompts on the page. It felt very much like joining the dots. I enjoyed it, though, and produced just over 1,000 words of reasonable prose. Quite what its use will be, who knows?

I did a little bit of Yellow Room admin (the competition entries are gradually trickling in), but was niggled by the thought of having to go to town and do some grocery shopping (boo, hiss!). I thought I'd get this over and done with, and really wish I'd sat at my computer for longer.

I have several writing projects on the go, as well as some paid editing work to do (four short stories), competition entries to read, the next Yellow Room to prepare for typesetting and some reading for research (we won't mention the massive ironing pile and the general state of the house and garden!). The writing projects are bothering me, as I feel I really should be focusing on one thing at a time instead of hopping about between the novel, the pocket novel, stories for competitions, preparing stories for The Scott Prize anthology competition and writing stories for the women's magazines. I flit between each project like a demented butterfly and don't feel as if I'm giving any of them my best shot.

And breathe.......

Back to School!

2011-09-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

It felt good waving my children off to school this morning. Both of them seemed rather excited at the prospect of a new school year. Megan starts Year 5 at primary and Matt starts Sixth Form.

It was bliss to walk back into an empty house! I love solitude, I have to confess. I went straight to the Mac and began thrashing out a new short story aimed at the women's magazine market. I've recently been encouraged by the Fiction Editor at People's Friend, after she wanted to see a rewrite of a story of mine she was very keen on. I've also been plugging away at my pocket novel set during The Blitz in London. Thank goodness I've almost finished it!

I tend to write in short sharp bursts. I can manage about 1,000 words in half an hour before I stall and need a break. I envy those writers who can keep ploughing on regardless and who can sit at their computers for a 12 hour stretch. I get restless after about an hour.

I've noticed that I get stuck in a scene very easily. With the pocket novel, I've learned that I have to make a character walk out or switch to a new scene when this happens. I somehow feel I have to resolve each scene before moving on, but of course fiction doesn't work like that. I can leave two characters in a room without any resolution being reached. I think I'm finally learning how to leave a scene 'hanging' or 'suspended in the ether'.

On the running front, things aren't too dire. I managed to do just over 4 miles today. My foot hurt at the beginning and I felt I was hobbling a bit towards the end, but the middle bit was fine! I've been doing my plantar fascia exercises and they do seem to help.

Oh look, it's nearly school pick-up time. Where did the hours go? Oh well, I can do it all again tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. Phew!

Running Injury and Writing Competition Success

2011-08-18T09:33:00.001-07:00

This isn't a photo of me running (I wish!). In fact, I won't be running for a few days due to plantar fasciitis , which I appear to have developed over the past couple of weeks. I've been getting pain in my heel after a run, and it's always much worse first thing in the morning getting out of bed. Just lately it's been getting worse and today I haven't been able to put weight on my left foot. I've been limping my way around all day and my foot is swollen.

This condition is a big blow, as it will spoil my training for the Coventry Half Marathon, which takes place the first weekend in October. I was due to do a 10 mile run tomorrow morning, but have had to cancel that and rest. I guess I have been doing too much, too soon. Until the middle of July I was running 3-4 miles about 3-4 times a week. Then I did a 6 mile on 22nd July and the following week 7 miles, then 8 miles, then 9 last week. In between I was doing two 5-6 mile runs. Clearly I overdid it.

My writing has been going slightly better, thank goodness. I entered the Write-Invite Competition for the first time last week. It was nerve-wracking, as the competition is live. You wait until the clock on the site shows 5.30pm (every Saturday evening), then pay your entry fee via Paypal, choose one of three themes, then write your piece in the space provided on the website. You have until 6pm that same evening to complete your story, add a title, edit and proofread. I was sweating profusely by 5.55pm! Once your entry has been sent, you wait until the following Wednesday at 5.30pm when the shortlist is posted. The participants then have to vote on the top three stories. I'm delighted to announce that my story was in the top three! I was over the moon, as it's the first short story competition I've entered in about two years. The overall winner receives £50, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

The beauty of this competition and the main reason I entered is that you are under pressure to write a complete short story in a short space of time. This really focuses the mind. It works for me, because I have great difficulty in starting writing each day. I knew that by 6pm on Saturday I'd have a more or less complete short story that I could then go on to expand and edit, if I wished to do so.

I've been reading William Trevor's collection of short stories for the past couple of weeks. I read one, maybe two each day. I recommend every writer of short stories to read his work, if they haven't already done so. I have learned so much. Not every story is to my taste, but I love his attention to detail. His characters are so well drawn and we discover things about them they didn't know themselves.

Tomorrow I'm off to Lincolnshire for the weekend with my nine-year-old daughter. Wish me luck!

Sally Quilford's 48 Birthday Bash

2011-08-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

Today is Sally Quilford's 48th birthday. She is a writer I admire, if only for the thousands of words she manages to bash out day-in, day-out. I wish I were half as prolific. So, today I felt I had to take part in her Birthday Bash, by bashing out a story on the theme of 48, as have many of her blogging friends.

Please excuse the poor quality, but I wrote it in about half an hour while the kids were occupied!

48 CRASH

My mum thinks you’re hot!

I wish Ria wouldn’t put her whole life on Facebook. I can’t make an innocent comment these days without the whole world knowing about it. Frankly, it’s more than embarrassing; it’s humiliating.

And yes, for the record I do think he’s hot.

Adam. A few years over the age of consent, but young enough to be my son, which is why I’m beating myself up about even thinking such a thing.

He’s got the hands of a man and the face of a little boy blue.

No, that’s not another of Ria’s status updates. It’s the line of a song that’s stormed into my middle-aged brain like a lightning flash.

48 Crash come like a lightning flash.

I’m going to be plagued by Suzi Quatro’s lyrics all day, I can tell. Perhaps going for a run will help. It might be my 48th birthday tomorrow, but I can still run 6 miles three times a week and not be out of breath. Mind you, I’m worried about my knees. And my ankles, come to that. They’re not going to put up with pounding the pavements for much longer.

And, as I run those damn lyrics are tearing their way through my head in time with my feet.

And the 48 Crash is a silk sash bash.

That’s the other problem with running any sort of reasonable distance at my age - your bladder objects to the constant bouncing up and down and you get the urge to go about three miles in. Fortunately, I’ve found the perfect spot behind a bank of topsoil and shaded by trees. That doesn’t stop me thinking there’s someone out there who can see me. Someone who knows my routine. Still, at my age I don’t care. Comfort is the most important thing.

And then just as I’m pulling up my running shorts, I see the car. It’s one of those little foreign hatchbacks. A boy racer car. Bright yellow.

It’s him.

I feel my face turning puce. Yes, I know it was pretty red to start with.

He can’t see me from the road, obviously, but just the thought of what I’ve been doing when he’s just a few hundred yards away is enough to make the humiliation creep in once again.

And you’re so blind you could find that your motor ain’t ready to go.

Damn lyrics again! And my motor is more than ready to go, thank you very much. I speed up for the last three miles just to prove it and it’s possible he’ll drive past me again. I want him to be impressed that Ria’s mum still has it in her, even though she’s edging towards fifty.

I shudder. I can’t face that yet. Not fifty.

In my head I’m still dancing as sexily as I can manage, emulating ‘Cherry’ off Pans People, while T-Rex’s Hot Love grooves out from the record deck at the youth club disco.

Russell had a bright yellow Ford Capri. A Mark One Capri with a 3 litre engine. Goodness knows how he could afford to insure it, even in those days.

He had black hair, cornflower blue eyes and wore denim button-fly flares which fitted very tightly across his slim hips. Fab!

You’re so young, you’re a hot shot sun of a gun.

Those are the lyrics repeating in my head as I run the last few hundred yards towards home.

Adam. Russell. Russell. Adam.

They merge into one. Similar colouring, similar car.

Russell was the older guy, buying me an illegal half pint of cider and bringing it to me in the beer garden of The Robin Hood. It tasted potent, yet refreshing; the bubbles fizzing up my nose.

“Fancy a spin?” he’d said afterwards.

I don’t remember the crash. I just remember the thrill of being driven too fast; the car stereo blasting Jeepster and the gorgeous dark-haired hunk beside me. It happened just after he turned to look at me; his deep blue eyes promising things that sent a shiver through me, even though I was too young to know what those things really were.

I was lucky, they said. A good job I was wearing a seat belt. And what was I doing in that young tearaway’s car anyway? We always knew he’d come to a bad end, they said.

Adam. You could hardly call him a tearaway. Geeky Freak, Ria calls him. He’s clever; a talented musician with an angelic voice. And he’s a bit odd, I admit. Mad about Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings.

“And he even has a life-size cardboard tardis in his bedroom, Mum.”

How sweet; how endearing. And I remember who I really am.

You’re so young, but like a hang up I’ll be sad when you’re old and you’re gone.

Suzi’s lyrics remind me that I’m a responsible middle-aged mum. And I like being a mum, feeding my teenage daughter’s crazy friends with homemade cake and pizza.

I head off for the shower. Washing away the years and the memories for now.

Crash, Crash, 48 Crash.

© Jo Derrick, 2011

Up and Down, Up and Down

2011-07-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

The title of this post says it all. Mood swings are affecting every area of my life, it seems.

My attitude towards my writing and life in general seems to change from day to day lately. Today, for example, I feel positive. Yesterday I felt the polar opposite. However, after a glass of wine the positivity returned last night and I hammered out 900 words of the Pocket Novel in half an hour. Sometimes it seems almost too easy.

If I think about my writing too much ie. what I should be writing or that I should be making it pay, then my creativity disappears and rebelliousness sneaks in. Rebelliousness takes the form of 'skiving off' by surfing the Internet or reading a favourite book (I felt compelled to re-read The Boy I Love by Marion Husband yesterday. One of my all-time favourite reads set in a favourite period of history - the aftermath of World War 1). I rarely allow myself to re-read favourite books or stories, because I feel guilty for abandoning the brand new, never-read-before books sitting on my shelves. It's a real indulgence to read an old favourite, but as a writer I think we can learn so much more the second or third time around. We're focusing less on the story and more on the way the writer works.

I've been dabbling in short stories again. I do enjoy the form; both reading shorts and writing them. I have no trouble with inspiration for stories and have no trouble getting ideas. I can write 1500 words straight off without pausing for breath, but then I dry up. I struggle to finish stories. The perfect ending always seems to elude me. I've had some terrific advice from Joanna Campbell here. She also advises starting with the ending, which I want to try. Any more tips on writing endings would be gratefully received!

School holidays are the perfect excuse not to write. Shopping for food takes up more time, as the children spend most of the day searching the cupboards and the fridge for food. That's when they're not asking me for lifts to places or begging me to let their friends come round.

The running is going very well. I'm now running with other like-minded ladies at least once a week and it's much more fun. I did a 6 mile run last Friday, which I didn't think I could achieve. We're aiming for 7 miles this Friday. I did a 4 mile run on Monday and hope to do another this evening. I've fallen into half-marathon training with a friend, even though she'll be doing the race and I won't! I really need to buy new running shoes, however, as mine are making my feet hurt. I hope to make a trip to The Sweat Shop in Milton Keynes tomorrow, where they can assess my running style and recommend the correct running shoes.

Now, back to the Pocket Novel......

Be Persistent!

2011-07-19T06:32:00.000-07:00

I read a wonderful blog post today and it reminded me once more that, as a writer, it pays to be persistent. We have to be a like a terrier with a rat.

Here's the link: http://htmlgiant.com/behind-the-scenes/22-things-i-learned-from-submitting-writing/

I love hearing from subscribers and today I received a lovely letter in the post from a long-term subscriber in response to me asking how her writing was going. A proper letter is so much nicer than an email somehow.

I am genuinely interested in how other writers are getting on; it doesn't matter whether they're a complete beginner or have been published in twenty different countries many times over. As writers we all share something in common. We scribble away on our own with no-one to read our work, thinking no-one cares about it either. It takes a lot of faith in our ability to screw up the courage to submit work to busy editors. That's why, as an editor, I like to give a few lines of feedback to writers who submit to The Yellow Room. I hate getting a story back from an editor with a bland statement to the effect that 'it isn't quite suitable for our requirements'.

Be persistent with editors. Personally, once I've rejected a story from a writer, I'd like them to send something else by return of post. I like to see the same names cropping up again and again. This way I can build a relationship with a writer and get to know their work better. I am much more likely to publish something from someone who has submitted many times, even though I may have rejected several of their stories.

My writing endeavours are very bitty at the moment (sounds like a sketch from Little Britain!). I switch from the novel, to the pocket novel, to short stories to articles. A real butterfly!

I think the answer with any sort of writing is to write something every day, leave it to rest, edit, then submit. Then to repeat this process over and over.

I must remember to follow my own advice!

By the way, the photo is another old one of my father, his two younger brothers and a friend. The dog in the photo was a terrier and a very good rat catcher, I believe. I think his name was Monty, but I could be mistaken!

Short Story Writing

2011-07-14T05:55:00.000-07:00

I've been itching to get back to short story writing for some time after a long stretch focusing on my novel. I've missed several short story competition deadlines, which I'm rather miffed about, simply because I didn't feel I had anything new enough or good enough to send out.

I've just read this marvellous blog post by Alison McLeod about writing short stories. Superb tips! I would urge everyone who wishes to write good short stories and everyone who submits to The Yellow Room Magazine to read this! http://blogs.chi.ac.uk/shortstoryforum/?p=5250

I've just finished sending the last of The Yellow Room Issue 6 out to all those who requested a copy or subscribe. We have a bit of a cash flow problem at the moment, so I would urge you to buy a copy of the magazine, if you haven't already or recommend it to your friends. http://www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk/www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk/Latest_Issue.html

I hope you like the photograph! It was taken in the 1930s (my father as a baby, his mother - far left, his uncle and aunt).

The Stylish Blogger Award

2011-07-06T03:49:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much to Pat Newcombe for honouring me with The Stylish Blogger award.

I'm very new to all this blog networking, so please forgive me if I get it all horribly wrong!

The Rules:

1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award. (Many thanks Pat!)
2. Share 7 Things About Yourself.
3. Award 10-15 Blogs Who You Think Deserve This Award.
4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

7 Things About Me

1. I used to ice skate competitively from the age of 4 until the age of 9.
2. I love wine (Pinot Grigio, Rose or Red, I'm not fussed).
3. My favourite season is Autumn and I was born around the time of the Autumnal Equinox.
4. I like running, but not very fast!
5. I love baking cakes, but don't always fancy eating them.
6. I have a book buying obsession.
7. I tend to talk in song lyrics when I'm drunk.

My Stylish Blogs I Pass The Award On To:
1. http://theelephantinthewritingroom.blogspot.com/
2. http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/
3. http://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com/
4. http://www.helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/
5. http://howpublishingreallyworks.com/
6. http://sarahduncansblog.blogspot.com/
7. http://oldenoughnovel.blogspot.com/
8. Brightwriter60
9. I should be writing
10. Nik's Blog
11. http://womagwriter.blogspot.com/
12. http://sallyquilfordblog.co.uk/
13. http://mousenotebook.blogspot.com/
14. http://jan-jones.blogspot.com/
15. This Itch of Writing

The New Office!

2011-07-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? There’s a beautiful building five minutes up the road with desk space. It’s full of books, warm and free to use. The wonderful Rugby library!

I’ve been struggling with some symptoms of depression recently. Nothing serious, by any means, but enough to make me feel unhappy and lacking in motivation. It’s taken me a long time to work out what the problem is. And it’s quite straightforward. I spend far too much time in the house. I needed to get out more and see people. I’d become far too wrapped up in a virtual world where I did have contact with people (via Facebook and Twitter), but it wasn’t enough.

Going to the library each day to write is the perfect solution for me. It gets me out of the house. It feels like going out to work. I feel like I’m taking my work more seriously. I feel like a student again. I feel as if I’m doing something important. I’m also surrounded by people who are quiet and don’t want to talk to me.

Yesterday and today I sat still for over two hours at a time, writing, making notes and being immersed in my novel. At home I can’t sit for more than fifteen minutes. There’s always something else to do, be it making a cup of tea, hanging out the washing or Hoovering the lounge carpet.

I can’t tell you how this has improved my mood. I feel a real sense of achievement when I get a scene written or resolve a major plot complication. The only downside is that I can’t use my computer in the library (I knew I should have bought a laptop!). I don’t mind writing longhand, but it’s a bit of a chore having to type it up afterwards.

It’s also quite useful to observe what library users are borrowing. My ‘desk’ is situated facing the Mills and Boon paperback rack and the Crime paperback rack. Today, the Mills and Boon rack was definitely busier. A lovely little old lady took nearly an hour to choose two Mills and Boon books. She brought them over to the table I was hogging (rather a large one with four chairs... I like to spread my work out!) and spent some time reading the first few pages of each, before making her selection.

I plan to spend every weekday in the new office (although how I’ll manage this in the school summer holidays, I don’t know!) and by the end of the summer I should have finished at least the first draft of the novel. Who knows I might just enter the Mslexia Novel Competition, which closes in September?

A Sight for Sore Eyes!

2011-06-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't done any writing today! I can't tell you how frustrating this feels.

I feel very much like the old barn on the right. A bit of a wreck. I'll explain why...

Today I went to the opticians for the first eye-test I've had in nearly 25 years. I've noticed I've become more and more short-sighted in recent years to the extent that I'm squinting at the TV and road signs. I struggle to recognise even family members at a distance. The other day I was peering at the TV text, trying to work out what the time was, when my son handed me his prescription glasses. I put them on and Bingo! The world suddenly became much clearer. I could see properly! I didn't realise I'd been going around looking at everything as if through a thin film. The trouble is, my son is severely short-sighted. So bad, in fact, that a few years ago, he could only see the large letter A at the top of the optician's sight-test board ('And even that's blurry,' he said).

It turns out that my eye sight isn't quite as bad as my son's, but not far off. I need glasses to be legal to drive, it seems. However, the worst piece of news was that I have a cataract in my right eye. The optician said I was one of the youngest people he'd seen with this condition. I am worried, I must admit! However, I have been reassured by several people now that should this get any worse and I do need an operation, it's all straightforward and those who've had it done can see perfectly well afterwards without wearing glasses.

Apparently, because I do so much reading, my close up vision is fine and my eyes have compensated. However, I have purchased some reading glasses to give my eyes a little bit of help. I will shortly be in possession of three pairs of prescription glasses: a pair to wear all the time (yikes!); a pair for reading; and a pair of prescription sunglasses to protect that right eye from UV rays to prevent the cataract getting any worse.

The only time I won't need to wear glasses is when I'm using the computer i.e. most of the time!!

I spent a long time choosing frames, particularly for the glasses I'll be wearing most of the time and, me being me, had to choose the most expensive pair in the shop! I chose a classy pair of rimless frames. Very delicate and pretty. The prescription tinted glasses are another matter! I will feel a little like Roy Orbison when I go out on sunny days! Although he didn't have a little sparkly bits on the arms of his, did he?

I felt a little wobbly when I got home. I didn't think I'd have to wear glasses all the time. The phrase: Boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses! kept coming into my head, which is silly, because I'm a married woman and shouldn't have to worry about such things! The other strong feeling is of getting old! Body parts are obviously deteriorating (remember all the trouble I had with my teeth?). I just keep imagining myself as a little toothless old lady who's virtually blind and can't read books anymore. Remember those games we used to play when we were younger: Which faculty would you rather lose? Your sight or your hearing? Aargh!!! Neither!

I'll get over it! It's just another life change. A fairly small one in the scheme of things, but a bit of a landmark day.

The Same Old Story!

2011-06-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

I'm having an energy slump at the moment! I'm not sure whether it's because my body is fighting off some sort of cold or what it is. My exercise regime has gone out of the window this week, but I am trying to compensate by 'eating clean', drinking lots of water, no alcohol and resting as much as possible.

I got a rejection from one of the women's magazines yesterday, which hasn't helped this gloomy feeling that has suddenly descended. It was a 1,000 word short story, and I was told there were no surprises. Does there have to be a surprise? Clearly. I'm not very good at surprises, however. Perhaps an area to work on?

Now I'm doubting my abilities in every area again. This sense of failure permeates everything I do and has done from an early age. I wish I could get over it! These feelings become so overwhelming that I tend to freeze and do very little for a while. I know I have to keep plugging away in the face of rejection, but it's one of the hardest things about being a writer. We're constantly looking for recognition that our work is worthwhile.

And just how many writing projects should I have on the go at any one time? I have many literary short stories I'd like to collate and send off to The Scott Prize. I'd like to research more online journals and see if I can write something suitable. I'd like to finish my novel. I'd like to finish the pocket novel for My Weekly. Can I do all that and more? Or am I biting off more than I can chew?

My gremlin is peering over my shoulder as I write this, whispering, 'What's the point? You're wasting your time. Admit it, you're never going to get published ever again. Face it, it's been too long since you last got anything published! Did you really expect to make any money out of this writing lark?' and so on.... Perhaps I could either shout really loudly at my gremlin or shoot him?

Issue 6 of The Yellow Room Magazine is still with the typesetter.

Announcing the winners of The Yellow Room Spring Short Story Competition 2011

2011-05-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Announcing the winning entries...

1st Prize: A Night Out by Sharon Birch

2nd Prize: A Few Vital Minutes by Sarah Barr

3rd Prize: Enduring the Sun by Shirley Golden

Highly Commended: Free Running by Jenny Roman

The Girl In Red Shoes by Jo Carroll

Commended: The Billet-Doux by Gill Blow

This Beautiful Day by Elizabeth Xifaras

Tear Analysis by Joanne Fox

I found it so difficult to decide between the top five stories. All were worthy winners and very well written. It just came down to personal choice in the end. I picked A Night Out as the winning story, because it moved me emotionally and my heart was in my mouth as I read, racing to see what the denouement would be. I felt total empathy for the characters in the top five stories and willed them to be allowed a happy ending. I will be publishing the top three stories in future issues of The Yellow Room Magazine.

Website updated!

2011-05-24T02:50:00.000-07:00

I've spent far too much time fiddling around with The Yellow Room website this morning. I have updated the competitions page and the news page. I've also added a 'Back Issues' page. You can now buy previous issues as back issues for £4. There is also a Paypal button to pay online for both the back issues and the competition entries.

The Paypal buttons can be a bit of a headache, but I finally got there. I was getting more and more frustrated at the time it was taking, as I really wanted to press on with my writing.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned in previous blogs that I'm writing a novella set during the Blitz. It's a romance, basically, and I'm hoping to target My Weekly Pocket Novels. It is an exercise in pressing on to the end and satisfying my craving for writing something historical.

I've had a bit of a break from my main novel, but printed off a chapter to read through yesterday. I hope this will reignite the fire and I'll be able to press on with this, too!

Issue 6 of The Yellow Room is currently with the typesetter, and I hope to send the magazines out in June. I'm going to spend part of today reading the shortlisted entries in The Yellow Room Spring Competition and hope to have the final three stories sorted by the end of the week.

My 16-year-old son is taking his English Literature GCSE exam as I write. I just hope he's doing well. He seemed to think he didn't have to do much revision for this one. What is it with boys?

The Yellow Room Spring Short Story Competition Shortlist

2011-05-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

Despite me saying repeatedly that I'm going to update this blog regularly, I don't! Most of the time, it's because I don't think I have anything worth saying. However, today I drew up the shortlist for The Yellow Room Spring Competition, which is something to shout about. I'll be re-reading these stories over the next week and choosing the top three.

The Girl in Red Shoes by Jo Carroll

The Billet-Doux by Gill Blow

Enduring the Sun by Shirley Golden

Tear Analysis by Joanne Fox

A Night Out by Sharon Birch

The Real Deal by Tracy Fells

Free Running by Jenny Roman

Trauma At The Gym by Di Horsfield

How Strange This Life Is by Michael Ross

A Few Vital Minutes by Sarah Barr

This Beautiful Day by Elizabeth Xifaras

A Teacher’s Tale by Ali Loconte

Telling Javier by Jocelyn Kaye

There were 99 entries in total.

All or Nothing Thinking

2011-04-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

When I haven’t updated my blog for a long time, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s either because I’ve been busy writing something else or because apathy has set in again. I have bouts when I lack motivation to do anything other than read, run and get through the domestic necessities.

I had a bout of serious writing until the children broke up for Easter, then it all went out of the window, despite my best intentions. I spent most of last week in the gorgeous Lincolnshire Fens with my daughter, staying with my favourite aunt. I took my notebook, but didn’t write a thing. I blame the wine my aunt plied me with! I then got into holiday mode and found it difficult to get out of again. I did, however, do two lovely runs down the Fens.

I’ve discovered that one of the problems I have is prioritising. I don’t think I shall ever overcome this. Do I prioritise different things on different days? Should I just go with the flow and see where this takes me?

I was doing very well with my list making, but let it lapse and stopped making those lists. Having a task list each day was an excellent motivator for me, but I think the long list of tasks became too overwhelming and I gave up.

I’m very much an all-or-nothing person and this goes for practically every aspect of my life. I’m not very good at chipping away at things, a little bit at a time. I either have to go great guns or not bother at all.

My one regret is that I don’t prioritise my writing. I’m not sure why I don’t do this. Once I get started, I love it and find it difficult to stop, but it’s getting started that is so very difficult!

Even my ‘write for 15 minutes as soon as I get up’ has gone by the board.

Oh dear, this is a negative post!

On a more positive note, then, I’m pleased that today I have done some gardening for the first time this year (shocking, I know!), have completed a 3 mile run and have written this blog. Will that do for now?

Link Fest

2011-03-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing a wonderful idea from Shauna Reid (aka Dietgirl) who regularly features a Friday Link Fest on her blog.

I've found some wonderful blogs this week, so here are a few for you to browse through.

The first one features some of the best tips on short story writing I've ever read:
http://www.publishabestseller.com/2010/03/short-stories-guest-blog-by-author-alison-macleod/

I definitely want to read some of Alison's short stories now.

I've recently been visiting Twitter on a regular basis and have made some wonderful new writer friends, many of whom have wonderful blogs. Here are a few:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/03/seventeen-questions-to-ask-your-novel.html

http://nikperring.blogspot.com/2011/03/guest-post-talli-roland-in-defence-of.html

http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/

http://sallyquilfordblog.co.uk/2009/12/pocketful-of-dreams.html

http://alisonwells.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/mother-writer-interviews-maria-duffy/

I hope to feature many more of the coming weeks.

Finally, if you haven't taken a look at my new blog, featuring some of my short fiction, here's the link:

http://www.joderrickfiction.blogspot.com/

Have a great weekend!

Beautiful Spring Weather!

2011-03-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the weather has been like where you are, but it's been gorgeous here in Rugby. 18 degrees yesterday afternoon! My mood has certainly been brighter.

My 15 minute writing sessions have been going very well, and I've got a lot of useful material under my belt this week. I have several short stories underway, and it's nice to have a break from the novel.

I've been revisiting my previously published short stories and have started to publish them on a separate blog. If you're interested in reading them, you can find them here: http://www.joderrickfiction.blogspot.com/

Most were published in small press literary magazines in the late 1990s, and some were awarded prizes or were highly commended in competitions. I give a bit of blurb at the beginning of each one, saying where they were previously published etc and in some cases, how I came to write them. It's an ongoing process, and I hope to be adding more in the next week or so. It's very interesting to see how my writing style has changed since then!

It would be great if as many of you as possible could 'follow' this new blog and if you feel like commenting on the individual stories, then even better!

As well as reading competition entries and submissions for The Yellow Room, I've been reading an awful lot of novels lately. I've got into my old book buying habit. It's my reward for only drinking wine on two nights per week. The money I'm saving on wine, I'm spending on books, but the latter is much more rewarding and better for me! I loved The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I'm not too keen on Val McDermid's latest, Trick of the Dark. I also loved Mo Hayder's DI Jack Caffery series. I spent about £30 in Waterstone's last week, as I had some vouchers. I can't wait to get stuck into those lovely new paperbacks. I'm perfectly happy having about five novels on the go at the same time with the odd biography thrown in for good measure and light relief. You can see a list of books I've read this year so far over to the right somewhere on this blog.

Time is running away with me this morning, and it's nearly time to go to the gym. I wish there were more hours in the day!

Lists etc

2011-03-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I was feeling very smug, because I thought I had it sussed. The way to motivate myself to get things done was to make a to-do list each day and tick things off as I achieved them. It worked very well, and I got lots more done than usual. Then what happened?

This week is a different story. I can't even be bothered to make a list! It all feels too boring and contrived. And I'm feeling lazy. Is it the dreaded hormones kicking in again? Something to do with the full moon? Who knows? Who cares?

One habit I have been sticking to for nearly three weeks now is writing for 15 minutes as soon as I get up. I have my yellow legal pad waiting for me on the kitchen table and I sit down to write before I do anything else. Some days the writing flows beautifully, often inspired by a dream. Other days (like today) I struggle to get the words down. This morning I simply wrote a list of things I could see in my garden. I described the sky. I added a little more to the novel scene I wrote yesterday, but that was about it. It's hard not to feel despondent when inspiration doesn't strike.

My novel is progressing very slowly, and I still feel a long way from finishing. I start to lose heart and feel it's the worst piece of writing ever. I have this longing to go through what I have and tidy it all up. It all feels such a raggedy mess. How can I write the ending when nothing seems to fit properly in the middle? It's like a giant puzzle I have to solve.

I'm not a planner. I try to plan, but then my writing becomes stilted and forced. The scenes where my characters take over and carry on without me work much better.

And The Yellow Room? The website is up and running again after being 'down' for about a month. I need to update it again soon and make sure I include a Paypal button for the competitions, so that people can pay online. I have yet to start proofreading the stories for Issue 6, which will be considerably later than planned, due to a slight cash flow problem! I'm relying on more competition entries to help with the financial side of things. More subscriptions would be great, too.

Don't forget to send in your entry to The Yellow Room Short Story Competition, which closes on 31st March 2011. Details of how to enter are on the website: www. theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk

Motivation

2011-02-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

Time spent reading is never time wasted.

With each book you read, you learn something new.

Time spent writing is never time wasted.

With each line you write, you become a better writer.

Am I becoming philosophical in my old age?

I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m peri-menopausal, but I struggle to motivate myself these days. (Actually, that’s not strictly true. A lot of my motivation gets used up to get my sorry backside down to the gym or out running.) I think part of the problem is that now the children are older, I have vast swathes of time on my hands. Having never been a domestic goddess, I don’t whittle away the hours cleaning or doing household chores. What a waste of time that is. What I ‘should’ be doing is writing a lot more than I do. And why don’t I? Is it because there are so many writers out there doing a far better job than I ever could? Perhaps if I had less time, then I’d prioritise my writing more? Perhaps I read too much?

I’ve probably mentioned many times before that I have hundreds of books sitting on the shelves that I haven’t read, and this makes me feel bad. All those lovingly written pages sitting there waiting to be discovered. How neglected they must feel!

I’ve set myself a bit of a task this year and that is to read as many of these books as I can. I’ve been going great guns, but the problem is that I rediscover favourite authors and start buying their new books, or start to read a book in a series and feel compelled to read the others in the series, which again involves book purchasing (oh dear, what a shame!).

I am learning a lot about the writing process through my reading, and I think that for many years now I have read like a writer. I try not to feel too daunted by others’ wonderful prose. That’s difficult, though, when I’m also addicted to well known writers’ blogs, how-to books and reading tips on writing. How do they do it? If I do that, too, then surely I’ll have a novel worth publishing? But we writers know that what works for one, doesn’t necessarily work for someone else. We all have our own way of doing things.

I have difficulty trusting my own voice when I write. My crime novel is very different from many of those that I’ve read, although there are many similarities, but is that a good or a bad thing? As usual, I am full of self-doubt, and this does block me on a regular basis.

I realise the reason I haven’t moved forward with my novel lately is because I’ve planned myself into boredom. For me, writing has to be an organic process, otherwise I lose interest. I love the feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next and allowing the characters to take me wherever they will. This is the exciting part of writing, and planning, for me, simply doesn’t work.

I know that I now have to allow my characters to speak for themselves. I have to ignore what’s gone before, to a certain degree, and forge ahead boldly, even if it makes no sense at first. It can all be scraped up, pulled apart and wrestled into shape in the edit.

I’m going to buy myself an egg timer, set it for 15 minutes and just write till the time’s up. I shall do this at regular intervals throughout the day and hope to get the words down. It’s the only way I can get the ironing done.... in 15 minutes intervals. 15 minutes most days. The difference between writing and ironing being that I really enjoy writing once I get started. It’s the getting started that’s the difficult part.

Finally, apologies for the fact that The Yellow Room website has been down for almost a week now. I changed to a new web hosting service, and they appear to be dragging their heels. Do email me (yellowjo AT me DOT com), if you have any queries or would like details of the short story competition closing at the end of March.

Howards End Is On The Landing

2011-01-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Gosh, I did go off on a bit of rant the other day, didn’t I? I’m not sure what brought that on.

I think I may have changed my opinion slightly. Possibly.

This is partly thanks to Susan Hill whose marvellous book, Howards End Is On The Landing, I’m currently reading.

It was such a relief to learn that I’m not the only one who has books all over the house in a higgledy-piggledy fashion. I don’t categorise or put them in alphabetical order. Just a quick glance across at the shelf in my office, I see that Cashelmara by Susan Howatch sits comfortably next to Hope Against Hope by Sally Zigmond, then The Queen’s Confession by Victoria Holt, then Bestseller by Celia Brayfield, then The Book of Love by Sarah Bower followed by Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter, and so it goes on.

Every now and then, and Wednesday must have been one of those days, I feel the need to clear clutter and create order. My perfectionist tendencies kick in, and I want to wipe the slate clean and start again. It’s interesting that I chose to clean out a kitchen cupboard then, too!

Is there such a thing as clutter when it comes to books?

On the same day I wrote the previous blog entry, I decided to pick six books I hadn’t read from my shelves and put them in a little pile on the floor in front of the sofa. The intention was to read through twenty pages or so, before deciding whether to give them away or not. In my first pile of six I discovered two books I wanted to continue reading. The first was A Good Life by Jan Fortune-Wood. I couldn’t put it down and read it in less than twenty-four hours (although the ending was slightly disappointing). I had met Jan at a home-educators seaside festival a few years ago and read her non-fiction books about home schooling. To be honest, I didn’t really expect much of her novel, partly because it was published by a little known independent publisher, Bluechrome. I was therefore very pleasantly surprised. It is basically an exploration of family secrets, dreams and lies. It is about the way memory is reconstructed and how those closest to us can wreak harm and betrayal, but, above all, it is about the power of the human spirit to live in hope and nurture new life. The second was Here Today by Zoe Fairbairns. I’ve read a couple of Zoe’s novels previously, both of which I enjoyed. I think what put me off this particular one was the fact that it was a second-hand book in rather poor condition. It gives a wonderful glimpse into life in London in the early 1980s, and the way women were still treated as second-class citizens. It centres around the threat of new technology in the world of temping typists. Not quite as engaging as A Good Life, but a wonderful insight into a bygone era.

Reading Howards End Is On The Landing has made me realise that it’s very much a case of ‘horses for courses’ when it comes to books. It’s all down to mood. Sometimes you might feel that a biography hits the spot, and other times it might be one of the classics. I guess we’re back to the food analogy. Some days you feel like eating nothing but currant buns and chocolate, then the next day you can’t get enough of brown rice and broccoli.

Finally, a wonderful quote, which my daughter found printed on a little laminated card inside one of her Michael Murpurgo books this evening: ‘Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.’ - Henry Ward Beecher.

Reading Matter

2011-01-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I come up against a bit of a crisis when it comes to my choice of reading matter. I look at my bookshelves and feel a tad depressed. Why? There are so many books there, which I’ve never read and probably never well. They’re usually those that others have recommended, saying that I really must read this brilliant book. Well, I’m sorry, but those days are gone. I have banished ‘ought’ ‘should’ and ‘must’ from my vocabulary. The word ‘ought’ expresses a duty or rightness about doing something or implies some sort of shortcoming on my part for not doing something. I can do without this sort of negativity, thank you very much. One person’s taste can vary widely from another’s.

Reading a book I’m not enjoying is like eating a cottage cheese salad when I’m really craving a beef stew with mashed potatoes and dumplings. I cannot immerse myself in an author’s world when I find their prose style irritating, for example (Frances Fyfield springs to mind here). Similarly, if the characters are unsympathetic or the setting unbelievable. I have to feel emotionally engaged.

Reading a book I love from the off is like wearing the comfiest pyjamas and lying beneath a soft duvet with feather pillows beneath my head. I don’t want to move. I’m fully immersed in the world the author has created, and I don’t want to put the book down. I used to give books 100 pages. If by that point I wasn’t enjoying it, then I’d give it to the charity shop. Now I’m less tolerant. Life is too short and there are too many books to read. I usually give it no more than a chapter. I’m all too aware, as a writer, that I have to get those first few pages right and engage my reader from the first line. If I don’t, then it’s likely they won’t even purchase the book in the first place.

I make no apology for my choice of reading matter. A few of my favourite books and authors are pictured here. I love reading fiction for pure escapism. I don’t want to tax my brain too much. However, that doesn’t mean to say that I put up with sloppy writing! It’s just that I prefer to read non-fiction for brain taxing and research purposes. I want a fiction author to tell me a good story with believable characters with whom I can feel empathy. Sometimes I like to be taken out of my comfort zone and read about grisly murders, but these have to occur in the most commonplace of situations, so that I can put myself firmly in the victim’s shoes.

I will no longer listen to friends’ recommendations when it comes to books. I listen to my own instincts. I’ll read what I want to read and not what I think I ought to be reading. Same goes for eating!!

The Yellow Room Competition Winners and Website

2010-12-07T07:02:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Joanna Campbell, winner of the first prize in The Yellow Room Autumn Competition. I love Joanna's writing. She explores emotions so well and her use of language is sublime. Joanna really gets into her characters' heads and creates a believable, realistic, yet fascinating world.

Second prize went to Allie Rogers for her wicked fantasy story, Like A Great Black Chess Piece. This was probably the most unusual of all the entries and intrigued me from the first line. I love Allie's use of humour.

Third prize was awarded to Poppy Peacock for her story, Frontline, which focused on the 1984 Miners' Strike. Political, hard hitting and wonderfully atmospheric. I felt as though I was there on the picket line with the central character, a teenage girl who has chosen to depict the conflict for her school art project.

On a more prosaic note, I am currently experiencing problems updating The Yellow Room Magazine website. Apologies to those who have been inconvenienced by this. It is incredibly frustrating for me, as I don't have the technical knowledge to sort it out quickly and efficiently! It's all down to ftp server problems. I may have to change my web hosting service.

For most of today I've been looking out upon a magical winter wonderland scene with temperatures of -7 degrees. I haven't done any work on the novel for over a week (apart from some research into Bloody Sunday), because I've been caught up in Christmas preparations and Yellow Room admin. However, one of the most pleasant jobs of the last few days has been choosing the top three stories in this autumn's competition.

And next year, please can someone remind me to buy advent calendars for the children on 1st November, before they sell out of the ones they really want?

The Yellow Room Autumn Short Story Competition Shortlist 2010

2010-12-01T01:44:00.000-08:00

There was a total of 81 entries. 16 entries were shortlisted.

Carol Wolrich - The Golden Arch
Frances Gow - Shaking up With Al
Nicola Warwick - The Wounds That Words Make
Nina Milton - The Ultramarine Dress
Joanna Campbell - Half-Price Mondays with Helene
Stephen McQuiggan - Vinny Grasps The Nettle
Jackie Richardson - Frontline
Rebecca Lawrence - The History Of The Skies
Tracy Fells - Keep Turning Right
Allie Rogers - Like A Great Black Chess Piece
Harriet Simpson - The Battle of Hatpin Folly
Sharon Birch - Blueprint for Murder
Ann Amari - Communication Skills
Eithne Nightingale - Google
Eithne Nightingale - Foucault Over The Garden Fence
Ruby McCann - Recognition

National Short Story Week

2010-11-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

As this week is National Short Story week, I thought I'd ask you all to list your favourite short stories. Tom Vowler has listed what are considered to be the best short stories of all time. You can find the list here:

http://oldenoughnovel.blogspot.com/2010/11/all-things-short-and-beautiful.html

This week I'm busy reading the rest of The Yellow Room Short Story Competition entries. I hope to draw up the shortlist next week.

Displacement activities

2010-11-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Today has been one of those days when I've flitted around the house doing anything but writing. Well, I have done a little bit of writing, but it was like pulling teeth. I will go back and do more once I've written this blog. I promise. Yes, I will. Honestly.

These are just some of the things I do to avoid writing the novel:

1. Aimlessly surf the Internet, pretending it's for research.
2. Look for 'the perfect diet'.
3. Surf the Internet for recipes for 'the perfect diet'.
4. Read posts on The Beyond Chocolate Forum, because we all know diets don't work.
5. Eat cake and drink tea.
6. Watch Escape To The Country.
7. Wash floors downstairs.
8. Look at the guinea pigs.
9. Write in my diary.
10. Hoover the lounge and load dishwasher.
11. Eat lunch and watch a bit of Loose Women.
12. Read something vaguely writing-related.
13. Quick look at Facebook (repeat before and between stages 1-12).
14. Update blog.

A Bad First Draft

2010-11-09T02:05:00.000-08:00

I once attended a workshop, which was run by the wonderful children's writer, Linda Kempton (http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/em/directory/k.htm) where she told us to: 'Allow yourself a bad first draft.'
It was one of those Eureka moments for many of us and it's advice that has stayed with me.

How bad should a 'bad first draft' be? I struggle with the concept, I have to say. I guess it's the perfectionist in me. I have shaped and honed my prose in the first few chapters of my novel. I continue to go back to those chapters to fiddle and fine tune. But, just how useful is this when I haven't even finished the first draft of this blessed novel?

It's all getting a bit messy. Messy is good, I guess, because it's a 'bad first draft'. The further I go with this project, the messier it gets. I'm in danger of getting myself in a right royal muddle, as I can now see that some characters could be dispensed with altogether or that two characters could be moulded into one. I've killed two people off early on and now wonder if they should still be alive. Perhaps that would make things more interesting? Is this really a crime novel at all? Is it more of a mystery/thriller? Yes, probably. Can I write the police procedure stuff? No. Do I want to? No. Is my detective that important? Probably not, but I do love the character I've created. He is so flawed, it's untrue. Can I have an incompetent detective who doesn't really solve anything at all? I guess I could. Can the mystery be solved, but not the crime? At the moment, this novel raises more questions than it answers. Perhaps all will become clear at the end.

I'll just plough on regardless. After all, it's only a first draft and a bad one at that.

Thinking In Threes

2010-11-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I've been re-reading Ansen Dibell's 'Patterns, Mirrors and Echoes' section in How To Write A Million. The emphasis on the pattern of three in traditional storytelling methods like fairy tales comes back to haunt any writer who has read 'how to' books and attended workshops.

I went back to my novel and started brainstorming my plot. Something must have sunk in after many years of reading novels and stories, as I've sub-consciously incorporated 'the law of three' into my crime novel.

There are three victims and three important connections between those victims; three significant relationships; three tearaways; three siblings; three false alarms; three major events; three locations; three baby connections/lost children.

This led me to think about the themes in my novel, which are basically a) the lost child b) involvement/lack of involvement c) commitment/lack of commitment d) running away.

This then led to thinking about the imagery in my novel: fire and water (heat and rain/yellow and purple).

My head feels much clearer after all that.

Does anyone else notice that they subconsciously apply the 'law of three' when writing fiction?

The Long and Winding Road

2010-11-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

Skrivener. Is it the answer to my prayers?

Those of you who read yesterday's posts will know that I've been looking for a way of organising my novel into manageable chunks so that I can see where I'm at without trawling through pages and pages of manuscript.

Debutnovelist gave me an idea when she told me about her methods with Word documents. Then I realised I hadn't got Word, as I use a Mac. I then did a search on 'tips for novel writers using Macs' or some-such in Google and came across Skrivener, a package for Macs, which helps you to manage and organise your novel all in one place. I suggest you have a go at the free trial to get a taster. (I think it's also available for PC users, but I'm not sure).

Well, I've spent a whole morning going through the step-by-step tutorial and, although I found it a challenge, I believe this could well be the way forward for me.

I still like the visual idea..... my novel in pictures, as that is very much how my brain works. The storyboards are very useful to me and help to work out both plot and character development. As Captain Black said yesterday, they are just as helpful as a source of inspiration.

I'm now experiencing tension in my shoulders, which is a sign I've spent far too long sitting at the computer in one session, so I'm off to do some reading before the dreaded school run!

Chapter One - Novel - Storyboard

2010-11-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

You know I mentioned creating an overview of each chapter of my novel in pictures? It can be done. Here it is!

Novel HQ

2010-11-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

Novel HQ aka The Kitchen Table. Yes, I have an office, but I can't spread my notes and paraphernalia out, because there simply isn't room on the desk. I also prefer writing new scenes in longhand.

Natalie Goldberg talks about 'exercising the writing muscle' and I'm sure that there is a much more creative connection between brain, hand and pen than there is between brain, fingers and computer keyboard. The screen acts as a barrier and automatically imposes the need for order, kicking into the internal editor before the piece is ready for those kinds of restrictions. Does that make sense?

I love the whole process of novel writing, but hate the unwieldiness of it. Compared to a short story, a novel is like holding a three-year-old toddler in your arms as opposed to a six-week-old baby. There is so much more to contain and hold in your head. I realise I need a physical way of visualising the whole. I'm trying to work out the best way of doing this for me. Some novelists use index cards, spread out all over the carpet (or the bed, in one case). Some use Post It notes on a huge board pinned to the wall. I feel as if I need pictures. Quite how that would work, I don't know!

Writing a first novel is a huge learning curve. I now realise that dividing my work into chapters, each chapter having a separate file on the computer, was probably a mistake. I'm now copying and pasting it all into one document. A chore, but a necessary one. You see how easily distracted I am from actually writing?

I may just log off and go and pick up that pen.....

Self Doubt

2010-11-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a very relaxing holiday in North Norfolk, but I appear to have lost the motivation and positive attitude towards my writing I had before I went away. Any ideas on how to get them back will be appreciated!

While I was away, I read the latest Persephone Bi-Annually (No 8 Autumn/Winter 2010). Persephone (www.persephonebooks.co.uk) reprints neglected classics by twentieth century writers (mainly women), and I love them. This edition of the Bi-Annually featured extracts from the journals and notebooks of Dorothy Whipple.

In 1933 she wrote of her novel, They Knew Mr Knight: 'I have only to start writing a novel to become flat and stale. A short story invigorates me, a novel depresses me during all the weary months I'm writing it.' And another entry in the same year: 'I began the second draft of my book. The first is very scrappy. I don't see my way with the book yet...I don't like having to concoct plots, I like doing people.'

Same here, I thought. I like inventing characters and writing about them. Plots are a boring necessity. Something has to happen. People are so much more interesting!

Writing about They Were Sisters in 1942, Dorothy says: 'I am terrified of the badness of this book. I am off my natural bent. Sadness, ugliness throughout is not my line. I wish I didn't start on themes without proper thoughts.... But I worked well and fast. It seems as if I have to ponder on a situation for several days, seeing no daylight, then suddenly it comes clear and I can write again.'

Yes, I can identify with this too, except that I 'ponder on a situation' for several weeks! When my head is clear and I can see where I'm going with my novel, then I write very fast. Trouble is, I can rarely see clearly where it's going. I guess as writers, we have to go up several blind allies before finding our way. Ever the perfectionist, I feel I have to get it right first time and berate myself when a scene doesn't work.

However, I keep telling myself that words written are never wasted in that we learn from every sentence we write.

Whodunit?

2010-10-21T03:24:00.000-07:00

One of the exciting things about writing a crime novel, for me, is discovering 'whodunit'. I'm three-quarters of the way through and I'm still not sure. There have been several possibilities along the way, but I've more or less narrowed it down to two suspects.

The downside of this, of course, is having to go back right to the beginning and tracking the character, ensuring that they were in the right place at the right time and that their character traits are in keeping with a psychopath or whatever!!

I am eager to finish my novel now, as I'd like to send it off to a Gold Dust mentor. I'm not sure about the merits of working closely with a well-known published writer on my novel, but I feel more comfortable doing this than sending it off into the ether. I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience of working with a writing mentor.

A new direction or not?

2010-10-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

I have been mulling things over this summer. Do I need to do something completely different? Is it time to get more serious and work towards a 'proper job'? My inner gremlin has been bullying me and telling me that I'm not really a writer at all. It has been telling me that I'm wasting my time trying to write a novel when there's little chance of getting published and that I should be working towards something more useful and lucrative in the long term.

After a lot of brain storming I decided that studying for a degree in psychology would be a good idea. After all, the human mind is fascinating, and I fancied doing something 'sciency'. A new departure. At least it would silence those who thought I was idling my time away at home. I could become a qualified psychotherapist. I quite liked the idea of going out to work, meeting people, listening to them and trying to help with their mental problems and emotional issues. Or did I?

I applied for a distance learning BSc (Hons) degree in Applied Psychology with Anglia Ruskin University and got accepted. My admissions tutor also sent my application to Derby University's Psychology BSc (Hons) degree course where you automatically get accredited by The British Psychological Society (however this course is £1000 a year more expensive). I got an unconditional acceptance from Derby as well. Great. Or was it?

I'm now having serious doubts about all this. The courses are expensive, and I can only just about afford it. Do I pursue a career in writing and work harder at it? Or do I learn a completely new set of skills? This is my current dilemma. Time for some serious decision making!

I'm back!

2010-07-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

I decided today that I’ve been silent for far too long.

The long and short of it is I needed a break from writing and the magazine while I concentrated on getting things in order on the domestic front and getting my head in the right place to move onwards and upwards.

I find I often need space in which to chill out, relax, rest and think, think, think. I often get to a bad place and need to pull myself out of it in my own sweet way. The result is often a re-energised self. I now feel ready to tackle Issue 5 of The Yellow Room and to prepare it for print. I’m also back to the novel, which, I feel, always benefits from the time away. I’ve been catching up on reading submissions the past couple of days and sending out those dreaded rejection letters. I’ve accepted very few this time. I do have a few more to read.

I was also feeling overwhelmed on the book front. I had a huge declutter recently and sent a lot of books to the charity shop (some unread!). I still have hundreds left, but have decided to adopt a new ‘100 page’ rule. If I’m not enjoying a book by the time I get to Page 100, I will close it and then off to the charity shop it goes.

I’m currently reading Joanne Harris’s The Lollipop Shoes. It very nearly didn’t make it and just redeemed itself in time.

The Yellow Room Spring Short Story Competition Winners

2010-05-17T01:49:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce the winners of The 2010 Yellow Room Spring Short Story Competition!

1st Place: The Adventure Park by Jenny Knight
2nd Place: Before Last Wednesday by Joanna Campbell
3rd Place: Only Connect by Jenny Knight

Highly Commended: The Elgin Villas Venus by Julie Ann Lee
Bone Structure by Rachel Crowther

The Yellow Room Spring Short Story Competition Shortlist

2010-05-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the shortlist for the competition which closed on 31st March 2010:

(Listed alphabetically by author)

And the Housemartins Leave The Sky by D. Bruton

Ten O’Clock to Balham by Joanna Campbell

Before Last Wednesday by Joanna Campbell

The Way of It by Sara Crowley

Watercress Makes A Meal by Rachel Crowther

Bone Structure by Rachel Crowther

Cala Di Volpe by Rachel Crowther

Miss Lacey Takes Her Tights Off by Bea Davenport

Painting Pebbles by Joanne Fox

Drunk On A Feeling by Lisa Fox

The Auction by T Greenwood

The Red Candle by Christine Howe

Only Connect by Jenny Knight

The Adventure Park by Jenny Knight

A Language of Trees by Julie Ann Lee

The Elgin Villas Venus by Julie Ann Lee

Silver In The 21st Century by Carol Rogers

The winning entry in the Short Circuit Prize for the best story under 800 words went to 'The Taste of Love' by Joanna Campbell.

My next job is to read through the huge pile of submissions sent in. Apologies to those who have been waiting a long time for a response.

I have been working hard on my crime novel, but there's still a long way to go! Keeping the faith is the hardest bit, at the moment!

Hope Against Hope-The Launch

2010-04-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled to receive my invitation to the launch of Sally Zigmond’s first novel, Hope Against Hope. The launch took place on a Friday evening almost two weeks ago at The Pump Rooms in Harrogate. I’ve now just finished reading Hope Against Hope (review to follow) and its Harrogate setting brought back fond memories of that afternoon as well as other wonderful times spent with Sally in her former home town.

I have known Sally since 1994 when I was pregnant with my first child, Matthew. She sent me one of the first short stories she’d written, apologising for not having read the guidelines. “You don’t need guidelines,” I told her, “You write just the sort of story I want to publish.” Sally went on to write many more short stories for QWF (the women’s literary magazine I published for 12 years) and eventually became my assistant editor. As well as enjoying a literary partnership, Sally and I have become great friends, so much so that she was my witness at my second wedding in 2006.

It was therefore an honour to be asked to the launch of Hope Against Hope. I know how hard Sally has worked to bring this novel to fruition and how many times her hopes have been dashed, when, after initial enthusiasm, agents and publishers backed down. If any writer deserves published success, then it’s Sally. She’s one of the most talented and unassuming writers I have the pleasure to know. She is also ever willing to pass on her experience to others and help them on their writing journey.

My trip to Harrogate didn’t bode well, however, when I received a phone call from The Crown Hotel (featured many times in Hope Against Hope) the day before my departure, saying that they’d overbooked and despite me having booked a room there three weeks in advance, they’d had to move me to another hotel, Grant’s. I wasn’t best pleased, as you can imagine. Staying at The Crown was going to be part and parcel of the whole experience for me. To add insult to injury when I arrived at Grant’s my room wasn’t ready, despite me having left instructions saying I wanted to book in early, so I was shown to a rather dingy, pokey little room on the second floor. The plus side was that I was given a hefty discount, subsidised by The Crown, for the inconvenience and room service at Grant’s was second-to-none. (It was the best fillet steak I’ve ever eaten and the Chocolate Marquise was to die for!)

Anyway, the sun shone on the righteous the day of Sally’s launch. Sally was doing her first book signing at Waterstone’s in James Street in the early afternoon, so I went along to support her, as had the lovely Jane Smith and a few other writer friends of Sally’s. We were like a bunch of over-excited schoolgirls, as Sally sat in pride of place at the front of the shop, surrounded by piles of copies of her novel and a huge placard featuring the alluring cover design.

It was fun to watch who was buying Hope Against Hope and getting their copies signed. There was also some eye candy in the form of Craig, Sally’s husband’s personal trainer! Sally said it felt like her wedding day, but without the groom. I guess that made Jane and I her matrons of honour! At the end of the signing, the three of us sneaked off to The Slug and Lettuce to share a bottle of wine and lots of writerly gossip. It was great fun, and I think I had more than my fair share of the wine (as usual!), my excuse being that Sally had to stay reasonably sober to host her launch party and do her speech/reading later.

We arrived at The Pump Rooms in plenty of time, but the doors were locked. Trust Sally to be the first author to be locked out of her own launch party! We must have walked round and round that building several times being overwhelmed by the smell of rotten eggs as we did so. (It was the sulphur from the well, for those who don’t know Harrogate too well.)

Sally’s delightful publicists had done her proud with copious amounts of wine and a delicious buffet. It was great to meet and chat to members of her family and friends I’d not met before, as well as other writers, some of whom I’d happily chatted to on Facebook but not met in person. I even met a writer whose story I’d shortlisted in a recent Yellow Room competition (Linda Priestley). We had a fascinating discussion about crime writing and the police forum she belongs to.

Despite her shyness, Sally did a wonderful job of reading from Hope Against Hope, which made us all eager to rush off and start reading it for ourselves.

Just like the best weddings I’ve been to, it was all over far too quickly and before 8pm I was trudging back up the hill to my hotel, Sally having been whisked off by her husband, Jon, not to their honeymoon suite, but to The York Festival of Writing.

I spent most of the rest of the night reading Hope Against Hope, unable to sleep due to noisy revellers in the street outside and inside the hotel itself! Still, I wasn’t complaining. If, like me, you loved reading the likes of Penmarric and A Woman of Substance when you were a teenager, then Hope Against Hope is for you. Pure escapism and a historical setting. As you would expect from Sally, her novel is beautifully written and meticulously researched. Perfect. I haven’t enjoyed a book as much as this in ages! Well done, Sally. The girl did good.

Bullets For Bill

2010-04-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that my son, Matt (14) is in a rock band called Bullets For Bill. They are a five piece band, Beffy Reeder on vocals (not pictured), Ell'e Chambers on bass, Brady Deeprose (guitar.. wearing red trousers here), Matt Good (guitar) and Louis Walford on drums. Now I know I'm biased, but they're all very talented kids and lovely with it. They're building up a huge following in the local area and have played many gigs over the last twelve months. They smashed into the Top Ten in the Rugby's Got Talent competition (everyone at the radio station loved their entry, My Cure, written by Matt) and today their song was played twice on Rugby FM radio. I was shaking with excitement when I heard it. I'm so proud of them all. You can listen to their entry on the Rugby FM website: http://www.rugbyfm.co.uk/rugbys-got-talent-180799 Their entry is No.3 (Bullets For Bill - My Cure). Listeners vote for their favourite entry from Friday 16th April at 10am. It would be great if you could vote for Matt's band! The top five will then play on a stage in Whitehall Recreation Ground on Monday 3rd May to, hopefully, a large crowd, who'll be gathered there for a charity fun day.

The Yellow Room Production Line

2010-03-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

I always forget what a mammoth task it is sending out each issue of The Yellow Room. It's not simply a case of putting magazines in envelopes. I have to check who needs to renew, then cross check that against various files. I need to sort out contributors' copies and cheques. Then there are all the records to update.

My timing is dreadful. The magazines arrived yesterday, and I so wanted to get them all out by Easter. However, the children are on holiday from school and there have been optician's appointments, shopping, gym, logging competition entries and all sorts of other things to fit in as well. I'm not complaining, honestly. I do like being busy, but today has been frantic.

I've managed to post out about half the magazines so far. Incredibly, even though I posted a quarter of them Second Class yesterday, a few have already arrived. Royal Mail have excelled themselves for once. I still have about half the total number of magazines to send out. I'm reluctant to post them tomorrow, as they won't be delivered on Friday, and they'll be languishing in a sorting office somewhere until goodness knows when. I find that magazines tend to go missing over the holiday period. I've taken the decision to mail out the rest of the magazines on Tuesday next week. It's not ideal, but I'm sure subscribers can be patient a little bit longer.

I have a busy weekend ahead. Matt's band, Bullets For Bill, are gigging on Saturday night and again on Sunday night supporting my husband's band, Visitation. I'm really looking forward to it.

Don't forget to let me know what you thought of Issue 4 of The Yellow Room once you've received your copy!

Issue 4 Coming Soon!

2010-03-18T02:25:00.000-07:00

Issue 4 of The Yellow Room is now at the printer's and should be delivered to me next week (fingers crossed). I hope to get the issue out to subscribers before Easter. It features another great collection of short stories including the first and second prize winning stories in The Yellow Room Autumn Competition.

I still have heaps of copies of Quality Women's Fiction Magazine (the magazine I published and edited before The Yellow Room), mainly Issues 47-49. If you send a C5 envelope (half A4 size) with your address on it and a 'Large' stamp (value 90p, I think, but postage rates are about to increase), then I can send you one copy. If you'd like all three copies, then you'll need a bigger envelope and more postage (£2.50 usually covers it).

I've been fiddling around with some of my old short stories the past week or so, as I felt like a break from the novel. I submitted a 'womag' story to The People's Friend by First Class post one day last week only to receive a rejection by email the following evening! The speed of the rejection was even more painful than having to wait a few weeks to receive one by post.

On a more personal note, I'm still visiting the dentist for treatment on a regular basis and my car needs yet more repairs! I won't bore you with the details, but it's all very frustrating and expensive. Yesterday I managed to get out for my first long walk with my walking friends, Fiona and Sarah, since October. It was lovely being out in the countryside once more, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine.

Don't forget to send in your entry for The Yellow Room Short Story Competition, which closes on 31st March. I'm busy reading the entries I've received so far and the standard is pretty good! I'm also receiving many orders for copies of The Yellow Room, as well as many new subscriptions, which is great news.

Emerging From The Cold

2010-03-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how long it's been since I last blogged. I'd like to say that I've been incredibly busy writing, but I haven't!

The good news is that Issue 4 of The Yellow Room is now with the typesetter, so hopefully it will be ready to send out to subscribers by the end of the month. I chose the stories pretty much on a first-come, first-served basis this time, as I felt guilty at how long I'd kept some writers waiting to see their work in print.

I still have days (far too many) when I find it incredibly difficult to motivate myself and feel crushingly tired. I keep putting it down to 'my time of life'. I hope it passes soon, as it's so disruptive in terms of getting anything creative done, not to mention the usual domestic chores, the gym and even reading. I just want to sleep! And no, I haven't been to see a doctor, because you usually have to drag me there kicking and screaming.

My dental treatment continues. I'm back there on Monday morning to have my crown fitted. My dentist still doesn't know that the temporary one he fitted came out the very next day. I couldn't bear to go back and get it fixed, having spent over an hour in the dentist's chair the day before.

Entries for the Yellow Room Competition (closing at the end of March) are coming in at a steady rate. I'm trying to read them as they come in, but I'm falling behind slightly. I hope to do some catching up today. I'm confined to the house waiting in for a parcel (story of my life!).

I have done half an hour's writing on the novel this morning, which is more than I've done in a while. I have to keep pushing aside those thoughts of 'Why am I even bothering?'.

I'm off to Harrogate at the beginning of April for the launch party for Sally Zigmond's first novel, Hope Against Hope. I'm so looking forward to it, as I haven't seen Sally in ages. She's worked so hard on her writing generally and on this novel specifically, that I hope it's a huge success.

And in case you're interested, I'm currently reading A Cotswold Ordeal by Rebecca Tope (a cosy crime novel set in the Cotswolds) and We Danced All Night by Martin Pugh (a heavy tome all about life between the wars).

Photo by David Derrick... taken at Longleat, I think!

Last Call For Readers' Letters!

2010-02-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of preparing Issue 4 of The Yellow Room and so, if you'd like to see your letter printed in the magazine, now is the time to email me a line or two. Your letter doesn't have to be about Issue3 in particular. It can be about any aspect of short story writing or writing/reading in general. In other words, anything you think may be of interest to The Yellow Room readers. My email is yellowjo AT me dot com.

I've had great difficulty in focusing on my novel lately. I have been thinking about it a lot, but I just haven't got round to writing anything. I've even started thinking about a new idea for a novel, making notes and doing some research!

I currently have seventeen stories waiting to be published in The Yellow Room. It's difficult choosing which ones to include in Issue 4. I'm publishing the top two prizewinning stories in the Autumn Short Story Competition, so that means that two of the stories on file get pushed aside to make room. I always feel uneasy about this. I'm loathe to publish a separate competition anthology, as it's more work and more expense and small competition anthologies don't usually sell that well, in my experience.

Sally Quilford recently asked me, in my capacity as a competition judge, what I thought about entrants challenging the results. Do you think it's acceptable for someone to query the results, because they think their story should have been in the top twenty? I'd be interested to hear your opinions!

Don't forget those readers' letters!

I should also say that this is a good time to submit stories for publication, as I haven't any left in my 'to read' pile.

Things Can Only Get Better!

2010-02-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

For those who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, you'll already know about my dental traumas and car repairs. Bear with me!

For those of you who don't, then I've had a troublesome two or three months on the dental and vehicle front. I now have a streaming cold into the bargain. By the end of today I'll have spent approximately £900 on my car since December and that doesn't include road tax, MOT and insurance! Just when I get one thing repaired, something else goes wrong. I guess that's the problem with having a car, which is over 8-years-old.

I'm having similar problems with my teeth! It all began with a broken tooth on the left side, back in November. It wasn't troubling me until the dentist gave me a temporary filling. I then experienced horribly toothache a few days later. However, it went away before I went for my emergency appointment, which I duly cancelled. I then went for my pre-booked appointment two weeks ago and had the tooth X-rayed and was told I'd need it refilled and a crown, so booked two more appointments in March to have that done. Then last week, for no apparent reason (well, maybe it was that packet of pork scratchings), a tooth on the right hand side began to hurt... and hurt... and really hurt! On Monday night the roof of my mouth and gums swelled alarmingly and were very sore. I managed to get a 'sit and wait' emergency appointment at the dentist on Tuesday afternoon. He was very concerned about the swelling and X-rayed the tooth. I had a dental abscess and a nasty infection in the tooth and it needed urgent root canal work. The dentist injected me with anaesthetic to which I had a bad reaction and spent the next hour or so, shivering and shaking uncontrollably (something to do with adrenaline, apparently), which worried my dentist further. He went ahead with draining the abscess and the root canal work and removing the nerve. I then left (after sitting in the waiting room with a cup of water for 15 minutes) armed with a prescription for two lots of super strength antibiotics. I can't drink alcohol for 5 days, for which my liver is very grateful. It needs a rest. I'm pleased to report that things have settled down. My next dental appointment to finish off the root canal work is a week on Saturday.

My novel has suffered as a result of my dental health, I'm afraid, but I have now caught up with all The Yellow Room admin. I'm about to press on with proofreading stories for Issue 4, as I've sold out of Issue 3 and have lots of new subscribers who haven't yet received a copy. Entries for The Yellow Room Short Story Competition, closing in March, have now started trickling in. Do get yours in early! There's a special prize for the best story under 800 words. Details are on the website (www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk).

Finally, I'm often asked to appraise, critique or simply read other writers' work. I'm happy to do this, as long as I'm not too busy, but usually charge a fee, as it does take up a lot of time. I like to think I'm very thorough and very honest. Probably too honest for my own good. I can't be anything other than totally honest, and I know the truth sometimes hurts. My opinion is subjective, even though I try to be as objective as possible, if that makes sense. One person's response to a piece of writing is always going to differ from someone else's. However, I do have a number of years of experience as a prolific reader of many types of fiction, and as an editor. I'm also a published writer. I guess what I want to say is, please don't send your work to me to critique, if you don't value my opinion, or if you don't want me to be totally honest.

The photo was taken by my husband, David Derrick. Campbeltown on a rainy Wednesday evening.

In the Zone!

2010-01-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

I'm going great guns on the novel at the moment and I'm about halfway through. The hardest thing is writing those first few words each day. Once I've written a few sentences, then I'm off and it's all fine. Then I don't want to stop and get frustrated when domestic duties beckon or when the family needs me. I don't write very well first thing. My optimum time for writing is mid-afternoon from about 3 o'clock onwards, which is a nuisance, as I have to collect Megan from school and give her some love and attention once she's home. I then find I'm writing up a storm while the tea is cooking! Another good time for me to write is between 7pm and 8pm. Again, I have to stop to deal with Megan's bath and bedtime. However, I think knowing that I have a limited time spurs me on to write as much as I can and to write faster.

I have now sold out of Issue 3. I didn't get enough printed, obviously. The orders have been coming in thick and fast. I'll have to get another fifty of the next issue printed. Talking of the next issue, I'm about to start choosing stories and proofreading them ready for typesetting, so do send in those readers' letters, as I have only one at the moment!

The next Yellow Room competition closes on 31st March. Entries have started to trickle in already. Vanessa Gebbie has kindly donated a signed copy of Short Circuit, an invaluable guide for short story writers. This prize will go to the best story under 800 words. Details will appear on the website very soon.

I'm off to write some more crime!

The Short Story Gland

2010-01-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently been reading one of the best books on short story writing I’ve ever read. It’s called Short Circuit, published by Salt and edited by Vanessa Gebbie. If you write short stories, then you really should add this gem of a book to your collection. It has certainly inspired me to write more short fiction and has persuaded me that flash fiction is a worthwhile genre in its own right. I had previously been quite dismissive of the flash fiction genre, but I think I finally ‘get it’, mainly thanks to Tania Hershman’s wonderful article Art Breathes From Containment: The Delights of the Shortest Fiction or The Very Short Story That Could.

I’m often asked in my capacity as editor of The Yellow Room Magazine what makes a good short story or what I’m looking for. This is incredibly hard to pin down. Adam Marek sums it up beautifully, however, in his piece What My Gland Wants - Originality In The Short Story. Adam has very kindly given me permission to quote from his article. “When I read or write fiction, what I’m really doing is hunting for a very particular sensation. It’s a feeling a bit like delight, a bit like surprise, a bit like weightlessness. It’s the excitement we get when we discover something new, something which in childhood we can’t take a step without tripping over, but which in adulthood is woefully infrequent.

I get this sensation most intensely when I’m reading or writing short fiction.

Something about this form lends itself to revelation. I can think of so many moments when I have just finished reading a short story, and am sitting on my knackered sofa holding the book in my hands, too caught up in it, too exhausted by the ideas it has put into my head, to even think about reading another one.

This sensation is particular to short stories, for me anyway.”

Yes, I’m with Adam on that. A few days ago I read A Small, Good Thing by Raymond Carver. I can’t stop thinking about that story. It blew me away. It also says so much about grief; something I revisit every January without fail.

Adam goes on to say that he thinks “people who enjoy short stories have a special gland, one that responds to the unexpected with little bursts of pleasure chemicals.” He says that he is “always suspicious of people who love to read, but who don’t like short stories. These people, I think, if they have the gland, have a shrivelled thing, an atrophied little apple core. I pity these people. They are missing out on these inky little orgasms.”

Don’t you just love that phrase, ‘Inky little orgasms’? I think I’ll have to quote that in relation to the short story at every opportunity!

Adam then says that the stories that get his “gland salivating” are the ones that present him with something he’s never seen before, “something absurd and then draw around it some internal logic - which justifies its existence, which makes it not just crazy surrealism, but grounds it in reality”. Adam admits that “it’s the stuff at the weird end” that he most likes to write and to read. And his stories are pretty weird, but addictive. I’m currently working my way through his collection, Instruction Manual For Swallowing.

In conclusion, Adam says that short stories “are like bubbles. Their existence is brief and miraculous, but the stuff that makes them can only attain a certain size.......Seamlessness is only possible within the short story. Perfection is only possible within the short story. And it is the pursuit of perfection, the balanced equation where everything that is included supports everything else and nothing could possibly be removed or added, that keeps us reading them.”

I’ll be discussing the short story form further in subsequent blogs this month, as I’m on a short story collection reading binge. I’m finding it more and more difficult to read novels when I’m working on my own. I need to immerse myself in the fictional world I have created rather than in someone else’s. Short stories are ideal, because I can ‘nip in and out’ of another world and move on.

Finally, I’ve been asked by Hazel Cushion, owner of Accent Press, to plug their new Xcite eBook writers’ guidelines http://www.xcitebooks.com/ebookguidelines.html

Autumn Short Story Competition Results!

2010-01-05T01:57:00.000-08:00

I've now done the final judging for The Yellow Room Short Story Competition, which closed on 30th September 2009. The results are as follows:

1st Prize: A Mean Undertow by Freda Love Smith
2nd Prize: Tiger In The Guest Room by Joanna Campbell
3rd Prize: Get Fit, Get Thin, Get Laid by Clare Reddaway
Highly Commended: Decisions Made Over Madeleine's Toast by Joanna Campbell
Rachel's Birthday by Sue Johnson
Commended: The New Heart by Nancy Le Nezet
Mapped Out by Rachel Crowther

The winning story will be published in Issue 4 of The Yellow Room in the spring.

Happy New Year Everyone!

2010-01-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting this blog yet again and it's very remiss of me. No excuses, really, unless you count Christmas! It was an incredibly quiet one for us this year, as my mother-in-law went into hospital the Wednesday before Christmas to have a hip replacement operation. She came out the day after Boxing Day. However, she's still very infirm and we're doing meals-on-wheelsy/caring-type duties. I did my usual hermit-thing at Christmas and hardly went out of the house.

I've finally drawn up a longlist for the Yellow Room Short Story Competition which closed on 30th September 09. I really must read the entries as they come in, not leave them to read all at once. Therein lies madness! Having read over eighty stories in more or less one hit, I realise just how crucial that first paragraph is. A competition judge becomes rather jaded after reading half a dozen stories that begin in a rather a banal way. I want that first paragraph to hit me between the eyes. If I'd discarded stories on the strength of that opening paragraph, then I'd have been left with less than half a dozen!

The Yellow Room Magazine has now joined Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Yellow-Room-Magazine/244913764208
Do take a look and become a fan! You can join in lively discussions about writing and reading fiction. There is a discussion at the moment about short story openings, if you'd like to join in!

Here's the competition longlist (in no particular order):

The Old Barn - Carol Rogers
The Chosen One - Clare Reddaway
Get Fit, Get Thin, Get Laid - Clare Reddaway
Tiger In The Guest Room - Joanna Campbell
Rachel's Birthday - Sue Johnson
Decisions Made Over Madeleine's Toast - Joanna Campbell
A&E - Elizabeth Lister
Mozart and Maiden-Form by Julie Ann Lee
Shotgun Bill - Sarah England
Getting Shot - Pam Eaves
Gene Krupa - Lynne Voyce
Ruined Sanctuary - Geraldine Franzen
Finale - Deanna Allan
Time Out - Lesley Mace
The New Heart - Nancy Le Nezet
A Mean Undertow - Freda Love Smith
Mapped Out - Rachel Crowther
Still Waiting - Katherine Clements
Emerik's Ices - Ruth Collett-Fenson
Freedom to Fish - Sarah Barr
Clear As Glass - Pat Jourdan
Zac In A Box - Alison Wagstaff
Daddy's Girl - Teresa Husher
The Nicest Girl in the Pub - Pat Jourdan

The Urge To Blog!

2009-12-09T02:53:00.000-08:00

I haven't got anything particularly useful to say, but got a sudden urge to blog this morning, as you do!

The window fitters are sawing and hammering away in the background and no doubt Radio 2 will be blaring out of their little battered radio before too long. It's quite nice to have company in a weird sort of way!

I've been ensconced in my office since Monday morning, printing off dozens of postage labels for Issue 3, most of which have now been posted. I get very nervous that some will go missing. I don't entirely trust Royal Mail!

I hope to get more feedback on this issue of the magazine, because the Readers Letters page is looking very scrawny (unlike me!). My thoughts are already turning to Issue 4 and which stories I'll publish. Again, I only have a few copies of Issue 3 left now and I think it's come to the point where I need to do a bigger print run. This is a good sign that the magazine is selling well and is starting to be quite popular. I'm not sure I'll ever reach the heady print runs of QWF days, but we'll see.

The Yellow Room Autumn Short Story Competition, which closed on 30th September, is giving me a huge headache. Drawing up the shortlist is a nightmare. I thought I'd cracked it the other day, but there are niggles. I optimistically announced that the winners would be notified by 1st December 09. Fat chance! Eight days past this date and I'm fretting. What if the top three stories have been sent elsewhere? I'm reading as fast as I can (trying not to get too distracted by Monica Seles' great book, Getting A Grip) and hope to announce the winners by early next week.

My car failed its MOT this week and the repairs are going to cost the best part of £300, so I have the hassle and expense of that to sort out very soon. Why do such mundane things get in the way? And don't even mention Christmas! I still haven't written all my Christmas cards and wonder why we bother sending any at all now we have great things like Facebook?

More next week......

Oh, and the photo was taken back in the summer, reminding me of sunny days and lovely walks.

So behind with The Yellow Room and Comp!

2009-12-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Apologies everyone, as I'm still very behind with reading competition entries. I've almost drawn up the shortlisted entries now and hope to announce the top three next week.

I've just heard from Biddles, the printers, that Issue 3 won't be despatched until 7th December. This is a week later than they promised last week. I'm so sorry about this. It's agonising when I said that this issue would be out in October. I just hope subscribers can be patient enough to wait another week or so. It's really not ideal for me to be sending out magazines in December when I have Christmas shopping to do, presents to wrap, cards to write etc etc.

To add insult to injury Needhams are coming to fit new windows and doors next week.

It could be worse.... it could be freezing cold!

The Yellow Room Issue 3

2009-11-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

Issue 3 of The Yellow Room Magazine is seriously behind schedule, and I apologise to those who have ordered a copy of the magazine and are still waiting. I received the cover proofs today and the magazine should be delivered from the printers at the end of November.

I've just about cleared the submissions pile and I'm about to start reading the ninety plus competition entries. I have a lot of admin to wade through as well.

It's a good job I feel so energised and invigorated after re-joining the gym where I spent seven happy years as a member until September 2008. Last week I realised that I couldn't stand another day feeling dreary, frumpy, lazy and menopausal. The first thing I did was get a new haircut. It works wonders, ladies, so do try it if you feel in the doldrums. The second thing was to phone the gym. I now have an excuse to get out of the house and see people. I think I was becoming a recluse.

My crime novel is progressing albeit very slowly. I'm enjoying writing it and spend a lot of time making notes and mulling it all over in my head, before committing anything useful to the page. It works for me. I write a scene or two in longhand in my notebook, then transfer it to the Mac, editing as I go.

Now I have to make myself update this blog more regularly!

Val McDermid at Warwick Words

2009-10-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

I’d been stressing for days about the fact I hadn’t got a ticket for the Val McDermid talk at Warwick Words. The online booking service implied the tickets had sold out. Anyway, I needn’t have worried, as a few days later my friend pointed out that the booking service was up and running properly again and hadn’t sold out. When we arrived at the venue on a cold Saturday evening earlier this month, I expected a packed house. You can imagine how surprised I was when the auditorium was at least two thirds empty. Where was everyone? It was almost embarrassing. Poor Val, I thought. Was it because X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing were on TV? Anyway, whatever the reason people stayed away, they missed a treat.

Val took to the stage and, after a brief introduction by a member of the Warwick Words committee, sat down to tell us, first of all, why she became a writer.

Val said she grew up hearing that ‘people like us aren’t writers’. The sort of comment that makes the more rebellious amongst us determined to prove otherwise, I suspect. Val comes from a working class mining community in Fife. Her father worked in the shipyards, and books were a luxury the family simply couldn’t afford. However, Val’s parents deemed education important. Val’s mother took her to the library before Val could speak properly and Val said she used to call it ‘going to the labrador’. Val’s family moved shortly afterwards to a house, which just happened to be opposite the central library in Kirkcaldy. It wasn’t long before Val had read the entire contents of that library. She said she was only allowed to take out four books at a time and two of those had to be non-fiction. Apparently, poetry and drama counted as non-fiction, so it wasn’t all bad.

Val spent her weekends at her grandparents. They didn’t have a library in their village, only a library bus. However, Val wasn’t allowed on the bus, as she didn’t live in the village. It was made worse by the fact that Val’s grandparents only had two books in their house, The Bible and Agatha Christie’s Murder At The Vicarage. Val grew up thinking that grown-up books had to have dead bodies in them. She read Murder At The Vicarage so many times and was desperate to read more Agatha Christie. She believes this led her into a life of crime. She then began to steal her mother’s library tickets to get into the adult section of her local library. She told the librarian that her mother wasn’t well and she had to get the books for her. Val then proceeded to read her way through the whole of the adult crime section.

The notion that the past casts a long shadow is a recurrent theme in Val’s novels. Val said she went back to Kirkcaldy Library as an adult and took her mother. The same librarians were working there as when she was a child. ‘I thought you must be dead,’ remarked one of them to her mother, as they’d always thought of her as a bedridden invalid. You can imagine the look Val’s mother gave her. The past had well and truly caught up with Val.

Later Val enjoyed reading private eye novels from the US. She liked seeing the way the characters reacted under pressure, always staying one step ahead of the detective. She loved the whole shape and structure of the crime novel.

When Val left school she went to Oxford University where she studied English Literature. Of course at Oxford, English Literature ended in 1945! However, she noticed, amongst the weighty tomes in her tutors’ rooms, the green and white spines of the Penguin Classic Crime series, so didn’t feel guilty about reading them for pleasure.

The Chalet School books were Val’s introduction to ‘series’ in literature. She was inspired by the main character in Chalet School, Jo Maynard. She realised for the first time that being a writer was a job; that you could be paid for ‘telling lies’.

When Val left Oxford she thought she was going to write ‘the great English novel’, featuring love, hate, betrayal, guilt and punting. She finished it and still has it as proof of how badly she can write.

She then wrote a play from the novel, which she took to a local theatre company. The director wanted to produce it. She was delighted. A playwright at the age of twenty-three! However, she didn’t know what she’d done right, so was unable to replicate her success. By this time, Val had acquired an agent. She didn’t know about writing courses then, otherwise she’d have probably gone to one about how to write plays. It wasn’t long before she got the dreaded letter from her agent beginning, ‘Dear Val McDermid, We are rationialising our client list...’. In short, Val had got the sack. She said this was the lowest point in her writing career.

By this time Val was working as a journalist, but it didn’t give her satisfaction. She wanted to make it all up, instead of just some of it! She knew how a crime novel worked, having read so many. You could either have lots of suspects or no suspects at all. She decided to write a crime novel with a main character who was a journalist. She also knew she’d need at least one dead body and a detective. This was the early 1980s and Val pointed out that there wasn’t much variety in crime writing then, unlike now. You either had police procedurals or the village mystery.

The villages Val knew weren’t in any way like St Mary Mead, the fictional village where Agatha Christie set her novels. There weren’t any spinsters doing gardening; no vicars, only ministers, and no retired colonels. Instead Val drew her inspiration from the USA. A friend of hers had gone to live there and had sent Val a Sara Paretsky novel. The urban setting and city life represented a world Val understood. She could identify with Sara’s strong female protagonist who had brains and a sense of humour. The individual against the world. Sara Paretsky’s books also contained both personal and social politics. Val wanted to write something in the same ball park. She wrote Report For Murder.

As a journalist, Val said she had Mondays off. She had few distractions and wrote from 2pm until 7pm every Monday. She wouldn’t answer the door or the phone. The rest of the week she’d be working out in her head what to revise or where to go next with the novel. She sent this first attempt to The Women’s Press.

Val said she believes that to have a literary career you need to have three things: a modicom of talent; the ability to work as hard as you possibly can; and luck. You have be in the right place at the right time with the right book. Val was lucky in that she rode on the back of the success of Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. Publishers were desperate for something with a similar flavour and a UK setting at the time she wrote her first book. Ian Rankin and Val used to laugh that it took them ten years to become an overnight sensation.

Val worked out that the advance for her first book would pay her mortgage for just six weeks. Report For Murder earns more money now than when she first sold it. When Val started writing the Lindsay Gordon books, she knew she wanted to write a trilogy. When she came to the end of the three books, she knew she’d have to do something different, so she started writing the Kate Brannigan books. In this series Val was aiming to give a different spin on the US private eye novel. She worked out that if she wrote and sold two books per year she could afford to give up her job as Northern Bureau Chief. She still had a pension at that time, as Rob Maxwell hadn’t jumped off his boat yet. Val was thirty-five when she gave up the day job. She said that not earning much for two years was a struggle and she didn’t buy any books or CDs. The Germans changed things, however, by giving her a big advance for her Kate Brannigan books.

All of a sudden it was time for questions from the audience. I was surprised when I looked at my watch. The time had flown. Val is such an entertaining speaker.

I was brave and asked the first question. I asked Val whether she was still supporting the Save The Short Story Campaign and she mentioned that there was now a National Short Story Competition and that things had improved considerably (can’t say I’ve noticed!). She said she enjoys both writing and reading short stories, especially Lawrence Block’s crime stories. Do take a look at his wonderful website, as he has some very interesting things to say about the short story: http://www.lawrenceblock.com/index_framesetfl.htm Val said, in her experience, as a writer short stories were like buses - three or four arrive at the same time, then nothing for ages.

Someone then asked if Val works out her plots beforehand. She said that which always worked for her was writing a detailed synopsis. She would write a paragraph on each chapter. Then she aimed to write 1,000-1,500 words per day. This worked for the first fifteen or sixteen books, then suddenly for her next book this formula stopped working for her. She managed to plot the beginning and end, but the middle slithered away from her. The more she tried to pin it down, the worse it got. She needed to meet her publisher’s deadline, as she’d taken the money and spent it, so she had no choice but to give them the book. She decided to go to Italy where there was no phone, no internet connection, and no TV. She sat and forced herself to write. She wrote 65,000 words in 9 days. (No, that isn’t a typo!) Her editor thought it was the strongest first draft Val had ever given her.

Val had a similar problem with the next book. She had thought the fact that she had the builders in had been the problem the first time round, but the problem was still there when they’d gone.

Now she works in a different way, Val told us. She knows the arc of the story, but doesn’t know any details. Then there’s a frenetic eight weeks when she forces herself to write and finish the novel. She said it was a very stressful way to write a book.

Val was asked where she got the idea for A Darker Domain, a recent novel set in the early eighties and set around the miners’ strike. She said that when a friend of hers was out running, she saw a dilapidated villa which had obviously been squatted and strange posters had been left there. Val said she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Val compared her brain to a massive compost heap. She chucks a lot on there, then it takes time to rot down.

Someone then asked Val whether she’d ever had any desire to write something other than a crime novel. The answer was a resounding, ‘No!’. She said that crime was a very broad church, so there was plenty to write about, as well as many different styles and sub-genres.

Another interesting question was whether Val scared or shocked herself by what her characters do. She answered no, because she is in control and knows what happens. As a writer she is thinking different things from the reader. Not, ‘Oh, this is scary!’, but ‘Should that adjective be there?’. She said that, in other words, she has more technical concerns.

Finally Val was asked what she was currently reading. The answer was Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen and Peter Temple’s Truth. Val remarked that Peter Temple writes really well about women.

I could have sat there all night listening to Val McDermid. I’ve always been a big fan of her books, particularly the Tony Hill series. My absolute favourite of hers is A Place Of Execution. Why, oh why, did I embarrass myself at the signing table by inadvertently jumping the queue? It could have been worse. I could have knocked over Val’s glass of red wine.

Sarah Waters Talks to Andrew Davies at Warwick Words

2009-10-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

My friend, Sarah, was over the moon when she realised it was Andrew Davies who would be interviewing Sarah Waters at The Bridgehouse Theatre as part of the Warwick Words literary event. Andrew Davies adapted Sarah Waters’ first novel, Tipping The Velvet, for BBC television in 2002. He has adapted more classic works of literature including the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth, and more recently in 2008, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.

Andrew began by asking Sarah about her early life. Sarah’s father was an engineer and she explained that as a child she liked to make models with him. She also spent a lot of time reading, despite the fact that theirs wasn’t a ‘bookish’ family. She remembers being influenced by The Silver Sword and The Phantom Tollbooth. Sarah was a huge Dr Who fan and read a lot of Dr Who novelisations and serialisations. She also loved ghost stories and liked to read the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, to which more literary writers like Elizabeth Taylor, Ray Bradbury and Elizabeth Bowen contributed.

Sarah reminded the audience that the accessibility of writers is a recent phenomena and that as a child she didn’t realise that writing was a job. She wanted to be an archaeologist. She also fancied working in the make-up department of a television company, as she loved making masks with lurid scars out of papier mache!

Sarah admitted to being a bit of a swot at school. Her stories were often read out in class, for example. In 1977 she remembers the family installing a stereo music centre complete with microphone into which she recorded her own talking book about killing her mother with an ashtray.

Sarah went from grammar school to study English Literature at university, then went onto to do a PhD in Lesbian/Gay Historical Fiction. She was thus inspired to write her first novel, Tipping The Velvet, as she said she had a very clear vision of gay life in the nineteenth century. She had no ambition to be a writer, even when writing Tipping The Velvet and didn’t have any intention of writing another book, but she got hooked. Sarah feels that Jeanette Winterson paved the way for lesbian fiction becoming more mainstream.

Andrew Davies thought that Tipping The Velvet was such a success because Nan is such a powerful character and we want what she wants. He attributed the success of the TV adaptation to The Sun newspaper, as the drama clashed with the football, so The Sun gave their readers the exact time you could turn over to Tipping The Velvet to catch the rude bits.

Sarah went on to write Affinity, which came out in 1999, followed by Fingersmith. Then she decided to change the era her books were set in to the post-Second World War period of the late 1940s. She says she liked the Brief Encounter-type image of that time.

Sarah’s latest novel, The Little Stranger is set between the years 1947 and 1948 in the county of Warwickshire. She confessed to feeling rather impertinent writing about the county when she knew very little about it. The Little Stranger is based on a fictional large Georgian house, Hundreds House, in the Bishop’s Itchington area. The house is falling apart, as there is very little money and just one servant. Going into ‘Service’ became very unfashionable after the war, as many of the men had gone off to fight and the women had left to do war work.

The Little Stranger is a haunted house novel in a similar vein to Henry James’ novel, The Turn of the Screw, a ghost story, reminiscent of the Victorian gothic tradition, which was made into a psychological horror film, The Others, in 2001 starring Nicole Kidman. Sarah said she thought M R James’ s stories were also inspiring, as they were clever, convincing and didn’t shock for the sake of it.

Both Affinity and Fingersmith are in the gothic tradition, of course, with psychological resonances. Sarah believes all the best gothic novels, like Dracula, were written in Victorian times. Dickens’ work was also an influence on Sarah (Great Expectations is one of her favourite books). There is a nod to Great Expectations in The Little Stranger, as the clock in story has stopped at twenty to nine, just like Miss Haversham’s (the exact time she was jilted).

Andrew Davies said The Little Stranger reminded him of Brideshead Revisited in that the peasant boy gets access to ‘the castle’. It was also reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty, he thought.

Sarah said when researching the post-war period she read the comedies of Angela Thirkle and told us they had a snobbish tone to them. Houses like Hundreds Hall in Sarah’s novel didn’t manage to recover after the war and belonged to a lost era. Sarah admitted she had very little sympathy for families like the Ayres in the book. They had inherited a social function that no longer had any meaning. Therefore, they felt useless and had lost their purpose. The Ayres are trying to cling onto the tattered remains of their status.

Roderick, who has inherited the Hundreds estate from his late father, was wounded badly in the war, but as well as his physical scars, he has deeper psychological wounds. Caroline, his sister, is plain and clever, but with few resources is put at a distinct disadvantage socially and far down the ranking in the marriage stakes. Faraday is an M R James-type narrator. He is a local doctor (a working class boy made good thanks to the grammar school education system) and becomes fascinated and drawn to Hundreds House. For him, Caroline is a way into the house. For Caroline, Faraday is her way out. Through Faraday we learn that before the NHS came into being, doctors like him with their working class roots found it much harder to gain the trust of the wealthier patients, who preferred to use doctors from their own class.

There is a lot of unease in The Little Stranger. All the characters are unhappy and trapped.

Sarah reminded us that this post-war period was a fascinating time in history. A Socialist government promised a better Britain. For some this was an exciting time, but for families like the Ayres, it was a very difficult time.

Housing was a hot issue then. There simply weren’t enough houses and there was a drive to build council houses. It was a time of rapid rebuilding and change. Sarah, herself, was a product of the rise of the working classes in that she was born in a 1950s council house. Grammar schools played an important part in this social change. The upper classes were in decline and some, like Hooper, thought Britain was being handed over to the mob, to philistines.

Sarah said she had always found Josephine Tey’s story, The Franchise Affair (also set in Warwickshire), fascinating. It was based on the infamous trial of Elizabeth Canning who became Betty Kane in the book. “She was the original ‘evil char’,” Andrew Davies joked.

Andrew Davies then invited the audience to ask Sarah questions. The first was about research. Sarah said that she does a few months solid research for her novels at the start, then as the story develops, the research narrows down. She does a lot of reading initially to the point where she’s itching to write. Once she feels she knows enough to make educated guesses, Sarah begins to write. There are gaps which she fills in later, although Sarah said she continues to research as she goes along. She reads novels and diaries of the period. Research, she said, is a fertile process for her.

Sarah was asked about her writing day. She said she was very disciplined about it and that moments of inspiration were rare. Every day she has to make herself write. She writes on week days only and usually stops work at 4pm, then sits and reads. However, in the last few months, when the novel is almost finished, she works at the weekends as well. I was surprised to hear that Sarah aims to write 1,000 words per day. Somehow I thought it would be more. She does several drafts of her novels. She said it was only quite late in the process that she realises what her characters are about. She then goes back and writes the opening - very late in the whole process.

Sarah admitted that she found The Nightwatch her hardest novel to write from the point of view of structure. In the end she decided to tell the story backwards. The novel begins in 1947 and goes back to 1941. What her characters had been through during the war was so dramatic that they hadn’t moved on. They couldn’t imagine a future, so Sarah decided not to give them one and moved backwards.

An audience member then asked which character in her books Sarah was most fond of. She thought for a moment and then said that it had to be Nancy in Tipping The Velvet. She realised that in her later books she’d become preoccupied with the idea of failure and disappointments. In contrast, Nancy has lots of energy. She persists and becomes successful. Sarah said she also liked Kay in The Nightwatch very much. She was also fond of Caroline in the current novel.

Someone then asked, “What’s next?”. She said she had a few ideas and that she was thinking about the period between the two world wars. She said she’d also considered writing a trilogy similar to Philippa Gregory’s Wideacre series.

A lady who worked in a local Waterstone’s then suggested that Sarah’s publisher put stickers on the front of The Little Stranger saying, ‘No Lesbian Love Action’.

The final question of the night was about theme, character and plot. Which came first for Sarah? She replied that theme was always the starting point and that usually she has the whole plot for her novels worked out beforehand. The exception to this was The Nightwatch.

It was good to see a packed house for this event and Sarah seemed to go down a storm.

The Reading Festival of Crime Writing... The Best of the Rest.

2009-10-07T02:23:00.000-07:00

Mark Billingham and Christopher Brookmyre gave a talk on Saturday evening. This was the one I'd been waiting for and Mark was one of the reasons I booked tickets for Reading in the first place. Mark's crime novels, featuring DI Thorne, have won several awards including the coveted Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award. Mark has also been nominated for five CWA daggers.

There’s no doubt that Mark Billingham started out as an actor and stand-up comedian before he became a writer. He had the audience in the palm of his hand from the off. Maybe with the exception of the man in the front row, who Mark picked on, saying he was going to quiz him on FA Cup Winners in the last 20 years. The poor man walked out after ten minutes, obviously not a football fan. Mark opened by talking about the best heckles he’d ever received. Or heard. At first, I felt Chris Brookmyre was in Mark’s shadow, but I needn’t have worried. Chris is a tough Glaswegian with great comic timing and who leaves you in no doubt he can look after himself.

Once Mark had dispensed with the comedy routine, he informed us that there was going to be a TV adaptation of his first two DI Thorne novels, Sleepy Head and Scaredy Cat. The actor, David Morrissey, is to play DI Thorne.

I questioned Mark’s wisdom in reading out emails from readers who have complained about bad language in his books. I was nervous that at least one of them might have been in the audience and would give him the best heckle ever. It could have been embarrassing, but apart from a few titters, the audience was silent. Christopher, who, as well as Mark Billingham, has written for BBC TV, explained that a writer is only allowed fifteen 'fucks' ie. only able to use the word 'fuck' fifteen times in an entire script (not easy for a drama set in Glasgow!). So frustrated was Chris at this, he asked if he could borrow some 'fucks' from a someone who wrote costume dramas and didn't need as many.

Both Mark Billingham and Christopher Brookmyre read from their new novels. Chris was a journalist before becoming a full time novelist. He is the winner of the 2007 Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award, and his novel, All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye won the 2006 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for Comic Fiction. I’m surprised it wasn’t an award for the novel with the longest title.

I enjoyed Chris Brookmyre’s Glaswegian accent. Most of the scene he read was in dialect and about a gang of teenage schoolboys on a bus talking about the girls they’d like to shag. It sounded so authentic, I could have been sitting on a bus to Glasgow Central. The scene evoked a laddish atmosphere with lots of swearing (Mark Billingham readers take note) and lots of mentions of Big Soapy Tits Magazine (made up title??).

I had the honour of sitting next to author, Patrick Lennon, during this talk. He was very charming and struck up a conversation before going on stage to introduce Mark and Chris. Damn, I might just have to buy Patrick’s books, too (scroll down to read more on Patrick - Murder in Mind Panel Event blog entry).

If you get chance, do go and see Mark Billingham and/or Christopher Brookmyre in action. They’re both very entertaining. I was in stitches. In fact, too busy laughing to make many notes.

In contrast, I saw Kate Ellis on Sunday morning and almost walked out. Kate is the author of 13 books in the Wesley Peterson series and two in the Joe Plantagenet series. Kate has been twice nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger, and her novel The Plague Maiden, was nominated for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year in 2005.

Kate came across as being a little ‘too nice’. Her talk wasn’t injected with a great deal of humour or charisma, I have to say. She failed to make her books sound interesting or intriguing enough. I haven’t read any of her novels, and just because she isn’t great at public speaking doesn’t mean they aren’t a good read, but she was there to sell them to me, and she didn’t. Kate said she likes to mix history with the present and writes about archaeology and legends. The present echoes the past in a lot of her books, which she sets mainly in Dartmouth and York. She says she changes the names of places, however, to allow her more freedom. She works with the same cast of characters for each book and they have become like old friends to her. Kate says she writes every day, even when she doesn’t feel like it. I should take note!

In the afternoon I attended another free event, Female Villains in 19th and 20th Century English Crime Fiction. This was more interesting than it sounds. Greta Depledge, a buxom red-head with oodles of personality, is a lecturer at Birkbeck College. She told us how English fiction is littered with badly behaving women. She discussed Wilkie Collins’ work, as well as that of Gladys Mitchell and Kate Summerscale, whose book, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, reached bestseller status recently. Greta raised some interesting points about women’s murderous tendencies tying in with their monthly cycles (I can relate to that!) and about the menopause and the role hormones might play in driving women to the edge of madness (can definitely relate to that!). She also talked about hereditary madness and the old ‘born evil’ debate. She discussed how in the 19th century people believed in the power of physiognomy, the art of supposedly judging character from facial characteristics. A good example of this was when the famous photograph of Myra Hindley hit the headlines in the 1960s. She looked evil and because she was a women, her crimes were considered to be all the more heinous.

For me, the best talk of the Reading Festival of Crime Writing, had to be the final one I attended; Mo Hayder with Sergeant Randall from the South West Police Underwater Search Team. Mo’s first novel, Birdman, was an instant bestseller when published in 2000. Mo wanted to talk about how she researched her novels and Sergeant Randall is one of the experts she’s consulted for her more recent series of books, featuring DI Jack Caffrey, the first of which is Ritual.

Ritual opens with a description of Bushman’s Hole in the middle of the remote Kalahari desert in South Africa. This place exists and at approximately 270 metres deep is the third deepest submerged freshwater cave. Mo told us the true story of how two divers lost their lives there; the second diver, Dave Shaw, died trying to retrieve the body of the first, Deon Dryer, ten years after his death in the cave.

Mo explained the challenges of deep water diving in a very succinct and interesting way (I guess it helps that Mo is also very attractive to look at! Oh yes, and I coveted her luminous pink Dr Marten boots!). She told us that firstly there is the danger of getting trapped or lost. Secondly, divers are breathing deep-dive gas mixes - usually a combination of helium, nitrogen and oxygen known as trimix - at extreme underwater pressure, which can kill you in any number of ways. Then, at depth, oxygen can become toxic, and nitrogen acts like a narcotic - the deeper you go, the stupider you get. It can be compared to drinking on an empty stomach. Apparently, if you don’t breathe slowly and deeply, carbon dioxide can build up in your lungs and you’ll black out. Finally, decompression can cause all the nitrogen and helium that has been forced into your tissues under pressure to fizz into tiny bubbles, causing ‘the bends’, which can result in severe pain, paralysis and death. That is why extreme divers spend hours on ascent, sitting at targeted depths for carefully calculated periods of decompression to allow the gases to flush safely from their bodies. Once divers have reached the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, it can take 12 hours to come back up to the surface again. Imagine the boredom of waiting for hours at each decompression stage!

I found all this fascinating. Then Sergeant Randall told us the tragic story of a young couple who had lost their lives deep water diving in the West Country. It could have been the plot of a novel and certainly tugged at the heart-strings. He also told us that claustrophobia can be a big problem for divers. To test out potential police diver recruits they take them to an ordinary swimming pool in all the diving gear, but with a blacked out helmet, so they can't see a thing. This usually determines those who can cope with the feeling of claustrophobia and those who can't. Underwater search divers usually close their eyes on a search, as this also helps improve their sense of touch. I also learned that when a car goes into water at night, the headlights don't automatically go out. They stay on for as long as the car battery holds out, which can gives clues as to how long the car has been in the water.

I guess one of the things that came over during several of the talks and this one was no exception, was that the experts like Sergeant Randall and Ken Wells (see Riddle of Maggots blog entry) are only to keen to share their expertise with writers, no matter how novice a writer they may be. Novel writing is a steep learning curve in terms of writing technique, but it can be so educational, because you never know where your research is going to take you.