Twelve in March (1)

I read twelve books in March. 

You don’t need me to tell you what’s been going on this month. Silver lining is more time to read. I’ll review my twelve books in two posts rather than one huge one.

Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach

Read on Kindle for book group. Ella and Tobi live in London now but have unanswered questions about their childhood in East Berlin including the family’s failed escape attempt in 1987 and the subsequent disappearance of their little brother – ironically only two years before the wall came down. When Ella finds some of their mother’s old notebooks she goes to Berlin and the Stasi archives to find out what she can. A beautifully written mystery/family story/history.

The Other Mrs Walker by Mary Paulson-Ellis

Margaret returns to Edinburgh in 2011 after her life in London falls apart, and with no other means of support she moves back to her mother’s flat. Her mother, Barbara, has always said that she has no family and she has refused to tell Margaret who her father was.

I was attracted to the premise of this book, being a fan of the TV programme Heir Hunters which features a company who look for relatives of deceased persons who have property/money but who have died intestate and with no known family.

Margaret finds a sort of similar job (to do with what kind of funeral takes place) tracking down families of those who have died alone. Interwoven with that is the story (not in chronological order) of three sisters and their lives in London, from 1929 to 1980, encompassing, among much else, abandonment, madness, paedophilia, thievery and abortion. All this grimness is well evoked and I liked having to keep my wits about me to work out what was happening and when.

BUT <spoiler alert>It did beggar belief that the deceased in Margaret’s first case should turn out (I think) to be a relative.

I wasn’t mad on the writing style. Which tended to be a bit choppy. Like this. And like this. There was lots of repetition too. Lots of repetition, and bracketed comments. (But that was deliberate and not lack of editing. I think.) These stylistic tricks were a distraction away from the story.

It’s such a dreadful thought, dying alone, estranged from or without family, sometimes not being found for days, weeks or even years. I see that MPE’s new book has an heir hunter called Solomon Farthing – clearly the subject is very fertile ground for a novelist.

Things We Choose to Hide by Jane Riddell

‘After ending a long-term relationship, Rachel Grosvenor goes to stay with friends in Florence, where she meets the attractive Sicilian businessman, Tommaso. Despite her friends’ concerns, she marries him weeks later, only to learn at the end of their honeymoon, that he’s been less than honest with her. Gradually she stumbles upon more unpleasant secrets in his life. Set in Italy and India, this is the story of one woman’s experience of deception, jealousy and finding love in unexpected places.’

Read my interview with Jane here.

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear

I’m a big fan of JW’s Maisie Dobbs character – she’s a private investigator/psychologist and this is the twelfth title in the series (currently there are 15). Here she goes to Munich in 1938 on behalf of the British Secret Service.

I’d also recommend following Jacqueline Winspear on Facebook – she’s a Brit living in the States and has a lot to say that is thoughtful and wise.

 One Shot by Lee Child

One of his best, I think, and completely page-turning. A man is apprehended after six people are shot dead; all the evidence including forensics point to his guilt. His sister however doesn’t believe he was capable of such a thing. All the man will say is ‘Get Jack Reacher’ but it turns out they weren’t exactly buddies on their previous acquaintance.

Did you see that Lee Child is going to stop writing the Reacher novels and has handed the job over to his brother? I wonder how that will work out.

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell

I have just discovered children’s writer (for children of all ages) Katherine Rundell and her Rooftoppers was the very last book I read last year.

I loved this one too – a plane crashes in the Amazon jungle and four children are left to survive in it. The different personalities, talents and backgrounds of the three older ones mean they all have something useful to contribute.

What do tarantulas taste like? What does it mean when they find a cigarette box tied to a high branch? And all those stories of lost cities – could they be true?

Things we choose to hide

Today I’m delighted to have on my blog fellow Capital Writer Jane Riddell answering questions about her new novel Things We Choose To Hide.

After ending a long-term relationship, Rachel Grosvenor goes to stay with friends in Florence, where she meets the attractive Sicilian businessman, Tommaso. Despite her friends’ concerns, she marries him weeks later, only to learn at the end of their honeymoon, that he’s been less than honest with her. Gradually she stumbles upon more unpleasant secrets in his life. Set in Italy and India, this is the story of one woman’s experience of deception, jealousy and finding love in unexpected places.

1. There is a fantastic sense of place in the book, Jane. I’m guessing Italy is a country you know well? And Positano in particular?

I love Italy, both the northern lakes and parts further south.  When our son was little, we had several holidays in Positano which is a particularly charming old town on the Amalfi Coast, near Naples.

2. It looks wonderful! The sights and sounds and smells of India and Kashmir jumped off the page too and were a great contrast to coastal Italy. Are these countries you have travelled in?

Yes.  After living in New Zealand and Australia for several years, my friend and I travelled back through SE Asia and India. One of the highlights was Kashmir where we stayed in a houseboat on Lake Dal for four days. The thing I remember most clearly was the fantastic purply light in Srinagar. My memories of other parts of India during that trip are vivid but more mixed. On the one hand there were wonderful buildings and landscapes and a sensual magic everywhere.  On the other, was the brutal poverty confronting us. 

3. What came first – the location(s) or the character of Rachel?

The location.  I did what I’ve never done before when writing books.  One afternoon in Positano, I decided to locate my next novel here and sat on the beach, determined to think of a storyline. This was many years ago, and for a long time this novel was my “go to” one whenever my current work in progress was being read by friends. On many occasions, just as I was easing myself into writing it again, I’d receive feedback on the WIP and return the Italian book to the back burner.  I’ve always been determined to finish it, but the final version is markedly different to the original draft.

 4. Rachel rushes into marriage with Tommaso despite her friends’ misgivings – and she manages to distance her own doubts too. There are other times throughout the book too when she ignores signs that everything is not as it should be.

Do you think the traumas she suffered in her teenage years made her hope, despite the evidence to the contrary, that things would turn out well?

Having seen how close her parents were, Rachel was keen to find someone who could make her equally happy and I think she would have felt like this even if she hadn’t lost them at a relatively young age.  A bigger influence in her choice of partner, however, was her frustration at the limitated relationship with a steady but perhaps rather dull man. After this experience, she was amenable to falling in love with a more exciting and less predictable man.

5. Apart from Tommaso, there is someone else in the book who is keeping a huge, life-changing secret. Is that lack of communication between couples something you like exploring (fictionally!)?

Very much so.  In general, I am intrigued by the communication in romantic relationships: the surface interactions and what underlying tensions and secrets may be bubbling away underneath. 

6. There is a feeling, I think, in the first-person narrative almost as if Rachel knows she is a heroine in a book and so is writing rather dispassionately about the events in her life. Did you ever consider writing her in the third person?

No, I always planned to tell the story in first-person because of the immediacy this can bring to it.  In wanting to guard against having a protagonist who bemoans her situation too often, I may have ended up with one who appears to be dispassionate about what has happened to her.  However, this wasn’t my intention!  One thing I’ve learned about characterisation is that readers will have varied reactions to the degree of emotion displayed by key characters.  What one reader considers to be overly emotional, another will view as being lacking in feeling.

7. Following on from the above, your lovely writing, the character of Rachel and the perfidy of some of the men around her, remind me of Anita Brookner’s novels. Would you go along with that?

Probably not.  I don't regard Rachel as being similar to an Anita Brookner female protagonist who has settled for a relationship where her love is returned with indifference.  The men she becomes involved with do love her and in the case of the one she marries, keep their secrets through fear of losing her.  Not that I’m justifying such behaviour!  In terms of style, there’s a delightful quiescence in Anita Brookner’s writing which she carries off this due to her rich and descriptive language.  I suspect I couldn’t be so successful, but thanks for the comparison!

8. The book covers about ten years in Rachel’s life and that of her friends and family. Did that time span take some working out or flow naturally? In other words are you a plotter or a pantser?

Essentially I’m a plotter but sometimes find that characters take off somewhere without having checked with me that this is okay…  As long as they return to the “main road” I am fine with this.   The time span did cause some headaches from time to time.

9. What are you working on now?

 

I am writing a humorous story about a group of people who come to a retreat which offers original therapies for their unusual problems.  It began as a longish short story, is now at novella length and may end up being a novel as more ideas come to me.

Thank you for answering my questions, Jane.

Things We Choose to Hide is available from Amazon – and here is another gorgeous view of Positano.

Free book!

A Christmas present for you ...

 

In my previous post I told you about Capital Writers’ new anthology Capital Christmas Stories (you can read the beginning of my story here).

And, just for you, our first anthology, Capital Stories, which came out last year, is FREE for five days only, from 20-24 December.

You’re welcome.

Capital Christmas Stories

With Jane Riddell, Anne Stenhouse and Jennifer Young I am part of Capital Writers – four writers who live in Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city.

Edinburgh, renowned for many things over the centuries, is now also famous for its Christmas/New Year festivities (anyone tried this year’s silent disco on George Street …?).

So it seemed appropriate that we produce an anthology of festive stories and here it is, available from Amazon at the very cheery price of 99p:

And here is a review by Joanne Baird of Portobello Book Blog

This is how my story begins:

UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Princes Street. George Street. Moray Place. Castle Street. Hanover Street.

Jessica blinked and looked again at the map she’d just been given in the tourist office.

Edinburgh was over 11,000 miles away, but in front of her were many of the same street names – albeit in a different configuration.

Sophie had only given her vague instructions about how to get to where she lived on Wallace Street, walkable she’d said from the centre of the city. Jessica had left home twenty-four hours ago, the time now a blur of airports and trying to sleep in cramped seats, and her head swam as she scanned the map for the street whose name was yet another reminder that Dunedin, New Zealand, was named after Scotland’s capital.

She took the map over to the assistant behind the desk. He swivelled it round towards him and made a pencil circle.

‘There,’ he said, marking a spot that actually didn’t look too far to walk and then helpfully pointing out the route. ‘Start here, at Stuart Street. About twenty minutes’ walk? Or there’s a taxi rank on the other side of the road.’

Any thought that a walk would clear her head – and postpone the moment of seeing her sister – was dispelled when Jessica saw that Stuart Street was vertical, so vertical she imagined herself having to scale it like a mountaineer while trying to hang on to her wheeled suitcase. Did people really live up there? Edinburgh was hilly but this was in a different league.

So, she wouldn’t walk. But she could still put off arriving at Sophie’s; she’d spotted a café when she got off the shuttle bus from the airport.

Over a long black coffee, which served to wake her brain up a little, she tried to think what she would say to her sister, what platitudes she could come out with this time to comfort her. And she wondered if Sophie would realise that Jessica herself might be in need of comforting.

Would Sophie remember what had happened to Jessica last Christmas? Would she wonder why her hysterical phone call home a month ago, crying that Logan had left her, had resulted in Jessica, uncharacteristically impulsive, saying she’d book a flight and come to New Zealand for Christmas? Just her, not David. No, she wouldn’t wonder; she would take it for granted that her older sister would drop everything – including her husband – so that Sophie wouldn’t be on her own over the festive season.

Now read on …

A writerly week

Didn’t get much writing done … but had a very nice writerly week nonetheless.

The last meeting of the Edinburgh Writers’ Club year was on Monday. The AGM followed by the prize-giving and a social event. I’ve been the membership secretary for rather a long time but I stepped down this year and was touched to be presented with these lovely flowers.

The Club year begins again on 24 September 2018, 7.30. Grosvenor Hilton Hotel, Grosvenor Street and meets every fortnight until the end of May. The 2018-19 programme will be up on the website towards the end of August. You can also find the Club on Facebook.

When I joined the Club I had never been published or even tried to be but I found people to be very friendly and helpful and it was so encouraging to get feedback in the competitions and from other members, and thus to think I might actually send a story out into the big wide publishing world.

Fourteen years on, although of course members have come and gone, the ethos of the Club is still the same – it’s a mix of published and unpublished writers who write in various genres (novels, short stories, poetry, drama, articles) but who come together in their shared love of the written word.

It is no exaggeration to say that joining Edinburgh Writers’ Club changed my life!

One of the encouraging members I met when I joined EWC was Anne Stenhouse. Now she and I and two other writers, Jennifer Young and Jane Riddell, all Edinburgh based, have come together as Capital Writers. The idea is to have a joint platform for promoting our writing. So we have a website, a Facebook page and are on Twitter @reekiewriters. We have produced a book of short stories, one from each of us, Capital Stories, as a taster of our work; a further anthology is in the pipeline for the end of the year.

And on Wednesday this week, Anne, Jane and myself (Jennifer was away) found ourselves on a writers’ panel at the Corstorphine Festival (Corstorphine is an area of Edinburgh), alongside crime writers Wendy H. Jones and Cecilia Peartree, and Ray Bell who was there to talk about his book Literary Corstorphine.

There was (almost) more panel than audience but what a lovely audience they were, really friendly and engaged and asking excellent questions. Capital Writers had a capital time and <hint> are available for similar events …

I have a story in the current issue (No 158) of The People’s Friend Special called What Would Jane Think?, my thirty-third for the PF. I do like the illustration they've had done for it.

Capital Writers in Corstorphine Festival

I am looking forward to being on a panel of writers, including two of my fellow Capital Writers, at the Corstorphine Festival (Edinburgh) on 30 May 2018 at 7pm.

If you are in the vicinity it would be lovely to see you - free, and no need to book.

Four Capital Writers

Three fellow writers and myself, all Edinburgh based, have set up a website together. Appropriately, we call ourselves Capital Writers. 

And to give you a flavour of our writing we have produced an anthology, Capital Stories, one story from each of us.

The stories in the anthology are arranged chronologically and are set in Edinburgh, from Regency times to the present day:

A Close Encounter

Anne Stenhouse

Afternoon Tea with Angelica

Jennifer Young

The Letter

Jane Riddell

An Ordinary Joe

Kate Blackadder

Apart from being writers living in Edinburgh we have something else in common. None of us were born in Scotland’s capital city but we have come to live in it at different times and for different reasons – and we love it.

We have each posted on the website an account of how we came to be here. This is mine, a tale that encompasses the murder of Rizzio, a horde of mice, and a name on a telephone list …

Anne, Jane, Jennifer and I propose to blog about things that interest us, to tell of the delights of Edinburgh including its past and present literary heritage (and promote our books along the way … )

We are looking forward to that and hope that you will travel virtually from wherever you are to join us …

… and we hope that you enjoy Capital Stories (99p).

Interview with Jane Riddell

I’ve just finished reading the very enjoyable Water’s Edge and as I know the author, Jane Riddell, through the Edinburgh Writers’ Club, I was able to ask her some questions about her work.

Congratulations, Jane, on the publication of Water’s Edge.

 Can you pitch the book to us – in 140 characters?

What a challenge!  Okay, here goes:

Set in Switzerland, Water’s Edge is a contemporary drama where secrets, guilt and regret turn a happy family reunion into a stormy one.  

Water’s Edge is published by ThornBerry Publishing. How has the publishing experience been for you?

The most positive thing about being published is the boost in self-esteem and self-belief.  For years, every time I described myself as a writer, I felt like a fraud.  This no longer happens.  The first few days after I heard that ThornBerry wanted to publish my book, I wandered around with a cosy little glow inside me.  It was lovely.

What has been a surprise is the amount of effort I have to make in order to promote my book. I was naïve enough to think that once I was published, the work was done and the royalties would roll in.  In fact, as my publisher told me, the hardest part today is not getting published, it’s selling your books.  Consequently much of my working time is now spent on promoting/marketing Water’s Edge, involving learning another set of skills.  I liken it to starting a new job with no induction, training, supervision or guarantee of a salary.  Over the last year or so, I’ve learned much about how to promote myself, and am now more realistic.  It does involve time and uncertain outcomes, but there’s a pleasant side to it, for example, at the moment I am contacting people on Linkedin to suggest we interview each other or review each other’s books.  This mean I’m getting to know writers from a range of English-speaking countries, all interested in promoting their work.

The book is set in Switzerland – is that somewhere you know well?

 

I’ve had a few holidays in Switzerland, mainly to ski.  As a child, on my first family holiday abroad, we drove to Austria, stopping off in Brunnen, Switzerland for the night.  We stayed in the wonderful old Waldstätterhof Hotel, (featured in Water’s Edge, but not Madalena’s hotel).  Amongst other things, I loved the fact that you entered the hotel to hear a pianist in the drawing room.  It wouldn’t surprise me if some day I write a book based on the Waldstätterhof – it lingers in my memory.

Being an enthusiastic traveller, I like to set my novels in other countries.  This allows me to spend ‘head’ time in a sunny landscape, when those around me are enduring yet another blustery, wet Edinburgh afternoon.  After I finished the first drafts of Chergui’s Child, based in the south of France, I thought about having an alpine setting for my next novel.  As I love mountain and lake locations, Switzerland came to mind.  Shortly after, I spent four days in Brunnen.  It was only when I arrived there that I decided to make it the setting for Water’s Edge.  It still intrigues me why I didn’t make the connection earlier!

 Did any real-life people inspire your characters?

 

A few aspects of Vienne’s character are based on me, mainly her health worries, the way she is slow to take reassurance she isn’t ill.  But other than that, not in this novel.

Madalena, Portia, Vienne and Annie each have a ‘voice’ – did that take a lot of advance planning?

It did, yes.  I was aware of the importance of varying the voices, so I spent time thinking about speech patterns, favourite phrases, and the attitudes I wanted to convey.  This is quite hard to do – although you need to incorporate pet words, as with so many aspects of writing, it’s about balance – too many, and it becomes irritating/self-conscious writing, too few, and they’re not enough to depict the character.

 Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac is mentioned in your book several times. Did you feel that it was the elephant in the room, so to speak – that the Swiss lake-side setting of Water’s Edge would inevitably bring Hotel du Lac to the reader’s mind?

No, I didn’t, but I think that my novel was probably inspired by Hotel du Lac, albeit subconsciously. When writing the first draft of Water’s Edge, I didn’t know that the hotel used in the film version is actually on Lake Luzern.  (In the book, the protagonist, Edith Hope, is exiled to a hotel on Lake Geneva.) 

 Which do you prefer – the writing or the editing process?

 

Probably the writing process, especially when ideas are flooding my mind and words haemorrhage out – this happened with the initial draft of Water’s Edge.  Editing is pure slog, although there’s the pleasure of re-reading a piece of text and seeing how it has strengthened.  I’m convinced enough of the value of  a comprehensive edit to have written a small editing guide (Words’Worth: a fiction writer’s guide to serious editing, also published by ThornBerry), but admit to finding the process time-consuming, tedious and hard work.  At least you can edit when you’re not feeling particularly creative/inspired, and know that your book is progressing.

What are you writing now?

I am completing a rewrite of Chergui’s Child.  This tells the story of Olivia who inherits a fortune after her aunt dies, at the same time learning something significant about her past which propels her on a life changing journey.   It should be finished by Easter. 

Where can we buy Water’s Edge, and where can we find your website/blog?

Water’s Edge can be purchased from Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Waters-Edge-Jane-Riddell/dp/1909734039

http://www.amazon.com/Waters-Edge-Jane-Riddell/dp/1909734039

And from Barnes and Noble in paperback:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waters-edge-jane-riddell/1117376643?ean=9781909734036

My author’s website: http/www.quietfiction.com  

My editing website: http://www.choicewordsediting.co.uk

My blogs:  http://wwwbloggercom-janelilly.blogspot.co.uk/         and

http://lillias-bakhtin.blogspot.co.uk/

 Thank you for answering my questions, Jane. Look forward to your next novel.