A bit of a spree

The annual conference of the Scottish Association of Writers was held 18-20 March, at the Westerwood Hotel, near Cumbernauld, a place that may not strike you as the most glamorous destination for the weekend but the hotel is out of the town in a hollow surrounded by hills and it was hard to believe that the M8 (I think – road numbers not my strong point) was only a few hundred yards away. The food was scrumptious and the young staff efficient and friendly.

‘But what about the “Writers” bit?” I hear you cry. “You didn’t go there just to scoff apple crumble tart with vanilla custard, did you?”

No, but that crisply pastried, lightly cinammoned confection was certainly a bonus. Yum.

Ten members of Edinburgh Writers Club including our Honorary President Alanna Knight attended, got nine places in the competitions and won the quiz on Friday night.

I had been asked to judge the Women’s Short Story Competition. The thirty-eight entries were wide-ranging in their topics – abseiling, dancing bears, suffragettes, selkies, a yellow car, DNA tests, Christmas angels, the bedroom tax and the Bell Rock Lighthouse to name but a few.

The winning story was full of excellent fishy puns while still being a very touching story. Magazine editors (and competition judges) always say they don’t see enough humorous stories so I do hope Chipping Away will be submitted and accepted and in print before long.

On Saturday afternoon I gave a workshop on structuring a story for women’s magazines (if this is something you are interested in there are a few spaces left in The People’s Friend story-writing workshop in Dundee 29 March:

http://www.thepeoplesfriend.co.uk/fiction/fiction-editors-blog/2016/february/16/story-writing-workshop/

There was a bookstall and I took along some copies of of my recently published story collection ... may have mentioned it before ...

I attended two excellent workshops myself – one by crime writer Caro Ramsay called From Pen to Publisher and Beyond, and Putting the Fiction into Face and the Fact into Fiction by journalist/non-fiction writer turned crime novelist Douglas Skelton. If you get the chance to hear those writers talking about anything I recommend you take it. And read their books of course ...

The crime theme continued on Monday night back home when Russel MacLean came to talk to Edinburgh Writers’ Club and to adjudicate our crime-writing competition. His enthusiasm for and knowledge of the genre was brilliant and we came away with writing tips (he uses a five-act structure) as well as a list of other crime writers to look out for.

And on Tuesday … more crime. The launch in Blackwell’s of Michael J Malone’s book Bad Samaritan (isn’t that a great title?). An advance review said the book ‘Hits you like an express train.’ I look forward to being hit.

Eight in February

I read eight books in February, or at least I finished eight books.

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

The first of the Hundred Years Trilogy. A fascinating concept – Jane Smiley aims over three books to cover a hundred years of American history told through the story of one family; one chapter covers a year. Not only that – she’s given herself another challenge: the first chapter of the first book covers 1920, so the last chapter of the whole trilogy (which has been published) will be set in 2020. So of course she had to invent history for the last five or six years. I shall be interested to find out what she predicted especially with the unpredictable US election coming along this year.

She does something else I haven’t seen before – some of the early chapters in Some Luck are seen through the eyes of a baby/small child, very convincingly. A page turner.

Chinese Characters by Sarah Lloyd

This is the one I finished in February but started some time ago; I like having a non-fiction book on the go I can read bits of between novels. I’m a little obsessed with China since I visited it in 2011 (see this blog post) and read a lot about it. Sarah Lloyd taught herself Chinese and travelled on her own in the country in the 1980s (which was pretty brave as tourists were rare then) in a bid to understand the way of life. As one reviewer said ‘Hers is neither the China of the revolutionary poster nor of the tourist snaps.’

The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jeffries

‘The Tea Planter's Wife is a story of guilt, betrayal and untold secrets vividly and entrancingly set in colonial era Ceylon’ says the blurb.

A mega-best-seller. Didn’t take to it myself. Right from the start unlikely scenarios occur for the sake of the plot. Gwen and Laurence get married in England but he goes back to Ceylon by himself. She’s going to wait to go out with her cousin Frances – which seems odd anyway. Then at the last minute Frances calls off her (long-planned and expensive) journey because she’s got a routine appointment with her solicitor … so Gwen has to travel on her own.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

Her latest, read for book group, but would have read it anyway. Vintage fly-on-the-wall Tyler – the book group discussion sounded as if we were talking about a real family, the Whitshank family in this case and their lives spooling backwards and forwards across three generations.

So then I felt inclined to re/read some more AT:

If Morning Ever Comes

Ben Joe Hawkes (fiction’s loveliest brother) has six sisters and he worries about them now that he’s left home for university. He can’t quite trust his mother and his paternal ‘Gram’ to look after the household so one weekend he turns up unexpectedly to see them all. A domestic setting but very far from being cosy.

Earthly Possessions

Blackly funny – Charlotte Emory is out of love with her husband and tired of her mundane life. But her life is about to change in a dramatic way – in the bank a young robber takes her hostage and they head for Florida in a stolen car. As the Observer reviewed: ‘A skilful novel by a writer in full flight from the obvious.’

Family Matters by Gillian Villiers

‘When Hope Calvert's best friend and business partner runs away with most of their money, she has no choice but to close their shop and return to Scotland. The only work she can find is as a carer, which is challenging, but surprisingly fun, and she's pleased to find she's getting more involved in village life. She particularly wonders if this extends to Robbie Mackenzie, the handsome farmer's son, but first she must sort out some long-hidden family secrets.’ Beautiful Scottish rural setting; a good read.

The Whitehall Mandarin by Edward Wilson

‘British intelligence has a deep penetration mole in the KGB. When that mole reports that a Soviet spy ring in London is no longer sending intelligence to Moscow, MI6 are worried. Catesby is sent on a mole hunt that leads him through the seamy sex scandals of 1960s London to the jungles of Vietnam.’

I like a good spy story – the vicarious thrills of the chase. Was a little disappointed in this much-hyped one though; in places it read more like non-fiction.

Publication day!

Publishing a story collection has been a series of steep learning curves – as soon as I climbed over one, another loomed up. But here we are, at least for the Kindle edition (print version coming soon) – it's out there, officially published today.

And, just like having a baby, I've already forgotten the bad bits and and am quite prepared to do it all again ...

The stories first appeared in The People's Friend, Woman's Weekly, and Woman's Day (an Australian magazine).

And talking of the The People's Friend – I am guest author at their imminent award-winning story-writing workshops. The Glasgow and York dates are sold out but there are some spaces left in Dundee on 29 March, see further details on Fiction Editor Shirley Blair's blog

Maybe I'll see you there?

Three's a Crowd

I am pleased to say that I have brought out a collection of my short stories (previously published in The People's Friend, Woman's Weekly and Woman's Day).

The Kindle edition will be published on 27 February 2016 and it is available for pre-order now:

myBook.to/B01BP9UDRY

A paperback edition will follow in March.

Extract from Hide-and-Seek for Astronauts, published in Woman's Weekly:

Last year, Julie hired a fire engine.

The year before, she had an igloo built in the garden – in June. The year before that she took ten four-year-olds on a steam train.

Now she had begun to talk about Ben’s next birthday party although he wouldn’t be seven for another two months. He was obsessed with space so I asked if she’d booked a supersonic trip around the galaxy with a stop for moon burgers.

‘Very funny. Haven’t finalised the details yet. Just keep the eighteenth free.’

When Julie and I were kids, our birthday parties were a few friends round to play in the garden and a home-made cake with candles half-burnt from their previous outing. I don’t remember either of us ever getting new candles, but we didn’t care.

 ‘It’s different now, Karen.’ Julie was dismissive when I reminded her. ‘Anyway, you don’t have children.’

I may not have children of my own but as an infant teacher I see more than enough of them. Julie was right. It is different now. We thought that life didn’t get any better than playing hide-and-seek and looking forward to a big piece of Gran’s jammy sponge. But that all came free, more or less – now birthday parties seemed to be about spending money and not just keeping up with the Joneses but leap-frogging over them.

Julie had become an expert leap-frogger, and spending money was one of her favourite occupations. As was trying to persuade me to spend my hard-earned.

‘Why don’t we go shopping for some new clothes for you?’ she asked me. We were sitting having a Saturday morning cappuccino. It was just ten o’clock but she was carrying several shiny carrier bags from one of the designer shops in the precinct.

‘What for? They’ll just get poster paint and sticky finger marks all over them.’

‘You don’t teach all the time. Matthew suggested … ’

‘Matthew suggested what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Julie.’ I gave her the look I give P1 when they’re particularly fractious and she capitulated.

‘We were watching one of those makeover programmes and he said why didn’t I put you forward?’

‘As if! I’m not going to parade in my underwear, or worse, for all the world to see. What would Gran have said?’

What Gran would have said to such an event was beyond our imagination, and we dissolved into giggles.

‘I can’t see you doing it,’ Julie conceded. ‘But you could do with a new look.’

I wasn’t offended. Julie meant well and we had this conversation, or variations on it, regularly.

‘I really can’t be bothered,’ I said. ‘You do the glam bit for both of us.’

To be fair, I knew that Julie would be happy to pass her cast-offs on to me and I would have been happy to take them. It was unfortunate that I, the older sister whose hand-me-downs Julie was forced to wear as a child, was three inches shorter than her and a completely different shape.

Julie was still thinking about Gran.

‘We hardly had any clothes that weren’t second-hand or home-made,’ she went on. ‘Remember the paper pattern she kept making those pinafore dresses from? The same one she’d used for our mum. And those scratchy jumpers?’ She pulled a face.

I didn’t tell her that I still had the moss green chunky polo neck Gran knitted for me when I was fourteen, and that I wore it on winter nights when I got in from school.

 ‘She tried to teach us to sew and knit but that was a lost cause.’ Julie finished her coffee and patted her red lips with a napkin. ‘Sure you don’t want me to come shopping with you?’

I was sure.

But when I was getting ready for bed, Matthew’s suggestion came back to me. I looked at the nubbly tweed skirt I’d just flung on the chair. I’d had it for five years but it was still perfectly serviceable. The top I was taking off was in a shade of blue I didn’t particularly like but it had been on a half-price rail.

I didn’t envy Julie her designer lifestyle. Fun for a day maybe but what a palaver. Sometimes I wondered what Gran, with her one ancient lipstick and her three-times-a-year perm, would think of Julie’s manicures and facials and whatnots, not to mention her built-in wardrobes and her forests of shoe-trees.

The nubbly skirt went on again on Monday with a top, mustard this time, from the same sale rail. Even I could see that the colour didn’t suit me; the face that stared back at me looked to be the last stages of yellow fever.

Maybe I should make more of an effort.

Everything seemed to go wrong that morning. When I was gulping down some cereal my cat, Scatty, jumped on the table and knocked over the milk carton. The traffic, even in the bus lane, was worse than usual. P1 was playing up and my fiercest looks did nothing to quell them.

And when I had a break in the staff room at lunch-time there came a hysterical call on my mobile from Julie saying she was at the school gate and did I have a minute.

I hurried outside.

now read on ..... 

myBook.to/B01BP9UDRY

 

Five in January

I read five books in January.

Bit of a lazy old nostalgia fest this month.

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

I loved Elizabeth Goudge when I was younger and reread her books many times. About three years ago I reread my favourites, the Damerosehay trilogy The Bird in the Tree, The Herb of Grace and The Heart of the Family, and they stood the test of time for me. This one did too, mostly – I was eager to reach the bits I remembered: the wonderful house inherited by the main character, Mary; the description of the ‘little things’; and the evocation of a countryside and way of life that, in the 1930s, was being mourned as slipping into the past. But I’m not sure that it stands a general test of time – would it appeal to many folk reading it now for the first time? Hmm. I'd like to think so though.

The Castle on the Hill by Elizabeth Goudge

Miss Brown – we’re told her first name is Dolores but she’s never thus referred to thereafter – has to leave her seaside home which she’s run as a boarding house as it’s been taken over by the military in the early days of WW2. By a circuitous chain of events she ends up housekeeping in a castle owned by an author who lives there with his two nephews. As before, I still liked my favourite bits. But what my younger self didn’t picked up on was this: Miss Brown aged forty-four is considered well past her sell-by date and Mrs Heather, in her seventies – well, it’s a miracle she’s still alive. 

Maybe it's a mistake to go back to reread old favourites – what do you think? 

And here's another one.

Pollyanna Grows Up by Eleanor H. Porter

I read this as a child, probably from school library. Couldn’t resist this second-hand copy. It has not stood the test of time from a literary point of view – far-fetched, plot holes a mile wide – but I enjoyed it anyway for old times' sake and for the reminder of Pollyanna’s in/famous Glad Game (looking for the silver lining in every cloud). Even though I’m not likely to play it all the time …

E-books are handy but you don’t get this with them, a reminder of a previous owner – or lovely endpapers.

Or this, which was tucked inside – perhaps from a different owner. I like her priorities.

Caddy’s World by Hilary McKay

Love these (children’s) books about the bohemian Casson family and was thrilled to see the author at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, where I bought this one. It’s the sixth to be published (following Saffy’s Angel, Indigo’s Star, Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After and Forever Rose) but it’s not chronological – it goes back to when the youngest, Rose, was born early and had to be in hospital for several weeks. A treat, as usual.

And for something completely different –

The Lewis Man by Peter May

An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. A man with no memory.

I really enjoyed Entry Island and don’t know why I haven’t read more PM since. This was terrific, although I was cross with myself to realise halfway through that it was the second in the trilogy – look forward to catching up with the characters in the first and third soon.

What's in a (storm) name?

I am somewhat obsessed by names so I can’t believe I’ve written almost 90 blog posts without discussing them.

I love choosing my characters' names for stories. I wonder about how some surnames came about. I always ask my teacher friends what children in their class are called. Etc. The subject could have a blog all of its own.

But as the wind howls around the house, I'll start with storm names.

 

From November 2015 storms in the UK began to be christened, starting with a girl’s name, Abigail. Abigail sounds far too nice and gentle to be a storm.

November had three storms – Abigail was followed by Barney and Clodagh. They’re from the Irish branch of the family maybe.

There were three in December – Desmond, Eva and Frank.

Doesn't Desmond have a barrow in the market place? What’s he doing thundering and blowing? Hasn't he got work to do?

Eva’s Abigail’s little sister – desperate to keep up.

I won’t forget Frank because I was in a plane that couldn’t land first time round because of him. Stupid boy.

Thankfully, only Gertrude showed up in January. In school stories, Gertrude was always the horrid girl – the sneak thief, the tale-teller, the one who’d trip you up in the corridor. I’m not surprised she grew up to cause havoc in the skies.

Bracing ourselves here in Scotland for Henry on 1 February. A king-sized storm is on its way by all accounts.

Off to hide under the bed.

Seven in December

I read seven books in December.

Shall we Dance? by Maggie Alderson

There’s always something very glam about Maggie Alderson’s novels and this one is no exception. She is a fashion journalist after all. Here, the main character, Loulou, has a vintage clothes shop in Primrose Hill and is the sort of person who wears high-heeled wellingtons to music festivals. 

Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie

I read every Agatha Christie, most more than once, when I was young (those long winter nights on the farm … ). When our parents downsized, my sister and I divided the collection between us.

I remembered The Secret Adversary as one of my favourites, very exciting – it’s the first Tommy and Tuppence story. I was looking forward to seeing the recent TV adaptation but was sorely disappointed. Why move it to the 1950s? Why rewrite the story to such an extent? Why make Tommy such a buffoon?

As my husband had never read any Agatha Christie (I know – weird) I pressed The Secret Adversary and N or M? on him (these had fallen to me in the share-out) and he liked them so much that he asked for more.

So I bought him two more Tommy and Tuppences, Partners in Crime and By the Pricking of my Thumbs, 1970s Fontana editions.

He liked those too and I reread PiC myself when he finished it. It’s a book of short stories, some very far-fetched but, hey, this is the queen of crime. She gets away with it as far as I’m concerned. Unlike the TV producers.

The Road to Little Dribbling More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Bill travels around Britain (well, England mostly, apart from North Berwick, Ullapool and Cape Wrath), describing his journeys in his witty, informative and often caustic way.

The Lost Woman by Gilly Stewart

Read on Kindle. Set in the Scottish Highlands. Catherine McDonald is trying to turn her family’s home into a hotel but a missing hill-walker brings unwanted attention to the area and some of her family are less than enthusiastic about her plans. Good read, with a great sense of place – as usual from this writer.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson

Bought in second-hand bookshop, published in 2003. I could not agree with the title more and had every hope that this American author and I would be kindred spirits. Alas no.

A whole chapter was devoted to a true crime book about murder by baseball bat. After reading it she apparently got anxious about her young son playing baseball, and about the possibilities of other sporting paraphernalia being used as weapons. I could win worrying competitions but I’ll skip that one.

I knew we weren’t on the same planet reading-wise though when she was indifferent to /dismissive of two of my very favourite books.

Housekeeping, subsequent Pulitzer prize-winner Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, was ditched after a few pages as ‘too slow’.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson was newly published when Sara Nelson read it. She found it ‘pretty close to cliché’ and suspected it would be ‘ignored or even trashed’ by other reviewers. Well, perhaps it’s mean of me to, ahem, crow, but with the benefit of hindsight I know that Crow Lake got brilliant critical reviews, became a best-seller and a beloved book for many people, and that it won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the McKitterick Prize among other accolades.

But each to their own … in the lists at the back of the book there are a few titles I hadn’t heard of that I'll look out for. Maybe we might even agree over some of them.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Read on Kindle. I bought this because I read that it was one of Anne Tyler’s top ten books. It’s contemporary, set in a small town in Colorado, and follows various characters and how they are linked to each other.

I appreciated it more than liked it, I think. The characters stayed in my mind but I found the almost reportage style of writing distancing.

People We Love by Jenny Harper

This is the fourth title in Jenny Harper’s very successful Heartland Series of ‘strong women under pressure’, set in a fictional town in East Lothian, Scotland. Here, Artist Lexie is back in Hailesbank, living with her parents, as they all try to come to terms with her brother’s fatal accident. ‘An engaging and delightful read,’ as Alexander McCall Smith says on the cover.

I’m very pleased to have been interviewed by Jenny Harper about writing serials, and about The Ferryboat (my People’s Friend serial now available as a large-print library book which I might possibly have mentioned before):

http://jennyharperauthor.co.uk/kate-blackadder-celebrates-serial-success/

@harper_jenny