Words with JAM

Sticky, but not in a bad way

Frank Quitely an exclusive interview with the world famous comic book artist

Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, in conversation with Gillian Hamer MORE Exclusive Content for Print Subscribers 60 Seconds with

screenwriter Jane Goldman, and author of The Donor, Helen FitzGerald WWJ Short Story Competition 2011 - The Results Housmans’ Bookshop on the future of radical bookselling Oh Blogger, there’s a Flasher in my Tweets

by Dan Holloway

Storytelling: profound and ancient art, or modern digital craft? with Anne Stormont

April | May 2012

www.wordswithjam.co.uk

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass is back with Kathryn Price

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http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php 2 | Random Stuff

Contents PRINT ISSUE EXCLUSIVES 30

Bane by JW Hicks. The crazy virus has no remedy, save isolation. Sequestered in the valley the family live safe, but with no visitors, no mail and the airwaves dead, how can they tell when it is safe to venture outside? One day a pedlar

The Team

calls... with news.

28

Centrefold Poster

Random stuff 5

Editor’s Desk

6

Book V Television - Michael Morpurgo, author of The War Horse, in conversation with Gillian Hamer

10

Is Necessity the Mother of Invention by Derek Duggan

11

Storytelling: profound and ancient art, or modern digital craft by Anne Stormont

12

Frank Quitely - Danny Gillian interviews one of the Graphic Novel World’s biggest illustrators

15

We’ve gone Digital Baby - by Andrew Ramsay

16

60 Second Interviews with screenwriter Jane Goldman, and author of The Donor Helen FitzGerald

18

Words Mixed Up by Susan Jones

20

Housman’s Bookshop and the future of radical bookselling - an interview with Catriona Troth

22

The Oldest Profession - procrastinating with Perry Iles

25

Oh Blogger, There’s a Flasher in my Tweets by Dan Holloway

Competitions 32

Words with JAM Second Annual Short Story Competition 2011- the RESULTS!

39

Comp Corner - be in with a chance to win a copy of Michael Morpurgo’s Shadow

Quite Short Stories and Poetry 24

Flash 500 - the winning entries of both the humour verse and Flash 500 competitions from the fourth quarter of 2011

39

Poetry by Abigail Wyatt

30

EXCLUSIVE PRINT ISSUE CONTENT Bane by JW Hicks

Pencilbox 26

Carver’s Couch - exploring the psychological aspect of writing with

consultant clinical psychologist Sue Carver

27

Question Corner - Lorraine Mace answers your questions on writing

40

The Agent’s View with Andrew Lownie and Hannah Westland

42

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass - with Kathryn Price

44

Are you Talking to Me? Looking at voice with Sarah Bower

45

Scripts: Storypropelling - by Ola Zaltin

47

Where Do I Belong? The WWJ Guide to Writers’ Organisations by Catriona Troth

50

Independent But Not Alone: Meet the Alliance of Independent Authors

Some other stuff 51

What We Think of Some Books

52

Guess the Book

53

Crossword

54

Dear Ed - Letters of the satirical variety

54

The Rumour Mill - sorting the bags of truth from the bags of shite

55

Horoscopes - by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith

Sarah Bower is the author of two historical novels, THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD and THE BOOK OF LOVE (published as SINS OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA in the US). She has also published short stories in QWF, The Yellow Room, and Spiked among others. She has a creative writing MA from the University of East Anglia where she now teaches. She also teaches creative writing for the Open University. Sarah was born in Yorkshire and now lives in Suffolk.

Cli nical psychologist Sue Carver is serving a long apprenticeship in novelwriting. Her aphorism is: it takes as long as it takes. Her first novel is set in the world of psychological therapy and her second takes her far out of her comfort zone. She has published poetry under her maiden surname: Leppard, but she wasn’t made in Sheffield and, although she has wide tastes in music, she much prefers Raymond to Def. Helen Corner founder of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and co-author of Write a Blockbuster.

Derek Duggan is a graduate of The Samuel Beckett Centre for Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Spain with his wife and children and is not a tobogganist.

Danny Gillan’s award-winning Will You Love Me Tomorrow was described as one of the best debut novels of 2008. Now, for entirely cash related reasons, Danny’s novel Scratch is available for Kindle readers (‘users’ sounds a bit druggy). It’s so funny it’s made people accidentally wee, apparently. Really, actually wee in their pants. True story..www.dannygillan.co.uk Gillian Hamer is a full time company director and part time novelist. She divides her time between the industrial Midlands and the wilds of Anglesey, where she spends far too much time dreaming about becoming the next Agatha Christie. http://gillian.wordpress.com/ Dan Holloway’s thriller The Company of Fellows was voted Blackwell’s “favourite Oxford novel” and was one of their “best books of 2011”. He runs the spoken word event The New Libertines and is a regular performer across the UK, winning Literary Death Match in 2010, and was listed as one of social media bible mashable’s top 100 writers on twitter.

Perry Iles is an old man from Scotland. If he was a dwarf, he’d be grumpy. He lives in a state of semi-permanent apoplectic biliousness, and hates children, puppies, kittens, and periods of unseemly emotion such as Christmas. He pours out vinegary invective via a small writing machine, and thinks it’s a bit like throwing liver at the wall. He tells anyone who’ll listen that this gives him a modicum of gratification.

Andrew Lownie is a member of the Association of Authors’ Agents and Society of Authors and was until recently the literary agent to the international writers’ organisation PEN. In 1998 he founded The Biographers Club, a monthly dining society for biographers and those involved in promoting biography, and The Biographers’ Club Prize which supports first-time biographers.

Lorraine Mace is a columnist with Writing Magazine and co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam, of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, has had her work published in five countries. Winner of the Petra Kenney International Poetry Award (comic verse category), she writes fiction for the women’s magazine market and is a writing competition judge. www.lorrainemace.com JJ Marsh - writer, teacher, newt. www.jjmarsh.wordpress.com Matt Shaw - author, cartoonist, photographer, hermit, Billy-No-Mates. www. mattshawpublications.co.uk Anne Stormont - as well as being a writer, is a wife, mother and teacher. She is also a hopeless romantic, who likes happy endings.

Kat Troth grew up in two countries, uses two names, and has had two different careers. One career she has spent writing technical reports for a non-technical audience. In the other, she attempts to write fiction. She tries always to remember who she is at any one time, but usually finds she has at least two opinions about everything.

Ola Zaltin is a Swedish screenwriter working out of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written for both the big screen and the small, including episodes for the Swedish Wallander series. Together with Susanne O’Leary he is the co-author of the novel Virtual Strangers, (available as eBook).

Contents | 3

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Editor’s Desk

The Ed

JD Smith lives and works in the English Lake District. She uses her publishing house Quinn Publications as a source of procrastination to avoid actually writing.

Excited? We are positively squealing with delight here at WWJ Towers. Firstly, we had a massive response to our second annual Short Story Competition 2011 (yes, yes, it was 2011, the closing date was just a little delayed due to our announcing the competition later than planned and we wanted to let all you good folk have a chance of entering post Christmas mania). The results of the competition can be found further on, and I promise you’re in for a treat with three worthy winners to feast your literary eyes on.

And speaking of short stories, since our February issue hit your inboxes, we announced that we are now in a position to pay a token amount of £10 per story and £4 per poem for previously unpublished material printed in Words with JAM. Please make sure when you’re submitting that you include some kind of covering message on your email. The amount of random, unaddressed documents to hit my inbox is frightening, and if I don’t know what they’re for I’ll likely delete them.

So what else do we have for you? Interviews with comic books artist Frank Quitely, author of The War Horse Michael Morpurgo, screenwriter and fab-hair-lady Jane Goldman (spelled just like mine - correctly), author of The Donor Helen FitzGerald, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors Orna Ross, and Housman’s ‘radical’ Bookshop.

But we’re not all about interviews here, even though we’re bloody good at them. No, we have much, much more in store for you: Dan talks about flashing, Derek gets inventive, Anne goes mythical and Andrew digital, whilst Perry looks at the oldest of professions … Then there’s Flash 500 winners, poetry from Abigail Wyatt, another exclusive poster and more literary wonder for print only subscribers. Carver’s Couch takes a different look at writing what you know, Cornerstones’ Mini Masterclass is back with Kathryn Price in the driving seat.

The Agents’ View gets honest with answering your questions, Sarah looks at voice, Ola storypropelling, Lorraine answering one reader’s heartbreaking plea, and our very own Library Cat compiles the WWJ list of writers’ organisations.

Plus we have a guilty pleasure for each and every one of you with the usual Crossword, Dear Ed, Rumour Mill and Horoscopes. And we get opinionated with some books.

As I write this note and send the magazine off to the proofreaders (phew), I will tomorrow be heading off to the Aye Write Book Festival. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there.

Enjoy!

My Cornerstones report, by Jane Hicks Rats was my first finished novel, collecting several name changes, a fair few rewrites, plus a stack of rejection letters on the way. It dwells in my Old Novels Folder, but I have a soft spot for it and bring it to the light of day every now and then.

When the one-paragraph competition popped up in WWJ I had to enter dear old Rats.

Imagine my surprise when a whole page was requested; imagine my shock when I read the fantastic short listed entries, found Rats at the tail end and learned it was the winner!

A strange thing shock – breathless disbelief, followed by zouped-up speeding heartbeats resulting in a stuttering call for an iPad using husband to come hear something absolutely a-maz-ing.

It’s not for a while that it dawns on me that now I have to send the whole book plus synopsis to a knowledgeable reader who will examine the battered babe that others have dismissed.

But off it goes... and I wait.

An email appears, catching me on the hop (I’ve put the prize out of mind, concentrating on my current WIP). It’s here – Cornerstones Report, produced by my reader, Sandra.

Printed out it looks serious, many pages, many words. I’ll need to take it slowly, I don’t want to miss anything. I’m nervous. What if it’s rubbish? Good start, disappointing middle, poor end? Oh why did I enter the competition in the first place?

I start reading.

And, you know, it’s a fabulous report. No, not everything is perfect and sure there’re weaknesses, but also strengths. Strengths I can build on. I’ve written a huge amount since I first finished Rats, written and learned and I hope, grown in skill. I’m inspired. Best of all, as I read my reader’s conclusion I see two novels springing out of Rats. The first part extended, made fuller and richer, and the (obvious to me now) rather truncated second part coming into its own as a fully fledged sequel.

What now? Well I’m energised, heartened and have a slew of wonderful ideas buzzing in my brain. What more can any writer want? And yes, I’m confident that a new and stronger Rats will emerge. So thank you WWJ for staging the competition, and thank you Cornerstones for igniting me with such a constructive, morale-boosting report.

Copyright © 2012 Quinn Publications The contributors assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. All Rights reserved.

All opinions expressed in Words with JAM are the sole opinion of the contributor and not that of Quinn Publications or Words with JAM as a whole.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the individual contributor and/or Quinn Publications, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Distributed from the UK. Not to be resold.

Editor: JD Smith editor@quinnpublications.co.uk Deputy Editors: Lorraine Mace lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk Danny Gillan danny@quinnpublications.co.uk Library and Podcast enquiries: Catriona Troth kat@wordswithjam.co.uk 60 Second Interview enquiries: JJ Marsh jill@wordswithjam.co.uk Book V Film Interview enquiries: Gillian Hamer gill@wordswithjam.co.uk

Random Stuff | 5

Book v Television:

A Conversation with Michael Morpurgo

by Gillian Hamer

Not ever having read a great deal of children’s fiction, Michael Morpurgo was not a writer I was familiar with until the recent explosive success of his novel, War Horse, both on stage and big screen. But upon researching his background, I’ve found myself drawn to his passion for his work and his staggering literary credentials.

It was during his first job as a primary school teacher, in his late twenties, that Michael discovered his talent for storytelling. Since then, he has gone on to become famous not only as an author, predominantly in children’s fiction, but also a poet, playwright and librettist. He was the third Children’s Laureate and has written in excess of 120 novels so far.

But it is his novel, War Horse – runner-up for the Whitbread Book Award in 1982, which finally catapulted Michael’s name into the spotlight.

War Horse has been adapted as a radio broadcast and as a successful stage play, premiering in South Bank, London, in October 2007, with the horses played by life-sized puppet horses. The show transferred to the West End in March 2009 and continues a successful run at the New London Theatre. And last year, the stage version premiered on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. And finally, to cap the extraordinary success of Joey and his owner, Albert, the story has been welcomed into the arms of Hollywood with a British-American film directed by Stephen Spielberg.

The synopsis of the book seems a relatively simple approach to the wartime-based story that Michael enjoys tackling:

At the outbreak of World War I, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. His rider, Captain Nicholls is killed while riding Joey. The horse is soon caught up in the war; death, disease and fate take him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself along in No man’s land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist in the British Army, he embarks on a dangerous mission to find the horse and bring him home to Devon.

So, what is it about this story of love and faith that has so captured the hearts and minds of people across the globe?

One person may well know the answer more than most. So, with that question, and more, this month we’re pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the author himself – Mr Michael Morpurgo.

How were you first approached about the theatre and cinema adaptations of War Horse? Which idea came first and what were your initial thoughts/fears?

I was first approached via my agent by the National Theatre. It was the director Tom Morris’ mother who originally discovered my book and urged him to read War Horse. I was sceptical at first. I wondered how on earth a convincing drama of the First World War could be made using life-size puppets of horses? For the film, it was Kathleen Kennedy, producer of films such as ET and Schindler’s List who came to see the National Theatre production of War Horse with her daughter on a visit to London. She was so entranced by the play that she immediately called Spielberg and suggested that War Horse might be worth a read for his next film and that he should come over and see the play too.

6 | Random Stuff

Did you ever have any concerns about how Joey’s story could effectively be told via confines of the theatre stage?

I did have fears initially, but I trusted Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott implicitly. They work-shopped the story with Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler from Handspring and the rest of the team – designers, musicians, writers, to explore how it could be done. They came down to Devon where I live to see the landscape of the story, to watch horses working the land. There were some tense moments during the Previews when it was obvious that the play was too long, even clumsy in places, but in the end they got it together somehow. Press night was a triumph.

The settings in both Devon and France are important features in the novel. Obviously there are limitations in theatre, but how do you think the sense of place comes across in the film compared to your books?

I think the scenes in Devon and France are magnificent. The cinematography is breathtaking. Spielberg filmed much of the Devon story on Dartmoor, very close to the village of Iddesleigh which was the original setting for the Devon story in the book.

What do you feel are the main differences between the stage adaptation and the film? And what are particular advantages of both?

The film keeps closer to the story in the book, I would say, but both the stage adaptation and the film are true to the spirit of the story. Both have great emotional intensity.

An obvious question about POV. In the book, the story is told in the ‘voice’ of Joey the horse. Clearly, this is not possible in the film, which chooses a naturalistic viewpoint. How do you feel this changes the nature of the story? And did you ever consider writing the story from an external point of view?

I did consider writing the story from an external point of view but I think that would have meant making a judgment about war and I didn’t want to do that.

I wanted to tell the story of suffering on all sides, universal suffering, through the eyes of a creature who is wholly innocent and yet caught up in the events. I also wanted to explore the bond between animals and humans as I have in my books many times. There is a particular connection that people feel to horses that I have witnessed through the relationship of my own daughter to her horse.

Many of your children’s stories are set in or on the fringes of War. Why are you drawn to that as a theme?

And why do you consider it important to write on those themes for children?

I was a war baby, born in 1943. As I grew up, I soon learned how war had torn my world apart. I lived next to a bombsite, played in it because we weren’t supposed to, and because it was the best adventure playground imaginable.

But I soon learned that much more than buildings were destroyed by war. My parents had split up because of it. I knew my handsome young uncle Pieter, killed in 1940, in the RAF, through a photograph, through the stories I heard

Photography by RichardCanon ©

of him and through the grief my mother lived every day of her life. I missed him and I’d never known him. War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the ‘pity of war’ as Wilfred Owen called it. Wars are still happening today and children see the effects of war and suffering all around them, on the tv, in newspapers and through the people they know. Knowing the sensitivities of children, we have to be careful not to traumatise them when writing about or telling them about such dreadful events as war and the consequences of war. But nonetheless, I think we have to talk straight about these issues and not talk down to children.

You’re such a prolific writer, what motivates you nowadays, and is there an additional spark when you write now, knowing your work could develop into so much more than just the original novel?

I know that I have been very very lucky to have a book turned into a play and not just any play, and then a film by one of the greatest film directors and storytellers of all time. My work has given me the opportunity to work with some of the greatest theatre directors including Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott, but also Simon Reade, who adapted Private Peaceful and the Mozart Question for stage and radio, and is now producing a movie for Private Peaceful directed by Pat O’Connor. It certainly has given my writing another dimension.

I feel more and more that my writing is bound up in performance in some way.

I always speak my story down onto the page to hear how it sounds. When I am writing well I’m deep inside a story, living it as I write it and also feeling it deeply. This is when the story really begins to work. I hope that readers will become completely involved in my story as they are reading – in much the same way that people in the theatre suspend disbelief so that a puppet horse can become a living, breathing creature capable of cantering across fields and pulling a cannon.

You have done a great deal of work with illustrators, librettists, directors, puppeteers, not to mention directors – in your opinion what makes for the best kind of creative collaboration?

The best kind of creative collaboration is based on trust. I think in adaptation you have to trust and allow the experts to do what they do best, even if it isn’t always how you would want it to be done.

Have you ever written yourself into a character? And if so, is it therefore odd watching or hearing the role on stage or film or radio play?

I suppose I use myself a great deal in all my characters, the good, the bad and the ugly. But while I am creating them I do detach myself as far as possible, so I can look upon them as if they are entirely not me, even though I know they are connected, if that makes sense.

You’re obviously famous for pushing the boundaries of lead characters, using animals for example. What do you think are the key points needed to create a successful main protagonist, be it horse, dog or human, in children’s literature?

To become the character, animal or human, is the key. I have to do what the puppeteers do in the play of War Horse. They become horse. I become every character I create, try to see the world as they do, live inside their skin.

Looking now to the phenomenal success of War Horse, how much involvement did you have in the theatre production?

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As an author, how does it feel to pick up a newspaper and read that something you have created is now a huge Hollywood success, which as we write, is in contention for six Academy Awards and five BAFTAS? Does it ever feel a little unreal?

Yes, it feels a bit unreal at times, and there are moments that I know I have got lucky, very lucky indeed. I just come home and sit down in front of my exercise book and become a writer again, or go for a muddy walk down by the river. I soon come down to earth again,

The story of the conception of the idea of War Horse is quite wonderful – a young boy who visited one of your city farms in Birmingham bonded with a horse. Do you think it’s possible that children could take some similar strength away from the book or the film?

I hope that both the book and the film convey the universal suffering of war that touches everyone. I wanted to tell a story from the point of view of an innocent animal who sees the war from both sides. This was my greatest anxiety too about the book that, the reader, child or adult, would have to suspend disbelief instantly. Get it wrong and it simply wouldn’t work. I had to believe not in the notion of course that horses could talk or write, but there could be real empathy between horse and man.

I had heard from accounts of veterans that I talked to in my village how attached the soldiers had become to their horses, how they confided in them talk to them as best friends when they went to see them in the horse lines. But never having witnessed this myself I could never quite believe it. I still thought it might be perhaps just an old soldier’s sentimental notion. It was seeing the boy from Birmingham – Billy – who I had been told never uttered a word - talking so freely to our horse in his stable at night, that made me convinced that I had found the right way to tell my story.

I have tried to keep involved as much as I can and offer advice when they want it. I read the script and commented on the bits that I thought didn’t work so well originally. I always try and go and talk to the new cast – even went to New York. I tell them about the origin of the book and about Devon. The team from the National came down to Devon to see the landscape of the story, to watch horses working the land. I also suggested that they visit the Royal Horse Artillery Regiment, where soldiers still work with horses every day at their barracks in London St John’s Wood.

And same question with the film version. Did you get to work alongside Steven Spielberg and the amazing cast?

Did you meet Joey?

I did meet him a few times and talked about the book and about the First World War. I visited the set with my wife Clare several times and we both got to have roles as extras in the film. You can spot us near the beginning of the film in one of the village scenes. I’ve got not very attractive side-burns but my wife looks gorgeous!

Aside from POV, how close did you hope the film adaptation would be to your novel – a mirror image or do you prefer some originality?

I prefer originality. A film or play that simply reproduces the novel rarely works.

There must be scope for the originality of a director, he or she cannot be constrained.

Do you feel your writing has changed at all now your novels are regularly made into films?

Not at all

Are there any other books to big screen adaptations you particularly rate in your chosen genre? And if so, why?

Lots. King of the Cloud Forest, Elephant in the Garden, Running Wild, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea – others too.

8 | Random Stuff

What is the truth behind the story of the painting of ‘Joey’ that also inspired you?

The truth is that there was never a painting of ‘Joey’ in the village hall in Iddesleigh as is says in the opening of War Horse. I was inspired by a painting but it was of horses on the wire in the First World War. The painting of Joey hanging above the clock in the village hall was never true. But since the book and the film people have been coming to the village especially to see the painting of Joey so we have had one commissioned by the artist Ali Bannister and now it hangs in pride of place in the hall.

As a literary magazine, we recognise YA is a hugely popular genre at the moment, what words of wisdom or encouragement would you offer to new upcoming writers hoping to follow in your footsteps?

All I can tell you are some of the guide lines that I have worked out for myself: Live an interesting life. Go places. Meet people. Keep your eyes and your ears and your heart open so that you drink in the world about you and fill up the well you will be drawing from when you write. Read a lot and widely, learn from the masters. If you can, write just a little every day, telling down the most important thing that has happened to you that day, just a couple of lines, so that it’s there. If you do it on a regular basis this helps you find your natural voice.

Finally, as an aside, you are on record as criticising library closures both in Devon where you now live and in your native Hertfordshire. But what kind of library service do you think can best serve communities these days? And do you have a view of the role of volunteers in providing library services?

I believe that good libraries and good school libraries in particular are vital, but more importantly the librarians who work in them and enthuse about books and stories, are essential. We all know that reading can transform people and change lives, and libraries play a vital role, especially for those children who don’t have books at home.

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Is Necessity the Mother of Invention?

By Derek Duggan

Inventions are great, aren’t they?

Some are obviously better than others – trousers, for example.

Where would we be without trousers? Scotland, probably.

And there’s a whole heap of other inventions that are good too – jumpers, shoes, hats, I mean, I could go on. And there’s money to be made from inventions. In the last year the global trouser market alone was worth almost as much as a speculative banker could piss away in a week. It’s serious cash we’re talking about here.

And, incredible as it may seem, it’s not just the clothing industry where inventions have made a real difference to our lives. There have

second-line-of-page-seven. Without brilliant and mysterious inventions like this we’d have nothing to post a link to on facebook, and where would we be then? You’d be telling us what you were going to cook for dinner like the rest of the world, that’s where. And no-one wants to go back to that, do they?

A lot of these writer specific inventions surprisingly haven’t actually been invented by writers, which is truly amazing when you consider how making stuff up is a writer’s stock in trade. Some obviously have been made up by us – Richard Attenborough didn’t come up with how to make dinosaurs out of mosquitoes on his own. Oh no. He’s just an actor and his words were written for him by a writer who worked out how to do it and there wouldn’t be dinosaurs running around all over the place now if it wasn’t for Michael Crichton who invented them.

Many of you will have slapped your forehead and thought – Making dinosaurs is so easy, why didn’t I think of that? And that’s the

it is now much easier to find out when you’ve won a lottery in a sub Saharan country that you didn’t even buy a ticket for. And, laterally, it’s much easier to get a communication from someone which begins – Thank you for letting us consider your work.

So, spotting what’s necessary is the key to the whole thing. A couple of years ago someone spotted that there were a lot of writers out there who would like nothing better than to give away their work for free, but there just wasn’t a platform which made this easy. They sat down and invented the e-reader which they’ve gone on to sell bucket loads of (buckets, now there’s a brilliant invention) on the likelihood that even if some authors didn’t actually want to give their stuff away for nothing you’d have no problem finding it on a pirate site somewhere so you’d never have to pay a writer for working again. If that’s not progress then what is?

It’s time to come up with our own inventions. Let’s get the ball rolling with

One day a person thought – I have a lot of Viagra here and no one to sell it to. If only there was a way to let people know of this. They noticed that there was a new invention called the internet that nerds had made up so they could have heated arguments about who was the best captain of the Enterprise and they thought – Bingo! been some massive ones – toboggans, hair gel, God. Someone (an inventor) has actually woken up one morning, looked in the mirror (an invention) at the state of their hair and thought – Something must be done about this; I think I’ll invent God. That’s how it works – you see a hair problem and you invent someone to blame for it.

Inventions touch on every sector of the community, even writers. There have been practical inventions made especially for us – the pencil, paper, cups for our tea, the printing press, etc – and then there have been special ones to make us feel better about our self published books like the Amazon chart system – Number one in Romance/Drama/ Womens/ScienceFiction/Stories-InvolvingBananas/Books-with-the-word-Shite-on-the-

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real problem with inventions. It’s easy to see what you didn’t invent. It’s much harder to see something that hasn’t been invented yet that needs to be invented.

Look at e-mail, for example. One day a person thought – I have a lot of Viagra here and no one to sell it to. If only there was a way to let people know of this. They noticed that there was a new invention called the internet that nerds had made up so they could have heated arguments about who was the best captain of the Enterprise and they thought – Bingo! That’s my target audience! And now we have e-mail and nobody needs to be without Viagra.

Lots of inventions will end up being used for things the inventors could never have imagined. Look at e-mail again – not only can you get drugs for your erectile dysfunction,

this - How about a device that could be sown into trousers (already a popular invention as discussed earlier) that could detect an illegal download on an e-reader? When it detects one it could administer a severe punch in the bollocks/lady-parts to the wearer. This wouldn’t have to operate solely with illegal downloads of books – it could also be used for wankers who steal films or music. Just think of the how much money you could make out of it. If you received a penny royalty from every whack in the nads meted out you’d be a millionaire in no time. That hasn’t been patented so if anyone wants to develop it feel free to go ahead.

So don’t be afraid to dream and to follow those dreams – remember, without dreamers there wouldn’t be half as many failed businesses in the world.

Glad I could help.

Storytelling:

profound and ancient art or modern digital craft?

by Anne Stormont

‘Stories are told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart’ A Scottish Travellers’ proverb Storytelling – we all do it – not professionally, I know, but it’s surely something humans are hard-wired to do. It’s how we make sense of our lives, our experiences, our world. It’s how we sort out and relay our understanding of our reality.

It’s also the way that cultures pass on their ‘universal’ morals, beliefs and wisdom. Many of us as individuals pass on our life stories and experience to our children and grandchildren in our personal anecdotes. Some of us still tell our young people old traditional fairytales. In these instances storytelling is a way to address life’s challenges, to face fears, to share and to support.

And, of course, there are those of us who make our living (or who aspire to) telling stories in novels, short stories and poems. But in producing a novel, or similar, it is the pen or PC that is slaved over as written artefacts are crafted and are set in the modern equivalent of tablets of stone. I’m thinking of a much more primitive, non-digital and more intuitive art form.

What I mean by storytelling is the more inclusive, dynamic and immediate form - that is oral storytelling. This includes the kind of storytelling mentioned above whereby cultural history and accrued wisdom are passed on, but also encompasses storytelling as entertainment,

as insight and as therapy. In other words it is where storyteller and storylistener communicate eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart.

You may believe that the oral tradition is dying, or has died, out. But you’d be wrong.

Certainly, in Scotland, it is at the very least a strong subculture and it’s a thriving one.

At its most basic and most commercial it can be seen at book festivals from Wigtown to Shetland when writers read from their work and readers become interactive listeners. Done well this can be a tremendously rewarding experience for both writer and audience. The normally silent written story comes alive and takes on new dimensions.

But in community halls, schools, marquees and in a dedicated storytelling centre people in Scotland are keeping the purely oral form of storytelling alive. The tradition is present in Scots, English and Gaelic.

The Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh http://www. scottishstorytellingcentre.co.uk is the home of Scotland’s stories. The centre produces an online newsletter called ‘Blethers’ (access at the above link) where you can find out more about the centre and about current events and projects. I’ve picked out some of the information from a recent addition to share with you here.

The centre encourages the development of storytelling skills and incorporates literature, theatre, visual arts, craft and multimedia exhibitions to support its programme.

Along with the Scottish Storytelling Forum the centre also supports a national network of storytellers involved in outreach projects. Indeed at the school where I teach

we have enjoyed the benefits of this network when we have run storytelling weeks or oneoff events. It’s magical to watch a professional storyteller hold a hall full of lively children in the palm of their story-spinning hand.

There are reckoned to be around 125 storytellers in Scotland. The centre claims that through this network it ‘strives to reinforce Scotland’s vigorous contribution to a worldwide revival of interest in storytelling and storytelling traditions.’

There’s also a therapeutic element to storytelling and listening. In Scotland there have been several examples of storytellers working with groups of older people, including dementia sufferers, and research is being carried out into funding, delivery and the perceived benefits of such initiatives. If you want to know more about this kind of work there’s a good handbook called ‘Reminiscence and Life Story Work’ by Faith Gibson (Jessica Kingsley Publishers) to which you can refer.

In the aforementioned ‘Blethers’ newsletter Wendy Woolfson writes about an organisation called Stories for Health. Woolfson’s article is truly inspiring and elucidates perfectly the therapeutic benefits of storytelling.

So, while writing isn’t for everyone, we can all be storytellers. It’s open, inclusive and rule free – and it’s good for our health.

I’ll leave you with a final quote - again I’m indebted to ‘Blethers’ for this one from Donald Winnicott – ‘A sign of health is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person.’ I can’t think of a better reason to develop our storytelling muscles.

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Frank Quitely has a wee chat with Danny Gillan

Vincent Deighan is a normal, working class Glaswegian. He gets the bus into Glasgow City Centre every weekday morning and climbs several hundred rickety tenement stairs to his place of work. He shares the cramped, run-down space with several colleagues and the battle for tea bags and a drop of milk is as fierce here as it is in offices and factories across the land. Every inch of surface space, including the floor, drowns in bits of paper, books, magazines, broken technology and works-in-progress. Navigating the route to the loo is no easy feat. Vincent (Vin, to his mates) puts in a solid eight hours a day, then gets another bus back home to his family. He has a bad back that flares up now and then that means he has to take time off work. This worries him. To Vin, nothing is more important than providing for his family. He takes his responsibilities as a husband and father seriously. Vin is humble, hard-working, good at his job, decent, generous and friendly. He is a normal, working class Glaswegian.

Frank Quitely is one of, if not the most in-demand comic book artist on the planet. He has worked for both Marvel and DC, the two biggest comic companies in the world, as well as just about every other comic producer out there. He has drawn both Superman and Batman to immense acclaim. He has won global awards and collaborates with the greatest writers in the field.

Along with Grant Morrison he made a dog, a cat and a rabbit three of the most terrifying and sympathetic characters in literature. Frank Quitely is a storyteller of the highest order.

Quite frankly, Vin Deighan is Frank Quitely.

Unlike most working in the field, Vin/Frank wasn’t a particularly big comics fan growing up. His passion was, and still is, for drawing. Comics just happened to be the way he found, after getting kicked out of Art School for

reasons he swears are too boring to go into, to use his skills to (eventually) make a living wage. He considered poster design (until he realised there isn’t actually such a job), and fashion. He readily admits he would have done pretty much anything that allowed him to be paid for drawing. He is, however, very glad indeed that he found comics.

His first job in comics, and the place he first adopted the Frank Quitely pseudonym , was with the Scottish underground humour magazine Electric Soup (sort of like Viz, but with even more swearing) where he created The Greens, a spoof of Sunday Post stalwarts The Broons.

It wasn’t long before his work was spotted by David Bishop, editor of 2000AD spin-off Judge Dredd Megazine, and Quitely was commissioned by Bishop to draw two popular strips - Shimura, written by Robbie Morrison, and Missionary Man, by Gordon Rennie.

Not long after this a certain Grant Morrison saw Frank’s work in the Megazine and picked up the phone. Morrison was working on a new title for DC’s adult imprint, Vertigo, called Flex Mentallo, and thought this Frank Quitely fellow might be just the person to draw it.

The two have worked together several times since, and each collaboration garners both ever-higher accolades. New X-Men, All Star Superman, Batman and Robin, We3 – all were huge hits with fans and critics, and the pair are currently working on the next massive DC project, Multiversity, with Quitely drawing the Pax Americana volume of the multi-part story.

Aside from his work with Morrison, Quitely has worked alongside comic legends like Neil Gaiman, Alan Grant and Mark Millar. He’s pretty bloody popular, it’s fair to say.

And yet, it wasn’t world famous artist Frank Quitely who greeted WWJ when I turned up at his Glasgow studio. It was the very down to earth Vin Deighan.

With little notice, Vin had cleared his afternoon and was happy to spend a good two and a half hours chatting about his work. He made me coffee, and let me smoke. He was open, honest, funny and completely lacking in anything approaching smugness, arrogance or a sense of superiority. This wasn’t falsemodesty either, he’s just a very nice guy. It’s the Glaswegian in him, obviously.

WWJ: When it comes to the big two, DC and Marvel, you’ve worked for DC far more. Is this just coincidence?

FQ: It’s not coincidence as such, it’s simply that DC had Vertigo, their imprint for mature readers, and they were the ones commissioning the kind of stories I wanted to work on. Also, that’s where Grant (Morrison) was mainly based and it turned out a lot of the work I’ve done has been with him.

WWJ: What is it about working with Grant you enjoy so much?

FQ: We just get on well, to be honest, both personally and creatively. He writes the sort of stories I love to draw.

WWJ: You’re both from Glasgow, did you know one another before you worked together?

FQ: Not at all, no. Grant saw my work in The Megazine and thought I’d be a good fit for Flex Mentallo, it really was that simple. As it’s turned out we’ve become good mates, but it was definitely the work first, friendship later.

WWJ: Does he give you more freedom than some other writers, is that it?

FQ: (Laughs) Quite the opposite! Grant is an artist in his own right, so if anything his scripts come with very precise instructions about what he wants me to draw. He gives very detailed character descriptions, often with wee sketches at the side, just in case I don’t get the message.

WWJ: And you prefer that?

FQ: I wouldn’t go that far! My working relationship with Grant is very different than with most other writers. I like the fact that it’s a genuine collaboration, in that, while he has very clear ideas about what he wants to see, he’s also very

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open to my ideas, being an artist himself, and he loves it when I can put a spin on something that he hadn’t considered. Also, because we live fairly close to each other, we can actually get together and play about with sketches and ideas over a few coffees or drinks. It’s just fun, to be honest.

With lots of other writers, especially when they’re based in the States, I’ll often just get a script emailed over and I’m left to my own devices. While that gives me a lot of freedom in one sense, it doesn’t always feel like a true collaboration in the same way it does with Grant.

WWJ: I know that you see storytelling as one of, if not the most important parts of your job as an artist. Can you elaborate on that? I’m thinking that a lot of readers might assume all the storytelling is done by the writer, for example. How do you, as the artist, contribute to it?

FQ: It’s become a bit of an obsession of mine, to be honest. When I started out I thought all I had to do was draw what the writer was describing in the script.

It didn’t occur to me to think about the storytelling side of things. It wasn’t till an editor on one of the early jobs pointed out that pretty much every single panel I’d drawn was a ‘mid-shot’, ie drawn from the same, twenty-feet-away perspective, that I realised things like framing, close-ups and viewing angle etc were so important. It’s my job to take what’s in the script and dramatize it for the reader. That means different things for different circumstances, but it’s what’s always at the front of my mind when I start laying out panels.

WWJ: One of the things that’s become almost a trademark of your work is the way you show time passing on the page, often within the same panel. I’m thinking specifically here about the panel in All Star

Superman where you have Clark Kent moving through a single panel tripping up, knocking stuff over, then catching it again etc. And also the incredible, virtually dialogue-free, escape sequence in We3.

FQ: It’s a simple fact that we’re conditioned to think of time passing from left to right. I don’t know why, but that’s how we think of time, at least in the western world. So I think it’s natural to take that concept and use it to best advantage on the page. It’s another aspect of the storytelling thing – you need to show motion and you need to show time. A series of ‘static’ images would be the most boring comic in the universe.

WWJ: Going back to We3, there’s so little dialogue in that story I can only assume the ‘storytelling’ aspect fell on your shoulders even more than usual.

FQ: In some ways, I suppose so. But again, with Grant, he had a lot of it already in the script, even without the dialogue. That was probably the most collaborative thing we’ve done so far.

WWJ: How so?

FQ: If you look at the escape sequence you mentioned, Grant knew what information he wanted to convey and roughly how much of the book he wanted it to take up, but it wasn’t till we got together in a café over a few days that we really hammered out how it was going to work. We settled on a sequence of six, eighteen-panel pages, with each panel the same size. Grant wanted to use CCTV camera footage for most of the images, but it took several buckets of espresso before we were able to actually plan it out properly. Luckily I quite like working with thumbnail type sketches and always have a supply of

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wee square bits of paper on me. We spent many, many hours shifting these wee thumbnails around the table until we found a version we were happy with.

WWJ: And you then use these thumbnails as the basis for your actual page layout?

FQ: I do, yeah. I tend to keep them all in one of those little red raisin boxes you get. They’re always kicking about the house and they’re the perfect size for the sketches. Unfortunately I left the box with the escape sequence drawings in the kitchen at home and my wife thought it was for the bin and tossed it.

WWJ: Fuck!

FQ: Fuck, indeed. Panic ensued, I can tell you. Luckily we found them again before the bin men came. I’m a bit more careful now.

WWJ: I bet you are! Given your emphasis on storytelling, do you ever consider writing your own stuff?

FQ: The very early stuff I did with Electric Soup, I wrote. It was, however, shite, in the main. I’ve avoided the idea of writing again until recently. I do now have some ideas for stories I’d like to write myself, though.

WWJ: Any hints?

FQ: They’re basically short stories I’ve been playing around with. Very domestic, no superheroes involved. Although the stories aren’t specifically connected, they do all revolve around domestic situations, so I’ve thought they could all be taking place within the same tenement building. I’m kind of thinking of it like a doll’s house, with different stories happening in different parts of the same building.

WWJ: IS this something you’re hoping to do on your own, creator-owned, or publish with one of the big companies?

FQ: This one will be my own thing, I think.

WWJ: Is the ‘creator-owned’ route one you see yourself taking more in the future?

FQ: I think most people would rather be in complete control of their work if possible. I need to make a living, though, and there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen without taking work from companies. If I can find a happy medium between the two I’d be happy.

WWJ: Would you consider going the digital route with it?

FQ: I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m not completely convinced comics work digitally. They’re designed to work as physical pages, with very definite hooks at the bottom right of the page, or double page splashes etc. Digitally, you end up, more often than not, zooming in to individual panels so you can read the dialogue and I think it loses something when you do that. That’s not to say I don’t think there’s a future for digital comics, I just think we may need to rethink some of the ‘rules’ about layout etc to make it work properly.

WWJ: How about piracy/illegal downloads, would that also be a worry?

FQ: Truthfully, I grew up taping songs off the radio and that didn’t put any bands out of business as far as I know. It’s not a big worry for me, to be honest.

WWJ: Anything you want to tell us about Pax Americana, your current project with Grant?

FQ: I can’t really say much other than it’s written by Grant, so it’s a bit fucking mental as usual.

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Andrew Ramsay on comics ...

We’ve gone Digital Baby!

Well, not me to be honest, I’m still flesh and bone. And, to be fair, digital comics have been around in one form or another since 1985.

When I decided that I was going to write about digital comics I thought it would be a really interesting insight into a breakthrough in comics’ publication. When I told Danny that I was going to do it, he said he thought it was a great idea. Well, it’s not!

It’s really boring, I’ve researched it and come up with when the first digital comic was published, as previously stated – 1985.

I’ve found out the first digital Graphic Novel – Iron Man: Crash.

I even looked into notable artists etc that have worked on digital comics and thought this would be really interesting, it’s not. I bored myself with it; my patience ran dry, fairly quickly to be honest. It’s really not that interesting.

I could tell you all about the different methods of transferring the art etc into a digital form, but I’d bet you wouldn’t be interested.

I could tell you how people developed new skills that meant that digital comics stopped looking like photocopied newspaper cut-outs and started looking like a proper piece of art inspired by beautiful prose, but that’d be fairly dull.

I could tell you that, like Tescos jumping on local shops’ ability to sell groceries in an attempt to strangle the life out of them, DC and Marvel began to release their own comics in digital format, but it’d just sound like another socialist rant from a bitter old has been.

I could even try to appeal to the geeks in all of you by explaining the benefits of comic book publishers releasing their own mobile phone apps so that you could read comics on your own phone, having downloaded them for a nominal fee, but it, too, is not very interesting.

This has saddened me hugely.

What I can tell you is; I found a fabulous site and app called comixology. Most of the larger publishers have comics on it and there are a large number of free comics. Most of these are there as ‘tasters’ to hook you in and get you to buy more comics, but there are a good selection to choose from.

The app is free on most android handsets.

I would also steer you towards The Abominable Charles Christopher, a beautifully illustrated digital strip written and drawn by Karl Kerschl.

It follows the titular character and many other woodland creatures in their adventures.

I found it to be a fantastically varied and interesting read.

One strip can be hilarious, laughing at a bird’s family problems or a bug’s attempts at family therapy, the next may be Charles Christopher’s attempts to save the forest, the

story of a bear who used to be abused at the circus or following the forest’s secret police as they attempt to solve various crimes.

I’ve loved every strip (and there’s many) each one as beautiful as the next.

Please do yourself a wee favour, check these out.

For those of you as bored as me with digital, Kerschl has even decided to release these in book form So, to sum up, digital comics...they’re really good! History of digital comics...it’s really boring!

Ocht Aye the Who?

Bearing in mind that I’ve spent the past few months living as an omniplegic, it would be fair to say that I’ve spent most of that time being fairly bored. It may be due to this that I started wondering about Scottish comic book characters. How many are there? Who are they?

How do they represent me in the world today?

It was easy to quickly come up with the well known ‘Oor Wullie’, ‘The Broons’ and ‘Angus Og’.

But with these all being stereotypically, shortbread tinilly, Scottish caricatures, I wanted to try and find someone that I could relate to, someone that didn’t wear a kilt, live in a Glasgow tenement or say “jings”, “where’s ma haggis” or, “Granpaw’s stuck in the but ‘n’ ben’s lum again maw”, every time they opened their mouth.

I started my search where every good search should start, Wikipedia, home of the truth.

A quick search brought me to, Oor Wullie, The Broons, Angus Og and deflation. However, on closer inspection, it also offered me Scrooge McDuck, the miserly, penny pinching uncle of Donald. No stereotypes there, then.

Exasperated, I decided that I would have to trawl through my own collection of comics, this however, caused a week long delay in my research as I found reading my back issues was ultimately far more satisfying than having to write anything.

Once I’d sated my need for spandex and heroic dare doings, I returned to my search.

Remembering that DC Thomson is a very famous company, having had my sketchbook returned to me by them some years ago when I was attempting to start my career as a comic book artist, means I obviously think of them as a lower class of comic

publisher. However, research is research and we sometimes have to visit dark places within our soul to produce our art. Boldly, I soldiered on and, despite their obvious failings, I unearthed my first unbiased truth - Desperate Dan’s not fucking Scottish, is he? Then, neither is that annoying wee prat Dennis the Menace!

NO! Despite being a very proud Scottish company, I struggled to find any Scottish characters within their pages. Fuck ‘em I say, in a totally unbiased manner of course.

Pills taken, I managed to calm down and continue my search.

I decided that if we couldn’t count on one of our own to represent us, I’d have to look elsewhere. The paragon of all that is Scottish America.

DC (not to be confused with DC Thomson, which is obviously a sham of a company), an American comics publisher, has at least one Scottish character that I know of. Mirror Master.

A member of the Rogues Gallery featuring in The Flash. Evan McCulloch, brought up in a Scottish orphanage where he was sexually abused and later in life turns to murder, alcohol and cocaine. Of course, another positive role model in our lives.

To be fair to DC, they let Grant Morrison, a Scottish writer, use him a lot within the pages of Animal Man and The Flash.

Disappointingly though, he does use a lot of “hen”, “ken” and “ocht”’s.

A quick jump across to Marvel to see what they could offer gave little more hope, to be honest.

Whilst they appear to have more in number, they also seem to jump quickly on the shortbread and bagpipe image.

A character with close connections to X-Men, Moira MacTaggart (a name slightly less Scottish than Hamish McHaggis, more on him later) is, at least an intelligent person with vast knowledge in the fields of genetics and mutation. However, again she appears to be afflicted with ‘ocht aye the nooisms’.

Granted, this depends on who is writing her at the time. The same can be said of Marvel’s Alistaire and Alysande Stuart and Wolfsbane. All intelligent folks but appear afflicted by a form of Highland tourettes.

I then remembered Garth Ennis and his sublime writing skills.

The Irish writer’s series The Boys, published by Dynamite has as one of his main characters a Scot by the name of Wee Hughie. He appears to only utter dialect in an acceptable fashion.

Limiting his references to Red Kola, deep fried Mars Bars and Tunnocks Tea Cakes to a bare minimum.

So, as I’ve always said, if you want quality Scottish representation, look to the Irish!

60 Second Interviews with JJ Marsh

Each month, we persuade, tempt and coerce (or bully, harass and blackmail) two writers into spilling the contents of their shelves.

Twelve questions on books and writing. Plus the Joker – a wild thirteenth card which can reveal so much. Be honest, what do you put on YOUR chips?

Your intrepid reporter, Jill

Jane Goldman One Tuesday afternoon, despite our respective vocal dogs, Jane and I managed a phone call of rather more than sixty seconds.

Which book most influenced you as a child?

Things like Sherlock Holmes, Rebecca, A Kiss Before Dying, and The Shining. They’re all examples of the power of the written word. Books that can make you gasp aloud. I loved genre fiction right from the start. I was an only child, so had lots of time to read.

Describe your writing space – what’s in it and why?

I write in an office at the end of the garden. It’s deliberately white and uncluttered with no pictures, just to keep my mind focused. Just a sofa, a desk and a laptop. And the dogs come and whine outside.

Who was the biggest influence on your writing life?

My grandmother. She encouraged me to think of writing as a career option. My parents encouraged me to read but it was my grandmother who gave me biographies of women writers and who belonged to literary societies

About Jane Screenwriter, TV presenter and producer, journalist and author, Jane Goldman has consistently made courageous career moves.

Her credits include co-screenwriter for Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and The Debt. Her latest triumph was the screenplay adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black. Her next project is adapting Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs, to be directed by Tim Burton. Jane is married with three children and lives in London.

Journalist, author and now successful scriptwriter – which is the real Jane Goldman?

They represent different stages of my life, but I definitely feel most me as a screenwriter. I just swerved away from doing it for a long time.

Why was that?

Partly because friends had bad experiences and I only wanted to do things that were pure pleasure. When I tried it, I realised what a pleasure it really was.

But having been a journalist and author, with full control over your material, wasn’t the collaborative aspect a challenge?

No, I love that! I really enjoy the combination of working partly alone and then as part of a team. When I was TV producing, that collaboration was essential. And feedback, even negative feedback, makes you a better writer.

Which word or phrase do you most overuse?

There is one which I can get away with because it only ever appears as a stage direction. “Looks on in abject horror.” I think that’s appeared in almost every script I’ve written.

Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t? Or one you expected to hate and fell for?

I thought about this and couldn’t come up with anything.

Although everyone told me The Catcher in the Rye was lifechanging. So I was surprised to get to the end and find my life unchanged.

Why are there so few female scriptwriters?

I really don’t know. Maybe to break into film, it’s easier if you write horror, crime, fantasy or action, rather than drama. Perhaps women are less attracted to that kind of writing.

Which book or writer deserves to be better known?

I can’t understand why David Sedaris isn’t more popular.

I love David Sedaris!

Thank God someone else gets him. He’s not exactly unknown, but ... (Jane’s dogs start barking)

Do you have a system when writing an adaptation of a book? Where do you start with something like The Woman In Black?

First, you have to make it movie-shaped. The form of a book is so different, so you have to find the spirit of the story and find a cinematic structure to suit. That probably takes me around three weeks to develop. Then you have to look at how to bring out character on screen. In books, a character can have a whole internal monologue, but on screen, that has to come across by putting them in different positions to reveal themselves.

Which book has impressed you most recently?

Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. I started it early in the morning and spent all day reading, avoiding work to do so.

He’s brilliant at creating narrative in non-fiction, which is really difficult. It was compelling. (My dogs start barking.)

Which book should every child read?

It depends on the child. That discovery is individual based on the personality of the child. I know which books my kids will enjoy and they’re very different.

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What are you working on at the moment?

Several projects. The screenplay for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Another one is a sci-fi film, which is an adaptation of a comic book. It’s unusual as there was only

one issue, and it’s the first sci-fi I’ve done. I’ve also got another American film in development and I’ve just delivered an early draft for another idea.

How do you switch between all these different stories?

They’re all projects I love. I’m terribly fastidious about getting each one right and if I don’t have to switch too often, it works.

If I can wake up on a new day and tackle something different to the day before, it’s what I love doing most. And while people are still giving me work, I’ll keep going.

How many have you got?

Eight.

Eight? I thought three was enough.

What kind are yours?

And then the conversation turned to snubnosed canines, which have nothing at all to do with writing so I’ll stop there.

Last question, which kind of dog has the biggest personality?

My short-haired Brussels Griffon, Sweeney, has such a distinctive character. He looks like a Gremlin, before the change. All our dogs have such particular identities.

Helen FitzGerald Helen was in Zürich for a reading and discussion about the German version of her book The Donor, translated as Tod sei Dank. We met for coffee and a chat about writing.

Did you ever want to be anything other than a writer?

About Helen The second youngest of thirteen children, Helen grew up in the small town of Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, and studied English and History at the University of Melbourne. Via India and London, she went to Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work. She worked as a probation and parole officer for ten years, most recently in HMP Barlinnie, where she helped prepare serious offenders for release.

She’s married to screenwriter Sergio Casci, and has two children, Anna and Joe. Her work has been described as a unique mix of noir/psychological/horror and chick-lit. http://www.helenfitzgerald.net/

No, I always wanted to write. When I was six, I wanted to write TV ads, because I had a great idea for one. In Australia, we have really huge magpies, not like those weedy things in the UK. In nesting season, they’ll swoop down and take a chunk out of your head. It was a major fear of mine, so I had this image of a kid walking along, holding up an ice-cream and the magpie swooping down, taking a bite out of it and saying, ‘Yum.’ It was brilliant.

Who was the biggest influence on your writing life?

My mother. As a literature teacher, she loved reading and instilled that in me. Now, it’s my husband. We discuss ideas and he can see how to fix problems when I can’t. Often when people point out something in one of my books and say, ‘I love that bit’, it’s Serge’s idea. We talk about writing all the time.

What do your kids make of that?

We often all sit around coming up with endings together.

They’re involved, although my son sometimes asks us to stop talking about murder at the dinner table. He’s a real prude and doesn’t even like swearing. So he won’t read my adult books until he’s fifteen. My daughter edits my YA fiction and gives very blunt feedback. She’s a great writer and maybe we’ll write something together one day.

You’ve lived in Glasgow for over twenty years. Do you consider yourself an Australian writer?

I’m not sure. My first book came out first in Australia and I even got a review saying she’s not really Australian anymore.

Aussies don’t like it when Aussies leave what they consider

the best country in the world. But I studied Australian literature in London, and met Thomas Kenneally and Elizabeth Jolley. It was a great experience. And the book I’m writing now is set in Australia, near the beaches west of Melbourne. I find the descriptions much easier, somehow. But I think I’d say I’m more of a Scottish writer than Australian.

Are Australian writers harder to fit into genre categories? I’m thinking of Peter Temple, Christos Tsiolkas and obviously yourself.

I suppose that’s true. But the strange thing is my Australian publisher, Allen and Unwin, was the most desperate to fit me into crime. ‘You have to have an investigator!’, they said.

Maybe not authors but publishers are certainly conservative in Australia.

Which kind of books do you read?

Friends’ books, at the moment. I don’t really read crime, I go for dark psychological stuff, with deep themes. I love mad people. Even when I was younger. Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi, Wetlands by Charlotte Roche. Anything with a wonky mind.

Do you have a word or phrase that you most overuse?

My New Year’s resolution was to get rid of tags. I’ve never used anything other than ‘said’, but I end up with so many ‘saids’. I noticed it again at last night’s reading. This year, I’m going tagless.

Is there a book you were supposed to love but didn’t? And which book did you expect to hate but didn’t?

I can’t say it. Everyone loves that book. OK, I’ve never actually read To Kill A Mocking Bird. I pick it up, look at the first page but can’t get drawn in. Yes, my husband keeps telling me what a brilliant book it is, but ...

As for a book I unexpectedly loved, The Rapist, by Les Egerton. It’s not got a publisher yet. I wondered if I should refuse to read it, imagining what my feminist friends would say, but the voice is so dark and fascinating. It takes you inside the head of a rapist.

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You’ve obviously met rapists, sex offenders and murderers in your line of work. Would you have written crime if you’d followed a different career?

Yes. All my roads have come together. I’ve always been interested in the darker side, so I’ve drawn on my literature degree, my experiences in Barlinnie, my own reading right from a young age. I’m still just as fucked up now.

Which book or writer deserves to be better known?

The Death of Bees, by Lisa O’Donnell. It’s published in March 2012. Her voice just dances off the page. It’s so rare to read something and think, this is completely different.

You’ve had your work adapted for screen.

What do you see as the positive parts of the experience and which bits piss you off?

I’m getting better and that is a result of learning from adaptations. How to pare things down, how to think things through. The downside is creativity by committee. It takes years to develop a script and each new person who comes aboard has a new take. I’m not precious, far from it. My problem was being far too much of a yes-woman. I was easily persuaded into changes by people I saw as experts.

And I’m guessing the writer has very little influence.

How do you work? Organically, through disciplined plotting or do the characters take over?

I used to just manically write. Now I start with a five-page synopsis, write a hundred pages and think, ‘Fuck! Where is this going? What’s this about?’ That’s exactly where I am with my current book. So I stop and write a detailed synopsis, 15-20 pages so I can see how it ties together, and what the themes are.

Will you tell me a bit about this current book?

It’s an adult thriller for Faber. The working title is Cry, but I’m thinking of changing it to Don’t Say A Word. It’s about a couple whose relationship began while he was still married.

They’re on a long-haul flight from London to Australia and their new baby is crying non-stop. They administer a sedative but accidentally overdose the child. After they’ve landed, the baby dies. He persuades his wife to cover it up. It’s harrowing.

And the first time I’ve stayed in one voice. So far it’s all from her point-of-view and that’s so hard. Although there will be a mid-section which is all public reactions; Twitter, conversations at bus stops, dinner parties. The story is about a dysfunctional relationship and how all their decisions have been bad.

What would be your Masterchef dish?

Oh, shit, I can’t cook. Spaghetti Bolognese and sparkling water. That’s my desert island dish.

Absolutely the bottom of the pile. That’s why I prefer to write novels. But the process has helped me to think about my books more as a film. This is Act One, and this is Act Two and so on.

Words mixed up

By Susan Jones

I live in a Midlands ex-coal mining town where accents are strong: I’ve moved around a lot and so my lingo is a mixture of all sorts. I love it when people mix up proverbs, like when a little old lady said, “If I get mad I’m like a ‘bull in ‘aystack.’” She left me wondering after she left. It didn’t sound right, but I couldn’t think why. She wears a headscarf like the queen, a heart of gold character, lending money to anyone who’s short. A genuine friend to everyone she knows. Trying to find an agent for my novel is like ‘looking for a ‘needle in a haystack,’ and when I get a rejection letter in the post, I’m like a ‘bull in a china shop’ but the thought of a head-scarved golden granny as a ‘bull in ‘aystack’ sends the imagination reeling.

It’s amazing how many people use ‘pacific’ for specific. ‘There’s a pacific washing machine I’ve got my eye on, in the co-op.’ Maybe they’ve got an ocean load of washing to do. Then someone told me, “I have to have my fried egg done in a pacific way.” Maybe it’s fried in brine? Thing is, I’m fine with specific, but the ‘pacific’ vibe is catching.

Another lady who I was talking to the other day, told me her buffer’s got a new fan. Being that I know this person, I understood that her brother’s had a new van. But others queried, ‘Who’s buffer?’

Dad was having a conversation with a lad new to the Midlands; he reeled off his usual patter, (no pun intended). “Oh that man knew his story alright; he’d got it off pat.” The lad replied, “Who’s Pat?” A lady from Sunderland called Bet said, “It’s going to be a long time before we see the end of the strikes at the pit, I don’t know about owt else?” Someone answered.

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“What about hotels, Bet?” My favourite is when someone is really having a rant about somebody else, and they say, “He’s not doing it properly; he’s going at it half hearted.” I just can never resist saying, “What, you farted? I usually get a dirty look, but it has to be said.

My ex-mother- in- law asked me, “What do you think of my erotic flowers?” I told her they were lovely. I didn’t dare say, “You mean exotic.”

Well, they were big and erect, so maybe she had the right idea.

So many words and so many ways to get them mixed up and misinterpreted. What a lovely language we have, and regional accents never fail to fascinate. Here’s one more I’d like to share.

A lady came into the shop and asked for some candles. Ever the joker, my hubby asked, “Not fork handles?” She replied, “What you mean candles for fucking?” He managed to explain about the Two Ronnies’ sketch with four candles -fork handles. Not sure who had the reddest face, he she or me.

Susan lives in North Warwickshire where she writes articles, short stories and poetry.

Her Special Earl Grey short story is in Cafe Lit 2011 - the first anthology of www. creativecafeproject.co.uk. Articles have appeared in The Great War magazine, Words with Jam, Take a Break, Bella Summer Special and Best of British. Poetry has appeared in Quantum Leap, Rubies in the Darkness and My Weekly. Her poem ‘Love in a Rainbow’ was longlisted on Writelink Spring fever challenge 2011 - to be published in A pocketful of Springfever 2. You can find her blogging here www. susanjanejones.wordpress.com and her website here www.susanjanejones.com.

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Housmans Bookshop and the Future of Radical Bookselling An interview with Catriona Troth Tucked away on a side road, a few minutes’ walk from King’s Cross Station, is Britain’s oldest radical bookshop, Housmans.

Those readers old enough may remember a time, in the 70s and early 80s, when there were radical bookshops of different complexions in every major town in Britain. Now few are left – but after a long period of decline, they are fighting back. And Nik Górecki, the manager of Housmans, believes they may be better placed than many independents to survive pressures from ebooks, online selling and cut-throat price wars.

The history of Housmans goes back to 1936, when the Peace Pledge Union set up a temporary bookshop on Ludgate Hill, where people would come at lunchtime and sit on the floor to listen to talks from the likes of Dick Sheppard, Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral and PPU founder.

After the War, Quaker and peace activist Laurence Housman suggested that the Peace Pledge Union and Peace News should set up a permanent bookshop, which then bore his name. Other supporters included Vera Brittain, Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, and the anarchist, Herbert Read.

Over the next fifteen years, the bookshop was run from a variety of locations – sometimes with a small, physical shop but often just as a mail order business. Then in 1958, a generous donation from the Rev Tom Willis enabled them to buy the freehold of their present location,

supermarkets and book chains and internet giants who are all able to undercut them. In order to survive, in one way or another they have to become specialists, to offer something unique. But radical bookshops are already specialists. They have their own built-in constituency – not just their local community, but their ‘political’ community as well.

Radical bookshops must keep those contacts alive and build better relationships with them.”

Another advantage that radical bookshops have is that political books may well survive as print books longer than mass market books.

But Górecki recognizes that it may be just a matter of time.

“Once that happens, there is nothing you can do about it. If there are no print books, then there will be nothing for bookshops to sell.

“I’m not sentimental about books – if the world decides we just want ebooks, then fair enough. But politics is about human relationships, and radical bookshops have provided a space where people can meet and interact. Without them, what happens to those people who recount how they spent a day in bookshop and stumbled over a book that changed their lives? It’s easier for that to happen in a bookshop than online.”

Even more so than in mainstream publishing, in radical publishing, authors need to behave as one-man one book campaigns. Housmans host a regular series of talks from radical authors, and keep a video and audio archive on their website. Their bestseller last year was Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class by Owen Jones, who was very active in promoting his book, and the ideas behind it, both on line and in person.

“Bookshops have to do the same,” says Górecki. “Housmans needs to treat itself as a campaign. Our biggest problem is staffing. We have very little money for wages and we depend heavily on volunteers. What we really need is the man-power to do lots of bookstalls and other events outside of the store – let people know we exist. Every student should know about Housmans. Look at City Lights in San Francisco - it has an international profile. That’s where I’d like us to be.”

Housmans’ closest community is the peace movement – and Górecki believe they needs to reconnect with it more strongly. “We are a not-forprofit campaigning bookshop. If radical bookshops do that well, they will survive.

“We’ve achieved a lot in the last three years. We’re more on the map than we used to be. The Internet is a great tool for getting the word around for free. But we want to get people in here – give them direct personal contact.”

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers

5 Caledonian Road. Housmans now takes up the whole of the ground floor, with the Peace News offices occupying one of the floors above and the rest of the space being let to a variety of other radical groups.

Housmans remains unique among radical bookshops for the breadth of material it sells. True to its origins, it continues to sell literature on peace and non-violence, but it is also proud of its wide range of socialist, anarchist, feminist, anti-racist, environmental and other radical publications.

“At one level, radical bookshops are no different from any other independent bookshop,” Górecki says. “But they have one advantage.

General bookshops are competing directing with the mass market – with

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One of the things they have achieved is the setting up of the Alliance of Radical Bookshops Back in the 70s and 80s, when there were lots of radical bookshops around, the Federation of Radical Bookshops acted as a coaliation. It produced a journal, met a couple of times a year, and provided a support network to share information. In keeping with the times, it had a very strict political ethos – only admitting those shops that were run as true cooperatives. (Housmans, having a management board, was never admitted.) But by the late 80s, when so many radical bookshops had closed, the Federation dissolved.

When Górecki started working at Housmans a few years ago, it struck him that the concept could again prove useful. Having learnt some lessons from the past, he wanted something that was more flexible, less binding – hence he chose to call the new organization the Alliance of Radical Bookshops.

“Rather than spending a lot of time working out how we were going

to do it, we just ‘went for it’. We set out some criteria and invited people to join.”

There is no membership fee for the Alliance. The first tranche of members were the ‘obvious suspects’, and now new members are admitted by majority decision.

The Alliance now has nineteen member bookshops, from Word Power in Edinburgh to the newly opened Hydra Books in Bristol. It includes Gay’s the Word in London, shortlisted for the Independent Bookseller award in the Southeast region. (For a complete list of member booksellers, see http://www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk/?page_ id=6.)

“We held a series of regional meetings around the country where we encouraged people to say what they wanted to get out of the Alliance.

And we’ve run a survey to share information on what’s working in terms of running our shops. Two new shops opened last year, and they turned to us for advice.

“Hopefully once things are up and running, they will have their own momentum and others will start to take on more of the responsibility.

Some of those that have been around since the days of the Federation are keen to do more.”

Bread and Roses Prize The Alliance’s key achievement since it was set up is the inauguration of the Bread and Roses prize for radical publishing.

“I think we’ve found a niche here. The nearest thing is the George Orwell prize, but that concentrates on journalism. In the future, we hope to expand into fiction and even young adult books. But for now, the prize will be given for the best radical non-fiction book published in 2011.

The shortlist for the Bread and Roses prize was published on 1st March and the winner will be announced on 1st May at (appropriately)

the Bread and Roses pub in London. The prize will be judged by the children’s poet and radical blogger, Michael Rosen, feminist writer Nina Powers, and organizer of Liverpool’s Off the Wall Festival, Madeline Heneghan.

“The shortlisted books will be featured within the shops. We hope mainstream press will take an interest. There is something of a fear of the word ‘radical’ – a cultural divide, if you like. It would be nice if the prize became a way to bridge the two worlds.”

Bread and Roses Shortlisted Books: Counterpower: Making Change Happen by Tim Gee Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution as it Unfolded, in the Words of the People Who Made it edited by Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones Magical Marxism by Andy Merrifield Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent by Laurie Penny Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson For more information on any of these books, please visit: http://www. radicalbooksellers.co.uk/.

You can read more of Nik Górecki’s views on the future of radical bookshops at http://stirtoaction.com/?p=980

And you can read Dan Holloway’s review of Housmans’ bestseller, Chavs, in this edition of WWJ.

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The Oldest Profession Procrastinating with Perry Iles

Where did it all start, this storytelling business? Somewhere away in the mists of time, Zog came home from a day’s hunting and told Mrs Zog about his day: “See, love, there I was, dozens of deer. Deer city it was; deer o’clock. Then there’s this bear see? No, sorry, two bears. And a sabre-tooth tiger. So what choice did I have? Had to come back empty handed, sweetheart, what else could I do?”

And Mrs Zog, who’s heard variations on this theme a hundred times before, says: “Don’t you sorry me. Go down to the cavern and tell it to your big he-man pals over a beaker of mead or woad or whatever it is you drink down there.”

So off goes poor Zog, and rather than tell the story over and over for the benefit of latecomers or those who are too drunk to remember, he draws it on the wall. Maybe he draws a few extra deer, and three or four bears, and perhaps he’ll draw himself at the front waving a spear at a mammoth or two as well.

And to prove what a man he is, he’ll award himself a foot-long erection, because he knows his wife is annoyed with him and the meadmaid is rather well put-together, so, hey, sheepas-a-lamb, you know how it is...

Voilà, the start of fiction, the oldest profession in the world.

But storytelling became sophisticated quite quickly. The law of diminishing returns made it certain that the simple process of just telling people what happened (and Zog begat Og, and Og begat Ob, and Ob begat Japheth and Ham and Pickle...) became boring very quickly. So it became necessary to go back to the blueprint of wall painting and show people what happened instead. So really, graphic art is probably the second-oldest profession (the third-oldest profession came that evening after some alcohol had been taken when Zog said to the mead-maid that he’d give her the thighbone of an ox and a drawing for her porch if she in return would just lie back and think of Pangaea for a bit, and the mead-maid, who fancied Zog anyway, thought “stupid fool”.)

Within days, the fourth-oldest profession, criticism, had been invented and we were all being told to show rather than tell. And one way to do that was simply to draw it. Of course,

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we all start off by reading books with pictures in, and many of us remember that first step we took, that leap from the comfort zone that took place when we riffled through a book in the library or the bookshop, thought: “blinking flip, there’s no pictures in this”, but took it anyway.

It goes without saying of course, that proper literary fiction shouldn’t have pictures in it, that graphic art belongs to the illustrated versions of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, to fantasists from Lord of the Rings era who had long hair, ate hedges and spawned children called Pippin, Galadriel and Moonchild. And that nowadays of course, the world of graphic art is inhabited by teenagers who dress in black, try to look introspective and interesting and spend their spare time hanging around in graveyards melting stuff. But those who think that way should go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and spend a day looking at the genius that is Roy Lichtenstein, who owes a lot to Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and other graphic artists that pre-date him by a decade or so, because comics are how a lot of people come to be interested in this whole book business.

I was a kid once, too. Graphic art was the Beano. Little Plum, your Redskin Chum says “Never be without um Beano!” Dennis the Menace dodged corporal punishment but always fetched up getting slippered by his dad in the days before ADHD/ODD disorders were diagnosed and beating the hell out of children became frowned upon. All the dads had moustaches, all the teachers were men in mortar boards and the mums shouted the occasional word of advice from the kitchen, where they were either cooking or washing up. Except for my mother, who was, of course, different. At the age of ten I wanted a skulland-crossbones jumper like Danny off of the Bash Street Kids, so my mother gave me a big square of knitting pattern paper and said: “you design it, I’ll knit it.” I went around for a few weeks getting sneered at by boys because I was designing knitting for my mum, but those same boys went a bit quiet when I wore the result and continued to do so until it fell apart.

Comics weren’t just weekly events. There were the gluttonous feasts of the Christmas annuals and the slimline snacks of the summer specials, little bits of the calendar to mark the years with. At Christmas, my father told me not to read the whole annual at once, because

I’d lose interest before the end. In the summer, my mother rationed my summer specials as we drove down through Europe to the Mediterranean sun every August so I wouldn’t get bored and “bother” my father.

My father looked at my Beano one day - representing as it did the cutting edge of popular culture in the early sixties - and decided to Do Something About It. In my name, he subscribed to a monstrosity called Wonderland. It was a shilling an issue and he expected me to feel grateful. Wonderland advertised itself as “The Comic That Teaches the Very Young”, and it was about as exciting as a Morris Minor. Special features invited you to buy nine sweets and give Mary three of them and see how many you had left, or to board a train at 10am that was heading 80 miles to London at a constant speed of 40mph and work out when you’d arrive. There was a cartoon of a fat, smiling porter holding a watch, and a train with steam coming out of it chugging past Big Ben that showed midday, together with a caption that read “Look carefully, boys and girls! There’s a clue in the picture!” Wonderland was fucking awful. The paperman brought it every week on a Saturday, and I’d dread him coming because I knew I’d have to go through it with my father, sitting up in bed sipping tea until we’d exhausted the possibilities of mathematics and grammar and I could safely bugger off downstairs and pull the wings off flies. I’d spent all week doing this kind of shit at school. I’d given at the office. If this was what it would be like growing up then I’ll just stay young forever, if that’s OK with you.

Eventually my father took the hint, and allowed me to subscribe to Wham!, Pow! and Smash! as well. You got a free gun with issue 1 of Wham!, and Smash! brought the amazing Spider-man to the UK, together with Doctor Octopus, alongside the usual run of substandard British home-made cartoons that featured a character called Grimly Feendish and some inner-city children who were all white and male. These comics introduced me to the fabulous world of American superheroes, those colossi of the atomic age who would save the world. Here was The Thing – that most terrible of beings, an ugly superhero who’d never cop off with the Invisible Woman even if he could find her, but who had human qualities of frailty and yearning under his cracked-mud exterior. Here

were villains called Dr Doom, Red Skull and The Abomination – thinly disguised Russians who were dooming the world to equality. I wondered even then if Doctors Octopus and Doom were born with those names, thus precluding them from a career in childcare or social services (My wife actually once knew someone called Doctor De’Ath, which shows the importance of punctuation and random capitals in a surname.)

That triumvirate of British comics brought the world of Marvel to a little English boy in a small town in south Cambridgeshire in the mid-1960s. Wonderland went unread (“I pay a whole shilling for this every week, boy! The least you could do is look at the bloody thing”). But the trouble was that back then, Marvel Comics had no artistic or aesthetic connotations, and the quality of the illustrations flew right over my head. It was popular culture; trash in a world where high culture still held sway. They were just comics, and eventually I thought I was getting a bit old for them because they were far-fetched and silly and spoke of a distant world called

And kids don’t lose as many eyes as they did when I was young and took the suction tips off arrows in my Injun Bow ‘n’ Arrow kit before sharpening the ends of the wooden shafts to a point with a kitchen knife so they’d stick into household pets instead of just falling off.

And what were girls doing while all this boyish high-spirited harmless fun was going on? I never knew because I went to a boys’ school and none of my friends were girls until they suddenly started getting all curvy and my voice made it impossible for me to sing in the school choir any more. Sometimes I’d look back through the comic collections of girlfriends. Here was June and School Friend, The Four Marys in Bunty. These girlhood heroines would get their way through subterfuge, using brains where Captain Hurricane used brawn. Goodness would win out in the end, honour would be satisfied, values would be upheld. Girls were all white, all wore skirts of a respectable length, and were breast-free so that when they wore school uniforms they in no way resembled the girls of St Trinian’s except in the minds of thirteen-

you know, as if they might. Here was Frank Harris’s My Life and Loves. Here was a copy of Harold Robbins’ The Carpetbaggers that would fall open at the dirty bits if you held it loosely in your left hand while you held something else more tightly in your right (try doing that with a Kindle, by the way. There’s a design fault they never considered). Here was a guitar shop where you could buy a magic instrument that would make girls sleep with you. So the comics went. There was an overlap period when I started buying Disc and Music Echo as well as Victor – the headline on my first issue was “Ex-Hollie Joins Crosby-Stills Supergroup.”

But the comics disappeared forever when I started saving up my pocket money for Cream LPs and posters of Jimi Hendrix. Here was a world where the myths came readymade and the comics were drawn by Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb. A world starring real people who strapped their superhero symbols around their necks and played them like there was no tomorrow (and frequently of course, there wasn’t – they started dropping like flies around 1970, victims of a world as exaggerated as any

Do kids still play soldiers? I guess so, but now it’s called Call of Duty 2, and it’s probably more insular and (with headphones) a good deal quieter than the Johnny Seven mega-gun was when I was ten. And kids don’t lose as many eyes as they did when I was young and took the suction tips off arrows in my Injun Bow ‘n’ Arrow kit before sharpening the ends of the wooden shafts to a point with a kitchen knife so they’d stick into household pets instead of just falling off.

America that was as fabulous as Superman’s planet, so I started getting Victor and Valiant instead, and here I was, back in the familiar world of British violence. Every week, Captain Hurricane would have a ragin’ fury and bash the Japs or the Jerries (“Aieee! By Shinto!”

“Gott in himmel! Kamerad! Ve surrender!”)

He called them slant-eyes or squareheads, sausage-eaters or nips. I expect he killed them, but not graphically, so my friends and I would go out and emulate him, bashing Orientals or Europeans in a clean-cut and wholesome sort of way, buying caps for our guns to make them more authentic, faking spectacular deaths in the haybales of the August fields, hiding in the bulrushes by the river on summer afternoons, charging through the upstairs rooms of the house on rainy days until one parent or other shouted up at us to be quiet. Do kids still play soldiers? I guess so, but now it’s called Call of Duty 2, and it’s probably more insular and (with headphones) a good deal quieter than the Johnny Seven mega-gun was when I was ten.

year-old boys, and possibly Gary Glitter. But in the late sixties, girls moved from these cartoon ideals to the young teenagers of Jackie, where attitude began to seep in. The boys had hairstyles, the stories were either copied from American High School adventures or were told with a kind of gritty northern realism that involved bus-stops and rain. Jackie published the lyrics of popular beat combos such as the Monkees or Herman’s Hermits every week, and by the early 1970s was beginning to endorse the family values of the Osmonds and David Cassidy, by which time I was listening to ten minute guitar solos by Neil Young and going out with a girl who not only liked Can but got a letter published in Melody Maker about how good they were. She was right, too; I wonder where she is now.

It was music that took me away from comics. Music and puberty combined, I guess. Suddenly I wasn’t interested in Captain Hurricane any more because here were Jane Birkin and Marianne Faithfull who looked,

Marvel adventure.)

A lot of British comics could be traced back to DC Thomson in Dundee, and the quality of illustration wasn’t as good as Marvel (or even Archie, come to that). But whatever their provenance, comics radiated innocence, clear-cut black and white values, the triumph of good, the value of virtue. They still do – Archie has featured a gay wedding, much to the ire of just about every clean cut American from those states where it’s still not illegal to marry your thirteen-year-old cousin or sleep with your horse. As far as I was concerned, I gave up on comics before I got old enough for Judge Dredd, but no matter how their popularity may be in decline in the face of online gaming, their artistic integrity forms a strong genre in itself, and one that turned trash into something lasting and valid. Something memorable.

Random Stuff | 23

Flash 500 - The Results We are pleased to publish here the winning entries of the fourth quarter of the Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition 2011, The Football Match by Adrian Shaw, and the Flash 500 competition fourth quarter 2011, Everybody’s Tuppence Worth by A M Smith. The competitions were judged by Lorraine Mace and Guy Saville respectively.

Although winning entries of Flash 500 competitions are published in Words with JAM, the competitions are independent, so please make sure you visit www.flash500.com for details on upcoming competitions and closing dates.

The Football Match

by Adrian Shaw O to be in England, now the football season’s here.

Straight from the pub, loud-lipped, half-cut, the local lads appear.

Up in Farmer Bullock’s field, they’re showing off their tackle.

Chalky White’s marked out the pitch, and shooed away the cattle.

The whistle blows; the match begins; the fans go raving mad: three fit birds, a barking dog, two children, and their dad.

Rod the Cod and Nick the Fence are marking far too hard.

At first they get a long black look, but then a yellow card.

Pete the plumber’s got the ball; he’s sprung a nasty leak, dribbling all across the pitch: his bladder must be weak.

His mate is showing loads of class, and lots of bottom too.

He needs to tighten up his strides, to keep his cheeks from view.

The other side begin to pull, with lots of flashy passes.

Our keeper’s played a blinder, but now he’s lost his glasses.

He bumps into the goal post. He looks in desperate trouble.

At first he couldn’t see a thing, but now he’s seeing double.

Two forwards shoot the ball at once: the poor old keeper’s floored.

The balls go either side of him. The other side has scored.

Half way through the second half, a cow disturbs the play.

We have to talk a load of bull, to get her out the way.

We’re just about to score a goal - our striker’s on the floor: a nasty foul inside the box, a penalty for sure.

The referee says, “ Not a chance.” He must have seen Pete drop.

It wasn’t what you’d call a dive, but more a belly flop.

We muster all our bully beef, but cannot do a thing.

We’re butchered in the middle, and carved up on the wing.

Although we lose the match five nil, we all shake hands and claim, that winning doesn’t count as much, as how you play the game.

But later in “The Coal Man’s Arms”, while we shift a stack, the talk is not of sportsmanship, but how we pay them back.

24 | Quite Short Stories and Poetry

Everybody’s Tuppence Worth

by A M Smith He said: C’mon, Cynthia – I’ve gotta condom.

She said: Darren ... you promise?

We said: If only Cynthia would find herself a decent boyfriend!

They said: Did you hear Cynthia Jenkins is going out with that Darren Baroda?

He said: But we used a condom!

She said: Well it didn’t work, did it?

We said: Cynthia – you don’t have to get married, we’ll stand by you.

They said: The Jenkins are heartbroken. Cynthia has to get married, and to that no-good Darren Baroda!

He said: Doesn’t that kid ever stop screaming? I’m not up for this!

She said: It’s not my fault – he’s a colicky baby.

We said: Aww ... who’s Nanna and Gramps’ precious?

They said: Darren Baroda must have shares in the pub by now ...

He said: Sorry, Cynthia, this isn’t working; I’m off to London – I’ll phone you.

She said: Get out you useless lowlife-drunk – who needs you?

We said: What a relief! We’ve sorted out your old bedroom, Cynthia, plenty of room for you and little Wesley.

They said: Such a shame: Darren Baroda left Cynthia in the lurch, and with such a difficult baby, too.

He said: Thought I’d give you a quick buzz; I’m off to Australia next week, gotta job with a mate of mine. Wish Wesley happy birthday for me, will ya?

She said: I hope a kangaroo kicks you to death!

We said: Cynthia, this can’t go on; Wesley’s a big boy now and he should know he mustn’t hurt poor old Kitty like that.

They said: Wesley Baroda’s a nasty piece of work – and only 7 years old.

He said: Thought I’d just check in – I’m back in London. Wesley’s birthday today – 13 isn’t he? Oh – sorry – I meant 12.

She said: Drop dead.

We said: Cynthia, unless you do something about Wesley’s’ temper tantrums, take him to the psychologist, you know it isn’t natural; if you don’t, we’re really sorry, but you’ll have to leave.

They said: Wesley Baroda’s seriously bad news; been spoilt by his grandparents, of course.

He said: No, nothing to do with me – no I don’t know Wesley Baroda; yes, it is an unusual surname, just a coincidence – I told you I don’t know him from a bar of soap; now bugger off and stop pestering me!

She said: I can’t – he couldn’t have – not Wesley – he loved his Nanna and Gramps – no-no-no-I can’t believe it – all that blood – surely he couldn’t have... aaahhhhhhhh We said: ...

They said: Absolutely shocking! that boy’s a monster – pity they dropped the death penalty.

He said: Time for me to change my name and do my disappearing trick.

She said: I’m not eating that. I want to die.

We said: ...

They said: We blame the education system and all those single mothers.

Suppose two life sentences gets some justice for the Jenkins. By the way, did you hear about the axe murder in Lambeth?

Oh Blogger, There’s a Flasher in my Tweets

by Dan Holloway

It’s been around as long as never having enough space on the cave wall started doing the job of an editor thousands of years ago. But social media, especially blogging and twitter, have seen flash fiction become one of the most popular forms of writing today. And it’s become so mainstream that the gold standard of all short form writing competitions, the Bridport Prize, now has a flash section.

And this year, for the first time, on May 16th, flash fiction has its own national day (see www. nationalflashfictionday.co.uk).

So what better time to look at all aspects of flashing: who’s doing it, why it’s so popular online, how you can get involved, how to do it well. And we may even have a look at the trickiest question of all – just what is flash fiction.

To start with that knotty one first, the answer is that just as there is no definition lengthwise of the novel, novella, novelette, or short story aside from those arbitrarily imposed by publishers and competition judging panels, so there is no official word count that makes your writing flash. Readers of this magazine will be familiar with Flash 500, with a limit of, well you can probably guess that one. The Bridport says 250, some say as many as 1000, others under 100 whilst others still would classify that as yet a further category, microfiction. Calum Kerr, coordinator of National Flash Fiction Day, has the rather neat definition that flash fiction is something you sit down and pour out in one go. On the other hand, I know people who can take weeks to flash, whilst the webfiction legend MCM has been known to line up the coffee and Red Bull, log on and not look up till 50,000 words later.

There, that was helpful! Perhaps the best way to think about flash fiction is through the online phenomenon it has become.

Like #amwriting, #fridayflash is a community of writers that has come together through and communicates via twitter whilst the actual activity takes place elsewhere. Every Friday, hundreds of writers put a piece of flash fiction up on their blog, link to it on twitter, and include the #fridayflash hashtag. They, and

those who love purely to read, then search on the hashtag, and read and comment on any number of the pieces. There is no set length to the pieces, so as so often happens with grassroots movements in the arts, the form pieces take is defined in practice not theory over a number of iterations, and the most important of those practical considerations are that writers can produce pieces on a weekly basis, and that readers can pay them due attention as part of a collection of reading. #flashfriday has hundreds of participants every week and has already produced some wonderful results, such as Marc Nash’s collection 52FF, one story for each week of the year. Most of all, it has got people writing on a regular basis and created a community of support, encouragement, and critiquing around that writing. And that can only be a good thing, and the opportunity to get involved in this community, and to kickstart your writing, and come into contact with other people’s writing on a regular basis, is reason enough to pick up your keyboard and get flashing.

This also, however, is part of what could be conceived of as a problem with flash fiction. It is often produced quickly, and very frequently.

It is, dare I say it, popular, even populist. This is exactly the criticism levelled at performance poetry by “serious poets” like the current Oxford Professor of Poetry, Geoffrey Hill, who has very publicly said that modern poetry (by which he seems to mean performance poetry) has no place in his lectures as it lacks depth and gets far too much attention as it is. Flash also suffers from the same problem as short stories, only more so – it is seen as good practice, or a good stepping off point, a great way of cutting your teeth or getting back into the habit of writing before moving on to something more serious. Even the kudos accorded by the Bridport is tempered by having a much smaller prize than that given to short stories and poems, even though a piece of flash can be considerably longer than a prizewinning poem.

But, as with short stories and performance poetry, this does a serious disservice to a form that has many wonderful features in its own right. And in that way, as well as its popularity, it has a lot in common with performance poetry, or in musical terms with hip hop.

Bringing writers together through social media to form communities who create their own ad hoc rules about form, their own terms of artistic engagement leading to their own often dazzling art, flash fiction is a genuinely

empowering grass roots led artistic movement that has risen up from below outside of the mechanisms of the mainstream publishing structures.

One very simple and unscientific measure of the grassroots popularity of flash fiction, and the way it revolves around the world of social media, is that as part of the research for this article I posted an innocent question on twitter asking what people thought about flash.

Within 20 minutes I had 19 responses.

The growth in flash fiction’s popularity, its inclusiveness, the development of an aesthetic that has worked its way up from practitioners, and the way anyone with a computer can join in the discussion about it as a form makes it the perfect example of how social media and culture can work together in a positive way. Through twitter and blogging, writers and readers have joined forces to create a sense of energy and excitement around a burgeoning art form. And that, more than tweeting links to your ebook on Amazon or getting likes on Facebook or cross-promoting on your blog, is a shining example of how writers should be using social media. And, through initiatives like National Flash Fiction Day and the Manchester-based collective #flashtagmanchester, who publish their anthologies in virtual and paper form, it is an example of how the online and the physical world of the arts can bleed into and feed each other.

So, what are the things flash fiction can do that other formats can’t? Well, in the spirit of flash, this is where I shall turn to my twitter research and share the wisdom of the community’s flashers.

The results were very illuminating. @nationalflashfd (Calum Kerr, organizer of National Flash Fiction Day) says “With flash-fiction, you force the reader to do most of the work, so you can paint a world in 500 words and it’s their world” @exislemoll (Marc Nash) also points out the way the concision of flash fiction on the writer’s part makes it a unique experience for readers: “500-1000 words, every one of them has to count.

Flash fiction restores the primacy of precision language.” When I pressed him on whether a novel should actually do likewise, he made the very good point that in a novel “the reader can’t possibly hold every association and layered word” @jomcarroll pointed to the concision not so much of the writing but of the subject

Random Stuff | 25

matter: “Love flash fiction because it finds unexpected stories in the smallest things” whilst @HelenMacKinven loves writing flash “because you can experiment without the need to commit to a longer piece of writing” In other words, above anything else what makes flash fiction special is the almost poetic ability to place layer on layer of meaning using the fewest possible words. There’s almost an element of alchemy in paring back word after word, editing out every extraneous syllable and watching the meaning and depth expand as you do.

National Flash Fiction Day is the perfect chance to find out what flash fiction is about, to read and learn from the best, and also to discover another aspect of what makes it special, its suitability for live performance.

The day’s website (http://

nationalflashfictionday.co.uk) is an

incredibly useful resource hub. There are details of workshops, competitions, and events happening on the day, both online and in real life. We will be holding a flash slam in Oxford, for example, allowing writers the chance not just to read but to have their work critiqued in person by one of the UK’s leading flash fiction writers, Tania Hershman, the award winning author of The White Road and Other Stories.

And you don’t have to wait until May to start your flash odyssey. Why not take a look around twitter’s #flashfriday hashtag this week, get to meet the people taking part, read their work, and start thinking about your own piece for next week.

To summarize • Flash fiction is pretty much whatever length you want it to be, and the “rules” of the genre are constantly evolving.

The key to great flash fiction is sparing and exact use of language, using the fewest possible words to create the greatest possible meaning.

• Flash fiction brings out the very best of social media and so, for a writer, there are few better ways to dive into the world of social media than through writing flash fiction and talking about it through something like #fridayflash • Because flash fiction is constantly growing and evolving, it is a great place both to find experimental writing and to experiment as a writer.

Get involved with National Flash Fiction day (http://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk) on May 16th.

Carver’s Couch

Exploring the psychological aspect of writing with consultant clinical psychologist Sue Carver Dear Sue, I’m sorry to say I found the quote on the attractive poster enclosed in the last issue of WWJ troubling. Combined with the cautionary advice from Danny Gillian regarding characters based on self, I’m now feeling unsettled with regard to the novel which I’m currently working on, which is loosely based on my experiences of growing up ‘in care’. I would find it hard to abandon it, I have to confess. Does that mean I’m hopelessly self-obsessed? How can I avoid producing something that comes across as ‘wish-fulfilment’ or, worse still, some form of self-help therapy?

Anon

Dear Anon, Thank you for your interesting questions.

Let me start with some reassurances. The very fact that you are questioning yourself about your motivation for writing your novel means you are self-reflective; that bodes well with regard to your being able to avoid the common pitfalls. In addition, your material sounds ripe with potential for creative writing.

Many well-regarded novels are autobiographical; my personal favourites include Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth, and The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. Many more, from David Copperfield to Sons and Lovers to Black Swan Green are semi-autobiographical and the central characters are thinly-disguised versions of Charles Dickens, DH Lawrence and David Mitchell, the respective authors. If wanting to write creatively about one’s own life experience indicates ‘self-obsession’ then all of the above share that trait.

Lucian Freud, referring to his own paintings, commented that all art is autobiographical. My own view is that all art forms, including the novel, are autobiographical to some extent. How can it be other? Whether writers set out to draw on personal material or not, creative writing reflects the unique consciousness of the individual author: the sum total of his or her life experiences filtered through her or his one-off brain.

Having said that, ‘writing from life’ makes particular demands on the

26 | Pencilbox

writer. The voice of hard-won experience says it should only be attempted by those who like a challenge: in terms of both literary requirements and more personal ones. I’ll share below some of what I’ve discovered and found useful for my own semi-autobiographical writing.

Don’t be limited by what you know to be the facts. Novice writers, when writing about personal experiences, tend to resist making things up. This natural tendency to want to tell the truth, at all times, needs to be overcome.

Invention is to be welcomed, not resisted. It will enliven the writing and, once you allow yourself to embark on this, you may be surprised by what the subconscious comes up with that may give you new insights.

If your material is too well-known to you, or so you think, it may lack energy and any sense of discovery. Sigmund Freud, Lucian’s grandfather, maintained that creative writing is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood. “A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work. The work itself exhibits elements of the recent provoking occasion as well as of the old memory.”

For truly creative writing to emerge, memory needs to be allowed to freely interact with imagination. In this way, senses can be reawakened, bringing past experiences to life. This may well be a progressive process during which psychological defence mechanisms designed to protect the ego need to be overcome. Patience, persistence and reflection can lead to writing that resonates and discoveries about self. What emerges when this is working well is often a long way from literal truths, but very much closer to something that rings with authenticity – for the writer and reader.

Finally, when drawing on personal experiences, allowing enough time to elapse so that experiences can be processed, emotionally and psychologically, seems to be most productive.

Good luck!

References Freud, Sigmund (1964 [1908]) ‘Creative Writers and Day-dreaming’ in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol.9, London: The Hogarth Press

Question Corner Co-author of The Writer’s ABC Checklist, Lorraine Mace, answers your questions ...

My column this time is devoted to answering one letter and the writer has asked not to be named. Writer Anon sent in this plea from the heart: I belong to an online writing group and one of the other writers in the group read the opening of my novel and said it was a load of cliché-ridden tripe with emotionless cardboard cut-out characters, rubbish dialogue and unrealistic settings. He said I should give up because I’m never going to make it as a writer. I’m scared he might be right. Would you read my opening chapters and tell me if I should quit?

Put yourself firmly in a character’s head. Become that person while writing – how would the character feel? In each scene and plot twist, what would he or she do and say? If you know the character as well as you should, the responses will enhance the characterisation.

The character’s personality should shine through in the dialogue; this will bring a character to life far more than any amount of description. So how do you get the dialogue to flow? One easy way is to imagine each scene in your mind and then become the character. Act it out in your head. Write the dialogue you can ‘hear’ your characters speaking. Afterwards, read it out loud.

Does it sound credible? Does it sound like people talking, or is it stilted?

Whatever your character says should fit his or her background and education

No, I’m afraid I don’t have the time to read and comment on your writing, but even if I did have time, I would never advise anyone to give up on their dreams. What I can do is give you some pointers on the aspects your writing group peer has highlighted.

Firstly, the problem with clichés is that all too often they sum up exactly

level. Use dialect to show where the character comes from, but don’t overdo it. If a reader has to stop every five minutes to try to figure out what someone is saying, they’ll soon lose interest.

One thing to be wary of is using dialogue to tell your readers things that the

what we want to say, which is how they became clichés. When any currently

characters themselves would already know. This is known as ‘As You Know,

well-known phrase was first written it wasn’t a cliché. A writer sat down and

George’ dialogue. Where the dialogue sounds false, you need to find another

thought of an original way to express something – and it worked so well

way of imparting information to the reader.

that others used it until it became a cliché. Your job as a writer is to find new phrases to express your thoughts and emotions, rather than using the words of others.

So, now that we’ve covered clichés, characters and dialogue, that only leaves settings. The three Ss are your friend here. Sight, sound and smell. If you can introduce these three aspects into your writing the setting will come to life for

Moving on to the characters, unless you know and believe in your characters

the reader. You have to become the eyes, ears and nose of your readers, but

as real people, they will come across as one-dimensional and cardboard

this (in my opinion) is one of those areas where less is more. Don’t overdo the

to your readers. You need to know everything about them – what’s their background? What drives them? What do they want? What do they fear? You have to know them so well that you instinctively know how they would react both physically and emotionally in any given situation.

Show their emotions through their actions and dialogue. Don’t tell your

descriptive passages. Often small touches bring settings to life – in a ghost story, for example, the whisper of a chill breeze blowing out a candle in a windowless room, with the scent of hot wax hanging in the air, sets the scene for fear much better than saying the house was haunted.

readers the characters are upset, angry, happy, sad or any other emotion,

I hope the above helps with the issues raised by the person in your writing

show them! Let the characters throw things, pace up and down, punch

group. Please don’t give up, because clearly you care enough about being a

someone, yell, scatter flowers at a lover’s feet – in other words, have them

writer to have written to me and no one has the right to take away another’s

react on the page.

dreams.

There is advice on every possible question you might ask. --Writing Magazine Regardless of the writer's level or ability, there is something extremely daunting about putting together a submission. It doesn't matter if it is for an article for a magazine, or short story for a competition, a humorous anecdote, a play or TV script, a novel or non-fiction book, "The Writer's ABC Checklist" will provide answers to questions you didn't even know you should ask. With its A-Z format, references can be found quickly and effortlessly. Unfamiliar terms are explained and bullet points at the end of most sections provide a quick reminder of the main items covered. This unique book is packed with writing tips and is something no aspiring writer can afford to be without.

Available from Amazon

Do you have layout issues, problematic characters, or struggle to get to grips with your grammar?

Email lorraine@wordswithjam.co.uk

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The Winner Bernardo by Fiona McCready

Second Place Battenberg by Beverley Sims

Third Place Falling Angel by Ingrid Baier

The Shortlist Rented by JW Hicks Snakes and Ladders by Susan Pope

THE RESULTS Late 2011 we launched our second annual Short Story Competition, and because of the success of the 2010 competition, we upped the first prize from £300 to £500. Now, in this April 2012 issue, we are delighted to announce the winners selected by our very first cover slot and author Douglas Jackson.

Prizes 1st Prize - £500 2nd Prize - £100 3rd Prize - £50

Home Rock by Susan May Oke Tidal Wave Simon Jackson My Enemy Dr. Seuss by Evan Guilford-Blake Puddings in the Park by Clair Humphries Beneath The Jacaranda Tree by Christine Steenfeldt Knock-Down Nuptials by Justin N Davies Mirror, Mirror by Penelope Jane Randall The Redshirt’s Lament by Tracy Fells The Brink by Jeda Pearl The Collateral of Choice by Yael de Jong

Longlist Woolton Pie by Sal Page Winter Closing by Alison Moore Heart to Heart by Susan May Oke Making the Grade by Shelley Arnfield The Brambles by Libby O’Loghlin The Bear Trap by Tom Harris Cheque 100 by K C Murdarasi Sure Thing, Partner by Sophie Wellstood Bully for You by Andy Hickmott Breaking Up by Nemone Thornes Inappropriate Behaviour by Steve Amos Finger Food by Elgiva Grugeon

The Results

Douglas Jackson judged our 2011 Short Story Competition. Here’s what Doug had to say about the winning entries: A real pleasure to be treated to so much excellent writing.

1st Place - Bernardo 2nd Place - Battenberg 3rd Place - Falling Angel So many different styles and approaches and brilliant writing, I had a lot of fun reading every one.

At least six or seven stories on the short list challenged for third spot and it took a lot of thought to cut it down to two. I found the atmosphere in Tidal Wave brilliantly evoked; the heat radiated from the pages with enough force to make you sweat, the street language was granite hard and almost poetic.

What made me eventually decide on Falling Angel, aside from the magically blasphemous and intricately manufactured Heaven the main character inhabited, was the laugh out loud ending.

Battenberg was the last story I read, and before I got to it I’d more or less already made up my mind on my top three. The brilliant writing, disturbing, almost warped concept, and the multi-layered characters changed my mind.

Some of the description was almost painful. It had to take something special to beat it.

But one story stood out above all the rest. From the moment my eyes scanned the first line of Bernardo I knew I was fortunate to be reading something very special. The way the writer effortlessly creates a sympathetic, likeable and ultimately tragic human being from the burned out alcoholic Bernardo is evidence of a remarkable talent. The author’s passion permeates every sentence and your heart beats with the samba rhythm with every paragraph.

Rio is never described in detail, yet it is always all around you, full of colour and sound and buzzing with atmosphere. A worthy winner.

First Place - Bernardo by Fiona McCready A few days of every year he felt like everyone else. On these days people didn’t cross the road to avoid him, there was no space. He didn’t have to hold out his dusty hands to collect the pennies that might buy him cachaca, people handed him theirs. His tattered feet danced with everyone else’s. Carnival in Rio was his favourite time of year, he felt like everyone else. Or in actual fact, I should say that everyone else felt like him. For Bernardo, it was carnival every day of the year, and it was a pleasure to have some company for once.

Even for the other 51 weeks of the year, Bernardo had music in his head, a deep samba beat that prevented him from sleeping. The rhythm came from the throbbing of his head in response to the beer and cheap cachaca he drank constantly, but he took it for the rhythm of carnival and, rather than bury his head in his hands at the pain of it, he let his body follow his throbbing veins and his feet scuffed the floor in a maniacal dance. At the same time he would hold his grey hands out and, every so often, someone would drop a coin in them. The people of Rio seemed to like his dancing. It kept him in cachaca.

He never slept intentionally, he preferred to dance. But sometimes his mind and body didn’t see eye to eye and his body would demand a break. He could never remember falling asleep, but he’d often find himself waking up on the pavement and would wonder how he got there.

Life was full of little mysteries for Bernardo. Why would people get angry with him when he told them, “Blessings to you, I’ve now enough for a new bottle of cachaca!” Why would young hooligans kick him when he was unconscious on the ground? Why did dogs like to pee on his spot in the street? Why didn’t everyone want to dance all day like him? The world was brimming over with unanswered questions it was best not to think about.

When the samba beats began to quieten in his head, he knew he was running low on fuel, he had to get more cachaca quickly, before his demons started calling. If he went without alcohol for too long his body started protesting, and the drumbeats in his mind became so weak that other thoughts and memories rushed in to fill the spaces. Dum-dumdee-dum-tsssh, sitting with his mother on the streets, Dum-dum-deedum-tsssh, forever hungry, Dum-dum-dee-dum-tsssh, the kickings, Dum-dum-dee-dum, the forever shouting, Dum-dum-dee-dum, always running, Dum-dum-dee, hiding in the dark corners, Dum-dum, his mother’s hand smothering his mouth, pleading with him, “Be Quiet Bernardo, be quiet,” Dum, all the strange men, the beatings, his mother crying, a front tooth missing, his blood mixing with his mother’s, tears and blood, blood and tears.

At times like these he implored people to help him out, to give him money to stop the memories and start his internal drum. Remembering that people disliked his ‘money for drink’ reasoning, he’d shout out, “Money for samba, money for samba!” desperately baring his rotten teeth in a painful smile. It would normally work on a couple of people, and for those kind individuals he’d perform a dance. “This one’s for you kind sir!” he’d yell, or “Shake it, shake it, shake it,” as he jumped around on the pavement like a child after too many sweets. It made people laugh, and that made him laugh. Once he had enough coins he’d race off to buy cachaca, gulp down enough of it to start the percussion, and continue his dancing and hysterical laughter. Laughter and cachaca were Bernardo’s currency in life.

He had no idea how old he was and, from his appearance, no one else could tell either. He could have been a weathered and beaten forty year old or a spritely seventy year old. His long hair was matted and grey in colour, perhaps from age or perhaps from dirt. His face was pockmarked and etched with deep contours like a dark desert, and his eyes were always half open and blood shot. His stringy arms hung from a threadbare T-shirt that had once been blue, and his jeans, that seemed to have grown bigger and bigger over the years, were held up by a piece of string. His feet were caked in dirt and his soles were so hardened that they acted like shoes; he could no longer feel the ground beneath them.

Bernardo knew that carnival was approaching. It wasn’t so much what he could see; the stalls emerging on every corner selling masks and costumes, the samba schools practicing out in the streets. It was more what he could feel; the buzz in the air. People were getting excited, there was electricity in the atmosphere, and even Bernardo’s dulled senses could feel it. The Cariocas became happier and more generous when carnival was approaching. They gave more generously to Bernardo and in return he samba’d as though his life depended on it, his feet stumbling furiously on the pavement, his arms shaking around his head, and his bony behind swaying. The generosity of people, the electricity in the air, and of course the extra cachaca, charged him up like a battery. That year, he didn’t sleep for four days in advance of carnival Friday.

Carnival 2011 was later in the year than normal owing to a late Easter. A March carnival was of course accompanied by March rain; heavy and relentless. Because of the miserable weather, Cariocas and tourists alike felt the need to drink more and quicker, in order to ward off the cold and forget about the rain. And so, starting on the Friday evening, the streets were full of happy drunks, like Bernardo. They had faces obscured by glitter and drooping wet feathers, and bodies squeezed into outfits suited to better weather. Goose bumps and wet hair abounded and people danced to keep warm. The more vigorous dancers looked like wet dogs shaking themselves dry, with beads of water flying from them. The gutters flowed with rain water, spilt beer and body

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Short Story Competition 2011 fluids, and the wet streets were littered with empty bottles, plastic cups and remnants of costumes that were being shaken to pieces. Rio and its people were saturated in carnival.

By Saturday morning Bernardo had drunk more in 12 hours than he usually drank in a week. Revelers had decorated him in glitter and a tiny pair of devil horns, the colour of which matched his eyes. Fuelled and styled for a party, he performed hard and fast, and soon people were making a special effort to come and see him, as word got around Lapa.

“Have you seen the guy under the arches? You’ve got to see him!”

“Look at him go!”

“I’m exhausted just watching him.”

“Let’s samba Grandad!”

People formed a circle around Bernardo, and chanted and clapped in unison. Everyone was loving his dance. And he loved everyone loving him. The appreciation touched him and for once the people also touched him. Hands slapped his back in congratulations, people dropped coins into his pockets, and danced arm in arm with Bernardo as cameras flashed around them. Deep into the night Bernardo danced and drank, with cachaca running down his face and through his glittery torso. His T-shirt had long ago been abandoned and his jeans, which were laden down with coins, were only just being held up by his bony hips and string.

‘Dance, dance, dance.’ This was the last thought that went through Bernardo’s head before he collapsed on the floor and knocked his head.

‘Dance, dance, dance, ouch.’ *** When he came round, he was surrounded by colour, glitter and light.

Smiling magical faces whirled around him in a kaleidoscopic blur. He looked down at his body and saw that he was no longer wearing his threadbare jeans and string belt. Instead he was dressed magnificently.

His shoulders were amplified by a huge pair of golden epaulettes that were covered in jewels and sparkle. Jewellery, like he’d never seen before, hung from his neck and ended low in his concave chest. His bare torso was decorated in dazzling paint. For the first time in decades Bernardo was wearing a pair of trousers that fit him. His legs were wrapped in a beautiful sky blue silk, that was as light as air, and his feet were being placed into matching silk slippers by a beautiful black girl. She tied the slippers onto his feet with ribbons and then reached out her hand to him.

“It’s time Bernardo,” she said excitedly.

Bernardo shook his head in confusion, he had no idea where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. She smiled at him.

“It’s time for the performance; we brought you here to dance with us Bernardo.”

He looked around him once again at the colours and movement, and finally understood where he was. This was the real carnival; he was in the sambadrome, surrounded by other dancers, all ready to shake their bones alongside him.

He was baffled and tried to piece together how he’d got there, but there was no time for thinking. Suddenly there was a crash above him and the night sky shattered into shards of light. Over and over the night sky exploded. The excitement built around him, as dancers stretched, feet bounced, smiles flashed, and voices sang.

“It’s time!”

“Are we ready?”

“We’re ready!”

As the fireworks grew to a crescendo, so did the exhilaration around him, until everyone was movement, and everywhere was colour.

Bernardo was swept up into the atmosphere and once again he could hear the samba beat, but this time the pulse was coming from drums, not from his own head.

He was carried along by the party spirit and his whole body became the carnival. His feet pounded the streets, his arms shook and his voice

34 | Competitions

sang out words he didn’t know. Bernardo and his fellow dancers were surrounded by crowds, and he saw more people than he thought existed in the world, all here to watch him dance. Huge trucks decorated like heaven drove down the centre of the street and everywhere was smiles.

He danced and sang and loved life. He wanted this night to last forever, and he was beginning to feel as though it just might. *** ‘Dance, dance, dance.’ This was the last thought that went through Bernardo’s head before he collapsed on the floor and knocked his head.

A crowd gathered around him, and panicked eyes looked at each other, seeking someone who might know what to do. Finally, a voice spoke up.

“Someone call an ambulance, quick.”

A number of people searched in their tight wet outfits until a mobile phone was produced. As the crowd argued over directions for the ambulance to follow, Bernardo bounced around on the floor in a sambalike fit. Girls cried, either a solemn whimper, or a drunken dramatic sobbing, while men tried to show some kind of authority or, failing that, just continued to drink.

By the time the ambulance had navigated its way through the carnival crowds, Bernardo was dead. His dying samba had ended with one last powerful surge of energy, before his heart finally gave in. The crowd dispersed, and people either headed home or joined the passing samba school, choosing to indulge their shock or ignore it. Bernardo’s body was zipped into a bag and taken away, never to be seen again. His last samba had pulled his largest crowd yet.

Second Place - Battenberg by Beverley Sims Tuesday: Word of the Day: Bungalow.

Caroline unfolds the skinny wing of her arm and points to the window, which her husband squeezes open. The thick blanket of heat rushes from the hospital room like a malevolent spirit in search of a happier home to haunt.

I only wish I could do the same.

Yesterday it was ‘pineapple’, the day before ‘dog’. ‘Word salad’, they call it, which also makes me think of ‘alphabet soup’.

Ironically it’s Alex and I who look like the mad ones. Him with three-day-old stubble and me with harridan hair, hollow eyes and lungs gagging for a cigarette. Caroline merely sits propped up against regulation linen, smiling in polite bewilderment.

As we are walking past hospital flowerbeds and smokers in dressing gowns later, a dark stain spreads across the crotch of her pyjamas and we have to hurry back inside.

‘Do you know what she said to me this morning?’ Alex whispers while she’s in the bathroom with the nurse. “I know I love you, but I don’t know who you are.”’

And then she is back in the room again, beaming as if she is seeing us for the first time today. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she enthuses in an unfamiliar Midlands accent, vigorously pumping both our hands.

I want to press my lips against that cool marble cheek and beg her forgiveness. But my throat only tightens and I fix on the strip lighting so that she can’t see the wetness in my eyes.

Outside in the car park Alex lights a cigarette and slumps against the wall. He is almost unrecognisable. I hijack the cigarette – my first one in three years - and suck the contents so fiercely that the nicotine razes my throat. I don’t care.

Saturday: Word of the Day: Nimbus.

The Results Caroline is sobbing into her stiff hospital pillow when I arrive. My heart clenches. I hover at the door wondering if This Is The Day. ‘Hydrocortisone kicking in,’ says the nurse, sweeping passed with a cocktail of blue pills rattling in a plastic cup. ‘Did you bring the photos?’

I nod, my hand clamped nervously over the zip of my bag. Caroline finally notices me and a shadow flickers across her face.

‘It’s Sarah.’ I remind her. ‘Sarah?’ Can she hear the trepidation in my voice?

When I sit in the plastic foam-filled chair it makes a farting noise, and she suddenly giggles and covers her mouth with her hand like a schoolgirl. Is the old Caroline still in there somewhere? Nun jokes and vodka? The thought both soothes and terrifies me.

We sit in silence like characters in a poorly acted play. Her shirt is all buttoned up wrong. She hates that shirt. Always said it made her look like her mother. Alex must have grabbed it from her wardrobe. Fool.

I slowly pull out the photos. University. Blurry Kodak moments of bright-eyed girls and beery boys. ‘Redemption Song’ and cheap guitars, Spag Bol and tequila. Four friends, tight as knitting.

I hold onto the other photographs. I don’t know why. Perhaps because I can’t bear to look at them myself. So the sun-blinkered Greek islands and the gaudy Halloweens get pushed back into my bag, to take refuge between crumpled tissues and hairy lozenges.

Thursday: Word of the Day: Battenberg.

‘You know,’ she urges, trying to make me understand. ‘Four squares.

Pink. Yemen. Pink. Yemen.’

‘Yellow?’ I offer.

‘Yes, yellow. Pink, yellow.’ She smiles satisfied.

‘Would you like some? I could bring you some.’

But she is staring out of the window again. Chasing the fleeting breath of summer tea and cake with almond essence, perhaps.

‘There were four of us.’

I swallow hard.

‘That’s right. Tony’s been in Australia for work. He’s coming back tomorrow. To see you.’

Suddenly her face folds in on itself and she begins to sob in hefty gulps. Here It Comes I think, and draw a deep and steadying breath. She stiffens when I put my arm around her shoulders, sniffing back the tears.

Then she raps the bony knuckles of her hand hard against her skull.

‘I just want to remember.’

When I prise her fingers away, they are brittle icicles suddenly locked into mine.

‘Truth hurts,’ she says stonily and now it’s my turn to freeze. An odd smile spreads across her tear-streaked face, and for one surreal second I wonder if it’s a test. The nurse enters and injects a clear liquid into her catheter. It’s only once the medication has begun to weave its dreamy descent and Caroline’s eyes flutter that the blood returns to my veins.

Tuesday: Word of the Day: Vino.

‘Think about it,’ Alex slurs, his red eyes lowering over our third bottle.

‘It’s our ‘Get out of Jail Free card’.’

‘Not for Tony, it isn’t.’

He reminds me that it’s only a matter of time before my husband has to be back in Sydney. Maybe for good if I don’t go with him.

Suddenly I miss him, that absent husband of mine. With his blushing bald spot and his Rob Roy chin dimple. I want to bury my face in his smell again, pick fluff off his jumpers while he rubs the soles of my flaking feet.

I drain my glass and bile rises in the back of my throat. Even in the half-light I can see the ghost of the red wine stain still on the kitchen wall.

It seems much longer than just a month ago when she found me with Alex. My legs wrapped around his rocking hips in the ultimate act of betrayal before she hurled the bottle at us. Did she think it was just that

once? An isolated moment of stupidity? Or had she already worked the whole story out?

Afterwards she lay in a coma for eleven days, during which time the medics diagnosed Addison’s Disease. They said that the seizure could have happened at any time and that she had, effectively, been living with a time-bomb. Her fatigue, her loss of appetite and her lack-lustre complexion were all indications of an adrenal hormone deficiency. But they were confident that she’d soon be back to full health. Given the right care and attention.

Tony is due to arrive at Heathrow in the morning and is going straight to the hospital armed with flowers and a specially-prepared i-pod. He’s thoughtful like that. Bob Marley, Andrea Boccelli, Van Morrison all downloaded for her. I can’t actually ever remember her listening to Van Morrison, but it’s the thought that counts.

‘He doesn’t need to fly all the way back here. It’s not like she’s at death’s door anymore.’ Alex sounds more than a little disappointed.

Yesterday he told me that he thought it would have been better if she’d never woken up. I slapped his face and he went off into the garden to rip at the buddleia. The word ‘weasel’ sprang to mind.

We sit now amidst the sleeping kitchen corners and the passive hum of the fridge. He puts his glass down and takes my hand. And it’s odd how simple and humane he makes it all sound.

He has it all worked out.

The gentle persuasion, the cleverly-planted phrases. Those moments, still as yet unremembered, of sitting down and agreeing that the marriage hadn’t been working for a while. The plans for an amicable divorce. All lies, of course. Caroline had never given me any doubt of her love for Alex in all the years they’d been a couple. Surely I would have known if something had been amiss.

When she first awoke from the coma, slurring in the native accent she had fought so hard to lose, I realised that she had somehow reverted to default mode. Like an infected computer re-booting with only the most basic of hard-drives intact.

Would she have to start all over again, re-installing her personality, uploading her love of salsa and her fear of pigeons? And was the love for Alex already hard-wired into her system?

I look at my best friend’s husband, the man I am supposed to be secretly in love with. The weasel who kicked at the buddleia planted by my gentle husband, who is still too far away to be real. The Rioja gets the better of me and I rush to the bathroom to throw up.

Monday: Word of the Day: Exponential.

Caroline is not only now controlling all her bodily functions she has mastered the art of buttoning shirts I don’t even recognise. She is also remembering details of her college years, and the word salad has become a side dish peppered with frustrated expletives and the odd exotic adjective.

The doctors are thrilled with her progress. Her memory is coming back far more quickly than they’d anticipated. She understands that she and Alex are married but cannot remember why. He continues to resonate panic and throws me frantic looks, like a cornered fugitive in search of a fire escape. I watch for any signs of affection she may have for him, but she only gazes at their matching rings with a vacant expression and picks at the Battenberg cake I’ve brought us for tea.

They doctors are preparing Alex for her homecoming, furnishing him with leaflets and support numbers. Your wife’s a real a fighter, they say.

You must be very proud. Only I can smell the fear in him.

By contrast Tony smells of Faraway. Even in a grey room the sunshine bounces like a medallion off his skin and he is fitter and browner than before. His hair is surf-boy blond and it winks in tiny

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Short Story Competition 2011 threads of gold along his arms. He looks different. Energised. And all this Without Me. We decide to visit Caroline in shifts.

‘She’s one of the strongest women I know,’ he reassures me with a hug, but there is something sorrow in his voice. In the evenings we sit on the sofa but he does not offer to massage my feet. Jet-lag, he sighs, but then looks guilty and takes me into the bedroom. I long for that faraway sunshine to rub off on me and warm my chilled bones. But even in his bronzed arms I am elsewhere.

If Caroline has lost her identity through a brain crisis, then what’s my excuse? I’ve forgotten who I am. I’ve disappeared and I don’t know where or when or how it happened. I don’t have any pills to help me get back.

Saturday: Word of the Day: Mascara.

Caroline is wearing make-up and I am shocked by how beautiful she suddenly looks. I can’t believe I feel jealous. I still look like shit.

‘Sarah!’

She’s exclaimed my name like that every day this week. I call her a glamour puss, and ask her jokingly which doctor she fancies. She twirls the hand mirror and tells me that Tony brought the makeup back from Australia. I feel stung, though I know it’s ungracious of me.

Wednesday: Word of the Day: Mojitos.

She takes a deep breath and beckons me closer. Whispers the words so softly into my ear that the invisible hairs on my lobe bristle.

The club. The dancing.

She pulls back and fixes her shining eyes on me as if to measure my reaction. There is something else too. Fear? Uncertainty?

Cuba was less than a year ago. That club in Havana was where it all started. Too many cocktails and the tantalising tang of another man’s sweat.

‘Why do they always keep these bloody rooms so warm?’ I say.

‘I’ll open the window,’ she offers eagerly, and there is not a bungalow or pineapple in sight.

‘What if it happened to me?’ I blurt out to Alex at the hospital coffee bar.

‘Would you desert me too?’

He ignores me and continues texting a colleague, smirking at some private office joke.

I think about the lump in my breast. My own secret demon throbbing away, cells conspiring to overthrow me. Every time I touch it I wince. Not because it hurts, but because I know I am deliberately prodding the Devil with a stick.

This morning I was mugged by a tiny streak of blood in my bra.

‘Tony spent all night at the hospital.’ I whisper, more to myself. ‘He hasn’t been home.’

Alex looks up now.

‘And his phone’s switched off.’

Tuesday: Word of the Day: There is no word of the day because there is no Caroline.

When I get to the hospital they are already changing the sheets for a new patient.

‘You’ve just missed her,’ the nurse says. ‘The Australian bloke came for her.’

‘He’s not Australian,’ I say thinly, the floor falling away from beneath my feet. ‘He’s my husband.’

She shrugs. ‘Well anyway, she left you something.’

On the bedside table is a small cellophane-wrapped slice of cake from the canteen vending machine. Pink. Yellow. Pink. Yellow. Four sponge squares bound in marzipan and hermetically sealed in plastic. I don’t check the ‘best-before’ date.

Only the post-it note.

Her handwriting is unmistakeable. Assertive and unapologetic, just

36 | Competitions

like her.

We’ve always had similar tastes, it reads, except when it comes to marzipan.

Third Place - Falling Angel by Ingrid Baier It was the usual influx at the office: the atheists, a few thousand vague deists, a handful of the truly faithful, the occasional Zen master, a pantheist or two, and of course, the know-it-all, new-age-crazy-bastards from California.

There is a perpetual line-up to get into the afterlife. At roughly one hundred and fifty thousand deaths a day world-wide, souls stream constantly through the tunnel and into the light, only to stack up in the Astral Zone, a kind of spiritual holding pen where each aura is funneled through primary sorting and catalogued according to its basic level of enlightenment. Courtiers and criminals, convicts and clergy, they emerge en masse from the tunnel and huddle together in little knots of six or eight at the foot of the primary scanner.

Except for the self-important; they stand a little to one side with their backs against the wall, as though they’d expected the afterlife to have a service entrance for the riff-raff and the rabble.

Nothing too fancy or technical in primary sorting, just the three basic categories: Heaven, Hell and, of course, the catch all: Purgatory.

I had no interest whatsoever in a career in Purgatory, but after a few ill-chosen words in the coffee room six months earlier, I had been transferred to secondary sorting at the gates of Purgatory faster than you can say “Praise the Lord”. All for noting that God must have had a few cocktails when He invented humans. A few years ago, this would have been a perfectly acceptable office quip, but between the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and Alighieri Management Systems’ new policy of affirmative action, a few human souls are, God forbid, moving up the transcendental ladder and actually finding employment amongst the lowest order of angels, and I just happened to be overheard by some upwardly mobile, freshly-dead office gopher who was delivering fat-free lattes to the Cherubim. Of course, he had to get up on his high horse and file a harassment complaint, and I was suspended with pay while I awaited my tribunal before the Powers in the Third Sphere of Heaven.

I hadn’t quite realized the seriousness of the new harassment policy until then. I looked it up before the hearing: Alighieri Management Systems (hereafter referred to as the Employer) expressly protects the rights of all employees, contractors and sub-contractors, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, to work in an environment free from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religious affiliation, age, sexual orientation, species, or level of enlightenment. Zero tolerance will apply.

There is nothing quite as humiliating to an archangel as performing a public apology to a human… unless it is being demoted and reassigned to the secondary sorting house at the gates of Purgatory.

I despise Purgatory. It is, by definition, bland and uninteresting, a kind of insipid spiritual holding pattern for the chronically indecisive.

For an archangel who has personally escorted such high profile souls as Mao, Barbie and Amin down through the Nine Circles of Hell, there is nothing more tedious than shepherding the perennially mediocre to their personal niche in Purgatory.

My new job was to individually assess the aura of each soul and categorize it into one of seven possible sub-levels within Purgatory itself.

The scanner at the secondary sorting house was considerably more refined than the one in primary sorting and it looked beyond the basic level of enlightenment and evaluated ulterior motives, repressed emotion and hidden agendas—although in my humble opinion all it really did was register the slight differences between the dull, the routine, the

The Results commonplace, and the cataclysmically boring.

I didn’t, of course, deal with the Truly Evil. They went to Hell, along with the Republicans. We did get the Democrats, mostly because chronic whining tends to have a negative effect on the aura, but while it may be considered to be one of the seven deadly personality traits, whinging hardly qualifies as a deadly sin.

Even Heaven would have been better than Purgatory. Purgatory is the training ground for Third Sphere novice angels, and getting re-assigned there was an insult to both my knowledge and skill as an archangel. Unlike Heaven and Hell—both of which house permanent accommodations for human souls—Purgatory is transient, meaning that souls can work their way up through the levels according to their own expanding degree of enlightenment. So if a new angel gets sidetracked updating his Facebook profile and accidentally sends a Seventh Terrace soul to get its eyes sewn shut, the mistake can be rectified without actual Divine Intervention from the Big Guy. I particularly resented my new assignment because I’d already done my time in the sorting house, in fact, I’d started my career in primary sorting way back at the dawn of time. Things had been pretty dull for the first few billion years—there wasn’t much to sort in the primordial soup—but eventually the sludge stirred itself off the bottom of the cosmic pot and sorting souls became a full time job (although it was only a paltry four million years ago when australopithecines emerged from the forest and straightened their collective back that earthly intelligence even remotely justified the concept of “desert”).

Things really picked about a hundred thousand years ago with the first appearance of homo-sapiens and for a time, working at the sorting house had been rather entertaining, particularly after the end of the Paleolithic period when human intelligence began to outstrip its moral development. No doubt about it, though, the last two thousand years had been the best. I particularly enjoyed the Catholics: I’d had a field day with the Crusades and again with the Spanish Inquisition. And we all looked forward to the death of a Pope. They only came in once a decade or so, and we always ran an office pool to see where the poor bastard would register on the enlightenment scale. I won three hundred pieces of silver in 1159 when Pope Hadrian IV (the only English pope, I might add), walked through the primary scanner and went straight to Hell for bestowing Ireland on Henry II in 1155.

But I’d never intended soul sorting as a long term career, and even before the birth of Christ I was starting to get restless. I longed for a change and after fifteen hundred years of Art-of-Waring and drinking Cadillac-sized cocktails with the Big Guy at the office Winter Solstice party, I finally made the leap from the Astral Zone to Hell. I don’t like to think of myself as obsessed with sin or anything quite so medieval, but good people are never as interesting as evil ones—if, in fact, humans can ever be described as interesting—I just know that given a choice between the unholy heretics and the check-your-brain-at-the-door, tow-the-line fundamentalists, I’ll take the heretics every time.

Anyway, I’d started off in Limbo, where I spent a brief stint organizing bocce ball tournaments for the Pagans, but I worked my way down through the Nine Circles and eventually I was appointed Foreign Liaison Officer for the City of Dis. Those were the days! Hobnobbing with the Guardian of the Stygian Marsh. Handing over traitors, murderers and corrupt politicians to the Fallen Angels. A penthouse suite and an unlimited expense account.

And now, because of an overly-sensitive, wet-behind-the-ears federal bureaucrat from DC, I was back at the sorting house. In Purgatory.

I scanned the list of the day’s incoming: 149,867 people through primary sorting. 11,985 destined for Heaven, 6,432 destined for Hell.

That left 131,450 for Yours Truly.

131,450 souls to slot into Purgatory’s delightful terraces in a single day. Then roughly the same tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, and on, and on, ad nauseam until I worked my way back up the transcendental ladder or the humans melted their species right off

the planet, whichever came first.

I fed the souls, one by one, through the scanner.

Ping! Apathetic.

It figured. Purgatory is stuffed to the rafters with the souls of the apathetic. They were usually assigned to Terrace Four, although it wasn’t uncommon for them to spend several centuries there. Of all the souls in Purgatory, the apathetic and the Baptists take the longest to get out.

Ping! Unmotivated talent waster.

That was bad, Terrace One, bottom of the totem pole, half a step above Hell itself. Nothing irks the Big Guy more than watching a concert pianist slinging hash at the local diner.

The pings became a symphony, blurring into a single, ringing chime as souls streamed out of the scanner and into seven wide-neck funnels before disappearing down seven colossal chutes. Even operating at maximum speed, I could see I wasn’t going to get a break this millennium. There had to be a better way.

Then it came to me—if I could reconfigure the scanner to simultaneously process multiple auras, I could increase my efficiency by the power of ten. I just needed an appropriate algorithm to divide the souls into seven equal categories.

I sipped my cappuccino as I pondered my selection criteria. Race?

Religion? Political persuasion? Cause of death?

That was it! Of course, I had to sub-categorize to get around the literal cause of death as cardiac arrest, but in the end I came up with seven relatively equal categories.

Terminally ill who had died in their sleep: Terrace One. All deaths from random acts of violence: Terrace Two. Needless, preventable deaths caused directly by human politics: Well, that would account for about ninety percent of the infant mortality rate, better send them up to Terrace Seven.

I was finished by noon and spent the rest of the day on the links.

I should have realized the Big Guy would catch on sooner rather than later. In retrospect, I should have limited my time saving devices to Sundays, His day off. As it was, I got away with it for a week only because He’d been at a conference in Anthropia, a parallel dimension that He’d created back at the beginning of time, when He first invented string theory.

But He was back now, and He was pissed! Overall, God was a pretty tolerant employer with a sublime sense of humor, but He was adamant about one thing: don’t fuck with the souls.

I have a vague recollection of Him picking me up by the scruff of the neck and shaking me. My wings, and then my body just kind of … melted. My last thought was that He couldn’t possibly demote me any further because I had already hit the bottom of the employment food chain when I had been reassigned to sorting out terminally middling human souls.

Then it went black.

It was a long time before consciousness returned. I couldn’t hear anything for the longest time, but I gradually became aware of burblings and gurglings and a steady thumping noise that I couldn’t identify. The next time I saw the Light, I was wet and cold. I looked up in horror to see a pair of spectacles peering down at me over a green surgical mask, while all around me joyous words reverberated in my ears: “It’s a boy!”

Competitions | 37

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Comp Corner Corralled by Danny Gillan

Space is tight this issue so I’ll keep this one brief (stop cheering!).

Last issue, to tie in with our cover star, the magnificent Frank Quitely, we asked for your character origin stories. You know, like in comics, with the radioactive spiders, murdered parents and dead home planets etc.

You responded with your usual high standards and it was once again a tricky business whittling out some winners. But whittle we did and here they are: As a toddler Rosie browsed municipal daffodils and whacked other children with her duck’s head umbrella. She acquired early immunity both to floral toxins and to her mother’s entreaties.

At her eleventh birthday sleepover friends inhaled superglue from a paper bag.

Rosie stared out the paramedics. “Rosie is terribly upset,” her mother told them.

At school the maths teacher picked on her whenever she didn’t do her homework. Her mother complained. Rosie swapped maths sets and failed her GCSEs. Topshop’s store detective spotted the t-shirt under Rosie’s hoodie. He didn’t see the vodka bottle. Or the knife.

Penelope Jane Randall and ...

McGee discovered hashish in a lowlife bar. He beat up of a couple of hippie types and ate what they were smoking. It altered his life. Half an hour later his world changed. His face drained, his hands trembled and his body swayed on jellied legs. He flung open the toilet door and slumped easily into the galvanized urinal, and there he lay. Considerate drinkers pissed around him, those with an old McGee grievance pissed all over him. A smile appeared on his face as the ingested drug took hold, his belief in God and Angels, lost since childhood, returned.

Congratulations to Penelope and Jim, who will soon be enjoying their very own copies of Julie Myerson’s Then. And thanks once again to everyone who entered.

For our next comp we’re looking for something so simple and straightforward we won’t be surprised if the entries number in their dozens. Yes, I said dozens!

All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning Michael Morpurgo’s Shadow is send in the worst sentence you’re capable of writing.

Yep, you heard us, the worst. You know all those rules you keep hearing about – no adjectives, lose the gerunds, can those adverbs, put those infinitives back together this instant etc. Well, we want you to ignore them all. Break every rule you can and come up with the most godawful, illiterate, nonsensical, downright painful sentence you can possibly create without doing your brain an actual injury. As always, points will be awarded for making us chortle.

You have a maximum of 30 words – use them unwisely.

As ever, send your entries in the body of an email to danny@wordswithjam. co.uk by May 5th.

Jim Brown

Poetry by

Abigail Wyatt

Seasons Seasons on since your going away, summer ends abruptly.

The wind tears pink roses from their slender thorns, tosses them and tramples them down.

I sit in your kitchen and drink strong black tea from your pink and yellow teapot.

Beyond the new windows, the rain-smudged garden where we giggled and did not suspect.

On the walls, your pictures, on the shelves, your pots; on the landing hangs the mirror that you painted.

The house is full of humble ghosts, though your shoes and clothes have gone.

Your son, grown taller, hugs the TV, gobbles cookies he made lately with his grandma.

On this first day of a new school year, he brings me another lost tooth.

About Abigail Abigail Wyatt was born in Essex and lives in Redruth in Cornwall. Over the past three years, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in more than fifty outlets including ‘Word Salad’, ‘The Recusant’ and ‘Poetry 24’. ‘Old Soldiers, Old Bones and Other Stories’, a collection of short stories, is due out with ‘One Million Stories’ in the spring of 2012. She performs her work at The Melting Pot, Krowji in Redruth and the Be Spoken Word in Penzance.

For Mary Anning, Written on the Beach at Charmouth Beach babe with your bonnet askew and your woollen cape wrapped close, with the tide’s roar at your sturdy back and the sky’s silver line, not for you the sun’s late warmth across this sleepy, golden mile; rather the trudge and squelch of sludge, ears, nose and fingers pinched, the quick, slick rocks as green as fields and the stones stark grabbing at the light.

How odd that where you risked your step to the slip and stumble of the shale the years have turned and brought these plodding hordes to fill your wake, not so nimble they who batter and crack at the long, slow works of time where a cormorant cries and swoops and dives and a child digs for dream-dust in the sand.

The Agent’s View with Andrew Lownie and Hannah Westland

Andrew answers YOUR questions ...

Andrew Lownie was born in 1961 and was educated in Britain and America. He read history at Magdalene College, Cambridge where he was President of the Union. He went on to gain an MSc at Edinburgh University and spend a year at the College of Law in London.

After a period as a bookseller and journalist, he began his publishing career as the graduate trainee at Hodder & Stoughton.

In 1985 became an agent at John Farquharson, now part of Curtis Brown, and the following year became the then youngest director in British publishing when he was appointed a director.

Since 1984 he has written and reviewed for a range of newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Spectator and Guardian, which has given him good journalistic contacts.

As an author himself, most notably of a biography of John Buchan and a literary companion to Edinburgh, he has an understanding of the issues and problems affecting writers. He is a member of the Association of Authors’ Agents and Society of Authors and was until recently the literary agent to the international writers’ organisation PEN. In 1998 he founded The Biographers Club, a monthly dining society for biographers and those involved in promoting biography, and The Biographers’ Club Prize which supports first-time biographers.

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Hi Andrew I’d like to know about true-life stories. I see Cathy Glass, a client of yours, has published many books based on the children she cared for as a foster mother. I’ve written several outlines for books about the models I work with, but what worries me is the legal side. Obviously, changed names and all that, and I’m writing under a pen name, but should I ask permission, or take the risk of someone recognising themselves and getting sued? How did Cathy Glass handle that side of things?

Thanks Lila Latte (the pen name!) from London Issues of confidentiality, privacy, copyright and libel are increasingly important and putting many publishers off certain sorts of books such as unauthorised biographies.

My advice is not to say anything to anyone in the book, to put everything in but highlight where there might be particular sensitivities and then let the lawyers take out or paraphrase where required.

As an American who writes a British mystery series, I’d like to ask Mr. Lownie how I can get my books looked at by a UK agent/publisher. I have a New York agent~ Kind regards. Love the issue!

Marni Graff Does your New York agent have a relationship with a UK agency or does the US agent submit directly to UK? If your representation is purely for America and your US agent isn’t interested in handling you abroad then you could approach UK agencies as clearly there is a British angle. Google UK literary agencies crime and that will alert you to possible agents and you could also check who has agented comparable books. Another option is to go straight to UK crime publishers.

Dear Mr Lownie Can you elaborate on what a writers’ platform is? For the oldfashioned amongst us, is it possible to succeed without?

Benedict Harries, Aldershot, Surrey A platform is another term for profile. Publishers increasingly rely on authors doing much of the marketing themselves. If you have a website receiving lots of visitors which can be used to market to potential readers then you are a more attractive proposition to publishers than someone who doesn’t. I recently sold a book helped by the fact the author had a very popular website. My best-selling author Cathy Glass spends several hours a day answering e mails and has built a large and devoted following which means that when each new book is released on Amazon she is catapulted up the sales rankings on the basis of pre-orders.

Platform might also mean that you carry authority as a world expert on the subject or have particular insights because of, for example with a biography, your

relationship with the subject. Platform may simply refer to your media profile and you are famous and likely to attract media interest.

It is possible to succeed without platform simply on the basis of good reviews, word of mouth sales, good viral marketing etc but platform is important. Increasingly I’m finding it difficult to sell UK authors in the US, even if the subject should be of US interest, if they don’t have a platform in US.

Dear Andrew Amazon - a threat to publishers and agents, but a gift to readers and writers?

Scott Simborowski, Albany, New York How long have you got? Amazon has transformed the publishing model and also the sort of books now commissioned providing huge opportunities but also changing the way we conduct business. Bookshops have been squeezed and increasingly we will buy our books – like so much else – either online or through supermarkets.

A threat therefore to bookshops but a huge bonus to everyone else most notably the consumer in terms of quick access, wide choice and low price. We can now buy books at the press of a button and if ebooks they can be delivered instantly. We have access to the biggest bookshop in the world so we will always find what we want and we can browse easily to find similar books of interest. Given the large number of books it sells, Amazon can negotiate good discounts and pass those on to readers in terms of cheap prices.

Anything that helps drive book sales is good for publisher, agent and writer. The margins may be tighter but volume is up. It has tended to polarise sales so success breeds success and some brand names are doing very well but through the ‘Long Tail’ argument it has also given a wider show case to academic and small specialist publishers and helped their sales. Amazon has also helped self-published authors cutting out middlemen such as publishers and agents but these have tended to be additional books in the market.

Can you ask the agent if he knows of any first-hand true accounts of last year’s riots which have already been published? And which kind of publisher might handle a close-up view of the action, supported by in-depth social and political analysis of root causes?

Toby D., St Albans Amazon has immediately come to the rescue. Put in ‘2011 riots’ and a number of books and e books come up including some first-hand accounts. I suspect the market has moved on and publishers will feel the subject has already been sufficiently covered both by publishers and the existing media coverage and probably hugely not commercial in any case.

How would somebody become a reader for an agent? I would love a job like that as I am now a Stay-At-Home-Mom after twelve years of office work. I love reading and have no problem meeting deadlines.

Patty DeMontfort, Lausanne You could offer your services to publishers but they tend

to already have a cadre of experienced readers with publishing experience who are also stay-at-home mums. What publishers need are readers who can assess commercial potential of a book rather than quality so difficult to break in. A good start might be to offer yourself as a reader for the Amazon Vine programme which will give you that required ‘platform’!

What do you see as the value of writers’ societies, such as SoA and so on?

Jill, Zürich I always encourage authors to join the Society of Authors and have been a member myself for over twenty years. It’s a useful trade union for writers offering free advice on contracts, providing lots of information on current trends in publishing through their magazine and seminars and, if my authors are members, can be a useful ally when I need to get tough with publishers. Knowledge is power so well worth joining any organisation such as PEN, Romantic Novelists Association, Crime Writers Association etc quite apart from networking opportunities and that it’s fun to mix with kindred spirits.

Hannah Westland Hannah Westland grew up in London and studied English Literature at Leeds University. She joined Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd in 2002, working with both Deborah Rogers and David Miller. In April 2012, she will join the profile Books imprint, Serpent’s Tail, in the role of publisher.

She said “I’ve been very fortunate to have spent nine happy years at RCW, among amazing colleagues and so many extraordinary writers, but the opportunity to become publisher at Serpent’s Tail was one I couldn’t pass up. I have always admired the Serpent’s Tail list for its bravery and imagination, and for championing new and unusual voices, both in fiction and non-fiction. I am absolutely thrilled to have been given the chance to continue this tradition, and am looking forward to working alongside the fantastic team at Serpent’s Tail and Profile.”

Hannah attended the Geneva Writers’ Conference 2012, where, in addition to sitting on a panel, she offered Q&A sessions where she addressed writers’ queries directly. This is what happened in one such session.

What do you look for in a submission?

I’m looking for work which is not obviously genre defined and which displays intelligence and with high literary merit. I’m not keen on excessively whimsical or elaborate prose.

When I receive a submission, the covering letter is key. If that interests me, I’ll read the 50 pages. The synopsis is the least relevant.

Are you interested in shorter works, such as a novella?

Novellas are hard to sell, not only for publishers, but for booksellers. I did a job swap a while back and spent a week working in a bookshop. A woman came in looking for the ‘novel’ of Brokeback Mountain. I explained the film was based on a short story by Annie Proulx, showed her the collection and explained she’d get several other excellent stories into the bargain. She didn’t want it. People are reluctant to spend £8 on something under 50 thousand words.

Do you represent poets?

As an agency, RCW do. Carol Ann Duffy is one such client. However, we don’t accept unsolicited poetry. I have one poet on my list, Richard Meier, whom I approached after he won a prize and because I loved his work.

At what stage in the process should writers approach an agent?

With fiction, you must have completed the book. At least a first draft. With nonfiction, you can send a proposal. If the agency likes the idea, think you’re the right person to write the book and it really has book potential, ie, not just an extended magazine article, they’ll work with you to get the proposal publisherready. A non-fiction book can be picked up on the basis of an idea, but fiction stands or falls on the quality of the writing.

If you work has been professionally edited prior to submission, should you mention that in your cover letter?

Why not? It certainly wouldn’t put me off and shows you’re serious. You need to demonstrate your commitment to writing.

Why do writers need an agent? Why not work directly with a publisher?

Some small publishers prefer that. But I would say that an agent will put your interests first, by trying to sell your rights all over the world, getting you the best deal across various media. Whereas a publisher will put their own interests above yours.

Can you explain the ‘code’ agents use in rejection letters?

There is no ‘code’. If agents say the book’s not right them for but would be happy to see future work, or that if you rewrite the book, they’ll reconsider, they mean it. Believe me, agents don’t want to cultivate contact with a writer who doesn’t interest them.

If you sell my rights to a British publisher, does that mean all Englishspeaking rights?

No. Usually we sell British and Commonwealth rights. That covers Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, India, South Africa, and used to include Canada.

But now, US publishers are often trying to buy US AND Canadian rights. And in fact, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly trying to buy World Rights. As the publishing landscape changes the traditional territorial definitions are going to have to change with it.

How’s the agent’s role changing in the current climate?

We need to keep up with trends.. Currently we’re trying to work out how to ensure our writers get a fair deal out of the new digital opportunities that are arising. We’re also keen to find new ways of promoting traditional books.

My hope is that writers, agents, publishers and readers can work together to redefine what publishing means.

In this fast-changing world of publishing, what makes you optimistic and what pessimistic?

I’d say I’m optimistic about the increased attention and wider readerships that the new digital age promises, but I’m worried about the relentless downward spiral of the prices of books – both print and electronic - and how this will affect our ability to protect writers’ incomes.

How do you feel about the potential of e-books?

Anything that encourages people to read is fine by me. I’m pleased to see that embedded detail, reader-directed content and animation seems to be a passing fad, especially in more literary work. I don’t want to be interrupted in the middle of a story.

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Cornerstones Mini Masterclass with Kathryn Price

To Each Her Own by J. Domingo Chapter 1 She was, as far as he remembered, a most heartfelt wish. Someone he dreamt up when he was a boy alone in his room and covered in welts after another beating from his father. She came to him whenever he writhed feverish with pain while praying to God to make him a better son, a good son. He thought she was his guardian angel. She enveloped him in skin so smooth and soft, breathing on his wounds and filling the air with the sweet aroma of lavender until his bruises healed and his heart soared. She promised him sanctuary if he believed in her. And for a while he did. But that was over eighty years ago.

These days he no longer dreamt. Instead he drifted on his narrowboat, the Swan, along an ever changing landscape. He was grateful for the River Lea and its many nature reserves. Every night he’d park his chair on the towpath, his boat moored, and watch the evening swallow up these few acres of raw nature.

He found comfort in such consistency and so when she emerged from the darkness as his watch ticked to midnight, his whole world turned. In an instant, decades melted away.

Framed by the harvest moon, she stood before him unchanged, with skin the colour of fertile earth, hair the shade of night and eyes so narrow he could barely see the velvet hue of her pupils.

Perhaps he should have been afraid. Instead he felt ashamed.

He groped his dry and liver-spotted hands aware of how painfully aged he had become. He knew the boating community called him The Old Geezer or the Old Fart depending on who liked him and who didn’t. Either way he knew he was old. There was no denying the straggly white hair where there used to be bright red thick locks or the stoop of his once broad shoulders or the shakiness of his movements as arthritis nibbled at his bones.

“Your eyes haven’t changed, “she whispered reading his thoughts as easily as before. “They are as blue as the heavens.”

The smell of lavender - concentrated pure heady lavender – made him almost faint.

“Why...” he spluttered, his hands turning into fists. “ Why are you here?”

“We had an understanding,” she breathed, drawing her face so close - much too close - to him.

“And you failed me.”

Lost in her scent, his whole body swayed towards her, eager to rest his weary head on her breasts just as he used to except this time he was ancient and exhausted. No good to anyone, he despaired, let alone to her.

Her lips brushed his nose.

“I... I was only a boy,” he stuttered.

“You promised me.”

“The war...I couldn’t... I was hurt... the doctors said... they said...”

“You killed as a man and yet could not fulfil your promise to me?”

“I was only a boy!”

“Hush.”

He felt her smooth hands tighten around his head, tipping it up slightly. A soft kiss touched his dry lips.

He stared up at her. He felt a passion he had not felt in a long while stir between his thighs. Oh she was beautiful, this vision of death. Then he heard a snap and the night rushed in.

This is an atmospheric submission with a chilling sense of mystery and sensuality. There are some vivid descriptions contributing to this – the smell of lavender, the touch of soft skin that’s the ‘colour of fertile earth’ – beautiful. The author has a real knack for helping the reader to experience a scene with all their senses.

We begin with a memory from the distant past, from a time when our POV character was ‘feverish’ – and as a result the scene is initially hard to pin down in terms of setting; we’re not immediately sure when or where we are. This gives it an abstract, hallucinatory quality which isn’t necessarily a bad thing given that the character himself is disorientated and possibly even delusional.

However, this first paragraph packs a lot in and there’s a danger that the reader will struggle to assimilate all the information they’re given, particularly if they’re also trying to puzzle out the setting and context. For instance, we learn that the woman is/was a creation of the young boy’s imagination; that he suffered terrible beatings from his father; that he made a kind of pact with the woman; that eighty years have passed; that he now lives on a narrow boat; and what he now does with his evenings.

Like the ‘ever-changing landscape’ of the River Lea, this opening whisks us through a variety of scenarios without pausing for breath.

Normally we advise against including flashbacks and shifts in timescale/location so early in a story because they can be distancing and even confusing for a reader, and these first pages are so crucial in terms of getting your audience hooked. However, there could be a way to make this flashback work effectively through careful sequencing and pacing.

Might it be possible to set the present day scene before drifting off into recollection? This would give the reader a clear picture of the setting in order to root them solidly in the now of the story before moving into the past. An extended version of the passage beginning ‘These days he no longer dreamt’ might work very well as an opening paragraph, but instead of telling us what the old man does ‘every night’ (a generalisation) let’s see him on this specific occasion, sitting in his chair on the towpath, musing on his life, his neighbours and his past.

Once we’ve established where we are, we could segue smoothly into a reflection – perhaps as the old man drifts off to sleep – about when he was a young boy praying to God while writhing in pain. The memory might be prompted by something he sees or physically experiences in the present (the smell of lavender, for instance). Ideally this recollection could be dramatised as a fuller, more immersive flashback. It doesn’t need to be long, maybe just a few paragraphs, but generally there would be no harm in slowing the pace down a little to give the reader time to absorb everything. The author’s talent for description can come into play here - where was the boy exactly (in bed? Huddled on a threadbare carpet?) - and avoid anything that feels like cliché or sentimentality (‘heartfelt wish’/‘guardian angel’/’heart soared’).

There could then be a great moment of doubling, where the present starts to overlay the past. The woman reappears in the present day, the old man’s memories blend with the now of the story, and he’s not sure whether he’s still remembering, dreaming, or experiencing something at first hand. The reader would share in his confusion – so we wouldn’t be losing that wonderful, dreamy sense of dislocation. Sequencing it this

way should make for a strong, impactful opening scene which retains the ambiguity of the present text but gives the reader a more solid grounding.

Currently, in fact, the moment where the woman appears to the old man in the present passes us by very quickly in a brief paragraph that tends to rely on rather general, abstract and clichéd phrases (‘he found comfort in such consistency’; ‘his whole world turned’; ‘decades melted away’). If this moment has been built up to sequentially and clearly, it should be easy to pace it more slowly; to inhabit the moment as it happens, dramatising it fully with plenty of specific detail.

There are a few points in the story where the author tells rather than shows. We often find that this happens due to a lack of confidence in the storytelling ability – authors sometimes feel the need to explain, just in case the reader hasn’t quite understood. This is particularly the case when a scene is rich and dense with meaning and emotion.

Here, for instance, we are told that ‘he felt ashamed’, an emotion which comes across fairly clearly through the later dialogue and action and therefore doesn’t need to be prefaced. Likewise, because we see the old man’s ‘liver-spotted hands’ and hear about the fact that he gets called ‘The Old Geezer’ we don’t also need to be told directly that he is ‘aged’, ‘old’, and ‘ancient’. The awareness of his age would be inherent to him, something that’s threaded through his being, and spelling it out explicitly actually tends to undermine this sense.

Finally, the conclusion to this passage might benefit from a little further development – again, this should just be a case of slowing things down a bit. A lot happens here: the woman touches him (and in this moment becomes suddenly – and scarily – real, rather than the dreamlike vision we’ve had so far); he feels sexual passion returning to him (surely an overwhelmingly physical experience); he – and we – have the flash of insight that she’s a ‘vision of death’; and then the ‘night rushes in’. This could be paced over a couple more paragraphs to give each of these progressions the space it deserves. As before, once the sequencing is a little clearer and more logical the author should find it easy to immerse themselves, and the reader, more fully in the immediate moment of the scene.

One or two very minor points to watch out for: check that language usage is always as accurate as possible. I wasn’t sure that ‘enveloped’ was quite the right choice and ‘groped’ as a verb is generally applied to an object – he should be groping something with his hands rather than just groping his hands. Try to avoid minor repetitions that nevertheless can jar a reader’s ear – ‘he knew… he knew’ or ‘lavender – concentrated pure heady lavender’. There are a couple of bits of misplaced punctuation and the sentence ‘no good to anyone, he despaired, let alone to her’ either needs the punctuation or the verb changing, since ‘despaired’ doesn’t really work as dialogue (or in this case thought) attribution.

Very well done on producing a thought-provoking opening which promises a spine-tinglingly atmospheric read. This is a potentially nightmarish moment, when past and present/dream and reality collide, and death is the only way out. If the author can ensure the writing and sequencing is tight and purposeful the reader should be drawn right into it.

If you would like to participate in the Cornerstones Opening Page Mini Masterclass, send your opening page to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject ‘Cornerstones Masterclass’.

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Are you talking to me?

Looking at voice with Sarah Bower

In my last essay, I wrote about narrative viewpoint, about who is telling the story. Closely allied to this is the voice in which the story is told. This can be the voice of the author, of a narrating character, or it can be a babble of several different voices, of all the characters who believe they have something to say and compete for the right to speak. The voice, or voices, in which a story is told set the tone.

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’

This most famous of openings sets up expectations in the reader not just on the basis of what it says, but also how it says it. This voice is articulate, ironic and knowing. It alerts us to the fact that the single man in question and his prospective wives will be subjected to a critical eye.

This author is prepared to give us a romance but she does not expect us to fall into the trap of believing her hero and heroine are perfect or that they are destined to live happily ever after as if in a fairytale.

What, by contrast, does this voice tell us?

‘Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.

Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cotton-house can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own.’

These opening sentences from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying show us immediately that this narrator is not a coolly detached author like Austen but a player in the drama. His phrasing detaches him from the watchers and places him in the action. His voice is colloquial and immediate. Here is no meticulous setting of the stage for the reader; instead she is thrown right in, and left to work out for herself, for example, the spatial relationship between field and cotton house and the

is achieved by finding the right register for a character’s voice.

In his novel, The Ground is Burning, Samuel Black employs three principal narrative voices: Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia. His Leonardo is dreamy and reflective. ‘Outside it is dark and snowflakes float gently through the air.’ Machiavelli is sharp, focused, exhilarated by power. ‘As I argue, the tiredness caused by the long journey fades...to be so close to power, real power...’ Cesare, the pivotal figure in this drama, is jittery, neurotic and terrifying. ‘On the floor – two ruined gloves. On the floor – a cock and three molars. On the floor – shit and piss and snot and puke.’ Note the way the author constructs this voice using short sentences, dashes, repetitions. Even for readers unfamiliar with the historical figures, these different voices reveal a lot about their personalities and preoccupations.

Although his novel is set in the early sixteenth century, Black makes no attempt to use archaic language to reflect the period. Had he done so, the effect would have been completely different. Consider this example, from Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. The injured hero is in conversation with the Jewess, Rebecca who is tending his wounds using her ‘authority as a leech’. Ivanhoe enquires about various people of interest to him, and winds up thus: ‘”...and I would fain know somewhat of a faithful squire, and why he now attends me not?”’ Here Scott, writing in 1819, uses consciously archaic language to convey a sense of the idyll of Merrie Englande which Ivanhoe and all those loyal to King Richard the Lionheart are pledged to protect. This is a novel of nostalgic patriotism, written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and Scott conveys this through the voices he gives his characters.

In developing narrative voices, the writer also has to think about whether or not to attempt to render dialect on the page. This can work very well. Here is the opening of the section of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas entitled Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After: ‘Old Georgie’s path an’ mine crossed more times ’n I’m comfy mem’ryin...’ The phonetic rendering of the narrative voice enables you to hear it as you read. It

Voice is a vital ingredient in making the fictional world credible to readers. It must be consistent, it must fit its surroundings and, most important of all, it must be true to the character who uses it. nature of the connection between Jewel and the narrator. Here Faulkner ventriloquises a character in his novel and this, particularly in the modern novel, is by far the most usual mode of narration. The author makes himself invisible behind his characters and uses their voices to tell his story.

Voice is a vital ingredient in making the fictional world credible to readers. It must be consistent, it must fit its surroundings and, most important of all, it must be true to the character who uses it. It is a subtle and vital way of conveying information to the reader about, for example, a character’s social background, education and, most importantly, their level of knowledge about the events in which the novel engages them. As we saw last time, narrators are, more often than not, unreliable because they either do not know the whole truth or choose not to tell it. All this

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establishes, not just a mode of speech, but an entire hinterland to do with knowledge and status, as we saw in connection with the quote from William Faulkner. In this particular case, the narrative voice helps to set up a post-apocalyptic world in which human understanding and technological know-how has retreated somewhere close to where it was during the Bronze Age. Mitchell uses the voice itself to tell us much of what we need to know about the value systems of this society, thus avoiding the need for a lot of exposition which would undermine the pace of the storytelling.

Phonetics are, however, a double edged sword. While Mitchell uses them well, it is easy to overuse them if you try to render an accent too faithfully on the page. Consider this example from Wuthering Heights, in which the old servant, Joseph, berates the young Catherine Heathcliff,

nee Linton. ‘”Aw wonder how yah can faishon to stand thear i’idleness un war, when all on ‘em’s goan out!”’ Even though I myself come from Yorkshire, I struggle to understand that! This kind of painstaking attempt to reproduce a colloquial accent accurately becomes so difficult to read it tends to interrupt the flow of the narrative. Readers may then skip it and miss something they really need to know to understand the story.

It obscures rather than clarifies. As a rule, I would counsel against using phonetics, and advise trying to suggest an accent using, for example, word order. David Peace, many of whose novels are also set in Yorkshire, suggests the way in which the Yorkshire accent substitutes the glottal stop for the word ‘the’ by excluding ‘the’ altogether rather than cluttering up his prose with the more conventional ‘t’’: ‘I wake on floor again. I get up off floor. I walk over to window.’ (from GB84) The idiolect of your narrating characters, their individual language system, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammatical forms, is a powerful tool in developing, not just the characters themselves, but the fictional world they inhabit. Always remember that you, as author, are a ventriloquist. However good your own command of written English, if your principal characters don’t ‘speak’ that way, then you must discipline yourself to break the rules – as Peace does with his removal of the definite article from the narrative voice of his striking coal miner. When

developing voices, spend time ‘listening’ to them in your head. If you can find ‘real’ voices on which to eavesdrop which resemble what you are trying to achieve, then use them. Note down the idiosyncrasies of their phrasing and vocabulary so you can reproduce them in your fiction. Be consistent. If you fail in this, readers will find it difficult to believe in the voice you have created. Don’t expect to perfect a voice in your early drafts. Voices are complex and, even when they are your own invention, take time to learn. You will need to be patient and painstaking in order to achieve control over them and make them serve your purpose.

And a final note after running this completed piece through my spell checker – when writing dialect, turn it off!

Scripts: Storypropelling

by Ola Zaltin

Let me tell you a story. Not a very uplifting or amazing story. In fact, it’s rather basic, down to earth and drab.

It’s one of those how to’s that reduces the lust, thrust, madness, love, hatred and sheer battle of Writing into a trite step-by-step process of expanding an original idea into a story with forward momentum, a clear goal and a well-defined theme. Very easy to say, bloody difficult to achieve. Fuck boxing; writing is a bloodsport.

This is the story about how ideas get structured into scripts at the National Film School of Denmark.

A caveat is needed at this point: just as with novels, there are a 101 different ways to go about it. Maybe you use a diary as a first draft.

Maybe you wake up every morning and cover yourself with a blanket and speak your dreams into a dictaphone. Or get blotto down the pub and then go home and write all night. All of the above methods that professional writers have told me Works For Them.

Perhaps you do like Paul Schrader when he wrote Taxi Driver: write a two page stepoutline (see below) in one go and then write the whole shebang based on those two pages in two months in the backseat of a car that is also your domicile.

Possibly - like me - you don’t.

What follows is Danish Film School dogma. But first some terminology. This is needed because the definitions of the below often vary from country to country, (and many times from production to production).

Pitch: a one-line description of the film. (often confused with Tag-line.)

Synopsis: a one-page description of the film’s story, from A to Z. Stepoutline: a scene-by-scene listing of the whole film. Each scene gets one line and not one word more. Often a two-to-three page document.

Treatment: a listing of every scene; telling if it be interior or exterior, where it takes place and time of day. Basically describing everything that happens in a scene, minus the dialogue. This is a document that often hits round about 30 pages in length.

Screenplay: the whole enchilada: an expansion of the Treatment plus dialogue. Text is 90 to 120 pages.

A story lego-built like this has the one advantage of being very structured and the creator can always go back and fix parts of the basic architecture that aren’t holding up.

You start out with a basic idea. Express it in a one-liner (pitch), then expand on that one line to a page: outlining the basic beats of the story (synopsis), then going full-bore and writing every scene out as a one-line description of the action in each scene (stepoutline) and so expanding on that into a scene-by-scene description (treatment), hopefully resulting in a first draft (screenplay).

The bonus is, you always have a road-map to lean up against when going to the next level (further developing & expanding on the story). As a neurotic security freak myself, I find this very comforting. The comfort factor helps, but most of all, this work-method forces me as a writer to constantly refine and define what I am trying to tell with the story:

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because of course, yes, these five different formats are constantly rewritten during the development of a script. It’s a bitchin’ discipline, but it pays off in the end.

Down to the nuts and bolts, then. Let’s pick a film, any film, right out of the hat, follow the white rabbit and ....ALIEN it is!

The pitch would be something like: A crew of space-truckers discover an alien race that infiltrates their ship and kills all bar one.

INT: GALLEY - DAY Kane plugs in a Silex.

Lights a cigarette.

Coughs.

Grinds some coffee beans.

Runs some water through.

KANE Rise and shine, Lambert.

The tag-line is, of course, famously: In space no one can hear you scream.

INT. HYPERSLEEP VAULT

Synopsis cannot be provided here in full (for obvious reasons) but it would start with something like: The Nostromo, a commercial towing spaceship is on a return trip from planet Thedus to Earth. After receiving a transmission from an unknown planet, the ship’s computer awakens the crew. Acting on orders from the ship’s owners the crew detaches the Nostromo and lands on the planet.

Another lid pops open.

A young woman sits up.

And so on. The idea is telling the story succinctly and to the point. This is not high literature. Synopses often have a “and then this happens and then that happens and she does this and that happens” - feel. No wucking forries. Just tell the story.

Okay, so you got your story down to a catchy one-liner and have gone on to write it as a one-page outline. Now comes the Stepoutline.

This would look something like this: 1. EXT: The Nostromo glides silently through deep space.

2. INT: Engine room, empty, cavernous.

3. INT: Oily corridor - long, dark. Empty. No movement.

4. INT: Infirmary - ”A” level. All instruments at rest.

5. INT: Bridge. Vacant. Electrical hum. Nothing. Then: a yellow light goes on.

The EXT being Exterior and INT Interior, natch. Not very sexy, eh?

Again: it’s but a tool for the screenwriter, a map, to keep focused on what happens, what the core essence of each scene is. What went before and what is coming up - all in the name of forward propulsion. When the stepoutline is fleshed out, the writer can proceed to expanding on each scene as he or she sees fit. This be the Treatment. In the case of ALIEN, it would look something like this: INT. HYPERSLEEP VAULT - DAY. Explosion of escaping gas. The lid on a freezer pops open. Slowly, groggily, KANE sits up. Pale.

Kane rubs the sleep from his eyes. Stands. Looks around.

Stretches. Looks at the other freezer compartments.

INT. GALLEY - DAY. Kane plugs in a Silex. Lights a cigarette.

Coughs. Grinds some coffee beans.

Runs some water through. Notices that LAMBERT is coming awake. Gives him a rough salute for a wake-up call.

Note that we’ve by now entered that tricky territory that is Courier New 12 point: that bastard font that is so unkind to the eye and takes up insane amounts of space: all in the interest of the old one- page-perminute movie time formatting.

But: huzza! You’ve got a 30-something page document, outlining every action, scene shift, place, time and location of your story.

Congratulations: you are ready to write your screenplay proper.

Now all you got to add is, ahem, dialogue.

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LAMBERT What time is it.

KANE (voice over) What do you care.

INT. GALLEY Pot now half-full.

Kane watches it drip.

Inhales the fragrance.

KANE Now Dallas and Ash. (calls out) Good morning Captain.

DALLAS (voice over) Where’s the coffee?

KANE

Brewing.

LAMBERT walks into the kitchen.

Pours herself a cup.

To summarize: wake up and smell the coffee. Not that this work method is everyone’s cup of java. The natural fear many writers experience with this dogmatic method is death of natural inspiration and the demise of free-flowing story development. Speaking only for myself, I’ve had countless experiences of planning and plotting and outlining to death, and then in spite of it - or perhaps because of it - my characters start going off on totally different tangents and being intentionally obtuse or very canny all of a sudden, in ways I hadn’t planned or foreseen at all.

Needless to say, when this happens, I let them lead and throw all of the above to the wind in a heartbeat.

“Once battle is joined - the first thing to go out the window are the plans.”

Good hunting.

Where Do I Belong?

The WWJ Guide to Writers’ Organisations

by Catriona Troth

It can be hard for writers at the start of their career to figure out which of the bewildering array of writers’ organisations out there might be for them. So here, to help you, is Words with Jam’s guide to who? why? and how much?

We’ve focused primarily on UK organisations, but we’ve noted which ones accept overseas members, and we’ve also taken a look at a few US and international organisations too.

The Membership criteria listed are generally those for Full Membership, but some organisations offer various forms of associate membership that admit a broader range of unpublished or self-published authors – or those such as editors or agents that are in related professions.

It’s worth noting that membership fees for professional organisations may be reclaimable against tax.

Society of Authors (SoA): Cost: £95 pa (less if you are under 35, or for associate membership) Website: http://www.societyofauthors.org

The biggest and best known writers’ association in the UK. Full membership is open to: • Those who have had a full length work published or have been offered a contract; • Those who have at least a dozen short items published (with payment); • Those who have self-published and sold at least 200 items in a 12 month period One of the most valuable benefits of membership is their free vetting service for contracts, and many authors will join when they are offered their first contract. Other benefits include a Reader’s Ticket for the British Library and discount membership of affiliated organisations (including CWA, RNA and HWA). They organise some great talks, act as a market place where any members can advertise their skills and services, and even provides bursaries and financial help for professional writers in need.

Jo Reed joined the Society of Authors in 2008, when she received her first offer of publication.

“I had spent several days trying to get my head round a lengthy and to me impenetrable contract. I asked for advice, and within twentyfour hours it had been vetted and returned to me with a list of suggestions. Their help was also

invaluable some time later when I had queries on eBook rights and foreign sales.” http://www.joreed.co.uk/ Lorraine Mace turned to the SoA when the first publisher of The Writer’s ABC Checklist ran into financial difficulties and tried to get out of paying the balance of the advance. She contacted the SoA to find out what rights she had and how best to deal with the situation.

“The free legal advice enabled us to not only secure the outstanding money, but we also received interest from the date it had fallen due until it was eventually paid. The Society later helped us to get our rights back when the publisher went out of business.” www.lorrainemace.com Andrew Crofts first joined the SoA about twenty years ago.

“I was approached to write an article for their magazine, The Author, and instead of payment they offered me a year’s membership.

That was when I started to become more aware of the services they were offering and I have maintained my membership ever since. I have had one occasion to call on them for legal advice when I had a dispute with a ghostwriting client. The two of us were sharing an agent so I needed someone else to write a letter. They did it beautifully and just that one service more than made it worth being a member all those years. There is also something comforting about knowing they are there should things go wrong, even though I seldom have to call on them - a bit like knowing, when you are young, that your parents are there in the background and will come to the rescue if necessary.

“Because I am based outside London I seldom got to go to any of their meetings and so when they announced they were setting up local branches I applied for West Sussex.

It has been extremely useful meeting other writers in the area without having to travel all the way to London and there have been some very interesting meetings regarding things like e-publishing and self-publishing.”

http://www.andrewcrofts.com/

Alliance of Independent Authors: Cost: Full Membership (International) $99 pa Website: http://allianceindependentauthors.org See separate article on page 50.

Society of Women Writers and Journalists (SWWJ): Cost: £45 pa (less for associate, student or overseas membership) Website: http://www.swwj.co.uk

The SWWJ was founded in 1894. Past Presidents have included Richmal Crompton, Margery Allingham, Vera Brittain and Joyce Grenfell. The current President is Nina Bawden. Their aims include ‘the encouragement of literary achievement, the upholding of professional standards, and social contact with fellow writers.’

Members must submit a CV and be sponsored by two professionals (agents, editors or existing SWWJ members) who vouch that they are bona fide professionals working in literature, journalism, or related spheres.

(Since 2004, published male writers can join as associate members.)

They provide a critique service for members that covers articles and non-fiction books, as well as poetry, short stories and novels. If you are interested in writing for the stage, they have a drama group which periodically runs workshops with professional actors. Members can submit a script in advance for a one act play needing fewer than a specified number of actors. The script can then be thoroughly tested on the day, in preparation, say, for submission to a festival or other competition.

They run a summer festival and maintain an overseas section.

The SWWJ runs both open and membersonly competitions. Last year, for example, they ran an open competition for a Life Writing piece of up to 700 words.

One of the more unusual benefits of membership is that you receive a Press Card.

Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB): Cost: 1.2 % of earnings from writing, subject to a minimum £180 pa and a maximum of £1,800 pa Website: http://www.writersguild.org.uk

Membership is open to writers who have at least one professional contract for writing in terms ‘at or above the Writers’ Guild minimum terms.’ Membership is open to authors of books, but the WGGB (like Writers’ Guilds in the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere) is first and foremost a union for writers working

in film, television and radio.

They have a free contract-vetting service and they also offer a pension for writers in TV, film and radio, with mandatory employer contributions for writers who work for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or an independent production company.

The WGGB negotiate minimum rates with broadcasters and theatre companies. They campaign on behalf of writers - for example, when it was recently announced that BBC Radio 4 would cut the number of short stories broadcast, the WGGB immediately issued a statement to campaign against the cuts.

They do, however, have a Books Committee, and the annual Writers’ Guild Awards cover fiction and non-fiction books, as well as writing for stage, screen, television and radio. Off The Shelf at Black’s is a collaboration between the WGGB and Black’s members club in Soho, offering a series of monthly one day residencies for fiction writers at Black’s.

Helen Smith joined the Writers’ Guild about eight years ago after she was commissioned to write a script for a TV series.

“Although I have an agent, the WGGB minimum rates have proved a useful starting point when negotiating my fee for scripts I have written for television, and for my first fulllength play, which was for an ITC company.

The WGGB has promoted my work on social media, including Twitter and their blog, and invited me to join a podcast they were hosting on publishing. I will also be a Writer in Residence at Black’s in the summer with the Off the Shelf at Black’s programme.” http://www.emperorsclothes.co.uk/

Crime Writers’ Association (CWA): Cost: £50 pa Website: http://www.thecwa.co.uk

The CWA promotes the crime genre and provides social and professional support for its members.

Membership is open to published authors in the crime genre, in the UK or overseas – not to self-published authors or to those as yet under contract. Screen plays, television scripts and plays with a crime theme count – ebooks do not.

CWA is well known for running the annual ‘Dagger’ awards, including the Debut Dagger, awarded each year to an unpublished writer based on the opening chapters and synopsis of their novel. Many of the winners and shortlisted entrants have gone on to be published as a result of the award.

IS THIS A DAGGER I SEE BEFORE ME? Ruth Dugdall on being a member of the CWA. “I have to confess to having a warm place in my heart for the Crime Writers’ Association, because my first encounter with them was when I entered – and won – the CWA Debut Dagger in 2005.

“The CWA is perhaps best known for its Dagger Awards. Each year nine daggers are awarded, the implement getting rarer and

glitzier from the debut (sterling silver plate, for unpublished authors) up to the silver, gold and the `lifetime achievement` Diamond Dagger won by stellar crime authors. Think of a wellknown crime author and they are likely to have a dagger or two under their belt. How my hand shook when I saw that my moniker in the Dagger winner’s ledger was on the same page as Ian Rankin’s, who won the Diamond that year.

But the CWA is more than just an organising body for the Daggers. It is also a membership group, offering a whole host of other services for crime writers. It is a selective group, as only published writers can apply for membership (and, no, that does not include selfpublished authors) so there is a certain prestige to being a member. It was a long wait for me – it wasn’t until 2010 that my dagger winning novel, The Woman Before Me, was finally published and I could join. But how much sweeter for the wait…

“Sad, I know, but I did feel a thrill of anticipation when I received my member’s handbook with the addresses and phone numbers of A-list authors. And through the CWA I have made contact with several fellow scribes; often newbie writers like myself, but also established authors who have been a great source of help. For example, I was fortunate enough to make a connection with Karen Maitland who was kind enough to provide a cover quote for my latest novel, The Sacrificial Man. Since then we have shared details of author events and met at the local chapter meeting. Speaking of which… “‘Chapter Meetings’ make it sound like we should all turn up on Harley Davidsons, but meetings are rather more sedate (think Ramada hotels and shortbread biscuits) and another advantage to CWA membership. In my group there are writers who have penned tens of novels, one who was first published before I was born, mature types who frown at the mention of Twitter (“t what err?”) alongside fresh blood, champing at the bit of new publishing deals and still nervous of their agents. The mix of experience and writing style leads to good debate as well as the opportunity for marvellous anecdotes. Evidently, crime writers do love a bit of gossip.

“Gossip is also in abundance, along with book reviews and articles in the Red Herrings magazine. It arrives in a buff envelope and is something like a school newsletter replete with pics of grinning authors in front of a pile of books and the latest info on DNA profiling (or something equally alarming).

“I haven’t braved a conference yet, but I understand these to be booky and boozy events.

Harrogate, of course, is a mainstay in the crimewriting calendar but the CWA also hosts an annual conference and a Xmas bevy at The Phoenix Club.” www.ruthdugdall.com

Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA): Cost: £50 pa (£57 outside EU): Website: http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation. org

The RNA was formed in 1960 ‘to promote romantic fiction and to encourage good writing.’ It now represents more than 700 writers, agents, editors and other publishing professionals.

Membership is open to ‘authors who have’ an enforceable commercial contract from a publishing company, which must be properly established as a bona fide business in an appropriate jurisdiction.

However, the RNA also runs a New Writers Scheme, which admits 250 unpublished authors annually. For a fee of £120, they can take part in all RNA activities and also submit a typescript of a full-length novel for appraisal.

The RNA holds regular meetings, with expert speakers sharing their knowledge and experience, and runs an annual conference, where members discuss publishing trends and craft tips. As their website says, ‘These gatherings are also social events, where members and their guests can enjoy the company of other writers, share the ups and downs of the writer’s life, offer and receive support and encouragement.’ They have an on-line forum for members and a quarterly magazine.

Their annual awards ceremony presents a total of six awards for romantic novels – plus the Harry Bowling Prize For New Writers.

RNA has close ties with libraries, reflecting the popularity of the romance genre among library users. They issue an e-newsletter to librarians giving details of our members’ latest publications, information on talks and events that have taken place in libraries and the latest RNA news.

Historical Writers’ Association (HWA): Cost: £75 pa Website: http://www.thehwa.co.uk

One of the newest professional writers’ associations, the HWA was founded in 2010 to sustain, promote and support writers in the historical field. Their first President is Michael Morpurgo.

Membership open to writers of historical fiction and non-fiction who have work published by recognised publishers, where ‘historical’ is defined as 35 years or more before date of application.

HWA held an inaugural Literary Festival in July 2011 at Kelmarsh Hall, in conjunction with English Heritage’s Festival of History.

Members have also taken part in a programme of Winter Activities held in conjunction with English Heritage at historical venues around the country.

The HWA awards the Goldsboro Crown for Historical Debut Fiction for ‘the best historical novel by a first-time fictional author of any nationality, first published in the UK in English during the Judging Period.’

Society of Childrens’ Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI): Cost: $85 pa for the first year, $70 thereafter

Website: http://britishscbwi.jimdo.com/ http:// www.scbwi.org//

Founded in 1971, SCBWI is an international organisation ‘for those writing and illustrating for children and young adults in the fields of children’s literature, magazines, film, television, and multimedia.’

SCBWI lobbies on issues such as new copyright legislation, equitable treatment of authors and artists, and fair contract terms.

Full membership is open to those whose books, articles, poems, stories, illustrations, photographs, films, television or electronic media for children have been published or produced. Associate Membership open to anyone with an interest in children’s literature.

There is a British branch of SCBWI, but membership is through the international organisation.

SCBWI in Britain run the biennial Undiscovered Voices competition, as well as regular ‘Slush Pile Challenges’ set by agents and editors.

They have a network of regional coordinators who run local critique groups and organise workshops, speakers and social events around the UK. They run a series of talks by professional writers in London and Manchester/Chester, masterclasses for writers and illustrators, a retreat, and an annual two-day conference.

SCBWI International gives a number of grants and awards, including the Golden Kite award for excellence in children’s literature and ‘work in progress’ grants for both writers and illustrators.

Horror Writers Association Cost: $65 pa Website: http://www.horror.org

An international organisation with an active UK chapter.

Membership is open to published professional writers of horror or dark fantasy.

(Affiliate members need only to have published and been paid for a short story (or equivalent) in the genre.)

They run a mentoring programme, produce market reports, list agents interested in the horror genre The Horror Writers Association present the annual Bram Stoker Awards for horror writing (including screenplays, graphic novels and non-fiction).

They also promote and support literature in translation.

Their writer-led education programme, Readers & Writers, aims to give refugees, offenders, detainees and young people in schools experiences with reading and creative writing.

They also award a number of prizes annually for excellence in literature.

Membership open to writing professionals, but anyone can join English PEN as a Friend.

A Selection of Writers’ Organisations from the U.S. Romance Writers of America (RWA): Cost: $95pa (plus $25 new members fee) Website: http://www.rwa.org/

Membership is open to ‘all persons seriously pursuing a romance fiction writing career.’

Anita Clenney is a member of the RWA. “Six years ago, after a lifetime of reading, I decided to write a book. Other than a desire to tell a story, I had no idea what I was doing.

I heard about the RWA and joined, hoping they could help. I was amazed at the amount of information and support they provided, from writing classes to information about the publishing industry. I was also shocked at how much I didn’t know about the profession I’d chosen.

“I was so encouraged, I also joined two local chapters, Washington Romance Writers and Virginia Romance Writers, and then went on to join a few online chapters, Celtic Hearts, Fantasy Futuristic & Paranormal, and Kiss of Death.

The local chapters are probably an even greater support because you have a chance to meet face to face with other writers who share the same dreams and frustrations.

“These groups have encouraged, supported and helped me grow as a writer. In a short time, I’ve gone from having what seemed an impossible dream to realizing that dream. My first book, Awaken The Highland Warrior hit the USA Today and New York Times bestsellers lists after only three months. I believe a part of that success is owed to my writers’ groups.” www.anitaclenney.com

Cost: £50 pa (London and overseas) £45 (rest of UK) £10 (student) Website: http://www.englishpen.org / http:// www.pen-international.org/

English PEN is a campaigning organisation supporting the freedom to read and the freedom to write around the world. They campaign on behalf of persecuted writers, editors and publishers. In the UK they campaign to reform laws that curb free expression, and for greater access to literature.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Cost: $80 pa

Mystery Writers of America (MWA):

Website: http://www.sfwa.org

Cost: $95 pa

Membership is open to writers with paid publications in ‘qualifying markets’ (which appear to be US only).

SFWA ‘informs, supports, promotes, defends and advocates for’ Science Fiction and Fantasy writers. They assist members in legal disputes with publishers, and administer benevolent funds.

Through on-line forums, conventions and less formal gatherings, they provide information, education, and support to their members.

The SFWA present the annual Nebula Awards.

Website: http://www.mysterywriters.org

English PEN / PEN International:

when I became a published author.

“MWA gave me a family of mystery writers who share the same writing challenges and dreams. The members offer amazing support to new writers, and MWA provides opportunity for established writers to broaden their exposure in the mystery community and beyond. I met editors and agents who specialize in buying and selling all variations of the mystery genre.

Membership gave me the chance to give back by sharing my experience with new authors.

“Organisations like these give writers camaraderie, information, and support. The MWA monthly newsletters keep the membership up to date on new mystery releases, breaking news in the publishing world, tips on innovations in self-publishing and eBooks, and articles specific to the craft of writing mystery. Our local monthly meetings feature talks by experts in fields related to writing mystery like law enforcement and legal experts. This month my local MWA chapter invited two local homicide detectives to our meeting. The detectives gave us the inside scoop on techniques used to solve murder cases and the latest advances in law enforcement evidence collection. They were amazing!

“The publishing world is changing fast, and our members are in the thick of the change. MWA University, a traveling crew of published writers and teachers, offers full day seminars teaching writers new skills in craft and discussing topics regarding traditional and self publishing. The MWA monthly newsletter The Third Degree recently carried an article on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). Self-publishing tips and articles on e-publishing rights are discussed at meetings and in our newsletter since the revolution in publishing began.” http://www.rochellestaab.com/

Membership open to ‘professional writers in the crime/mystery/suspense field whose work has been published or produced in the U.S., who reside in the U.S. Writers must have been paid for their work and must not be selfpublished.’

Rochelle Staab is a member.

“I joined MWA just as I began writing my first mystery novel. I wanted exposure to the world of published mystery and the chance to meet mystery writers in my area. I joined as a Fan and was so proud to achieve Active status

Independent But Not Alone: Meet the Alliance of Independent Authors

The Alliance of Independent Authors will be formally launched at the London Book Fair in April, and then in New York in June.

So who exactly qualifies as an ‘independent author’?

According to the Alliance’s founder, Orna Ross, an independent author is both writer and publisher – they own their own ISBNs, and they control their own distribution and marketing.

Ross has a wide experience of the publishing industry. She herself has been a literary agent. (She founded the Irish agency Font in 2003.)

Her first experience as a published author was with a small feminist press in Ireland, which she enjoyed very much. But then her books were taken up by one of the Big Six, an experience which she found ‘a bit bruising’. She saw at first hand what she describes as the ‘Tesco-isation’ of publishing. She had no control over the title, cover and blurb and felt the final choices did not at all match the content. “My natural readership were put off, and those that did pick it up were probably bitterly disappointed with what they found inside.”

A couple of years ago, she made the choice to take back the rights and publish the books for herself. “It has been such a pleasure and a positive experience to be able to reissue them with my own choice of title and cover.”

The self-publishing revolution is, she says, a fantastic development for writers. “Together with the explosion of digital publishing, it gives writers back their creative control. They are no longer limited to readers within their own territory. They need never go out of print. And once their book is discovered, there is an immediate point of sale.”

As a former literary agent herself, what role does she think agents have in this changing world?

“The literary agent, as they exist now, is a relatively new job. Their current role really came about with the change in the publishing environment in the 1990s. That was the birth of the mega-agent.

Previously it was a much ‘quieter’ job – perhaps nurturing a handful of authors.

“We are now facing another massive change in the publishing world, and both agents and editors are going to have to rethink their role. Some writers are always going to need representation – not everyone is cut out to go it alone.

“But potentially, the writer becomes a more serious player – a partner in the process of publishing and marketing their book rather than, as Margaret Atwood put it, a ‘dead moose’ on which a whole ecosystem of other creatures are living.

“It is far better if we are aware of our own worth, rather than pleading with authors and agents to ‘please love me.’”

So why the Alliance of Independent Authors?

As Words with JAM’s guide to writers’ organisations shows, many existing organisations do not admit even highly successful self-published authors. And the support needed by self-published authors, working without the backing of agents and editors, can be very different from that needed by traditionally published authors.

The primary function of the Alliance, as Ross sees it, is to connect authors with one another and with the literary and publishing

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establishment. “When you write, you go into a sort of bubble, but when you come out the other end, you need a support team – all the more so if you don’t have an agent or an editor.”

Those who self-publish are, she says, generally either ‘brave’ or ‘desperate’. The brave ones are sticking their necks out, doing something different. The desperate ones may have been hanging around in the slush pile for years.

“They need support and they need objectives of excellence. There is no doubt that publishers add value. If you are going alone, you will need the services of a designer and a copy editor.

“I have no time for writers who tell me they can’t afford an editor.

No one should be putting their book out without proper editing. But every book needs a plan. You have to know how much you can spend on hiring an editor and a designer.”

One role of the AIA, therefore, will be to put authors in touch with reputable service providers.

In a rapidly changing environment it is, as they say, “what we don’t know we don’t know” that trips us up. New authors need advice from those that have existing experience. So the AIA will provide both on-line and off-line opportunities for authors to meet. There will be a help line, as well as advice and information provided on site.

A major issue for self-published writers is the question of promotion and discoverability. The AIA website will provide a shop window for authors, who can upload a profile when they join. It will also provide authors with an opportunity to work together on promotion.

Another issue many self-published authors face is a barrier of entry – to bookshops, literary prizes and so on. Orna Ross intends that the AIA will maintain an advocacy and campaigning wing. In fact they are already working on a letter-writing campaign, targeting publishing conferences, literary festivals, rights agencies, literary prize committees and so on, inviting them to think about ways in which they can open up to indie authors.

Eventually they hope to have a permanent staff, but for the time being, the Alliance will be run by volunteers. Their website already lists a solid group of ‘advisors’, including Mark Coker of Smashwords and Victoria Strauss, the co-founder of Writers Beware, who among them cover all aspects of self-publishing from editing to design, marketing and running a small business. They also have experienced reps established for the USA, Australasia, Ireland and the Eurozone, and the UK. What does Ross think of the role of Amazon in the self-publishing world? What happens if they become a virtual global monopoly? Will the AIA have any clout to fight back if the terms Amazon offer start to deteriorate?

“There is no doubt that Amazon, at the moment, are good for selfpublishers. They have opened the whole thing up. But monopolies are always a bad thing in the long run. As for our clout, that will depend on the size and reach of our membership. If we have a lot of members, and if some of those members are big sellers, then our voice may be heard.”

The AIA will have three main categories of membership: Professional Membership (cost $95 pa) will be open to writers and translators who have independently published at least one full length work – or those who have been published by a third party and are now interested in self publications.

Associate membership ($50 pa) will be open to previously unpublished authors interested in preparing a book for self publications.

Consultant membership ($95 pa) will be open to editors, designers and publicists etc who offer services to independent authors, with their services being vetted by the AIA.

To learn more about the Alliance of Independent Authors, please see http://allianceindependentauthors. org

What we think of some books Floccinaucinihilipilification: the estimation of something as valueless Tacenda: things better left unsaid 5’9”: The average height of a British adult male Deipnosophist: someone skilled in making dinner-table conversation Logodaedalus: one who is cunning in the use of words

Bone (graphic novel) by Jeff Smith Review by Andrew Ramsay Rating: KAPPOWWW!!!!

Anyone enjoy a good sword and sorcery tale?

Maybe you’re a fan of fantasy?

A sucker for intrigue and mystery?

A crackerjack for comedy?

An avid reader of evil and monsters?

So why haven’t you read Bone????

Jeff Smith started his beautifully crafted novel in 1991, taking over 13 years to complete it (initially released as individual, self-published issues before being picked up by Image comics). It has now started work towards the big screen where it should be every bit as big a success as it has been a phenomenon in the comic world .

Sitting at 1,332 pages long, the ‘one volume’ edition, collecting all issues of the story into (surprisingly enough) one volume, is big enough to be used as house foundations. It only took me 2 days to finish it, though (bearing in mind your talking about a man who takes a full day just to read the sports pages in the Daily Record – accepted that both these are mostly pictures).

The book is completely mesmerising. We’re introduced Fone Bone and his two cousins as they’re making a mad dash for safety whilst being chased out of town by the townsfolk for another one of Phoney Bone’s mad make-cash-quick schemes whilst running for town mayor.

They quickly get lost and separated, and are soon drawn into adventures untold (to be honest, if you read the book the adventures are told, definitely not untold – never really understood that saying).

The following epic is full of dragons, hairy beasties, cow racing, eggs, evil do-ers, giant talking felines and wars.

Smith tells a tale that is as heart rending as it is funny, his art work is possibly the most perfect it could be for the story being told. Its simple lines, in particular with our main character and hero Bone, are so beautiful that you’re drawn into the story and fall hopelessly in love with each character. The innocence of Fone Bone, the money grabbing but ultimately protective ways of Phoney Bone and the fun loving but ultimately very dumb, Smiley Bone.

With the names and the Bone cousins’ looks

you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’ve picked up a kids book. However, this would only ring true if you’d read Lord of The Rings and been left only with a feeling that Hobbits were cute with their wee fluffy feet ‘n’ all that, forgetting the ogres, trolls and that whole ring business.

Fone soon arrives in the valley and after a run in with Ted the bug’s big brother and some smelly rat creatures, eventually meets up with Thorn, whom he immediately falls in love with. Thorn is, firstly, a human and, funnily enough, not that she knows it at this point, heir to the throne. She lives with Granma’ Ben, mother of the previous murdered Queen. She’s rough, tough and star of the previously mentioned cow racing. There are some particularly funny sequences centred around Fone Bone’s obsession with Moby Dick that run throughout the book and Smiley ensures that there are constant one liners and physical gags that keep the book from getting overly serious.

I love this book, other than the fact that it’s big enough to use as a chib in a fight should there ever be an argument at the next book club meeting (I don’t go to any of them by the way, they’re for weirdos!), the art work is beautiful. The characters, whilst full of their own flaws, are written flawlessly.

I felt a huge sense of loss, if that makes any sense, when I finished reading. I didn’t want to leave these characters. They were my friends.

The whole story, littered with secret pasts, hidden talents, dragon’s tales (and tails!), big hairy monsters and woodland creatures is possibly my favourite read, well...EVER! My copy of the book has made its way round my family, not because they’ve asked for it but because I’ve given it to them and practically begged them to read it, this way it keeps the story going if I have someone to talk about it with.

The news that it could make its way to the silver screen is, as is usual, exciting at the prospect of seeing it up there mixed with trepidation and the cock up it may well turn out to be. How will they manage it? Will it be animated, computer generated or just some weird lads dressed up in furry suits? Will they just take the story, rip its heart out and turn it into a money making scam worthy of Phoney Bone himself?

Let’s hope not.

Chavs by Owen Jones Reviewed by Dan Holloway Rating: Deipnosophist I first came across Owen Jones’ Chavs in the late spring and early summer of last year. A session with the author was one of the most-talked about events of the super-trendy Stoke Newington Literary Festival where I was presenting a spoken

word show. But it was the shocking events that unfolded on our TV screens and our social media streams later that summer that propelled Jones’ book fully into the media gaze.

As cities burned and property was deconstructed as quickly as our notion of what riots “should” look like. And Chavs, with its sinister subtitle, “The Demonisation of the Working Classes” and its trite and in the event somewhat unfortunate strapline “from the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth,” was suddenly being referenced and name-checked way outside of the cultural pages.

This unexpected zeitgeistiness gave Chavs a serious image problem. As the public, led by politicians capitalising on a few brief weeks of someone else being the number one object of popular ire, rounded squarely on the looters and the so-called feral underclass to which they were alleged to belong, it was that strapline that kept appearing – what was it that had made the white working class into the “scum of the earth”? The question, complete with Jones as its apparent standard bearer, even started to make its way back into the culture pages.

It’s only now that more sober reflection on the events of last summer is starting to make it abundantly clear that not only did the media’s treatment of the riots vindicate Jones’ thesis, but that its misuse of his ideas came completely at their expense.

Because Jones’ account of the fate of the British working class is, at its centre and at its strongest, about the way a very non-working-class media, in cahoots with a similarly non-grass-roots political class, has fuelled a feedback loop of public perception of a part of society that, in Britain’s manufacturing heyday, was seen as the country’s unbreakable backbone.

And he’s right. Something certainly happened during my childhood in the 70s and 80s, as that manufacturing bedrock of the British economy disintegrated to be replaced by services and a new breed of entrepreneur. And I certainly remember, the last time Britain was ablaze, in that period between Broadwater Farm and Orgreave, a media ambivalence emerging that crystallized forever into animosity in the aftermath of Hillsborough. On the one hand the creative media, in the hands of the likes of Alan Bleasdale, Ken Loach, and Jimmy McGovern, portrayed the tragedy of the death of a way of life for the country’s working class. On the other, the newspapers, whose management were themselves bedding in for battle against the workers at Fortress Wapping, were throwing their weight behind our new economic backbone of self-made men and women, the entrepreneur and the yuppie.

Whilst Jones attempts to answer the question of what we should do about our image of the working class, his answers about institutional cooperation are slightly vague and carry a whiff of hope over experience. But such is always the way with books that outline a problem. And as such a book, Chavs excels.

Other Stuff | 51

What we think of some books

Reviewed by JJ Marsh Rating: Deipnosophist Rachel Knight has it all under control. She‘s one of LA’s hardest-working deputy DAs, she’s on a permanent diet and she’s just about stopped cursing in court. Her best friends are her Special Trials colleagues; smart-mouthed, stylish dresser Toni, and gentle Jake, the other hardest worker on the team. Rachel has relationship issues, and thanks to her therapist, Carla, she knows why. Not that it helps.

When Jake’s body is recovered from a sleazy motel alongside that of a seventeen-year-old rent boy, Rachel’s world is rocked to its foundations.

Worst of all, she’s forbidden to investigate and given a politically sensitive case to handle instead.

But she’s resourceful, not to mention persuasive.

Assisted by investigating officer Bailey Keller, Rachel sets out to find the truth about both cases, exploring rundown high schools and elite estates.

The cases grow increasingly complex and more closely intertwined than anyone could imagine. Turns out sleaze is everywhere.

Marcia Clark, herself an ex-attorney, was the lead prosecutor in the OJ Simpson trial.

Her investigative experience shines a light on the Los Angeles police procedures and judicial system. Not only does she manage expert plotting and dynamic pace, but her dialogue is whipsmart and sense of location absorbing. Her broad cast of characters comes to life in her spare description and reflection in the eyes of others. Rachel Knight is a complicated, likeable and driven protagonist, with an undeniable determination to see justice done.

Clark’s writing is not entirely even. There’s the

Guess the Book

See if you can guess the book from the one star Amazon reviews below.

1. Finally, maybe this is how most europeans behave, but the characters in this book have sex with each other like hamsters in a box.

They have sex as if they were shaking hands.

52 | Other Stuff

odd clanger; Four attractively burly uniformed officers spoke briefly to Bailey, then two of them ran round to the back of the building while the other two brandished their lethal weapon flashlights and pounded on the door.

But more than counterbalanced by lines of insight and sensitivity: No one knows how I feel and time doesn’t heal the wound. The wound just becomes part of you.

“How come you haven’t asked?”

“Asked what?”

“Whether or not I knew Jake was gay.”

“Because if he was involved with Kit, he’s not gay. He’s a pedophile.”

Kevin nodded with a sad smile. “Thank you.”

Overall, Guilt by Association is a fast-paced, exhilarating and highly satisfying read, and I will seek out the first in the series, Guilt by Degrees.

A Visit from the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan Reviewed by Gillian Hamer Rating: Logodaedalus “Time is a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?”

This line effectively explains the meaning behind the quirky title of Jennifer Egan’s novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011.

Time is the goon, the narrative drive of the book. And the squad are the collection of cleverlyconstructed characters that accompany you through the novel. In fact, is it a novel? Or a selection of short stories? Or something in between?

The structure is impressive - in that it makes something which must have been difficult to write and complex to create, incredibly easy to follow once you have a grasp on the style.

Each chapter glides effortlessly between stories - from present day New York to 1970’s San Francisco to sometime in the

All of the characters in this book need to see a psychiatrist about love, sex, and relationships in general.

2. It is the worst, no exaggeration, book that I have ever read. It was totally incomprehensible.

The plot was not even interesting! If you are sitting there trying to figure out what each character is saying, it’s not easy to find the book enjoyable! I do NOT recommend this book to anyone; young or old!

3. I made it through ten pages of this piece of trash. It’s worse than awful, reading as if written by a child who’s flunking eighth grade.

The words of Dorothy Parker came to mind when I stopped: “This is not a novel to be

future - and back again. Each section has its own mood, a distinctive voice, and a variance in style that takes you from humour to tragedy and every emotion in between. It’s sad and wise, affecting and engaging – but most of all it’s clever – very, very clever.

Chapters that you expect to make you sad – for example Jules Jones’s relaying his attempted rape conviction from prison – are almost satire despite the seriousness of the topic. And the chapter presented via Powerpoint by a teenage girl in 2020, which should by its own inference have been humorous, almost had me in tears.

I’ve read that continuity was the theme Egan had in mind when writing the book, and I can see her reasons. But I’m also drawn to ageing, and the way time seems to bully and dictate each of the characters. Memory, friendships, time, connections. They are the key words that hold this narrative together. The story examines how common patterns form in peoples’ lives, how easily relationships can fall apart and be rebuilt, and for me, it also has a sense of fate. That our journey is already long-ago plotted and it’s as much as we can do to follow its lead.

What I particularly enjoyed – both as a reader and a writer – was the spiders’ web approach to the narrative. Minor characters in one chapter, would become central players in the next. There was no set formula, no point in trying to second guess the author. It almost felt that Egan just accepted her own fate and settled on whichever character piqued her interest as she wrote.

It may take me more than one read to appreciate the layers of structure – which is as complex as the characters are economically drawn.

But this book is a stayer, it’s one that makes you think long after you’ve turned the final page. It’s one you know you will rediscover one day, far off in the future when you’d forgotten all about it. I kind of feel the author would like that – continuity, you see.

Proof that time is a goon.

tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

4. I usually enjoy historical fiction as well as classics, but this book was unenjoyable; it was so boring, it even had a soporific effect on me! The book droned on and on for over 500 pages, and reading it was pure torture.

To give you an idea on how verbose the book was, [the author] went on for a couple of pages describing how one of the characters was dressed!

5. This is one of the worst books I have ever read.

Trying to read it was more painful than going to the dentist.

Answers: 1. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson 2. The Odyssey by Homer 3. Valley of The Dolls by Jacqueline Susann 4. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott .5 Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark

Crossword created by Mad Cow and Pel 1

2

3

4

5 6

7 8

9 10 11

12

13 14

15

16

17 18

19

20

21 22

February 2012 Answers 23

Across 1

What is the origin of Frank Quietly’s name? (5,7)

3

Who wrote the Gaunt’s Ghosts series? (3,6)

6

One’ll read more crime if they’re as good as his books. (6,7)

9

Nine of the clues here represent Caledonian pencils of a sort (8,7)

10 He Entertained Mr Sloane and got a lot of Loot (3,5) 11 My first name is Ireland, my second is Morning Star, and my book is full of rêveurs (4,11) 15 “Why Be Happy When You Could Be ...” (6) 18 Played whack-a-mole with a fish-eating mammal (5,7) 19 Which organ causes the central dilemma of The Donor? (6) 22 He encouraged children to fly away with strangers (1,1,6) 23 40 would be a step too far for him (4,6)

Down 2

Technology Tome, I? No, I’m this year’s best selling book about words.

(3,12)

4

“Thou hast committed Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, ............. “ (The Jew of Malta. Marlowe) (3,5,2,4)

5

He created a puzzle in crime fiction (3,6)

7

16 June 1904 - when an odyssey occurs. (9)

14 She put on a pie, I hear. And told her little friend a secret history. (5,5)

8

The Beatles hit Murakami. What with? (9,4)

16 This writer might make a backward mint hot (6,5)

9

He’d make up writers’ lost act (3,6,5)

17 A boy and a girl get together to create this Irish writer. (5,5)

12 Pope’s poke at Petre for the barbering of Arabella Fermor. (3,4,2,3,4)

20 He adds a thousand when turning his hand to SF (4,5)

13 This author could tell a horrid unclean story (3,6,5-5)

21Trainspotter from another country? (6,5)

Random Stuff | 53

Dear Ed Letters of the satirical variety

Dear Ed, There are so many internet sites out there that as a relative newcomer to this whole revolution I’m finding it overwhelming. It’s very difficult to know what to put into search engines. For example, the other day I wanted to find out if there were any sites dealing with the simple pleasure of good friends sharing a mug of tea so I typed in – Two girls, one cup – and you wouldn’t believe the place it took me too. I’m surprised I’m not blind! Could some of your readers suggest sites that might get a novice like me started without risking me wanting to take a fork to my eyes?

Thank you very much, Mrs Lill O’llady Any suggestions for Lill?

Ed Dear Editor, I recently read on your Dear Ed page that a Mrs O’llady was looking for some tips on internet sites worth visiting. May I suggest conjunctivitis.com – it really is a site for sore eyes.

Yours truly, I Sore Dear Words With Jam People, I’m often astounded at how the answers to big problems are right there under our noses and no one can see them. Quite often it’s simply a matter of working together. For example, just the other day I was watching an item on the news on the electric television where they were talking about how looking at pictures of people who have been photo shopped turns everyone into an anorexic. The previous day they had been talking about how nearly everybody is obese. Surely the answer is for the fashion industry and the wobbly-guts industry to co-operate. Photographs that have been ‘fixed’ could be handed out on the NHS to greedy people and then they could be weened off them when they hit a healthy weight. This would save the NHS a fortune which could be put back into keeping our libraries open.

Yours truly, Mr Con Monsense Dear the Editor of The Words With Jam, I can sympathise with Mrs O’llady and her difficulties. I myself have had many problems with these so called search engines. I am writing a book about a poultry farmer and was trying to research how to breed very large birds for my novel, but you would be amazed at the things I was shown when I typed the perfectly innocent – Giant cocks – into the space provided. Shocked is not the word. I blame the government and the way they are closing libraries. If my local library had still been open I could have gone in there to do my research

and asked Mrs Cromaty (our librarian of some twenty years standing before she was savagely removed and forced onto the dole) to tell me everything she knew about big cocks without any fear of being subjected to the horrors I witnessed. I am scarred for life. If this is the modern world then I want no part of it.

Yours sincerely, Mrs C Kneenuf P.S. I love your bi-monthly on line magazine and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Dear Editor, I’d like to agree with Mr Monsense that the answer is often under our nose. To this end I have carefully and meticulously shaved my moustache into the words ‘Fuck Off ’ so that when strangers knock on my door and ask me what I think about God I can tell them that the answer is literally under my nose. Simples.

Also, it has helped no end with my job as a lollipop man.

Yours sincerely, Mr A D Nuf Dear Jam Editor, Your readers are absolutely correct about the ineptitude of internet search engines. I have lost a lot of custom for my hall door accessories business because of this. In the old days when you asked a man in the street if he knew where to go to have a look at ‘Knobs’ or ‘Knockers’ he knew where to send you, but the internet is an ass, sir. When will the government take action and sort this out? I, for one, am sick and tired of having my knockers handled in such a rough fashion.

Yours truly, Mrs B Ongos Dear Words with Jam, I’d just like to add my voice to the letters I have read in the recent past (five minutes ago) on your page regarding internet searches. It’s like the internet is an idiot. How can it get things so wrong? Just the other day I sat down with tissues to enjoy my morning constitutional while looking at some bum cake, as is my right, and I typed in - massive arseholes. I was extremely disappointed when it led me to Jeremy Clarkson’s home page. What is the bloody internet coming to? I mean, I continued on and everything – well, once you’ve started there’s no stopping, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience I don’t mind telling you.

Yours in disappointment, Mr W Anchor And on that bombshell…

Ed

The Rumour Mill

sorting the bags of truth from the bags of shite

Heard a rumour but you’re not sure if it’s a bag of truth or just a big bag of shite? Send it to us and we’ll get our top investigative journalist Kris Dangle to look into it for you.

I’ve heard from someone that it’s much easier to spend your time playing Spider solitaire than it is to write rumours. This couldn’t be true, is it?

I have personally done extensive research on this matter and it turns out that it is, in fact, true.

Someone on the internet said (so it must be true) that if you have a self published (or book on a small indie press) book out it is the law that you must post links to all other self published books every ten minutes on facebook or someone will call around to your house and kick you up the shit pipe. This can’t be true, can it?

There are several versions of this particular one doing the rounds at the moment – the other common version is that if you don’t post the links someone will jump out at you in the supermarket and punch you in your junk.

All of them are untrue, but writers can be a superstitious bunch so this trend looks set to continue.

While pressing my ear to a door in BBC Broadcasting house I’m pretty sure I heard someone say that Bruce has been dead for six years but they’re afraid to tell him. Is this truly true?

I can’t find anything on this at all, but just going on appearances it certainly seems possible.

While having some innocent manly fun in a public lavatory last week with a friend we overheard someone in the next cubicle saying that Jeffrey Archer was considered for a job on BBC flagship programme Top Gear, but that in the end he didn’t get it because he wasn’t enough of a cunt. Is this really the case?

Unfortunately the terms of the court settlement mean I’m not able to comment on this or anything else relating to Top Gear.

There’s a rumour going around my Petrol Should Be Used For Everything Club that thermodynamics is just a load of hot air. I’ll bet that’s true, just like the way wind turbines are a blot on the landscape, unlike lovely oil refineries which are positively stunning and bird friendly.

Erm, is this a trick to try and make me say something about Top Gear?

Horoscopes

by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith

It’s all very well reading books or singing songs with a ukulele at strangers on a train platform, but as we all know the only real knowledge about how to meet prospective partners is in the stars.

And now that spring is in the air it’s that time of the year when the thoughts of the singletons among us turn to getting their ends away.

LEO Leonianists - it’s time to take the plunge and take that Pole dancing class you’ve been thinking of.

Don’t worry; you don’t have to be Polish to get the hang of it – many top Pole dancers have never even been to Poland! Once you’ve had a couple of lessons you’ll be able to impress that co-worker who took the restraining order out on you last year – approach them with confidence and shake your booty in his face – he will definitely fall for your charms and won’t call the police or anything. It’s in the stars.

VIRGO An impromptu wet T-shirt competition in your local pub on the 16th may seem a bit risqué, but don’t worry – with the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in your house, once you’ve entered you’ll be assured of a romantic encounter! You won’t win, but if you are patient and hang around near the lady who does you’ll be able to pick up the drunken guy who totally fails to pick her up. Don’t worry – he’s desperate, so you can’t fail.

at men’s faces. This month you’ll spot that perfect partner by how they are filling out their jeans.

Don’t worry if men catch you staring at their junk – they like it and take it as a compliment. If they do seem a little unsettled just give them a quick flash of your bongo’s and they should be fine, although you may get thrown out of the supermarket.

bowel infection. Turn over a new leaf on the 30th

SAGGITARIUS

With the brief transition of Mercury through your

You’ve had a crush on a work colleague for months now and the 12th is the perfect time to do something about it. Pluto is high in your house this month so the best way to approach him would be to serenade him at his desk in front of everyone.

Do it with confidence and a romantic encounter is assured and you definitely won’t look like a mentaller or anything. The stars have spoken.

CAPRICORN Initiating first contact is always difficult for shy and retiring Capricornianists. Your mouth always seems to go dry and you feel awkward and silly.

To get around this problem this month take some intimate photos of your banjo and leave them on your secret crush’s desk. That will certainly grab his attention and before you know it he’ll be the one breaking the ice. Some sad news this month too – the passage of Mars through your sign means there’s a good chance you’ll lose your job. Don’t fret about it – it’s in the stars so it’s unavoidable.

AQUARIUS

when a man with smouldering eyes asks for your help. Extinguish them with some water and take him to Accident and Emergency and romance will blossom.

ARIES house on the 29th, that would be the perfect time to use your star given confidence to woo that man you’ve had your eye on for the last few months because after all those hours of covert surveillance you’ll finally hit the jackpot and have something to blackmail him with. Romance will ensue.

TAURUS Gentle and caring Taurisianists, you have long laboured under the misapprehension that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but you’re setting your sights a little high – about six inches too high to be precise. During the week beginning the 9th start a rumour about yourself at work that you once sucked a golf ball through a fifty foot length of garden hose and you’ll have suitors falling over themselves to take you out.

GEMINI Things could go either way for you on the 12th when a handsome stranger walks in on you in a changing room by accident. Many factors are in

Wear your best underwear to a party on the 4th.

It will seem boring at first, but then your eyes will lock with the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. A word of warning, however – he won’t be interested in you, but be patient – his mate will arrive later and he’ll shag anything, so just hang in there Libraianists and you’ll be quids in.

Single Aquarianists – you’ve been finding excuses not to approach people you find attractive for ages and now it’s time to shake that. Being a minger is no barrier. There are plenty of men out there who set their sights low and on the 22nd of this month one such man will come stumbling into your life. You’ll know him instantly by his gammy eye and the cauliflower ear, but look past these imperfections and you’ll be rewarded because it will turn out that if you look past the warts he has a massive penis.

SCORPIO

PISCES

your repartee, and most importantly let him know

With the Moon strong in your sign this month, it’s time to stop making snap judgements by looking

You’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places and that’s what has led you to that nasty

that you’re up for anal. After all, beggars can’t be

LIBRA

flux here – What song is on in the background; what item of clothing you’re trying on; exactly how your eyes meet; but it will mostly depend on how nice your boobs are.

CANCER The Sun comes crashing back into your sign from the 7th on and will remain there for twelve days.

Seize the power this gives you and use it to shine and sparkle while in the company of the apple of your eye. Dazzle him with your wit, stun him with

choosers.

Some Other Stuff | 55

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