Words with JAM December 2012

Sticky, but not in a bad way

“In every great film, there must be great story-telling first and foremost.

A beautiful story is vital.

And in every epic you must be able to find the intimate.”

We interview Sir Richard Taylor at the Frankfurt Book Fair

Dead Time - how to kill time between finishing your book and becoming a billionaire

by Derek Duggan

Bennets, Bonnets and Beyond: the Fictional World of Jane Austen Writers Behind Bars Chorleywood Literary Festival, ‘The Greatest Lit Fest You’ve Never Heard Of’

by Catriona Troth

RRP £5.50 December 2012 | January 2013 www.wordswithjam.co.uk

Staying Alive: The Power of Stories with Sarah Bower

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Contents PRINT ISSUE EXCLUSIVES 26

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Centrefold Poster: “Of all the arts, the relationship between the reader and the writer is the most intensely intimate. You read in private. There’s no sound, no vision. Just hour after hour of the creative engagement between two imaginations.” ~ Ben Elton Red Wool and Black Leather by Janet Fawdington

Random stuff 5

Editor’s Desk

7

Bennets, Bonnets and Beyond: the Fictional World of Jane Austen

8

Dead Time - how to kill time between finishing your book and becoming a billionaire by Derek Duggan

9

Storyworlds - from real worlds to brave new worlds by Anne Stormont

10

The Killing - TV Gold to Literary Gold: David Hewson, in conversation with Gillian Hamer

13 We interview Sir Richard Taylor at the Frankfurt Book Fair, co-founder of Weta Workshop, the multi award-winning special effects company who brought to life The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Avatar, Jane and the Dragon ... with Gillian Hamer and JD Smith 16

Writers Behind Bars

19

Chorleywood Literary Festival, ‘The Greatest Lit Fest You’ve Never Heard Of’ by Catriona Troth

21

The Small Press Scene

22

Speak the speech, I pray you: The Society of Women Writers and Journalists’ Drama Group, by Catriona Troth

24

Fantasy: The Lies That Start at Birth - Procrastinating with Perry Iles

30

60 Second Interviews with Emma Darwin and Joe Abercrombie

Quite Short Stories 28

The Team

EXCLUSIVE PRINT ISSUE CONTENT: Red Wool and Black Leather by Janet Fawdington

Competitions 32

Flash 500 - the results

35

Comp Corner

Pencilbox 33

Staying Alive: The Power of Stories with Sarah Bower

38

The Agent’s View with the Zeno Agency and David Haviland

40

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass, with Kathryn Price

42

Scripts: The Worlds We Tell Stories In - by Ola Zaltin

43

I’ll Tumble For You by Dan Holloway

45

Question Corner - Lorraine Mace answers your questions on writing

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.

Sheila Bugler won a place on the 2008 Apprenticeships in Fiction programme.

Whilst publishers debate her first novel, she is working on her second novel and spending way too much time indulging her unhealthy interest in synopsiswriting.

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.beatrice-stubbs.com Anne Stormont - as well as being a writer, is a wife, mother and teacher. She is also a hopeless romantic, who likes happy endings.

Some other stuff 46

What We Think of Some Books

48

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

48

Guess the Book

49

Crossword

50

Dear Ed - Letters of the satirical variety

51

Horoscopes - by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith

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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Ah yes, the details … As Hemingway once wrote to John Dos Passos: “Remember to get the weather in your god damned book – weather is very important.”

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Editor’s Desk

A rogue sat-nav destination, a dodgy Travel Lodge, cancelled flights resulting in a free Frankie & Benny’s (no complaints there), some debatable German phrases which mostly included “Do you speak English?” (actually, it was more “English!!??”), a very wet bus ride, and myself and Ms Gillian Hamer finally stepped into the foyer of Hall 3 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Our destination: one very specific conference hall.

Anyone who has been to the FBF before will know that it’s not a place for authors; it’s not the same as the London Book Fair, but the global trading event for book rights. Good job we weren’t there as authors. We had a bigger mission to accomplish. With our press passes secured, we ventured through

The Ed

the large halls filled with vibrant exhibition stands lighting up the thousands of books, with thousands more people creating an atmosphere that couldn’t have been more different from the quiet we associate with libraries and reading

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.

rooms; a buzz caused not just by those who love books and to read, but by those who love it so much they chose to make it their life’s work.

Having explored three halls, made a coffee stop, and claimed a free Angry Birds canvas bag, we entered the conference hall for StoryDrive, where speakers took to the stage and talked about story – everything from the process of bringing stories to life in the form of movies and games, to the future of storytelling.

With The Hobbit released this month, we couldn’t not get an interview with the

Copyright © 2012 Quinn Publications

man who brought to life this remarkable world. We tried to get J. R. R. Tolkien,

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.

but although we here at Words with JAM Towers are good, it appears we’re

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.

not quite that good. So after he had finished inspiring us on stage, we caught up with Sir Richard Taylor, co-founder of Weta Workshop, the special effects company behind Lords of the Rings, Narnia, Avatar and more, for an exclusive interview. He spoke about his take on storytelling and what Tolkien would have thought about his books being brought to life on the big screen and more

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.

[page 15].

Editor: JD Smith editor@quinnpublications.co.uk

fill these pages with their humour, wisdom, and love of writing; to those who

Deputy Editors: Lorraine Mace lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk Danny Gillan danny@quinnpublications.co.uk

to our pages; to our interviewees, who it has been a pleasure to feature; to the

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

And so, after our great adventure, we choose the theme storyworlds for our third anniversary issue.

With an anniversary issue comes my opportunity to say a sincere thank you to all those who have contributed: to the regular contributors who time and again have submitted stories, poems and articles and brought vibrancy and texture advertisers, without whose support we would cease to be; to our proofreaders, whose job I make infinitely difficult by retyping and misspelling numerous headings; to the editorial team whose dedication leaves me in constant wonder; and lastly to you, our readers, both old and new.

It doesn’t feel like three years, and certainly not eighteen issues. Thank you.

Merry Christmas and enjoy!

Random Stuff | 5

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January 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Who better than a self-confessed Janeite - Clair Humphries – to take us inside Austen’s storyworld?

Bennets, Bonnets and Beyond: the Fictional World of Jane Austen

Bonnets and ballrooms; piano and picnics; coy glances and courtship.

The world of Jane Austen’s novels is instantly recognisable – the stuff of countless films, TV series and jolly documentaries, often hosted by equally jolly, head-girl types inviting us to drool over the delicious Darcy and embrace our inner Elizabeth Bennet. Parodied in sketch shows and a handy reference point for any aspiring rom-com writer, it’s a mannered, anachronistic yet safe world of old-fashioned social mores and romance. Reading an Austen novel removes us from the day-today grind of debt, inequality and Coalition cock-ups; it is cosy – the equivalent of a warm blanket or fireside chair – and it provides escape from all the unpleasantness of modern life.

Or does it?

2013 is the bicentenary year for Austen’s best loved novel, Pride and Prejudice. Since its publication, P&P (as committed Janeites prefer to call it) has come to epitomise Regency romance, with its principled heroine determined to marry for love, not money, and its brooding, buttoned-up hero. Elizabeth and Darcy’s world is one of card games and country house dances, inhabited by handsome, eligible suitors and agreeable young ladies

with pleasingly pinched cheeks. So far, so predictable. Yet scratch the surface and a darker, grittier narrative is revealed beneath the velvet frockcoats and froth. Elizabeth’s mother – a comic figure mocked for her constant meddling – is driven by the very real need to marry her daughters off. A secure marriage was not just desirable but essential, in a time when reputation and family money was all. We are told of the Bennets’ financial pressures early on: none of the family’s five daughters can inherit their estate and, without the buffer of a wealthy husband, face a bleak future. Elizabeth’s sisters do their best to impress potential suitors: they dance, sing and flirt (modestly), keen to show their credentials as would-be wife material. Meanwhile, our disdainful heroine scoffs as her siblings jump through these male-pleasing hoops. She sets herself apart and we modern, emancipated readers cheer for her – to a point. The thorny issue of impoverished spinsterhood lurks in the background, threatening to take the shine off her principled stance, until Darcy rallies and thaws and provides her with the love match she craves. Thus, all ends well, with good old Lizzy taking her place as mistress of Darcy’s Pemberley estate and her share of ten thousand a year.

Phew!

Austen knew only too well the precarious position held by unmarried women of limited means. Her light, comic touch and wry observations belied a heartfelt understanding of the social Siberia spinsters faced. Letters to her sister, Cassandra, reveal the torment she endured aged twenty-one, after giving up what many scholars believe to be the love of her life, Tom Lefroy. Despite the strength of her feelings, the match was disapproved of by her family, as Lefroy’s financial prospects were insufficient. Austen never recovered,

withdrawing instead into her writing, accepting her childless, single state and forced to depend upon her brother.

Her adult life was contained, although not entirely sheltered. As with any unmarried woman of the time, she assisted with family births, attended to sick relatives and visited the local poor, teaching their children to read and write. This exposed her to the often harsh realities of life, which she wove into the subtext of her novels. There is talk of illegitimacy in Sense and Sensibility, for example, when it is believed that Mr Willoughby has seduced and abandoned a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl. In Mansfield Park, she addresses the issue of slavery, alluding to family wealth built on the proceeds of an Antiguan plantation.

Social inequality and the abuse of power are recurrent motifs in Austen’s world of outward respectability and genteel pursuits.

So; what does this mean to the modern day Janeite?

Is it time to cast off our cosy comfort blanket readings and slump despondently in our fireside chair? Or can we still seek escape in the romance and comedy of Austen’s novels?

As someone who loves to lose themselves in the ballrooms of Pride and Prejudice, I hope its fans will still delight in Darcy and cheer on Lizzy Bennet for another two hundred years.

However, let’s not sell Miss Austen short by dismissing her fictional world as nothing more than gossip and trivia and crumpets for tea; beneath her bonnet, our knowing spinster was fully aware of life’s dark, dangerous and often immoral underbelly.

Which is all rather modern, don’t you think?

Clair Humphries is a writer and devoted Janeite. She was a finalist in the ‘Jane Austen Short Story Award’ and lives with her own real-life Mr Darcy in Kent.

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Dead Time - how to kill time between finishing your book and becoming a billionaire

By Derek Duggan

Sometimes, incredibly, there is a gap between writing a book and becoming a billionaire. Obviously it will only be a matter of time before you are recognised for the genius you are and you’re off to parties where you’ll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous and buying cocaine from Lance Armstrong, but what are you supposed to do to keep yourself occupied in the meantime?

Before we explore some realistic options let’s just knock the crazy ones on the head.

Going outside is a no-no. As a writer you will have been sitting in front of your computer a lot. This means that despite where you’re actually living or what your ethnicity is, the mere act of writing a novel will have had an effect on your skin and rendered it Scottish.

Therefore any contact with direct sunlight is likely to cause you to spontaneously combust.

There is also a relatively high likelihood that you will have developed the well documented medical condition known as Writer’s Leg which makes moving any further than the kettle and the cupboard containing the custard creams extremely difficult. As you will know if you did your homework before sitting down to write your book in the first place it is wise to make sure that your toilet facilities fall within the Custard Cream Ring, an imaginary circle with your chair at the centre and the custard cream cupboard a full radius away. Failure to do so can be messy, sticky and a lot less fun than you would imagine.

Another thing to rule out is trying to renew relationships with family members as while you’ve been busy writing your great tome they have all forgotten who you are and are only likely to remember when the billions actually start rolling in.

You could fill your time by going down the self-publishing route – if nothing else it will give you something to post on facebook besides reposting shit photos of other peoples cats, or (sweet suffering fuck) actually photographing your meals and posting that.

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Seriously, what is up with that? Think of it like this – imagine it’s the days before facebook.

Someone you sort of know from work comes up to you in the street and shows you a photo of the dinner they had last night. They say – Yum yum! - and then invite you to comment on the photo they are holding in their hand.

You wrack your brains, but the only thing that comes is – Fuck off you total freak of nature.

So why is it different if it’s on facebook? The answer – it’s not. You’re still a freak.

Anyway, instead of taking pictures of your dinner you can post links four times a day to where you can buy the self-published book and to another five star review on Amazon which brings the total to eight now, and they’re all from total strangers, honest.

You could write another book, but that seems like a lot of work when the first one hasn’t even been picked up yet. And besides which, you might have to engage in the most buttock clenchingly tedious task of actually having to do some research. Of course, in reality, research is about as necessary as foreplay with Katie Price, especially if you’re writing in the crime or thriller genre. Just make it all up. If you actually wrote a book that followed Police procedure or, you know, common sense, it wouldn’t ever be accepted by crime slash thriller readers.

If you feel you really must do some research, simply confine it to a quick Googling and possibly half read something on Wikipedia. However, it might be wise to remember what the great American author and humourist Mark Twain had to say – “The trouble with quotes on the internet is that many of them are a load of shite.”

So, what does that leave you with? Well, one thing you might think about is to start a blog telling other people how to write. You may as well pass on the vast amount of knowledge you’ve garnered through your own experience of writing a book that nobody wants to publish yet. Not to mention all the tips you’ve picked up from other people on forums who are waiting to become billionaires too. Remember - Those who can, do. And those who can’t, teach. And those who can’t teach, sure, you know, just have a go at it anyway. Not only will you be helping all the other billionaires in waiting, but there’s also a chance that some of the people who read your top tips might buy

your self-published book and give you a five star review and then you’ll have something else to post a link to. And even if they don’t, you can post a link to your blog every day and get some of your friends to repost the link to ensure that it shows up twenty seven times an hour in everyone else’s time line. Nothing will endear you to your friends more – except maybe sending them Farmville requests Another, and slightly more benign, option depends on the level of delusion you are able to attain. There is a chance that, as a writer, this is pretty high so you’ll have no problem whatsoever convincing yourself that four hours playing Angry Birds constitutes a good usage of your time.

Not writing a book can leave a big hole in your life. Of course, having a big hole in your life may have been what lead you to writing the book in the first place. Make sure you find something to plug your hole.

Glad I could help.

Storyworlds from real worlds to brave, new worlds

by Anne Stormont

Inspiration comes to writers in all sorts of ways. It might be an imaginary person that presents themselves and asks the author to tell their story. Or, it might be the seeds of the story that come first. Then again, it might be neither of these. It might be a place that first beckons - a setting - demanding to be populated by fascinating folk with interesting life stories.

The storyworld - or setting - is the ingredient that completes the triad of essentials - along with character and plot - when putting together a piece of fiction.

The world of the story can be a real and contemporary place. Or, it can be a made-up place existing decades - or indeed - hundreds, thousands, millions of years in the past or future. It can be recognisable - or weird and alien. It can be confined - to a town, a house, a room, a shoebox - or indeed the head of a pin. Or it can be as vast as a whole universe.

But, although the world of the story can be drawn from a whole world - and beyond - of possibilities, once the author has decided on the nature of the stage on which her story will play out, then there are rules to adhere to.

There will be rules that come with the genre. So crime fiction will most likely require the settings of police station, pathology lab, or detective agency. Historical fiction will unfold in a cave, settlement, village or city that is true to the artefacts and customs of its time. Romantic fiction will need to provide a place where it is possible for the paths of the two main protagonists to cross.

Science-fiction, fantasy and literary fiction are less restricted than those listed above when it comes to world-building. They can literally push boundaries. They can do away with the rules of physics, time and space.

Children’s fiction too can be real world or completely fantastical - or, indeed, as in Harry Potter both at once.

A huge part of the thrill of writing fiction is the fun you can have designing homes, cities and planets. But the freedom this gives to the writer’s imagination is one that comes with responsibilities.

Whether an author is telling the story of a wee girl and her teddy going to nursery school, or the story of a time-travelling Roman soldier turned detective, who also happens to have an interesting lovelife and a load of existential angst, the world in which their actions take place must ring true for the reader.

There must be inherent and coherent conditions within that world. There must be no jarring inconsistencies. By all means have upside-down town - or should that be Downton - but the author must remember this characteristic throughout the action - everything will have to happen upsidedown.

So whether it’s the three bears’ cottage or Hogwarts, or whether it’s Wuthering Heights or a galaxy far, far away - the author must remember at all times where she and her readers are - and stay true to that world.

But, as long as you do that - then the world for you, the writer, is your oyster. Just remember though, if it is an oyster, then the story world will be shell-bound, underwater and a bit smelly throughout...

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The Killing - TV Gold to Literary Gold:

David Hewson in conversation with Gillian Hamer For the most part, my column features authors who have been fortunate enough to have seen their work commissioned into film or television.

This issue, it’s an about turn for me. I’m talking to David Hewson, the author behind the novel version of the hugely successful Danish television series, The Killing. And this, I feel, fits in really well with this issue’s theme of ‘Storyworld.’

David Hewson has written 22 books translated into more than 22 languages. His first novel Semana Santa was made into a movie with Mira Sorvino. His Nic Costa crime series set in Rome is now in development for an English language TV series by Bavaria in Rome. His next book will be The Killing II, out in January 2013 in the UK from Pan Macmillan.

is simply massive and can’t be cut in narrative terms since each element hinges into another in some way. So I had to cut scenes, characters and the occasional story thread. I just looked at the parts I thought weakest and cut them.

It’s easy to see some of the difficulties you may be faced with in this kind of commission, but what do you consider are the benefits?

Benefits– you have a basic outline for the piece, some characters and, from a publishing point of view, an instant line into the reader. That’s it.

You’re already a successful author in your own right, so how were you first approached about writing the novel Did you have concerns about how the novel would be version of the screen story of The Killing? accepted by the millions of followers of the original television series? Obviously the novel has received high There was a huge international auction for the book rights. My publisher Pan Macmillan wanted to win and came beforehand to ask me if I’d write. praise from the literary press, but have you had any They’d had an internal discussion about who to approach and I was top of contact with its real die-hard fans? the list on the back of experience in foreign locations and writing strong female leads.

No. I was in Italy at the time so I heard the buzz. But the idea came up while I was away so the DVDs were waiting for me when I got back. It didn’t take long to know I’d do it.

I thought I’d get a really hard time actually. TV tie-ins are often cheap, rushed hack jobs, not long, creative adaptations of the original. I thought some fans would scream at me for changing the original, quite fundamentally in some ways. In fact I’ve had very little of that and the reviews have been the best of my career. Lots of fans have said they really liked the fact the ending is so very different. I did try to make that ‘new’ ending an alternative reading of existing threads in the story. I was trying to introduce as little as possible that was new there.

It’s quite an unusual commission to be asked to write a novel from a television series. What were your initial thoughts and fears?

Were you worried the massive hype surrounding the television series might have a negative impact on the novel?

Principally flattered and terrified. It’s quite something to be given one of the best TV dramas of recent years and told, ‘Make it work as a book.’ I’d no idea how to go about this but I thought it would be a lot of fun to find out.

I don’t worry about anything, ever. Pointless.

Had you already watched the original Danish television series and were you a fan?

How do you go about translating over twenty hours of small screen drama into a normal length novel?

In a very organized way. I went to Copenhagen, talked to Søren Sveistrup the series creator, visited locations, got to know a little of the city. Then I wrote a synopsis of every scene – more than 600 of them – as a kind of massive treatment. That came to 260K words. I then tried to understand the story structure. After that I worked on a prose style. When all those things were in place I could start writing.

Was it an easy decision to make deciding what would stay, what would go and what would be changed?

It was really because the thing needed pretty savage cutting. The story

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I’ve recently listened to the audio version of the The Killing whilst on holiday, and I loved in particular the dialogue and characterisation. How much of a help was it to have already seen these people on the small screen, rather than have to rely on solely on your imagination?

The acting was incredibly helpful even though I didn’t really know what they were saying. When you look at the sub titles closely it’s clear they’re not terribly close translations. So they were no use to me. Almost all the dialogue is original. I tried to imagine the voices those actors would have had in English. So a big help.

Without giving too much away for those who’ve yet to

read the novel, what made you decide to change the ending from that of the television version?

Books and drama are different media. Drama has actors, scenery, music, location. It can get away with murder when it comes to leaving storylines unresolved. Books need to answer a few more questions. TV can ask: who killed Nanna Birk Larsen? Books also have to pose the question… why?

The TV ending didn’t give us the why. So I knew I had to provide it, and find it by rejigging some existing threads in the story.

I believe you spent time in Copenhagen to give an accurate portrayal of the setting and atmosphere.

Having already seen this on screen, why was this important to you?

I can’t write about places I haven’t seen. Spending time in City Hall, the police HQ, and in Vesterbro, the Birk Larsen’s district, gave me insight into aspects of the story I couldn’t have got if I’d stayed at home.

How much of a free reign were you given in writing the novel? And how much involvement was there with Soren Sveistrup (the mastermind behind the television series)?

Completely free rein within reason. That was one of the conditions of the deal. I knew there would have to be changes in an adaptation and said so from the outset. Fortunately Søren was incredibly supportive and said very vocally, ‘I want this to be your book.’ He was great help in explaining some ideas and answering some questions but he wasn’t involved in the writing or publishing. He’s been tied up producing the third series of The Killing throughout the whole time I’ve written both Killing books – which shows how different TV is to literature.

Would you rate this commission as harder or easier than creating a novel from scratch? And is it something you’d like to attempt again?

that is actively in development. I have one UK novel from the 1990s, Native Rites, which I think would make cracking UK TV. It’s a rural gothic horror story… with cricket. But I don’t have time to write it sadly.

Do you think as a writer, you need some special gift or skill to be able to tackle this kind of commission?

Organisation and an analytical mind. If I’d sat straight down to write this without the two months of preparatory work I put in the thing would have been a disaster.

Any other films or television series you’d particularly like to be offered?

Anything intelligent with lot of money attached, please.

And finally …

You’re among a wealth of strong crime fiction writers in the UK at the moment, who were your own influences in the genre?

I don’t really like the genre thing. It’s OK as a label but it always worries me when I meet people who read nothing but a genre, or worse a subgenre.

I happen to believed writers are actively influenced only by the authors they like and admire in their first thirty years. So for me that would be Robert Graves, Ed McBain, Ray Bradbury, Daphne du Maurier, Robert Louis Stevenson and Mario Puzo.

As a literary magazine, we relish sage nuggets of advice from published authors, so what words of wisdom or encouragement would you offer to new upcoming writers hoping to follow in your footsteps?

Read books, work out what you do and don’t like. And be analytical.

Understand why. In fact, I have a book on writing out this year too.

Not really… just different. I had to invent my own working process for it which was a fascinating exercise. Whether I’ll do it again… I really don’t know. I want to write my own stories too.

Has the experience made you keen to see any of your own novels adapted into television or film? I believe there may be a television series of The Costa series in development, has your experiences with The Killing made this all the more important to you?

Bavaria have all the Italian books I’ve written, half my entire output, so

Random Stuff | 11

12 | Random Stuff

Sir Richard Taylor and Weta Workshop

In conversation with Gillian Hamer and JD Smith, Frankfurt Book Fair 2012 The man who brought you Narnia, Middle Earth, Skull Island among many, many others is probably one of the most charming men I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. Certainly the most passionate. The editor and I were lucky to get opportunity to sit in on a speech Richard gave as part of the StoryDrive Conference at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Anyone not moved or motivated by his tale of gathering mud as a boy from the nearby creek in the wilds of his home in New Zealand to fashion little toy models that became his first steps into the industry for which he is now a global phenomena, really has no soul.

The man’s credentials are amazing, not that you’d think it from his laid-back demeanour and shoes covered with an inch of plaster dust. But this man has five Academy Awards to his name, not to mention a Knighthood in 2010 and the current title of New Zealander of the year. Oh, and his best mate is none other than director extraordinaire, Peter Jackson. (And he has a soft spot for the Brummie accent to boot ...)

How vital are the basics of good oldfashioned ‘story’ to the multi-million pound, high tech, industrial side of film making. Does it all start with the author?

Unsurprisingly, Mr Taylor, has some words of wisdom to impart ...

From a writer’s perspective, it was really good to hear you talk today about your passion in bringing books to the screen.

And you started, like us, reading Tolkien.

I come from Birmingham, where Tolkien lived, and that’s a big thing for me.

Well all of my family are from Northern England. I grew up in Cheshire. I’m from Cheadle, and my family are from Oldham.

It’s great to see you build the worlds we have in our heads. If you were having this conversation with Tolkien, what would you say to him?

I feel very certain from all my reading about JRR Tolkien that should he have been alive at the time we made the movies, he would have celebrated the new medium of telling the stories, because he was instrumental in getting those stories onto any medium that was available to him at the time. In fact, my uncle, who was from Malvern, – was in the very early stages of computer development in England – and he shared an attic with a friend who was in the very early stages of tape to tape recording. And he recorded Tolkien reading The Hobbit in the attic, at the time, and on the recording you can hear the Malvern clock chiming and a taxi beeping its horn. I would like to think he would have embraced it and celebrated the fact that his literature was transcending the page and getting on to another medium, that a whole other part of the world would enjoy.

Tolkien was so passionate about why he was writing The Lord of the Rings, because he was passionate about industrialisation. But the thought that he could get his word out there to a wider audience would have been vital to him.

I think he would have found it delightful that an industrial process such as film-making – it’s obviously an artistic process but it’s only possible because of the invention of a piece of industry: the camera and the process of film-making, would have been the medium with which the story reached another part of the world’s population.

There was mention about cross-media in the Storydrive Conference. It has been said that Hollywood is more interested in merchandising rather than telling a good story. What do you think is different about the movie-making in New Zealand, and to what do you attribute its current success?

Well, I can’t take any credit for coming up with the story around The Lord of the Rings, the big budget features films. We’re a service provider on those films and offering creative ideas and concepts.

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But you made Gollum into what we now know as Gollum on screen. That was you …

Does Weta deal with games and other mediums? And how do you think they enhance the storytelling?

Well, that was our collective take … thank you! No film-maker ever sets out to do a bad job. And Hollywood certainly is only focussed on success. And film-making is almost a black art. If you actually stopped to think about what it takes to make a movie, you probably wouldn’t make a movie. Because it’s such an intangible and complex process. Writing a novel, it’s incomprehensible to me how difficult that must be for an individual to go on that journey alone. But it is an individual pursuit, and it’s almost exclusively the challenge of one person. A film on the scale of a blockbuster feature film, is the collaboration, the rallying, of thousands of people. A human endeavour. Almost unprecedented in any other part of the world’s industries, to bring that content to the screen. And the Hollywood film-maker has the best possible intention of making content that is going to add gravitas and longevity and celebration in the industry and in the popular culture of the world. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work out that way, but in respect to your question, it all cumulates around Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, because they are great storytellers.

Regardless of their film-making prowess, they make beautiful stories.

We aspire to be involved in as many of the mediums as possible. We haven’t yet made our own game, although we’ve designed for gamemakers, and we are right now in the infancy of developing our first game around the world of Doctor Grordbort.

In answer to your question, it can only enhance, because any piece of popular culture that keeps you immersed in the universe is critical. The way I visualise it, the fan is a lighthouse and the fan sends a beam out across the ocean. When we were kids – I’m 47 now – when you and I were kids, the number of boats in the ocean was tiny. You know, there was Andy Pandy and Sooty and Sweep, there was Basil Brush and Thunderbirds. Today the ocean is crowded with boats, and that light beam scans across the ocean and you want the fan to lock on to your boat and stick with it. But of course today you have create a flotilla of boats. You have the main battleship, but then there’s all the other smaller crafts around it, which is the game, the ebook, the graphic novel, augmented reality possibilities, the presentation and so on. All of it trying to capture that tiny beam of interest, and of course once you grab them you’ve got to feed them, because there is a ravenous desire for more content.

And they’ve got your settings to back them up.

Well, that’s true, but it’s very secondary. You could generate the greatest scenery in the world, the greatest spectacle ... but in the epic, Peter always finds the intimate. That’s the heart of every great story and great film, and something that is sometimes missed in the great blockbusters. The spectacle films that are made these days, is that in the epic, they continue to show the epic. But of course you go to a movie to form a relationship, you read a book to form a relationship, with a set of characters that you can otherwise not get in your normal life. And that will only happen in the intimate. It will never happen in the epic.

So it doesn’t matter if it’s King Kong or if it’s Frodo, as long as you connect?

Yes, you have to offer a unique character, that we want to go on a journey with.

A book, arguably, is even more difficult, because you’ve got to go on a multiple week journey, or however long it takes someone to read a book. Or in my case a very long time! And I need to love and even love to hate that character, because that character has to be that engaging. You know, why did we all love Harry Potter? It’s because we grew to have those people as family members in our lives.

Because they can access it anywhere.

And they can access any amount of it. Billions of opportunities, and everyone competing.

Do you think about that when you’re designing or plotting Gollum or a WotWot? Do you think how it’s going to work in the next generation, media, or whatever the new release might be?

Yes. It is critical to. For me, at 47, I get it, and I like to think that I can think that broadly, but I have to turn to the young people and our design team for inspirational advice because popular culture sprouts as weeds through the pavements of the world. You can’t just go out and decide to squeeze popular culture out of your brain, it’s got to evolve through a morphic, complex process of it rising up. And then it reaches somewhere where it engages across the world. And it’s youth culture.

Which is maybe a little bit alien to our generation?

To some degree it is. Although, the day that I don’t get it, is the day that I need

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to pack it in because it’s as critical that you’re tapped into that as much as possible. Going to ComicCon is a critical thing for someone like me. In those three days you can absorb such an unbelievable richness of popular culture, that otherwise you may travel the world for months and never get it. So you have to be very aware and savvy to what’s happening, and it’s incredibly timeconsuming.

Do you have one story, or one idea, that you would like to develop? If you could go to Peter Jackson and say, “I’ve got this really good idea …” what would it be?

I have thought about that. It’s a very tricky one to answer. It wouldn’t be a preexisting idea, it would be an original idea.

So not any old classics? Something that you want to try yourself?

Yeah, I mean, once I would have answered The Thunderbirds as a feature film, but that’s now happened.

Modernise it?

Well, no. I would want to make it for a feature film. I believe you could have kept it in a very retro-1960’s Gerry Anderson aspiration. It’s arguable that the modernising of it lost the core fan-base, that diminished its impact.

But for the moment my greatest aspiration is to help see the world of Doctor Grordbort come to life.

You mentioned a sci-fi boys’ action production? Is that in the pipeline?

time. I’ve been pitching television for thirteen years now, and managed to get two shows off the ground, and aspire to more. It’s immensely enjoyable and fulfilling, making children’s television. We get quite a bit of fan mail, and the loveliest fan mail has been for Jane and the Dragon, from young girls, born into third-world cultures, that have seen Jane, been empowered, and it’s changed their lives, and to think that a kids’ TV show can have the gravitas to change cultural direction.

I interviewed Michael Morpurgo about War Horse, and he said exactly the same, that going round speaking to children meant more to him than all of the awards and accolades.

I agree, it’s incredible. We do a lot of work in China, and I’ve been doing business there for thirteen years now, and going to parts of China and sitting with young people, and hearing them talk about what our work – not the actual film, but our work within the film – meant to them, because they’ve been able to access it through DVDs, empowered them to try it themselves, and change their lives because of it. It’s worth more than any award or accolade you can imagine.

You should be very proud. You’ve done a brilliant job.

Oh, thank you.

And thank you for your time today.

And thank you, it’s so nice talking to your accent. The Birmingham accent is a very unique one. It’s funny that from that little part of the world, it’s so independent and so recognisable. I have a real love of accents.

Yes, we have two boys’ sci-fi action television shows in development right now.

And a number of other bits and pieces that we’ve been working on for a short

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Writers Behind Bars

Due to the nature of the work, the writer of this piece has asked to remain anonymous On the front page of our local paper there is a photograph of a violent armed robber. Slack-lidded and with lips curled in a snarl, his picture hovers above a quote from the victim. In the not too distant past I would already have made up my mind, but I know this man. His name is Ethan. He is the quiet dynamo of the creative writing group I run in a local prison.

Ethan experiments with his hair. Some days he plaits his locks in neat cornrows and on other days, it is only half done. On these days he pulls the hair into a bunch on top of his head, like a little girl.

When he was in care, Ethan’s foster mother forced him to eat spoons of marmite because she knew he hated it. Ethan claims his recent conviction is unfair, but loyalty to his guilty friends is unswerving.

The tough act he saves for outside. In our group, he admits how terrified he is of spiders.

Prejudice is easy. Judging by appearances is the road mosttravelled – a way of thinking that allows us to avoid engaging with unpleasantness. It reminds us that prisoners are criminals, locked up for our protection, a group we can as a society safely forget about.

Why should we worry about those who have done wrong?

Looking at Ethan’s photograph, I get a flash of the old me.

Now, I know that among the scores of inmates I have met over this year, few have avoided the worst blows of life. Wholesale neglect, abuse, poverty and its attendant drug use are usually only the start for these men. A huge number (in our prison, around 60%) are dyslexic. Reaching school, they rarely found understanding of their particular needs and ambitions. In this situation far easier for boys to act up and abscond than be made to feel stupid and worthless by individuals who had the power to change the message they already received from home.

A few weeks ago I met two young brothers, both bright, polite and bespectacled, they excused themselves during one of our writing sessions to chat with their addiction counsellor. I was slightly surprised, but then later I spoke to another member of staff who told me their story. Mum had abandoned the brothers to their abusive, schizophrenic father who would sporadically kick the boys out of the house. The first time, they were ten and eleven. With nowhere to go, the boys slept rough, mixing with abusers and drug users. These engaging, personable lads writing fabulous stories of fantasy lives had this for their earliest experience.

Organisations like PEN are active in sending writers into prisons to run workshops, and many prisons have Writers in Residence posts, but why? I have my own theory as to the reason writing is so important behind bars. Stories are what make us human. Storytelling evolved as a way for us to make sense of the world and the sharing of stories with other human beings is the mesh that binds communities.

Being herded together and deprived of freedom is dehumanising.

The men that end up in prison feel excluded from society and validating the stories they have to tell is a salve on this rejection – a

16 | Random Stuff

way of restoring their worth as human beings.

Many institutions recognise the importance of creativity behind bars, finding that difficult behaviours reduce when inmates have access to creative expression. For those that control the purse strings however, rehabilitation is the magic word. I cannot pretend to understand the complex nature of rehabilitation but I see with my own eyes how sharing their stories and poems in the writing workshop raises the men’s self-esteem. It seems to me that people with low self-esteem have nothing to lose, and that those who feel good about themselves do not usually go looking for trouble. Being listened to and praised sometimes for the first time in their lives might at least plant a seed.

For me it is humbling to have gained the trust of these ‘tough’ men. When they drop their defences and bare a bright shard of their soul, I sometimes have to fight tears. During my earliest visits I worked alongside an English teacher. At the start of one class, a man loped in. Tom was about fifty, with a face covered in tattoos and many teeth missing. He was not interested in English. When the teacher announced a creative writing session he flicked open his newspaper and started reading, planting both feet on the desk.

The others made a start, sharing stories they had written about shipwreck. Slowly, the newspaper came down. He opened his exercise book and started writing. He wrote for the remaining two hours of that session and for the whole of the next one, filling two exercise books with neat handwriting. Tom gave the exercise books to the teacher and the teacher asked Tom’s permission to read the story aloud.

Prison classes can be noisy. If you get the level down to a hum, you are winning. Within a couple of paragraphs a deafening hush descended on the room. Tom’s descriptions were minute, intimate as he painted the death of a man’s dreams and his fear as he helps a young boy during the sinking of the Titanic and how in adopting the boy, the man finds his purpose in life. It was so wonderful that I worried about how he was going to end the story - I did not want to be disappointed.

His final, poorly spelled line read, ‘I looked over at the boy - the boy who saved a man, who saved a boy.’ There was a moment before the class erupted in spontaneous applause, and Tom’s ink-etched face melted into an expression of pleasure that must have been his as a child. He shook his head.

‘Do you really think it was OK?’ He was incredulous. ‘I never knew I could do that. I haven’t written anything since I was at primary school.’

I stayed behind after the class, typing up Tom’s story to make the deadline for a writing competition. This ‘thug,’ the sort of man with whom you would avoid eye contact and pray not to meet in a dark alley, won a Highly Commended in a national competition for his beautiful words.

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Clive Stafford Smith

Chorleywood Literary Festival

‘The Greatest Lit Fest You’ve Never Heard Of’

by Catriona Troth

Chorleywood is a London commuter village. It lies (just barely) outside the defining arc of the M25, on the far-flung reaches of the Metropolitan Line. But by an accident of geography and road planning, you could drive right by it without knowing it was there. Perhaps because of that relative isolation, it has more of a community feel than its Metroland cousins up the road. Small enough that big global chains like Tesco and Starbucks don’t bother with it, it still boasts a butcher and a fishmonger – most importantly of all, an independent bookshop.

Chorleywood Bookshop has been the southeast regional winner of the Indie Bookshop of the Year award two years in a row. And no doubt one reason is the role of its dedicated and enthusiastic owners, Sheryl Shurville and Morag Watkins, in running the annual Chorleywood Literary Festival, now in its seventh year.

One thing that makes the Chorleywood festival a little different is that it does without Aristotelian unities of time and place. You won’t find a cluster of white marquees on Chorleywood Common; rather the events take place across a scattering of venues – mostly local schools, selected to match the anticipated audiences. And those events aren’t crammed into one long weekend, but spread out over nearly two weeks. It’s perfectly possible, if you have the stamina, to attend every one of the fourteen events on offer.

And a pretty eclectic set of events they are. The festival opens with Nigella Lawson, and spans comedy from Howard Jacobson, family tragedy from Ben Elton, biography from John Suchet, history from Sam Mullins and Jerry Brotton, a showcase for new novelists, and a whole lot more.

In the background, the festival also runs an annual Short Story Competition for adults and children, several ‘fringe’ events for children (such as an exhibition of costumes from Harry Potter) and an adults’ creative writing workshop on the final weekend.

There is a nightly draw to win a bundle of books, and an overall draw to win a Freedom Pass to next year’s festival. And for those that can’t get to the events, @chorleywoodbooks tweets live highlights and teasers – such as Nigella revealing, in response to a question from the audience, that she carries a tube of mustard with her wherever she goes.

Zoo Time The first event I manage to attend is Howard Jacobson talking about his latest book, Zoo Time. Jacobson is a particularly welcome return guest.

Two and a half years ago, Shurville and Watkins heard him talk about his book, The Finkler Question and decided they must book him for the festival. Six months later, just before he was due to appear, the book won the 2010 Mann Booker Prize and CWLF achieved something of a coup.

Jacobson is a self-styled Old Testament prophet. “I have come like Jeremiah to tell you that it’s all over.” ‘It’ in this case being a certain sort of literary world, a world inhabited by the common reader, where a writer like Dickens could draw audiences of thirty-thousand people.

Of course, he says, there is a certain absurdity in pronouncing that everything is over, but so long as there is triumphalism, the world needs prophets of doom.

Zoo Time is about abject literary failure. “I was halfway through writing it and I then won the bloody Booker. Fortunately, as a writer, I have the gift of retrospective bitterness.”

Most author events I’ve attended have an interviewer to ask questions, but Jacobson has no need of an interlocutor. Words pour out of him. His glasses come off again and again as he thinks of just one more thing to say before he starts his reading. The idea for Zoo Time, he says, sprang from a newspaper article about an American author who was arrested in Borders for stealing a copy of his own book. Jacobson’s hero, even less glamorously, is arrested in the Oxfam shop in Chipping Norton for the same crime.

The second passage Jacobson reads takes his hero to Australia with his wife and mother-in-law, for whom he is developing a passion.

“You might think of it as an expression of genetic loyalty, but you’d be surprised how often wives don’t see it like that.” The reading includes a description of killing a large hairy Australian spider. “I love it when people moan at this point,” he remarks with relish.

Failure is clearly a subject he enjoys. “I have a secret. We are all failures. And before you get offended, let me tell you it’s because we are all readers, and that means we are all dissatisfied with the world as it is. People who are dissatisfied with the world either imagine the world remade, or try remake it themselves.”

A questioner from the audience notes that his humour often involves inversions or oppositions and asks if that is something conscious. If that’s true, he says, it must be something so deeply engrained he’s not aware of it. Then he considers. He draws an analogy with the way Talmudic scholars frame their rhetoric. “Maybe it’s something that goes back three thousand years.”

Someone asks him about reader reviews. He tells us he used to be very dismissive of online blogs. “It’s your opinion; you’re entitled to it, and it’s worth nothing.” But he’s coming round. Recently, he says, he has found more considered opinions, more evidence of people ‘getting it’ online than in newspaper reviews. “One shouldn’t change one’s opinion based just on what’s said about oneself. But it’s a start.”

His favourite literary character, he says, is Hamlet. “He shows it is incumbent upon an intelligent person to be sad and to think the world is a terrible place. He’s miserable, despairing, tragic – and witty.”

He never plans his books. “You should never know your ending.

The book must take over. You must write with ‘loose hands.’ That’s why I don’t read crime novels. They feel too planned.” And he warns against the feeling, towards the end of a book, “that you’re writing the wrong book. It’s like the end of a marriage – you know you’ll have to leave this book and go on to the next one. But it can make you rush the ending.”

The novel, he says, “defies the morality of tractarians.” He mentions Tolstoy, who set out to write about the terrible decline in morality in Moscow and ended up writing the most empathetic novel about adultery ever penned.

He is not, he insists, a comic novelist, but a tragic novelist who makes you laugh. It’s a description that fits him well.

Injustice I wasn’t sure what to expect of the second event I attended. Clive Stafford Smith is a lawyer renowned for defending prisoners on Death Row in the United States. His book, Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America, centres round the case of Kris Maharaj, a British national who has been in prison in Florida since 1987, accused of the

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double murder of a father and son in a Miami hotel. But the issues he uncovers have far wider implications for our notions of justice and fair play.

I expected to be interested, moved even. What I didn’t expect was that I would be so thoroughly entertained. Wearing grey cords and a long sleeved t-shirt, and with steel-rimmed specs perched on the end of his nose, Stafford-Smith looks more like an enthusiastic maths professor (the other path his life might have taken) than a courtroom lawyer. At the start of the talk, he passes round a clipboard where we can sign up to receive information about his charity Reprieve. “If you don’t sign, you’re going straight to hell,” he tells us cheerily. “But if you do sign it, I can practically promise you a place in purgatory.”

His voice rings out and he quickly dispenses with the microphone, which is producing an annoying hum. He approaches the talk like a reconstruction of a trial, presenting evidence, talking to us like a jury, and stopping every now and again to extract our opinions and to pin us down, squirming, while he dissects what’s led us to our judgements.

“How many of you here believe in the death penalty?” Eight hands go up out of an audience of a hundred or so. “None of the rest of you could serve on an American jury in a capital case.” He gets a man in the front row to stand up and face the audience. “This man is on trial for murder. Would you take an oath that says if he’s found guilty you will send him to his death? Because that’s what you’d have to do.”

“What about standards of proof? What does ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ mean to you? Put a percentage on it.” In the case of judges surveyed in Louisiana, this turned out to be on average 83% - which doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that this implies that one in six, or more than a million prisoners, in the US are quite possibly innocent.

He throws out unsettling tips from his own experiences, like how to beat a polygraph (“think erotic thoughts while you’re answering the baseline questions” or how to react when you’re held up at gunpoint (“I said, ‘I’m a defence lawyer: do you really want to turn me into a prosecutor?’ They gave me my wallet back.”)

He talks about a system that dare not expose its own flaws and corruptions, lest we, the people, turn against it.

But most bizarrely of all, he exposes the reason why Kris Maharaj is still in jail. There is now – and has been for a long time – documentary evidence that witnesses at his original trial, including the police, lied and covered things up. Yet a supreme court ruling means that this evidence is not legally relevant to whether he can be released.

What reader of crime novels would tolerate such a concept of justice?

Two Brothers Anyone who remembers Ben Elton’s standup routines from the 1980s will know how passionate he is about the things he believes in. What might surprise you is the range and breadth of things he is passionate about.

“Of all the arts, the relationship between the reader and the writer is the most intensely intimate. You read in private. There’s no sound, no vision. Just hour after hour of creative engagement between two imaginations. The reader’s doing half the work. Come to think of it, I should probably be paying you!”

He doesn’t like reading from his own books, because even his own voice gets in the way of the relationship with the reader. And perhaps he’s right. A woman in Howard Jacobson’s audience remarked how, rereading The Finkler Question after hearing him speak, she heard his voice in her head and found more and more of it falling into place. But Elton’s voice is not particularly suited to reading aloud. Extemporising,

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he holds you in the palm of his hand. Reading, he falls into the trap of being too rhythmic.

Then he’s back on form again, talking about his inspiration for the book. Each of his previous novels began with a snippet from a newspaper that fired his imagination. Stark began with a quote from the Prince of Wales about the death of the North Sea, Popcorn with the media frenzy over movie violence and copycat killers – and so on. Two Brothers, on the other hand, is rooted in his own family’s history. Two of his uncles, cousins who had grown up together, found themselves by an accident of circumstances fighting on opposite sides in the Second World War – one for the British Army and one for the Wehrmacht. It’s a story that’s fascinated him all his life and one that’s taken him thirty years to write.

Which brings him to the next of his passions: history. Two Brothers begins in 1920, on the same day that the Nazi party was born. In order to write the book, Elton immersed himself in the history of the Weimar republic, “a period of extraordinary culture. An explosion of ideas.

Dadaism and relativity, Bauhaus and George Gross, all coming out of Berlin at the same time. Free medical care thirty years before Britain had the NHS. And history turning on a sixpence. If a handful of people hadn’t done a deal with Hitler for fear of communism, Germany could have been the leading light in Europe.”

The fact that that deal was done led to what Elton maintains is history’s darkest hour. “Not that you can weigh up individual tragedies, to say that the murder of Jews in Auschwitz is worse than the massacres in Rwanda. But at no other time has the mechanism of a civilised state has been so fundamentally corrupted in the service of banal evil. An evil that could overnight divide a family by rule of law into humans and subhumans.”

Every question takes him on a meandering path from football mums (“‘You need to develop your killer instinct, Sebastian!’”), to religion (“I refuse to believe in a personified God that has opinions on everything from sex to the American election”). “Not quite sure how I got into that,” he says again and again, by which time even the questioner has forgotten where they began. He talks about the ten weeks his own twin boys spent in a premature baby unit and about his fears for the generation growing up in the information age. (“They have to develop the capacity not to be never-endingly distracted, and it’s not their fault.”) And he recalls his writing career beginning at the age of thirteen with PG Wodehouse pastiches.

“Before you can become a professional writer,” he tells the audience, “you have to be an amateur writer. And if you remain at amateur writer for the rest of your life, you are still a writer.”

And that’s where I have to stop. The deadline for the December issue of WWJ comes slap in the middle of the Festival, so if you want to read about, say, The History of the World in Twelve Maps, or hear from rising stars Erin Kelly, Evie Wyld and Nell Leyshon, you’ll have to take a look at our blog.

Please support your local bookshop this Christmas: www.indiebound.org.uk

The Small Press Scene Galley Beggar Press is an independent publisher based in Norwich run by Henry Layte, Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison.

We want to publish books because we are passionate about them, rather than because we think they will fit in with trends or appeal to a certain demographic. Happily, the success of our first book The White Goddess: An Encounter has shown that this isn’t such a crazy idea. There is an audience eager for quality.

Over the next few years, we plan to release several more first books that fill our basic remit of being wonderful and fun to read. We have several previously unsigned authors on our list, most of whom have got to the final hurdle with bigger publishers before, only to be told that although their work is wonderful, it isn’t commercial. We are also in the process of establishing a separate list of American classics that haven’t been sufficiently appreciated in the UK. Our first release on that list (in Spring 2013) will be Cutter And Bone

by Newton Thornberg - a work of GENIUS (and incidentally the inspiration for the character of The Dude in The Big Lebowski). Excitingly, as printing a high quality paper version of this superb novel, we’ll also be making Newton Thornberg’s backlist available in Ebook format...

We’re also going to be exploring the potential of Ebooks to resurrect lost masterpieces from the UK too. Just before Christmas, we’re going to release My Elvis Blackout by Simon Crump - the best book you’ve never read. This book is so strange, so funny, so poignant, so twisted that I can’t hope to do it justice in a brief summary like this. Suffice to say that it features the death, mutilation and resurrection of Chris De Burgh, Elvis losing his shit on a daytime TV

cookery programme and it will make you cry both tears of laughter and sadness. I have loved it since it first came out in the year 2000 and always thought it has deserved to be read by anyone and everyone, everywhere. It’s thrilling to be able to give a book like that another shot at glory.

These are difficult times for publishing - but they also represent an opportunity for small presses with low overheads. We are prepared to take risks and publish for love as much as the bottom line - and that gives us a real advantage in today’s climate. As bigger publishers slash their lists and marketing men and bean counters decide what should be printed rather than editors, more and more fine authors are looking for a home. And we are here for them. It’s frightening to watch Amazon building a monopoly on bookselling and using their power to bully publishers - and even destroy them. As a book lover, I groaned at the recent Random House and Penguin merger, knowing it points the way to the future: consolidation, retreat, narrowing lists, fewer opportunities for writers to be published by a big house. But the retreat of the big houses also represents an opportunity for independents. There will always be a market for good books. And more and more good books are likely to come our way...

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Speak the speech, I pray you:

The Society of Women Writers and Journalists’ Drama Group

by Catriona Troth

I first encountered the Society of Women Writers and Journalists earlier this year when I interviewed their chairwoman, Zoe King, for an article in WWJ on writers’ organisations and what they had to offer their members.

Each organisation had its own particular flavour, but one thing that intrigued me about SWWJ was its Drama Group.

The group meets twice a year and gives dramatic writers, from the very experienced to the complete novice, the opportunity to hear their work read by professional actors.

SWWJ held its first ‘Playwrights’ Workshop’ in 1991, and distinguished past members of the group have included Mary Witt, Jean McConnell and Eve Blizzard. Twelve years ago, however, the group was running out of steam. Mary Rensten, one of the original cofounders, wrote to all past participants, inviting them to a meeting at the New Cavendish Club which re-launched the group, and it hasn’t looked back since. Director Martin Cort, the group’s current drama coordinator, joined in 2005, when he was directing one of Rensten’s plays, and has run the workshops for the past four years.

After trying a number of venues over the years, their present home is a basement room off Judd Street near King’s Cross in London. I joined them at their October meeting, when five scripts had been selected for sight reading – three short stage plays, one screenplay and one potential radio play.

Although, when time permits, the group may progress to blocking out moves for a scene or two, the focus is on the read-through. If you’ve ever watched Doctor Who Confidential, you’ll have an idea how that works. Actors, in this case seated facing the audience, sight read the dialogue, while the director reads descriptions, stage directions etc.

Any writer will tell you the value to hearing your words spoken aloud. Even if you speak them yourself, you will spot blunders and

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clumsy word choices that are much harder to pick up on the page or the screen. But for a dramatic writer, a read-through can illuminate the shape of your creation. Is the pace right, is there a balance between the different actors, is there enough on the page to give the actors a character to flesh out?

Three of the authors whose work is being tried out this time round - Carolyn Pertwee, Jane Lockyer Willis and June Walker - are old hands who have had their work performed at festivals and in the theatre. Two others are testing the waters for the first time. Angela Ashton’s Broken Branches tells the story of the Cheshire Regiment’s Bantam Brigades in the First World War by interweaving scenes of a family holiday among the war graves of northern France with a young soldier’s letters home.

While Sade Akisanya’s Toy Boy shows a young African man’s attempt to escape the stifling poverty of his own country by exploiting the vanity and naivety of Western tourists.

Of course, some stumbles and blunders and blunders are inevitable with sight-reading, but these are professional actors and they are quick to bring the writers’ words the words to life…

Well, I say professional: there was an exception. Most of the pieces being read involved four or five characters, but Toy Boy involves more parts than there are actors. Part way through, I have a script thrust in my hands by my neighbour and find myself reading the part of an African granny. I’ve not done any acting since I failed the audition for my university drama group, but the play is in media res and there’s no time for hesitation. I take a deep breath and draw on my most recent experience –reading bedtime stories to my now-almost-grownup children. If nothing else, that’s taught me to keep my eyes a line or so ahead of my mouth, so I know what’s coming and don’t trip up too badly.

(I don’t think the fact that granny turns up murdered in her bed has anything to do with my performance…)

When each reading is complete, comments come back both from the actors and the other writers in the audience. In fact there is a fair degree of overlap between the two groups – several of the writers are also actors and vice versa – so there is plenty of mutual understanding and the comments are both considered and supportive.

There is enough experience in the room for people to suggest potential outlets for the work. (For example, Broken Branches was suggested as a potential Theatre in Education project.) They can also identify issues that will make something tricky to stage – more appropriate perhaps for radio, or a very minimalist production that leaves almost everything to the audience’s imagination.

There are drawbacks, of course, to testing something with a readthrough. Speeches that would be broken up by ‘business’ can seem long and clunky when read without a break. But again this is where the experience of Cort and the others shines through, pointing out how

particular segments would work in practice.

Working with the actors also exposes the reason for all those fussy rules about the layout of scripts. You only have to hear the actors struggle when the rules are broken, to realise why you really do need to use double spacing or clearly differentiate character names and stage directions.

Even the minutiae of punctuation can affect the actors’ reading. I listen to a heated debate over lunch as to which is better to indicate a break in speech – ellipses or a stage direction such as ‘pause’. What they do agree is that geniuses like Pinter and Beckett might get away micromanaging the rhythm of their plays with nuanced stage directions like ‘pause’, ‘silence’ and ‘extended silence’ – lesser mortals should definitely leave that to the actors.

The last play to have a read-through this time is Walker’s The Joker’s Legacy. This has been through the process once before, when the group were dissatisfied with the ending. This time it goes much better. “I can’t tell you how beneficial I’ve found it,” she tells the group afterwards.

“Whether the feedback is good or bad, I always learn from it.”

The group is not just for dramatic writers. As Rensten says, “You learn by listening to other people’s words. A novel needs dialogue. A good journalist brings alive the character of the person being written about by quoting him/her directly. So yes please, let’s see novelists and

journalists at our workshops!”

So if you think this might be for you, and you live within travelling distance of London, I can highly recommend joining this group and perhaps submitting a short script. You’ll learn more about the craft in one afternoon here than from any amount of theory.

And don’t think male writers are excluded. Men can join SWWJ as associate members, allowing them to take full part in the group. Nonmembers, though they cannot submit scripts, are welcome to attend as observers.

If you are interested in joining the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, please contact Wendy Hughes via: http://www.swwj.co.uk/joining.htm If you want to learn more about the Drama Group in particular, please contact Benita Cullingworth via: http://www.swwj.co.uk/council.htm

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Fantasy: The Lies That Start at Birth Procrastinating with Perry Iles

Fantasies begin at birth, or as soon as comprehension starts. Fantasies are a compendium of setting and psychology, starting with religion – a psychological necessity that helps us imbue chaos with spurious reason and thereby allow us to feel better about ourselves and the things we do. Here’s a good guy with his army of angels, here’s the bad guy with his legions of devils.

The good guy makes the world, the bad guy makes the snakes. The good guy makes the first humans, who get tempted into romance by the bad guy and start shunting humans into the world, who all

whatever religion floats your boat, although it’d probably be best to suspend belief during the process before you find yourself nailing people to bits of wood or shooting fourteen-year-old girls in the face for learning to read. They aren’t messiahs, they’re all just very naughty boys.

Remember this.

So fantasy starts as soon as you can think and carries on from there – God, fairies, Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. It’s no great leap to Snow White, Disney, Twilight, Hogwarts, Middle Earth, the Discworld, online gaming communities, until one day you find yourself being lowered back into the ground with people banging on about the Lord again just like they did when you started all this shit. And fantasy has protected you; you’ve spent significant parts of your life not having to think about reality at all, or at least having something to retreat into when the real world gives you a pain in the arse or an overdose of guilt.

Setting and psychology. In fantasy this is

to connect with the reader’s imagination in a way that allows what Stephen King called the telepathic process to work successfully. It’s about story, balance, structure, background, setting and character. It’s about depth of involvement for the reader too. As such, how you write it comes a poor runner-up. So; is it possible to be a good writer and still manage to create a credible fantasy world? Step forward Terry Pratchett. Brilliant writer, the best British fantasist of the lot, although he skirts close to satire a lot of the time, which of course has an earthly root, or we wouldn’t know what the point of the satire was.

My own appreciation of fantasy is pretty thin. Generally speaking, if it’s got a dragon in it, I’m not that interested. If it involves technology and teenagers or any vague suggestion of heavy metal soundtracking or imagery, I’ll put my running shoes on.

Imagined worlds of barbarians and beautiful women with fine hairstyles and wonderbras are all very well, but like religion, they’re getting a

The American dream is built on fantasy. So you study it by deconstructing the fantastical stories that have become the clichés of its history. The lone lawman in Dodge City, the gunslinger who proves the essential decency of mankind by taking a stand for good - and in the process winning the hand of the feisty rancher’s daughter. shag their children and brothers and sisters to carry on the race.

Oooops, there’s a sudden plot hole Jimmy Savile could drive his Rolls Royce through on the way to the spinal injuries ward…

But look at the common ground of all religions – prophets, conflict, floods, sacrifice, miracles, lots and lots of killing in lots and lots of really interesting ways as the paradigm shift takes hold, regardless of which religion you follow. It’s a good versus evil thing. It’s the basis of all fiction. We’re prepared to die for unprovable lies, which proves beyond all doubt the strength of stories. Anyone who wants to write fantasy could do far worse than reading the Bible or the Koran or the Talmud or

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more important than the quality of the writing.

Rowling and Tolkein both have fabulous imaginations and the worlds they create are three-dimensional, living and breathing, and the stories that inhabit those imagined realities are rounded and perfect, they have beginnings, threads and endings that are all nicely tied up, reet, neet and complete. But can they write? These days, reading Tolkein is like wading through treacle, and his poetry is toecurling, it’s embarrassingly bad. Rowling fires testosterone into her verbs and compounds the felony with an adverb overdose. I’ve done my fair share of griping about JK Rowling’s style and adverbs, but she is a great teacher of one of the last and most subtle lessons about the writing process - that it’s about more than just the writing, especially in child/teen/fantasy fiction; it’s about getting the writer’s output

bit samey. Superhumans with special powers?

Marvel did that best fifty years or more back, and Judge Dredd is for people who drink snakebite. Guys cut from the mullet-and-sixpack mould went out of fashion about the same time as Arnie became governor of California.

Which of course brings us to the ultimate fantasy – America. Writing about America is a bit like writing about winning the lottery, or the music business. You can’t write about it because the truth is the fantasy; there’s no point. So how do you study the reality of the American dream – the fantasy world that led from Columbus through the War of Independence, the Civil War, the westward expansion, immigration of the poor and the huddled masses via Ellis Island to populate the new supernation that’s just voted a black president in for a second term? It’s interesting

how the Americans love a rags-to-riches story whilst the British are always trying to cut people down to size. The difference lies in our histories. America is a rags-to-riches story, while Britain lives in the dying embers of its former greatness. Britain is all grown up now while America blunders around like a kid in a sweet shop, throwing tantrums at people who knock its sandcastles down, yelling at foreigners until its voice breaks and it suddenly starts getting interested in chatting up an even younger country because its parents have got lots of money. Then of course, it’s “Hey Europe, eat my Florida!” and we can all breathe a sigh of relief because the school bully has directed its attentions elsewhere.

The American dream is built on fantasy. So you study it by deconstructing the fantastical stories that have become the clichés of its history. The lone lawman in Dodge City, the gunslinger who proves the essential decency of mankind by taking a stand for good and in the process winning the hand of the feisty rancher’s daughter. You deconstruct its heroes and take apart the structure of its histrionic heroism. You start by realising it’s mostly lies – from the obvious superhero to the reconstruction of less palatable aspects of history by Hollywood, which suddenly imbues wartime stories with respected black people in positions of command and manages to mix races in 1960s settings without once using the word “nigger”. It’s all bollocks, and fantasy is just another word for bollocks. A nicer, more credible, safer word. A word that opens doors for the intellect to go nuts against the greenscreen of potential. “Be anything you want,” fantasy says, “go on, knock yourself out…”

And of course, I am now old cynical, misanthropic and British. But over the last ten years I’ve taken my kid to the cinema time and again, and fantasy appears to be alive and well and producing, a successful film record of the imagination. From Shrek to Coraline, from Wall-E to the wondrous output of Tim Burton, fantasy rules the kiddie demographic. And it’s in better shape than it used to be back when Snow White turned up and cleaned house for seven ungrateful little bastards. Maybe that’s because it’s based on a generation or two of literary fantasists who have honed their craft and built the market up to the place it stands today. The effort of fantasy went principally into literature when I was a kid because computers and special

effects hadn’t been invented yet. I had Narnia, Middle Earth and the fantasy land of a war not that long over populating my comics. Alice in Wonderland and the Hundred Acre Wood was for girls, but Science Fiction was there, mostly in implausible Martian invasion stories or stuff about walking plants, but fantasy, as a literary genre as opposed to a comic-book style, didn’t really take off until the hippies embraced the fantasy culture and started banging on about, y’know, cooler alternatives, man.

But to understand fantasy, and appreciate its inclusivity in fiction as a whole, it’s useful to use the acting world as a metaphor. When an author writes a book, he’s taking on a role, just like some kind of method actor, or like Brian Wilson, who couldn’t write Beach Boys songs unless his bare feet were immersed in a tray of sand placed under his piano. The book is not about the author, it’s about the characters and the setting, which were created by the author, so the book is all about the author.

That’s the literary paradox to which the reader must dance, so it’s hard to be an author, and like I said earlier, it’s not just about how well the author writes. The author is God, pulling the strings and making the puppets dance. To do this, a good author must immerse himself thoroughly in the world of his book. The story is driven by character, circumstance and setting, all of which exist within the author’s head. Sure, they might exist in real life too, like Rankin’s Edinburgh or Colin Dexter’s Oxford, but that matters little compared to preserving the credibility of the story. Oxford would still

fantasy. Did the England of Kasuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day exist? Maybe – it’s a strange amalgamation of British cliché and ramrod-straight characterisation that’s scarcely believable, but the result is one of the best works of British fiction since the war. Why? Because Ishiguro allows his central character, Stevens the butler, to describe the proceedings through his eyes only, subsuming language, viewpoint and emotional response to that of his fictional creation. Ishiguro is rigorous, more so that almost any other writer, in not allowing any external influence from the meddlesome author himself. One can almost imagine Ishiguro like Brian Wilson, not comfortable with writing unless he was in the constricting uniform of a butler, his feet in that tray of metaphorical sand, method-acting for all he’s worth. Ishiguro did exactly the same thing with Never Let Me Go, methodwriting, using the language and expressions of a sheltered girl of limited perceptions to convey the story. I’ve gone on record as saying that this time it didn’t work – the language was pedestrian – purposely so, and the settings limited – again purposely so, but it was, nevertheless, a fantasy world in both books.

So, whatever you write, remember you’re an actor too, and your novel is a tissue of lies, a house of cards that could fall if the wind turns. It’s up to you, the author, to preserve the fantasy, because you are at the centre of a world that you’ve invented, which is a fantasy to anyone who isn’t you. And when the reader enters your world, this world will be whole

... fantasy rules the kiddie demographic. And it’s in better shape than it used to be back when Snow White turned up and cleaned house for seven ungrateful little bastards. be Oxford if Inspector Morse came back from the dead as a zombie in a dress and traded in his Jag for a Toyota Prius, but we wouldn’t care much.

So all fiction is fantasy in its own way. It’s a bunch of credible lies told for entertainment, erudition and profit. Joseph Heller says the island of Pianosa, on which Catch 22 is set, never existed. It’s a product of his mind, a

and breathing because you’ve invented it for him, and as it’s probably unfamiliar, it’ll be a fantasy too – Seabastian Faulks’s First World War battlefields, Dickens’s Victorian London, Orwell’s 1984, Joyce’s Dublin, it’s all made up, so none of it’s real except the settings – and, of course, the author and the reader.

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Jack was mesmerised. He stared at her with his eyes wide and mouth open, for a full thirty seconds and then grabbed a handful of my skirt and asked me in an awestruck whisper if she was Mrs. Father Christmas. I could tell he didn’t believe me when I said that it was Mummy’s friend ‘Aunty’ Arabella and if he was polite he could have two bedtime stories.

An extract from The Wave by Susan Oke - a print issue exclusive

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

Emma Darwin Emma taught the Fiction Masterclass at WriteConZüri and found time to talk to JJ Marsh about influences, bodiceripping, studying Drama and why she took so long to read Wolf Hall.

There’s a rather beautiful symmetry about having you here in Zürich to teach a Fiction Masterclass. Your own first novel, The Mathematics of Love, came from your own writing degree with stimuli triggered by a writing course.

How far can training and courses assist creators of fiction?

I think courses can help with the two ends of the process: they can unpick craft and technique, and they can show ways of finding and imagining material to write. Offered those, it’s the writer her or himself who has to work out how to bring the two together. A good course can also be a safe space in which to try new things and difficult things and maybe fail, to get support and validation, and to learn to stand back from your own writing and read it like a reader.

About Emma Emma Darwin is an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing with the Open University, and a senior editor and tutor of both one-day and online courses for Writers’ Workshop.

Her debut novel The Mathematics of Love was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Award and other prizes, and she is the first writer to achieve a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths; her thesis consisted of her novel A Secret Alchemy, and a dissertation which explored the practice of writing historical fiction.

As well as writing novels, Emma writes short fiction, and has had her stories published and broadcast. She has appeared at literary festivals from Hay on Wye to New Zealand, and she teaches, lectures and blogs. She is an associate lecturer at the Open University, teaching creative writing. Emma now lives with her children in South East London, still surrounded by history: there was a Viking fort on the hill behind their house, and down the road is Eltham Palace, where many important scenes in A Secret Alchemy are set. No further away is William Morris’s Red House, which inspired the Chantry and the Pryor family in the novel, and Down House, home of Charles Darwin and his cousin and wife Emma Wedgwood: Emma’s great-greatgrandparents.

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My previous view of historical fiction was all bodice-ripping and battles. Yet authors such as Sarah Waters, Karen Maitland and yourself have convinced me of the dynamism within the genre. Why does writing historical fiction appeal to you?

Till I was sixteen I was going to be a historian, and I still see everything round me in terms of its history: the way time is built into every street and field, and how we are actually the products of history that’s so much wider and longer than our own immediate memory. So it’s partly that I can’t see stories in any other terms. But it’s also because moving into the past enables me to tell stories about the central drives and experiences of being human without getting snared in the particularities of the contemporary world. The skin of Now is less interesting to me than the bones and organs beneath it. And, yes, the frocks are more fun and so is the transport, while plotting is much easier when so many people thought they had a say over who you could go to bed with – and when no one had a mobile phone.

Do you consciously use the advancement of the reader as an ironic layer when describing the past?

Of course when a character acts on beliefs or information that we know are hopelessly wrong, I’m aware that the modern reader is thinking “ouch”; I might even want them to. But I go very carefully, because there’s always a risk that the book becomes very “knowing” and selfconscious, if you try to play with that in a way that readers will be conscious of. Better to stay with the characters, understand their world, let them be what and who they are,

and let the reader draw whatever conclusions they can’t help drawing.

Whom would you cite as your own influences?

So hard to say, in the sense that one can adore a writer without specially being influenced by them – maybe others would see connections I can’t. For what shows in my writing, Peter Ackroyd and Georgette Heyer: a rather bizarre combination which probably explains a lot. Also Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain, John LeCarré, Jane Gardam, Dorothy L. Sayers.

Your award-winning short stories are greatly admired. How does the discipline differ?

Fiction is built of character-in-action: so far, so much the same. Short fiction usually fleshes out one main change for your main character-in-action and perhaps one or two others, so that by the end, something important in their internal and/or external life is different. The change may be huge, or tiny, and even so the perfect voice or atmosphere can make even the shortest story resonate.

But in long fiction voice and atmosphere aren’t enough, and nor is a single character or three. Each character-inaction has their own story, even though only bits of the minor stories are visible, where they weave into the main story. And the main change needs to be big – there must be a lot at stake – if it’s to drive your narrative all the way to the end. But it takes a chain of smaller changes keep us turning the pages. So each unit of change – each scene or set of scenes – mustn’t be too resolved, or leave too stable a situation. It needs to leave threads trailing to lead someone on, or trip them up later.

David Foster Wallace made use of the phrase, ‘Every love story is a ghost story’.

Do you see a resonance with your own work?

In writing a novel you’re choosing to write one section of some lives which started before and go on after that section, and that the narrator, whether they’re a character or not, is standing at some time after these events happened. The narrowly-defined romantic love kind of love-story may be what fills the section you’re writing, but there’s all the rest of those lives too... My second novel, A Secret Alchemy, is about how marriage works after, before, during and without romantic love, because love is a potent ghost in much of any long relationship.

Like you, I spent many years working in theatre. How did the experience of storytelling on stage inform your writing?

Doing Drama for my degree had all sorts of benefits: learning to speak Shakespeare, Pinter and all sorts of other texts is peerless training for the ear. Working with Stanislavskian “intentions”, when you distil a character’s

reason for acting and speaking as they do into a verb, is brilliant training for working with characters-in-action on the page. And it does mean I know what it’s like to live in corsets and long skirts.

Could you distil your advice from the Masterclass into a few bullet points? What do you want us to remember?

I would struggle to do that, but what I hope the writers will take away with them would include the uses of psychic distance, and the way that fiction is built of interpenetrating voices.

What are you working on now?

I’m trying to get a new novel to behave itself, which it isn’t at the moment. I’m also working on a book based on my blog, This Itch of Writing, teaching in various places, and trying to find time for the occasional short story.

Which book has impressed you most this year?

Wolf Hall, which I’ve finally started reading: it’s astonishing.

I’d say that it’s amazingly technically accomplished, which it is, but of course you don’t notice that when you’re reading a book as good as that. I’d been terrified it would make me want to give up in despair, and in one sense it has. But it’s also done what great writing does: strips a skin off so that everything else seems extra-vivid, and makes me long to get writing myself.

Joe Abercrombie Which book most influenced you when growing up?

Lord of the Rings. Hey, I never claimed to be original.

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

About Joe Joe was born in Lancaster and educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology.

He moved into TV production before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. During a break between jobs he began writing The Blade Itself in 2002, completing it in 2004. It was published by Gollancz in 2006 and was followed by two other books in The First Law Trilogy, Before They Are Hanged and Last Argument of Kings. In early 2008, Joe was one of the contributors to the BBC Worlds of Fantasy series, alongside other contributors such as Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett and China Miéville. In 2009, he released the novel Best Served Cold. It is set in the same world as The First Law Trilogy but is a stand-alone novel. He followed with The Heroes (2011), again set in the world of the First Law Trilogy, which made no. 3 on the Sunday Times Hardcover Bestseller List. A third standalone, Red Country, was published in October 2012.

Joe now lives in Bath with his wife, Lou, his daughters Grace and Eve, and his son Teddy. He still occasionally edits concerts and music festivals for TV, but spends most of his time writing edgy yet humorous fantasy novels…

It’s a new room we built at the end of the house. It contains shelves full of trashy books I’ve read and impressive ones I haven’t, a motorised desk that goes up and down so I can sit or stand at it for the prevention of back trouble, and a Fabricius and Kastholm Grasshopper chair, in which I sit and contemplate the secrets of the universe. And play video games.

Who or what had the biggest impact on your writing life?

My mother. She’s the one who got me reading in the first place, and cautioned me to always be truthful in dialogue, description, and metaphor. Best writing advice I’ve had, although, “every morning . . . get dressed,” comes in a close second.

Do you consider yourself a literary rebel?

That sounds much too much like hard work and danger, two things I strive manfully to avoid.

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

Kind of. Not that I kind of have a phrase I overuse, but that kind of is the phrase I overuse. Kind of.

I know you have strong views on made-up swear words in fantasy, and prefer the good old Anglo Saxon traditional fourletter words. Do you find some countries more sensitive to that than others?

By the holy hammer of Swarfega I do not! People often think the US to be more puritan and less humorous in taste than the UK, but I haven’t particularly noticed that as an overall trend. People occasionally object to the use of ‘modern’ swearing in my books, but most swearwords are ancient, with long and noble traditions in the English language. Returning to that point about truth, my feeling has always been that in an adult work of fiction, if you mean fuck, you should say fuck.

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

Undoubtedly, but since being exposed to a vast range of criticism myself, I have found it best to mostly keep my opinions to myself...

How far does you penchant for video games influence your writing?

It certainly means I have less time to do it than I might otherwise. But I think everything you read, watch, play, or experience and enjoy or don’t enjoy becomes an influence, and video games certainly feature among those lists for me.

Do you have a guilty reading pleasure?

Any and all mentions of myself or my work anywhere on the entire internet.

Trilogies, standalone novels, short stories ... where are you most at home?

Not with short stories, certainly. I’ve written a few and will certainly write more but novel length at the least feels most natural for me.

Which book has impressed you most this year?

Can I say my own? No? Damn. In that case of recent releases I will have to grudgingly cite Garth Nix’s Confusion of Princes, and Adam Nevill’s The Ritual.

What are you working on at the moment?

For the last few weeks it’s mostly been promotion for my new book, Red Country, with tours of Scandinavia, the UK, and Australia. But I’ve been planning a little side project in the down-time. I can say no more.

You can take an unlimited supply of only one whisky to a desert island - which would it be?

Oh that’s a really testing question. Limiting yourself to one is a tough thing to do. But on a desert island you’d probably want something reasonably light, clean and eminently drinkable, so I’ll opt for Ballantine’s 17, which I have been hugely enjoying of late. A blend, but a darned good one...

Random Stuff | 31

Flash 500 - The Results We are pleased to publish here the winning entries of the second quarter of the Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition 2012, Smartie by Jane Wildeboer, and the Flash 500 competition second quarter 2012, Spontaneous Human Combustion

by Dan Purdue. The competitions were judged by Lorraine Mace and Jo Reed 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.

Smartie by Jane Wildeboer There once was a smartie who went to a party All dressed to impress - what a smart little smartie!

But the big hard-boiled sweets who had gate-crashed the party Thought his crisp candy coat would be great for karate, So they grabbed him, and dragged him behind the settee, Then they chopped him and chopped him as hard as could be!

The poor little smartie, his coat was all shattered He stood in the shards of the sugar, all battered.

But the beating he’d had had revealed his brown tummy, All chocolately smooth and delectably yummy, And a rather attractive and flavoursome jelly Just couldn’t help notice his sweet little belly.

All glistening with sugar, she really looked sweet, From her sparkly head to her succulent feet.

She wandered on over to say her ‘how do’s’, And the smartie went melty right down to his shoes!

He whispered sweet nothings to his fruity friend, So happy he hadn’t met a sticky end At the hands of the boiled sweets so nasty and rough Seems they’d done him a favour by acting so tough!

Meanwhile, on the dancefloor, the sherberty dips And the mallows were dancing, and shaking their hips, And the jelly and smartie, they whirled round the floor, Til the party was over, and their feet were sore.

Then they said their goodbyes, and their thanks, to the chocs For inviting them round to their lovely new box, And, together, they wandered off into the night, Where they melted and mingled in Turkish Delight.

32 | Competitions

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Dan Purdue We laughed at Granddad when he started on about bursting into flames, but if you stand over there – no, left a bit – and look where I’m pointing, you can still see his outline. See? Yeah, that’s his arm, there. You can even make out the bobble hat he was wearing when he went up. The grass grew back a couple of shades darker and the groundskeeper’s been doing his nut ever since. He wants to dig it up and lay new turf, but Mum’s not having it.

“My dad lived and breathed this bowls club,” she says, real proud like.

“It was part of him. It’s only right he should be part of it, too.”

After Nan died, I think we all just figured he’d gone a bit doolally. All that talk of precautions. Vigilance this, fire safety that. We didn’t see any harm in it, you know? Let him get on with, we thought. We all got used to his ‘No aerosols in the house’ rule and him pulling on those thick rubber gloves when he filled the car at the petrol station.

Whenever I think about him, I remember those pyjamas he handstitched out of a couple of fire blankets, and the big red extinguisher that always stood beside his favourite chair. He was especially proud of the modifications to his potting shed.

“That Ivor might have his fancy ride-on lawnmower,” he’d say, casting a glance over his neighbour’s fence. “But does his shed have a sprinkler system? I think not.”

At least he’s keeping busy, we’d say, wearing but-what-can-youdo expressions on our faces. To be honest, I wish I’d taken him more seriously. I wish I’d really talked to him about it.

For one thing, I feel bad I wasn’t there, you know? When it happened.

They say it was over pretty quick; that Granddad didn’t suffer. That his last words were, “I bloody told you!” That’s him all over, see? Always did like being proved right.

But the thing that worries me is, well, if he was right about that, what else might he be right about? Like, when I was a kid, he was forever telling me to be careful.

“Don’t play with matches,” he used to say, in that big, stern voice of his. Pointing his finger so I knew he meant it. “You keep away from fireworks.” And most of all, “Promise me you’ll never, ever touch cigarettes.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

What? No, you stay where you are. I might go up any moment.

Staying Alive: The Power of Stories with Sarah Bower

In past editions of this magazine, I have written about many of the different components which go to make up a story. So, having deconstructed, this month I am going to try to reconstruct, to look at what a story is.

How can it be defined and what are its purposes? Why do we tell stories, and how do they differ from other forms of discourse?

If I state that storytelling goes back as far in human history as the development of speech, I doubt any reader will disagree with me.

Why not? After all, until the emergence of written culture, we have no evidence for the existence of stories. Yet the idea of story, of the ordering of events, either real or imagined, into a narrative is so deeply embedded in our psyche that we do not question the notion that stories have existed as long as human beings have had the means to devise and tell them.

Even in this brief opening paragraph I have begun to make assumptions about what a story is, so, before going any further, let me back track a little and consider how we might define story. As the ancient tale of the great storyteller, Scheherazade, shows us, a story is a weapon of survival. This is not an histrionic assertion. Stories really did develop to help humans survive in a hostile world. It begins with the way in which our brains have developed to perceive patterns. When our hunter gatherer ancestors peered into the undergrowth, they had to be able to pick out, quickly, instinctively, the pattern of eyes, nose and mouth which would indicate the presence of predator or prey. They had to be able to tell the difference between edible foods and poisons by looking at the shapes of leaves or the markings on fungi. A brain which has developed to perceive patterns in one area will naturally impose them in others, and thus it will learn to shape the apparently random occurrences of a life into a coherent narrative, with a chronology and a chain of consequences.

Storytelling, just like the ability to perceive patterns in the undergrowth, has a serious purpose. It is not merely a means of entertainment during the long dark nights around the campfire in that unimaginable age before Strictly Come Dancing or I’m a Celebrity. On one level, as E. M. Forster wryly observes in Aspects of the Novel, ‘…as soon as the audience guessed what happened next they either fell asleep or killed [the storyteller].’1 All storytellers are like Scheherazade; they tell stories because their lives depend upon it, whether that be simply because it is the way they make their living or because it what keeps them sane by enabling them to make sense of the world they live in. They also tell stories because other people’s lives depend upon it. In a modern context, you might apply this dictum to the campaigning journalist, the underground activist smuggling a blog on to the internet or Tweeting to bring the world’s attention to his plight, even the Jihadist suicide bomber making her farewell video.

But again, it is far more basic and fundamental than that. Look at the fairytales we traditionally tell to children. Despite the Disneyfication of many of our best known tales (and, to be fair to Disney, Charles Perrault began the process in the eighteenth century and even the Grimms cleaned up their second collection to remove some of the darker stories), the mysterious, the unexpected and the downright terrifying make up a vital component of these stories. Why do we want to frighten our

children? What compels us, in the interests of getting them to sleep, to fill their heads with the stuff of nightmares just before bed?

Fear can be experienced as an irrational, debilitating emotional response to a threat, or it can be contained and managed, and transformed into a valuable learning process. If you find a sabre tooth tiger is competing with you for the same prey, you might either run or become paralysed with fear. If you run, the tiger will probably chase you, run you down, and eat you instead of the much more fleet-of-foot deer you were both originally after. If you stay still, the tiger may run straight past you in pursuit of the running deer. From this you learn that keeping still can be a viable strategy when confronted by a dangerous animal; it is counter-intuitive, but you learn, through the mechanism of fear, that it works. Exposing every nascent hunter to a rampaging big cat in order to teach him this lesson would clearly be inefficient. Not only would his seniors have to expose their arguably more valuable selves to needless risk in order to set up the test, but, if he himself exhibited the ‘wrong’ response, he would be killed before he could begin to pay back the investment made by the community in his upbringing. The solution is for his elder, who has been through the experience and lived to tell the tale, to do just that, to tell the tale.

However, in order for the tale telling to have the desired didactic effect, the teller must find ways of recreating the fear he felt in the wild in the safe environment of the fireside. The way to do this is to organise your story so that you create suspense in the hearts and minds of your listeners. You take the bare facts, twist them into new shapes and embellish them, give some details while withholding others. Perhaps you don’t even finish the story on the night you begin it, but send your listeners out into the dark hungry for more, and that way, what they have heard stays in their memories, is processed while they are sleeping, eating, working, and becomes part of their apparatus for living. The child who is exposed to ‘safe’ terrors in stories grows up with a better understanding of the real terrors of the world and how to cope with them. As Pinker (1997) states, ‘”Intelligence” is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions and actions based on rational rules. The quality “intelligence” is awarded to those who follow story structure.’2 The story, then, is a much more sophisticated mode of discourse than the kind of anecdotal recollection in which we indulge in our unstructured conversations, and which we often refer to as ‘telling a story’. The pub bore is a bore because he does not know how to tell a story, how to marshal and organise his facts in order to create and sustain suspense, either by frightening us or making us laugh(for waiting for the punchline is also a kind of suspense). The ability to tell a good story well is – quite literally – a vital human skill. It is one of the ways in which we have used our big brains to overcome our relative physical weakness in order to become the dominant species on the planet and it will, if we manage to get the stories about population growth, climate change, flu and malaria resistant mosquitoes (among others) right, be what keeps us alive.

(Endnotes) i Forster, E. M., Aspects of the Novel, 1927 [2000] ii Pinker S., How the Mind Works, 1999

Pencilbox | 33

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Comp Corner Corralled by Danny Gillan

Last issue we asked you to illustrate the difference between believable and non-believable characters. Any of us who attempt to write fiction strive to have our characters take up home in our readers’ minds. Antagonist or protagonist, hero or villain, loveable or pain in the arse – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the reader accepts the actions and motivations of the characters and loves or hates them in exactly the way the writer intends. It’s the art of manipulation, basically.

So, what’s the secret? Here’s what our winners think: When a believable character’s dreams get slashed, trodden on and pulverised, you want to make them tea and give them a hug; when the character is unbelievable, you want to put the book down and make the tea for yourself.

Melody Fears The believable character makes you think ‘I’d do that.’ It might not be right or legal but you can identify with it. The unbelievable character is the one you could never be, however many lifetimes you were to live.

Ann Abineri Beware the character who fails to cry, or look at you in sympathy; whose hand never leads you along the story trail. Embrace the character who grins mischievously, making you laugh and who cares for you during the midnight watch.

Kahryn Amaya Congratulations to our winners and massive thanks to all who entered. Prizes will be on their way forthwith.

Something a wee bit different for this issue’s comp. There is a constant and often fraught debate that rages regarding the importance of proof reading and copy editing in the world of publishing (indie and traditional). So, to give you a bit of practice, and taking into account that we were down one of our usual proof reading volunteers for this issue, I want you to send in as many typos, errors and faux pas as you can find within these hallowed pages. The entrant who spots the most errors wins. Please make sure you include page and column numbers so we can check your work like the didactic pedants we are.

All entries in the body of an email to danny@wordswithjam.co.uk by 5th January.

WIN a writer’s bo bundle (wor ok th £50+) co urtesy of B loomsbury

The winner will receive a Writer’s Book Bundle worth over £50 courtesy of Bloomsbury.

Please note that the review extracts in the Guess the Book feature don’t count, and neither do adverts.

Please also note that if you spot more than, say, four errors in any one column by a regular, they will be ritually sacrificed to the great and terrible grammar gods. In public.

Have at it.

Competitions | 35

The Agent’s View Andrew answers YOUR questions ...

Can you advise on what the ideal synopsis should be when pitching to an agent? What makes a submission stand out for you?

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.

The ideal format can be found at How to Submit‘ on my website www.andrewlownie.co.uk. This addresses key points that both agents and editors need especially when lots of people in an editorial meeting will need a quick sense of a book, its content, market and how it can be reached and its authority. The first page is the pitch which, if only one page is read, will fully explain the concept of the book. The second page establishes the writer’s credentials and profile. The third page looks at how the book fills a gap in the market and relates to similar successful books and demonstrates the writer’s knowledge of the market. The fourth page identifies the new primary material to justify a fresh look at the subject.

The fifth page highlights all the sales and marketing angles showing the writer is thinking about that aspect. Finally chapter summaries and sample chapter give an indication of the structure of the book and the quality of writing. It’s much easier to assess and rework , if required, and shows whether it’s a book or just amagazine article or tv programme.

Ebooks seem to be flourishing whereas bookshops in the UK and US are closing. Is print on the way out?

Print isn’t on its way out but bookshops are and ebooks may well displace the cheap paperback edition. People will still want to read printed books, keep them and cherish them so we are seeing some beautifully produced hardback editions.

Worth remembering ebooks are simply licences controlled by the suppliers and one’s carefully built up collection of books can be extinguished at a stroke.

The European landscape looks rather different. For example, German bookshops are thriving. Why is it different to the UK? Many European countries, such as Germany, Austria, France, Greece, Italy, Norway , still have fixed book prices thereby protecting bookshops. It was the abolition of the New Book Agreement in 1997 which destroyed UK independent bookshops and shifted power to large bookshop chains and supermarkets who could use their muscle to discount heavily.

Amazon, supermarkets and the growth of ebooks have subsequently undermined the bookshop chains in the UK. In time, the Europeans will catch up with the US & UK . The number of French people who have read an e-book has more than doubled in the past six months, acccording to a recent report , albeit from a low base of 6%.

Are agents and publishers interested in self-published authors?

Very much so if they have demonstrated their self-published books have sold or have something fresh to say and both I and my colleague, David Haviland, who is building a fiction list are scouting Amazon bestseller lists and sites such as Authonomy.

36 | Pencilbox

Is it wise to mention a creative writing degree in a query letter?

It doesn’t make any difference to me as it is all on the strength of the writing. Many of my best authors left school with no qualifications at all.

Are audiobooks a growing market?

Yes. The portability of MP3 players has made more people interested in listening to books. According to the recent sales figures from the Publishers Association, downloads of audio books grew by 72 per cent between 2008 and 2009 whilst sales of talking books on CD, cassette and DVD also grew to an annual £22.4m, according to the sales monitoring company Nielsen BookScan. Audible, who have just entered an arrangement with one major literary agency to handle some major backlist authors, say they have over 60,000 titles which can be downloaded to ipods or other mobile devices.

One of the fastest growing audiobook markets is India.

When should writers register their work to be sure their ideas are copyrighted?

As long as there is an email submission trail, writers don’t need to register copyright and it should then be enshrined in the publishing contract they sign.

What are some of the common mistakes writers make?

Where do I begin. Submitting work which the agency doesn’t handle, before it is ready and with poor presentation, not in the format requested, in obvious blanket submissions, without including an SAE if by post or an email address, addressing to the wrong person , making boastful claims...

What Am I Looking For? David Haviland is the fiction agent for the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency.

One of the questions writers often ask is, ‘What kind of books are agents/ publishers looking for?’ It’s an easy question to answer, in some respects, but the obvious answers are not always very illuminating. The simplest approach is to speak in broad terms, of categories and genres, so I might respond, ‘I only handle fiction, and I’m particularly interested in crime, thrillers, espionage and adventure stories.’

However I’m not sure this answer is really very helpful for writers, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s not really true in any meaningful way. I do particularly enjoy crime fiction, but the truth is that I love books of all genres when they manage to tell a powerful, resonant story that transcends the genre.

In my view, one of the greatest pleasures for a reader is finding a book in a genre that you thought you disliked, but finding yourself being pleasantly surprised. Strictly speaking, the Harry Potter books belong in the fantasy genre, but their appeal is clearly much broader than just fantasy fans.

On the other hand, as much as I love the best crime fiction, most run-ofthe-mill crime stories leave me cold. So a rather more accurate, more nuanced, and more annoying answer would be: ‘I love great storytelling, with a slight but essentially meaningless preference for crime.’

So far, so unhelpful. What then do I mean by platitudes like ‘great storytelling’, ‘powerful, resonant story’, etc? The following are some of the issues that strike me as being important for commercial fiction – principles of storytelling that can bring a book to life when handled well, or fatally undermine it when handled badly. Of course, the usual caveats apply. Writing is a subjective and nebulous business, best characterised by William Goldman’s famous aphorism that, ‘Nobody knows anything’. Even so, I usually have a good sense of whether or not I’m enjoying what I’m reading, and these are sometimes the reasons why.

Protagonist Firstly, a story needs a protagonist. Fundamentally, a story is a thing in which a person or persons try to achieve something, and in the resolution they succeed or fail in a decisive way. This may sound obvious (as may most of what follows, I’m afraid), but you might be surprised at how many submissions I read with no clear central protagonist. In some cases, the main character doesn’t appear until the tenth chapter. In others, the baton gets passed from one new character to the next in an endless relay. Sometimes, the main character disappears halfway through the story. The result is usually confusing and unsatisfying.

Of course, there are also stories with multiple protagonists, and these can work well, but successful examples tend to have certain things in common.

Usually, they have one clear central protagonist, who is our main focus within the ensemble. Each protagonist has a clear goal, and is thus at the centre of their own particular narrative. Crucially, if a story has multiple protagonists, this will have been established early on, and maintained consistently, to manage the readers’ expectations.

Perspective A related point is the question of perspective, or point of view. There are a number of ways of narrating a story, the most common being first-person and third-person. In both cases, it needs to be established early on whose perspective we are sharing, and how many perspectives there will be. When a story is told in the first person, there is perhaps less danger of things going

wrong, as we’ll usually stick to one clear point of view.

However, third-person stories often get muddled over perspective. I often read submissions which abruptly switch perspective in ways which are confusing or unhelpful. Readers usually expect to share the perspective of the main character. Depending on the narrative structure, we might also share the perspective of one or more antagonists. Lots of contemporary thriller writers use this device to build tension and suspense: setting up the antagonist’s trap in one chapter, then watching the hero approach it in the next; or cross-cutting more frequently towards the resolution, to build pace and excitement. Some books will use a more omniscient form of third-person narration, in which the narrative voice has access to the points of view of a broader group of characters, or even all characters.

None of these uses of perspective is right or wrong per se, and any of them might work well, if properly handled. However, the choice of narrative perspective must be a clear, deliberate authorial choice, established early on and maintained consistently, otherwise the reader will be confused and unsettled, and lose confidence in the writer. If we’ve spent 75 percent of your detective novel sharing only his point of view, then it’s probably not a good idea to suddenly introduce a new character’s perspective.

This problem often occurs when a writer simply wants to show us some plot point – so we might suddenly shift perspective to a minor antagonist for one scene, just so that the reader is forewarned that the hero is being tailed – but readers will instinctively feel that this is a contrivance, undermining the book’s structure, purely to provide exposition. Besides which, it’s usually more dramatic if the story’s twists and turns occur without us being forewarned.

Goal This is another obvious point, but it’s amazing how often it crops up. A story is a thing in which a character tries to achieve something, so they need a narrative goal. There are various characteristics that this goal might have, but the first and most crucial is that it is present. If I don’t have some sense by the third chapter of what the main character wants, I’m not likely to read much further.

So what does an ideal narrative goal look like? It should be introduced as early as possible. It should be of the greatest significance to the protagonist – if this is not the most important story of his life, why are we reading about it? It should comprise both a mechanical aspect and an emotional aspect – so, for example, the hero has to not only recover the secret papers, but by doing so prove himself to his father. It will generally comprise a series of intermediate goals, in a crescendo of jeopardy and importance, so that the protagonist has to overcome a series of increasingly difficult and dangerous challenges in order to reach the climactic resolution.

Antagonist Again, this is an issue which occurs surprisingly often. A story is a thing is which a person tries to achieve something, but for this story to take as long as a book does to play out, there usually needs to be someone in the way, particularly in genre fiction. A story in which our protagonist wants to do or get something, and no one actually wants to stop them, should not last very long,.

If it does, we are likely to be dissatisfied, because the obstacles will invariably be contrived and coincidental. Therefore, we need at least one antagonist, a character whose own goal is fundamentally in conflict with that of the protagonist.

What qualities should this antagonist have? In one sense, the antagonist is a narrative device to test the protagonist, to force him to reach the limits of his abilities to achieve his goal. An effective antagonist is usually therefore formidable, and only slightly less capable than the protagonist. The antagonist also needs to be morally flawed in some way, a way that matters to the protagonist, so that it’s clear why we are on the protagonist’s side, and why it is important for him to not only win the prize, but also to defeat the antagonist.

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Theme Finally, a story needs to be about something, some moral, ethical or emotional tension in the real world, to which we can relate. This is one of the most difficult aspects to get right, and the one that can transform a story which is merely effective into something much more tense and engaging. A powerful theme is a question, rather than a message, and it should be a question with no obvious correct answer. Is the natural state of a group of shipwrecked schoolboys civilisation or savagery? Should two gay cowboys take the risk of pursuing love in a repressive and dangerous society? Can a pure-hearted orphan retain his character in the criminal underworld? A story that effectively dramatises this kind of question is likely to grab readers at a much deeper level than one driven purely by plot.

Getting all of this right is enormously difficult, but for the professional, commercial writer, it’s important to be aware of these issues, and skilled in handling them. An effective editor or literary agent can also help, in providing a fresh perspective, identifying issues, and suggesting solutions.

The Zeno Agency and the future of agents Zeno Agency Limited is a partnership between veteran literary agent John Parker and freelance literary consultant and genre critic, John Berlyne. Neither can recall exactly when they first met, but undoubtedly it was at some social occasion – a book launch or more likely a science fiction convention. Over a few years, their association grew, with Berlyne becoming a regular reader and consultant for Parker who was at that time – and had been for many years – a senior agent with MBA. Never one to rest on his laurels, in July 2008 John Parker took the huge step towards agent independence, splitting off from MBA and joining forces with Berlyne whose genre knowledge and internet savvy quickly proved indispensable. Along with the huge benefits this move offered to existing clients, the start up company was perfectly placed to help develop the careers of new authors and Zeno’s aim of bringing writers of excellence and originality to the attention of both the industry and the public is already paying dividends. http://zenoagency.com/

Traditional publishing is undergoing a series of rapid and dramatic changes. Which elements make you optimistic and which pessimistic?

Yes - there are certainly a lot of changes going on and yes, this is not comfortable for an industry not famed for its ability to move quickly. Publishing is a behemoth that moves with glacial slowness, so the technological wizardry we’ve experienced over the last decade has rather put a bat up its nightdress!

That said, I don’t think we’re seeing the death throes of publishing quite yet not by a long way. There are innovations coming through that are as exciting (and as important) as the arrival of Caxton’s printing press. I’m sure there were a whole bunch of monks who found their business model of their illuminated, hand-scribed manuscript trade under threat, but they soldiered on and got through it, just as we will.

On the whole, I’m hugely, hugely optimistic about the future. With ereaders we can get more books to more people than ever, more people are literate and educated than ever before, markets are opening up in India and China... there’s a lot of great opportunities out there. Closer to home, my own specialist area - Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror - has opened like a flower in the last few years. There are now nearly twice as many places as there were

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four years ago where we can peddle this stuff - good places too! There’s a lot to be excited about.

How will the role of agents change, do you think?

I see quite a bit of commentary about how writers don’t need agents nowadays, what with the self-publishing routes available. But mostly this commentary comes from the mouths of writers who haven’t been able to secure representation via the traditional means. Countering this is a whole discussion that perhaps now writers need agents more than they ever did before... and not surprisingly that’s my thinking too! The terrain of publishing has never been an easy one to navigate - in this new, ever-changing landscape, writers need us as guides, mentors and facilitators more than they ever did.

But yes, the role is changing along with much else. One of my main preoccupations in this regard is what our relationships will be with those agencies with work with in the US in, say, four or five years. This stems from the hot topic of DRM application. With the divide between those for it and those against it now taking shape in terms of publisher policy, the opportunities to sell rights between the two positions are becoming fraught with challenges. My feeling is that more World English deals will be pressed for by publishers and that the trans-Atlantic cross-pollination that has been the established protocol for many years will evolve into something else. Agents will have to adapt to this new landscape.

Where does Zeno find its clients? Do you ever make ‘slush-pile’ discoveries?

Yes, we make slush-pile discoveries.... or, rather, we might if we had such a thing. Zeno’s submission status is clearly noted on our agency web site. If we’re open to submissions, it’ll say so on the site, probably accompanied by specific information on what we might be after at the time. Currently we’re closed. This is a matter of the current work load we have on vs the number of people in the agency. Given that there are only two of us here, and that we have a full and active client list, we’re closed much of the time at present. New material that we do take to market tend to be projects from our established clients or work that we’re sub-agenting for our associate agents abroad. This last feeds us much of inventory and in fact has become far more central to the way we operate than we initially foresaw.

That said, things do slip through. Even though we are closed to submissions, the particular area in which we specialise - Science Fiction and Fantasy - has a number of annual events and conventions where writers established and those just starting out - tend to gather. I make efforts to go to these things, not just because I enjoy them socially, but also to be available and visible. An informal meeting in the bar can often tell me more than a formal submission letter ever could about whether an author might be suitable for my list and such conversations can lay down roots that will lead to something further down the line. A recent example is of a well known author whom I met for the first time at some convention - I got on really well with them and about a year later they contacted me with a personal recommendation of an author they’d been mentoring. At their suggestion I took a look, love the work, enlisted the client and sold it on a pre-empt at the London Book Fair for a nice bit of money. And all from a conversation in a bar! I even recently had an editor contact me to ask me to look at an SF book that her colleague had written.

Recommendations from such trusted sources do manage to get under the shutters.

When considering an author, what other factors besides their writing do you take into account? Eg, online profile, personal history, platform etc.

This is a tricky one - first and foremost, we’re looking for excellent writing, yes.

But it’s true that there are other factors to consider. One of the first things I

tend to do if I’ve enjoyed a submission is Google the author. If they have a footprint on the internet, it can add weight to their potential as a client. An active twitter feed with a host of devoted followers can certainly be an asset, though equally an active twitter feed with a host of devoted followers upon which a potential client heaps venom upon the publishing industry can tip things the other way.

The internet is unforgiving and has a long memory.

Generally I’m looking for anything, over and above the writing, that can provide a selling point, a ‘hook’ if you will. It’s a sad fact that being a commercial and competitive business, the quality of the writing is only one factor in potential success of a project. If the author was, I don’t know, the first woman on Mars or the person who discovered a cure for cancer, well, that can add weight when an editor takes it into their acquisitions meeting. It’s all grist for the mill.

Is there such a thing as a typical day for you?

What might it look like?

I don’t know that there is a typical day for me - but that’s not to say that there isn’t such a thing for other agents. I’m drawn to the freelance life-style. It’s risky, but the unpredictability, the ‘life can turn on a sixpence’ nature of it is what attracts me. My day can be spent editing, or researching the right editors to pitch to, or writing the pitch for a submission, or submitting, or in meetings with clients and/or editors, or paperwork, or negotiating a deal, or preparing for Frankfurt or working on the agency social media, or writing a press release, or banking, or standing in the queue at the post office, or the queue to pay for paperclips... or, or, or... a mixture of some or all of the above. Or other things too! There are a whole bunch of minutiae which go into the running of any small business whether it be a literary agency or a corner store. One thing I do know is that my day isn’t set aside for reading unsolicited submissions, so the writer that sends something in on Monday and then queries for a response on Wednesday is living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land! In fact pretty much all my reading is done out of office hours in what could inaccurately be described as my own time.

What’s your view on transmedia narratives?

I don’t particularly have one. I’m happy to sell rights across all kinds of platforms and I am equally happy to embrace the new storytelling opportunities that technology presents us with.

Writers often say they’ve become more critical as readers. How does it work for agents? Can you take off your ‘work’ persona and enjoy a book?

“A tour de force of psychological obsession that demands your attention.” ~ British Fantasy Society

MALIM’S

LEGACY Available from all good bookshops, Amazon or direct from http://www.wildwolfpublishing.com

Also available - The Tyranny of the Blood and A Child of the Blood

Sure. I like a good read as much as the next person. It helps that I’m not an author and have no interest in becoming one. I therefore don’t have that “I could do this better” axe to grind when reading something. I’m always slightly suspicious of reviews written by authors for this very reason. But I still read outside of work - how else could I keep abreast of the market?

Wild Wolf Publishing Fiction with Teeth www.joreed.co.uk

www.cornerstones.co.uk

A Mini Masterclass with Kathryn Price BiggeBrain Conspiracy

By Jonathan Humble It was a dismal Monday morning.

Dexter Bacon stared gloomily at his reflection in the rain spattered window pane. The curly mop-head staring back wished himself any place but a wet playground, whilst wearing second hand wellies and a leaky raincoat. A large droplet of rain gathered at the end of Dexter’s nose and hung there momentarily before falling off into oblivion. Placing his forehead on the cold glass of the window, a deep sigh escaped from the ten year old, misting up his reflected image.

He was as cheesed off as a mouldy lump of cheddar left in a long forgotten lunchbox. There was no doubt about it; things just weren’t going right for him at Boughgandale Primary. In fact, everything seemed to be going wrong.

As he stood, alone in the drizzle, the events of the previous month tumbled through Dexter’s mind. He thought about his recent mistake of announcing to one and all, his decision to become a vegetarian. Impulsively, he’d decided to share this information with his new classmates. This had resulted in him earning the nickname ‘Streaky’ from the kids on the back row; something which in itself wasn’t a problem, until it was accompanied by the odd meatball winging its way towards his head during dinner time. Interestingly enough, picking bits of congealed school gravy out of his hair wasn’t on Dexter’s list of favourite pastimes. Wiping the rain from his nose, he made a mental note to control his tendency to blurt out his inner thoughts.

Lately, he’d also noticed that his teacher had begun to despair at his poor performances in class, and had taken to rolling her eyes whenever he struggled during revision exercises. “Oh Dexter, do try!” Miss Whittle would say, as he grappled with the mysteries of algebra and inverse operations. But it was no good; he just couldn’t keep up with the pace of work she was setting. He’d begun to resent the implication that he was faffing around. He wasn’t! He’d sit there, racking his brains until they hurt, but still it made little sense. Maths was simply a foreign language to Dexter, and he just didn’t have a passport to the land of Gobbledegook!

Then there was his clothing problem, and in particular, the permeability of outer garments.

The fact that members of staff on playtime duty had begun to enforce an unwritten rule that children must get as soaked as conditions allowed during rainy weather wasn’t helping matters.

Apparently, loafing around inside, playing chess or reading in the classrooms when the weather was dreadful was now frowned upon by the school. This was not a good situation to be in when global warming seemed to be establishing Dexter’s own personal monsoon season, at a time when his waterproofs were woefully defective!

To cap it all, for some reason that was a complete mystery, a number of the infants had taken a bit of a shine to him at playtimes. The reception kids just couldn’t get enough of the tall and thin ten year old, and often pestered him to play games with them, even on days when he really wasn’t in the mood. It had now got to the point where he’d occasionally considered hiding in the toilets during the morning break, just for a little peace and quiet.

This opening showcases a lively sense of humour and a real affinity with language. Dexter Bacon is introduced as a tragicomic figure who the reader is bound to empathise with, but the author’s light touch means we’re never weighed down by pity or gloom.

The distinctive voice can be both a strength and a potential problem area. In the tradition of children’s authors like Roald Dahl, funny books often make use of a style that relies heavily on authorial narrative; however, perhaps because of these classic associations, authorial narratives tend to now be seen as slightly old-fashioned by the trade, which favours books that inhabit a closer character perspective.

The result of an authorial narrative is that in terms of vocabulary and lexicon it often feels as though we’re hearing the adult voice behind the story rather than seeing things through the main character’s eyes, and because of this we can feel a little distanced from the protagonist. In the first paragraph here, Dexter is described as the curly mop-head and the ten year old (this second description is repeated further down); both of these are phrases that he would be unlikely to use about himself, so they feel very much like an external view of him.

We hear some quite sophisticated phrasing elsewhere, too. For instance, permeability of outer garments or he’d begun to resent the implication that he was faffing around. This latter is actually followed up by the statement, he wasn’t! which feels much more like Dexter’s own thoughts/response, in the free indirect form.

This kind of child’s eye view is something to strive for throughout, so that, rather than wordy explanations like the following…

This was not a good situation to be in when global warming seemed to be establishing Dexter’s own personal monsoon season, at a time when his waterproofs were woefully defective! …we instead have an insight into his problems which feels like Dexter’s own (perhaps making use of some of that child-friendly humour we can see in imagery like as cheesed off as a lump of cheddar): It seemed to rain every single day, which wasn’t good when his coat had more holes than his Uncle Egbert’s string vest.

An authorial voice can also result in vocabulary which feels a touch dated or clichéd, making it harder to establish the main character as a youthful, contemporary child. (As there’s no indication otherwise, the reader will assume this is set in the real world, present day, although do take care that the odd gothic touch, like children must get as soaked as conditions allowed doesn’t give it a conflicting sense of melodrama or unreality). Again, familiar phrases like racking his brains, frowned upon, and a foreign language feel like an adult form of expression, and Dexter’s own words and world-view would undoubtedly be fresher.

The main issue, however, is that an authorial narration tends to be almost entirely told rather than shown, and this is certainly something to consider here. In this passage there are a number of potentially dramatic points, here told in summary, which could in themselves form strong scenes.

Firstly, we hear that everything seemed to be going wrong. Since we actually get specific examples in the next few paragraphs anyway, this foretelling isn’t really necessary; but it might be even better if, rather than Dexter reflecting on the events of the previous month, we could see some of these for ourselves, dramatised in the form of full scenes.

The moment where he ‘comes out’ as a vegetarian, for instance, sounds hilarious and dramatic, and would demonstrate in an

immediate fashion the way he’s ostracised (presumably) by his schoolmates. A scene like this might, in fact, be a stronger and more involving way of starting the story than this episode, which is quite static because it takes place mostly inside Dexter’s head, in the form of authorial narration.

Similarly, problems, conflicts and dilemmas like his inability to do maths and his leaky clothes will come across more vividly to the reader if we can witness them first-hand. In fact, this scene itself is showing us about how wet and miserable he is, so we probably don’t need that reiterated, and the problem with maths could be brought to life in a subsequent scene once the kids have gone back indoors.

Because there’s such a lot of incident summarised here, the passage actually feels quite crowded and this leads to a slight lack of focus. By the end of the page, we have established a number of problems for Dexter (which is great) but some of these seem to work against each other (for instance, the reception kids really like Dexter, so he’s obviously not universally despised, and yet the implication earlier is that he’s a complete outsider) and overall, it’s not clear what the main hook or point of tension is.

Creating a successful, gripping opening for a children’s novel is all about setting up the key goal or problem that the character is going to have to tackle (whether it’s for the sake of the world, his life, or just his passionate desire to compete in the under-11s lacrosse championships!) Here, we have lots of little problems, but nothing that really seems motivation enough to launch us into the story. Establishing this from the outset would immediately give the opening more urgency and focus.

A few points on style and technique: watch out for the odd bit of overwriting (over and above what’s already been discussed about adult, authorial vocabulary) as where, for instance, the joke about the cheddar is diluted by excess adjectives. Take care with exclamation marks – they’re the form of punctuation that is most often overused and it’s a bit like spelling out to the reader that they should have spotted the joke. And perhaps reconsider starting with the wet Monday – something of a cliché in fiction, as is a character looking at their own reflection to allow them to be described.

One final question: what target market is this aimed at? In terms of tone and setting it feels like Middle Reader or slightly younger, but the vocabulary and syntax would certainly be too complex for a 7-9 Confident Reader/Read Alone. Much will depend on the length, as imprints within these age brackets have quite firmly established guidelines as to word count. Also bear in mind that at ten, Dexter would be too young for a Middle Reader; children like to ‘read up’, so he would need to be at least twelve or thirteen to appeal to readers in this age group.

Overall, a sparky opening that showcases the author’s flair with words and the obvious relish they’ve taken in creating a gloriously grim, tragicomic setup. The aim now should be to give it a fresh, contemporary and above all child-friendly feel, with a keen eye on Dexter as a character – how he sees things, and how he would choose to relate them to the reader.

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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Scripts: The Worlds We Tell Stories In

by Ola Zaltin

No matter what your format is, be it a novel, play, poem or screenplay - one of the most important things to do is to immediately set the tone, present the main character(s), introduce the theme of the story and the world it is set in. There are countless examples of famous opening lines and chapters in novels that do this with expedient efficiency. With scripts, this task is paramount, as you only have about 120 minutes, maximum, to tell your story and about as many pages of sparsely populated script pages.

A storyworld in the language of film is often called a “universe”.

This term is used in the same sense as “world”, but is perhaps an attempt to aim at something even more than a world, (a universe being able to contain multiple worlds) something all-encompassing, the whole shebang, as it were. The designation envelops tone, characters, setting, genre, music, dialogue, props, and so on: all of it.

A film’s universe literally starts before it begins; it is introduced with the opening credits.

If it’s a children’s adventure with a dark ironic twist, the giggling, sunlit elves are rudely interrupted half-way through, as with Lemony Snicket. In Adaptation - a story about a seriously procrastinating screenwriter - the second the opening credits start rolling, we are inside screenwriter Charlie Kaufmann’s head, beginning with the voice-over: “Do I have one original thought in my head?” and the credits are, of course, in the screenwriter’s font: Courier 12 p.

In Jerry Maguire, again to the opening credits, we hear Mr Maguire start up: “So this is the world and there are almost six billion people on it. When I was a kid, there were three. It’s hard to keep up.” Voilá: it’s a film about a man trying to keep up, failing, and through that failure finding redemption. And not one minute of film time has passed before the theme is set. What might seem like mindless ramblings from the main characters is in fact a very slick way of directly getting to the rub of the story. Clever, innit?

Needless to say, the most efficient (and these days, most popular) method of getting straight to the story is through interior monologue - voice-over - by the main character. When done well, it’s brilliant.

When it’s just done, it’s...well, lazy. “Pure cinema” is the one that is predominantly told with images and actions, not words. The opening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There will be blood runs for, I believe, something like 15-20 minutes without one word of dialogue being uttered, but a wealth of information is presented to us in this time.

And consider for example brilliant openings such as Lawrence of Arabia: Lawrence - a masochist if there ever was one - snuffing out the match with his fingers (“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”). Gladiator: first the sensual image of the rough Farmer’s hand caressing his crop in warm sunlight, cut to the Warrior in harsh blue light. The dual sides of the main character, together with “People should know when they’re conquered” “Would you, Quintus? Would I?” - and you’ve got pretty much the whole story and theme without any pesky voice-over.

The director’s aim is to hypnotize the audience from the get-go with sound and images: This is my world, welcome into it. This is the main

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character, this is his goal, that is his antagonist, this is the world they play in. Lars von Trier does this with typical aplomb in the opening of Europa - narrated by the one and only Max von Sydow: “You will now listen to my voice. My voice will help you and guide you still deeper into Europa.

Every time you hear my voice, with every word and every number, you will enter into a still deeper layer, open, relaxed and receptive”. And at the count of 10, we are, natch, in the film.

Another hypnotic opening is Apocalypse Now: those slow-mo images of jungle being turned to a liquid napalm inferno together with Morrison wailing “This is the End”, the helicopter blades’ throp-throp being segued into the POV of the main character: the fan above captain Willard’s bed, and presto: we’re inside the main character’s head.

Point of View does this, and with film it’s not a character’s opinion on a certain topic, or his general world-view. It is quite literally What He Sees. The classic way is of a character looking at something, then cut to the object he is viewing. We’re presented to it dozens of times per night on the telly, but when done well, in all its simplicity, it is a stroke of storytelling genius.

Spielberg is one of the masters of the cinematic POV. The POV is a magic way of getting into the main character’s mind, quite literally. Not only seeing what he sees - but feeling what he feels, thus emotionally bonding the fictional character with the very real viewer. In Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler watches the persecution of Jews from astride a horse on a hill. The horror unfurling below him is clearly registered on Liam Neeson’s face, but in addition Spielberg singles out a little girl, colouring her coat red in an otherwise black and white film, so turning the universal into something close and personal. Picking out one destiny in the maelstrom of Shoa. All told in images. In Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller and Sergeant Horvath survive the killing-zone on Omaha beach, make their way to the top of the bluffs and take out the enemy bunkers. Pausing, they turn to look not at the country they’ve just landed in, but to look back across the channel. “That’s quite a view,” says Sergeant Horvath and Cpt Miller answers, simply: “Yes it is.” And it’s not the view, or the channel they’re talking about. But what they’ve just lived through, and what they have accomplished.

This way, the POV helps the audience seamlessly connect with the character’s inner-world. (One might well argue that these choices are the director’s, but it’s well worth thinking in these kind of terms, images, actions and POVs already in the script stage. ) Once the main character is introduced, his or her goal is set, the antagonist presented and the world they will do battle in is outlined, the story develops within that universe. Meaning: if there’s a gun presented in act one, (as Chekhov would have it), it has to be fired in the third act.

And if there’s no magic in the first act, it can’t suddenly make an entrance in the third. Put simply: the rules of the story set up in the first part of the script has to be obeyed throughout.

SKYFALL SPOILER ALERT Within the specific storyworld and the three act structure comes the plant and the pay-off. This is a much used trick in the universe of film.

Take for instance Skyfall and M’s porcelain pooch. On her desk - in the first act - we are made to notice an ugly “Churchill” bulldog. In the second act, Bond - invited to her new underground digs - comments upon it, and in the third act epilogue it is given as a gift to Bond (literally from the other side ) by M, and now the object is emotionally charged.

All this from an ugly porcelain two penny dog.

(Another, beautiful, dialogue plant and pay-off I can’t refrain from mentioning is the one in Blaze: the story of the rural backwater young girl who goes to the big city of New Orleans and becomes the stripper Blaze. She meets and falls in love with the much older politician Earl Long. In the opening, her mother admonishes her: “Never trust a man who says you can trust him!”. Upon meeting senator Long, she asks can she trust him? “Hell no!” is his spontaneous reply. Then we witness their romance, and at the end, with Long dying in her arms, she asks: “Can I trust you not to die?”. Yes, she can, answers the old man. And dies.)

I think it was Cary Grant who said that all that really matters in a film are the first ten and the last ten minutes. He has a point. The first ten minutes hooks the audience, the last ten carries the denouement,

the tying up of loose ends to be knitted together in a pleasing storyworld sweater that both warms our hearts and tickles our brains.

In an American film the killer is caught, and the boy gets the girl. In a European story, everybody’s dead, emotionally or physically. (If both, it’s a classic. See: Hamlet).

We’re now leaving the story’s universe and the characters we’ve so enjoyed spending some ninety minutes with in the dark. If well done, we’ll leave sated and smiling, with a twinge of emotion in our hearts. If done the European way we feel we’ve touched upon some eternal truths, however harsh or oblique they may be.

If done the Hollywood way, we just can’t wait for the sequel.

I’ll Tumble For You

by Dan Holloway

I first talked about blogs in the very first issues of Words With Jam, where I discussed the differences between Blogger and Wordpress.

In the nearly three years (Three years? Really? Wow!) since then it would be surprising if things hadn’t moved on apace in the world of blogging. And they have. Sort of.

The like of Weebly, Typepad and Posterous all have their advocates but what is most surprising of all is how little has changed. Blogger and Wordpress remain not just the most extensively used platforms for writers but the most convenient.

But for a new group of writers, who can broadly be described under the umbrella term Alt Lit, the only platform in the running is tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com).

Tumblr is best described as being a blend of blogging platform and social media. Once you have set up your account and chosen a username that doubles as your URL (a process that takes a minute or less), you can start posting your own things and following the posts of others. What makes it such a versatile tool is that it can be used as either a blog for your own work or a way of following

other people’s work, but the writer can also use it as both to create a much more rounded relationship with readers than either a blog or a Facebook can do.

The first thing I noticed about tumblr when I started using it earlier this year is how intuitive and organic it is to use once you’ve worked out an initial quirk. Whilst your URL is where you direct people to that part of the tumblr world that’s “yours”, where they can see everything you’ve posted, from your point of view the action takes place on your dashboard.

Once you’re on your dashboard, you will see, as per twitter, a steady stream of everything posted by those you are following, and you can distribute your own work via a simple click – you can choose the format you want to upload, whether it’s text, a link or a picture or a video to which you can add your comment, and the whole process takes just a couple of clicks. Unlike twitter, what you upload can be as detailed as you like, though there is slightly less scope for straightforward formatting than in Wordpress or Blogger.

You can also comment on other people’s posts, though it is more common to like them, as you would with Facebook, or reblog them so that they appear in your posts, rather like retweeting on twitter. Only unlike twitter or Facebook, liking and reblogging are very like having a conversation, and there’s a real etiquette of finding people to follow through likes and reblogs. This combination of intuitive functionality and organic community growth give tumblr a very pleasing feel.

What makes tumblr particularly interesting is the way it has been so fully adopted by a whole generation of writers so that whole

communities have begun to grow around it. Generation is probably the wrong word.

Creative community is probably better, because whilst there’s definitely a young, smart-to-nerd, campus-to-dropout feel to the community, there’s a sense of inclusiveness (I’m the wrong side of 40 and so alien to hipsterdom I sport an untrimmed beard and leathers totally unironically), of a community that’s built around a set of literary questions.

Which is strike one in tumblr’s favour. We always want to find the like-minded, those involved in our common creative endeavour, who see the world as we do, who “get” us, but most of social media is taken up with marketing-oriented conversations, and most of the blogosphere is taken up with people dispensing advice. Whilst there are lots of communities of people seeking a common purpose – selling books – there are very few really active communities of those seeking a common creative purpose. Alt Lit feels like one of those communities, though. It has its own way of speaking and interacting, is very internet and brand conscious, but is clearly formed around a set of (often implicit not explicit) creative questions around the way identity is constructed in the 21st century. What tumblr does is to allow a free flow of ideas, a network of answers that grow organically and out of which truly interesting work is produced. To anyone interested in expanding their creative horizons and practices that’s a heady thought.

In order to understand the pull of this platform and to get an insight into the many ways we can use it as writers, I put a general question to members of the Alt Lit community.

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The quick, thoughtful, and conversational response I got, which I will try to do justice to here, is illustrative of the way this community works in general, and if I can be so crass, each

I advocated was for writers to build concrete, deep relationships with a few readers (well, when I say a few, I mean ideally around 1000 – but compared to the 50,000+ readers many

do, feeding our creativity and other aspects of our writing life. But whilst for some, especially those whose writing and creative questions focus on the way we interact and form

The first thing I noticed about tumblr when I started using it earlier this year is how intuitive and organic it is to use once you’ve worked out an initial quirk. feature of that response is reflected in the use of tumblr.

For Steve Roggenbuck (http://plus. livemylief.com/), the leading light of the Alt Lit movement and author of groundbreaking books Crunk Juice and Download Helvetica for Free, what is most attractive is the communal aspect.

“It’s better than wordpress and blogger because it has a more built-in community aspect like twitter because people follow and reblog within the system.”

There’s also a sense of people working together creatively.

“I get the sense that young people are collaboratively creating/curating what “youth culture” is now. That’s exciting to me.”

Of course, for many writers, the process of getting work onto paper is a very solitary one, and the excursion into social media is one that feels separate from that process, either because it is undertaken for distinct goals (such as marketing the words you have already produced), or because the work that is displayed to the world online is already complete and you are offering people a taste of what has been done elsewhere.

As a writer who grew up (in writerly terms, anyway, although I was already in my mid 30s) within the creative context of an online writing collective, I find the idea of my social media experience being part of the creative process itself an intoxicating and enriching one. I think anyone who writes about the modern world needs to make the effort to engage at some point with what the internet means for people’s lives, and experiencing that in action is the best way possible of doing this, of getting under the skin of lives lived online and maybe transferring some of that energy into your own creativity.

I’m also particularly drawn to the organic way sharing and community happen. I wrote in a recent column here about the 1000 true fans way of writers connecting with readers. What

44 | Pencil Box

writers think in terms of that’s few), rather than shallower, less loyal, fixed relationships with more. Interaction, community building and giving are the key to building such relationships, and tumblr is the perfect platform from which to do that. As the writer Austin Islam put it: “I think things get shared more freely on tumblr than on any other social network.”

That said, I can’t imagine tumblr being the only platform for most writers. Several of the people I heard from sounded notes of caution. There was agreement that there were positive creative benefits that ensure the platform itself stretches you as a writer. As Michael Hessel-Mial put it, “the reblog model and the circulation that ensues tends to push for more terse and eye-catching works.” And as Juan Pablo Motoya (not the racing driver. I think!) noted “your posts have to be incredibly interesting within a microsecond of your sight catching the first corner of the image and/or title of post because you can scroll right past it. Which is great because I feel like people strive to create content that will be interesting enough for you to stop and give your two minutes of attention to.” I can definitely see the attraction of a medium that forces you to grab the reader’s attention. On the other hand, as David Shaw puts it “tumblr is the worst way for people to consume beautiful things. When I’m on tumblr I scroll through images without really focusing on what I’m looking at and ‘like’ things that catch my eye and immediately scroll past things that don’t catch my eye. I don’t think tumblr works as a good place for short stories.”

I have found tumblr works best for me as a place to learn about myself creatively and to form close bonds with readers and other writers. It is the perfect place to play and experiment, to free yourself from the constraints of form and the demands of marketing. As such, it is an ideal accompaniment to the other things many of us

communities in a digital age, for most writers it is an adjunct and not a primary platform.

To summarize • Tumblr is a perfect way to build a community around your work, but you need to make sure the work you post suits the medium (snappy, concise, and a visual component helps).

• Tumblr is based on community – as with other forms of social media you get most out of it by being generous and making use of interactive features such as liking and reblogging.

• For most writers tumblr would work best as an accompaniment to a static website.

• Tumblr is a creative and communitybuilding platform, not one that lends itself to marketing. Avoid selling and sales links.

• Take a look at some of the very best literary tumblrs to get an insight into its creative possibilities: http://plus.livemylief.com/ http://proudbeam.tumblr.com http://blog.illuminatigirlgang.com/ http://matthewsherling.tumblr.com/ http://neatomosquitoaltlitfireworksshow. tumblr.com/

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

Stacey from Edinburgh sent in the follow question: In my debut novel I have quoted some song lyrics, just a few lines, but some of my friends who have read the book say I should delete the words because I’m breaking the copyright law. I don’t see how I’m doing anything wrong because I’m not playing the music, just using some lines to illustrate a point, but are my friends right? Am I breaking any law?

The easy answer to this question simply doesn’t exist. There is such a thing as ‘fair use’ which entitles you to use a few lines without transgressing copyright.

However, there is no hard and fast rule over what constitutes ‘fair use’ of song lyrics and you could find yourself in a deep financial hole if you use someone’s lyrics without first gaining permission to do so. http://www.copyrightservice. co.uk/copyright/p09_fair_use You would need to contact the copyright holder (or their agent) and ask for permission to use the lyrics. You’ll be charged (usually quite a hefty fee) and will need to include certain information in your book covering details regarding the copyright.

If the song is deemed to be ‘in the public domain’ then the situation changes: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm Buying permission to use song lyrics is never cheap, but using them and being taken to court afterwards will be even more costly, so it’s best to avoid including them unless they are absolutely essential to your novel.

The following links are all worth reading as they could save you a great deal of money. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/01/blake-morrison-lyricscopyright http://www.justaboutwrite.com/A_Archive_IntellectProp3.html http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law http://www.pdinfo.com/PD-Music-Genres/PD-Popular-Songs.php One other thing to bear in mind is that song titles are not subject to copyright and can be used freely, unless they have been protected by trademark or other registration.

Good starting places to search: http://ideas4writers.wordpress.com http://www.hisdates.com http://www.datesinhistory.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/default.stm Do bear in mind that anniversary pieces need a longer lead time than other features, so you would have to query at least six months in advance.

Search engines Go on search engine home pages and see which subjects are currently hot.

Look back through the archives and try to find a way to link the old information with the new to create a different slant. Editors love new ways of looking at existing ideas.

Read articles written by others Read extensively on topics of interest to you. Ideas for new articles will come to you if you study with a questioning mind. Why has the author said this?

Why did the interviewee say that? What will be the consequence of his or her actions? Ask yourself the famous W questions: who, what, where, why and when?

If you question what you are reading, you can get a different perspective and be able to use someone else’s ideas to spark articles of your own. Running with someone else’s idea is fine, but never copy their words, not even if you change them to hide the fact, as that is plagiarism.

Research Think of a topic about which you know very little (or one you have a passing

Gitika from Birmingham sent this plea for help: I am a student on a non-fiction writing course and I have to submit articles to my tutor, but I really struggle to find things to write about. Everyone else seems to come up with topics easily, but not me. Can you help?

Searching for article ideas can seem impossible, but in truth there are always new topics to write about.

knowledge of) but about which you’d like to know more. Research the subject, read all you can, and then pass that knowledge on in the form of articles – always looking to find your own way of dealing with the topic.

Why not make a list of: • The problems you’ve encountered recently • How did you solve them?

• What makes you angry?

Listen to the news The news is a constant stream of information on a variety of subjects ranging from world affairs to new technology, from celebrity gossip to climatic disasters, from fashion to religion. Next time you listen to the news, jot down any item that catches your fancy. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t knowledgeable on the subject – that’s what research is for.

Discussion groups Join in forum debates on subjects which interest you. There is nothing like a healthy debate to get your brain cells working. Keep paper and pen to hand.

It might not be the actual subject which sparks an idea, but a word or phrase used by one of the other members.

• What makes you happy?

• Which TV shows do you like and why?

• Which ones drive you insane and why?

• Who do you know who has overcome adversity and how did they do it?

• Reasons to make a living will • Reasons not to make a living will • Who is your least favourite politician and why?

• Holiday destinations you’d love to visit – good for travel articles • Funny things you’ve heard people say • Odd coincidences in your life and that of others

Anniversaries

If you do just a quarter of the things I have outlined above you’ll have enough

Anniversary articles are always worth considering.

topics to write on for the next year at least.

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

Email lorraine@wordswithjam.co.uk

What we think of some books Floccinaucinihilipilification:

we gradually learn more about Sean’s tragic

the estimation of something as valueless

background and understand that he is a child who

Tacenda: things better left unsaid

has been grossly let down by the community in which he lives. Neglected, abused and over-sedated

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

on Ritalin, Sean’s bleak life and bleaker future could be a symbol of Ireland itself.

On the surface, this is a crime novel. The boys witness a murder. When no one believes them, they set out to prove they aren’t making it up. In doing so, they are forced to challenge the corruption, hypocrisy and ignorance of the society in which

Dead Dogs by Joe Murphy Reviewed by Sheila Bugler Rating: Logodaedalus Dead Dogs is a crime novel – sort of. Set in rural Ireland, it centres on the story of two teenage boys, Sean Galvin and his best – and only – friend, the unnamed narrator.

The novel is a perfect snapshot of small-town Ireland as seen through the eyes of a sensitive, deeply troubled teenager. From the dramatic opening, with its hints that something terrible has just happened (‘Today I’ve lost the best part of my life.’), the story cuts through the small-minded conventions of rural Ireland, revealing a dark and dangerous world.

From the outset, we know that Sean isn’t quite normal. In the words of his best friend, ‘Sean is not a well person.’ As the novel progresses,

they live. We sense it’s a battle they can’t win. After all, how can two boys overturn a world which has endured far more for far longer than their own short lifetimes?

At its heart, this is an angry novel that condemns the failures of modern Irish society. Set in a depressed, post-Celtic Tiger world, this is a place where children aren’t safe. Adults are, at best, ineffectual, at worst, murdering psychopaths.

The one good thing in the boys’ life is their friendship – strong, consistent and true, it contrasts sharply with everything else they endure. The tragedy here is that, ultimately, it is this very friendship that destroys them.

At times, Dead Dogs reminded me of Patrick

reader, I shrivel into hopelessness as a writer.

This is a big book by an immense brain.

David Foster Wallace, while creating wholly developed characters and backstories, takes the Brechtian approach of interruption via

McCabe’s The Butcher Boy. Like McCabe, Murphy

footnotes, asides, foot-footnotes and challenges to

holds a mirror to the conventions of Irish society.

conventional narrative structure. The reader must

With both authors, the image we see reflected back

engage and think. That makes Wallace sound like

isn’t a pretty one.

a tosser. He’s not. He’s cunning and clever and

The strongest similarity with McCabe, however,

uncompromising. He’s not just addressing you,

is Murphy’s ability to create an immensely powerful

but almost coaching you, making you stretch, work

main character with a uniquely distinctive voice.

and use your mind.

There are differences, of course. McCabe’s Francie

I probably understood less than half the

Brady is, essentially, an unreliable narrator. In

sly allusions, wry acronyms, and semi-familiar

contrast, Murphy’s unnamed narrator is, at times,

nomenclature ­­– Himself, ONAN, USOUS, The Moms,

a single sane voice in an insane world. What both

even the surname Incandenza. But it doesn’t

books share is a central character which stays with

matter. I know I’m in safe hands. And I know I will

you long after you’ve read the final page.

get even more from this book when I re-read, as is

Murphy writes with a wit and verve that is rare. He is an immense talent and this clever, dark, funny book is a testament to that.

inevitable.

His World of Novel is wholly plausible, including the imaginary film, Entertainment; the interactive environment of Eschaton, a computerbased virtual reality game; and his analysis of both

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

tennis and addiction. All this left me blinking and

Reviewed by JJ Marsh

a-gasp and wanting to tell my friends.

Rating: Logodaedalus

His detours, diversions and switches of tone are not simply post-modern, they’re post

This book will change your life. It took me over

everything – a writer who has second, third and

three months to read this behemoth, but I swear

fourth-guessed you, and provided the answer to

there were days it kept me sane.

the questions you’ve not yet formulated.

It’s massive. In every sense. It is knowing but

46 | Reviews

This is a book about achievement, addiction,

passionate; cynical yet honest; epic and precise.

formation and self-delusion in a vast cultural

While it makes me stand up and applaud as a

landscape. Much has been made of David Foster

What we think of some books Wallace’s suicide at the age of 46. I’d say that’s irrelevant, regarding this book, but a damn shame

and explores the power of faith.

The author has vividly brought to life a

target readership - i.e. children in the upper stages of primary school and early high school. The pace

for his new readers. It’s one man’s attempt at

medieval community where the mind was ruled by

of the storytelling is also perfectly judged for this

framing the world from one perspective. Infinite

religion and superstition. Through simple, lyrical

age group. But what makes it really stand out is

Jest is an adventure conducted by (and maybe into)

prose, she builds the plot to a conclusion that

that although it has elements of fantasy and magic

an incredible mind. I’m going to read this again.

provides both resolution and the expectation of

and although it is also humorous in places, it is a

In ten years. As an attempt to exercise my own

what might have happened next.

story with real depth.

ageing membranes.

Awesome, incandescent and a challenging

Karen Maitland truly knows how to write about

Jack, the main character, has to resist the

what interests her, and I would highly recommend

pressure put on him by the mysterious Wishnotist

read, this is one of the top books I’ve digested in

The Owl Killers to fans of historical fiction and the

to reveal his heart’s desire and make a wish.

my lifetime. And days after the 2012 US election,

supernatural.

The story addresses Jack’s typically adolescent

it feels just as relevant as if it was published yesterday.

The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland

confusion and emotional turmoil as he copes with

The Wishnotist by Trevor Forest

fancying a girl. And when he does eventually

Rating: Logodaedalus

cave in to the Wishnotist’s pressure, the ending is poignant and moving.

Wow! I just read a scintillating wee sparkler of a children’s book.

Having loved Company of Liars, I was excited to

his disabled brother and his first experience of

Reviewed by Anne Stormont

Reviewed by Liza Perrat Rating: Logodaedalus

growing up, with his ambiguous feelings towards

Back in March last year I reviewed Trevor’s book ‘Peggy Larkin’s War’ on my blog. Since then

I’ve been a primary school teacher for nearly

I’ve read Trevor’s other books -’Abigail Pink’s

read Karen Maitland’s next novel, The Owl Killers,

thirty-five years. I’ve worked with the full age range

Angel’, ‘Faylinn Frost and the Snow Fairies’, the

set in Ulewic, a 14th century village near Norfolk.

from four to twelve. For most of the last decade I’ve

‘Magic Molly’ trilogy - all about a young trainee

For centuries, Ulewic has been ruled by both

worked with children with special needs alongside

witch - and the outrageous and hilarious ‘Stanley

the lord of the manor and by the Owl Masters - a

their ‘mainstream’ peers. During my career, I must

Stickle Hates Homework’.

predatory, pagan

have shared hundreds

group empowered

of books with children.

characterised by his ability to communicate directly

by fear, blackmail

Amongst those books

with his target readers without talking down to

and superstition to

there have been gems

them. He can also make the fantastic and the

dispense a harsh form

and there have been

magical perfectly plausible.

of law and order.

disappointments. Some

A group of

Trevor’s gift for writing for children is

The storyworlds he creates - whether based

of the gems are ones that

on modern or historical reality or complete fantasy

religious women

I have owned and shared

- are utterly believable - and he does it in such an

settles in a beguinage

with my pupils for most

understated way that readers young and old slip

outside the village

of those thirty-plus years.

into these worlds with ease. There’s no sense

and when their

They range from picture

of the author saying, ‘Aren’t I clever, I made this

crops succeed and

books to full length

place.’ And I believe that is the secret to good

their animals survive

novels. So I feel at least

storyworld creation.

diseases, jealousy and

a little qualified to judge

conflict are brought to

what makes a good book

interest story in language that is accessible to

a head in Ulewic.

for children.

young readers and manages to combine this with

The author uses

And I’ve just read

He also has that rare ability to tell a high

keeping the adult ‘supporter’ interested too. His

a multiple narrative

another gem. The

books are ideal first novels for children who have

voice flawlessly, each

Wishnotist by Trevor

perhaps struggled to become independent in their

voice distinct and

Forest is a diamond. As

reading.

compelling. I engaged

I’ve done with most of

with every one of the

Trevor’s books, I shared

wonderful and truthful storyteller. The Wishnotist

the reading with some of

is the latest example of this fact.

characters, whose lives are drawn out smoothly and interwoven into

the pupils at the primary school where I teach. They

the main story in an unobtrusive and enjoyable

were wowed too.

way.

Pagan and Christian ways intermingle and

The Wishnotist is a wise, witty, warm, wacky,

But most of all Trevor Forest is simply a

The Wishnotist is available on Amazon and Trevor hangs out on Twitter at @tbelshaw and he writes adult fiction too.

weird and wonderful story. It’s an action-packed

clash, the story steeped in witchcraft, heresy,

tale with the moral ‘be careful what you wish for.’

mystery, suspense and tragedy. At times very dark

It’s a contemporary story full of characters and

and bleak, it also evokes human nature at its best,

references that are instantly recognisable to the

Reviews | 47

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 a friend of mine’s Dad that Lance Armstrong had to have a man with a fire extinguisher on hand at all times because his pants regularly caught on fire. Is this true?

It’s difficult to know what’s not false when it comes to this subject. Of course, the fact that his tongue is as long as a telephone wire should have been a dead giveaway.

A tramp I met while taking a piss against a wall on my way home from the disco the other night told me that Lance Armstrong is re-releasing his auto Biography but changing the title from ‘It’s not About the Bike,’ to ‘It is about the Drugs.’ Is there any truth in this rumour?

The only thing I can confirm about this book is that the original is now only available from the fiction department of your local bookshop.

A bloke I met in prison who didn’t strike me as even remotely cynical said the only reason Hillary Mantel won the Booker prize this year was because she told the judges if she didn’t win she’d eat them. Surely this must be false.

It is absolutely false. There is no truth whatsoever in this.

There is also no truth in the scurrilous rumour that her evening dress was sponsored by the Great Outdoors camping department. Or that all the money attached to the prize was used in paying off several large debts to pie shops.

The other day while I was rooting around in the rubbish out the back of a genetic testing facility I overheard some people inside the building saying that humans share 82.6 % of their genetic make up with Piers Morgan. This couldn’t possibly be true, could it?

It does seem like a very high percentage as humans share about 50% of our DNA with bananas and I would have guessed the figure in this case would have been less.

However, I have no way to confirm or deny this rumour at this time, but I’ll keep an eye on it for the future.

Guess the Book

See of you can guess the bestselling books from these onestar reviews.

1. I seriously have better things to do than read about talking bunnies!

2. I was forced to read this against my own will.

This book was boring, and not at all exciting.

It was kind of predictable, and if you like thrillers, this isn’t the book for you. If you want to fall asleep, read this one and you’ll have no trouble falling asleep.

3. I HAD TO READ THIS BOOK FOR SCHOOL. AND IT IS THE MOST BORING INCOMPREHENSIBLE BOOK I HAVE EVER HAD TO READ! MAYBE BECAUSE I WAS FORCED TO READ IT...MAYBE BECAUSE IT REALLY IS A BAD BOOK. I JUST ABSOLUTELY DETEST IT! AND I’M ONLY 13!

4. Great book for junior high boys who live BIG in 30 year old “men”. About as funny as looking at a bowel movement left in a toilet 3 hours ago at Walmart and you have to go really bad(ly).

5. Ever read Melville’s Moby Dick? Let me promise you that it is one heck of a lot better than this piece of wholeasale plagiarism.

It’s a real shame, too. This author wrote an absolutely brilliant early work titled ************** -- and then descended this low. Of course, Moby Dick is public domain.

Nobody gonna sue this guy. What a shame.

Is there any truth at all in the rumour that Donald Trump wears a wig? If so, you’d never know it to look at him.

48 | Other Stuff

Answers: Watership Down by Richard Adams; Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery; The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien; Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach; Jaws by Peter Benchley.

This is yet another rumour that although I’ve heard often I can neither confirm or deny as I’ve never seen a photo of him without his distinctive trademark hamster hat. Maybe one day he’ll take the hat off and we’ll get a look at the lustrous locks beneath.

Crossword by Solange and Pals

Across 1.

Crazy lady with strange men re-lights fire in Cornish house. (anag.) (9)

6.

18th century heroine remains virtuous to the end. (8)

9.

Italian castle, fuelled Catherine’s imagination (7)

10. Scarlett Thomas’s idea of Heaven? (3,11) 11. Down the tunnel girl will learn dreams are mixed up. (anag) (10) 12. Kate Atkinson character who proclaims: “I am alive. I am a precious jewel. I am a drop of blood. I am …. ……” (4,6)

October 2012 Answers

15. This man’s hapless history is far from science fiction. (2,5) 16. Gut shame, Mr Fowles, for a messed up magician. (anag.) (3,5) 17. Le Carre’s horticulturist took a tip from Planck. (8)

Down 1.

We’d be mad to go there and back again; put a lid on it! (anag.) (6,5)

2.

Christopher Robin’s woodland latrine. (4,6)

3.

Graceful birds on sailing holiday with single-breasted warrior maidens. (8,3,7)

4.

Art? Oh, a classic! Mr... Dickens? (anag.) (1,9,5)

5.

Where Teddy Daniels confronts his alter ego. (7,6)

7.

Author on a trip visualises Brave New World. (6,6)

8.

Psychopath spotter who stared at goats. (3,6)

13. Robin’s mate around middle East - formerly known as Colin. (7) 14. Original name of greene spiky scribbler who gave his last. (4)

Random Stuff | 49

Dear Ed Letters of the satirical variety

Dear Words With Jam, I am not the sort of person who normally complains about things (other than my sciatica and the man who lets his dog shit in my garden every morning and the blot on the landscape that windfarms are and the layabouts on welfare and the bloody foreigners and Brussels and the stealth tax that is speed cameras and cyclists and people who believe in evolution and all the normal stuff that it is my God given right to point out at the drop of a hat), but I find myself with a complaint. Why-oh-whyoh-why-oh-why have they put Angry Birds on the internet? I haven’t been able to write a word for months as it has distracted me. I don’t know what the world is coming to. The Government should do something about it. Harumph.

Yours truly, Mrs Tyne E Mind Uhm OK Mrs Mind – has anyone got any thoughts on this?

Ed Dear Bloody Writers, I’m suing you for the injuries caused by reading your bloody books. Just the other day I was reading one of your novels while on the train. An exciting bit was carelessly put right at the point that I reached my stop and so I continued to read as I exited the bloody train. My foot went into the hole between the carriage and the platform and I got a bloody bad scrape. You heartless fuckers. My solicitor will be in touch.

Good day to you, Miss Myne D Gap Thanks for that, Miss Gap. Has anyone else had a book related injury?

Ed Dear Words Editor, I am writing to agree with a letter printed in your magazine on this very page. Hurrah for Mrs Mind and her rage against the Angry Birds. Is it any wonder that kids are growing up completely illiterate when writers are unable to write their books because of that dreadful game? The government would want to get their fingers out and act immediately.

Yours sincerely, Con Sern PS How do you get by level four on the Green Day round?

Dear Editor, I am a nurse working in the Emergency department of a hospital and just recently I came across a highly amusing book related accident that your readers may care to hear about. A man came in in a high state of agitation complaining about

50 | Some Other Stuff

severe rectal pain. On examination it turned out he had a copy of The Da Vinci Code lodged up his anus. He told us that he had been telling an acquaintance how it was the best book ever written and after twenty five minutes the acquaintance suddenly went crazy and shoved the book up his arse. Doctor Schlong (who is dreamy) removed the item. The patient then began to tell the doctor about the book until the doctor eventually shoved it back up. Oh, how we laughed.

Yours truly, Ward Sister Julie D’Zerved Dear The Words with Jam Magazine Editor, What is all this namby pamby ‘Angry Bird’ nonsense?

When I was lad and was writing books the only thing I had to play with was some barbed wire and a stick that had been handed down from my older brother. It was diverting, I’ll grant you that, but in those days we just got on with it. A stint in the Army would do you Angry Bird-ers the world of good. You don’t know you’re born. I’d live in 1942 forever if I could. And bring back capital punishment.

Yours sincerely, Mr Ol Days Dear Sir, In stark contrast to the letter you printed immediately before this one, I, for one, am delighted to be living in the modern era. Just today, for example, thanks to the marvel of modern technology, I was able to watch a movie while sitting on my couch on the tiny screen of my mobile phone instead of on the old fashioned big TV in the room. You couldn’t do that in 1942, I think. If this isn’t progress then I don’t know what is.

Yours truly, C Knit Dear fucking Words editor, Look, I’m as fucking high minded as the next fucker, but I’ve got a fucking complaint and it’s not about shitting angry birds or any of that bollox. Look, while it’s all very fucking well and fucking good having your fucking interviews and everyfucking-thing (which I enjoy im-fucking-mensely), the other reason I read your fucking magazine is because it regularly has the word ‘cunt’ hidden away somewhere in it in a non fucking sexual context. Sort it out.

Yours etc, Mr C Hunt Sorted, Mr Hunt Ed

Horoscopes

by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith One thing I’m often surprised to find is that people

ten minutes is well within acceptable on-time

you. This is in no small part down to the fact that

who believe in horoscopes don’t actively go out

parameters. Keep up the good work.

the stars have gifted you with the super power of

and become superheroes with proper super powers and everything. All of you already have the power inside you and all you need is to know how to let it out. You too can be not only super, but also dooper.

LEO

SAGGITARIUS Wise old Saggitariamists have the power of knowledge stuffed into their special brains. Not

steering. Your power may begin to feel sluggish after the 19th, but keep your wits about you and beware of a scruffy man who will look at your

just any knowledge, but specialist information

sluggish super power steering, scratch his head

about how there’s no need to go to the doctor if

and say – Oooooooohhhh, it’s gonna cost ya.

you are unwell because all you need to do is place

With the heart of a Lion and fire raging in your

a bit of crystal somewhere or drink some magic

soul you will not be surprised to learn that buried

water and everything will be OK. Watch out for a

deep inside you there is the amazing superpower

confrontation between the 16th and the 25th when

of Gaydar. Yes, you are able to tell what the

you will be challenged by someone who actually

sexual orientation of a person is just by looking

knows what they are talking about.

at them and talking to them and their friends for

TAURUS As you know, all Taurusianists have the most amazing abilities in the presentation department.

This is because you have the super power of point

about an hour. And you are nearly always right.

CAPRICORN

working for you at all times. Be prepared to face

But remember, with great power comes great

One of the great things about being a

adversity on the 12th when someone at work will

responsibility.

Capricornianist is that your super power works

challenge you on your use of the x y axis. Stick it to

in pretty much every situation. Many of your

them by showing just how wrong they are with the

VIRGO

colleagues will be subconsciously aware of your

Virgonianists, you have one of the most deadly

power and will spend a lot of time asking you to

superpowers of them all as you are able to kill

suggest things like where to go for a pizza. The

people without even touching them. Yes, your

power of suggestion is a heavy burden to carry,

superpower is being able to bore people to death

however, as you have to pick your words carefully.

by telling them about the dream you had last night

Caution is needed on the 22nd when you will be

and then explaining what the dream probably

tempted to tell your boss to go fuck himself.

help of a multicoloured pie-chart.

GEMINI Don’t worry Geminianists this month as you lose your job, lose your house and it turns out to be more than just a rash after all. Yes, all you need do

meant. The way you can cause another human being simply to lose the will to live is staggering.

AQUARIUS

is engage your super power of positive thinking

Your power will come in handy on the 23

Sensitive Aquarianists have been gifted with the

and everything will be OK. There is no need for you

when Keith from IT will try and tell you what the

power of love. This will come in very handy on

difference is between Android 2.3 and Android 4.

the second Friday of the coming month as you

to actually do anything to sort your problems out

rd

will travel back in time and help your parents get

as the power of positive thinking will sort it all out

together. Good luck with that.

for you.

unlock it simply hold a sword over your head out

PISCES

CANCER

in the street and shout – I have the power – and

Psicesianists will feel that the winter months are

away you go. Your super power will be called on

dragging by. This is not because you have SAD

in the last week of the month as Skeletor will try to

or anything, but rather that your special power

invade.

is American so it runs on 110 volts. Take the

the extraordinary power of dance on your side.

opportunity on the 6th to go to a building site

Use this star given power to your advantage on the

LIBRA Librarianists have the power of Greyskull. To

SCORPIO Most Scorpionianists use their superpower

where your power will fit right in.

There is no situation that you Cancerianists can’t deal with as you wend your way through life with

18th when you’re in with the bank manager asking for an extension on your mortgage. Don’t worry

repeatedly and often they are not really aware of

ARIES

it. You have the ability to mildly annoy people all

You Ariesianists always know exactly what

the time simply by turning up ten minutes late

direction you’re going in and have no trouble

break into your soft shoe shuffle in his office he

and pretending like you’re actually on time and

negotiating the twists and turns life throws at

won’t be able to help himself.

if at first he seems unlikely to be kind as once you

Some Other Stuff | 51

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