Words with JAM February 2013 Issue

Sticky, but not in a bad way

Celebrating our crime issue, we discuss the success of Rizzoli & Isles, future plans, and discover a few insights as we interview novelist Tess Gerritsen WWJ BIGGER Short Story Competition 2013 - THE RESULTS Why I Went Small On choosing a publisher, by Lorraine Mace

The Art of Ghostwriting with Andrew Crofts Wigtown in the Rain Festival coverage with Danny Gillan

The Girl and the Gun: In Defence of Genre Fiction

By Sarah Bower

Ten Tips for Writing Crime Fiction with Sheila Bugler

RRP ÂŁ5.50 February | March 2013 www.wordswithjam.co.uk

Plus usual shenanigans including Horoscopes, Guess the Book and Procrastinating with Perry

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Contents Random stuff 4

Editor’s Desk

5

Crime - the serious genre by Anne Stormont

6

Tess Gerritsen in conversation with Gillian Hamer

10 Sarah Butler in conversation with Dan Holloway 12 Under the Eyes of Eric the Skull: The Story of The Detection Club

by Catriona Troth 13 Three Queens. Three Aces. by Catriona Troth 15 Why I Went Small by Lorraine Mace who sometimes comes out to play as Frances di Plino

The Team

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.

psychologist, on psychological aspects of writing

Clinical psychologist Sue Carver is serving a long appre nticeship in novelwriting. Her aphorism is: it takes as long as it takes. Her first novel is set in the world of psychological therapy and her second takes her far out of her comfort zone. She has published poetry under her maiden surname: Leppard, but she wasn’t made in Sheffield and, although she has wide tastes in music, she much prefers Raymond to Def.

20 The Eye of the Beholder - Procrastinating with Perry Iles

Helen Corner founder of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and co-author of Write a Blockbuster.

16 The Art of Ghostwriting ... with Andrew Crofts 18 Why is Crime Fiction So Popular? Sue Carver, consultant clinical

22 The Emperor’s New Writers by Derek Duggan 23 60 Second Interviews with Malcolm Pryce and James Long 25 Wigtown in the Rain - Festival coverage with Danny Gillan 27 The Girl and the Gun: In Defence of Genre Fiction by Sarah Bower

Competitions 29 WWJ BIGGER Short Story Competition 2012 - THE RESULTS 43 Comp Corner

Pencilbox 44 Ten Tips for Writing Crime Fiction by Sheila Bugler 45 Scripts: Why Crime Pays by Ola Zaltin 46 Cornerstones Mini Masterclass, with Kathryn Price 48 Get the Fires Burning by Dan Holloway 49 Question Corner - Lorraine Mace answers your questions on writing

Some other stuff

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

50 What We Think of Some Books

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

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

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.

52 Guess the Book 53 Crossword 54 Dear Ed - Letters of the satirical variety 55 Horoscopes - by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith

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

Editor’s Desk It’s definitely the time of year to curl up with a glass of wine by a roaring fire and read, and not only do we have an abundance of useful, funny, intelligent and thought-provoking articles and a crossword for you, we also have the announcement and stories of the winning entrants of our WWJ BIGGER Short Story Competition 2012 - three categories, nine works of fiction. We had more entries than ever before and I would like to thank and congratulate everyone for their participation; we here at WWJ Towers enjoyed ourselves immensely The Ed

reading the stories. I know that picking winners wasn’t easy, but pick them our judges did. Winners and five runners up from each category will be published in our first annual anthology, which will be available at the end of May.

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.

I am also delighted to announce that our second annual First Page Competition is now open after its huge success last year. Details can be found within and also on our website.

Crime is our theme this issue, and that’s not because we’ve committed any recently (well I haven’t at least, I can’t speak for the rest of the team, and you know what a rabble they can be). The lovely Tess Gerritsen, our cover author, in conversation with Gillian Hamer, Catriona Troth delves into The Story of the Detection Club, Andrew Crofts shares once more in The Art of Ghostwriting,

Copyright © 2013 Quinn Publications The contributors assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. All Rights reserved.

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

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

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

4 | Random Stuff

Sue Carver takes a clinical look at the popularity of crime fiction, Perry procrastinates whilst Derek rants, and there’s 60 Seconds with Malcolm Pryce and James Long.

Lorraine Mace tells us why she went for small (we’re talking publishers, not, you know ...), Danny gives us coverage of the food at the Wigtown Book Festival, and briefly mentions the books, and Sarah Bower puts forth a defence of genre fiction.

To give us a helping hand as we look toward the spring months, Sheila Bugler shares ten tips for writing crime, Kathryn is back with another Cornerstones Mini Masterclass, Dan gets the fires burning, and Lorraine answers your questions.

We have some other fun stuff and reviews at the end, as always.

I do hope you enjoy ...

Crime the serious genre

by Anne Stormont

I should say at the outset that I’m a passionate fan of the genre. I especially enjoy the crime writing of Ian Rankin, Susan Hill and Kate Atkinson. I wrote about my love of such books in the June 2010 edition of this magazine. And in the June 2012 edition, I shared my enjoyment of Sara Sheridan’s crime novel ‘Brighton Belle’. However, as a writer, I am daunted by the thought of actually writing crime fiction. Although to do so must be a fun and exciting challenge.

So, what makes it such a giving, all-round and satisfying sort of storytelling?

For readers, in common with other types of fiction, there is the pleasure or challenge of getting to know the main character. But the bonus in crime fiction is that, because the main character is the sleuth who is going to discover the perpetrator of some terrible crime, the reader will almost certainly be spending time with a passionate, quirky, driven individual. The inside of a crime fighter’s head is an interesting, challenging and often dark place to be.

Plot wise, crime fiction offers extra value over other genres because it will have more twists than a corkscrew. There’s the delight of a convoluted mystery to be solved and usually the satisfaction of a just resolution at the end. There’s also the challenge of trying to solve the criminal’s identity before the main character gets there and of identifying the red herrings along the way.

Settings can be infinitely varied too. After all, crime has always been, and always will be, part of human society. The reader can often have two genres for the price of one. You can have historical crime, sci-fi crime, horror crime – there are even child and teenage detectives in fiction for more junior readers.

More often than not, and also probably more so than in any other genre, the main character and their work/home environment will give rise to a whole series of novels. This means that the reader can form a long-term relationship with the crime solver. So the reader of a crime series gets the welcome return of a familiar character in a familiar setting, but also has the novelty of a new mystery with each new book. And in the best of the crime series, the reader will come to know the main character as a real, flawed human being – who, whilst retaining consistent characteristics, will also develop and change over time.

And, for writers, crime fiction also has a lot to offer. It could be argued that it’s probably the most challenging of the genres to do well, not least because it’s highly vulnerable to clichés of all sorts and because the plotting has to be so precise.

The author has to come up with an original and compelling lead character – true for all authors. But the constraints are tighter than in other genres. Although the crime fighter doesn’t have to be in the police, they will have to have some sort of technical and legal knowledge. They will have to have access to some of the paraphernalia of crime fighting. They will have to have the kind of lifestyle that allows them to be available 24/7 for the pursuit of the criminal. They will have to be single-minded, and resilient, but also be complex, fascinating and sympathetic. However, the author will have to be wary when creating the troubled-buttalented loner, that they don’t just copy all the other troubled-but-talented, lone detectives already out there in the world of crime fiction.

Writers of crime fiction must also be mistresses of plotting. Of all the genres, the plotting in crime writing will have to be the tightest, most complex and most unpredictable. Readers of crime fiction will not forgive the smallest of plot holes – one weak point in the plotting and the whole edifice crumbles. The motives, means and opportunities will have to be watertight, rock solid and utterly convincing.

But the restrictions faced when creating character and plot are not nearly so tight when it comes to setting. As mentioned above, when discussing readers of crime fiction, authors can blend two or more genres.

A grisly, gruesome crime could be committed in Georgian Edinburgh and it could be ingeniously solved by a romantic-but-thwarted-in-love, technically proficient, time-travelling detective from Mars, aided by her psychic, recovering-vampire sidekick.

Hmm, I think I’ve just come up with an idea. Maybe I’ll give this crime writing a go...

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Tess Gerritsen in conversation with Gillian Hamer

A diet of Nancy Drew novels, a degree in anthropology, a deep fascination with human behaviour, and a career in medicine … are undoubtedly the perfect ingredients needed to produce one of the most successful female crime writers of our generation.

Whilst on maternity leave from her job as a busy ER physician, Tess Gerritsen took up writing as a hobby. Her success was instant. Her debut short story competition entry won first prize in a statewide fiction contest. From there, she began writing romantic suspense novels, but her love of crime thrillers and the grittier aspects of human psychology were never far from her thoughts.

Gerritsen published her first medical thriller novel, Harvest, in 1996 – and celebrated her debut release by reaching #13 in the New York Times bestseller list. In 2001, her first crime thriller, The Surgeon, was released, and introduced the now infamous character of homicide detective, Jane Rizzoli – heralding the start of a fantastic career, across ten subsequent novels, with her partner, Dr Maura Isles.

Her books have sold over 25 million copies in forty countries, and she has numerous literary awards to her name. Her work has received high praise across the board - from media types to her fellow writers - for her intelligent, dark and intense writing style.

“Suspense doesn’t get smarter than this. Not just recommended but mandatory.” author Lee Child (reviewing Last to Die – August 2012) To celebrate our crime theme this month, we’re immensely proud to have had the opportunity to discuss the success of Rizzoli & Isles, her future plans, and to discover a few insights into the literary world of Tess Gerritsen.

This month at Words with Jam we have a ‘crime’ theme and we’re delighted to get chance to chat with you this issue. Looking at the success of your Rizzoli and Isles series, it seems more and more crime novels are being snapped up by television channels? Why do you think this is?

Crime has always been a favorite for tv shows, going all the way back to “Perry Mason” and “The Untouchables,” so I don’t think crime shows themselves are a new trend. What we’re seeing now is new kinds of sleuths: women (like Rizzoli & Isles), obsessive-compulsives (Monk), even serial killers (Dexter).

Since successful series are usually character-based, novels are the perfect source material. Crime novelists work hard, book after book, to create unique characters, and its unique characters that Hollywood’s looking for.

How were you first approached about the television adaptation of Rizzoli & Isles for the TNT Network in the US? I got an option offer from a producer named Bill Haber, who had been reading the books for years and had loved the characters of Jane and Maura. As he told me over the phone “I love your girls and I think they belong on television.” He focused straight away on character, not on the crime stories themselves. He thought the concept of female crime-fighting partners was something no one else on TV was doing. Not since “Cagney and Lacey” 30-some years ago have we seen female partners.

What were your initial thoughts? Or fears?

I was pretty pessimistic about the project ever coming to fruition. I’ve had a number of books either optioned or sold outright, and nothing ever came of it; I assumed this deal would hit a dead end, like all the others. I signed the option contract, cashed the check, and forgot about it. It’s the only way to stay sane when you deal with Hollywood. Don’t ever get your hopes up.

Did you have any concerns about how the plot and characters, particularly the complex relationships, would come across on the small screen?

I knew that Haber was very invested in the book characters, as I’d created them.

And the screenwriter he hired, Janet Tamaro, was diligent about reading the series and getting a good feel for what I’d created. As she told me later, she immediately got the sense that Jane and Maura were very much like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Jane operated on brash instinct and Maura on logic and science. As a shorthand for approaching these characters, I thought it was a pretty spot-on analysis -- even though I’d never actually realized that’s what I’d been doing! For TV, I knew there’d be changes -- of course there’d be. For one thing, TV Jane Rizzoli would no longer be the plain and frumpy woman she is in the books.

Both of your lead characters are feisty female roles.

What’s behind this decision? And do you think your background in the medical profession has any bearing on it?

Jane and Maura represent my experience in the working world, which is full of feisty and intelligent women. I’m a medical doctor, and the hospital is where you’ll find a whole host of brilliant, capable women. You want feisty? Talk to any ER nurse. The E.R. is where you’ll find a whole host of Jane Rizzolis, doing difficult and demanding jobs.

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How do you feel watching Angie Harmon (Rizzoli) and Sasha Alexander (Isles) on television? Are they as you created them in your head?

The big difference? Angie and Sasha are far more gorgeous than I ever imagined my characters in the books. Book Jane is decidedly NOT beautiful; in fact, a large part of her persona is about feeling ignored by men and struggling to prove her worth. Book Maura is a bit of a goth -- scary, dark-haired, and unapproachable. Clearly not what you see in the TV version.

What aspects of your writing will fans of your books recognize in the television version?

The family relationships are similar, with Jane’s mom and dad having issues.

Frost is very much the same personality as in the books, although now he’s African American. The crime stories are similarly dark, sometimes grotesque.

The working partnership is one of skill and mutual trust -- although that friendship you see in the TV show took a while to develop in the books. It wasn’t until around the fourth book where you see Jane and Maura truly becoming friends.

Were there any changes made in the television versions that you weren’t altogether happy with? Or alternatively, any you feel enhanced the story?

I really wanted Maura to retain her serial-killer mother! In the books, Maura discovers that her birth parents were serial killers, and her killer-mom is now in prison. This dark history makes Maura question her own reasons for being obsessed with death, and it troubles her that she has the genes of monsters. I guess it was a bit too dark for TV.

There obviously have to be changes in bringing books to screen. How do you feel television handles complex plots and storylines in crime fiction, and what do you consider the pluses and minuses in this regard?

A TV series is really the perfect vehicle for handling complex storylines, because you get to build on the relationships week after week, and characters can drop in and drop out. I also love the fact you can have a combination of long-running storylines as well as stories that can be wrapped up in one episode. It’s a bit like a book series. With every book, I try to wrap up the mystery, but the longer arcs of family and relationships continue to play out over the years. The challenge, for both books and TV, is to avoid jumping the shark and going off in absurd directions.

Looking at the actual production of TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles, how much involvement do you have in the making of the series? Would you like more or prefer less?

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I have no involvement with the series. I find the prospect pretty frightening, actually -- the killer deadlines, the need to juggle the demands of so many different entities, the constant pressure. I have the highest respect for Janet Tamaro and her team, because she manages to succeed at what would probably fry me to a crisp.

very first novel, a romantic thriller, had about thirteen dead bodies in it. I guess I should have realized that I was destined to be a crime novelist.

How close did you hope the television adaptation would be to your novel – a mirror image or do you prefer some originality?

I adore character-based crime fiction, as well as historical crime fiction. I love Kate Atkinson and I was a huge fan of Arianna Franklin, who has tragically passed away.

I’m realistic enough to understand that TV or film can almost never be a mirror image to a book. Of course, as the author, I would have preferred everything to be absolutely identical!

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?

You’re such a prolific writer, with more than twenty novels across genres to your name. What motivates you nowadays, and is there an additional spark when you write now, knowing your work could develop into much more than just the original novel?

For me, it’s always about the book. I really don’t think beyond that, because the book is the only thing I can control. What motivates me now is the same thing that motivated me when I wrote my very first novel: “what happens next in this story?” I write because I want to know that answer.

You’ve written a historical novel set in Boston (The Bone Garden) is this something you’d like to see as a film or television production?

I would LOVE to see that book made into a film. In fact, of all the books I’ve written, that’s the one story I’d most like to see as a feature film. It has such a dark sense of history and it explores a real and horrifying time in medicine, when doctors were unwittingly killing hundreds, maybe thousands, of women.

Other than the obvious medical expertise, what do you think your medical career as a physician has brought to your crime writing?

Medical expertise is the factual part; what I also bring to it is the sensory experience of what it’s like to be in medicine. The sights, smells, and sounds of panic in the emergency room. The way a doctor thinks when he approaches a problem. And a look at where medicine intersects with police work.

You handle some gritty, complex storylines in your crime novels, many that carry subliminal messages about today’s society. Which of your novels have you found the hardest to write? And which has given you the most satisfaction?

The hardest novel to write was probably VANISH, because it dealt with the disturbing topic of sex slavery in America. There were sexual assault scenes in that book that I struggled with, because I wanted to convey horror without being exploitative. It’s a very fine line. I want the reader to feel powerful emotions, but I try to avoid being too graphic.

Are you planning any surprises in upcoming novels or have any new projects in the pipeline that will see a change of direction in your writing?

I can only see ahead one novel at a time. When surprises pop up, they usually occur to me on the fly.

I believe you were brought up on a diet of Nancy Drew books, just as I was raised on Enid Blyton. Yet you chose to write romantic fiction to begin with, so what persuaded you to turn to crime?

Even while I was writing romance novels, there was always crime in them. My

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Who are your heroes or heroines today in crime fiction writing?

There’s no way to follow in another writer’s footsteps, because every career is different. I never planned my success. It simply happened because I wrote the best books I could, and I always trusted my instincts. I follow my emotions when I tell a story. I need to know what every character is feeling. I instinctively twist a story in the way that evokes the strongest emotions possible. And I give myself permission to write a really bad first draft. Don’t worry about getting it right the first time; just get it down!

International Prizes

§

Short Memoir Prize €1,000 HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS SHORT STORY ASSSOCIATION

Judge: Molly McCloskey

ANNUAL OPEN

author of the acclaimed memoir Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother.

SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Word limit is 4,000. Entry fee €16. Closes 31 Jan ‘13. §

£400 FIRST PRIZE Closing date 31st July 2013 £5 entry or 3 for £12 No connection to Scotland by entrant or theme required

We also run a mentoring service to bring your writing up to competition & publishing standards

Flash Fiction Prize €1,000 Judge: Peter Benson.

Word limit is 300. Entry fee €14. Closes 28 Feb ’13. § Submissions by post or online. Read the full details on

£59 for 3 stories; £99 for a work in progress; £129 for a full length novel

www.hissac.co.uk info@hissac.co.uk

www.fishpublishing.com The best 10 submissions from each Prize will be published in the 2013 Fish Anthology.

Fish Publishing, Durrus, Bantry, Co Cork, Ireland info@fishpublishing.com

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Sarah Butler in conversation with Dan Holloway

Sarah Butler is someone you will be hearing a lot about this year. Her debut novel, Ten Things I’ve Learned About Love, is published by Picador in March and has already garnered favourable comparisons to Alice Munro and David Nicholls. I was lucky enough to hear her read the first two chapters at the Poetry cafe last year and I can vouch that it’s actually even better than that. So I am especially thrilled that Sarah took time out to talk to me about it, and the other fabulous things she does.

years back the whole thing just felt impossible to break into. I do believe that if you write something brilliant it will find a place, somewhere, at some point, as long as you don’t give up on it.

I’m sure you’ve told the story a hundred times, but go on, once more. How did you meet your agent?

The thing that strikes me straightaway about Ten Things... is its symmetry. To what extent did you find this symmetry allowed you to illuminate and amplify each character, and to what extent did you feel constrained by it?

The more interesting story is actually how I met my editor, as I ended up ‘selling’ my book direct to Picador rather than via an agent.

I was teaching creative writing at an international summer school in Cambridge in the summer of 2011. At the time I was sending my novel manuscript out to agents and stacking up the rejections. My co-tutor (the fabulous Emma Sweeney: www.emmaclairesweeney.com) organised an event for our students with Francesca Main (then editor at Simon and Schuster and about to start a senior editor job at Picador) and Ed Hogan who talked about the process of editing Ed’s brilliant novel The Hunger Trace. We went for dinner after the event, at the end of which Francesca gave me her card and asked me to send her my novel, which, of course, I did.

A few weeks later she sent me a lovely email, saying she loved the novel but that “it didn’t quite feel ready yet.” She asked me some really really helpful questions that helped me looked at the novel afresh and see – quite suddenly and quite clearly – what I needed to do. I restructured the entire thing, and cut 15,000 words along the way. I took my time, got some writer-friends to read it, and also applied for and got a ‘free read’ from The Literary Consultancy via Spread the Word. I knew I had one more shot at sending it back to Francesca and it had to be the absolute best I could make it.

I sent the revised manuscript back to Francesca in January 2012. She got in touch to say she loved it and I then had an excruciating two and a half week wait while she took it through the various meetings at Picador to get the go ahead to buy it. And then one freezing cold day in February she called and offered me a two book deal. I had wanted this to happen since I knew what books were – it really was an extraordinary moment.

Three weeks later Picador had sold rights in seven countries (it now totals fourteen countries). I decided to get an agent and am now represented by Andrew Kidd.

A lot of writers I know complain endlessly that the publishing industry isn’t prepared to take a risk on new writers who nudge at the electric fences around literary genres. The general excitement about Ten Things... would seem to be evidence that the opposite is true?

What’s your sense?

Ooo, I didn’t know I was nudging at any electric fences! I suppose Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is possibly treading a line between literary and commercial (I always find that distinction a bit strange, because it seems to assume literary fiction won’t sell!). It’s difficult when you’re speaking from a position of having got a deal, but.... I did spend 10 years and write two other novels which didn’t get published before I got here. My gut feeling is that publishers are buying books by new writers – I know quite a few brilliant writers who have been writing for years and have recently got deals, whereas a few

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And do you think things have changed in the last year or so, with publishers emerging a little from their entrenched positions?

I don’t know if I feel sufficiently qualified to answer, but as I said above I do think there’s maybe been a shift and I’m certainly aware of more of my contemporaries getting book deals who have been banging on that door for a long time. Things are shifting: e-books, self-publishing, the successes of independent presses, all that I think is feeding into some kind of change.

Publishers know they have to keep up.

The restructure I mentioned above was actually the creation of that symmetry.

Originally the novel was in three parts: 1. Alice, 2. Daniel, 3. London. Parts 1 and 2 were in the first person, from Alice and Daniel’s points of view respectively; part 3 was in the third person, and only Alice’s section had the lists at the start of each chapter. I decided to change the book so it was all in the first person, alternating between Alice and Daniel’s voices, and with a list of ‘ten things’ at the beginning of every chapter. Once I’d created this, the whole thing seemed to fall into place. It was difficult at times, because there were plot considerations about who told what when, which I didn’t have to worry about when their voices were in stand-alone sections, but I think the book’s a hundred times stronger for it. It certainly helped me differentiate between their voices more than I had in earlier drafts, and make more conscious decisions about their similarities and differences.

It’s become a bit of a cliché for critics to say to writers “London is the real protagonist in your story?” but, um, to what extent is London the real protagonist in your story?

I feel saying London is the ‘real’ protagonist implies Alice and Daniel aren’t ‘real’! Maybe that original structure - 1. Alice, 2. Daniel, 3. London - is one answer: that London is as much of a protagonist as the two main characters.

London is more than just a backdrop, that’s for sure. I set out to think about how someone (Daniel) might find a home in a city in a way that didn’t involve owning or renting a physical house. Maybe I was also looking for a way to write about a city that I love, to find a way to conjure it on the page.

You have done some amazing work with Urban Words.

Could you tell us a little about that and how that has fed into your awareness of the relationship between people and their cities?

I set up UrbanWords in 2006 because I realised the potential for writing and writers to engage with the process of regeneration and urban change.

Over the last six years I’ve worked in the most extraordinary places – from the marshlands of Belvedere in East London to the Central line (London Underground), to Great Ormond Street Hospital, to Elephant and Castle shopping centre, to a building site in Bristol, to the strange mix of urban wasteland and new development that is the Greenwich Peninsula. All these projects have been participatory and driven by conversation and questioning, so they have allowed me to really explore how people connect to places, how places both contain and create stories, how and where and why people feel at

home (or not) in a place. Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is the first novel I’ve written which has really drawn on this wealth of experience and conversation.

How important for you is the concept of home?

I’m not 100% sure why, but I’ve always been interested in the idea of home.

Being at home, being in exile, being away, fascinates me. Maybe it’s because I feel it’s somehow at the heart of our connection to place. There are places I feel at home even when I’ve never been there before, and other places where I feel unsettled, or disconnected.

I do subscribe to the idea that place is created not just by topography, architecture, etc. but also by people. I’d say the same about home too.

Sometimes feeling ‘at home’ is about who you are with rather than where you are.

I’ve worked for the last few years in Elephant and Castle in London, with the fabulous photographer Eva Sajovic: www.evasajovic.co.uk who is as obsessed with the idea of home as I am! We created a book called Home From Home (www.urbanwords.org.uk/2011/07/home-from-home) , and then did a residency at the Cuming Museum called Collecting Home (www.urbanwords. org.uk/2011/11/collecting-home) , which involved exploring the idea of home through objects.

The experience of having to leave the house I bought with my ex-partner (which happened just as I started writing Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love), after which I spent a period of time ‘sofa-surfing’ around London, probably crystallised my interest in home, but I think it’s always been there.

Is home the place you spend your life wanting to return to, the place you spend your life wanting to reach, or the place you spend the journey?

What an interesting question! There’s something interesting about time in there too: do you look back (nostalgically?), look forward (in a kind of a yearning way?) or live in the here and the now? I think nostalgia plays a big role in many people’s idea of home, which perhaps ties in with nostalgia for childhood/ youth. And it was interesting for me, re-reading Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love just before it went to print, to find I had written a book full of longing, for home and for love, but perhaps I equate those two things?

I’m not sure if I think ‘home’ is just one place either, which is maybe why I like the idea of it being ‘the place you spend the journey’ – perhaps home is shifting, and ephemeral, and not always geographically specific?

I just looked up home in the OED and the fifth entry, from the 18th Century is: ‘A place where a thing flourishes or from which it originates.’ I love the idea of home as a place where something flourishes, so maybe I can offer that as an alternative definition?

Which character came first, Alice or Daniel? And, returning to the issue of symmetry, did you have to fight for the independence of the second character from the expectations thrown up by the first?

They both came together, because they came with the story, if that makes sense. But Daniel was the strongest for me. Yes, I did have to work hard to find Alice’s own story alongside his, but then I found her voice easier than his, so I think it probably all balanced out in the end.

Thank you so much for your time. Just one further question. You have recently moved out of London. How do you think that will affect your writing?

I don’t know yet! In terms of writing and place: I am setting my next novel in Manchester, which – while I grew up near here – I know much less well than London. It is a very different city, so perhaps I will need to find different ways to write it, but then my characters in the new book are very different from Alice and Daniel, so the writing would be different anyway. I am excited about exploring all of this.

OK, the obligatory “this is a magazine for writers” question. I first came across your book when I heard you read from it at the Poetry Cafe last year. The thing that struck me straightaway was the distinctive and instantly engaging voce. How hard is it first to attain and then to sustain such an original voice?

I’m glad you thought that! It is extraordinarily hard – or at least I found it so. The characters and the plot of the book came to me very easily and very quickly, but finding voices for Alice and Daniel took a long time and a lot of work. I found Daniel a particularly problematic character to write. I spent months writing diaries, letters and bits of back story, volunteering at homeless hostels, reading books and blogs, all the time trying to find his voice. He is so far away from me – his age, his gender, his situation. I had to work really hard to fully imagine him and his life, and get myself in a position where I felt I could inhabit his character enough to write his story.

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Under the Eyes of Eric the Skull:

The Story of The Detection Club

by Catriona Troth

Almost a year ago now, I was in Nicholas Hoare’s, an independent bookstore in Toronto that specialises in imported English books. Searching among the displays for something I could slip into my luggage, my eye was caught by The Floating Admiral, or more especially by its list of authors:

By Members of The Detection Club including Agatha Christie Dorothy L Sayers and GK Chesterton.

At that point, I had never heard of the Detection Club. But the mention of Sayers was irresistible. Decision made, I took the slim volume to the till.

Without Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or Act of God The Detection Club was founded around 1928, at the dawning of the so-called Golden Age of British detective fiction, by Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L Sayers and Ronald Knox. It was – and still is – a byinvitation-only club for the very best writers of detective fiction which, as Sayers put it, “exists chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable intervals and of talking illimitable shop.”

Looking down the list of members from the 1930s, Sayers, Christie and Chesterton need little introduction. Ronald Knox (creator of the insurance detective Miles Bredon), Anthony Berkeley (creator of Robert Sheringham) and Freeman Wills Croft (creator of Inspector French) are still tolerably well known to fans of Golden Age detection.

Others you might know without realising it. Canon Whitechurch’s Railway Detective can be heard on BBC Radio 4 Extra, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. And Gladys Mitchell’s psychologist sleuth, Mrs Bradley, was portrayed on TV by Diana Rigg.

Others have vanished into almost complete obscurity. Henry Wade, High Sheriff of Buckingham, brought to bear his knowledge of rural justice and did much to establish the realistic police procedural.

John Rhode was one of several pen-names of the prolific Cecil Street.

Milward Kennedy’s career may have been blighted by a libel case arising from a novel he based too closely on a true life, but unsolved, murder.

And Edgar Jepson is perhaps best known as the grandfather of Fay Weldon.

Those early members of the Detection Club, and Sayers in particular, clearly had a strong sense of mischief. From a letter written by Anthony Berkeley to GK Chesterton in 1931, it would seem that it was Sayers who devised the oath (still taken by all members of the club): “Do you solemnly swear that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow on them, and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery,

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Coincidence or Act of God?” Gladys Mitchell hinted that it was the husband of Helen Smith (writing partner of Clemence Dane and co-creator of the theatrical detective Sir John Saumerez) who ‘acquired’ Eric the Skull from a London Hospital, for use in the solemn ceremony – also devised by Sayers – to invest a new chairman. According to Peter Lovesey*, Eric the Skull - a real human skull with red light bulbs for eyes - is the sole survivor of the paraphernalia from that original ceremony, which also involved a red-lined cloak made especially for GK Chesterton, black candles and an order of initiation that has since changed several times over. *The 2011 Dorothy L Sayers lecture

Knox’s Decalogue Ronald Knox codified the principles of the Detection Club in a set of ten rules – his Decalogue as he called them. These rules, like the oath, were drawn up in reaction to the sensationalism and hocus pocus of the Fu Manchu style of stories of Edwardian writers like Sax Rohmer (which explains Knox’s tongue-in-cheek prohibition in rule number 5: no Chinaman must figure in the story.) They were intended to ensure that the reader had as fair a chance as the detective of solving the mystery. As such, “the detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader,” and “no accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.” The rules also prohibited “undiscovered poisons,” “more than one secret room or passage” and “all supernatural or preternatural agencies.”

If you compare Knox’s ten rules to the twenty drawn up around the same time in the US by SS Vine (creator of Philo Vance), many are similar in intent, but there are some telling additions. According to Vine, there must be ‘no love interest’ (rule number 3), and ‘ no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no “atmospheric” preoccupations’ (rule number 16). You have to wonder to what extent those two – both regularly and comprehensively broken by British writers like Sayers and Allingham, and more recently by the likes of Kate Atkinson – contributed to setting modern British and American detective fiction off on their different tracks.

The reaction of the Golden Age writers away from jiggery-pokery, and their commitment to ‘play fair’ with the reader led to books that were in essence carefully constructed mental puzzles – what writer and critic Julian Symons rather cruelly referred to as the ‘humdrum’ school of detective writing.

But it also produced writers who were interested in the psychological motivations behind the crime, who played fast and loose with the form, whose detectives could be human and fallible. The four ‘queens’ of the Golden Age – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh (and I’d personally add Josephine Tey to that list) – gained

Clive Stafford Smith

their crowns because, at the height of their powers they raised their writing far beyond mere mental games and wrote novels that people have wanted to return to again and again.

Ronald Knox when having, as I fondly imagined, cleared up much that was obscure, I handed the problem on to him.”

The Floating Admiral

And After

So what about that slim volume I picked up at Nicholas Hoare’s?

I’d expected a collection of short stories, but it turned out to be something far more intriguing. The Floating Admiral is a collaborative story, a parlour game played by twelve members of the club. Each author in turn wrote one instalment, taking the clues left by the previous writers, interpreting them as best they could, placing their own twist upon matters, and then in turn presenting a new set of problems for those that followed.

According to the rules, each writer was obliged to deal fairly with the difficulties left for them by the previous author and not to treat them as aberrations. They must construct their segment with a definite solution in mind and be able to explain their own clues ‘coherently and plausibly’.

The result is an amusingly twisted tale – a good, if not great, Golden Age detective story. But what makes The Floating Admiral unmissable is the Appendix, in which each author explains the solution they had in mind as they wrote their chapter. The way that solution twists and turns, as each author tries to makes sense of what has gone before, surely debunks forever Sherlock Holmes’s famous injunction that “the facts admit of only one explanation.” As Sayers puts it in her introduction: “The helpless bewilderment into which I was plunged on receipt of Mr Milward Kennedy’s little bunch of brain teasers was, apparently, fully equalled by the hideous sensation of bafflement which overcame Father

The second book-length outing for the Detection Club was Ask a Policeman. The problem, here set by John Rhode, is that a murder has been committed that implicates so many members of the establishment – including a senior detective at Scotland Yard – that the Home Office is forced to call in four amateur detectives and give them forty-eight hours to solve the problem. The twist is that the four contributing authors each ‘swap’ detectives. For me, the result is more parody than detection. Anthony Berkeley’s portrayal of Sayers’ sleuth Peter Wimsey, in particular, is funny but heavy handed. (Rumour has it that Sayers herself was none too pleased with it.) A tantalising addition to the 2012 edition is Christie’s essay, written for publication in a Russian magazine, in which she discusses her fellow crime writers with disarming candour.

Having tested each other’s powers of detection with The Floating Admiral, the Detection Club went on to pit themselves against a real life Scotland Yard detective, with Six Against the Yard (due to be republished in August 2013).

More recently, the Detection Club has published collections of short stories, but never again these ‘parlour game’ books, which is a pity. It’s irresistible to imagine what Val McDermid would make of Jackson Brodie, or how current president Simon Brett would tackle a problem set in Rebus’s Edinburgh. But perhaps today’s publishing world is too cutthroat to admit of such frivolity.

Three Queens.

Three Aces.

by Catriona Troth

Sayers. Allingham. Tey. I’ve loved those three for as long as I can remember.

It all started, like so many of my literary excursions, with a battered copy of a paperback found on my parents’ bookshelves. Its red and black cover showing an effigy in a mortar board and gown hanging in a doorway, against the background of an Oxford college: Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read that book. I fell in love with Wimsey and wanted to be Harriet. I maintain no one has captured the moment of recognition that you have fallen in love better than Sayers did in this scene in a punt on the river: Peter is reading Harriet’s dossier of the crime and she has nothing to do but watch. She begins to study the details of his face. He looks up and catches her and she flushes scarlet. When she looks again, “His eyes were riveted upon the manuscript again, but he breathed as though he had been running... ...She was conscious of every movement, of every page he turned, of every breath he drew. She seemed to be separately conscious of every bone in his body. At length he spoke and she wondered how she could ever have mistaken another man’s voice for his.”

And what writer could ask for a better life partner than one who tells her, “What would it matter [that it hurts like hell] if it makes a good book?” (“The protective male? He was being about as protective as a tin opener.”)

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No sooner had I finished Gaudy Night than I had to go back and devour every syllable of their courtship, from Strong Poison on. And when that was done, I went on to the rest of Sayers’ oeuvre, from Whose Body to Nine Tailors.

But there was always something a little off, for me, about where Sayers left the newly married Peter and Harriet at the end of Busman’s Honeymoon. Dramatic and moving it might be, but the fact that she never wrote about them again – except fleetingly in a short story called ‘Tallboys’ – left them stranded in an unbearably sad place. For years, I couldn’t bring myself to read that book again, though all the others were read until the pages turned yellow and split from the spine.

Then came Jill Paton Walsh. Using an unfinished manuscript found in the safe of Sayers’ agent, she wrote Thrones and Dominations, which brought Peter and Harriet back from their interrupted honeymoon to the London of George V’s death. And then, with Presumption of Death, on into wartime and family life. Finally, having seen their marriage unfold as I hoped and imagined when I first read Gaudy Night, I was at last able to return to Busman’s Honeymoon and appreciate the raw honesty of that ending for what it was.

Josephine Tey arrived via my other favourite literary conduit, my uncle.

He lent me a copy of Daughter of Time, Tey’s novel about the death of the Princes in the Tower.

The book opens with Tey’s regular detective, Alan Grant stuck in a hospital bed. Out of boredom, he becomes fascinated by the question of Richard III’s guilt or innocence and with the help of a couple of friends, begins to investigate as if it were any other cold case. (If this sounds familiar, it might be because it’s the book that inspired Colin Dexter’s The Wench is Dead, where Morse, laid up in hospital, tries to solve a hundred year old drowning.) The book turned me into something of a Richard III obsessive, and I’m not the only one. In 1990, the Crime Writers’ Association voted Daughter of Time the greatest crime novel of all time, and five years later, it came fourth in a similar poll by the Mystery Writers of America.

But it is Tey’s Brat Farrar that has stayed in my head ever since I first read it.

Brat Farrar has elements of the classic French tale, Martin Guerre, where a stranger turns up professing to be a long lost family member and appears to pass every test to prove who he is. Like most of Tey’s books, it’s not constructed as a traditional whodunit. We know from the start that the man claiming to be Patrick Ashby is not who he says he is, but a lookalike called Brat Farrar. We might expect the plot to turn on whether the imposter will be unmasked before he succeeds in swindling Patrick’s twin out of his rightful inheritance, but Tey subverts our expectations. Slowly, layer by layer, she peels back family secrets until we discover what really happened to the thirteen year old Patrick, and who Brat Farrar really is.

What made the story stick in my mind was the subtle psychology of Tey’s unearthing of the truth. The book tests the limits of what people will do or condone, and judges them in that light.

Yet there are problematic elements to Tey’s writing. She clearly believes that criminals are born not made, and nowhere is the consequence of this line of thinking demonstrated more disturbingly than in The Franchise Affair.

The Franchise Affair is based on a historical case of a young girl who claims to have been abducted and held hostage in a lonely house. She can describe things about it in minute detail and the women accused of holding her seem to have no defence against her accusations. The only way the two women can clear themselves is to prove where the girl, who was only 15 at the time, really was when she was supposedly locked away in their attic.

In some ways, Tey’s novel seems highly contemporary. One of the turning points of the story, for instance, is a vicious tabloid newspaper campaign that demonises the accused women and beatifies their supposed victim. But if it were set in 2013, the true story of what happened to the girl would unquestionably be treated as a case of child abduction and sexual exploitation. Tey, writing 60 years earlier, has no qualms in laying the blame squarely on the shoulders of the girl. That

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yawning gulf in attitude comes as a shock and makes it a difficult book to read.

After Sayers and Tey, in my discovery of the Golden Agers, came Margery Allingham.

Allingham’s detective, like Sayers’, is an aristocratic amateur. Albert Campion may, in fact, have begun life as a parody of Peter Wimsey, but Allingham was not the sort of writer to be content with pastiche. Over 17 novels, Campion became very much his own person. Like Wimsey, he wooed and wedded his wife over the course of several books, and like Wimsey, his bride was his intellectual equal – in his case the young aircraft engineer, Lady Amanda Fitton. But unlike the Wimseys, their story continued through the war and into marriage and children.

Allingham has a finely-honed gift for description and characterisation. How’s this for a paragraph that brings three individuals to life in as many sentences?

The door shuddering open had admitted three excited people. Two of them, both male, were almost beside themselves with the joyous adventure of getting home through London in a real peasouper. One of these was six and the other was sixty. The third of the party, who was pale and a little breathless from the responsibility of controlling the others, was a girl. She was eight.

Or this sentence for capturing the feel of a grand but run-down old house: It reminded him of his school days, since all the architectural features seemed several sizes larger than he personally required.

Allingham’s characters can tend toward the wildly eccentric (never more so than the Palindone family in More Work for the Undertaker). But they are never two dimensional. As for her regular cast, from Campion’s manservant, Lugg – an ex-burglar as unlike Wimsey’s Bunter as you’d find in a whole pantheon of literary servants – to the three generations of policemen Campion has dealings with – Oates, Yeo and the delightful Charlie Luke, with his unconscious gift for impersonation – they will twine themselves round your heart.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Allingham isn’t afraid to explore London’s criminal underbelly. Her tour de force, The Tiger in the Smoke, begins in the London fog, with a young war widow cruelly induced to believe her husband may be alive after all. But the ‘tiger’ of the title is Jack Havoc, a murderer out of jail and loose again on the streets of London.

Havoc is vicious, violent, described by Oates as, “A truly wicked man. In all my experience, I’ve only met three... I can’t describe it, but you’ll recognise it if you see it. It’s like seeing death for the first time.”

And then there’s Tiddy Doll with his gang of petty criminals – Fagin to Havoc’s Bill Sikes.

The Tiger in the Smoke is a short book – a mere 224 pages to Gaudy Night’s 564. But Allingham uses this intense thriller to explore the boundaries between madness and evil. It’s a book years ahead of its time.

It’s true that the language of these queens of the Golden Age can seem flowery and self-consciously literary. Compared to the unrelenting violence that has become commonplace, you’d describe them as ‘cosy’.

And yes, at times they reflect the prejudices of their age. (How, I wonder, will future generations judge today’s glib association of ‘Islamic’ with ‘terrorism?’ Every age has its own blind spots...) Yet what all three did was show that crime fiction could be so much more than either sensationalism or mental puzzles. They showed that beautiful writing, complex characters and psychological depth had as much a place in detective novels as in literary fiction. And they paved the way for the convention busting books of modern British crime writing.

Why I Went Small

by Lorraine Mace who sometimes comes out to play as Frances di Plino Are you at the stage where you have a novel that’s been critiqued to within an inch of its life? Rewritten it so many times you can’t bear to look at it? Something you know is as good as you’re ever going to get it? Are you ready to send it out into the big wide world, but don’t have an agent, so can’t get anywhere near the big publishers? Feel that self-publishing is the only answer, but know deep inside that it isn’t the right option for you?

A couple of years ago that’s exactly where I was after I’d completed my first adult novel. I’d written a hard-boiled crime thriller, as far removed from the children’s books I usually wrote as it was possible to get. From coming of age adventure stories, I’d moved into the world of serial killers and sordid sex crimes.

I had an agent for my children’s novels and naively thought she would be able to market the adult novel as well. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Being a specialist children’s agent, she knew even less than I did about which publishers and editors to approach.

I had to make a decision – stay with the children’s agent and approach publishers myself, or try to find an agent who handled both genres? I decided to go it alone for a while and see how things panned out.

One thing I was certain about was that selfpublishing wasn’t an option. Not, I hasten to add, because there is anything wrong with going that route, but you have to be sure it’s the right one for you. I knew it wasn’t for me because I am far too needy as a writer. For me, the knowledge that someone feels my work is good enough for them to put in their time, effort and finances to publish it, is essential. I don’t have the self-confidence required to stand up and say: this is good enough as it is. I need external validation, as well as editorial feedback and marketing support.

Because all the larger houses want submissions through an agent, I concentrated on smaller houses that would accept non-agented subs. What I hadn’t realised was that the success I’d achieved as a writer up to that point wold almost count against, rather than for, me.

There I was, a humour writer and aspiring children’s author subbing a book that opens in the killer’s point of view as he gets his rocks off after inflicting terrible violence on a defenceless woman.

As you can imagine, the covering letter took several rewrites to get it to sound credible. What’s my writing background? I’m the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and I write kids’ books. Yeah, that’s just

what a publisher of crime is looking for in an author platform!

I sent the opening chapters off to a small house that had a strong crime imprint and was asked for the full ms. A few months and several emails later, the house declined. Bad Moon Rising had made it as far as the acquisition meeting, but fell at the final hurdle. What came with the rejection was a lovely personal letter saying that the editor had really wanted to take the book on, which gave me the confidence to try another house. And this is where Crooked Cat Publishing came in.

A new house, they hadn’t long been open to submissions, but were already inundated. I sent off my submission as per their website and was delighted when they asked for the full. At the time, Crooked Cat Publishing, set up by husband and wife Laurence and Steph Patterson, was only intended to be an e-publisher, but such is the success of their venture that they now also publish in paperback as well. The name is derived from a British children’s nursery rhyme and was chosen because it was unusual and memorable.

When Bad Moon Rising was accepted, my biggest fear was that no editing would be demanded. Had that been the case, I was ready to decline the offer. I like to think I can write and I run my own critique service, so know what’s what when it comes to getting the most out of a story, but I also know that authors are not the best people to judge their own work. When I was presented with a manuscript marked up with questions, suggestions and comments I was overjoyed – this was exactly what I’d been hoping for – but when the editor pointed out the need for a couple of additional scenes, I almost wept with joy. I knew then that I was in the hands of professionals who would polish my story until it shone.

Bad Moon Rising was published under a pseudonym to distance it from my other writing.

This turned out to be both blessing and curse. As Frances di Plino (the feminine form of my Italian great-grandfather’s name) I was free to delve into the dark side of fiction in blog posts and interviews, but because I wasn’t using my own name, the author platform I’ve spent the best part of ten years building was completely useless when it came to getting the word out.

It will be a year next month since Bad Moon Rising was released and it’s been a year of wonderful triumphs and some disappointments. Do I regret going with a small press publisher? No, not at all, given my time over I would submit to Crooked Cat Publishing without hesitation. In fact, that is exactly what I intend to do just as soon as the next in the Paolo Storey series is ready for submission. Only problem is, the next one is called Someday Never Comes. At the rate I’m writing it, the title could easily come true!

Crooked Cat Publishing: www.crookedcatpublishing.com Crooked Cat Bookstore: www.crookedcatbooks.com

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The Art of Ghostwriting ... with Andrew Crofts

by Gillian Hamer

In conjunction with this issue’s crime theme, we speak to Andrew Crofts, who as well as an outstanding fiction author in his own right, is known as one of Britain’s most prolific and successful ghostwriters.

Andrew has published more than eighty books, many of which were Sunday Times number one bestsellers.

His name first became known amongst publishers for the stories he brought them by the otherwise disenfranchised. Travelling all over the world he worked with victims of enforced marriages in North Africa and the Middle East, sex workers in the Far East, orphans in war-torn areas like Croatia and dictatorships like Romania, victims of crimes and abused children everywhere. He also worked with members of the criminal fraternity.

The enormous success of these books brought many very different people to his door; first came the celebrities from the worlds of film, music, television and sport, and then the real elite in the form of world leaders and the mysterious, powerful people who finance them, arm them and, in some cases, control them.

Throughout his bestseller, “The Ghost”, Robert Harris quotes Andrew’s seminal book, “Ghostwriting”. No mean claim to fame indeed. Harris’s book went on to become a major movie by the same name, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Ewan McGregor as the eponymous ghost.

The opening lines in Robert Harris’s book sum up Andrew’s philosophy: “Of all the advantages ghosting offers, one of the greatest must be the opportunity that you get to meet people of interest.” – Andrew Crofts, Ghostwriting.

I find the whole subject of ghost writing fascinating, but as we’re focusing on crime in particular in this issue, can you remember the first crime-based experience you were involved with?

The first was probably “Just a Boy” which I wrote for Richard McCann. Richard’s mother was the first victim of the Yorkshire Ripper. Richard was five years old at the time and the book was about how the murder of a woman can ruin a family and trigger decades of deprivation and abuse. Richard’s entire childhood was overshadowed first by the murder and then by the hunt for the Ripper, which saturated the media for years with his mother’s face forever appearing in the papers as the list of victims continued to grow.

How did completion of your first crimerelated ghost book leave you feeling?

Were you inspired to try to help in any way or were you disillusioned by the experience?

“Just a Boy” was a huge success, staying at number one

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in the Sunday Times for many weeks, and Richard has consequently gone on to build a wonderful career as an inspirational speaker. I know that writing that first book was enormously empowering for him and that made it a very satisfying experience for me. I have worked with many other victims of crime as well as many criminals and I think that simply telling their stories for them is a help.

Without naming names, if necessary, whose story have you found the most interesting, and why?

I find them all interesting at the time of writing because I am nearly always learning about their worlds as I am writing. “Sold” by Zana Muhsen, the story of a young Birmingham girl who was sold as a child bride in the Yemen was especially fascinating, possibly because I had never been to the Yemen and so I was learning new things in the same way the readers eventually were.

Have you ever had your preconceptions about a person, place or crime completely changed by your work on a book? And if so, can you give an example.

I tend not to have many preconceptions. I am always open to listening to someone’s side of any story. Very few people are beyond redemption, even professional assassins and tin-pot dictators, and even those who are, are still very interesting.

I started out thinking that child abuse was a horrible rarity and by the end I had realised that it is very widespread indeed, as the rest of the world is now finding out.

There must be a cross section of crimes you cover, what have you found the most harrowing and which have you found the most inspirational?

“Cry Silent Tears” by Joe Peters, which told the story of a little boy who fell into the hands of a paedophile ring, was incredibly harrowing, but also “For the Love of Julie” by Ann Ming which told the inspirational story of how Ann struggled to get the law of “double jeopardy” changed in order to get her daughter’s murderer put away.

Have you ever taken any of the crimes, criminals or cases home with you – either emotionally or physically?

I tend to keep work and home separate if I can, partly because people talk more feely if they are in their own environments. There have been occasions, however, where we have given shelter to people when they have become friends and obviously need a bit of extra help.

My family have always been very understanding on these occasions. We have also had one or two “retired”

gangsters and a notorious hooker/ madam to stay, all of which were educative experiences for the children.

I believe you’ve worked with people involved in human trafficking, what can you tell us about that experience?

As a writer, I’m curious how you choose your tone? Do you aim for clarity, persuasion, emotional influence and does it change according to subject?

They have always been the victims of trafficking rather than the perpetrators. It is the modern version of slavery and much more widespread than most people imagine.

The tone chooses itself. You get to know the person and you know how they talk and how they would write if they could. You also have to bear in mind that the reader needs things to be clear and the publisher needs as much emotion and drama as you can find. Once you put all those things together you instinctively know what you have to do.

Have you ever felt in danger in any of your assignments? Can you give us a story if so?

How much does your approach change when writing your own books?

I tend to be so absorbed in whatever story I am writing that I can be quite naïve about what else is going on around me and don’t always realise that I have been in danger until after the event. I went to Lahore once to investigate the assassination of a child labourer and was quite shocked to read a book called The Reluctant Fundamentalist soon afterwards, in which the protagonist had almost exactly the same experiences as I had and the resulting story was terrifying.

It’s the same approach really. Once a book is ready to be written you know how you want it to sound.

There’s been a lot of talk about ‘misery memoirs’ recently. Have you been involved in any of these? And how did you find that experience?

I have written a great many misery memoirs. Initially I couldn’t get publishers to buy them because they said it was all too shocking for the reading public. When I eventually got one published and it went to number one for several months they changed their minds and on one memorable day I had three different publishers, (all from the “Big Six” companies), ringing to ask if I had any more misery stories that they could commission. They had all just come out of editorial planning meetings with the same brief – “buy misery”.

In almost every case I found them to be fantastic stories and the authors nearly always ended up enjoying the process, as well as making a bit of money to help them get their lives back together.

What do you feel the individual gains from having their story ghost-written?

They get the book they would write themselves if they were able to.

How do you handle delicate subjects such as child abuse – with both the victims and the perpetrator?

I only ever work with the victims in those cases. You have to be entirely straight and open with your questions, allow them plenty of time to answer, not worry if they cry, and never stop listening.

If you’re telling the story of someone who broke the law, or who is still vulnerable to vengeance, how do you handle the delicate business of identity of concealment?

Do you have a lawyer check your work?

You change the names and the locations and some of the details, hopefully without changing the basic story. The publishers’ lawyers are always very careful in checking everything.

What are the differences – positive and negative – between your ghost-writing books and your own works of fiction?

Ghosting provides you with all the material you could possibly need, (and sometimes more), without the need for extra research. Writing your own books gives you the freedom to exorcise your own demons.

Which ghost-written book makes you the most proud, and why?

I think probably “Sold” by Zana Muhsen, largely because it has received such good responses from readers. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t get an email from somewhere in the world telling me it is their favourite book of all time and asking what has happened to the characters since the end of the book. It has also sold around five million copies, which adds to the fondness both Zana and I have for it.

What has been your funniest crime ghost-writing experience?

Watching my wife’s expression change over lunch as it dawned on her that the euphemisms the sweet old man we were entertaining was using were actually about assassinating people in his youth.

Who has been the most fascinating character you’ve met?

They’re mostly pretty fascinating.

Have you ever ghost-written a book that you’ve been tempted to rewrite as fiction – or indeed, have you done that?

I have been ghostwriting now for nearly thirty years, so I guess that most of the fictional characters I create have their roots in people I have met through ghosting. The heroines of “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride” and “The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer” are both casualties of the celebrity circus, and I have met plenty of them. The main character in “Secrets of the Italian Gardener” is a ghostwriter working with a soon to be deposed dictator and in “Maisie’s Amazing Maids” the ghostwriter character is investigating people trafficking.

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Why is Crime Fiction So Popular?

Sue Carver, consultant clinical psychologist, on psychological aspects of writing In real life as well as in fiction, crime seems to fascinate most of us. Best seller lists for fiction, public lending rights statistics and TV audience viewing figures all bear testimony to the popularity of fictionalised crime. Since the form took off in the US and the UK in the latter half of the nineteenth century to the current vogue for Scandinavian authors, the genre has proved remarkably resilient.

Crime fiction has never been in greater demand or more diverse, with something for all: from ‘cosy’ to ‘hard-boiled’ in tone, the once prevalent ‘whodunnit’ has been joined by many other varieties, including the ‘howdunnit’ and the ‘whydunnit’ and then there are the brilliantly creative developments of the genre in novels such as The New York Trilogy[1] and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle[2].

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my preference is for the sophisticated ‘whydunnit’, in the form of elegantly written crime novels that do a satisfying job of exploring the social circumstances and psychology of their characters; the works of Dostoevsky, Patricia Highsmith, Ian Rankin, PD James, and Ruth Rendell spring to mind.

Writers of crime fiction have long had to suffer the elitism of the literary establishment and, despite a relatively recent softening of attitudes, prejudices still linger. Early in his career, Rankin railed against his work being classified as crime fiction; he reports he went into book shops to move his novels from the crime shelves to ‘literature’.

He continues to challenge the literary establishment by pointing out that ‘when crime fiction started in England it was very much seen as literature’[3]. Nowadays he appears to be more comfortable to be classified as a writer of crime fiction and to acknowledge how far the genre has come, with crime writers now featuring prominently at literary festivals. However, he says literary elitism is still in evidence in such places, with crime writers sticking together like ‘kids from the wrong side of the tracks. The crime novelist Andrew Taylor, of whose novels I am also fond, argues that the pure detective story was an aberration in any case and that ‘the modern crime novel, like its nineteenth century predecessor, is much closer to mainstream fiction in its concerns and techniques than is often realised’[4].

During recent decades, increasing numbers of serious writers have been attracted to the genre, although from its ancient origins to the present day, there have always been authors of crime fiction who have taken their craft seriously. As Raymond Chandler, writing in the 1940’s, put it: ‘Neither in this country nor England has there been any critical recognition that far more art goes into these books at their best than into any number of goosed history or social-significance rubbish.’

Just what is it that draws readers, male and female, from all cultures and of all ages and literary tastes to the genre? Should we be uneasy about our fascination with sudden, usually violent, death?

Before exploring these questions further, let us attempt to define terms. A working definition of crime fiction is, according to Andrew Taylor, “a mystery which would have baffled Holmes or Poirot”. Borges maintained that all great novels are detective stories, an assertion in which PD James finds some truth: “… the novel is an artificial form and the detective novel especially so, as the writer has to select events and arrange them in a certain order, making use of his or her experience

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to reveal a view of reality. The problem solving, too, is characteristic of both genres. For example, Jane Austen’s Emma is a remarkable detective story in which the truth of human relationships are inserted into the narrative in a very cunning way—for instance, Frank Churchill arriving in Highbury already secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax. She needs a piano and Frank goes to London to have his hair cut and a few days later a piano arrives.” [5] Whether or not a book is classified as crime fiction appears to be somewhat arbitrary. Many of the titles on the British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) top 100 and on the American Mystery Writers Association (MWA) – incidentally, with a good amount of overlap between the two lists and with the Americans putting more UK authors above their own and vice versa (a fact that I found both surprising and curiously pleasing) – are unlikely to be found on the crime fiction shelves of most book shops or libraries, including two of my favourite novels: Brighton Rock[6] (46 on the CWA list, ranked 69 by the MWA) and Crime and Punishment[7] (24 on the MWA list and not mentioned in the CWA top 100).

Let’s just agree with the somewhat circular assertion that ‘a crime novel is a novel that has a crime at the core of it’ (Lesley Grant-Adamson, 1996) and embark on trying to tease out some of the reasons for its strong and enduring appeal. I offer a few for your consideration.

Literary qualities Hallmark characteristics of the crime novel are strong narratives and, very often, a satisfying resolution. In addition, there is a refreshing lack of literary pretension in crime fiction. Could it be that reader disenchantment with regard to these aspects in the post-modern literary novel is a factor in the increasing popularity of crime fiction? According to Nick Elliot, former ITV director of drama, ‘Crime fiction satisfies in us a secret yearning for justice, the unappeasable appetite for a fair world, which begins in childhood and never leaves us. It satisfies our need for conclusions, both moral and narrative.’

Brain teasing and pleasing One effect of crime novels on readers, particularly with regard to the whodunnit, seems to be the satisfaction that comes from piecing together clues in order to solve the crime, with the reader often motivated to get there before the denouement occurs in the text.

We seem to be hard-wired to enjoy problem-solving, evidenced by the fact that many people spend considerable amounts of time struggling with Sudoku or crossword puzzles. According to neuroscientist Daniel Bor, a research fellow at the University of Sussex and author of The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning, the human brain is hard-wired to enjoy pattern-finding. ‘We get streams of pleasure when we find something that can really help us understand some deep pattern. Sudoku isn’t the most [fun activity], but it sure feels good when you put in that last number.’

Making sense of an unsafe world The best crime fiction challenges us to think about the different factors that impinge on their characters, in particular, those who commit

violent crimes, enhancing our understanding of the ‘causes of crime’.

Rendell’s compassionate portrayal of the lives of the less-privileged and illumination of the social circumstances with which they are faced – realities with which I am familiar – ring with authenticity. Never polemical or sentimental, Rendell illuminates the social factors that foster violent behaviour and exhorts us to do something them.

Processing potential threats in a safe environment It has often been suggested that crime fiction offers opportunities to explore and rationalise our fears concerning the possible threats to personal safety that emanate from our perceptions about contemporary society. It may be that there is an evolutionary component to our intrigue with things that frighten us: that films and books dealing with anxietyprovoking subject matters offer a safe way for our brains to adapt and respond to dangerous situations. However, it is also possible that the prominence of crime, in fictionalised accounts as well as in frequent news coverage of violent crimes, may skew beliefs about personal risk. Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, states that all forms of violence are less common now than ever before, including torture, slavery, domestic abuse, hate crimes and cruelty to animals. His claim is well-supported by statistics, at least in the Western world. We have trouble believing it, Pinker argues, ‘partly because we see so many examples of violence streaming on the Web and blaring across our big-screen TVs. Our own eyes deceive us,’ he says, ‘because we estimate probabilities by how well we can remember examples.’

My own view is that fictionalised crime is less likely to contribute to the over-estimation of risks to personal safety because we don’t necessarily extrapolate from fiction to fact. I imagine there are few who would avoid going to Oxford as a result of the body count in Morse and Lewis.

We Enjoy Scaring Ourselves Our love of stories that frighten us may well be influenced by biological factors. In an alarming situation, adrenaline is pumped into our blood streams, triggering the ‘fight or flight response’ with a number of bodily effects, including increased heart rate and air intake. As the anxiety subsides a compensatory hormonal wave restores heart and breathing rates to normal levels, often bringing a peaceful, relaxed and pleasurable state. Both the adrenaline rush and its aftermath have the potential to become addictive.

A taste for the macabre Is there a negative dimension to reading crime fiction? Might repeated exposure to the details of grisly murders desensitise us to violence or, worse still, encourage violent tendencies in us? There are two main schools of thought on the effects of media violence: one holds that it has a stimulating effect, increasing the likelihood that consumers will engage in violent behaviour, and the other that it leads to catharsis and a consequent reduction in violent tendencies.

Joanne Cantor, internationally recognised authority on the effects of the media and frequent advisor to the US government, states that there ‘is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific literature about the unhealthy effects of media violence.’ She goes on the state that

‘meta-analyses show that media-violence viewing consistently is associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour, ranging from the trivial (imitative violence directed against toys) to the serious (criminal violence)…’ [8] Other equally eminent psychologists point out that much of the research on which such meta-analyses are based is deeply flawed. I have concerns about the possible effects of, for example, a heavy diet of violent video games on individuals who may also be subject to other adverse influences that predispose them to violence, but it has to be stated that there is, as yet, no firm evidence to justify those concerns or my uneasiness about the apparent increase in appetite for books that seem to revel in the graphic details of violent crimes. Jessica Mann, author and reviewer of crime fiction for the Literary Review, has said that an increasing proportion of the books she is sent to review feature male perpetrators and female victims in situations of “sadistic misogyny”.

“Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims’ sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive.” [9] I have to say, I share her distaste and, with my psychology hat on, have concerns about the possible effects of frequent exposure to graphic depictions of violence, usually against women, at the nastier end of the crime fiction continuum, although I acknowledge that frequent exposure to internet violent pornography is likely to have a more powerful effect.

Marked increases in violent sex crimes, in particular, the gang rape of young females in many parts of the world, suggest we need to be vigilant and to improve the quality of research into the effects on potential perpetrators of exposure to explicit material depicting sexual violence.

To sum up, crime fiction is an umbrella genre that provides for a wide range of literary tastes. The reasons for its enduring and widespread appeal are many and varied. In addition to pure entertainment value, the consumption of crime fiction – to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the nature, quality and focus of the writer – is likely to benefit the individual reader in a variety of ways and the very best crime novels have the potential to act as a force for social change.

References New York Trilogy, Paul Auster The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami Extract from Ian Rankin interview by Breandain O’Shea (2010) for Deutsche Welle The Strange Appeal of Crime Fiction, Andrew Taylor , for Shots Crime and Thriller Ezine P. D. James, The Art of Fiction No. 141, interview by Shusha Guppy for The Paris Review, 1995 Brighton Rock, Graham Greene Crime and Punishment , Fyodor Dostoevsky Media Violence, Cantor, J., 2000, Journal of Adolescent Health 27 Jessica Mann, quoted by Amelia Hill, The Observer , 25th October, 2009

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The Eye of the Beholder Procrastinating with Perry Iles

Being woken up by dogs is one of the nicest things I know. They are such uncomplicated, simple beasts that react with joy to almost anything, even seeing me with my morning face on. They leap onto the bed, snuffling and licking and thumping their tails against the duvet until I relent and allow them to burrow down between the sheets, whereupon I trap the exits and blow off on them.

Treating dogs to a Dutch oven is not a crime, despite the fact that their sense of smell is sixteen times greater than ours. They can probably tell what I had for breakfast last Sunday.

But when I get up, my criminal behaviour starts. I live in Scotland, at the edge of a small town where I can find farm tracks and fields for the dogs, who run off happily and shit in the hedgerows.

And I don’t pick it up.

There’s a law now that says we should always pick up our animals’ shit, but I don’t see the farmer running round after his sheep or frisbeeing summer cowpats into a big trailer.

In fact I see the farmer spreading shit all over his fields with a big machine that stinks like the sulfurous furnaces of Hell itself. If I were to take my dogs for a walk in a kids’ playground and they shat in the sandpit, I would pick it up. When I lived by the sea and walked them on the beach I picked up after them to prevent sandcastle adornments from children too young to know better. Here beneath the hedgerows where no one sets foot, I leave it for nature to take its chance.

But the law is no discriminator. The law is the law, and a policeman could probably dash out from behind a tree and arrest me for letting my dogs shit where no human treads instead of putting it a non-degradable bag and chucking it in the dustbin for people to have to deal with.

Let’s face it, I’m a criminal through and through. One of my car’s front tyres is worn, I lied on my tax return and failed to shop the woman down the road when she told my

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wife she had a cleaning job she wasn’t telling the Benefits Agency about. Once upon a time I used to smoke calamitous amounts of marijuana, but I don’t do that any more. It never killed me. Never killed anyone else as far as I know, unlike Paracetamol and motor cars and Tony Blair. Yet it’s illegal. Howard Marks – Britain’s Mr Nice - once did time in a US prison alongside Mike Tyson. Marks was doing six years for transporting a beneficial herb across a national boundary, Tyson was doing five years for rape. There’s crime for you.

So, what is crime? Who defines it?

Generally speaking it’s the state, and let me make it clear that human nature being what it is, the state needs to make laws in order to prevent humans acting like humans. Henry Thomas Buckle, a British historian, said this: “Society prepares the crime: the criminal commits it.” He said that in about 1840, and it seems even truer now. Why is it that drugs are illegal yet tobacco and alcohol aren’t? All those cancers and heart attacks and fights and stabbings and wife beatings and police chase programmes featuring motorists who are only driving because they’re too drunk to walk.

When drugs kill people it has more to do with impurity or strength. Why is this? Because illegal drugs can’t be tested by authorities before ingestion. There is no regulation. So instead we leave them unregulated and then blame the victim. Except in Holland, where you can pop into any police station with your drugs and have them tested for you so that you won’t die. At least that was the case twenty years ago, but I expect common sense has

“Warning: this product may cause enjoyment.”

Because if you really want to get cancer and die horribly or black out and murder your wife in an alcoholic rage, stick to the stuff you can buy in the newsagents next to the kiddies’ sweet rack.

As I hinted before, the law is not nonsense; anarchy is a ghastly idea and as for doing what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, try telling that to Jimmy Savile’s victims. Which brings me neatly to public perception of the law and what it should be. Watching 83-yearold Stuart Hall being taken into custody for something he may or may not have done in 1972 was frankly a little sad. It’s proof that we live in witch-hunt times still. But these times will pass, and these wicked men will die. So where does it stop? At which point do we adopt the “but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead” attitude?

Should we arrest 77-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis for marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin in 1950-something? America has different rules, of course, as to what constitutes paedophilia, which is probably why some of us still revere Michael Jackson. But the country of the rich and cool occupies its own place in space and time, and for its inhabitants normal rules don’t apply. But even here in Britain, Bill Wyman in 1982 freely admitted sleeping with 14-year-old Mandy Smith when he was 47. Everything was consensual, if there is such a thing as consent when a fourteen year old girl is faced with one of the Rolling Stones. I believe Wyman’s son later copped off with Smith’s mother, causing the ghost of Sigmund Freud to collect

There’s a law now that says we should always pick up our animals’ shit, but I don’t see the farmer running round after his sheep or frisbeeing summer cowpats into a big trailer. prevailed since then.

What would happen, I wonder, if all drugs were legalized? They’d immediately be reclassified as boring, for one thing. Their price would go up because the government is greedier than organized crime and would want more in taxes. Oh, and the packet they came in would have warnings on saying things like

thousands in winning bets up in heaven, and causing all sorts of social etiquette problems about who should call whom “dad”.

Wyman went unpunished, because the Stones were still living in the land of cool back then, in a world where the Sun was encouraging reader to gawp at Samantha Fox’s tits. She was sixteen. Just. But a couple of years

later someone looked at Gary Glitter’s harddrive, and no amount of “oooh, please sir, it’s not fair sir, Wyman did it first” was going to save him.

The law. Sometimes it’s an ass, but mostly it protects us. The law is like a famous celebrity – when it just gets on with doing its job it’s fine and everyone leaves it alone, but when it does something confrontational and controversial, we’re all up-in-arms about how stupid it is. The last successful blasphemy trial, you’d think, probably came along around the time when they were burning old women for being able to cure warts. Wrong. It happened in 1977 when Gay Times portrayed Christ as a homosexual

them you’re creating a market for more people to do more unspeakable things. So surely the best thing would be to allow the clergy to marry whomsoever they want whenever they want regardless of gender, colour or anything else other than being above the age of consent. It would save them having to keep illicit laptops hidden under their helmets or whatever it is bishops wear on their heads.

Crime, in the final analysis, is what we make it. It’s a necessary attribute to democracy, which given human nature is the best political system we can hope for. A democracy must have rules. In theory those rules should apply equally to everybody but of course they don’t

and hosepipe the car because the loans are getting on top of them. In Britain alone, banks are responsible, directly or indirectly, for thousands and thousands of deaths. Deaths of ordinary citizens who just couldn’t cope any more. And yet what are they spending their money on? Advertisements, sponsoring racing cars and football leagues. And of course their own staff bonuses have become such a cliché now that as soon as anyone mentions them the public just yawn and turn the page. Result, eh? And we’re so swamped with MP’s expenses stories that we now react to them with a similar sense of addled boredom. But maybe that residual anger goes underground. Maybe

The law. Sometimes it’s an ass, but mostly it protects us. The law is like a famous celebrity – when it just gets on with doing its job it’s fine and everyone leaves it alone, but when it does something confrontational and controversial, we’re all up-in-arms about how stupid it is. getting a shag off a Roman Centurion. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d have thought that blasphemy might entail proving the existence of someone to blaspheme against, but evidently not. Useful get-out clause, that.

But it does pinpoint a weakness in state law, a very serious error of judgment that allows religious or secular opinions to define laws.

This means in certain countries it is quite legal to shoot little girls in the face for learning to read, and to stone adulteresses or use rape as a punishment. In more civilised countries like ours, the Church of England has said it’s OK for gay people to become bishops as long as they don’t practice being gay once they have been adorned or anointed or whatever it takes to make a vicar a bishop. I’d imagine this law might result in a fair amount of bishop bashing, but there you go. So by the same rule of logic, the pope can be a paedophile as long as he just looks at pictures. In fact, it means that anyone can have pictures on their hard drive of men doing unspeakable things to children, as long as they don’t do such things themselves. It’s a bit like Bill Clinton not inhaling. Which means that these images are legal, but obviously they’re not because they entail real people doing real things which are thankfully illegal, and simply by looking at

because rich people can afford better lawyers.

And the democracy that made the law is big enough to avoid having to abide by it, so we get situations like Iraq happening because Americans say it can. And since they stopped being just a colony, our only response when they ask us to jump is “how high?” Whether Blair was coerced into the Iraq war by things we know nothing about, or whether he went willingly into that good night, we’ll never know, but laws were broken at international level. Possibly because other people broke laws too. It must be illegal in some constitution to nick a plane and drive it into a building, but whether it’s legal to punch the boy standing next to the thief because he looked like he sniggered is another matter.

And of course, where does the money come from? Was it legal to give billions of pounds to the banks, or was it just an absolute necessity because the banks had become so big that seeing them fall would bring the world down too? The banks are killers, quiet, respectable, suited thieves and murderers whose cold hearts think nothing of the havoc and the death they cause. Fathers who drive their children off Beachy Head because they can’t pay the mortgage any more. Mothers who take their families to a woodland clearing

it steams and fizzles and sparks away until it finds an outlet in places like Sandy Hook or Dunblane, or in some cinema in middle America, where the desperate seek their own fifteen minutes in the spotlight. And why shouldn’t they. The banks killed more children than they did, and here they are sponsoring racing cars and getting billions from the government. All you have to do is shoot some kids in the face and you’re front page news.

You could always claim political asylum in Afghanistan and say you suspected them of learning to read.

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The Emperor’s New Writers

By Derek Duggan

You’d be forgiven for thinking that generally, if you want to wade through some really shit writing it would have to be in some form of book or other. The simple truth is that you can access an astonishing range of truly awful stuff almost anytime you want and in a dizzying array of media as it turns out that shit writing is absolutely everywhere. It’s not always obvious that an actual writer has been involved with a lot of the bollox you’re confronted with.

For example, despite appearances, actors do not just make up a load of stuff as they go along when they’re doing films and so on.

Someone, a writer, has actually written the words down for them and been paid to do it.

This is a good area to break into if you’re the kind of writer who would like people to say nice things about your writing endlessly on breakfast television and chat shows where celebrities go and pretend to be friends. It doesn’t matter how fucking dreadful a film you

before you know it top actors will be falling over themselves to be involved in your next project.

If you can get a couple of Oscar winning actors, and let’s say an Oscar winning director to say that the script you provided for the movie was amazing, almost everyone will just go along with it. If you want to make sure that no one in the world at all brings your script into question then you’ll need to throw in a multi award-winning top drawer theatre actor into the mix and then the perceived quality of your script is guaranteed. No questions asked.

It’s assured.

This might seem wildly dubious, but let’s examine the evidence. Skyfall – the highest grossing movie in Britain of 2012 (according to some countdown to fill time on a satellite channel over Christmas) - had its fair share of award-winning actors, an award-winning director and the trusty old car with the ejector seat (not used due to cutbacks under the Tories and health and safety legislation). These actors were interviewed endlessly on various television sofas where they talked a lot about how good the script was. And of course they’re of such high calibre that they really must know what they’re talking about. There is no way they could have gotten it wrong. No way in the world. The script couldn’t have been better if William Shakespeare himself had spent his entire life crafting it.

So, let’s just have a quick look at one of the brilliant bits of writing in it so we can learn

in the shadows of this big empty house with a shotgun. As you do. He didn’t drive there or anything because James Bond (Daniel Craig – who has won the Critics Choice Award for Best Actor in an Action Movie since I wrote the last sentence) is trained to spot cars in wide open territory – you do it on day one of secret agent training. So this man, Albert Finney, in his mid-seventies just walks for miles and miles across the fields every single day to hang out in the shadows of the big deserted house with his shotgun just for the hell of it. And this may seem to the casual observer to be a flaw in the writing. But it’s not.

You see, the writer has put the house absolutely in the middle of nowhere so there wouldn’t be anyone phoning the police when the baddies with the helicopter gunship showed up and started blowing the fuck out of the house. Now that’s good writing. That’s thinking ahead. That’s probably the sort of thing everyone meant when they said it was a brilliant script.

Of course, you may wonder how in the name of sweet suffering fuck someone managed to transport a fully loaded helicopter gunship to within range of James Bond’s parents’ house in the Highlands in the first place. But if this happens to you, all you have to do is remember that respected actors, the sort of people who know a lot about this sort of thing, have gone on breakfast TV and said that this is a good script and so there really is no question about it and you’re probably just

... M (Judi Dench – seven BAFTAs and seven OLIVIERs and tons of other awards) is trying to get away from Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem – Acadamy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, two European Film Awards, Screen Actors Guild Award, five GOYAs etc etc) so James Bond (Daniel Craig – no impressive awards as such, but nice blue eyes and fucking huge muscles) drives her up to Scotland ... write, every actor that’s in it will talk infinitely about how good the writing is and that if anyone doesn’t think it’s brilliant it’s obviously because they’ve got an intellect the size of Pamela Anderson’s modesty and not because the writing is, in reality, about as good as having a dog puke into your mouth after it has eaten its own faeces.

The higher the quality of actor the more likely it is that everyone will just go along with how fantastically written the film must be. They may even pull out all the stops and not refer to it as a film at all and instead keep calling it a project. If this happens then you’ve hit the smoke-blown-up-your-arse jackpot and

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something about the craft of scripting a film.

M (Judi Dench – seven BAFTAs and seven OLIVIERs and tons of other awards) is trying to get away from Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem – Acadamy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, two European Film Awards, Screen Actors Guild Award, five GOYAs etc etc) so James Bond (Daniel Craig – no impressive awards as such, but nice blue eyes and fucking huge muscles) drives her up to Scotland to the house he grew up in – Skyfall. They get there and, due to some brilliant writing, Albert Finney (BAFTA, Golden Globe, EMMY and Screen Actors Guild award winner plus four Oscar nominations for best actor) is hanging about

ignorant.

So, the hard lesson is that as with most things in life from amazing diets to Scientology the quality of the product is not nearly as important as the quality of the celebrity endorsement. Think of it like this – the only people to cook their full dinner on a sandwich toaster were students before George Foreman came along (sans ukulele) and endorsed the fuck out of the Lean Mean Giant Sandwich Toaster Machine.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get some words on the page, people.

Glad I could help.

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

Malcolm Pryce Which book most influenced you when growing up?

I don’t really recall being influenced by a book but my favourite childhood read was the Hobbit. It was one of my great tragedies that I wasn’t born a Hobbit. I have no intention of watching the movie.

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

This may sound sacrilegious, but I don’t have one. I write on a MacBook Air, in bed, on the dining room table, reclining on the sofa, in cafes…there’s nothing else in the space. This probably derives from the years when I was travelling a lot and never settled. I tended to discard possessions, and brought the whole process down to me and a laptop. That’s the great thing about writing, you can do it anywhere.

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

In terms of influencing my style, I would say it was a toss-up between Saki and the American Sci-Fi writer Robert Sheckley.

About Malcolm Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been, at various times, a BMW assembly-line worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman. In 1998 he gave up his day job and booked a passage on a banana boat bound for South America in order to write Aberystwyth Mon Amour. He spent the next seven years living in Bangkok, where he wrote three more novels in the series, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and Don’t Cry for Me Aberystwyth. In 2007 he moved back to the UK and now lives in Oxford, where he wrote his most recent novel, From Aberystwyth with Love. He is not and never has been a librarian from Swanseahttp://www.malcolmpryce.com/home. html

Why write about Aberystwyth while working in Bangkok?

Well for a start, you can’t possibly write about somewhere while you live there. I think Hemingway said something along those lines. And I love Bangkok. And after getting my first novel published I decided to go somewhere cheap and write a sequel. Three months in Bangkok turned into seven years.

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

Probably loads, but one I’ve noticed that I use a lot is ‘betoken.’ Not what sure what it betokens though…

How long does it take you to write a Louie Knight novel? Can you explain your writing process?

It takes around 15 months. I spend the first six months dreaming up the story & world and making copious notes that I never subsequently refer to. I write a fairly detailed plan but this is torn up in stages as the real writing proceeds. At some point around the six month mark I wake up sniff the air and decide the time has come to stop provisioning and set sail. I write about five drafts, each one being a distillation of the previous one.

Of the first draft I throw away about 70%. After about a year I have a manuscript of a standard I am happy with and send it off to my agent and editor at Bloomsbury.

There are usually about three months or tweaking after that before it is put to bed.

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

I don’t think I’ve ever started a book I expected to hate.

As for books that are raved about but which I didn’t like, there are loads. But I’d prefer not to slag other people’s work off. Even a crap book is hard work to write and almost certainly wasn’t crap to the person who wrote it.

How far has your copywriting career aided your fiction?

I think quite a lot in the sense that as an advertising writer you are painfully aware that you are writing for people who don’t like you, and wish you would go away. The need to grab their attention, and never let it go, is constantly there. I don’t claim that I succeed but I am always aware of the need to try.

Do you have a guilty reading pleasure?

It’s probably more sad than guilty but one of my favourite books is the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable.

There are a vast range of learned references in your novels, from ancient Celtic culture to modern science. How long do you research each novel?

I don’t do any research, I make everything up. It’s a lot easier and you can never get facts wrong if you invent them. As for the so-called learned references, they are just bits and bobs lying around in the rag and bone shop of the heart that I chuck into the mix. Just stuff I’ve read and remembered. It all gets remembered and pops up. I’m quite impressed sometimes by the breadth of allusion some reviewers find in my books, often stuff I haven’t read, such as Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land.

I will probably read it one day just to see.

Which book has impressed you most this year?

I re-read Tom Hiney’s biography of Raymond Chandler and re-loved it.

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Will you tell us about the latest project?

When do we get to meet Jack Wenlock?

Jack Wenlock is the last of a special cadre of detective working for the Great Western Railway, and the novel opens on January 1st 1948, the day the railways were nationalised. He sits in his office expecting the letter terminating his employment. But instead a client walks in and presents him with an opportunity to solve the greatest mystery in the annals of railway lore, an infamous case in 1914 when fifty nuns disappeared from a train. It was called by the press, the ‘Hail Mary’ Celeste. It should be out sometime around the spring of 2014.

Given your vast international experience, would you name your Top Three Beers of the World?

Finally a question that makes sense!

Singha beer from Thailand (before they dropped the strength from 6% to 5%) Schneider & Sohn’s Aventinus from Munich. The original loony juice brewed by Monks.

Hinano beer from Tahiti. I mean, it’s not particularly great beer but something must have gone right in your life if you happen to be drinking it. You can send me one if you like.

James Long Which book most influenced you when growing up?

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

I went through so many stages. Biggles of the Camel Squadron at age 10. The Lord of the Rings at 12. On The Road at 18, Perfume at 25. For Whom the Bell Tolls for the following twenty years. All the Pretty Horses for the next ten. Wolf Hall since then.

I’m trying to weed out all those strange negatives such as ‘I’m dying to...’

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

About James James Long was a BBC TV news correspondent until the end of the 1980s. After two years starting and running an international TV station out of Zurich, he returned to England to concentrate on writing, which had always been his first love. He wrote four thrillers, then went back to a story he had begun many years earlier and which grew into Ferney. The book was originally born from his disappointment at being unable to buy a derelict cottage near the village of Penselwood which became the centre of the story. Many more novels followed, including two written under the pseudonym ‘Will Davenport.’ He moved into historical non-fiction in 2007 with The Plot against Pepys, co-written with his oldest son, Ben. His interests range from archaeology to motor racing. He is actively involved in the Arvon Foundation. He is also a patron and adviser to the Dartington Literary Festival, ‘Ways with Words’. He currently lives in Bristol. www.jameslongbooks.com

It seems to be wherever I happen to be. I have an image in my mind of two variations on what it should be ideally... a small wooden barn with a mezzanine shelf by a window for the writing and sofas below with enormously high bookshelves for the research OR a round thatched hut with glass French windows and a projecting roof over a sheltered deck just like the gardener’s office on the Dartington estate in Devon. In fact, because of one of those upheavals life throws up, I currently live in a small rented flat with a fine view of Bristol and tend to sit hunched in a sofa with a laptop on my lap surrounded by open books. As an exjournalist, I can still write pretty much anywhere.

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

Two teachers at my minor English public school - one a senior member of the staff who opened my eyes to fine, classical writing and encouraged me to write in the style of various literary figures to understand what they were trying to do. I clearly got a little carried away because I quoted two lines from a fake John Donne poem which I wrote myself in my English ‘A’ level and appeared to get away with it. The other was a younger renegade English teacher who told me to read Catch 22 and A Canticle for Leibowitz and was speedily removed in Dead Poets Society style after a couple of terms.

Much of your work references the inescapable influence of, and fascination with the past. Where does that interest in history come from?

Ah... My mildly eccentric mother drove me round villages as a child with a copy of Highways and Byways of Sussex in the car - perhaps the single most untrustworthy historical narrative yet published but laden with fascinating anecdotes. She would brake to a halt outside any ancient building, church, manor house or crumbling castle and read chunks of it out. I used to half close my eyes and try to imagine it as it was.

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Ferney, like some of your subsequent work, is difficult to define. Was that blurring of genre boundaries deliberate, or did the book simply evolve that way?

It evolved that way. It started as history. I wanted to tell the story of that extraordinary (real) village through a single narrator who had lived there through the ages in successive reincarnations. I realised that was a truly terrible fate to condemn anyone to so introduced a woman to share it with and she decided all by herself to turn it into a love story.

Readers sided with her and there we were...

Why do you think historical fiction is currently having such a renaissance?

I wonder. Perhaps because the future has rarely looked less attractive? I would like to think that we have finally discovered that we can learn from the past but that might be asking too much. To go back to Hilary Mantel, perhaps it is because good writers have finally taught us that the people of the past were very like us - just dealing with different sets of rules.

You’ve collaborated with two of your children, in writing and in theatre. What are the pros and cons of working with family?

It was fascinating. I worked with my oldest first, Ben. We wrote ‘The Plot Against Pepys’ for Faber. He is a real historian and mistrusted my moments of journalistic hunch and novelistic flights, especially when I gave too much credence to oral history. Then we began to meet somewhere in the middle. It took two years longer than we expected both because there was so much more unplumbed material than anyone had realised and also because he is the ultimate perfectionist. When we finally, finally typed the last word of the last redraft, I looked across the table at him with a huge grin of relief and he said, ‘I think I’m going to go through and take most of the commas out.’ He taught me punctilious historical precision.

I hope I taught him about vivid prose. He is now finishing his first novel after many drafts, so maybe I won on balance.

Working with my middle child, Harry, was a very different experience. He had always written remarkable poetry. He is an actor and now runs his own company. We wrote a play together or rather I would write something. He would

read it through with a kind smile then disappear and come back with a version that worked so much better that I could only wonder. He taught me a lot. I’m hoping one day I will complete the set by working with my daughter Matilda. The pros were that (I think) it moved our relationship on to a true relationship of equals. There haven’t been many cons except for the occasional low blood sugar moment.

Do you have a guilty reading pleasure?

Elmore Leonard. Rereading my great, late friend Roger Deakin. Old and forgotten war memoirs. Classic car magazines.

Why did you choose to use a pseudonym (Will Davenport) for some of your work?

I didn’t really choose it. My American publisher, for some reason best known to himself, branded me as a writer of women’s romance then refused to publish my next book unless I turned it into something to match the brand.

When I refused he said I would have to be relaunched with a pseudonym. I chose Will Davenport because my middle names are William and Davenport. It made life very difficult.

At my first book signing I found I had no idea how to sign the name so it straggled unconvincingly across the flyleaf and my first customer glared at me. Poor Will is now officially dead, killed in a unforeseen washing machine/hang-gliding disaster. never again. I have one more pseudonym too but I rarely admit to that.

Which book of last year did you most enjoy?

Bring up the Bodies. I waited with bated breath to see if HM could match Wolf Hall and she did. Amazing. Third person present and making us both understand and like one of history’s great villains is an extraordinary achievement. I’m so glad the Booker judges got that right.

Can you tell us what you’re working on at the moment?

Yes. I’ve been ghosting but my lips are sealed. Now I am starting my own next book, a First World War novel about the almost unknown world of the balloon observers... the men hanging in the air, 5,000 feet up over the Western Front, suspended under a gasbag full of hydrogen which was likely to explode as soon as it was hit, with only a primitive and unreliable parachute to save them.

If you could spend a year in another era, which would you choose?

That’s so hard. I would like to meet Pepys, especially in his time of trouble so the Popish Plot years around 1679 would be very interesting. I would also very much like to meet Sir Guy de Bryan, an ancestor of mine who served the great Edward III so I would like to miss the Black Death and pass some time with him in around 1360 or so.

Wigtown in the Rain Festival coverage with Danny Gillan

There are some things in life that go beyond tradition.

They develop such certainty that they become touchstones by which you can orient your entire life.

The knowledge that the unchanging, eternal nature of these things will continue long after you die and will serve as a guide for your children and grandchildren is both comforting and a wee bit eerie. One such definite in life is that it will be raining at the Wigtown Book festival. It just will.

wariness. The parallel universe theory has been around for a while now, and is gaining traction within the scientific community. It’s got quantum in it, which must mean something. Quarks too, probably. Something was definitely amiss. It was all just too … dry.

I sidled, ninja-like, into the foyer, my Festival Programme (rolled into a makeshift but serviceable katana) clutched in my trembling fist.

The place was deserted. Weird. I darted into the lounge and ducked down behind a wee table as I surveyed the area. No one behind the bar.

Odd. Even odder, no Ed. staring at a cold coffee, checking her watch and muttering impatiently. This was getting serious.

Crouching under the table, I assessed the situation, weighing options. Should I make a dash for the car and head back to Girvan,

Imagine my horror, then, as I approached the Galloway Arms Hotel in Newton Stewart on a September Saturday last year to be greeted only by sunshine and a light, refreshing breeze. It was terrifying. I assumed, naturally, that I’d taken a detour into a parallel dimension at some stage in my journey (probably at the roadworks just outside Girvan). The place looked familiar enough. The Galloway Arms was still painted a rather silly shade of blue. Our old friend the pizza shop was still there across the road, waiting patiently until the Ed. and I got drunk enough to convince ourselves a 14” pepperoni and mushroom was a good idea. That’s if the Ed. was here, of course. I had no way of knowing if she’d made the same dimension hopping error as myself or if she was, at that very moment, sitting in the bar of the real Galloway Arms, in the real Newton Stewart, wondering why I was even later than usual.

I parked the car and approached this hotel door with practiced

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hoping to find the wormhole I’d traversed and so find my way back to my own universe? Should I wait for someone to show up and check in, just to see what happened? After all, this dimension’s Iain Banks might be appearing at the festival, unlike that slacker from my home world.

Brookmyre might even be here as well, making it a twofer.

As I tried to decide what to do I heard a noise from behind me. A sort of rustling.

I froze for a bit, as you do. Then I slowly turned my head, cringing at what horrors might await my pitiful gaze.

Sitting at the back of the bar, just in front of the window, was a middle-aged couple. American, judging by their sandals.

My initial recce of the room had clearly been a tad deficient. There was little to no expression on their faces as they regarded me. The man lifted a half pint of lager and took a swig. The woman chewed a chip.

They both nodded at me, not unkindly. I tried a smile.

Just then my phone rang, causing me to almost shite myself, such was the tension in the air. I jumped, battering my head on the underside of the tabletop. I scrabbled at my jacket pocket, trying to free the screeching beast.

It was the Ed. wondering where the hell I was and informing me that she had both our room keys and was waiting upstairs, having got sick of sitting in the bar alone like a twat.

Anyway, we went to the Festival. It was pretty good. Banks and Brookmyre were conspicuous by their absence, making me doubt further my alternate universe hypothesis.

First up was literary legend and Booker winner James Kelman.

What a grumpy old git. He was brilliant. On a par with John Byrne last year, Kelman is now of an age where he could clearly see these things far enough, but still had the good grace to answer questions with a reasonable amount of coherence while reserving the right to meander off on tangents secure in the knowledge that he no longer needs to give much of a shit. Makes me proud to be more than halfway towards being an old Scottish man. His latest novel, Mo Said She Was Quirky, is a fascinating study into the life of an apparently ‘ordinary’ woman.

Next was the legendary John Hegley, reading from his latest poetry collection, Peace, Love And Potatoes. A practised performance master, Hegley was hilarious. He sang, he joked, he took the piss and he brought us close to tears. Definitely the highlight of the weekend for me, he has the uncanny ability to mix depth and high emotion with crudity and nonsense to a degree almost unseen since Ivor Cutler hung up his hoho.

Plays a mean ukulele, too.

Ben Hammersley has a moustache. It’s magnificent. It’s so impressive it almost eclipses the book he’s written. Which is a shame, as the book is fairly essential, too. 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then: How to Face the Digital Future without Fear is Wired editor Hammersley’s thesis on the 64 most important technological advances of the modern age that many of us don’t know a lot about. It covers all the obvious stuff like the internet and mobile technology etc, but the real interest lies in those things we’re only barely aware of. 3D printing is going to be huge, for example. No, really huge. As for Shanzai… Shanzai is the collective name for all those factories in China who make the knock-off Nokias and fake iPhones we all sniff at. Except, we really shouldn’t be sniffing too haughtily. Did you know that one of the main reasons for Nokia’s recent financial woes is that the Shanzai factories started making fake Nokia phones that were actually better than the originals? So good were they, in fact, that the rapidly expanding eastern market ended up shunning the Finnish originals in favour of the phonies. One of the main reasons why being that the Shanzais included an extra sim card slot, which allowed unfaithful Chinese businessmen to have separate sims for their wife and

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their girlfriend without having to go to the trouble of using two handsets.

Talk about knowing your market.

These were the highlights, but we did manage to see a few other bits and pieces. The theme for the Festival was Dark Skies, which was similar to the recent BBC stargazing programmes but without Brian Cox. We attended a talk on a local farm all about how art and the cosmos have been linked throughout history. It was very interesting, but mainly it was cold, to be honest. And cloudy, which made the actual stargazing section something of a let-down. And don’t get me started on the ‘supper under the stars’ bit at the end. For the ‘suggested’ donation of a tenner, we were treated to a tiny paper plate (not)full of tasteless curry and stale bread.

We later attended the pizza shop.

Tom Holland said lots of fascinating things about the ancient Arab world while discussing his book In the Shadow of the Sword, the majority of which I can’t remember. The Ed. loved it, mind (she’s into that sort of thing).

Finally, Caspar Henderson discussed The Book of Barely Imagined Things, a beguiling look at some of the rarest, and weirdest, creatures on the planet. This one I highly recommend. Freaky.

Of course, the main attraction in Wigtown is still the plethora of bookshops, and they’re there all year round. So you don’t have to wait till the Autumn to plan a visit.

All of these delights aside, though, I think the main thing I’ll take away from the 2012 Wigtown Book Festival was the inspired addition of a fresh doughnut stall. Good God, they were tasty.

To this day, I’m not completely convinced this is my original home dimension. But, given that the only observable difference seems to be slightly better weather, I’ve decided to let it go. For now.

Danny has some books available on Amazon Kindle and all other reputable ebook platforms. Just plug his name in, you’ll find them. He’s even poorer now than he used to be, so any purchases will be gratefully turned into gruel and go towards feeding his family of fourteen.

by Sarah Bower The film-maker Jean-Luc Godard famously said, ‘all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl’. It is a known truism that all fiction deals with sex and death. It enables us to explore those twin taboos and sites of angst and emotional conflict in relative safety. That is its serious power.

The Girl and the Gun: In Defence of Genre Fiction

Not all fiction, however, approaches its weighty responsibilities with the overt seriousness of so-called ‘literary’ fiction. A quick glance along the shelves in any book shop or library will show you that by far the largest number of novels there fall into generic categories. They are crime, romance, historical, horror, fantasy, westerns, thrillers and so on and so forth. These are the kinds of novels most people read. These are the kinds of novels that gain vast followings for authors such as Henning Mankell, Lee Child or J. K. Rowling.

Probably the default position for most readers of this magazine would be to get a bit sniffy about Mills and Boon, but let us look at some statistics. Harlequin Enterprises, which owns the Mills and Boon imprint, sells over 130 million books a year. Mills and Boon sells ten million books every year in the UK alone, of which 70 per cent is in its traditional romance category. That, according to their website, is a book every three seconds. Whatever view you hold as to the literary merit or otherwise of a Mills and Boon romance, you cannot ignore statistics like that. They represent a lot of readers interested in reading about sex, even when it is disguised as candle-lit dinners, romantic drives in open-topped sports cars, or smouldering glances exchanged across the operating table.

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The success of E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey shows the way in which our tastes in genre fiction are now being adapted to suit the growing e-reading market. Fifty Shades initially did well because readers could enjoy it on their Kindles safe in the knowledge no-one else could see what they were reading. If you read romance, whether it’s Jane Austen or Helen Fielding (both, arguably, exponents of that sub-genre of romance now known as chick-lit), what engages your attention and keeps you going is the promise of consummation. This is what lies behind the shamefaced embarrassment with which many readers will admit to enjoying a good romance, and what is immediately swept away if you can keep your choice of reading matter secret. Ergo, it’s easier to slip on to the private side of the bedroom door.

Death, in the guise of the murder mystery, from the hard-edged gentility of P. D. James to the gore fests of Kathy Reichs or Patricia Cornwell, is the next biggest seller. Not satisfied, moreover, with crime fiction written in English, Anglophone readers have developed a seemingly bottomless appetite for crime fiction in translation, from Scandicrime to the more esoteric and bizarre world of Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin. The latter, incidentally, are historical detective novels, a sub-genre which is just as popular, from Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael to C. J. Sansom Matthew Shardlake stories.

Consider also the huge success of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series in which, as with all vampire fiction, sex and death come together.

Interestingly, the current wave of teenage vampire fiction begins, however, not with a novel but with a TV show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was ground-breaking television, a still unique (in my opinion) blend of gothic fantasy, coming-of-age story, high school romance and frat house comedy. While Bram Stoker dressed up the equation of death and defloration in the overwrought language of high chivalry, for Buffy and Bella Swan the risks of attraction are far more overt and immediate, and there is terrific tension associated with each girl’s journey towards her final decision and her ‘growing up’.

The cross-fertilisation between books and film or television is a major factor in the success of genre fiction. I myself, for example, came to the Wallander novels through TV adaptations. I have never read a Robert Ludlum book, but I have seen all the Bourne movies. Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael was brought to life for a whole new generation of historical detective fiction enthusiasts, long after the author’s death,

by Derek Jacobi’s portrayal on television. Most notable of all, perhaps, is James Bond. Not many people read Fleming nowadays (though they

feel betrayed. A western must chart the elemental clash of good and evil through the conflict of ‘white hats’ and ‘black hats’. There must be a climax in which good triumphs, the hero comes to terms with his sacrifices and rides off into the sunset with the dollars, the girl, or some other symbol that tells us crime doesn’t pay and a good man will always come through. Fantasy and science fiction require alternate worlds in which the normal physical rules of our planet do not apply. The existence of magic, the absence of gravity, or water, the ability to teleport instantly from one place to another, are the factors which govern the narrative, limiting some things and making others possible. It is a prerequisite of the whodunit that there will be at least one suspicious death for our hero or heroine detective to solve. Although the hero and heroine of a romance may encounter all kinds of obstacles to their being together, there must be a happy ending, with a wedding or some other formal avowal of eternal love.

Of course you can bend the rules, but you cannot break them. You can do Cowboys and Aliens, but the theme of good versus evil and the triumph of virtue still pervades. Your romance can have two heroines or two heroes, but they still have to walk off together, hand in hand, into a glorious future. Even in fantasy, magic cannot work as a kind of deus ex machina, popping up out of nowhere to extract the characters from an impasse. It must operate within the logic of the fantasy world, within the limits imposed by the boundaries of the reader’s suspension of disbelief.

A horror story must pit its protagonist against horrors – zombies, vampires, invaders from outer space.

Those of you who haven’t yet fallen asleep will have spotted that my categorisation of an alien invasion story as horror suggests a mash-up of scifi and horror. This has always been a feature of genre writing. Slipping once more from the page to the screen, for example, consider the crop of scifi movies from the 1950s and early 60s – Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, War of the Worlds, Quatermass, Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos – whose iconography is far more that of horror than of science fiction.

If you compare the films with the books from which they were adapted, you find that, while the books are ‘pure’ science fiction, a horror element is injected into the movies in the way in which the aliens are visualised.

Genre mash-up is now almost a genre of its own. There are zombie versions of Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith), Snow White meets the Borgias (Gregory McGuire’s Mirror, Mirror, my personal favourite) and the daftly entitled The Late Gatsby, a vampire version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It goes

Genre fiction is, therefore, important, not just because it sells in millions, makes household names of its authors and brands of its protagonists – Bourne and Bond being cases in point – but because it confronts the big questions of life and death in an entertaining and palatable way. should), but everyone flocks to the movies, as the enormous success of Skyfall goes to show.

Genre fiction is, therefore, important, not just because it sells in millions, makes household names of its authors and brands of its protagonists – Bourne and Bond being cases in point – but because it confronts the big questions of life and death in an entertaining and palatable way. It isn’t difficult, it doesn’t make your brain ache with deep philosophical questions ( although they are there. Patricia Cornwell campaigns for gay rights through the character of Kay Scarpetta’s lesbian niece. Henning Mankell has tackled asylum, corruption in public life and the banking crisis to name but a few of his preoccupations). Its cathartic effect is achieved, not by forcing the reader to confront reality but by sweeping her up and away from it. Although easy to read, however, good genre fiction is far from easy to write.

This is because it requires the writer to conform to very strict rules.

Readers of genre novels have specific and particular expectations of their reading matter, and if the author doesn’t meet these, readers will

28 | Random Stuff

to show that, although genre is characterised by rules, the writerly imagination can work with great ingenuity and flexibility within those rules. What you cannot do, though, is break them. Once the rules are broken, the work is no longer classifiable as genre. Ian McEwan’s Atonement, for example, is, on one level, a romance, but because of Briony Tallis’ lies and misunderstandings, the romance is subverted and the lovers do not end up happily ever after. The novel thus becomes an examination of the romantic novel rather than a romance in and of itself.

What a novel like Atonement, or A. S. Byatt’s Possession, shows, however, is that genre is worthy of serious examination. It should be taken seriously by all writers due to the measure in which it entertains its readers. Yes, of course the money and fame and TV and film rights that follow from creating a successful generic brand are the stuff of which writers’ dreams are made. But it is the reasons for genre’s popularity that make it worthy of our attention. Genre is the sugar coating on the pill, the entertainment that helps us to confront our vulnerabilities and our mortality, and it really is very difficult to do. Believe me, I’ve tried.

BIGGER 2012

Overall Prize Pot £1500

1st prize in each category - £300 2nd prize in each category - £100 3rd prize in each category - £50 The 5 runners up in each category will be published in the first volume of our Short Story Anthology (of which they will receive a copy), and awarded £10.

Judges: Short Story Judge (up to 2500 words): Jane Fallon www.janefallon.co.uk

Shorter Story Judge (up to 1000 words): Benjamin Myers www.benmyers.com

Shortest Story Judge (max 250 words): Zoë Fairbairns www.zoefairbairns.co.uk

Welcome to the results of our BIGGER Short Story Compeition 2012. The decisions were tough, but they had to be made. On the following pages we give you three 1st prize winners, three 2nd prize winners, three 3rd prize winners, and fifteen runners up, all of which will be published in our anthology ...

250 word Shortest Story Category WINNERS:

1st Prize Busy Lizzy by Ken Elkes 2nd Prize Word Problems by Alison Wassell 3rd Prize B for Bottom by Tracy Darnton RUNNERS UP: Retreat from the Future by Susanna Clayson Winter’s Kiss by Vanessa Savage Chicken Soup by Jacqui Valota Ubbe Iwerks Revenge by Bo Crowder Time Off for God Behaviour by Darrell Barnes

SHORTLISTED ENTRANTS: Through the Open Window by Paul Weidknecht Why Do You Love Me? by Peter Richardson Sharing by Sherri Turner You Won’t Feel a Thing by Magda Knight Because it was Raining by Catherine Hastings Peach Stones by Ken Elkes Behind Every Caveman by Don Wells

Judge’s Report by Zoë Fairbairns Flash fiction is so called because it flashes at you, makes you blink, and leaves you either shocked or tickled - sometimes both. So it has been with some of these stories, with their domestic violence, rain-soaked teddy bears, cannibalism, locusts and sinister vaccines. On a lighter level, Minnie Mouse, and God and his angels, are encountered in unexpected roles, and lovers feed each other peaches and soup.

Having been asked to pick the three best from a shortlist of 15, I started by identifying the ones which, I was regretfully sure, were not winners: the ones which didn‘t live up to the promise of their ideas, the ones which read less like short stories than summaries of something longer, or extracts.

The winners were all tight and complete, yet richly evocative of wider worlds. Third prize goes to B for Bottom. Anyone who has ever tripped over their tongue and said the wrong thing in public will wince reminiscently at this gorgeously silly, embarrassing tale of a brief encounter between a rude old woman and a scornful young man in a shop.

Second prize goes to Word Problems which explores infertility treatment. It’s a big subject to contain in such a short story, but the author’s audacity in presenting it in the format of a school exam paper cuts it down to size and keeps it satisfying and self-contained.

First prize goes to Busy Lizzie. This tale of bereavement and gardens is one of the shortest on the short list, but the richness of its imagery gives it substance that goes beyond its word count. The opening sentence gives

30 | Competitions

a flavour: ‘My wife, the gardener, the queen of cut-and-come-again, trailed loam through hospital corridors till nothing more could be done.’

That carefully-chosen phrase - cut-and-come-again - evokes not only cakes but the pruning of plants, and the ordeals of recurrent surgery.

Later in the story, the dying wife teaches the narrator how to look after the garden, including ‘who should be pruned, who could bear tough love’. Then she plants herself. Written with a light touch that belies the emotional rawness of the material, and utterly lacking in sentimentality or self-pity, this story embodies the essence of successful flash fiction: it starts, you blink, then it’s over. Like life.

1000 word Shorter Story Category WINNERS:

1st Prize Pictures of Lily by Karen Jones 2nd Prize Little Black Dress by Shelley Arnfield 3rd Prize Little Ears by Alison Wassell RUNNERS UP: A Cautionary Tale of Love and Tissue Paper by Jacqueline Allan Celebration by Barbara Leahy Cash in Hand by Dale Lately Explode Like a Nail-Bomb by James Collett Carriages at Midnight by Diane Jackman

SHORTLISTED ENTRANTS: The Lonely Child by Mark Reece Catalogue of the Northern Renaissance Painters 1430-1580 by Jess Sully Miss Right, Mrs Right and Serves You Right! By Jacqui Valota Love Me Tender – the Power of a Good Education by Dale Lately

Judge’s Report by Benjamin Myers The shortlist in the 1000 words and under category was of a high quality – higher than I expected. Words With Jam readers can write. I could quite easily have selected a number of the stories on my shortlist of 12 as the ‘best’ one, which made choosing winners especially difficult. The top three positions were hard fought and could have appeared in a different order; I particularly deliberated over six or seven stories. I hope it’s of some consolation to those writers who didn’t win to know that they very nearly did. I commend all the entrants.

Interestingly, certain themes prevailed throughout this selection: deception, a nagging sense of melancholy, failure, loneliness, desire, the fleeting nature - or failure - of relationships.

Here are my favourite stories: First Place: Pictures Of Lily This winning story concerned a very modern conceit: infatuation / love from afar, aided by technology. Low-level cyber stalking . The

BIGGER Short Story Competition 2012 - Results set-up is very simple - a male student picks up the dropped phone belonging to a female student, and holds on to it– yet the writing is fluid and economical and manages to treads the thin line between digital creepiness and something altogether more human: basic longing. Telling the story through photographs stored on the missing phone and the girl’s Facebook page added an extra narrative layer – the descriptions of minor details is excellent - and though Pictures Of Lily was shorter than most of the other entries, it managed to convey more in that space.

Second Place: Little Black Dress More often than not New Year’s resolutions tend to signal failure of sorts and though Darla has achieved last year’s resolution of drastically losing weight in order to attract the attentions of her boss, twelve months later it has not made her feel any less lonely. I enjoyed the juxtaposition between past and present in this story, the domestic descriptions and the building of tension via the ten second countdown to midnight, which was interspersed with snippets of recalled dialogue from the past. This gave the story a cinematic quality. Best of all I admired Darla’s spirit at the conclusion and her new resolution to put the weight back on by eating a different flavoured ice cream every day of the year. This felt triumphant and instead of wallowing in her situation I enjoyed Darla’s sense of abandonment and optimism.

Third Place: Little Ears Though it is not at first obvious, Little Ears is a story about a school boy, Zachary, eavesdropping on two male teachers in the staff room. The structure of the story is strong enough to slowly reveal to the reader what is happening and suggests that Zachary is a strong character – he is a rule-breaker, a proto-Machiavellian whose main motivation is to gather information on his teachers to use to his benefit (ostensibly to flourish at school with as little effort as possible). I almost pictured a combination of Holden Caulfied and Ferris Bueller. The overly male ‘banter’ between the two teachers is funny and the twist - or the pay-off – at the end was a well-delivered surprise. This was the most funniest story of all the entrants in this category.

2500 word Short Story Category WINNERS:

1st Prize Abhra, The Cloud by Ruby Cowling

I Know What It Is by Claire Whatley Waiting for Barbie by Jacqueline Allan (withdrawn post judging) Peanut Brittle by Carla Leach A Questions of Mana by Dave Fraundorfer Always Check his Bathroom Cabinets by Marie Gethins Poke by Hilary McGrath

Judge’s Report by Jane Fallon The best short stories evoke a feeling, a mood, a world that is new to us whether culturally or emotionally. They’re a snapshot captured, a moment in time. Plots can – I think should – be slight. The short story isn’t the place to demonstrate knowledge of obscure words and complicated turns of phrase. It’s about creating a universe and bringing it to life, allowing the reader to fully immerse themselves in it for a few minutes. If they start noticing the language then you’ve not done your job.

That’s not to say that the four stories I’ve chosen aren’t beautifully written. Each world is different, every word is carefully chosen. But these writers’ skill is in allowing their creations to breathe. Not suffocating them with overworked prose.

I chose ‘Abra the Cloud’ as the winner because of the way the writer uses a pivotal moment in a child’s life to so beautifully illustrate the whole of his life. The world of the factory and Abra’s close extended family are as alive as if I knew them myself. Abra’s optimism, his positivity in the face of the hardship of his existence, is heartbreaking.

‘The Scent of Lemons’ centres on a small misunderstanding within a relationship. Told from Leah’s point of view, the use of the first person helps to draw us into her anxieties and suspicions. What really grabbed me about this one was the believability of Leah’s narration, the authenticity in the way she speaks.

“Breeding Monsters’ has an unusual and disturbing premise but the writer has managed to construct a very human story. There’s something tragic about the passion the narrator feels for his work compared to the feeling of stagnation and suffocation that comes across in his home life.

‘I’m Sorry, it’s Bad News’ has a sombre, melancholy tone that is perfect for this particular story. Ruth’s loneliness is palpable and is reinforced by the unexpected and poignant ending.

It wasn’t easy to choose the winners. The standard overall was fantastic and I was doubly impressed by the diversity of the stories. In the end I had to pick tales which enveloped me and which stayed with me long after I had finished reading them.

2nd Prize Scent of Lemons by Cathie Hartigan 3rd Prize Breeding Monsters by Anthony Howcroft RUNNERS UP: Careers Week by Benjamin J. Langley The House of Meat by Tania Hershman Pig Man by Natalie Smith Nightwear for Warriors by Beverley Sims I’m Sorry, it’s Bad News by Madeline Parsons Exposure by Vikki Gemmell

SHORTLISTED ENTRANTS:

Competitions | 31

250 word Shortest Story Category 1st Prize Busy Lizzy by Ken Elkes My wife, the gardener, the queen of cut-and-come-again, trailed loam through hospital corridors till nothing more could be done.

She didn’t want graveyards: “Too manicured and prim.” So she dug a long groove between the roses, at the end of the garden where the morning sun would reach.

250 word Shortest Story Category 3rd Prize B for Bottom by Tracy Darnton What a stupid thing to say! She’d meant to say “B for Bravo” but “Bottom” had just popped out.

She cursed her wrinkled cheeks that were so quick to blush.

Then she taught me who would need watering, who should be pruned, who could bear tough love. Who could not.

The young man at the counter was already sniggering with the girl behind him. They only looked about 18. He still had pimples on his chin.

Once everything was done, she stayed until winter’s first hard frost, then left a half-empty bed.

Well never mind them and their easy youth.

Stepping through brittle, iced grass I found her by the roses ready-sown, pockets tight with bulbs, waiting for Spring.

250 word Shortest Story Category 2nd Prize Word Problems by Alison Wassell Attempt all the questions.

1. Helen is thirty-six. Tony is forty-one. If they have unprotected sex three times every week, calculate how long it will take Helen to become pregnant.

2. Helen is thirty-eight. Tony is forty-three. The couple have no children. In an average week, how many tactless remarks will be made by their friends and families?

3. Helen is forty. Tony is forty-five. Tony has two children from a previous relationship. Calculate the probability of them being offered IVF on the NHS. 4. One cycle of private IVF treatment costs £6000. Helen and Tony have a combined annual income of £45000. What is the cost of three cycles of IVF, expressed as a percentage of their annual income?

5. Helen is forty-two. Tony is forty-seven. a. How long will it be before Tony tells Helen he feels too old to be a father again? b. How many times will Helen tell Tony that he can’t possibly understand how she feels, because he is already a parent?

NB. You will be awarded bonus marks if you accurately predict how much longer the relationship will last.

6. Helen is forty four. Tony is forty-nine. They are no longer together.

Calculate the chances of Helen ever becoming a mother. Take into account her age, past history, and the fact that she has, essentially, given up on men.

Remember to show all your working. This may gain you extra marks, even if your answers are not correct.

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“Yes, it’s Mrs Barnes. B for Bottom, A for Anus, R for Rectum, N for Nuts, E for Enema and S for Screw You.” She picked up her parcel and left.

1000 word Shorter Story Category 1st Prize Pictures of Lily by Karen Jones In the first shot, Lily is dancing, head thrown back, eyes closed, hair falling away from her face, her lips parted in a smile that’s about to break into a laugh. I’m almost in the picture, just behind the guy who’s reaching for her hand but, most importantly, I’m not the guy who’s reaching for her hand. I’m not the guy who’s supposed to be in the picture. I’m strictly background.

It was just luck that I was in the uni canteen the day her phone slipped out of her pocket and skittered under her chair. The place is always so noisy – pot lids clattering, trays falling, people talking – she didn’t notice, didn’t hear it land. No one did. Once she walked away I moved quickly, scooped it up, started after her, glad of this opportunity to actually talk to her. Then I stopped.

The next frame is one of those Facebook-style self-taken profile pictures. When I see those, I always assume the user has no friends, is so pathetic they had to be their own photographer, their arms stretched, distancing themselves from their loneliness, a false smile etched on a sad face. I took my profile pic with my iPhone, so I know what I’m talking about. But Lily has lots of these shots. She experiments with poses, outfits, looking up from under her fringe, or wide-eyed and fake-honest into the lens.

In my favourite picture, she’s lying on her side on her bed. She’s wearing a vest top and shorts. There’s a teddy bear on her pillow, its feet just visible above her head. Her hair splays out around her and the act of raising her arm at this angle to take the picture has pushed her breasts up and together, making them look fuller and rounder than they really are – than they probably are – and her gaze is steady, as though daring the viewer to look away. I wonder if she thought about the juxtaposition of the cuddly toy and her pose, the contrast between innocence and sexuality. Something tells me she did. Something tells me nothing Lily does is by chance. I look at that picture more often than I should. I feel guilty afterwards.

I’ve copied all of her photographs, memos and contacts. I will give the phone back, but not just yet. She’s had it blocked since she lost it and I’ve taken out the sim in case it could be traced, so all I’m hanging on to

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Judge: Sue Grafton Sue Grafton is published in 28 countries and 26 languages—including Estonian, Bulgarian, and Indonesian. She’s an international bestseller with a readership in the millions. She’s a writer who believes in the form that she has chosen to mine: “The mystery novel offers a world in which justice is served. Maybe not in a court of law,” she has said, “but people do get their just desserts.” And like Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, Robert Parker and the John D. MacDonald—the best of her breed—she has earned new respect for that form. Her readers appreciate her buoyant style, her eye for detail, her deft hand with character, her acute social observances, and her abundant storytelling talents. www.suegrafton.com/sue-grafton.php

BIGGER Short Story Competition 2012 - Results is a useless piece of pink plastic. But it lived in her pocket. She used it, touched it for so long, it makes me feel close to her.

I should speak to her. I really think I should speak to her. I should have given the phone back straight away, that was my best chance. If I do it now it’ll look weird. I’ve had it for a week. I could tell her I found it, heard she’d lost hers. Or I could say nothing.

Her Facebook account is set to private, but I managed to get in before she blocked the phone, so now I’ll be able to see all her check-ins.

I’ll engineer a meeting with Lily soon. I just have to work out how to get her alone, how to get her to look at me, to laugh with me, the way she does with the guy who was reaching for her hand, the guy who isn’t me.

And when I finally talk to her I’ll have to remember to forget everything I’ve learned. Forget her dog’s name, that she likes snowboarding, how her brothers tower over her and look more like her parents than she does. I’ll have to forget that while people like me, people she’s never noticed, think her name is Kate, the people she loves call her by her middle name. I’ll have to forget her name is Lily.

Darla turned back to the television. The crowd was pressed together, for warmth, for community. The ball was lit and ready to begin its descent.

Darla looked down at herself, comfortable in just her bra and panties.

She placed her hand on her stomach, taut and lean under her splayed fingers. One minute to go. She hit the mute button again and the sounds of the high-spirited party crowd filled the room.

Yes, it had been a long year. All three hundred and sixty five days and one hundred pounds of it. One year ago she’d sat in this very same chair, taking up way more space then she did now, so ready to make the resolution, to take control of her life and reap the reward. On the television the crowd began the countdown chant.

TEN...

Darla has such a pretty face, it’s too bad...

NINE..

Darla is such a nice person, if only...

1000 word Shorter Story Category 2nd Prize Little Black Dress by Shelley Arnfield It had been a long year. Darla flipped the lever on the side of her La-ZBoy recliner. The foot rest sprang out and she stretched out in the chair, hitting the power button on the television remote control and muting the sound at the same time. Five minutes to go before the new year and she never missed the ball dropping and the count down to midnight in Times Square. Every city had their version of the big moment but she thought New York did it up the best. Except after forty years of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, Dick wasn’t rockin’ any more. Ryan Seacrest had this one all to himself.

Darla’s eyes drifted from the silent shots of the crowd in the square to the empty clothes hanger on the wall by the kitchen door. The ivory satin covered hanger would be coming down at midnight and relegated to the back of her closet, putting an end to another New Year’s resolution.

EIGHT...

Darla sure can put it away, it’s no wonder...

SEVEN...

Thanks, Darla. How did I get so lucky to have the best damn secretary in the company...

SIX...

My New Year’s resolution is to lose one hundred pounds...

FIVE... ...and fit into a size 8 little black dress...

FOUR... ...and then maybe Todd will notice that I’m more than just a good secretary...

THREE...

She had less than five minutes to decide on her resolution for the upcoming year. It was a silly little ritual that she had -- announcing her resolution for the year out loud at the stroke of midnight, even if there was no one there to hear it. And there never was.

...and next New Year’s, maybe, just maybe, I won’t be sitting at home by myself at midnight, and Todd will...

The idea she’d been considering had been tossed aside earlier in the evening, right about the time she’d slipped quietly out the back door of Elaine’s party. It had been too crazy anyway and largely out of her control. And that was a rule she had for making resolutions -- they had to be something she had total control over. Still, it had been a dizzying idea to contemplate for a while, imagining it coming true.

...and Todd will...

Darla glanced at the hanger again.

Would you like a gift receipt with this?

No, thank you, it’s for myself.

Would you like me to find you another size?

No, thank you, this one will fit.

I really think you should try it on.

TWO...

ONE...

Darla, let me introduce you to my fiance. Darla’s the best damn secretary in the company. Oh, you look nice, by the way...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! “My New Year’s resolution is to eat a different flavour of ice cream every day this year.”

Darla opened the tub of French vanilla she’d left sitting beside her on the table. How crazy she had been to think that Todd would kiss her at midnight. What had she been thinking? You couldn’t make a New Year’s resolution that included someone else. She knew that. After all, she’d been making New Year’s resolutions since she was old enough to know what they meant. Ever since she’d started spending every New Year’s Eve with Dick.

Competitions | 35

But she was the only person she knew that kept them. All year long.

That was really something to be proud of.

Darla looked at her size 8 little black dress pooled on the floor where she had taken it off.

The ice cream was just starting to melt a little around the edges of the carton. She loved that part the best. She switched the channel away from the jubilant crowd in Times Square, still blowing horns, hugging.

Kissing. In her head she silently amended the wording of her resolution.

‘One gallon. One gallon of every different flavour.’ It didn’t matter that she hadn’t said it out loud. It still counted.

No, she never missed the count down to midnight on the television.

Darla sighed and picked up her spoon.

1000 word Shorter Story Category 3rd Prize Little Ears by Alison Wassell Hot days are good, because they open the window, and you can hear everything. Fridays are good, because all the women go for a girly pub lunch, and Mr Miller and Mr Curtis are left behind. A hot Friday is perfect. Zachary leans back against the wall, which is pleasantly warm from the sunshine, and stretches out his legs. He opens his book and rests it on his knees. People know better than to disturb him when he’s reading. He peels the lid off his lunchbox and takes out his crisps.

Crisps are contraband. Lunchboxes are supposed to be healthy. But Zachary’s a smart kid. He has ways and means of getting round the rules.

Crunching too loudly could blow his cover. He pulls open the packet slowly and takes out one crisp at a time. The quietest way to eat a crisp, he has discovered, is to lick all the flavour off, then, when it’s a bit soggy, cram it into your mouth in one piece, let it go soft, then swallow. They don’t taste that nice, to be honest, but it’s worth it.

Someone fills the kettle and switches it on. Mr Miller complains, as he always does, that there are no clean mugs. There’s no sound of anyone washing up though, so they must be using dirty ones. The microwave pings. Mr Curtis says his lunch is leftover curry from last night. Mr Miller says curry always tastes better the next day. Not when his wife has made it, it doesn’t, says Mr Curtis. They both laugh.

They sit right next to the window to eat their lunch. There is rustling as Mr Miller unwraps his sandwiches. Not peanut butter again, says Mr Curtis. Mr Miller snorts. He does a lot of snorting. It was all he had in.

He’s not a fan of shopping.

There is silence, apart from the sound of them chewing. Zachary knows how hard it is to speak with peanut butter and bread stuck to the roof of your mouth. He knows how to be patient. It will get more interesting once they finish eating. He turns over a couple of pages in his book, just in case anyone’s watching.

They scrape their chairs back and one of them opens the dishwasher.

Mr Curtis asks Mr Miller if he knows how to work it. Mr Miller has no idea. He says they should leave all that stuff to the girlies. They laugh again. Mr Miller asks Mr Curtis if he saw Jenny bending over to put her coffee mug in at break time. Jenny is Miss Price, the Teaching Assistant.

Mr Curtis says if Jenny’s skirts get any shorter they will be belts. Not that he’s complaining, he says.

Mr Miller says he took Jenny out once, last term. Neither of them speaks for a bit. Zachary thinks they must be picturing Miss Price bending over the dishwasher in her short skirt. He can imagine this quite clearly, because the Year Six boys get to watch her every day, when

36 | Competitions

she bends over someone’s work to explain something. Sometimes they pretend not to understand stuff, just to make her do it.

At last, Mr Miller finishes thinking and snorts, as though he’s disgusted with something. To be honest, he says, he can’t be doing with clever women. Jenny has too many opinions for his liking. What about one of the mums, then, says Mr Curtis. Mingers, the lot of them, says Mr Miller. It sounds as though he is thinking again. Except maybe Abigail Fisher’s mum, he adds. He was definitely getting signals from her, last parents’ evening. This time, Mr Curtis snorts. In Mr Miller’s dreams, he tells him. Zachary can tell their snorts apart now. He’s been doing this for ages, pretending to read while he gathers information.

Mr Curtis says what about Jack Spencer’s missus. Is her name Shirley, or Sheila? Something beginning with an‘s’ anyway, he says. Jack Spencer is the Chair of Governors. That’s a person, not an actual chair.

Zachary knows all about it. He reads stuff. Mr Curtis asks Mr Miller if he’s seen the size of her tits. Mr Miller doesn’t reckon they’re real.

Besides, she must be at least forty-five.

Mr Miller would go there, though, given half a chance, Mr Curtis tells him. Course he would, says Mr Miller. They laugh again. From what he’s heard, says Mr Curtis, Mr Miller wouldn’t be the first. His voice gets louder as he comes over to close the window. Zachary stands up, and his book falls forgotten to the floor. Mr Curtis takes a step back when he sees him. He turns pale. In fact, he looks a bit ill, although that might be down to his wife’s curry.

Zachary rests his palms on the window ledge, and leans into the staffroom.

‘It’s Sheena, Sir,’ he says. ‘The tits are real, by the way,’ he adds, as an afterthought, looking past Mr Curtis at Mr Miller. Mr Miller has gone a strange colour too. His mouth is hanging open, like someone in a cartoon who’s just had a shock. Zachary holds up the bag of crisps he’s not meant to have, and smiles. He actually does a kind of little victory dance. He thinks of how easy his life will be from now on. No detentions, no extra homework, brilliant marks even if his work is crap.

He’ll probably even get made captain of the football team. Zachary Spencer knows there are ways and means. Especially when your dad’s the Chair of Governors.

2500 word Short Story Category 1st Prize Abhra, The Cloud by Ruby Cowling My aunties used to shout that I was a good for nothing boy, but I have a job in the factory now: I make pyjamas for people flying overnight on planes between New York City and London England. Well, my sisters do most of the actual making. All they let me do is sew in the labels at the end: S, M, L, XL, XXL. The supervisor on our shifts has one big eyebrow joined in the middle like a flying bird. He’s okay.

I tried putting on an XXL shirt. I popped out of the sleeve with room to spare, endless black cotton falling around my body like I’d pushed my head up through the night sky. Then I stood in one leg of the pants and pulled up the waistband over my head and it was like I was down a well.

Up high and down low just like that.

We make so many pairs of pyjamas, everyone in New York City and London England must sleep in them. I can see them: millions of big black soft beetles snoring in their smoked glass apartments on the eighty-eighth floor. Getting up in their rumpled suits, drinking tiny cups of coffee and smiling at the city sunrise.

I tell Bibha this and she says, “Abhra don’t be stupid, they are disposable.”

“What’s dis-posable?”

“They wear them once for the journey and then take them off and the airplane company throws them away.”

She is crazy.

Bibha means Radiant Light. My other sisters are Amrita (She Who is Full of Nectar), Usha (Beautiful Dawn) and Rani (The Queen). My name, Abhra, means Cloud. My aunties get a little ditch between their eyebrows when they say it.

“Abhra, you’re in our hair.”

“Abhra, stop mooning about here.”

“Abhra, you’re darkening our doorstep with that face of yours. Make yourself useful. Your auntie Leela is coming back tomorrow and we have too much to do, we cannot be entertaining you as well.”

They say I drift around threatening to bring the rains, but I can’t help if I’m a dreamer like my grandfather. I see things as if I’m flying over them, a big picture of the way things are, sometimes of the way things should be. Bibha listens to what I describe sometimes but then she’ll say oh, you saw that on the TV the other day and ruffle up my hair.

Auntie Leela has been away for three months. She has been to Delhi.

I think of Delhi and see heaps of coloured pottery, ancient temples glowing cream. Crowds upon crowds upon crowds, and the smell everywhere of cow pee. Auntie Leela never shouts at me like the other aunties. I wonder will she bring me a present and then I stop my greedy thoughts. I’m a working man now; I don’t need presents.

I’m not really supposed to be working at the factory, but then neither are my sisters. It’s no big deal, they just tell us to go home on inspection days and we work later for the rest of the week to catch up. And there’s plenty of work. A whole new floor opens up next week, where they’ll be making some kind of special miniature clothing.

“It’s for American girls to dress up their teddy bears as pop stars,” Bibha tries to tell me.

Sure, Bibha. I tell you: crazy.

Whatever it’s for, I love seeing the sparkly material being carried through on the big rolls. It looks like the future, shiny and silver.

I’m sewing my last labels of the day, the end of a big pile of Ls, when Bibha gets beckoned over to the supervisor’s office. I watch her through the glass as she rolls her hands over each other, over and over. The supervisor talks from under his eyebrow. Then Bibha puts her hands over her mouth in a pointed shape.

It takes her a long time to walk back to our table.

“We have to go,” she tells my sisters and me. She has such a soft voice.

She is nearly fifteen and soon she’ll get some dopy husband or other like Amrita did and she won’t live with us any more. But at the moment every one of us needs to earn money here.

“What did he say?” I ask her. “Is it because of me?”

I know it’s me. I’m the cloud that brings the rains. I’m the one who pushed my amma out of this life when I was born, the one who drove my father away into madness just looking at me.

“Just come,” she says and grabs my hand.

She says nothing on the walk home. When we get there, none of the aunties are home. Bibha’s face looks grey.

“Into Dhaka,” she says when I ask where they’ve gone.

“Have they gone to meet Auntie Leela?” I ask. “Why did all of them go?”

But she won’t answer any more questions. She takes Rani and Usha into the kitchen and when they come back in, Rani is crying. I think of the sparkly material and wish I’d taken a little scrap of it so I could remember what it felt like to look at a bright future.

There is a wailing noise coming up the street and then someone bangs on our door. Bibha answers it: it’s our neighbour Mrs Dutta.

“Is there any news?” She burbles, her mouth all stringy and wet, as she throws her arms around Bibha. Come on. She knows the news, that we have all been thrown out of the factory, otherwise she wouldn’t be

crying about it and coming round wanting to hear the details and slap the back of my legs.

But Bibha shakes her head and says, “We’re waiting.”

She takes Mrs Dutta through to give her some tea. It seems I am invisible. I switch on the TV set and quickly turn the sound down. I’m not allowed to put it on but I don’t see what else I’m supposed to do with myself.

There is a news programme on, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. There is a red strip with white writing running across the bottom of the picture, and up in the corner a square full of fire, flashing lights and bad-looking metal. I turn up the sound just a little to hear what the newsreader is saying. “… on the flight. Terrorism remains a possibility, but the most likely cause seems to be a mechanical failure, though there were reports of heavy cloud in the region.”

I understand the words New Delhi to Dhaka in the message running across the red strip. The phrase 244 people.

I hear Bibha’s footsteps, jab the TV off and leap to sit next to Usha and Rani, who are crying in the corner to themselves. Bibha comes over and takes my hand.

“Let me talk to you,” she says.

We go into the kitchen where Mrs Dutta still is.

“It’s not about the factory, is it?” I say, just to check, but even before she shakes her head I know the answer.

They start talking to me, and I close my eyes. I see a hot black strip of ground, all around it little fires, and the New York Times whirling and spinning until it slams into the picture with its headline Delhi-Dhaka Disaster!, and everyone in London England lighting candles and bowing their heads over bunches of flowers laid on the ground. And I can see, all around the burning black ditch, heaps and scraps of colour: red green yellow red blue pink and yellow and silver, the clothes the aunties and sisters and mothers were wearing and the future clothes they’d packed in their suitcases. Watching the scene I’m up high, drifting over it dressed in those black pyjamas. When I open my eyes I’m down low again, but still drifting, untethered, away and out into the world.

2500 word Short Story Category 2nd Prize Scent of Lemons by Cathie Hartigan ‘They’ve put me on perfume for Christmas,’ I say when Steve comes to pick me up.

‘I thought you looked happy,’ he says. ‘No more suitcases then?’

I swear you could die working in a luggage department; it’s so boring.

The girl before me was sacked for dropping off in a trunk. No wonder I’m smiling. My dream was perfume. The shiny boxes: gold, silver, all colours. And the bottles with the fancy tops like birds and hearts and twinkly things. I’ll smell gorgeous every day instead of coming home reeking of rubber and leather polish.

‘I don’t see luggage is so bad,’ Steve reasons. ‘You don’t have to spend every day rooting round under floorboards with dead rats and the most enormous…’

‘Okay, okay,’ I say, shoving my fingers in my ears. Steven’s a gas fitter.

I’ve got prospects, he keeps saying, along with then you and me can…you know. I sort of know and do like the little squeezey peezey feeling I get when he says it.

We haven’t been going out all that long though. I’ve not met his Mum and Dad yet, but he’s struck up conversation with mine when he comes round to get me. I can tell Mum likes him; she offers him her Roses. Even

Competitions | 37

if he’s just waiting in the hall, she gets off the sofa and goes out ‘specially.

‘I have to know things. Learn the names and how to gift wrap.’ I tell him.

People care about what they spray on themselves. They ask me if I like it. Nobody chats in luggage.

The first day I’m in heaven, so thrilled I could kiss my customers, not just smile at them like my manager says I should. By after lunch I’ve tried everything from A to L and my nose feels knackered. I like Heureux best, it smells lemony, although I have to stick my chin out to say it otherwise it sounds like Horror. I was so rubbish at French.

In the pub on the Friday evening I get Steve to test me on the names.

Not that he knows whether I’m right or wrong.

‘Pink Kisses,’ he scoffs. ‘You’ve made that up.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ I say. ‘It smells like dog breath though.’

Perfume is mega busy. We have queues. Men come in blinking and looking round as if they’d heard about this shop thing but have never seen it before.

It’s about half an hour before closing when this older guy comes in.

Well, about my Dad’s age I reckon. He’s got a nice face and he’s friendly.

Says he wants some scent. Bless.

‘Have you anything in mind, sir?’ I ask.

He frowns and looks at the perfectly arranged shelves behind me.

‘Umm… perhaps you could recommend something?’

I smile and say ever so charmingly. ‘Who’s it for?’

A simple question but he goes all flummoxed. ‘Well, she’s…umm… goodness, that’s a difficult question.’ Then he looks like he’s had a brilliant idea. ‘What would you like?’ he says.

I wonder sometimes if they share the same planet. ’course, I recommend Heureux.

Funny how you remember some people and not others. The following week I see him again. This time it’s at the garden centre. Dad’s made me go with him to help with the tree and inflatable polar bears.

He’s getting out of a car a few down from ours and he’s with someone so I can’t resist having a butchers to see who’s getting Heureux in their Christmas stocking. Phew. She looks all right. Well togged up, retro red cape thing, not some manky fleece. They’re having a laugh together too.

Even better.

What isn’t better is when I see him next time. Steve nips in one lunchtime and suggests a quick pizza. An hour isn’t long, so we hoof it up the High Street. Smack. Straight into Steve’s Mum and Dad, who shock, horreur turns out to be the Heureux man.

‘This is Leah,’ Steve says, introducing me.

‘Oh, how lovely! I’m Sue.’ His Mum steps forward and gives me a big hug. That’s nice. I like her at once. But over her shoulder I’m staring at Steve’s Dad, who gives me a look; a guilty sort of look and he caps it off with an almost un-noticeable to everyone else, but not to me, shake of his head. Don’t tell, he mouths.

‘I hope you’ll come to Christmas tea, Leah,’ Steve’s mum says in my ear.

‘Oh, how kind. Thank you,’ I’m being all demure but thinking of my Mum who’ll start lining up her wedding outfit as soon as she hears.

‘Steve’s been telling us all about you, hasn’t he, Jim?’ Jim nods.

‘All very complementary,’ she says, nodding at me. ‘But he’s a good lad. A very good lad.’ And she nods again. Now, I don’t come from a nodding family. We usually say what we mean straight. What am I supposed to think? I look at Steve and down at my watch, but then Sue puts her arm through Jim’s and says. ‘That’s because he’s just like his Dad, isn’t he, Jim?’ And she laughs again. Jim’s got a smile on that looks as if he’s delved very deep to find.

Our pizzas takes ages.

‘What’s up, love?’ Steve asks.

38 | Competitions

‘Oh, nothing. Just tired.’ I yawn. Stupid. How lame is that?

‘Never mind, only a couple of days to go.’

‘Mmm.’ Every time I look at him, I see his Dad. God, I’m fed up.

If Christmas hadn’t been so close I might have said something but Steve’s a darling. I’m not messing him about. Besides, I’ve bought him a bag; bit like a brief case. I know he’ll like it because he’d been into work and picked one up.

‘This is what I want,’ he’d said. ‘Paperwork in here, tools in the kitbag and everything in a van with my name on.’

He’d twirled the bag round then lent across and given me a kiss. He shouldn’t have but no one was about. No one was ever about in luggage and I do like it when he kisses me.

By Christmas Eve, I’m in a strop. It’s Steve’s Mum’s voice I keep hearing. He’s just like his Dad…like his Dad. Is he? He doesn’t seem like the cheating type. In fact, Steve’s a kid waiting for Christmas to come. All excited and twitchy.

The shop closes early. I’ve promised Dad, I’ll go and get a poinsettia for Mum on the way home. He insists I go to the garden centre, reckoning they’re better quality. They’re always dead twigs on the sill by February so I don’t see it matters, but I wasn’t going to upset anyone so close to Christmas.

I see Jim in the car park again. I’m standing next to an inflated Holy Family and duck behind it. He can’t see anything over that lot. He’s on his own and carrying a small tree with lemons on, which makes it lemon tree I guess. I’m thinking I’ll give him a hand as it looks heavy, when lady in red rushes up behind him. They get the pot in behind the front seat and next thing, he puts his arm round her.

I tell Mum. I have to say something because I’ve come home without her poinsettia.

She says: ‘You’re the only person I know that can make a pig’s breakfast out of a silk purse.’ She’s probably right but I keep brooding on Jim’s expression that time we met in the street.

Steve says they’re not having presents at his house ‘til tea-time when I’ll be there. At home, I pick over my lunchtime turkey.

‘Are you going to eat that?’ Mum asks. I try harder until eventually Dad suggests he gives me a lift to Steve’s. I can see they both want to settle in front of Titanic and I’m being a complete pain.

Steve opens the door, waves to my Dad and gives me a huge hearthopping-about kiss. He looks so happy to see me; I decide Mum’s right.

It’s time for me to stop being a misery guts.

‘I’ve bought presents,’ I say holding out the carrier bag. I hope Sue likes the soap and only half hope Jim’s teeth have trouble with the toffees.

‘Mum’s in the kitchen,’ Steve says. ‘Why don’t you go and say hello and I’ll put these with the others.’ And he disappears upstairs.

Sue has her hands in the sink. ‘Have a mince pie, love,’ she says, ‘But watch out, there’re still hot in the middle.’ I was just biting through the pastry when she adds: ‘Jim’s out with dog.’

‘Mmghh,’ I mumble. Oh yeah? Out with the dog, where exactly?

I help her take the tea into the lounge, which I reckon has more decorations up than we have at the shop. Steve’s two kid sisters giggle at me but not badly.

Then I hear the front door open, there’s a whoosh of cold air and a black and white mongrel bounds in. At least they’ve got a dog.

‘Who’s for mulled wine?’ Jim hands me a glass and gives me a crinkly smile; meaning what, I haven’t a clue but I smile back, nice and wide.

There’s a lot of noise, everyone talking at once. They don’t leave me out but I’m glad to gulp down the wine and sniff all the mulling stuff. Plus, I have something to hold. Steve’s hand would be better though. Where the hell has he got to?

‘Ho, ho, ho!’ From the hall comes the voice of guess who. Everyone cheers and laughs and in comes Santa dragging an enormous My Little Pony duvet cover full of presents. My eyeballs are popping so much they’ll probably end up in my glass. Christmas at home is all right but only decorations and telly. Last year we hung Santa out the window but

he fell off. Nobody ever dresses up themselves but come to think of it, I quite fancy Steve with a beard.

I can’t get over how happy everyone is. Laughing and being pleased with all their presents. I get some awesome Lush gear from Steve’s folk and they like my things. At least they say they do.

The duvet cover’s only got a couple of lumps left in it when Jim says: ‘Wait, Hang on.’ And he goes out the room and then out the front door.

‘Ooo, very mysterious,’ says Sue. Santa Steve is happy as a blissed-out Larry with his brief case and I have to tell him to shut up. I think he’s leaving my present till last deliberately and I’m beginning to feel a bit hot.

‘More mulled wine, Leah?’ says Sue. ‘Yes please.’

Steve gets right in the duvet looking for the last thing and while he’s there he stands up and lurches about the room doing pony impressions with neighing and weird whinnying. I’m pulling on my cheeks to stop my face hurting. Then he gets out and hands me my present.

It’s about the size of a paperback but I doubt Steve’s bought me a book. He’s wrapped it in reindeer paper but underneath I recognise the shop’s gift wrap.

At that moment, Jim comes back carrying the lemon tree from the garden centre and behind him, enter the red coat woman in a blue mac.

‘Auntie Pat, Auntie Pat!’ Everyone rushes up to her for hugs and whatnot. And I’m standing there, grinning like a pig with two ears. I know straightaway what my present is from Steve because I wrapped it myself.

I nod at Jim and he nods back and through the leaves of her lemon tree, Sue nods at Jim, then Steve and then me. ‘I told you they’re alike, didn’t I?’ she says. ‘Can’t resist a surprise, either of them.’

Steve’s looking for a kiss and I plant a big lipstick strawberry on his cheek. I open the pink box and take out the bottle of Heureux.

‘Mmm,’ says Steve as I spray my wrist. ‘I like that. What’s it called?’

‘Heureux,’ I say. ‘It’s French for happy and glad.’

‘Really?’ He leans across to look at the box. ‘Dad said it was called Hurrah.’

‘Did he?’ I say, laughing. ‘Good for him. Hurrah or Heureux. I like both.’

2500 word Short Story Category 3rd Prize Breeding Monsters by Anthony Howcroft My cellphone rings to the tune of “In the jungle, the mighty jungle...”

Janet gives me a look to say, if this call is work you’re dead.

I flick open the clamshell. It’s work. I study Janet while I listen to the caller. Janet looks beautiful. Her dress dazzles, with black silk and sequins clustered like stars. I listen to the appalling news. Just when I think my life is coming together it falls apart. The call ends.

“Felicity?” Janet asks. Clearly she was studying me too.

I nod. “It’s bad. I should look in, briefly.”

“They know it’s our anniversary,” she says.

“Let me call you a cab and meet you at the restaurant. I’ll be quick.”

Janet chews her lip, messing the perfect line of red lipstick. She knows how much it means. Ten years dedicated to one goal and I’ve failed again.

My professional credibility is at stake and more importantly our funding grant.

“If it isn’t meant to be,” she squeezes my arm.

My Land Rover is painfully slow but once rolling it’s harder to stop than a rhino. Charging past the wooden tiger at the Park entrance I hit the button to lower my window and then stamp on the brakes, skidding to a halt at the Security Lodge. I feel a fool in my dinner jacket but hardly anyone will be here. I realise I’m wearing aftershave, which is banned.

You don’t want to smell like a sow in heat when stepping in to an enclosure with a sexually-starved tiger. There’s no time to shower though.

“Doctor.” The guard acknowledges me and lifts the barrier.

I speed through the Park and finally leave the car skewed across two spaces. There’s rain falling but it’s only a short run to the centre. Swiping my card I enter and stride past three white tigers. Sheets of industrial strength glass separate us and hopefully shield my aftershave.

“Hi,” Michelle passes me an overall. “I wasn’t sure whether to call, being that it’s your anniversary.” Her nostrils twitch suspiciously.

“You did the right thing. How’s Felicity?”

“Physically she seems fine. Licked herself for a while but she’s settled again. We’ve kept her isolated. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to inspect her.”

We peer through the observation chamber’s one-way glass.

“Miscarriages are a fact of nature.” I say, glad my wife can’t hear me.

Felicity lifts her pale head. She sniffs ostentatiously although she can’t possibly trace us in here. She’s nine foot from nose to tail. In between lies 125kg of bone and muscle and two blue eyes bright enough to set the proverbial forests alight. She’s my eldest. I raised her from a cub.

Every tiger has a unique pattern of stripes, distinctive as a fingerprint or a snowflake. Felicity has two bold stripes curling around her white forearms like smoke, contrasted by dark flame-patterns encircling her face.

Our tigers have contraceptive implants placed beneath the skin when they’re chipped so that they can’t reproduce. There’s no shortage of tigers in zoos. We could easily breed but every legitimate zoo is already over quota. I sometimes fantasize about releasing them into the wilds of Solihull. They would adapt well. The nimbys would moan about the occasional teenager eaten on a street corner, but that would be a positive advantage from my perspective.

We do have authority to breed from Felicity. My special project. All white tigers are Bengals with two recessive genes. Genetic science is helping us move towards the last great threshold; the black tiger. This would be a true melanistic without stripes not the pseudo-variety.

“What have we got?” I say. “Blood? Any evacuation?”

Michelle shows me the tissue mass.

“Felicity ate the rest,” she states.

“That’s normal,” I say. Michelle’s a good assistant but I keep her at arm’s length. In my profession, never get too close is not a cliché but practical guidance. I sometimes wonder about Michelle.

I consider sedating Felicity to perform a scan. That would kiss goodbye to dessert with Janet and see me sleeping in the spare room for a week.

Besides, this is finished. All we can do is keep Felicity under observation, skip a cycle and wait for her to enter estrus again.

“Let her rest while I review these,” I say.

Michelle sets up the equipment and retreats. I peer at the display, looking for anything to identify. We’ve had very few miscarriages. I was certain we had the genetic puzzle solved. This was going to be the first melanistic in captivity. The only verifiable black tiger in the world although they do occur naturally. James Forbes’ lost watercolour is a mild proof, surviving in written descriptions of the black and glossed

Competitions | 39

purple coat apparently variegated like rich velvet. Then there were the three cubs at Oklahoma City Zoo in the 70’s, where the mother mysteriously killed the two darkest animals herself. With a world population of a few thousand tigers, I seriously doubt whether there’s one alive today. Declining tiger populations suggest we may never see another. If we do it will almost certainly be a dead specimen, the myths will ensure the veracity of that.

You see, the rural regions maintain their legends. If the white tiger is a ghost then the black is a demon. They pad through the night devouring souls, stealing dreams, causing drought and disease, even withering crops as they swagger past. The value of a demon’s corpse to the Chinese apothecaries would be immeasurable. No black tiger would survive in the wild. If we can produce one in the West Midlands, we’ll have achieved something remarkable. This is the beneficial application of genetics, ignored by the media. Not breeding monsters but conserving and educating, revealing animals are beautiful and fearsome in equal measure. Just like us.

“Let’s hope San Diego fare better.” Michelle murmurs.

“Everyone wants that first black cub.” I say.

“Nero would’ve been a good name.”

“Burning brightly, eh?” I smile. “The Marketeers will hijack the naming process.”

“Can I do anything?” she asks.

“No, thanks. I’ll take a quick look, must dash...”

“The restaurant,” she says.

“Exactly.”

She returns to the observation chamber.

I hate San Diego. Copy cats. Stealing my research, pumping huge funds in to their projects from Hollywood celebrities. In my more paranoid phases I wonder if they have a spy in our labs.

“That can’t be,” I say aloud.

I zoom.

“No.” If eureka is a moment of brilliant inspiration then there ought to be a word for the slower revelation. One that waxes at the moons pace, an immense knowledge pulling everything towards it with irresistible gravity. This word could describe the situation where you already know the answer but can’t admit the truth until the whole image is laid bare.

I drag myself to the next machine. Placing a sample in the tube I bang it on and watch it spin out of my control. Science is no longer run on Newton’s fixed laws, more Heisenberg, uncertainty and chaos. The new century erodes and blurs our stringent ethical guidelines that have governed since Victorian times. Things are harder to compartmentalise.

We’re not different people at home and work; the edges are complicated to define. I’m not a scientist and a husband I’m the compound result. It’s beginning to look like that equals a complete failure.

The analysis terrifies me. It reveals that the tiger’s miscarried cub was human. My brain grinds through that logic. Felicity was impregnated with a human foetus. A truth leading to several inexorable conclusions.

I check the results but that’s a forlorn exercise. Resting my head in my hands, I fight to control my breathing. Michelle mustn’t hear. I seal the remaining materials in a container. I want to hurl it across the room and smash the equipment. Instead I push the container into a jiffy envelope and tuck it under my arm. I almost forget to clear the images off the computer. This may end my career as well as my marriage.

I try to leave without encountering Michelle but she’s silent as a cat. We all pick up something of the animals we study.

40 | Competitions

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“Bitterly disappointed.”

“You’ve got a lot invested in this project.”

“More than you can imagine,” I say and regret immediately.

I head for the exit. “Call me if you need to.”

She watches me run across the gravel and I can feel her eyes burning into my back. It’s raining harder. Janet will be waiting in the restaurant, letting her anger build. I release mine as I hit the main road, overtaking on blind corners, flashing my lights, roaring abuse as I hurtle past cars.

In town my anger fizzles and sparks as I slow down and try to compose myself.

Janet is surprisingly relaxed, tapping her feet to the live pianist and finishing a cocktail. I look dishevelled. My coat is with the maitre’d but water drips from my hair and nose. I kiss Janet and sit down. The waiter offers a menu and asks what I want to drink.

“Are we having red?” I ask Janet.

“Not for me.” she smiles.

“Of course,” I say, looking at her cocktail.

“Virgin daiquiri,” she answers my glance.

I order a large Cab Sauvignon. I need something rich and heavy, thick as blood. Something to numb the pain.

“It’s funny,” Janet says. “I’m calm. It feels different this time.”

“That’s good.” I can’t decide if it is.

“How’s Felicity?” she asks.

The waiter interrupts. I’ve not looked at the menu but Janet speaks.

“I’m famished. Do you mind if I order while you choose?”

“Go ahead,” I say.

“I’ll have the Caesar salad to start, no dressing and can you make sure it’s all freshly washed?” The waiter looks puzzled and she indicates her tummy with a semi-circle motion.

“Madame,” he replies.

“Then I’ll take the fillet. Medium rare.”

I look up, startled at her choice.

“I mean well-done. Nearly forgot. I’m craving it raw. One of those things.”

There’s no ethical dilemma. I have to tell her. My wife is pregnant and unless I’m very much mistaken, she’s carrying a black tiger. There’s no chance of the pregnancy lasting it’s only a matter of time before she too aborts. All I can do is speed the process and ease the physical pain.

Even if it were technically possible for her to carry the tiger until it was feasible, it would be immensely cruel to let it progress.

Here I sit, one of the world’s leading experts on animal fertility and I can’t produce a baby of my own. I know people laugh about me. There’s nothing wrong with my sperm or Janet’s eggs. We’re victims of that rising human epidemic known as unexplained infertility. We should have tried starting a family when we were younger but we didn’t meet until we were both in our mid-thirties. It feels like fate is toying with us like a cat with a mouse.

I can’t remember whose idea it was first. We both knew the risks.

We wanted something to share as we grew older instead of stale conversations and silent blame. Can we give nature a helping hand? I do remember Janet saying that. The clinic weren’t interested, given our age and the length of the waiting lists. Yet it was a simple procedure with my background and I had all the equipment. Do-It-Yourself IVF. I labelled everything so carefully; I don’t understand how it happened. I need more time and wine before I tell her. Tonight we need to enjoy our anniversary and celebrate hope.

During the meal I can’t help but imagine a tiger curled inside her.

Kicking, stretching, scraping, a miniature black demon with talons instead of claws.

San Diego will take the glory. This delay means success will fall into their hands. I may get a citation if they’re generous but I won’t get any more research dollars. Yet the world’s only black tiger is alive right now, feeding off expensive steak that I’m paying for, smouldering with burgeoning intelligence. If only there was some way to transfer it from Janet to one of the tigers.

“Have you thought about names?” Janet asks.

“I’m a little superstitious,” I say, although I think Nero. “I want to make sure everything is OK first.”

“The scan’s next Thursday,” she says. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me neither.” That’s my deadline. We have to resolve this before then.

I know I should tell her now but the scene would be horrendous. She would scream and knock the table over. She might try to rip her own womb out or stab the tiger with a steak knife. Alternatively her anger may be directed at me or she could faint. There are so many factors to consider. I watch her devour pudding while I sip a black coffee. We drive home and I almost tell her in the car. I nearly say something when we undress for bed. I come close to confessing before we turn the light off.

My dreams are ravaged by blazing fires. Rome burns and velvet-skinned tigers pace the forests surrounding the city. I’m woken by a scream.

Janet’s not in bed. I leap up. Over the banister I see the orange lamp switched on between the lounge and kitchen. I rush downstairs and hear her sobs. Janet is curled in a foetal position, night-clothes soaked in sweat and blood. She leans her head against the leather armchair.

“Pain,” is the one word she manages to say.

My eyes scan the chair. In a spasm her fingernails have gouged tracks down the seat like claw marks. The miscarriage has started. She stiffens as another wave of agony sweeps over her.

“Let’s go.” I say.

I collect my car keys and throw on some clothes. I can’t quite shake my mental image of a small black demon snarling in her womb. As I dash down the stairs it occurs to me that the Safari Park is a fraction closer than the Hospital. It has a full range of medical equipment and no prying eyes, except for Michelle. I’m sure I could deal with that small problem. What is it they say, risk and opportunity always go hand-inhand? Accidents do happen.

At the top of the road I can turn left to the Hospital or right to the Safari Park.

I hesitate. A catastrophe is not one bad decision, but a cascade of tiny choices. I can see that. Once you’ve started down a path each choice is easier, more natural than the last. Even the hardest decisions are out of our hands, in many ways. Janet lies in the back unaware of the choices that lie before us.

“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

The legend says the black tiger is a monster, a devil made flesh.

As I said before, we all take on some aspects of the creatures we study.

I turn right.

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Château Ventenac sits on a hill beside the Canal du Midi in the Languedoc region of the South of France.

The Château faces south and nearly

Château Life

every room overlooks our attractive gardens, the canal and lush vineyards,

Inspirational Creative Escapes

with stunning views of the Corbières hills and, on a clear day, the Pyrenees

Poetry & Writing Courses

Lovely, thank you! Nothing is too much trouble and you

in the south of France at

Château Ventenac Writing & Poetry Workshops, plus Writing Retreats Tutors for 2013 include: Sean O’Brien Tiffany Murray

Fiona Robyn

Pascale Petit

Crysse Morrison

Jo Bell

Inspiring location beside the Canal du Midi

We look after you whilst you relax and write

making

Château

Ventenac

feel like a home from home!

Thank you. I’ll be back!

vides a haven of peace and tranquillity and is the perfect backdrop for our courses, workshops and retreats.

Several convenient

airports

offer

budget flights and Ventenac is very

G. P.

well placed for rail and road travel.

Couldn’t have been looked

We can provide transport to & from

after better – Julia, you had

local airports (Carcassonne and Bezi-

just the right touch, relaxed and accommodating. Oh, and great

Spectacular views over vineyards to the Pyrenees Lovely gardens and pool, great food

looked after us very, very well,

and majestic Mont Canigou. It pro-

airport

pick-up (so

important to feeling one’s arrived in the right place!)

A. S.

ers) and Narbonne railway station.

www.chateaulifecourses.com Contact Julia: +44 (0) 7773 206344 julia@chateaulifecourses.com

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Comp Corner Corralled by Danny Gillan

Congratulations people, you just added to the unemployment figures! Yep, thanks to you we’ve been able to sack one of our proof-readers*. It has become clear that they are the very definition of the word ‘redundant’.

Given the unavailability of one of our regular proofers last issue, we set you the challenge of judging just how crucial they are to our operation by searching out as many typos and errors as you could find. And your answer was loud and clear – they’re not even a wee tiny bit crucial!

Nope, not a single mistake was found, despite your best efforts. We’ve chosen to assume this means we are flawless and, frankly, god-like. We can do no wrong, literally. We’re so good at what we do that we are seriously considering compiling the next issue entirely blindfolded, just to confirm how magnificent we are.

Obviously it couldn’t possibly be that you just couldn’t be arsed and that the number of typos was at least as high if not higher than usual. That would be silly.

Sadly, this does mean we have no winners to announce this time round. But it also means our prize has rolled over to this issue’s competition. So one lucky winner will receive a bundle of writing books from Bloomsbury worth fifty of your British pounds. Good, eh?

Here’s what you need to do: Create some atmosphere. That’s all. We want you to make it abundantly clear what tone you’re going for. Is it scary; dream-like; exciting; creepy; light-hearted; tense; icky; erotic or contemplative? Or any others that I can’t think of right now?

There are only three rules: fifty words or less; no dialogue allowed; you’re not allowed to actually tell us the tone you’re after, either in the extract or afterwards. If we can’t figure it out for ourselves, you’ve failed.

Although we only have one prize to give away, our three favourites will be printed next issue.

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

Send your entries to danny@wordswithjam.co.uk in the body of an email. We prefer to remain unattached. Closing date is 5th March.

Have at it! *No proof-readers were harmed (or sacked) in the course of this competition. We love all of our proofers and would be a shambling mess without them.

Competitions | 43

Ten Tips for Writing Crime Fiction

by Sheila Bugler

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably toying with the idea of writing a crime novel. Maybe you’ve already started but are finding it difficult to keep going. Or maybe you’re flying through the first draft and don’t need any help at all (and if that’s the case, good luck to you – it’s a great feeling when that happens).

Whatever stage you’re at, writing a crime novel, like all other forms of writing, is not for the faint-hearted. To help you along the way, here are some tips on how to get started and how to keep writing until you’ve completed your first novel.

Know the genre Crime fiction is an extraordinarily broad genre that, typically, is broken down into a number of sub-genres. These include classic ‘whodunnits’, police procedurals, historical crime fiction, noir (or hard-boiled crime) and psychological thrillers. Then there are categories based on the location of author or protagonist (Tartan crime, Scandi crime, Celtic crime, etc), those revolving around legal conundrums (courtroom dramas or legal thrillers), those targeted at a specific audience (eg, women’s crime fiction), etc.

I could go on but I’m sure you get the point - it’s a broad genre already full of great writers producing gripping works of fiction. If you’re serious about writing a crime novel, you need to understand the market you’re writing for and where your work fits within that. Most importantly, you need to know what you bring to this genre that is different from what’s already out there.

Try this:

The same goes for plot. Think of these classic plots - a woman is being stalked by her psychotic ex, a random serial killer is knocking off hot young women on a university campus, a maverick detective refuses to listen to his/her enthusiastic new partner, a man with money problems fakes his own death then reappears years later to get revenge on the person he blames for his financial losses, etc etc. In the right hands, a writer can give a fresh perspective on any of these plots. But only if that writer has something fresh to say.

Try this: Make a list of as many crime fiction clichés (plot and character) you can think of. Put it somewhere near where you write and refer to it regularly as your novel develops.

Location, location Like character, location is a key element of a successful crime novel. All good crime novels have a strong sense of place, whether it’s the dreamy spires of Oxford, the gritty streets of LA or the leafy lanes of rural England.

Try this: Read at least three of these novels, focussing on the sense of place created by the author. Think about the locations where the novels are set and what techniques the author uses to bring that place to life within the novel - The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke; The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler; Fatal Remedies, by Donna Leon; The Dead of Jericho, by Colin Dexter; The Dead Women of Juarez, by Sam Hawkin; Cradle Song, by Robert Edric.

Choose four new crime novels by authors you’ve never heard of. Read each one and think about how you’d categorise it.

Now think about the novel you want to write. Where does it fit within the broad genre of crime fiction?

Start with a flourish

Character matters

The beginning of your novel is crucial. You need to draw the reader in from the very first scene. Think carefully about how your novel will begin. Choose an opening scene that raises plenty of questions, so that your reader is keen to read on for answers.

People who don’t read crime fiction often assume crime novels are plot-driven stories with little thought given to character development. In my experience, the opposite is true. Like all good fiction, a crime novel succeeds or fails on the basis of its characters. Think of the many great characters crime fiction has given us – Sherlock Holmes, Morse, Hannibal Lecter, Dexter, Poirot, Dave Robicheaux, etc.

Try this: Here is the opening line from The Wrong Kind of Blood, by Declan Hughes: ‘The night of my mother’s funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband.’

For your novel to succeed, you need to have a central character your reader cares about. If that happens, your reader will follow that character wherever he/ she goes.

Does it make you want to read on? I hope so. That’s the sort of opening you should aspire to.

Try this:

End with a bang

Think of strong characters in crime novels you’ve read. What makes them work? What makes you care about them?

Make sure your novel leads to a dramatic finale. Plan the story so that it builds to a heart-stopping, page-turning climax. Remember, you’ve already created a character your reader cares about. Now, create a scene that puts your central character in jeopardy – the bigger the danger, the more your reader will care.

Just remember to keep it realistic and avoid clichés!

Now think about your own characters. How can you improve them? Are you 100% certain your central character is strong enough to carry your novel? For all your characters, do you know – the music they like, what makes them sad, what makes them smile and what their favourite food is?

Avoid clichés It’s all too easy to fall into the cliché trap. This can happen with your character or your plot. Avoid characters which have been ‘done before.’ Have an idea for a maverick detective with a drink problem? If that’s really who you want, then make sure you can do it better than Ian Rankin, Colin Dexter, Dashiel Hammett, Craig McDonald and Ken Bruen. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.

44 | Pencilbox

Try this: Think of some of the best endings in books you’ve already read. Make a list of the reasons these work. When you are working on your own novel, keep the ending in mind. Plan it well in advance so that your story is building up to this.

Get writing and keep writing Start today. You don’t need fancy paper or special pens or a dedicated ‘writing space’. All you need is a PC (or pen and paper if you prefer) and a spare half

Scripts: Why Crime Pays

by Ola Zaltin

So we’ve had the magic mania, the vampire craze and the fifty shades of silliness is just around the corner, coming soon to a multiplex near you.

hour each day. I wrote my first novel by getting up at 5am each morning and writing for half an hour before my working day began. It can be done.

Set yourself a (realistic) daily word count and stick to this. The number of words you write is more important than the amount of time spent writing. I’d suggest a daily target of between 350 and 1000 to begin with. Once you’ve found your own pace you’ll know what’s best for you.

Try this: Go start writing your novel. Now.

Don’t worry about research at this stage It is a myth that research is more important for a crime novel than other types of fiction. Yes, at some point you’ll probably need to do a bit of research. This might involve sending an email to your local police station with some pertinent questions or spending a few minutes online finding out how long it would take someone to die if they’re stabbed in the throat. Or something.

However, in almost all cases you can do your research at any time. It doesn’t have to be done before your novel begins. In fact, if you start to research before you start writing you are in danger of becoming very good at doing research but not much else.

Try this: Do not use research as an excuse to put off the writing for another day. If something’s important you can find out more about it later. Trust me on this. Please.

Keep reading To be a crime writer you should be a crime reader. Read widely. Discover new writers. Find out who the best new crime writers are. What do they offer that’s new? Can you do better?

Immerse yourself in the genre.

Try this: Actively set out to discover new crime writers and aim to read work by a new author at least once a month. Immerse yourself in the glorious, gory world of crime. You won’t regret it.

Believe in yourself Writing is a hard, lonely, mostly thankless business. Writing a crime novel is no easier than writing any other sort of fiction. It takes hard work, determination and unfeasible amounts of self-belief. Don’t have the confidence you can do it? Well you’re wrong. If it’s what you want to do and you set your mind to it, you can do this. When the going gets tough, write through the pain. If you write every day and stick to your word count target, you will get there.

Try this: Don’t give up.

Sheila Bugler’s first novel will be published later this year by Brandon Books. More detailed information on how to write crime fiction can be found on her website:. www.sheilabugler.co.uk

How Harry got to the movies, Bella went to hell and back, and how we’ll all soon get tickled, bonded and cuffed at the movies (if you please - yes please, harder, mistress!!) is common knowledge.

These three films copy well-known patterns of story-telling titillation. Harry Potter goes the way of Ordinary Young Fellow who realizes he has special powers and lands in a Universe of Magic and Awesomeness (see: Star Wars). Bella is an outcast being adopted by a cast of cool, otherworldly people (See: Romeo & Juliet, West Side Story, Grease, etc) and 50 Shades; well, Anastasia finds herself in bed in Seattle, which is pretty much where you wanna stay if you wake up there.

Which, in a roundabout and fascinating way - at least I think - brings me to the subject of crime. The above-mentioned films all use different tricks & plots and such to entice you into their story-telling universe. Crime does not do this. Crime is honest. Crime says: come hither - enter my world. I shall tell you a tall tale. A tale with many murders, most bloody. However, you shall not be a part of them. You shall be spared. You shall walk out unscathed. It shall be horrendous, hairraising, heinous - in fact, anything with a word beginning with the letter H. I shall lead you along. I shall be Holmes. Like the eponymous Dr. House (Holmes minus the L: homes=get it?) the lead character in a whodunnit is often a grudgy son of a c who in the end turns out to be a decent fellow after all. Holmes often lets his perpertrators off scot free, and House is a kuddly kitten underneath all that cynic veneer, of course.

Why is this? One reason. Well, two-fold really but the moral gist remains the same: we need to be re-affirmed about a basic moral goodness in the world. And we want to believe that all ends well (it doesn’t: in the end we die).

But most of all, Crime is a great page-turner.

When something nasty happens, we all crane our necks - want to find out what the hell?

Want to find out who’s the bad guy, who’s dead, who’s alive - and who committed the crime.

There is no genre in film & TV that has more sub-genres, and as opposed to the different periodical crazes for other genres, crime is constant in ticket sales, and will so remain.

And that’s why crime always pays.

Pencilbox | 45

www.cornerstones.co.uk

A Mini Masterclass with Kathryn Price

By Christine Jordan Chapter 1 1497 All Hallowes Eve Blackfriars Priory, Gloucester The scriptorium stood empty, bathed in stillness. A deathly stillness.

The study carrels, twenty eight in all, lined both sides of the long building. Thick damask curtains, normally pulled across each carrel to cloister the novices, were drawn back, exposing their oak desks, displaying a neat collection of ink wells, pen knives, and quills. Leather-bound books and manuscripts lay open, exposing the vellum, like crisp linen, the background to letters and illuminations, waiting to be meticulously crafted. More books and large manuscripts were stacked on shelves along the centre of the room. At one end was the Prior’s study carrel, set apart to show pre-eminence. The friars had long since retired from their studies for the day.

A sharp October wind blew through the unglazed windows of the scriptorium. The bells of St Peter’s Abbey began their hourly chime. On the second chime, the luminous edge of a passing dark cloud revealed a bright and full moon whose light now shone through the windows of each study carrel, illuminating the scriptorium and casting shards of murky shadows across the wooden floor. The curtains rustled softly.

On the floor, eyes staring upwards at the finely crafted, scissor-braced, oak roof laid a young woman, mouth slightly open, lips tinged with blue. Dark red marks on her neck were the only evidence of her violent and disrespectful death.

Maverdine Lane Emmelina moved very slowly so as not to disturb her sleeping husband. Limb by limb, she edged her way to the outside of the bed. Moving the covers to form a lump beside his heaving hulk, she very carefully lowered her left leg till her toes touched the cool, wooden floor. Next she lowered her right leg. Humphrey made a grunting noise and turned onto his back. Emmelina sat rigid on the edge of the bed, every muscle in her body tense.

Surely, having drunk several flagons of beer, as was his wont these days, at the Fleece Inn, he would not wake. Newly built and full of pilgrims visiting the abbey the Fleece had become a nightly haunt for Humphrey. Most wives would be furious with their husbands for leaving them every night, but not Emmelina. The Fleece Inn had been a godsend to her, giving her the space and freedom she ached for in her marriage. Still, she held her breath, closed her eyes and listened until he settled.

This has the potential to be a wonderfully atmospheric, rich

However, the writing here feels less assured than in the

historical mystery in the vein of a Ken Follett or The Name of the

preceding passage; perhaps the transition into Emmelina’s

Rose. With the opening tableau, the author sets the scene for

voice needs a little more thought. There are a few repetitions of

intrigue, violence and murder – a page-turning way of hooking in

vocabulary, and the minute emphasis on Emmelina’s movements

the reader.

draws our focus to the movements themselves rather than what

This introductory set-piece is fairly short, which is no bad

they signify. The taut dynamic within this relationship should

thing; prologues (which this is, in essence) tend to work best when

be possible to convey with a slightly more subtle handling of

they present a vivid, visceral snapshot of something that sits

Emmelina’s actions.

outside the main action or viewpoint of a story, rather than going

Perhaps it’s just a question of downplaying this a little. As

into too much detail in terms of backstory or set-up. However,

with the deathly stillness above, being too overt about how

there’s space here to extend this just a touch, in order to really

we’re supposed to interpret a scene can undermine the intended

make the most of the atmosphere of unease and the shocking

effect. We could see Emmelina exercising caution, treading softly

juxtaposition of the body against this studious, holy place.

and carefully (though watch out for overuse of adverbs here

Partly this is to do with balance. There are some lovely touches

and elsewhere) and being very aware of her husband’s sleeping

of description here – the shards of murky shadows works

presence, without actually being told that she’s tense or that she’s

brilliantly, for instance, thanks to the unusual imagery, though

trying not to wake [him]. In fact, a more ambiguous reading of

pruning it to shards of shadow could create an even tighter,

her behaviour would give the reader space to engage their own

sharper metaphor. There’s also a skilful use of sensory detail to

imagination and fill in the gaps. The subsequent paragraph in

bring the scene alive – the rustle of curtains and the chime of the

which we learn about Emmelina’s gratitude for her husband’s

bells; the feel of the vellum.

absences could also then be cut, or replaced with something a

However, much of this description is relatively prosaic, given

little more allusive and less explicit. Allow the reader to figure out

over to the dusty volumes and the study carrels (a phrase which

for themselves that she aches for space and freedom, and the

is repeated often enough to become noticeable). By comparison,

truth of the emotion will be that much more strongly felt.

the actual body is allotted relatively little space and we are whisked

Finally, a couple of tweaks to presentation would give this

away from it almost before we’ve had a chance to take it in. By

a more professional feel. Manuscripts should be double-spaced

slowing the pace to linger on this climactic point of the scene for

and paragraphs indented rather than given an extra line break,

longer, perhaps introducing the appearance of the corpse more

which can make the text feel a bit choppy. Chapter numbers and

gradually (limb by limb, feature by feature, for instance), the tense

headings should be centred and ideally placed a little further down

foreshadowing of the previous paragraphs would have a greater

the page; all small points, but all helpful in term of presenting a

payoff and would make a bigger impact on the reader.

text in the way that an agent or editor expects to see it.

It might also be worth thinking about introducing a POV

Overall this opening has huge promise, delivering some key

character here through whose eyes we could experience the

features of the genre and recognising the benefit of setting

scene. Because this is in effect a prologue, this doesn’t have to

historical fiction (which can have such a wide focus as to be

be a main character but can just be someone who will provide

distancing for the reader) within the smaller, intimate framework

the reader with a useful route into the story. Perhaps a novice

of ordinary lives. To really lift it above the competition, it would be

monk, tidying up at the end of the day, hurrying back to his cell,

a good idea to now consider what gives the story its unique hook

comes upon the body unexpectedly; sharing in his reaction to the

– the thing that sets it apart and makes it different.

discovery would give us an emotional insight into the moment that the current authorial perspective doesn’t allow for.

At the same time, watch out for the odd bit of overwriting.

Perhaps the character of Emmelina is the answer here; despite her wariness of her husband she’s obviously no downtrodden wife, and the sooner we can get a sense of what drives her and

The potentially powerful first sentence is weakened by the

what sort of person she is, the sooner we’ll start to care about her

repetition of deathly stillness which feels as though it’s

and want to read her story.

foreshadowing too heavy-handedly; elsewhere, the echo between luminous and illuminating gives the description a slightly overcooked feel. And the sentence already flagged, featuring shards of shadow, is long and unwieldy with an excess of adjectives.

The shift into Emmelina’s POV provides us with a nice contrast in terms of voice and setting. We’ve begun with a big, far-reaching moment and then zoomed in on a more personal and prosaic tragedy: the human drama of Emmelina’s troubled relationship with her husband.

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’.

Pencilbox | 47

Get the Fires Burning

by Dan Holloway

It’s New Year. At least it is as I write this. Being a general Pollyanna sort, I’m rather fond of this time of year. I don’t do resolutions, largely because even this Pollyanna has a realist streak. I know if there’s a wagon on the road I’ll fall off it at some point. But I do use it as the time to do my regular refocusing, to remember the reasons why I started writing in the first place, reasons I’ve usually wandered way off track from during the year as lovely lovely shiny shinies come along to distract me.

I want to make this a miniature refocusing exercise for our public and social media lives as writers. “Surround yourself with inspirational people” is one of those truisms of the creative world. It’s how collectives come together, how vague perceptions are refined through the polish of another person’s perspective, how we find ourselves challenged and inflamed with enthusiasm to do the things that would otherwise remain the vaguest of dreams, how diverse ideas bounce off each other, the friction creating a heat that cooks them into delicious creative recipes, how – at the bottom line – new movements are formed.

Before I’m accused of adding yet another page to the extrovert’s charter, consider what originally gave you your love of the arts. Most of us can point to someone who pointed us in the right direction, however gently and however long ago. For me those inspirations go from my mother’s passion for Virginia Woolf through children’s writer Aidan Chambers all the way to the incredible poet and performer Kate Tempest. Without those inspirational figures we would never have set out on the path we love. The way we can best repay that debt, and refocus our writing lives at New Year, is simple. Be inspirational.

How can we be inspirational? Isn’t that something for leaders and prize-winners?

Something we aspire to, not something we can be, er, now? Well, all that “be what you aspire to be” self-help guff aside...no. The look on my mother’s face as she described her anticipation of the latest volume of Woolf ’s diaries’, the passion of a fellow poet performing, even the

48 | Pencil Box

fantastical doodles of my classmates, things like this were and are probably my biggest inspiration. Those already up in the pantheon show us what is possible, but it is our peers who make things real for us, make them a possibility in our minds. And that means you are the best person to inspire those around you.

So. Ever one to look for alliteration where none exists in nature, the following are all things you can do, qualities brought out in the way you behave online and in your real life writing dealings.

Enthusiasm – it’s infectious, almost epidemiologically catching. Do you love literature? Really love it? Lose that natural reserve and let it show.

Try always to keep hold of the passion that first fired you up about literature and let that fire burn through your words.

Encouragement – those who inspire us are always looking for ways they can support others. They often have an uncanny knack of seeing beyond the one who shouts loudest in a group, seeing what it is that burns unseen, even unnoticed, in the quiet kid at the back of the class, making a line straight for them and helping it catch fire.

See a glimmer of interest in someone? Don’t say “that’s nice?” or even walk on by. Stop and figure out what you can do to help it burn brighter.

Enjoyment – it seems obvious but it’s something we forget so often. One of the main reasons we do things we see others doing is that we see just how much fun they’re having. There will be times when the last thing you feel like doing is tapping anything on the keyboard. I know that all too well, and I know how important it is to vent sometimes. But some writers seem to make a virtue out of grumbling at every turn. There are times we need to keep those conversations among friends because, after all, if we didn’t at a deep underlying level love what we do, we wouldn’t do it.

Energy – I’m not talking about tweeting 100 times an hour or generally being one of those always bright and breezy smiling people who thinks

the world is always one long cocktail. It’s more a question of giving what time you have.

People who inspire us are just as susceptible to depression and the vicissitudes of life as the rest of us – it’s what they do with the time they have that matters.

Engagement – when people make the first move and talk to you about writing, respond to them, and not just to promote your work. Take an interest in what they do, listen, advise, discuss.

Extraordinary – do something that makes an impact. That makes people’s jaws drop, that renders them speechless or leaves them mouthing OMG. The kind of thing that might make people see literature in a whole different light and go “I want to be part of that” or “I must go and find something to read.”

So how about making it a focus for 2013. Make it not a year when you are inspired, but a year when you inspire.

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

David Robinson, prolific author of the STAC cosy crime series, sent in this question: Does it matter if a character has a similar name as one in a best-selling novel by a well-known author? When I wrote The Handshaker (due for release next month and not one of the cosy crime series) I didn’t know that American author James Patterson had a character named Alex Cross in a series of novels.

He’s a psychologist and a detective. I knew nothing about this because I don’t read American crime novels. In fact, I found out off the side of a bus advertising the movie. In order to avoid any confusion, I’ve changed the name of my character from Alex Croft to Felix Croft. Would it have mattered if I’d left it as Alex Croft?

Legally, no. Not even if you’d called your character Alex Cross, because there is no copyright in names unless the name itself is protected (Harry Potter springs to mind). However, from the perspective of keeping your readers happy, I think you’ve done the right thing. When a character, such as Alex Cross, is so well known and close in occupation to your character, having a similar name might give the appearance of piggybacking on someone else’s success.

Sasha from Brixton needs some marketing advice, she writes: I have written several articles on technology issues, but I’m really struggling to find outlets for them. Can you help me find markets?

There are two ways to deal with market research. One is to read several copies of a magazine and then think up an idea that might be of interest to the editor - taking into account the publication’s style and content. If the editor likes your idea in outline form, you would then write the article to suit the magazine.

The other way is to think of an idea and then research a magazine that might be interested in it. This is by far the harder way of doing things. However, sometimes ideas come to us and we want to write them, so we have to research for the right outlet.

What you are trying to do is to find a market for existing articles. This is almost, but not quite, impossible. The articles may well need substantial rewriting to suit the publication. You might be able to use the facts, but end up with an entirely different article at the end, depending on what the editor asks for.

This is why it is so important to query with an outline - so that you don’t waste time and effort on writing an article for which you do not yet have a market.

With regards to your technology articles, you need to find magazines that

appeal to you as a reader and study the tone and content, then write an outline using your facts, which you feel would catch the eye of the editor. If he then accepts any of the ideas, you can alter your existing articles so that they are right for his readership.

Magdalena from Salford wants to become a travel writer. She asked: can you give me some advice on travel writing? I’m going to be taking a number of trips this year and hope to write up some of them, but I’m not sure how to find angles for features.

Firstly, you need to think about query letters. These can be sent either before or after a trip, but it is essential that you know exactly what your article will cover and how you intend to deal with the information, so it is often easier to query after you get back. However, if you do query in advance, make sure you mention when you will be going, so that the editor doesn’t ‘pencil you in’ too soon if she likes the idea.

I find my angles for travel features often occur to me when I’m actually in the location. I see something unusual, or notice a particular event that is different, and then build my article around that. It’s quite difficult to decide in advance, before you’ve even visited a place, what it is that is going to stand out. Keep your eyes open at all times, sometimes even a taxi trip can provide the inspiration for a unique angle. I always chat to locals and try to get to see the place through their eyes.

Also, do bear in mind that you can often write several different articles using the same information from different angles.

Markets need to be fully researched, but the following websites might be of benefit to you. http://www.wexas.com/travel/traveller/ http://www.budgettravel.com/bt-dyn/content/destinations/europe/ http://www.internationalliving.com http://www.hiddeneurope.co.uk http://www.goworldtravel.com/ And for a website absolutely full of good tips and advice, I recommend this one: http://www.graduatedegree.org/blog/2009/03/the-art-of-travel-writing100-tips-tools-and-resources-to-get-paid-and-published/ You can write your article on a trip taken as far back in the past as you like, as long as your facts are completely up to date. When querying, don’t mention when the trip took place, but send in an outline showing how you will deal with the information and the tone the article will take.

One final point, few editors will accept a travel feature without illustrations, so take lots of high quality pictures.

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

Available from Amazon

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

Email lorraine@wordswithjam.co.uk

What we think of some books Floccinaucinihilipilification: the estimation of something as valueless Tacenda: things better left unsaid 5’9”: The average height of a British adult male Deipnosophist: someone skilled in making dinner-table conversation Logodaedalus: one who is cunning in the use of words

Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young Reviewed by Perry Iles Rating: Five Feet Nine and a Half There have been books about Neil Young before.

Johnny Rogan’s over-earnest album-by-album critique; Jim McDonough’s Shakey – which had far too much Jim McDonough in it to be objective. Now we get it from the horse’s mouth; the man in his own words, for the first time. Think of Neil Young what you will, he’s not going away just yet. It’s been fifty years since he played with the Mynah Birds and the Squires, a long career by anyone’s standards, and he’s still going strong.

And now he’s written a book. Waging Heavy Peace, it’s called; a hippie dream.

The good thing is it’s all in his own words. We get first hand experience of the legends that have become encysted in rock history – the rock formations and park bench mutations that were considered apocryphal.

True – he did drive all the way from Toronto to LA looking for Stephen Stills. After two weeks of fruitless searching he met him in a road-works traffic jam on an LA freeway, and looking at the logo on a steamroller they both read “Buffalo, Springfield.” True – Young gave Danny Whitten his plane fare home when he found he was still strung out on heroin. Whitten spent the money on more heroin and died of an overdose. True – Young spent time jamming with Charles Manson at Dennis Wilson’s house and recommended him to Reprise, who passed on the opportunity. A while later Young wrote Revolution Blues. True – the Sea of Madness track on the Woodstock album was actually recorded three months later at the Fillmore East and then stuck on afterwards to appease the managers.

The other good thing about this book is that it darts around through time so you don’t start zoning out through the troughs in Young’s career.

One minute he’s in Canada in the1960s buying a hearse to drive to LA, the next he’s in Hawaii last week, then recording Live Rust at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, then back in the Springfield jamming with Stephen Stills, and now he’s in the

50 | Reviews

moment, naming the dead – Danny Whitten, Ahmet Ertegun, Ben Keith, Jack Nitzsche, Carrie Snodgress.

Like some of his music, there’s little discipline and no attempt at smoothing things off.

So, he can play guitar, and he can write songs, and he’s come across in public until now as Mr Enigmatic, the schemer, the shrewd businessman, hiding his plans for world domination behind a faux-shambolic exterior of first takes and bum notes. But when it comes to writing, he’s childlike and simple. So much so that I wondered if this was a new part of the act – I am a Child redux.

But by the end of the book I was convinced that this candour is for real. Young says that writing is surprisingly good fun, surprisingly relaxing, and that he makes it a rule never to read back what he’s written.

This means he hasn’t learned how to do it properly yet.

So what we have here is a first draft, and as such, the quality of the writing is not really very good. Young doesn’t write well, talking directly to the reader, overusing exclamation marks and making the sort of mistakes that get beaten out of you on peer-review writing sites.

Playing guitar can work when you include the bum notes and the feedback, but writing doesn’t. Bands can get away with being like Crazy Horse or Nirvana, writers have to be like Steely Dan; slick, stylish and slightly overstated.

Young doesn’t want to learn the niceties of the craft, and seems content to remain ignorant of them.

So we have to treat this book as a first attempt.

The time-hopping is refreshing, his continuing enthusiasm and obsessions are interesting, and once past the mediocre writing, what’s most interesting of all is that he puts his other loves – model trains and old cars and perfecting electric transport and pure sound reproduction - on an equal level to his music.

So we have a new piece of electronic switching gear he’s invented for the Lionel model train company juxtaposed with Cowgirl in the Sand, we have him scouring scrapyards for the tailfin of a Cadillac for the cover of On the Beach. Interspersed with some of the greatest musical moments of the last fifty years are all these incongruities, told with wide-faced, open innocence and that childish sense of enthusiasm that totally belies the moody and sullen exterior we see in Neil Young the musician.

Neil Young’s music is a

curate’s egg. He tells us that back in the eighties he recorded Everybody’s Rocking after Geffen sued him for making music that was “unrepresentative of Neil Young”. Go do some rock ‘n’ roll, they said, so he did, returning with the Shocking Pinks and sounding like a substandard Dion and the Belmonts. That album was a piece of crap, but I remember where I was when I first heard Tonight’s the Night – a horror album, Young said, filled with death and misery. Bullet-holes in the mirror.

I remember hearing the stories of the gigs in Hammersmith Odeon at which downing a pint of tequila was an artistic prerequisite to performing – onstage with a wooden Indian and a wind machine, totally wasted, old boots hanging off the Steinway, rock and roll history, days of wonder. The difference is simple. Tonight’s the Night makes you realize you’re in the presence of someone special.

Harvest doesn’t. There’s the difference between talent and something approaching genius – a word Young overuses in his memoir, by the way.

But that was music, and this is writing. Anyone else who wrote a book like this wouldn’t get very far, but for a fan the subject matter outdoes the amateurish writing. Maybe Young is directing his obsessive control-freakery towards a new area, like he did with movies. Think of this book like Journey through the Past – interesting but not particularly inspired. He could have done with some help – a professional editor at least. Maybe he was offered one and refused, maybe he wanted to retain artistic control. The result is flawed, a bit off-kilter, maybe a step too far down one too many roads, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.

Ratking by Michael Dibdin Reviewed by JJ Marsh Rating: Deipnosophist “A ratking is something that happens when many rats have to live in too small a space under too much pressure. Their tails become entwined and the more they strain and stretch to free themselves the tighter grows the knot binding them, until at last it becomes a solid mass of embedded tissue.

And the creature thus formed, as many as thirty rats tied together by the tail, is called a ratking.”

The first in the Aurelio Zen series, its title is fundamental metaphor for the layers of inescapable corruption within the Italian political, judicial and business systems. Through which, Commissioner Aurelio Zen threads a complex route, attempting to do his job, but not rock the boat.

Ruggiero Miletti, head of a powerful Perugian family business, has been kidnapped. Favours are called in and Zen, a Venetian attached to Roman Criminal Police, because he’s the only one available, takes on the case. He encounters resistance and corruption,

What we think of some books allegiances and loyalties, and the weight of social history hangs over the book like smog.

Alongside the darker underbelly of Italy, Dibdin shares the nuances of regional rivalry, cultural insights and geographical descriptions. Perugia has become well known more recently due to the murder of Meredith Kercher, but Ratking shows us a different side to the place. The plot is complex and slow to develop, but the author’s depiction of how difficult it is to solve a crime while battling vested interests results in an unexpected and exciting end.

There are eight more Zen novels, which take place in various Italian locations. I will be back for more.

Time & Tide by Shirley McKay Reviewed by Anne Stormont Rating: Logodaedalus A superb example of historical crime fiction A few months ago, the nice people at Polygon sent me an unsolicited copy of a newly published book for me to review. I hadn’t heard of Shirley McKay, the book’s author, before - but I saw from the book’s cover that Time & Tide is - the third Hew Cullan mystery - so she was obviously an established author. And speaking of the cover – it’s a Bruegelesque beauty. I judged by the cover and decided to give the tale a go.

As it turned out, the cover sets up the novel perfectly in its time and place.

It’s set in sixteenth century St Andrews. This further endeared it to me - as I got my MA at the university there - and I still love the place thirty-five years later –returning to visit whenever I can. So I was well set up for this ‘Morse of the sixteenth century’ crime-solving story The hero is Hew Cullan, a lawyer, in the town who, somewhat reluctantly, teaches at the university. Following a shipwreck, the town’s bakers and millers are keen to get their hands on the windmill that was lashed to the deck of the stricken ship and survived the boat’s demise. The sole human survivor from the wreck dies before he can confirm who owns this technological innovation.

All sorts of intrigue, trickery and, even, murder ensue as vested interests seek to establish their right to the windmill. Hew is dispatched to Ghent, the survivors home town to try to sort out matters once and for all. This sort of mission is much more appealing to him than the life of an academic.

The resolution of the mystery is certainly surprising and that, along with the hint of a love interest for Hew at the close, all made for a thoroughly satisfying read.

McKay’s period detail and her descriptions of

the town of St Andrews are spot on. The plot is clever and the writing sharp. But it’s the characters that really stand out. All are vivid and credible. And for me it was the female characters that made the most impression.

Hew’s sister, Meg, a healer, psychologist and therapist, despite not being eligible to study at her brother’s college due to being female, is a wonderful creation.

She causes her brother to wonder at ‘the secret art of women’ on more than one occasion with what she knows or works out. As well as Meg, Maude the landlady of the inn, Beatrix the widow of the shipwrecked sailor and the nuns at the closed community of women in Ghent are all impressive and rounded characters.

So if you like historical novels and/or crime thrillers full of mystery - and you’re looking for something original and rather different within those genres then I can highly recommend Time & Tide.

Raven Black By Ann Cleeves Reviewed by Gillian Hamer.

Rating: Logodaedalus Over the past couple of years, I’ve really fell in love with the writing of Ann Cleeves. I must admit it was the ITV series of ‘Vera’ that first introduced me to her writing, and I realised there was another crime writer out there who I could really connect with. I loved her attention to detail, how she uses settings as a character in its own right in much the same way as I do in my own writing, and how her characters really developed and shone throughout the series.

Having polished off most of the Vera series, and following a tip off that television had recently commissioned another of Ann’s series – The Shetland Series – I decided to read RAVEN BLACK, the first novel in the quarter set on the remote islands.

From the opening scene set on a typical Scottish New Year’s Eve, when two girls decide to play a dare and drop in on Magnus Tait, a local man known for his odd ways (and an obvious suspect when the killings finally began) there was a sense of a heavy, brooding atmosphere and I was totally gripped. Something bad was going to happen, that much was clear, it was just a

case of biting your fingernails until the first murder occurred.

The author’s love of the Shetland location really comes across in the book, and yet it isn’t overdone or detracts from the pace of the investigation. Through the eyes of newcomer, Fran Hunter, who has recently returned to island after an absence, the writing brought the island and its atmosphere, legends and lifestyle to life. I can see this book being adored by Scottish readers, but also attracting a lot of people to visit the islands who would otherwise never have learned of their charms.

Fran finds herself in the middle of a major murder investigation when she finds not one, but two bodies during the course of the novel. Fran is an interesting character, well told and believable, who struggles with the balance between her own needs and that of her small daughter.

As an avid crime reader, this storyline reminded me a lot of some of PD James’ Dalgleish novels, and there was much to enjoy here. A clever plot, full of twists and turns, where we meet for the first time Detective Jimmy Perez, a Shetland local who still struggles to fit in at times. Perez handled the complex investigation with a light and deft touch but also left the reader with a sense of his professional competence. I also liked the glimpses into his private life, which will no doubt develop more throughout the series. There are a plethora of suspects – dodgy school teachers and crooked land owners – to choose from who keep your attention and guesswork set to maximum.

As a crime writer myself I was delighted with the clever (but difficult to achieve) denouement and I’m delighted to say that I had no hint of the final twist at all, and think the ending was handled brilliantly. I sat back at the final page and nodded, smiling and delighted at the outcome.

I have nothing but praise for RAVEN BLACK, and I’ve already downloaded the next book in the series and I’m looking forward to working my way through the quartet.

Reviews | 51

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.

A woman I know who is friends with a man who went mental and left his family and now washes windows at traffic lights in the hope of getting a few bob together to buy a bottle of meths says that he told her that the producers of top Sunday night entertainment show Dancing On Ice were shocked when Pamela Andersons big boob fell out of her tiny strapless top after she had been flung around vigorously and carried upside down during her routine on the show. Is this completely true?

From what I can find it seems that they were completely taken by surprise at the incident which in no way could have been predicted.

Someone I know who lives in America told me that Pamela Anderson has brought out her own range of food products and that the bestselling item is her one litre cartons of breast milk. Apparently Ms Anderson is milked around the clock for this while she is not on TV and this is why her breasts are swollen. Is there any veracity to this rumour at all?

I must say that I have looked high and low for this product and even taken some considerable time to look at photos of Ms Anderson in great detail to see if I could spot signs of where the suction cups might have been attached, but sadly I can’t find any evidence to back this up at all. I’ll keep looking though.

Guess the Book

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

1. They’re getting married. After knowing each other for five whole weeks. This has train wreck all over it. Need I say more?

2. Bottom line, who wants to have a mother who deserts her son for her married lover, and a father who skewers a poodle for whatever reason? So, the happy ending is they get their son a dog? I love dogs, and this did not strike me as a good idea.

Some bloke I met while standing in a queue at a bank machine the other day told me that Jeremy Clarkson has a new book coming out which is a compilation of all the best bits from his previous books called Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves And Other People Who Should Go Back to Europe. Is this true and when is it out?

3. A beautifully illustrated book based on poor scientific knowledge. Butterflies do not come from cocoons - moths do.

When butterfly caterpillars pupate, they do not spin silk to make a cocoon. If you want your child to learn inaccurate science, use this book with them.

I can’t find anything to confirm this rumour at all, although one of our researchers here at WWJ Towers did come across another similar rumour (also unconfirmed) that he has written a book entitled Gypsies, Mexicans, Truck Drivers and Other People I have Rightly Insulted on my Show.

4. Most of the “Meals” were in fact salads.

Which really isn’t to much cooking, i’d say that’s more preparation.

There is no documented evidence to back this one up at all, I’m afraid, although there certainly seem to be less people around banging on about how good they thought it was. While looking into this I came across a similar rumour on the Net saying that everyone who bleated on about how good Fifty Shades was is going to die of being a dopey cunt.

Is it true that you struggled to find any topical rumours for this month’s publication because your skybox suddenly went on the fritz?

There may be some truth in that rumour.

52 | Other Stuff

5. I loved this book all the way until the end, then I hated it … If you are the type of person who does not enjoy psychological horror- ‘Silence of the Lambs meets Sophies Choice’ I would encourage you to look elsewhere for your reading pleasure.

Answers: 1 – 50 Shades Darker by E.L. James; 2 – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon; 3 – The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle; 4 – Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes by Jaimie Oliver; 5 – Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I heard from a bloke I knew in school who was good at science that it turns out that everyone who said The DaVinci Code was the best book they’d ever read a couple of years ago has since died from brain feebleness. Could there possibly be something to this?

Crossword by Poireaux and Rambeaux

Across 6.

Whose suspicions uncover the killer of 3-year-old Saville Kent? (4,7)

7.

Who created Jane Gresham, Kate Brannigan and Tony Hill? (3,8)

11. Which doyenne of mystery mysteriously disappeared for 11 days in 1926? (6,8) 15. David Hewson took this crime drama from screen to page (3,7) 18. John Banville’s quirky criminal alter ego.

(8,5) 19. The first outing for DI Tom Thorne (10) 21. Dan Brown gives this heroine an icy reception (6,6)

was hanged in famous miscarriage of justice (5,5) 6.

Charlie Huston’s shady gumshoe (3,4)

8.

Susie Salmon is fourteen years old when murdered by a neighbour in which book? (3,6,5)

9.

Which Quebecois character is fluent in French, English and forensic anthropology? (2,10,7)

22. Dicken’s detective - one of the very first.

(9,6)

10. The greatest quantity of Robert by Elmore Leonard. (7,3)

23. One’s job - is to write about Harry Hole. (anag.) (2,5)

12. In which novel does Mitch McDeere encounter the ultimate in ‘golden handcuffs’? (3,4)

24. Who receives a letter from the count in Bistrirtz on the eve of St George’s Day? (8,6)

Down 1.

Chandler’s small sibling. (3,6,6)

2.

Who makes Cameron Colley complicit?

(4,5)

3.

Mooning Reg sees mixed up Maigret creator.(anag.) (7,7)

4.

During which celebration does Peter Wimsey finally get his girl? (5,5)

5.

Real life murder victim whose husband

December 2012 Answers

13. In which novel does Richard Papen become embroiled in classics and killing at Hampden College, Vermont? (3,6,7) 14. The King and Cheryl duet for Robert Crais’ detective. (5,4) 16. Creator of the handsome Roderick Alleyn, whose first name looks like an anagram but isn’t. (5,5) 17. Which novel was filmed twice, first starring William Petersen and second starring Edward Norton? (3,6) 20. Sherlock Holmes took up this hobby in his retirement (9)

Random Stuff | 53

Dear Ed Letters of the satirical variety

Dear Words with Jam, I never thought I’d say this, but hurrah for e-readers and e-books. In years gone by in the run up to Christmas I have always had to take a trip into town to a book shop to buy my family members books that they would thank me for and make a fuss over on Christmas day and then never look at again. Now I can download stuff with a photo of some celebrity or other on the cover directly to their e-readers from the comfort of my own home without any messing about looking for parking or anything.

Yours faithfully, Mrs Pru Dent Dear the words magazine people, I’ve read somewhere that eighty per cent of all book sales happen in late November and early December and that eighty percent of all those books bought are never read. Somewhere else it said that eighty per cent of all space in book shops during this season is taken up with celebrity cookery books. In yet another report, from the TV this time, it said that eighty per cent of all reports done on the book industry at Christmas will involve the figure eighty per cent more than once and that this was true at least eighty per cent of the time. What I’d like to know is how much do statisticians get paid to produce this shite?

Yours sincerely, Ian D’rongjobb Dear literary magazine types, What the fuck are you all on about you arty cocks?

That is all, Mr Norm Mel Mann Norm, uhmmmmm, I’m not sure how to answer that. Can anyone else help?

Ed

Craig Doyle doing a news report. Are the double glazing sellers taking over everything? What’s next, I ask you? You buy one weather report, you get one free. I said you buy one weather report you get one free.

This kind of thing never happened under Labour.

Yours sincerely, Mr V Ewer Dear Words with Jam readers, I am writing to you with an appeal on behalf of the Let’s get rid of stupid old sayings (UK) movement. We would like, once and for all, people to stop saying stupid shite like – When one door closes, another one opens. This is obviously shite unless you own the worst built car in the world. You lot, as writers, are perfectly placed to point out what annoying wankers people are when they say things like this instead of just banging on about how clever you are because you put an apostrophe in the right place. Put your pedantry to work. Do your duty. Stop the shite.

Yours truly, Mr F E Dupp Dear WWJ, I just thought I’d take a moment to drop you a line so I could disagree vehemently with Mr Dupp from the Let’s get rid of stupid old sayings (UK) movement. I think that there is a lot of truth in many of these old sayings. For example while my father’s coffin was being carried out of the church one of the pall bearers slipped and the casket was dropped which caused the body to fall out and roll under the hearse where it got lodged.

We had to push him out the far side with a broom stick. But we managed in the end. So, you can see why I, for one, would be opposed to losing the expression – All’s well that ends well.

Yours sincerely, Mrs C H Inupp

Dear Editor, It is with great vehemence that I write to you in rejoinder to a letter published in your magazine in this issue by a Mr Mann.

How dare he imply that your readers are arty cocks [sic]. I very much doubt that his level of tutelage reaches above the most rudimentary of levels and I am sure that he is no more than a cad and a bounder and a fuck bag.

Your servant, Art E Tosseur Esquire

Dear Editor, I have some sympathy for Mr Dupp and his opposition to old sayings. My own complaint is somewhat similar. I am tired of people posting and reposting self-help rubbish maxims on Facebook. Is there a setting you can switch on that makes a boxing glove fly out of the screen and punch anyone who posts one of these things in their stupid tits?

Just asking, Mr F Uksayk

Dear Words People, You’re not going to believe this, but the other day while watching my television set I saw Irish double glazing salesman

There’s nothing in so far, Mr Uksayk. We’ll pass anything that comes in along to you.

Ed

54 | Some Other Stuff

Officia as accu lly rate as the Mayans

Horoscopes

by Shameless Charlatan Druid Keith It has been a great 2012 for me as just towards the end of December I was certified as being officially as accurate as the Mayans. Achieving this recognition wasn’t easy and took a lot of hard work, dedication, luck, and, above all, talent. And while nobody in Britain or America is as talented as a dog that can stand on its hind legs and follow an extremely sad person about on a stage, you still have special talents of your own. With the recent explosion of talent orientated shows on television now is the time to exploit your specialness.

LEO The Leonianists ability to deal with slippery situations and to walk through life on a knife edge means you would be perfectly suited to Dancing on Ice. The only slight hindrance to this is that it is only open to people who have been on television before and who now have no career left. To raise your profile to the same level as the other contestants simply use your star given skill of walking around the shops so that the security cameras will see you. A word of caution - If you have big fake boobs make sure you don’t leave it until the skate-off to let them fall out or you’ll be voted off.

VIRGO Virgonianists are the saddest and loneliest children of the stars. But don’t let your Billy No Mates demeanour hold you back. Why not train a dog and buy a spangly suit for yourself. Simply doing this will elevate you in the eyes of the public above opera singers, gymnasts and trained dancers and will give you a choice of shows to enter on the television from Britain’s Got Talent to the one with that boy in the tiny speedos who does all the backflips into the pool and everything. Be wary of strangers bearing tins of Chum.

LIBRA The X Factor is the ideal place for you Librarianists to show off your star given talent of self-delusion.

Some of the judges may test how strong your talent is, but nothing can shake you because your friends have told you how good you are and they obviously know a lot more than multi-millionaire judges. If you really want to feature make sure you choose the most difficult song you know to sing at auditions.

SCORPIO Typically lethargic Scorpionianists may think you have no obvious talent at all, but this simply isn’t so. There are many new talent shows now that cater directly for people like you who are brilliant at sitting on the sofa shovelling handfuls of crisps into your big fat face. The Great British Bake Off with that girl who love-her-or-hate-her-there-won’tbe-more-than-three-programs-in-a-row-on-theBBC-without-her (Sue somebody) would be ideal because any calories you burn off whisking some eggs up will be more than replaced when you stuff your gob with all the cakes at the end.

working out how they can be used mathematically to make another randomly generated number.

Take your talent onto Countdown where you can show it off to the full and you will also have the opportunity to use your other talent of making a complete dick of yourself in front of attractive girls by saying – A better one – to Rachel when she pulls out a Q.

ARIES Although Ariesianists everywhere are sure they have very many talents in fact you have only one – the talent of being a loud bint. You should have no

SAGITARIUS All Sagitarianists who are true believers in the wisdom of the stars are, of course, unfortunate looking in the face department. However, having a head like a well chewed toffee is a talent in itself as you could get a friend to enter you in Top Dog Model where you’d have at least a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Of course, you could take it a step further and have the friend enter you in Britain’s Got Talent and watch as people marvel when you speak. You might even land a spot on the following weeks Harry Hill’s TV Burp for the I certainly didn’t expect to see that slot.

problem finding fame on the Loose Women panel where you will be able to use your talent to talk over other people and to tell the listeners about your yeast infections.

TAURUS At first it may seem to you Taurusianists that you have been dealt a poor hand in the talent department, but just recently your talent of being a good listener has come into vogue. You could use this ability to help out ninety-three year old Tom Jones to know when to turn his chair around on The Voice, because his hearing probably isn’t what

CAPRICORN Despite being naturally cautious and retiring, Capricornianists harbour the fantastic talent of knowing what figure is written on a piece of paper that is taped to the inside of a box. Work hard to overcome your fear of people who pretend to talk to other people on the phone and soon a quarter of a million pounds could be yours.

it once was from all those years down the mines.

GEMINI Just like cuddly roly poly TV presenter Kirstie Allsop, all Geminianists have the super talent of being able to clean up old shit you’ve found in car boot sales and making it look like slightly less dirty old shit. You could find fame on TV by doing a

AQUARIUS

regular slot on Kirstie’s Homemade Shit. However, always remember to call your slightly less dirty old

Aquarianists have a staggering talent for finding people with sufficient levels of gullibility to think they are good enough to win The X Factor, or Libraianists as they are sometimes known in the Astronomy trade. Simply get them to sign to you before they audition and then watch the money roll in as they go on Lorraine to explain why they are too good for the show.

shit ‘vintage’ or people may not be won over.

PISCES

off to great effect by entering The Apprentice. A

It may not always be obvious how the talent of taking six random numbers (one from the top and five from anywhere else please, Rachel) and

CANCER All the great fiery planets line up when Cancerianists are both conceived and born and this gives you the remarkable talent of being an out and out unlikable cunt. You can show this talent note of caution – if you follow this path you’ll have to hang out with a whole gang of other annoying cunts and do pointless tasks at car boot sales.

Some Other Stuff | 55

John Hudspith

editing services

Characters failing to shine? Story hidden beneath mountains of fluff? Dialogue flat? Continuity broken?

Structure without foundation? Plot holes need filling but you don’t have the tools?

Try John Hudspith’s editing services.

“John worked with me on the historical fiction Gisborne: Book of Pawns, which subsequently was highly commended in the Golden Claddagh Book Awards for 2012 in the USA and is a repeated Top 100 ranker on Amazon.”

Prue Batten, Australia. www.pruebatten.com “Due to John’s expertise in polishing my novella, Plague has been talent spotted by an editor in the Gallery Books Imprint of Simon and Schuster. The editor remarked on the excellent editing of Plague. Rights have been purchased for the US and Worldwide, and Plague will be re-released in 2013.”

Lisa Hinsley, UK. www.lisahinsley.weebly.com “If you’re thinking about an editor, you can’t go wrong with John. I highly recommend his editing services.”

Marita A. Hansen, NZ. www.maritaahansen.blogspot.co.uk

Apply now for a FREE appraisal and free sample edits: www.johnhudspith.co.uk

Kimi’s secret is out – her

brain is the key to successful time travel and a ruthless greylian bounty hunter will break every bone in her body to get to it.

“Kimi’s Fear is magical but dark, sad but romantic, and meaningful but bonkers all rolled into one.”

“Deep, profound, scary as hell, and all the makings of a classic.”

John Hudspith’s sequel to Kimi’s Secret

Fear

AVAILABLE NOW

in paperback and ebook format, from Amazon and all major retailers