Criminal Activities in Tunbridge Wells

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Antonia Hodgson, City of Masks, Death at Fountains Abbey, J D Sykes, Plague Land, The Butcher Bird, Waterstones

On Wednesday, 14 September, two successfully published authors of historical crime will be at Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells to talk about their latest books and the journey to their publication.

S D Sykes (see our post of July 7 about her Bloomsbury Press workshop : How to Write Historical Fiction and Get Published) will be discussing the latest adventure of her hero, Oswald, who was sent to a monastery at the age of seven, only to be called home at eighteen when his father and brothers succumbed to the Black Death. Finding himself the reluctant Lord of Somershill Manor – and wrestling with the aftermath of the plague, peasant unrest, and some infuriatingly troublesome female relatives – he discovers a talent for solving gruesome murders, in Plague Land and The Butcher Bird.

City of Masks is Oswald’s third adventure, which takes place when a pilgrimage to Venice finds him trapped under seige by the Hungarians. I have yet to read it, but look forward to following this endearingly diffident young man’s journey towards maturity.

The magnificent cover, I’m told, is The Relic of the True Cross by Gentile Bellini, which can be seen in Venice and is apparently HUGE.

 

As a complete contrast, Antonia Hodgson’s latest book, Death at Fountains Abbey, features a rakish Georgian antihero, Thomas Hawkins, who is employed secretly by Queen Caroline to uncover the blackmailing activities of a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer. (Let’s hope George Osborne doesn’t read it and get any ideas…) Hawkins, previously featured in The Devil in the Marshalsea and The Last Confessions of Thomas Hawkins, has a host of enemies and a long-lost daughter returning from the dead to ramp up the pace and atmosphere.

Tickets for what should be an enjoyable and informative evening are available now from Waterstones for the very reasonable sum of £3, which can be redeemed against the price of the books, if purchased.  I have mine already…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A challenging reading list

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BBC, Bohumil Hrabal, British Museum, David Lodge, George Eliot, Oxford, reading list, teachers, The Midlands

A challenging reading list. It’s aimed at school students, but would do us all good if it widened our reading horizons. I found it attached to a tweet from King’s School in Worcester (@KSWLibrary), setting out what pupils (and staff!) are to read by February 2017 if they are to win a gold, silver or bronze award (if they want to podium, in fact). The tweet is dated 22 July if you want to hunt it down. The initiative is part of the BBC Year of Reading.

To win an award you should read:

1. A book shortlisted for a major award in 2015/16
2. A biography or autobiography
3. A book from a genre you have not yet tried
4. A book you’ve been meaning to read
5. A book recommended by a teacher
6. A book chosen for you by a friend
7. A book published before you were born
8. A book in a foreign language or translated from a foreign language
9. A literary classic
10. A book by a Midlands author
11. A book set in a foreign country
12. A book that will challenge you

I wonder if you’re allowed to double up. For example, I’ve just read David Lodge’s comic novel The British Museum is Falling Down. Would that allow me to tick off both A Midlands Author and A Friend’s Recommendation (if my sister is allowed to be a friend)? Before that I’d read Rambling On by Bohumil Hrabal (see https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/08/05/rambling-on/) which would let me tick the Translated box and also the Set in a Foreign Country box.   I imagine that, if we’re honest, many of us have Literary Classics in our Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read category. So, if I do get round to Daniel Deronda or Silas Marner, I could tick two more boxes. No, three, because they were Published Before I Was Born.

This is getting too complicated. And I suspect the judges at the school would frown on all this sleight of hand. So it’s back to Death on the Cherwell.

Well done the school (and the BBC) – let’s hope it works.

What are your Meaning to Read books?

Designing our book cover

I was interested to be sent this link, presumably for self-publishing in a digital medium: https://blog.dreamstime.com/2016/08/19/book-cover-design-how-to-choose-and-use-images_art44964

I quite like the idea of subverting a genre by having space ships alongside a regency heroine.  I guess I’ll never get employed as art director for a publishing house…

Going for Gold – or maybe for the Bridport…

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Dorothy Parker, Team GB, University Challenge

It’s said that the average British athlete will have trained for six hours a day, for six days a week, for twelve months.

Could this dedication be applied to our writing? Obviously lesser mortals have to factor in jobs, families, trips to the supermarket, walking the dog and finding time to watch University Challenge. Writing also requires different disciplines, although the astute Dorothy Parker considered it to be simply ‘the art of applying the ass to the seat’.

Maybe there are lessons to be learned from the magnificent Team GB about persistence. What couldn’t I achieve if I determined to write even for one single hour a day, for six days a week for twelve months?

 

 

To medal or to podium?

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medal, neologisms, Olympics, podium

Every four years we have to get used to two new verbs: to medal and to podium. Those of us who feel we disapprove (even if we’re not sure why) can comfort ourselves with the thoughts that (a) they are used, and it’s usage that counts in English, and (b) they only seem to be in use when the Olympics come round.

But as they are verbs, how are we to we spell their different verbal forms?

‘Medal’ is easy. We can look at ‘pedal’, and using its forms we can get to

• He, she or it medals (What kind of Olympian qualifies as ‘it’? Best scrub that.)
• We are medalling
• You medalled.

These sound right, and they look right.

But how do we conjugate ‘podium’?

• He or she podiums: fine.
• But are we podiuming, or podiumming?
• Have you podiumed, or podiummed?

‘Podiumed’ looks as if it ought to be pronounced poh-dee-oomed, and ‘podiuming’ as poh-dee-oo-ming. But the double ‘m’ in ‘podiummed’ and ‘podiumming’ looks bizarre.

Is there a word in use we can copy, like ‘pedal’ for ‘medal’? How about ‘drum’? That would take us back to ‘podiumming’ and ‘podiummed’. Which get worse every time I look at them.

One answer is: Fortunately these are synonyms, so if you really have to write one of these sporting neologisms, use ‘medal’.  Only use ‘podium’ in speech ….

Read the Winning Entry in the Good Housekeeping 2016 Novel Competition

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Giovanna Iozzi, Good Housekeeping Novel Competition, Luigi Bonomi, Margaret Morton Kirk

I’ve just learned that the current edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine contains the opening of Margaret Morton Kirk‘s winning entry, Shadow Man, a gritty Scottish crime novel. Margaret has won a publishing contract with Orion worth £10,000 and will now be represented by Luigi Bonomi of LBA.

The first runner-up, who won an Acer Switch laptop, was Giovanna Iozzi, who impressed the judges with a domestic noir thriller, Black Worms.

Both books could well be gracing our bookshelves in the not-too-distant future and prove that entering competitions can make that all-important difference. If nothing else, they really help your productivity: pushing for the competition deadline had me churning out over a thousand words a day at one point, which wasn’t a bad consolation prize.

Well done to these two talented ladies, and to all those who made it onto the short list! Good Housekeeping Magazine is on sale now.

‘Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor’

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autism, butterflies, Clevedon, Cotswolds, Melanie Dobson

In the posting in April https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/2000-words-a-day/ I told of my chance meeting with the author Melanie Dobson and what I had learned of her writing discipline. I’ve now had a chance to read one of her books, Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor.   As you can see from Melanie’s website (http://melaniedobson.com/books/shadows-of-ladenbrooke-manor/) it’s a romantic historical mystery.

It opens dramatically in 1954 with a great storm in the Bristol Channel, that smashes into the town of Clevedon and sweeps young Maggie out to sea. She is pregnant by a handsome French seaman who has promised to return, but hasn’t. She feels that drowning might be the answer – but she is rescued by dependable local journalist Walter Doyle.

It is difficult to summarise the storyline without giving away too much. It’s a story of generations and of patterns that recur down the generations – patterns like forbidden love. The story of Maggie and Walter and their family in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s alternates with happenings in the present day, as Heather Toulson arrives from America to sort out her late father’s cottage. This is in the Cotswold village of Bibury, next to Ladenbrooke Manor. The Manor belongs to the Croft family, but has been deserted by them since the mysterious death in 1970 of Lord Croft’s heir Oliver, found dead in the River Coln.   Heather finds herself seeking out the truth about his death, and she also has shadows from her own past to cope with.

At first I had thought this type of story wasn’t really for me. But as I read it I found that I cared for the characters and I wanted to know what happened to them. This is especially true of Libby, Maggie’s daughter, a girl who grows up wholly absorbed in her own world, a world of colour and pictures, and who is never happier than when she is roaming the gardens of Ladenbrooke Manor, dancing with her friends the butterflies. Her portrayal, and that of her parents’ concerns for her and the problems she faces and causes, is beautiful and moving. I also came to admire the portrait of Walter Doyle, whose roles of husband and father are under unwanted strain.

The stories are cleverly interleaved, and the appearance and reappearance of secondary characters in the different stories shows careful plotting. I liked it. The author’s demanding writing discipline paid off!

The book is published in the US by Simon & Shuster. I’m not sure that Melanie Dobson’s books are published in Britain, but they are available on Amazon. ISBN 978-1-4767-4614-2

When do you feel young again?

For me it’s walking over Waterloo Bridge. The years slip away and I am twenty again working in the City. I did it last night and it still casts its magic. I don’t think they’ve repaired the paving stones since I was twenty.

More musings on ‘im outdoors

Humour lavatorial…

‘im (not) outdoors:
“Would you fetch me a new loo roll.”
“They’re in the bathroom cabinet.”
“Yeh, I know but…”

“Bye. See you around lunchtime.”
“But I’m on the…”
I pull the door to behind me, walk towards the car:

Why do men always leave women to replace the toilet rolls.

Not Quite the Bridport…

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Bridport Competitions, Christopher Fielden, To Hull & Back Competition

We’d all love to get an email from the Bridport people saying we’ve been awarded one of their prestigious prizes – but don’t forget that there are plenty of other competitions out there worth aiming for.

Christopher Fielden‘s idiosyncratic short story competition To Hull & Back closed at the end of July and he’s recently announced that he received 284 entries. The Bridport competitions receive thousands. Think about those odds. Far, far better than the lottery or those Premium Bonds you were given by Great Aunt Violet for your eighteenth birthday.

Chris offers a top prize of £1,000, a second prize of £200, and a third prize of £100. On top of that (generous guy), he awards 3x£50 for highly commended stories and 14x£25 for shortlisted stories.

What’s not to like? That makes twenty monetary prizes on offer, PLUS the warm glow for each of those entrants of knowing that Chris really liked their writing.

To Hull & Back 2017 is now open, with a discount for early entry. Worth some serious thought, surely?