Whilst I drive this stunning vehicle to Mongolia with team mate Victoria as part of the Mongol Rally. We have another blog where you can monitor our progress. We are leaving from Goodwood on Saturday at the Festival of Slow and taking the 19:45 ferry from Dover to Calais. From Calais we’ll drive through France around the Belgian border and then into and across Germany into the Czech Republic where I have a literary surprise for Victoria. There we will party at a castle in Prague and early the following morning press on into Poland and then the Ukraine where we have a planned hotel stop (for laundry services/proper showers) in Kiev. I also want some chicken and to see the bars. From Ukraine we’ll pop into Russia for a short time and then into Kazakhstan and zip around the top of the Caspian Sea and across the country, popping back out into Russia and then finally landing in Mongolia around 3 weeks later where we plan to spend up to a week exploring the country and visiting some of the clinics, one of which our ambulance, Estelle, will ultimately be donated. This will, of course, be immense fun, as well as in a good cause, but is also a research trip for my second novel, currently titled ‘Rich in Small Things’. We also anticipate it to be somewhat arduous so once Estelle is safely transferred to the relevant authorities in Ulaanbaatar we will take to the air into Beijing and onto Sri Lanka for a week or two of lying down. They have elephants there and are also very good at massage. Then it’ll be back home to bore you all stupid with tales of our adventures. Bayartai!

Filming has begun… Exciting stuff. I’m not sure her hair is as out of control as I’ve imagined it when I’ve been reading but perhaps I have visualised her as a bit of a cartoon character… Regardless, I think the Heigl is perfect for this role – I can’t think of another actress (apart from Cameron Diaz – who even with dying her hair I don’t think would have the right look) who is as good as comedy. Apparently Evanovich originally saw Sandra Bullock in the role but I’m not sure she’s funny enough – she’s good at slapstick clumsiness but she hasn’t got the delivery of Heigl. Anne Hathaway was also considered – right hair, but nowhere near funny enough. And I think Heigl’s face fits better. I can’t wait for this – which is a shame as I don’t think there’s currently a release date.

“In the beginning were the howlers.”

From our most recent bookclub read and recent Orange Prize winner, Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘The Lacuna’. It’s a large book and I suspect I won’t have finished it by Friday. Full review when I do, though. I remember the excitement of my Grandparents buying a box of these and us sitting at a small, cast iron table on the cobbles on the street in Mallorca to devour them. No-one ever offered them to me with PINEAPPLE though! (one of my favourite things).

“Directions for making empanadas dulces

They can be triangular, or curled like snails with the filling inside. The dough is the same, either way: white flour with lard and a little salt rubbed in. Beat egg yolks into a little cold water (as many eggs as Olunda will spare), then mix the liquid lake into the volcano of flour. Exactly like mixing plaster.

For pineapple filling, cook the fruit with brown-sugar syrup and star anise.
The other way to make them is to spread the filling over the whole rectangle of dough and roll it into a log, then cut off round pieces, each one like a snail. For that, use the pineapple filling. The custard will make a devil of a mess.

Did you ever learn quite so much from a recipe?

By email. I am off for six weeks on Saturday and wondering whether to try and cram in another round of submissions before I go… I have 2 outstanding at the moment and have become very focussed on finishing the new novel – it is, after all, a year since I finished TSBM. Decisions, decisions. I am in the City on paid work all day tomorrow so I will see how Wednesday pans out. Anyway, here’s the rejection:

“Dear Helen,

Yours sincerely,”

By email:

“Thank you for writing to us.  I do apologise for the standard email; we have been so inundated with submissions recently that we are unable to give each one an individual reply.

I do assure you that we have considered your work carefully and I am sorry to say that we feel that it is not going to be one for us.  Of the hundreds of samples we receive each month, we do, in fact, only ask for a handful of complete manuscripts.

If you need editorial advice, it might be useful to discuss your work with a literary consultant. Details can be found on our website: http://www.xxx.co.uk on the ‘Submissions’ page.

There is an online magazine where authors can get in touch with each other and the writing world at http://viewfromheremagazine.com.

I am sorry not to be writing with better news and I do wish you luck with finding an agent elsewhere.

May I remind you that this email address is not for general enquiries, only for sample chapters? Thank you.

With best wishes,”

I went to see the new Twilight movie yesterday, Eclipse. The global phenomenon that is Twilight is so fascinating – here’s her interview with Oprah on the release of the previous movie, New Moon.

I recently posted a profile of Janet Evanovich in the success stories section of this site, and in it mentioned that I had ordered a copy of her non-fiction work detailing her approach to writing. Typically no nonsense, this was an excellent read, and even though I have read several books on the craft of writing over the years, I found lots that was new here. The first thing was a reference to ‘in medias res’ – where a story starts in the middle of the excitement – as I have done with the current draft of ‘Rich in Small Things’ (previously titled ‘The Nature of Forget’). You can read the first chapter here.

Other things I learned was that Evanovich wrote three books that were never published despite being hawked to every agent and publisher in New York. She just kept going. It took her ten years to become a published author. She’s pretty scathing about self-publishing but the co-writer of this book, Ina Yalof, shares some trivia on books that were originally self-published before being picked up by commercial publishers – authors include John Grisham, Walt Whitman and Beatrix Potter.

Evanovich was inspired to write this book in part by the slew of questions she received from aspiring writers through her website. Here are a few I liked:

“Q: I’m sure somewhere along the line you had doubts about your work. How did you overcome them?

JANET: I’m not sure how I overcame all the self-doubt. Certainly there was (and still is) a lot of it. I suppose if something is important enough to you, you simply grit your teeth and take a chance and do it. I kept reminding myself I wanted to be a writer and that a writer writes.”

And some advice to an author receiving multiple rejections for a book they personally believe in:

“… my advice is to shelve the book and start on your next one. Make sure when you write your second book that you know where it will be placed in a bookstore and that it is directed toward a specific audience. Publishing is a risk-adverse business, and first time authors usually have better success when their books aren’t too different from what’s already out there. Sometimes the wonderful different book needs to be the second book sold.”

And one for my mother (who sometimes suggests I could make a living out of short stories):

“Q: I have written about ten short stories. Do you think I’m ready to write a novel?

JANET. Do it! Write the novel. Short stories are fun, but they can sometimes be difficult to sell and the payoff isn’t usually as good as a full-size novel.”

And rejection is just a very big part of this game:

“Q: I know that rejection letters are part of getting started as a writer. But I have so many of them piled up on my desk, I’m ready to rent a .44 and shoot myself.

JANET: Forget the .44. I prefer death by birthday cake. Much slower, and while you’re waiting to die from a heart attack you might get published. I collected rejection letters for ten years. Until you beat my record, you should keep trying.”

And now, encouraged, inspired, I must go and write.

“They had driven into town from the castle; and Keith Nearing walked the streets of Montale, Italy, from car to bar, at dusk, flanked by two twenty-year-old blondes, Lily and Scheherazade…”

Herewith begins a feature I have been planning for some time. Takes a bit of discipline from me as a reader though, to read just the first sentence and then stop. This is the most critical line in the book though, and I regularly write pages of possible first lines trying to figure which is best, will hook the reader, is original and gives enough information to generate a raft of questions. Here’s the first from BEE’s new one:

“They had made a movie about us.”

Pretty good. Who are they? Who are us? Why did they deserve a movie?

My mentor, Matron, from the TLC recommended this at least a year ago and it’s been sitting in my to read list all of that time. I love it when you find a treasure in there. This is a difficult book to explain and quite possibly why Matron thought I would like it. It is beautifully written, even in translation which sometimes I can find a little bit of a struggle, although perhaps the verb ‘slough’ was used a couple of times too many for my liking.

Essentially there are two storylines: the first fifteen year old Kafka’s first person (and sometimes 2nd person as his imaginary friend Crow speaks to him) account of his running away from the home where he lives with his father, the second thread that of Mr Nakata. The second thread opens with some newspaper reports describing some strange happenings with a class of children during the war and then picks up with Mr Nakata as a much older man.

What’s so entrancing about the story is that you can see that the threads are colliding, overlapping, that time becomes fluid, characters switch in and out of each other’s experiences, settings and space themselves collide, and yet it somehow still feels real. Kafka is running away, Nakata is chasing something and yet still somehow they end up in the same space. There are some delightful supporting characters and, much of it being set in a library, lots of literary and philosophical discussions. Some of the minor characters are particularly comically amusing having taken on characters from famous brands – Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders.

Some of the book is also quite disturbing in a Manga-esque way. There was one particular scene early on that I could hardly bear to read. Nakata can talk to cats (probably another reason Matron thought I would like the book) but when another character starts killing them it’s unbearably violent. I was talking to some of my book group cronies about this at the weekend – and that to most of us words are more powerful than pictures. I am a speed reader which often people dismiss as skim reading, but it’s not. It’s more like you look at a 3r/d of a page and the words kind of lift up as one. This actually makes it very difficult to skim read as I was trying to do over this very visceral passage. It was almost like the best I could do was to just make the words out of focus and take in the vaguest of their meaning. What was particularly odd about this is that in a recent documentary I was watching about the trip I am taking to Mongolia I was presented with virtually the same visual image on film as they killed a goat for supper. But somehow the words made it more real for me, more unbearable, and yet it’s so much harder to look away when you are reading, than to turn your head away from a clip on the screen.

Violent as this scene was, it absolutely had a place in the whole story, in fact is the scene the whole concept of interchangeability pivots on.

This is going straight to the top of my ten favourite books of all time list. And I get to put a picture of a cat on here.

By email, personal, AND a comment on the actual book itself:

“Thank you very much for sending the first chapters of your novel, THIRTY SECONDS BEFORE MIDNIGHT.  I was very much intrigued by the premise of the book and by the unusual narrator, but after reading found that the plot moved too slowly for me, and the tortoise’s knowledge and understanding of the world around him was inconsistent, breaking the spell often.  I hope that you will find representation elsewhere.”

I just received a new review for TSBM on the youwriteon.com site that has really made my day. I’ve been feeling a bit sad about the book’s apparent lack of progress this week and this, in addition to a mature, experienced professional writer saying that he couldn’t see an issue with a tortoise narrator and thought it was a great idea and to ‘keep the faith’ this feedback has really brought a smile to my face. Incidentally the encouraging writer chap met Steve Irwin as he was profiling him for the Sunday Times and Steve let him feed Darwin’s tortoise, Harriet!!!

Here’s the really heart warming review:

“This is marvelous tale, and so utterly compelling . I love the idea of the World as seen by the animals, this is a brilliant and original concept, and exceptionally well written. All the characters have a distinct identity, especially Herbert, the narrator, nice wry commentary from him. there is a particularly stringent sense of anticipation as the ancient regime at the house gives way to the old, sparks are definitely waiting to fly here. The pace of the narrative, characterisation and the setting can not be faulted, this is an outstanding work of fiction and deserves to go far. Best of luck.”

TSBM I think is even more divisive in terms of readers I think that than The Thought Collector for which I already posted the youwriteon feedback. Here’s what some other people have said:

“from the mouth of tortoises this is a lazy, meandering read befitting the narrator, i think its bvery entertaining and see no reason why it should not appeal to both adults and children, but my guess is that adults would have to read it to the younger children at least for whom the vocabulory may be a bit advanced, i think you write with some wry humor at the foibles of humans and have succeeded in great meaure in creating a different animal landscape of sorts, good luck with this decidedly original work. enjoyed this effprt. liked the title as well.”

“I found this fun and thought provoking, once I got into it. My initial problem was brought about by the synopsis – I thought I was reading the wrong piece for the first few paragraphs…. expecting something about rock n roll and getting watership down was a shock. I’m not saying you need to change the beginning but a well turned phrase in the synopsis that alerts us to the unusual narrator (without giving it away) might help the reader not to feel so uncomfortable at first. However, once I realised the conceit you were constructing I was able to settle into it and it was certainly interesting to look at the world from the perspective of a tortoise. I’m interested to know what happens in the rest of the story.”

“Really enjoyed this one! Although… and maybe I’m just slow on the uptake… but despite the opening description of Digby clattering his beak on the narrator’s shell, I was still unclear about what was going on and who/what these characters were for several paragraphs. Once I got all that figured out, though, I breezed through the rest of the story and enjoyed every minute of it! Wonderful descriptions of the animals and their habitat, especially all the sounds they make in response to the music.

Herbert’s narrative voice is great– witty, dry and somewhat condescending to what he seems to think of as “lesser creatures.” I’d definitely love to see more of this!”

“This is certainly an unusual piece of writing. I like your narrative style; it flows well and I like your choice of language for Herbert. He comes across as educated, slightly self-important.
So, the menagerie will come to represent what’s left of the old money now that the new have moved in. Herbert already admires the sounds he’s heard for the first time. I expect he’ll defend the Palmers and their way of life against opposition from Bob and the rest of the animals.
Using animals as main characters in this way is not a new idea, of course. This kind of personification works well when the characters of the animals are thoroughly developed. I don’t think that you have got there yet, but I expect, as the story continues that the reader will come to learn more about Herbert and his Family etc.
I think that the choice of a tortoise for your MC is a good one. Not as excitable as the other creatures he will be able to act as a kind of mediator in whatever conflict you have in store.
I can’t tell yet what your main themes are likely to be. Your brief synopsis says ‘tragedy’, so the arrival of the Palmers must set in place the beginnings of the inevitable and unavoidable outcome of whatever events happen next. I think it would be useful for reviewers to have a full- page synopsis to give us a few extra clues. Similarly, the relevance of the title is not clear yet.
Here are my scores:
Characters:4 a variety of interesting characters here, both animal and human. I think you can develop them further. They are a little one-dimensional at the moment.
Plot:4 I actually think that I’m being generous here, because in all honesty, not a lot has happened yet. I just have a feeling that it will.
Pace:3 I think that you can afford to up the pace without losing Herbert’s quirkiness.
Language:5 Great use of language and masterful control
Voice:5 Strong voice; never falters from Herbert’s way of looking at the world.
Dialogue:3 I really think that you need more dialogue in this opening to give us an insight into the other animal characters.
Settings:4 Good, but I’m not sure how much a tortoise would actually be able to see from a distance.
Themes:4 Unusual, but not clear yet.
I wish you all the very best with your writing.”

You be the judge! No, really your vote counts with the People’s Book Prize. There is a drawback, I think, with this approach, in that I think most judges will find it impossible to read all of the books in order to make a considered opinion – and it runs quarterly! There are 36 books in the finalist competition alone. So it would also be expensive. So I guess the most widely read/networked or cunningly promoted books stand the best chance. What do the winning authors receive? I have no idea. Free promotion I think. There doesn’t appear to be a cash prize.

As a voter you receive: “Each month 12 voters will win a book of their choice from The People’s Book Prize collection. Win 2 tickets to the Gala Awards Nights:  simply vote monthly for your favourite books” and you can go to the awards ceremony if you wish.

I am particularly in love with the cover of this book but am banning myself from reading for a little while to concentrate on pulling the final draft of my new book together for submission in October.

Normally I wouldn’t touch the Daily Mail with a barge pole, but there was an interesting article about Harper Lee in there today. I hesitate to say ‘interview’ since she doesn’t actually answer any questions, it’s more of a fleeting sighting. However, it’s a fascinating profile of one of the world’s most lauded authors who whilst being a massive critical and commercial success, is also a recluse. And only wrote a single book. Have a read here.

I read the second half of this book this afternoon, in the sun in Priory Park. This spate of gorgeous weather we’re having is not great for my writing as I cannot bear to be indoors when it’s so beautiful outside. There’s always the evenings and the time trapped on trains I suppose! This is the third and final book in the Millennium Trilogy. I’ve read some rumours about an unfinished fourth manuscript but it seems unlikely that this will appear even if it exists, given the complications around Larsson’s estate. I found the first half of it a little difficult, mainly because Lizbeth Salander, the central, most intriguing character, is stuck in a hospital bed. But the scenes towards the end where she is on trial really gripped me. At times the translation felt a little clunky, more so than the others, but even though this is a very big book (nearly 750 pages) you can race through it. I’ve enjoyed all of these very much and am looking forward to the film adaptations – the first one, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ which came out early this year was excellent – Salander is such an interesting character.

Q: Hi Gaby, and huge congratulations on the imminent publication of your debut novel, ‘His Last Duchess’. How have the past few weeks been for you and what plans do you have around the launch of your book?

A:   It’s all getting very exciting as the launch date approaches.  All sorts of things seem to be happening.   I had an unforgettable experience last Thursday – I travelled up to Suffolk, to Clays Ltd, who are printing ‘His Last Duchess’ and watched the book roll off the presses.  Seeing literally hundreds of copies of it whizzing around on conveyor belts was a truly extraordinary thing to do.  (I’ve posted a full account of the day on my blog, on the website – www.gabriellekimm.co.uk)  I have various events booked in – a couple of signings at Waterstones (on 7th August in Chichester, on 14th in Portsmouth) and I’m preparing to go and talk at a literary festival in Buckinghamshire in September and at the Havant Literary festival in October.  But basically, right now, I am just trying to contain my excitement and get on with everyday life, when all I actually want to do is walk around with a soppy grin on my face.

Q: ‘His Last Duchess’ is based on a Robert Browning poem – how did you come across that and how did you develop an idea for a novel from that?  I loved that you created whole scenes from the poem – such as the gift of the cherry bough, and Lucrezia’s mule.

A:    I first met Browning’s poem as an undergraduate in the early eighties, and was entranced by it.    It’s a masterly piece of writing – within a mere fifty-six lines, Browning gives you a portrayal of a complex, sinister, three dimensional character, and then leaves you with a mass of unanswered, haunting questions.  Brilliant stuff.  After graduation, I suppose I forgot about it, as you do, but then, teaching GCSE English some fifteen years later, I re-discovered it, as it’s included in the AQA GCSE Poetry Anthology.  I was delighted!  It was like finding an old friend, and as I worked on it with the students, I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with it.   Then one otherwise inauspicious day, I was listening to something unconnected on Radio 4, and it suddenly burst into my head, almost fully formed:  the basic plot and structure of a novel, based around the poem.  I was like a thing possessed for several hours, frantically scribbling, desperate to make sure I didn’t lose any of the ideas.  And it all went from there.

My novel is based on the Browning poem, but the poem is based (loosely) in historical fact.  Copious research produced some definite facts but the circumstances are relatively obscure, I suppose, and I was happy to find this to be the case – I felt pleasingly free to create my fiction around those facts I did uncover.   Alfonso d’Este, the fifth duke of Ferrara did marry a Medici heiress (she was actually fourteen at the time, but I tweaked her age up to sixteen deliberately) and three years later, Lucrezia disappeared from the records.  Those records are unspecific about the cause of her death – though Browning’s feeling that Alfonso had had a hand in her demise seems to be one of the most popular theories.    The other important fact, not mentioned by Browning, is that the Vatican decreed that, if Alfonso failed to produce a legitimate heir, they would take back the rights to the duchy of Ferrara.  He eventually died childless, and his family did lose the lands and the titles, though his cousin, Cesare, was allowed to retain the rights to the duchies of Modena and Reggio (great for balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese, but not quite the might of the original!).  Bizarrely, a direct descendent of Cesare (now very elderly) lives in a village close by and I know him quite well – I hope he will approve of what I have done with his uncle.

Q: Alfonso, the Duke, is a thoroughly nasty man. How did you find writing the scenes with him in them, particularly the ones where he is behaving most horribly?

A: Oh, crumbs, there were times when being intimately cooped up with the Duke of Ferrara was a distinctly uncomfortable experience!  I would disagree with you, though, that he is ‘nasty’ – he is damaged and unhappy, and insecure and desperately troubled, but ‘nasty’ implies that he obtains some sort of enjoyment from his dreadful behaviour..  He certainly behaves appallingly on a number of occasions, but he isn’t a sadist. However, he can be unpleasantly misogynistic, and there were several occasions when I found writing that side of him very troubling and upsetting.

I spent one very interesting evening, early on in the drafting process, with a friend of mine who is a consultant psychiatrist, and between us, we psychoanalysed poor Alfonso.   My friend had asked me to write up a set of ‘case notes’ and to run them past him as though I were a junior psych consulting a superior.  It was a fascinating, revealing and at times quite shocking experience!

Q: The final scenes of the book are so cleverly brought together. There’s a real sense of suspense, adventure, fearfulness. How did you develop that part of the plot?

A:  Ooh, this is a difficult one to answer without giving away things I don’t want people to know before they get there!  The whole final section of the book needed about seven drafts to get it right.  One of the most difficult things was the choreography – making sure everyone was in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing in the right order!  I did get in touch with a wonderful man called Tod Todeschini (what a fab name!) who is an expert on period forensics, and he advised me on how best to set up my ‘scene of crime’ towards the end of the book.  I suppose you could call him my SOCO!  Other than that, I suppose, it’s just a matter of spending as much time as you need to in each of the character’s heads, to ensure that you really understand how they each feel about the situation they are in.

Q: ‘His Last Duchess’ is set in the 1500’s in Italy and you have described in detail the clothes they wore at the time. How did you find out about all of this and what did you find most interesting?

A:  I love the research side of writing historical fiction!  When I began writing ‘Duchess’, I felt that I was entering into uncharted territory, writing about such an unfamiliar era and setting, so to be on the safe side, I researched absolutely everything (including checking the etymology of almost every word in the novel…) to try to make sure I was not including any glaring anachronisms.  Clothing was obviously a very important issue – and, given the behaviour of a number of my characters, as well as the look and texture etc of period clothing, I needed to know exactly how best to put the various items on, and (probably more important) how to take them off!

I entered into a detailed correspondence with an expert at the V&A who was enormously helpful.  One of the delightful facts I discovered from her was that men kept their hose (stockings) up by fastening them to the doublets (jackets) with little bits of string (called points).  Because, I was told, doing these up and undoing them all the time was obviously a bit of a pain, they often used to take the whole lot off at night still fastened together, like a giant babygro!  I just love the idea of the likes of William Shakespeare and John Donne taking off romper suits at the end of a long day’s writing.

Q: Your new book will be taking one of the minor characters, Francesca (the Duke’s mistress), and her twin daughters and following their story after they have departed Ferrara. I love this idea and am very much looking forward to reading it. When did you know your next book was going to be about her?

A:  When I finished ‘Duchess’, I had a very strong feeling that I had completed my relationship with nearly all the characters.  I was happy with where they were, and what they were doing, and I didn’t feel I needed to know any more about them – I felt able to let them go their own ways.  But not so with Francesca.  From quite soon after the completion of ‘Duchess, she kept intruding into my thoughts, and pestering me, and I found that I just couldn’t get her out of my mind.  It wasn’t long before I knew she was going to need a book of her own.

Q: Like Jane Rusbridge and Isabel Ashdown, you are a graduate from the Chichester MA in Creative Writing. How do you feel that prepared you for where you are at as a writer now? As an alumni, how connected to the people you worked with then are you now – is there some sort of writers support network that has been formed locally?

A:  I loved every minute of my time on the MA course and I feel I owe an enormous amount to them!  I’m sure I wouldn’t be where I am now without having done the MA.  It’s an extraordinary experience that teaches you not only fantastic writing skills (the tutors are all wonderful teachers and successful working writer in their own right), but it also encourages essential working practices.  The workshop structure (whereby you share work with a small group of other writers on each module, critiquing each other’s writing on a weekly basis) teaches you to be generous and open with what you write, and stops you ever getting precious or protective about your work.  This is fantastic preparation for the gruelling business of presenting work to agents and commissioning editors.

I still meet regularly (usually monthly) with a lovely group of writers from the MA and we share work and ideas.  I suppose you could say that we are each others’ closest supporters and fiercest critics.  We none of us pull our punches!
I’m also discovering a sense of a writing community, since getting the book deal.  I’ve been keeping in touch with a number of writers (like Jane and Isabel, and also a lovely novelist called Deborah Swift, who was a fellow shortlistee for the Impress Prize for Fiction in 2007), and we are all working on a number of different supporting ideas, like sharing website space and promoting each other’s work on blogs, etc.

Q: I love hearing different writers’ stories of how they got into print. What was your journey from writing your novel to where you are now with it about to hit the shelves?

A:  Hmm.  Talking about the ‘gruelling business of presenting work to agents and editors’ …  I started submitting ‘Duchess’ to agents before I had finished the MA, and had about thirteen rejections in all, I think.  Several were ‘close calls’ and I had phonecalls and letters telling me how sorry a particular agent was to turn it down, as they had really like it, etc etc – nice to hear that people were enjoying the book, but such honeyed words were pretty cold comfort when faced with yet another returned jiffy bag,  tucked behind the wheelie bin!  The most bizarre rejection came from an agent who said she was very struck by the story, but found the central character too disturbing, and she didn’t want to spend too much time with him!

Funnily enough, the agent who took me on, at the end of 2007 – Judith Murray, of Greene & Heaton – was the only one I didn’t approach myself.  My manuscript was passed to her by a colleague of hers whom I had met at a University Publishing Panel.  He didn’t want to take the book on as it was not really a genre he specialised in, but he thought she would enjoy it.  And, very luckily for me she did.  I’m very fortunate to have an agent who is also a really acute editor – she insisted (very nicely!) on huge changes to the book when she took me on, and terrifying though they were, her suggestions were all absolutely spot on.  I’m currently working on some fairly far-reaching new suggestions of Judith’s with regards to ‘The Courtesan’s Choice’ (my second novel, which will be out in July 2011).

As far as obtaining a book deal goes – I had a number of rejections over the first year of submissions in 2008, but then Judith secured me a terrific two-book deal with Little, Brown in 2009.  I think you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog, if you really want to be published.  (A retired professor friend suggested, in the early stages of my quest, that I ‘pack a large bag and prepare for the long haul’.) You need to develop a sort of one-way thick skin – resilient from the outside in, so that you can withstand the repeated knockbacks, but still sensitive and receptive from the inside out, so that you continue to be an empathetic and observant writer.  If that makes sense …

Q: If you were a gemstone, what gemstone would you be?

I’d like to be a pearl – I think because it’s a bit different, being made from the organic matter in an oyster. And I’m probably drawn to it because it is both my birth and astral stone and mostly comes in white.

A:  This was the hardest question to answer. Thinking hard about it, I think I would probably say a tiger eye.  That was my instinctive response, and I have just looked it up on Google, and found this:  ‘Tiger Eye gemstones are said to help convert anxiety, fear and obsessiveness into practicality and logic. It is said to increase confidence and clear thinking’ Sounds fairly reasonable for a writer, if for ‘practicality and logic’ you substitute ‘a compelling narrative’!

Over the last few months, as I’ve focussed more of my time and energy on my writing goals, in addition to actually writing, I’ve been doing a fair amount of networking. This has had a massive impact on my reading habits. Whereas before I would choose books based mainly on what I saw in shops or on recommendations from Amazon and friends, first I started being sent books by publishers to review and now, most excitingly, authors are giving me their books to review. I have just finished my first ‘proof’ copy – that is – pre-publication and feel very privileged to have had the opportunity. The writer is Gabrielle Kimm who I met whilst assisting Jane Rusbridge with a reading event at Chichester library. I met Jane via another Chichester writer, Isabel Ashdown who found me by looking for local book groups and stumbling across mine. It was with Gabrielle and Jane over tea recently where they likened the experience of having a book go to print and out to market to releasing a child out into the world – the hopes for its success, fears of failures or mistakes that reflect badly on the writer/mother or hurt the child/book (ok, so a book doesn’t have feelings itself being an inanimate object but I do remember promising one of mine at one point that I would do my very best for it, so they definitely have more life to them than a pile of words in the writer’s mind).

I don’t think Gabrielle should worry too much with this one – ‘His Last Duchess’. It’s a stunningly written absolutely riveting story set in 16th century Italy. Lucrezia, at just sixteen, is married to Alfonso, a Duke, an absolute horror of a man. Lucrezia is such an absorbing, enchanting character so you naturally revile Alfonso and root for Lucrezia to escape or somehow find a better life. Gabrielle’s seed for the story came from a Robert Browning poem ‘My Last Duchess’ which, on researching it, she discovered had some elements of truth in it. I rather like this as this is also true of my short story, ‘The Thought Collector‘ – there was a cast of Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ in the Cantor Fitzgerald lobby on 9/11 and it was found by a firefighter who was photographed with it and it did disappear and is yet to resurface. Gabrielle has taken the skeleton story – a Duke with a much younger wife who ‘disappears’ just a few years into their marriage and has brought it to life, filling it with vibrant characters and fascinating technical details of the fashions and foods at that time, meticulously researched with the likes of the V&A.

I have pre-ordered a copy of this for my mother and also a copy of Gabrielle’s next book – ‘The Courtesan’s Choice’ – although, if I’m very lucky I might get an early read of that too. I know from Gaby it’s in the final editing stages at the moment. Interestingly, it’s the story of Francesca, the Duke’s mistress, following her departure from Ferrara. I like it when author’s take one of their minor characters and write a whole new book with them as the central character – like Paul Torday did with ‘The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers’.

I will be making ‘The Courtesan’s Choice’ a read for our book group and I very much hope that along with ‘His Last Duchess’ it’s very successful because in my opinion it deserves to be. A fantastic read.

Gaby will be doing an interview with me for this site so keep an eye out for that!

Last night I entered an online competition being held by literary agent, Kate Nash. The prize? Meet Kate Nash over drinks and nibbles of some sort and discuss your writing. All I had to do to enter was submit 500 words of a novel’s opening. I sent her the opening of the third revision I am currently working on of ‘The Nature of Forget’. Currently titled “Rich in Small Things”, here it is:

Rich in Small Things

Part One
Chapter One

Showtime

1600hrs, Saturday July 19th 2008
Hyde Park, London, England

As Julia finally turns the key in the ignition I fumble with the large silver envelope just passed to me by one of the rally officials. Around us hundreds of competitors rev their engines and the thickly humid air, already heavy with the smells of onions and grease, fills with petrol fumes and dust. The leaves of the trees in the park clatter in the stiff winds as if applauding, cheering us on our way.

Julia slips the jeep into first gear and I flip open my penknife and slide the blade under the flap of the envelope, neatly slicing through the top. Our windows are open and the hooting and whooping mauls us. Julia and I sit in our small puddle of silence, nervous and serious.

I slide the card out as we trundle across the serpentine, lovers rowing casually about, goose-pimpled, jackets flapping as the dark storm clouds continue to gather threateningly overhead.

Julia glances in the rear view mirror. ‘The weirdo students are behind us,’ she comments. I read the card out loud.

‘”Challenge the first,” – it’s a route one -  “Arrive at Prague Castle at 1900hrs Tuesday 22 nd July or earlier. Value: 100 points. 25 points deducted for each 12 hours’ tardiness. Party 23rd July from 2000hrs.”’

‘Okay,’ Julia interrupts, ‘that’s as expected.’ I nod and continue.

‘And then, “Challenge Two – Photograph a purple sea of Lavandula at Sarah Cracknell’s organ.”’ Bingo, I think and I smile. Julia frowns as she turns right into the Bayswater Road. ‘That’s worth one hundred points,’ I tell her.

‘Okay,’ she says flatly, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel at the traffic crawling up to Marble Arch.

‘And number three: “Bring us sweet Bacchus from the caves of Venice.”’

Julia’s phone rings and she snatches it up from the dashboard, squints at the screen, tuts, and hits the decline button. ‘David.’ She spits his name out like it tastes bad. ‘How many points is that last one?’ she asks.

‘Also a hundred,’ I say, twisting and reaching round behind me to the case of maps we have and pulling out the one for France. ‘There’s a fourth one: “Bring us a bottle distilled in nails”. A hundred again.’

I don’t read the note in small print at the bottom to Julia. It says: ‘Reminder of qualification rules: All photographs must be time stamped and include a copy of that day’s newspaper and an appropriate signpost. All objects must be accompanied by a receipt detailing time and location of purchase.’

‘So, what are you thinking?’ she asks as we head down Park Lane, the hotels opulent and lazy on my left. I wave at the Dorchester thinking about that afternoon tea with Babu just a few weeks before, the day I first met Henry. I remember how at the time he seemed like a promise and wince at the threat he is to me now.

Whilst mooching about Kate’s site and reading her blog I was surprised and delighted to find a link back to here! (my review of the VWC Get Writing conference back in February). She also had Jon Pinnock’s amazing Mrs Darcy and the Aliens trailer on there hence me also posting it here. I would very much like to meet Kate – we are of a similar age and she used to work in marketing for a company now owned by Microsoft so I am sure we would have lots to chat about even if we ran out of things to say about books (although that seems highly unlikely to happen in any case). Fingers crossed for the competition then – if I get the opportunity I think I shall suggest afternoon tea at the Dorchester, just like Melissa and her grandmother, Babu.