Monthly Archives: October 2013

October 30, 2013 · 4:27 pm

My top five thrillers and spooky novels

Borderliners, the first novel in my trilogy, is a psychological thriller set in the autumn of several different timelines.

As I prepare this novel for publication at the end of 2013, some of the key themes of the story are uppermost in my mind: dreams and reality, the mysterious nature of time, ambiguity of human relationships and the destructive nature of isolation and the vulnerability it brings to its subjects.

Inspiration for some of my themes comes from my love of thrillers and some of my favourites are listed here:

  1. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
  2. Dark Places, Gillian Flynn
  3. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
  4. Blackwater, Kerstin Eckmann
  5. The Landscape of Love, Sally Beauman

For me, Gillian Flynn is the current queen of the plot-driven suspense thriller, but almost nothing beats the way I felt when I first read Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ over a decade ago. I was a student at the time and spent several days and nights immersed in the story. Kerstin Eckmann’s Blackwater is one of a longer list of nordic thrillers I’m very fond of, but the one which stands the test of time in my memory. The Landscape of Love is a peculiar novel, which I found both disturbing and compulsive at the same time. The use of changing points of view from the reliable to the unreliable narrators was one which I loved and has followed through to my own work. Finally, The Master and Margarita contains a masterpiece of a scene where Margarita, the Master’s mistress, is invited to a ‘Walpurgis Night ball’ , an event associated with the occult and the supernatural.

Happy reading!

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October 22, 2013 · 6:14 pm

Dirty drafting

my writing deskAre you a ‘dirty drafter’ or a detailed planner?

I’ve decided I’m the former even though I would dearly love to be the latter. Given the plot driven nature of my stories, I really should be a planner, but I kind of wing it a bit.

Why? Well, the answer is simple. I love the feeling that the manuscript is becoming something more than you planned. It’s almost like giving birth, albeit a lot less painful (physically, at least). You imagine what you might be making/have made, but it ends up an entity of its own. When characters become that little bit darker than you wanted, or you wake up in the middle of the night and realise they have to do something completely unexpected. That’s the feeling I’m after.

#Nanowrimo

So as the countdown to National Novel Writing Month begins – now T-9 to lift off (or write off) – I’m reminded of why I like to bash down as many words as possible in the first instance. Just as the author of this article about drafting suggests, the more you write, the more you want to find out what happens next.

Compass

Of course, I’ll never go back to the dark days of no planning whatsoever. I’ve learned over the course of the last three years and two manuscripts, that you need a compass. Stephen King calls it his ‘what if?’ question, which is, as I understand it, a kind of ‘mashup’ of two or three ideas or events which make an entirely new entity you can use to kick off your novel concept. Faber Academy and other creative writing courses like to you get an elevator pitch down before you start – theory goes, if you can’t get the basic concept into one of these 25 word pitches, it won’t fly. This is probably true, by the way. But great long reams of planning charts and characterisation cards? No, this is not for me.

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October 20, 2013 · 2:04 pm

Quantum mysticism

What if ghosts were not spirits of the past but a manifestation of another reality?

What if the past is not the past and the future not the future? That all timelines merge into one simultaneous view of space time? Is time what we perceive it to be, or is everything past, present and future happening at once?

Hokum?

Well, even I find it difficult listening to the ideas of ‘Ramtha’ without raising my eyebrows. But where is the line?

Quantum mysticism is one of the areas which lends itself to New Age interpretations. Can it be explored without verging onto the no-man’s land of made up explanations of the supernatural? Some might say this is what many forms of religion do anyway. I’m not saying any such thing, but I find it relevant to throw those questions out there whilst entertaining my readers, of course. Questions, not answers.

Answers have no place in fiction.

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October 3, 2013 · 9:19 am

Hybrid routes to publishing

In the bad old days when authors were told not to put anything online prior to obtaining that magical mega book deal (which doesn’t really exist) there was one option, and one only: traditional publishing. Then, with the rise of online publishing a kind of virtual free-for-all happened, where suddenly it became possible to become master of your own destiny. Oh, the freedom.

Nowadays I’m hearing exponential numbers of stories about authors who are masters of their destinies. Unconstrained by either of the above publishing models, they do a bit of both.

Yesterday, a writing colleague told me the story of her friend, a self-published author who distributed business cards at literary festivals and book fairs. On one side she printed her name and on the other, the name of her book and the website address of her author platform. Now she has a five book deal with one of the big six.

See, there are many ways to skin a cat.

Researching this approach I couldn’t help but notice how the process of self-publishing hones the brain. To run my own self-publishing experiment, I will use my very first book, ‘Borderliners’. The product is ready (written) but needs to be packaged up and marketed – a task which is easier talked about that actually done properly. Everything, from the blurb to the buzz must be professionally executed. And it must be smart. Audience-message-medium, here I come.

It is entirely logical that a self-published author should find it easier than an unpublished one to secure a traditional publishing deal. This kind of author has had to learn the hard way: how to pitch direct to their consumer – to even know exactly who that consumer is and what will press their buttons, to understand when and what they read and what will resonate most of all. It’s a big challenge. Then they will have had to work out how to stand out against the competition. Essentially, a successful self-published author can say to an agent or a publisher – I know what you’re up against and I can reassure you I’ve learned how to create great products which have a market.

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