cate's blag blog

The Best Books about Writing

2007-06-23T13:43:00.000Z

Please send me titles of your favourite books about writing. Here's my provisional list for the workshops I'm starting this week which is more about freeing our inner voice, or unblocking rather than rules or how to write.

Creative Novel Writing by Roselle Angwin

Writing The Bright Moment by Roselle Angwin

Creative Pathways -Freeing the Writer's Inner Voice by Suzanne Ruthven

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Writing For Self Discovery by Myra Schneider and John Killick

Anyone like to add to that?

Penny Alexander in her previous comment recommends the following:

Jane Wenham-Jones 'Wannabe a Writer?' and not just because I'm quoted, but because it made me giggle and spill my tea several times.

Stephen King's On Writing is supposed to be one of the best too, though I confess I haven't read it [yet].

David Isaak recommends:
Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art" is wonderful. Initially the format--little short chapters that look as though they verge on proverbs--is a little off-putting, but if you read it straight through it is one of the best things ever written on the writer's battle with all the naysayers in their own mind.

My favorite manual on how writing works is the unfortunately titled "Modern Library Writer's Workshop" by Stephen Koch (novelist, and also the head of Columbia University's Creative Writing Program for many years). Koch isn't one who hands down rules, but he discusses all aspects of the craft and art, and peppers the book with quotes from a joyously eclectic selection of writers

Conversations with Strange Men Part Six

2007-06-23T13:06:00.001Z

I was at Snape Maltings Concert Hall today to hear a string quartet. I arrive to find my seat sandwiched between two men. The man on my left is I think, rather posh and reticent, or maybe can't get a word in edgeways as the man on my right is from Suffolk and chatty.

Him: Hello.

Me: Hi.

Him: I love it here. This is a special place.

Me: Yes, I'm really looking forward to this.

Him: I love the starkness of it and the sound.. I've been coming here 25 years.

Me: Really? This is my first festival.

Him: I'll tell you something. I used to suffer from asthma. This place cured me.

Me : Wow! That's amazing!

Him: Yep, they wanted to pump me full of steroids and I didn't like the idea of what it might do to my bones, so I said forget it and I came here instead. Never had an attack since. I tell you this place... I expect you think I'm mad don't you?

Me: Not at all. I work in this field....in creative writing in health...

Him: Well Bach is my cure. And I tell you Shostakovich is the cure for cancer.... when that music get inside you.... and it's what's inside that make you ill, do you agree....?

Me: Oh yes. I often work in mental health and I see how all the arts help a lot.

The Zehetmair Quartet arrive onstage play and are pretty amazing. Afterwards our conversations continues as if it hadn't left off.

Him: Well there's more mental illness than ever before isn't there? There's too much of it about since they closed all the hospitals... it's everywhere and some have ended up in prisons and people don't know where to turn... there's no church and the politicians... no one can look up to them can they? And people are let out and they're murdering people...and no one knows which way to turn... but if people just came here they'd see.... they'd know.... I should be dead really you know... in fact I have been dead and come back and music saved me... and the Masons.... you know the Freemasons don't you? Well they've got it in for me....because I broke my wrist and couldn't work and they wanted £1000 off me and I couldn't pay it so they want me dead... and I climbed Ben Nevis for Cystic Fibrosis and I helped this girl and fell in love with her, but she didn't love me back because she had three children and I had no money, so that was that, but I loved her, so every year on the anniversary... you know the anniversary is special, so I climb Ben Nevis every year...I need to so I can break that demon... and if people would only come here, they'd realise, they'd forget everything... all your troubles just go... you agree with me don't you?

Me: I have to go now I'm afraid...

Find The Writer Within

2007-06-17T13:26:00.000Z

Anyone want to tell me their favourite books about writing? Find the Writer Within is what I've called my series of workshops I'll be holding in Aldeburgh fromThursday June 28th at Aldeburgh Music Room. I'm just planning what I'll do and also reading lots of writing books to compile a reading list of my favourites. This is how I've been plugging it on leaflets placed around the town: Tap Into Your Creativity... Find Your Unique Voice...Develop Your Ideas....

From Club Dancing to Morris Dancing

2007-06-14T09:15:00.000Z

Well I've certainly been strutting my stuff lately. Had a brill time in Ibiza with two old (very old) friends and a new one seen here with me in Pacha night club. I kind of made a joke to everyone about going to Ibiza and I didn't expect to like it. What a total snob I am because it was fab, kind of alternative and chilled and really beautiful and the music (which I love) was everywhere from bars to cars to the boat carrying us across the bay to Ibiza town even taxi drivers seemed in the chilled groove and believe me Spanish taxi drivers are some of the most miserable in the world. Or maybe it's a given for that particular job anywhere with the exception of Ibiza it seems. We were staying in lovely hotel in Talamanca and my favourite chill out bar restauarant just down the coast a little even has a bed in it! See photo. It was probably a great time because I spent it with such groovy people. I even went clubbing and didn't feel too old, well the dim light helps, not sure whether my eighties- auntie- style dancing is still the thing, but hey anything goes I think!

So now back in Aldeburgh and settling back into life here and to keep my feet in I ended up Morris dancing on Monday night outside the Ship Inn at Dunwich. It's a long story but it seems whenever Rosie (mentioned in an earlier post Feb 19th 2007 ) venture out things seem to happen. I blame her!

Madrid In Winter / Ghosts of Spain

2007-06-06T10:53:00.000Z

Two amazing books I´m reading in parallel. The former book by CJ Sansom (I´ll upload cover when I get back) was absolutely brilliant. Set in Spain just after the Civil War, it has everything: history, romance, gore, war, humour, spies and spivs, a page turning read in every sense of the word.
There are some books you read and think I can write better than this. Other books you think what I brilliant idea I wish I´d thought of that. And other books, like Madrid in Winter, seem to me just so skilful and amzingly complex, gripping but working on so many levels I know if I spent the rest of my life on it I couldn´t come up with anything like it! It was also really thrilling as the climax of the book is set in Cuenca which is my favourite place in Spain (part of Selfish Jean is set there too) and I just got to that bit of the book as I was staying in Cuenca again this time. It was so thrilling to be there and read it. I´m sure they´ll make a film of it there. Only thing isa it wil bring more people then and I like to keep it as my secret hide away.

Reading in tandem with it is a factual book by journalist, Giles Tremlett, who has lived in Madrid for years and it is about the Cicil War and what has happened to Spain in the post Franco years. A riveting and fascinating eye opener about modern Spain

Strange Conversations With Spanish Women

2007-06-06T10:42:00.000Z

We also has to hold role playing phone conversations for the spaniards to practise speaking on the phone. A couple of memorable ones were I had to act that part that I had just got married George Clooney and was to be interviewed by a Spanish journalist over the phone. She was doing it all so very seriously and sincerely that I just had to start being really naughty and began explaining how he liked me to wear a Nazi uniform in the bedroom. I think I rather lost her at that point.

Another bizarre phone conversation was with another female. I was supposed to be her partner and had to tell her I was working late but in actual fact was seeing someone else. I rang her, she said she was busy with work and put the phone down. I didn´t know if it was part of the act or not! She rang me back later and said she really had had an important call from work to deal with, but it was quite a good come back. I felt hoist with my own petard! Spanish women rock!

The role of women has changed very much in Spain and I think has the lowest birth rate of anywhere in Europe. It seems to be very much a choice of either career or kids and many choose career. The ones I met were great role models, funny, fascinating and smart in every sense of the word.

From a Contemporary Art Museum in Segovia

2007-06-06T10:39:00.000Z

Taste The Intrigue

Share A New Adventure

Go For The Magic

We´re Writing The Future

Save The Dream

From a video Art work called Slogans by Antoni Muntadas

Conversations with strange Men part Five

2007-06-03T16:27:00.000Z

Well I´ve spoken to lots of strange Spanish men at Vaughan town here´s a random selection of different ones.

1.
Me: Hi. So are you enjoying yourself?

Him: Yes. But I no more speak. My only neurone is full.

---------------------------------------------------------------
2. Each Spanish person had to do a presentation in English.

Me: Have you decided what your presentation will be about?

Him: Safety in Scuba Diving.

Me¨: Interesting. So you want to practise it?

Him: Pliz. You will hear me.

Me: Of course. Do you want me to just listen or correct you as you speak?

Him: Oh correct me pliz.

(He begins is doing great until......)

Him: In Scuba diving it is safer if you have a good body.

Me: A good body?

Him: You need a good body no?

Me: Probably, but do you need a good body?

Him: A goooood boooooody.

(We are both hysterical with laughter by this point)

Me: Oh you mean a good buddy?

Him: A good buddha?

Me: No buddy, buddy.... my accent is from the North.

HIm¨: Ok OK I got it a gooood baddie.

Me: OK that´ll do then.

Every time we passed each other after that he would laugh and say: " Do you think I have a gooood boooody?"

Volunteering to talk non-stop

2007-06-01T16:34:00.000Z

Hi I am still travelling in Spain and finished my week volunteering Vaughan Town and it´s taken me a week to get over it! A mixture of tiredness, picking up a cold, and really missing the people I met. It´s amazing how strong bonds between people can become in a week.

I can´t upload any photos here for you but you can check them out if you want to see if you can spot me.
It wasn´t so much a course for the spaniards as an English immersion prgramme which included lots of rain and english humour and talking. There are no classes just non stop conversational sessions, lots of Monthy Python (Montee Peeton in Spanish!) sketches and Karaoke. They get to talk with us, a variety of volunteers from the US, Oz and UK.
What amazing bunch of people the Spaniards are though. They spoke nothing but English for six days to a load of strangers. At first a little reserved, suspicious or both, of us possible football hooligans or costa-louts, they seemed like serious english speaking robots (not surprisingly) but after a couple of days their individual personalities started to come out to play. Their humour, their little quirks, eccentricities and sweetness and playfulness and we all began to bond like UHU.
I know how difficult they must have found it because I´ve been travelling around Spain since leaving there using my not bad, but fairly limited Spanish a la perdiz. It´s made me realise how difficult it is really conveying what sort of person you are in another language, or expressing what you really believe and think.
Massive respect hombres!
By the end of the week it really felt we were getting to know each other well, some new freindships made and I hope we keep in touch.
Conversations with Strange (Spanish) men to follow David. Patience!

Conversations With Strange Men Part Four

2007-05-18T13:40:00.000Z

I was contacted via a friend, by a man who has been a writing teacher in the US for years. He's a very interesting, deeply spiritual guy, we had coffee, then he read Selfish Jean and loved it, and wanted to meet with the idea of me being part of a sitcom writing team (on spec, no commission). We meet for lunch.
The talk turns to writing partners and goes something like this.

Me: I tried writing a sitcom with a really close friend once and we nearly came to blows over it. Like whose plot was best, best lines, anything. He died unfortunately.

Him: (a little horror struck) Really?

Me: Oh it's OK I didn't kill him. He'd been ill a long time.

Him: Mmmm. Whenever I feel myself getting angry about someone, not only do I try and analyze them, I always like to turn it round and analyze what it is in myself that's reacting to them.

Me: Right....

Him: Now I'm not a judgemental person or I try not to be as much as anyone can be non-judgemental.

Me: Uh-huh..

Him: But with one of the writers it was impossible. There were three things that made me angry. One (he puts out one finger to count on) just his cynicism about everything, and everyone and the whole of his life. I wondered in the end if it was just because he came from the North.

Me: I am from up North.

Him: Well if that's the way things are up there, being really negative, acting like everything is a waste of time anyway.so what's the point. ThHen again maybe it was the fact he had a lot of money that was making me angry. He has houses all over the place, in the US, the North, one in London and doesn't really need to work, so then I had to really try hard and turn it round, really look at myself and see what it is in me that was reacting in the way I did to this person...

Me: Don't be so hard on yourself, there are some people we just don't hit it off with...

Him: I haven't finished yet.

Me: Sorry.

Him: So on to reason two (he counts on his next finger) why this person gets my back up.

Me: I thought we'd done reason two.

Him: No, that was just a subclause of reason one... So reason two...

(I settle back onto the sofa cushions, make myself comfortable)

About 20 mins later....

Him: So all in all, I think what we need is some new input into the script, which is where you could come in. You could send me one of your scripts and I'll send you what we've written of the sitcom so far. It's still in very early stages.

Me: Well a sitcom needs really good dialogue, snappy you know? And of course it needs to be funny.

Him: (unsmiling) Funny?

Me: (smiling brightly) Yes!

It's not over till the fat lady writes

2007-05-18T09:42:00.000Z

I need to stop comfort eating.
I can't stop now! Blogging, eating or writing. Two of them will have to be cut down.
I just read the post below and thought bloody hell! I can't leave that post as the first one everyone sees if they happen to flick over to my blog. I decided to be honest about how having a book rejected makes your feel, as it's so much work and I think we put so much of ourselves into our work however fictional it is that it is hard not to take it personally.
Funnily enough I have been coming up with new ideas now the pressure is off to perform, and I hasten to add the only pressure was what I put on myself.

So I'm back, well I'm just off to Spain for three weeks actually but after that, it's upwards and onwards really to a new life. This is a picture of Madrid where I fly to tomorrow.

I have booked to run a writing retreat, funnily enough near the beach below at a very spiritual place called The Phoenix Centre and that will be three nights from 28th Sept to 1st October if anyone would like to come. I'll work out the fine detail when I get back from my trip.

Making it up as we go along.

2007-04-29T07:39:00.000Z

I spent most of yesterday on Dunwich beach walking, thinking, writing, jotting.

It was extremely windy and the seaside is changing now particularly at weekends. The beautiful people have arrived: families, romantic weekenders, dogs and/or children in tow. I feel more the outsider now. On this long, long beach I was almost totally alone save for a group of young (to me!) people who walked by, so happy, so confident of who they were, what life was all about, and it was about having fun at weekends, to chill after the pressures of a busy week, in their cropped trousers, clothes with labels I've no inkling of. Such good looking men in mirror shades, their loose-hipped, soft-lipped, finger-licking-good girlfriends following close behind. A glance at me as I clung to the strip of sand right by the sea, a glance that seemed to say to me, what's she doing here all alone walking in such a desolate place? Probably more likely indifference, my own hang-ups got a chip on my shoulder this week.

Look this isn't what I meant to write today, not what I meant to write at all. It's just I've been thinking, a lot, and I woke up at three this morning with what I thought was insight into my situation, but I don't know. It may be just coincidence that it's a whole year since I started this blog, and somehow I feel it's time to end this one. It was supposed to be about Selfish Jean after all. I may start another one about something else, a new book or a new life, I've no idea, but I just don't know what to do next.

It's pre-sunrise now and I've just heard the cuckoo.

Had a bit of a Road to Damascus moment (or is that a Big Crosby/Bob Hope film?) and feel I'm on the verge of a whole new life, either that or I have to retrace my steps back to my old one somehow.

Last year was amazing, exciting, different in all sorts of ways from volunteering in an orphanage to all the book publicity events. However, it was all planned out and I'm not sure I got the mix right. I let the book thing take over too much, going along with this book lark, then trying a second novel lark, because well when you’re offered stuff like that on a plate, you go for it don’t you? Of course it was a dream come true, but maybe one book is enough really. I just feel I don't want to write anymore at the moment, not to the point of spending months on something for nothing. It was a crap book anyway, the second rejected one, I can see that now. It didn’t really come from my soul, bits of it did, but not much of it. It was phoney I think.

Except as I was walking on that beach I realised it was heading to Walberswick, in which part of my new novel was set, and I realised that the Mackintoshes would have walked this very beach many a time too, and it reminded me, the book opened with them walking on a beach. A big theme in the book was about failing, about them failing, but then realising they could move on and start in a new way, as they did several times in their lives. We all have to reinvent ourselves sometimes.

So unintentionally I was walking on their beach on a day I was contemplating my future, in a year that has no pre-plans whatsoever, and that feels a bit frightening, but also a bit exciting, a clean slate. What next?

Maybe that’s why I called this a blag blog, because I felt I’d blagged my way into this getting publishing lark, that it wasn’t really real and it wasn’t really me. A lucky fluke. It was fun, and I met some great people, but it just took up too much valuable time, I think. Books aren't that important. No, don’t all shout, I don’t mean that exactly, of course books are important, how else would we escape, or know how to live, or recognise our experience in another’s, or be transported somewhere else? I just mean mine won’t ever be those sorts of important books, (interesting how I went in the plural then though isn’t it?) Selfish Jean was written, in a way, for me… to let out some of the anger I felt about a situation I was in. To let out some of the stuff I felt I was having to hide, by being a good girl to get approval from those nice adoption people looking for a Stepford Mother type. The book was all fiction, but the emotion behind it was real. Now, I realise why the second book was no good, I just wasn’t angry enough or believed enough in what I was writing.

Maybe I’ll write another book when I live something I feel deeply enough to write about. And of course I will always write and help other people to do it, or rather I’ll help them write the stuff that is in their soul, the stuff they care about, feel about, their real true selves, disguised in fiction or fact the choice is up to them. But I have to do that myself too or I’m living a writing lie.

To me, what is much more important than writing about something is actually doing something, something that makes a difference, another cliché I know, but true.

Will there be more of this? Was this just one of those middle of the night maudlin moments we all get from time to time? I don't know.

Whatever thankyou for reading and good luck with your writing and life and try and get the balance right! Work out what's imporant, what's really important, not what you think is important...

I can see through my window that the sun has now risen over the sea. and a beautiful new day has begun.

Conversations with Strange Men Part Three

2007-04-25T17:23:00.000Z

I was introduced to an Indecisive Poet. Here's a summary of our esoteric conversation.

Him: You're quite quirky aren't you?
Me: Er... I suppose.
Him: Your teeth are nice, lips a bit thin though...
Me: Sorry?
Him: Breasts look good. What size are they? Shall I guess?
Me: Er... I don't think so...
Him: You're a bit chunky aren't you?
Me: Chunky!!!!!!
Him: But all in all, I find you not unattractive.
Me: Really? Funny you use the negative like that...
Him: I don't get you...
Me: No.... I guess not.

Reading A Lot Into Things

2007-04-25T17:11:00.000Z

This is what I'm currently reading, which is the book about Suffolk and recommended to me by the Indecisive Poet. You can't search inside by the way if you're thinking of trying.
But here's some stuff about writing from inside it that spoke to me. As in not out loud. I mean I know I'm feeling a bit mad this week, but not actually hearing voices, I just mean, you know...
anyway...

"For days and weeks on end one racks one's brain to no avail, and, if asked, one could not say whether one goes on writing purely out of habit, or a craving for admiration, or because one knows not how to do anything other, or out of sheer wonderment, despair or outrage, anymore than one could say whether writing renders one more perceptive or more insane. Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are all engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life."

Conversations with Strange Men Part Two

2007-04-23T16:31:00.000Z

This took place in The Brudenell Hotel when I sat on an opposing sofa and ended up chatting to a a rather nice chick-lit reading builder! After some pleasantries about the shoddy service and the beautiful weather, here's how it went.

Him: So you're working now then? (nodding at my lap top)
Me: No, not really. I'm just doing emails, updating my blog.
Him: What is a blog exactly?
Me: A web log. Kind of a diary.
Him: What for?
Me: Well mine was to publicize my book, but...
Him: Oh you're a writer!
Me: Er.. kind of...maybe...
Him: What sort of books?
Me: Book. A novel. But I've just heard the second one has been rejected so...
Him: Never mind it must be such an amazing feeling having a book published. Knowing that you wrote that and it's out there and people are buying it.
Me: Well yes... I had kind of forgotten how exciting it was at the time... Thanks you've reminded me, it is pretty cool and funky.
Him: I'd love to write a book. I do write but never finish anything.... I did inspire a famous story once however.
Me: Really?
Him: I'm a builder and I went to see this customer and she told me the problem and asked: Can you fix it? I said, yes we can! She was the author of Bob The Builder.
Me: You're kidding!
Him: No.
Me: So you're kind of a guru builder. You inspire writers. Maybe I should hire you!
Him: Er... have to go now. Got a call to make.
Me: Oh OK. Nice meeting you. What's your name?
Him: Bob. Bob the Builder.

Conversations with Strange Men Part One.

2007-04-22T18:09:00.000Z

Why do drunk men always seem to talk to me? This happened earlier at a tea dance. Yes that's right, a tea dance! No alcohol available apparently.

Him: Do you know your eyes are the most amazing colour?
Me: Er...
Him: The most amazing blue. Are they real?
Me: No, both glass.
Him: I'm really drunk you know?
Me: Really? And it's only 11 in the morning...?
Him: Haven't stopped since last night. Your eyes....I expect people tell you that all the time.
Me: Occasionally, but thankyou.
Him: They look like my Dad's when he was on morphine.
Me: Right. And is he OK now?
Him: Yeah recovered and got his dream job couting newts at some nature sanctuary.
Me: Great! So why do you have one finger nail painted red?
Him: (laugh) I was taken advantage of by a young lady last night, but I can't quite remember.
Me: So she like paints one finger nail before she leaves, like a Mark of Zorro?
Him: You're so funny. Has anyone ever said your eyes are so...
Me: I think you're a louche character.
Him: I'm not loose.
Me: No... louche.
Him: What's that mean?

Maybe I'm no good at sex.

2007-04-22T17:36:00.000Z

If this entry was to be written by Selfish Jean here's what she'd say:
So what was the fucking point of them trying to discover new writers only to reject them in the end? I know business is tight for publishers (so you hear) but the whole point of getting writers this way was to discover new talent. So that must mean I was talented for the first novel, had a strong original voice, full of irreverant humour, which apparently the second novel has too, but suddenly I can't write anymore. No fucking way!

No, I think it was the sex that did it. It's just too much! I mean did I really think I could get away with describing a blow job from a man's point of view? I didn't did I? Yes I did. Aaaaggggh! I've totally humilated myself. I'll never show my face again. I just had to outdo Selfish Jean and the scene most people comment on (if they dare) is the masturbation scene in a nun's cell. I mean I had to try and top that for the next book and what else was there? I'm glad it wasn't accepted for publication really then, because what the fuck would I do for the third book?

Well hopefully that was a bit of good publicity, as anyone searching for masturbation or blow-jobs on the internet will have brought up my blog; Selfish Jean will suddenly become a best seller and publishers will be clamouring for the rejected tome! That'll show 'em.

OK, so maybe my male "I" wasn't totally convincing, but the whole fucking point of the book, or a major theme at least, was that I don't actually believe men and women are that different, deep down, underneath I mean, or rather that the differences are less than the similarities. Also I got quite into the Yin Yang thing in theme, in that everything always turns into its opposite eventually and back again and so....Oh that's bollocks isn't it? I am wrong. Men are different. Obviously. What was I thinking of? I don't understand them and they certainly don't understand me. I need to study them a bit more.

Actually (this is me again now!) I'm not that angry. Not sure what to next, but not angry. Not really. I always tend to blame myself and I shouldn't have rushed it, took more time, developed the themes more, but I don't really believe it would have made a huge difference if I'd sent it in six months later as far as MNW goes anyhow, they just don't have enough slots. If they publish 20 new novels in the last year in this imprint and plan to continue publishing one per month and each of those writers can send in a second, the maths just don't add up for publishing second novels. Most are bound to be rejected whatever they're like. It's like a cascade effect. Second novels are always tricky, it's a well-known fact, but in "normal" publishing deals there's a bit of a cushion, a bit of an allowance made, for us there isn't. Maybe that's how it should be? I don't know.

Enough!

This from Conor Corderoy who also had his second MNW novel rejected. He sent me the following by email.

Here is something I have on my study wall. It's by Hugh Leonard.

'Writing is neither profession nor vocation, but an incurable illness. Those who give up are not writers and never were. Those who persevere do so not from pluck or determination but because they can't help it. They are sick, and advice is impudence.'

What a difference a day makes

2007-04-20T20:37:00.000Z

Of course I'm bloody well not giving up writing!
I think what I meant by my maudlin meanderings yesterday was the idea of giving up trying to write what I think will do the trick i.e. be acceptable. I can't quite decide with the rejected work whether I tried too hard or didn't try hard enough, both I think, in different bits of it.

Matt you are so wise (for one so young and lovely!) I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just feel so relieved today that it's over. I've had the thought of what to write for a second book hanging over me for over a year, thinking of different ideas and rejecting many of them and this idea was actually based on a play I wrote and I elaborated on it, so maybe it was meant to be a play all along. Funnily enough, I knew Selfish Jean had to be a novel, so maybe I was writing the new one in the wrong genre.

Lucy, you're a gem (for one so middle-aged and lovely!) and one of the great things to come out of MNW has been our friendship, so thanks. I also think that though you planned your second alongside the first, we were still different to many of the other writers that we didn't have a collection of "old" novels hidden under the bed or in the archives or an old PC, so in a way we are still learning on the job. I've always said the worst sort of failure is never having tried at all, but always wanting to have.

So thanks Lucy and Matt for your fulsome, interesting (and beautifully written) replies. I think I just meant I'm taking stock at the moment, what next? And considering lots (I'm lying, a few) options. And what next is a bloody big glass of wine and having a fun summer! Last summer was far too busy for very little reward.

I'll continue as planned, I think, with arranging my writing workshops for helping people discover their "voice" as it might help me too! I was thinking today how the work I do in this field, often with ill people or those who have very little confidence in their own creativity and imagination is what is important to me. It is a paradox though, as I encourage them to write to make them feel better, build their confidence, change their mood, express themselves, however when you get to the professional level, the opposite happens, it's hard work, fraught with anxiety and filled with rejection. Professional actors have a similar problem I feel. Maybe the lesson is keep it amateur! It's a very, very competitive market.

I'll continue to blog the thoughts as I go here rather than writing up my diary, which would probably have more swear words, and ramblings about strange men, but hey fuck it, why be reticent here?

The Man From Del Monte He Say.....

2007-04-19T19:19:00.000Z

No! My second MNW novel has been rejected.

Oh well it was fun while it lasted. I feel disappointed obviously, but also oddly relieved it's over. I've decided to blog my immediate reactions and see how I adjust . Blogging will be more diary like for a bit. Random thoughts and feelings.

The main reason for rejection seems to be the fact I had a dual first person narrative, one of which was male and I didn't really convince with it. I knew it would be a challenege, but I didn't want to play safe. As in tennis I thought it worth trying to work the line, at the risk of losing more points.

I knew it needed leaving in a drawer for a few months to look at again, rewrite again, but again I took the risk. Writing a novel is such a lot of work when you aren't really convinced they'll want it at the end of it anyway.

You see, is it just me, but you know what? I'll admit this. I always felt a bit phoney as a "writer". It felt a lucky fluke Selfish Jean was picked out at all. Maybe it's enough to have one book published. I've always been more interested in theatre really, but when the novel was published I thought, maybe I got it wrong, maybe I'm a novelist really. It's all writing of course.
Why do we write?
Why do I write?
I used to write when younger I think because I I felt I had something to say, but really it was about success and being noticed. Now I think it's about trying to connect something about the way I see the world...people... if it isn't doing that, then why? For me it's not enough really.

A big theme in the book was about moving on, trying something new when one option fails despite repeated goes at it... I really feel I want to move on now. Is it possible to give up being a writer you might ask? Well giving up expecting to get anywhere major after years of almosts ... I have some talent I think, just not enough really. I think it's grown-up to admit it and move on. Maybe I'll think differently in days /weeks to come. You see this hasn't affected my sense of who I am, or my own self worth. I'm not being self-pitying, I'm just not sure I'm a writer....but if not what?

Not sold as Many books as I First Thought!

2007-04-11T12:23:00.000Z

Oh dear!
On the one hand Macmillan have paid me money for unsold books which thankfully I don't think I have to pay back. On the other hand I thought I'd actually sold all books they paid me for. I've just received my latest royalty statement and there have been a lot of returns, which means I've sold about a third less than I thought, so in theory owe them money!

The good news is, according to a recent article in The Observer (which a friend sent me and I've now misplaced so can't quote exactly) that I've still sold around twice what would be expected from an unknown, first time novelist in hard back.
Disappointing not to get any money though! So it's in their interest to publish my next one isn't it? To try and get all their money back!

However, there's also the problem of what sort of books are selling to publishers at the moment and there seems to be a general impression that it's not so many women and maybe why Lucy is having a problem with very charmingly worded, but ultimately same answer rejections. Check out what she has to say.
Maybe that's why we are pooling resources and styles to write a detective novel. Just on my way over to hers in a mo, the ideas get better the more wine we drink... I think...

Some Ideas About Writing from Ian McEwan

2007-04-11T12:12:00.000Z

I thought his Saturday was a bit of a bore quite frankly, and I love Ian McEwan normally. I haven't read the new one yet, but I also love Chesil and shingle beaches as I live near one.

This is more to do with an article in The Independent April 6th. Interesting stuff about writing and use of metaphor and underplaying it.

"This particular beach offered so many metaphorical possibilities, they could kill the novel! So I really had to row back quite hard on that... it was so rich, that I had to keep the volume down."

Very interesting. Does that knowledge come with experience? Also makes me wonder if I'm someone who hammers my metaphors home in the fear that a reader won't get them if I don't. Here's what McEwan has to say:

" Readers will rebel when they spot an overriding, determining metaphor."

I suppose it depends what market you're in perhaps?

Owning or Being Owned?

2007-04-11T11:54:00.000Z

I promised you a little bit of The Tao of Leadership and here it is! I just opened the book at random.

Are you doing this work to facilitate growth or to become famous?
Which is more important: acquiring more possessions or becoming more conscious?
Which works better: getting or letting go?

There is a problem with owning a lot. There is a problem with getting more and more.
The more you have and the more you get, the more you have to look after. The more you might lose. Is that owning or being owned?
But if you give up things, you can give up spending your life looking after things.

Try being still in order to discover your inner security. If you have inner security, you will have what you want anyway. Also you will be less harried, and you will last longer.

There you go. What do you think?

So what are tenterhooks exactly?

2007-04-04T15:23:00.000Z

Whatever I'm on them. Should be hearing about book yeah or nay soon and finding it difficult to settle to much.

Wandering paths by the reed beds and reading in bed.

Roger Morris's A Gentle Axe and enjoying it very much, though I'm getting lost with all the Russian names and who is who. I always have this trouble from Chekhov to Dr Zhivago. Roger does have a lovely way with words though and it's his descriptions that are often very haunting. How about this for example: "The music of a barrel organ clashed with the songs or woodworkers at their lathes and the cries of the itinerant vendors and the stallholders. Overhead pigeons swopped with cluttering wings and settled next to placid, mice-intent cats."

You're there aren't you?

Supposedly writing a crime novel with Lucy which should be great fun as my smack-in-the-gob writing somehow goes very well with her flowing, smooth style, surprisingly! (check out the details on her blog)

Reading a book called The Tao Of Leadership for a course about group dynamics which I'm doing and really enjoying (the course and the book) and had a great workshop presentation with the group the other day about opening doors. The reason I mention this is I should just learn to chill and be able to let go of anything whatever the outcome. It's the old Yin/Yang theory, everything turns into it's opposite eventually, so why worry? Success? Riches? Love? Learn to do without them and more will come your way. Mmmmmm, it is a wonderful read, but really hard to live! I do really want to believe it though, it makes sense in a bit of a mad world. Anyone else into it?

I did have a dream last night that I bumped into my publisher and he said he was in the middle of reading my book and enjoying it, he had a crooked, silly grin on his face and said he liked my quips, (men always tell me that!) but couldn't make a decision till he'd got to the end. A good omen? We'll see.

I want to write more, but my battery runneth low, and the Tao doesn't seem to be recharging it at them moment, what is empty will be come full (when I get to a plug!) I shall update quotes and links shortly.

Have a good Easter!

There's something about Irish funerals

2007-03-21T10:19:00.000Z

We were all stood by the grave side whilst the coffin was lowered. A cousin stumbled across mud to me and squeezed my arm: "Saw you on Ready Steady Cook." I smiled flatly and muttered: "This is Auntie Mary's funeral!" Then worried I was being too stroppy.
I moved away to give another other cousin a hug (it was her mother who had died) and then went to check on Uncle Lol, who had been buried a few spaces down a only a few weeks before and I hadn't been able to make the funeral. I then decided to check out my parents' grave which was quite a bit further along, up a hillside and heard someone calling after me: "Catherine!" deciding to have a moment's contemplation alone.

I'm not a regular grave attender, so thought I'd better do a bit of catching up. It's a huge old Catholic cemetery, that actually made the national newspapers a few years ago, as they had to retire the ancient woman who'd always managed it and there were no records of who was buried where as she'd kept it all in her head! Make a great play sometime. Anyway, it's also getting very full, as not many Catholics like cremations, and so all the newer graves seem to be on a steep hillside, which gets very muddy in winter and it's hard to get your footing without walking all over other people's graves. I'd just managed to find Mum and Dad's when I heard someone calling "Catherine" again and looked up to see a whole army of Sweeney cousins, staggering through mud and graves (most of them dead relatives or friends of one kind or another, so I'm sure they didn't mind) towards me. So my cousins and I all ended up gathered round Mum and Dad's grave, all chatting and laughing and talking and pointing out various grave stones: there's Uncle Austin, where's Auntie Norah's again? And I just thought, ridiculously, this is fun! Mum and Dad would have liked it I think! All it needed was for us to have started a good old sing song and we'd have been well away.

And it didn't stop there. Because then we went back to the church hall for a bit of a wake. Not too boozy thankfully, as we've all had enough of those days. Every time I spoke to someone they squeezed my arm: "Saw you on Ready Steady Cook." Like it was the best thing I've ever done in my life! I'd never even told anyone in the family about it, so goodness knows how it got round, though perhaps was something to do with my brother. But then, yet another cousin (I have about 50 of them) decided to introduce me to the priest.
"She's an authoress you know!" she said to him.
"Oh really, what's your book about?" the priest said in his lovely Irish accent.
My cousin leaned into his ear. "It's rather sexual actually Father."
"Oh then I'll have five copies," he replied.
Cousin then wandered off and left me to it. God's judgement on me I guess. He kept asking what the title was, I wouldn't say of course, but muttered something about it being a bit cheeky about nuns, (understatement of the year!) He seemed to think that was fair play, then proceeded to tell me about the book he wanted to write, so I was saved, though not forgiven, I guess.

Oh and another strange thing, when they shake holy water over the coffin in the grave now they use a sports cap, plastic Highland Spring bottle, rather than a silver shaker thing.

And quote of the day was at my cousin's, which we all went back to after. She is nervous of outdoor dirt and germs getting in the house, so it was very sweet of her to ask us back. However, when she saw an aged relative staggering through her hall she said: "Oh we normally Dettox walking sticks, but seeing as it's you."

Sad news

2007-03-21T09:59:00.000Z

I wasn't sure if I should report this on my blog or not, but it seems fitting somehow as it's connected with Macmillan New Writing. The sad news is that Mike Barnard's wife Jayne has died. Mike, of course, is the father of MNW and as Jayne has been very much part of that, helping him edit and not least type-setting many of our books, it seems right to mention it here. I didn't know her too well, but on the few occasions we met, she seemed a warm, open, confident woman, who in other circumstances, I'd probably have been able to have a right laff with, as we say up North as she hails from Sheffield too. I was in Sheffield yesterday for the funeral of an Aunt and a few weeks before that an uncle died in Sheffield too. So this blog is in memory of all three. A moments silence please for Uncle Lol, Auntie Mary and Jayne Barnard.

This painting called Procession is by an artist acquaintance David Gleeson.

Yummy Mummy books for Mother's Day

2007-03-18T18:13:00.000Z

Maybe it's because I'm not Mum and no longer have a Mum (Aaaah!) that I'm doing so many postings today. But I'm just reading newspapers again and came across a couple of conflicting articles in today's Observer. One was about the way motherhood is changing in that fewer women are having children, mostly by choice. Then in the Review Section was a big article about Yummy-Mummy novels (written by a man of course!) These are the post Bridget Jones ones who bagged the guy and pro-created before middle-age set in and now to quote the article:

"If you listen carefully on a quiet day in bookland you can discern the hum of a hundred agents making a hundred pitches: 'It's a Bridget Jones with a boring husband, kids and a lover. Madame Bovary meets Grazia magazine. V funny, v sexy."

Well apart from the fact I've not read Madame Bovary obviously (see previous posting) this cynical article (there's always this sniffiness about women's novels isn't there?) has got me wondering. Because you see in light of the other article about more women than ever before not having children, and the fact the reporter in the above quoted article seems to think there's a glut of yummy mummy novels, and the fact that woman over the age of 30 buy more fiction than anyone (70% of the market supposedly) then that must mean around 30% of female book buyers don't actually have children, and presumably they read (what?) so maybe I have got something to write about after all. V funny, v sexy!

Was it a conscious decision not to include any characters with children in my latest novel? I think so. I'm not sure there are many novels out there addressing this fact, and where are the stories for us? Where are the TV dramas, the films? You'd think we didn't exist, either in life or in fiction. But will my novel be of more interest to my publisher because of this? Probably not. In the end it's still got be a good story well told, but we shall see.
Please tell me if there are any good middle-aged women novels out there (rather than late mothers coping, or empty nesters) and I'll gladly report on them. I'm trying to think of one, there must be one!

All the books I've never read

2007-03-18T17:25:00.000Z

There are loads actually. What are yours? Mine include an ever increasing pile of MNW writers, and other new books (On Beauty, A Winter in Madrid, Poppy Shakespeare, The Tango Singer, are the ones in a pile on my bedside table, with a mental list of others I daren't even blag, steal or borrow, but the ones I really worry about are all those classics I should have read and feel I can't be a proper writer as I can't drop quotes never mind names.

Roger Morris's latest book, A Gentle Axe, has just arrived and sounds great, something to do with Dostoyevsky (can't even effin spell it!) I also feel I should have read Italo Calvino, a bit more Marquez, with a smattering of Emile Zola (well he wrote so much!) not to mention a bit more Shakespeare, Dickens and Bronte than I have. Am I really missing out on something? There are just too many books out there. On one hand, no wonder mine will hardly be noticed, on the other why do I think I should be adding to the sum of unread books?
Oh, I'll delay a smart answer to that one just at the moment.

I've been reading the newspapers this weekend (instead of books) and realise I often quote Susan Sontag in various essays I've written over the years, but never actually read any of her novels (has anyone?) anyway she's always very interesting (this from a Guardian article)

"A writer is first of all a reader. It is from reading that I derive the standards by which I measure my own work and according to which I fall lamentably short. It is from reading, even before writing, that I became part of a community-- the community of literature-- which includes more dead than living writers. "

She had died now too of course. Maybe I should read her.
Or how about this:

"I'm often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: "Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."

Has this ever happened to you?

2007-03-16T19:43:00.000Z

Oddly enough, I do get people writing to me. A lot of unpublished authors seem to think I know what it takes to get published or something. Like I know! If I did I'd know how to do it again wouldn't I? Anyway, that's not the interesting thing about this posting which is that I've found out a writer I've been emailing and who I thought was a woman turns out to be a man! How weird is that? I'm wracking my brains trying to work out if I've been slagging off men or talking about periods or something, but I'm hoping we more or less just stuck to writing.

I must use it in a plot sometime so don't pinch it will you? It came about because I met his/her Mum here in Aldeburgh one evening at a wine tasting session, and she mentioned her daughter (or so I thought... well there was a lot of wine!) was a writer too, so I gave her my card and she/he emailed me. It was only when I bumped into the Mum again in Munchies over coffee this time and could focus on the info, that I learned she was a he, having a very unusual first name. It does alter the dynamic somewhat, but is quite funny and she... I mean he...took it well and saw the funny side. We plan to meet up at some Norwich literature festival in May, and I've promised as consolation to take him to an MNW launch sometime.

My Perfect Partner

2007-03-16T19:30:00.000Z

I'm seeing it as a good omen.

I do not know how this system works, but whatever I'm pleased to say Amazon have given me another MNW writer as a perfect partner. Moreover Aliya's second novel has just been accepted by MNW, thus breaking the run of second novel rejections. Maybe some of her success will rub off onto me! I'm just reading it now and enjoying it very much. Sometimes it's insightful:
"There was a sneer evident in her voice. He wanted to say to her, 'I saw you. I saw the lost look, the hair falling over your tiny face, and I know that was the truth',but he didn't dare."
Other times it's just very funny:
"He was shocked to discover he had a half-hearted erection happening in his downstairs department. He hadn't had one of those since the hostage crisis of the Munich Olympics."
And just full of great observations:
"She looked the kind of woman who wasted good money on plug-in air fresheners and decorative toilet roll holders. Alma thought she was probabaly an office worker who gave to charity and thought she had a stressful life."

For those of you who haven't bought either of our books, what better time to bag a double bargain

I looked up from the page...

2007-03-08T18:41:00.000Z

And saw that it was spring...

I couldn't face reading a novel just yet so I was reading poetry from this book last night.
See if you like this:

Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he had heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache..
The sun was coming from outside.

That scrawny cry-- it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Wallace Stevens

I feel great today. Finally got the second novel into publisher after working almost non-stop on lots of last minute tinkering. I was consumed by it and didn't want to do anything else much. Now, I feel really free and strangely confident about it, which could be completely misplaced and of course may be nothing but the post-adrenaline rush of just getting it done. And still thinking of things in my mind, as in.. oh should have changed that bit...oh that's a good bit... oh I should really do a bit more work on the run up to the ending...

You know what though, and this is for all you other writers out there, I don't really care, if it finally gets rejected I mean (remind me of this when...) because you know what, it is the creation of this other world that is the important thing, and just how bloody amazing it is when we do that. I just don't know where half of it comes from, and I think any of us, published or not, rejected or not, happy with our work or not, should just be bloody well proud at having done the work, invented these other creatures we are using to say something about life and what it's like.

Just a bit of another poem from this book:

a word is found so right it trembles

at the slightest explanation.

You start out with one thing, end

up with another, and nothing's

like it used to be, not even the future.

RITA DOVE

Heck, I've just thought, are we supposed to get permission from author's to quote stuff on blogs.

Anyone know?

The trouble with second novels

2007-02-25T17:14:00.000Z

Oh little picture for big book.

I've just read this. Thought it would be good research, for my book and for life. Essays in Love is an engrossing account of the start up and finish of a relationship in funny and excruciating detail, excruciating as it's so true and as he's a philosopher he cleverly links each phase to various philosophies.

I could go on, but you know what? My blog is too wordy, and it should be pithier. Maybe my novel should be too. The trouble with second novels is... no let me start elsewhere... the thing about having had your first novel published is, you know they chose it because there was something original that spoke to them, some spark in it that made it stand out from the masses and masses and masses of other ms, which are probably all perfectly readable but... so when it comes to the second novel, because the first was so original, this one can't possibly be! Does that make sense? I mean it's hard to find that originality in yourself again, because it was original, a one-off, so how can you do that twice? Also if you just write something in a similar vein to the first, then that's not original to the publisher then is it? And this is just what I do in my novel: I ruminate and over-explain and follow each thought to squeeze out every ounce of juice, except every ounce of juice is a cliche so then I might go back over that bit and try and think of something more original, but I can't be bothered for the blog. See what I mean?

David Izaak has done a great job on his blog gathering quotes from recently published writers about how they plan or don't plan what they are going to write. Check it out. Maybe we should do one for how people go about writing a second novel.

Blogs as would-be-novels/biography experiment

2007-02-19T22:09:00.000Z

OK so the post below was a bit of an experiment. Did anyone see in the Sunday papers about that woman, Judith O'Reilly , who started a blog about her move to the country and it's become so popular (and is well-written I hasten to add) that she's got a publishing deal from it?
Is that why we write blogs now? If so I'm a bit embarrassed. I try and save my good stuff for my book (that's my excuse!) but maybe I should make the blog better as that may be read by more people than my book.

It got me thinking. Because my blog is true (mostly) and my book is fictional (mostly) and I keep a lot of stuff out of the blog, because although it's like a kind of diary, it is in the public domain so you have to think about upsetting or defaming people you may or may not know. So how does she do it? Her blog is very funny and very well-written and quirky, but all those weird and wonderful characters, can they be real? If they are and she's living in a village community then they are going to read her being funny and clever about them, especially now, as the blog has become so popular. So...oh I dunno.... what does anyone else think? I often write things in the blog then delete them, not wanting to offend, and like the posting below (all true by the way) what if both life coach guy and mysterious woman read the blog, would that be too mean about them? Would they take offence? Or am I merely envious that this woman has dared and got away with it and a got book deal out of it too. Good on 'er if she can. Or does she make it all up? Either way she can still write.

I've blagged a swanky car for six weeks!

2007-02-19T21:26:00.000Z

I think I must have a trustworthy face. It was such a lovely day here Saturday, all sunshine and reasonably warm, very warm for Feb, so I decided to sod the re-writing and take the car out for a spin up the coast, with the top down (on the car, not me!) I went to this pub on the left, The Anchor, where I'll probably be ending my book. It's at Walberswick, and Mackintosh stayed there for while, so it was all in the interests of research.

A guy I don't know that well, but met on moving here, (he's a life coach writer type) is off to Oz for six weeks and asked me to keep an eye on his car and his house. I'm sat in his house at the moment updating this. My feet are a bit cold as the heating isn't on, so there's a limit to my cheekiness. Anyway, I always thought his car was a bit wanky actually: soft top, personalised number plate, uses tons of petrol, everyone looks at you. Why? I know we all like a bit of attention, but Jeeeezuz! Just so not me... she says from her vantage point on the moral high ground, but that was before I drove it, and that was before I had the top down and before whizzing down the coast in the sunshine. I LOVE IT! For a bit, not forever! WheeeeeeeeeeeeyHeeeey!

There's a mysterious older woman I keep bumping into in Aldeburgh. She very spiritual, very serious, into essences, and vibrations and energies and stuff. She always seems a bit lost and sad really, but I keep bumping into her, so I wonder if it means something! Anyway, I was just setting off in the wanky car, a bit nervously, when I heard a bang, uh-oh, something's dropped off it, I thought, so I pulled over to check, and who should be on the pavement, but the mysterious woman. She looked completely taken aback to see me, and until now probably thought I was part of the alternative arty/green crowd. I checked out the car. It was fine, just the exhaust backfiring or something (girls and cars eh?). Anyway, I asked her if she wanted to come with me, thinking she'd go: "Moi? In that thing? Do you know what that will do to my sensitive inner vibrations? Never mind if anyone spots me. Get outa here and don't speak to me ever again." But she just went: "Can I? Are you sure I won't cramp your style?"

"You Babe, no babe," I replied, "hop in and I'll put the top down." We just chortled and laughed and I've never seen her laugh before, her face was transformed. It was such fun!

I need to get out more. And in that car!

The Beginner's Guide to Rewriting

2007-02-10T19:28:00.000Z

Does anyone else do this? Send your last but one draft (hopefully) out to people for comments? It's an odd process where you get wildly differing opinions, but the ones to watch are when you hear several comments not exactly the same, but harping on at the same thing, such as people are having a bit of trouble with my main man Nick. Some men say he's a bit gushing (for a man) and bit introspective (for a man) and some women say he's a bit horrible (to her) and not good enough (for her) and rubbish in bed so what's she see in him?! I am writing male first person for half of the book, and if I'm honest I felt he was a bit inconsistent, so I think I agree that this is where most of the work has to be. I was trying to write a real man rather than some silly chick-lit fantasy one, but like Frankenstein he needs a bit more work.

However, I also sent it to one bloke, a friend, who only had time to read the beginning section. I think he read four chapters and hated it. He was almost vitriolic. The thing about this is I wonder now whether you/I/we should send work to friends. I had to look deep in my soul (not too far!) and work out which of his comments had a ring of truth and where I might be feeling defensive. And yeah he helped me realise that the book really begins at what was Chapter 3, as that's when he could work out what the story was going to be about. And he was right. The book is better for it, and I'm pleased, but still there's a bit of me that thinks some of his other comments were just a bit out of line, such as about my voice, my style, my funny bits, which weren't in his eyes.

The weird thing about this is my book, about to be called The Beginner's Guide to the Art of Love, Life and Mackintosh or A Picture of Veronica is, on one level, exploring whether men and women are really that different, and before you all choke, what I mean by that is that the differences between us are actually less than the similarities. I mean underneath don't all human beings want the same things? To love and be loved? Be understood? Try and keep our vulnerabilities safe? Yet now the very book I'm writing has only exposed to me the huge differences between what men see and what women see... or has it? There's also a lot of stuff in the book about the theory of whether most women are empathisers and most men are systemisers, so that would explain the different feedback. Then again, another big thing of mine is that we are all individuals, so three men and three women reading a rather dodgy draft of my novel do not a scientific sample make... thoughts anyone?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh books and stuff

2007-02-06T13:34:00.000Z

So there's new stuff happening at Macmillan, most of which I don't understand, but can only be good I guess as Will at Macmillan New Writing says: "It seems apt that an imprint which specialises in new writing should be leading the way with this new technology." All our books are now available to download as e books whatever they are.

I should also point out Selfish Jean is now available in America & Canada from selected websites, though how this or the e book thing will translate to sales I've no idea, but if you are from over the pond try these places: HBFenn and Trafalgar Square Books. Spread the word!

I remembered this as I had an email, via my website, today from some church in America asking if they could put on one of my old plays. I was rather taken aback as the play is called Spunk and is full of swearing and a lot of rather sexy scenes, albeit both funny and moving, I hasten to add. I've tried to put them off, as it's either a joke, or they have misunderstood, but I'll keep you posted on that one!

And the pictures? I'm off to Spain again. The night time one is Avila. I'm going in May to try out this volunteer programme thing. I get a week's free board and lodging in a 4 star hotel in exchange for speaking English to Spanish business people. They always need more blood, so even my Yorkshire accent is acceptable. After that I have about a week free in Spain where I may return to Cuenca (the other picture) which features heavily in Selfish Jean, including my favourite hotel there. Then I'll get the boat over to Ibiza to meet a couple of friends. I guess I'll look like my old aunty dancing in a crimplene dress and Scholl sandals in an Ibiza club...

Now I need to stop blogging and get re-writing. Ta-ta for now!

It's all sex, food and philosophy

2007-02-06T12:00:00.000Z

Hey guess what? I've been reading Chick-Lit.

The cover gives it away: all pink and girly and scrolly and telling you it's your personal invitation to Paris. It is quite fun, very well written, not surprising as Kate Muir is a journalist. It flows and it's funny and sexy and smart, but oh so shallow. Even when it tries to get a little darker and a little deeper, it just feels false.

I did want to like it as it tries to tell Paris like it is: great food and adultery seem to be everyone's priority. It's about tall, handsome, philosopher Olivier Malin and his gorgoeus filmstar wife Madison and the shallow lives they lead till they get a bit of a comeuppance. The more genuine character is supposedly the half English, half French nanny who turns up to look after their daughter, and the philospher falls for her. Quelle surprise! But why does he have to be tall and gorgeous and trim and 44? And why does she have to be short and gamine with a silky bob and a tiny waist, despite being able to eat anything she likes and 23? OK I know it's just fantasy, but come on! It's cleverly structured between all the main character's narratives, so you get all their viewpoints and that makes it fair, so there's no real hero or heroine and I did like the fact the ending isn't as easy and glossy as I thought it would turn out to be, though perhaps a little anti-men or at least anti-Parisian men!

I tried, and I did read it quickly. It kept me turning the page, but as I've said before if you look up from finishing a book and the world is still the same place, it doesn't really do it for me. I mean there were references to philosphy in there, and there were suggestions that the couple were a kind of modern day Sartre/ De Beauvoir couple (if only!) but only in a very surface way. I should perhaps judge a book like this by its cover and see it as a virtual escape to Paris for a brief while, but as it's not the real trip, this book is soon forgotten.

Seeds Of Greatness

2007-02-02T16:56:00.000Z

I’ve just read this book. Really enjoyed its laugh-out-loud humour, a thing many books aren’t, even when they’re supposed to be. This one is, every few pages or so, with several cheeky grins in between as well.

So what’s about? Well there’s what it’s supposed to be about and what I really think it’s about. Two boys grow up in London, one becomes a celebrity and the other doesn’t. However, they kind of keep in touch. When the celebrity Jack Harris dies, Dave, his rather dull, polite, nice old mate is commissioned to write the safe biography. But he just can’t do it, and ends up writing about himself as much as Jack, and the bits about Jack aren’t all that complimentary. I’ll tell you what I really think it’s about in a minute.

Because the only reason I was reading it was because this writer lives in Aldeburgh where I have moved to. A new friend of mine, who’s an old friend of his, lent me the book as she thought our styles were quite similar, which is rather too kind of her (to me), because his funny bits are much, much funnier than mine, and my darker bits are much, much darker than his. Around the middle of the book, I stopped reading, because I was beginning to suspect it was just a string of very funny sketches tentatively linked – not surprising as Jon Canter was (maybe still is) a scriptwriter for TV and radio comedy – However, I took it up again this week, and am glad I did as it really developed with some great characters that I began to get fond of… Jess the girlfriend and her family for instance, who are both touching and batty. I even liked celebrity Jack in an odd way, and there are so many funny moments it’s hard to pick one out, but the Harry Potter one was a real laugh-out-loud moment for me.

Anyway, so what do I think it’s really about? Alter egos. How we love and hate them, how our alter egos may be people we think we’d like to be, but the reality would be unbearable. In this case that we’d actually all rather like to be successful, rich celebrities, but it’s more like wanting a disease or being addicted to a drug in reality.
This book, through Dave’s eyes, just observes and lets the readers reach their own conclusions. Mine is that Dave and Jack are one and the same person, and that the writer has been wrestling with his own demons whilst living on the fringes of celebrity, wanting to be part of it, and wanting to reject it also. I won’t give away the ending though, as there is a bit of a surprise, but at the very end, the bit after the surprise, I had hoped that Dave might want to go back to a life of normality and obscurity, but he can’t quite let it go. Maybe that’s more truthful in a way. It was still one of those books where you look up from the page and the world has changed and shifted a bit and I like that.

Anyway, to bring it all back to me, well it’s my blog after all innit?

You see as I was reading this, this writer began to feel a bit like an alter ego of mine.
Because I couldn’t help comparing, and maybe it’s because there is a bit of similarity in our styles:

1.Our hardback novels were published on the same dates last year.
2.His is bigger and fatter than mine, but costs the same
3. His has quotes on the back from Richard E. Grant, Tony Parsons, Arabella Weir. Mine doesn’t. Not even quotes from nobodies.
4.He lives in a proper house in Aldeburgh with a nice family. I live in a Wendy house in some rich person’s garden on the edge of aforesaid town.
5. The paperback version of his book is being published in May this year…. I still await a decision on mine, probably because they are waiting for second novel to see what I can do.
7.He is writing his second novel. So am I, but I bet he has an advance.
8.He has probably sold more hardbacks than me.
9.He is funnier than me.

You see what I mean when you start this? Not that I’m at all twitter and bisted. If I had the same MNW contract offered me all over again I’d take it because it’s a way in, but boy do I have an uphill climb to get anywhere, even just making any money.

And don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining, because I know there are a lot of people out there who I might be the alter ego for:

1. A major publisher picked up my first novel. Their's hasn't been.
2. I live at the seaside. They don’t.
3. I have no responsibilities whatsoever. They do.
4. They have to work in a corn plaster factory. I don’t. (Not yet!)

Everything seems to hinge on this second novel doesn’t it? It does feel worse than getting the first one done. Then, I had no expectations of failure. It didn’t matter. Now I’ve had a glimpse of my new writerly life, I don’t want to let it go, and maybe that’s what’s at the heart of Seeds of Greatness too. A love hate relationship with success and fortune. Read it. It’s fun.

Bright & Breezy Blog

2007-01-31T17:31:00.000Z

Suddenly felt funny today not funny ha-ha... but funny as in Blogging whasit all about?

I'm kind of feeling I should use it for other stuff apart from book launches and publisher's parties and my navel-gazing worries over my old and new novels. It all feels so.... not me. .. well it is me, I love parties and mingling and meeting people and stuff, but it's not everything and it shouldn't be either...

I should be reading more women's fiction and commenting on it. I've read three books by men this week. OK I can say it's because I'm trying to get some tips when I rewrite my main man in the new novel-- a few people have commented he's a bit girly--but I don't like to read so-called women's fiction and I'm a woman! Apart from some classics and a bit of literature stuff, but maybe I should really see what the range of women's books are out there... I wonder if we get lumped into one group, the silly pastel covers with curvy writing, the dreadful titles. But then Selfish Jean is a pun, and has a cover many people tell me they hate... so do other women writers feel they have been put in the wrong category too? I'm not sure I'll ever write Literature, but I'm certainly not Chick Lit either, so maybe I'll have a little explore, and see what's out there, or non-chick-litters or litters, are we critters?

I've sent a draft of my new novel out to a few special people to read, before writing a final draft to send in to MNW. (By the way new title is either A Beginner's Guide to the Art of Love, Life and Mackintosh or A Picture of Veronica) so all this week I've had nothing much to do, but meander both along the beach and in my thoughts. Glorious weather today, better than in this pic, but the same beach and that could be me the sole person on it, except I was sitting, ruminating and could see about a mile either way with no one in sight, just me, and the slight breeze, the blue sky, the sun, the regular breathing sighing of the sea... and it felt wonderful, just another day, but a beautiful one, a day it's OK to be alone on. So I've had a good day reading, thinking, walking and drinking primoridal soup.

And wonder what the hell I should be doing instead of writing novel and hanging around to be rejected. I should find something else in my life. I want to write though and make money. I'd like to make enough money to open a huge seaside foster home to house the kids nobody else wants. Karmically perhaps I think if I state this on my blog, then my second novel won't be rejected and will do brilliantly well so poor kids can find a place of respite... there's no end to my conniving is there. You see I don't want to be published just for myself. Who am I trying to kid?

So blogging what's it for?

Shopping and Cooking

2007-01-27T20:29:00.000Z

Well I promise not to mention Ready, Steady Cook anymore after this. I was watching it between my fingers more like it was the film The Ring. It was excruciating. I vowed never to leave my seaside hut ever again, but to become a full time hermit. The day after, I decided not to be so precious and get over it. The day after that, I was in London chatting for four hours with Lucy on the top floor of Waterstones Piccadilly, where there is a rather nice restaurant bar with great views. Fours hours? What on earth did we talk about? Oh you know....girl stuff... books... men....clothes...quantum physics...

Lucy has unbelievably had her second novel rejected by Macmillan New Writing, she's written about that in more detail on her own blog. Check it out for the full story. It's obviously got me wondering about how mine will fare...

The great thing about Macmillan New Writing has been the people you meet. Lucy and I were saying how we can't believe that we've only known each other since last April. We were in London really to go to Mike Barnard's retirement party at Macmillan Head Office, which wasn't a bad do at all, especially as Mike ended up playing and singing in the band, he's so cool!

Also there were most of the other MNW writers, some of whom are gearing up for first novels to be published, others who are about to have the next one published, such as Roger whose new novel shown here is out next week, though that is with another publisher. I've ordered it from Amazon and imagine he will do well as he's very talented. I also heard a few people talking about the first totally American novel that will be published by MNW in the Autumn. A controversial book that should get people talking. Intrigued, I looked up David Izaak and found he has read all of our books and has lots of interesting comments on MNW and nice things to say about Selfish Jean, such as "I really did enjoy your novel; a nice combination of touching and LOL funny." Also: "Cate Sweeney’s Selfish Jean had me snorting coffee out my nose (her “letting the wine breathe” scene was so funny I read it aloud to my long-suffering POSSLQ Pamela. [Pronounced possel-queue. Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters according to the Census Bureau, those incurable romantics.])"
I quoted all that bit so you could see his sense of style. The MNW list is getting very eclectic!

Ready Steady Book!

2007-01-17T21:57:00.000Z

So check it out: Monday 22nd January, 4.30pm BBC2

Oh dear Lucy and I look like we've been put through the Food processor rather than the Word processor. This was taken just after the show, we look knackered. I look as if I'm trying to run away save for Lesley grasping my arm. Oh the things we have to do!

The things I have to do!

2007-01-17T21:25:00.000Z

Last night I went to a book group and two bagpipe players turned up as well.
The photo was taken whilst I had a bagpipe stuck in either ear, so couldn't hear a thing for about five minutes afterwards, probably just as well, as the group were discussing what they thought of Selfish Jean.

A very friendly, lively group, who were very positive about it, though some honest comments as well, and there was a even a social worker in the room too, so I feared the worst, but she realised my male social worker wasn't a baddie! She did tell me in 25 years of being a social worker, she'd only ever met one male social worker, and he wasn't dishy so there you go.

They have a vote at then end of the session so here are the results:
I would rather watch paint dry 0
So-so 4
A very good read- I would recommend to a friend: 14
I put my life on hold to finish it: 1

I covered my eyes during the vote!

Book launch in Sheffield

2007-01-17T20:41:00.000Z

Went to a great launch in Sheffield last week (and also caught up on visiting my bro Pete.) Matt did his Oscar acceptance speech (thankyou one and all!) but because it was really touching and personal and more like a wedding (or an Irish wake) with family interrupting to say nice things, and people setting fire alarms off and Matt swinging a huge bloody sword, many people had a little moist moment.
Anyway got I reckon he's gonna be big! So buy a first edition hardback whilst you can. I did and got it signed too.

Had a nice meal afterwards courtesy of Mike Barnard, with Will & Sophie from Macmillan and David Headley of Goldsboro books. It felt very strange hob-nobbing with my publishers in Sheffield, my home town (City!) where I was born and bred, but left at 18. London it's OK to do such things, but Sheffield? I felt like I was "Gettin above my station" or "giving myself airs and graces"

CAN YOU HELP ME WITH A TITLE PLEASE?

2007-01-06T20:34:00.000Z

OK so here's a puzzle for you.
Can you think of a title for my new book. I've had several and can't settle on one. Here are some images and themes from my novel. It's actually a modern, funny, quirky, sexy story about love and art, and a mystery surrounding a Mackintosh interior. So even though it looks like it's set in the past by these photos it's not really. Or only a bit of it is.

Below are titles I've been thinking of at various stages. I'm now warming to the idea of something with Mackintosh in the title, jumping on the band wagon perhaps, but hey every little helps.
Pick one or write me another I'll acknowledge it in my new book if and when it is published. Give it a go. Let me know.

The Mackintosh Shoes

Mackintosh Footprints

In the Footsteps of Mackintosh

The Mackintosh Way

The Rose Way

The Rose Path

A Picture of Veronica

Mackintosh Rooms

The Heart of The Rose

The Moon Also Rises.

For The Love of Margaret.

I hate all of them. Help!

HAPPY NEW YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAR!

2007-01-05T21:34:00.000Z

I just want to wish you all a happy new year.

And best wishes for a great 2007!

Whatever you dream you can do. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

I have had a pretty amazing 2006. I started the year volunteering at an orphanage in Costa Rica working alongside two delightful all American girls, Susanne & Sunia,who were great fun to be with, much younger than me, but put up with my English Miss Marple ways. There are photos of them here, as well as some of the gorgeous, heart-melting kids. Also the odd monkey here and there. I'll leave you to work out which is which. Most of the photos are Susanne's.

Of course had a book published, nuff already said about that, but made some new friends because of it, not least of all Lucy, who's a little marvel. Also as Mike Barnard (photo on news clipping below, crouching man at front) is the guy at Macmillan who believed in my book, I'm eternally grateful to him. He's retiring in a couple of weeks, I have an invite to the party and though I have given up alcohol for Jan, I will have to toast him won't I? He will be really, really missed at Macmillan and by many of us MNW writers too.

My year ended with moving to the seaside, kissing Ainsley Harriot and finishing book two. Not bad for 12 months eh?

I hope I've got more of the same in store for 2007! I know writers should be above cliches but... watch this space!

It's not all me me me!

2006-12-20T22:58:00.000Z

Whilst in London I caught up on a bit of theatre too. Two new plays, and there aren't many of them in The West End. One I really liked and the other nearly sent me to distraction. Can you guess which from the pictures? Probably not. In one, set in Ireland on Christmas Eve, the devil comes to visit. This was The Seafarer by Conor McPherson. I absolutely loved his first major success The Weir, but this? Perhaps a play full of drunken Irish men at Christmas was a bit too close to home for me. It ended well with a good twist, and all the characters were very distinctive, but for three quarters of it, I felt like I was trapped in a corner by several boring drunk men with no chance of escape, and I've been there a few times believe me. A bit like being the person who's driving home, it might have seemed more interesting if I'd had a good drink with them perhaps.

The other however, Love Song, by a writer I've not heard of and I know it's unforgiveable of me, being a writer that no one's heard of too, but I just can't be arsed to go back onto the internet and check the name. Google it if you want to know. Anyway she's very talented. Basically this play really spoke to me. It's message was something along the lines of: when you start to look at the world differently, that is, in a hopeful rather than a fearful way, then it not only affects your life but those around you as well. You make yourself happier and others happier too. That may sound a bit simplistic and it certainly wasn't flawless, but it was so interesting to have a play about trying to be happy that was deep and thoughtful rather that soppy and unrealistic. Anyway I'd recommend it and say forget the Irish one. Thinking about it, it could well be that the Irish play relates more to my old life and dark times, and the other play more to how I try and live in the world now in my wise middle-age. I just need to remember where I've left my sense of humour and I'll be sorted.
Merry Christmas, or enjoy the holidays however you celebrate them!

A kiss from Ainsley

2006-12-17T21:04:00.000Z

Oh what a week! I spent most of it in London, kissing Ainsley Harriot!
Well Lucy and I completely wasted our first National TV appearance to publicise our books. Lucy, oh so calm, beforehand was saying stuff like: "Whatever question they ask us always start with the title of your book" I'm like, yeah course I will. Well neither of us mentioned our books. It was a frenzy of activity: researchers in our faces; make-up artists dabbing us; Ainsley kissing us; chefs being nice to us; peeling broad beans (me) throwing away valuable fish stock (Lucy). I can't think what on earth it's going to be like. Lucy red- cheeked and me trying not to swear mostly!

Anyway it's to be aired 22nd Jan (probably) BBC2 4.30pm. I'm not sure I can bear to watch it.
Sophie came from Macmillan so it was good to have her support and we gave away free signed books to the chefs and we got a free signed apron and a hamper, with which we've decided to have a RSC party, cook food in 20 mins for a group of friends wearing nothing but our aprons.

No photos as yet, this is a picture of Veronica by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which I mention in my new novel, title I'm still not sure about. More over Christmas when I have more time.

Got the call from the RSC

2006-12-03T14:42:00.000Z

Not The Royal Shakespeare Company, but Ready Steady Cook!
We've manage to blag our way on! Lucy and I have been called for filming in a week or so and should be on your TV screens in January or thereabouts. A pity I can't cook and Lucy has a fear of male chefs with big choppers, but apart from that we should be fine. It's all to publicise our books anyway. The photo is from the summer, when we decided to apply, and we're holding each other's books, looking a bit worse for wear as we were supposed to be writing press releases, but spent most of the time drinking wine. Which is what I'll probably do in the studio too.

The only pity is we can't sell our books to the studio audience, as it's the BBC. We can talk about them but not show them. A shame, as pre Christmas and with, I imagine, a mainly female audience we'd have done quite well. Still, it's all publicity. I must remember not to swear too, when I chop my finger off or spill olive oil on Ainsley.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on....

2006-12-03T14:09:00.000Z

I always find striking the set at the end of a theatre production unbearably sad, so this Sunday finds me thoughtful as Sundays often do, or is it just me? There should be some photos here, but haven't got any yet of Shed MK's Inclusive theatre production of The Tempest but will probably edit some in later. It went off really well, the kids were amazing, and the director's vision using film, music, drums & dance, worked a treat. I was there as prompt, but was rarely needed, which I was happy about, as it meant they all remembered all their Shakespeare lines, no mean feat.

Maybe I feel sad, as my relationship with that theatre company is really at an end, but also happy in seeing some of the changes that have happened with the kids who have been there with us since the beginning of it all. I hardly recognise some of them as the confident, lively people they've become. Shed MK isn't about star turns, but supporting each other and including anyone and everyone who wants to be part of it, and making quality productions with this ethos in mind.

I wrote their first show, Cloud Cuckoo Land , which was a great experience for me. I was taken on The Tempest production, to help write some additional bits, or modernize some bits, make cuts in others, but in the end it proved very difficult, and I was very confused what the director expected me to do. I mean they already have a writer in Shakespeare don't they? What did they need me for? I also moved to Aldeburgh in the middle of it all, so.... oh well... all part of life's rich tapestry... I wish them well and hope the company continues to flourish.

The Heart Of The Rose

2006-11-23T17:13:00.000Z

Hi here's a picture of my grandma and granddad outside the family home! No not really, this is the house I am writing about in my book, The Mackintosh one in Northampton I still can't sort the comments thing on my blog but a few people have sent me emails and if you like you can do so via my web page.
After chatting to Lucy however, she thinks The Heart of The Rose is a better title. I was worried it might be a bit soppy, but it is actually the name of one of Margaret Macdonald's works. There is a lot about love in the story and roses, because of the Mackintosh theme and his relationship with his wife Margaret Macdonald, but most of it is set in the present day and is looking at why that house, why then, and I think there is a bit of a mystery about the place. A researcher/writer comes to check it out and stays in a Mackintosh style B & B that has recently opened and there, run by a woman who also has a bit of a Mackintosh obsession. And I'm just on the very last chapter....

The Way of The Rose

2006-11-16T17:50:00.000Z

What do you think of this as a title then The Way of The Rose for my next book don't you know? I've not felt anything was right, I thought this might be particularly apt as the book partly concerns the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but I don't know. I've just checked on-line and there is a fantasy novel of the same name with something like Xena Warrior Princess on the cover, so it's put me off. Also there's that famous book The Name of The Rose I think. Any suggestions? However, book going really well. I've been living in 1917 all week as I've just had to go back into the past and shut myself in my room to write it, on a lap top of course, so I didn't go for ink and parchment or whatever they had in those days, but it's going well. I went back in time as Margaret Macdonald Macintosh actually that's some of her work here. The stained glass is her more famous husband Charles Rennie Mac "Toshie" .

Anyway, I'm in my Saxmundham office again (The Deli) and running out of time, before they close or my battery runs out. So just a quickie. However, I hear I've not been getting comments for my last few postings as there's no comments button on the bottom of the comments, so I'll try and republish see if that fixes the gremlin. Probably something I've done trying the HTml stuff. Oh well! Please leave comments or try to I do enjoy them.

No postings for ages then three come along at once.....

2006-11-08T22:05:00.000Z

Here are my two "oldest" friends visiting me in Aldeburgh. We've all known each other since we met at school when we were about 12. And that's quite a long time ago!

That's the famous Maggie Hambling sculpture on Aldeburgh beach they seem to have managed to break. As you can see the weather was amazing and we walked miles and chin-wagged and put the world to rights and drank lots, then put our worlds to rights too. As a matter of interest my Wendy house is in those trees behind the sculpture.

I did a rather drunken I Ching reading for one of them, and rather upset her I think, because she didn't like what it told her. So perhaps I shouldn't do that sort of thing for people really. Is anyone out there know about it? I came across it when I was researching synchronicty for my new novel (though it's not really about that now) that research took me to Jung and the idea of meaningful coincidence in our lives, which took me to the I Ching, and reading about that just blew me away, as it's great for asking questions, especially when you are in a process of change in your life as I was at that time. (And still am!) I think all it does really is tap into your subconscious and it's a way of expressing what you really want to do, without all those doubts and ifs and buts and that'll never work, all the stuff our conscious brain tells us not to do! It's the reason I'm in Aldeburgh anyway, so I love it! But it's made me realise I perhaps shouldn't get other people to try it, especially when we're all a bit tipsy to say the least. I still recommend it though!

Ready Steady Cook Here we Come!

2006-11-08T21:50:00.000Z

Well would you believe it? Lucy & I have got an audition to be on Ready Steady Cook. OK so it's only an audition, but they're saying as long as we like food and have a personality we should be in! Bring it on Ainsley! Pity I can't chop an onion, but don't tell them that anyone! Anyway if we get on should be great publicity for our books. Way to go red tomatoes!

The Whole Madonna Adoption Thang

2006-11-08T20:41:00.000Z

I decided I'd better comment on this as my book is about an adoption assessment.
My fellow author and friend Lucy has even been quoted in the papers and been on Radio 4 about all this, as she has adopted two little girls from Russia. Check out her viewpoint and her novel Blood and Water (also with an adoption theme) on her blog. Some of the stuff written and said though has been absolutely ridiculous. I mean I know she's fabulously wealthy (Madonna not Lucy!) and gets through life doing what she likes more or less, but I'm sure she has feelings for the child, and people seem to be almost demanding the child be taken away from her and that seems a bit harsh as I'm sure she means well and from what we hear she's no terrible mum so lighten up I say, let them be. I also know that no one can adopt children here or abroad without going through a homestudy adoption assessment and, as my book Selfish Jean explores, that is never as straight forward and easy as it might seem to people on the outside, so there's no way Madonna could buy her approval by the adoption services.

However, I do wonder which social worker got the short straw and had to ask questions such as... so how is your sex life these days? Are you using contraceptives? How many partners have you actually had? Do you still have a problem with the Church Madonna? Have you ever really got over your mother's death? So why a black child, have you got black relatives, or close friends who are black? What makes you think you can promote the child's culture? And on and on, meanwhile I imagine Guy is practising his Judo kicks in a corner.

At least I got a book out of it if nothing else and Selfish Jean has humour and pathos about the whole debacle. It is a fictional tale, but of course it is no surprise to anyone I guess that I've been through an adoption homestudy. She had to have had an easier assessment than I had, but then as a result of that assessment I've transformed my whole life in lots of positive ways, so who's to say that if I'd had an easier time of it I might be trapped in a very difficult situation I was unable to get myself out of. Who knows? We can never see the lives not lived. Here endeth the very philosophical bloggeth today.

a groovy place to play with my lap top.....

2006-11-03T17:17:00.000Z

Look at this! Here is where I've found to use my lap top in fact that is the actual table I'm sitting at as I write this. The one through the little alley way. This is a such a cool place I've found The Bistro at The Deli, in Saxmundham Suffolk, a few miles away from Aldeburgh. It's totally groovy, great coffee, chilled music, good atmosphere, there's even a roaring open fire, and sofas, so I imagine I'll end up spending a lot of the winter in here. Also, friendly service from the owner Bob, who says "Hello". Only don't put your feet up on the sofas, he doesn't like it! Not that I did such a thing, I hasten to add, I was just ear-wigging, and being nosy, or being writerly and observing, take your pick! My only worry is that I'll end up spending all my time and all my money in here, but there are worse places to be. I've decided I'm going to be rich anyhow and the book I am writing now is going to be a great success. If I believe it maybe someone else well, but it is just going so well, the writing of it. Now I know that might just be that confidence writers get and we need to be able to finish the book, then with the re-writing the doubts set in, but for now I'm loving it.

....In an octopus's garden by the sea...

2006-10-19T18:03:00.000Z

Hey you'll never guess what I've done...
This is my new home... a wendy house by the sea.
Well it's a bit bigger than this, but this is a photograph from Aldeburgh in Suffolk where I've moved to, oh and at the risk of sounding like I'm gloating and with better language than I'd normally use, it's absolutely bloomin' gorgeous! Course the weather we've been having lately has helped, but I've moved there for the winter with the excuse of writing my next book which is partly set in Suffolk (now!) and Northampton, which is the furthest place from the sea of any town in Britain (correct me if I'm wrong.)

I could end up being a whole different person, I feel different here. Now, anyone who knows me well will know I'm not a morning person, I secretly believe morning people are a different species, and much less cool than night people (like me!) but here I can see the sunrise (over the sea) from my bed (though I have to be careful not to sit up quickly or I bash my head on the sloping roof, but I just have to get up and get out there. I could be starting a whole new routine of walking and beachcombing by day, and writing at night when it's dark. No doubt I'll change my views with the weather, but hey what's new? It's a very friendly town too, with a cinema, bookshop and characters galore, I feel like I'm in heaven. I don't have broadband, so I have to go to the library to check up on emails and stuff, so there may be less posts here, but I'm sure you can live with that! I was too addcited to my t'internet anyhow.

And I'm writing loads too! I'm about half way through a very rough draft, and as someone who doesn't find it easy to talk about work in progress for fear I'll talk myself out of it, I do feel it's going well (now) It's strange how different writers write. Talking to Lucy, my MNW pal, she is so methodical and works out each bit as she goes along according to her master plan, more or less, and I think it shows in her very well-plotted plots. Me, though I have a vague outline and plan, I just write my way into the plot and the characters especially. It does mean however, now I'm half way through that I have loads to sort in the earlier stages, but I just can't get to know the characters otherwise. Anyone else do it any different?

Who Are You?

2006-10-08T20:57:00.000Z

Hi
Where do you come from?
Who are you?
Why?
What?
When?
How?
These are the big questions this week.

This is a picture of a Question Mark butterfly by the way courtesy of clip art.

Now I'm not that technology minded (in case you can't tell) and fairly new to this blogging lark so with the help of random teenagers and a bit of trial and error I get by. Last we I managed to download to this site a site meter. Idle curiosity. I don't get that many comments, mostly from a few friends who've got blogs themselves and karmically think perhaps, I leave a comment on her blog she may leave one on mine and vise versa more or less. So I wonder. I'm a wondering type of person. I don't really do blogs that much unless it's connected to my world somehow.... is that how most people blog? Are there bloggees out there rather than just bloggers? Who knows?

Now I've had around 57 visitors to the site this week and OK so it might not be that many in blog land, but I can't help wondering who the hell you are. Do you come back? Do you wander in idly by accident thinking I'm another kind of site all together? How do you find it? What are you looking for? What is the meaning of life?

It would be interesting to hear from some of you. No pressure.

You see, now I know there are other people out there looking at this stuff rather than a few friends, it does alter your perception on what one should be putting on one's blog, and there I go going into proper language, trying to make a good impression, pretending I know about grammar and etiquette and stuff. I must do I've had a book published. To be a proper writer I must know about all this stuff, mustn't I?

So maybe writers shouldn't blog actually, because there are real, true, natural bloggers out there who know how to do it properly, plan what they are going to write and work out how to grab their audience. We writers can't be bothered with that. We wanna save the good stuff for our books, articles etc. Why waste a good phrase or idea on this load of shite? Because people read it and if they like what they read they might buy the book you idiot! Ah but if I put loads of effort into this when actually I should be working on the next book, like I should be doing now at this very moment, then there won't be a next book...

God I'm so wise! I'd better get back to my rough draft sharpish...

fair made up by great review

2006-10-01T18:36:00.000Z

Well it may be six months since Selfish Jean hit the shelves but it's still being praised, this time on another writer's blog shameless words so I shall be shameless in freely quoting from it here.

She (I'm assuming it's a she though I don't really know) says my book "turned out to be an absolute treat." That she " read this in one sitting, which is very rare for me, as the writing had me by the neck and wouldn't let me go."

Also:
"I think the novel is a master class in how an author needs to find an original "voice" and keep it going until the end."

And:

"It was also such a delight to read a book where all of the text was crucial to the story, where I didn't feel the urge to skip ahead to escape unnecessary detail. The humour and tragedy works well together, and the writing was fresh and accessible. The way things are tied up at the end was intelligent and inspired.

"This is a short novel, only 218 pages, and I didn't want it to come to an end."

Blimey. I couldn't have written a better review of my own book!
It's great when someone really enjoys your work and seems to understand it the way it's meant and set up and that doesn't always happen. So thankyou whoever you are!

However, there was some criticism for the cover design and as many people have told me before they found the cover completely uninspiring, it's got me in a wondering mood. There seem to be two types of people: those who know what the spiral thing on the cover is and those who don't. I could explain it, and it links to the story on several levels, but I'd be interested in comments from anyone or other readers about this and the cover.

It is difficult to know if this type of cover actually has increased sales or not. On the one hand the chick-lit market is huge, despite people saying it's had its day, so people who like that sort of thing may buy it. On the other hand, many people who don't read chick-lit (including a lot of men!) have told me the cover almost put them off, but they were then pleasantly surprised by its contents, which in a way does work in my favour, because if they were expecting one type of novel and I deliver a more interesting one, then that makes them like it more perhaps. The only problem then is how many people have been put off by the cover and don't read it, when they probably would have enjoyed it? And how many chick-litters have read it and hated it because they were looking for a nice cosy romance? Who knows? All I know is my book, so far, has managed average sales for a first time novel in hardback and I'm pleased with that, considering all the competition out there, but I can't help wondering which way it would have gone, up or down, with a different cover.

Anyway, all this talk of Selfish Jean feels strange now as I'm losing myself in the world of my new novel. It was a bit of struggle at first, but I persisted and continued writing even when I wasn't really sure of the characters, but now they are really starting to live and the thing is when I get to this point, I don't want to do anything else in this world I want to stay in that world with them, so ta-ta for now!

Visit to Wellie Writers

2006-09-13T20:02:00.000Z

I was invited to talk to a local writer's group at Wellingborough to talk about Selfish Jean. It's always encouraging to other writers to see there are people getting books published with a bit of talent and a lot of luck and not to give up. Dorothy (the blonde lady in the picture) has had a lot of encouragement for a novel of hers, but sadly no publisher as yet, so I think she will have a go at Macmillan New Writing.. Also the local press came along and took a photo and the young reporter kept calling me Claire! Maybe that's why I look a little defensive in the first photo whilst the photographer is preparing. However, hopefully they'll get it wrong in the paper and everyone will think Claire Sweeney has had a novel published and buy it by the truckload. Fingers crossed!

I've been a bit remiss in keeping my blog up to date lately, but have had quite a bit of publicity lately. An article I wrote about Macmillan New Writing has appeared in the magazine of The Writer's Guild.. I also had an interview e-published by The Motivated Writer e-zine. Click on current issue if you want to read it. I've also has an excerpt of Selfish Jean published in the Lapidus Magazine, published by the organization Lapiduswhich I'm a member of. They stand for creative arts for health and well being, which of course is important to me for my work in facilitating workshops in healthcare settings usually in the mental health field. It's amazing work and helps my writing too. I think to be a good writer you have to be willing to expose yourself even if it is fiction because that's the only way you can really touch people with what you write. If anyone has any views about this please let me know. I was at the Scottish Lapidus conference last weekend in Glasgow and had a wonderful time meeting and connecting with people with like or similar minds and staying with Frances Campbell at her house, who is a lovely mix of energy and fun.We met twice before at previous Lapidus conferences. A great recharging time, though I seem to have picked up some tough Scots bug which has left me feeling a bit rough, or maybe it was that ferocious Virgin train air-con. Why? I want to wage a war against aggressive air-con. It will definitely feature on my room 101 list when I'm famous enough to get on the programme!

The new novel has been started at last. I've been struggling with it, but now getting on with it and having loads of ideas. Glasgow also involved a bit of research for it as there is an element of Charles Rennie Macintosh featuring. I will say no more for now, as I just have to stop talking about it and get on with it.

Lucy McCarraher's Blood & Water published

2006-09-13T19:25:00.000Z

Lucy's book Blood & Water is published at last. Lucy had a really successful launch at Goldsboro books new larger premises in London last week and sold out! That's how cool she is and though she said she was nervous you'd never have known. We've become really good friends since meeting at the official launch of Macmillan New Writing back in April, funny it seems longer ago than that, so I was please she called me her new best friend in her speech.
For full details see Lucy's blog. I really think she will do well and deserves to.

So what is the book about? About a woman who seemingly has it all and yet everything is threatened by her own fears about the future and the solving of mysteries from the past. It's a wonderful read, complex in it's plotting, yet very easy to read, and takes off as Mo Mozart the heroine tries to juggle her complex family life, wacky but very human friends, and solve several mysteries at the same time. It probably is a woman's book, but why should that be a derogatory term? There's a real sneering labelling of such things that I don't think happens to men's writing, but that's another story. This is a warm real book that should have a wide audience.

Waterstone's Bath

2006-08-14T21:54:00.000Z

Well thank goodness for good friends! See photo of me with Rosalind & Antony. This pic was actually at the book launch, but it was down to Rosalind (and Sophie at MNW) that I got a book reading/signing at Bath Waterstones. Rosalind is a great writer and was also my first writing teacher when I lived in Bath. Hence the Bath event. A bit of a shambles that turned out well in the end, because of bloody Waterstones I can tell you. First of all, as I mentioned below, I was supposed to be doing the event with Edward Charles, but he had to cancel on the day as Waterstones had no books of his after assuring the Macmillan New Writing HQ they had plenty. His book In The Shadow of Lady Jane is being reprinted (well done Ted!) so a last minute rummage to try and come up with more stock proved fruitless, so he cancelled. I, poor little shrinking violet me (yeah right!) was reduced to doing the event alone. I arrived to find as Waterstones had only sold ten tickets pre the event they'd only put out ten chairs and ten wine glasses and ten copies of the book. I was hopeful for more on the door and even tried loitering with intent around the fiction section to persuade a few more to come. I even managed to persuade one couple they really needed to be at my reading, even though it was their anniversary and they really wanted to go out for a quiet romantic meal. Bless 'em they even bought the book! Thanks! Anyway, then people started turning up, and more people and more people, they soon ran out of tickets, chairs, wine glasses, and wine. Even my chair and wine glass disappeared. The place was heaving! The staff looked for more chairs, sod the chairs I said, we need more wine, they managed to rummage in a dusty cupboard and find a couple of dusty bottles of Gerwurztraminer. I had to sit in an arm chair looking like a refugee from a Lemsip advert, drinking corked wine with a fly in it! Ottakers was never like this! It went very well though.

And the Grumpy Old Bookman turned up.He doesn't live too far away and has been a good supporter of Macmillan New Writing all along, so it was great to see him and Mrs GOB even bought my book, why I don't know as he should have a free review copy anyway, but maybe he liked it so much he doesn't want to share it!

So all in all, it was a pretty good night, I caught up with some old friends and made some new ones, but perhaps Waterstones shouldn't judge a book by it's cover (ha!ha! clever me!) We MNW authors may not be such non-entities as you think. Give us a chance to prove ourselves. Also I do remember when I lived in Bath, Rosalind and I often went to Literary evenings at Waterstones, some were well known writers, others less so, and of course I never dreamed I'd be doing one one day (well OK I did, but not seriously) however, I imagined it might have been a lot better organised than this!

second freebie of Selfish Jean set free on the world

2006-08-07T11:31:00.000Z

First of all thanks Lydia for helping me sort my blog page. I can now do HTML well when I say "do", I mean I can follow instructions scibbled on a dog-earred bit of paper, still don't understand it, but as Lydia said her generation were using computers almost as soon as they came out of the womb. Anyway, I was in London for a wedding this weekend, very enjoyable, great weather and great company. Congratulations Patrick & Mary, you are individual, idiosyncratic, hospitable, warm people. I arrived Friday evening, and decided I was having a serendipity day. You know when things seem to go very well, parking spaces are found, trains run on time, people don't run a pram into the back of your ankles, or swing rucksacks in your face all things go smoothly and in flow. Well, Friday was like that.

I got to my Travel Lodge just behind the Tate Modern and decided to go out to leave my freebie copy of Selfish Jean somewhere. I'd wanted to see Galileo at the National Theatre but knew it was sold out. I wondered whether to go anyway see if I could blag a standby, and also leave the book there, when I saw an ad for free theatre, that evening, actually The Caucasian Chalk Circle, another Brecht play for those who don't know, and as that drama ends up being about a trial between a foster mother and a real mother, and it was free, it seemed serendipitous that I leave Selfish Jean there! I thought the production might be a bit ropey, but it was brilliant, really, really good and easily the best version of that play I have seen. I didn't even mind risking piles sitting on a stone step to watch it in the shadow of the Tower Bridge and City Hall along the South Bank. See photo above. I wrote my message in my book and left it on one of the stone step seats at the interval. I felt quite nervous and wondered whether anyone would take it, but after the show it had gone! haven't had any message from whoever took it though, so maybe they threw it into the Thames! Hope not. A great weekend all round.

Much Ado Abart Someat!

2006-07-30T00:13:00.000Z

Hi check out http://sulgravemanor.org.uk which was the home of George Washington's ancestors in Northamptonshire. I was involved in a project there this week with 14 kids. Basically I took the plot and some scenes from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and made it about something! We had kids in it aged 9 to 14 and they were absolute stars all of them! And most of them didn't even know each other Monday and then by Friday they were putting on a show and working together as a team to make it something really special, with the help of Fiona and Becky who directed them and got the show ship shape. A lot of people think drama for kids is for drama queen types who just want to show off, well it isn't really, or certainly not the way we work. I think it teaches them so many skills and helps their confidence, but it's also working with others and yes they can shine as individuals, but at the same time need to work together to make sure the whole thing works and they seem to end up doing than instinctively, it's a joy to watch.

Bath time needs playmates!

2006-07-29T23:26:00.000Z

This is Bath alongside my book. I will be with it in Bath Waterstones on Thursday 10th August at 7pm. It's weird ending up in Waterstones Bath, as I lived there (in Bath not Waterstones!) for a few years and often went to the literary evenings there, never imagining that I'd be doing the same myself! In fact I once wrote a jokey article for the Bristol Evening Post about a literary evening at Waterstones, must dig it out. However, it's a big Waterstones about halfway up the left side of this photo on Milsom Street, but if you're in the area please do pop in. To get Waterstones Bath I'm supposed to have around sixty guests! What do they think this is a wedding? My dear friend Rosalind who was my first writing teacher (around twenty years ago now!) when I lived here is rounding up all her cronies from her various writing groups, and I've still got some really close (old) friends in the area, namely Chris & Ian, but it would be great to get some more (newer, younger?) faces too. I'm also doing the event with another Macmillan New Writer, Edward Charles author of In The Shadow of Lady Jane. So it should be a good evening, come along and talk to me, and buy the book if you want, though I won't force you! Be good to see you there!

selfish jean goes to Dublin

2006-07-29T23:03:00.000Z

Well my free book is winging its way to Dublin as we speak. Several people contacted me about the free copy I offered on Gumtree website , but it's going to the first person who contacted me, not because they were the first person, but because something a bit synchronistic happened! This guy Daniel (see his comment on the Seredipity Jean posting below where he introduces himself) contacted me asking for the free copy. He knew nothing about the book or its subject but it turns out he was adopted from South Korea as a baby and brought up in Sweden and is now working in Dublin. How strange is that? Anyway he sounds a really lovely guy, and intends to pass it on to his girl friend who will take it to Sweden and then who knows? I hope he enjoys it, I fear he will find it a bit strange! However, I did spend a bit of time travelling round Sweden a couple of years ago and found the people had a lovely quirky sense of humour that increased exponentially the nearer we got to the arctic circle. We went midsummer when everyone was celebrating the long nights in all sorts of weird and wonderful and charming ways.

Anyway I hope I can keep tabs on what happens to this copy of Selfish Jean

two media tarts looking for a home!

2006-07-29T22:37:00.000Z

Well here is a picture of me and Lucy after a hard night's drinking, putting the world to rights, and a hard morning writing a press release. It shows doesn't it?
However, we did have a good time, got on really well and amongst over publicity ideas, we've decided to apply to get on Ready, Steady Cook only problem is I can't cook (that's why there's a chef there isn't it?) and sent her son out for a Chinese take away when we visited so I don't think we stand much chance. Ainsley watch out!
Lucy's house is lovely and she is right it does have a special feel about it, some houses just do don't they? But she's made a lovely home out of it, which not everyone has the knack of doing even with a good basis to work on, a kind of good eye for things, but also very comfortable rather than a slave to those perfect house mags. In fact when I arrived I almost sat on a dog's bone on the sofa and was immediately given a running knee hug by her youngest daughter, who was desparate to see who the visitor was. A lovely night and day.

Serendipity Jean

2006-07-17T21:31:00.000Z

I'm trying a bit of an experiment with three signed copies of my book. I'm giving them away free and seeing where they end up as a bit of fun. The first I've posted as a freebie on the Gumtree Dublin website. The second is on a swap site, I'm wondering what someone might be willing to swap it for. The third I shall leave in a public place, probably somewhere on the South Bank when I'm there for a wedding in a couple of weeks. I feel quite excited about it, seeing where they might end up and making connections with strangers. It's fun, so I hope it works. Synchroncity or Serendipity, which will come into force?

I've already had someone requesting it from Dublin, who is going to give it someone in Sweden.

I'm off to speak to a book group in Northampton tomorrow, who have read my book. Feel a bit nervous about it, in case they hate it. Will they be polite and lie or will they go for my jugular? Should be interesting.

it's all in the JPEGS

2006-07-15T16:36:00.000Z

So here are the photos I couldn't upload before. They weren't Jpegs you see. I am learning stuff all the time. It wasn't long ago that I thought Jpegs were something in the hardware store next to the J cloths so there you go! Ah bless, aren't they lovely Matt & Lydia? Really have a soft spot for them (and the reclusive Hannah!) as we were all there at the beginning of Shed MK Inclusive Theatre. http://interactionmk.org.uk It's not just they've grown up with me but I've grown up with them too! We've all blossomed because of it. The next show will be Shakespeare's The Tempest at Stantonbury Campus Theatre this November, tickets on sale now. http://stantonbury.org.uk That's enough blogging for one day, off to meet a mate Judy for drinkies, gotta get ready, she's so glam and I look like a bag lady from the bus station. Bye for now!
By the way I have an anonymous mystery blogger. Who are you?

Searching for Susi Gomez

2006-07-15T15:49:00.000Z

Well my book jacket picture will have to do. I was trying to upload some photos I'd scanned into my computer but they won't upload. They were really nice too of my book signing event at Ottakars Milton Keynes, which I mentioned a few postings ago. It also had on there photos of my trusty teenage helpers Lydia and Matt ( Hannah refused to be on the picture for some reason preferring to block the aisles with her skateboard) Lydia is supposed to be helping me sort out this blog and I've promised to take her and Matt to lunch somewhere nice (Oh please not TFI's or New Orleans!)

Thankyou Eileen for your comments about PLR yes we did have a really good chat on the sofas of a nice hotel in Leicester, great to meet you! I do have a soft spot for nice hotels.... comfy sofas, chilled atmosphere, chilled wine, no muzak, good company.... oooh I was off then...
Favourites anyone.... try Royal Cresent Hotel Bath or if you are going to Spain, go to Cuenca where part of my book, cover on the left in case you haven't noticed and check out the Posada San Jose, stunning, or the Parador there. Oh the Parador in Granada is amazing.

Talking of Spain I am trying to see if I can get bookshops to stock my book over there, as it has a big section in Spain and there are loads of British people in Spain who may enjoy it. So if anyone knows of any bookshops I could approach, or even go in and ask for it to be stocked.

The other reason for talking of Spain is I'm searching for Susi Gomez, who is a Spanish Artist quite well known I think, yet I can't find her on the web at least. However, she features in my book too, mainly because I came across her Art when I was writing it and liked it, it spoke to me. I also made her into a fictional character in my book, and a very nice and funny one. Now I'd like to find her because I think if I was her and I was mentioned in a book I'd like to know about it. Anyone any ideas how I can trace her? However, be warned there seem to be a lot of Susi Gomezes around. I was waiting for one and three came along at once! My Susi Gomez has art in The Museo De Reina Sofia Madrid, the Museo de Arte Abstracto, Cuenca.

To continue with the story I've just had to upload the cover of Dark Rain, which now has shot to the top of the page! Oh help, how do people do this stuff? I'm supposed to be an intelligent liberated female and I can't even work a blog page properly. Oh the shame!

Anyway to continue because Conor Corderoy http://conorcorderoy.co.uk has a bit part in this story. He has a big connection with Spain and is there at the moment. I emailed him about my quest for Susi Gomez, and it turns out he once knew an arty girl from Cordoba called Susi Gomez, anyway it wasn't her, born different years, but it sent him on a trip down memory lane, but there must be millions of Susi Gomezes about and I only want to find one of them. Conor's book is doing well as apparantly Kate Mosse and her husband are reading it!

I need a little PLR

2006-07-13T20:54:00.000Z

So who knows what PLR is? I didn't until recently. I never knew there was such a thing, I'm so green! I was recently at a writer's reunion event, for an ex-agency I was briefly a part of when I won a short story competition they were running a couple of years ago. The agency is no more but the people are and still meet up regularly. It's great to meet up with other writers, apart from hearing what everyone is doing who is published with who and what, you get to hear lots of stuff you never knew, like Public Lending Rights. Apparantly you get paid something every time your book is loaned at a library, the deadline was 30th June. I emailed them the 1st of July and they let me off the deadline nice people. It was Margaret Kaine the novelist who gave me that tip and was very generous with her advice http://www.margaretkaine.com. Incidentally, she has also had a novel published with adoption in its plot, see picture to side, can' t seem to make it bigger, but if you need more info about this book and Margaret I'm sure she'd be thrilled to hear from you.

Incidentally, talking of libraries, I feel I should be encouraging more people to go to their local library and ask them to stock Selfish Jean, it means more sales of the book, you don't have to buy it and maybe a little bit of PLR too. Sounds so nice doesn't it, like TLC only more new age. So why not got to your library today and get me a little PLR honey!

It's a spookily wonderful life

2006-06-18T22:47:00.000Z

Talking of Goldsboro books I've been invited to my new friend Lucy's book launch there in September. Her cover is on the right. Check it out at www.macmillanewwriting.com or on her blogspot here. I still haven't read it yet as it's not available till September, but will have to try and blag a free copy from Macmillan as we hope to do some publicity together.

I think we're becoming good friends because our lives have spookily paralled each others in more ways than I am permitted to say on here, but there may be a book about it one day. Other spooky coincidences apart from the fact we are both gorgeous middle- aged women, is we both were picked out by Macmillan New Writing from the Richard & Judy "How to Get Published" competition, the only two that came through that way and both our books concern the subject of adoption, though in very different ways. We both live in Grade II listed cottages and both like dogs, there's also a joint fascination with Jimmy Stewart.

I had just loaded onto my Amazon sales pages a DVD film called Made For Each Other starring Jimmy Stewart, when I saw on Lucy's Blog, she was trying to find out more about the film for the new novel she was writing, Kindred Spirits, in which Jimmy Stewart plays a minor role. Spooky or what. Incidentally I once wrote a play Monochrome Days about a family obsessed with the film It's a Wonderful Life, which of course starts Jimmy Stewart. I don't doubt more coincidences will follow!

goldsboro books London

2006-06-18T22:34:00.000Z

I was asked to go back to Goldsboro books in London to sign some more copies as they had sold out of the ones they had, that is a nice feeling! It's a great shop and just off the Charing Cross Road so feels really special to a first time author and they been very supportive to Macmillan New Writing.

The guy who owns it (in partnership) David Headley is also a character who has done all sorts of jobs not least training to be a Catholic priest but dropping out. I wonder if he told me that in confidence? No I think I'm OK to mention it. He's a friendly chatty guy, go along and ask him, and buy my book at the same time. You can get them for usual retail price there instead of double the price on ebay, your choice.

I'll be there again in September for the launch of Lucy McCarraher's book Bllod & Water which I'm really looking forward to as we're becoming firm friends.

And Lydia, anonymous emailer extraordinaire good luck with GCSEs and know I'm only teasing you about my blog, but once your exams are over please help me sort it out!

Book signing at Ottakars Milton Keynes

2006-06-04T18:43:00.000Z

Well this isn't a photo of that event, but I'm signing a copy of my book so it will have to do as I only had a tacky disposable camera on me. I can't work those digital thingys, just like I can't sort out this blog page but help is at hand.

At Ottakars I had the help of three members of Youth Theatre Shed MK, who turned up to see me, bless 'em. Lydia, who incidentally has a great smile and a great line in patter in persuading folk to buy the book, seems to have read everything about me on the internet (and I think is responsible for my Wikpedia entry) and she said "You so need to sort out your Blog Cate" with a flick of her head and a roll of her eyes, like I'd broken wind in church, and I felt deeply ashamed, but she is going to sort it so watch this space! Other YT members there were Hannah who said the best way to catch people's attention would be to throw my book at them. We hastily sent her off on photocopying duty, but I'm very fond of her for some reason, even though I kept tripping over her skateboard she stashed under my chair. Then there was Matt, who has been in Shed MK as long as I have, and we've always been friends as he likes to write too. One couple he spoke to in the shopping centre, not even in the bookshop, came in to buy the book simply because he'd been so nice. So thankyou all three. Incidentally, they were in Cloud Cuckoo Land (see earlier posting below). And I think they are all friends now because of that and their involvement in Shed MK. It's become a bit like a big family really and certainly enriched my life with the people I've met there. Two of the practitioners (drama teachers in ordinary language) turned up too. Fiona who bought the book, and cakes, then later Cherry, who didn't want to buy the book because of the swearing in it, but came a long to say hello. I daren't tell her the Youth Theatre members there had read it and weren't at all shocked, but they are sixteen now so....

Anyway, a pretty good day. There were some lovely people who bought the book blind, and I had some interesting conversations. In fact I felt exhausted afterwards, and also worried I'd been too desparate to sell. I felt like a market trader selling bruised apples, and whatever people told me they liked to read I managed to convince them was in the book, or almost!

For example the lovely Irish Man. We had a bit of craic about religion and our Irish Roots (mine too far back for me to remember) Catholic guilt & angst and also about religion causing too many problems in the world. He came back later with his wife, and they bought two copies! There was also young woman, whom I persuaded it was a good girly read, well it is, but not your usual chick lit. Another man who was doing a PHd on some cultural study thingy, had a good chat about labelling people and labels people like, and choices we make, well he really didn't want a copy at all, till I told him it was about being refused to be labelled. An Autralian nurse bought after I told her I was a health professional too. A man who said he liked more highbrow stuff, I blinded with science, the double helix and The Selfish Gene. Another guy said he preferred self help books. I said my novel was, as it had helped me enormously to write out (in fiction) all about something very personal and upsetting to me at the time.

Thankyou, all you lovely people you made my day much more interesting and I'm really not a hard sales person. I'd like to think it's not that really, I managed to sell my book to you because I believe there is something in my book for everyone, because it's more about relationships and difficult life choices, and we all have those, but I also write and have fun with it all rather than too much misery I think. I couldn't get past page two of Angela's Ashes. I prefer to make things funny, but also moving as well. I hope the balance of the two works in Selfish Jean.

Phew! Did I really just say all that? Yes, well I think I'm having with how to market my book, how to, where to, and it's because it doesn't seem to fit any particular genre to me, or crosses several, so I'm not sure I'm selling it right at all, but maybe that's what makes it a good read. Also thanks to Richard who made me a lovely leaflet of nice things people have said about the book. I'll try and add it here when I can work out how to do it.

And thanks Penny for turning up and buying too. Penny Alexander also a writer, with many short stories published. And in reply to your comment. It's just I haven't got the photo where I'm supposed to have the photo! But hope you enjoy the rest of Selfish Jean.

so how do you get a little photo on the side?

2006-05-30T20:12:00.000Z

I wish I knew how to be technological! How do I make my head smaller? And put it on the side over there? And how do I have links at the side and how do I have people's names to connect to links for other people and places? What's the meaning of life? Help me someone!

2006-05-19T16:52:00.000Z

I'm going back in time with photos, but though this was only six weeks ago, it seems ages away, but we all look so happy and today I feel ancient, though really I'm having the life of Riley. Birthdays were so exciting when we were young....hey ho... maybe I've put this on now cos I think it's a good photo of me and everyone else as well. A good night. Oh I'm halfway through a bottle of red and all the way through a box of chocs... if only somone had bought me the hairdresser's head complete with real nylon hair as a child things might have been different. I blame my parents. I'll be OK tomorrow.

2006-05-19T16:46:00.000Z

Oooh look piles of the bloody things! That was the pile before I read. After I read it was even bigger as several people brought copies back asking for a refund.

2006-05-19T16:39:00.000Z

Oooh look that's me reading all alone at Ottakars Market Harborough. With food enough to feed the whole town and those fetching plastic cups of wine in the foreground. I wasn't really alone. It's just everyone was so far back! Maybe they'd heard about the guy who had a heart attack on the front row in Northampton when I lunged at him. (It's acting dahling!)

some photos I should have uploaded before

2006-05-16T20:31:00.000Z

Hi here I am sat in my study trying to look like I'm working. I should be working on a new novel idea, but though I have loads of ideas I haven't found THE ONE yet!

2006-05-16T20:27:00.000Z

Hi OK so I've managed to download my book cover. Clever girl! I think it's really groovy. It looks like a fun read, but hang on what's that? Look deeper and what a bottle of wine and what the hell.... what is that ladder thing? Can anyone tell me? A prize to anyone who knows. (And I'm a big fat liar!)

a good day

2006-05-12T03:33:00.000Z

Today has been a good day. Today has been a very good day. Or rather yesterday because it's now the middle of the night, and if today (I mean yesterday) was really such a good day why have I woken in the middle of the night cringing? (again!) Why do I do that? When everything was going so well.

I'm not sure I'm a proper genuine blogger because I can't seem to find the time to do this very often, or put any clever tricksy bits on and links to where you can buy my book. I'm sure I could do this but I can't seem to find the time to learn how, but hey if anyone is reading this, and hasn't bought my book, then hey I'm sure you're not daft and can do a search on the internet, Amazon, or Macmillan New Writing.

Anyway back to why today, I mean yesterday, was such a good day. it wasn't just the weather which was amazing. I knew it was going to be a good day because I got up early and my hair went right and I didn't look too much like Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, which is why I avoid frilly shirts at all times. It might seem superficial, especially with all the things I had going on yesterday, but a good hair day helps.

Good day thing ONE: First meeting at a mental health ward at a hospital. This might sound like a weird thing on a good day, but was a follow up/feedback meeting about a writing workshop I did there recently. And from this (funding allowing!) it looks I will become their Writer in Residence, on this ward, which absolutely thrilled me and was completely unexpected. I work on a freelance basis for MK Arts for Health (www.mkartsforhealth.org.uk)

God day thing TWO: I then had my usual workshop with my Offstage drama group at The Castle Theatre Wellingborough. It's a drama group I facilitate for the over 50s and I go there every fortnight. The last session I had with them hadn't gone that well, and I began to think I was l getting a bit stale, but this week was great again, they were all up for it, and I was really there with them. Driving back from that with car windows open and jigging in my car to Will Smith's Summertime felt great.

Good day thing THREE: And really the most important as far as blag blogs go was a book reading/launch thingy in the evening at Northampton. Again it went well, really well. Roger Morros, Taking Comfort author came up from London and I guess we had around thirty people and both sold out of our books, which in one way was a bit annoying because the organisers obviously hadn't ordered enough.

And this is why I'm not sure why I'm waking up in the night cringing again, because it went well, I feel it went well. Having done a few of these things now, I'm actually beginning to be a little less nervous and able to engage with the audience a bit more and getting a few laughs. In fact I did it so well I became a kind of funny man to Roger's straight guy. I even managed to make an old guy on the front row jump, when I did a monster impression (it's in the book!) and lunged at him. Talking to his wife afterwards, I learnt he's been very stressed as he's been on a waiting list for a heart transplant for years! Oops!

So what was the problem? Why am I waking up in the night cringing? Because, because ooooh I dunno, I'm not sure if I don't do my book a diservice (spelling? is there no spell check on here?) I make it sound like it's all a laugh. I play up to the Hen-lit/Chick-Lit/Mick-Lit (Middle-aged Chick geddit?) tag, when that's not really a true picture, there's something a lot more thoughtful and darker going on in my book, yeah there are laughs, yeah I don't do all that bleeding hearts-throw -me- out -with -Angela's -Ashes stuff, and yet....and yet... and I wonder why, why do I feel the need to always try and entertain an audience?My playwriting background? Or because it makes me uncomfortable to be sharing that stuff, some of which happened to me, I mean the story and characters are all fiction, but some of the internal monologue stuff in Jeanette's head, the thoughtful stuff about the trauma of going through an adoption assessment and some of the musing on relationships an stuff, some of it is my own thoughts, that I then take on somewhere else, somewhere fictional. So why can't I tell people that? Why can I write about that stuff very honestly in a book, and on here, but in person, in front of an audience, I bottle out and go for the easier option, the writer as entertainer option? When in fact it's more authentic and would connect with people more if I spoke about that aspect. I don't know.

Roger came across as a very clever literary kind of author which he is, and I love his style and his book. I think I came across as a bit of fluff, a bit of middle-aged-whatever -happened- to- baby- Jane fluff, and it's my own fault. I engineered it, I let it happen.

Anyway, here I am in the middle of the night ruminating about this in a very Jeanette way actually. Someone even asked me that question about how autobiographical the book is, and I rambled on about how it wasn't really very much... and it isn't in one way, but in another...

Oh stop mithering and go back to bed.... you sold all the books for goodness sake, want do you want the Nobel effing prize or something?
It's times like tonight when I'm reading that I hear my mother's voice saying to me clearly.... Will you just stop showing off!

Anyway, today was a good day.

Be nice to hear what makes other people wake up in the night and cringe.

Virgin Blogger

2006-04-22T16:41:00.000Z

Oooh heck this is all new to me, but as in the comedy show, when I see all my fellow Macmillan New Writers having blogs then...I want that one!

News, news, news! I had my first solo book reading last night in Ottakers Market Harborough. A bit terrifying, and I didn't realise till too late I should maybe have toned down my language a bit for middle England. My feeling was the words "masturbating" and "Bastard" weren't quite what they were expecting during crisps and plastic cups of wine. I woke up in the middle of last night (with hangover) and cringed. Does anyone else have those middle of the night cringes that make you groan? However, I sold quite a few copies of the book so maybe I worry too much.

I chose a nice girly pink background. I'm not actually that girly although, as I've got older, I've decided to get more in touch with my inner girl, and as I seem to have written a "woman's book" quite unintentionally I'm sure, then maybe it's appropriate. If I knew how to make links to various comments and reviews about my book and the other's being published with me, then I would, but hey it's early days and I'm enjoying the chatting first aren't you?

http://www.wordaction.co.uk Oh hey how did I do that? That's my website link. I need to update that to so don't bother looking just yet... well if you like you can have a quick peek.

Anyway a bit about me and my book, so much stuff has happened and the last few weeks have been a whirl of readings, champagne, book signings... but more of that later...

Stuff....

My book got picked up by MNW via Richard & Judy's slushpile and a very nice place to be. They had 46,000 entries (for the competition How to Get Published) and I made it into that last twenty or so. I count myself very lucky to be spotted at all. Another MNW writer Lucy McCarraher's book was picked up this way too. We were nearly returned too. There's a bit about it in Mike Barnard's book Transparent Imprint. It's all down to Maria Rejt, another Macmillan publisher, who worked on the Richard & Judy side of things and told Mike she couldn't quite bear to part with the long list who didn't quite make it, and did Mike want to look at the entries? Thankfully, he did.

Suffice to say, despite all the publicity, some of it quite negative, about the whole MNW thang, I know my book just wouldn't exist without it. I'm not sure I'd have finished it or sent it round agents et al, as I'm more usually a playwright, but I knew this was a novel novel idea!

Images of the last few weeks.....

My first signed sale to a Finnish student.... not sure she liked me putting a kiss after my name but I was just soooooooo grateful!

Being one of the Macmillan Six.... meeting the other authors, though we're all very different, I feel kind of bonded to them. I'd like to sell more than them, but hey I can be generous and I really wish them well! Suroopa is lovely and her proud husband must have taken three thousand photos. Roger seems sweet and enjoying it all. He has a really distinctive style and I'm pleased to say will be joining me for my Northampton gig. Conor, I just like, as he seems like one of those guys to have great drunken chats with, he has suggested we all meet up every April 7th in a pub in London (there must be a story in there somewhere!) Brian is very charming and modest and I think his book is going really well. He may be 69 but he's cool! And as for Michael Stephen Fuchs, see below.

Meeting some of the other MNW authors to be published after us. I like making connections and meeting new people. I immediately liked Lucy McCarraher, whose novel Blood and Water it to be published in September, and we may try doing some publicity stuff together.

The launch party. Oh we all love a little attention don't we? Oh it was dead posh, with food that you daren't eat cos it looked like Art and was brought round on pieces of slate. I was trying to imagine what my Yorkshire brother would have made of it.
Also special by having special people there, my best friends and my old writing teacher. Not that she's that old I just mean it was a long time ago and we've always kept in touch.

People actually coming up and finding you to sign your book, or tell you that they've read it and loved it, bless 'em.

The Pan bookshop reading, our first proper public foray, went down well I think. I forced myself to look up whilst reading and try to make eye contact with people. I'm no actor, but as I write plays too, I come from that drama background where I don't find audiences too frightening... yeah right, so why was I shaking like on that ad? I see you babee, shaking that asss....

The highlight had to be the Goldsboro bookshop launch, just off the Charing Cross Road, and walking down it I suddenly thought, bloody 'ell girl, here you are, Charing Cross Road, going to your book launch , and I felt like doing one of those little jumping side kicks in the air, but hey I had on high heels and I thought I might ladder my tights if I fell arse over tit! Even before the rather generous amounts of Champagne. Hey beats Babycham let me tell you!

Being called "sexy & witty" in a photo caption by Michael Stephen Fuchs, (author of The Manuscript) whom I call the eye-candy author. A friend sent me the link. Oh I know he's being kind to an older woman, and the lighting was good, but hey I can still enjoy a compliment. I'm not sure he should wear shades indoors though, someone ought to tell him! And I did catch him having his Charing Cross Road moment outside a pub looking like he was the man, in shades, beer bottle in hand, drinking that and the moment. Way to go!

Catching up with Mike our publisher again. He's just so great with people and really makes you feel you and your book are special. He believes in it, in all of us, so it's a great confidence boost.

I did a huge email blurb mail shot about my novel to every soul who has ever appeared in my inbox, I titled the email "my naval novel published". I think everyone thinks it's about sailors now. Of course I should have said navel novel....oh heck! It doesn't look good from a writer does it?

Being asked to sign several copies of your book not "to" anyone, and then seeing them for double the price on ebay! How wierd is that? Hasn't sold any yet though, and I think maybe it will take a while... like never!

I think that must be enough for now. Be nice to have some comments.

And I'll work out how to do the links. Roger seems to have got it sussed maybe I'll ask him.