Prediction fiction - serial update

I've updated the two prompt-led serials running since the beginning of the year.  To John Pettinger's tale, 'A change of focus', I've added episodes forty-five to fifty-two, to  'Tao escapes from Rhodes'  episodes thirty-one to forty-seven. [Links in the page bar at the top of this page]

As ever, the words supplied dictate direction, plot and the arrival and departure of  a variety of characters, mostly nefarious, and I am, as ever, immensely grateful to Colleen for the hosting of Prediction Fiction.

Next week's are muckrake, gloss and trappings.   Should be fun.

My space, today

Took this at 06.45 this morning, with the intention of posting it on a new group. 

 Not done that yet, but will.   

Tells it like it is - I write and I read - all the books on view are on my to-be-read pile.

Also tells you I don't do tidy.

Approaching the end ... off the map and a change of gear.

Earlier, in July, I sorted out who caused the death and why and how.  Where and what the implications were.
But I have struggled with the writing of it;  have not seen how it can be put down, spelt out, made convincing.
In the end I resorted to writing conversations.  Conversations Baz had, with Susannah and with Luke; with John and Col and Billy.  And with Adam.  Gradually, they are telling me what happened.  Not always straightforwardly: sometimes they lie, deliberately deceive.  Lead me to believe one thing, only to be tripped up when I realise that's not possible.  It's a lot of writing, deleting, and re-writing.  A lot. A ridiculous amount, when I am already guilty (no, I don't think 'guilty' either) of writing without prior thought to a considerable extent.
But, it's my time I'm wasting (and no, I don't believe 'wasting' either) - and anyway, what else would I do?

But it's more than a little disorientating, disconcerting, especially because the man I thought was guilty seems not to be after all.

Losing Faith - and accurately justifying it.

This is one of the eight books I picked up in New York, this from the wonderfully-named 'Mysterious Bookshop'.

A typical example of the title (spine only visible when I selected it) i.e. font plus colour initially attracting my attention, and then the blurb, which began "We are burying her today."

Speed-reading, I omitted the next paragraph and read the first line of the third: "Faith had been dark, disturbing, a Goth" which presumably (because I remember no conscious thought) removed all expectation that it would be at all religious.

Third paragraph of the opening page describes a breakfast which "sizzles and giggles to itself"; egg yolk described as "a malevolent yellow eye watching me from the plate."
And I am hooked.

And continue to be so throughout the book.  My Goodreads review was as follows:  "I did enjoy this. Disconnected. Fractured. Slow to start, hard to see for much of the time where it is heading. Not at all consecutive and the main character un-named and of dubious character, but a thoroughly engaging read. And one I'll read again."

And two novels more by Daniel Blythe are on their way from Amazon (despite the fact that I subsequently discovered he also writes Dr. Who books!!!)
He also kindly sent me the image for the cover since it does not appear on Goodreads

Prospective TV series for wanna-be writers ...

A short clip (twelve minutes) presumably from a pilot, can be seen here 

Delphine, with her very first manuscript, gets an opportunity to show it to Carol Blake, who has taken on just two writers in six years (from at least a dozen submissions a day)

Daily exercise

Oh! the pleasures to be gained from limbering up one's brain with an at-first-sight-impossible cryptic crossword .

New York books ...

My notes for this day say:  Pouring rain so sans umbrellas we head for Times Square - tiny - just a set of junctions;  its impact in the tallness of its surroundings. Colour flashing while we stand in puddles, rain in gutter, shiny drains and gridded, griddled covers of the subway.  Others had umbrellas, all to be avoided and several had shed new-bought skins as nylon litter.

Damply we lunched in a Brewery eating place; the sort of room and ambience we had expected (hoped for) of New York.  Copper vats, lots of wood and wallpaper.   Apricot Summer beer and a pile of chicken crispy-wrapped bits, orange sauce too spicy but the white a well-chosen accompaniment.   And, as always wonderful bread.

In the evening another place of the same ilk.  Serious, large b/w photos above picture rail height.

I'd taken Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' to read but from the firs three pages I suspected it would depress me.  Soon after my daughter finished Colum McCann's  Let the Great World Spin 'Let the great world spin' - a tale of a tightrope walker in New York, written in beautiful language.
Equally beautifully written, with nastier characters but an eventually positive sort of ending was Vince Passaro's irresistably-title Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel
Followed this with another  Colum McCann - This Side Of Brightness  picked up, to my surprise in a local charity shop.  This was more harrowing than enjoyable, yet the writing kept me reading. 
And yesterday, at the Tynemouth Station bookfair, a copy of Jesse Kellerman's The Brutal Art

Musty in here isn't it?

Yes, it's been a while, but I have been away and have not yet got photos, notes in any sort of order, plus lots of catch-up to do.
HOWEVER I was directed to this site which amusingly deals with one of my bêtest noirs: book cover clichés

Tending the plot

On Wednesday morning the plot of my most recent, still-in-progress novel revealed itself to me and although much  of what I wrote on Thinking Ten, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week have been attempts to develop a single scene, much of it will doubtless be discarded.
 
Because, I’ve realised, now I know how the second death came about I need to knot the cords of coincidence which connect this second murder with the first.  A staggered sort of sheepshank, a clove and two half hitches, any of which, provided they are sufficiently subtle, will convince the reader of his cleverness in solving all before the end
.
First there is the wife, the mother of the victim’s son:  having made her bed she’s lain in it for seventeen years, but sees her chance for happiness slipping inexorably away.

There’s his brother.  Guilty of a number of things – manipulation and adultery – and holder of a secret he never should have been told.

Less likely, there’s his son, at seventeen like any son, he needs to free himself, and the recent jeering accusation of his peers that he might have inherited his father’s homosexuality makes adolescent shame a good enough reason.

There’s an unseen, unknown, presumed lover, heard arguing with him the night he disappeared, the same night that an adulterous DI had an assignation with his wife.  Was this DI lying when he said he’d only met to end the affair?

There’s a fellow-victim, who shared the first ordeal and is being encouraged to tell all, for the sake of fame and fortune – was murder thought the ideal response to a refusal to cooperate?

And this victim's uncle has perhaps the most to lose should the deemed-essential-at-the-time deception come to light.

The biggest problem of all, of course, is that it is me who has to solve it all before revealing it to the waiting-to-be-entertained reader.

Phew - a plot emerges ...

It started life as 'Susannah Elphinstone' a name which came to me out of the blue.  She and Luke Darbyshere became reacquainted and Baz and Madigan got involved too.
I always hoped it would be a psychological thriller.
And this morning, some fourteen months after I began writing it, I woke at 2.45 this morning with the knowledge of who did it, why, and some good ideas also about how I was going to be able to conceal the knowledge from the reader - is it any wonder I leapt out of bed to scribble it all down?

Initially, I'd written 15000 words before I knew who'd been murdered, and a further 40000 since,  getting to know some of  the newer characters: Stuart and Adam Randall, John and Michael Rendlesham and  Col Washington, along with Baz's Mum and Dad.  But I really did not know who was responsible for the second murder until today.

An invitation to come and play

The bandstand, round and somehow forbidding, but I’m sure I remember pale sun-bleached ecru deckchairs and once, a band.  Trees and a low brick wall between park and road and the other side a concrete path - ochre with orange and white pebbles - between grass and the drop down to the sand.  It was a run-down part of town, midway between two otherwise touching towns, gentility on a third edge, in the guise of a Grand Terrace of houses, forlorn and peeling, which sort of said it all.

Oh! and the octagonal little thatched house in the trees with it's pointed-top door which, no matter how often I asked, never became anything,according to my mother, other that "the place they keep tools in."   (Then it made me think of a charity money-box;  today I'd say it would be perfect for 'cottaging')

It was there I witnessed my first eclipse of the sun, entered a fancy dress competition and was eclipsed by a dark-featured boy dressed as Noddy.  It was there I had the conversation which ended, my mother aghast (it was the Fifties when no-one spoke of what was before their eyes) “You mustn’t ever mention it to her.”

And it was there I embarrassed as much as shamed and irritated my mother by climbing the steps to the slide only to become transfixed with fright at the necessity of sliding down the other side.

A response to an  invitation from Thinking Ten - a place I've too much neglected lately, whch is a shame because as somewhere to limber up, to have ideas come sparkling from unexpected places, it can't be beat.   I will try and go there more often. 

Little acorn of advice enables oak to at least start to grow in the direction of upwards ..

Sometimes you only need one tiny bit of advice to make a huge difference: "start as near the end as possible"* has enabled me to firm up my plot immeasurably :), especially in conjunction with reading Chris Brookmyre.

N.B. I had already done this instinctively, but reading the advice made me note and strengthen it, more assured of its merit.

 * Thank you Emma D, once again! http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e54eced2e18833014e8ba0ba66970d

All my trials: Scrivener

A recommendation for Scrivener last week - and a list of reasons why - from Emma Darwin's excellent blog.
I tried it once before when I set myself up for Script Frenzy, but both died within days (my fault - too little preparation of either Script or software) but now being aware of the amount of work it took to sort Not wanted on voyage into sensible order, and that the follow-up will be trickier, I thought it worth a second go.

The video is useful, as is the tutorial, but the best thing is that the 30 day trial is for thirty days, i.e. if you have a day when you don't use it, it doesn't count, you don't have to use it within that time.

One day spent wrestling, back and forth between tutorial and a section of my wip left me scratchy and exhausted, but I think it will, in the long run, be useful, although it needs to be remembered it is an organizational tool rather than a writing tool.

Inhibitions

They erected a barricade between themselves, all the while each blaming the other for it, each knowing that really they were the one responsible.  ‘If only he ...’, ‘If only she ...’ and so on and so forth, neither able, or willing to say what they really meant, really, truly wanted.

Upbringing, of course, parental ‘advice’, heavy handed, red-faced, oblique, couched in such formal twisty words, with averted eyes, that it was almost meaningless.

Peer pressure another thing that made them tongue-tied. 

How could she really be sure that what Jacky said was the best way really was, when she was such a ... well, not really someone you wanted to be copying, taking advice from.   Especially when it was couched in such a sly manner, eyes sliding to older friends, who sniggered as if they knew she was lying while you had no way of telling, because of your ignorance.
He ... well he’d claimed to have, already.   Not to her, (don’t be so effing stupid!)  but to the others.   Wasn’t sure that they’d believed him.   Part hadn’t wanted to, part had.   But he suspected they could tell it had been cobbled together from magazines and the film he’d found at the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe.

[This a Thinking Ten piece from a week or so ago. ]

How do they DO that?

I’ve just read three books in succession

Picked not quite at random, but certainly without deliberate intent to prove this thing.

Book A had a heroine called Lacey.

Book B had a man called Lacey and a heroine caller Lennie and Book C contains a minor villain character also called Lennie

It isn’t always names;  it’s quite often random references to, for example, a straw basket called a skep, which occur in consecutively read books, but I am certain that such a link  connects from one book to the next, every time.

 

Something to hang on to.

Howard Jacobson, at this week's Hay festival: "The author has an obligation to please the reader, but the reader has an obligation to be intelligent."

Shock horror! - Rock'n'roll Britannia

Picked up a link to this programme on FB early this morning and watched before 7 a.m. grinning like an idiot and wallowing in nostalgia.
It doesn't look very shocking these days, but I remember my father leapng up from the Sunday dinner table, hurtling himself across the room to turn the radio off, part-way through 'Forces Favourites' after Billy Fury so temptingly sang "I want to be your lover".

Dressing to tease?

A letter in yesterday's Daily Telegraph* referred to the cover of the paperback edition of Harlan Coben's Stay Close, saying it had 'absolutely no connection with the story'.  Coincidentally, I had earlier that morning, reviewed G J Moffat's Blindside on Goodreads, beginning with the question 'What the hell does the cover (plane crashed into a loch) have to do with the story?'

Such carelessness is not  universal:  in December 2011, the Daily Telegraph interviewed Suzanne Dean, who explained in some detail how the cover of Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending came about, and many, many books have what are obviously well-thought out covers.  Additionally, I remain fascinated by the ability of publishers to correctly lure me to he type of books I like.
 
So why do some so  totally disregard content?  Fail, at times to even bother with a photograph of the relevant location?  It's not rocket science and any book that has made it thus far deserves better; any reader not to have his intelligence insulted.

Harlan Coben is published by Orion, G J Moffat by Headline, a division of Hachette - neither of them unknown.

*from Keith Edwards, of Tattershall, Lincolnshire

Silver linings

The broken crankshaft of the Hamnavoe - the Scrabster-Stromness ferry to Orkney - was a nuisance by which we lost a day's time there, but we were able to travel on the boat from Aberdeen to Kirkwall instead.  
The return journey allowed me to take some early morning photographs of the entry to Aberdeen's harbour and make notes about the experience of sleeping aboard - all useful background information for 'Not wanted on voyage'

Acknowledgement

I always felt the long list of acknowledgements for assistance in the writing of a novel, increasingly  prevalent it seems, was just a tiny bit pathetic - after all, if they were proper writers surely they could  do it all themselves?

Humbled, I now know different.   A complete stranger, met only through the good offices of the 'whole MS read-swapping' group at WriteWords, not only read the whole of my second draft of 'Not wanted on Voyage', she also made sixty-one comments.   Some were a treat, noting phrases she particularly liked (and henceforth I will always include them in any critique I do), some were small but vital (like pointing out I'd written 'Madigan' when I'd meant 'Mirabel') and several were "too much show, not enough tell".

Having dealt with the minor points I am now tackling these larger ones and already I can see that I am making vast improvements.  Yes - I am making them, it is still my book, but I might not have done so had it not been for her pointing them out, and so I will gladly include her name among other acknowledgements.

And I am very slightly less trepidatious knowing this will be the novel I shall, in September, be handing first to a 'book-doctor' and then pitching to an agent at the York Festival of Writing.

Just marking the day

Today would have been my Dad's ninetieth birthday - in this 'three generations' photo he is younger than I am now.








It is also the anniversary of Effie Traves' birthday - in Timaru, New Zealand in 1891- and of her death, in childbirth in a hospital in Ymir, British Columbia.  She married my father's mother's brother, and a few years ago, in New Zealand we met up with a nephew of hers, who gave me copies of letters and photos.

Excarnation

Excarnation - the removal of flesh from the bones, a word known to me from reading John Hedges 'Tomb of the Eagles' wherein he describes burial practices in Neolithic Orkney.  It is my intention to do the same for 'Not wanted on voyage' since without exception the comments of four most excellent readers on WriteWords said, in a variety of ways, 'too, too wordy!' 

In one way it pains me to deprive the reader of the detail of how Ian and Lydia met, how Davy rescued Fay and Zoë's deceived her mother, especially when I have already wiped out how Natasha got pregnant, what happened at the blood donor session and just what a nasty piece of work Gareth's daughter is.   In another way, especially with the months of 'Prediction' practice I've had at fitting a tale into one hundred words - and making it interesting! - I actively welcome the challenge (and précis was something I always was good at.)
  
I envisage the finished product as being not entirely skeletal - but have no idea how long it will take.   Nor whether I'll have got sick of the whole thing by then.

Reiprocal writing help

On  20th March I posted about beta readers, wondering how they were to be found.  On 22nd March I joined the WriteWords site and a few days later, the 'Whole MS read/swapping' group.  There I posted one, then fourteen, chapters of my problematical 'Not wanted on voyage'.

In just three weeks I have had four folk read and comment on it, with honesty, insight and courtesy, which was way beyond my expectations (the reading, not the courtesy etc).
So I thank Gaius, Arboreal Sal, AlanH and Astrea whose comments have been exactly what I needed to know what is still required to knock this into a shape which others might want to read.  ('Prune' in a word - the length of my sentences, yet again causing problems; Astrea's "I don't think style should overwhelm meaning" being especially pertinent)   Can't say it'll be easy but am sure it'll be worthwhile.

It is, of course, absolutely necessary to reciprocate, to also read and comment on others' work, otherise the group fails to function, but that is no hardship when I consider the pleasure I get from that.  Also, there are myriad other groups, you don'r have to have an MS, but this I CAN and do recommend.

On location

Initial purpose of the trip was to revisit old haunts, where we did our courting (for that was what it was referred to as, in those days) but I immediately latched on to the additional prospect of some location research for novels.






'Making good' includes a couple of funerals, taking place in a graveyard described from memory.  The reality was, unsurprisngly, smaller, but also less sloping and further from the consequently hidden view of church and house that once belonged to Henry VIII, so the conversation between Sean and Bridie is inaccurate and has, in fact, to be fiction.  Of course.




'Longest shadows reach' is less problematical since much of the action, which takes place in 2011 - and one of the major inspirations - is a house which was demolished in the 1960s, so I will have far fewer qualms about sending Luke Darbyshere to stay in a pub which I had forgotten but whose location is perfect.  It too, is about to be demolished.

Fifty years ago today

Fifty years ago today I woke up in Saffron Walden, last morning of a stay with school friend Sue, a stay which both underlined to some extent my social ineptness, compared to hers, and included several ‘firsts’ - pubs and snogging against a wall with just-met strangers  -  all taking place against an insistent, ever-repetitive, slightly whining,  ‘From a jack to a king.’ 

Fifty years ago today, the bus ride home, Saffron Walden to Bishop’s Stortford and a second bus from there to Hunsdon, and me so filled with a heightened sense of  ... of something ... that I still recall the sensation, that fizzing self-awareness as I looked south across the valley of massed trees in Much Hadham to the space where the turreted fairy-tale castle was no more.   (This castle re-inserted itself into my head last year, become inspirational  background to a to-be-written novel, subsequently a found Flickr photo of its ruined state connecting me to a boy I sat beside in primary school, much more than fifty years ago;  the novel is now one-third writ.)

Fifty years ago today I dressed for the youth club visit (the reason for my earlier than otherwise intended return home) to the ‘59 Club’, in Hackney Wick, knowing only that  it’s leader was the ‘Ton-up vicar’, in brown shoes, mustard colour dress and nearly-black stockings which I still have, the rip reminding me of an unthinking trip on a rose-bush.

Fifty years ago  we travelled there by coach, me sat next to Gillian, and there, in semi-shadowed, high-ceilinged dustiness, I danced and talked to Steve, marvelling at the antics of the hunch-shouldered mods, gloomy circling round handbags and dressed in polka dots;  unexpected in a bikers’ club;  we snogged all the way home.

Callipygian and A Change of focus

A change of focus [32]
‘Yanno, no,’ Raptor’s expression pained, ‘how could I have killed him?  I was with you, he in custody...’
Pettinger grunted. ‘No... released on diplomatic bail... as per the fucking handbook.’   Then, doggedly reverting, ignoring the turbulence of messages from his superior, questioning his absence,  ‘How come my brothers knew, when I did not?’
‘Guessed.  I sent you here, paid for your education.’
‘Manufactured reasons for me not to return?
Sharp gleam of surprise, not sufficiently fast-hid, ‘Kept you safe...’
‘Why not protect me there?  Since you need me to eventually return.  And why, for fuck’s sake, why the tinpot embassy?’

A change of focus [33]
Raptor’s smile a recrudescent memory.  ‘Part of their grand scheme to wrest power; naïve belief that allying themselves with Britain in these turbulent times...’
‘Christ, don’t tell me they’re stupid enough to trust the EU handbook?’
‘They wanted a hand-out to support their fight against the Dubnovaskis.   I merely encouraged.’
‘Is Khakbethia really that poverty-stricken?’
‘It’s known hunger... as I know hunger now.’  Standing, ‘Time to eat, Yanno.’
‘You still have to tell me about Sally-Ann.  You knew her, had her, passed her on to me...’
Quietly, ‘Did not kill her.’
‘But caused her to be killed?’
Raptor strode ahead.

The most recent  entries for the Prediction which required the inclusion of handbook, grunt, and  turbulent.  And with thanks to my younger son for the word 'callipygian'

Omnibus plus

 

 A money-saving omnibus edition of the first three Bridie and Sean books with the extra, hitherto unpublished in this format earlier tale of how Jenna copes with a three month old baby and an adulterous husband 

Now available from

http://www.lulu.com/shop/sandra-davies/make-and-mend/paperback/product-20949179.html

and if you buy before March 31st, quoting coupon code VERNUM you pay 20% less

Cast in stone - always and ever?

I am the keeper of a large number of photos and documents relating to my Sutcliffe family, from Warley (the one near Halifax in Calderdale) and this afternoon received an email asking whether or not I knew the grave number my great-grandfather was buried in.  I did, and was able to furnish written proof in the form of a receipt giving details of the burial of his 5 year-old son in 1888

Soon after  Edwin's death, when the cemetery was still fairly new they must have had a photograph taken of the headstone, which has Tom and Sarah Sutcliffe as 'of Tuel Lane, Sowerby Bridge' carved upon it.

At a later date this inscription must have been erased and another one carved because by the time I photographed it, ninety-nine years later in 1987, the inscription clearly read of 'Little Moor Warley'

Levelling and loyalty

Jack was in the upper-middle echelons of criminal aristocracy within the City, Tao’s status similar but, because more country-wide, marginally less notable.
The manse owned by the holder of Tao’s Lisbon-stolen letters placed him far higher, as did the sovereign-price he’d offered against Jack’s head, whereas that on Tao’s had been raised by his yeoman brother and was of small account, save for the added influence of the eldritch witch.
She, giddily-overconfident, was still too much the novice, badly underestimated cell-mate loyalty, failed to prevent them getting drunk together and misunderstood the head-clearing effects of a syzgy of high-class whores.

This is part 23 of Tao's tale, inspired by prompts from  The Prediction, for which the less-than-sympatheric words this week were : eldritch, manse, aristocracy + syzgy (optional) 

TW3 (remember that?)

TW3 - Friday night, allowed to stay up late despite not entirely understanding the satire of Willie Rushton, not sure whether or not David Frost was a pain and loving the husky break in Millicent Martin's voice, but knowing that this was something new and shocking.

But I'm more referring to the past week - a scratchy week of grey cold, lots of reading (a Good Thing mostly) and bloody editing.  Sometimes editing feels good, improvements flow and you know things can only get better, but last week that 'are you sure you're not overwriting, losing the freshness?' question kept asking itself.   Over both novels, which are at the same stage, despite having been begun six months or so apart.

The reading has been mixed:  three fast-paced, violent, noir, damaged hero crime novels (Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Ray Banks), all superbly written but a factor in my mild dissatisfaction with what I've written (and no I do not want to emulate but in admiring one can't help but measure).  Frances Fyfield, more thriller than crime but much more 'English', and Tessa Hadley were equally enjoyable. 
[N.B. do click on the top five book covers in  montage in the right hand column for more information]

But yesterday I joined a group called WriteWords which promises much, provided I make the effort to participate.
This week's Prediction prompts are eldritch, manse and aristocracy, with the addition of syzgy if I fancy it.   Not sure how Tao and Carrion Jack, or John Pettinger and Raptor are going to manage those (The story so far can be read on Pages, above.)