Final decision! (Possibly...)

Right. This is the title, and this is the cover.

Almost certainly.

I think.

*clears throat*

Actually, no, it's REMIX.

Name my book

As suggested by Norm, I'm asking my trusty blog readers to come up with a better title for my book than Heart of Rock.

The original title was Catch a Falling Star, then Jade Goody used it, so I had to find a new one. Although there is no copyright on titles, it's an advantage to have a unique one so people can find it on Amazon.

Left is the cover, and here is a brief synopsis:

Ric Kealey is the charismatic lead singer of über-successful band, The Voices in my Head – and he died three years ago. Caz Tallis restores rocking horses in her Hoxton studio. When Ric turns up, shabby and alive, on Caz’s roof terrace, she is drawn into investigating the murder that led him to fake his own death.

The prize for a title I use? I will name a character in my next book after you, or give your pet a walk-on part.

Fretting over the cover

Book covers are important; people really do judge a book by its cover.

Vital for sales, they will attract a reader to pick up the book or click on the image - or not. Publishers decide what you get, because they are the best judge of what will sell. It must be nail-biting for an author, waiting to see how his book will look, when he has little or no say in the final decision.

A recent favourite of mine is the beautiful and witty cover of Gary Corby's soon-to-be-released The Pericles Commission; browsing yesterday in Waterstones I thought that the images and lettering on books has never been better - even though they are subject to fashion, and are now more genre-specific than they've ever been.

It's a bit daunting for anyone like me who plans to self-publish - but at least I won't get lumbered with something I hate. I've resumed my tempestuous love affair with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, and the image here is my best effort so far.

The purpose of this post is to get a reaction from readers of my blog. If you click on the picture it comes up larger. What do you think? Would you pick this up in a bookshop? Should I have the boasty quote on the front? And what would you expect the novel to be like going by this cover?

Honest opinions, please, don't spare my feelings.

Endings and beginnings

We are constantly told the first page of our novel is vital in grabbing the attention of a reader. Ray Rhamey in his blog Flogging the Quill analyses what works and what doesn't for readers who send him their first chapter. He often suggests that the writer is starting in the wrong place, and gets his readers to vote on an alternative beginning. My friend Alan Hutcheson told me to start Trav Zander a couple of pages in, and everyone preferred his first line: "I wish to acquire a dragon."

I think endings are as important as beginnings - after all, it's the last thing your reader reads, and you want her to put the book down with a satisfied sigh, not hurl it across the room.

Jane Austen knew what happened to her characters after the novel ended, and would sometimes disclose a tantalizing detail in her letters, for example that Jane Fairfax died early. But she doesn't tell the reader that.

Do all novelists know what happens after the last page? I do. I know what Trav and Isolda do next, and who Caz marries. I'm not prepared to reveal anything after THE END, though, even supposing anyone was interested, because the point at which your story stops is important. With Jane Austen, it was invariably the marriage of hero and heroine, and a couple getting together remains a popular happy ending to this day. After the ceremony, they subside into domesticity, children and contentment - and who wants to read about that? Poor Jo in Jo's Boys, married to a dreary middle-aged German and fostering lots of children makes one grind one's teeth, after her feisty start in Little Women.

Much as I like a happy ending, I prefer to leave the ends of my books a little open, so that the reader is left speculating on what will happen next, rather than tying up every loose end too neatly. Just as long as they don't get it wrong...

Tell me about your baddie

I realized the other day I like virtually all my characters, even the unpleasant ones, with very few exceptions. Can this be because they all represent a facet, however minor and repressed, of my own personality? They let me explore my undesirable traits I strive to control in real life. Perhaps my villains and baddies are like the Queen's corgis, who being dogs and not royal get to misbehave in a way Her Majesty would never allow herself to.

In Heart of Rock one of my favourite characters is Jeff Pike, The Voices' drummer, rich, impulsive, rude, foul-mouthed, a sexual predator; but also mixed-up, needy, with an abusive childhood and an undeclared love for the hero, lead singer Ric Kealey. He was fun to write.

So what I want the writers reading this to do today is tell me about one of your less agreeable characters: book title, character's name, what is horrible about him and why you like him - if you do. A brief quote, if you can find one that sums him up, would be good.

Speech marks - double or single?

Which do you like? And which do you use?

I prefer double, but I've always used single in my novels, for the simple reason that the key is right there, conveniently to the right of the semi colon, not requiring the Shift key. For double, it's Shift and 2. I believe on USA keyboards it's more accessible, which may be why they've stuck to double while in the UK these days we use either.

Now I am cursing myself for taking the line of least resistance. In order to accommodate American readers when I e-publish, I made the change in Heart of Rock, and it's been far from straightforward. Find and Replace changes all the apostrophes, too, and it takes hours to track each one down and correct it. And I care about apostrophes.

I'm not sure I've succeeded, either; I think I'll have to print the book out and read it through, possibly with a ruler under each line. Which is really annoying, as the typescript was, as far as one can ever say, typo-free.

Instead of an appropriate image, here is a nicer one of the blackbird who makes himself at home in my workshop. He's sunbathing.

Ellipses

In my occasional and arbitrary series on punctuation, I have reached one of my favourites, the ellipsis. I like it so much I have to be careful not to overdo it, for fear of giving my typescript a fly-spotted appearance.

You can use ellipses:

• to indicate missing words in a quoted passage
• to let a sentence trail off in an intriguing manner
• in dialogue to suggest hesitation or reservations

Lynne Truss writes amusingly and authoritatively about the ellipsis in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but oddly doesn't mention how handy it is in dialogue.

Dialogue in a novel is not like genuine conversation; it lacks the repetition, the scrappiness and the verbal tics of the real thing. You'd drive the reader mad with a true depiction of the way people speak. No, good dialogue in a novel is a stylized version of speech which yet convinces the reader that it is natural, and for this the ellipsis is invaluable.

My current heroine, Beth, lacks confidence, and at the start of An Unofficial Girl lets people walk over her. One way I show this is the hesitant way she speaks, just asking for people to interrupt. I don't know how I'd manage without those three dots.

What agents want

My sister bought me a book she'd enjoyed and thought I might like, The Last Time They Met, by Anita Shreve. It didn't sound quite my sort of thing: crimes of passion, incest, negligence, loss and guilt, but I started to read it. And stopped again. Here are the first two lines:

She had come from the plane and was even now forgetting

the ride from the airport. As she stepped from the car, she

Word echoes: from three times, she three times. Now I know no normal, non-writing reader would notice this, or mind it if he did. Goodness, look how popular Stieg Larsson's novels are, and on one of his first pages, I found five sentences in one short paragraph beginning with She. But you'd think an editor would pick it up.

Of course, what made it a real turn-off for me is the fact that as an unpublished author, I'm constantly being told that any error, particularly on the first page, will cause my typescript to be tossed in the shredder. If my writing is not polished till it shines, it has no chance of getting read by an agent's assistant, let alone reaching the shelves of a bookshop.

I no longer think this is so. What agents are looking for, it seems to me, is not a polished book; nor is it a book that they fall in love with (whatever they say). They are looking for a book they believe they can sell to a publisher.

That's all.

I'd prefer to blame Royal Mail, on the whole...

This round of submissions I've taken to enclosing a stamped self-addressed postcard for the agent to post to let me know my chapters have arrived. The messages I put on them are getting increasingly frivolous:

Your chapters are now with our team of readers, being passed eagerly from hand to hand was the latest.

And the worrying thing is, three out of five haven't come back.

Is this because Royal Mail has lost my submissions, or my postcards? London deliveries are now so unreliable, this could easily be the case. Or have my envelopes joined a tottering stack of similar unopened submissions, waiting till the lowliest intern has time to send the lot form rejections? I can imagine that, too.

Unpublished writers are told to do our research; personalize our query, check out the writers the agent represents, submit in the exact format the agent requires. It's a downer to feel that this doesn't mean our submissions will necessarily even be read. My feeling is that the slush pile has now become such a burden to agents that they prefer to find their authors elsewhere. I've been approached by one agent via Authonomy, and by another after submitting a short story for a contest.

No wonder people pay Cornerstones or The Literary Consultancy hundreds of pounds in the hope of being thought good enough for referral to an agent, or throng to literary festivals to pitch their novels in person, or spend £99 on a day's writing workshop at Harper Collins' headquarters. These days, unless a new writer is very lucky, he needs to find some shortcut that avoids the slush. Any ideas?

Alter egos and doppelgängers

This is a shot of my workshop balcony. Bang in the middle of that bay tree is a wood pigeon's nest, a twiggy and random affair. In the nest are two squabs, baby pigeons just out of the egg. Their mother sits tight when I water the tree, and we both pretend the other isn't there, even when our eyes meet.

Last week I heard a kerfuffle, and saw a crow after the eggs. I scared it off, twice, then hastily made the scarecrow in the picture for when I'm not there. I change my alter ego's clothes and move it about daily. So far it's worked...

My daughter remarked that it looks worryingly like me. Which got me thinking more about doppelgängers, those inexplicable and sinister harbingers of doom. (More, because the story I'm currently working on involves a young woman who is duplicated, and her inconvenient replica has to go on the run with just what she stands up in.)

In real life, people who see their doppelgänger, or someone else's, are inevitably shaken by the experience, and one can well see why. It happened to John Donne, Lincoln, and Shelley among the famous. There is something spooky about doubles - even twins, nature's clones, are a little weird - and you really, really, wouldn't want to bump into yourself; never ring your own number just in case you hear yourself answer...

If you haven't read it, take a look at Hans Christian Anderson's short story The Shadow. Now that's a strange and disturbing tale.

Sorry, just couldn't resist...

This is for all of you who, like me, have grown to like spiders (though my favourites are zebra spiders, clever, big-eyed and good at jumping). This spider will follow your pointer in a friendly way; if he's lurking out of view just click on the white space.

Rejection blues

Recently I came across this helpful hint on a parking ticket dispenser in Islington:

If inoperative you may use another machine, if one is available

Something about this reminded me of literary agents, and the things they say when they are trying to be encouraging while rejecting your novel. On this blog I generally avoid the subject of agents, especially anything critical - after all, I'd like one of my very own, so it makes no sense to snipe at them. But today I am sharing with you a few quotes from various rejections for Heart of Rock, and you'll see why I'm a little discouraged as I get on with my third wave of submissions.

I have to admit to liking your writing, however... : oh, all right, then.

I think you write brilliantly. Unfortunately I'm not convinced a publisher will buy it: this might make a lesser woman want to give up.

Books about rock stars are notoriously difficult to sell: I bet you didn't know that either.

We both found it well-written and compelling, but regret to say it is simply not the sort of thing we are looking for at the moment: *sniff*

I think you are a terrific writer and if you decide to write anything else, I would love to see it: a crumb of hope, I guess. Press on with book number 4.

You might like to try other agencies for a different response from ours: Now there's an idea. I'll just go and do that, then.

Sometime Around Midnight

I can't resist posting this song by The Airborne Toxic Event (terrible name for a band), as some of you may not know it, and some of you may like it as much as I do.

It's incidentally a demonstration of scene setting, conveying emotion, and how to do backstory with the lightest possible touch, that all writers can learn from. You can read the lyrics here.

Let it go at a raised eyebrow...

I expect you all read last month about the Congolese man who is trying to get Tintin in the Congo banned in Belgium, where the cartoon originated. Tintin's black sidekick is seen as stupid and without qualities, Bienvenu Mbutu is quoted as saying, it makes people think that blacks have not evolved.

My immediate reaction was that if anyone's world vision is founded on a cartoon created in 1929, there is nothing to be done for him. We have had this attempt to obliterate all traces of historical political incorrectness before - for instance, in The Dam Busters, a film made in 1955, the unit's mascot dog is called Nigger, as it was in real life. When the film was shown on ITV in 1999 and 2001, the name was bleeped out. In America, the dog in the film is now Trigger.

Enid Blyton has suffered similar censorship, with the baddie golliwog excised and a black chum inserted in Noddy's adventures. I find this extreme sensitivity over the attitudes of a bygone age in just the one area, racism, a little odd. Other lapses according to modern tastes go uncriticized.

If I were as touchy about slights to women in different centuries' fiction, I'd never stop tutting. One of my favourite eyebrow-raisers is in Stella Gibbons' The Bachelor, set during WW2, and published shortly afterwards. The heroine accidently runs over a man's foot, and when he casts aspersions on her ability behind the wheel, Alicia's idea of a retort is to say, Actually, I don't drive as badly as most women. That passed for a spirited comeback in 1948, I suppose.

I think we need to accept that novels are of the time they were written, and are all the more interesting because of it. Michelle Magorian's vapid depiction of WW2 in Goodnight Mister Tom has none of the authenticity of fiction actually written at the time, in part because it incorporates modern sensibilities.

And remember, aspects of our writing are certain to be similarly disapproved of in 50/100 years' time - in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

Insignificant and significant deaths in fiction

I've just been listening for the first time to The Devil's Disciple on Radio 7, by George Bernard Shaw. The hero, Dick Dudgeon, spends a large part of the play waiting to be taken out and hanged. He's extremely laid back about this impending nasty end, discussing it calmly and joking about it, so that I would have been astonished and outraged had he not got off at the last moment - as of course he does.

And it got me thinking about death in fiction, how it can devastate the reader or leave him entirely unruffled. I've rated the following types of demise, with marks out of ten for how much we care.

• Supernumerary: the classic unknown in a red top beaming down with Captain Kirk, Spock, et al, picked off by an alien sniper to show the viewer that this planet is hostile. 0/10
  
  
• Unexpected: Joanna, heroine of the 1975 film The Stepford Wives, strangled by the robot who was to replace her. See also the death of Henry Blake in M.A.S.H.. High No! What? They can't do that! factor, 6/10
  
  
• About time too: Little Beth, always sickly, not quite killed off in Little Women, finally conked out in one of the sequels (don't know which one, don't care). 1/10
  
  
• Oh good: my daughter was briefly and worryingly infatuated with a two-volume tome of Catholic martyrs, all of whom went cheerily to their unpleasant deaths as they knew next thing they'd be in heaven, hurray! 0/10
  
  
• Box of tissues required: a perfect example is Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea. I cry each time I read it, at the death of Hippolyta, then Hippolytus, and finally Theseus. How does she do it? 10/10

As writers, this is something we need to get right; we shouldn't trivialize death, or pretend some deaths don't matter, even in 'cosy' mysteries or violent thrillers; and when we confound the reader's expectations, it should be deliberate.

Horrible haiku

Could haiku be a joke played on the rest of the world by the inscrutable Japanese? I've sometimes wondered. Today I am putting forward the view that haiku, in the West at any rate, are not poetry.

While researching this post (see, the trouble I go to) I came across a haiku I like. Here it is:

Just friends:

he watches my gauze dress

blowing on the line

Alexis Rotella 1984

This is an exception to the generality of haiku. Wikipedia informed me that in Japan there's a lot more to them than having 5/7/5 syllables, but somehow this has got lost in transit. Over here, it's just an easy way to let schoolchildren think they are writing poetry when they are not. (The other way is free verse, i.e. a short piece of prose about nothing very much chopped up into random lines on the page.)

Proper poetry rhymes and scans, and from this derives its power and memorability. The writers of pop and rock lyrics know this. Alas, many English teachers do not.

Do tell me whether you agree with me. If you like, you can tell me in haiku form, which shouldn't take you much more than a minute. Here is mine:

Horrible haiku

What is your fascination?

Elementary.

Borrowing books

What is it about books that brings out the worst in otherwise honourable people?

By my twenties I'd learnt it was a bad idea to lend books to anyone except my mother, even if I'd written my name at the front. These days I try to lend only to my daughter. The blood tie, I find, protects my property - or maybe it's just that you can nag a close relative to return a book, where you can't nag a friend.

(Don't think I'm being self-righteous about this issue. There are at least three books on my shelves which are not mine. Plus a school copy of Love's Labour's Lost.)

And it's always the best books that fail to return - the ones you love so much you tell a friend about them. Then each time you see the friend, she forgets the book. Or you don't see each other for a while, and it gets forgotten. Or she's too busy to read it, and never does, and time passes and you realize she has now moved to the Isle of Wight... Or, by the time you remember to ask for it, she's totally forgotten and denies all knowledge, and says you are thinking of someone else. The anticipated pleasure of discussing a favourite novel with a fellow reader seldom materializes.

Eventually you give up, and buy another copy.

Footnote: writing this has reminded me of a book of my mother's I lent to an obnoxious girl at school, and never got back. Jules Feiffer's Passionella, a collection of witty graphic novellas. I've just tracked it down and ordered it. Three cheers for the internet!

Courage, Sacrifice and Brotherhood

I'm reading THE SOLDIER: a History of Courage, Sacrifice and Brotherhood, by Darren Moore, and I'd recommend it. It's a fascinating and thoughtful book.

It covers the experience of soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day, with many personal accounts. Every possible aspect is covered, including what makes soldiers reluctant to kill - their perception of the enemy as being like them - and what makes them want to - the death of their comrades. There is one heartbreaking photograph among the illustrations, of a soldier comforting another whose buddy has been killed, which alone is worth the price of the book.

I often feel, when reading battle scenes in fantasy novels, that it's all too obvious the authors have zero knowledge of war, fighting, or the psychology of the soldier, and their imaginings are wide of the mark. For them, this book could be the answer.

Buns for tea

It was breakfast time. Mother's face was very bright as she poured the milk and ladled out the porridge.

"I've sold another story, Chickies," she said; "the one about the King of the Mussels, so there'll be buns for tea."

I was misinformed at an impressionable age about the saleability of fiction: I picked up the idea that if you wrote well, you could sell your stories and earn a living, albeit a modest one. I risk your laughter if I tell you that I wrote my first novel, Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation under this misapprehension.

Today I name the two main books that gave me this notion (there were other novels, less memorable, amusingly catalogued under 'Careers' in my school library). All that can be said in their defence is that they're pretty ancient, and were even when I read them as a child; it probably was possible to eke out a living by your pen back then.

• Little Women. Jo March, every reader's favourite among the four sisters, hating housework and loving books, getting inky fingers from her writing and making her first sale to an editor before she was out of her teens. Also, poor soul, being expected to forgive Amy for burning the only copy of her manuscript. Darned if I would.
  
  
• The Railway Children. There are no fewer than EIGHT references to 'buns for tea' - which is how Mother celebrated with the children whenever an editor was sensible and accepted one of her stories for publication. Editors are a good deal less sensible and much harder to impress these days, alas.

Today, I guess it's not fictional heroines who promote the dream. It's JK Rowling, and the vast fortune she earned from her imagination.

Hey! That could work...

I've pretty much given up on Authonomy - the corrupt chart, the ridiculous state of the talent-spotter rankings, the loudmouths on the forum, but last week I got a comment there on Heart of Rock that I enjoyed. Teric Darken said:

I just want you to know that I have a vintage concert t-shirt of The Voices, and the very picture of Ric Kealey that you described (in chapter two) is emblazoned on the back, along with Bryan Orr and the other members!

Once I'd stopped laughing I thought, hey, that's a great idea - I could use it to promote the book! My mind ran on with researching rock promo tee shirts, where to find a charismatic stand-in for Ric for the shot, how many to print...then I remembered none of this would be necessary until I got a publishing deal.

*sigh*

I'm just off to press on with the submissions.