Fiction Uncovered

Fiction Unovered, a new lottery-funded site aimed at promoting mid-list authors, launches today, with support from retailers including Waterstones and Foyles. The lead illustration from the site (also shown here) is by my mate and yours, pen and ink illustration specialist Johanna Basford.

Good luck, Ian

Ian Hocking, an excellent writer, who's had the representation of a respected agent for over four years, has recently come to the difficult decision to give up on fiction writing.

Lots of writers--and lots who are far less talented or technically proficient storytellers than Ian--say they cannot live without writing. That it makes them sad or puts them into emotional turmoil. I'm not one of those sort of writers. I can see myself coming to a point where I could give up on serious fiction writing as Ian has done, if I don't taste that success. I can see other aspects of my life positively benefiting from this, both family and social life, and at work, but for now I will keep on keeping on. But I completely understand where Ian is coming from.

Rather than telling him he's doing the wrong thing, or that he's a quitter, I hope other writers can recognise the amount of soul searching this decision will have taken, and realise too that it's the cut of the pack that has meant Ian hasn't found a mainstream deal or a publisher to champion him, rather than a lack of talent or of interesting stories to tell. As well as being a talented writer, Ian has also done well--far better than most--in promoting his work, something that I know from personal that for someone with a level of integrity, as Ian no doubt has, can leave one feeling a little tawdry. But without this, he wouldn't have had reviews in national newspapers or blurbs from best-selling authors

Please do stop by and wish him well on this new start.

I wonder if they're open to crime writers...

In Guardian Media today there's an ad for Writers in Residence vacancies for four of her majesty's prisons. Each position comes with a fairly decent salary, for a writing position, but I only read the ad briefly, so am not sure of the additional duties it entails, though I imagine creative writing with inmates is probably on the list.

The ad isn't online yet, but I thought some of the readers of this blog might be interested.

Talking tables

Sadie Jones, she of The Outcast fame, talks writing and common sense over on Untitled Books.

Woof woof

My top five non-fiction books on canine companions, given that a certain someone is going to be sharing her home with a certain something soon:

Don't Shoot The Dog, Karen Pryor - this one's not really about dogs. It's about animal training using cognitive learning and positive reinforcement. Pryor was a dolphin and this book is the one that brought clicker-training out of the pool and into the obedience ring, and is a proponent of the nice rather than nasty approach to animal training. If you're wondering whether you'd like to give it a go, it reads a little like Malcolm Gladwell's cod-science books, so if you can happily read The Tipping Point and Outliers, this should be fine for you.

For similar behaviourist-edged writing, but more on traits and less on training, see also Stanley's Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs, which is one of the few places to say sensible things about breed traits.

The Philosopher and the Wolf, Mark Rowlands - I read this last year and mentioned it on the Veggiebox. Much like a canid, Rowlands is self-obsessed but not selfish. His arrogant, egotistical tone takes a bit of getting used to, but is commendable for its honesty and quite refreshing. Here's what Aimee Shalan over on the Guardian made of the book.

King Soloman's Ring, Konrad Lorenz - This is like a blend of the two books I mention above, insofar as it is a scientific book, but concerned with the topic of what it is to be an animal. There are more geese than dogs in it, but it has a lot of personality, and a strong sense of time and place to the anecdotes, which add to the interest. Lorenz was one of the fore-runners of modern ethology, which is where my own main area of interest in animal psychology lies. Lorenz won the Nobel Prize for Science and Medicine in 1973.

The Hidden Life of Dogs, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. I've only just found out that Marshall Thomas is actually a novelist. I'm keen to check out her. She's one of the modern breed of ethologist. This book is about the development of a pack of dogs, including a dingo or two, she shared her life with. Hers and Rowlands' are the most pleasurable reads here, great books regardless of their subject matter. I'd actually highly recommend The Tribe of Tiger, her book on cat behaviour, but as we were talking dogs here...

351 changes, and I'm done

The New Goodbye fast approaches a 'public-ready' state. (There are 351 minor changes to implement, and it's job done.)

It's a weird feeling, being on the verge of what is essentially self-publishing. It's not something I thought I'd ever be comfortable with, but, having read through the entire manuscript now, in an almost final state, I have to confess I've never been so confident in or so proud of a piece of writing, and I seriously think there's an audience for it.

It feels like it fulfills everything I want to achieve with my writing. Can an author really ask for more?

Added to this is the fact that it's going to be part of a very special art project, and I couldn't be happier with it. Johanna has completed work on her illustrated version of The Dialogue Of The Dogs and although it took her closer to seven days rather than seven years to complete, it is no less amazing for it: a two metre-long wordless narrative full of tiny detail. I'm not really one for superlatives, but it really is a wonderful achievement.

I'm getting that Kindling feeling...

The honest truth about my Kindle is that I love it.

Scott Pack has been blogging about his over the last week or so too. I reckon I probably prefer it a bit more than he does, but that's not to say he thinks it's without its merits. Go take a look after you've read this. His latest post is a comparison with the Sony Reader, which might help anyone (Matt) who's considering buying an e-Reader.

I own a batch of books I love, that I'll go back to again and again and the books as objects have sentimental value. There are maybe fifty or so of them. Other books I generally give away, or they end up dusty in the loft. So from now on, that collection won't grow as much as it did. I'll be using ebooks instead, especially for my commute, for which the Kindle is ideal.

What's so good about the Kindle? The main advantage over a computer (or phone or netbook, or, yes, iPad), is that, like all the other eReaders, it uses digital ink rather than a LCD or Plasma display, which is pretty much print-quality text on a screen. (If you've not seen e-ink in action before, it looks like someone has pasted some actual printed text on an acetate to a screen.) Reading from it really is a very similar experience to reading from print (except for light reflection on the screen in dim light.)

I've tried out the Sony Reader and the Sony Reader Touch in a couple of bookshops before, and also the horrible BeBook. Aesthetically, some people, like Scott, prefer the Sony product, some the Amazon. I side with Amazon. But the real advantage of the Kindle over the Sony devices--at least at the moment for UK users--is the Kindle has wireless access to Amazon's Whispernet (using a bunch of wireless networks, including 3G), which means you can use the Kindle without the need for a computer (other than the initial setting up of an Amazon account).

This is getting a bit wordy, so let's try some bulletpoints:

Why I like the Kindle:

• Easy to hold and don't need to hold pages open with your hand
• Shorter width of the page than a standard paperback means faster reading
• No headaches or eyestrain, unlike using an LCD screen
• Can hold thousands of books
• Wireless connection
• Can store other file types (although I think a USB stick or iPod Shuffle is better suited to this, it's good for emergencies)
• Free wireless inbox
• No distractions from other programmes (such as email) while you're reading

I'm also in the middle of editing a good few hundreds of pages of work. The Kindle has saved having to print these out for the final read-throughs, as you can also use the (not-magnificent) keyboard to annotate the work if you crunch it into mobipocket format.

So there you go, my tuppenny worth on using an ereader device. There're lots of other points to consider from the point-of-view of an author, and from the point-of-view of the publishing industry, but more on that another time.

(Bonus points to anyone who can spot the TV reference in the title of this post.)

Dream logic (or The Plot Thickened, and then thinned as if a gallon of water had been added)

In Which Our Hero Realises He Has Taken A Wrong Turning

You know when you have a dream and you're convinced when you wake up in the middle of the night that it contained the complete plot for a novel? Then you wake up in the morning and realise you're an idiot. Here are the plot elements I can recall: A man with a serious injury to his torso who has to look after a cattery with only two cats, but he needs to fly to America only they won't let him onboard a flight. So anyway, he gets to America, and there's an artifact, some museum piece... (this is how my memory returned to me this morning, in instalments, and it's sounding weird, but do-able so far, but then... Oh but then!) The museum piece is MAGIC! Oh dear. At least there was a chase through an elegantly furnished hotel to enjoy after this.

That is all.

Let it be: Doug Worgul's Thin Blue Smoke

I just had a week off work, which was nice. I also took a couple of weeks off from writing fiction, which was odd. Don’t worry, I’m not ill. Yesterday I pulled a rather nice flash piece out of the bag.

I had intended to post a bonfire night-themed story up here on the fifth or sixth, but didn’t get round to it. Maybe next year. The moment’s passed for now.

So there’re lots of things I haven’t done during my week off. What I have done, along with seeing some farm animals and visiting NT properties, is finish reading Doug Worgul’s Thin Blue Smoke (which Aliya raved about on this very blog way back when).

Take note. This is a very very good book and I urge you to go out and get a copy and read it. It is is about barbecue, blues (there’s a cameo by BB King) and God, a little bit. Primarily the book’s about love and redemption. So yes, it’s a good solid book, with the chapters consisting of subtly nested short stories. Top notch. Buy it.

What I was struck by when I came to the end of it though is how my understanding of the editing process interfered with how I appreciated the book’s conclusion. Thin Blue Smoke is pretty much constructed from these wonderful chapters that work as standalone short stories. David Mitchell did something similar with Black Swan Green, but Doug’s book is far more tightly plotted and due to this, for me, the achievement is more remarkable. Add to this the spot-on prose, the connoisseur’s appreciation of barbecue and of Christianity and the outstanding characterisation and all is well with the world.

But then, right at the end of the book, I felt like the rug was pulled out from me a little. The ending is serviceable enough, and perfectly plotted. I’m still happy to recommend the book profusely, but the ending (and I’m talking the ending of the book proper and not the epilogue, which is fine) smacked to me of editorial interference. But here’s the rub—Doug tells me this wasn’t the case. The ending is all his and fits with his original vision for it.

My perception was probably coloured by my feelings that the subplot about a criminal jars a little with the tone of the rest of the book, and lends it a certain ‘commercialibility’(I’m sure some marketing and books sales people somewhere use that non-word on a daily basis), but probably more than that it was being aware as I am of how the original version of Aliya’s Light Reading ended and that changes were made to what was can only be described as the blackest possible comic ending, to one with an eye on the potential of a suggested series. After much hard work and one and a half books written, Aliya recently announced that, actually, given market forces, the series is a no-go. Think of something else. She’s fine with it. But the irony is her book was tampered with—weakened in my opinion—to shoehorn in the opportunity for a series that never materialised. Knowing this made me wondered if any such tampering had gone on with Thin Blue Smoke.

I love the fact that as a writer it’s hard for an author to keep me satisfied. I look for the holes and slip-ups in voice and technique and it’s when a book—a book like Doug’s—is capable of being enjoyed by me without a single consideration of the technical process of writing, I know it’s a very good book indeed.

I like, for instance, Laura Lipmann—she of the spiderweb of coloured cord fame from the article Aliya linked to that’s on the WSJ site—and Jason Pinter well enough, but the cracks in technique are yawning ones in comparison to Doug’s writing, and down the scale slides to Mr Brown…

So there should have been no suspicion, really. Yet there was. And my enjoyment, my satisfaction at reaching the book’s end, was marred.

So know this as you go off and buy this grand book (there are plenty of turtles in it too, if you like turtles—I’m kind of ambivalent about them, but if helps shift a few copies), the book is the book the writer wrote. In all it’s glory, and should be enjoyed as such.

Thanks, Doug.

Amnesty of rejection

A proposed exhibition at the Royal College of Art is calling for your rejections. They will be displayed and then recycled to create "a document of positive affirmation".

According to the RCA's Students' Union blog, chosen letters will be on display in the Union for a two to three week period which will culminate in a "Bacchanal" on 11 December.

All the letters will be destroyed (shredded) and then recycled; turned into a "positive document" that, along with photographs of the process, will be framed and hung somewhere in the college.

The full story from Mark is up on Creative Review.

The New Book: The New Goodbye

Yes, it's a new book by me. A short story collection to be precise. Most of the stories in there have been published previously, and the ones that haven't, well, they're better than the ones already out anyway.

Here's the official blurb:

In this collection of realist short stories, Neil George Ayres details the often overlooked depth of modern relationships. From the self-contained love story of a modern marriage, through to the microcosm of the patrons of a working class public house, all life is here. If you love Raymond Carver or Jon McGregor, you should be in safe hands.

The book is available completely free. And, as is usual with me, it's short too, being comprised of a mix of traditional shorts and a couple of stories structured from linked flash pieces.

The cover image is by the talented Jaci Berkopec. And the book is produced and distributed courtesy of the nice people at Smashwords.

The book can be read online, or in the following ereader formats and computer document formats:

Kindle (.mobi)	Download
Epub (open industry format, good for Stanza reader, others)	Download
PDF (good for highly formatted books, or for home printing)	Download
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Download
LRF (for Sony Reader)	Download
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Download

It should also be available on the Sony ebook store and from Barnes & Noble fairly soon, but it's free, so doesn't matter too much where you pick it up from.

Review, are of course, always welcome. Hope you like it.

Write what you don't know

Tim Stretton has recently been keeping quite a detailed record of his wranglings with embarking on writing a new historical fiction. What I've ben interested in is his reading matter. He is digging into his genre, in an effort to find out more about his chosen period, sure, but also as they're the type of books he likes to read.

As close observers may know, I am in the throes of writing an SF novel (am about halfway through the first draft, and have a very able advisor for the more technical elements of the book), but my science fiction reading, especially in recent years, has been pretty limited, and what I have read, outside of Interzone, I've found pretty dull (Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear...) I never have really been a big SF reader, more fantasy. I've never read Asimov, or Zelazny. What gives me hope is I remember reading some while ago that Neil Gaiman always wanted to be a science fiction writer, as that was what he loved, but ended up writing fantasy.

Part of this new book is set in post-almost apocalyptic Britain where I'm on firmer ground--thank you 2000AD et al--but the other section is set in a, for want of a more appropriate phrase, virtual reality.

Outside of Neuromancer, I'm not much of a cyberpunk. I toyed with the idea of reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and also gave Charles Stross' Halting State a go recently, but these books are built, really, around gaming, which is something that, obviously others have done already, and also doesn't interest me much. But, perhaps more to the point, I find them a little intimidating. They make me wonder if I can really pull this off.

What do women think about?

My new literary novel is pretty much told from the point of view of a female character. I'm hoping I can pull this off convincingly, but any tips from the ladies much appreciated.

Personal Holloway

There's an in-depth interview with moral investigator Richard Holloway over on Vulpes Libres.

I read his Godless Morality a few years ago and thought it was excellent.

Rejection, acceptance and a Merry Christmas

Over on dovergreyreader's armchair, Fay Weldon tells how she came to write her latest book, in opposition to expectations of her publishers and the marketing and sales departments therein. Guess what? It was rejected. Luckily, Corvus picked it up.

In other news, The Friday Project's An Atheist's Guide to Christmas is now available.

And in possibly my first fit of brilliant item linking, here's Weldon finding God after 70 years the non-believer. (Okay, so, yes, it's over three years old and she converted almost a decade ago, so shoot me.)

"Pennies" from heaven

An amusing link from author and literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog: The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Outcasts

I'm just finishing up with my copy of Watchman and readying it for its trip back into the great outdoors, and next up is Sadie Jones' The Outcast.

Here's an interview with her from last year, in the Telegraph, talking about the frustrations of screen-writing and paying her dues as a writer.

At the foot of the article are four other--kinda obvious and lazy--attempts at pointing out other authors who had a time of it trying to get published. Rowling and Austen are on there, along with Frederick Forsyth who was rejected three times--what we wouldn't all give for just the three rejections, huh. Surely there are some far greater tales of rejection prior to finding wide-ranging success?

Who wasn't watching the Watchmen?

Due to the delights of Soouthern trains, my journey home was delayed and of a slightly circuitous route on Friday afternoon. After reading about and urging Aliya to suggest herself for a place as one of the writers on the Firestation Book Swap, and blogging a few weeks back about both Book Crossing, and my discovery of that weird John Le Carre book on the train, I took a seat at an intermediate station on my way home in front of the camera of David Berman, a photographer and film-maker making a piece on the Book Crossing project for the Surrey Mirror.

What this amounts to is little more than my hands may be seen reading a copy of Ian Rankin's Watchman, which David had left for me to discover on the free bench seat in front of his camera.

The book's a new-ish paperback, but I thought Rankin's introduction might prove encouraging to a few of late struggling with second (and third) book rejection and such-like.

Rankin wrote Watchman (yes, the title was inspired by Alan Moore's Watchmen, which came out not long before) after the first Rebus book had been published and at the time was in full-time employment as a journalist and with a three hour daily commute (no kidding) to contend with. He notes from his extensive diaries around the time that he was fairly certain he was about to be dropped by his publisher at the time. Watchman did get published, but it didn't set the world alight at the time at all, only to be re-published in more recent years when it became a bestseller.

Accountants have all the fun

I've just come over all Tim Stretton for the work in progress and had some 'fun' with spreadsheets. With a little help from Wikipedia and the Met Office, I've written an annual temperature scale for the next 150 years to add to my detailed seventy six year time-line.

Points of view

So I'm well into the throes of the new SF novel and, as alluded to previously, there are a lot of characters in it. The whole thing is written in third person from the various points of view of this multitude of characters, and I've employed the technique of having the narration reflecting the character it's dealing with at any particular time. I'm just beginning to wonder how sensible this is. With some of the characters it's almost indiscernible, given their similar backgrounds and motivations, but with others it's very pronounced. For instance, at the most obvious level, you've got American characters where the narration will refer to their pants, whereas if they were British I'd use the term trousers, or jeans or whatever.

Any opinions on this approach? Using such a diverse group of narrative voices is part of the joy of more non-traditionally-structured (like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten), but can anyone point out this type of approach in a novel with a 'normal' multi-character structure?