Byker Books - ooops!

Anyone reading my blog post from last week about Andy Rivers' appearance on tv, and trying to watch the programme on Wednesday 6th July, will soon realise that either they're in an alternate universe or else muggins here got it wrong.

Well, as far as I'm aware we'll all stuck in the same reality, which means only one thing. Mea culpa! Sorry. Money Watch, featuring Andy Rivers, is on Tuesday 6th July at 8.00 pm on BBC2.

I'll be watching and, now that we've cleared that up, I hope you will be too!

All that jazz

For a complete change yesterday we gathered up a couple of friends, various chairs and rugs, and the makings of a picnic and set off for the 'Mostly Jazz Festival' in Moseley Park.

This is a brand new music festival in Moseley, which already plays host to the internationally-acclaimed Moseley Folk Festival each September, and whoever organised it clearly has some 'clout' in the music business because the line-up included Courtney Pine, Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes, and several other luminaries of the jazz scene. (Whoever came up with the dreadful pun in the festival's name wants shooting, on the other hand...).

Moseley Park is the perfect venue for these smaller festivals - pretty, enclosed, intimate, yet large enough to house three separate stages, a food 'village', and space for several thousand spectators sat or laid out on the grassy slopes. Music, company and ambiance were all fantastic; sadly only the weather let us down. On Saturday it was sunny and around 26c. Yesterday iron grey clouds rolled across the sky and stayed there, stubbornly, all afternoon. A strong and surprisingly cold wind sprang up and by four o'clock it was drizzling. By five o'clock we were frozen to the marrow and decided, sadly, to call it a day. Of course, half an hour after we'd got back home the clouds cleared away, the sun came out and the temperature soared again, but at least we'd had four and a half hours of fabulous music and fun - which is better than most concerts when you think about it.

And our favourite 'act' of the day? Well, it had to be The Bright Size Gypsies, playing a range of 'gypsy jazz' and swing. They played brilliantly, and had the audience on their feet and dancing for pretty much the whole of their set.

Killing off dads

No, don't worry, I'm not advocating mass patricide, just pondering a fun little article on the BBC TV blog entitled 'Disappearing Dads'. To put it briefly, the author, Andrew Martin, realised that all his work to date showed fathers as 'mad, bad, just generally useless, or entirely absent' and that lots of other fiction followed the same pattern.

And you know, I think he could be right. A quick trawl round various classics reveals a trail of fathers who are missing, dead, or otherwise incapacitated. In The Railway Children the father is vital, but absent for most of the book. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo was an orphan and brought up by his older cousin Bilbo. Harry Potter's an orphan too, as is Garion in David Eddings' Belgariad series. Even where the hero is a (step)father himself he's absent in mind or body, like Dick in Daphne du Maurier's 'House on the Strand'. And in the two most recent books I've read, firstly the heroine was illegitimate and only discovered at the end of the book that her absentee father was the local lord of the manor; and secondly the hero's future father-in-law drops dead fairly early on. No exceptions to the rule there, then.

I'd love to know why this is. My immediate thought was that perhaps most authors have had terrible relationships with their own fathers and are either seeking revenge or simply have no experience of a good father-child relationship to write about. But Andrew Martin says this isn't the case for him, so it must be something else.

Is fiction simply mirroring the society of the time? In the past, lots of fathers were absent, perhaps because they were away fighting wars or exploring or setting up distant trade routes, and there must have been a good deal of 'seducing and abandoning' going on. These days dads are working away from home, or divorced from their kids' mother and living with someone else. There must always have been millions of fathers who've had a great relationship with their children, of course, but for some reason they don't seem to make it into fiction.

And me? Well, my relationship with my Dad wasn't particularly close and in much of my fiction I've realised to my shame that fathers don't really exist. Characters have doting mothers or bossy mothers or interfering mothers... but they might as well have been brought up in a test tube for all the mention I make of their fathers. Perhaps I should change that before it's too late, and actually write about a kindly, loving father for once.

Sheer brilliance in a book

Psst! Wanna read a book that's hilarious, poignant, intriguing and intelligent, all inside one cover? Then look no further than 'A Very Persistent Illusion' by L C Tyler, which is all of those things and more.

Blurbs can sometimes be vague or misleading but this one captures the book's tone perfectly, as well as summing up the plot: Meet Chris Sorenson - middle-manager, closet poet and co-inventor of the Sorenson-Birtwistle Revised Scale of Girl-Rage. He seems to have made a modest success of his life: he has a beautiful girlfriend (Virginia), two affable future in-laws (Hugh and Daphne) and a classic sports car with a genuine leather gear stick and one good wing mirror.

But Chris's apparently stable existence is about to be sent spiralling when Hugh dies suddenly. With Virginia in tow (as well as a certain French philosopher), Chris begins to uncover the truth about Hugh, Daphne, and his own dark past.

I fell in love with the very first line (Women have many different ways of showing disapproval, only some of which are immediately apparent to men.) and things just got better from there. Hardly a word was out of place and the sections of conversation involving historical philosphers (Descartes et al), which could have seemed awkward or out of place, were a scream.

I finished the book yesterday, after a marathon reading session in the afternoon. It took me less than a week, not because it's thin or because I was skimming, but because I couldn't put it down. I laughed, I turned pages, I identified with the hero, I even cried a little. I see from Mr Tyler's website that he's written several other darkly humorous crime novels. I'll be adding them to the 'to be read' list post haste. I love it when I discover a brand new author I knew nothing about, and they turn out to be this good.

Byker Books on telly!

Author Andy Rivers, whose crime novel 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' has just been published by Byker Books, is to appear on tv next week. Look out for him on Money Watch, BBC2, Tuesday 6th July, at 8.00 pm, when he'll be discussing ways to find work during the recession. Including writing crime novels, presumably. ;)

Who needs football?

We were determined not to watch The Match yesterday afternoon, partly because we're not big fans of football and partly because we had a funny feeling England weren't going to do very well.

We have annual passes for the local aquarium, so thought we'd potter off there because it's slightly off the beaten track and, crucially, nowhere near any pubs with big screens. And it was amazing! The roads weren't quite deserted, but they were very quiet compared to a normal sunny Sunday afternoon. We got a table at the cafe with a view straight up the lake - normally you have to kill someone to get one of those. There was a chap outside giving an owl display and I got to hold a beautiful Bengali Owl on my arm (with a suitable Very Large Glove, I hasten to add), and fuzz his feathers. And in the aquarium itself there were only two other couples wandering about, which gave us ample time to look at all the things we like best (the poison arrow frogs, the pygmy marmosets, the 'underwater tunnel', and even to chat to the staff about the animals.

It was a hundred times better than slobbing around and watching England lose...

Currently reading...

'The House at Riverton' by Kate Morton.

I borrowed this from my mother-in-law just before the holiday, since it looked like the perfect holiday read. Richard & Judy recommended it on their 'summer reads' list (slightly lighter than their ordinary book list) and although it was clearly chick-lit of the historical family epic variety, at first glance it was well-written with some lovely descriptions and a nice turn of phrase.

I have to admit, though, that I'm struggling. Gradually the balance has shifted from chick-lit to outright melodrama, and too often the characters are making choices or taking action based on what the plot requires them to do, rather than what they'd be likely to do in real life. Why on earth would a young serving-girl give up the love of her life, for instance, just so she could stay with her current mistress? I'd have a job believing that in the modern world; in the 1920s when marriage was the most important thing in almost any woman's life (unless she was in a professional career such as teaching, which this heroine wasn't), it just seemed silly.

On top of that, the book is narrated in the present by Grace, the 98-year-old heroine, ostensibly making an audio tape of her life for her grandson, who's vanished while on a round-the-world trip. I was looking forward to finding out whether Marcus ever reappears, and what he thinks of his grandmother's life story. But the book finishes in the past, on a note of high (and ridiculous) drama, and the present Grace vanishes with her own story left unresolved.

It's a good enough read if you want something to flip through by the pool, but I don't think the plot or the characters stand closer examination.

Sod's law...

...is alive and well and living in a supermarket in Warwickshire.

On our way home on Saturday we realised we were suffering from Empty Fridge Syndrome after a week away, so called in to a supermarket to stock up. I was reaching for a couple of yoghurts and didn't realise they were precariously balanced, with almost no 'lip' to the edge of the shelf. Inevitably, one toppled over. Even more inevitably, it landed upside down on the floor, burst, and transferred a good half of its contents onto the bottom of my skirt.

Yuck! To (mis)quote Captain Jack Sparrow, I felt sullied and unusual.

Pale cream yoghurt on a black skirt is a tad, um, noticeable, so I was glad when an assistant hurried over bearing the life-saving gift of a couple of wet wipes. I scraped the worst of the mess off and held my nose the rest of the drive back. The skirt went in the wash the minute we got in (as if I didn't have enough washing with all the stuff we wore on holiday) and luckily it hasn't stained.

But why, oh why, do these things always happen to me? *rolls eyes*

Pining for the fjords

Yesterday afternoon we arrived home after a lovely week cruising to Norway and back. We called in at a couple of the fjords a few years ago and loved the scenery and the welcoming people so much we vowed to go back - and this was the return trip.

We cruised with P&O on one of their new super-ships, Ventura. Unlike most passengers the ship is a means to an end for us - a lazy, idiot-proof way of seeing some wonderful areas of the world without having to make too much effort. There's a certain amount of 'institionalisation' involved, but it does make for a very relaxing holiday which is important for two workaholics!

Our first port of call was Bergen, Norway's second city and a beautiful mixture of old and new with an eleventh-century wooden 'old town' and some very swanky shops, bars and restaurants, all surrounding the harbour. Its main claim to fame is as the wettest city in Europe (apparently it rains 300 days of the year) and last time we went it fully lived up to its reputation and we got soaked. Twice. This time, the weather was just perfect - warm and sunny without being too hot - and it was lovely to wander around and take photos without having to wipe the camera lens every two minutes.

Second on the list was Flam (pronounced Flaam, or even Flom, according to the locals), which is a tiny village on an arm of Sognefjord, Norway's longest fjord. This was completely new to us and utterly stunning - a tiny, quiet backwater surrounded by some of the wildest and most beautiful mountain scenery we'd ever seen. Huge waterfalls pounded hundreds of feet down sheer cliffs, rocks the size of houses had tumbled down off the mountainsides, and there was still snow on all the higher peaks, even in mid-June. We strolled up the valley alongside a racing river, and found a tiny watermill that the mill-owner had built himself three years ago, using ancient Viking designs, to grind wheat and barley for the local people. He makes his own beer using the end product and let us try a little - and it was delicious! Far more fragrant than bottled varieties.

After that it was on to Olden, at the head of Nordfjord, for yet more stunning mountain scenery, this time looking distinctly Alpine with summer meadows, snow-capped mountains and glacial lakes. The main reason for stopping here is to see the fast-vanishing Briksdal glacier, but all the trips were hideously expensive so once again we set off to explore along the river and up the hillsides by ourselves. The village of Olden isn't quite as attractive as Flam and some of the passengers were very disappointed that there was nowhere to have a cup of tea. You can't seperate British people from their cuppas for long...

Finally we called in at Stavanger, another attractive city which owes much of its wealth to the oil and gas business. We'd seen it once before so rather than plod round the same streets and shops we set off for the Archaeology Museum (fascinating) and then the Oil and Gas Museum (also fascinating, surprisngly so for me). Stavanger shared the European City of Culture with Liverpool a couple of years back and one result is the largest selection of museums I've seen anywhere outside London. We could just as easily have gone to the Printing Museum, the Canning Museum, the main city museum, the Telecom Museum, the Guards Museum, the Fire Museum, or the Maritime Museum... but we'll save those for next time.

Now all we have to do is unpack, wash pretty much everything we own, and settle back into real life. It feels rather strange at the moment.

What's wrong with quotation marks?

We didn't learn much formal grammar at school, but we did learn a few simple rules that have stayed with me for life. One of these was the use of quotation marks (" or ') to indicate speech. You know how it works - you bung one set of marks at the start of a character's speech, and a matching set at the end, and hey presto - you have a simple, instantly-recognisable shorthand or code that shows when a character is talking.

Just lately, though, I'm coming across an increasing number of books where this rule has changed. I've seen three in recent months, including 'Haweswater' by Sarah Hall which was nominated for the Booker Prize, and 'Accidents in the Home' by Tessa Hadley.

In each of these books the quotation marks had been eradicated, and the only indicator for speech was a long dash at the beginning of the dialogue. There was no corresponding mark at the end, and there were absolutely no speech 'tags' of the 'he said', 'she shouted' variety. As a brief example, a piece of dialogue would look like this:

-- Nice weather we're having.

-- Aye, not bad for the time of year.

-- How's your garden doing?

Straight away I found several problems with this system. One, I'm not used to it, so every time it was used, it dragged me out of the story. That might change, of course, if the system becomes common and I get more familiar with it, but at the moment it's a problem.

Second, as you'll see from the example above, it's very difficult to work out who's saying what. Is that conversation between two people, or three? There's no obvious way to tell if the garden question is character one again, or somebody else chiming in. In long sections of dialogue between more than two people, it's impossible to keep track and you find yourself guessing, or having to go back and count the lines to see if the seventh line is character one, two, or five.

Lastly, without a mark at the end of the dialogue, it's hard to tell when a character has finished speaking and the book has returned to narrative. In Hall's case this was handled by always starting a new paragraph after each piece of dialogue, which sort of works. But Hadley's 'Accidents in the Home' doesn't even follow this logical pattern. You get mad paragraphs like this cropping up:

-- Well, that's what I'm picking up. That's what we're all imagining... It's like a sign, a sign of cruelty and abuse. I don't even want it in the house. Seizing the tea towel again she turned her back on them all and started opening another bottle of wine.

My initial reaction to this was 'WTF? What is going on?' It jerked me right out of the story and the overall effect was so silly I was tempted to giggle, in the middle of a supposedly fraught emotional scene. Hmm. Not, I suspect, what the author or the publisher intended.

So what is this sudden thing with dashes rather than quote marks? Is it purely a fad? Is it an attempt to do away with tagging, which has fallen out of favour in some literary circles? Whatever it is, I have to say to the authors, editors, and publishers concerned, IT AIN'T WORKING, GUYS. Please find something else, or stick to what you know. The quotation mark system has been with us for a long time for a very good reason - it works. Why change that if you don't have to?

Slug's revenge #2

The slugs in our garden must have read my recent story and decided to take revenge. We got back from a week away to find one had broken into the kitchen, made a bee-line (or slug-line?) for my beautiful stainless-steel oven and spent the entire week cavorting madly around, leaving a trail of hideous slime all over the door, the knobs, the handle and anything else it could find. I spent most of yesterday evening with my head in a bucket of suds trying to wash the mess off, but the acid in the slime has etched into the stainless-steel (whoever decided to call that stuff 'stainless' got it dead wrong) and permanently marked it. And of course, the minute I'd finished and turned my back, it crawled out of whatever hole it had been hiding in... and left another gooey trail over the bits I'd just cleaned.

I didn't actually whack it with a mop, but it was a close-run thing.

Perhaps I should have put a disclaimer at the end of my story. You know the sort of thing. "No slugs were harmed during the making of this work of fiction." I'll go and add it now. Otherwise I'm likely to get back from my next shopping trip to find a whole procession of the little blighters, slithering round the floor waving 'no cruelty to slugs' placards.

Safe and sound

Just in case anyone has switched on their tv, seen the terrible events unfolding today in Western Cumbria and is worried about us, I thought I'd drop a quick reassuring line to say that both Dave and I are fine. Luckily Windermere is the opposite side of the county and although it's only around 15-20 miles as the crow flies from Boot, there are a couple of large lakes in the way! The worst that happened was that following advice from the local police, we had to stay indoors with the doors locked for a short time this afternoon, until it was confirmed that the gunman had been dealt with. After that it was business as usual - a short but hot stroll down the hill into Bowness.

It's been a lovely sunny day here which seems to make the day's events even stranger and more surreal. I'm beginning to think Cumbria is jinxed; in the last six months we've had floods, snow, ice, a coach crash and now a string of shootings. Whatever next? :(

Call for submissions - Every Night Erotica

This morning I found an email in my inbox from the editor of this brand new e-zine, inviting me to submit stories. These days I'm concentrating more on my dark, gritty urban contemporaries and flash fiction than I am on romance or erotica, so I thought I'd pass on the call in case anyone else would like to have a go.

The zine pays $3 per story (with a further $3 if you sign away anthology rights) and the only slight worry I have is that they ask writers to electronically 'sign' a contract during the submission process. In the wrong hands, this could lead to (any) publisher taking rights without officially accepting a story, but if you're happy to take that particular hurdle in your stride this could be an interesting new market.

They publish one new story (of up to 2,000 words) every night, US time.

Here's the blurb from the editor.

----

Every Night Erotica intends to publish a new sexy story each evening 365 days a year! To that end, we are looking for submissions from everyone - multiple times! Please pass the word along! We published our first story on May 1st 2010 and we have been very well recieved thus far. Visit us at www.everynighterotica.com to read the latest publication.

We'll satisfy two markets:

WRITERs

Experienced or virgin writers are welcome to submit their own original erotic works using our online form. We are happy to include a short bio of the writer, as long as one is provided.

READERs

The reader will visit each evening to enjoy the pro-offered erotic tale. They may choose to sign up with us and we'll send each new sexy story discreetly to their inbox. We're even going to archive past stories so they don't have to, that way they can come back multiple times to renew their favorites or rediscover something sexy from the past.

Please visit us at www.everynighterotica.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincere Thanks,

Jennifer Case

ENE Editor
www.everynighterotica.com

CiB shuts up shop

The free lease on the Created in Birmingham shop has expired and for now the shop has closed. I picked up my remaining Radgepacket volumes this morning which means that temporarily they're unavailable in physical print format from anyone other than the publisher, Byker Books. However, the organisers of CiB say the whole experiment has been a resounding success and they're looking for new premises as we speak.

I'll be saving my books to sell with them again, and as soon as I know where they'll be popping up next I'll post full details here.

Woo - a whole paragraph!

I'm not sure I can really call this a 'story' because it's only 75 words long and contained in a single paragraph. They all count, though, and that's exactly what Paragraph Planet, an online flash writing magazine, wants.

I came across the site months ago and have been meaning to send them something ever since. Fellow writer Sharon Maria Bidwell had some success with them in April and that spurred me on. I scribbled two or three different 'paragraphs' (they all have to be exactly 75 words long), chose the best, and submitted it.

Yesterday I had the terrific news that Rollercoaster Ride has been accepted, to appear on 7th July. As usual I'll post a reminder nearer the time so you can read this tiny snippet about a child at a fairground.

Writing to such a tight target is surprisingly difficult, even with previous experience of flash fiction. I don't have too many problems getting a story down to less than a hundred words, say, or even less than fifty. But hitting a specific number of words (which has to include the title) is bloomin' hard work. I found I'd written a very nice story in 74 words, for instance, so I fiddled around and then found it was 76. ::headdesk:: Still, I got there in the end and enjoyed the challenge so much I've now written several more. Watch this space to see if Paragraph Planet take any more in the months to come.

Good grief - is it summer?

It's suddenly turned warm here in Brum. The sun is out, flowers are popping out in their own mini baby-boom and the swifts are swooping and screaming across the skies. I do believe it might be summer.

After such a long cold winter (and an unimpressive spring) I'd almost forgotten what warm weather feels like. It's lovely to be able to stroll outside without wrapping myself in umpteen layers of jackets, scarves, gloves and boots. Goodness knows how long it will last, so I'm off to spend the afternoon in the garden. Normal service will be resumed shortly. ;)

Best guitarist in the world... ever

Last night we had our second Big Night Out in a couple of weeks; this time to the NEC Arena to see Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. The tickets cost an arm and several legs, but we figured it was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing since he's not getting any younger and seats at his concerts tend to be like hen's teeth.

The last time we were at the Arena it was some years ago, to see Rush live. To be honest, it was a memorable night for all the wrong reasons. The venue looked scruffy and unfinished, everyone in front of us stood up the minute the music started so I got no view at all, the air was blue with cigarette and pot smoke (both of which I'm violently allergic to), and the accoustics were absolutely, shockingly awful. The Arena is basically a corrugated tin shed and if you turn up the amps high enough the whole building vibrates in time to the bass and you can't hear a ruddy thing!

Thankfully, this time the experience was much, much better. The Arena was refurbished a couple of years or so ago so it's now vibrant and stylish. The smoking ban has come into force. The stands are no longer so temporary that there's a huge gap at the back of the highest row, leading to a sudden sharp drop back to floor level. And somebody, somewhere seems to have done something about the accoustics because they were fine.

And the concert? Well, it was fantastic. You can't get much better in terms of sheer musical expertise than these two. Clapton played on not one but four different guitars (not all at the same time, I hasten to add) including electric and accoustic, and his economic style made it all look far too easy. And Winwood was a revelation, playing guitar, organ and grand piano and singing beautifully. They played a great selection of tracks including blues, blues-rock, jazz, and one or two poppier hits and they played non-stop for over two hours, with no interval, and came back for a longish encore. And their sheer professionalism meant they were note perfect all evening and improvised and 'jammed' together on pretty much every track.

The Arena holds just shy of 15,000 people now and by the end of the evening every last one of them was on their feet, stomping and cheering two brilliant musicians. We felt a little sorry for Winwood; his lengthy solos brought decent applause but Clapton only had to play two chords and the place erupted. But then he is a legend in his own time and I'm very, very glad we finally got to see him, in the flesh, live.

There's a review of the concert by the Birmingham Mail here which says pretty much the same things I just have, only better. And I promise I won't say a word about the twenty-five minutes it took us to get out of the NEC car park afterwards...

Radgepacket 4 review

Just a line to say there's a new review of Radgepacket Vol 4 at The Crack magazine.

"These short stories aren’t for the timid or fainthearted. They are gritty and wicked and brilliantly written."

You can read the whole review here, and thanks once again to fellow Radger Paul Brazill for bringing this to my attention.

Deafened again...

And it has nothing to do with music this time.

The local council have been digging up the road outside our house. Not just a small patch of tarmac, mind you, but the whole road, from one end to the other. Yesterday they scraped all the top surface off and today they've been putting new tarmac on. It's going to look fantastic when it's done but my goodness, the noise.

Yesterday we had an enormous tarmac-grinding machine tacking back and forth, as well as vans, lorries, a roadsweeper and two pneumatic drills going full-tilt from 8 am to 5 pm. Today we've lost the tarmac-chomper, but kept everything else and gained a huge tarmac-laying machine and two steamrollers.

The house has been quivering for hours and my head is starting to vibrate!

Dazzled and deaf

On Sunday night we had one of our annual treats - a trip out to an Aussie Pink Floyd concert at the NIA. This was the third one we'd been to and they're so amazing we decided to invite our friends - and they loved it too. The evening kicked off with a great meal at Around the World in 80 Dishes (good food, worryingly quiet) then a stroll past the canals to the NIA.

Our seats were brilliant - on the raised level but not too high up, and right in the centre so we could see everything. And well worth seeing it was too. Our friend Nicky commented that she'd never seen a concert where there was so much going on - the musicians on stage, vast graphics on a large screen, lasers and lights... and inflatables. ;) It's become something of a tradition that they have an inflatable pig with flashing red eyes, and because the band are Australian, an inflatable kangaroo. :D

The music, as ever, was gobsmackingly good. I swear these guys get better ever time we hear them. They may 'only' be a tribute band but they have a name for being the best tribute band of any band anywhere in the world and boy, are they good. Close your eyes and you'd be forgiven for thinking the clock had reset itself to the late 1980s, a parallel universe had kicked in, and the real Floyd were up there on the stage. The only real difference is that where Gilmour et al managed with a four-piece band, it takes APF two drummers, three guitarists and two lead singers to create the same effect. But when the results as fantastic as this, and when they perform a three-hour set with only a brief interval for drinks, who's complaining. Certainly not us. We came out dazzled by the light show and deafened by the music, but very very happy, and we'll be on the look-out for next year's tickets the minute they go on sale!

Wimping out of a walk

Yesterday I discovered details of this rather fascinating art/sculpture walk around Birmingham, which is being publicised as part of the BBC's new 'Modern Masters' series about modern art.

This morning we were all set with walking shoes, cameras and a map to set off and explore. Then we saw the weather. For the first time in weeks it was raining - not heavily but with a persistant spatter that was too little for umbrellas but too much for comfortable walking. Added to that it was bloomin' cold, and very grey and unprepossessing. It would have been far too dark to take good photos of the sculptures, which is half the fun. So we took a 'rain check' (sorry), left the walk for a better day and went shopping instead.

Shame, as Birmingham has a surprising amount of sculpture hidden away amongst the streets and office blocks and although we know some of it very well (Anthony Gormley's Iron:Man, above), some would have been completely new to us. Hopefully we'll find time to do the walk soon and I'll post any photos I take here.

All thanks to a savage Alsatian

My oldest cousin died late last week. As with many families left over from Victorian times, our ages were wildly different - she was well over ninety and I'm, well, not.

She'd had a wonderful, full life teaching languages in a local school and making hundreds of friends via the church and her various interests. I'm still sad, though, because she'd been a fixture in my life ever since I first moved to Birmingham to work as a scared twenty-one-year old.

I'd never so much as visited the city before and didn't have a clue. The B&B where I was staying was a mean little place whose owners seemed to live more for their own convenience than their guests' comfort. After a few days they suddenly announced that oh, hadn't they told me? they didn't do food at the weekends. And I was left to feed myself, on a Sunday when pretty much everywhere was closed. There's a Greek restaurant on the main road, they rather unhelpfully said. You can eat there.

I didn't eat there, I phoned my parents. They were too far away to come and bail me out, but they did tell me about Joan. "She lives fairly close, why don't you give her a call?" So plucking up my courage, I did, and she was wonderful. Within half an hour she'd marched straight round and was bobbing nervously up and down on the doormat while the owners' large and savage Alsatian dog hurled itself at the inside of the front door. Once the dog had been dealt with she took me under her wing, took me home, and fed me. It turned out we had all sorts of interests in common and we became firm friends; I joined her church and visited regularly for Sunday lunch, and when I finally got a place of my own I invited her back there too.

I'll really miss Joan. She might have been from an earlier generation but she never lost her fascination with and sheer love of people. She was interested in everything she heard, and a slightly 'Miss Marple' manner hid a keen mind and a wonderful grasp of human nature. You could tell her anything and she wouldn't be shocked, just full of curiosity.

It seems odd to think that if it hadn't been for that B&B I might never have met her. I hated that bloody Alsatian at the time, but looking back I have a lot to thank it for.

Rationalising characters

This week I yanked a novel off the shelf, where it's been festering for the best part of a year. I'd got horribly stuck on one particular scene which stuck out like a sore thumb, but which I simply couldn't think up a suitable replacement for, and it was only this week that I suddenly thought of a solution.

When I came to read through the relevant chapter, though, I found that scene was only part of the problem - a symptom rather than a cause. You get so familiar with works in progress that sometimes you forget the details and in this case I'd forgotten that I'd made the love interest American, probably because I was writing for an American market back in the day when I started the novel.

There's nothing wrong with an American love interest, of course. It's just that being British, I'm not entirely familiar with American dialogue, American history, American culture. Most of what I know comes from tv series and films and might not always be strictly authentic, and I'd never even been to the city I had the character coming from. This all made it much harder to familiarise myself with the character. What would his accent sound like? Where would he work? Which part of the city would he be likely to live in? What's the attitude to gay men in that city? If I don't know this sort of basic stuff, I'm never going to convince my readers that the character is a real person.

I started to ask myself why the character needed to be American. Did it add anything to the plot, or to the character himself? The quick answer was no, not really. There were a few culture-clash style comedy moments but very little else, and it's easy enough to rewrite those.

So, this week my American has become a Liverpudlian. I know that city pretty well; I'm familiar with the accent which means I can hear the character's voice in my mind and know the sort of things he would or wouldn't say. And I can 'place' him geographically, and come up with a few amusing anecdotes about Liverpool, to add a bit of local colour. It'll mean a heap of rewriting, of course, but I already feel happier that the novel will be better as a result.

I don't think I've ever re-nationalised a character before, but there's a first time for everything...

Once there was... a disappearing blog

A couple of months ago I discovered the Midlands-based writing/resources blog Once There Was, and promptly stuck it on the list of blogs I follow. It had some interesting articles and useful links, it wanted stories for an anthology, and it was running a flash fiction contest. I entered the latter and was delighted when my story was 'placed' and appeared on the blog. The winning entries were also posted (and very good they were too), but after that I'd noticed the blog wasn't being updated any more.

I assumed the owner was on holiday or 'otherwise engaged' and checked on a weekly basis for anything new. This week when I clicked the link I was greeted with a mostly blank page and the alarming words 'the author has chosen to delete this account. No content is available'. Well, that can happen with blogs. It only takes the blog provider's server to be up the spout and the whole thing can vanish for an hour or two, and then reappear as though nothing had happened.

But Once There Was hasn't reappeared. The blank page and the message are still there, several days later, and it looks as though the owner has pulled the plug. This is a real shame, not least because it was such a friendly and useful site. I've had to take all the links to my flash story off my website and I have no idea what to do with the story I'd almost finished for the anthology. I'm left in limbo, wondering whether I missed a re-direct to another site, or any other sort of explanation.

If anyone knows what happened or where I can find Once There Was in the future, please get in touch. I'd hate to think I was missing out on all the fun somewhere else on the net! In the meantime, I'll have to chalk it down as the strange case of the disappearing blog...

Phone shop sharks

Dave's been looking around for a new mobile phone lately. His is now several years old and although there's nothing physically wrong with it, the rate technology moves on means it has been left lagging behind. Since he uses it all the time for work, something with the latest gizmos is pretty much essential.

This afternoon we happened to be passing a mobile phone shop, so we called in. We collared a salesman and explained that we were looking specifically at the new Nokia handset and an O2 tariff because several of the places Dave works can't pick up any signal from the other networks. We asked what their best tariff would be. He ummed and ahhed, said he would have to check with his manager, and sat us down to wait.

After a while the manager came over and the two of them started to ask us a load of personal questions and write the answers on a form. First question was: What's your home telephone number? This always annoys me, because it's quite obvious they don't need it and are only taking it for marketing purposes, so I told him it was ex-directory (which it is) and we don't give it out. After that he asked for Dave's mobile number, our name, our post code, and even our broadband provider. Quite why these details were necessary wasn't explained.

In the meantime the manager was doing his level best to sway us away from Nokia and O2, for some unspecified reason. Were we sure we wanted O2? Were we really, really sure? Why didn't we go for the i-Phone? Because we want the Nokia, I rather unhelpfully replied. Oh, he said. But why do you want O2? By the time we'd explained for the fourth time that we couldn't pick up any other signal, we were beginning to wonder what was going on.

Eventually, after much looking up in books and muttering amongst themselves, the pair of them came up with a quote for the tariff, which was reasonably competitive but not exactly outstanding. The salesman then asked Dave to sign the form with all the answers on it. "What am I signing for?" asked Dave, who's been caught before. "Oh, nothing, it's nothing, just some internal stuff for us," the salesman replied, looking shifty. We read the form. It turned out to be an agreement that we would purchase mobile phone insurance from them. Dave promptly ticked the 'no' box, but signed the form.

The next time we turned round, we found the salesman quietly filling in a load of other 'yes' boxes on the form, that quite patently didn't apply to us - but that would have been covered by Dave's signature. I asked for the form back and changed all the 'yes' ticks to 'no'. I then turned the form over. In small print on the back, it said 'by signing this form you are agreeing to let us contact you for marketing and research purposes, and to let us sell on your details to related companies and other businesses for marketing purposes' or words to that effect. On a form that was supposed to be 'nothing' and 'just for internal stuff'.

Needless to say we walked out of the shop without buying a phone, and the whole experience left us feeling grubby and used. What a difference from the O2 shop we visited a few days ago for a similar quote, where they told us the various tariffs without taking so much as our name and were friendly and polite throughout.

I very rarely 'name and shame', but Phones4U Kings Heath branch, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

The reality of writing

Writing, almost more than any other occupation, suffers from a strange and skewed perception of itself. In part this could be due to the way writers are portrayed in films, on television, even in other books. Writers tend to be shown as either mad ('The Shining') or bad ('Secret Windows') and the business of writing is shown as terribly artistic and genteel. I've had any number of people say, when I've told them I'm a writer, 'Oh, that must be a lovely hobby...' and the general perception of writers seems to be that we sit in a summerhouse surrounded by flowers, sipping wine (or tea) and tapping out our latest novel on an ancient typewriter.

At last there's an antidote to all that in the shape of a wonderful, and wonderfully funny, article by author Kate Douglas about the reality of writing and publishing. No floating around in summerhouses for Ms Douglas; she emphasises what anyone who tries to make a living from writing already knows - it's bloody hard work most of the time.

It’s great—you write full time, the kids are grown and three months is more than enough time to get a book written, right?

Yeah…sure. If that’s all you do.

I read the article, laughed, winced in sympathy, and wished I'd written it. I may not be writing simultaneous series of novels for different publishers, but I've been there with the edits and the cover art information and the second round of edits and the third round of edits and the proof-reading, all whilst trying my damndest to write something else. It makes juggling with chainsaws look easy. It's worth it in the end, of course, when you have your latest book or story published, but sometimes I do find myself wishing that people realised just how much of a full-time, business-like job writing is....

Tourists for a week

Last week we had our first visitors to stay at the Lakeland cottage. They'd never seen the area before so we put our tourist hats on and took them for a cruise on Lake Windermere, a walk round Bowness and Ambleside, and a trip to the old grammar school at Hawkshead where the poet Wordsworth was a pupil.

Once they'd gone we forgot to take our hats off again and ended up doing all sorts of other touristy things. We visited the South Lakes Wild Animal Park near Barrow in Furness, we took a ride on the Lakeside & Haverthwaite steam railway, and we popped into the Lakes Aquarium to see our favourite pygmy marmosets (yes, they have monkeys in an aquarium... go figure). All of which was immensely good fun.

The only time we'd been to the Wild Animal Park before was shortly after it first opened. It was very sweet, but a little sparse in the animal department - a few lemurs and wallabies and not a lot else. Now we're pleased to see it's bedded itself in really well, is chock full of animals and has started up a couple of great conservation/rescue services, for spectacled bears and macaws. Long may it continue the good work.

The steam railway only goes about three miles along the south-western shore of Windermere, but it passes through some amazingly pretty scenery along the way and there are all sorts of engine sheds and exhibits to clamber over at Haverthwaite station.

It always feels a little strange being a tourist in an area you call home, but it did mean we got to see things we wouldn't have done otherwise. Maybe next time we'll do a coach tour of the lakes and mountains. Then again... ;)

Crime writer tv show

I'm wondering if anyone else caught the first episode of a new US import called 'Castle' the other night? It was tucked away at 9pm on the Alibi channel so I'll forgive you if you say no, but you missed a treat.

We weren't optimistic at first. Yet another US crime drama. Yawn. Yet another series with the hero's name as the title of the show. Double yawn, step aside House and Dexter. Yet another series where a civilian with an unusual speciality helps the police. Hmm. Haven't we seen that idea before somewhere?

But Castle turned out to be much better than we expected. Nathan Fillion (of Firefly) was excellent in the title role and Stana Katic was equally good as his 'will they won't they' love interest/colleague. The script was a joy, chock full of witty one-liners that had us laughing out loud. And best of all, Castle's unusual angle was that he's a successful crime novelist.

Too often in movies and tv series, writers are shown as dippy floaty artistic types who drink lots of coffee, bang away on an ancient typewriter and talk to the walls. Castle was different, because he was intelligent and because he truly understood his craft. In order to write successful crime novels (possibly more than any other genre) a writer has to understand the motivations of his characters - why they would do something, or why they wouldn't. This was used to great effect in the first episode where several times Castle changed the direction of the police investigation because the motives didn't fit. Of course, it was a little hard to believe trained detectives could be quite that thick, but it was nice to see a writer genuinely using his craft to untangle the foibles of human nature.

Pilot episodes aren't always a good indication of the rest of the series but we're hoping the intelligence continues - and we'll definitely be watching episode two to find out.

Radgepacket 4 reviewed

Thanks to fellow Radgie author Paul D Brazill for spotting this one, the first review of the anthology I've come across. Author Donna Moore recently read Radgepacket 4 and had this to say about it:

"A collection of 22 short stories - gritty, funny, weird, warped and wonderful... They're not all crime stories but many of them have a crime in, and all of them are deliciously nasty. An anthology for those who like their fiction twisted, profane and depraved. Me, I loved it."

I've just finished reading my own copy and I have to agree - there isn't a duff story in the whole collection and many of them are very, very good indeed. My own favourites were Ragna Brent's 'Piano Man', Patrick Belshaw's achingly sad 'Grey's Elegy', Blaine Ward's startlingly chilling 'Eye for an Eye', and Carol Fenlon's poignant 'Half Mile Island'. But you don't just have to take my word for it now - you can pop along to Donna's blog and read the rest of her review.

Authors' rules of writing

The Guardian recently asked a bunch of well-known writers for their own personal top ten rules of writing. The results, which you can read here, were fascinating.

Needless to say every writer had a different set of rules and not a few contradicted each other. Some I found myself nodding over, some were completely new to me, some were hilarious and others I didn't agree with at all.

Margaret Atwood's suggestions for writing on a plane journey had me in stitches. Robert Ford was so brusque it was unhelpful. One author banned the use of prologues and another said all similes and metaphors were taboo. These two worried me. Yes, I've come across books where the prologue got in the way of the story and yes, I've read writing that's so full of imagery it's positively puce. But to ban every instance of something risks losing our wonderfully rich language and variety of writing forms.

And the top of the top ten advice? Well, lots of it was good but I think this, from Elmore Leonard, was pure gold: 'If it sounds like writing, rewrite it'.

Author blog awards

Someone has very kindly nominated my blog for this (I'm assuming) new award, run by CompletelyNovel.com which appears to be an online resources centre and networking site for writers.

I'm usually rather cynical about these sort of awards, which proliferate all over the net. You can find awards for blogs, e-books, web design... and I can't help thinking they're set up to provide members/publicity for the people running them rather than any real benefit to the nominated sites. It's still very nice to be nominated, though, and I figured I had nothing to lose by signing up.

You can vote for my blog (until 2 April) by clicking the logo at the top left of the post - apparently there are prizes available for people who vote. And thank you for your support!

RIP Tricity Bendix

My trusty friend of a washing machine, which I've had for the best part of twenty years, finally stopped working on Saturday.

It's been a wonderful companion, sticking with me through thick and thin. I got it when I bought my first flat here in Brum. Buying the property had just about cleaned me out (no pun intended) and I had to choose between carpet, or a washing machine. Having survived the previous three years in a rented flat with nowhere to put a washer, I chose the latter and managed on underlay for the next two years.

The machine followed me around the country, first to Loughborough, then back here to Birmingham. It never broke down, it never sulked, it never even thought about not working. I've used it every other day (sometimes every day if the drying weather is good) and it's been just about the most reliable piece of electrical goods I've ever had. But finally, after eighteen years' hard labour, it decided it had had enough. I switched on on Saturday morning to wash a load of towels and... nothing. Not a peep. The door didn't lock, no water flowed, no hum echoed through the utility room. Dead, as they say, as a parrot.

We dashed straight out and bought a new one and I'm sure it will be terrific. It's a washer-dryer for starters so I can get clothes dry in wet or very cold weather. It has a larger capacity and a wider-loading drum so I can actually wash duvets. It comes with all the latest energy-saving settings, and it even comes in a snazzy grey-and-white design.

I shall miss my loyal old Tricity Bendix, though. And I bet the new one won't last eighteen years....

Rats!

We were hoping to go on that Odeon cinema bus tour I mentioned the other day, but when I came to book tickets I found it had sold out. Either it's too popular or they didn't hire enough buses! Shame, as it looked as if it was going to be really interesting. Ah well, perhaps next year...

Currently working on...

I have two stories on the go at once which is quite a rarity for me; usually I prefer to finish one thing before starting another.

The first story, which I've just finished to first draft, is a shocking little tale of a man's increasingly frustrated efforts at picking up a parcel for his wife at the local sorting office, and the rather drastic steps he takes to provide suitable ID.

The other is a humorous crime story which begins with a man jumping naked out of the cake at a local crime boss's 50th birthday party. A birthday surprise and then some, you could say...

Both are proving tremendous fun to write and I'm hoping once they're done and polished, to add them to a growing collection of noirish/crime stories which I might submit as an anthology somewhere.

Right, back to that birthday cake...

Birmingham Flatpack Festival

Even after 20-odd years living in Birmingham I'm still finding out fascinating new things about the city. Today marks the start of the annual Flatpack Festival, which celebrates all things cinematic.

One of the highlights this year is a bus tour around three gems of the Odeon cinema empire. The founder of Odeon, Oscar Deutsch, was born in Birmingham (Balsall Heath, to be precise) in 1893 and the early cinemas were all built in the West Midlands in the high art deco style of the 1930s. Over the years the lavish interiors have been toned down (they used to have glamorous uniformed usherettes as well as carpet, chandeliers and potted plants) but the buildings themselves remain as landmarks in many places.

As well as the tour (more details here if you're interested!) English Heritage have a complete collection of photographer John Maltby's pictures of every Odeon cinema in the UK. You can see the photos at the English Heritage viewfinder site - just type 'Odeon' into the search box.

My books for sale at Created in Birmingham

Those nice people at the Created in Birmingham shop have agreed to stock both Radgepacket Volume 2 and Radgepacket Volume 4, since both have a story by a local author (ie, me!) in them.

I'm absolutely delighted about this, because it gets the Byker Books name out to a whole new audience (and let's face it, there aren't too many independent British publishers taking the sort of dark, gritty urban fiction that Byker like), and also because it hopefully gets *my* name out to a whole new audience. This is the first time I've had physical books for sale anywhere except the internet and it's rather nice to think that people will mooch into the shop and be able to pick up and browse my work.

CiB have asked for a few more details including business cards to hand out, and a display card with a few details about myself, so I shall be beavering away on those over the weekend.

For those of you who want to check the shop (and my books!) out, it's on the upper level of the Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham city centre, between the main entrance (with the bull statue) and Debenhams. It opens from 11 am each day, it's full of exciting local artwork, and the staff are very friendly. What more could you want?

Minotaur story finds a home

I had some great news from QueeredFiction yesterday - they've accepted Unravelling the Thread for their 'Love & Fables' anthology.

The story is a total romp, loosely (okay, very loosely!) based on the old Greek legend of the minotaur. In this case, when Theo's sometime-girlfriend Ariadne thinks there's a monster in the Coseley Manor maze, she sends him in to Deal With It. Never at his best in adversity, Theo surprises even himself - and is rewarded with Beauty of a different kind on the way to tackling the Beast.

The anthology is currently slated for publication in June/July of this year, but as usual I'll post more details when I have them so don't forget to check back from time to time.

A story in how many words?

I got chatting to a fellow author on Saturday who said he'd been trying his hand at a new challenge - flash fiction that's only six words long!

It seems almost impossible to tell a story in only six words, but he explained that if you got it right, it could be very effective, especially in comedy work.

Never one to turn down a writing-related challenge I decided to have a go. I'm used to writing flash and have managed stories of only 30 words before now, but six is something else again. And... I failed. At least for now. I managed one piece that was ten words long, which I'm actually rather proud of, but I couldn't have reduced it to six if it'd stared at it till Doomsday.

It was fun trying, though, and something to drag out and look at again in the future. I suspect it might be useful for prodding my brain into action when I've hit the latest brick wall.

And the ten word story? Well, I might be persuaded to post it on here in a week or two, if you're all very very nice to me.

Radgepacket 4 available now!

In case you hadn't already noticed from the sidebar (-->) Radgepacket Volume 4 is now fully available to buy.

This one is bigger and better than previous volumes, with extra stories in place of the interview and contest that have appeared before. Now there are 22 stories by 22 different authors, all of them dark, gritty and urban but most of them with a quirky element of gallows humour.

My own story, Lemon Sour, is loosely based on an incident from my childhood - although I swear the sort of revenge the main character takes never even occurred to me! Jenny isn't a very nice person; I can't think where in the darkest recesses of my mind she came from. However, I was trying to suggest the way that (sometimes minor) childhood humiliations can end up scarring people for life.

The paperback is available to order from either Byker Books or Amazon, for the very reasonable price of £5.99 (not bad for all those stories...). For more details including a point-of-sale link and an excerpt from the story, please hurry along to the Lemon Sour page on my website.

And if you do take the plunge, I hope you enjoy my story and some of the other sly, wry and downright naughty stories in the book.

Back from Newcastle

We had a fun, if exhausting, time in Newcastle over the weekend. The train journey went very smoothly, the only problem being that the heating controls got stuck on the way up and our carriage was absolutely boiling. It took three separate requests by three separate passengers over two and a half hours before the staff got the problem fixed, by which time I was a dripping wreck! Not what you need when you're attending an event an hour after arrival.

Luckily our hotel was only minutes from the station so I was able to freshen up before we headed out to explore the area and find the venue of the book launch. Newcastle looks to be a much more historical place than I'd realised; within minutes we'd discovered a section of 13th century town walls and a medieval friary, as well as Chinatown and St James Park (the Newcastle football ground). The book shop, The Back Page, was very close to the stadium; hardly surprising since it's a sports-lover's dream, stuffed to the rafters with football books, football dvds and football memorabilia, some of it quite rare. It made a fascinating backdrop to the party.

The launch itself was great fun; seven or eight of the authors came along and we met the editor (who grew up on the Byker estate in Newcastle, hence the publisher's name); discovered more about Byker Books' history; and chatted about our stories, writing and life in general. I picked up my contributors' copy of Radgepacket 4 which has more stories than previous volumes and looks great value at only £5.99. More of that later...

Since we both love Chinese food we couldn't resist dinner at one of the many buffet restaurants along Stowell Street? Lane? - huge choice of dishes and absolutely delicious. The highlight for me was jelly and fruit for dessert since I'm still a kid at heart!

Yesterday we had the morning to kill before our train back to Brum, so set off to explore the rest of the city including various shopping centres (they're strung out like washing on a line); the famous Grey Street with its statue of Earl Grey (of tea fame); and the river with its impressive gaggle of bridges, and a craft fair along one bank. Newcastle is obviously a vibrant city filled with music, culture, creativity and nightlife; in fact I don't think I've ever seen so many nightclubs per head of population - there were simply hundreds! The downside to that is a slightly higher than average amount of antisocial behaviour, with gangs of people shouting all night, broken glass and vomit everywhere, even early on Saturday afternoon. Highlights including seeing a curlew at close quarters at the edge of the River Tyne, and finding a lovely statue of a man with some pigeons in the Eldon Square shopping centre (you can see a pic of it here).

We were really glad to have seen the place at last, as we've been promising ourselves a visit for years. It's a long way to travel from Brum (three and a half hours each way on the train) so combining the trip with the book launch made a lot of sense.

One day to go...

Don't forget - it's the Radgepacket 4 book launch at The Back Page in Newcastle upon Tyne from 3-5 pm tomorrow (Saturday 13 March).

I'll be there. Will you? ;)

Review: Alan Hollinghurst's 'The Line of Beauty'

I bought this book a few years ago, soon after watching and enjoying the tv series based on it. Too soon, really - I spent most of my time comparing the book to the series and it pulled me out of the 'story' and made it very difficult to focus. Eventually I gave up and stuck the book on the shelf, and I only picked it up again the other week... and promptly wondered why on earth I'd waited so long!

The book is terrific. Quite possibly Hollinghurst's best, and that's against some pretty stiff opposition. Set in the 1980s of Margaret Thatcher, mobile phones, consumerist excess and yuppie-dom, it tells the story of Nick Guest, a young gay man who gets himself invited to live with his university friend Toby's family. Toby's father Gerald is an up-and-coming politician in the Thatcher government and his mother Rachel is an upper-class heiress. Nick, who is obsessed by beauty in all its forms, is swept off his feet by their attractiveness, their wealth and their social standing. At the same time he explores his own sexuality for the first time with affairs with a black council-worker and the son of a middle-eastern millionaire. Needless to say the course of true love does not run smooth and Nick learns the hard way as his lovers succomb to drug addiction and AIDS, and his new family prove to have their own skeletons in the closet.

There is so much going on inside the book - so much detail, so much humanity, so many themes, that I hardly know where to start. In particular I love the dry sly humour - the millionaire is clearly modelled on Mohammed Al Fayed, for instance - and the dialogue which conjures up so skillfully the brittle brilliance of the decade. Although the downward spiral of Nick's life takes on a tragic tone it's never overdone and the ending is just ambiguous enough to leave Nick, who's lost everything, with a flicker of hope for his future life.

Hollinghurst seems at times to be gleefully breaking all the usual writing rules. He uses 'tell' rather than 'show', especially when describing characters' emotions, and he manages to set an entire novel in the 1980s without mentioning a single person, piece of music, book, television programme or event from that time (with the obvious exception of Mrs Thatcher herself). And yet the sheer brilliance of the writing, and the everyday details of the characters' lives, bring the decade to vivid life anyway, so it hardly matters.

All in all it's a wonderful piece of writing and fully deserves its Man Booker Prize.

Created in Birmingham

To my shame I've only recently discovered Created in Birmingham, the blog for all things (and people) creative in Brum. It looks as though I found it just in time, though, because shortly afterwards they opened their first ever store, in the main Bull Ring shopping centre in Birmingham city centre. They're initially there for a period of 6-8 weeks and will decide whether to continue the venture after the 'trial' period.

It's a wonderful space, right up on the top deck between the main entrance and Debenhams where it should catch lots of passing trade. Dave and I were in town yesterday morning and found it was open on Sundays, so we called in and were really impressed with the quality of the products being sold. There's everything from buttons and badges to large-scale artwork, via music and t-shirts with trendy designs, and most of it is very, very good. And the prices didn't make us blink, either. We treated ourselves to a signed limited-edition print by Jo Ruth of the famous Iron Man statue on New Street (by Anthony Gormley of 'Angel of the North' fame, no less) and were delighted with it. We'll definitely be popping back from time to time to check out any new stock they've had in.

Date for your diary

Radgepacket Volume 4 is due out any day now from Byker Books, and the launch party is all set for Saturday 13 March. And I'll be there! This is my first ever book launch and I'm glad it's for an anthology rather than a standalone book because the editor and several other authors will also be there - there's comfort in numbers when you're shy.

There'll be drinks and nibbles on tap, there may be a reading from the book, and I and the other authors will be available to chat about our stories and writing in general, and sign copies of the book.

So, if you'd like to meet me and get my autograph for your collection, come along to sports bookshop The Back Page in Newcastle on Saturday 13 March between 3 pm and 5 pm, and prepare to have fun. The shop's full address (including post codes for those of you programming satnavs) is 56 St Andrews Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 5SF. I hope to see you there.

Wet start to the month

And for once I'm not talking about the weather.

Yesterday I noticed the faint sound of dripping in our lounge, which is quite an achievement since there shouldn't be any water in there. Further investigation revealed a leak from a pipe in the bedroom, where we had an old washbasin taken out and the pipes capped off. The plumber hadn't done a very good job of the capping and one had split, causing water to percolate through the ceiling and down the lounge wall, where it was gathering behind the lining paper and then dripping onto the skirting board.

Needless to say the worst part was right behind a large bookcase so half way through my lunch I had to leap up, clear all the books off their shelves and hump the bookcase out of the way before I could get busy with mops and towels. And of course we had to turn the water off at the mains, and had one kettle-full to last us all afternoon and part of the evening.

Dave called out an emergency plumber who arrived, finally, at 7pm (they're run off their feet with all the burst pipes etc caused by the cold weather) and fixed the leak. Rather amazingly, he only charged us £40 which is a far cry from emergency plumbers we've had before who seem to charge by the minute. Many thanks for a great service, Dynorod, we'll be using you again. If we have to, which I rather hope we don't...

Now we just have to wait for the plaster to dry out before redecorating in the lounge. Luckily I was thinking about a change of colour in there anyway, but I could have done without the drama!

Oh my aching bones...

We came back a day early from our holiday in the Lakes because we had a tai chi session booked for Saturday afternoon. Dave's tutor had organised a workshop with a Chinese organisation who promote qigong for health around the world. They hadn't come all the way from China just to teach us, of course - it was part of their general UK tour - but it was still something of a coup as the two ladies were very senior and at least one had represented China in contests at international level.

The session was three hours long and completely exhausting. Qigong is the least martial and least 'physical' of the tai chi disciplines - very graceful and flowing - but even so you end up using muscles you've never come across before, and learning fourteen new moves in one afternoon was pretty tiring too. But it was all absolutely fascinating, especially as the main tutor explained the health benefits of each and every move - sometimes in surprisingly frank detail which left the translators blushing! I came away feeling stretched (think: Ioan Gruffuds' character in The Fantastic Four) but happy.

'Come Friendly Bombs'

My flash story 'Come Friendly Bombs', which was recently 'commended' or mentioned in dispatches or whatever in the Once There Was flash fiction contest, has just been posted on their site.

The story, believe it or not, is based on a real-life event, although I admit I took a few liberties with the ending. It's very tiny and decidedly silly but if you'd like to take a look, go to the Once There Was blog.

I had lots of fun writing this one and hope you have as much fun reading it.

Another charity anthology

While we're on the subject of charity anthologies, the sequel to 'I Do' in support of marriage equality has just hit the shelves as well.

This one is currently available as an e-book (pdf available from MLR Press) but will be coming in print shortly. It contains 22 stories and weighs in at nearly 100,000 words, and every last penny of the profits will be donated to the Lambda Legal Fund. The print version should be available in a couple of weeks or so.

Haiti book update

I promised to let everyone know when I heard anything new about the '100 Stories for Haiti' anthology. The good news is that the book has found a publishing home with Bridge House Publishing and should be available to buy from 4th March 2010. Bridge House will be producing it as a print paperback volume and it'll be available to order from their website, the original 100 Stories for Haiti website, and Amazon, price £11.99 plus postage.

You can pre-order your copy now to make sure you're ahead of the rush on 4th March! Just head over to the 100 Stories for Haiti website and follow the 'buy the book' links to register your interest.

Culture vultures #2

It's amazing what you can find on the doorstep on a dismal, cold, damp February Saturday afternoon when you can't think of a thing to do. A quick search of the local what's on pages revealed a museum we'd read about ages ago and promptly forgotten - the Lapworth Museum of Geology. Like the Barber Institute the other week this turned out to be on the University of Birmingham campus, tucked away in the Grade II* listed 'Earth Sciences' building. Also like the Barber it was more 'educational institution' than genuine museum, but it also turned out to be fascinating.

A room full of glass cases revealed hidden treasures. There was everything from tiny trilobite fossils to whole dinosaur skeletons (okay, small ones, but still...); from fragments of precious metal to vast crystals of galena and quartz. Apparently the museum was started in 1880 by Charles Lapworth (hence the name) with a collection of fossils found mostly in the West Midlands. Since then it's been added to from all over the world and it's now one of the largest specialist geological museums in the country.

My only criticism is that some of the labelling is very old-fashioned and unhelpful: small cardboard labels with vast Latin names and not much actual information. It was still great fun, though, and we would happily go again.

MyFreeRead to be avoided?

Several of my writer friends have recently received letters from a new company called MyFreeRead, offering to pay them for their e-books and other writing, which is then made available to readers free of charge on their website. The letter began:

"Dear Authors,

We want your e-books -- and we'll pay you for them!!

* e-Books
* Newsletters
* Excerpts from books
* Self-Published Articles

Now, there's a new idea... actually get paid for writing your e-books and articles!"

The payment offered for each e-book 'downloaded' (ie, 'sold') was 20 cents. Quite apart from the extraordinary notion that being paid for ebooks is a new idea, several things about the letter worried my friends - and me.

One, that amount is very low. If an author sells an ebook via one of the reputable publishers they are paid a percentage royalty per book sold. This varies depending on the price and length but most ebooks are in the $5 range and typical industry percentages are around 25%-40% of cover price. Now, I'm not much good at maths but even I can work out that 25% of $5 is a lot more than 20 cents.

On top of that, the only way the owner(s) of MyFreeRead can make any profit from this business model (paying the authors and not charging the readers) is if they benefit from some sort of advertising deal. Sure enough, Writers Beware has done some research and found that MyFreeRead is linked to a provider of online advertising, and that readers will have to complete a survey and view several adverts before they can get at the free ebook they want to download.

I'm not a big fan of online advertising. Much of it is linked to viruses and malware, some of it hijacks your browser, and all of it tends to breed like bunnies in a field. You start off with one browser screen and end up with fifteen pop-ups, seven pop-unders and three extra screens. Every time you close one down it automatically generates six more. I've been known to spend minutes trying to close my browser down. And I'm supposed to subject my readers to that sort of experience just so they can download a free bit of my writing, and I can be paid the measly sum of 20 cents?

If you're even remotely considering getting involved with MyFreeRead, I urge you to visit the Writers Beware article linked above. It makes for interesting reading and will hopefully make you look before you leap... and land in a puddle of something wet.

More three-word-madness

Another story prompted by Three Word Wednesday; this week the words were lucid, righteous and salvage. I'm thinking this might actually make a good beginning for a much longer piece of work...

-----

Salvage Job

Jonathan was never at his most lucid at 6 am. It wasn’t even properly light; a pale halo surrounded the window but shadows still clung possessively to the corners of the room. He lay with his eyes closed, drifting and listening to the varied morning sounds - sparrows chattering in the bushes outside, the electric buzz of the milk float and the chink of bottles on stone steps, faint clatters from the kitchen where Marilyn was busy with pots and pans. A tantalising whiff of frying bacon tiptoed in through the partly-open door and sleep receded a little more.

He stretched until his toes popped and rolled onto his back, folding the blankets round him to close out any draughts. It might be late March but the mornings were still chilly and Marilyn hadn’t popped back in to switch the electric heater on. Usually he’d be up and about by now, dressed in his collar and tie, clutching a briefcase, ready to peck Marilyn on the cheek and catch the 6.42 bus to town. Sundays were different, though. There’d be chores later - sweeping the drive, washing the car - and a walk in the park after lunch, but for now he could luxuriate in the bliss of a weekend lie-in.

Until a small bundle of pure energy raced through the door and landed, panting, on the bed. It waited, briefly, then prodded his shoulder where he’d let the bedclothes slip. “Daddy? Dad! Come on, I know you’re only pretending to be asleep. I can see your eyes moving.”

Jonathan groaned and opened his eyes, then groaned again. It was light now, sun pouring in through the thin floral curtains, and that orange wallpaper had definitely been a mistake. “Whaddya want?” he mumbled, trying to shift the heavy lump off his chest. “Worse than a cat, you are, Suzanne.”

His daughter prodded him again, in the tummy this time. “So wake up then. Did you get them? I was out round Mandy’s last night, I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

Jonathan’s heart sank. The tickets. Those blasted, wretched, ruddy, bloody tickets to the Righteous Brothers concert that Suzanne had asked for as a special treat. He wasn’t keen on her going to pop concerts as a rule; she was only fifteen and you heard bad things about what went on. But this was her birthday and she’d made puppy eyes at him and he’d found himself saying yes.

He barely knew who the Righteous Brothers were; only that they weren’t brothers and they weren’t particularly righteous as far as he could see. He preferred a nice bit of Bach himself, but Suzanne had played him one of their songs on her new transistor radio and he supposed the chap had a nice enough voice. And as the kid herself had said, “They’re coming all the way from America and they’re only doing one tour....”

“Uh.” He pushed the blankets aside and sat up, shivering with the sudden chill. A chill of premonition, perhaps, or of guilt. “Look, love, I’m sorry....”

She didn’t let him finish. “Oh, daddy. You forgot, didn’t you? I knew you’d forget! That was supposed to be my birthday present! And now I’ll never get another chance to see them!” The lump moved abruptly off the bed, there was a rush of air and the door slammed on what sounded like a sob.

“Suzanne! Come back here and let me explain.” But a second slam followed as she took refuge in her room. He lay back again, fuming at the injustice of it all. He hadn’t forgotten the tickets - he’d given up his half-day off to go into town and queue for two hours in the pouring rain, only to find they’d sold the last ones to a chap about six feet ahead of him. He’d gone to a pub to dry out and console himself and then he’d missed the last bus home. Marilyn hadn’t been impressed, but she’d calmed down when he told her the worst.

“Never mind, dear, you tried your best. We’ll get her a rabbit instead.”

Jonathan didn’t think rabbits were much consolation for a missed opportunity for a teenage girl, but he’d agreed, and agreed to built a hutch. Which reminded him - he’d have to forgo the walk in the park this afternoon and head for the shed to knock up some bits of wood. He sighed, his euphoria vanished with the early morning sun. Suzanne would no doubt sulk in her room all day and might not forgive him for weeks, and on top of that he’d have to give up next Saturday afternoon to look up plans for hutches at the library. And on top of that, he was sure yesterday’s soaking had given him a cold. He swung his legs out of bed and reached for trousers and a comfortable old shirt. The bacon should be done by now. He’d go downstairs and salvage what was left of his day off.

(c) 2010 Fiona Glass

Suspicious, me?

I came across this story on the BBC website this morning, about a woman's skeleton being found wrapped in a carpet on a construction site in Manchester.

Straight away something struck me as odd. It wasn't that the skeleton had been found, or even that it had been put there in the first place. What really made me blink was that initially the police treated the discovery as 'non suspicious'. It wasn't until they got the results of the post mortem that they decided to treat it as anything other than a natural death.

Now I don't know about you, but in the world I live in nothing about the above scenario is even remotely natural. Why? Because those bones were found wrapped in a carpet. I can't think of a single reason why someone would be buried in an unconsecrated site (ie, not a churchyard or cemetery), wrapped in an old piece of carpet, that doesn't involve some sort of criminal activity. At the very least it suggests someone concealed the death, because you could hardly wrap your own bones up once you were dead. At worst, it's murder.

I don't know. Is this just me? Have I been reading too many detective novels, or do I just have a very suspicious mind?

The case looks rather fascinating, in a tragic and macabre way. The clothes that were found with the body have a design that looks Victorian, yet the presence of a bra suggests something post-1920s at the earliest. I'll be watching for more details with interest - and a good deal of suspicion about that carpet...

More snow (sigh)

This endless cold weather is really getting me down. It's been almost two months since we had decent, normal temperatures - and by 'normal', I mean 'normal for the time of year'. There was one brief exception, on Friday. The sky turned blue with fluffy white clouds floating about, the sun came out, the temperature crept up... and up... to 9c, and all the birds started to sing for the first time this year. Dave and I strolled round to the High Street at lunchtime and it was just lovely being out of doors without feeling every last calorie of energy was being sucked straight out of you by the cold. Spring might only have been a week or two away.

Sadly, the return to normal parameters didn't last. It's been getting steadiy colder over the weekend and today we're back to what passes for normal this year - 2c. And it's just started to snow.

Last winter was on the cold side but before that we'd had a run of milder winters, and nature made hay while the sun shone. Birds started not just singing, but breeding and raising their young. We had daffodils at Christmas - not here in Brum, but at least in London and along the south coast. Trees and shrubs were showing a haze of green by the middle of March. To hear the experts, you'd think it was the end of the world. Mother Nature was apparently so confused she was never going to recover, and we'd be stuck with the consequences till our dying days.

Well, Mother Nature isn't confused. This year the birds are huddling in corners, fluffing up their feathers and too busy conserving energy to do frivolous things like finding a mate. And there isn't so much as a petal out yet. Not only are the daffodils not in flower, their levels haven't poked through the semi-frozen ground. All of which gives me lots of confidence in nature's recuperative powers... but it does make spring seem like an awfully long way away.

Flash story commended...

...in the Once There Was flash fiction contest.

My (very silly) little story 'Come Friendly Bombs' didn't win first prize, but was shortlisted/commended and will be published on the Once There Was blog in the next few days.

I'm pretty sure this is the best result I've ever had in a writing competition, so naturally I'm delighted!

In other news, author Rick Reed is running a spotlight on 'Queer Dimensions' today, including a synopsis and a new excerpt that you might not have read before. Want to see it? Pop along to his blog to read more.

Three words make a story

At least that's the idea behind Three Word Wednesday, a blog I discovered the other day, which gives writers three words to play with once a week. This week, the words were frantic, lurch and odour. I used two and the third is implicit in the story. :)

This is based on something that happened to a colleague of mine, by the way. Hope you enjoy.

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Running Late

I’m late, I’m late, I’m bloody late for work.

Everything’s gone wrong. First I burned the toast and had to do eggs instead. Then Martin lost the car keys and I helped him hunt for them. Of course he’d left them in his coat pocket all along but we must have turned the house upside down. Then the cat was sick, and Martin saw his chance and slipped away, saying brightly ‘Have a good day’ and aiming a kiss into thin air.

Millie needed changing, not once but twice. I forgot to empty the washing machine last night and my favourite blouse has creased. I’m dabbing it with water and trying to stretch it flat, but the end result is piebald and the creases won’t go away. The heel’s broken off my best shoes and the pair I drag out from under the bed are covered in fuzz. I waste another precious minute dusting them.

The clock ticks threateningly and the minute hand lurches ever closer to the eight. I’m late, I’m so bloody late, and it’s the third time this month. Last week my boss looked at her watch and frowned. Yesterday she raised her eyebrows and scowled. Today she’ll probably fire my arse - and we need the money to pay the mortgage off.

At last the kids are off to school with gym kit, packed lunch, books and shoes. Finally, I think. If I run now I might just make the early bus. There’s time to grab my coat and bag, hoist Millie into my arms and dash for the child-minders down the road.

Too late. The unavoidable odour of wet nappy assails my nose.

I can’t take her out like that - she’ll catch her death of cold. “Oh, Millie,” I wail and run for the bathroom at the top of the stairs.

Tell me my baby hasn’t just cost me my job.

Free flash

As I'd expected, 100 Stories for Haiti rejected my flash. Because of the very short timescale I had to send the best I had available, and obviously the tone wasn't quite right. I wish them all good luck with the project and hope it raises lots of £££ for the Red Cross; I'll be keeping an eye on progress and will report back once the book is available.

In the meantime, as promised, here is the story I submitted. It's very short and very silly, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. However, as everyone knows, there's no such thing as a free lunch! So if you do stop by and read the story, please consider making a donation of your own to a Haiti Appeal charity. For ease I've included various links below the story but feel free to choose one of your own if you'd rather.

Thank you.

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Is it a Bird?

Henry had always wanted to fly.

Knotting the last string to the chair's arm he felt the whole contraption lift clear of the ground. It was working! The power of hundreds of balloons could life the weight of a man! None of his colleagues at the College had believed him, but now he'd show them he was right.

His hair ruffled in the breeze. He tried to straighten it but the chair lurched and he clutched again at the arms. He was glad he'd tied himself on as well as the balloons. They gave more lift than even he'd expected: soon he would be above the trees, then up amongst the clouds. When he'd had enough, he would shoot the balloons one by one and return, the opposite of Icarus, in steady descent to earth.

His hand twitched towards the gun tucked beside one leg... and felt only empty space. Had he left it, propped against the chair, to fall when he took off? He remembered a clatter, which he'd ignored in the elation of flight.

***

"Control, this is Flight 475 out of London Heathrow. We have an unidentified flying object at ten thousand feet. Please advise."

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And here's where you can make that donation. The links will take you straight to the relevant donations pages:

British Red Cross
Unicef
International Rescue Fund
Disasters Emergency Committee

Put off modern classics

I was sad to read the other day that J D Salinger had died. I don't often comment when well-known writers die because too often, to my shame, I haven't read any of their works. But I did read 'Catcher in the Rye', years ago, and I know it's a modern classic.

Whether I enjoyed it or not is another matter. When I was in my teens my Mum went through a phase of borrowing modern classics from the library for me to read. She thought I didn't read enough good literature (which was true) and that I needed some encouragement to get me away from my comfort zone of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer (also no doubt true). Trouble is, I was an incredibly sensitive teenager, I tended to get totally lost in books, and I chose those nice comfortable books for a reason - they didn't make me sob or feel ill.

Unlike the books Mum chose. I can't remember all of them now but I know the list included 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' (I cried); 'Catcher in the Rye' (I cried); Brave New World (I devoured it in two sittings and cried for hours). '1984' I couldn't even finish and as for 'Lord of the Flies', it made me physically ill. After that, mercifully, Mum stopped trying to push literature down my throat and left me to develop my own tastes at my own pace.

Over the years my taste has changed and literate, character-driven novels are my first choice. These days I'd probably enjoy at least some of the classics on the list, especially 'Catcher in the Rye'. Sadly, my experience aged sixteen has put me off all those authors for life, and I'm not sure I could even get past the first page.

I know of friends who were put off particular books (or even the whole concept of reading) at school. I'd be fascinated to hear if anyone else suffered in the same way. Have you managed to overcome it? Or has the experience stayed with you for life?

Culture vultures

Yesterday it was really cold again here in Birmingham so we were hunting around for something to do that would get us out of the house, but still be indoors. A few weeks ago someone recommended the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at Birmingham University to us as being 1. open, 2. free and 3. pretty good. We'd heard of it before but always assumed it was only open to students, university staff and the like, not the general public, but a quick search on the net soon showed it's open to anyone, almost every day of the year.

And very impressive it was too. It's housed in a award-winning Art Deco building and the inside is slightly odd - less art gallery and more institution - but it was blessedly warm and filled with staggering works of art. The collection is only small (around 150 paintings plus sculpture and other artefacts, collected by Lady Barber as an aid to education) but represents some of the finest artists in history. Big names include Van Dyck, Manet, Monet, Pisarro, Rembrandt, Rubens, Renoir... this list goes on. Unlike most galleries they might only have one or two works by each artist, but you can guarantee that said work(s) will be among the best or most interesting examples.

We spent well over an hour browsing the galleries and were pleased to see a steady stream of people coming through the doors. It was never busy enough to be uncomfortable but clearly it's one of Birmingham's better-known secrets. And a very pleasant way to spend a miserably cold afternoon.