NextRead

Title: The Pools
Author: Bethan Roberts
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Published: 29 August 2007
Price: £10.99
Review Copy

Bethan Roberts has started her literary career with a disturbing tale of Middle England, mid-1980s when the death of a teenager, Robert, is the inevitably conclusion to the paths of many lives.

This is a hard book to pin down. Beth rebuilds the events that lead up to Robert’s death but she goes further than that. She dismembers them. She gets under the skin of the narrators as she retraces the steps.

This is not a who dunnit. It’s not even a why dunnit. It’s story of life and how our characters might be natured as well as nurtured and how we can’t escape from what is in our hearts.

I wish that Roberts wasn’t so honest in her portrayal. I was she’d been more writery so that the story isn’t as brutal as it is. But she doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t pull her punches. She confronts the confusion we experience as we find out who we are and maybe face the realisation that we can’t escape what we done or perhaps the effect that our parents have on us.

Overall, Bethan has created a challenging novel that delves deep into the pools inside each one of us and it makes you question your own decisions. It also makes you thankful that you still have choices. An outstandingly insightful début.

Tags: reading lists

Tia over at the Fantasy Debut tagged me for a meme. Not that I’m very good at memes… but here we go.

The idea is to write what you were doing 10, 20 and 30 years ago, then tag others to do the same. This way, we all get to know each other a little bit.

10 years ago: So that’s 1997… I know I was reading a lot of Terry Pratchett at the time. I was also taking an English A-Level learning all about Aphra Behn, Angela Carter, Derek Walcott and reading Villette by Charlotte Brontë.

20 years ago: that would make me 8 or 9 and I wasn’t reading anything at all. I was watching a lot of cartoons and I still do. I would have been watching things like The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo, Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Brave Star, Captain Caveman and Son, Danger Mouse, The Centurions, Duck Tales, Dungeons and Dragons, Thundercats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and a probably a few more.

30 years ago: Not yet born….

Not sure who to tag though…

Edit:

At there own request I’m tagging The World in the Satin Bag!!!

Most of the time films are too long - they have long lingering scenes where nothing happens. Resident Evil Extinction though is ether too short or at least not fully developed. Just when it should get going it ends.

And that’s not the only problem a lot of it is wasted or perhaps saved for yet another sequel. A lot is made of Las Vegas for it to just used as the backdrop to a battle then nothing else happens.

Overall it could have done with another 45 minutes added on to the end to give it more of a point. It’s not bad but then it doesn’t excel either.

As it is it’s worth watching if you’ve seen the others on a Wednesday night on DVD if there is nothing else on.

Tags: 5/10, Film

Title: Dead Men’s Boots
Author: Mike Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 06 September 2007
Price: £7.99
Review Copy

Felix Castor, exorcist, doesn’t like funerals and at the start of Dead Men’s Boots that’s exactly where he is when a lawyer turns up to exhume the deceased (a former exorcist and someone Castor avoided before he died) so he can be cremated and it’s only the start of his problems. His new client is the wife of a man who is accused of murder only she’s convinced that he didn’t do it and it was done by a woman that’s been dead for forty years.

Told in the first person we follow Castor’s investigations as he figures out clues left by the deceased and wonders how a ghost can wield a hammer though the poor fella doesn’t know what he got himself into. Trouble finds Castor like a drunk finds a chippie. It’s part of the deal when you take that first drink.

As I said in my review of Vicious Circle, the second book of this series, Carey is a master plotter. His plots are focused and well planned though with enough clues that you mentally kick yourself when you start to see the connections.

Dead Men’s Boots is a stand alone title but it’s probably better to start at the beginning as you get to see more of Castor’s make-up as well as the history behind the some what’s going on and his history to some of the other characters. And there are some great fully formed secondary characters.

The subplot from the previous books is kept ticking over quite nicely with a few teasers that I hope are going to make an appearance soon.

It’s a great read. You can’t help yourself from wanting to know how deep in shit Castor can go before he drowns.

If I have one negative I’d say that some things are a little too neatly tied off at the end but I don’t really care as it’s a great read that keeps you thinking and guessing all the way to the end. And it’s left me wanting more.

Tags: 10/10, Fantasy, noir, reading lists

Writing is a funny old occupation and creative writing is even stranger. As I pointed out in a previous post there is no money in it - well there is - if you manage to connect with enough people who then actually buy your what you’ve written. But still thousands of people spend hours and hours writing. . We just can’t help being creative even if we’re not creating for a guaranteed audience (that’s if you want an audience).

What did I learn from taking Creative Writing as a degree? Writing isn’t therapy, it isn’t really self-expression, it’s more about conveying something to a reader in the best way you can. And if that means that you have to cut all the bits you like from your writing or you have to rewrite what you’ve been working on for days, so be it.

It’s not about you. Readers don’t care if you’ve spend 20 years working on your novel. They only care if you engage them with what you’ve written.

And if that hasn’t put you off, not that it should, to help start your writing career I thought I’d make some book recommendations some spiritual and some technical. Spiritual books are the ones that I think help inspire you and the technical ones will help stop you annoying the grammar police as well as offer more writerly advice.

It’s hard to recommend just one book as no book is going to teach you how to write but they might keep you going once you have.

The most practical and inspirational book for me would be A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s packed full of daily prompts so you’re never stuck for something to write about. It’s got loads of tips, mini-articles, and thoughts from other writers on the writing life and gives you everything you need in a companion book. It’s not a technical book. It does not deal with plotting, or character development nor does it go over grammar or spelling but it does get words on paper.

The next source of spiritual inspiration is the writer Natalie Goldberg. She is famous for a volume of essays called Writing Down the Bones. It’s a guide for living the writing life. It’s not a practical guide like the one above but non the less inspiring. Goldberg has written a way of thinking about writing by sharing her thoughts and experiences. She’s also written two other books on writing, Wild Mind and Thunder and Lightening, in which she explains that writing has never made anyone she knows happy. As I said before writing isn’t therapy though it might be therapeutic. Wild Mind contains lots of exercises to limber up your writing mind. Thunder and Lightening is more depressing but still worth reading if you’ve read the others.

Another inspirational teaching of writing is Julia Cameron who believes whole heatedly in laying track, which is another way of saying just worry about putting the words down and not the words themselves. And if you’ve ever sat there for hours pondering about what to put next this is a book for you. I agree with this especially if you have deadlines there is nothing like them for keeping you writing. She’s the author of The Right to Write and The Sound of Paper. I’d choose The Right to Write first and again if she agrees with you read The Sound of Paper.

If you’re looking for a book which is a little more grounded and less airy we have On Writing by Stephen King - half memoir and half writing guide. This is a no nonsense guide packed with common sense advice on what you tools to have in your writing toolbox. He does play down though how much talent he has - writing isn’t just about the technicalities there has to be some spark there too and his is blazing. You might not like what he writes but what he does write is a class in itself. This book is a wonderful insight into the mind of a master.

One final mind that’s worth looking into is the mind of Lawrence Block. In Telling Lies for Fun and Profit and Spider, Spin Me a Web he collects together a series of columns on all aspects on the writing life. He deals with why you shouldn’t walk in Jane Austen’s footsteps, why you shouldn’t always say yes when to editors suggestions, plus a myriad of other topics. And seeing as the guy has written in excess of fifty novels he does know a few things.

Apart from that there are couple of technical books that I’d recommend for your shelves. The first being Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. She might be a little acidic when it comes to style but she makes up for it in helping you understand the rules of grammar and if you don’t fancy that there is always Getting the Point by J. Haddon & E. Hawksey.

And to help tell the story and figure out the mechanics of it well you can’t go wrong with Story by Robert Mckee. It’s not strictly speaking about novels but readers are so ingrained by filmic shorthand that it might help you set everything up in the right way.

Oh and if you’re wondering if I’m currently writing a novel - well no, not yet. I still haven’t found right story to tell but when I do I’ll let you all know as soon as I’ve signed on the dotted line.

Tags: reading lists, writing

This has been an interesting week for facts and figures.

Let’s take a look at the Man Booker. The Telegraph reports some earlier sales of the Man Booker Shortlist (the longlist was announced on 7th August):

Literary life - Telegraph
The sales figures, before the announcement, according to Nielsen BookScan, were similarly extreme.

Up to 18 August the McEwan (published in April) had sold 99,660 copies whereas the Barker (May) had sold 499 copies.

As for the other four: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (March) had sold 1,519 copies, Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (June) 880 copies, Anne Enright’s The Gathering (May) 834 copies and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (March) a mere 231 copies.

And The Bookseller reports a massive reprint for the winner, The Gathering. 

theBookseller.com
The Gathering had sold 3,306 through Bookscan to 13th of October, but imprint Jonathan Cape says it has sold in 35,000 copies worldwide. Cape is printing an additional 50,000 copies this week, which it anticipates will be in the shops by the end of the week. Asked if The Gathering could equal last year’s winner Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which has sold 140,000 copies in all editions, Random House Group sales director Gary Pryor said: “Absolutely. We’re thrilled that The Gathering has won. The Man Booker is always going to give a boost and we have had orders pouring in.”

And #7 of the marvellous Deathray contains a letter from John Jarrold giving rough sales figures of 6,500 for the hardback of The Court of Air, plus it mentions the indirect sequel, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, set in the same universe. He also mentions the fact that far too many fantasy debuts sell less than 1,000 copies[in the UK, I assume].

The Guardian’s Blake Morrison, who btw has just had his wonderful book When did you last see your father released as a film, made this ’shock’ revelation:

Blake Morrison wonders, after the Booker Prize, how writers keep going when fiction sales are so low | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Books
Let’s suppose that a realistic sale for a literary novel these days is 2,000 copies in hardback and 8,000 in paperback. At current cover prices, that will generate royalties of around £9,000. Serialisations, film or television options and sales of foreign rights might push earnings up to £12,000. But this isn’t annual income, it’s the proceeds from the three or four years spent writing the novel. Two recent surveys have found that 60% of British authors earn less than £10,000 a year - and that median earnings are less than a quarter of the national wage. You wonder how they, and publishers and agents, keep going.

The minimum wage in the UK is now £5.52 in case you were wondering.

And more from The Bookseller:

theBookseller.com
Last week, online book retailers and suppliers put emergency contingency plans in place in the face of the postal strike. Websites of traditional high street retailers were also affected as well as customer orders. However, the disruption did not dent the market growth. Total revenue through the TCM for the seven days to 13th October was £38.5m, up 1% on the previous week.

The seven-day period also saw the average selling price of the 4.4m titles sold hit its highest point to date this year £8.79.

The top 50 is looking more like a Christmas chart week-by-week with some recognisable names proving popular once again with the book-buying public. The 2008 edition of Guinness World Records maintains its position at the top of the charts with sales of 37,060 last week. Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Express (Chatto) and the tie-in edition of Ian McEwan’s Atonement (Vintage), are also top five non-movers, but are joined by Martina Cole’s latest thriller Faces (Headline) and the paperback edition of Jeremy Clarkson’s Christmas 2006 bestseller, And Another Thing (Penguin).

If you’ve made it this far and wondering what the point is, well I want to know how many copies do you need to sell in order to make a decent living as a writer. One answer could be:

Macmillan New Writing About
But the fact is, the model of publishing we are practising is rather old-fashioned: we read manuscripts sent to us by authors and, if we like the novel and think we can sell enough copies to make it worthwhile for everyone, we publish it. Our terms are standard and straightforward: we pay a royalty of 20% on net sales; we retain world rights and share any rights revenue 50/50, and we reserve the option to publish the author’s second novel under the same terms as the first.

(To put the royalty figure in context, assuming the average discount at which a book sells is 50%: if 200 copies are sold the author gets about £260; if 1000 copies are sold the author gets about £1300; and if 10,000 are sold the author gets about £13,000.)

The good is that Macmillan New Writing is transparent in it’s figures. The bad thing is that they are £14.99 hardbacks. And most books are 6.99/7.99 paperbacks.

So after all this I’m still non the wiser about how successful a novelist needs to be before making decent £20,000 plus a real in royalties? Though writing critically acclaimed literary doesn’t seem to be the way to go unless you win a prize or two.

If there is a film to restore your faith in the movies it has to be Stardust.A boy makes a promise to cross The Wall and bring back a falling star - but he isn’t the only one looking for it and the star isn’t exactly a chunk of rock.

Stardust is a modern fairy tale, which produces clichés then deals with them with a big dose of common sense.

It has everything that a fairy tale needs; a quest mixed with a love story, villains that are more misguided than evil and pirates who owe a little nod to Johnny Depp.

There are stellar performances throughout.

I really can’t praise it enough. It really is what a blockbuster should be.

Tags: 10/10, Film, flash fiction

Wow, I’m not sure what to say apart from to direct you a transcript on The Leaky Cauldron:

The Leaky Cauldron: J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumbledore is Gay; Neville Marries Hannah Abbott, and Much More
First, the biggest revelation of the night came when Jo revealed to her audience the fact that Albus Dumbledore is gay and had fallen in love with fellow wizard and friend, Gellert Grindelwald. This elicited a huge reaction and prolonged ovation. So much so, it promoted Jo to say:

“If I had known this would have made you this happy, I would have told you years ago.”

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was….

Neil Gaiman has made a lovely post about writing. Here’s an extract:

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Why write?
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (”but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

I really really need to write more, and after an 18 month recharge it might be time to put pen to paper again. Have I mentioned I have a degree in Creative Writing?

And the Winner is:

Anne Enright takes the Booker | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Books
Against all the odds, and seeing off competition from favourites Ian McEwan and Lloyd Jones, rank outsider Anne Enright was tonight awarded the Man Booker prize for her “powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book” The Gathering.

Here’s what the bookerthon judges Dovegreyreader and John Self thought and I’m underwhelmed and unexcited. I’m still going to read Darkmans when it comes out in a more wallet friendly paperback. Not sure about the others though…

The BBC has a feature called 10 ways to get you to read a book:

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 10 ways to get you to read a book
As the Man Booker Prize looms, every competing publisher has every finger crossed that their book will be boosted into the stratosphere. But what are the reasons a book sells well?

No.1 being work of mouth - I wonder if bookblogs like this one could be considered work of mouth? I know it’s more words of a screen but hey.

The surprising one is No.3 Richard and Judy aka Oprah - they may single out a few books that go on to sell bucket loads but their effect on what is published can’t be all that surely. They don’t recommend the types of books I read.

I keep meaning to take some pictures of my four Ikea Billy Bookcases all double stacked with books but I find the idea kind of scary. What if there are books that are going to embarrass me on there! Bridget Jones’s Diary is certainly one.

Scott Pack has just announced a book that is right up my street - shame it’s going to take a while to come out. Though there is the original site for here

Me And My Big Mouth: Who Needs Frankfurt?
Shadowmagic by John Lenahan
Professional magician Lenahan’s debut novel for young adults (of all ages) set in the mythical Irish land of Tir na Nog.

The reading is going slowly and the reading pile is slowly going up. I just can’t get into it a the moment - but I hope I won’t be keeping you to long before I post the next review.

There is a new website devoted to the short story called The Fix:

The Fix | About
From the publisher of Interzone, Black Static, and Crimewave, The Fix online, like its print incarnation, provides you with in-depth reviews of short fiction from the full spectrum of magazines, webzines, anthologies, and single-author collections in the industry. We’ll also bring you interviews, a range of features and columns, and insightful articles and observations.

Oh and if anyone wants to offer me a job in the Cardiff area I’m free! Sadly.

Through some strange twist of fate I’ve ended up with a second copy of The Electric Church by Jeff Somers. So I’ve decided to give it away competition style. Seeing as I’m funding the postage from my own pocket it’s UK only I’m afraid.

All you have to do is send an email to gavscomps@gmail.com with the subject line TEC Comp before midnight 20th October 2007. One lucky winner will be selected at random.

Good luck!

Edit: For some fully featured reviews see - here, here and here.