The End of All Things

We know how it begins: with once upon a time. And we know that it all ends happily ever after. That’s all you need to know about writing a romance, isn’t it? (Apart from the bit in the middle, but let’s not worry about that just now.)

I don’t fear the beginning but I approach the end of a novel with the dread of one heading for their destination and now knowing if they’ll recognise it when they get there. And in fact that’s exactly what it’s like. I get to the end of the story…I think. But maybe I haven’t.

It’s bothering me particularly at the moment because I have a novel in draft and I can’t end it. After all the stresses to which I’ve subjected my hero and heroine in the course of the book we conclude with a dramatic scene in which all is revealed and they can live happily ever after.

Except they can’t because the denouement which bring them together causes problems elsewhere. Love may conquer all but it doesn’t do so at a stroke and by resolving the problems between themselves they create others with their families (yes, it’s set in Italy and there’s a nod to Romeo and Juliet, so a quick acknowledgement to William Shakespeare here). They have each other but what happens then?

In reality these things reverberate for years. He’s chosen her over his family but is there a rapprochement, forgiveness? If there isn’t, how will he cope with the isolation? If they choose love and poverty how will they cope when there isn’t enough money for what they want and need?

My good and wise friend Jenny advises that a satisfying ending should rest on resolution, which I interpret (with some relief) as meaning that we don’t have to tie off every single end of the story, especially not those which will take time to sort out. It’s most important to solve the big problems and we can leave the little ones as long as they are resolvable. But equally we cannot leave too many questions unanswered.

I’ve read a few books which take you past the point of resolution (and I’ve written a few as well).
In romance, there’s a requirement that the couple end up together, even if they’re only happy in the short term rather than for ever. But how to do it? You can only walk off into the sunset so many times.

In all my time of writing I’ve only ever been satisfied with two endings for novels. Neither has been published (though one will be out next year). My usual approach is to write it all and then chop off the bit where two years down the line they get an anniversary card from her mother or whatever it might be. But any other tips and hints for knowing when the story’s over will be gratefully received!

NaNo, No, NO!

My NaNoWriMo novel this year is set in Italy...

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a terrific concept. The idea is that you write a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November. You get support from your friends because you’re all in this together and you can moan and groan and cheer — or even celebrate — together.

I always run at NaNo on the basis that it’s a sprint not a marathon. Last year it took me five days (and if you want to read it you’ll find it here, because it was published last month). This year was a little less successful, certainly quantitatively speaking as I didn’t type those wonderful words ‘The End’ until the 10th.

I think this year’s may be qualitatively deficient, too, for all sorts of reasons. The main one is that I wasn’t quite ready to get started but alas, November wouldn’t wait. I like to approach these things with a plan and work to it. If the plot changes then so be it; if the characters decide the want to do their own thing I have to go with them. But this year the plan was at best sketchy, partly because I’d just finished a draft of a novel and that had taken up so much of my energy that I didn’t really think I had much left in the tank.

But one thing leads to another. My recently-completed draft had two characters whose story cried out to be told; so this year’s NaNo was about them. A variation on Romeo and Juliet had Nico and Leona falling in love despite their feuding families. (Hardly, original, I know, but no plot is. It’s how you handle it that matters.)

So I did finish but it felt very unsatisfactory. The main benefit wasn’t in the novel itself but in how it informed the previous one. Even as I wrote it I realised that I needed to change things in the first one (thanks heavens it’s still at draft stage!). Most significantly it informed my characterisation — that almost all of my characters had secrets revealed in the second that needed to be hinted at in the first.

Never having attempted a sequel before I’ve struggled with a lot of aspects of it — not least how to make two books about the same set of characters set over in a short period of time stand alone and yet not repeat large chunks of back story in book two — but I think I’ve learned a lot.

I haven’t finished yet, of course. Just because you get to 50,000 words doesn’t mean those 50,000 stay still. The keep churning in your brain, multiplying like bacteria. I’m now reasonably certain I have the plot for book one but that for book two is still evolving. And I’m excited.

Can’t wait to get on with the editing…

Strange Days Indeed

I’m chuffed. With the publication of my new book my friend and fellow writer Allis Gordon has reminded me that I now have ‘a corpus’. Does a body of work make you more of a writer than just single piece? Does it mean that you don’t count as a one-hit wonder? (Okay, neither book is what you can call a hit but you know what I mean.)

The funniest thing about the publication of No Time Like Now (yes, I know I need to work at my titles) is the time and effort it took. Because I just hosted a launch party. A digital launch party. On Facebook.

Strange days indeed.

It’s a digital book in a digital age and much of the promotion is digital. It makes perfect sense. I took to promotion like a duck to a sandpit and my attempts were probably even more comical. But I loved the party. Virtual food (Amanda, the cake was delicious), virtual drink (has Gilli left any champagne?) and plenty of chat.

My friends came along from all over the world. They came from Singapore, from the States, Canada, Germany. One even popped in from just down the road. People who’d never met tried to guess the theme tune for the book and compared their favourite islands. A long discussion ensued about whether or not science, and scientists, can ever be sexy; though quite why the discussion went on for so long I don’t know as we were agreed that they certainly are.

I posted excerpts from the book — more tricky than you might think, because you don’t want to give too much away. I did quizzes (not such a good idea in the age of Google); we took every chance to mention Rafael Nadal, even though neither he nor tennis gets a mention in the book; and there were prizes.

All in all I was at the computer for pretty much the whole day. It was emotionally exhausting yet my brain was buzzing so much that even when I fell into bed it took me ages to fall asleep. Was it worth it? Well, who knows? In terms of book sales, maybe or maybe not. In terms of building a brand (ugh) or developing an identity as an author (ugh again) I suppose no harm can come of it.

But I’d do it again because it had all the benefits of a real party. I got to chat with my friends and they got to chat with me. I got to know some of them better and they made new friends. I may at last have found an aspect of promotion that’s fun and doesn’t feel self-serving. I can’t wait for the next launch party.

I’d better get writing that next book…

Life, sport...or a plot in the making?

Greg Rutherford meets with triumph at Hampden Park

Whew! Sport, eh? Bloody hell, as Sir Alex memorably said on that day when he wiped the sweat from his Premier-League-and-Champions-League-winning brow.

Almost everyone who was at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will bend your ear about how wonderful the atmosphere was, how cold the burgers were (room for improvement there, Hampden) and how they were almost swept way by that great tidal wave of mutual love, for everyone and everything from the Cook Islands’ lawn bowls team to the fastest man on the planet. Sport brings people together. That’s the message of the Friendly Games.

For the novelist (writer or reader) there’s more to it than that. Real life weaves all our stories together, sprinter and spectator.

My own favourite moment, probably because it was the one I saw at closest quarters, was Olympic champion Greg Rutherford taking on the world in the long jump.

Since his triumph in London, life has been tricky for Greg. He left the Olympics as a surprise winner, with whispers that his victory was a fluke. Subsequent performance lent their support to that theory and then there were the injuries. Safe to say that he wasn’t expected to achieve…which made it all the ore special when he did.

Elsewhere in the sporting world, another young man was battling with loss of form, loss of confidence and public criticism. England cricket captain Alastair Cook was out of the runs and his team hadn’t won a test match in almost a year. Pundits and the public called on him to quit. But Cook came out fighting, just missed a century in the first innings ad finished the second 70 not out as his team thrashed their previously-triumphant opponents.

It was (if I may mix my sports) a Roy-of-the-Rovers storyline, just like Greg Rutherford’s. Sport lends itself to that because it pits its heroes not just against their opponents but against themselves. By challenging them with disaster after disaster — not just defeat after defeat but their own self-doubt — it demands that they reach deep into the well of courage to emerge. And it’s why sports fans care so much when Alastair Cook shakes the hands of the umpires with the broadest of grins as he leaves the field victorious; and why Greg raises his arms to acclaim the crowd just as they acclaim him.

A bit like the story arc for a novel, in fact…

Remind me of Morning Glory

Two things struck me today over my morning coffee. The first is that my life is far duller and more conventional than I ever imagined. The second is that, no matter how extraordinary a character I may create, no matter that a reader puts the book down with a tutted “unbelievable”, there’s always someone out in the real world who has far more claim to be the invention of a fevered mind than anything I can produce.

Today’s Daily Telegraph carried the obituary of one Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart - not, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, her real name (which was the rather less exotic Diane Moore). And her background appears not to be exotic; her upbringing seems pretty straightforward.

Maybe Morning Glory decided one day that her life, like mine, was just a little too dull; or maybe she was always a wild child. Anyway I won’t go into detail (the obituary does it far better than I do) but who could resist the siren lure of the strap line: “a witch who raised unicorns, taught mathemagics and spell-casting, and preached the gospel of ‘polyamory’”?

Morning Glory was married to the man who went on to run “the world’s only registered wizard academy” (Hogwart’s is clearly not registered, unless the Telegraph has got it wrong). His name was Oberon, in real life Tim — although that, as they say, is quite another story but one of which those who think Tims are slightly wimpish and ineffectual might wish to take note. Reading their life together, with its tightly-woven network of complicated relationships, had me shaking my head. No, really? Unicorns? And I’d no idea you can study eclectic shamanism.

I wish I had invented Morning Glory, though I suspect you wouldn’t have believed her if I did, at least unless I recast her into a fantasy, in which case she might have fitted in quite well. Yet I’ve no reason to believe that anything in the obituary is incorrect. Morning Glory, nee Diane, proves that you can be anything you want to be if you have the courage. Goddess, high priestess, published writer — she was all of those.

By the time I’d finished reading I was completely bemused by the enmeshing of real life and fiction, the believable and the unbelievable. Oh, and the plot twists that life furnishes, clearly illustrated by the fact that her first child turned her back on the witching life, changed her name from Rainbow to Gail and went off to live with her father (for literary neatness, I like to see her settling happily in the suburbs).

Fiction stretches credibility in a way that real life doesn’t. I think that’s a pity. And if you ever hear me say I don’t believe anyone would behave like that - remind me of Morning Glory.

Sweating the Small Stuff: the Importance of Detail

I like a cup of coffee with my breakfast. That’s another way of saying that I can’t function without one. And it has to be a large one. (Take a note because that’s important. Detail matters.)

Out for breakfast for a holiday treat with number two child, I found myself in an upmarket(ish) eatery in central Edinburgh. Oh, the breakfasts! I watched as the waitress carried them past me to other tables. Vibrant smoothies, plates piled high with waffles and crispy bacon, all over-ridden by the heavy fragrance of the full cooked.

We ordered. “Large black coffee, please, milk on the side.”

“Would that be a long black?”

“Yes, if that’s a large black coffee. With milk on the side.”

And so to the breakfast, the thick granary toast with pristine poached eggs bursting, buttercup-yellow, onto the plate. And the coffee.

Ah, the coffee. “Excuse me, I thought I asked for a large black coffee.”

“You ordered a long black coffee madam. This is a long black coffee. It’s the largest we have.”

The coffee was black, at least. But it was half the size of a normal cup of tea (albeit slightly larger than the tiny espresso which graced the next table) and it packed a real punch, a shot of caffeine that could wake you from a coma. It was a brutal, mean-minded sergeant-major of a coffee; and I like to be eased into my mornings.

I got over it. Sort of. The rest of the breakfast was terrific but that small-minded, vicious blast of caffeine undermined the experience. It’s detail you see. Detail is a vital thing, something which can make or break a narrative or a character just as much as it can make or break a relationship or a holiday. (That view of the car park when you wanted one of the sea? It’s a detail you overlooked.)

I confess that I can be sloppy about the details in my writing. I should take more time to see my characters clearly, more time to think about what they do and why they do it - and how. But today was a revelation and one that I don’t think I’ll forget until I find somewhere that can serve me a large black coffee to caress me awake.

News on the Next Book

Who wouldn't be inspired? Majorca rocks...

So…almost a year after my first novel, Thank You For The Music, was accepted by Tirgearr Publishing, and just five months after its publication, I’ve signed a contract for my next novel.

Did I think it would be different? Did I think I might be blasé about it? (“Hmm…oh, yes. Just another contract, nothing to fuss about.”) No, I didn’t. It doesn’t feel quite the same because, let’s be honest, NOTHING beats the buzz of first understanding that you’re going to be published except for that moment when you actually are. But oh, it still feels good.

I’ll tell you a little about this one, just as a teaser. No Time Like Now is, like Thank You For The Music before it, set in the north east of Majorca, this time just outside the town of Puerto Pollensa. Unlike TYFTM it’s romantic suspense rather than plain romance. Our heroine is a housekeeper at a university field centre but when a researcher turns up for a month’s fieldwork, her cosy life is disrupted…because he’s her old flame and the two of them broke up very, very nastily some years before.

It brings together a lot of the things I love. Romantic suspense fiction is the first of them. I still have all my old Mary Stewart books, tattered and read to bits. (Maybe I should think about replacing them.) I like to read and write in all sorts of genres but Mary Stewart caught my attention early (The Moon Spinners is the first I read, and still my favourite) with her exotic locations and desperate situations.

Majorca is the second, happily fulfilling the requirement for an exotic location while giving me the excuse to justify a holiday with the writer’s claim of ‘collecting material’. I have good ideas there, usually when I’m sitting in the sun and staring across the Mediterranean, too idle to do anything but let my imagination run wild in those otherwise barren hours between the afternoon ice cream and the pre-dinner drinks.

The third is rocks. Geography, geology, earth science…whatever. And Majorca has lots of rocks. It has lots of caves, too, and lots of secret places (some of which I’ve invented but I’ll talk about that at a later date). Add that to the mix and see what you get.

So it’s a sort of new venture for me. I just hope, when it comes out, that you like it.