Writing in coffee shops

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When I first applied for a career break from the ‘day job’, nearly two years ago, I did wonder if I was going to be able to fill my time given that the bulk of the writing I do is in November for NaNoWriMo.

Sitting here in Starbucks it’s curious to look back on that, and I find myself thinking about writing routines as a handy procrastination tool – since I should be writing. I have to kind of have a run-up to it. So think of this as my warm up (and it beats trawling through Facebook and Twitter). Additionally the people sitting next to me are having a loud conversation of the sort that’s impossible to tune out, and I’m wishing I had brought my noise-cancelling earphones. They are back home, in the shed, darn it.

Everything’s mad-busy at the moment. I’m finishing the first draft of book 5, which is the second book in the Briarstone Major Crime series. My deadline for this was 14 October, but my plot only just decided to show up the week before my deadline (75,000 words in) so I managed to negotiate a bit of an extension. I’m glad the plot DID turn up because it’s a cracker. *whispers* I think this book might actually turn out to be quite good. My new deadline is 28 October, and I want to be able to spend at least four days reading and checking before I send it off, so the writing deadline is actually 14 October.

As well as that, I’m working on a short story which will be released on e-book before the paperback version of Under a Silent Moon comes out, which will both (hopefully) promote Under a Silent Moon and provide a little snippet of insight into where the team are going for the fifth book. This needs to be done by December.

And you may have noticed that November is fast approaching, which means National Novel Writing Month again. This year I have two potential plots instead of one, and I can’t decide which one to tackle, so I’m going to be brave and try both. The likelihood is that one will fizzle out, but at least if I get stuck with one I can transfer to the other one. As much as I’d like to have two 50,000 word novels by the end of the month, and it IS possible, I’ll be happy if I manage two 25,000 or any combination.

As well as writing, lots of other things are going on too.

Under a Silent Moon was launched in the UK on e-book yesterday! Quite a lot of excitement (mainly from me) on Twitter and Facebook about it. It’s a different sort of book for me, which is always a bit of a risk, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that people like it – especially as the nearly-complete book 5 is in a very similar style. The paperback version will be out in Australia and New Zealand in November, then over here in the UK and in the US and Canada in April 2014. It feels like ages away, but in a way I’m quite glad because I don’t think I could cope with a big paperback launch right now as well as everything else that’s going on!

As well as all this, lots going on at home too. My son is in Year Six at school, which in the UK means that he’s moving from primary school to secondary school in September next year. By the end of this month we need to fill in a form with our four choices of schools, so we have been busy visiting prospective schools, too. The pressure is extraordinary. When I went to secondary school there was only one place I could realistically go… for my son it’s a highly strategic venture taking into account distance, Ofsted results, whether the school in question is likely to be oversubscribed, how he’s going to get there every day, not to mention where his friends might be going…

Well, now I’ve got all that off my chest, I shall go back to inventing some fictional intelligence reports to slot in to my book. I love this bit. I am neatly burying clues for you all to find. It’s like wrapping Christmas presents.

 

 

#TOPCRIME2013

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I’m back from the annual Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, helpfully abbreviated for Twitter purposes to the hashtag above.

Last year I was on Val McDermid’s New Blood panel on the Saturday, and so I spent most of the weekend in a state of ever-increasing panic. This year my 0nly responsibility was hosting a table at the Saturday evening dinner (at which there was to be a James Bond themed mystery to solve) and I thought I could probably cope with that and actually relax a bit and enjoy myself this time.

So my highlights of the weekend were, in no particular order:

Lovely People

The bookshop at the event did stock my books, which was nice of them considering I wasn’t doing a panel – and throughout the weekend I was stopped by some very kind people who seemed to know who I was and asked me to sign their books for them. Emma, who I met last year, bought a SECOND copy of Into the Darkest Corner because she’d loaned the first one to someone and it hadn’t come back. Catherine, who said hello on Facebook too, after we got home. Annette and Pete, who brought me their well-read copies of Into the Darkest Corner and Revenge of the Tide to sign (imagine carting a book all the way to Harrogate for that purpose!). Even MORE impressively, a very kind man called Chris from Flanders had brought me a copy of the Dutch edition of Revenge of the Tide (Bij Het Vallen Van De Nacht’) to sign. I had to drag him over to meet Holly so she could take our picture! Charlotte and her sister Ruth, who tweeted me to ask if they could meet me and were exceptionally kind. They had no idea they’d caught me at a particularly stressful moment (see below re nasty woman) and managed to make me feel all happy again without even realising it. Lovely Erin, who has been tremendously supportive over the past year – I met her last year after the New Blood Panel – how fab to see her again. Felt exceptionally lucky to get to see all these people. (And if I’ve forgotten someone, I’m really sorry!)

Panels with Famous People on Them

I got to hear Jeanette Winterson interviewing Ruth Rendell. Both of these women have had a phenomenal impact on me over the years. They were both so funny, intelligent and eloquent, it was like sitting in a living room with them eavesdropping on a wonderfully relaxed conversation. And yet they are both sharp as anything. And Ruth Rendell reminded me a lot of my wonderful and much missed Aunty Wendy. Seeing her on the stage brought a tear to my eye. Afterwards, in the signing tent, I got a book signed by each of them and I had one of those fangirl moments where I gushed something about how wonderful Jeanette was and how she should come every year. And then I walked away and for hours later I was thinking of far more relevant, bright things I could’ve and should’ve said to her. I should have told her that even now I can quote big chunks of ‘Sexing the Cherry’ because I read it when I was at university and loved every single word. How desperately I wished I had an ounce of her talent. How I’d laughed and cried at ‘Oranges are not the only fruit’ because I understood how it felt – all of it. How I’d loved the cover of ‘Art and Lies’ so much I could barely open it for fear of damaging it…

Anyway. I’m a great one for thinking of the best things to say half an hour after the moment has passed. See below.

I also got to hear Sarah Millican interviewing Lee Child. That was every bit as funny as you’d imagine. And Val McDermid in conversation with forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black – that was a real eye-opener. (For the record, I’m just about curious enough to have demanded to see inside the Gucci bag). Mark Lawson (my hero) interviewing Kate Atkinson – was not what I’d expected at all. And of course, Val’s New Blood Panel this year, including the very wonderful Anya Lipska and Colette Mcbeth.

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If you’re curious about the panels I’ve mentioned and the ones I haven’t, you can view the full festival programme here.

Friends

I drove up to Harrogate with my friend Sam (avid reader of everything) and my friend Lisa (fellow crime writer, former colleague, all-round genius) on Thursday. We had a big old journey of it with lots of traffic hold-ups. Ended up doing almost a complete circuit of the M25 and we were stuck in queues almost all the way up the M1. I know this probably won’t mean much if you live outside the UK. It took SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS. According to Google maps it should have taken us a smidge under four hours. Anyway! First world problem – we arrived safely.

...this is my wine face

…this is my wine face

Our hotel was great. We met up with Holly, editor at Myriad, and her fiance Matt, and we had a very nice dinner at the Orchid Restaurant. I got very tipsy. Lee Child arrived with lots of lovely ladies and we were being a bit excitable.

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The next day Sam and Lisa got to meet the man himself. No idea where I was…
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Nails

On the Saturday morning I decided to get my nails done. By which I mean, I wanted to get a ‘file and polish’ since my nails were quite long and were in danger of breaking. Well, lovely readers, I ended up having my first visit to a nail bar… and even though I said what I was after, I ended up with a full set of acrylics because the nice young man didn’t seem to speak much English and once he’d started it felt a bit rude to interrupt.

At one point Sam looked up from her magazine and noticed I was having things glued to me, and mouthed ‘what’s he doing?’ and I mouthed back, panic-stricken ‘I have no idea!’ I have to say I’m quite happy with how they ended up, and it didn’t cost very much. I have nails strong enough to unscrew an IKEA bedframe and I can’t type properly, but they’ll do….

When I got home D asked me if I could ask for a Phillips attachment next time (private joke – you had to be there).

 

 

 

 

Cocktails

Had to be done. Mine is the ‘Basil Grande’ on the left. In the centre is Sam’s Mojito, on the right is Lisa’s Cosmopolitan.

Later in the evening we had more. Sam and I had Strawberry Dacquiris, Lisa very sensibly stuck to the Rioja… I have no idea why our cocktails look strangely radioactive. It must be the overhead lighting, or something.,

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Feeling like a writer

 

 

 

Draft Zero

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I’m nearly done with the copy edits for Under a Silent Moon – just some queries to check and another read through – and today I’ve got the itch to write something new.

Fellow NaNoWriMo author and all-round genius Julia Crouch calls this ‘draft zero’, the writing you do that nobody will ever see – experimental, rushed, occasionally beautiful. Most of it will be edited away. For me, this is the best part of writing, letting the story take me somewhere I wasn’t expecting to be. I never really (if I’m being honest) get the urge to edit. I don’t feel that pull, that emotional hunger to go to the shed and pick apart writing I’ve already completed. What I do get is the urge to create. It’s almost visceral.

Having studied art history at university (along with many other useful subjects) I always found it fascinating how the most amazing works of sculpture by Michelangelo, Bernini and Leonardo all started out as blocks of marble. The art was inside, waiting to be revealed – and only the artist could do it. Imagine the pressure!

Here’s Michelangelo’s unfinished ‘crossed leg slave’ – see what I mean? It’s like the sculpture is struggling to free itself from the stone surround. And it will stay like that forever, won’t it? Because the artist isn’t here to finish the process of liberation.

Crossed Leg Slave (1520-1530)

Not sure what I’m trying to say here. Maybe that I have that pit-of-the-stomach pull towards a story at the moment. I have a vague shape to the story and it’s sitting inside a metaphorical block inside my head, waiting for me to try and get it out. It’s exciting and a bit terrifying, knowing that I might accidentally chop a bit off that’s quite important, or get the shape of it completely wrong. The great sculptors did sketches, both on paper and out of less expensive stone, but I have to write without preparation or else I get bored and distracted.

My themes: I want to write about fear, unrequited love, making mistakes and then making more mistakes when you’re trying to fix things, acts of kindness that change a stranger’s life, cruelty and its consequences, about mending lives that have been destroyed. And revenge. Or maybe retribution.