E. V. Thompson on Writing Historical Novels and ‘The Bonds of Earth’

I am often asked why I chose to write Historical Novels when there is much in my own background that would be of interest to readers. The easy answer is that I am essentially a private person who prefers to keep work and home life separate. Were I to set my stories in the present day I feel readers would imagine they could detect some of my own exeriences in the novels – and they could well be right!

As it is, by having my characters living more than 100 years ago the time gap is too much to be put down to personal experience. Nevertheless, my research shows time and time again that those who lived, for instance, in the Victorian era, had emotions and experienced situations that had quite as much impact on their everyday lives as they would have today – however improbable such situations may seem to be.

For instance, in my book The Bonds of Earth, to be published by Robert Hale in November this year, a farm on which the young hero has worked since he was a boy is given to him by a grateful farmer. Far-fetched and stretching imagination too far?

Well, when I returned from Africa to live in Cornwall some forty-odd years ago I bought an old cottage from an 83 year-old farmer. As a young boy he began working on two farms, one from dawn until midday, the other from midday until dusk, seven days a week.

When one of the farmers died childless, leaving behind a seriously disabled widow, the now newly-married farm labourer and his wife took her in and cared for her until she too died, but before doing so she made a gift of the farm to the young man who had done so much to help her and her husband.

When I knew him the one-time farm labourer was an old man, but he was still as indomitable as he had been as a boy, despite living in a world that had changed almost beyond recognition during his lifetime.

The life of that old man planted the seed of a story that remained with me until I felt able to embellish and make use of it in The Bonds of Earth.

- E. V. Thompson

E. V. Thompson has written numerous novels. His latest, Beyond the Storm is out this month in paperback and available to pre-order now. The Bonds of Earth is set for publication in November 2012.

Wendy Perriam Author Interview: Part Two

Credit: Frank Baron

Earlier today, in part one of Wendy Perriam‘s interview, the author discussed her average writing day, her journey into publishing and just where her ideas come from. In part two, she compares writing short stories to novels and looks ahead to the digital age and future plans.

Is it more difficult to write short stories or novels?

The received wisdom is that short stories are more difficult, but I have never found them so. Novel-writing is definitely more laborious, involving more advance-planning and in-depth research – a marathon, in contrast to a hundred-metre sprint. And, even when I’ve completed a novel, it’s much harder to assess three-hundred pages than a mere half-dozen or so, which can be read at one sitting, without getting sidetracked or losing the thread.

On the other hand, writing short stories is certainly a challenge, in that the essence of the short-story form is concision. That means cutting out extraneous detail and paring down the prose. It’s a bit like making stock: you boil down the bones to extract the goodness, remove the debris and reduce and reduce until you’re left with the pure meaty essence.

Do you have a particular favourite character from any of your books?

I tend to prefer the bad girls to the good ones. Some of my female protagonists are dutiful and “normal”, such as Morna in The Stillness The Dancing, or Jennifer in Born of Woman. Others are wild and whacky, like Carole in Sin City, who loses all her money in Las Vegas and ends up working in a brothel, or Thea in After Purple, who masturbates on trains and shoots the Pope. My sympathies are with these ‘naughty girls’, perhaps because I was born one myself, but had no chance to go wild in my strict Catholic home and cloistered boarding-school. One of the advantages of being a writer is that your characters can live alternative lives for you!

As for my male characters, I’m attracted to the overbearing, dominant ones, such as Christopher, the haughty stained-glass artist in Bird Inside, or Caldos de Roche, the protagonist of Absinthe for Elevenses – snobbish, selfish, but also flamboyantly sensual; a man who makes love to church music, because only that, he claims, has the power and passion of sex itself.

Yet I’m fond of the wimps, as well – Bryan, for instance, in my blackly comic novel, Fifty-Minute Hour, who takes his toy snake to bed and longs to parcel up his mother and post her off to a far-flung destination, with no ‘if undelivered, return-to-sender’ address. And I also have a soft spot for Eric, in Broken Places, who feels he’s a coward and a loser, yet wrestles heroically with his fears and ultimately achieves success, despite his unhappy start in life.

To tell the truth, I’m fond of all my characters. As their creator, how could I dislike or disown them, whatever their frailties and follies?

With the digital age upon us, do you still believe in traditional publishing or are you an e-convert?

Forget the digital age – I don’t even own a television or a mobile phone! With my passion for the radio and my dislike of computers, I suspect I’m stuck in a 1950s time-warp. For me, books are companionable friends, each with its own individual character. I’m currently reading four different novels and all four are quite distinctive: one slim and spare and spanking-new; one chunky and well-worn; one with a vibrantly coloured jacket; one stark and grey and severe. I don’t want them reduced to anonymous downloads; shorn of their interesting covers and their heterogeneity. Books as physical objects also furnish a room, and my flat is crammed with them. I still have my childhood favourites – tattered but treasured copies of Parliacoot, Thunderhead and Milly-Molly-Mandy.

On the other hand, many of my own titles are already issued as ebooks, or in the process of being converted, so, in some ways, I welcome ebook readers. And, with my deteriorating eyesight, I’m certainly attracted by their facility to increase the size of the type. My 800-page paperback of Our Mutual Friend – one of the four mentioned above – is certainly causing me eye-strain!

Have you ever been tempted to write about someone you know (including the ability to adjust their fate accordingly…)?

No. Two of my fellow authors, once extremely close, now no longer speak to each other because one depicted the other in a novel – surely a dire warning to all novelists. Anyway, the role of the fiction-writer is to invent characters, in contrast to the biographer – although even biographers run the risk of ructions and libel-cases.

The most I might do is ‘steal’ certain aspects of someone I know and use them for a character who’s totally unlike them in every other way. For example, Charles, in my novel, Cuckoo, has my dad’s love of order and efficiency, but his job, background and general demeanour are a far cry from my father’s. And for my novel, Michael Michael, my friend Mary Edwardes allowed me to use her own experience of being married to a Michael Edwardes, whilst also knowing two other, unrelated Michael Edwardes. I also drew on her work as a psychotherapist, but the character I eventually created was nothing like Mary in outlook and personality.

What’s next for you…?

The total rewrite of my seventeenth novel, which I’ve just completed in its first draft. Although I made constant daily revisions throughout the writing process, I now need to don my editor’s hat and read the whole thing through with a highly critical eye. I’ll be looking out for any saggy passages; any repeats of ideas or phrases, and also trying to assess its general feel and structure. Is it too long? Does the beginning drag? Are there any characters who fail to convince or need greater delineation? Do any scenes need more drama, especially sex-scenes?

I also have to choose a title. I have two in mind, but neither is quite right. I remember a really hairy time, some years ago, when my new novel was due to go into production but I’d still failed to come up with a title. My frantic publisher summoned me and some of his colleagues to a brainstorming session and the six of us eventually hit on an idea – although I have so say it’s the least favourite of all my book-titles.

Although the editing process is hard work, I find it the most enjoyable and least stressful stage of writing a novel. All the words are already on paper; the whole plot is worked out, and a suitable ending in place. The research is done and most of the hassles are over – I hope! I may find on my re-read that my new baby isn’t as strong or healthy as I thought, and needs not just a bit of TLC, but weeks of Intensive Care. Well, my Peter Rabbit mug is standing by, prepared for a long slog!

Wendy Perriam‘s novel Broken Places and collection of short stories I’m on the Train! are scheduled for release 30 April 2012. Both are available to pre-order now.

Check out Wendy Perriam‘s website at http://www.wendyperriam.com/

Wendy Perriam Author Interview: Part One

Credit: Frank Baron

Wendy Perriam has not one but two books out with Robert Hale Ltd this month. Her novel Broken Places is out in paperback following on from its tremendous success in hardback. Her collection of short stories, I’m on the Train!, is also out on Monday. 

In the first part of her interview with us, Wendy talks about writing from an early age, her long journey into publishing, getting kicked out of convent school and just where her ideas come from.

Don’t forget to check back later for part two …

Have you always enjoyed writing, from a young age?

Absolutely! I wrote my first poems and stories from the age of four and my first ‘novel’ at eleven. The latter was sheer wish-fulfilment. Entitled A Pony at Last, it featured an ordinary girl like me, who longed to own a pony – highly unlikely in my own case, since we lived in a suburban semi, in a cul-de-sac, miles from any field or stable. The only horse in evidence was the milkman’s decrepit nag. However, my heroine and alter ego becomes the proud possessor of a thoroughbred chestnut mare, so, before I’d even reached my teens, I had realized the power of writing to remake an unsatisfactory world.

I was a sickly, unsporty child, so, while my siblings went skating and cycling, I preferred to curl up with a book, or pen my own variations on Black Beauty or the Famous Five. In fact, I spent much of my childhood with imaginary companions or in imaginary situations – as do several of the characters in my new short-story collection, despite their being adults. In the story Michael, the office dogsbody, Carole, finds strength and support in an Archangel, who becomes her guide, her protector, her shopping-consultant and even her alarm clock. And then there’s eighty-eight-year-old Connie, in Thick Hair, who re-enacts her wedding day, tragically aborted in 1941, when her fiancé’s ship went down; while Jodie, in Hope and Anchor, not only conjures up an imaginary dog, but also transforms her unloving, absent father into a proud and doting dad.

‘I spent much of my childhood with imaginary companions or in imaginary situations’ – Wendy Perriam on a childhood love of writing.

Although now in my seventies, I still draw on the power of the imagination, both in my life and in my work. I find it both consoling and compensatory; an alternative universe where anything can happen.

What was your journey into getting published like?

Well, I’d dreamed of being an author from early childhood, but a series of reverses prevented me from achieving publication until a much later stage. Firstly, I lost my once-all-important Catholic Faith and was expelled from my convent boarding-school. Told I was in Satan’s power, I lived in terror of damnation, which precipitated a long period of depression, followed by physical illness, fertility problems and a painful divorce. So it wasn’t until my remarriage – and the ripe old age of forty – that I saw my first book in print.

I’d been taken on by a literary agent, on the strength of my short stories – written more as diversion than in the hope of publication. This agent said that, if I wrote a novel, he’d publish it. Despite my own deep-seated doubts, he proved true to his word. Absinthe for Elevenses was accepted by Michael Joseph, the first publisher he tried, and came out in 1980. After that, I just put my head down and produced the next book – and the next – scared that if I stopped, my lucky break might come to a precipitous end!

How do you spend your average writing day?

I always start early in the morning and postpone household chores, emails and phone-calls till later in the day. It’s all too easy to waste vital energy on such trivial distractions! But, first, I make a cup of coffee in my special ‘writer’s mug’ – a Peter Rabbit one I’ve had since babyhood. Perhaps all those busy bunnies, racing round the rim, provide me with a good example of enterprise and exertion!

‘I just put my head down and produced the next book – and the next – scared that if I stopped, my lucky break might come to a precipitous end!’ - Wendy Perriam on the fear that comes with finally being published.

With my earlier novels, I’d start at page one and keep going till I reached the end, not stopping to revise until the first draft was completed. Now I’ve changed my method and tend to revise continuously – rewriting each chapter or each short story over and over, until I’ve licked it into reasonable shape.

I prefer to write by hand, in the same red notebooks I favoured as a child and using the same messy, slapdash scrawl. This seems to free the sub-conscious and thus aid the imagination, and I always encourage my creative writing students to swap the computer for a pen. Certainly in my own case, I find composing on a computer inhibiting and unnatural – perhaps because I didn’t own one until I was in my sixties. I didn’t even know how to type and had to enrol on a beginners’ course – the oldest student in the class!

But, once I’ve done my writing-stint, I do - reluctantly - go to the computer and turn my messily scrawled pages into a neat typescript. Then I spend the afternoon revising this typed draft, continually retyping and re-revising, until my mind is soggy and I realize it’s time to call a halt. At that stage, I turn my attention to emails and household tasks, although making the beds at 5p.m. seems appallingly sluttish and I hear my long-dead mother’s voice in my head: ‘Any decent housewife does the chores first thing!’

Where do your ideas come from?

My ideas spring from anywhere and everywhere, especially those for short stories. In my new collection, a pub sign swinging in the wind gave me the idea for Hope and Anchor, while The Little Way arose from viewing the relics of St Therese of Lisieux, on display in Westminster Cathedral. Baggage was prompted by my own total inability to pack light. Even for a weekend-break, I’ll take a cabin-trunk.

I plan to start on an eighth collection of stories, once I’ve completed my new novel, so I’m already on the lookout for ideas. Wherever I go, I keep my senses primed, ready to pounce on even the smallest incident – a puppy in the park, a punk’s flamboyant hairstyle, a fracas on a bus – and then let my imagination get to work and turn this tiny seed into a story.

‘Wherever I go, I keep my senses primed, ready to pounce on even the smallest incident…’- Wendy Perriam on where her ideas come from.

Ideas for novels tend to come less randomly and need much more working out. I may start with a character, like Catherine in Second Skin, who feels she’s never been the person she was born to be, or with a concept such as fear – as in my last novel, Broken Places, or with a situation, such as Lorna’s bungled bunion operation in Tread Softly. Yes, even an unsightly bunion can kick-start a novel!

Check back later today for part two of the interview, when Wendy discusses the digital age and what’s next for her books…

Crime Writer Bill Kitson, Author of the Mike Nash Series, on Becoming a Serial Killer

Credit: J. Brian Beadle

Bill Kitson, a retired finance executive, was born in West Yorkshire. He is an avid fan of cricket and cryptic crosswords and is also the former chairman of the Scarborough Writers’ Circle. Identity Crisis is the sixth instalment in the Mike Nash series, following Kitson’s gripping thrillers Depth of Despair, Chosen, Minds That Hate, Altered Egos and Back-Slash. Here, Kitson talks about creating a serial killer and keeping up interest for a book series.

With the sixth book in the Mike Nash series, Identity Crisis, due for release at the end of May, I’ve had time to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages that surround writing a series. There has always been a great demand for detective series, from Conan Doyle, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie and John Creasey to Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Nor is it solely a British trait. American, Italian and, most recently, Scandinavian crime writers have all been highly successful. They also transfer well to film and TV – increasing their popularity.

I joked once that my advantage was in not having to invent as many characters, but I found there are risks attached to maintaining the same ones. An obvious one is to make the regular characters mere observers. Unless the characters’ life experience is reflected in the books, they become two-dimensional, caricatures, and ultimately, unsatisfying. I have a life outside the books, why shouldn’t my detective? Events should touch them just as they touch the writer. They should age, get married – or divorced, have children, lose family and friends. Anything less, and the books become little more than an extremely wordy cryptic crossword. A well-known novelist once told me, ‘Your characters should be so believable you would recognize them if they knocked at your door’. However, if they did – I’d have a problem!

Naming characters is very important, in several ways. The name should ‘fit’ the part. I’ve changed several names, usually in my first draft, because they didn’t feel right. They should also be right for their origin. To help with that, I use http://www.behindthename.com/ which gives origin and meaning of first names from anywhere in the world, and from different religions and ethnic groups. This has to be correct, or the author loses credibility. I once heard a TV detective asking a Muslim what his Christian name was. Woops!

I also avoid similar sounding or looking first or last names. If a reader has to stop every time they see the names Michael Roberts or Martin Robins to decide which character I’m referring to they will eventually lose patience. This is particularly so with thrillers, where I’m striving for pace. If a reader has to stop, it takes several pages for them to pick up speed again. A chart is probably the safest way to prevent this happening, especially the longer the series goes on. When I get a minute I WILL do one!

Along with reflecting changes in the characters’ lives, fashions dictate the subject matter of books set in any particular era. Unless the story is set before the war – the days when the detective gathered all the suspects together in the library to unmask the killer are long gone. Many small towns are without libraries nowadays, let alone most houses! Writing present day crime books and striving for realism can be uncomfortable, particularly when real life imitates fiction. Only three days before I wrote this article, a tragic event locally mirrored something I wrote a few months ago. This is by no means the first time I’ve written about crimes that later became headline news.

Having the same detectives throughout enables me to indulge in a little office banter, humour that lightens what are sometimes fairly grim scenes. The humour, sometimes black, is a natural reaction to some of the horrors that police and forensic officers, plus pathologists encounter. Once more, it reflects real-life reaction along with realism and accuracy from my research into the subject matter of the plot.

Credit: J. Brian Beadle

The setting for a series is almost like having an extra character in the books. I borrow scenes from real locations adapting them to my fiction world, amending them to fit the plot. In Depth of Despair, the template for Desolation Tarn is in fact two lakes that are fifty miles apart. Similarly, in Minds That Hate, one of the characters walks out of a house (in Northallerton), down a ginnel (in Thirsk) and fifteen minutes later is in woods alongside a river (near Ilkley). In real life that is about a seventy mile journey.

Using real places can have disadvantages. At a speaking engagement last year I let slip the true location of the alley where the victim was abducted in Chosen. One member of the audience reacted with horror. ‘I’m never going to walk down there again,’ she told me. Fact and fiction had collided.

The beautiful and diverse scenery of North Yorkshire is the greatest inspiration for me, and I hope it provides scope to describe settings that the reader will enjoy. Sadly, I know I will never be able to do them complete justice. But then, I doubt if there are many authors who could.

Above all, with both the challenges and disadvantages, I’m pleased I decided on a series. It’s been a lot of fun – and it isn’t over yet, by a long chalk.

Identity Crisis by Bill Kitson is scheduled for publication on 31 May 2012 and is available to pre-order now.

Wendy Perriam on the Differences Between Writing Novels and Short Stories

One of my friends asked me recently, ‘Are writing a novel and writing a short story much the same process, apart from the matter of length?’

For me, the answer is no. And, with a new short-story collection and a paperback novel published simultaneously, it seems a pertinent question. I actually feel I’m a different person when writing in each format. For the stories, I’m a flitting magpie, seizing glittering trinkets on a whim; for the novels, a laborious builder, laying stone on stone and brick on brick, in a careful, structured fashion. The former process is easier – more playful, more instinctive, more in tune with the unconscious – whereas novel-writing requires discipline, rigour, rational thought and continual re-thinking.

With a novel, I’ll map out the plot in advance; draw up biographies and backgrounds for my characters; decide on settings, seasons, weather and the whole time-scale for the book, and do a lot of preparatory research. It may be weeks, or even months before I’ve penned a single word, whereas I might write a whole short story in a day. Stories can arise from some tiny incident: a chance meeting with a stranger; a weird object in a charity shop; a snatch of overheard conversation. They don’t need in-depth research, elaborate advance planning, a large cast of characters, or complicated plot-twists.

For example, the title-story of my new collection (I’m on the Train) was prompted by a garrulous fellow passenger, glued to her mobile on a train to Kent. I was going to my cousin’s funeral and my mood of meditative grief was totally disrupted by the woman’s breezy, giggly, one-sided conversation. For the purposes of the story, I changed the whole situation: instead of me and a funeral, there’s a harassed man, recently made redundant, travelling to London for an all-important job interview. He’s maddened by the woman’s incessant prattling, at a time when he needs silence and a chance to prepare and rehearse.

The crematorium itself ‘provided’ another story – Survivors. By mistake, I attended the wrong funeral: a most bizarre experience, involving party-poppers, red tin-whistles and a shower of red balloons. And, although, once again, I used the situation for a story, I altered everything else: the character, the setting and, most importantly, the end, adding a sense of resolution, often lacking in reality.

Several other stories in my new collection ‘presented themselves’ in this same spontaneous way. Second Sex, for instance, began in the Curzon Cinema, when I got talking to the man taking tickets for the film: a radical young philosopher who had thought profoundly about every aspect of life. In the story, his views deeply influence my character, Alice, who begins to see her own lifestyle as shallow and materialistic, and to regard her own boyfriend in a new, unfavourable light. This story involves two guys and a girl, a violent movie and a Rolex watch - that’s all - and those few elements came together with very little pre-planning.

However, writing my novel, Broken Places, was a very different process – much slower and more tortuous. All I had at the outset was the character of Eric – a man prey to many fears. But, aware that readers might dismiss him as a wimp, I had to give him some reason for his fears; make him more sympathetic. Only at that point did I decide he would be a foundling; a baby abandoned at birth, who spends his entire childhood in care, with constant unsettling moves from one institution to another, and no sense of security or ‘home’. That would excuse him, I felt and explain his many hang-ups.

But first I had to research the whole subject of foundlings and the intricacies of the care system. And it was while interviewing an ex-Barnardo’s boy, who’d had much the same experience as my protagonist, that I hit upon the notion of Eric working as a librarian. The Barnardo’s boy told me that the only place he’d felt safe as a child was in his local public library; an oasis of quiet calmness compared with the noise and chaos of the children’s home. Having ‘stolen’ this idea, I added a kindly librarian who takes Eric under her wing and even persuades him to train as a librarian himself.

That meant more research into the whole complex world of librarianship – far more daunting than it sounds. I also needed to decide which particular library Eric would work at, since every borough runs its libraries differently. After much debate, I eventually chose Balham, in the Borough of Wandsworth, and that, in turn, led me to add Eric’s role in running Wandsworth Prison’s Book Club. The latter also needed researching, of course, but after two visits to the prison, the members of the real-life book club kindly read these passages, to check I’d got things right.

Despite all this work, I was nowhere near even starting the first chapter. Indeed, if I took you through the whole long-winded process of writing and rewriting all twenty seven chapters – including a plane journey from Hell, a section set in Seattle, and Eric’s dramatic rescue of his teenage daughter from a soccer champ intent on seduction – it might require another book!

So let me end, instead, by explaining that, however different my methods for each format, the themes in both my long works and my short are often similar: the clash between duty/rules/conformity and hedonism/wildness/rebellion; the crucial influence of mothers - whether good, bad, absent, dead or imaginary; the importance of fantasy to fill gaping holes in lives, and an interest in the miraculous and in what I call ‘moments of grace’. And often, in both forms, I combine humour and sadness; since comedy has always been used, in both literature and life, to assuage the sting of grief and loss. And, finally, the benefits of writing in both forms are also much the same: a truly therapeutic sense of absorption and engagement in the task, and a whole set of new friends made along the way, be they librarians, prisoners, crematorium officials, Barnado’s boys, or Curzon Cinema employees. But not – I repeat not – those whose incessant chatter on a mobile can shatter the peace of a journey and incite one’s fellow passengers to violence!

- Wendy Perriam

Wendy Perriam‘s novel Broken Places and collection of short stories I’m on the Train! are scheduled for release 30 April 2012. Both are available to pre-order now.

Check out Wendy Perriam‘s website at http://www.wendyperriam.com/