My First Book (blog 1)

In 1996 I began to write a book. I wanted to write a murder mystery about a serial killer where the scene of the crimes kept shifting. I decided to set it during the First Crusade, which started in 1096 – exactly 900 years earlier.

I began by rereading Steven Runciman’s wonderful book: A History of the Crusades – Volume 1. Then I outlined my plot, pasting the action onto the geographical progress of the crusade. A lot of research about the period followed. What did people wear, eat, and so on? Who would have been responsible for investigating the killings? What system of justice did they have?

I spent a lot of time trying to decide what sort of language to use. My main character is the son of a blacksmith who lived in Brittany. Since I was writing in English there was a mismatch to start with right there. I decided to write the text in modern English while avoiding modern idioms and slang.

The dialogue needed to be accessible to the reader. This meant it needed to be reasonably modern, but avoiding modern idiom, words etc. I read a lot of Ellis Peter’s books to see how she handled language.

I wrote the book. That took about a year. Then I spent another year editing, rewriting, weeding out anachronisms. The metric system, for example, was introduced after the French Revolution – who knew?

The book was called THE SIGN OF THE CROSS.

I sent out queries to about 20 agents in London, and got about 14 rejections. The remaining 6 never responded.

At that stage, I put the book on a shelf in a box file, put it out of my mind, and went back to writing the occasional short story.

In 2007, I spotted an advertisement on a writers’ web site for a literary agency in New York. I sent a sample of the book off and forgot about it. Within a week, the agency responded that they wanted to represent my novel. They said it had potential.

I was delighted by this news. As it happened, I was in hospital at the time, undergoing a series of tests. I didn’t have access to my computer, so I had to communicate with my new agent via my wife. She received the contract, printed it and took it to the hospital.

I signed up, and began to work on my second book.

As soon as I had signed the contract, I was contacted by my agent (Georgina) who recommended that I send my book to an editor in a sister company. For $1,200 this editor would help me to prepare the manuscript for the market.

This, I agreed to. I sent off the money and the manuscript, and, within a few weeks, I received a line edit. There were some anachronisms still in there. I remember that the word “pantaloons” was not appropriate. We settled on “breeches”.

Shortly after that I discovered that this “agency” was no more than a well-known scam, whose purpose was to extract fees for editing services from unsuspecting and naïve people like me. I cancelled the contract.

The one good thing that came from this experience was that it got me writing again. Maybe I might have got there without spending that money. Maybe, but I doubt it. As a writer, I was in a horrible black hole of self-doubt. I’m not sure if I would ever have found my way out of there any other way.

Tune in next week to find out what happened next.

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No, it's a Kindle

On Friday last, I ordered a Kindle. Finally, after raging against the machine, so to speak, I capitulated, logged on to Amazon.co.uk and clicked on Kindle.

Sorry, says the screen, if you live outside the UK you have to buy your Kindle from Amazon.com. It will be shipped from USA. That seems daft to me, but what the heck. So I switch over to Amazon.com and set about ordering the thing.

The process took about an hour.

First, I had to choose Wi-fi or Wi-fi plus 3G. Having previously consulted my friend who had bought one recently, I was prepared for this question, but still I wasted some time reading about the difference. And then there was a larger version to consider.

My main problem was that I wanted to buy it for use in Ireland, but then give it to my wife when she goes on her planned long (6-12 months) trip to Australia. So, when it asked me to select a country, I could have entered Ireland or Australia. I tried both, flip-flopping between them, trying to work out which I should choose.

I selected Ireland and got a dinky pop-up that warned me about VAT. As I was placing the order I noticed that I was eligible for free shipping. It told me how to claim free shipping by clicking on Preferred Delivery Method. My fingers were poised to do just that, when the screen thanked me for my order. Hastily, I cancelled the order and tried again.

This time, Amazon realized that I was not based in the USA and therefore not entitled to free shipping. But somehow, I managed to order two of the things, one with and one without a case.

Cancel and start again.

The order has now been processed and I am to expect delivery in about 4-5 days.

Monday: We were out when UPS delivered the pesky thing. I ordered it Friday (18 Mar) at 10:59. It was dispatched the same day at 22:15 and delivered today (20 Mar) at 11:36. The UPS man left a note in our mailbox: “Left it in your grey bin”. The whole process, from order to delivery was so fast, it’s made me nervous. What have I let into the house? At 13:30 I rescued it from our dustbin. By 16:00 I had it charged and ready to go. It’s now 17:00 and I couldn’t find a single ebook on Amazon’s top 100 titles that I would want to buy.

I’ve switched it off for the moment.

Toothpaste

It’s amazing how much toothpaste there is in a tube. Remember when toothpaste tubes were made of lead and we rolled them up to squeeze the last globule out of there? We used to use the empty tubes as weights in model aircraft or boats. Like everything else nowadays, the tubes are made of plastic, and, although rolling your tube is not an option, there are other ways of squeezing those last few blobs out of there. If you’re diligent enough, and you know what you’re doing, you can get weeks of brushing from a tube that looks entirely empty.

This morning I finally gave up on our latest tube and broke out a new one. Imagine my surprise when I discovered shiny green paste oozing out. My first thought was that this was a special edition manufactured in recognition of St Patrick, but then I dismissed this idea as frivolous and unrealistic. The paste is called “Smooth Mint**.” I can only suppose the unusual colour is intended to reinforce this notion.

Our last tube provided striped paste in the French colours: blue, white and red. How they do that is a mystery, and frankly, I’d rather not find out. I love the idea that the manufacturing process incorporates some arcane magical spell to delight us at brushing time, twice each day. Mind you, the tube before that produced red, white and blue stripes. I can only suppose that a massive logistical meltdown caused the inadvertent diversion to these shores of a consignment destined for England.

God only knows what we’d ever find to talk about in our house if all toothpaste was plain white.

On Tenses

I have noticed an increase in the number of books that are written in the present tense. I’m sure the technique is intended to heighten excitement, suspense, or tension, and maybe it does in some situations. Speaking for myself, I find it irksome and distracting. For many (most) books written in this way, it feels artificial, the text like a rubber band that the author has stretched too far.

Here is a short sample list of books I have read recently that are written this way:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Winterland by Alan Glynn
Room by Emma Donoghue
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Perfume by Patrick Suskind is interesting. On one half page of chapter 1 he uses the present tense to describe his main character’s traumatic (and dramatic) birth. And that’s it. He never uses the present tense again. (Correct me if I’m wrong). Wonderful book, btw.

In Hans Fallada’s famous book Alone in Berlin (US, Every Man Dies Alone) written in 1947, he mixes his tenses. In some chapters, he starts in the past tense and then segues into the present, using past tense to tell us how the scenario came about and then the present tense to tell us what transpires. In other chapters he reverses this, starting with the present tense and then using the past tense to fill in the scenario. I’m not sure if this might be characteristic of the way German is spoken, but it is a very effective technique. I expect it’s probably considered old-hat in literature nowadays, which is a pity.

Submissions and Stuff

Two stories that I submitted to Tor.com were rejected in the last few days. The first, “Intelligent Design” was a light-hearted look at Creationism; the second a version of “Snugglesuit” (included in this blog under its own tab). I have one more story still in Tor’s in-tray. Given that it took them 9 months to respond to the first two, I should get my rejection for “Ooze” in late August.

I have also entered one of my novels in the Amazon Breakout Novel Competition and I’m happy to report that it got through the first stage. On the strength of a one-page summary, it was selected to go through to stage 2 with 999 others. Still, that’s 1,000 out of 5,000 entries. The schedule for the rest of the contest is as follows:

March 22 Quarter final stage. 250 books are selected to go to the next stage.
April 26 Semi-final stage. 50 books are selected to go on to the final
May 24 The Final. 3 books are announced.
Amazon readers vote to select the winner.
I’m not holding my breath.