Becoming a Public Author

On the way to my book launch I read How to be a Public Author by Paul Ewen. It’s comic gold. As preparation for an event - well it prepares you for any eventuality.

Francis Plug attends a string of stellar author events. Here he is at a Salman Rushdie talk:

‘My £8 ticket is equivalent to two and a half well-filled glasses of wine. So far I’ve had seven glasses, so I’m up. The wine table is unattended, so I help myself to another bottle before heading back into the theatre. Salman Rushdie looks over to me as I scuttle towards my seat. It must be distracting to have someone moving about like a frilled lizard while you’re trying to talk.’

Later he writes:

'Perhaps we’re currently experiencing the golden age of author/reader interaction, but I suspect, for most contemporary authors, it’s nothing but a friggin’ nightmare.’

The night before the launch I take a sustaining draught of solitude. I like people, but I burn out on sociability. I revel in the singleness of my hotel room, the mini kettle with one cup, and the narrow bed. On the telly Florence (and the Machine) leans out from the Pyramid stage and touches drifts of hands. I don’t think I will need to be hoisted by security guards. What if no one turns up?  

It’s June in England and it’s hot. English villages and fairs are made for each other. Girls have bows in their hair and stop mid run for two turns of a hula hoop. Chair legs sink into hot grass. Organisers look at their watches and move things. Tea and cake is served on mismatched pastel and flowered crocks. Winter feet are aired. Ants tickle. I have to make an effort to be nervous in such an atmosphere but I manage it. 

I check the venue. It’s a small marquee. I recognise my publisher from her picture on line. She has very sweetly brought flowers (from her own garden) chocolates and a card. She gives me piles of books to sign. People enter the humid tent, sit down and wait.

 Oy Yew is a middle grade/crossover book, in other words it appeals to all ages. We pitched the talk at both children and adults. The tent fills with adults. I'm told it’s difficult to attract MG readers to an event unless the writer is already a big name. It's a shame. Like Francis Plug I have an anarchic inner child. I relate to children.

Thankfully the adults find enough content to smile, respond, take notes and buy books. No one darts between the seats like a frilled lizard. Perhaps if I offered wine...

What I learned and some advice for first time public authors.

Read Francis Plug as preparation.

Support indie publishers. They are very nice. 

Don't carry your flowers around all day. They will wilt.

If you do a presentation with a dog, people will look at the dog and not you. (The cartoonist, Brick, secured his dog to the altar of the chapel where he was speaking).

Only thought makes things into ‘friggin’ nightmares’.

Eleven-year olds don’t decide to go to book talks. When taken by parents to culture, they trail. Eights and nines are more open. Children in schools are captive and will happily receive you as light relief.

Buy food before you get on the train else you will be forced to spend a large part of your advance on a packet of quavers.

I am now a public author. That means I am available for any event, anywhere. Lakes and mountains preferred.
Email anasalote@aol.com

Going indie: constraints of the publisher's list

Earlier this year I visited the William Blake exhibition at the Ashmolean. I thought it diminished Blake with its nerdy focus on technique. It was like studying Van Gogh’s brushes with his paintings as an aside. I skimmed the technical details and looked at the pictures.

William Blake was a copyist till he had learned his craft. Then he opened his cranium. He used the spiritus mundi as ink. He had his own vision and he made something new. There were influences from Raphael and Michelangelo, but Blake’s figures have a peculiar contained enormity which is singularly Blakish. The burden of kingliness drags striated arms, crouches with sinewed thighs, resounds with the yawning of bergs, the grinding of planets. His pins are the scale and holy terror of beyond. The infinite is seen; there can be no return to limitation.

The artist could have played safe and pandered to prevailing tastes. No publisher or gallery was calling for Blakesque submissions. Instead he scrawled scathing notes in the margins of Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses and did what he pleased. Others were pleased by it. The market came to him.
 

Writers take the same risks. The major publishers are conservative. They have a list which the writer must fit, a confining mould. Its parameters are, ‘things which have previously been shown to make money’. Innovation is acceptable from a ‘name’. Otherwise change proceeds in cautious baby steps. In general bankability trumps ability. It is rare to see something genuinely fresh, an Alice in Wonderland, an On the Road, from a large press. This leaves the small presses, webzines and literary journals as the forward edge of publishing.

My book, Oy Yew, though praised by the big publishing houses, didn’t quite fit their lists. One editor asked to see it twice and emailed over a year later to say of all the mss she had seen in that period it was the one that had stuck in her mind. Though she loved it, she was manacled by her list.

Oy Yew is a difficult book to characterise. It is a middle grade children’s novel, it is an escapist adult read, it is a search for identity, a tale of separated soul-mates, and a mystery of disappearing servants. It is both dark and comical, and its voice is more classic than is fashionable. It was written out of inspiration and not with one eye on the market. With so many list-bound editors I thought self-publishing would be the only route. Then along came Mother's Milk.

MM is an indie press with heart. Heart and head can have equal influence on the small publisher who is in it for love as much as a living. Signing with MM is the beginning of a journey. The press is personal and supportive. If you've ever received the standard rejection, 'Sorry, it doesn't quite fit our list', consider replying, 'Don't worry, I'll find a more interesting list'. Then research the small presses. We’re now at the stage of final edits and building up to launch on Jun 27th. I'll be writing more posts on the rest of the journey.

Oy Yew is available for pre-order with a £2 discount here
We are launching with a talk at Lowdham Book Festival near Nottingham on Sat, Jun 27th 11a.m. Unusually, I will be joined by my publisher, Teika Bellamy and award-winning illustrator, Emma Howitt to discuss all aspects of book production plus readings.

Imagination is quantum ergo fairies are real

Welcome to ‘The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ Carnival This post was written especially for inclusion in ‘The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of their latest collection of fairy tales for an adult audience: The Forgotten and the Fantastical. Today our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘Fairy tales’. Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants. ***

I believe in fairies because:

You know how the quantum world is like a soup of potentials. It’s only when we look at the soup that a dead cat bobs to the surface, or a carrot. Between the soup out there and the observer in your head the material world arises.

   But what if the mind fixes potentials inside itself? Is that imagination and is the result any less real? The difference seems to be that imaginary carrots can't be seen by everyone till they are fixed in speech or art or writing.

   There is evidence that fairy tales straddle the worlds of ‘reality’ and imagination. The weasel seen hitching a ride on a passing woodpecker is a fairy tale interruptus.  

   When my daughter wrote to the tooth fairy: ‘Are you rill?’ TF replied at length on a scroll of birch bark tied with grass. When Grace found it, there was a hush; reality crept away, leaving the stage to star-robed imagination.

Too cutesie? Cast off the sugared pink tutu and come to the dark side. Remember The Owl Service?Our Bertie has owl patterns on his high chair. He flicks his head from side to side and regards them with deep mistrust. He keeps a rice cake in the pocket of his dungarees as a protective mandala.

Now owls are appearing at secret locations all over my house. Rice cakes will not shield him.

What causes these tears in the quantum fabric? You do, hopefully. Imagination sometimes needs helpers. They help the fairies of Crewkerne woods to carpenter tiny doors. They teach tooth fairies to write, and paint owls hiding under bath towels. They dress as BFGs, climb ladders and peer into nurseries.

   There are forces ranked against the helpers. They wear corporate lanyards and organise life into terms and conditions and bulleted criteria, in a jargon that makes every sentence seem like a rearrangement of the same dead words. Dickens called it Gradgrindery. I call it NVQs. First it makes the imagination frantic with boredom and constriction. Then it stitches the quantum weave tighter and tighter imprisoning fairies, owls and giants.

   For children the inner and outer worlds are permeable. The weave is still wide enough to let the fairies through. Helpers might move on from airy fairies to Yeats's host and Rosetti's Goblin Market, but they stay child-hearted. And here’s another powerful thing they do. They read to children.

The Forgotten and the Fantastical is now available to buy from The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) and as a paperback from Amazon.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

Any comments on the following fab posts would be much appreciated:

In ‘Imagination is quantum ergo fairies are real’, Ana, at Colouring Outside the Lines, explains why we should all believe in fairies and encourage our children to do the same. ‘Wings’ — Rebecca at Growing a Girl Against the Grain shares a poem about her daughter and explains the fairy tale-esque way in which her name was chosen. In ‘Red Riding Hood Reimagined’ author Rebecca Ann Smith shares her poem ‘Grandma’. Writer Clare Cooper explores the messages the hit movie Frozen offers to our daughters about women’s experiences of love and power in her Beautiful Beginnings blog post ‘Frozen: Princesses, power and exploring the sacred feminine.’ ‘Changing Fairy Tales’ — Helen at Young Middle Age explains how having young children has given her a new caution about fairy tales. In ‘The Art of Faerie’ Marija Smits waxes lyrical about fairy tale illustrations. ‘The Origins of The Forgotten and the Fantastical’ — Teika Bellamy shares her introduction from the latest collection of fairy tales for an adult audience published by Mother’s Milk Books. -- www.mothersmilkbooks.com For the latest news, please subscribe to our email newsletter via our website.

Don't dot shop - flash theatre in the High Street.

Wells Trading Local Festival was like molten blobs of creativity dropping on a small cathedral city and bursting in random places. Where they fell, Saturday shopping world was suspended. A dozen shops became flash theatres. In the corner of a practical commercial space: a supermarket, a school uniform shop, art bloomed. Something happens when a group of people suspend reality together. The audience, crammed between aisles and islands of folded jumpers or kitchenware, hushed rapidly. There was breath-holding and laughter, and at two of the shows, sniffing and eye-dabbing.

The monologue is a great form for immediate intimacy. It is like opening a door in the forehead of a stranger and peering in. There is confiding, vulnerability and revelation. It is an encouragement to wider empathy and greater attention to others in life as well as art.

As one of the writers and a member of the audience I won't see the city and its shops in the same way again. It's now a map of little theatres in my head. The empty stage holds an imprint of magic even when the players have gone.

Move your body not your finger. Don't dot shop. Use your local shops, have conversations, meet real people. You can't do it on Amazon.

Sod got into my phone and drained my battery just as I was about to film my piece, so picture this: Actor David Reakes (like Benedict Cumberbatch but more talented) opened his jacket to reveal a satin ruffled shirt and in the back of a clothes shop he became Prince Steve. You can read the script here.

                    For more about the fabulous Show of Strength Theatre

                http://showofstrength.org.uk/productions/trading-local-wells

                                   
                                   

Creativity v Domesticity: you won't find an orchid in a roller-striped lawn.

Families, like fairy tale bears, have their habitual seats. Mine is at one end of a 1930s sofa. Nicotine-yellowed, it soaked up the smoke that my grandma’s lungs did not. This sofa is actually my desk. One end is confettied with notes and stuff.

  In the surrounding room objects are not privileged or displayed, they are beached: old greetings cards, papery flowers on the mantel, the drift of ashes in the hearth; a dead bonsai’s wintry charm. Their outlines mingle like flotsam and seaweed. Webs thicken and droop like vines, and the dust, as Quentin Crisp said, gets no worse after three years. Things wait to be put away: a pop-up festival tent, the African-snail-that-didn’t-thrive’s plastic tank, a frisbee left by a visiting dog. Fortunately things are infinitely patient because they do not die. It’s just as well because given the choice of a pen or a duster I seize the pen. I don't do tidy - small, vinegar-mouthed word.

I am messy and I have no guilt. (Reminds me of the Patti Smith song: ‘my knees are open to the sun, I seek pleasure' etc. I doubt she straightened the antimacassars before she wrote it.)
If you do have guilt you must be female. Drop it. If you need convincing there are plenty of studies which show that messiness provokes creativity. Disorder can trigger creative solutions. Order is associated with rigid thinking. A disordered environment has depth and history, archaeological layers and surprises. Clutter is interesting. Dirt is a maligned character. It is as beneficial as it is pathological. It nourishes a strong immune system and a diverse biome. Air fresheners and cleaning chemicals lodge in the body with a half-life somewhere between plutonium-244 and a seaborne carrier bag.

I have visited homes as bland and minimal as the local Nationwide. Banks with their clear, clean surfaces don’t taste of anything. You could lick the glass, the wall, the carpet. The only difference would be the texture. I don’t want to live in a bank. I don’t think I could write in one. Einstein famously said: ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’

Of course there’s clutter and clutter. There’s the chaos of a Mumbai rubbish tip and there’s the ordered disorder of a non-linear mind; a sophisticated, highly individual filing system that cannot be reduced to algorithms. It nourishes the random, the providential, the serendipitous, the inspired.
Organic and organised have the same root. Ordered disorder is nature’s way. Ordered order is topiary, borders, selective planting. Ordered disorder is a meadow where everything finds its symphonic niche and somewhere in the grass is a single wild orchid. You won’t find an orchid in a roller-striped lawn.

Some of my ordered disorder, enhanced by a broken horn in the log basket and a part-lobotomised Gandalf on the hearth.

How to fill a church - Show not tell.

In writing as in art, show not tell.


Damien Hirst's 'Fallen Angel' and David Mach's 'The Thief'.

Show not tell: possibly the most common advice given to beginner writers. It doesn't always hold. Sometimes a simple 'She was sad,' is preferable to 'Her eyes gushed like an open fawcet'. Anyway, a visit to the Crucible 2 sculpture exhibition in Gloucester cathedral got me thinking about the subtler lexical scope of 'showing'. The sculptures were a masterclass. A thousand-idea matrix of associations linked them one to another, and with the setting.

Edward 11's effigy could not have been more dead. Stiff, cold, stony; dethroned by the common marks of 18th century graffiti. At its feet Henry Moore's Bone Skirt, earthed, curvy as a slug river. Each is a commentary on the other; the sum greater than the parts.

A gilded angel is unremarkable on the altar of a cathedral, until you see the cross-hatched forearms, the tourniquet, the spoon and syringe. The attitude is not prayer or repentance but heroin stupor. Behind her the sacrificial table, and saints in fractured glass stepped to unreachable heights. The eloquence of the pairing is exquisite. A still-life sermon on suffering, desire, temptation.

Framed by the arches the thief with his cross. Fifteen feet high, anger and resistance on a face made of coat hangers. Christ to his right is slumped, surrendered; rugged and stratified as though birthed in a quake from his crucifix. People gaze in silence but the volume of dialogue between the pieces is high.

We monk-tread the oyster shadows of the cloisters, plain song hovers in the roof shells. And here is a man, modern but primitive, the base schema of aboriginal lines in red plastic. The sculpture is more brazen in its solemn setting.

The power of the exhibition lies in the interplay. So it can be with writing. There are unspoken dialogues between ideas, scenes, characters, individual words. In a poem it is clear that spaces and frames matter.  Prose can 'show' in ways which go beyond action, body language and metaphor. There's meaning and fascination in surprise juxtapositions: solemnity and wit, anger and surrender, rigidity and motion.

Note to the ArchB of C, the cathedral was packed for two months. Show not tell could be the way to go.

The Stolen Child

Inspirations - there's one of mine. Mike Scott, sitting behind the book-signing desk in the festival tent: black hat, musical mist about him, song in the lilts of his speaking voice, minstrel to his bones. Shook the hand that strums. He wrote on my book.

Listened to him earlier in conversation with screenwriter, Richard Curtis (4 weddings, Black Adder). Mike is Richard's musical hero. Richard got teary just speaking the lyrics of Mike's songs. I know how he feels.

When I first heard 'The Stolen Child' I cried. The words of Yeats spoken in a brogue made of peat smoke. How can music smell green as the wet of water-mint, make a dawn-dim dell of the ceiling dark, show faery faces in yellow-damp woodchip, bear the host of the sidhe on the window draught, take us back where morals don't even matter because all is play.

The vision comes with wist and yearning. We have a pact. Eternal childhood is forfeit. Our destiny is to return and suffer. That is our pass out, not the hand of a faery. Oh, but we're drawn...

I've now begun book 3 of the Waifs trilogy. I've called it Nigma. It's informed by Yeats' poetry and Mike's music. My hope is that, for the space of a sentence or two, it calls the human child away to the water and the wild. This side of the divide is lighter when a poem, a song, a book, opens to the other and sends us out to play.