November’s writing – a breakthrough

Posted on November 30, 2015 by vanessa

Writing progress As you might remember from my previous post, since Pitch Perfect I’ve been struggling a little with the rewriting of the novel. Bits of the original version were good but the plot wasn’t satisfactory and so I came up with a new one – which I talked about at Pitch Perfect – and now I’m at the stage of dismantling Novel 1.1 and rewriting it with a stronger structure in the hope that Novel 1.2 will be better. And hopefully worth publishing. I tknow my characters and here’s lots of 1.1 that can be repurposed, albeit with some rewriting so it’s not like starting from scratch. I tell myself that, but I’m not sure it makes it less daunting.

I’ve been dickering about with the first couple of chapters – part of the book that needs the most restructuring – for a month or two but it’s been like wading through treacle with endless rewriting and deleting and muttering and the odd tear of frustration.  And I’ve been getting sidetracked with all sorts of displacement activity and we had family to stay and other work has been taking up time. So I’ve been hiding from my ms rather.

Two things happened though. Firstly I met the lovely Mark Leggatt for coffee. A contender a couple of years ago at Pitch Perfect, his first book, Names of the Dead (which I must read), has been publishing by Fledgling Press and is doing really well. As well as talking about fountain pens and notebooks – you always bond with someone when you recognise that they’re writing with Mont Blanc Bordeaux ink – we also talked about my feeling of stuck and to be frank I got my arse kicked a bit. There are writers and there are people who talk about writing and I’m in danger of falling into the second category.

The second breakthrough was that I had a revelation about the plot and effectively cut the first three chapters which were feeling a bit episodic. Now, things get going a lot faster and I’m writing with much more energy and enthusiasm.

I did some replanning and started writing chapter 1 last week. I’ve now done two chapters and they’re not bad – better than a first draft although I’ll obviously be gussieing them up later. I’m on 6k words and the plan is to have at least 20k of similarly clean text by Hogmanay.

Anyway, enough for now – I have a clear(ish) day and I’m going to make a coffee, turn on Freedom and get my head down.

And just a reminder, my advent calendar of books begins tomorrow – read more here and do join in as the month goes on.

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Literary advent calendar – tell me your favourite books

Posted on November 29, 2015 by vanessa

Literary advent calendar - Tell me your favourite books #GandBbookadayDecember is the month for curling up with a good book, partly because the weather is so grim (as I write this here in Edinburgh, the wind is rattling the windows, the rain is sheeting down at a 45 degree angle and it is soooo cold) and partly as a respite from all the hectic Christmas planning.

Here, I often find that I’m always talking about new books and so I also thought the run up to Christmas was a good time to think about favourite books – there are some much-loved titles that I tend to re-read in the winter.

Therefore, I give you The Glenogle & Bell Advent Calendar – a prompt for each day to talk about and photograph the books you love. And one that you hated, in the interests of balance. What I would really like people to do is to add a photograph and/or a line about the book they choose and either blog or tweet or post an Instagram image for each day, on the relevant day. Or just leave a comment here. If you can’t do all of them just do the ones you feel like. If you’re a blogger joining in, then let me know and I’ll add a link to your posts.

Anyway, the book a day meme begins on the first (Tuesday) so get cracking with choosing your favourite childhood book and check back here to see what mine is.

Just in case that image is difficult to read, this is the calendar in text format.

  1. Childhood favourite
  2. Favourite cover
  3. Most memorable opening line
  4. Favourite scary book
  5. The book you wish you’d written
  6. Favourite fictional detective
  7. The book that should be better known
  8. First literary crush
  9. The book you couldn’t finish
  10. The book that made you cry
  11. Favourite movie adaptation
  12. The book you always give as a gift
  13. What you’re reading now
  14. Guilty literary pleasure
  15. Own more than one copy
  16. Most recent purchase
  17. Favourite comfort read
  18. Most underrated book or author
  19. Book that made you laugh
  20. Book you’ve read more than three times
  21. Book set where you live
  22. Favourite Christmas book
  23. Book of the year
  24. The book you hope to find under the tree

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Shelf notes – A is for Arsenic, the poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup

Posted on November 18, 2015 by vanessa

A is for Arsenic, the poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn HarkupIt is often said that poison is a woman’s weapon: a claim made from Sherlock Holmes to Game of Thrones. That may or may not be true – accurate data is hard to come by, especially when looking at historical details – but in Golden Age detective fiction poison was a popular method of bumping off characters.

Queen of the poisoners, using the knowledge gained during her wartime work in a hospital pharmacy, was Agatha Christie, felling her victims with a huge range of substances both well known and obscure.

A is for Arsenic; the poisons of Agatha Christie, by scientist and Christie buff Kathryn Harkup, is an encyclopedic account of those poisons. The first chapter is – as you might have guessed – A is for Arsenic and that sets the tone for a chapter-by-chapter exploration of the various substances. This is followed by appendices explaining chemical structures and a book-by-book breakdown of which poisons featured where. My only (fairly small) criticism is that I would have liked those latter tables to give a mention of which character was killed in that book by that method.

This isn’t the type of book to read cover to cover, but rather to dip into or to have within arm’s reach while enjoying a Christie re-read by the fire on a winter’s evening. It’s currently on my bedside table – fortunately my husband is used to seeing unlikely reading matter there. Last week, it was Val McDermid’s fascinating book on forensic science.

As someone working on a crime novel, this book will go on the shelf by my desk with other reference books. I have another book on poisons (mentioned here) but this will be a useful additional resource. A is for Arsenic is a more accessible read and Harkup manages to manage the scientific elements easily understandable and gives an air of fun – Agatha Christie novels, however dark they sometimes are, are not literature to agonise over. This would be an excellent Christmas gift for the crime fiction reader in your life – my late grandmother, who ‘liked a good murder’ would have loved it!

So far, none of my characters have met their end by means of poison but who knows? Maybe someone will fall victim to Calabar beans or hemlock soon…

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Shelf notes – The Daughter’s Secret by Eva Holland*

Posted on November 16, 2015 by vanessa

The Daughter's Secret by Eva Holland. Click to read review When she was 15, Stephanie ran away with her 24 year old teacher, Nathan Temperley. Six years later, her mother discovers that Temperley is about to be released from prison, far sooner than expected.

The family have never talked about what happened, never dealt with the emotional fallout and neither parent has considered that their daughter may have become involved with Temperley because they were so self-involved (her father) and neurotic (her mother).

The story is told over several days, counting down to Temperley’s release, with fashbacks to the abduction, building the tension as the reader wonders what’s going to happen upon Temperley’s release. What happens is both inevitable and unexpected and the end of the book is left open and ambigious, asking the question of any mother reading: ‘What would you do?’

This is Eva Holland’s first book and was the winner of Good Housekeeping’s 2014 novel competition. I was intrigued by the central story – a girl I knew at college had a relationship with a teacher while she was still at school, his marriage broke up and she carried on seeing him for quite a long time. Even then, nearly thirty years ago, I didn’t see it as a forbidden romance but rather as someone who had abused their power. Today, that teacher would be in court and probably in prison, his career shattered. It’s interesting to see how children are protected better now and that predators are seen for what they are.

I really enjoyed the book and I’m sure that some of our Glenogle & Bell customers will too. I’m also looking forward to seeing what she writes next as this type of psychological family drama has a lot of potential.

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Sunday words.

Posted on November 15, 2015 by vanessa
Je suis Paris. Image by Banksy

Image by Jean Jullien

Nous sommes Paris. Those seem to be the only words that matter this weekend. Words that show solidarity, sympathy and a refusal to allow hate to win over love.

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