Michael Jecks's Blog, page 31

Festivals and Cash!

It surely can’t have been such a long time since my last blog? I had thought I’d be writing up notes much more regularly than once in every eight weeks!

Apologies for the long break, but there have been good reasons. Lots of work with the Royal Literary Fund helping students at Exeter university, finishing a tough edit, getting the ideas together for the next book, editing two others, preparing myself for another collaborative story (this time with the Detection Club), and meanwhile trying to cope with Christmas.

However, there is one project that has been taking up even more of my time … the AsparaWriting Festival.

Festivals can be huge fun. For authors nowadays, it’s hard not to want to get out and about and stand up on the hind legs to share your enthusiasms with audiences. I love it. Seeing people who haven’t heard you talk before, giving them an idea about writing, what it’s like to be an author, how I research and write – well, it all gets me out of the house, which is worthwhile in its own right!

However, writing, as readers of this blog will already know, is a precarious career.

The money is bad. Since retailers demand ever larger discounts, and because an author’s income generally is dependent on the discounts demanded (if Amazon want an 80% discount, the author’s income reduces by 80%), we are all having to consider other means of bringing in cash.

In the past, a good way to mix business and pleasure used to involve visiting libraries and giving talks. For a small fee plus expenses, authors could generate some much-needed cash. Sadly, the cuts in local government mean that this option is pretty much dead. I’ve recently been told I can’t give a talk for free, because the library won’t pay any travelling expenses. Thus, in order to provide a service to the library, I am expected to not only work for free, but to pay all my own expenses for the privilege. It isn’t the fault of the librarians. It’s the problem that local authorities are suffering from. With ever reducing budgets, they have to make savings where they can.

However, there are other ways to earn money. One is the marvellous idea which has become the Literary Festival.

How about this as a venue for author talks? Wonderful location and atmosphere.

 

These wonderful events have blossomed up and down the country. People flock to them. Fans and enthusiastic readers go to talk to their favourite authors. At Crime festivals people go to meet the criminal greats; at Romance festivals they meet the best romantic novelists; at Science Fiction festivals Trekkies meet Star Warriors and exchange dark forces; at Erotic festivals people go to share something, I daresay, but I am not going there!

I have participated in many festivals all over the world now, and it is often rather depressing. For instance, I really dislike being asked to pay to attend a festival to talk about my books. Yes, it does happen – several festivals think it is a good idea to treat the authors like fans, so that all are on an equal footing. Except most authors aren’t – they can’t afford to pay several hundred pounds to join in because, unlike most fans, authors don’t get a monthly salary. They are paid twice a year, hopefully, when royalties are due.

Still, the festivals of that type tend to be good organisations which are non-profit making. Which is nice. They are infinitely better than the large festivals which are most decidedly profit-making, and which still do not pay a reasonable fee to the author. For example, I have heard recently of an author who generated several thousand pounds for a festival and was paid, in return, with a few bottles of indifferent wine. I have myself talked at a festival where over 100 people paid £6.80 each to listen to me, and where I was paid one bottle of low-quality champagne and no expenses. Without the authors there would be no festival. In the Author magazine recently a case was mentioned of a comedian. The standard rate for comics is 70% of the take, apparently. That seems a rational way to reimburse the people who are generating the income for the festivals – but it isn’t how authors get paid.

Yes, I know. It’s always easy to whine and complain about such things. But moaning itself doesn’t achieve much, does it?

That is why I am helping to organise the AsparaWriting Festival.

It is a small affair, but it’s running over several weeks. Rather than bringing together a lot of people in one weekend, AsparaWriting will have a series of events over the period of the asparagus season. And, rather importantly, it’s a festival for those who are writers or who want to write. It’s for people who aspire.

Each week there will be an author giving workshops or masterclasses for a day, and then speaking in the evening too. Aspiring writers can bring their own work and have it critiqued by their favourite authors, then listen to an evening talk about how the author worked, what motivates them (usually money, to be honest!), and if they want to book a couple of evenings in the Evesham Hotel, they can share a meal with the author on the night before.

The wonderful Evesham Hotel

For me, it’s been delightful to be involved with a (non-profit-making) festival like this, because so many people are interested in learning how to write and how to be more involved in the publishing industry. However there is also the other angle, which is that it’s a festival that is committed to supporting authors, so all will have their expenses paid and a small fee too.

Which, I think, makes it a worthwhile festival to support. I hope fans and aspiring writers will think so too!

If you’re interested in the festival and learning more about it, you can follow @AsparaWriting on Twitter or “like” it at https://www.facebook.com/AsparaWriting. For regular updates, please look up http://www.AsparaWritingFestival.co.uk. All the sites are in place, although they are being developed still. The ordering and pricing pages aren’t up yet, but will be this week. Please be patient!

Perhaps one day all writing festivals will offer their speakers a reasonable sum in return for making the festivals profitable.

And now … back to the edit of my next Medieval Murderers story … Book ten!

Tagged: AsparaWriting, authors, books, Evesham, literary festival, money, writing

So, Christmas is Approaching …

In the past I’ve spent ages wittering on (as I do) about the difficulty of getting a book into print.

Now I’ve had an idea. I’m working on a new literary festival (more on that later) with some friends, and one of the jobs we’ve had to do is find a decent small printer who can print and bind short runs of books. And we have found a fabulous firm who not only does so with a really professional job, they aren’t overly expensive.

Investing money in this kind of thing is not easy. However, I know that there are lots of people out there who wanted to get a copy of ACT OF VENGEANCE as a printed book, and who didn’t want to see it only as a Kindle edition. Well, the good news is, it’s going to be going on general release shortly, so it’ll be on Kobo and Nook, hopefully well before Christmas. But at the same time, I don’t have money to invest up front for an effort like this. So, before I throw lots of borrowed money into getting the books printed, I thought I should try a crowd-sourcing effort. That means asking people to commit to the £10 cost of the book and postage at another £3.00. That postage is a guess, incidentally. I’ve no idea how many pages the printed book would come to, so I have no idea what the weight would be. For postage to America it will almost certainly work out as up to double that – but it’ll still mean that the whole book will be a lot cheaper than most hardbacks.

So, what do you think? A hardback, unique and very collectable Jecks book for from £13 to £16 or so. My first modern spy thriller, and it’ll be printed in a short run of 100 copies. That should mean that the value will quickly rise for collectors.

For anyone who is interested, please contact me on Michael.Jecks@gmail.com and we’ll see if there’s enough interest to justify this rather silly digression for me!

And while I’m talking about such things, I have books for sale.

Yes! Books, glorious books!

I currently have very limited space indeed in my office, and a desperate need to make more. So, dear, kind readers: if you haven’t yet bought a Christmas present for Auntie Maud, or need something to tempt a twenty-something away from her iPod for a day or two, how about buying a signed copy of a Jecks book for your loved (or if not loved, those tricky people for whom it’s hard to know what to buy) ones!

What’s the deal?

You tell me what you want, and I’ll give you a straight price for the book, postage, packaging, and including a message of your choice. While stocks last, any spare promotional cards or bookmarks will be thrown in free of charge.

Paperbacks, trade paperbacks and hardbacks for many of the titles are available.

Of course, some people prefer to buy gift tokens and give their family ebooks. You already know about the first thirteen titles being ebooks, I’m sure, and that all the books from Simon and Schuster are already electronic. There are also the wonderful (I think) collections of my short stories: FOR THE LOVE OF OLD BONES and NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM, which would grace anybody’s Kindle. I’m looking at how I can also get these onto Smashwords, which would mean I could get them available on Nook and Kobo etc. Watch this space.

Getting this kind of translation sorted is not easy, and does take a computer illiterate like me a lot of time and effort which I can ill-afford. So if you are keen to see these books on Nook or Kobo (or other formats, please let me know), then do write to me. I’ll be very interested to hear from you.

That’s all for now.

Take care and happy reading!

Crooks and thieves

I’m going to have to be careful here.

This week I received (yet again) another mailshot from British Telecom, or BT as the company prefers to be known. They want me to agree to move my phone and broadband accounts to them. In return, they’ll give me a large discount. Which is nice, isn’t it.

Except …

I also received this email today:

“Good morning,

“I hope you get this in time, my family and I made a trip to Manila, (Philippines) unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel we are staying, all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off us but luckily we still have our passports with us,

“I have been to the Embassy and the Police here but their response was too casual, the bad news is our flight will be leaving very soon but we are having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won’t let us leave until we settle the bills, I will need your help/LOAN financially I promise to make the refund once we get back home, you are my last resort and hope, Please let me know if i can count on you and i need you to keep checking your email because it’s the only way i can reach you.

“Thanks”

This sad tale would be bad enough, but it’s happened to three other friends of mine this week already. And four or five last week, the week before, the week before that and on and on into the dim, distant past.

It is very sad. Oh, you don’t think it’s genuine? Well, perhaps it is odd that of my friends, 35 have recently visited Manila. It does seem peculiar. And since I doubt every single friend who goes to that city will have had their money nicked, but miraculously been left with their passports – perhaps there’s something fishy. I don’t know.

What does seem odd is that the victims of these crimes are almost always (I had one yahoo user) clients of BTinternet and 2. ask that you reply to their other account – some yahoo, some hotmail, some “live.com”. This week my mother received a similar email from a friend of hers. Oddly, the message again told her that her friend was stuck – although in that case, the friend wasn’t in the Philippines but the Bahamas. That surprised my mother, because her friend – well, actually her next-door-neighbour – was in the garden as my mother received the message.

She asked her neighbour. No, they hadn’t been abroad. And yes, they had a BTinternet account. But she told my mother not to worry. They had received the same email from my mother recently. Guess which email account she uses?

All a crook needs is one of these and the world’s his oyster

Why is this happening?

Well, I think that most humans are fallible. If they are offered a large sum of money (which is a relative sum depending on where people live, what their aspirations are, and what the potential is for getting caught), most people will take it. Not because they are evil, but because, sometimes, it offers a way out of immediate problems.

I recall a conversation many years ago with a friend (and manager). A man had just been arrested for the theft of some thousands of pounds from his company. I think he was a lawyer. My boss of the time was scathing. “What a prat! He gave up his reputation, his career, his livelihood, for a few thousand!” My boss went quiet a moment, drawing reflectively on his cigarette (this was the good old days), and said, “You wouldn’t see me do that for less than five million.”

His argument was rational. If you were to take a risk with everything, it had to be for enough money that you could cease working and live off the interest for the rest of your life. There was a break point where the theft, fraud, whatever it might be, became worthwhile.

Many years ago, BT and other companies decided that with the cost of international communications dropping through the floor, it was worth their while basing call centres abroad. The staff would be cheaper, the costs of providing desks and phones would be vastly less, and they could save a lot of money.

The risk involved? Only that whereas in the UK it would cost hundreds or thousands to bribe a UK employee into giving details of customers, once access to client details (such as emails) were moved to a poorer nation with staff who were paid far less, the cost of bribing those staff would also fall.

Thus it is that (so the BBC reported a little while ago) fraudsters can acquire many hundreds of email addresses with user ID and passwords for a few tens of pounds. If you are a call operator with an ill parent, a need for food for your children, or just a desire to impress a girlfriend, you will probably not think twice about selling two hundred client accounts for fifty dollars, cash in hand.

No, I have no idea whether this is what’s happened here. I don’t know that BT is worse than any other company. However, I do know that the vast majority of the spam messages asking for me to send money (which incidentally means giving out other details such as my bank account and leaving me open to all forms of fraud) come from BT accounts.

So, I am not likely to be changing from my own email servers any time soon, BT, I’m afraid.

 

 

Tagged: criminals, fraud, ID fraud, theft

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I have been growing more and more alarmed by the way that the police in Britain appear to be operating as a more and more paramilitary, unregulated force. And it is not a force for good.

When I was young, I wanted to join the police. In fact, I tried to (my eyesight wasn’t good enough)

The old prison at Lydford. Unscrupulous and corrupt miners kidnapped an MP and held him here. The miners thought they act above the law. Just like our police.

. And I like to think I would have made a good officer. I was brought up to believe in the concept of public service, I had a clear understanding of right and wrong, and I firmly approved of Peel’s concept of a police force that had no more powers than any other citizen. They were a citizen force, to be used by the public for the public good.

At the time, we had other models that could be considered. In Europe, paramilitary forces were created. They were agents of the state, with powers over the citizens. However, Peel had a vision of a force that would be accepted because it was formed from the people. That is why we always had a solid belief in unarmed police officers. The police should not be allowed any more than an ordinary citizen. They were allowed a badge of office and a short club, and with that, they were sent out into the world to protect people and prevent crime – Peel felt strongly that the punishment was far less important than the certainty of being caught. By having a visible police presence, he thought that crimes would be less likely. If criminals were apprehended, it was less likely that other felons would try their luck.

Through the centuries, this system has served Britain well. And it has depended upon trust.

That trust is now being severely tested.

In recent years we have seen that the police have failed utterly. In the Stephen Laurence inquiries it was determined that the police were “institutionally racist”; Hillsborough enquiries showed that the police were prepared to lie under oath and condemn the innocent; after Dunblane the shooting fraternity were used as scapegoats when it was discovered that the police had issued firearms certificates to the murderer even though he had been found in possession of illegal pistols bought on the black market; the execution (when a man is restrained by the arms two police officers gripping his arms while a third emptied a Glock into his head and upper body no other term is suitable) of a Brazilian in surely the most flagrant example of police incompetence imaginable; the shooting to death of a man carrying a table-leg in a bag; the shooting to death of a car thief; the shooting to death of an unarmed man while naked and unarmed in bed – the examples of incompetence and worse are rife.

However, no one ever seems to be brought to book. The police have an automatic get-out. If they take early retirement or leave their force, they can evade prosecution.

At the same time, the whole concept of the police has been eroded. Now, the police are allowed multiple defensive weapons. They are allowed Mace, pepper sprays, extending steel batons that can maim or kill, tasers to incapacitate, sub-machineguns (even though they were not allowed – the police got around that by lying to the Home Secretary and reclassing the guns as “carbines”) and pistols. All these are banned for the public. The police are now a separate organisation of government, away from the people and viewed by their organisations as above the people.

It was because of the concerns about police behaviour that the Labour party brought in the IPCC. The “Independent” Police Complaints Commission. Why the inverted commas? I recall only too well the Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister series, in which Sir Humphrey said that you always get rid of the difficult words in the title – that way you can ignore them in the text.

The IPCC was set up to judge the police, but it was staffed by ex-police officers. It is no more independent than the complaints panels set up by, say, the legal profession or accountants. I have no faith whatsoever in the IPCC generally.

Although at last, perhaps, it has discovered it has teeth. Yesterday the head of the IPCC agreed with the Home Secretary that three Police Federation representatives who questioned Mr Mitchell had lied. That is shocking in the extreme: http://tinyurl.com/p7mva32

The “Plebgate” scandal doesn’t take long to describe. Last year, a minister in the British government was cycling home. All that day, when he had arrived to pass by the gates in Downing Street, the police had opened the gates for him, as they did for any cars. However, when the MP was leaving for the night, the police officer on the gate refused to open the gates, and pointed him to the pedestrian gates.

A short while afterwards, the papers said that the MP had called the policeman a “f…ing pleb”. The policeman’s recorded report was seen, apparently, by journalists. Worse, witnesses called the media to denounce the MP. One said he was there with a young child, and he and the child were hugely offended by the MPs rant. Other people there, he said, were visibly shocked.

The MP concerned was considered to be a bit mouthy. He was known to be abrasive and determined to get his way. The public and the media were scathing when the man denied the “P” word and said the stand-up row had not happened. No one would believe an arrogant MP, so soon after the scandal of expenses.

And yet, one or two voices did question the story. After all, pleb is hardly a common word. However, it is used fairly regularly in police circles, apparently.

Three senior police officers went to question the MP to get his side of the story, and afterwards, they gave press interviews that said he had nothing to add, that he wasn’t going to press charges, and leaving the firm impression that the MP was in the wrong. The poor policeman was rudely lambasted for doing his job.

However, then the story began to fall apart. Because the “independent witness” with his child, was discovered to be an off-duty police officer – an officer from the same unit as the protection officer on the gate. And when video evidence was brought up and considered, it was blatantly obvious to even the meanest intellect that there was no stand-up row. The MP appeared, was pointed to a gate, and walked to it, apparently chatting to the officer amicably. And it was perfectly obvious that the road outside was empty. There was no crowd of appalled onlookers, there was no individual standing and watching. There was no child. The officer who claimed to witness the whole matter was not there. He lied.

Channel Four showed this: http://tinyurl.com/d79klef

This could be two officers who were confused, I guess. The man on the gate could have felt insulted by an MPs behaviour. He could have thought he heard something. But he lied if he did truly state in his records that he had an argument. The second, the witness, could have lied in support of a colleague because he sincerely believed his mate. He might have wanted to help a friend whom he thought had been victimised by an arrogant MP.

But this feels very bad.

At the end of the day, a minister of the crown, a senior government minister, was forced out of his job by lies. Police officers seem to have thought that they could get away with targeting an MP.

Why would they want to do that? Simple: the MP was imposing cuts on police budgets. The Police Federation hated him. He was viewed as a legitimate target, perhaps, but officers who were less than scrupulous.

However, ironically, it is the videos that have shown the truth – them and a recording made of the meeting with three senior officers. Their subsequent interviews were less than accurate.

Which leaves any independent judge with the very unpleasant taste of another police cover-up and deception. Not only by the protection officers on the gate, but even at the highest levels of police management. It is deeply alarming.

The police must not consider themselves above the law. The officer at the gate appears to have lied. He wrote an untrue statement in the police log. That log was shared with his colleague who lied when he said he was there and witnessed the events. Someone also released copies of the police log to the media. That was a crime. Then three Federation officers lied to the media.

And yet no one is to be punished, we are told.

The police are acting as though they are above the law.

Tagged: Andrew Mitchell, plebgate, police, police corruption

And while in the middle of an edit …

I recently received a book to review: Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris. Now, I should quickly state that I don’t know this lady, except as a delightful correspondent on Twitter, so anything that follows you can assume is not biased.

Copy of the cover

It is one of those books that will work for a lot of people. It’s friendly, accessible, with a bunch of good ideas. Especially when she is talking about writing a novel. She has a number of little tricks which help get the writer on the way. Particularly useful, I reckon, are her parts on identifying problems and getting the plot moving again.

There are issues – for me. But I am unique, because I’m editing my 33rd novel right now. I’ve got a certain amount of experience with the job. The main thing I was not happy about was the rather gung-ho writing style. It’s definitely a “you can do this” book, and it occasionally irritated me in the same way as self-help titles on selling, on personal achievement, or on management used to really grate with me. They set my teeth on edge when I see paragraphs filling a page, each of which is a single sentence. However, this book was written with the intention of going into ebook, and if people pay for a real paper book, they expect pages to be filled. So, there are reasons for this.

If I had a gripe, it would be that the book does give the reader the impression that before long anyone can be writing their story and earning a fortune. It’s not that Roz says so, but she has written a very motivational book, and that’s an impression that will last. However, that’s a function of books like this.

When I started out, I read a superb book called “Writing for Pleasure and Profit”. It was written by a man who had spent time as an editor, then agent, then author, and he gave solid, firm advice on how to write – especially covering “what not to do” sections. I loved that book and used to dip into it as I progressed as a writer, until one day I lent it to a friend who has lost it. Not the action of a friend, no, and no – I won’t lend him another book, tape or anything else, ever again.

However, it’s a pretty high accolade that I can see myself dipping into Roz’s book in the future. There are too many little points in there that act as aide-memoirs to people who are writing. And no one has a monopoly on common-sense when it comes to writing.

While I am talking about writing, I should just say that I am still editing my latest.

Back to the edit.

The edit is taking longer because I have to work through a couple of narrative issues: mainly there is an imbalance in the story – too much about the first half of the campaign, and not enough about the end. This shouldn’t be a problem, but when writing about real events, it makes things more difficult. Do I leave out a specific battle and make passing mention of it in a flashback, or do I stick with that but remove mention of another battle? Should I leave in the gunner’s boy, or bring him in more to elevate his position in the plot? It’s the sort of edit that gives me headaches, but it will make the story infinitely better in the end.

And again, I cannot leave this without saying that it is this kind of work that demonstrates yet again why it is so essential to have a good editor. Mine has a mind like a steel trap when it comes to analysing stories and plots. Thank God!

But with the edit and the read of Roz’s book, I’ve had another idea. I’m going to contact some of my friends in the writing community to ask them specific questions about their writings, their motivations, their tricks of the trade, and any little hints they can give to aspiring writers. I think this should be rather useful, and will hopefully help a lot of people trying to write, and more to the point, it will make for interesting reading for me as well as other people.

So: watch this space.

One final note. Last week I missed my own deadline for my blog. Apologies for that. I lost a very dear friend on Saturday.

About fifteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a lovely lady called Dot Lumley. She was an agent, and to my astonishment, she had chosen to based herself down in deepest Devon, not far from me, rather than the literary world of London.

I had an excellent agent already, and didn’t need her services, but I was happy to recommend her to friends in the area, and a few were taken on by her.

Later, when Medieval Murderers decided to go mainstream and actually write a book, rather than talking about their own books at events, we put our project to many agents, and Dot took us on. She was unfailingly efficient, organised, keen and enthusiastic about our books, and never mucked up her sums – which since she had different authors in each book, with differing shares of royalties per title, and the added confusion of multiple countries and languages, was itself little short of miraculous.

Earlier this year we heard that she had developed cancer, but from talking to her, one could not have noticed. This year Medieval Murderers have written our tenth anniversary title, and we are dedicating the book to Dot. We had hoped to be able to tell her this and show her the draft, but to my own very great personal sadness, Dot succumbed to her cancer and passed away last Saturday.

Dot Lumley was a delight to work with and to socialise with. She was a wonderful lady, and I know I speak for all her clients and friends when I say that she will be hugely missed.

Tagged: agents, authors, crime writing, Editing, novelist, publishing, writing

Back to the Edit

Back to the edit. Look at the size of that manuscript – badly needs slimming down!

Today I have settled down to work on the edits of my next book, Fields of Glory, which will be published next summer. Luckily there’s not too much to do, other than remove some unnecessary scenes and tighten some others. I say luckily, because as you can see, this isn’t the shortest book I’ve written!

It’s a stage authors dread, very commonly, and as a result we are prone to get quite defensive. However, with a good editor (and I’m lucky enough to have a very good one), a story can be improved almost magically.

I was talking to Michael Ridpath last week, and he gave that pained smile when I mentioned the stage I had reached with this book. He was the same, he said: he found it best to set the editor’s comments to one side after reading them, to let them sink in. Better that than to snap an immediate (intemperate) response that could hurt relations later. Especially, as we both agreed, because almost invariably the editor is right.

OK, I confess, I have had editors who didn’t give a damn about the book in front of them. If they had not commissioned the book themselves, and they were brought in from outside, sometimes they were too keen to make a name by bringing in a new author of their own, fostering the talent and demonstrating that they were capable of picking the next JK Rowling.

But the vast majority of the editors I’ve worked with have been sensible, very competent wordsmiths who can read a manuscript and see where sections are too woolly, where descriptions are weak, where there is too much description or, a terrible failing for an historical novel, where there is basically too much history. These books are novels. It’s all right to play fast and loose with the history – a bit!

I had an interview with another American writer recently (if you’re interested, keep an eye open for Lisette Brodey’s interview on her site at http://www.LisetteBrodey.com – should be out around 21st October), and in that she expressed delight at my response to one question.

It is the age old problem: do you show your work to anyone, or keep the whole novel to yourself until it’s ready to publish?

I am utterly wedded to the idea that all books should be written by the author, and when the author’s moderately happy, the book goes, in sequence, to the agent, and then the editor. No one else sees it until those two have had their say.

Other authors do not like this. Some feel the need to have friends, family, or other writing professionals cast an eye over their work, and make their own comments. Some, especially those in the ebook and self-published market, actively seek out Beta readers and collaborators of various hues to give input.

I’ve mentioned in past blogs that I have friends who are enormously successful who have taken precisely this approach. I know of some of the very top authors working today who will pass their books around old friends in the creative writing industry either as a matter of politeness or as a generous acknowledgement of help given in the past.

For those who are involved in the self-publishing business, it makes sense, because it is the same as presenting a manuscript to an impartial judge – an editor.

However, for me, it’s not either a good idea generally, and nor should it be acceptable professionally.

In my own case, the book goes first to the agent, and then to the editor – it’s always that order for a very good reason.

My agent is a wonderful fellow. He is extremely hard working, unfailingly supportive and generous, and utterly dependent for his income upon his stable of authors.

One thing he must do every year is put his own professional credibility on the line for his authors. Each book that they produce must be taken on and sold by him to the various publishing houses with which he must deal. He has to tell the cynical enemy (publishers) that his books are actually the very best that are available this decade. There is nothing better anywhere. And he has to believe it. If he thinks the book’s twaddle, it’s less easy for him. If the work goes to the editor before he has a chance to even look at it – well, clearly he’s hamstrung.

So, if for no other reason, I think it’s a matter of professional courtesy to make sure that he is the first person to view my work and to have an opportunity to comment.

Second, of course, there is my editor.

Many people who are not published still have an over-inflated view of how publishers and editors work. There is no great system: it’s the same as any other organisation, and all the staff in the firm are all there to keep their jobs, to progress in their company, and to try to earn a little more this year than last. Every publishing house has in-house politics. Every member of staff has to justify their existence. And those who are in at the sharp end tend to be the editors.

When an editor gets a new manuscript in, and rejects it, the author has to appreciate the pressures on the editor. It’s not necessarily because of the author’s halitosis and body odour. Although it might be, of course …No, really, that was a joke!

First, she (it’s almost invariably a woman) will have to actually like the book. If she can’t get on with the story or the style, she can’t give it her best shot. So some books get sent back for that reason.

However, it’s not only the book itself. Every editor will have to attend the dreaded “Commissioning Meeting”.

This is a hotbed of dispute and rancour. In my mind, I can see editors chewing paper to make soggy projectile balls, and flicking them unmercifully at their opposite numbers as they speak. No? Perhaps my imagination is getting the better of me. However, it is the case that editors have to present to their colleagues any new books that they have read and want to take on. Their colleagues, by comparison, have to read through the works themselves, and consider whether they think those books have merit enough to make money – and not lose it.

Editors at those meetings, once a week or so, have to get up on their hind legs and say why they like this or that, what is so good about them, and whether the publisher should invest £10,000 or £20,000 in advances in it to win the title from their competitors.

All well and good, but if you have a book you are yourself unsure of, it’s hard to fight in a commissioning meeting for a slice of the money available. And if it’s the kind of book you know your colleagues, your boss, the head of the publishing group or the owner – or a combination of the above – do not like, you are not very likely to push it hard, are you?

Better to let that one go, and get on with the next manuscript. Especially since all editors will receive at least ten unsolicited manuscripts every day. Yes, every day.

So, for my money, the first people to see a book are always, agent, then editor, in that order. Both, like the author, have their own professional careers invested in their authors and the books written by them. It’s a matter of common sense and courtesy to let them have first sight of them.

 

And I should apologise. This was typed up while a severe cold was threatening to remove what few brain cells I do possess, and turn them all to mush! If there are typos, blame the cold.

Tagged: authors, ebooks, Editors, publishing, self-publishing, writing

Back to editing

A large manuscript this time.

Tagged: #blogtuesday writing editing books editors

Editors are Good!

I am just getting the editor’s comments back on my latest manuscript.

Hmm.

I value editors – the work they do is absolutely essential. They can radically improve a piece of work with what can seem like tiny changes. Still, those tiny alterations can be incredibly difficult to get across to the author sometimes.

The thing is, the author can be utterly stuck in the way they work. An author creates a whole world, an environment, a political situation, and populate it with people who are, as the author writes, real people in his or her mind. The book evolves from an initial concept, a sketched plan, a map of events, or perhaps just a chance conversation overheard in a bus or on a train.

As the writer develops the ideas in the book, the characters grow and develop. The plot will change, because since the characters have grown while being written, their motivations will also be impacted. And suddenly the crucial turn of events that led to the crisis on page 230, wouldn’t have happened. Because Big Josh actually wasn’t stupid enough to have thrown over Alice and Mack the Mauler wouldn’t have got jealous and … or whatever.

The fact is, the writer will write the story, sometimes at speed, and then, to accommodate the original plan, will change characters to fit the scheme. Or ignore the fact that the character’s motivations are all wrong.

It’s not the author’s fault. When a writer rereads words on a page, they have an especial significance. They see not just the words, but the mental images that led to those words. They see people in their mind, they hear conversations, or see events unroll like film reels in their minds. And then the words on the page embellish those scenes.

Sadly, of course, a reader hasn’t got all that background. The reader sees only what is on the page. Sometimes a writer can put the facts down in a way that stimulates the reader into imagining a whole new world. Often the writer alone cannot. That is where the editor comes in.

The editor can usually understand the story better than the average reader. They have been involved in the development of the story from the outset, and will have a half-formed view of what the author’s working towards. So the arrival of the manuscript is a stage on the route for the editor.

So they edit.

Once I was able to change the entire direction of a book by the addition of one short sentence. At the editor’s suggestion. I have seen confused descriptions and sloppy characterisation transformed by a good editor.

However, there is a tough point to accept here.

If you are the writer, you have to accept that the work is collaborative. No one has a monopoly of genius. If the editor reads a work and decides that major changes have to be made, it is best to grit the teeth and knuckle down.

Because that is where the editor does know best. Not because of some spurious knowledge of the arcane arts of marketing. No. Purely because editors generally love books and words, and they can see when the story needs to be redirected, gently, rather than going off the rails.

So authors need to be brave when editors’ comments are posted. Yes, the work is the writer’s own and, yes, they must show integrity when it comes to their work. Hacking at a manuscript for the sake of it is not what I mean. But there’s no point in getting defensive about editors who are only doing their job.

In short, as you can tell, I’m on tenterhooks wondering what delights the editor’s comments will hold in store for me.

I hope she’ll be kind …

Tagged: comments, Editors, edits, publishing, writing

Where Do The Characters Come From?

Continuing the theme of professional tricks of the trade, I thought I’d comment on characters I’ve used – and those I have read.

Some authors are really not happy unless they’ve planned out every person in their book in a forty page synopsis. Many professionals do work in this way, I know.

Recently I read a book by Tom Vowler called “What Lies Within”, which is a superb read with characters that jump off the page. Then again, when I recently reread Fred Forsyth’s excellent “Dogs of War”, the main characters were immediately there in my mind. Cat Shannon and the other mercenaries were instantly believable (especially if you know of some of the mercenaries of that period, such as ‘Taffy’ Williams, and the strong rumours that Forsyth based his book on an actual attempt to free a small African state).

I think describing the landscape is much easier than people!

There are man ways to create strong and believable characters for stories.

Personally, I do not like to work in this way. To me, sitting down to write from a template like that would feel like writing to a specification – having my characters respond to their specification.

I can’t do that. Not when it comes to people. People are irrational creatures. They do not respond to specific stimuli in predictable ways. Rather, they prefer to take their own course, which can on occasion seem utterly foolish, pointless, or downright stupid. But this is often the way of real life.

If a person is going to be plotted or outlined, my own approach is to take a minimalist approach. I will sketch out place and date of birth, certain main physical notes (eye colour, jaw line etc) and I will even on occasion draw a very rough picture of them. I’ll have their wife’s name, children’s names, and an outline of his career to date. But that’s pretty much it. I want them to be believable because of their behaviour. Once their motivations are understood, the rest follows naturally.

What I will usually do is check with photos of mine, or with my favourite mug-shot reference. I’ve used this for years: it’s a book with hundreds of faces in it. Many years ago, when I worked in the computer industry, I was sent abroad to attend international conferences. Afterwards, those attending were sent a book, much like an American school’s annual album, with several faces per page. I can base any number of characters on that one book.

But a face and rough background only go so far. More important is the general feel for the character. For that, and for the rhythms of their language, I have to go to my own memory and the TV.

Many of the characters in my books are based on people I knew very well. One or two have strong elements of my family and friends in them, while others are based on people I worked with, customers I used to sell to, and in certain cases, on a mixture of character actors. Sir Richard de Welles, for example, is the thoroughly unnatural result of a combination of two heroes of mine: James Robertson Justice and Brian Blessed. Every line I wrote of his made me laugh as I was writing it, imagining this vast, intimidating character!

Conversely, when I set out writing Baldwin de Furnshill, I had a firm picture of Alan Rickman stencilled to the inside of my eyelids. Now it’s Richard Armitage … I can dream.

How to describe those eyebrows?

But then you get to the point where you are writing a story, and all these little facets of life have to be pulled together in a meaningful manner. They have to behave and speak with convincing simplicity and display consistent human traits. For this, I have occasionally used simple verbal tics.

In all my books, for example, Baldwin will speak in a more precise manner, without ‘ain’t’, ‘isn’t’ and ‘hasn’t’ or similar contractions, while Simon always used them. A simple device, but it works.

With other people, I used different tweaks of style. An extreme example would be the Dean of Exeter Cathedral, who always inserts an ‘er’ or ‘um’ in every sentence. He is like those people who are incapable of speaking without throwing in ‘you know’.

Last week I listened to Alistair Darling, who was once Chancellor of the Exchequer, and counted all his ‘you know’s. In one sentence I heard five – and it wasn’t a long sentence. Politicians fondly believe that using such verbal delaying tactics makes them sound more human. Personally I think it makes them sound more dim – but that is a personal opinion.

Other speaking traits can be usefully employed in dialogue, but you have to be wary: use too many, and it becomes an irritation. Actual, true dialogue is not going to be published, basically because most of it involves four or five incomplete sentences, before an entire string of comprehensible language can be discerned. If you have all characters speaking as they would in real life, with all the false starts, pauses, inconsequential side-tracks and so on, every novel would be three times their current length. It wouldn’t work.

How would he speak and behave?

However, you can use one or two verbal quirks per character as a kind of quick reference guide to that speaker. Then, not only does it make following longer dialogues more easy for the reader, it also gives the reader the chance of mentally imposing a certain set of believable traits per character. It can be a cadence in the speech, the use of more posh language (or the opposite), or even a stumbling approach. Whichever you use, it makes the person sound and ‘feel’ more believable.

And that is really all we, as writers, are aiming for. Believability.

 

Tagged: characterisation, characters, faces, novelist, plotting, publishing, writer, writing

Endings

Today I was going to write about ending a story, but then a few other ideas came to me. So, first, if you don’t mind, I’ll just talk a little about the writing life.

For now, I was at a delightful evening last week, and a good friend who has recently changed his job told me that he had to move because the previous one was not suitable for him. It wasn’t to his taste; he found he was not enjoying life. In short, it was an office job with all the normal office politics, and he found that it was hard to ‘switch off’ – he was waking in the middle of the night thinking about work, and he felt his family life suffered. He found he was carrying a notepad with him all the time. He could not stop thinking about work.

I can easily understand how difficult that must be for anyone. All too easily, really, because it is the standard form of existence for more authors.

I do not – ever – switch off from work. If I’m away for a few days, I always carry a notebook and pen. I am never, even in bed, more than an arm’s reach from paper and pen or pencil. I always scribble, and if I’m not writing, I am thinking: musing over a character’s behaviour, over his or her motives in certain scenes, rethinking scenes and wondering how I could improve them.

I take periods off between books.

I hate doing that, because I feel as though I am skiving, avoiding the only means of earning an income I have. However, it’s essential for me to have time off, because if I don’t, I will soon dry up. It’s just too absorbing to be writing. And I know that it drives my family potty when I am writing, because I am so utterly consumed by the story.

Yes, consumed. When I am writing, I am living six or seven lives as well as my own. I am seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, reacting to the environment they live in, sometimes reacting to hideous stimuli that would, in my life, give me nightmares for weeks or months. To live those lives is not easy. It’s not something I can switch on and off for a seven hour working day.

And that, I think, is one reason why writing can put a strain on people. It’s not easy to write in a schizophrenic haze! It does devour all a writer’s creativity and concentration, even after 32 or more novels.

Enough of that.

To return to my first concept: it is hard, always, to end a novel or novella. The story has to be complete, and that, to me, means rounding off the ending so that it’s not harsh and sudden.

There are some books (especially thrillers) which appear to mount in tension and excitement all the way through to the denoument, and then, suddenly, just stop. It’s like running flat out into a brick wall for the reader. All the involvement in time and effort that has gone into associating with the characters in the novel feels wasted.

The worst examples I have seen have been by writers of legal thrillers. Perhaps (and I suspect there may be some truth in this) the authors are or were lawyers, and are so used to sticking to their contracts that, as soon as they reach the 120,000 word limit stated in their contracts, they immediately throw in the ending. They allow two pages for resolution and send their manuscript to the editor. They’ve done their job as stated in the contract. Who would do more work when they’ve already earned their money?

Hmm. Well, a good salesman always leaves the buyer wanting a little more. For a small additional effort, you can leave the reader more satisfied. It’s the little wafer-thin mint after the meal. It’s not needed, but it rounds things off beautifully. The diner goes away satisfied for an additional cost that is negligible. Take away the little complementary choccies, and you may save a few pennies per punter, but they may not come back. Last impressions last.

My own view is, for a book to read well, you should put as much effort into winding things down – both for your readers and your protagonists – as you do in the early stages setting up your story.

All authors spend an inordinate amount of time getting the characterisation right, they spend time setting the scenes, explaining motives and making sure that their people behave rationally and sensibly – basically keeping them all in character. It’s as important, usually, for the reader to see how they react after the big scenes of conflict and hardship.

And that is why I have now spent almost a (flaming) week on the last thousand words of this story. The story isn’t complex. It’s not convoluted. It’s not difficult. BUT, if I just closed the story off when I could have last week, it would be deeply dissatisfying, to me if not to anyone else.

After all, I’ve been living with these characters for some time now. I can’t just ditch them. They’re friends. I have to make sure I send them on their way with a clear path ahead.

Hopefully readers of my books will appreciate the fact that they can see how things are developing as they reach the final page – (and then want to buy the next book, of course)!

Happy reading!

Tagged: books, endings, planning, work, writing, writing novels