G.X. Todd's Blog, page 4

Reblog: What Makes Libraries Special?

Make sure you visit Polly’s blog here for the whole journey and more wonderful stories and picture like these. Polly’s second novel, Where Monsters Lie, is out 7th July 2016.   DA ChildrenR…

Source: What Makes Libraries Special?

Writers (and Mom) in Cars Vlog: Saturday morning carpool

A special look into my regular Saturday mornings with my mom. Yesterday, we ate toast, did the grocery shop in Sainsburys, checked out the LEGO and bought Cadbury’s Giant Buttons. Oh, and we looked everywhere for a replacement lightbulb.

 

Writers in Cars Vlog: Pinch, punch, first of the month

On the first of every month, my mom casually walks over to me, grabs my arm and proceeds to pinch and punch me while gleefully reciting the rhyme in this blog’s title. And, without fail, every single month she takes me by surprise; mainly because I’ve slept 29+ times since the last time she did it, but also because my mom very rarely physically attacks me, so I’m always taken off-guard. So that was a lovely start to my day.

ANYWAY, maternal abuse isn’t the theme of today’s blog, it’s just a non-related segue into this month’s car vlog. I say “this month’s” because I haven’t done one for a while and I’m awful at keeping up-to-date with them. This one does include Fruit and Nut and jam tarts, a trip to a cemetery, and me being rained on, though, so it’s full of excitement.

Enjoy [image error]

Want to see how agonising making a book Promo video is? Well, look no further.

I was tasked with making a simple, 2 minute book promo video for my publishers so they could send it to colleagues in Australia and New Zealand. I emailed through the finished version late last night, but here is the journey it took to getting something even vaguely useable. (Note: my book, DEFENDER, is great. Honest. I’m just terrible at condensing all its myriad parts down into shorthand.)

GXT Presents: The Writers in Cars Vlog

The first vlog from half of the Writers in Cars team (the new podcast of which can be heard here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/8786734/writers-in-cars-episode-one-how-we-got-o). This is an introduction to me (Gemma, in case you forgot which blog you were reading[image error] ) and why I’m embarking on a new vlog journey when I have no real idea what I’m doing. And a small peek into a Mobile Library Unit.

My 6 Favourite ThankBookFor Podcast Moments: Series 1

To commemorate the ending of series 1 of the ThankBookFor podcasts, I wanted to do a round-up of my Top Six Favourite Moments. But first, let me just give you the spiel. ThankBookFor is an initiative that celebrates all things story-related, namely through reading, books, and creating and sharing stories. The easiest and most time efficient way we’ve found to do this (so far) is through the medium of podcasts. There are several reasons for this: we need only 1 dictaphone, 1-2 hosts, plus a guest, and a software package that lets us edit the recording (in this case, Audacity, which is free). We’ve recorded 16 podcasts to date, and I’ve co-hosted 12 of them. You can find them all at ThankBookFor.com and you should go find them. Because they’re a lot of fun and they’ve made me add at least 15 new books to my TBR pile, which is what bookish podcasts are for, right? To share the love of stories and, in the process, encourage and inspire others to enjoy and love them, too.

 

So, without further ado, here are my Top Six Favourite ThankBookFor Podcast Moments.

 

Physically banishing my co-host out of the recording room, mid-interview.

This occurred during Gilly McAllister’s podcast. And let me be up front, the thing that cracked us up wasn’t even that funny; Gilly had managed to mispronounce a title of a book by Curtis Sittenfeld and that was it. Complete and utter meltdown – you can still hear part of it in the podcast. What you can’t hear is this transcript:

Cath: (giggling like a maniac)

Gilly: (laughing)

Me: (speaking through my own laughter) You’re gonna have to get out of the room, Cath. Seriously.

Eight minutes later.

Cath: (still giggling)

Me: Seriously. Get out.

She wasn’t allowed in the room during that entire bit of the podcast discussion; it’s just me and Gilly, and Cath standing at the door, peering in at us through the glass and trying to stifle her giggles.

 

Inadvertently telling our podcast guest she looked like the Elephant Man.

This was my mistake and I hold my hands up to it. Sometimes (who am I kidding? A lot of the time) my mouth engages before my brain. It was my first Skype podcast interview, and for anyone who knows me, I’m really not comfortable taking phone calls, and Skype is barely one rung up from that. I’m more a face-to-face kind of person. Anyway, the Skype video decided to freeze on our guest, Phoebe Morgan, and morph her face into a new and wondrous lumpy mess. What I actually wanted to call her was Rocky from the film Mask, but I couldn’t remember Eric Stoltz’s character’s name. So I went with Elephant Man. Because that’s loads better. I still apologise for it every now and then when I speak to her. Or offer to crochet her a John Merrick plush for Christmas.

(Disclaimer: Phoebe is actually very beautiful IRL and doesn’t resemble John Merrick at all. Even though I think he’s cute, especially in crochet form.)

 

Spending all my money, to the last penny, in a bookshop.

I’m not even surprised this happened. If you put me in a room full of books, I’m gonna be carrying some of them out with me when I leave. This is just what happens. So when Tom and I went to Southcart Books for our first independent bookshop podcast, my eyes lit up like bright saucers as I gazed at all the lovely stock. I entered with thirty quid, and left with some fluff in my pocket and a pile of new books to read. It was amazing.

 

Recording my own jingle for the ThankBookFor theme tune.

To a couple of people, I used to go by the nickname Jimi, because I told them I could play guitar as well as Jimi Hendrix. Which I could! …at Rock Band on the PlayStation. I’d somehow conveniently forget to add this second bit of information to the conversation. So, in an attempt to realise my dream, and to live up to the little white lie I was telling, I bought a cheap ukulele. And I can play it! Sort of. Armed with my new musical talents, I told Tom I’d be happy to have a go at doing the ThankBookFor jingle if he wanted. So I played one for him. And he wet himself laughing . You know that bit in the Father Ted Eurovision episode where an angry Ted is shouting at Dougal to play the f**king note he just f**king played ten f**king seconds ago? It was like that but in reverse.

After five minutes of improvised ukulele twanging.

Tom: Maybe, you know, play that bit you did just now, before it went all weird, can you do that again?

Me: Which bit? Which f**king bit, Tom? I can’t just recreate it. I was jamming.

Tom: Just, that, you know, right before it went all…different – there was that bit that sounded kind of okay?

Me: Tom, it doesn’t work that way. (Tries to play it again but it sounds CRAP.)

Tom: Forget it. It’s fine, Gemma. Let’s just…forget it.

He then went straight to our mate Dave (a real guitarist) and asked him to record the theme tune instead. Which is what you hear at the start and end of each of our podcasts! Maybe on a special occasion (our 50th podcast maybe), my ukulele rendition will finally be released to the world.

 

Can you high-five on a podcast? Hell yeah, you can!

This was a very special moment for me. We have a question in our standard list which asks ‘What book would you recommend that no one else has ever heard of?’. The lovely Steve Aryan, Fantasy author with Orbit, smiled ebulliently and began to describe a book, and my little heart blew up like a balloon ready to burst. Because, friends, I knew which book he was talking about. The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell. Tom had read it, too. I lost my cool for a moment and my hand rose from the table in slow motion, lifting, palm opening to Tom. He slid me a confused smile , but I’d already committed, this had to be done – there was no going back. I made him high-five me. Am I embarrassed about that? NO. Because I never thought we’d come across a book that both of us had read in answer to this question. The moment will be etched into my memory for all time.

 

Having to cancel on a Bestselling Author because of vomit.

We asked Mike Gayle to appear on one of our podcasts and much to our shock he actually agreed. Thus ensued a whole slew of emails pinging back and forth, trying to find dates and locations that worked for all involved. It took a while. Then, when we had finally agreed to a venue and time, and we were on our way, driving to Quinton Library, disaster struck in the form of projectile vomiting. Luckily it wasn’t me or Tom doing the upchucking because, in a car, I imagine that would be quite traumatic. It was still traumatic for me because it involved PHONE CALLS. Phone calls on speaker phone, pulling over and more phone calls at the side of the road, another phone call once we’d set off again, going back the way we’d come. It was like something out of a movie where the president’s life had been threatened and action plans had been activated. Anyhow, it’ll be a good story to tell Hannah when she’s older “Best-selling author Mike Gayle got cancelled because you threw up the entire contents of your stomach. Well played.”

And on that lovely note, the season 1’s finale, Mike Gayle’s ThankBookFor podcast, will be released for your ears’ delectation this Tuesday 24th May. You can find it (and all the other podcasts I’ve been writing about in today’s blog) by going to the website ThankBookFor.com and clicking on the links. If anyone is interested in being a guest on one of our podcasts (series 2 is mostly booked up, but there are spaces left for series 3), please do get in touch via the website or through our Twitter account @ThankBookFor or through its founder Tom Bissell at thankbookforTom@gmail.com (or find him at @TBFTomB).

 

(Honourable mention: getting to meet Liz Tipping’s beautiful beagle Mary. I wanted to eat her up she was so cute.)

Rankin your writing: is yours King?

I had a discussion the other day with some fellow writers about how we all felt about writing. Did we see it as a profound and worthy endeavour? Did we see it as a bit of fun, a hobby? Where did we place it in terms of importance in our lives? I found that I was maybe in the minority of thinking on this one, which I found interesting.

I’d like to point out that very little of my thinking is set in stone. I’m pretty fluid with a lot of opinions (apart from when it comes to signalling on a roundabout in which case EVERYONE, WIHTOUT FAIL, SHOULD ALWAYS USE THEIR INDICATORS. Oh, and get in the right lane. That’s important, too. And when it comes to sugar allotments for hot drinks, but don’t get me started on that). Anyway, having discussions of this nature always stimulates my thinking processes. Quite often, I come away from them convinced I’m abnormal. Which is fine. I don’t mind being abnormal

But let’s get back on track. Is writing important to me? Yes. Undeniably and unequivocally Yes. Do I think it’s an important endeavour for me? Yes. Should it be the most important endeavour in my life? Maaaaybe?  See, I’m already roaming into uncertain territory here. I can’t stick “writer” on the same level as brain surgeon or any other life-saving profession. I can’t pretend I’m doing something so important it trumps other people’s day jobs. Now, I’m only talking about my writing here, before anyone gets any bees in their bonnets. I know there are plenty of books out there that have saved lives, or have had a profound impact on their readers. But I write commercial, fairly mainstream, fiction. I’d like to think I can be profound sometimes (I’m not), or have a vital message to convey in the themes I choose to write about (only at a stretch). So the conclusion I ended up making was I’m trying to, first and foremost, entertain. I’m in the business of entertainment.  Sometimes, when I’m reading up on the Oscars or some very important semi-final football game, I often find myself thinking things like ‘But they’re being paid millions of dollars to play dress-up in front of a camera’ or ‘they’re just punting about an inflated bit of plastic on a field’. Why is this stuff given such ESTEEM? It’s entertainment, pure and simple, and there’s a place for that, definitely. It makes people happy, and that’s brilliant. Millions of people sit down every week to watch the newest episode of Game of Thrones – me included – and we spend the next week discussing it with our colleagues and friends. Do we need it? I’d argue not. It brings enjoyment to our lives. It may even teach us some things (don’t feed a newborn baby to a pack of dogs, for example. That’s a truly despicable thing to do). But no, it’s one of those pleasures that we’re lucky to have. But I couldn’t call it essential.

Am I a better person for writing? Maybe. It does help with empathy, having to write yourself into other people’s shoes all the time. I still think my parents deserve 90% of the credit for making me a decent person, though. Even psychopaths, if brought up in a loving, supportive home, lead a safe and fulfilling life that contributes to society. Not that I’m saying I’m a psychopath or anything. Only mildly sociopathic at the very worst. So, yes, writing helps keep me sane. It gives me purpose. And that’s where I mark its importance: on an individual scale. Outside of that, for me, it’s entertainment. And I’m eternally grateful people enjoy being entertained so much.

(Current reads: Fellside by M.R. Carey / listening to The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig.)

A Not So Rough Ride for a Not So Sociable Writer

I think I can attribute 80% of all stresses I’ve ever felt in my life to the past year. Does that coincide with signing a four-book deal with Headline? Yes, indeed. Can I also attribute some of my most standout moments in my entire life to the same year? I can. So, I think it balances itself out.

I’ve read articles on the stresses and worries and negatives that accompany a book deal, and I can certainly attest to some of them, even though I’m barely out the starting gate. Tax forms = nightmare. Networking = outside of my comfort zone. Administration work = tiresome. Edits = often gruelling. And yet, I want to highlight some of the positives, too. I have met some of the nicest people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting since taking my first steps into publishing. From literary agents to foreign rights assistants to accountants to other writers and authors, editors, publishing directors and all manner of publishing folk across the board. I’ve had constructive criticism from editors as far afield as New York to friends and colleagues whose desks are eight feet away from mine. Everyone gets on board, everyone wants you to do well, everyone is happy to take a few minutes to chat. In that sense, this business brings with it a wonderful sense of inclusion, because, and I’m being honest here, I was worried about how I was going to fit in. I mean, I’m a working class gal from a small town in the Black Country. I was the first in my family to go to University and even then I didn’t stray far (to the lofty heights of the University of Birmingham’s redbrick campus). I’m a home bird. I didn’t have any connections or ‘Ins’ with anyone in the industry. I set out to write a good story, get an agent, and maybe, just maybe, get myself a nice little book deal so I could one day see myself in print (and secretly place my novel on my own private bookshelf next to the likes of Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, stand back with hands on my hips, and give myself a self-congratulatory pat on the back. And then go eat spaghetti hoops for tea). I never thought about having to go to Sales Conferences in Piccadilly or entering the glam world of publishing with its delicious lunches and glasses of Prosecco and frocks and high-heels. Let me tell you, it’s scary as fuck looking in from the outside. Yet, each time I’ve made the effort to go to a launch or an event or travelled to London to meet my agent or the Headline bunch, everyone has made me feel at home, even when I felt like I was a complete intruder.

I’ve also learned new reams of meaning to the word ‘collaboration’. From going through edits with your agent and her readers, to the editor at your publishing house, then editorial assistants, copy editors, proof readers: all are happy to take a back seat when your book comes out. Your name is on the front cover but so many people have had input by that point. All to enhance your work. And this feedback is given gently. In fact, I’m sure they must run courses somewhere on how to give writers their edit notes. Something called ‘Don’t Scare the Clients 101’ or ‘Be Kind, They’re Fragile Little Birds: A Workshop’. They drip-feed you the rougher comments and camouflage them by praising your wonderful writing abilities in the very next breath. It’s very systematic: praise the scared writer, tell the writer to cut 2000 words, PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE. I’m sure it’s a skill that the best editors don’t even realise they do. But it’s all to save the writer’s feelings and not lead to them having a major meltdown. I imagine it’s the equivalent of trying to handle a new batch of hatchling chicks who are about to be trained to to join the chicken army. It’s very much appreciated by this writer, at least. I first came across it from my agent and remember thinking ‘Gosh, she’s very good at punching me in my writerly face and then stroking my ego like a pro. I quite like it.’.

So, there you go. A nice encouraging story for anyone out there who thinks they’ll never make it and, even if they did, would feel completely out of place. Anyone can do it. I did. And there are plenty of people on the inside who will make the transition easier – dare I say it, even enjoyable. Even for antisocial buggers like me. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and don’t be afraid to start sending your work out. It’ll all be worth it, I promise.

An Asylum of Authors

Asylum (collective noun); a group of authors. I’ve been using this term for a little while now. It fits, I think. Even when we’re at our most steady – in between deadlines, maybe, taking advantage of the occasional chunlulla