F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 31

Coming Saturday – Confined Spaces

Available FREE to download from Amazon, this Saturday.

[image error] “When he awoke everything was white. At first he thought it was death, but he quickly realised he was horribly alive.”

Coming Saturday – Confined Spaces

My short story collection, CONFINED SPACES will be free for download on Amazon next Saturday.

Throughout the week, I’ll be sharing an image related to one of the stories, and the first line of each tale.

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“She lay her head on his broad chest and tried not to think of his wife.”

Me, Writing, in 2017

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Obviously the above will change somewhat, but that’s the first short chapter of my new work-in-progress novel.

My stated plan, for those just tuning in, is to write and publish a novella in time for Christmas. I began in August and it swiftly turned into a short novel, but – even with the length doubling – I think I’m on track.

It’s a tale of lust and revenge, set in 1979 but echoing back twenty years before. A young film journalist is sent to interview a former movie-star of British cinema. It isn’t long before the journalist finds himself in an all-consuming affair with her, but being involved with Diana Christmas means getting drawn into murder and blackmail.

To get it all done I have different chapters at various different stages of writing and editing, but it’s tough work trying to keep everything in order in my head. There’s a hell of a lot to focus on – and that’s without my real life of Mrs Jameson, Baby Jameson and my proper job-type job.

But I’m revelling in it; enjoying it every time I open my keyboard, pretty much every time I type a word. Yes, I’m anxious to get it done now, get it across the finish-line – but that’s not because I want it to be over. No, it’s so I can hold the completed product proudly in my hand.

I’ve never written anything this quickly before, never even attempted such a thing. Events might prove me wrong, but right now, I really think I can succeed in this challenge!

 

E by Kate Wrath

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Part fantasy, part western, part sci-fi, and all dystopia, Kate Wrath’s E manages to cram a great deal in, all while remaining a distinctly human story. Although filled with vividly described agony and bloodshed, it’s at its core a tale of companionship and loss, of a family unit trying to defy the awfulness of the outside world.

Eden is our protagonist, a beautiful young woman who wakes up – having been locked tight in a dark box – with no idea who she is. The world she finds is basically a sealed-off frontier town, where gangs of armed men roam around being tough hombres and doing pretty much whatever the hell they like. The only thing to stop them getting completely out of hand are the giant robot sentries which patrol the town and stop ultra violence (or other subversive things, like democracy). At first Eden is forced to hide herself, lest – young and beautiful as she is – she gets picked up by a slaver. But gradually she finds a home, makes connections, eases her sense of disorientation at the loss of her old identity through becoming part of a family. But, of course, with a family she now has much more to lose.

In E, Wrath has created a tale full of empathy, about the strengths and weaknesses of people. I was most impressed by her incredible ability to ramp up the peril again and again, so you realise – as you’re reading it – that even the most desperate looking odds can become yet more desperate. I’m sure there are some who may think it’s too dark, it’s too hopeless, but I’d disagree. I think Wrath just manages to keep a sense of salvation in sight the whole time, even if it is often a glimmer right at the horizon.

Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead

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Trashy, lightweight and superficial – yet I don’t mean any of that in the pejorative. This is a book which revels in being trashy, lightweight and superficial; it’s raison d’être is to be trashy, lightweight and superficial. It’s a novel which wants nothing more than to be a fun, sexy, albeit dark piece of fluff, and in those aims it more than succeeds.

Essentially we have here a spin on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, where the powers of darkness are actually okay and it’s the vampire hunters who are the right pain in the arse. Georgina Kinkaid is our sassy narrator – a sexy, succubus bookshop employee who has to deal with both dilemmas in her love life and a murder mystery in modern day Seattle. Yes, that last sentence does sound utterly ridiculous, but the book commits to that ridiculousness wholeheartedly and pulls it off with admirable brio.

I actually read SUCCUBUS BLUES at a dark and depressing point of my life, but it’s a novel which puts a smile on my face just to think of it now.

Coming Soon!!!

Available for download on Amazon from the 16th of September (and FREE for a couple of days), my new short story collection of claustrophobia:

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Me, Writing (and doubting), in 2017

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Sometimes I’m so overcome with doubt.

After all, what I’m trying to do is hard. I want to make a career out of my writing, but that’s – any way you look at it – going to be really, really difficult. There are so few people on this planet of ours who manage it, why am I going to be lucky enough to succeed?

I am writing constantly at the moment: creating and creating and creating.

But I need more than that.

Book marketing is something I know pitifully little about in any practical sense, but I’m trying to increase my knowledge, understand how it works.

I want to give myself the best shot, and to do that I need to have amazing product that I’m proud of, and the understanding of how to promote it.

But still I worry, as I pay for professional editing and cover design, that I might be taking food from my baby daughter’s mouth for no good reason.

Actually, that’s an exaggeration. I have a job and will always have money to feed and clothe my darling girl.

But if I do keep down this route and fail, she might wonder someday what I did with her inheritance.

I hope and pray not though.

Hopefully she looks at her old man with pride because he lived his dream. That, as much as anything else, is what I’m striving for.

Nixonland by Rick Perlstein

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NIXONLAND is a huge, sprawling populist history of eight years of American history, that even with its generous 900 page length, feels like it has so much crammed into it.

If I had the time, it’s a book I’d want to study. Not just for the glorious and entertaining detail of the book, but for how it applies to now.

For starters, it’s a book to make Donald Trump look like a vainglorious incompetent. Okay, Donald Trump frequently makes himself look like a vainglorious incompetent, but NIXONLAND really hammers home how far out of his depth he is. As much as Richard Nixon ordered various acts of skulduggery and did terrible things, he was a career politician who knew how to draw a veil over his worst impulses. Those impulses were frequently acted upon, but he understood how to keep them distant from himself. Of course, it all eventually came back to bite him, but it’s a book to suggest that Trump’s fall may come even quicker than his Republican predecessor. Nixon tried his hardest to hide all the ammo that could be used against him, Trump just seems to be advertising it.

There are parallels closer to home as well. 1972 saw a US election between a distant, aloof President who barely campaigned (and had the country embroiled in a deeply unpopular war, to boot) against a more woolly-minded populist, labelled with a new politics tag that appealed to the young and left-leaning. Fast forward to 2017 and relocate the drama across the Atlantic and that could be Teresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Except whereas Nixon thrashed McGovern, May lost her majority. The reason could be that the Conservative party – despite their nasty party reputation – didn’t go down the road of illegal dirty tricks that Nixon did. It could also, of course, be that this time a sense of change is in the air.

This is a long book, but without a doubt it’s a page-turner of a read. Nixon as always is a truly fascinating character. To rise so far and still have such a chip on his shoulder, to see plots and people looking to do him down at every turn is quite amazing. You’d surely expect him to relax slightly, to acknowledge even just to himself and those around them him that he had turned himself into one of life’s winners. Not at all, even after he wins the Presidency in 1972, he’s still moaning to the press about how he hasn’t got his dues.

Yet, for all he was a miserable man who had a tunnel vision for the worst things in life, he did tap into something primal in the psyche of his country. Small c conservatives perhaps, who were happy for the country to change, but slowly and not any way like the radicals wanted to change it. He coined the phrase “the silent majority” to describe them, and coincidently I saw the Telegraph columnist, Tim Stanley use that phrase in a headline yesterday. Nixon may have left power forty-three years ago, but we are still in Nixonland.

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

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Confession time: I’ve never actually read any Harry Potter (though I did make my way slowly through the films), nor did I do more than pick up and casually glance through A CASUAL VACANCY in a bookshop. So THE CUCKOO’S CALLING represents my very first exposure to the writing of J.K. Rowling. I have to say that one has to doff one’s cap as to the sheer readability of what we have here. She really does know how to carve a story, centre it on a couple of well-drawn characters, and then keep it charging along, shaking it up every so often to keep it interesting.

Our hero is Comoran Strike, a one-legged, war veteran, private detective (also a large man, named after a mythical Cornish giant). Along with his new temporary secretary, Robin, he finds himself investigating the death of a famous supermodel, Luna Landry. This trip from a beaten up office in Soho, to the rarefied circles of fame and fashion, offers a neat line in contrasts – as well as plenty of suspicious characters with their own agendas. There are unscrupulous film producers, coked-up trophy wives, wastrel actor boyfriends and bitchy fashion designers. There are also less than trustworthy solicitors, which given that this was exposed as the work of Rowling through the loose lips of her lawyers, makes for an interesting ripple.

A nice touch is that Comoran is himself the illegitimate, neglected son of a famous rock-star, this gives him an in with the famous people he meets as they at least know his dad – even if he really doesn’t. His distant links to fame work well in this novel, but reading this I wasn’t sure what Rowling was going to do with that part of the character in the sequel, unless of course there’s the intention for Strike to frequently investigate the seedier parts of fame and fortune. (The sequel is about a missing novelist.) That may make him a strange private detective, one who belies his run-down Soho office by scarcely ever dealing with real people. But then I suppose it wouldn’t be without precedent. On the other side of the Atlantic we had Lieutenant Columbo, an LA homicide cop who never investigated drive-by shootings, but instead spent his time banging up rich bastards. Perhaps that quasi-socialist path is the one Rowling will happily send Strike down

So top marks for readability, but this is perhaps not the most memorable book I’ve ever come across. Its workings are a bit too apparent, some of the strands fell into predictable grooves, and the actual whodunit wasn’t as big a reveal as it could have been. (I did enjoy though that this is a private eye novel which starts and finishes by referencing the magazine, PRIVATE EYE.) However despite those flaws, it’s an entertaining, well-written yarn with strong characters, which shows off just why J.K. Rowling is just so damned successful.

Me, Writing about 1979, in 2017

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The novella I’m writing at the moment (which actually has a chance of turning into a short novel) is set in London in December 1979.

I know what events were dominating the news in that month.

I know what was in the charts, music-wise.

I can even find out what was on BBC1, BBC2 and ITV in the run-up to Christmas that year.

But my quandary is, how much of this stuff do I need to include?

The story has to be about realistic characters, it has to have an interesting and gripping plot. If it doesn’t have those then the story is a failure anyway. Everything else is just window dressing.

But if I am setting it in this period (and there is a proper plot reason why it’s set in this period; not just a crazy whim) then I should really try to engage with the period to some level.

One of the many things I loved about the tv series, MAD MEN, was its ability to drop in – what are now – fairly obscure 1960s references to make the period seem much more real.

But then that was something like seventy hours of television, I’m talking about 150 to 200 pages of fiction.

I know I want to engage with it somehow, but I don’t want to seem like I’m showing off how much I’ve learnt about the year and the month.

Nor do I want to feel like it could be set anytime.

It’s a head scratcher. A balance I’m trying to strike.

And all I can hope is that when I’ve finished it and published it – which will hopefully be by the end of the year – I’m happy with where I’ve ended up.

[image error] A glamourous looking London, 1979