Harriet Springbett's Blog, page 13

Big Bones shortlisted

Big Bones shortlisted

I’d just like to share today’s excellent and unexpected news: my short story ‘Big Bones’ is on the shortlist for the ‘University of Sunderland in Association with Waterstones Short Story Award‘.

I was already chuffed to see it longlisted at the beginning of August.

The final results will be out at the end of October. Good luck to everyone on the list.

Quark Soup

Quark Soup

Yippee! 3rd place in the Segora International Short Story competition for my ‘Quark Soup’. The competition was judged by Amanda Hodgkinson (who wrote the bestseller ’22 Britannia Road’) and organised by Gordon and Jocelyn Simms. Congratulations to Fleur Smithwick (1st) and Anne Woodford (2nd), whose writing I admire enormously. I feel honoured to have my name alongside theirs on the Segora website announcement. You can download and read Quark Soup here.

Amanda said:

“Third place goes to QUARK SOUP. This is a lyrical and emotional look at the life of a couple dealing with illness and changes in their lives. The writing is rich and detailed, and satisfyingly full of emotional depth and wisdom.”

I was lucky enough to meet Amanda in Bordeaux last year, when she spoke about her work. You can read my blog post about her here.

There is also a review of Quark Soup on ‘String To My Bow’ website

“Springbett starts with an assault of flavours and textures and quickly hits the reader with a one-two punch that completes the metaphor of the opening paragraph and literally takes the breath away.

The timespan of this short story is a mere couple of minutes, yet in that time the protagonist feels, remembers and tastes every aspect of her love for her husband.

With a bombshell happening in the third paragraph, it is hard to see how the author will resolve this emotional story. And yet she does with a sleight of hand that is as natural and beautiful as the prose.

Quark Soup was recently awarded third prize in the Segora International Short Story competition. A real deserved plaudit for Springbett’s approach to the genre.”

Hot Streets

One of the things I love about summer is the festival season. Cognac may be a tiny town but we’re spoilt for choice. You know all about Cognac’s Mars Planète Danse festival in March – if you don’t, read my blog post. There’s also a big music festival in the first weekend of July (Cognac Blues Passions) and a music / local-produce picnic festival at the end of July (La Fête du Cognac).

The end of the summer doesn’t mean the end of the festivals: oh no, not for us Cognac die-hards, raving with festival fever.

On 14th-16th October there’s the Polar festival, which is not all about the Polar regions (you have permission to groan). The translation of polar is detective / crime / whodunit / thriller, and the festival is a celebration of this genre in the form of novels, comics, cinema, television and theatre.

Then we have the European literary festival on 17th-20th November (featuring Scotland this year, among other countries that have towns twinned with Cognac) – see my blog post from last year’s edition. I may even manage a post about this year’s edition before the event, if you ask nicely.

Rigoletto (copyright Xavier Cantat)

But my favourite is, and always has been, the Coup de Chauffe street theatre festival.

It’s organised by Cognac’s Avant Scène theatre in collaboration with the CNAR Sur Le Pont in La Rochelle, one of France’s national street theatre centres. This year is the 22nd edition and it’s taking place on Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th September (there are no Friday evening shows this year).

Whatever you do, don’t come to this festival.

You won’t like the fact it’s completely free – one of the only free ones in France. You won’t enjoy laughing at the clowns or the circus acts. You won’t like the music bands meandering through the streets, the exhibitions, the dance performances, the amusing and thought-provoking theatre shows. And you certainly won’t like the relaxed, convivial atmosphere. The Coup de Chauffe is Cognac’s best kept secret – although the audiences seem to get bigger each year, so someone is obviously letting the cat out of the bag.

And because you definitely don’t want to come, the lovely Audrey at Avant Scène has given me a list of the shows that don’t require French language skills. There’s nothing worse than hearing everyone around you laughing when you don’t understand what’s funny. Though maybe that’s nothing to do with the language, come to think of it.

Unlike last year, you won’t need your walking boots, as the shows will be centred in the Parc François 1er, Jardin Public and town centre. This year is also Cognac’s 1000th anniversary, and the town will be celebrating by a big, collective performance featuring many festival artistes on the Saturday evening. Don’t come to this. It will be too much fun. I suggest you stay at home and watch TV instead.

So, which shows will be easy to understand?

Pig (copyright Paul Herrmann)

Firstly, a group of British actors are coming with their pig. As you do. Their show is called…yes, ‘Pig’. So once you’ve played the piglet to their 9-metre-long sow, you could have a chat with Manchester-based ‘Whalley Range All Stars‘ in the Jardin Public.

‘Ballet Bar‘, a mix of hip-hop, narrative, mime and circus, will be acted outside for the first time, although they have plenty of experience in theatres.

‘Attention Je Vais Eternuer‘ (Be careful, I’m about to sneeze – that’s a translation, not me warning you that I’m actually going to sneeze, obviously) is a dance duo performance with changes of clothes at its heart.

Ballet Bar (copyright Nicolas Thebault)

‘In Paradise‘ is also dance, this time to rock music. And if you prefer Verdi to rock, you must see ‘Rigoletto‘, an irreverent street opera show in which a brass band and 4 singers use the Bel Canto form to act out a story. ‘Les Kaléidophones‘ is a sound décor, a combination of actors with cornets for listening to the environment.

There are also acrobatic displays with ‘Dynamite and Poetry‘ and ‘A Corps Perdus‘, involving equipment such as the Russian bar and Chinese poles.

If you like the screen, try ‘La Boîte Noire‘, a 3-metre-square cube in which a series of dancers, actors and musicians perform. The image is projected live onto a screen outside the box for the audience to watch.

There are lots more theatre-based performances, which you’ll enjoy if your French is up to it. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing the company ‘Annibal et Ses Eléphants‘ and ‘Qualité Street‘, whose past shows have delighted me. I’m intrigued by the ironic ‘Cocktail Party‘ and am ready (or am I?) to face the migrant issues with ‘Bouc de là‘.

For practical details of times and venues, pick up your programme from tourist offices or check out the Avant Scène website.

So, the 3rd and 4th September. Have you got that? Good. Mark the dates in your diary with ‘early night’ or ‘TV weekend’ or ‘visit the in-laws’ or ‘clean house’. Write anything you like, in fact, as long as it’s not Cognac Coup de Chauffe.

I’ll (not) see you there.

Oranges and LemnS (for the Belles of St Clemns)

I can hear you festival-goers from St.Clémentin groaning at my blog post title. For the unlucky readers and writers who weren’t able to come this year’s literary festival, some explanation may be necessary.

Who planted the seeds on my bike?

The LemnS bit is easy. Olympics (and a long list of other awards) poet Lemn Sissay, the festival’s keynote speaker, wowed everyone with his unique performance. His choice of clothing – a slick grey suit with fluorescent green trainers – was only the tiniest hint of the paradox to come.

It’s not every day that a performance combines first class stand-up comedy with heart-rending poetry. His desperate themes delivered in dramatic poses and followed up by boyish grins and jokes were a see-saw of emotions. The image of him hanging over a cliff face, clutching a branch, is engraved in my memory. What a man of contrasts! His name, although he pronounces it as ‘Lem’, sounds more like ‘lemon’ in Ethiopian. It means ‘why’. Surely that shows a poetic destiny?

After we’d lived his poetry and sympathised with his answers to Roisin McAuley‘s astute questions, we plundered the festival bookshop for his books.

The ‘Belles’ part is fairly easy too – these are the lovely ladies present at the festival: the readers, writers, speakers, helpers and, of course, the belle organiser Jocelyn Simms. Perhaps I should also mention the beaux men, headed by Gordon Simms and followed closely by John Hudson (see my blog post about him here), Roger Elkin, Ian Mathie, Gavin Bowd, Peter Hoskins and all the others I didn’t manage to see.

During the festival, Gordon kindly announced my publication deal with Impress Books, which led to an invitation for me to lead a workshop at the Charroux litfest in 2017 and lots of congratulations from my supportive fellow readers and writers.

There seem to be two kinds of writer: those who tell stories about their exceptional life experiences, and those who use their language skills and imagination to invent or retell stories. At St.Clémentin you could find both. Ian Mathie kept a full room of spectators spellbound with his tales of living in a mud hut in Africa for forty years. And Clare LeMay gave us a fascinating insight into the skills of an audio describer for theatre, film and art galleries.

We were spoilt for choice of practical workshops for poetry, play and prose writing. Alison Morton, of Roma Nova fame, doled out generous helpings of tips for self-publishing. And, as it’s a bilingual festival, different translators talked about what it’s like to inhabit two languages. Ed Briggs, notably, pleasured her audience with her poetic essay on English and French words – which Katherine Gallagher advised her to take to Bloodaxe.

Yes, yes, we get the point, I hear you say. We’ll make sure we come to the 2018 edition. But what about the ‘Oranges’ in the title?

Patricia Duncker speaking at St.Clémentin

Orange is a reference to Patricia Duncker and her infectious, grounded energy – and I don’t mean the colour she was wearing. Patricia’s literary knowledge, technical craft and analytical skills qualify her as an intellectual. But she’s not a whimsical ‘wrrrrriter’ (as she says with a flourish of her hand and rolling of ‘r’s).

Her bold opinions and her passion for literature inspired us all and made us laugh. Those lucky enough to participate in her workshop (Me! Me!) had a thorough dousing in beginnings, structure, double narrators and genre. She also lavished us with advice on the challenges we face in our own work.

She is a writer who truly knows what she’s talking about, both in English and French literature. I can understand why Michèle Roberts, when she was a judge for the 2010 Orange prize, argued in favour of long-listing Patricia’s novel ‘The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge’.

Ha! There you are: the oranges. It took a little research…but you’ll find the reference here, in the article Michèle wrote for the Independent in June 2010.

So the festival is over for another two years. I look through the programme of the 70 events which took place over three days and wish I could go back and attend all those I missed. Perhaps I could have squeezed in a few more – but then I wouldn’t have met the other literary lovers and discussed reading and writing with them over tea, cake, aperitifs, picnics, lunch…

Bravo and many thanks, once again, to the Simms, to their host of helpers, to the speakers and to the enthusiastic public. I’m sure there will be some official photos on the St.Clémentin website in the weeks to come.

Impressed!

Tree Magic

“Thirteen-year-old Rainbow discovers she can communicate with trees. But that’s just the beginning.

Her magic hands can shape trees at will, but her gift is dangerous and has fatal consequences. An accident that leaves Rainbow in a coma leads her mother to make a confession that will change Rainbow’s life forever.

Are her abilities a gift or a curse? Can Rainbow really trust her mother?

From England to France, through secrets, fears and parallel worlds, Rainbow’s journey to understand her powers takes her beyond everything she’s ever known.

To find the truth, she must also find herself.”

I didn’t write this. I mean, I wrote the book Tree Magic but I didn’t write the blurb you’ve just read.

It’s a strange feeling when someone else writes a piece based on your own work.

Unlike a review, in which the reviewer is giving their opinion from outside the book, this blurb has been written from the inside. It’s written by a reader who is interpreting your story and wants to share it with other readers. Up to now the only person who has done this is me.

So who did write it?

My publisher!

Ooh…Shivers down my spine. Yes, I’m excited. A novel is a bit like a child, and when someone takes an interest in your child it makes you happy. Unless it’s the police, of course. Or an unsuitable boyfriend – you know: tall, dark (why dark? Isn’t that hairist?), handsome, rich, fun. (In case you’re wondering, he’s unsuitable because your daughter will fall for him and then neglect her studies).

Rainbow has interested several people since she first knocked on the door of my imagination and demanded to be let in. To begin with I let her into the hall, where she asked for a short story – this was back in 2005. I read Rainbow’s story to my writers group, Lumineuse. Later, one of the writers (Christine) told me she could almost see Rainbow beside me.

Rainbow liked this. “See!” she said to me. “Now you’ve got to let me sit down and have a drink.”

She ignored my protests about not having sold my first novel (novel Zero) yet, pushed her way into my living room and demanded a novel of her own. These teenagers. They’re all the same.

Like the model mother I try to be, I negotiated that she could have a small novel as long as she took her feet off my coffee table and helped with the washing up.

She shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. 

But the small novel shot up, in the way teenagers do, and became a full size novel.

Rainbow had her own bedroom by now. She would play loud music and order pizza for dinner. She was great company – when she wasn’t sulking about me having to go out and earn a living and deal with real life.

In the end, she decided my house was too small for us both. She wanted to go into the world, which I guess is natural. I’d taken her to meet my writing friends over the years, but now this wasn’t enough.

We wrote off to find her a place with an agent or publisher. Some were interested and encouraged her to keep trying, though they didn’t have room for her. She was interviewed several times, won a runner-up position in a competition and, at one point, was even offered a place.

This didn’t work out, though, and I think she became a little depressed. These poor kids spend years studying, only to find there are no jobs at the end of all the hard work.

Then, one day, an interviewer asked to see her for longer than the standard three minutes. She took her whole self along and gave everything. The publisher liked her. Rainbow liked the look of the publisher. We negotiated. Rainbow yawned – she was a bit bored by all the nitty-gritty, real-world stuff – and we came to an agreement.

So my Rainbow is due to fly the nest. I’m leaving her in the capable hands of a nice young man (Tall? Dark? Handsome?) at Impress Books.

Hence the terrible pun in the blog post title… my apologies if you’re groaning.

Click the following links to find out more about Impress and their ebook imprint Watchword. You can sign up to their blog, discover their authors, see a silly photo of me, read a quote from my editor – and, around January 2017, you’ll find Rainbow sitting on the shelf beside the other Watchword ebooks.