Hazel Prior's Blog, page 2

Frustrating Waiting and Worthwhile Wintering

It’s almost the end of 2020 and wow, hasn’t this year tried our patience?

I can't really (or at least, shouldn't) complain. I’ve been lucky that my small family is OK, but wow, how I've missed music-making with friends! Having lost many years to illness, I now get stupidly stressy when every moment isn’t packed with activity and achievement. I don’t think I’m the only one with this problem. In recent times, in spite of - or perhaps because of - all the help we get from computers, our lives seem increasingly rushed and frenetic. But then we get locked down…

The enforced cancellation of gigs and author events at first made made me desperate to embark on lots of other activities. Self-imposed targets whooshed in to fill the vacuum. Now there’d be time to learn ukulele and singing and increase my harp repertoire and write new songs and record a CD and write another book and and and… and suddenly my to-do list was longer than ever!

But I’ve realised I need to calm down. Socrates said: 'Beware the barrenness of a busy life', and he knew a thing or two. Naturally all life goes through cycles and includes a ‘wintering’ period: small creatures creep into hollows and curl up to sleep; trees shrug off their leaves and rest. Even when things aren’t going on, things actually are going on, beneath the surface, at a cellular level. The acorn sprouts inside the earth where no one can see. And we humans are continually processing a vast whirl of experiences. We are badly in need of quiet time so that we can reset and regenerate.

It’s hard though. Patience isn’t my forte and waiting is frustrating. That sense of ‘waiting’ is sometimes just a vague feeling but sometimes hinges on specific events. Waiting constitutes a large part of a writer’s life anyway: waiting for contracts, for publication, for news of sales figures etc. and author nails tend to be well bitten. At the moment I’m in a good phase regarding my new novel; penguins are perceived as Christmassy so my book is suited to this festive season. Thank goodness AWAY WITH THE PENGUINS has been on sale in the supermarkets and (because of the Richard & Judy Book Club news) in WHSmiths! Otherwise the timing of paperback publication would have been a disaster. Bookshops continued to trade over this last lockdown but they weren’t open for browsing, which obviously made a massive difference to sales.

With the help of my lovely publishers I’ve hopefully helped a little. I’ve been signing hundreds of bookplates and sending them out to 58 independent bookshops from St Ives to Scotland, as part of the UK #SignForOurBookshops campaign.



The idea is that a book signed by the author is more personal and precious than one that isn’t, so our wonderful local bookshops will have something special to offer. I hope that now their doors are open again, their run-up to Christmas will be a time of plenty.

Talking of doors opening, this is my Venice angels advent calendar.



I bought it several years ago but it comes out every December because it’s much too nice to throw away. I’m using it to remind myself (and you, if you’re still reading this) that, whatever problems we face, with every new day there’s a new door, and every new door is a new opportunity. Advent - especially this year - may be all about looking forward to a better time, but let’s enjoy any small beauties we can find while we are waiting.

Wishing you a worthwhile wintering and a very happy festive season!

A Plethora of Penguins

You really should take a look at penguins. Penguins will help. Not only are they a welcome distraction from the news right now, but they are also deeply relevant. If you think about key penguiny (penguinesque? penguinistic?) virtues, you'll see what I mean: Resilience, courage, community spirit, resourcefulness and cheerfulness, to name but a few. During the ongoing wretchedness of the pandemic, we need to develop these qualities to help us through. Penguins are an example to us all.

It’s also hard to look at a penguin without smiling… and smiling is healthy in all sorts of ways… and, wow, don’t we desperately need to smile at the moment?

In spite of all that’s going on, I personally have a good reason to smile this month. My own tribute to these waddling wonders, AWAY WITH THE PENGUINS (USA title = HOW THE PENGUINS SAVED VERONICA), which came out in paperback here last week, is now a Richard and Judy Book Club pick! For any non-Brits who happen to be reading this, Richard and Judy’s Book Club has been going for ten years and is legendary in the UK. Any whooping or crowing seems inappropriate right now, but I'm going to permit myself a squawk and a little waddly dance of glee. It is such an honour to have my book amongst the hallowed few.

What does this mean for me? Several things:

A. I had a private half-hour’s Zoom meeting with Richard and Judy themselves. The somewhat surreal conversation centred around Exmoor, book inspiration, writing processes, my eccentric octogenarian heroine, Veronica McCreedy, and, of course, penguins. I also introduced them to Purrsy who was not impressed by any of it and kept his eyes firmly closed (but he was purring so I think he’s secretly a fan, even though he’d never admit it)

B. Validation! I may have to write a separate blog about this one at some stage because it’s such a huge deal for us writers. Suffice it to say that it’s amazing to have that stamp of approval from such renowned book experts. They love my novel! I will never, never stop being being grateful.

C. As well as being in bookshops and the three major supermarkets, Away With The Penguins is now stocked in every WHSmiths in the country - and at half price: £3.99 for a proper paperback with lovely, shiny cover – what a bargain! And at last I have spotted my book for sale in my home town.

                                     

This would be a big, big hooray, but, darn it, we're not allowed out again now. Just as Away With The Penguins has finally hit the shelves in all its glory, nobody will be in the shops to buy it. These twists and turns of fate... Ah well, in the great scheme of things...

A quick aside here, because this really is important: Please check out the Children in Read Auction (google it. UK only, I'm afraid). There’s a chance to buy both my books at lot 224, but you’ll also find hundreds of other fabulous reads in all genres. It’s a great source of Christmas presents and you will be supporting Children In Need, too.

Back to the penguins, because it was they who started all this. By way of celebration I’ve been running a penguin art competition via Twitter. Gorgeous penguins have been rolling in, brightening my days. Penguin sketches and penguin cartoons, penguins in scarfs and hats, a felted penguin, a wire penguin, a pumpkin lantern penguin, a green penguin, a Picasso penguin, … you name it… These are so delightful I’ve dedicated a separate page of my website to penguins and, with the permission of participants, have set up a penguin gallery. Please take a look!

And, like the penguins, no matter what problems life throws at us, let's keep our peckers up and just keep waddling on.

A Little Help From My Friends

I am always happy to chat about penguins, or about harps. I've been doing that quite a lot during September. BBC radio presenters kindly invited me to their programmes twice (first for Lancashire, then for Devon, Cornwall and Somerset) and, despite my worries that I’d forget how to speak, I did remember words and they mostly came out in a logical order. However, there’s always a problem when this question comes: So, Hazel, can you give me an idea what your books are about? This is where I stumble. My mouth dries up and my sentences become an incomprehensible tangle. How can I possibly, possibly put a whole novel into a few pithy sentences? How can I give a flavour of it without using the voices of my characters? How can I tell you the plot without - well, giving away the plot?

I know I’m not the only writer who struggles with this. It’s the truly awful part of submission letters. It’s hard because your job as a novelist is to go broad and deep; you’ve spent months (or years) broadening and deepening around your topic - so how can you now suddenly go narrow and shallow?

Reviews have shown me that other people are way better at summarising my novels than I am. And the book blurb isn't the only area where I need help. I recently joined Instagram and I’m gobsmacked at the creativity I’ve found on there, including many photos and videos of my own books. I may be able to write the stories but I could never have achieved these artistic feats.

Self-published writers manage virtually everything by themselves, and I'm full of admiration. Reluctant as I am to give up control over things like the title and the cover, I'm also incredibly relieved to have a group of editors, designers, publicists and marketing experts behind my books. Trad publishing really is team work.

My debut novel came out as a paperback in the USA last month. My kind publicists at Berkley sent me this, just one of their clever designs to help with publicity.



Then there is my fabulous agent, Darley Anderson and his team who negotiate deals for me all over the place! Last week the Slovenian edition of Ellie arrived here, and isn't it beautiful?

                                     

I somehow don’t think I would have managed that on my own!

With the harping, too, I've been a bit needy recently. I can play the instrument, but that's not the issue. While there are no live performances, I'm experimenting with other ways of getting out there which means (oh no!) technology. I'm lucky to have a husband who is technically minded and produces sensible advice and an array of electrical leads when things go wrong. And, thankfully, I have a friend who knows about Cubase software so there's hope for the penguin song. I've clubbed together with another talented friend, Ursula, and we have plans for it that might just coincide with an important announcement later in October. Watch this space.

I've finally realised I can't control everything. I must sometimes accept a little help from my friends. That’s the way it should be. And it's one of the things that makes my jobs - both of them - so lovely.

Diving In!

Hello Friends and Readers

It's about time I wrote a Goodreads blog, isn't it? I have a monthly blog on my website about my writing and music (https://www.hazeltheharpist.co.uk) but have been rather slow on here. I hope you'll forgive any technical blips. I still have a lot to learn.

I'll dive in and see what happens when I paste my most recent blog here. Wish me luck!

A BIT OF A STRETCH
September 1, 2020
by Hazel Prior

There’s a problem with writing. Just one, you say? Well, all right there are lots, but the one I’m thinking of is physical. It’s unhealthy - and I mean EXTREMELY unhealthy - to sit at your computer thumping out words all day. And yet, how else do you produce a book? Unless you are very good at thinking and dictating at the same time, there’s no other way. I’m all too conscious of this, and so are my poor muscles. They've made me recognise the importance of stretching.

And so it is with the muscles of the imagination. You can’t just work them and work them and work them. You need to stretch them gently in between or you’ll get repetitive strain injury.

The imagination is pretty elastic and can be stretched in lots of ways. One is research. For AWAY WITH THE PENGUINS (Or HOW THE PENGUINS SAVED VERONICA, as it’s titled in America) I not only tried to get into the mind-set of my two protagonists, an 86-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man; there were also the penguins. I pored over books about penguins, I watched videos of penguins on Youtube, I quizzed penguin experts and I went to meet real life penguins. I put myself into the shoes (or flippers) of penguins. I became a penguin. That was a very good stretch.

This August, while forging on with my writing, my imagination started to flag. So again, I tried stretching it with a bit of research. I:

-Wandered along the canal in Bath, taking notes

-Chatted with an artist about her experiences in Bolivia with ocelots

-Measured my smile with a tape measure (10cm!)

-Looked up Mountain Hares (and yes, I briefly became a mountain hare, which was fun… although maybe not quite so much fun as the penguin).

I also did some people-y things. Authors are good at hiding away and thinking, dreaming and processing, but we also need to be extrovert sometimes. Meeting up with other people has been difficult recently, as we all know. But this last month I’ve managed some socially distanced garden music practices and a couple of trips out to meet friends.


(You may be able to spot a theme here!)

Friends sometimes ask if I might use them as characters in a book. The answer is no - but their company could be the starting point of an imaginative process. There are many details I don’t particularly notice when we meet, which later come back to me. I might take one tiny aspect from them and mix and match with foibles or mannerisms from other people. I might use an anecdote that comes up in conversation and shape it to fit my story. I might recognise an emotion but put it in an entirely different situation…

So writers, my advice is, don’t just sit there behind the computer. Get out while you can. Stretch those limbs! And stretch that imagination!