Helena Halme's Blog, page 21

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

My heart sank when I opened ‘My Brilliant Friend’ and saw the ‘Index of characters’. I’d really been looking forward to reading this book, especially as I knew it was the first part in a series set in Italy – and had been written by a woman. All details that attracted me to ‘My Brilliant Friend.’ But a book which announces in its first pages that there are so many characters that the reader cannot possibly be expected to keep track on them all, and therefore needs an index, wasn’t a good start. I firmly believe that a good novel should have enough characters to make it interesting, but not so many that the reader is confused.

But I persevered, and as it turned out I didn’t need the index, and found ‘My Brilliant’ Friend an evocative and atmospheric novel.

The story starts when the two main characters, Elena and Lila are young girls, living in a poor, post 2nd World War community on the outskirts of Naples. They play with their dolls, go to school and grow up observing the patriarchal society change in front of their eyes.

The plot of the novel isn’t fast-paced, and lot of emphasis is put on small details, and the emotions of the narrator, Elena, who is constantly trying to keep up with her brilliant friend. But as the story develops, we are left to wonder which one of the girls is the more talented – brilliant – one.

I thoroughly enjoyed ‘My Brilliant Friend’ and have just started reading the next instalment in the series, ‘The Story of a New Name’.

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The Finnish Girl Freebie!

To celebrate the forthcoming release of The Finnish Girl, a prequel novella to The Englishman, I am going to publish samples from the book here on my blog.

Today, 8 days from Publication Day, you can read a sample from the first chapter absolutely free.

Look out for the next instalment on this blog in a few days’ time, or sign up for my Newsletter to avoid missing a post!

Now read on …

Prologue

If she was honest, Kaisa couldn’t quite remember when she first met Matti. He, on the other hand, told her endlessly how he’d been overwhelmed by her loveliness and innocence when he’d first seen her at the house of her new school friend in Lauttasaari. Kaisa had no idea that Matti had even noticed her during any of those lazy weekends and evenings spent at the Norens’ house.

Chapter One

Helsinki, Autumn 1974

Kaisa was the new girl in town. Again. But she was well versed in entering a classroom where she knew nobody. At fourteen she had already changed schools no fewer than four times. During the past three years she’d spent exactly a year in each school. Still, there were a few butterflies in her tummy when she scanned the room full of new lanky students on the second floor of the redbrick building. It was late August and all the new faces, some looking up at Kaisa, had a healthy glow from the long summer, which was now nearly over.

Vappu Noren was the first girl Kaisa spoke to; she’d sat down at the desk next to her at the back of the classroom. Vappu was skinny, with an angular face framed by long, thin blond hair and a friendly smile. They exchanged a few words about how unfair it was to be back at school on what seemed like the hottest day of the summer.

Vappu said she, too, lived on Lauttasaari Island, where Kaisa had moved with her mother and sister Sirkka only a few weeks before. In fact, Vappu and Kaisa discovered they weren’t too far from each other. On that first day, after they’d had lunch together, sitting on the grassy bank at the front of the school building, Vappu invited Kaisa back to her house.

Kaisa had no idea that Vappu’s place was one of the large houses at the tip of the island, overlooking the sea. She’d walked along the shore with her mother after arriving in their new home, admiring the grand places, wondering what kind of people lived there. When she saw the Norens’ house for the first time, she’d regretted her earlier, carefree, mention of the small flat she lived in with her sister and mother. The modern detached house had a vast wooden balcony at the front with a wide driveway below, leading to a garage on one side and a front garden with paving stones up to the door on the other. Kaisa’s new home in Lauttasaari would have fitted into the Norens’ large, open-plan living room. There were five bedrooms, a sauna, and a swimming pool next to a basement TV room. The lounge had floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. Kaisa tried to remind herself that, after the divorce, her mother had done well to get a rental on a two-bedroom flat in such a good area as Lauttasaari. The flat even had a partial view of the sea, if you craned your neck and looked to the right-hand side on the small balcony. It wasn’t quite the same as the full vista of the Gulf of Finland, which the Norens enjoyed when they looked out of their living room windows, but still.

Vappu’s parents had split up just like Kaisa’s, but instead of having just the one sister, Vappu was the third child in a gang of four blond-haired siblings. Vappu was fourteen, just like Kaisa; her boyish, lanky, sports-crazy sister, Saija, was thirteen, her brother Erik seventeen and the oldest, Petteri, had already turned twenty-two.

Petteri was serving his conscription in the Finnish army, so was rarely in the two-storey house that the Norens called home.

Visiting Vappu was a bit like going to a house party; there were always other young people there – Vappu’s sister and brother Erik, and their friends. They’d all cram onto the large corner sofa in the basement TV room, or have sauna and pool parties, with illicit beer and Lonkero, the Finnish bitter lemon-and-gin drink that the girls liked. Sometimes even a bottle of Koskenkorva vodka would be passed around if Mrs Noren was working late, or out with her own friends. They’d grill sausages in the log-burner, which stood in the middle of the oblong basement room, and joke and flirt with each other. Kaisa liked Vappu’s younger brother, Erik. He had pale blue eyes, straw-blond hair and a strong jaw. He’d just come back from a year as an exchange student in Minnesota in the States, and sometimes used American words, such as ‘Yeah’ and ‘Alright’, instead of Finnish.

During a particularly rowdy evening, when Mrs Noren was away on a weeklong conference, leaving Petteri in charge, a girl no one admitted to knowing threw up on the sauna floor. But the rowdy teenagers took no notice of the quiet twenty-two-year-old Petteri’s attempts to restore order, so Matti, his best and only friend, as far as Kaisa could tell, stepped in. Matti, who stood out from the crowd of blond siblings and their friends because of his dark hair and brown eyes, took on the role of a grown-up. Acting like everyone’s dad and speaking in a stern voice, Matti told the guests to leave, and the Noren siblings to go to bed. Kaisa stood there, staring at this adult amongst the teenagers, a little drunk, not knowing what to do. Vappu was very unsteady on her feet by then, and walked slowly up the stairs, arm in arm with her younger sister Saija, waving goodbye to no one in particular like a queen on a balcony. She seemed to have forgotten about Kaisa.

Matti bundled the unknown girl who’d been sick into a taxi, and when he came back inside, Kaisa noticed it was just the two of them standing in the basement hall.

‘I’ll take you home,’ Matti said in the same stern, dad voice to Kaisa. He wasn’t looking at her, and Kaisa didn’t want to cause any trouble, so she said she could quite easily walk.

‘It’s past 2am, and I haven’t had anything to drink, you’re safe with me,’ Matti said with such confidence and authority that Kaisa just nodded and followed Matti out of the door.

On the way home in the car, Matti suddenly turned towards Kaisa, and smiling said, ‘You’re a good influence on Vappu, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ Kaisa said.

‘She shouldn’t drink alcohol, so it’s good that you’re no drinker either.’

Kaisa turned fully to see Matti’s serious face, momentarily lit by the streetlights. They were about to turn onto the main road running through the western part of the island. Matti had stopped the car and was leaning forward, closer to the windscreen, to see if there was anyone coming from either direction. Kaisa thought about what he had said. Hadn’t he noticed that Vappu was so drunk that she could hardly make it up the stairs to her bedroom? Or that Kaisa herself was quite the worse for wear?

‘What do you mean?’ she said, trying not to slur.

Matti turned to look at Kaisa. For the first time she noticed that his eyes were very dark and his lips very full. The street was absolutely empty, and the only sound came from the ticking of the indicator. The sky was black against the yellow glow of the streetlights. Matti’s face was serious, but there was gentleness around his eyes when he replied, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

Finally, Matti turned into the main road, and then onto the street where Kaisa lived. She had to direct him to the right turning, but apart from that they didn’t speak for the rest of the short journey. When they reached her block, Kaisa got out of the car, and leaning in before closing the door behind her, thanked Matti for the lift.

‘I’ll wait to see that you get in safely,’ he said smiling, and Kaisa nodded. There was absolutely no one about, so Matti’s caution seemed unnecessary but strangely flattering. She waved to him from the door of her block of flats, and he waved back. She saw through the glass panel that he was sitting in his car watching her as she entered the lift. When she reached her bedroom and looked down at the dark road below, she half-expected to see Matti’s car still parked below, but the street was empty.

To read more, pre-order The Finnish Girl for £1.99 / $2.99.

If you’re browsing in the UK click here, and here for the US.

 

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Empty Nesting – Again

Daughter moved away from home on Sunday and although she’d already done that once when she left for university, this time the move felt more final.

She works in TV, so she’s never home, and often has been staying away for weeks filming here and there. A couple of years ago, she went travelling for three months so I should be used to her absences.

But now, with all her things gone, there seems to be a new quietness to the place. As if her shoes and coats in the hall, or her washing hanging out on the balcony, or the make-up strewn across her bedroom, gave the flat a silent presence.

Even the Englishman agrees that the place seems more quiet – and he’s not usually one to go along with my airy fairy emotional notions.

I remember years ago, my mother-in-law said, ‘It’s so quite when they go,’ talking about my husband leaving home at the age of 18, when he joined the Navy. I didn’t understand what she meant then, but boy, do I know exactly what she was speaking about now.

A few years ago when Son left for university, it was as if a sledgehammer hit me in the guts. And again when Daughter left for her gap year in Finland. Now after several departures, the feeling is less violent.

Just as well in the same week as the last of my babies left home, I gave birth to another one.

Pre-order The Finnish Girl now!

Yay, it’s nearly out!

My latest book, The Finnish Girl, a prequel novella to The Englishman, will be published on 15th April and is now available to pre-order.

This novella, just as The Englishman, is based on true events, and was very hard for me to write. But I felt compelled to revisit those early years in Finland, before I met my Englishman and moved to the UK. Although The Finnish Girl is a fictionalised account of the time, I still feel very connected to the story and find parts of it very painful. Those of you who are not authors will wonder at this compulsion to revisit difficult periods in one’s life, but it is what we writers do. Especially if we are of the Scandinavian persuasion.

Tea Shop Tales this Saturday 2nd April

I am delighted to be taking part in this tea shop story festival. I will be reading from my forthcoming novella, The Finnish Girl, which is a prequel to The Englishman, the first book in my Nordic romance series.

I will also be talking a bit about how I use my own life for my fiction (and stay sane). There will be a question and answer session afterwards.

If you happen to be in London this Saturday, pop over to Queen’s Wood near Highgate for a day of tea, cakes and stories. (I’m hoping there’ll be some coffee too)

Tea Shop Tales   Saturday 2nd April 2016 11am – 9pm

Queens Wood Cafe 42 Muswell Hill Rd London N10 3JP

FREE ENTRY

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Self-publishing Has Let Me Follow My Art And My Heart

I’ve known Roz Morris professionally and have admired her writing (and writing advice), from the early days of The Alliance of Independent Authors. I was thrilled when she agreed to tell me more about why she decided to become an indie author.

After thirteen books I became a real author

My first published book was a short volume about how to write.

Okay, it wasn’t my first. And indeed, it would have been cheeky to release a writing manual as my debut. It was, in fact my thirteenth published book, but the first with my name on.

Howso? I’d spent several years ghostwriting novels for others. I conjured the characters and thrashed out the stories, then they were adopted by a famous ‘author’. I started to teach upcoming writers, too, and discovered that one of their biggest problems was transforming a muddled pudding of ideas into a publishable book. That’s when I wrote Nail Your Novel.

So, Nail Your Novel was the first book that carried my name. I had fun writing it and enjoyed the feedback from readers, but I still didn’t feel quite like an author. I wanted to write stories – plots and characters and entanglements made from my curiosities and preoccupations, carrying on the traditions of the books that had enthralled me. My writing career so far had been like a series of acting jobs. I wanted to speak as me.

I finished my first novel – My Memories of a Future Life. Publishers were keen to see it because I’d written some successful books for them, so I submitted it. The reaction was ‘good but too unusual’. They were hoping for an easy sell like a thriller or a conventional murder mystery. Instead I’d written a psychological, time-transcending, faintly romantic tale like On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Three Faces of Eve, Somewhere In Time, Lady of Hay. A bit of Vertigo and The Blind Assassin too. All very well, I was told, but those kinds of books were no longer fashionable.

(Quick aside. Fashionable? Who thinks about fashion when they choose a novel to read?)

Anyway, I released the book myself, thanks to the gods of Kindle and Createspace. From always working in a collaborative environment, with a brief, I was suddenly very solo. Very alone. Remember the first time you drove a car after you passed your test? How obvious the silence was, how you realised you were conspicuously responsible for everything? There I was, driving my book alone. Very nervously. Fortunately, I had a nice surprise. Readers wrote to me – complete strangers. When I ghostwrote, I never knew this happened. I never had a personal response from a reader who had spent time with my work.

For the first time, after thirteen other books, I felt like a real author.

More writing books followed, and another novel, Lifeform Three (where I did another extremely unfashionable thing, but that’s another story).

That first novel as myself feels like a major waymark. Before it, I was writing other people’s words, fitting others’ agendas, part of a machine. If I’d had a traditional publishing contract that would have continued, and my name would have been on books that weren’t truthfully me. But with that novel I graduated to performing an art myself, using what I knew for better or for worse. I had my own voice; my style; my identity on the page.

We live in marvellously mixed times now as authors. The downside is this: making a living from writing is more difficult than ever because there are so many books. There is much that is going wrong. But the upside is opportunity. We have amazing tools and resources. We don’t have to fit market fashions; we can take our inspiration from any books that have been personally important to us, even if they were published decades ago. This is how we are given books that have genuine originality – and transcend fashions.

Self-publishing has let me follow my art and my heart. Because of it, I am the author I want to be.

My Memories of a Future Life – for readers of Vertigo, The Three Faces of Eve, Somewhere In Time, Lady of Hay, Cloud Atlas, The Blind Assassin 

Lifeform Three – for readers of Fahrenheit 451, Dream Days, 1984, Never Let Me Go, The Handmaid’s Tale, Station Eleven 

Roz Morris has published nearly a dozen novels and achieved sales of more than 4 million copies – and nobody saw her name because she was a ghostwriter. She is now proudly publishing as herself with two acclaimed novels My Memories of a Future Life and Lifeform Three. She has also been a writing coach, editor and mentor for more than 20 years with award-winning authors among her clients. She has a book series for writers, Nail Your Novel (and a blog http://www.nailyournovel.com), and teaches creative writing masterclasses for The Guardian newspaper in London. She has a show on Surrey Hills Radio, So You Want To Be A Writer. Find her books here.

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Indie Author Fringe at the London Book Fair

I’m really pleased to be able to tell you about an online event happening in April. It’s called Indie Author Fringe.

Indie Author Fringe by Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), offers FREE ONLINE DAY CONFERENCES for authors interested in self-publishing. This means best self-publishing advice and education for indie authors across the world — using the global reach of the ALLi network.

The goal of Indie Author Fringe is to make great indie publishing “a mission possible” for any writer, across the world.

And because it’s run by authors for authors, it’s all FREE!

There are three online international events in 2016 on the heels of London Book Fair (April 12th-14th 2016), Book Expo America (May 11th-13th 2016) and Frankfurt Book Fair (19th-23rd October 2016).

Over the course of the year, the online Indie Author Fringe events will take authors through the entire indie author journey, from writing to promotion and beyond. Each event will offer 24 hours of non-stop advice and inspiration, organized around key self-publishing topics.

All content will be available on the Indie Author Fringe website afterwards so you can read, watch, listen and learn whenever you want.

I am thrilled to be one of the contributors to the Indie Author Fringe. I feel honoured to be amongst an illustrious list of experts in the field of indie publishing. I’m going to be talking about how to turn your life into fiction.

How to Turn Your Life into Fiction (and Stay Sane)

Would your life make a good story? Helena Halme draws on her own experience of an international romance with an English naval officer in her books. Here she offers excellent advice on how to turn fact into fiction.

Click here for the complete list of speakers.

Find out more and register now for the FREE online author conference!

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New Book Title and Cover Reveal!

I’m terribly excited as I’m writing this, not only because I can finally share with you the title and cover of my next book, but also because I’m about to leave for a mini-break to Sweden with my friends. Friendships are so important, and I’m lucky I have a set of school friends, who still want to know me, and (get this!) want to spend a few days in my company.

When you are reading this, I will be kitted out in warm skiwear, stylishly (hmmm…) hurtling down a snowy slope, or alternatively sipping a glass of bubbly in a hot tub!

So, a drumroll please!

The Finnish Girl is a prequel to The Englishman and tells  the story of Kaisa, the leading lady in The Englishman series, before she meets her handsome English Navy Officer.

The novella is set in Finland in the late 1970s and follows Kaisa as she tries to come to terms with her parents’ divorce and another new school in Lauttasaari, an island suburb of Helsinki.

Kaisa makes friends with Vappu, and is introduced to her older brother and his friend, a serious boy called Matti…

The Finnish Girl will be out in April.

If you would like to be amongst the first readers of The Finnish Girl, sign up for Helena’s Review Crew and get a FREE copy of the novella. Please note, there is a limited number of spots in my Crew, so sign up now!

There will be an excerpt from the novella on this blog after Easter – so keep your eyes peeled, or sign up for my newsletter.

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5 Questions for Crime Writer JJ Marsh

I’ve been a fan of Beatrice Stubbs, the female sleuth of murder mystery novels by JJ Marsh, for a long while now. When the latest book, Human Rites, (number 5 in the series) came out before Christmas, I again consumed the novel within a week. I’ve written several reviews of the novels in the series here (see below), but I was curious about the author behind these often dark, but not too violent, crime thrillers.

I decided it was time to find out more about JJ Marsh and asked if she’d be willing to answer a few pertinent questions for my blog. And she said yes!

What’s your favourite place and/or time to write? Do you need complete silence or can you write even if the world around you is falling apart? Or perhaps you have a writing soundtrack you listen to?

I’m a Martini writer – anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Most of Behind Closed Doors was plotted in hospital waiting rooms. My study is silent, apart from the sounds of snoring pugs, and overlooks a surprisingly cheerful Swiss graveyard. Writing in solitude is preferable as I act out a lot of my dialogue/violence for authenticity. Music is intrusive when I’m actually getting words on paper, so my musician husband composes in the cellar while I write in the attic. That way his sounds don’t influence my stories and he can concentrate on his keyboard without the sight of me attempting to stab myself.

How long does it take you to write a novel? Tell us a little about the process.

Research – on average, six months. Plotting – another month or two. First draft – three months. Redrafting – four to six months. But all these phases overlap and interact and work in tandem, so I can now create something rough yet ready to share with the Triskele team in about a year. Then the fun starts – editing.

Authors know strange little details about their characters. Can you tell us something no one else knows about the main protagonist of your novels, Beatrice Stubbs? What about the other main characters in your books, do they have secrets you could share with us?

That is the most interesting question I’ve ever been asked and the toughest to answer.

You’re right, there’s so much more to these characters than ever makes the page. I’ll have to dissemble as I don’t know how much of the iceberg I’ll need to reveal in the final book. What I will say is that Beatrice is an emotional hedgehog, fighting an inner pigdog, with the appetites of a truffle hog, and dependent on sheepdogs.

There is one detail about Adrian I can spill. As well as being a wine merchant, gay chorister and gourmet cook, he has a private passion for Welsh male voices reading poetry, especially Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.

Which one of your books was the quickest to write? And how long did it take?

Tread Softly and Human Rites (Books 3 and 5) slipped onto the page like shucked oysters. Neither novel took more than eighteen months. As I progress through the series, the characters have become so real to me, I sometimes wonder who’s in charge.

Those two books also include some of the most popular minor characters and vivid locations. All the research into Spanish wines for Tread Softly was probably the most fun I’ve ever had researching a novel.

Human Rites includes my first attempt at writing children and animals, which I approached with trepidation, but in fact the hardest thing about that one was finding a title.

How many more books in the Beatrice Stubbs series are you planning to publish, and when can we expect the next one?

One more. I will publish as-yet-untitled in November 2016 and it will be Beatrice’s swansong. There’s no question of killing her off as I may want to bring her back someday. She is going to retire and grow courgettes while I explore other genres. Let’s put it this way, I will always love her, but we’re on a break.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I am most saddened that it’s going to be the end of the road (for now!) for Beatrice Stubbs, but pleased that there’s going to be one more book. Of course, I cannot wait to see what JJ Marsh will serve up next!

JJ Marsh is the author of The Beatrice Stubbs series, featured in The Guardian Readers’ Recommend and The Bookseller’s Editor’s Choice

She is a founder member of Triskele Books, co-editor of The Woolf Quarterly, a regular columnist for Words with JAM and a reviewer for Bookmuse. Originally from Wales, she now lives in Switzerland with her husband and dogs. In an attic overlooking a cemetery, she writes crime.

You can find out more about JJ Marsh on her website and about her Beatrice Stubbs books here. JJ Marsh is also on Twitter.

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The Navy Wife in The Helensburgh Advertiser

I thought I’d share with you how I got an article on The Navy Wife in a local Scottish newspaper, The Helensburgh Advertiser. The novel is set in the Royal Navy base in Faslane and the married quarters down the road from Helensburgh in Rhu, as well as in Portsmouth. Thinking the papers might be interested in a novel, set in the locality, I sent a Tweet out to two newspapers.

Did you know my novel, The Navy Wife, is set in #Portsmouth #Helensburgh #navy bases?@portsmouthnews @helensburghadv https://t.co/Cdm29oC5s3

— Helena Halme Author (@helenahalme) February 12, 2016

I was thrilled when, the next day, I was contacted by a reporter for The Helensburgh Advertiser, but was sent into a spin when she asked, ‘Have you got a picture of you with the book?’ I only had the Proof copy of the novel and was waiting for the box of books to arrive. Luckily the ‘Proof’ stamp was inside the book, so from the outside it looked like the real thing. I hastily asked daughter to step in as photographer. The picture in the paper is the result of a 2-second ‘photo shoot’. (Daughter had just popped in for a change of clothes – it was a Saturday). I look pretty happy in it, though?

The Tweet and the article is also included as a success story in a post on the ALLi Self-publishing Advice blog on wacky marketing campaigns by indies.

I’m yet to hear back from Portsmouth Evening News, but fear not, they’re in my sights.  Here is a link to the article, hope you like it.  

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