Geoffrey Gudgion's Blog, page 8

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

This rewarding book is the story of a Scottish family with their complex inter-relationships, seen primarily through the eyes of a young man. Note ‘primarily’; at first I found the multiple points of view and multiple time-periods confusing. If hadn’t been so well written, he’d have lost me about 1/4 of the way through, but Banks has a way of pulling the reader in. The Crow Road is witty, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, confusing, but builds a sense of real lives. Characters are very sharply, sometimes brutally drawn; picture the middle aged aunt at a wedding, ‘dressed in something which looked like a cross between a Persian rug and a multi-occupancy poncho, [who] moved with the determined grace of an elephant, and a curious stiffness that made the experience a little like dancing with a garden shed’, and who had ‘the same effect on the dance floor as a loose cannon manned by hippos’.

It is worth persevering through the initial confusion. Plot lines and dominant characters do emerge, and I finished the book well satisfied, and wishing I could capture characters as well.

Filed under: Great reads Tagged: book review, books, literature, writing

Saxon’s Bane selected for debut author challenge

I’m delighted to hear that Saxon’s Bane has been selected by The Qwillery for their 2013 Debut Author Challenge.  Watch this space for guest blogs and interview.  Further details at http://qwillery.blogspot.co.uk/p/2013-dac.html

Filed under: News Tagged: book review, books, debut novel, Genre, literature, paranormal, publication, solaris books, writing

Strandloper by Alan Garner

Alan Garner’s Thursbitch was such a delight that I opened Strandloper with rare excitement.  I was not disappointed.  Garner writes with brilliant, bare precision, even if he can demand much of his readers.

As the cover tells us, the essence of the plot is the true story of William Buckley, a Cheshire bricklayer who was unjustly deported to Australia in 1801, escaped, and lived for 31 years with the Aborigines.  Garner weaves together Cheshire folklore and Aboriginal spiritualism in separate melodies that blend to create a single harmony.  This beautiful and moving tale is not always an easy read; old Cheshire dialect is as obscure as Aboriginal words and the reader sometimes has to look for meaning in the context rather than the words themselves.  In a way, it is like looking at a landscape through a stained glass window; there are layers of beauty that reward the eye that is willing to concentrate.

Garner says, in The Voice That Thunders, that a writer has to have a sense of the numinous.  That single word probably sums up Strandloper.

Numinous.

Filed under: Great reads Tagged: Alan Garner, book review, literature, writing

Emma Darwin: The Mathematics of Love

I ‘discovered’ this book by accident, while browsing the author tables at the Historical Novel Society conference in London.  I was intrigued by the blurb; I have an instinctive interest in debut novels, even though this one has been out for several years, and my work-in-progress is also set in two time periods.  Enough hooks there for me to buy a copy, and it proved to be an intelligent, beautifully written book that kept me reading late into the night.  I found myself re-reading some passages purely to appreciate the prose.

Both main characters are finely drawn.  The book opens in 1819 as the Peterloo massacre is witnessed by a crippled officer, a survivor of the Napoleonic wars.  The story of his wartime traumas, and of his lost and secret love, is interwoven with the story of a rebellious, teenage girl in 1976.  She has been parked with an uncle in the crumbling mansion that was once the officer’s home.  Both characters are written in the first person, a technically challenging approach that works well in this book.  Ms Darwin has also managed to write very convincingly from a male as well as female point of view.

There are one or two minor implausibilities that somehow added to my enjoyment of the book.  The officer is much more explicit in his memoirs than, I suspect, any Regency gentleman would be, even in private, and the 1976 teenager is wonderfully articulate for a girl of her background.  The character of Lucy is probably more fiercely independent and liberal than any Regency lady would be allowed to be, given the restrictions of that era, but her character is delightful for those traits and by the end of the book I was perhaps a little in love with her myself.

However, some of the interactions in the 20th century sections would today be given the label of ‘abuse’, even though they are written with immense tenderness through the eyes of a willing ‘victim’.  That conflict was the only discomfort that remained as I finished a thoroughly satisfying read.

I shall certainly look out for more of Emma Darwin’s work.

Filed under: Great reads Tagged: book review, books, debut novel, historical novel society, history, literature, writing

Genre Matters. It really matters.

I’m discovering the significance of how books are categorised, tick-box fashion, into ‘genre’.

With the naivety of the unpublished author, I crafted Saxon’s Bane from an idea that was fighting to land on the page.  It was that passion that drove the story, not a need to fit a label defined by a publishing industry I knew nothing about.  It wasn’t until the book was finished and agented that I began to learn the reality of book marketing.

Saxon’s Bane started with the catalytic linking of two characters.  There’s a man emerging from the trauma of a car crash in which he almost died; his character grows on his journey to mental and physical healing.  And then there’s a woman, an archaeologist whose obsession with her excavation of a Saxon grave develops into a preternatural understanding. Her character slides into turmoil as she struggles to reconcile professionalism and intuition, evidence and belief.  The crisis builds around them as present-day events begin to mirror the ancient, bloody past.

Then came the question of pitching the finished manuscript to the market.  My pride knew no bounds when my agent (Ian Drury at Sheil Land) described it as ‘an astonishingly accomplished debut novel that blurs the line between genres’, but that’s when my genre lessons began.

“Loved the book,” said one editor of a major publishing house when I met him at a conference, “absolutely loved it.  But I’d never get it through an acquisition meeting.  Too cross-genre.  Got anything else for me?”

“Whaddya mean, ‘too cross-genre’?”  I struggled to contain my frustration.

“Well”, he explained, “it has flashbacks to the Dark Ages, but not enough to put it into a Historical list.  And although Saxon’s Bane has supernatural threads, they’re too ambiguous for us to put it on our fantasy list.  Super book, though.”

“But that ambiguity is important.  I wanted to write a book with a plausible plot, with characters that face real-world pressures and threats.  I didn’t want readers to have to suspend their disbelief.”

That started a master-class in publishing reality.  The big publishers, it seems, are having a tough time and are intensely risk-averse.  They in turn are selling into a retail distribution chain that is having an equally bad time, and which also works on ‘lists’.  If you’re writing about spooks, I gather you need to write about full-on spooks, complete with woo-woo noises and rattling chains.  If you’re writing history, that means at least 30% of the plot must be set at least 50 years before the present day.  Publishers want material that is new and fresh and exciting, provided it is not significantly different to what’s already out there.

Huh?

Watching the book being pitched into genre was fascinating.  Imagine turning up at a country fair with an animal for sale.  There are buyers for sheep.  There are buyers for goats. Kids stuff too – just follow the bleats.  Romance?  Rabbits are very popular this year, sir, we’ve had fifty shades of fur already.  What’s that you’ve got?  Haven’t seen one of those before.  A horse, you say?  Never heard of it.  Lovely looking beast, but I’d never get it on the van.  There’s a good market for sheep, though.  Got one of those for me?

My agent consoled me with the anecdote that Tolkein had a tough job selling ‘Lord of the Rings’ because until LOTR there wasn’t a fantasy market.  Tolkein created it, but he might well be rejected today.  How my ego loved him for that analogy, even if no parallel was intended.  What we need, he said, is one of the smaller, entrepreneurial publishers, the sort that want to eat the big guys’ lunch.

Bingo.  Saxon’s Bane acquired a publisher (Solaris) and, within the contract, the genre label ‘fantasy’.  Here my ignorance showed again.  I’d always thought ‘fantasy’ meant other worlds, with dragons or hobbits or dark magic, not books about how this world can be touched by an ‘otherness’.  My main character, for example, has fought his way back from a hinterland mapped more by faiths than by science, and who is to say that a man’s experiences at the edge of death are ‘real’ or the product of his own mind?  But don’t misunderstand me; I’ll settle for whatever label sells the book.

I was lucky, and the euphoria of that oh-so-elusive debut publishing deal is still coursing through my veins.  But there are legions of other writers producing work of publishable quality who are not blessed with an agent, particularly one who believes in a genre-bending book enough to land a deal in a risk-averse market.  I fear that in the major houses’ retreat to the perceived safety of strict list criteria, the reading public is being denied the chance to try a mass of fresh and exciting work.

Views and comments welcome!

Filed under: One writer's journey Tagged: agent, debut novel, finished manuscript, Genre, literature, paranormal, publication, publishing, rejections, solaris books, unpublished author, writing

Saxon’s Bane Acquired by Solaris Books

I’m delighted to announce that Saxon’s Bane has been acquired by Solaris Books, an imprint of Rebellion, and will be released in September 2013.  Solaris Books’ press release, excluding the blurb and bio that is already posted on this site, is:

Acquisition announcement:

Debut author finds Saxon treasure  beneath 21st Century England  

COMING IN SEPTEMBER 2013: Saxon’s Bane by Geoffrey Gudgion

Solaris is proud to announce a 2013 debut novel that brings the Dark Ages crashing into the 21st Century.

Geoffrey Gudgion’s historical supernatural thriller, Saxon’s Bane, will be published in September 2013.

A contemporary novel with a thrilling historical heart, Gudgion’s first novel is set in the 21st century but grounded in the Dark Ages, with a Saxon legend at its heart.

The past invades the present in this beautiful, lyrical and frightening tale, inspired by Gudgion’s love of ancient, ethereal places, and his eye for signs of the distant past in the English landscape of today.

“It’s a rare occasion when a submission comes in that I have to read right the way through in one go,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris. “Saxon’s Bane was such a book. Discovering a new writer is always a thrill, and Geoffrey’s novel is of such a high calibre that I can’t wait for people to read it.”

For all press enquires please contact Michael Molcher

on +44 (0)1865 792 201 or press@rebellion.co.uk

http://www.solarisbooks.com/

Filed under: News Tagged: atmospheric, books, editing, literature, publication, solaris books, Submissions, writing

The Lost Village of Nether Haddon

I’d have made a very bad historian.  That’s a surprising admission, perhaps, for a writer whose plots are grounded in English history, but I’m much more interested in the lives of ordinary people that are caught up in great events than I am in the events themselves.  Talk to me about how the generals manouevred to win a battle, and my eyes will glaze fairly rapidly.  Show me a private soldier’s letters home and I’m hooked.  It’s history on a human scale.

This week, I visited Haddon Hall in Derbyshire while researching my next book.  If you like old English manor houses, and haven’t been to Haddon Hall, then I can thoroughly recommend a visit.  Unlike so much of our architectural history, it has survived relatively unscathed through every threat from the English Civil War to the concrete catastrophes of the late 20th century, and is now being lovingly restored by the same family that has owned the place for about eight hundred years.

But if you go, allow some time to look Westwards, towards the cow pastures on the opposite slopes of this beautiful valley.  The turf carries the imprint of a road, rising towards the skyline.  Hummocks in the hillside show where dwellings once stood.  The discerning eye, I’m told, can see the outline of enclosures for cattle.  This is Nether Haddon, mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and in 13th century documents, but at some time in the Middle Ages, the village disappeared.  English Heritage (who list Nether Haddon as an Ancient Monument) speculate that the decline might have begun with famines or the Black Death of the fourteenth century, or even the creation of a deer park by the lord of the manor in 1330.

But these forgotten people left their mark.  Even after seven hundred years, the strip patterns of medieval fields still flow across the hillsides above; regular, gentle undulations of the ground like the slow-breathing waves of the deep ocean.

They also left their mark in Haddon Hall, whose chapel was their parish church.  See if you can sit there alone, in between the guided tours.  It is small enough for the aisle to seem crowded when a party of fifteen washes into the space, flowing round the box stalls and monuments, their heads turning in unison at the intonation of their guide, but each flood soon recedes.  Wait a while.  The atmosphere seeps back into the chapel the way a mouse will creep back into a room it thinks is empty.  Sit still, be aware, smell the centuries.

They decorated their church, the people of Nether Haddon.  The walls are covered in their wall paintings, probably dating from the early 15th century.  Entire walls are decorated in leaf designs and stories from the lives of saints.  Enough people had survived for this still to be a living church, and their exquisite artistry lasted until the Reformation.

Did I say ‘survived relatively unscathed’?  God save us from zealots of all faiths, and the desecration that they do in His name.  After the English church broke with Rome, the wall paintings were plastered and lime-washed over.  Only now are they being restored, and only to pale suggestions of their former richness.

But still, there’s a link.  A road to nowhere between old earthworks, a strip piled into a ridge by an ox-drawn plough, and a simple faith that painted miracles into plaster.

There’s a story in there, somewhere.

Filed under: Historic places Tagged: atmospheric, evocative, history, Places, writing