Ali Bacon's Blog, page 14
February 23, 2014
Mrs Hemingway – at last, great biographical fiction
Recently there have been quite a few novels that have taken real life stories as their inspiration but Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway is one of the few I’ve come across that has delivered the satisfaction of a convincing and well-crafted fiction along with the feeling of reading about events that did or could have taken place. The ‘could have’ is important. The author reminds us that this is fiction and I don’t know if Pauline ‘Fife’ Pfeiffer wore a dress of black feathers to seduce her friend’s...
Mrs Hemingway – at last, great biographical fiction
Recently there have been quite a few novels that have taken real life stories as their inspiration but Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway is one of the few I’ve come across that has delivered the satisfaction of a convincing and well-crafted fiction along with the feeling of reading about events that did or could have taken place. The ‘could have’ is important. The author reminds us that this is fiction and I don’t know if Pauline ‘Fife’ Pfeiffer wore a dress of black feathers to seduce her friend’s...
February 20, 2014
Promotion – how much is too much?
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that indie and self-pub authors – or even authors with big publishers who don’t get the lion’s share of the promotional budget – will gripe at the amount of coverage given to those whose previous claims to fame guarantee them market saturation.
I’m avoiding the word ‘celebrity’ because that smacks to me of someone famous for being famous and I don’t put Sally Magnusson in that camp. She’s an established broadcaster and writer like her father and mother bef...
February 13, 2014
Yes, that was me on the BBC
Phew! Quite a lot of action was packed in to National Libraries Weekso here’s a run down.
On Tuesday I’d offered to help with acelebration taking place at my small but beautiful local library inEmersons Green. My official job was to lead a pop-up book club discussing Susan Hill’s novel of 2008 The Beacon - a short but intriguing novel I had hastily consumed over the weekend. But arriving early (in too much of a hurry toread the programme!) I was in good time toget a feel for all of the activit...
January 29, 2014
In praise of padding (the good kind)
Last week someone – not a writer -asked how my current novel is going, and I tried to explain that I knew what events were going to take place, but was still struggling to write the rest of it. Oh, she said, so you know what will happen, you’re just padding it out? Well I couldn’t deny it, but padding has such a bad name, and the more I think about it the more I realise it’s the ‘padding’ that makes a novel what it is. I don’t mean meaningless bulk – empty description or redundant characters...
January 15, 2014
I’ll be busy in February – National Libraries Day and more!
If you’re thinking that in viewof the weather and general gloom you might never leave the house againunless you really have to, take heart, because soon it will beNational Libraries Day and there’s probably something interesting going on right on your doorstep.
For instance (yes, you knew that was coming!) on NLD itself, which is Saturday February 8th, I’ll be in Winterbourne Library with Pauline Masurel with a session called Storytelling for Grown-Ups. It starts at 10.30 and I guess will last...
January 6, 2014
Poetry – good for the soul (and, actually, the pocket)
When it comes to reading my first – and usually last – port of call is a novel. I also read short stories but only when time (away from novels) allows and in order to improve my own short story craft. But every now and then I have a poetry ‘season’ which usually arrives out of nowhere and eventually recedes as I gravitate back to fiction. Last time I had one must be almost ten years ago when I indulged in the Staying Alive which I liked because it combined traditional poets with more contempo...
January 1, 2014
My thought for 2014: keep on running!
Great Xmas present!
Yesterday I decided to see the old year out by watching the men’s Wimbeldon final (yes, that one!) on DVD. Well I was too tense to watch it properly first time round and spent most of the time ‘looking away’. During the closing stages I even had to bake a cake for therapy! So I had no idea the last set had so many ups and downs and, like Andy, no memory of how the last game p...
December 15, 2013
It’s writing, folks, but not as we know it: the art of using a pen
On the Unchained blog I’ve been talking about the Big Thing that passed our way recently and how it compares with the overwhelming scale of a novel in progress. But I also mentioned speed (or lack of) when handling a juggernaut and I think it’s a desire to SLOW DOWN that has brought me to my latest hobby – well after two lessons it’s barely a hobby but I think it might be soon.
Very few people these days write by hand – and I am not one of them. I’ve always said I would never have become a wri...
November 28, 2013
Fry’s Chocolate Dream
Sweets and chocolate bars must be as evocative of past times as smells or music. One of the first errands I ever ran was when my granny sent me for a bar of ‘Caddy Pep’(Cadbury’s Peppermint Cream) and my vocabulary was given an early boost by all those long words experienced by Fry’s Five Boys. Remember them? A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to run into someone who probably knows more about Cadbury and Fry’s joint history than anyone on the planet and who has luckily put it all in a book pa...
