L.R. David's Blog

Different voices

National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is a bit of fun, the literary equivalent of Movember, a break-neck, month-long dash to write a 50,000 word novel, as opposed to not shaving your top lip.

I started a NaNoWriMo book a couple of years ago, when I was first introduced to it via twitter. The opening scene featured a body being found on waste ground near a tram station in Manchester – waste ground I used to walk across quite often myself. It’s a car park now.

Anyway, the body was a skinhead, then a young girl, and there was throat trauma, and I couldn’t decide whether to do a straight crime novel or a vampire novel and, basically, both I and it ran out of steam after a few chapters, and lay fallow on my laptop until this year.

When I wrote The Revenants I couldn’t find that original draft, but took the opening scene and adapted it, becoming the scene where the body of the skinhead is found in the alley, introducing Davis and the team of detectives.

That went one way, with a very traditional style, a standard, third-person narrative, for all the historical meandering and time-slip, it’s a pretty straightforward way to write a book. (Clearly this is based more on my experience of reading books than writing them. That was my first one).

Anyway, I did The Revenants, self-published and sent it out into the wide wonderful world, and I’m still trying to plug it wherever I can, but the proper, real world, grown-up plan was that I would have a real job by November. I didn’t, and my consultancy business was a bit on hold pending website being finalised etc.

So, to keep me busy amid updating my CVs and posting them on various websites, I dug out my old novel off the laptop, and lobbed it into my shiny, new, fully-licensed, not free-trial version of Scrivener, and banged on with it.

I kept the chapters I had done pretty much as they were, but noticed that the narrative was much more mixed. A bit all over the place. I had been reading a few proper books around then, DBC Pierre and David Peace among them, and they had clearly had an influence.

This book was written in the present tense, with the main protagonist, another police detective, referred to as “he” or “him” – “he goes into the office…”

Other characters are referred to by name, with very little use of personal pronouns – “Jones lights a cigarette”.

Finally there is the killer, who is allowed first person (“I go into the bar”) when they speak.

Why did I do this? It felt right for the subject matter, it worked, and it worked for the characters, I think. It was also a bit more fun to write, keeping the discipline, which I pretty much word after word, sentence after sentence, until 50,600 or so of them had been committed to digital actuality.

Was it the right thing to do? Is it an exercise in pushing the boundaries of modern literature? Is it a pretentious rip-off? Is it a pile of post-modernist, self-indulgent twaddle? Is it a good story told in an interesting and challenging way?

I honestly don’t know.

When I was writing it i was by turns really excited and quite despondent, I couldn’t actually decide if it was any good. So I did what I did last time, got some volunteers from the audience, and asked them to have a read. The first draft went out today. If people like it, I’m going to send it to a literary agent or two, just to taste the sweet, sweet sting of rejection. I’m told its character building. And my writing usually needs better-built characters.

History today

The Revenants is, at heart, a fantasy book. It is made up, it has supernatural elements and no, I’m not going to tell you what they are, you’ll just have to read the book.

As well as being a fantasy/horror/whatever, the book also features a lot of historical context – one plot strand features an archaeologist tracing an intriguing mystery going back through the centuries, and the first chapter is set in Roman Britain

When writing the book, I did try to make the history as accurate as possible. I suppose the question is why? If there are made up beings creatures involved, why not just make up the history as well?

Well, of course, I have, the events in the book are all fictional, but I have tried to make the historical context as real as possible. And I suppose I’ve done this because I’m already asking people to swallow a good deal of made up stuff, so I might as well make the rest of it as easy to swallow as possible. It’s the spoonful of historically-as-accurate-as-possible sugar to help the made-up medicine go down.

To do this, I did some research. Some, not loads, as one thing that does annoy me about some books is when there are pages of clearly immaculately researched facts and history poured across the page by way of extemporisation rather than plot or character. So, some research, but from what sources? Well, all over the shop, to be honest. I took periods and events I had a working knowledge of from my own memory and reading, then used  Wikipedia, the BBC history site and Google searches to fill in the rest.

So what were these historical periods?

As I mentioned, the opening chapter is set in Roman Britain, AD70 to be exact, with a Century from the XX Legion, the Valeria Victrix, pursuing a band of Celtic warriors from the Oridvice tribe into the mountains of Wales. The XX Legion was indeed in Britain at the time, and the garrison of Deva – modern Chester – was named Deva Vitcrix in their honour. Will most people reading the book know this? Probably not, but some may well, and they may get a small wave of personal satisfaction from seeing some of their knowledge on a printed page or Kindle screen.

I researched the history of the legion, and more stuff on tactics, communication methods, weapons, military ranks and the like to add that veneer of authenticity, then tried to reflect that in the (made up) events the Century found itself in. The names of the Centurion and other soldiers came from vague memories of Latin O-level text books.

The next bits were in the years of Llewellyn the Great – Llewellyn Fawr – in his conquest of Wales in the 13th Century. Again, childhood stories was the root of this, the story of Gelert the faithful hound, and many childhood holidays and trips to Snowdonia had immersed me in the history of the place. The research here was around the political history of his reign, who would he be fighting, what kind of warfare would take place at that point?

Llewellyn is followed in the book, if not history, by the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr, another childhood hero (can you sense the influence of my Welsh forebears here?), which provides the next point of the mystery being pursued by Elsa Chirk, the aforementioned archaeologist.

I set other scenes in the Civil War – specifically at the Battle of St Fagans in South Wales in May 1647 – and used accounts of the battle I found online to help shape the scene.

The roots of this scene came from the Thirty Years War, and specifically the army of Albrecht von Wallenstein. For me, he is one of the most enduring characters in history, dating back from when I studied for my history A-level many, many years ago. I always found his career fascinating and wanted to have him in the book. In the event, two characters serve as mercenaries in his army, providing them with an initial touchpoint for the later clash at St Fagans.

The other historical element which was essential to the narrative was the industrial revolution, and the associated movement of people from rural areas like North Wales into the new industrial cities like Manchester. Being Manchester born and bred, I have been immersed in the history if the industrial revolution and my home city’s part in it for as long as I can remember. My main source for research was a quick online reminder of Friedrich Engels’ Conditions of the Working Class in England, which should be required reading for any child studying this period of history, in my humble opinion.

At heart my love of history was part of what drove me to write this book, rather than one set wholly in the modern era. History matters, it is important to know where you and the society in which you live come from, what shaped it and made it what it is. After all, if you don’t know where you’ve come from, how can you really know where you are going?

 

 

The write stuff

The write stuff.

The write stuff

I wanted this blog to be about writing, so I thought I would share how I came to write my first book.

In July I left work after being made redundant. I had wanted to write a book since I can remember, and I finally had some spare time, I thought, to have a go.

I have notes on a novel I have been working on for a few years now, but didn’t feel ready to go with that. Instead, I thought I’d have a go at an airport novel – one of those books that I enjoy reading when I’m sat by the pool on holiday. One that keeps the brain ticking over, but without being too taxing. Something exciting and interesting and fun, but is essentially fluff – literature could wait.

So, where to start? I did a bit of googlage, just to get a sense of how many words I needed to make it a novel rather than a novella or short story or whatever, and 50,000 words seemed about right.

I had two weeks before the school holidays, 10 working days, so 5,000 words a day? That seemed about right.

I’d had a thought about doing a crime thriller, but I also fancied doing something about vampires – not least because vampires seem to sell, and it would be nice to actually shift some units, wouldn’t it?

And I wanted a twist – something that bit unusual, a bit different – how about Celtic Vampires, instead of the traditional Transylvanian Undead? Hmm.

So I got my word processing software and started to write. Usually I would wake up at around 6am, still being on a work body clock, then go down to the spare room/office/study/library/storage space for coats and fire up the Mac Mini, and just bash it out. Break to take kids to school, then back to the keyboard, with only Radio 6 Music or Test Match Special for company, writing, writing, writing. (The legacy of my listening can be found in the books, by the way, not least in some character names).

A good day was when the tea I made when I got back from the school run was cold and still full at lunchtime. A not so good day was one spent researching on Wikipedia (and thank the internet for that) or making four or five cups in a morning.

I would work out the plot and characters in a notebook, then try and flesh them out as I wrote. But most of all, I wrote, wringing out 5,000 words every day, give or take, until, 10 days later, I had 50,000 (and a bit) words. I now needed an edit.

Then I got on twitter, and asked for volunteers, and two people – one  a published writer – stuck their virtual hands up. I sent them each a pdf, then went off on holiday for a couple of weeks, read some more books (The Hunger Games Trilogy, a Dan Brown, and Wolf Hall among them, the latter being the best thing by a country mile that I read).

I came back from holidays and my twitter friends had kindly given me feedback – good action, good story but the characters are paper thin. I had to agree, as I was writing, I realised the secondary characters were barely even ciphers, just stock plot devices, and the main two characters had no relationships with anyone else, let along each other.

So I wrote up, in my little notebook, a life history for the main protagonists and secondary characters. Where they were from, when they were born, their families, their career histories, then I returned to the manuscript and re-wrote it. After a few more weeks, I was happier with the characters, had caught more of the typos and sent it back out to my two volunteers.

They gave the thumbs up – believed in the characters, got a bit more from it, understood their motivation a bit more.

So I thought, let’s publish it. I’ll cover the how and what and wherefore of the mechanics in another blog. But I just wanted to get it out there, to see what happened.

The result is, I hope, an enjoyable thriller, with a fast-paced plot, a bit of historical interest, some decent action scenes, some erotic tension and a bit of resultant blue for the Dads.

It’s not particularly brilliant, it needs the proper polish of a good editor, it still as a typo or two and it’s still rough and ready, but it’s done, and it’s out there, in the big wide world, fending for itself.

So my tips for budding authors? Three quick ones, just for a start.

Just bloody write. Sit down, tap at that keyboard, get out that pen, just let it pour out of you. You’ll soon know if there’s a book in thereGet someone else to have a read of it, and listen to what they say. If you can afford a proper editor, there are services out there, otherwise get someone you trust and ask for their opinion. Get to know your characters, give them a history and a full story, even if it doesn’t end up in the book, it’ll still be there in who they are, what they do and say.

Am I remotely qualified to give this advice? I am more qualified now than a few months, but take that advice and let me know.

First edition

This morning I awoke this morning to see, nestling in my in-box, a mail from the lovely people at Amazon to tell me my first novel, The Revenants, is now available to buy on Kindle. I am now a published author. Giddy stuff.

I thought I would do a blog about writing, publishing, doing all those things the tortured artist then has to do to hawk his (or her) finely crafted works to the general public, and make some money.

So I will use this blog to discuss the book, how I got my ideas, how I wrote it, how I went about publishing it and what I’m doing to flog it, at least  flogging enough copies to get a proper Scrivener licence…

Clearly it would be a help if you could have a read of it, so we can chat it through, so why not have a look, eh?

You can get the kindle version here.

You can buy an actual paper book of  the book here.