Robin Storey's Blog, page 7

DOWN THE RESEARCH RABBIT HOLE

Most novels require some sort of research. If you’re writing a novel set in a different historical period, obviously you need to do a lot of research. But regardless of what genre of novel you’re writing, things come up that you need to investigate (with perhaps the exception of fantasy, because you can make everything up).

How do you milk a snake?

For example, your protagonist may be making a soufflé, so you need to find out how to make one so it sounds authentic, or you’ve decided that one of your characters will be a snake milker, and as you know very little about how to milk snakes (yes, there is such a profession) you google 'snake milking.'

From there, you find an interesting article on the history of snake milking and the story of Sam the Snake Milker who’s been bitten thousands of times while milking snakes and has the scars to prove it. This then leads to an article about which drugs are made from snake venom, which then directs you to a story about a farmer who was rushed to hospital by helicopter after being bitten by a snake, and was saved in the nick of time by an injection of anti-venom.

All very fascinating and will no doubt make you a hit at your next dinner party, but you probably only need a quarter of that information to write your character convincingly. We writers call it going down the research rabbit-hole.

What I’ve learned from research

I love research, and I think most writers do, because you find out so many interesting things you may not have learned otherwise. Here are some of the things I’ve learnt as a result of research for my novels:

More about guns than I will ever need to know

How to trace an adopted relative

Everything I ever wanted to know about llama farming, but was afraid to ask (this was for a novel that I abandoned, but I am keeping the information because you never know…)

How to snort cocaine, what it feels like to snort it, what are the effects, how to tell when someone has used it. In fact, I’ve googled ‘effects of cocaine’ so many times I’m expecting the CIB officers on my doorstep any time

How to poison someone and get away with it. (If you want to know, you’ll have to wait until my next novel A Time For Penance is published in May). My partner often directs nervous glances my way at meal times.

Back to the 90s

In my novel, my protagonist goes back 20 years in time, from 2015 to 1995, so a lot of my research involved going on a nostalgia trip back to the 1990s. Obviously I was alive then – I was 40 and raising a family – so I can rely to a certain extent on my memory, but I found I had forgotten so many aspects of daily life in the 90s – what sort of food was popular, what TV shows did we watch, what music was playing on the radio, who were the movie stars in the news – all the popular culture stuff that’s important for the background and setting of the novel.

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The main difference between 1995 and today was the lack of instant connectivity. The internet was still very new – the average man in the street didn’t have access. I remember getting dial-up in about 1999. So of course no social media, and until the end of 1995 mobile phones were still bricks that required you to be of Amazonian proportions to carry them around.

So people went to the library to get information and used public phone boxes if they weren’t at home. In that sense life was simpler and easier to write about, and not having the instant contact between people suited the narrative of my novel.

Those were the days

And once I started doing the research, all the memories of life in the 90s flooded back. I remembered CDs, cameras, photo albums, videos and video cassette recorders, Gameboys, floral leggings, (no-one, I repeat no-one, looks good in floral leggings), huge bookstores, American sitcom Friends (my daughters loved it and mealtimes had to be planned around it), high-waisted jeans, bike shorts, the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, grunge music and fashion, Princess Diana worship, the beginning of the coffee culture, women’s magazines that actually contained articles worth reading, Poptarts, the proliferation of low-fat snack foods (it’s now acknowledged that they’re not good for your health at all, being full of sugar, usually high fructose corn syrup), roller blades, the Macarena… the list goes on.

The thing about the nineties is that it’s long enough ago to warrant reminiscing and nostalgia and for the Gen Ys, it was their childhood, and they’ll be telling their grandchildren about the ‘good ole days, back in the 90s.’

Procrastination – I’ll deal with it tomorrow

Because it’s so enjoyable, writers often use research as a procrastination tool to avoid starting their novel. At some point you have to tear yourself away and start writing. Stopping your novel to research a point can also be dangerous and send you back into a maze of irrelevant information and time wasting.

When I come to a topic I need to know more about, I will often write RESEARCH in the spot as a placeholder, write what I think are the facts and come back to the research later when I’ve finished the draft.

How far would you go for research?

And so far, I’ve only mentioned armchair research. Many writers go out and get real life experience for maximum authenticity, learning how to shoot firearms, scuba dive, even fly a helicopter. I wrote a post about this: WRITER'S RESEARCH - HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO?

Get thee to a winery

But as I’m a bit of a wimp when comes to physical pursuits, I’ll stick to Mr Google. Unless I write a novel set in a winery…

Have you ever been impressed by the amount of research that’s gone into a novel? Or fallen down the rabbit hole yourself? I’d love to read your comments in the comments box below.

The post DOWN THE RESEARCH RABBIT HOLE appeared first on Robin Storey.

The Top Ten Books I Read In 2016

There’s only one thing I enjoy more than writing (and sometimes more) and that’s reading. I review a lot of the books I read on Goodreads, an online book club where readers can post reviews of books and connect with other readers. It’s always fun at the end of the year to look back at all the books I read that year, so I thought I’d share with you the ten books I most enjoyed reading in 2016.

Although my preferred genres are crime and suspense with a noir flavour, I’ve been making an effort to read outside of these genres to broaden my tastes and expose myself to other styles of writing, which helps me to improve my own.

Neverwhere, a fantasy by Neil Gaiman and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King, also containing many fantasy stories, are two examples, and I thoroughly enjoyed both books. I’ve also included a couple of memoirs (Natural Born Keller by Amanda Keller and Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor), a non-fiction collection of articles (Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner) a book of short stories (Crime Scenes Stories edited by Zane Lovitt) and a novella (Gotham by Nick Earls).

I won’t apologize for my leanings towards Aussie authors – I’m helping to spread the word about some of the very talented authors we have Down Under. So here they are in no particular order. 

1. Cambodia Noir by Nicholas Seeley.

Once acclaimed war photographer Will Keller lives in Cambodia, taking any job that pays and spending his nights in a haze of sex, drugs, alcohol and violence. His descent into oblivion is interrupted when he is approached by a young woman who asks him to find her sister who disappeared during a stint as an intern at the local newspaper.

This story, which takes place in the underbelly of Phnom Penh against a backdrop of political unrest and corruption, is not for the faint-hearted. It’s a suspenseful, well-plotted story soaked with atmosphere that transports you right into the seething, steamy heart of Cambodia. It’s obvious that the author, himself a photographer, lived for some time in Cambodia.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

2. Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor.

Award-winning Australian author Cory Taylor wrote this book at the age of 60 as she was in the last stages of melanoma-related brain cancer. In this exquisitely written, moving memoir, she explores our society’s attitudes towards mortality and death from an academic point of view, as well as the ways dying has changed her own attitudes towards life and death.

Taylor knew 10 years prior that she had a terminal illness, so she had plenty of time to prepare for it, but as she says, ‘dying is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’ The book was published in May 2016 and she died in July 2016.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

3. An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire.

When 25 year old Bella Michaels is brutally murdered in the small Australian town of Strathdee, the community is stunned and a media storm descends. Her older sister Chris, a barmaid at the local pub, tries to cope with her grief by searching for answers, but as time goes by with no arrest, she becomes increasingly suspicious of those around her.

This is not the usual crime story concerned with catching the killer. It’s about the fallout of such a crime and the effect on family, friends, the residents of the town and society as a whole. Narrated from the alternating points of view of Chris and reporter May, who arrives in town to cover the story, it grapples with a number of social issues, including the role of media, particularly social media in such events, ingrained male attitudes towards female victims of rape and murder and the damage inflicted by small town bigotry, gossip and rumours.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

4. Crime Scenes Stories edited by Zane Lovitt.

This is a book of crime short stories by Australian authors, from emerging authors to well-known names such as Peter Corris, Leigh Redhead and Carmel Bird. The stories are about prostitutes, criminals, cops, authors and everyone in between and I enjoyed every story, which is not something I can often say about collections of short stories.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

5. Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner.

This is a collection of articles, essays and diary entries by acclaimed Australian author Helen Garner. The subject matter is varied, from conversations with her grandchildren and a moving tribute to her mother to backstage at the ballet and the trial of a teenager convicted of killing her newborn baby.

Garner writes simply and eloquently with wisdom, compassion and humour, and a fine ear and eye for the frailties of human nature. Women of a certain age will especially enjoy her controversial essay on the insults of age.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

6. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King.

This is a collection of stories from the master of short stories, ranging from crime to supernatural thriller. They’re connected by themes – morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. Two that come to mind are Obits, about a columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries and The Dune, about a judge who can foretell freak accident deaths in by seeing the names written in the sand.

At the beginning of each story, King describes how he came up with the story idea and the writing process involved, which as an author, I found particularly fascinating.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

7. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

An act of kindness catapults young businessman Richard Mayhew into the bizarre world of London Below, a city under the streets of London populated by people who’ve fallen through the cracks. As he tries to find his way out he encounters monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and mysterious girls in black velvet.

This was one of my first forays into fantasy, and I thoroughly enjoyed this Alice in Wonderland for adults.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

8. The Song Is You by Megan Abbott.

In October 1949, actress Jean Spangler disappeared, leaving behind a young daughter and lots of dark rumours. Two years later, PR man Gil ‘Hop’ Hopkins tries to piece together what happened, navigating a web of sex, drugs and blackmail.

Abbott has written a number of novels that take place in this era, and excels in Hollywood noir. It’s an absorbing narrative with a number of twists and turns and Abbott’s richly evocative writing draws you into the world of broken dreams and depravity behind the glamorous façade of the movie industry.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

9. Gotham by Nick Earls.

This is the first in the five novella series The Wisdom Tree by Aussie author Nick Earls. Although the novellas are all stand-alone stories with different characters, they are linked by a common theme of relationships and what they mean to us in contemporary society.

This story is about the encounter between journalist Jeff Foster and famous rapper Na$ti Boi, whom he has flown to New York to interview for a story. He has also brought his wife and four year old sick daughter so she can receive treatment.

Earls has a light, deft touch but his stories are full of depth and nuance and he is excellent at portraying the ambiguities and undertones of relationships. Each novella is only 20 000 words long so you can read them in one sitting, but they stay with you for a long time afterwards.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

10. Natural Born Keller by Amanda Keller.

Amanda Keller, popular Australian radio and TV personality, takes us on a nostalgia-filled journey through her life, from her childhood and ‘daggy’ teenage years to her varied career in TV and radio, which includes travelling the world as a reporter for the acclaimed TV science show Beyond 2000.

This is an entertaining, funny and heart-warming book, written with Keller’s trademark self-deprecating, zany humour. There are some emotionally wrenching parts as well, but overall the tone is positive and upbeat. A great book to read to start off the new year.

Here’s my review on Goodreads.

Have you read any of these books? Or have recommendations of your own? I’d love you to share your comments in the comments box below.

The post The Top Ten Books I Read In 2016 appeared first on Robin Storey.

Five Life Lessons from Walking the Camino de Santiago

Since returning from my 775 kilometre trek across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, I’ve been asked several times, ‘Did you experience any spiritual enlightenment? Discover the meaning of life?’

There seems to be a general assumption that even if I didn’t make the journey for spiritual reasons, I would have discovered some deep and meaningful truths along the way as a by-product. At the risk of seeming shallow, I didn’t.

What made me do it?

The idea of doing the Camino first occurred to me about 3 years ago, though how or why I can’t remember. I think I just thought it would be an interesting thing to do. Writing novels is a sedentary and mentally challenging pursuit and the idea of balancing it by doing something physically demanding and testing my endurance appealed to me. (Although I was later to find out that the Camino is about as much about mental as physical endurance).

And my options were limited. I hate running so marathons were out and I’m not confident on a pushbike so that was out as well. (I blame the magpie that chased me all the way home from school on my bike when I was ten years old for that). Heights give me vertigo so Everest was out, and I only like swimming in the sea if there are no big waves, jellyfish, sharks or seaweed, so swimming the English Channel was crossed off the list.

What was left? Apart from extreme sports such as bungee jumping, aerial skiing or train surfing, the only thing left was walking. (Although I did jump out of a plane earlier this year but that’s the extent of my recklessness). I’m a natural at walking – been doing it for most of my life.

The hardest bit…

Once I’d settled on that, now came the hard part – persuading my LSP (my long-suffering partner) to come with me. Like the incessant drip of water eroding a rock, I managed to wear down his resistance and change his response from ‘Are you mad? They have roads and cars in Spain, you don’t have to walk!’ to an enthusiastic ‘Okay, let’s do it! Book the airfares now before I change my mind!’

So although I had no major epiphanies as we trudged past cornfields and vineyards, up never-ending hills and down steep tracks of rocks and shale, the occasional deep thought did occur to me, apart from ‘When can we stop and eat some chocolate?’

But the truths I pondered on were not new ones to me – they were truths I already knew, just brought to mind again and given a fresh perspective by my new surroundings and experiences.

So here they are:

1. Every step forward is progress.

Sometimes you’re not in the mood, or you’re tired and grumpy, and taking those first few steps is a gigantic effort. But once you do, the momentum keeps you going and sometimes the days when you feel most unmotivated can end up being the most enjoyable and productive. I have found this often applies to my writing.

2. When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.

This saying was attributed to Creighton Adams, a US army general in the Vietnam War. Why he chose an elephant for his metaphor I have no idea. It’s too big to fit on a dinner plate, it would make very tough and unpalatable eating and as an endangered species, shouldn’t be eaten at all.

But it illustrates the point. When you think of walking 775 kilometres, it seems like a Herculean task. But by focusing on the present and not the final destination it’s a lot easier, certainly from a psychological point of view.

However, I’m the first to admit it’s easier said than done. Along the way there are signposts telling you how many kilometres you have still to go, and on more than one occasion, I turned to LSP and wailed,’ We’re not even half way there!’

‘I’m not taking any notice of those signs,’ he said, in his sensible and rational wisdom. I could have clobbered him.

3. Stop periodically and look back at how far you’ve come.

You’re often so engrossed in the journey, plodding away day after day, that you don’t realise how much progress you’re making until you stop and look back – particularly when you reach the top of a hill, and you can marvel at the tiny speck of village in the distance that you left from that morning. Giving yourself a pat on the back for how far you’ve come gives you a tremendous boost and the energy and motivation to keep going.

And if you don’t stop you’ll miss some spectacular views.

4. Don’t compare yourself to others.

This is my nemesis. I was slow going up the hills and many others, including LSP, strode ahead of me, reaching the top as fresh as a field of daisies, whereas I was wilting and drooping like a vase of dead flowers.

‘Why is everyone so much faster and fitter than me?’ I wondered, feeling as if somehow I wasn’t up to standard. But the truth was that not everyone beat me up the hills. There were many behind me, and in the larger scheme of things, why did it matter? I got there in the end.

Comparisonitis is a deadly trap to fall into and we indie authors are particularly vulnerable. We often think other authors are more successful, selling more books, making more money. As Mark Twain said, ‘Comparison is the death of joy.’ And by making you miserable it also affects your productivity and creativity. Lose-lose situation.

5. Perseverance outshines ability

Before I started the Camino, I was under the impression you had to be reasonably fit and strong to undertake such a long trek. But I was wrong. We met people of all shapes, sizes and physical condition – obese people, people in their seventies and eighties who swallowed handfuls of medication every morning at breakfast, people with a limp or gammy knees and hips, people with all sorts of injuries.

A friend broke a bone in her foot when she was less than half way along the journey – she just strapped it up and kept on walking. One elderly gentleman shuffled along looking as if he were about to keel over any moment. But he didn’t. None of these people allowed their afflictions to stop them doing what they wanted to do. Quitting was not an option, they just kept going till they got there.

And it’s the same for all other aspects of life – it’s not necessarily the brilliant ones who are successful, it’s those who never give up.

BONUS: lesson number 6.

There's always another hill. Nelson Mandela understood perfectly, even though I’m pretty sure he didn’t walk the Camino – his journey was a lot tougher.

‘After climbing a great hill,’ he said, ‘one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.’

That pretty much sums it up. For the Camino. And life.

What are your thoughts on my life lessons? Do you have any insights you’d like to share? I'd love you to leave your comments in the box below. 

The post Five Life Lessons from Walking the Camino de Santiago appeared first on Robin Storey.

My Mother’s Cookbook – Recipes For Nostalgia

One of the things I love about historical fiction is being transported into another time and place. As well as vicariously living a life vastly different from my own, I also enhance my knowledge of historical people and events.

It’s one of the reasons I love flipping through my mother’s recipe book. She bought it soon after she was married in 1954 – a plain brown fabric cover inscribed with ‘Recipes’ and inside a contents page – eight categories from soups, meat game and poultry, to jellies, creams and ices. For some reason omelettes are lumped in with puddings and sweets – perhaps eggs are the common denominator.

Inside the pages are ruled with pale blue lines for the eager cook to write her recipes on. As you can imagine with something so old (perhaps not that old, it’s only a year older than me) and that's been well used over the years, it’s falling to bits – the cover is torn, the pages are discoloured and blotchy where bits of food have sploshed on to them and some of them have come loose.

Cue: the theme from Happy Days

But as soon as I open it, I’m back in the 1950s. An era where women gave up their careers when they married, as my mother did, to concentrate on being the perfect housewife. An era of meat and 3 veg when pork chow mein was considered exotic, listening to the radio and reading The Australian Women’s Weekly, which set the standard for fashion, cooking and everything female, chequered linoleum kitchen floors, aprons worn over waisted dresses with swing skirts, creaming the butter and sugar in the big shiny Mixmaster, the latest in kitchen technology.

My mother professed to not enjoying cooking, but as my father liked to have a hot meal and pudding (as we called it) every night, Mum endeavoured to keep up the standard. Her recipe book is reminiscent of the trajectory of her life. I see her as a young bride on the brink of a new life, determined to get her head around this cooking lark and fill the crisp, pristine pages with interesting recipes to tempt her husband and impress her friends.

Recipes were written out in the correct sections, in her impeccably neat handwriting, and beside each one she wrote the source – the friend or relative, the Women’s Weekly or the ABC radio Women’s Session. The recipes are basic – mock chicken (the real thing was expensive back then), fish mornay, cheese tart and beef casserole. In the sweets arena there was madeira cake, two minute sponge, cornflake biscuits and home-made ice-cream.

Kids – who has time for recipes?

Then after her children arrived – three in four years – it was plain she ran out of time and energy. Recipes were written on pieces of paper – sometimes her handwriting, sometimes other peoples’ that I don’t recognise – and shoved in the book. Other recipes were torn out of newspapers or magazines.

I can imagine her thinking, ‘I’ll just put them in loose for now and when I’ve got a spare moment I’ll copy them into the book.’ But she never did, and the result is that when you open the book, recipes invariably flutter out everywhere.

As we progressed into the 1960s and 70s and in keeping with the times, Mum became more adventurous with her recipes. There are clippings for cold tomato soup, Thai fish cakes and sweet and sour pork. Desserts (no longer called puddings) include liqueur fancies, Yugoslavian Zagreb cake and banana caramel crepes. There’s even a postcard I sent her from my trip to Europe with a photo of the mouth-watering Austrian chocolate cake Sacher Torte on the front and the recipe on the back.

My mother’s Cordon Bleu period

Mum didn’t take the hint and make the Sacher Torte; in fact, I don’t recall her making any of these recipes. However, she did go through a brief Cordon Bleu phase when she attended cooking classes and whipped up exotic meals such as pork and chicken terrine and Charlotte Russe. (Although I think my father secretly yearned for a lamb roast and baked rice pudding).

There are a lot of recipes in the book that I don’t remember Mum making. And I’m glad in the case of oyster soup, chestnut stuffing and the aforementioned mock chicken. And a handwritten dish she called Prawn Pie or Tart or Something. Obviously she never got round to making it to ascertain what it was.

Mum, can you roast a pig?

Mum was also subjected to desperate pleas from me to cook things I’d read about in books. I was an avid fan of the Bobbsey Twins series, by American author Laura Lee Hope. They were two sets of twins who solved mysteries in between getting into lots of mischief. Mrs Bobbsey was forever baking strawberry shortcake and I nagged Mum constantly to bake one for me.

She finally capitulated, and spent hours looking for a recipe and then creating it. After all that, I don’t remember what it tasted like, but I’m sure I was diplomatic enough to tell her it was delicious!

I was also an Enid Blyton fan and the children in some of her stories regularly tucked into a supper of bread and milk. This sounded rather exotic to me; even the idea of supper, which wasn’t on the menu in our house (unless we managed to sneak a bowl of ice-cream while our parents were watching The Ed Sullivan Show).

So I requested a bread and milk supper and Mum obligingly prepared me a bowl of bread sprinkled with sugar, floating in a sea of milk. It was very unappetising and I felt sorry for those children who were forced to eat it and pretend they liked it.

I dare say Mum was hoping I didn’t read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which Huck ate freshly caught catfish, corn dodgers and buttermilk or Lord of the Flies, in which the boys killed and roasted wild pigs.

Family favourites

Every family has their favourite recipes that become traditions. Two of ours are in this recipe book. The first is Fluffy Custard, which was handed down from Mum’s mother. This is essentially melted butter blended with flour, with egg yolks and milk added. When the mixture is smooth, you add sugar and stiffly beaten egg whites. It lives up to its name – wonderfully light and fluffy and very more-ish.

The second is a dessert called Canton. This was given to Mum by a relative, but where she got it from I have no idea, because I have never seen it anywhere else. And why it’s called Canton is also a mystery, because it’s as Chinese as apple pie and custard. It’s simply a sponge cake liberally covered with pink whipped cream and blanched almonds, swimming in a river of chocolate sauce.

It was sinfully rich and we kids would request it as a special treat for our birthdays. It was every man for himself when it came to Canton and whoever got up earliest the next morning raided the fridge and had the leftovers for breakfast. Those were the days, when you had no concept of blood sugar levels!

End of an era

Sadly there were very few recipes added after the 1970s, as Mum went back to work after she and Dad divorced. Her children had left home and she had no-one to cook for but herself. But as she died a few years ago, her recipe book is a treasured heirloom. Perhaps one day, just out of curiosity, I might give the Prawn Pie or Tart or Something a go.

Do you have a recipe book that’s become a family heirloom, or any recipes handed down that have become family favourites? I’d love to read about them; indulge in a bit of nostalgia in the comments box below.

The post My Mother’s Cookbook – Recipes For Nostalgia appeared first on Robin Storey.

Confessions of a Book Nerd

I’ve been a book nerd ever since I learnt to read. Even before I learnt to read, as my mother read to me from the time I was six months old, so it’s all her fault.

As a child, my favourite activity was to curl up on the couch with my head in a book, while my peers were outside playing football and riding bikes. (I did that as well, when I ran out of books). And it’s still my favourite activity, although it now has to share top billing with writing books. Like most authors, my passion for writing evolved from my love of reading.

When you’ve been doing something for well over 50 years, you invariably develop some habits or routines around it. So for the first time in public, I’m confessing to my book nerdy quirks and practices. Some of you may think them strange, others will nod your heads knowingly.

I don’t finish a book if it doesn’t grab me in the first couple of chapters.

This is not such a strange habit, because I know plenty of readers who do the same. But I know equally as many who plough their way through a book until the end, grumbling all the while because they’re hating it. Life’s too short to spend reading a book I’m not enjoying, when there are so many books on my WTR (want to read) list.

Sometimes, though, I will give a book more than one chance, allowing for the fact that I may not have been in the right frame of mind when I tried to read it the first time, particularly if it’s a book that has attracted rave reviews from other readers.

An example of this is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I have started it at least three times; have read probably the first two chapters, but find it so dull and the characters so uninspiring that I can’t bring myself to continue.

On the other hand, I loved Lord of the Rings and that takes more than two chapters to get into the story. Oh well, I’ve never claimed to be rational.

I have a photographic memory when it comes to books and authors.

My brain sops up information on books and authors like a sponge, even if the author is one whose books I haven’t read and am not likely to. Regardless of what era they’re from, I’m interested in authors’ lives, their writing processes, the books they’ve written and what inspired them. So my brain retains all that information and buries all the less important stuff, such as the PIN number for my bank account or the name of the person I was introduced to three minutes ago (unless they’re a famous author).

Consequently, I’m a great person to have on your team on trivia nights for the literary questions, but as for the rest… I’ll go and get the drinks. Years ago, when playing Trivial Pursuit I always gave a holler of delight when I landed on the brown square (Arts and Literature in the original game) because it was almost a guarantee for a brown wedge (or piece of cake, as we called them). As an aside, whatever happened to Trivial Pursuit? Did it live up to its name and become too trivial?

I love going to appointments at the doctor or dentist.

In fact any appointment where you’re sitting in a waiting room. Because instead of thumbing through dog-eared Readers Digests from the Paleolithic era or trashy gossip magazines, I can while away the time reading my book, which of course I have packed in my handbag.

Reading during the day when I’m supposed to be writing is a guilty pleasure for me and I especially enjoy my doctor’s appointments, as she is invariably running behind schedule and I can usually count on at least 45 minutes reading time.

My dentist, on the other hand is annoyingly prompt with his appointment times and I’m usually only a couple of pages into the book when he calls me in. I once turned up half an hour early so I could sit on his comfy lounge in the waiting room with ocean views to read my book, only to have him call me in after five minutes!

I thought he probably wouldn’t take too kindly to my asking, ‘Can I just finish this chapter?’

I am a book sniffer.

This is how I get high. I came out of the closet as a book sniffer about five years ago on my previous blog , and here’s an excerpt from it:

The words on the page are only part of the story. For me, reading is also a tactile and olfactory experience. I love the feel of a book in my hand, its reassuring solidity and the texture of the pages as I turn them – sometimes new and starched, other times soft and pliable from the hands that have turned them before me.

But the real pleasure is the smell. Like a wine connoisseur who inhales the bouquet of the wine before tasting it, I’m compelled to breathe in the pages of a book before I read it. The best way to smell a book, in case you’re wondering, is to hold it up to your nose and flip through the pages.

Like wines, each book has its own distinctive aroma depending on where it’s from. Fresh and crisp with a hint of woodiness if straight from the bookshop, (sometimes you can still smell the print), stale and musty if from the library, add a strong suggestion of mildew if from the second-hand bookshop.

Since I wrote that, many other readers have admitted to sniffing books, so now I don’t feel so much of a freak. Here’s a blog post on 3 Reasons Why Book Nerds Love the Smell of Books.

I don’t read short stories in order.

I’ve left this one till last because it’s the most shocking. Yes, dear reader, it’s true. In anthologies of short stories, I don’t read them in order. I jump all over the book, picking and choosing stories according to my mood and how much time I have. That’s the beauty of having a variety of stories in the one book – some will appeal more than others, and some I don’t read at all.

My partner, however, starts at the first story and keeps reading till he gets to the end. And I’m sure there must be many others who do the same. It’s a logical way to read, but to my mind, logic doesn’t come into it. It’s more fun doing it my way, like a lucky dip.

Do you have any strange reading habits you’d like to confess to? Please reveal all in the comments box below – I promise I won’t tell a soul.

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Badass Women – Why They’re More Fun

Who doesn’t love a red-blooded, shoot from the hip badass woman? One who’ll entice you with sweet words and bedroom eyes, only to pull a gun on you as soon as you turn your back. Men love them because there’s something so sexy about a woman who takes control into her own hands, and women love them because they want to be them.

Badass women are more fun

You may not want to marry a BAW or have one as your best friend, but they are certainly a lot of fun to invite into your imagination as a reader or writer. I much prefer to read stories where the protagonist is a BAW, and as an author I find they are much more fun to write than a mousy heroine whose main flaw is a lack of self-esteem, and whose worst vice is eating an entire bucket of caramel pecan ice-cream in one sitting.

‘There’s nothing a man can do that I can’t do better, and in heels.’ Ginger Rogers.

Although there are BAW in every genre of fiction, many of them hang out in noir and crime books. As I mention in my previous blog post, Three Reasons To Love Noir, where I describe noir fiction in detail, there’s a crossover between crime and noir, as many noir novels contain an element of crime.

Noir evolved from hardboiled crime fiction from the 1930s onwards and in its early days was very male oriented. Female characters usually played a supporting role, like the femme fatale, the distraught victim or the forbearing wife, and if they were the perpetrators of crime, it was often because they’d been led astray or forced into it by the controlling male protagonist.

However, after the Great Literary Uprising of the 21st century, when thousands of subjugated female characters held a rally in the New York Public Library, marched out of the pages of their books and demanded equal rights to be the nasty, violent antiheroes of their own stories, fictional BAW have been springing up like mushrooms.

Famous badass women

One of the most famous modern BAW is Lisbeth Salander in the Millenium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). A brilliant computer hacker, she is also volatile, anti-social and frequently violent. However she also engenders empathy in the reader because of her horrific childhood with a violent father, adolescence in a psychiatric institution and sexual abuse by her guardian. You can understand her dislike of authority and her inability to trust people, and you sense a kernel of vulnerability underneath her tough exterior.

It’s often the case with many fictional BAW – they act the way they do because of their earlier experiences – poverty, neglect, abusive relationships. But instead of staying in the victim role they take control and fight for what they consider is their rightful place in the world, regardless of the price, which may be anything from broken hearts and deceit to violence and murder.

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is the quintessential badass woman and others include Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations, Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s Misery and Carrie from the book of the same name, Nurse Ratched from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper from Rebecca and Cathy Ames from East of Eden.

More badass women at a bookstore near you!

Badass women are frequently unlikable, but always fascinating. The best ones are a complex mix of attractive and nasty traits. Acclaimed noir author Megan Abbott, who has written a number of novels set in the 1940s and 50s, full of gangsters and Hollywood glamour, frequently writes of ‘good girls’ who are seduced into the seamy side of life and have to dig down to their inner BAW woman to survive.

Here are my reviews on Goodreads of a couple of Megan Abbott’s books: Die A Little and Bury Me Deep.

There’s a new generation of female noir authors writing a wide variety of badass women and if you want more badass women in your fantasy life, you need look no further than Gillian Flynn, Vicki Hendricks, Christa Faust, Cathi Unsworth and Sara Gran.

My own BAW

I’m having fun writing my own BAW, Eva Dennehy, in my current work in progress, A Time for Penance. Eva is given the opportunity to travel back in time to undo a crime she committed 20 years ago, but needless to say, things don’t go according to plan. This book will be published in early 2017.

What are your thoughts on BAW in fiction? Have you met any lately? I’d love to know. Put your comments in the comments box below.

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Three Reasons To Love Noir

If you’ve been following my blog for a while or read some of my books, you’ll probably be thinking, ‘She loves noir? But she writes comedy!’ Or even, ‘What is noir?’

Noir is French for black and there are many definitions of noir fiction. Google defines it as ‘a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.’

The main difference between traditional crime stories and noir is that the protagonist is not a detective but a suspect, perpetrator or victim.

Noir fiction came out of WW1 and the Depression, and famous early noir authors include James Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window, upon which the Alfred Hitchcock movie was based) and Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me). Later authors include Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley), Richard Stark, alias Donald Westlake (the Parker series) and Lawrence Block (the Bernie Rhodenbarr series).

Nowadays there are all sorts of noir-blend genres – noir romance, noir fantasy, noir thrillers and so on. If you search hard enough I’m sure you’ll find space noir, zombie noir and vampire noir.

To explain the specifics of noir fiction, author Dave Zeltserman, in a blog post titled ‘On Writing Noir,’ quotes American fiction editor Otto Prenzler:

‘Pretty much everyone in a noir story (or film) is driven by greed, lust, jealousy or alienation, a path that inevitably sucks them into a downward spiral from which they cannot escape. They couldn't find the exit from their personal highway to hell if flashing neon lights pointed to a town named Hope. It is their own lack of morality that blindly drives them to ruin.’

Sounds uplifting, doesn’t it? But I believe that villains and highly flawed characters are more fun to write than heroes, and if you write them well, you also reveal their positive traits as well as their flaws, which helps to create empathy in the reader.

I’ve always loved reading crime novels and having worked as a probation and parole officer on and off for over 25 years, I’ve had first-hand exposure to the lifestyles of people living on the fringes of society. I’m not sure if I was drawn to that profession because of an innate interest in crime or whether the job itself sparked the interest.

But two things happened recently to make me realise that writing noir fiction was the direction I want to go in from now on.

Firstly, while writing my most recent fiction book, noir romance novella An Affair With Danger, I realised how much I enjoyed writing about desperate, doomed characters who are victims of their own weaknesses and frequently take the not-so-heroic path.

And secondly, a reviewer of my book of short stories Comedy Shorts, said that while she thoroughly enjoyed the stories, she didn’t think they were comedy as they all had a macabre core to them, dealing mostly with crime and/or death. On reflection, I had to agree with her.

So for me now, noir is the new black and if you’ve never read any noir fiction, here are three reasons to go find a book right away:

1.There’s a raw honesty in noir fiction that you often don’t find in other genres. In the above-mentioned blog post Dave Zeltserman describes it perfectly:

The best noir can be a far more exhilarating experience than you can find reading almost any other kind of mystery or crime fiction, and the reason for this is it can expose truths about the human condition that other genre fiction barely hints at. There’s a resonance in the best noir fiction that’s almost impossible to find elsewhere in genre fiction.

2. It can allow you to indulge your dark side while lounging on your comfy couch, without ever having to actually dabble in drugs, hang out with criminals or murder someone. (Of course if you want to do any of those things, you’re probably out doing them and don’t have time to read books).

It’s the same impulse that makes us slow down and gawk at the scene of an accident, or watch TV shows about serial killers who dismember and cook their victims – we’re fascinated by the grisly and the gruesome, as long as it’s from the safety of our own comfort zones.

3. It makes you think about the big, unanswerable questions of life – are some people born evil? Why can some people rise above misfortune and others get dragged down by it? How much influence do social conditions and environment have on your actions? Why can’t we ever live in peace, no matter how much easier we seem to have it than the previous generation? If I hang out in seedy bars and drink cheap gin, will I become a character in a noir novel?

I’m not saying you can’t find these attributes in other genres, but you are guaranteed to find them in noir. And if you’re looking for more recommendations for noir novels, Goodreads lists some popular classic noir books and some popular neo noir (modern noir) books.

HEALTH WARNINGS:

This blog post contains small parts and is not suitable for children under 3.

There’s hardly ever a happy ending in noir. The best you’ll get is an ambiguous ending in which there is some resolution but other bits are left dangling – just like real life! So if you like HEA (happily ever after) endings and all loose ends tied up with a neat bow, read noir at your own risk. The writer of this blog takes no responsibility for any ensuing mental health issues.

Have you read any noir, and if so, do you have any recommendations? I’d love you to leave your comments in the box below.

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Five Top Benefits Of Being A Mature Age Author

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With Queen Elizabeth turning 90 recently and still looking pretty spry, it got me thinking that one of the secrets to healthy aging has to be a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the mornings. In the case of the Queen, she has commitments – speeches to make, buildings to open, medals to give out. And hundreds, often thousands of people would be put out if she pulled the covers over her head and refused to get out of bed because her arthritis/lumbago/gammy hip was giving her trouble.

The challenge for many people after they retire from the workforce is to keep active and fill their days with challenging and worthwhile activities; otherwise it’s a short slide into a twilight of daytime TV, curtain twitching and writing daily irate Letters to the Editor.

From that point of view there are many advantages to being a mature age author. I’m not fond of the expression ‘mature age,’ but have used it mainly for convenience. And it is satisfyingly vague – you don’t have to specify an age. If you identify as being mature age, you are. But to me mature age, for a woman at least, conjures up images of a bosomy matron who wears crimplene pant suits, plays bridge and has a husband named Frank and/or a yappy terrier called Muffin.

I am none of those things, but for the sake of this blog post I will identify myself as mature-aged, even though it makes me sound like a block of Strong & Bitey vintage cheese. So here are five top benefits of being a mature age author.

1. We don’t have to retire

In fact, we don’t want to retire. Writing is part of who we are, so if we were to stop writing our souls would wither away and die, leaving just an empty shell of a body. There is no-one from up in the hierarchy who is going to sit us down one day and say, ‘You’re getting on a bit now, you’re 95, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a gold watch and let you go.’

As long as we’re capable of sitting at a computer and typing, we’re working. And if that’s beyond us, there’s always dictation. I rather fancy myself lounging on the settee Barbara Cartland style with a fluffy dog in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other, hopefully not getting them mixed up, and nattering away into my iPhone (the modern version of Barbara Cartland’s secretary.)

2. Use it or lose it

This well-known adage is true for our brain, as well as the rest of our body. We’re close enough to the edge of mortality to realise the importance of it and we’re constantly using our little grey cells as we plot and plan, write, re-write and edit. Even when we’re not writing, we’re writing – thinking up plot twists in the shower, fleshing out characters in the supermarket queue, nutting out a love scene at Great Aunt Muriel’s afternoon tea. We’re not only pursuing our art, we’re staving off dementia.

3. We have a wealth of life experience to draw from for our writing.

As philosopher and poet Henry David Thoreau said, ‘How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.’ Not only are all our experiences grist to the creative mill, but we bring to them a maturity and wisdom that comes from having lived a few decades.

As another philosopher Kierkegaard said, ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ We have the benefit of years and hindsight to help us understand our past actions and emotions, and this insight makes us a more astute judge of others peoples’ characters as well. All of which give us plenty of material to create satisfying plots and rich, multi-dimensional characters in our novels.

4. We can remember typewriters

And carbon paper, encyclopaedias, (hard cover, 43 volumes, A-Z) floppy discs and Word Perfect. How is that a benefit? You may well ask. Apart from stories to tell our grandchildren about the hardships we suffered in the 'good old days,' it makes us appreciate the technology we have at our fingertips now. The internet is a writer’s best friend when it comes to research; it beats looking up musty old books in the library and peering at reams of microfiche any day.

Although sometimes when my computer freezes, I think wistfully of my old typewriter with the ‘a’ key that always stuck, the sandwich crumbs in between the keys and the clunky carriage return.

5. We can indulge our eccentricity

In fact, we’re expected to be eccentric. Being of a certain age and a writer as well means a double whammy of eccentricity. So if:

· you’re chatting away to yourself about plot twists while out for your walk and passers-by give you a wide berth

· or having a conversation with one of the characters in your book while stopped at the traffic lights in your car, and you look across to see the man in the car beside you staring at you

· or you arrive at the supermarket wearing your slippers and your pullover inside out because you were up till 2 am writing and you’re still half asleep

· or you suddenly whip out your notebook at a dinner party and start scribbling madly because you’ve just had a fantastic idea for a novel, and it was nothing to do with Nigel’s boring discourse on real estate prices

All you need to say is, ‘I’m an author, I’m writing a novel.’

And all will be forgiven. (But if you’re going to put Nigel in your novel as an opinionated windbag, make sure you disguise him well).

Is there anything I’ve left out? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

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Five Reasons To Have A Messy Desk

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What do I have in common with Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg?

No, it’s not that I’m a genius, though it’s very kind of you to suggest it.

You’ll never guess so I’ll tell you: we all have messy desks. Or in the case of Albert and Steve, had messy desks. There’s a lot of evidence, especially when you google ‘geniuses have messy desks’, to suggest that a messy desk is not only indicative of a creative mind, but it also enhances creativity and productivity – particularly for authors, as we spend so much time at our desks.

The Clean Desk Mafia may well snort in derision, but there are perfectly logical reasons why this is so:

1. Because tidy is the societal norm (or at least the goal we’re told we should aspire to), those with untidy desks tend to be more unconventional and imaginative in their thinking. The creative process is not necessarily a neat, structured process that responds to law and order and a tidy desk, but is often jump-started by chaos. Research has shown that clutter can force us to focus and think more clearly.

2. Too much time and energy is taken up keeping your work area neat, when it could be used for creative purposes. Except when you’re procrastinating – that is the perfect time to tidy your desk, even though you know it’s pointless, because it will be messy again before the day is out.

3. There is method in the madness of a messy desk – a system which ergonomist Mark Lander calls the volcano. In the middle is a relatively clear area where all the work is done and around it things pile up in order of importance – the urgent and commonly used stuff is close by, then fans out to the less important stuff, which is further away and/or buried at the bottom of the pile. Instant filing – no need for an in-tray or a filing cabinet. Nick Earls, a fellow messy author, elaborates in his blog post On The Efficacy of Mess.

As you can see from the image of my desk above, I subscribe to the volcano theory, and also to the school of post-it-note prompts.

4. A cluttered desk is more efficient than a tidy desk. David Freedman, author of A Perfect Mess (which is definitely on my to-read list) says, 'A survey found that people who had messy desks spent less time hunting for things than people who had very neat desks. That makes a lot of sense, because when you have a messy desk, you're arranging things in a way that's customized to the way you think and work.'

We’ve all had the experience of having a tidying up blitz and not being able to remember where we’ve put something. If that ‘something’ lives permanently on your desk, you always know its approximate location.

5. Having a messy desk teaches you to deal with criticism, because invariably the Clean Desk Mafia will make snide comments, or come right out with something really original, such as, 'It looks as if a bomb has gone off here.’

And you have to learn to shrug it off and smile enigmatically, as if you know the secret of the universe, and afterwards send them a copy of your best-selling book with a note: ‘This book was written at an extremely messy desk.’

That’s my fantasy anyway, you can make up your own.

The last word belongs to Einstein who said, ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?’

​What are your thoughts? Are you a messy or clean desk supporter? I'd love to hear your comments (and justification of your status) in the comments box below.

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To Swear Or Not To Swear – That Is The Fecking Question

The use of profanity in books has always been a controversial question. Readers range in attitudes from not being in the least bit concerned to finding it offensive and refusing to read books containing swear words. Mention the subject to any group of authors, and you’ll end up in a lively discussion as to the pros and cons of the use of swear words and their personal preferences.

Less is more

I have a laissez-faire attitude towards swearing. It doesn’t offend me and my only objection to it is that heavy use in a novel or movie causes it to lose its impact, and it becomes just another word. A swear word is an expletive expressing a range of emotions from frustration to despair, and if it’s used constantly, its power and associated emotions are blunted. Some people use swear words as everyday adjectives, which negates all meaning, as in ‘I went to the f…ing shop and ran into f…ing old George, who told me this f…ing hilarious joke!’

Fecking brilliant

That’s why I’ve come to love the Irish words feck and fecking. Marian Keyes, in Making It Up As I Go Along, an anthology of articles on modern life and love, goes to great pains to point out that fecking is not a swear word – it’s commonly used by the Irish in everyday conversation. But what I like about it is that it sounds so much like a swear word that you can derive a satisfactory amount of cathartic release from using it when you’re in polite company (‘I went to the fecking shop and ran into fecking old George, who told me this fecking hilarious joke!’) in the knowledge you’re not offending anyone.

Fecking is what is known as a minced oath. This is not a meat dish the Irish serve up with their praties, but a euphemistic adaptation of a swear word to make it less offensive. Others include gosh, darn, dang, fudge and heck, which sound like a bunch of vicars at morning tea and in my opinion are not a patch on feck.

You can’t please everyone

Unfortunately, feck or fecking are not much use to you when you’re writing a book, unless your character happens to be Irish. As an author I take the stance that if swearing is necessary for the authenticity of the character, I include it, and as many of the characters in my books are either criminals or live on the edge of respectable society, some cursing is inevitable. The frequency is certainly not what I would consider excessive, but even so, I have had a couple of readers comment that they didn’t like the swearing in my novel How Not To Commit Murder.

My argument is this: imagine a hardened criminal who’s been in and out of jail all his life getting angry at you and telling you to ‘Go away.’ If he does, he’s displaying exceptional and uncharacteristic self-control – maybe he did a course in Etiquette 101 during his last stint in prison. In reality, he’s going to tell you to f… off and if you’re lucky, that will be the only expletive he uses.

Wall Street Blues

It’s also a fact that the frequent use of cursing in modern books and movies has desensitized the average person to its impact, particularly the f-bomb, as it’s called. It was used over 500 times in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. (Wikipedia says 569). So someone actually sat through the movie with the sole purpose of counting the number of f…words? If so, there’s a definite component of human error here, as another account put the number of f-bombs as a mere 506. Perhaps the person who made that claim had a coughing fit and missed the other 63?

According to Wikipedia there are two other movies with a greater number of f-bombs than The Wolf of Wall Street – Swearnet: The Movie and F… a documentary on the word. But Martin Scorsese, the director of The Wolf of Wall Street is keen to claim the title of King of Profanity, as another article claims that the movie has set a new Guinness World Record for the movie with the most swearing, with Scorsese breaking his own previous world record of 422 f-bombs in his 1995 gangster movie Casino.

Again Wikipedia disagrees, claiming that the movies Summer of Sam and Nil by Mouth contain more f-bombs than Casino. Surely someone’s created an app that counts the number of f-bombs in a movie that would resolve this important controversy for once and for all.

Jazzing it up

When it comes to the most profane book ever written, there’s even more contention. It seems that readers are not as devoted to counting the number of swear words in books as movie-goers are in movies. A number of readers have mentioned Miles, the autobiography of jazz musician Miles Davis, with one claiming there are 672 f-bombs in the book. Davis was obviously a man who liked to make a point – or maybe had a limited vocabulary. Other books mentioned were Irvine Welsh’s books Trainspotting and Filth and Henry Miller’s books Tropic of Cancer and Over the Rooftops of Paris.

There’s a fecking app for that?

And if you're offended by swearing in books, you could buy the Clean Reader app, which replaces swear words in e-books with sanitized versions, with settings ranging from clean to squeaky clean. This app was released in early 2015 to the strident objections of many authors. One called it ‘f…ing horrifying,’ while award-winning author Joanne Harris pronounced it as ‘infinitely more offensive than any of the words it blanks out.’

In an article in The Telegraph she goes on to say, ‘Anyone who works with words understands their power. Words, if used correctly, can achieve almost anything. To tamper with what is written – however much we may dislike certain words and phrases – is to embrace censorship.'

Other authors took a more light-hearted view, wondering if there would be anything left of Irvine Welsh’s novels once the Clean Reader app had swept its broom of purity through them. And it’s also worth reminding authors not to set their books in places like Tittybong, Penistone or Balls Cross, as those with the Clean Reader app won’t know where on earth the story takes place.

I’ll leave the last word to crime writer Ian Rankin, who said on Twitter, ‘People seem equivocal about the Clean Reader app, but I've just installed Dirty Reader and it has done wonders for the Miss Marple books.’

What’s your view on profanity in books, as a reader and/or writer? I’d love you to chime in with your opinions in the comments box below.

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