Katherine Pathak's Blog, page 8

Has our understanding of courage been highjacked?

When on a trip to London yesterday, my husband and son took a tour up the Orbit tower, in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. I’m not a great one for heights so my daughter and I ducked into a nearby cafe to await their return. After settling at our table with the drinks, my daughter began indulging in some soul searching. Apparently, they’d had an assembly the week before about ‘courage’. She lamented how she should really have possessed the courage to climb the tower and clearly felt it a personal failure to have ‘wimped out’.

This got me thinking. I immediately told Shona that courage didn’t mean quite the same thing to me as it did to the teacher leading the assembly. She agreed, suggesting  that abseiling off a building might constitute courage to one person and stupidity to another. It has certainly  become fashionable in recent years to encourage youngsters to take part in high adrenaline activities, viewing them as ‘character building’. Indeed, my daughter will be going on her year six residential trip in May, which is an adventure holiday including a ‘leap of faith’ on the final day.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great. The kids will love it, just as I enjoyed riding roller coasters and diving from high boards when I was a teenager. But where I become uneasy, is in the redefining of thrill seeking, adrenaline pumping acts as synonymous with courage. Fearlessness is only one aspect of the OED definition of being courageous. It is also about having fortitude, being brave and gallant, even heroic. To me, a courageous act is to stand up for what you believe in even if all those around you disagree. To stick up for someone who is being bullied at the risk of a backlash against yourself is courageous. To make the trip to a war zone in order to provide medical care or assistance to those caught up in the violence  is courageous.

When I hear about those individuals who seek greater and greater artificial thrills by walking tightropes between tall buildings or climbing rock faces without support ropes, I always wonder how those who live with real difficulties view this strange occupation; those who trek for hundreds of miles and embark upon dangerous sea voyages to escape torture and persecution with their young families must marvel at why people would actually seek the stress that those dreadful  situations bring.

The answer, I suspect, is that ordinary life bores some people . They’ve sought out every available activity to stimulate the endorphins and have become addicted to the buzz. This isn’t what courage means to me and I wish we would stop telling our children that it’s what they should aspire to. Courage is the ability to recognise the true value in what we have before us right now. It might take more courage to stand still and face our responsibilities than to rush off in search of the next big thing.

So, I had no intention of forcing my daughter to go to the top of that tower – to face and overcome her fear. Because we all have a different interpretation of being brave. For some people, travelling any distance away from their home requires a courage that others may not fully  appreciate. Who am I to judge what another individual’s capacity for stoicism might be. I’d rather my daughter stood up for her friends when it mattered most and was a person who put their head above the parapet at work to point out an injustice. Because that is what true courage means to me and it is possible to achieve it on either  a small or a large scale.

Calling occupants of a 1970s birth date.

Several things this week have reminded me of my late 70s/early 80s childhood. On Monday evening’s University Challenge, one of the teams completely failed to identify ABBA’s ‘When All Is Said And Done’ in the music round. And why on earth should they? The song is from the album ‘The Visitors’ and was released in 1981, long before any of those students were born.

Being a baby of the 1970s, I recognised it, and was humming the tune for the next couple of days. It reminded me of long car journeys from the south east of England to Scotland, where my parents grew up and my Gran still lived. This was before the M25 was built and it took us three hours to even get past London. My sister and I were too young for the Sony Walkman, which certainly played a significant part in my life later on. During this particular era of the family car journey, we were all listening to the tape player and it was ABBA and The Carpenters who reigned supreme.

We must have thoroughly worn out those poor cassettes. We appeared to play the same selection of three or four albums over and over again. Each recorded from their crackly vinyl original, of course. And there was singing. Oh yes. Loud singing.

We had some particular favourites; ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ by The Carpenters was one. In fact, the song is being used in the trailers for the CBeebies channel, currently running on BBC1. It was another thing I heard this week that got me reminiscing.

In this age of Youtube and iTunes, it’s very easy to track down the songs of our childhood. In a way, it brings the past closer to us than it’s ever been. Until the last few years, I probably hadn’t heard any of these tunes for decades. They were a dimly recalled set of notes or a lyric here and there. Now, I can properly revel in every one of them. ‘It’s Yesterday Once More’, as The Carpenters would say.

I’ve got a birthday coming up too. Which is undoubtedly another reason for my nostalgia.

Whatever the trigger, I really want to warble out some ABBA songs in the back seat of a car – preferably one without upholstered seats and rear belts and certainly without an iPod dock or Bluetooth connection.

Just once, you understand. Simply to remember what it was like. Then, I’ll happily come back to the present day, where everything is in reality so much better than it was, but perhaps that communal sharing of music isn’t quite what it used to be.

Where do you write?

I’m having one of those weeks when I’ve got itchy feet. It’s probably the unseasonably warm and sunny weather. But my little office just isn’t enticing me to sit down to proper work.

So, I unplugged the laptop, gathered together my notes and shifted the whole book writing operation down to the living room, where sun was pouring through the patio doors onto the sofa and it simply felt like a much more pleasant place to be.

The move got me thinking. Where do us writers work best? I suspect that this is something very personal to each individual author. For me, it depends on the circumstances. Most of the time I work more efficiently at my desk. I have my dictionaries, notepads and Kindle Fire close to hand and it feels as if I’m embarking upon a proper working day.

But every so often, when I’ve just finished a novel and I’m pushing myself to get going with the next one, I need that extra boost.

With my earlier books, when my family weren’t quite so used to the lengthy writing process I had to adhere to, I tended to take my laptop out to coffee shops and worked there. The bustle and noise of such a public place being less of a distraction than the children asking me endless questions and refusing to defer to their dad if they knew I was still on the premises.

I’ve even done an Agatha Christie a couple of times, going away to a hotel for a weekend to finish a novel. I did this two years ago with The Only Survivor and ploughed through about forty thousand words in a handful of days. Now, I am less compulsive about writing. I’ve got eleven books under my belt and know there will be many more. I still enjoy the process, but the burning desire to complete isn’t quite as strong as it was.

Holidays are another occasion where my writing seems to flow with greater ease. If we go away somewhere with my parents, my family are happy to leave me in the cottage or lodge, tapping away at the keys whilst they go sightseeing. It often only takes a couple of really focussed days’ work to get fully into a new book. This is often all it needs to get me kick started.

Some writers need alcohol to fuel their writing, others have survived on the steady inflow of nicotine. But I think a slavish adherence to these habits doesn’t really represent the modern author, who writes as a business, in order to support their family and doesn’t much like the idea of becoming an addict in the process.

For me, the occasional stimulant required to keep going has to be gained from something less harmful than drugs, however mild they may be, and a change of scenery seems like a perfect way to achieve it.

How do I fulfil my daughter’s voracious appetite for books?

I’m not bragging, my little boy can hardly be persuaded to pick up a book. He’d much rather be on Forza Motorsport or building Lego. If I could divide the book love out between them a bit more evenly then I would. But they are their own people and that’s just the way it is.

My husband and I were both book worms as kids, but I don’t recall being quite so speedy at reading as my daughter seems to be.

We spent every Saturday morning at the library when I was my daughter’s age, in the town where I grew up. I took a pile home with me at lunchtime and then we returned the following week to either renew or exchange. But in these days of constant access to the internet, youngsters know exactly what the next book in a series by their favourite author is. They aren’t prepared to simply take whatever happens to be on the young adult shelves of the local library.

Maybe schools need to be more up to date with the titles they offer. I know of other youngsters in my daughter’s class who have read every title in the entire school library and have been told that anything else they have is too ‘adult’ for them. But let’s face it, when you are a competent reader from a young age, you read whatever you can get your hands on. I read my Gran’s Victoria Holt’s and Georgette Heyer’s from when I was my daughter’s age. I’d worked my way through every single Agatha Christie before I was eleven years old.

I have tried to push my old favourites onto my first born but she often finds them old-fashioned and the prose style laboured. She has a very definite idea of what she likes to read and I want to encourage this passion as much as I can. Luckily, she is perfectly happy to spend her pocket money on books. Otherwise, we would be in trouble.

I trawl the second hand shops whenever I can and so does my mum. We tend to keep her well supplied that way. What would be really great is if the Kindle versions of her favourite titles weren’t quite so expensive. I keep my Kindle price low and my books are adult length. This would give us another option to keep her appetite satisfied.

I suppose if the supply ran dry she might be forced to turn to those old classics that we all read when there was nothing else available. However, there is no ‘nothing else’ these days. There’s always the TV and our various household internet devices. My fear is that if I cut off the supply, she will turn to something else and I really don’t want her to.

The sight of my daughter with her head in those books is a wonderful thing to behold, so I shall just have to keep thinking of ways to keep up.

How I used my book titles to create a strong author brand

I write two separate series of detective, mystery novels. When I set out to pen the second series, featuring my new main character; Scottish policewoman DCI Dani Bevan, I wanted all the titles of the books to share a common feature.

This decision wasn’t pre-planned. When I make a choice about my next title it is usually quite early on in the planning process. The title helps me to formulate and develop the storyline. I need to have it in my head as I write. With the Dani Bevan books, I knew that the first instalment was going to be called ‘Against A Dark Sky’ because I wanted to create the image of a mountain set against a dark, stormy background in the reader’s imagination. The plot revolves around a suspicious death which takes place on Ben Lomond, when the weather turns bad without warning during a hiking expedition.

Once I had this first title fixed, I was keen that all of Dani’s subsequent cases should follow a similar theme and that the ‘dark’ element should be retained in each new book. ‘On A Dark Sea’ was the follow-up novel. The title was a natural progression from the planning phase as the story begins with a young woman’s perilous journey across dangerous seas at night, in a small fishing boat.

The other titles then flowed quite naturally as the series continued. ‘A Dark Shadow Falls’, ‘Dark As Night’ and ‘The Dark Fear’ were the books which followed.

I didn’t really realise at the time, but by creating this ‘dark’ series of books, I was building a kind of title-based brand for the Dani Bevan novels. Because of the nature of the titles, it was clear to my readership whether they would be getting an Imogen and Hugh Croft Mystery or a DCI Dani Bevan police procedural. I’m an avid reader of crime novels myself and I like to know exactly what I’m getting from a book. An author’s brand plays an important part in re-enforcing this and making the genre clear to consumers.

My Dani Bevan books are slightly different from the Imogen and Hughs – they are ‘darker’ and although containing humour, they are more brutal in subject matter than their sister series. The titles reflect this perfectly and help to formulate the brand.

The next book in the DCI Dani Bevan collection already has a working title; ‘Girls Of The Dark’, which I am hoping to be able to release before Christmas.

So, if you are looking to establish a strong author brand, you would do well to consider the title of the book itself, which can be a very powerful tool for conveying just exactly what your series wants to say.

The change of season can give you ideas to kick start your writing.

I should really be concentrating on promotion. I’ve just released my eleventh novel, The Dark Fear. I’m still excited about its completion, don’t get me wrong, but the change in the season, as we slip from late summer into autumn, is giving me ideas. I’m sure it’s the same for all those who make their living in the creative sector. We need to follow inspiration from wherever it comes and at certain times of the year, it comes more readily than at others.

For me, the shortening of the days and the turning of the leaves from green to gold, encourages me to shift the tone of my stories slightly. For a mystery writer, the season in which you work has great significance. Summer suspense is full of the intensity created by long, hot days and characters throwing off the shackles of work. Winter perhaps lends itself best to the thriller author, providing the backdrop of dour weather and dark evenings. But to me, autumn is the preferable season. The landscape changes significantly; bonfires are lit and the temperature drops, so that the heavy boots and jackets come out. But it doesn’t have the stark bareness of mid-winter.

My plots change accordingly and I am finding that a new story is forcing its way into my mind. I wouldn’t wish to lose this moment of inspiration, so I will follow my urge to get back to the wordprocessor. They say that the most effective promotion is to keep writing more books. Lets hope that’s true, because it’s the part of the job I really enjoy the most. I will take the excuse given by the change of season to allow me to get back to it.

What do you do when your conscience comes calling? Review: An Inspector Calls.

I approached the BBC1’s adaptation of JB Priestley’s haunting drama An Inspector Calls with some trepidation. It is well trodden territory for TV and radio producers and the text studied by pretty much every schoolchild in Britain.

However, the assured performances of Ken Stott, Miranda Richardson and David Thewlis soon had me hooked. It’s so long since I have read the play that I couldn’t make any comment upon accuracy, which I suspect was a blessing.

All the twists and turns were there and the clever clues that make Priestley’s work a proper detective mystery. But what struck me most was the unnerving aptness of the story’s message. Priestley’s play, set in 1912, on the eve of the apocalyptic First World War, is an allegorical tale of the risks we run when we ignore our responsibility to others.

The Birling family are confronted with their own failings in respect to their treatment of a poor young woman, Eva Smith. The unpleasant realities of her predicaments are transported into the Birling’s comfortable drawing room by way of the mysterious and all-knowing Inspector Goole.

Thankfully, the production is subtle and doesn’t lay on the spookiness with a trowel. The real suspense and chills are caused by the powerful script itself. But what really lingers in the mind, long after the Inspector has gone, is the striking modern parallels.

In recent weeks, we have found the humanitarian crises of the wider world invading our own parlours. This production certainly made me consider how well I would fare if my conscience were to call uninvited.

The play is a classic, largely because the story is still relevant today.

The mark of a truly great piece of detective fiction.

Well and truly pranked by my ten year old daughter…

I had to share this document with you, as it really took me by surprise.

I’m concentrating on writing my new book at the moment, the weather being not so great, and the kids have been entertaining themselves reasonably well. After a brief period of absolute quiet (which should have immediately alerted my suspicions) my daughter called me downstairs. She wanted me to read a letter. It had just been sent to all subscribers to the Jacqueline Wilson magazine, and had been received by e-mail.

This sounded entirely plausible to me, I was fresh from the keyboard and not really fully ‘switched on’ yet. My daughter got the subscription from one set of grandparents for her tenth birthday. She is a massive fan of Jacqueline Wilson’s books and has read them all (some of them many times over). I have to admit, that I had very nearly reached the end of the letter before I realised I’d been pranked. Apologies to Jacqueline Wilson, no offence was intended, but I was so taken aback by my daughter’s insight into the doubts and thought processes of an author that I really wanted to share it with you, especially fellow writers.

(Beware, none of the following information is actually true. It comes simply from the fertile imagination of a ten year old girl…)

Dear Everyone,

I do admit I’m having trouble keeping my head bent over Little Stars. Hetty is very stubborn and sometimes I wish she was nice and charming and everybody loves her. Sadly, in this book not everybody does, and I pull a thunder face at my detailed planning jotter. But, I guess Victorian Britain couldn’t always be fancy, and some people were stuck on the kerb, with only a few pennies as a day’s wage. I have never actually written a perfect story, though I get millions of fan letters. Every book that gets published is very popular, but somehow halfway through something goes wrong, and I stop typing in disgust trying to pick up the error. My daughter Emma often comes round to check on my current work. She sometimes spots the odd spelling mistake, or full stop in the wrong place. But overall everything goes well, and Emma sips her coffee always satisfied. Not every book I write makes it to the shelves. I wrote an a hundred page book called ‘Boomerang’. It was about an orphan who travelled across the world to a foster family in Australia, and their dog is wonderful. But, then the family decide to stop fostering and the orphan is sent back to England and is left on the street by an unkind man. Luckily, he gets adopted by kindly street urchins and there’s a curtain ending. I thought it would sell well, and was even working on a sequel, but there was a big tussle with the editors, and they worried it would make children paranoid. So I reluctantly tossed that idea aside. Now Little Stars is finished I’m planning a book called ‘Bullpup’ it’s meant to be about a rather ideally large boy, who gets a bulldog for Christmas, and loves it. I haven’t quite yet figured out the rest, but by plan it causes a lot of trouble… Don’t let me get too into it!

They’re thinking of making Katy into a TV series, but judging by the progress it’s going to take several months to film. They’re thinking of making Lana West Katy, but right now she’s in Bolivia and they figure it would take way too long to sort out. The BBC broadcasting team are letting CBBC know they need to keep a space open for a new show, most likely coming out at Christmas time! Christmas is so magical, last year I got a brand new ruby ring that cost a fortune from Rachel my co-editor and a handmade festive jumper from Nick Sharratt. I love buying gifts for people too. One lovely, charming fan sent me a typed up tribute to Lola Rose one of my most popular books. I sent her a free copy of my latest annual and a hand written thank you letter. I love all my fans, and don’t feel bad if you don’t get a reply from me, I’m probably too busy writing! I send these little emails onto Word Document every now and then, for those kind enough to subscribe to my magazine. In the current issue there’s a fun little quiz, where you can find out if you’re more modern, or more Victorian. I took the test, and frankly I couldn’t decide. Thank you for stopping and reading my little message to all my dear fans. I’ll try to write another letter when I have the time.

Best wishes, Jaqueline Wilson xxx

Want to encourage the creative urge in your kids? Embrace your own.

When I was about three years old and my sister five, our dad, a bank manager who commuted to his London office each day, decided to re-decorate our suburban, three bedroomed semi-detached house in Essex.

In the process of this fairly mundane and entirely unremarkable task, he decided, almost inexplicably, to create a colourful painted mural up the stairs.

At the time, I thought this creation was wonderful, and something that everyone’s dad did. It perhaps took me until I had my own children to realise that it really wasn’t.

I’ve been decorating the upstairs bathroom myself this past week and although I have created murals in my children’s bedrooms at various points, I’m just not brave enough to do it elsewhere in the house. But I wholeheartedly wish I was.

Nothing appeals to children more than the feeling that their world of imagination and fun can spill over into the serious, sterile universe of the grown-ups. I can still remember that picture snaking up the twisting staircase, with perfect clarity. There were green hills, blue skies and white fluffy clouds. I’ve no idea if it was any good in an artistic sense (sorry Dad) but to my younger self this really didn’t matter. It was magical.

My sister is now a rather wonderful artist herself and I write novels. We have both embraced the idea that it’s perfectly acceptable to explore your imagination and follow it to wherever it wants to go.

Does this tendency have anything to do with that mural my father painted for us over 35 years ago? Well, I can’t prove it, but I definitely think it might have. In which case, maybe I should really consider making a similar gesture to my own children.

Because how can we expect our offspring to show their creative side if we are never prepared to reveal ours?

Writing a ghost story

kathpathak:

The process behind the sixth novel in the Imogen and Hugh Croft Mysteries series.

Originally posted on The RetroReview:

Having written seven novels in two different crime series, I was ready to try something new. I have always enjoyed atmospheric ghost stories, especially those with a historical element to them, so I decided to attempt something similar in my new book.

At first, I decided to make it a standalone, set in my native north Essex and in a boarding school similar to the one in which my husband works and where I used to teach. But as I began the planning phase, I realised that the story would fit very well with my husband and wife sleuths Imogen and Hugh Croft. So I devised the idea of creating a ‘story within a story’, so that Imogen could be told about events from the past and then investigate them in the present day. To this end, the book is separated into two distinct parts.
This format was also used…

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