Laurie Graham's Blog, page 20

Brief Interruption of Service

Shingles.  Yuck.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

And Then the Sun Came Out

    A funeral is never a good way to start the week but on Monday I had the pleasure of hearing my son’s beautifully written eulogy to his father. It was, by turns, poignant and hilarious and I’m slightly relieved that he’s too busy doing an important, proper job to compete with me for writing gigs. Take a bow, Alastair Graham. You had the old feller absolutely nailed.

And then…. the Man from Delmonte Publishing House, he say ‘Yes.’

The peanuts have been counted, terms have been agreed, I have a two-book contract.  The recent hiatus means there won’t be a new book in 2016, but that gives everyone all the more time to put their Laurie Graham Benevolent Fund pennies in a jar for early 2017.

I can’t tell you how ridiculously joyful I feel.

Going Dark

   A short post to pay tribute to David Graham who died yesterday. David was my husband for twenty years and the father of my four children. We did the whole thing, soup to nuts: young love, lean years, good times, bad times, divorce and, eventually, truce and friendship.  We found many ways to infuriate one another and by dying at the preposterously early age of 66 he has truly topped them all.

Not a great reader, David continued to buy and read my books without fail after our divorce. He always informed the bemused sales assistant in the bookshop of our relationship and he always told me when he thought he’d recognised a character. Well he did know where a lot of the bodies were buried.

Rest in peace, DFG. As a mark of respect this blog will now go dark until after the funeral.

Through the Crystal Ball

       Yes, I’m still unemployed.  I have never sweated so much over a book proposal. On bad days I feel my confidence dripping away and if there’s one thing a novelist needs in buckets it is self-belief. How else could you work completely solo for a year?  Other days I remind myself that vastly better writers than I have struggled to make a living.  Meanwhile I’m trying to keep myself occupied even if not gainfully. My kitchen floor has never been so clean.

 

On to cheerier things. Today, as you will know if you subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac, is the birthday of E C Bentley whose Trent’s Last Case is sitting, funnily enough, in my Amazon basket. Bentley is perhaps best known for his invention of the clerihew, so what more fitting way to honour his memory than to compose one myself. My very first clerihew.

 

Erika L James

Who writes about erotic games

Has proved that sex can pay.

Give me Fifty Sheds any day.

Okay, so I probably shouldn’t give up the day job. Oh, but wait. I don’t have a day job.

 

 

 

 

Playing God

I know you’re waiting with bated breath to know my next career move but prolonged breath-bating isn’t good for you (unless you have hiccups) so I thought I’d better give you an update. The story so far…. a few weeks ago my publisher thought the WWI story I’d pitched to them was a good plan. Then they decided it wasn’t. But they did think Caroline of Brunswick was a ripping idea and so even though there was no money on the table I started thinking about Caroline. She’s had a bad press. I rather liked the idea of rehabilitating her.

But suddenly Messrs Publisher & Co decided Caroline was a terrible idea. Actually, I think they decided that Laurie Graham writing about Caroline was a terrible idea.

‘Call yourself a historical novelist?’ they said. ‘Look at these sales figures, you miserable waste of paper.’

So here endeth my stint at historical fiction. I’m getting bumped back to the 20th century. Or maybe the 20th century counts as history now.

Moving along to Plan C, how do we feel about sequels? Not sequins. I love sequins. My only commercial success with fiction was The Future Homemakers of America. How about taking that story on a few more years? Sounds good to me.  Which is why I’m currently revisiting my old characters and playing God. Who lives, who dies, who fades from the scene unnoticed. I suppose playing God is what novelists do all the time, but this time it feels strangely personal.

Tune in same time next week. Who knows, by then they may be asking me for science fiction.

Vowel Problems

    There’s an interesting piece on The Writer’s Almanac today, the anniversary of the patenting of the first typewriter. Remember typewriters? My first one was given to me by my mother-in-law and was already so ancient that it required great physical strength to pound the keys and great resourcefulness to find replacement ribbons.

I never learned to touch type. Instead I developed a regrettable but very fast two finger technique. That typewriter was a thing of beauty, as was my old Singer sewing machine. Both gone. I wonder where?

Eventually I upgraded to an Olivetti that was being tossed by my husband’s office. I use the word ‘toss’ loosely. That machine was so heavy we had to reinforce the floors before bringing it into the house. I guess I wrote a couple of books on it. I must have had a substantial Tippex budget. And then suddenly there were personal computers, enormous humming machines that impoverished writers had to buy on easy terms. I don’t remember exactly when that was but I do remember it seemed like a very big deal. And my first email, well…. I knew how Thomas Edison must have felt.

I work on a laptop these days and I fear it is on its last legs. The e key kps failing, and the i and a cn’t b dpndd on. I do have a back-up laptop but I’m fond of ths old workhors. I don’t want to hav hr put down just yt. Just have to bash the keys harder.

No pressure anyway because I’m still unemployed. That and Vowel Failure. A person could lose the will to write.

 

Happy as Larry

Larry McMurtry, one of my most esteemed writers, is 79 today. There are  writers who are very full of themselves and indeed these days are encouraged to be  –  put yourself about, blow that trumpet  –  and then there are writers like Larry who never take themselves too seriously. My favourite McMurtry anecdote is the one about him wearing a sweatshirt printed with the legend MINOR REGIONAL NOVELIST. Happy Birthday, Larry.

But let me tell you how FADING MIDLIST SCRIBBLER spent yesterday afternoon. I had been checking page proofs, last chance saloon for catching typos, goofs, and frankly regrettable sentences. This year’s book, The Night in Question, features the Whitechapel Murders of 1888. Rather late in the day it occurred to me that readers might appreciate a little map to help them get their bearings. I put the suggestion to my publisher.

‘Unfortunately,’ they said, ‘we have no budget for a map.’

Then they said, ‘Can you draw one? And make it look Victorian?’

So suddenly I’m an illustrator? They’ll be asking me to hoover the offices next. They’ll be sending me out for coffees.

But it was raining, I was bored with page proofs and, you know, I thought why not have a go?  So I spent a happy afternoon drawing, redrawing, and pasting on tiny street names. The tools of my new trade: a Pritt stick and eyebrow tweezers. And though I say so myself my little map turned out rather well. If my damned scanner was working I’d show you, but it isn’t. It’s sitting beside me, sneering.

Now I’m wondering whether they have the slightest intention of using my map or was it a mischievous fob-off? Never mind. It was fun. Happy as Larry, I was.

 

What Would Agatha Say?

   So how do we feel about Sophie Hannah performing CPR on another writer’s character? I think Agatha Christie’s wishes were pretty clear when she killed off Hercule Poirot. He’s been in his grave for forty years as has Agatha and it seems to me an act of gross impertinence to dig him up. I realise Sophie Hannah is a hugely successful crime writer and I know the Agatha Christie Estate agreed to the Harper Collins project, but still. Not so much a case of flogging dead horses   –  Christie’s novels are still very popular  –  more a case of flogging stolen horses.

In the unlikely event of anyone robbing my literary grave I warn them now: I shall haunt you.

Meanwhile, back at the Job Centre… Yep, I’m still unemployed. But writing anyway. Well it keeps me off the streets. My, ahem, publishers invited me to their authors’ party though. Is that a good sign? Or is it a cruel trap?

‘Everyone who thinks they’re a valued adornment to this publishing house, tuck in. Not so fast, Laurie Graham. Do not move. Step away from the peanuts.’

What Mother Knows

It’s that time in my writing year when the manuscript comes back to me with bloopers and queries marked up by the copy editor. Copy editors are essential people in the publishing business. They catch howlers and misspellings, they patiently insert missing commas.  But sometimes they go a bit further and make stylistic suggestions and when they do that they cross my personal version of the yellow incident tape the police use to cordon off no-go areas. You can’t write a novel by committee. No-one tells me how my characters speak.

When I’ve spent eight months writing in First Person the voice of my narrator is as real and familiar to me as, say, my children’s voices. If someone else puts words in my character’s mouth they are very likely to get it wrong. Call me pernickety but even a single word dropped in by a usurper can scream ‘No! Never!’ because I’m Mother, and as we all know, Mother knows best.

So now the copy-edited text goes for typesetting, the designer has started work on the jacket, and we crawl a little closer to an October publication date.

In the meanwhile yes, I’m still unemployed, hopeful but by no means certain of getting another contract, but thank you anyway for asking.

A Hopey-Changey Post

     Thanks first to all those who sent messages of support/death threats to my publisher/offers of a long-term let of their garden shed. My book proposal, revamped because I refused to accept that it was totally crap, is being reconsidered and may yet live. But what with one thing and another I’m not likely to hear the news, good or bad, till mid-May.  So two more weeks of unpaid leave. What to do?

‘You could dust the top of that wardrobe,’ whispers the ghost of my dear departed Mum. Well yes. But I thought I’d begin by tackling the twenty seven books on the floor beside the bed.  My husband put his head round the door and asked what I was doing. I said, ‘There are going to be some long overdue changes in this room.’ He fled.

Books-to-read can be hard to account for. Some of mine must have seemed like a good idea at the time, some were recommendations, some were just things I felt I ought to read.  Three went straight in the bag for the charity shop, others may follow, perhaps after a speed-read. It can be hard to back down from a decision made and good money spent even if it was three years ago but I’m trying to approach this the same way I would the can of sardines (best before May 2015) that lurks in the kitchen cupboard. Use it/read it RIGHT NOW or pass it along. Let it gather dust beside someone else’s bed.

And speaking of passing things along, if you don’t know The Writer’s Almanac subscribe to it at once. It has an American bias but nonetheless, a poem in your inbox plus a bit of literary arcana is a very pleasant way to start the day. That and a bucket of black tea and I’m good for anything. Check out the posting for April 28th: Dan Albergotti’s Things to Do in the Belly of a Whale.