Laurie Graham's Blog, page 4

Notes from London

I emerged from self-imposed quarantine after one week. No-one at Gatwick Airport seemed remotely interested in where I was going or who I’d be seeing, so last Monday I laced up my walking shoes and started a daily habit of wandering the empty streets of London. The Square Mile of the City is one of my favourite haunts, not least for the names of its streets. Garlick Hill, Pudding Lane, Bread Street. The building that looks like a pink, stripey Edwardian dessert is No 1, Poultry. A fabulous address, I think you’ll agree.

Look, though. No traffic. Almost everything here is dark and shuttered. My current bedtime reading, which at 880 pages also serves as a workout for my biceps, is Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light, so I’d have liked to revisit the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula where Thomas Cromwell is buried, along with many who preceded him to the scaffold. But, like everything else, the Tower of London is closed. Maybe things will loosen up in December.

For me walking is the best ever brain-recharger. This morning as I passed HMS Belfast (closed to the public until further notice, natch) I heard the voice of Dr Dan resuming his story. He was quite insistent. So, tomorrow, I may begin the task of playing God. Who will survive in Book 4 and who is for the chop? To be decided. But that’ll be after I’ve walked to Postman’s Park.

 

 

 

 

 

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Exits, Carrying Mop and Bucket

The eve of departure and how am I spending it? Cleaning my flat. For some reason I’ve never worked out, I feel I must leave the place in sparkling good order. Is it a vestige of the old days when getting on a plane seemed momentous and risky? The subtext being, I might not make it back and I don’t want people at my funeral saying, “you should have seen the state of her tea towels.”

My youngest daughter, whose tea towels always look immaculate, pointed out that at the end of a trip it’s nice to come home to a clean and tidy house. So there’s that.

I think there maybe something deeper at work and no doubt someone has written a PhD thesis on it, but anyway, my flat is spruced, my bag is packed and I’m making a run for it before Boris locks the gates. Apparently I’m not required to quarantine myself when I get to London because I’ll be arriving from Ireland. To which I can only say, ‘hunh?’

But I will isolate for a week or two. It seems only polite. And it’ll be a good opportunity to commune with Dr Dan and see how he feels about a Book 4.

 

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The Arithmetic of Reviews

I read my Amazon reviews peeping anxiously through my fingers, which is a dumb thing to do. I could just not read them but that, as any writer will tell you, is easier said than adhered to. You know they’re out there, lying in wait.

A bad review is like someone tipping a bucket of icy water over you. Furthermore, a bad review is not cancelled out by a good one. The arithmetic of reviews is, it takes about five complimentary ones to ease the pain of a stinker. It’s human nature. We write to entertain. We certainly don’t do it for the money.

Occasionally I’m asked to review someone else’s work and my rule is, if I can’t say something nice, I won’t say anything at all. Books are a matter of taste. There is no gold standard and there are people who think even War & Peace might have benefited from a good edit.

All this is leading to the admission that I dared to look on Amazon this morning and found I already had some 5 star reviews. I’m going to put them in the bank, against the day someone gives me no stars and a Bronx cheer. Thank you very much indeed, reviewers, whoever you are.

 

 

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Coming Soon!

And so…. we’re finally there. The paperback of Dr Dan Moves On should be on sale by the end of next week. The Kindle edition is available to pre-order and will be released on October 30th.

If you buy a copy, I thank you very much. If you read it, enjoy it and post a review on Amazon, my cup runneth over. Just one thing: please, no spoilers. Most readers prefer to find out what happens for themselves.

So now what? As usual I’m suffering from empty desk syndrome. My writing routine kept me as sane as was possible during the past few months. I’m missing it already, but I know I need to take a break. All work and no play soon turns a person into a bore. I’m going to defy C***d and travel a little, get out my neglected sketchbook, read some of the books I’ve bought in moments of whimsy and generally catch up on normal life. This week’s tasks are, 1. to make a Tarte Tatin and turn it out of its tin without any of it landing on the floor and, 2. to reverse engineer a pair of silk trousers my Mum bought in India nearly 40 years ago and try to recreate them. There may be rude words uttered.

Then I have some thinking to do. Will there be another Dr Dan book? I hope so, but it very much depends on reactions to Book 3. If the feedback is good, there’s plenty more where that came from. But there are also other possibilities, book proposals which my erstwhile publishers, over the years, didn’t fancy. Maybe I’ll write one of those as well. Nobody to stop me now!

 

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Revealing All

Here he is. Dr Dan Mark III.

After a few days of slightly more competent formatting and one sleepless night when I couldn’t figure out, ay ay ay, why the margins were in a mess, I now have just one more hurdle to clear: to get hold of a printed proof copy and check it, page by page. The printing happens in Poland so it’ll be a week at least until the postie delivers. A whole week in which to clean my desk, get out my winter clothes and lie on a couch eating chocolate, I mean, file my accounts.

My copy editor, the only other person to have read it so far, loved the book and she is a woman of taste. This has encouraged me. It will be a two-book year thanks to the efficiency of self-publishing, so two cheers for the all those big-daddy publishing houses who said, ‘Get thee to a scrap heap, Laurie Graham.’

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Locked Down, Locked Out, Still Standing

The news this morning, half an hour before I set off to church, was that we’re locked down again in Dublin. No church for the foreseeable, not even for a small congregation of sensible, considerate people. Meanwhile, the Millennials continue to give the finger to laws, directives and polite requests. Perhaps a senior citizen rebellion is in the offing. I’m certainly ready to lace up my shoes and join one.

For those of you who, for reasons best known to yourselves, aren’t on my mailing list, here, The Bradshaws, is the most recently published Interview With.

And for those of you who enjoy a bit of journalism, here’s a link to a piece I have in the current issue of The Spectator.

Is this a full-service blog, or what?

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Step Away From the Book

I surfaced at 4 am. While answering a call of nature, my head was buzzing with a conversation between Dr Dan and someone called Andrew. Brought to semi-consciousness by a cold bathroom floor I thought, ‘Hang on. Who the heck is Andrew?’ Had I created a character, given him one line and then abandoned him to literary limbo?

By now I was back in bed but wide awake, with that horrible, lurchy feeling you get when you realise you’ve done something stupid or left undone something you really ought to have done. 4.10. Should I get up, make tea, turn on the laptop and do a search for Andrew? I came close.

Then I got it. I had dreamt the conversation, dreamt Andrew. He was the product of REM sleep and perhaps the Cashel Blue cheese I’d had for supper.

This is the first time ever that my fiction has invaded my sleep and I don’t regard it as a healthy development. Absent any opportunities to travel, schmooze or go shopping in Flying Tiger, I’ve been spending long, long hours on the first edit of Dan III. Perhaps too long. A warning voice said, ‘hands where we can see them and step away from the book, Laurie.’

Which is why, come Monday or maybe Tuesday, the manuscript is going to my copy editor and a fresh pair of eyes. It will be off my desk for a week or two. No more vexed dreams. And how I love those possessive pronouns. My designer, my copy editor. I depend on the kindness of friends, and with their help this self-publishing lark isn’t so tough after all.

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Hear Ye

Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. At 14.00 on this the 26th day of August in the year of our Lord 2020, I finished first draft of Dan III, hereinafter to be known as Dr Dan Moves On. Which means this is going to be a two-book year! Who’da thought. This evening I’ll mark the event by the anointing of ice with elderflower gin.

So now what?  Beyond getting out of bed, I have no plans until Monday when I face the uncomfortable task of reading the damned thing. The first two weeks of September are earmarked for editing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Then comes the business of formatting for print and Kindle, a job which, I’m happy to say, no longer intimidates me. Apparently an old dog can learn new tricks.

What else? Well, my bank manager would love it if I ended the recent drought and picked up a few journalism gigs, and I have a pencilled-in appointment to interview Ba and Bobs Bradshaw, last seen between the pages of The Dress Circle. Plenty to keep me busy, a state I’ve been grateful for during this strangest and toughest of years.

Coming next month: the new cover reveal. The excitement is unbearable. Almost.

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Not Averse to a Verse

In an attempt to make up for lost classroom time, there is talk in the UK of dropping the poetry element of English Literature in next year’s GCSE exams. Who knows, trigonometry may be next for the chop. The school curriculum has no shortage of subjects that can seem pointless to a 14 year old.

If something really has to be sacrificed, then the laboured analysis of poems  may be fair game. But please, not the exposure to them, not the recitation and memorisation of them. Poetry reaches the parts other literary forms do not. How poets create their poems is a thing of enviable mystery to me. I can knock out a haiku and given enough time I can manage a clerihew. But a poem that goes beautifully and economically to the heart of something?   Not a chance.

I don’t recall what poems I was required to study back in 1962. Some of them may be poems I can now, just about, recite by heart. It was much later though, in my 50s, when I caught the poetry bug. My husband was the carrier. Each month my challenge was to learn a new poem or a speech from Shakespeare. I retain remnants of them.  I can usually start, but quite often I can’t finish. Some of them I refreshed in more recent times, to recite to Howard and try to reach him after he lost the power of speech, and it was one of his favourite Christina Rossetti poems that I chose to read at his graveside.

I don’t analyse poems, so I’d probably score an F if I had to take an exam, nor do I seek them out. Somehow they arrive in my life. If they speak to me, I keep them. If not, not. So far this year (and it’s only August) I’ve discovered three widely published American poets whose names had been unknown to me: Ron Padgett; Paige Riehl; Faith Shearin.  I point you gently in their direction and offer you a sample of each. Poetry is a matter of taste. There will be no examination.

Don’t dismiss trigonometry, by the way. One day you may need to calculate how to fell a tree without demolishing your neighbour’s house. Just saying.

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Points of View

I have had many places of employment. Shops, cafes, offices. I once did a stint in a factory canteen, ladling out chips with everything. Like most students in the Sixties, I worked for the postal service during the Christmas rush, though I was deemed too small to carry a bag of mail and got a cushy job in a nice warm sorting office. I’ve worked Saturday jobs, night shifts, per diems and nine-to-fivers. But mainly I’ve been self-employed.

I started on a kitchen table adorned with my children’s Lego and orphaned plimsolls. There was just about room for my typewriter. Remember typewriters? Later I was able to carve out a small dedicated workspace for myself. It was in the basement of our then city centre house, so my view was of ankles and bike wheels.

In 1999 we moved to Venice, to a top floor apartment and my husband graciously allowed me first dibs at office space. I nabbed a bedroom with an en-suite loo and a view over the tiled rooftops towards the Giudecca. Visitors would say, ‘How inspiring this must be!’ Not really. I’m the kind of writer who lives mainly inside my own head. I can write pretty much anywhere (see above). But it was certainly a view that made me grateful: for the possibilities of self-employment and the freedom to live in such an extraordinary place.

Four and a half years ago, when we moved into this tiny flat, I earmarked the spare bedroom to be my office. It’s okay. It has a garden view with a cabbage palm and one of those nice Irish stone walls and I have never worked a day in there. Not an hour, even. I’m back at the kitchen table. You’ll understand why.

My view now is across Dublin Bay to Howth, which sometimes has its head in the clouds and often disappears entirely, shrouded in soft Irish rain. In the mornings there are fishing boats, sometimes attended by hopeful seals. Around the clock there are ferries shuttling between Dublin and Holyhead and Liverpool. On days when the writing is going badly I wish I was on one of them. On days when the sea gets big and fierce, I’m glad I’m not.

My commuting time is 30 seconds. I don’t have to spend eight hours a day under a buzzing neon light, nor do I have to wear a security pass on a lanyard and ask when I can go to lunch. For someone who never had a career plan, I’d say I am truly blessed.

 

 

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