About Me
- Julia Bohanna
- Shortlisted Bath Short Story Award 2013 Runner-up Cinnamon Press Competition 2013 WNNER: Don Louth Writer of the Year (run by Reading Writers) WINNER: Bradt/Independent on Sunday Travel Writing Competition 2012. SHORTLISTED: Scott Prize (Salt Publishing) 2012 for a short story collection. Writer/ Journalist - assistant editor and writer for the art and books pages of Wolfprint. Most recently published in Independent on Sunday and short story anthologies: Sentinel Champions No 9, 100 Stories for Queensland, 50 Stories for Pakistan, 100 Stories for Haiti and From Hell to Eternity. In a recent writing competition, Joanne Harris described my writing as '...compelling (but quite creepy)'
Monday, 6 April 2009
The Searchers
Yesterday I fell apart at the seams - like a rag doll in the care of a wicked child – while watching John Ford’s The Searchers. My father died in 2005 and The Searchers was one of his favourite films. We had a difficult relationship with huge communication problems. But we both loved westerns and war films. We would settle in front of them in comfortable silence, knowing that we were both lost in the narrative, the action, that actorly magic. The Searchers is a very emotionally manipulative film, as well as being an ambitious attempt at explaining racism and the bonds that tie, or sometimes break us. It was based on novel that was based on true events, of a young girl taken by Commanche Indians. John Wayne gave one of the best performances of his life; he was always my father’s hero. In fact, my father, who often said very little and was inwardly strong – truly emulated him. Through The Searchers, we always experienced a surge of feeling and heartbreak that we never ever showed one another face-to-face. So that film will always be a floodgate. I cannot watch but I cannot turn away and oddly, through celluloid I mourn him. But I also bear in mind the power of genetics and my father had once told me that as a young man, he had loved to make up stories. So maybe that's where my need comes for writing.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Today I will be....
Birthdays should be all about whimsy and be defiantly egocentric. After all, it is one day – one day only – to celebrate your slippery entry into the world. So in the spirit of all things whimsical and willful, I like to imagine having a different life on every birthday, no matter how absurd or mercurial. For this one, I would like to be a mudlarker. Originally a job – considered one of the worst jobs – for the very poor….mudlarking is really all about scavenging in the chocolate mud that skirts the dimpled brown water of the Thames. For treasure of course but then treasure is a subjective term – there are many wonderful objects that the Thames regularly belches out onto the pebbled shores: fragments of pottery, clay pipes, horses’ teeth. You now have to have a licence and report all finds to a recognized museum but now, the Mudlarking Society has numerous enthusiasts who don wellies and gloves to lose themselves in the looking. What joy, for time to slip away and to find history to casually secreted…..
'Sometimes they would throw a sixpence into the river, where the water was about two feet deep, to make us wet ourselves through in groping for it. Indeed, they were very generous when they wished to be amused; and every kind of offer was made to them which we thought suited to their tastes, or likely to extract money from their pockets.'
"Dip my head in the mud for sixpence, sir!" one of us would cry out; and then he would be outbid by another."Roll myself all over and over in the mud, face and all, sir - only give me sixpence!"
Next year, a different incarnation.
'Sometimes they would throw a sixpence into the river, where the water was about two feet deep, to make us wet ourselves through in groping for it. Indeed, they were very generous when they wished to be amused; and every kind of offer was made to them which we thought suited to their tastes, or likely to extract money from their pockets.'
"Dip my head in the mud for sixpence, sir!" one of us would cry out; and then he would be outbid by another."Roll myself all over and over in the mud, face and all, sir - only give me sixpence!"
Next year, a different incarnation.
Monday, 2 February 2009
I have found my inner child.....
.....while crafting a snowman in the garden. Dishes piled in the sink, other monotonous jobs pushed from my mind. Packing snow with very cold fingers..three rather snow-phobic chickens at my ankles looking for grass and the odd frozen worm. They puzzled as this big white thing developing before them, especially Desdemona who has a particularly fear of all things white, including one of the other chickens, who she pecks regularly to keep her in place or perhaps to persuade herself that this girl is not a ghost, a phantom, a threat.
I shaped some boots for my man, because they never seem to have them. Usually snowmen erupt from the ground like fingers in a glove. I made these boots smooth, oh so very smooth. Handcrafted. Italian. The snow has to the packed so very tight, because I want him to be the last thing to melt when all the rest has dissolved to slush. Up up up he goes, spindly at first and then fatter. Bits of stone, grass and slate, speckling him so that he is not a plain creature, like an overweight aunt in Austen.
The snow is still falling and I have to catch some on my tongue, where it dissolves like sugar.
I have no idea of time as I work - it is like the best writing session, the ones where the flow is everything and the pleasure of watching something grow is organic, not laboured.
At the end I have a man. Controlled and created by me. Vulnerable to my destruction. The chickens stand back and cluck in some alarm, then run back into their enclosed pen where the man won't see them. But there he sits: comic, ridiculous in his awkward beauty.
If only a novel was a series of snowmen; each one a chapter - but with more complexity of course. For now though, I'll go with simplicity. The glow you get from building a snowman is like no other - it bridges the gap between the happy past and more difficult present.
Pure joy.
I shaped some boots for my man, because they never seem to have them. Usually snowmen erupt from the ground like fingers in a glove. I made these boots smooth, oh so very smooth. Handcrafted. Italian. The snow has to the packed so very tight, because I want him to be the last thing to melt when all the rest has dissolved to slush. Up up up he goes, spindly at first and then fatter. Bits of stone, grass and slate, speckling him so that he is not a plain creature, like an overweight aunt in Austen.
The snow is still falling and I have to catch some on my tongue, where it dissolves like sugar.
I have no idea of time as I work - it is like the best writing session, the ones where the flow is everything and the pleasure of watching something grow is organic, not laboured.
At the end I have a man. Controlled and created by me. Vulnerable to my destruction. The chickens stand back and cluck in some alarm, then run back into their enclosed pen where the man won't see them. But there he sits: comic, ridiculous in his awkward beauty.
If only a novel was a series of snowmen; each one a chapter - but with more complexity of course. For now though, I'll go with simplicity. The glow you get from building a snowman is like no other - it bridges the gap between the happy past and more difficult present.
Pure joy.
Friday, 28 November 2008
Blackbird
Yesterday, I heard screams and flapping from the garden – an animal in pain – so I rushed out. In a haze of brown downy feathers and dead leaves from the tree where the attack took place, I had a vague sense of a large bird flying away. It was possibly a red kite. A small male blackbird fell at my feet and lay there panting, his displaced milk chocolate coloured feathers followed down and curled up around his body. Their beaks are so bright. I could see no blood and thought it best not to pick him up, as he was already traumatised. I just stood over him and talked softly, until gradually he stopped the panting, ran out through the iron gate, up onto the fence and away.
It made me think though, about the percentage of victim and bully/predator/confident being in all of us, how it differs with life experience, moods and attitude. I have met a lot of supremely confident red kites – soaring through life being admired by all. There have been sparrow hawks too, who bide their time but get what they want eventually…but only the odd gentle blackbird. Ummm…. Maybe we are all blackbirds inside, just hoping that no-one will spot the deception and hurt us.
I wasn’t a victim exactly but neither did I feel entirely in control on the Henry Kelly Radio Show on Radio Berkshire yesterday. Radio is an odd medium and presenters are a little like drug addicts: they become extremely twitchy if there is dead air…they need a fix of the human voice to feed that habit. Nodding my head is not the way to convey ‘yes’ and so I ended up saying ‘Absolutely’ and sounded as if I should have a hockey stick and small pony. It was primarily to publicise the book The Map of Me but also to try and come up with intelligent comments about the experience of being mixed race. But suddenly I felt very exposed, having to take about me. No hiding behind characters and their fictional motivations……I felt naked. Not in a good way. My mother-in-law listened and told me I sound articulated. Now that is a new one.
Brief interviews with The Map of Me authors:
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141038926,00.html
It has been a good week in all though, with a few writerly things such as the radio broadcast and then a few other treats to boost confidence:
I have been shortlisted for The Asham Award this week. I have been shortlisted before, so my excitement is a little tamer this time. It’s still good. Now I send on my story for judging…results of the final twelve in February. It’s a big competition in terms of stature this one and there were 799 entries. To be published alongside Margaret Atwood – that’s something to fantasise about over Christmas.
I wrote six flashes for a wonderfully intense writing session on The Workhouse this week. The quality of all the writing (108 stories in total) was superb and reminded me why it's so life-affirming to hang out there so much. I’m proud to be in that company and am still learning what makes writing literary, resonant, publishable.
I am now visiting a lovely old lady of 86, who was a nurse during World War II and is feisty and fascinating. I love her company, her refusal to be taken for a fool and the stories she has to tell. She also has enormous compassion and insight. She also told me I was very pretty but admittedly her eyesight is very poor.
In early December I get to go to the book launch party at Penguin. I am very interested in meeting the other writers; their stories were impressive, elegiac, emotional.
So I will subdue my inner blackbird for now – that fluttering sense of potential failure and rejection that all writers carry in their hearts – to pursue this funny life of scribbling and making things up, being greedy enough to live several lives in a day.
It made me think though, about the percentage of victim and bully/predator/confident being in all of us, how it differs with life experience, moods and attitude. I have met a lot of supremely confident red kites – soaring through life being admired by all. There have been sparrow hawks too, who bide their time but get what they want eventually…but only the odd gentle blackbird. Ummm…. Maybe we are all blackbirds inside, just hoping that no-one will spot the deception and hurt us.
I wasn’t a victim exactly but neither did I feel entirely in control on the Henry Kelly Radio Show on Radio Berkshire yesterday. Radio is an odd medium and presenters are a little like drug addicts: they become extremely twitchy if there is dead air…they need a fix of the human voice to feed that habit. Nodding my head is not the way to convey ‘yes’ and so I ended up saying ‘Absolutely’ and sounded as if I should have a hockey stick and small pony. It was primarily to publicise the book The Map of Me but also to try and come up with intelligent comments about the experience of being mixed race. But suddenly I felt very exposed, having to take about me. No hiding behind characters and their fictional motivations……I felt naked. Not in a good way. My mother-in-law listened and told me I sound articulated. Now that is a new one.
Brief interviews with The Map of Me authors:
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141038926,00.html
It has been a good week in all though, with a few writerly things such as the radio broadcast and then a few other treats to boost confidence:
I have been shortlisted for The Asham Award this week. I have been shortlisted before, so my excitement is a little tamer this time. It’s still good. Now I send on my story for judging…results of the final twelve in February. It’s a big competition in terms of stature this one and there were 799 entries. To be published alongside Margaret Atwood – that’s something to fantasise about over Christmas.
I wrote six flashes for a wonderfully intense writing session on The Workhouse this week. The quality of all the writing (108 stories in total) was superb and reminded me why it's so life-affirming to hang out there so much. I’m proud to be in that company and am still learning what makes writing literary, resonant, publishable.
I am now visiting a lovely old lady of 86, who was a nurse during World War II and is feisty and fascinating. I love her company, her refusal to be taken for a fool and the stories she has to tell. She also has enormous compassion and insight. She also told me I was very pretty but admittedly her eyesight is very poor.
In early December I get to go to the book launch party at Penguin. I am very interested in meeting the other writers; their stories were impressive, elegiac, emotional.
So I will subdue my inner blackbird for now – that fluttering sense of potential failure and rejection that all writers carry in their hearts – to pursue this funny life of scribbling and making things up, being greedy enough to live several lives in a day.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Grasshopper?
Can I fall any lower? I have been stood up by a Buddhist monk. Finally I found The Priory, which was a humble detached house with only a small statue of Buddha outside to signal its purpose. For some ridiculous reason I was expecting something exotic…with gold leaf…which flies in the face of Buddhist humility. Then I rang the bell, while staring at a grasshopper that sat with its feet splayed on the window. I had been trying not to think grasshopper, as it is a cruel cliché from the old Kung Fu films, where the monk with the opaque eyes calls the seeker of truth ‘Grasshopper.’ Tried not to giggle and rang the bell again. Again. Rapped the door. It was hot and I was getting cross. Goddammit, where was this man who was to help me with my anger? Bloody hell, has he forgotten? Why can’t he hear me!
I went home very angry and it then only dawned on me the irony of being furious that a man who was to help me meditate and control my anger, had made me angrier. I also put a note through his door and my other half was frightened about what I might have said. He knows that I have a feisty soul, flashes of my mother’s shrewish temper. How could he think that I would be rude, whatever the provocation, to a gentle monk?
It transpires (by email) that the monk was in the back garden and had not heard me (what was he doing – nude sunbathing, painting his gnomes?) Oh well, universe – life was buggered up again.
Onward. Mary Stott prize to enter. Book review and interview for Wolfprint. 5,000 words left for my 10,000 novel pledge. Bought a new copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ yearbook. After all, my other one is 2006 – editors have moved/died/gone insane. I once picked up an American equivalent and sat laughing at the extent of specialist magazines. Lesbian Biker Chicks on Acid who Knit – that sort of thing. Ours, with its Horse and Hound and Dogs Today, is so much more tame.
It’s a shame really.
I went home very angry and it then only dawned on me the irony of being furious that a man who was to help me meditate and control my anger, had made me angrier. I also put a note through his door and my other half was frightened about what I might have said. He knows that I have a feisty soul, flashes of my mother’s shrewish temper. How could he think that I would be rude, whatever the provocation, to a gentle monk?
It transpires (by email) that the monk was in the back garden and had not heard me (what was he doing – nude sunbathing, painting his gnomes?) Oh well, universe – life was buggered up again.
Onward. Mary Stott prize to enter. Book review and interview for Wolfprint. 5,000 words left for my 10,000 novel pledge. Bought a new copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ yearbook. After all, my other one is 2006 – editors have moved/died/gone insane. I once picked up an American equivalent and sat laughing at the extent of specialist magazines. Lesbian Biker Chicks on Acid who Knit – that sort of thing. Ours, with its Horse and Hound and Dogs Today, is so much more tame.
It’s a shame really.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
The Future's Bright - But Is It Orange?
On Saturday, I have a date with a Buddhist monk. Shaved heads and acid orange. Yum. Well perhaps not strictly a date – more a search for spiritual solace. Not religion though – I don’t want the whole package. I did consider a Catholic priest – as Catholicism is my default setting and I did go to school with nuns – but no. Meeting up with a priest of that persuasion is like having dinner with a second hand car salesman. Eventually, they try and flog you something. Buddhism simply contains beliefs that largely correspond with my own but more importantly, they give guidelines to coping. Especially with anger. At present I have lots of that emotion; I am overflowing with it. Anger at loss. Anger at not achieving enough. Anger at exhaustion. You get the picture.
So back to the monk. I used to meditate, which had a wonderful calming effect on my impatient, twitchy personality. I want to learn that again, to learn how to centre myself again. As a child I was a very gentle daffy sort, who liked nothing better than counting stones in the garden, or adoring animals to the point of worship. That back please, or at least a little pocket of it that can be held at the core, to counteract all the crap of modern life.
So that is step 1 for returning normal service – essential for everyone around me who is endlessly patient and loving, namely my family. It’s selfish to be so indulgent (Buddha, he say NO to selfishness - apparently)
Step 2 is to help others – to life coach a writer friend who is suffering literary angst of the most critical kind. I have set aside a day to bring her back to a good place. How easy it is to give advice, whatever mess you are in yourself. Also, I have joined a Good Neighbour Club that visits lonely people. I love older people (after all, we are all old people in training) and also their stories. I was dithering about it but I was then invited to a party for all the Good Neighbour Volunteers to meet. Free cake! Tea! They knew how to entice this greedy slattern. But what are a few hours a week? It’s injustice that anyone is lonely in a society with billions of people, all talking to themselves (allegedly into their phones) or clutching fucking Blackberries (I like a good crumble myself.) When I was cat-hunting (no spears, honestly) I found aching loneliness in people, that desperate need to make contact. Every day for example, an old lady with an ancient dog crosses the road to my house and reads my Lost Cat notice. Every day. Then she wipes away a tear, pats her dog and stumbles on. Then I wipe away a tear at her wiping away a tear and awash I am with sentimentality. I can barely hold down my Special Brew. (I’m kidding – I have not succumbed to the demons of drink. I did have a packet of……..crisps though yesterday. I half expected Jamie Oliver to helicopter in with a megaphone, to hear that over-sized tongue announce my betrayal to good food in that cheeky mockney voice.)
Where was I….step 3…bloody hell…I have pledged to two writers friends that I will write 10,000 words of a novel by November 7th. I am also writing fillers, articles etc so quickly that my fingers leave steam on the keyboard. Zipped one off to The Guardian yesterday and now am about to write one for The Sunday Times. I have had a few already in the latter some time ago and they pay £200 for what is to me about half an hours work. Ker-ching. I also entered The Asham Award and for once, I was truly proud of my story. Not that I pretend brilliance or perfection – but that I absolutely felt in the skin of my characters. So much so that I had sensory delusions. It was set in India and I could smell it, feel the heat. Wonderful – like being actor.
Step 4 – to return to the bosom of The Workhouse to post a story and get back into a wonderful community. Also to critique…an important skill.
So there it is. Hope in the darkness.
So back to the monk. I used to meditate, which had a wonderful calming effect on my impatient, twitchy personality. I want to learn that again, to learn how to centre myself again. As a child I was a very gentle daffy sort, who liked nothing better than counting stones in the garden, or adoring animals to the point of worship. That back please, or at least a little pocket of it that can be held at the core, to counteract all the crap of modern life.
So that is step 1 for returning normal service – essential for everyone around me who is endlessly patient and loving, namely my family. It’s selfish to be so indulgent (Buddha, he say NO to selfishness - apparently)
Step 2 is to help others – to life coach a writer friend who is suffering literary angst of the most critical kind. I have set aside a day to bring her back to a good place. How easy it is to give advice, whatever mess you are in yourself. Also, I have joined a Good Neighbour Club that visits lonely people. I love older people (after all, we are all old people in training) and also their stories. I was dithering about it but I was then invited to a party for all the Good Neighbour Volunteers to meet. Free cake! Tea! They knew how to entice this greedy slattern. But what are a few hours a week? It’s injustice that anyone is lonely in a society with billions of people, all talking to themselves (allegedly into their phones) or clutching fucking Blackberries (I like a good crumble myself.) When I was cat-hunting (no spears, honestly) I found aching loneliness in people, that desperate need to make contact. Every day for example, an old lady with an ancient dog crosses the road to my house and reads my Lost Cat notice. Every day. Then she wipes away a tear, pats her dog and stumbles on. Then I wipe away a tear at her wiping away a tear and awash I am with sentimentality. I can barely hold down my Special Brew. (I’m kidding – I have not succumbed to the demons of drink. I did have a packet of……..crisps though yesterday. I half expected Jamie Oliver to helicopter in with a megaphone, to hear that over-sized tongue announce my betrayal to good food in that cheeky mockney voice.)
Where was I….step 3…bloody hell…I have pledged to two writers friends that I will write 10,000 words of a novel by November 7th. I am also writing fillers, articles etc so quickly that my fingers leave steam on the keyboard. Zipped one off to The Guardian yesterday and now am about to write one for The Sunday Times. I have had a few already in the latter some time ago and they pay £200 for what is to me about half an hours work. Ker-ching. I also entered The Asham Award and for once, I was truly proud of my story. Not that I pretend brilliance or perfection – but that I absolutely felt in the skin of my characters. So much so that I had sensory delusions. It was set in India and I could smell it, feel the heat. Wonderful – like being actor.
Step 4 – to return to the bosom of The Workhouse to post a story and get back into a wonderful community. Also to critique…an important skill.
So there it is. Hope in the darkness.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
A Trilogy of Inspiration
I have had three days brain-deep in all things literary. A distraction that came when sadness was weighting me down, for many reasons. I was safe in the company of writers at Litcamp: the fragrant Vanessa Gebbie, the truly lovely Alison, incomparable Sara (of Asalted), gorgeous Kerry……. Litcamp made me feel like a professional, a contender. I was cheered by an ‘excellent’ verdict from Steve of Willesden blog infamy on a short story of mine. My god, I needed that. I needed it all….even the daft and the delusional at the event who made me giggle. Including someone who thought that if their mother told them their book was fab, that was all they need to continue. Ahem.
My head full of books and the infinite possibilities of language, I also attended two days of the Reading Crime Festival – a first for Reading and initiated and run by the borough librarians. It began with a writers’ workshop with Cath Stanicliffe, where my daughter (aged 11) rather surprised a roomful of adults by conjuring up her own method of murder: stuffing snow down someone’s throat. I may have to sleep with one eye open from now on. Bless her gothic soul. The day continued: literary discussions, writers explaining their craft, a talk on the role for coroner….all very juicy. There was very much an old tale repeatedly told by the male (usually bearded) writers: ‘I had a good lunch with an agent/publisher and then later had several films made of my books………’ To the aspiring crime writers there it sounded wonderful, easy. It took Frances Fyfield to be honest and admit that it was ‘Easier in my day…it is hard for people to get published now…it is a different business.’ A friend of mine, after a particularly turgid reading from one of the crime writers, was tempted to ask him if he thought that he would get published nowadays. I stopped her…it was a little too blunt, even if true. Fyfield at least could see beyond her own accomplished world and realise the current market.
There is also a great friendship between some crime writers. Bored, Fyfield rang up Val McDermid one morning to ask her what she was doing. (I love that image) ‘I’m bleaching spoons,’ she was told. Increasingly Fyfield’s honesty was so fresh….she hates the actual discipline of writing and will often resort to mundane displacement activities. Hurrah! Someone else! Someone widely published!
Speaking of the spoon-bleacher, Val McDermid was a delight, in every way. In smiling Scottish brogue, she held a huge room of people like a professional actress. Passion shone from her. Writing was everything. ‘Ah, I saw they called this the ‘Big Author Event,’ she laughed. ‘Why do they not say FAT and be done with it!’ I asked a question at the end about whether the growth of crime fiction may in fact be due to our perceptions of a lawless society. Quick, articulate. clever – she explained how a crime book is a contained and controlled entity, a moral universe. The real criminals out there, she said, were far worse than even our imaginations could muster. Things are not solved, people are not saved. From someone who writes the graphic scenes in the ‘Wire in the Blood’ series, that was a terrifying thought. Afterwards, I dutifully bought her new book and shuffled up for a signing. I gave my full name and she looked at me curiously, with some recognition at the name. The moment seemed right and so I thanked her for choosing my story in Mslexia some time ago, when she judged the submissions. I specified which one. ‘That was a lovely story,’ she smiled. ‘Very moving.’
Very moving. Very moving. I wrote it on my mirror in eyeliner when I got back and in the morning, thought how batty that was of me. Vowed that if I ever become successful I will try and endorse writers still climbing: it means so much.
On the Sunday evening at the final event, Mark Billingham and John Harvey rolled through the doors from the pub. Much banter and silliness, much use of the words ‘Fuck’ and ‘Bollocks’ between the two daft beggars. Mark Billingham read from his new novel and proved that a writer who can read well, tell stories…will be a successful one because he can also do the circuit, entertain. He later slagged off John Banville (‘I hate these up themselves authors…he told me that its perfectly possible to read a book with a dictionary by the side….what!!!!!!!!!!”) Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Archer were also for the chop. The Crime Writers’ Association has black tie award events at £90 a ticket, full of old buffers. ‘But did you know,’ he said, ‘that the Australian equivalent is called the Ned Kelly Awards and they have a stripper.’ It was that kind of blokey nonsense. John Harvey, who was much more drunk and was intellectually freefalling, talked about the Paralympics for no reason, then decided that the first few pages of his new novel wasn’t good enough and ripped it up. Went to read something else and then discovered that he had actually ripped that up instead. All fun and games. The death of the short story…how there was no market....blah blah…came up and John Harvey even admitted that he had to approach a small press to take a recent novella, despite the fact that he has published many books and has a ‘name.’ Billingham praised the short story and everyone bemoaned the fact that they are not supposed to sell.
So many treats at that festival…including a plant forensic scientist who looked as if he were being played by an actor. Tweed and dusty moustache, guffawed in all the wrong places as if he did not mix with people much, lived with his microscope. He once had to collate evidence from a rape case (that was one where he laughed, inappropriately) and the police gave him a dress from the victim. ‘Now if there were evidence to collect, it would not be on a dress.’
He then came up with a great book title for his memoirs:
The Answer Lies in The Knickers.
My head full of books and the infinite possibilities of language, I also attended two days of the Reading Crime Festival – a first for Reading and initiated and run by the borough librarians. It began with a writers’ workshop with Cath Stanicliffe, where my daughter (aged 11) rather surprised a roomful of adults by conjuring up her own method of murder: stuffing snow down someone’s throat. I may have to sleep with one eye open from now on. Bless her gothic soul. The day continued: literary discussions, writers explaining their craft, a talk on the role for coroner….all very juicy. There was very much an old tale repeatedly told by the male (usually bearded) writers: ‘I had a good lunch with an agent/publisher and then later had several films made of my books………’ To the aspiring crime writers there it sounded wonderful, easy. It took Frances Fyfield to be honest and admit that it was ‘Easier in my day…it is hard for people to get published now…it is a different business.’ A friend of mine, after a particularly turgid reading from one of the crime writers, was tempted to ask him if he thought that he would get published nowadays. I stopped her…it was a little too blunt, even if true. Fyfield at least could see beyond her own accomplished world and realise the current market.
There is also a great friendship between some crime writers. Bored, Fyfield rang up Val McDermid one morning to ask her what she was doing. (I love that image) ‘I’m bleaching spoons,’ she was told. Increasingly Fyfield’s honesty was so fresh….she hates the actual discipline of writing and will often resort to mundane displacement activities. Hurrah! Someone else! Someone widely published!
Speaking of the spoon-bleacher, Val McDermid was a delight, in every way. In smiling Scottish brogue, she held a huge room of people like a professional actress. Passion shone from her. Writing was everything. ‘Ah, I saw they called this the ‘Big Author Event,’ she laughed. ‘Why do they not say FAT and be done with it!’ I asked a question at the end about whether the growth of crime fiction may in fact be due to our perceptions of a lawless society. Quick, articulate. clever – she explained how a crime book is a contained and controlled entity, a moral universe. The real criminals out there, she said, were far worse than even our imaginations could muster. Things are not solved, people are not saved. From someone who writes the graphic scenes in the ‘Wire in the Blood’ series, that was a terrifying thought. Afterwards, I dutifully bought her new book and shuffled up for a signing. I gave my full name and she looked at me curiously, with some recognition at the name. The moment seemed right and so I thanked her for choosing my story in Mslexia some time ago, when she judged the submissions. I specified which one. ‘That was a lovely story,’ she smiled. ‘Very moving.’
Very moving. Very moving. I wrote it on my mirror in eyeliner when I got back and in the morning, thought how batty that was of me. Vowed that if I ever become successful I will try and endorse writers still climbing: it means so much.
On the Sunday evening at the final event, Mark Billingham and John Harvey rolled through the doors from the pub. Much banter and silliness, much use of the words ‘Fuck’ and ‘Bollocks’ between the two daft beggars. Mark Billingham read from his new novel and proved that a writer who can read well, tell stories…will be a successful one because he can also do the circuit, entertain. He later slagged off John Banville (‘I hate these up themselves authors…he told me that its perfectly possible to read a book with a dictionary by the side….what!!!!!!!!!!”) Agatha Christie and Jeffrey Archer were also for the chop. The Crime Writers’ Association has black tie award events at £90 a ticket, full of old buffers. ‘But did you know,’ he said, ‘that the Australian equivalent is called the Ned Kelly Awards and they have a stripper.’ It was that kind of blokey nonsense. John Harvey, who was much more drunk and was intellectually freefalling, talked about the Paralympics for no reason, then decided that the first few pages of his new novel wasn’t good enough and ripped it up. Went to read something else and then discovered that he had actually ripped that up instead. All fun and games. The death of the short story…how there was no market....blah blah…came up and John Harvey even admitted that he had to approach a small press to take a recent novella, despite the fact that he has published many books and has a ‘name.’ Billingham praised the short story and everyone bemoaned the fact that they are not supposed to sell.
So many treats at that festival…including a plant forensic scientist who looked as if he were being played by an actor. Tweed and dusty moustache, guffawed in all the wrong places as if he did not mix with people much, lived with his microscope. He once had to collate evidence from a rape case (that was one where he laughed, inappropriately) and the police gave him a dress from the victim. ‘Now if there were evidence to collect, it would not be on a dress.’
He then came up with a great book title for his memoirs:
The Answer Lies in The Knickers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)