About fifteen years ago, my husband came back from lunch with a publisher who had said he would be remiss in his job if he did not keep an eye on the business models used by pornographers – ‘because they are always the first to react to market conditions.’
Apparently the latest development in the business then was the death of the stars and the advent of ‘normal people’ as protagonists - what was called either ‘amateurism’ or ‘democratisation’. This was accompanied by a great expansion of what some call fetishes, others special interest groups, and marketing people term ‘genres’.
At the beginning I was, frankly, doubtful about all this. The use of the word ‘punters’ for book buyers struck me as more macho wistful than real, certainly in the mainstream of British publishing.
I was, of course, quite wrong. This argument - that where pornography points the rest follow - has now become commonplace. I remember reading a long article in the Guardian about it. More recently, the Financial Times had an alarmist report from the West Coast of the US, which said that even pornographers were struggling to survive with new technologies, and were experiencing the same problems that have afflicted music producers - how to make money when so much is freely available to download. There were other problems.
In his afterword to Lolita, Nabokov, suggests (remembering childhood fairy stories) that consumers of pornography needed what he called ‘sutures of sense’ so as not to feel cheated as they skip-read. He also suggested that pornographers were doomed to adding more and more characters and combinations. ‘In de Sade they call the gardener in.’
I suspect this argument shows Nabokov as an innocent moralist. Certainly this is no longer true. In the age of YouTube and YouPorn, no ‘sutures of sense’ are required. As I believe the director of the first Lara Croft film put it, ‘narrative is so last century.’
We might call this ‘instant effect’. I have to be careful using terms like shorthand – though shorthand descriptions have always existed. Lolita was after all first published, as Nabokov put it, ‘by a supplier of ‘one-handed literature’, before a mainstream publisher decided to cash in on scandal and greatness. In Spain, people sometimes referred to crime books as ‘el mayordomo’ – the butler.
I am not by nature censorious - certainly not when I have been charged with being akin to a pornographer myself.
Why? Genre, I was told, works on the same principles as old-fashioned (ie printed) pornography – ‘the manipulation of words to the satisfaction of the consumer’. The ‘consumer’ wants guaranteed satisfaction within narrow limits. P D James’ assertion that crime fiction is comparable to a sonnet shows that she does not know the difference between form and formula. And, to quote Nabokov again, ‘nobody wants to read a crime novel without any dialogue in it.’
In short, the crime reader wants consistency, a short cut to resolution or justice - usually of a conventional or atavistic sort that confirms and never challenges their presumptions and prejudices. Originality and curiosity are prohibited.
If you are reading this on this site you probably think the above case is, to put it politely, over stated. I was also told that I had ‘joined the herd. Romance was, Crime is – and there will be another shift in due course.’
I have to admit I found this stimulating. Apart from the obvious rejoinder - that this argument closes the arguer off behind dogmatic barricades and will probably leave him looking po-faced and wrong when future courses have taken their supple due - I found the argument too formulaic.
I will certainly not say that all crime books contribute to the well-being of humankind and advance our knowledge of human nature. But I would like to point out here - as I did at the time - that in Lolita, Nabokov had made use of ‘certain techniques’ – the confession, elderly pornographic novels – to spin a murder story of his own. Not his main intent? No. But he needed the readers’ familiarity with those conventions to work his magic. I also, probably unfairly, suggested that the genre-pornography argument given me was like accusing Nabokov of paedophilia, pseudo-taxonomy, and an inability to distinguish between real life and fiction. Hokum? You bet.
‘Bliss’ - which was Nabokov’s aim in writing - is a tall order, and varies from reader to reader. Ask a pornographer and he’ll probably say – you mean a happy ending? And for a pornographer, that is a balance sheet.
Yes, publishing involves money. Huge quantities of novels appear every year in the hope of acquiring some. And this hope is not just the publishers’ - some writers do find themselves, more or less planned, more or less willingly, in the grip of a formula to attempt to achieve this.
It may be that reflective, intrinsically slow prose will be twittered away, but I suspect that independent book stores and ‘boutique’ markets will persist for some time yet.
Honestly? If I could afford it I’d love to examine the possibilities in the new. (The e-books seem to me old mind set in a new technology – rather like early photographers slavishly referring to Old Master paintings.)
Finally, someone else has recently used the crime, thriller, spy genre for his own purposes: Javier Marías, who I have mentioned in earlier blog posts. I will be posting on him a little later.
In the meantime, have a supple and exciting Christmas and New Year.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Lionel Davidson (1922-2009)
Last year (Sunday 30 November 2008) I wrote a blog on Lionel Davidson, pleased that Faber and Faber had brought out a collection of all eight of his books for adults published between 1960 and 1994.
Lionel Davidson died at the age of 87 on 21 October 2009. You can check the obituaries in the Guardian, Times and Daily Telegraph but here I’ll repeat that he was the youngest of nine children of a poor Polish-Jewish tailor (who died when he was two), that later, when the family moved from Hull to Streatham, he taught his Lithuanian-Jewish mother to read and that, on leaving school at fourteen, he got a job as an office boy at the Spectator and by the age of seventeen was writing syndicated features for the Morley Adams Group, including a column for children and advice to the lovelorn.
He served as a telegraphist in submarines during World War 2 (though he never used the experience directly), freelanced his way to Czechoslovakia in 1947 and later worked for the Keystone press agency and as fiction editor of John Bull Magazine. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas – set in Prague – was published in 1960.
I should declare a tenuous connection. Lionel’s lovely brother Cyril and wife Kathleen were my family’s close friends. We’d see Lionel, his first wife Fay Jacobs and their two children on Boxing Day and later, when Lionel and family moved to Israel for about ten years, hear how they were getting on.
I always seem to have known that Lionel Davidson suffered from depression. The death of his wife Fay in 1988 did not help.
His second wife, however, the author Frances Ullman, encouraged him to write again. This was not easy. Lionel Davidson always said he did not enjoy writing. Working on films made him feel ‘like a road digger’, he finished novels feeling like the loser in a boxing match.
At one time, in a spectacular effort to solve writer’s block, he bought a lighthouse on Beachy Head. I don’t believe he ever moved in. The lighthouse is now apparently owned by the BBC.
What turned out to be his last book, Kolymsky Heights, was published in 1994, sixteen years after the seventh.
In memory of a writer who, after all, was in the business of entertainment, this may all seem a little grim. Far from it. This is a thank you note for the life of a charming, witty and inventive writer of excellent thrillers. Apart from also working on films, he wrote a number of children’s books under a pseudonym and his own name.
One last confession. My father always bought Lionel Davidson’s books when they came out and would give them as presents. This worked very well until The Chelsea Murders. An elderly recipient wrote back to say that she was not going to read the book because she had heard it was ‘pornographic’. (I believe there is an allusion Swinburne). But the kerfuffle meant I never did read that novel. I have just ordered it.
Lionel Davidson died at the age of 87 on 21 October 2009. You can check the obituaries in the Guardian, Times and Daily Telegraph but here I’ll repeat that he was the youngest of nine children of a poor Polish-Jewish tailor (who died when he was two), that later, when the family moved from Hull to Streatham, he taught his Lithuanian-Jewish mother to read and that, on leaving school at fourteen, he got a job as an office boy at the Spectator and by the age of seventeen was writing syndicated features for the Morley Adams Group, including a column for children and advice to the lovelorn.
He served as a telegraphist in submarines during World War 2 (though he never used the experience directly), freelanced his way to Czechoslovakia in 1947 and later worked for the Keystone press agency and as fiction editor of John Bull Magazine. His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas – set in Prague – was published in 1960.
I should declare a tenuous connection. Lionel’s lovely brother Cyril and wife Kathleen were my family’s close friends. We’d see Lionel, his first wife Fay Jacobs and their two children on Boxing Day and later, when Lionel and family moved to Israel for about ten years, hear how they were getting on.
I always seem to have known that Lionel Davidson suffered from depression. The death of his wife Fay in 1988 did not help.
His second wife, however, the author Frances Ullman, encouraged him to write again. This was not easy. Lionel Davidson always said he did not enjoy writing. Working on films made him feel ‘like a road digger’, he finished novels feeling like the loser in a boxing match.
At one time, in a spectacular effort to solve writer’s block, he bought a lighthouse on Beachy Head. I don’t believe he ever moved in. The lighthouse is now apparently owned by the BBC.
What turned out to be his last book, Kolymsky Heights, was published in 1994, sixteen years after the seventh.
In memory of a writer who, after all, was in the business of entertainment, this may all seem a little grim. Far from it. This is a thank you note for the life of a charming, witty and inventive writer of excellent thrillers. Apart from also working on films, he wrote a number of children’s books under a pseudonym and his own name.
One last confession. My father always bought Lionel Davidson’s books when they came out and would give them as presents. This worked very well until The Chelsea Murders. An elderly recipient wrote back to say that she was not going to read the book because she had heard it was ‘pornographic’. (I believe there is an allusion Swinburne). But the kerfuffle meant I never did read that novel. I have just ordered it.
Monday, 7 December 2009
The Seas South of Gaudi
When, on his way back home from Australia in 2003, Manuel Vazquez Montalbán died at the age of 64, at least half (the left-wing half) of Spain went into mourning. Television and newspapers went into overdrive. Spain had just lost a prolific journalist and writer who had provided frequently waspish and funny, always acute commentary, up to, through and beyond what is called the Transition – the movement out of dictatorship and into democracy.
Vazquez Montalbán was from Barcelona, born in the poor Barrio Chino (the Chinese Quarter, Chinese in Franco’s Spanish meaning Red Light), which was subsequently flattened for the '92 Olympics. Mediterranean, Catalan, he grew up as a Left-wing, gourmet workaholic, who said the only slavery he could countenance was his own. Articles, essays, poems and books in many genres poured out of him.
Amongst all his other activities Vazquez Montalbán was one of the very first crime writers in Spain.
You may think this an odd thing to remark on.
But when I first went to Spain I was struck by how popular English crime writers like Agatha Christie were. On asking for Spanish writers in this genre I learnt there were indeed a few thriller writers – they wrote macho adventures, usually set abroad. It soon got through to me that ‘perfect societies’ – also known as societies with censors –have no place for crime novels because they involve investigations and uncovering truths. Spain at that time did not need that.
The Pepe Carvalho novels actually began in 1972 (Franco had three years to go). It is difficult now to understand the limitations imposed on Spanish writers at that time. For example, the newspaper El País could not have started while Franco was alive. The name was regarded as insulting by the old guard. El Pais means, simply, The Country. Not nearly grand enough. Where was the Fatherland, the grandeur of Spain?
Likewise the censors would not allow ‘bad Spaniards’ in fiction unless they met an exemplary end. But they looked superficially: Is Carvalho a Spanish surname? No, it is Portugese. So it was passed.
‘Biscuter’ is the nickname of Carvalho”s sidekick. I saw people howling with laughter at this. Apart from being a description of the character’s sexual orientation(s), the name refers to the Biscuter (Bi-Scooter), a tiny vehicle with a two stroke engine and drive to one wheel, that was produced when Spain was excluded from the UN and licensing agreements. It became a byword for ugliness, the tatty pretensions of the dictatorship, and the diminutive size of the dictator.
Does this matter now? Probably only in the sense that things date, and names, expressions and attitudes are left alone, looking orphaned, long after a dictatorship has gone.
Freed from forty years of Franco, the Spanish leapt to ‘join Europe again.’ There were some odd conjunctures. Political and sexual liberation came together in what was called the destape' (uncovering). One of my favourite memories is being handed a magazine, a garish buffet of naked women, to find the centerfold was a long, closely argued article by the man called ‘the old professor’ - Enrique Tierno Galván, a mild-mannered, very serious, somewhat self-conscious intellectual who would become Mayor of Madrid.
The Spanish sum up this climate now by pointing to a photograph of the amiable old professor, quite unaware that a porn actress is flashing beside him.
The sexual revolution at that time in Spain, certainly in print in magazines and in S cinemas now long gone, was decidedly male orientated. The word ‘macho’ is after all a Spanish export. Yes, I think there was definitely an element of women as food, probably best expressed by the Jack Lemmon character in Some Like it Hot when, surrounded by the members of the female band, he recounts to Tony Curtis his dream of being locked in a cake shop - though most of the stuff was not as charming or as funny.
My point here? Manuel Vazquez Montalbán was what the Spanish call ‘extremely well prepared’ – that is, he was very intelligent, highly educated and well-read. Un hombre culto – a cultured man – meant a lot in Spanish politics then. He represented the left in this respect, could take on the right-wing intellectuals as a man who had had academic success and knew about Schrödinger’s cat, Philip Glass or Ubu Roi.
But he was not as innocent as the old professor, and some of his writing reflects the greasy nature of some ‘cake shops’, and an appetite that does not think much, if at all, about the cake herself. I suspect this is why he is popular in Italy.
One more thing. There is a ritual in Spain. Every year since 1952, on October 15, the winner of the Premio Planeta is announced. Though books are submitted under pseudonyms ,the winner tends to be well known already. The list of winners is a veritable roll call of Spanish cultural life. The money is so big that one winner, Juan Marsé I think it was (he has also written crime novels) called it ‘la casa’ – the house. He meant that the money was big enough to buy one and, after years of scraping a living, it meant security. Juan Marsé, a recent recipient of the Cervantes prize and the prize in honour of the wonderful Juan Rulfo, won the Planeta in 1978 with his La Muchacha de las Bragas de Oro – literally The girl with the gold knickers - published in English with the title Girl with Golden Panties. It is not actually a prize but an advance and is currently 601,000 euros.
The Planeta is now a tradition, like cologne and socks at Christmas, a popular present and in some ways the book of the year, ie the one book bought, usually for Papa or Dad. Sales are enormous, the marketing at saturation level. It is very tempting. And to win it, the writer is asked to be accessible --- and to reflect society.
The Southern Seas (Los Mares del Sur) won the Planeta in 1979.
Vazquez Montalbán was from Barcelona, born in the poor Barrio Chino (the Chinese Quarter, Chinese in Franco’s Spanish meaning Red Light), which was subsequently flattened for the '92 Olympics. Mediterranean, Catalan, he grew up as a Left-wing, gourmet workaholic, who said the only slavery he could countenance was his own. Articles, essays, poems and books in many genres poured out of him.
Amongst all his other activities Vazquez Montalbán was one of the very first crime writers in Spain.
You may think this an odd thing to remark on.
But when I first went to Spain I was struck by how popular English crime writers like Agatha Christie were. On asking for Spanish writers in this genre I learnt there were indeed a few thriller writers – they wrote macho adventures, usually set abroad. It soon got through to me that ‘perfect societies’ – also known as societies with censors –have no place for crime novels because they involve investigations and uncovering truths. Spain at that time did not need that.
The Pepe Carvalho novels actually began in 1972 (Franco had three years to go). It is difficult now to understand the limitations imposed on Spanish writers at that time. For example, the newspaper El País could not have started while Franco was alive. The name was regarded as insulting by the old guard. El Pais means, simply, The Country. Not nearly grand enough. Where was the Fatherland, the grandeur of Spain?
Likewise the censors would not allow ‘bad Spaniards’ in fiction unless they met an exemplary end. But they looked superficially: Is Carvalho a Spanish surname? No, it is Portugese. So it was passed.
‘Biscuter’ is the nickname of Carvalho”s sidekick. I saw people howling with laughter at this. Apart from being a description of the character’s sexual orientation(s), the name refers to the Biscuter (Bi-Scooter), a tiny vehicle with a two stroke engine and drive to one wheel, that was produced when Spain was excluded from the UN and licensing agreements. It became a byword for ugliness, the tatty pretensions of the dictatorship, and the diminutive size of the dictator.
Does this matter now? Probably only in the sense that things date, and names, expressions and attitudes are left alone, looking orphaned, long after a dictatorship has gone.
Freed from forty years of Franco, the Spanish leapt to ‘join Europe again.’ There were some odd conjunctures. Political and sexual liberation came together in what was called the destape' (uncovering). One of my favourite memories is being handed a magazine, a garish buffet of naked women, to find the centerfold was a long, closely argued article by the man called ‘the old professor’ - Enrique Tierno Galván, a mild-mannered, very serious, somewhat self-conscious intellectual who would become Mayor of Madrid.
The Spanish sum up this climate now by pointing to a photograph of the amiable old professor, quite unaware that a porn actress is flashing beside him.
The sexual revolution at that time in Spain, certainly in print in magazines and in S cinemas now long gone, was decidedly male orientated. The word ‘macho’ is after all a Spanish export. Yes, I think there was definitely an element of women as food, probably best expressed by the Jack Lemmon character in Some Like it Hot when, surrounded by the members of the female band, he recounts to Tony Curtis his dream of being locked in a cake shop - though most of the stuff was not as charming or as funny.
My point here? Manuel Vazquez Montalbán was what the Spanish call ‘extremely well prepared’ – that is, he was very intelligent, highly educated and well-read. Un hombre culto – a cultured man – meant a lot in Spanish politics then. He represented the left in this respect, could take on the right-wing intellectuals as a man who had had academic success and knew about Schrödinger’s cat, Philip Glass or Ubu Roi.
But he was not as innocent as the old professor, and some of his writing reflects the greasy nature of some ‘cake shops’, and an appetite that does not think much, if at all, about the cake herself. I suspect this is why he is popular in Italy.
One more thing. There is a ritual in Spain. Every year since 1952, on October 15, the winner of the Premio Planeta is announced. Though books are submitted under pseudonyms ,the winner tends to be well known already. The list of winners is a veritable roll call of Spanish cultural life. The money is so big that one winner, Juan Marsé I think it was (he has also written crime novels) called it ‘la casa’ – the house. He meant that the money was big enough to buy one and, after years of scraping a living, it meant security. Juan Marsé, a recent recipient of the Cervantes prize and the prize in honour of the wonderful Juan Rulfo, won the Planeta in 1978 with his La Muchacha de las Bragas de Oro – literally The girl with the gold knickers - published in English with the title Girl with Golden Panties. It is not actually a prize but an advance and is currently 601,000 euros.
The Planeta is now a tradition, like cologne and socks at Christmas, a popular present and in some ways the book of the year, ie the one book bought, usually for Papa or Dad. Sales are enormous, the marketing at saturation level. It is very tempting. And to win it, the writer is asked to be accessible --- and to reflect society.
The Southern Seas (Los Mares del Sur) won the Planeta in 1979.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Talking to Readers at The Edinburgh Bookshop
On Wednesday I went to the Edinburgh Bookshop in Bruntsfield Place to read from and talk about the first two books of the Peter Cotton series, The Maze of Cadiz and Washington Shadow. It was a lovely responsive audience and I’d like to say thank you to all for coming, and for your interesting questions and comments, which made it a very enjoyable evening for me.
Thanks, of course, to Vanessa and Andrew for inviting me and for making the evening possible. If you haven’t visited the shop yet, do. It’s a lovely place to browse.
Their Book of the Week this week is a double offer of The Maze of Cadiz and Washington Shadow, both signed.
http://www.edinburghbookshop.com/index.php/2009/10/aly-monroe/
Thanks, of course, to Vanessa and Andrew for inviting me and for making the evening possible. If you haven’t visited the shop yet, do. It’s a lovely place to browse.
Their Book of the Week this week is a double offer of The Maze of Cadiz and Washington Shadow, both signed.
http://www.edinburghbookshop.com/index.php/2009/10/aly-monroe/
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Visit to Goldsboro Books
I went down to London from Edinburgh on Thursday - a somewhat fraught trip as the train broke down and we all had to get out at Durham and wait to be transferred to another train. I found my agent was travelling on the same train so we travelled the rest of the way together and met up with my editor.
From there I went on to Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court to sign copies of Washington Shadow.
Goldsboro is a wonderful bookshop specialising in signed first editions and has clients from all over the world. The owner, David Headley, is, deservedly, becoming an important reference in the book world. He has a great eye and works generously to promote authors.
I was welcomed by all the team, then signed, lined and dated a big pile of books accompanied by enjoyable conversation with David. They also asked me to do a brief video recording my visit to them to sign the books:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/Goldsboro-Books/59634714875?ref=mf
My thanks to David and everyone at Goldsboro.
From there I went on to Goldsboro Books in Cecil Court to sign copies of Washington Shadow.
Goldsboro is a wonderful bookshop specialising in signed first editions and has clients from all over the world. The owner, David Headley, is, deservedly, becoming an important reference in the book world. He has a great eye and works generously to promote authors.
I was welcomed by all the team, then signed, lined and dated a big pile of books accompanied by enjoyable conversation with David. They also asked me to do a brief video recording my visit to them to sign the books:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/Goldsboro-Books/59634714875?ref=mf
My thanks to David and everyone at Goldsboro.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
‘Thankfully’
November 5th was official publication day for Washington Shadow and I have been taking a break from the gruesome winter of 1946-47, the background of the next Peter Cotton book, to answer a number of questions I have received from would-be writers and/or the curious.
These questions have ranged from how long a book should be and where did I learn to write, to how much control I have over shoutlines/taglines and book covers, and one from Bookhugger that asked me directly whether or not I have received pressure to change my ‘creative vision’ for commercial reasons. See the previous post.
For the record, my contract asks for a minimum 70,000 words and I have never had a writing class but, if I may borrow from Jorge Luis Borges, ‘writers start as readers’ and at my age, as I have explained to some enquirers, my biggest difficulty was acquiring confidence.
There are some writers – I know one very well – who will fight over a comma. I have just published my second book, however, and have no trouble admitting that, particularly with my first book, I needed to establish a kind of dialogue with my editor. No, she did not tell me what to write but I needed another view.
The dialogue was necessary, not just for me, but because of the genre I found myself in. There are some writers who are very market orientated. Others, I am one, who start by examining certain possibilities, and go on from there. I am by no means alone in this. Recently I had coffee with another writer in Edinburgh and both of us have had moments of puzzlement at being so very firmly pigeon-holed. I even found the same at Crimefest.
Aren’t we an innocent crowd? Of course. We all sweat over what we produce and then, ouch, publishers, marketing people and, of course, readers break in with their perceptions of the world. So to answer that shoutline and cover question – no, most writers - don’t get that much of a say, certainly not when starting out. There are art departments and marketing departments who deal with that. Honestly? I have only heard of Ian Rankin having a strong influence on his.
The reason for this is something called ‘the process’. This ‘process’ is the publisher’s production schedule. The cover is fixed early and when I say fixed I mean settled. It is needed for the catalogue and it is all the marketing and sales people initially have to work on. It takes time to introduce a writer and it takes time to introduce a book. The publishers’ job is to think quickly and clearly about what they are investing in - this sometimes works better than others, of course, but they too need, particularly for a first book, the consumers’ feedback and reaction and are only too happy to change and to work hard at it.
From the first time writer’s point of view, if someone has had the courage to take you on and you are trying to get the content right, the packaging becomes not your business but that of those professionals with a lot more experience than you have.
I consider that publishing a book is a collaborative process but that there will always be some readers who hold the writer entirely responsible not just for the story but for what publishers call the product as well. This is not a complaint. The reader is an absolute monarch of their own opinion.
This brings me on to the last question. ‘Do you ever reply to reviews’? I know of some authors who do so – A L Kennedy, a truly excellent writer, is one. Ms Kennedy is also a stand-up or, with some reviewers, a knock-down, comedian. But the publisher’s advice is clear – don’t.
I have to admit this hasn’t been a huge problem. I was lucky enough to get some favourable reviews by usually respected reviewers like Mike Ripley, Marcel Berlins, Natasha Cooper, Joan Smith, Andrew Taylor and others. Did I always agree with some of their opinions and comparisons? Of course not. But it seems to me elementary respect for that to remain private. I get to publish over seventy thousand words. They get to give their impressions to other possible readers in very many less. It is also interesting and instructive to see different readers’ reactions to your work.
Likewise with unfavourable reviews. Absolutely the reviewer’s right. But there was one reviewer who has gone on and on - for example, to Amazon to join the one star patrol, not something usually respected reviewers tend to do. They give an opinion and move on.
So no, I don’t reply directly to reviews. But there is, I have to admit, an advantage to writing books. Some time ago the late literary agent Giles Gordon, a truly charming, wonderfully indiscreet and normally most amiable of men, took against Michel Faber’s work. Reasonableness had nothing to do with it or, as publishers like to say ‘it is all so subjective.’ So Michel Faber included him as an umbrella carrying client of a brothel in his next book, The Crimson Petal, I think.
A few days ago when I was told of what was probably yet another reference from the same source to The Maze of Cadiz - a year after publication - I remembered (yes, time does move on and I forget things) that I had, around the time of that one star Amazon review, done something similar, though involving a patrolman, in Washington Shadow and that it is, probably, only fair to say so now.
Giles, at least, laughed uproariously.
These questions have ranged from how long a book should be and where did I learn to write, to how much control I have over shoutlines/taglines and book covers, and one from Bookhugger that asked me directly whether or not I have received pressure to change my ‘creative vision’ for commercial reasons. See the previous post.
For the record, my contract asks for a minimum 70,000 words and I have never had a writing class but, if I may borrow from Jorge Luis Borges, ‘writers start as readers’ and at my age, as I have explained to some enquirers, my biggest difficulty was acquiring confidence.
There are some writers – I know one very well – who will fight over a comma. I have just published my second book, however, and have no trouble admitting that, particularly with my first book, I needed to establish a kind of dialogue with my editor. No, she did not tell me what to write but I needed another view.
The dialogue was necessary, not just for me, but because of the genre I found myself in. There are some writers who are very market orientated. Others, I am one, who start by examining certain possibilities, and go on from there. I am by no means alone in this. Recently I had coffee with another writer in Edinburgh and both of us have had moments of puzzlement at being so very firmly pigeon-holed. I even found the same at Crimefest.
Aren’t we an innocent crowd? Of course. We all sweat over what we produce and then, ouch, publishers, marketing people and, of course, readers break in with their perceptions of the world. So to answer that shoutline and cover question – no, most writers - don’t get that much of a say, certainly not when starting out. There are art departments and marketing departments who deal with that. Honestly? I have only heard of Ian Rankin having a strong influence on his.
The reason for this is something called ‘the process’. This ‘process’ is the publisher’s production schedule. The cover is fixed early and when I say fixed I mean settled. It is needed for the catalogue and it is all the marketing and sales people initially have to work on. It takes time to introduce a writer and it takes time to introduce a book. The publishers’ job is to think quickly and clearly about what they are investing in - this sometimes works better than others, of course, but they too need, particularly for a first book, the consumers’ feedback and reaction and are only too happy to change and to work hard at it.
From the first time writer’s point of view, if someone has had the courage to take you on and you are trying to get the content right, the packaging becomes not your business but that of those professionals with a lot more experience than you have.
I consider that publishing a book is a collaborative process but that there will always be some readers who hold the writer entirely responsible not just for the story but for what publishers call the product as well. This is not a complaint. The reader is an absolute monarch of their own opinion.
This brings me on to the last question. ‘Do you ever reply to reviews’? I know of some authors who do so – A L Kennedy, a truly excellent writer, is one. Ms Kennedy is also a stand-up or, with some reviewers, a knock-down, comedian. But the publisher’s advice is clear – don’t.
I have to admit this hasn’t been a huge problem. I was lucky enough to get some favourable reviews by usually respected reviewers like Mike Ripley, Marcel Berlins, Natasha Cooper, Joan Smith, Andrew Taylor and others. Did I always agree with some of their opinions and comparisons? Of course not. But it seems to me elementary respect for that to remain private. I get to publish over seventy thousand words. They get to give their impressions to other possible readers in very many less. It is also interesting and instructive to see different readers’ reactions to your work.
Likewise with unfavourable reviews. Absolutely the reviewer’s right. But there was one reviewer who has gone on and on - for example, to Amazon to join the one star patrol, not something usually respected reviewers tend to do. They give an opinion and move on.
So no, I don’t reply directly to reviews. But there is, I have to admit, an advantage to writing books. Some time ago the late literary agent Giles Gordon, a truly charming, wonderfully indiscreet and normally most amiable of men, took against Michel Faber’s work. Reasonableness had nothing to do with it or, as publishers like to say ‘it is all so subjective.’ So Michel Faber included him as an umbrella carrying client of a brothel in his next book, The Crimson Petal, I think.
A few days ago when I was told of what was probably yet another reference from the same source to The Maze of Cadiz - a year after publication - I remembered (yes, time does move on and I forget things) that I had, around the time of that one star Amazon review, done something similar, though involving a patrolman, in Washington Shadow and that it is, probably, only fair to say so now.
Giles, at least, laughed uproariously.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Book Hugger Author Panel
I was recently invited by Book Hugger - the excellent online magazine that started back in June - to take part in one of their author panels together with Helen Walsh and Armand Cabasson. The panels are a great idea and I enjoyed the opportunity to exchange thoughts with these writers. The subject of the panel was Writing From Life. You can read this and lots more by clicking on the following link:
http://bookhugger.co.uk/2009/11/the-bookhugger-author-panel-writing-from-life/
http://bookhugger.co.uk/2009/11/the-bookhugger-author-panel-writing-from-life/
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