No way can I jump this

Annie Dalton left a comment a few weeks back on my post Laying the tracks. Fearing to lower the intellectual tone, she made reference to Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, when Indy actually has to step out into the void, only to find that an invisible bridge takes his weight. It is, as he mutters to himself, a leap of faith. Starting a new book is very much like this.

I’m currently like Indy (minus the hat) standing on the brink of the abyss. Before me is my promising new idea, but from here it looks vast, dark and daunting, and I don’t see how I can possibly start writing when I can’t see what’s out there. On the other hand, I can’t really see what’s out there until I start. Oh, I know the basic plot, I know the major players and the big things that happen to them, but how it all links up, in ways that won’t feel contrived, is still invisible like Indiana’s bridge.

I know what I have to do. I have to start work on that first chapter, and then I’ll be able to see the bridge under me, narrow, transparent, vertigo-inducing, but there nonetheless. I know this, and it’s still a frightening prospect. What if the bridge doesn’t appear? What if it does appear but I fall off it? These are the questions that face anyone at the start of any major project, a book being just one example.

Then I remember something else. The being scared part of it is just as important as anything else. It’s the fear that concentrates the mind and helps you keep your balance. The fear is what provides the necessary thrill that makes writing so rewarding. This is why writers write and why climbers climb mountains. And why dashing if unshaven archaeologists gallop off in search of Holy Grails.

At what point do you know you’re ready? You’ll never be ready. Just step.

CAT'S PAW is here

Pashki: the ancient Egyptian art of moving like a cat.

The Cat Kin: London’s most unusual after-school club.

But the Cat Kin are not the only ones with extraordinary skills. Ben Gallagher has stumbled on a far more sinister gang, ruled over by a man with a horrific past. Deep beneath the city streets hides a deadly secret that Ben and Tiffany must uncover – but can the evil be stopped in time, even with the help of their remarkable new teacher, Geoff White? No-one can hope to emerge unscathed when cat meets polecat…

What is this? What’s going on?

Well. Rather than wait for publishers to pull their socks up, I’ve produced my own edition of the Cat Kin sequel. CAT’S PAW is bigger, faster, scarier and more exciting than THE CAT KIN, carrying on the story from where that book left off.

CAT’S PAW will some day be available in bookshops, in a different edition – I don’t know when but it will. However, if you liked THE CAT KIN, now is your chance to own the unofficial homemade version of the sequel – a guaranteed rarity as well as a thumping good read. Just pop over to my website to find out more, including how you can get your hands on a copy. Go on, you know you want to… Click on the book cover above.

Avoid turkeys this Christmas

I’m linking here to one of my favourite pages of hints and tips for writers. The Turkey City Lexicon is mainly targeted at writers of science fiction, but in actual fact many of the guidelines can be applied to any genre. For any writer, it makes hilarious – and sometimes painful – reading. We’ve all made a few of these gaffes at some point, and no doubt continue to do so.

Everyone will have their own favourites, but here are some of mine. And yes, you are right to think they are favourites because I’ve met them in person.

Signal from Fred

A comic form of the "Dischism" (q.v.) in which the author's subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: "This doesn't make sense." "This is really boring." "This sounds like a bad movie." (Attr. Damon Knight)

Dennis Hopper Syndrome

A story based on some arcane bit of science or folklore, which noodles around producing random weirdness. Then a loony character-actor (usually best played by Dennis Hopper) barges into the story and baldly tells the protagonist what's going on by explaining the underlying mystery in a long bug-eyed rant. (Attr. Howard Waldrop)

The Jar of Tang

"For you see, we are all living in a jar of Tang!" or "For you see, I am a dog!" A story contrived so that the author can spring a silly surprise about its setting. Mainstay of the old Twilight Zone TV show. An entire pointless story contrived so the author can cry "Fooled you!" For instance, the story takes place in a desert of coarse orange sand surrounded by an impenetrable vitrine barrier; surprise! our heroes are microbes in a jar of Tang powdered orange drink.

But they are all my favourites… I have to stop there before I simply copy out the whole page. Enjoy it at your leisure.

Poetry Friday: Eclipse

A rare original poem for Poetry Friday.

Eclipse

the Sun and the Moon
express their love
in brief eclipses

conditions must be
absolutely right

both become
nothing and one
impossibly the same

wedded with a diamond ring

then return to their routine
saying
“We must do this more often.”

but soon the Sun sets
and the Moon forgets

Who’s up for a metaphor?

A metaphor is a glorious thing,
A diamond ring,
The first day of summer…
Use them wisely,
Use them well,
And you'll never know the hell of loneliness

The quote above is from the song ‘Metaphor’ by the Sparks (a band who have raked in the money for over 30 years by being uncommercial). Metaphors are a subject close to my heart. I tend to use them rather a lot, both in writing and conversation. I am especially tickled by the scene in the fourth Star Trek movie when Spock asks Jim, ‘Captain, are you sure it’s not time for a colourful metaphor?’ In fact my use of metaphors borders on binge-use, and many is the time when my friends haven’t the faintest what I am on about, and even I may have lost the thread. (Now circle the metaphors in the paragraph above).
But metaphors are useful when writing, so long as I can rein myself in. ‘Metaphor’ is made up of two words that mean, respectively, ‘Over/across’ and ‘carry/bear’. They are things that can carry something across (and can also be overbearing!). I use them – I try to use them – to convey impressions or experiences that would be laborious, complex, or even impossible to describe in literal terms. Since I write a form of fantasy, this happens rather often.

Metaphors can also serve the function that the soundtrack serves in a film. Actually I have lifted this line from Diana Wynne Jones’s book The Tough Guide to Fantasyland – a merciless blitz on fantasy fiction clichés – specifically the part when she lampoons the use of topsy-turvy phrasing to invoke an epic atmosphere (‘sang they with eagerness and sang their swords with them’). But the appropriate use of metaphors can lift a scene from flat description into something mysteriously alive. If I’m writing a climactic scene, don’t be surprised if the metaphors go into overdrive. Think of it as heavenly choirs on the soundtrack.

After all, in the end, ALL words are metaphors. No word is literally the thing it represents. All are just vehicles that ‘carry across’. I think that the difference between ‘ordinary’ words and the ones we choose to call metaphors, is that metaphors are the experiments, the seedlings, the daringly floated possibilities. Metaphors happen when the writer turns alchemist, mixing colourful compounds in the hope of gold, new life, or anything better than the blank expression on people’s faces that I’ve learned over the years to dread.

Computer says no

Visitors to the Green Knight’s Chapel will be aware that for the past four months I’ve been in a state of apprehension over the fate of the sequel to The Cat Kin. For my part, I know that quite a few Cat Kin readers are anxious to get their hands on part two, entitled Cat’s Paw. Well, at last the long wait is over. But not in the way we all hoped.

FF (that’s ‘Faber and Faber’, by the way) are not going to publish Cat’s Paw. They don’t want it. Apparently, FF don’t think that The Cat Kin was enough of a commercial success to warrant a sequel. I use the past tense ‘was’ even though it’s been out barely six months. Maybe FF don’t think the sequel is good enough? Actually that doesn’t seem to be the case; my Editor was in favour of publishing it, but there are higher powers at work within FF, who see only bottom lines. Possibly due to the positioning of their heads.

No consideration is given to the fact that The Cat Kin received almost no promotion, yet was praised in reviews in The Times, The Telegraph, The Sunday Express and the Financial Times. No-one seems to remember that a sequel is itself a powerful marketing tool, a mobile, viral piece of advertising that creates a snowball effect through word of mouth. The second book sells the first, and vice versa. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that they’ve just sold the German rights, nor that the audiobook rights have been sold. It didn’t sell the required number of units in the first six months, so BLEEP – Computer Says No.

The Cat Kin, to the best of my knowledge, will now be allowed to trickle quietly out of the shops, not to be replaced by new copies, eventually to disappear. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, for there are plenty of other books out there, and better. It certainly doesn’t matter to FF, for whom there will be another naively optimistic new writer along in a minute. But it matters to me, and it matters to others: readers young and old who were gracious enough to open my book, give it a chance and let the story take hold of them. Many of them now have that simplest of wishes: to find out what happens next. That I’m not currently in a position to grant this wish, thanks to FF, is perhaps the most aggravating thing of all. I feel as if I’ve somehow let my readers – as few as they may be – down.

Snakes and ladders, this game is, and it looks like I just stepped smack on a snake’s head. Well, I hope it hurt.

I hate to ruin a lovely black mood, but unfortunately I’m going to finish on a positive. I AM going to find a new publisher, and to them I will sell all three Cat Kin books. That’s right, three.

Amazing

I have just finished reading Eva Ibbotson’s book ‘Journey to the River Sea’ for the first time. I am of course now reading it again (it seems to me ridiculous that many people are happy to listen to a piece of music over and over, but generally read novels only once). It is her most famous book and the most acclaimed, and I have been saving it up for more than a year. One reason for doing this was that I didn’t want to read it while trying to write my own book, because it would have been like attempting to make up a tune while listening to a Bach cantata.

I won’t write an actual review of JTTRS (though you’ve probably worked out by now that I liked it). It’s probably enough to say that it’s as close to a perfect children’s novel as you’re ever likely to read. The writing itself is a joy to behold. Ibbotson doesn’t go in for grandstanding purple prose or epic descriptions – she simply tells, in simple language, and the characters and places take on lives of their own. Lesser, more insecure writers (mentioning no names) lack this confidence and often hide behind hyperbole and visual fireworks. There’s no dodgy CGI in Eva Ibbotson.

One thing I noticed were some classic ‘Ibbotson riffs’ (that makes her sound like Jimmy Page, I know, but bear with me). I spotted certain parallels with some of her other books, especially ‘The Star of Kazan’, which I have also read multiple times. She definitely has favourite themes and motifs that she returns to. She has a thing for near-flawless heroines, the sweet, kind, innocent girl alone in the world; the enigmatic male stranger, perhaps gypsy or mixed-race; the penny-pinching, mealy-mouthed manipulating villains. These elements, which are often the mainstay of the airport novel or Mills & Boon romance, stop being clichés when she touches them and turn instead into gold. It’s almost as if she’s showing off – like an artist painting the Mona Lisa using cans of spray paint.

Of course, the familiar elements (which in any case are given new life) are outweighed by those that you will find nowhere else. But it is the execution that takes my breath away. The reader is transported to the Amazon rainforest with such speed and ease that I had to read it over and over to check – yes, it’s true, we get from a girls’ school in London to the city of Manaus in the first 27 pages. Not only that, but we know who everyone is and care about them deeply, AND about four different subplots have been subtly set up and the same number of mysteries are stirring. It’s a conjuring trick. And you don’t even notice it being performed because you’re enjoying yourself too much.

The language… I’m in awe of it. Some of the lines are so good I want to eat them. Right near the start, when the heroine (Maia) is setting off on her journey, and her classmates are terrified about what she might encounter in the Amazon, the sombre mood is captured with the line: ‘Piranhas and alligators were in the air.’ And then there is Maia’s stern black-clad governess, who looks ‘more like a nutcracker than a human being.’

Reading back it seems that I have started writing a review after all. Oh well, it was hard not to. This post was supposed to be about how envious I am of Eva Ibbotson, but sometimes a writer is so good that the only emotion I can feel is gratitude. Besides, there’s another good reason why I’m not envious of Eva Ibbotson. Because I’ve just read ‘Journey to the River Sea’ for the first time, while she, as the author, will never truly know what that’s like.