Guest Post: Wendy Robertson on John McGahern's 'Amongst Women'

I'm on my way back to Italy at the moment, and it's a real treat to have best-selling novelist Wendy Robertson as a Guest Blogger to talk about writers' retreats and a particular writer, John McGahern,  whose novel 'Amongst Women' has meant a great deal to her.  Over to Wendy!

John McGahern -  Amongst Women

 I have participated in several writers retreats and now have run a few. Something significant always happens at writer’s retreats: they can be life changing events.

I met the late, great John McGahern at my first writer’s retreat at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire – a great place on the side of a hill with a scattering of garden huts furnished with a chair, a bench, and a great view of the countryside. I had been suffering from overwork and a loss of confidence.

At that time I’d had three children’s books published and was hungry – not to write  a better book as I knew writing for children can be the highest part of our calling – but I felt the need for  bigger scope and scale: the opportunity to fly higher, dig deeper. So I saved my hard earned pennies and went to Lumb Bank, exhausted, clutching half a novel and shot through with that down feeling you get in the middle of a novel. ‘What have I done? Is this any good? Is this no good? This is no good.’

 John McGahern was one of the two tutors on that retreat. I’d read The Dark – a masterpiece of a book – but knew little about the writer. A good tutor, he read my half-book and I shared my misgivings, my lack of confidence about it, and my sense of foolishness. He chuckled. ‘You’re surely joking, Wendy. Sure, I see you’re a great writer!’ And he went on to tell me why. He gave me the confidence to surge on and write many more adult novels. He treated me as an equal, a fellow artisan.

One morning we talk about an extract from my manuscript where a girl is walking with a basket up a bank.  She lifts up her skirt to show her friend where her brothers have kicked her, leaving boot marks on her thigh. John then talks with some intensity about how much one can render in fiction the dark things that have really happened to you.  And he tells me something so terrible it could not make its way onto even his pages which – always beautifully written – are undercut with the complex interplay of cruelty and control, love and loyalty inside the crucible of family life.  

His work is cut through with the chillingly honest view of his own difficult childhood which is a strong strand of most of his fiction, often dominated by the figure of the strong, cruel, seductive father. His fiction - emerging as it does out of his territory of rural Ireland - consistently reflects on the politics of family life where power, and even love, is wielded in subtle and brutal ways. He allows the reader access to these excesses by rendering the highly subjective experiences of his characters in a pared- back, detached style allowing the reader to infer the terrors for themselves. As well as this he allows us some rest for our emotions - with his great prose, his acute observation and lyrical rendering of time and season in rural Ireland. 

 Amongst Women, his 1990 prize-winning[1] novel, has at its centre just such a cruel controlling seductive father and husband. Michael Moran, an ex hero and a leader in the historical war against the British, wields total power over his family of three girls and a boy. Michael prefers family to friends and dominates his family using rituals of meals, domestic tasks and prayers as the syntax and grammar of his domination. (Brainwashing comes to mind…) There are physical aspects to his domination that have sexual undertones but the writing is too subtle for that to declare itself as incest.

Michael is handsome and has charm and is prepared to use it – as when he courts his second wife, Rose, so he can add her as caretaker and fellow-hero-worshipper to his brood of women. McGahern, though, shows Rose as the only one who, though loving Michael, holds out against his domination. This is logical. She has not been brainwashed by him since birth.

It is significant that the daughters, whom he bullies, manipulates and dominates, adore him and make excuses for him to each other and to Rose and other outsiders. And the final irony – and the brilliance of the perception in the writing – is that these women do not break down. At his death, around which the whole of this novel is tuned, they become their father. He has created them. He is in their hearts, in their skin, in their soul.

I have many other stories emerging from this particular writing retreat but this is the most important. Writing retreats, as I say, can change your life.

Wendy has two wonderful blogs of her own which you can check out at

http://www.lifetwicetasted.blogspot.com/

 http://wendysloveaffairwithbooks.blogspot.com/

 Wendy Robertson grew up in the North of England, one of four children whose widowed mother, an ex-nurse, worked in a factory. Wendy has worked as a teacher and lecturer, gaining a Masters whilst also writing short stories, articles, a column in the Northern Echo and novels for young adults.  She is the author of more than 25 novels, including the wonderfully titled,  'Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker' (published by Headline).  She was Writer In Residence at Long Newton Prison, an experience that resulted in a novel 'Paulie's Web' now available on Amazon Kindle.  She is now part of the Room to Write group and writes and presents a radio programme 'The Writing Game'  for writers and readers on Bishop FM.  Her most recent books are a memoir, The Romancer, and two novels 'An Englishwoman in France' and 'A Woman Scorned'.

---

[1] Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literary Award (1991), GPA Award (1992), nominated for the Booker Prize (1990).

Thanks for the comments

Thank you to everyone who sent me comments on the text - the general feeling was positive and I had several helpful suggestions.    I will now be starting on the Big Edit - working my way through the manuscript trying to hone it to perfection.  In a couple of weeks I'm going to post a list of editing musts put together by a friend and shared many times with students and other writers - a life saver! 

I'm doing a lot of travelling this week, but there will be  a Tuesday Poem and then novelist Wendy Robertson is doing a guest blog on the subject of Writers Retreats and the wonderful Irish novelist John McGahern.

I should be back in Italy by Friday, snow, wind and rain permitting!  I hope you're all having a good week wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

The Centauress - New Work In Progress.

Rodin:  The Centauress

This is the really scary bit - I've just finished the first draft of a fictional project I've been working on for a while.  A difficult story with a complicated plot, set in Istria - a traditionally Italian area of Croatia.  The two central figures are an elderly painter, Xenobia, who has led a controversial life, and her biographer, Alex, recently bereaved and trying to find the narrative of her own life again. I have no idea whether it will interest anyone other than myself.  I've been so immersed in it, I haven't been able to stop to think about what anyone else might think!  So, before I spend precious weeks re-writing and editing, I need to know if a reader would be interested enough to read on after the opening pages. These first pages are critical in any book - if you're not hooked by page 3 you usually give up.   That's why I'm pasting them below and would really appreciate honest, straight-forward comments from my lovely blog-readers.  Would you want to read on?  Or would you not?  You don't have to be tactful! If you'd like to email me your comments you can do that on kathyferber@yahoo.co.uk

The Centauress (working title)

Chapter One

London, October 2003

        ‘So, how would you feel about writing this book?’  Jane asked, a forkful of spinach and mozzarella pizza poised halfway between plate and mouth.
        Alex had realised how far down the ratings she’d sunk when her agent had asked her out to lunch and then suggested a Pizzeria on the South Bank rather than one of the smart bistros and wine bars that Jane usually favoured.  But in fact, considering her own long silence, the unanswered emails and the abandoned book contract, it was a miracle that Jane was still speaking to her at all.
       ‘Xenia’s marvellous,’ Jane put down her fork.  ‘So articulate!  And only the tiniest bit ga-ga -  she’s so eccentric you don’t even notice.   But apparently she’s very ill and it’s going to be vital to get everything down quickly before she deteriorates.’
     Even before the menus had arrived,  Alex had been aware that this lunch was simply an excuse for her agent to sell the notion she’d had on her recent holiday in a fortified village in Istria, owned by someone Jane described as ‘the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met’.
       ‘Xenia lived in England and America, knew Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, stayed in Paris with Picasso.  She even painted Marilyn Monroe for god’s sake!’
       Xenobia de Braganza, one of the most famous living painters, the grande dame of  the Veneto, who owned an entire Istrian hill village rented out to tourists in the summer (hence Jane’s visit) but in the winter filled it with her friends, creating a colony of artists and simpatici.
       ‘She seemed to like the idea,’ Jane said.  ‘Wants to tell the truth while she’s alive so that people can’t tell lies after she’s dead.  And I’ve talked to her London agent - no problems there.  It would be a good excuse for a retrospective in the Tate Modern.  Bloomsbury might be interested, and Harper Collins, providing I can get a good writer.  So I thought of you.   A spell in Istria might cheer you up.’

       Alex suppressed a sudden impulse to hit Jane hard across the face.  The surge of anger was so strong and physical, Alex could taste the bile in her mouth.  But, thanks to the little blue capsules of anaesthetic, prescribed by the doctor, Alex managed to contain her rage.   Why Jane should think a holiday would cure what she’d just been through was in-comprehensible.  Alex could only assume Jane had never experienced any kind of family tragedy or real pain in her entire life.  Alex’s whole world, her way of seeing everything was irrevocably altered.   It was like going back to the Tate Gallery after having become  colour blind;   the paintings would be there, still the same, but all the colour and life would have gone out of them.  There would be no point.

       Alex hasn’t written a word in almost two years.  The grief counselor she’d been assigned afterwards,  had recommended that she kept a journal to record her thoughts and feelings, but the journal too has remained obstinately blank.  The feeling still  persisted that there was no point in anything any more, but the grant from the Royal Literary Fund was almost spent and her small legacy down to single figures.
The flush of anger receded, leaving Alex feeling slightly shaky.   She held her tongue between her teeth for a moment longer and then asked.  ‘What’s the advance?’
       ‘We’ll have to negotiate that.  But her agent seems to think they can cover all your expenses to go out there on an initial visit - see how you get on with her, whether you like the idea.  Get a synopsis together based on the published material - there’s loads apparently.   Then I’ll try to sell it while you’re out there.  You speak Italian don’t you?   Of course it's Croatia now, but  Istria used to belong to Italy before it was Yugoslavia and they still speak the language.’
       Alex looked out of the window.  It was a cold autumn day with persistent drizzle.  Pedestrians in gloves and scarves were scurrying along the concrete walk-way of the South Bank.  An unkind wind was whipping the Thames into spiky waves.  Jane had just been talking about Istrian  sunshine, the citrus odour of the lemon tree below her window, describing the sunset in the Adriatic.   Alex was conscious of a great longing for warmth, colour and light.  Could she write this book?  Was she actually still capable?  It was the first time in two years that Alex had felt even the stirrings of an inclination.

        Alex spent the rest of that grey afternoon in the National Portrait Gallery looking at a canvas by Francis Bacon, early work but still with the characteristically dramatic strokes, the cruel drawing out of the figure.   Xenobia de Braganza’s name was on the label, but the painting didn’t give any clues to the reality of her appearance or character.  In another room was a photograph of her aged twenty five by Man Ray - a dark unruly head sculpted by light, jutting, furious brows, half closed eyes and the most beautiful, androgynous face Alex had ever seen.  The strong bone structure, voluptuous lips and brooding eyes could have belonged to either sex.    This was no ordinary person.   It was that face that decided her to tackle the biography.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



That's Chapter One -  all comments gratefully received.  Now I'm off to England for a brief visit to look after my small grand-daughter Isabella for a few days while my daughter is at a conference.  I'm really looking forward to spending time with her and hoping the English weather will be better than the Italian - which is still below zero.  Some parts of Italy have had 3 metres of snow, as far south as Sicily.  The worst winter in generations - that's what they're calling it.

Blogging at Author's Electric

Today I'm blogging over at Author's Electric on the dilemma of whether to E-publish a novel or go down the traditional route.

Talking about Biography and Fiction

Just been back to Lancaster University, where I was Royal Literary Fund Fellow last year, to meet this year's fellow Philip Caveney   who writes scarey books for young adults.   We'd been invited to give a joint seminar - actually just a posh way of saying that we gave a talk about our own writing to the university staff and whoever else wanted to come along.

Philip started out writing thrillers for grown ups but moved to young adult when his ten year old daughter asked why he wouldn't let her read any of them.  The first YA was written for her and since then he's been very successful.  He read from his latest WIP about a young boy who falls through the floor in a museum in Edinburgh and finds himself back in time and face to face with an infamous Plague Doctor during the time of the Black Death.  It was wonderfully entertaining.

I couldn't compete with that!  So tried to give some insights into how I write and the different approaches to writing biography and fiction and the fact that biography hasn't always been valued as much as fiction - biographers have been vilified as hearse chasers, vultures picking over the bones of the dead, purveyors of literary lace curtain twitching, and upmarket tabloid journalism.  Like a kind of literary Burke and Hare we sell other people's lives and live off the proceeds.

Virginia Woolf said that biography neglected the imagination and worked 'at a lower level' than the sublime art of fiction.  But why should it do that?  I've always thought of biography as a 'found' novel, where you are given the plot, the characters and some of the dialogue and you have to create a riveting story that brings it all to life for the reader.  A novel on the other hand, could be thought of as a fictional biography.

Jane Eyre, a literary fraud

Because I write across both genres I spend a lot of time thinking about the differences between them and how one can feed into the other -  using the techniques of one genre to solve problems in the other.  I've also been puzzled by the recent debate about fake memoirs.  It seems that if a novel is discovered to be autobiographical it isn't a crime, but if a memoir turns out to be a work of fiction this is a sackable offence for an author.  Very strange, since one of the most famous novels of all time began life as the autobiography of a governess, edited by Currer Bell. 

These days, Jane Eyre would never have made it to the shops, the book tour would have been cancelled and the author blacklisted.  Because this is what happened to Love and Consequences published by Penguin USA.  It was, according to the sales team, a riveting, un-put-downable read, but as soon as it was discovered to be (mainly) fictional, it was unreadable and the author guilty of 'a huge personal and professional betrayal'.

 

The Creative Cafe Project

My story 'Jazz Cafe' is on the menu at the Cafe Lit Creative Cafe Project site today as a Mango Smoothie.  If you love scribbling at cafe tables with a cappuccino on the side, and haven't found the Cafe Lit site yet, please check it out - there's some great work and some very good stuff for writers.

Travelling and Plagiarism Scandals!

I'm off to the UK  for the launch of 'Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21' at the Derwent Poetry Festival.  By an odd coincidence I've just waved goodbye to Neil who is off to Cambodia via Milan and I'm not looking forward to the next 3 weeks on my own.

Interesting story unfolding in Book World - Q.R. Markham's much hyped spy fiction 'Assassin of Secrets' released only a few days ago has been withdrawn after a tip-off that passages had been 'lifted' from classic spy novels.   Amazon described  the book (pre-revelation) as   'a narrative hall of mirrors in which nothing and no one are as they seem'.  It proved to be absolutely prophetic!

Red faces and big losses for Little Brown and Hodder who have withdrawn all copies -  end of career for author who didn't include the quotation marks.   According to the list on the Huffington Post and a number of blogs, this isn't just the odd phrase picked up and unconsciously repeated,  the book seems to have been a patchwork of other people's novels including classics such as Ian Fleming.  Even Markham's interviews were quotes from someone else.   How can this happen?   Do editors no longer read?  Don't they check for plagiarism?  Apparently the Huff Post compiled their list by putting phrases into Google and seeing what came up.  Shouldn't the publishers have done that?  I have to do it with my student's work to check for originality.

Rain still causing chaos in Italy.  Neil managed a couple of shots from the train as he passed through the Cinque Terre.  At Vernazza you can see the huge mound of rocks, mud and debris that's still being bulldozed from the streets.

Signs of Change in Book World?

What could be nicer than books and chocolate? The Galaxy Book Awards are rapidly upstaging the Booker prize, which has taken a knock lately after arguments about the need for readability which supposedly clashes with perceptions of literary value  (are the two things irreconcilable?).

Alan Hollinghurst won the Author of the Year award - after having been left off the Booker shortlist - for his novel 'The Stranger's Child'.   A lot of people will be pleased to see an award going to Sarah Winman's debut novel  'When God was a Rabbit',  and an old-fashioned literary biography won the non-fiction prize ahead of the much hyped celebrity bios.

Apparently there's been a reader's revolt against the trend towards (often publisher generated) celebrity memoirs/biogs  and Claire Tomalin's 'Dickens' is doing much better than anyone (even Claire herself) predicted.  Hurray!!!!

Nothing for poets this time though.

Interesting post by Elizabeth Baines over at Fiction Bitch, about the experience of re-reading books you loved as a child.    It's called 'What do we read, when we read?'

Galaxy Award Results:- 

Waterstone's UK Author of the Year: The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador)


Specsavers popular fiction book of the year: A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French (Penguin)

More4 popular non-fiction book of the year: How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran (Ebury Press)

Crime and thriller of the year (available on iBookstore): Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson (Doubleday)

Daily Telegraph biography of the year: Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (Viking)

International author of the year: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Corsair)

Food and drink book of the year: The Good Cook by Simon Hopkinson (BBC Books)

WHSmith paperback of the year: Room by Emma Donoghue (Picador)

National Book Tokens children's book of the year: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (Walker Books)

Audible.co.uk audiobook of the year: My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, read by Dan Stevens (HarperAudio)

Galaxy new writer of the year: When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (Headline Review)

One Writer's Week

The reality of a working, free-lance writer’s life is not the peaceful existence a lot of people fantasise about.  Virginia Woolf famously wrote all morning (after ordering meals from the cook), read and wrote her journal after lunch and took a little walk before dinner.  For most writers it's very different.  There's the business end of writing (it is like running a business these days) and then there's the actual writing.  There are usually half a dozen projects swilling around in your head at any one time and the pace is killing.  This week has been particularly brutal.  It started in Italy.

Monday - up at dawn, drive to airport, early Ryan Air flight from Pisa to London.  3 trains in vile weather, eventually make it back to the Mill around 9pm clutching a pint of milk grabbed from a station shop.

Tuesday - up at dawn, open a month’s mail, sort whatever possible, dash out to bank, pay bills, go to dentist, hairdresser, get flu-jab, buy shopping.  Pack suitcase and write talk for Manchester LitFest and print out directions for Library I’m also going to do research in.  Fall into bed with 2 alarms set.

Wednesday - up at dawn, bus, 2 trains, arrive Manchester.  Dash into Library Archive to arrange reader pass and check they received the manuscript order I emailed yesterday.  12 pm Drink coffee in the street on the way to the LitFest to arrange IT for power point and meet the organisers of the event.  Give talk, meet audience and chat, answer questions, sign books, drink bottle of water (no time for lunch). 2.30pm Dash into archive to make a start on the ordered boxes.    3.20 Meet my new poetry editor in a café - latte and about an hours’ chat about book launches etc.  4.45pm sit outside station and eat yogurt and pot of fruit bought earlier for lunch!  5.00pm, train to Daughter no 1's house where I arrive just before 7 in time for supper.  Do email and fall into bed.

Thursday - awake at 5.30am - do email - check library catalogue, catch train to Manchester - all day in archive until 7pm.  Back by train to Daughter no1 about 8.30.  Picnic supper on train.

Friday - ditto.

The problem is that you’re usually working on 3 books at once - arranging publicity for the one that’s in the publishing pipe-line, finishing another and working on ideas for the next.  At the moment I’m publicising the Katherine Mansfield, arranging publicity and readings for the poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 (would anyone like a review copy?), and doing edits for the paper-back of Katherine Mansfield - due out in about six weeks.  Then there’s the permissions for illustrations etc that I have to re-do for the Japanese edition of Katherine Mansfield, due out in 2013.

I’m also working on the Kindle edition of my Christina Rossetti biography - just finished proof reading and sorting out rights and permissions.  By a huge stroke of luck the BBC have decided to do a small Christmas film about Christina, which I’m filming in London next week - so that’s all running around in my mind too.

Then there’s the research I've been doing in Manchester to put together a proposal for a new biography I’ve been asked to look at.  Another publisher has also asked me to prepare a proposal for a non-fiction book that seems an attractive idea.   Two things on the boil.

Then there’s the creative work in progress - almost finished a novel, which I am deeply into at the moment and trying to get time to scribble bits on trains and planes and every single spare moment I get - not easy.  Desperate to finish it.  Fed up with characters running amok in my brain.  But paid work has to come first.

Then there’s the blogs - 2 of my own, (they help me keep sane rather like an online shrink!) I also contribute to 2 others regularly, and I’ve just been asked to be a guest blogger on two other blogs - already said Yes.  Am I mad?  Oh, and I tweet.

And yes, I do have a personal life - a partner and four long-suffering children and I try to see as much of them all as possible, but this week I’ve been too tired to have an intelligent conversation with anyone.  One of my daughters, who is older and more sensible than I am, tells me that I MUST STOP RACKETING AROUND LIKE THIS.   She’s right, of course, but can’t see any chance of it happening soon.  Working for yourself is either all cream-and-custard or it's prison fare.  You have to lap up the cream when you can!

Big Book, Small Page. The Mobile Phone Novel

Want to write a mobile phone novel?  Apparently they're big in Japan as 'keitai shousetsu'.  Flash Fiction writers all take note!

Just follow this link to Dan Holloway,  at the 'Man who painted Agnieszka's Shoes' blog.   At 100/200 words a chapter, it's even more challenging than Twitter!

And you might like the Mobile Phone Novel awards site  at http://www.textnovel.com/home.php

VS Naipaul and Women Writers

I’ve been so involved with preparing for and running a residential creative writing course in Italy I’ve missed quite a lot of things that are going on in the world. Being without the internet for most of the last two weeks also means I’ve not had regular news updates. So I missed V.S. Naipaul’s infamous speech, quoted in the press. Naipaul doesn’t rate women writers at all.




“Women writers are different, they are quite different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." Asked to elaborate, he said this was due to their "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world".

He added: "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too. My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."

So in what way did he mean it? Such dismissive cruelty can’t be masked by a qualifying phrase. I didn’t know whether Naipaul’s speech was so laughable it should be ignored, or whether it represents a residue of misogyny we still have to fight.

To say that women write differently to men is OK. We do. And we write differently to each other too. Every individual sees the world from a different angle. It isn’t always possible to tell who wrote what. There are men who write so closely from the inside of a woman’s head that you can’t tell which sex authored it (Brian Moore’s I am Mary Dunne for instance) and women who can write equally convincingly as men.

His main gripe seems to be that women are sentimental. Does he mean we’re more in touch with our emotions than men? But he’s such a concise linguist I don’t think so. He means we wallow, we go over the top beyond emotion into sentiment. That’s palpably untrue. I know a great many sentimental men. Anyone read The Notebook? Message in a Bottle? And there are a great many witty, unsentimental women authors - Barbara Trapido’s ‘Sex and Stravinsky’ comes to mind. I’ve also just read Carol Clewlow’s ‘A Woman’s Guide to Adultery’ - which is just about as unsentimental as you can get.

But of course, however well a woman writes she will never write ‘equal’ to him (or any other man is the implication). In his opinion.

On his comment, that a woman is not ‘a complete master of a house’, now that is just plain prejudice. Maybe not in his house, but the days when a man was automatically master of the house by reason of his gender are long gone. And a lot of women writers are single - very much masters of their own houses. Not to mention head of publishing houses, literary agencies, book-selling houses. But the man is 78 and doesn’t seem to realise that we are living in a new world, so perhaps I’d better forgive him. The trouble is, I believe there are many in the literary, and academic, establishments - still solidly masculine - who privately agree with him. Women’s writing is weak; men’s writing is strong. What do we have to do to convince?

New Developments in Digital Publishing

There's a very interesting post on the Writers Beware blog at the moment about the sudden cut-throat competition that's arisen between agents and publishers about putting backlists out again either as Print On Demand or as E-books.  Most publishers have given up keeping any but their most famous authors in traditional print, and they've been very slow to realise the potential of POD and E-books.     Catherine Cookson's agent has set up her own publishing imprint to publish CC's backlist, by-passing Random House (who are of course furious!).
And, of course, there's nothing to stop an author doing the same once their book is out of print and they've got their rights back.  A lot of writers that I know are doing just that.  POD is very cheap and putting out an E-book either as a PDF or on Kindle is free.  Neil has already re-published one of my Virago paperbacks 'A Passionate Sisterhood' and is planning to publish my Christina Rossetti biography next year.
There is also a new digital publisher - Shortfire Press - who are E-publishing short stories,  submission guidelines here, and Amazon have started  Kindle Singles - where you can sell your own short stories individually for a small sum of money (99p seems usual).   I'm certainly going to be doing that. 
Writers need Readers and the Internet makes it possible to find them without the traditional gate-keepers of publisher and agent.  It's unsettling for authors, but makes for an exciting future.   Where is it all heading?  Listen to this radio interview with Seth Godin - it's both frightening and optimistic.  Things are changing and writers need to be prepared.

In Praise of Reading and Fiction

Mario Vargas Llosa

Route, the small northern publisher which has published some of my short stories and pioneered e-books in Britain, has just brought out the text of south american author Mario Vargas Llosa’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s free as a pdf download (and costs only pence for the kindle version) and includes a telephone interview with Vargas Llosa as well.

Besides the author being something of a literary pin-up, Vargas Llosa’s novel ‘Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter’ has always been one of my all-time favourite books. I laughed and laughed while I read it and cried when I finished it. It’s a masterpiece of story-telling. So I was delighted when he was honoured with the Nobel Prize.

His acceptance speech is called In Praise of Reading and Fiction and he talks about how reading changed his life as a child:

Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and adventures.
 He makes a good case for Literature making the world a better place:-

... thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.
 He also believes that fiction creates a medium for people to understand each other:

Good literature erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise, unites us beneath the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us.

He  talks about his own passion for writing.

“Writing is a way of living,” said Flaubert. Yes, absolutely, a way of living with illusion and joy and a fire throwing out sparks in your head, struggling with intractable words until you master them, exploring the broad world like a hunter tracking down desirable prey to feed an embryonic fiction and appease the voracious appetite of every story that, as it grows, would like to devour every other story.

Above all he’s alert to the political aspects of writing.

The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility.

It's an inspirational read at a time when writers, particularly of fiction, are feeling discouraged by diminishing returns and publishing cut-backs.

The Fictional Mansfield

So, Thursday afternoon and Neil and I are on a train to Cambridge. This weekend there’s an international conference, at the university, on Katherine Mansfield and her contemporaries. It seems a good place to promote the new biography, which is why I’ve agreed to give a short lecture about KM.. This is also rather scary, since I’m a writer, not an academic and we have very different approaches to the same material. At the moment I feel rather like a goat who is about to wander nonchalantly into a pride of lions, hoping they won’t notice I’m a different species!

I’ve decided to talk about the different authors who’ve used Katherine Mansfield as a fictional character - there are at least 16 novels about her, which seems something of a record for any author - unless someone out there can tell me otherwise. Two of her lovers wrote her into novels, using actual letters and diary entries, then her husband John Middleton Murry wrote 3 novels with KM as the central female character; then D.H. Lawrence cast her as Gudrun in Women in Love and Christopher Isherwood used her as Elizabeth in The World in the Evening.

Since 1940 there has been a further trickle of novels - American novelist Nelia White’s Daughter of Time, C.K. Stead’s Mansfield, Janice Kulyck Keefer’s Thieves, Linda Lappin’s Katherine’s Wish and Joanna Kirkpatrick’s In Pursuit.

Why this fascination? That’s what I’ve been trying to explore. What makes fiction writers choose one character rather than another? Isherwood said that KM’s life conformed to the ancient pattern of narrative tradition - paradise lost, paradise regained. But I also wonder whether it was KM’s enigmatic personality, her fascination with masks, and multiple identities, that intrigued all those authors who set out to explore who she was.

I’m looking forward to staying in Cambridge, which is such a beautiful city - the train is on time, the sun is shining and there are lambs frisking in the fields beside the railway line.

The Next Big Author

I've turned into a news junkie recently - rather ashamed of my addiction to the rolling 24 hour news of war and disaster.  Technology is extraordinary - to be able to watch events on the other side of the world in real time.  But it's also frustrating - because you can watch, but you can't do anything to help other suffering human beings.

So now I'm trying to get back to writing again.   And discovered that the peer critique site You Write On, has launched something called 'The Next Big Author'.  The challenge is to write the opening chapter/s of a novel in May and submit them for peer criticism  - the highest rated chapters will be viewed by publishers.  It sounds fun.  I tried out You Write On when it was launched and although initially cynical, it was a useful experience.  You have to review someone else's work in order to get a credit to have yours reviewed.  You request a chapter and have the option to reject the one you're sent if you don't feel you can do it justice.
I enjoyed most of the work I read and the reviewing is good experience for your own editing.  I also found the feedback I got on the 3 chapters I submitted was really useful and I made lots of changes as a result.
They've also had a big success in a novel called The Legacy, which has had lots of good reviews and been listed for prizes, so this really is a legitimate enterprise that can launch authors who've been overlooked by the big publishers.   The author of the Legacy had already written 7 unpublished novels before she hit the jackpot with this one and, looking through the lists of authors queuing up for review on this site, she isn't the only one.
How this site is going to differ from You Write On, I'm not sure.  But it does stipulate that it has to be new work - YWO allows you to submit anything you've ever written.   The really good thing about these sites is that they get people to focus on editing - you have to listen to your readers and think about their feedback.

A Week at Words by the Water

It’s been a busy week at the Lit Fest as well as trying to keep up with my university job and daily life.

I love the Words by the Water event, not just because of the beautiful location, but also because there’s always a friendly atmosphere and you never know who you might bump into over lunch in the Green Room. This year one was likely to trip over Lesley Garrett, Melvyn Bragg, Maureen Lipman, Claire Tomalin, and a host of television journalists and philosophers - including A.C. Grayling. Several of the promised journalists were missing, due to the situation in Libya, but replacements were being ordered.

I was booked to give a couple of creative writing sessions in the Sky Arts Den, which was fun, though there isn’t much you can do in 45 minutes. I hoped just to give people a taste of writing and perhaps get them started on something they might want to finish later.

One of the nice things about the festival is getting a pass to other authors’ events. I went to listen to Cate Haste talk about her new book on Sheila Fell - a painter from Cumbria who was one of the youngest artists (and one of the few women) to be admitted to the Royal Academy. She was incredibly beautiful, a protege of L.S. Lowry, and  died tragically at a very young age. It was a fantastic talk with good images.  Of course I'm slightly biased  -  Sheila Fell was an Old Girl from  my school and she spent her short life painting the landscape I love. 



You can’t go to everything though - there just isn’t time. Apparently Rachel Hewitt was fascinating on the history of the Ordnance Survey map, and I would have loved to hear poet Jackie Kay talk about her Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter.

I did manage to go to a forum on the short story. A new small press called Nightjar is bringing out Chapbooks of limited edition short stories and there seems to be a general revival of interest in the short story form - it was all very encouraging. The editor prints a maximum run of 2-300 and sells them via the internet and a few sympathetic independent bookshops. He aims to break even after printing and editing costs. There’s no money in the short story, which is presumably why so few of the big publishers are producing collections. Literary presses such as Salt are very short of money, but they need to exist if published writing isn’t to be restricted to a choice of predictable commercial fiction and the work of a few celebrity authors.


I’m always nervous appearing at big festivals like this - I much prefer small intimate venues where you can engage with the audience. But my own events seemed to go well - I had a good audience for the Katherine Mansfield talk - part of which was filmed - and they all seemed to enjoy themselves. Some of them even bought books!


And the following day we all had a lovely afternoon, with a sumptuous tea, at Greta Hall - the historic home of Coleridge and Southey - imagining what it must have been like to live there - though not with Coleridge who was, according to Southey, ‘murderous to all domestic comfort’ after the copious consumption of opiates and brandy.

Greta Hall, Keswick

Those who took part in the writers’ workshop early in the afternoon even had the opportunity to sit and write in some of the historic rooms - Coleridge’s study, Sarah’s bedroom, Southey’s parlour, Hartley’s parlour - and soak up the atmosphere. My favourite part of the house is the hallway, remembering the description of the line of clogs (there were 11 children not to mention all the adults) arranged in order of size all the way from the front door to the kitchen - which still has the original dresser and wood fired range. The current owners have kept all the original features and with 7 children running around, and fires burning in the grates, it feels very much as I imagine it must have done 200 years ago.

And now home to start work on the talks for the next two events I’m booked to do this month, but utterly distracted by the tragic events on the other side of the world. I can hardly bear to switch on the TV to confront the suffering in Libya and now in Japan.

Writers and Politics

Having lived and worked in the Middle East for almost ten years, I have a great interest in what happens there. As I write this, the best-selling Egyptian author Ahdhaf Soueif is on the streets of Cairo demonstrating for democracy in her country. She's not alone in being politically active.  Not long ago it was Swedish author Henning Mankell on TV, arrested on board an aid convoy bound for Gaza. Indian author Arundhati Roy put her literary career on hold after winning the Booker Prize in order to use her profile to expose human rights issues on the Indian sub-continent.
“I had this light shining on me at the time, and I knew that I had the stage to say something about what was happening in my country. What is exciting about what I have done since is that writing has become a weapon, some kind of ammunition.”

Roy has been widely criticised for using her public platform as a writer to promote her political views. But she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004 for her work.

Being a writer gives you a kind of privilege - you have a voice and an audience - a ready made soapbox to express opinions. There are many who feel that being a published writer puts you under an obligation to use your position to expose injustices, but there are also those who feel strongly that your work and politics are best kept separate. What is certain is that having a public platform is a responsibility - and readers of novels don’t like too much obvious polemic. Gide wrote in 1927 that one should ‘never present ideas except in terms of temperaments and characters’.

Arundhati Roy has opted for non-fiction to express her point of view (Listening to Grasshoppers); but Henning Mankell’s thrillers are an ideal vehicle to expose corruption in public life under the veil of fiction.

I’m a great admirer of Ahdhaf Soueif’s short stories, particularly the volume called ‘I think of You’. The politics of the Middle East are there in the narrative, in the voices of the characters and the circumstances of their lives. In ‘Melody’ the narrator is peering out of the window at the swimming pool in the garden of the compound she lives in. ‘We’re not allowed to use the pool; us women I mean. It’s only for the kids - and the men of course. They can use anything. And they do. Use anything I mean.’ Not all the stories have a feminist point of view, but all expose the difficulties of living inside a system that denies freedom of expression and what we would consider basic human rights to all but a select few.

As writers we can't help but reflect the world we live in.  I hope against hope for the democratisation of Egypt, but I fear that the need for Europe and America to have stability (for its oil supplies and as a bulwark against Islamic extremism) will stifle the infant, and currently unfocussed, pro-democracy movement, as the West has done in other countries in the past. And I fear more than anything, that that will allow the extremists to prevail and create greater chaos in the long term.

I would like Arundhati Roy’s creed to be mine, but it’s a lot to live up to:

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”

Arundhati Roy’s Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, is well worth reading, as is anything by Ahdaf Soueif. You might also like to check out Fadia Faqir, who lectures at Durham University and is a brilliant writer, whose novels focus on the dilemmas of the middle east.

The Tuesday Poem: David Malouf

My thoughts dwelling quite a lot on Queensland, by coincidence I’ve been reading an author born and bred in Brisbane - Australian novelist, poet and short story writer David Malouf. I’ve been reading his slim novel ‘Ransom’ which is a re-telling of one of the most poignant incidents in Homer’s Iliad. It’s the story of how Priam, King of Troy, cast off his kingly regalia and rode out in a mule cart, loaded with golden treasure, attended only by the carter, to penetrate the Greek lines and ask Achilles to return the body of his son Hector, slain by Achilles in battle, in exchange for the gold. The character who comes out of this story most strongly is the carter, Somax, whose ordinary life is the complete invention of the novelist and who has more substance than the characters reconstructed from the mythic history. The story is told in what is somewhere between prose poetry and poetic prose. This is the section where Priam has the moment of waking dream that shows him what he must do.
"Priam’s mind is as clear now as if he had slept for the whole of these eleven days and nights and woken entirely restored, his spirits quickened and lightly expanding in him.
He sits very still, his shoulders in the spare frame a little sunken; and the picture that forms before him is of himself seated just as he is here, but in full sunlight on the crossbench of a cart. A plain wooden cart, of the kind that workmen use for carrying firewood or hay, and drawn by two coal-black mules.
He himself is dressed in a plain white robe without ornament. No jewelled amulet at his breast. No golden armbands or any other form of royal insignia.
On the bench beside him the driver of the cart is a man, not so old as himself but not young either. A bull-shouldered fellow he has never seen before, in an ungirdled robe of homespun. A bearded, shaggy-headed fellow, rough but not fearsome.
Behind them, the bed of the wagon is covered with a wicker canopy, and something there is shining out from under a plain white cover. Gold or bronze it must be. It is pouring out light.
But he knows what it is - no need to lift a corner of the cloth and look beneath.

Quickly he rises, and passing the servant, who this time does not stir, swings open the door to his chamber and begins down the corridor. His blood is racing. ...

Outside, the corridor is dark, save for braziers set at easy arm’s reach along the wall and extending at intervals to the distant portal. The effect is of a black flood that has risen above head height, thick, solemn, lapping at the flickering redness of the upper walls, so that stepping out into it, what he feels is an unaccustomed lack of ease - he for whose convenience everything here is arranged by the conscientious forethought of stewards and the labour of a hundred slaves.
Here and there, as he passes, the faces of servants who sit backs to the wall, at this or that chamber entrance, loom up in the dark. Startled to see him at this hour and unattended, they stir and mutter the usual courtesies, but he is gone before they can stumble to their feet.
Yes, yes, he thinks, all this I know is unprecedented.
But so is his plan. This plunging at near dawn down a deserted corridor is just the beginning. He will get used to the unaccustomed. It is what he is after.
He feels bold now, defiant. Sure of his decision"

David Malouf: ‘Ransom’, Vintage, 2010.

Quite a lot of David’s poetry is on the internet - this is a link to my favourite one - a powerful elegy called ‘Absences’ about his relationship with his mother.

For more Tuesday Poems please go to http://www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/ 

A New Fiction Site for Authors and Readers

I've just discovered this new Arts Council site - Fiction Uncovered - which seems to be dedicated to promoting lesser known authors.  You can find it at http://www.fictionuncovered.co.uk/

Will it make a difference?   I hope so, but I'm feeling a bit cynical today!

Cuban Connection

The internet is the most amazing tool for writers - not just for research, but also for e-publishing and publicity. I don’t think we’ve all grasped the way it’s going to revolutionise our lives yet. My visit to Cuba and the blog diary I kept while I was there continues to have repercussions.
While I was in New Zealand, I was contacted by a publicist working for one of America’s leading Independent Publishers - they don’t call it ‘self-publishing’ (with all its vanity press associations) over there. They asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a novel set in Cuba, written by an ex-secret service operative who had once spent two months in a Cuban jail as the guest of Fidel Castro. Intrigued, I said yes and waited for Havana Harvest to arrive in the mail box. I also said that I’d like to interview the author and sent off a series of questions.

But for the internet the publishers would never have found my blog, or known I had an interest in Cuba, and I would certainly never have found Robert Landori’s novel or been able to talk to him about it. Book blogging is suddenly becoming an important tool in the marketing strategy for authors.
Robert Landori was born in Hungary, is multi-lingual, has a background in international finance and is a prolific story-teller (I’ll be posting my review later in the week on my book blog). He currently lives in Canada. Havana Harvest is his second thriller - the first, called Fatal Greed, is set in the murky world of Cayman Island based finance and money laundering. Both books are independently published and I was very interested to find out about Robert’s experiences with the American system. He was very generous in his responses to my questions.

When did you start writing - did you write as a child?
Never wrote a damn thing until my sophomore year at McGill. Too busy learning languages.
I spoke Hungarian and German colloquially, correctly, fluently and without an accent (a trick of the inner ear) by the time I was ten, and a governess came to the house once a week to teach me English. In 1947 my parents enrolled me in an all-French boarding school in Switzerland.

At school Robert also ‘elected to learn Spanish because it was easy.’ He goes on to say that ‘I made most of my money through speaking that language.’ One result was that he was sent to Cuba.

‘After I became a Chartered Accountant a client sent me to Cuba in 1959 because he wanted to deal with Fidel’s Government and I spoke the language, but he did not. A number of assignments in Spanish-speaking countries followed, but none involved writing. When, one day in 1986, I remonstrated with my then-girlfriend about her reading only ‘trash’ she, deeply hurt, retorted: “If you’re so smart and superior, why don’t you write a book that’s better.” I bet her that I would produce a superior novel within a year. And I did – from scratch: a 381 page thriller, called Galindo’s Turn.

Were you an avid reader?

Yes, I was. I read in Hungarian, German, English, French and Spanish.


What kind of books do you like reading?

Literally almost everything: classics, thrillers, spy stories, literary fiction, etc... Astronomy, chess, history and mathematics fascinate me and – obviously – I devour anything and everything on language.

Who are your favourite authors?

Hemingway, LeCarre, Alan Paton, Ferenc Molnar, Solshenitzyn and the late Mordechai Richler (a friend).

Have you always enjoyed story telling?

Most emphatically ‘YES’! Always have, always will. I’m a born storyteller, and good at it.

Quite a number of ex CIA and British govt agents have gone into fiction writing - John le Carre, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming to name but a few. Is this because they are forbidden to talk about their experiences and so find an outlet in writing about it?

This is not only true about the world of spooks. Players in the murky world of Mergers &, Acquisitions (one of my professions) are also restrained by contract from revealing telling details.

How much of Robert Landori is there in your main character, CIA agent Robert Lonsdale? (I note the shared history - born in Hungary and the familiarity with banking and the world of the secret services.)
Obviously, there’s a lot of Landori in Lonsdale... as well as LeCarre, Deighton and Ted Allebury.

In both Fatal Greed and Havana Harvest you weave your story around actual events. How difficult is it to combine fact and fiction in this way?

If one is a good story-teller and one has a vivid imagination it is not difficult at all. BUT, THE DEVIL IS ALWAYS IN THE DETAILS, so one has to get the background right AND THIS IS AN ART THAT ALSO REQUIRES FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE. .

On your website you talk about someone called Dania and her part in the genesis of the novel. Could you elaborate on this for readers of this blog?

Dania was a sixteen year old idealistic student in Santiago de Cuba when she was recruited into the Revolutionary Movement in 1956. Her future husband, Roberto Cisneros, and also one of her uncles – Arturo Duque de Estrada – were already members of the underground opposition organised by the student leader Frank Pais in Oriente Province with the objective of ridding Cuba of the Dictator Batista, if necessary by force.
When Fidel sent his famous message to her uncle that Fidel, his brother Raul and El Che were on their way back to Cuba from Mexico on board the yacht Gramma, Dania decided to join the guerrillas in the Sierrea Maestra. She became Raul Castro’s ‘field clerk’ and fought alongside him.
In December 1958, while working at setting up a fifth column in Havana on Fidel’s orders, Dania and her husband were captured by Batista’s secret police. She was nine months pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in prison. In great pain, she escaped a few hours after giving birth with the help of the prison’s doctor. Had she not done so she would have been shot the next day, as would have been her husband.
Her husband was severely tortured to the point where he never recovered his sanity completely. Totally disillusioned by the way the Revolution became compromised and turned into a dictatorship he, like so many other idealistic members of the July 26th Movement, committed suicide by immolating himself in front of his children.

In 1968, Dania and I were arrested while we were having lunch at the Havana Libre (previously Hilton) Hotel. I was accused of spying and was kept in solitary for 66 days. She was charged with nothing and let go the next day, BUT she was fired from her job and could not find employment (except as maid, or dish washer or waitress) for about four years. Finally rehabilitated in 1972, she married again and worked as a senior official in the Ministry of Tourism until her retirement.
She left Cuba in 1990 after giving up her pension and her apartment, and went to live in the US with her parents and sisters.
In 1993 she gave me a book to read: Case Number 1 of the Year 1989 – the Trial and Execution of Arnaldo Tomas Ochoa Sanchez, also known as El Moro (because of his dark skin). I felt that Ochoa had been treated unfairly. It seemed to me that Fidel and Raul had known all the time about Cuba’s involvement in drug trafficking and arms dealing and that Ochoa had committed no crime that merited the death penalty.
By writing HAVANA HARVEST I tried to right – at least partially – a great injustice.
YOU SHOULD RESEARCH THE OCHOA CASE IF YOU HAVE TIME!
Having just been to Cuba to meet some Cuban writers I’m interested in your take on the country’s current political situation and the direction it is moving in. What do you see as the future for Cuba?

Fidel has recently announced (although he recanted later) that his economic model is not working. He’s right. An industrious, imaginative and independent-minded people, like the Cubans, are far too enterprising to live within a centrally controlled economy.
After the disappearance of the present geriatric leadership (within the next five years) Cuba will quickly morphe into a Social Democratic state similar to what the Province of Quebec is like today: strong entrepreneurship through small and medium-sized businesses active in the agricultural and hospitality industries, in other words, tobacco, sugarcane, rum distilling, market gardening and floral produce, cattle and horse breeding, at one end, and hotels, restaurants, etc... at the other.
Two new industries may become a factor: off-shore banking and health services.
It is likely that Cuba will make serious inroads into the revenues of islands such as Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda etc...
Partly due to the current publishing crisis, there is tremendous interest in independent publishing in Europe at the moment. This doesn’t just apply to first time authors, - quite a number of well established authors are bringing out their own work. What advice would you give authors thinking of doing this?

By all means self-publish, but make sure that you buy the best of the industry – a house that has strong, wide-ranging and EFFICIENT distribution facilities. This costs money, so don’t venture into the self-publishing field unless you have at least $50,000 to throw at the project.

How did you choose Greenleaf Publishing? Did you try any commercial publishers first and if so, what was their reaction?

Commercial publishers and their gate-keepers, the literary agents, are swamped by good material and unless one has a friend in the business, or one gets to be very lucky, one is bound to be rejected. (Even F. Scott Fitzgerald had to publish his own stuff).
I am proud to say that I had over 70 rejection letters from publishers and literary agents. Altogether I have written six books of which only two have been published
Everybody is writing books these days, so what you need to do is to find a publicist who can create a brand name out of your name, thereby separating you from the run-of-the-mill. I was fortunate to meet such a person: Sarah Wilson. She was the one who introduced me to the Greenleaf Group.

Publicity and getting books into the book retailers is always the hardest part. How do you go about this?

Like John Grisham, I packed a bunch of copies of my first published book into the trunk of my car and went from book store to book store across Canada and the North-Eastern Sates of the US. I met over 20,000 people who told me what they looked for in the type of books I was writing.
My latest book is promoted by Sarah Wilson through blogging, supported by a modest advertising budget. I also lecture frequently on Money Laundering and Terrorism and appear on radio and television whenever I can.
In other words, I beat my own drum constantly and furiously.

What’s the next project? (If you’re able to talk about it, that is!)

I’m in the process of writing a sequel to Fatal Greed, my first published book.
I’m also in the process of arranging for a digital (electronic) version of Havana Harvest.

Is there anything you would like to say that isn’t covered by the questions I’ve just asked - feel free to add any comments that you want to.

TO SUCCEED IN THIS BUSINESS YOU MUST HAVE
1. TALENT TO WRITE WELL,
2. IMAGINATION TO CREATE GOOD PLOTS,
3. PERSEVERANCE AND DETERMINATION,
4. DISCIPLINE AND DEDICATION TO WORKING HARD,
5. ENOUGH MONEY TO SUSTAIN YOU WHILE YOU ARE WRITING, PRODUCING AND PUBLICIZING YOUR BOOK,
6. PERSONALITY AND A STRONG EGO THAT ENABLE YOU TO SELL YOURSELF.

Havana Harvest is published by Greenleaf Publishing, part of the Emerald Book Company