Welcome
Welcome to the launch of Spooking  
Have have a cup cake

And a glass of bubbly.

Cheers!

         

Great news for teachers
If you're a teacher in the Greater Manchester area, or not too far away from Salford, I may be able to offer you a free school visit. This would be about 90 minutes long, and would include a reading form the book, a question and answer session, a creative writing exercise with your class and a chance for your students to buy a signed copy.  Email me here for availability and to discuss details.
For schools further afield, I can offer a question and answer session. Just buy two signed copies of the book and I'll answer 20 questions form your students. Use the Add to Cart button below:      
         


Free copies 
I'm giving away five e-book copies via a draw between all the people who submit  an interesting question via the comment box below.

Continue following on Twitter and Facebook
I'll be adding more and more material to this site and letting you know via Twitter and facebook tomorrow.
Now for an excerpt from Spooking  
This is one of my favourite pieces. At a reading recently I actually sang part of this.

It was night-time. Tom could hear gentle snoring. His eyes got used to the dark and he realised he was in a student room. Kevin’s. Marcus was sitting up on top of the bookshelf, flicking through some of the books. 

“Twenty heavy text books, lined up by the wall,” he sang. “And if one heavy text book, should accidentally fall. -” He took one of the books and threw it to the floor.  “- There'd  be nineteen heavy text books lined up by the wall.”

One by one, Marcus tipped the books on to the floor. Then he wrenched the shelf away from the wall, so that it looked as if the shelf had given way under the weight of the books.

“Blimey, ‘e’s a good sleeper,” said Marcus, “We’d better do summat about that.” He floated over and took his mouth organ out of his pocket. He played a bell chime over and over again, getting louder each time. “Wake up Kev-in. Kev-in wake up,” he sang finally.

Kevin woke up startled. “Who’s there?” he called. “What’s that?” He snapped his bedside light on. “Oh Christ,” he said, as he saw all the books on the floor.

“Do not take the name of the Son of God in vain,” said Marcus in a very solemn voice.

“Can he hear you?” asked Tom.

“Just about,” said Marcus. “Not loud and clear like you can. Quiet enough that he might think he’s imagining it. ” He put his finger to his lips.

“Is there somebody there?” asked Kevin, his voice a bit wobbly.

Marcus stretched his arms out in front of him and went “Oooh” Oooh!”

Tom had to bite his fist to stop himself laughing.

“Can he see you?” asked Tom.

“He might be able to. If he’s sensitive enough,” said Marcus. “But by the morning or even as soon as we’ve gone, he’ll probably think he imagined it or dreamt it.”

“What about the books, though?” asked Tom.

“Well, he’ll just use those as the explanation about what give him the nightmare.”

Kevin was looking a little less startled. He got out of bed and started straightening up the books.

“Oooh! Ooh!” went Marcus again.

“Who the Hell’s there? What do you want?” shouted Kevin.

Marcus shuddered. “Do not mention the name of the Bad Place in vain.” Hhe spread his arms out in front of him again in classic ghost fashion.

“What?” cried Kevin. “What do you want?”

“He can see me all right,” said Marcus winking at Tom. 

Tom really had to bite his fingers hard now to stop himself laughing. 

“You can’t be for real,” said Kevin with a sneer. “Who the Hell are you?”

“Do not mention that dread place,” quivered Marcus.

Tom couldn’t help tittering. 

“Who’s there? What do you want? What’s so funny?” cried Kevin. His face was white.

“I have told you,” droned Marcus. He blew Kevin a kiss.

Kevin shivered. “Yes, all right,” said Kevin, pulling his dressing-gown on. “Now leave me alone.”

As Kevin opened the door to his room, Marcus blew at a stack of papers on the table. They too ended up on the floor. Then he slammed the door. 

(I have taken a couple of spoilers out of this!) 

Question and Answer Session

What was your inspiration? 

I actually can't remember. But the car in it, Binky, a blue Ford Fiesta, belonged to my son and then I bought it off him and allowed my daughter to use it. Some of the story takes place near Southampton, where I used to live, and some of it takes place at the University of Bangor, where I got my PhD.    

Did it take long to write? 

About nine months, including all of the editing I did before I sent it off. I try to write 2000 words a day.  Or deep edit 6000, or read through 10,000 or any combination of these. I usually work on more than one project at a time.    

Was there a particular reason to write it?

I wanted to start a new project whilst I was on Tenerife. The story had been flapping around at the back of my mind for some weeks. It also acted as a break between two volumes of my Peace Child trilogy.


When you were a student yourself did you ever imagine that one day you would be a published author and a lecturer?  
I always wanted to write but kept not getting round to it. My first degree was in modern languages, and I became a language teacher. I did everything I could in that profession. Then it was time to move on. So, I started writing - children's books and educational materials. I still like reading in other languages however. I kept the dream going even though at first I wasn't successful. I then had a chance to do a masters in Writing for Children.  The dream widened. I now wanted to be published and talk with authority about writing to university students. I wanted to be asked to do readings. Then I was published and started getting invited to talk to groups. I started a Ph D in Creative and Critical Writing. I was asked to teach some undergraduates. Then I got the Ph D and the post at the University of Salford.
It was always important to keep the vision alive.  Which is why I say IF you  really want to do it you can. But it is a big IF isn't it?  

Did you have a "What if?" question in your head when you wrote "Spooking?" and what was it? 
I guess I did. What would happen if.... a young man died in a car crash before he had really sorted things out with his girlfriend? So yes, the "what if" question is important. But some other things go on as well ...  

How do you determine how to end the story? Do you pretty much know the direction you'll take before you begin writing? 
I think I always know the beginning and the end of the story. But it can meander a little between those two points. Yes, and that beginning and end usually makes up the first statement of the query letter.
With Spooking also both the opening scene and the closing scene were pretty clear in my head ... and kind of similar!      

Do you plan all your story lines up front, or do you see where it takes you and add sub plots as you go? OR a mixture of the above?
Really a mixture, I guess. I do quite a bit of planning. Opening, complexities, crisis, climax, resolution. Then think about sub-plots. I also spend quite a bit of time on the characters and setting before I start. Often, though, mainly in my head - while I'm driving, cooking or walking. Many ideas actually come as I write.       
 

  
I'm interested that you were a language teacher. So was I. What age groups did you teach and how did this input on your book?


I taught mainly 11-16 though I have taught younger and older, and adults as well. I don't think languages come into this one that much BUT I wrote most of it on Tenerife and was speaking a lot of Spanish at the time. And yes, I have another ide for a book from that time there - it's in a queue behind two others. Some of the scenes in Spooking take place very close to a school where I used to teach. It's possible that both Tom and Amanda went to that school. Tom's French teacher's a bit useless and absolutley not based on anyone I know, though she does say something to her students that is similar to what one of our teachers used to say to some of us ....
BTW J K Rowling an I share a chemistry teacher ... who was the model for Snape.
People need to be careful around writers. We might put them in books!  Actually, though, I'd say that that can be quite dangerous.
Going back to languages: maybe my trademark is that I'll often sprinkle a few foreign words into what I'm writing.  Sometimes they're form a real language and sometimes they're made up.     
 
 

Rewriting: more about addition or subtraction?

Which is it?

I was fascinated by a debate recently about whether editing / rewriting was more about adding or taking away. One of my MA students recently said that once he had edited his text it would be slightly over the 12,000 words required and that currently it was slightly under.  Mark Twain famously said that if he had had more time he would have written less. In the debate I followed, some writers were saying that their edited drafts were longer than their originals. Others said the opposite. So I started watching myself very carefully. I was already convinced I did both.

What tends to make drafts longer

It’s usually where I’ve been telling instead of showing. Of course, sometimes it’s okay to tell and an experienced writer has a sense of how to get the balance between the two right. We take short cuts in the 21^st century anyway as we don’t need as much detailed description. Say “New York” and even people who have never been there get an image. But the scenes I need to extend are usually the ones where I’ve been lazy. I need to show my reader that my character is uncomfortable by the way he acts and / or thinks. I need to create a film in my reader’s head similar to the one I have in my own.

Sometimes a whole scene is missing. It’s almost as if I’ve forgotten to spell something out to the reader. We are hampered by our intimate knowledge of our characters and stories. An extra scene can sometimes help to ground the reader more.

Sometimes I want to avoid using the word “said” too much. I certainly don’t want to substitute it with another word other than maybe “whispered” or “shouted” and I may have those there already. Yet the speech needs assigning. At that point it’s useful to have the character who speaks perform a relevant action:

 “I’ve no idea.” Barney frowned and looked away.  

What tends to make drafts shorter

Sometimes I discover that it’s just not necessary to say something. I do like to have my young adult characters say one thing and think another. But sometimes it’s obvious that that’s what a character thinks from a previous action.

I tend to use “seemed to”, “was ….ing” and “suddenly” too often. A more direct language is often more effective. “Suddenly he seemed to be sitting on the sofa,” is stronger as “He sat down on the sofa.”

Sometimes a whole scene is not needed at all. This happens especially near the beginning of a novel or a story. So often those opening paragraphs / chapters are there simply to help the writer into the story.

We’re all guilty from time to time of expanded sentences: “It was a great disappointment to him that the museum was closed on Wednesday afternoons.” Why not just “He was disappointed that the museum was closed on Wednesday afternoon.”?

All of these, though, stay if they’re part of the character’s voice. It tends to be fine in conversation anyway.

Just changing

This is usually about finding something better than the accepted cliché.            

The clay-modelling analogy

My second and subsequent drafts d tend to come out a little longer than the first ones, despite there being more examples of reasons to extract text than to add it. I guess those scenes that need to be shown rather than told account for that. In fact, though, I take away almost as much as I add. I reshape a fair bit too.

It is a little like clay-modelling. The first draft gets out the basic shape. Then you add a little clay here, take a little away there and reshape as you go. You know about what needs to be done with your text the same way as you know what needs to be done with the clay. In the end it is intuitive rather than rule-bound.                

                        

       

Teaching Creative Writing

I was really delighted to receive my copy of this book the other week. I have one chapter in it: Finding a suitable narrative voice when writing for children. I’ve written on this theme before and I use the type of exercise I’ve outlined here quite often in my own classes. I even use it myself as I start each new children’s book.

But I don’t really want to talk about just my own chapter here. I’d like to say it’s an excellent reference book for a creative writing teacher or a writer. There are fifty chapters, so that means forty-nine creative writing exercises I’ve not used before. This is extremely useful as my students inform me that what they most like about their classes are the opportunities they have to complete creative writing exercises. It’s my own experience too that I’ll often get a completely new idea by doing one of these exercises.

There are chapters also by several colleagues I know well: Elaine Walker (editor), Steve May (the paperless workshop), Philip Gross (collaborative poetry game), Vanessa Harbour (voice in young adult literature) and Craig Batty (describing feeling). There are several people I do not yet know and I’m look forward to reading about writing animals (Sandra Burr), yoga on the page (Beverly Frydman) and leaving the comfort zone Nicholas Y.B. Wong.

The book is also extremely attractive and very tactile.                

A Writing Experiment

I’m currently working on something that to some extent was inspired by the master students at the University of Salford where I lecture in creative writing. They conduct some very bold experiments. I thought it was about time I did, too. The subtitle to our MA is innovation and experiment. I’m a fan of the OULIPO poets and I think what I’m doing would be approved by this group – though I am working within prose fiction rather than poetry.  

I don’t want to give all of the details at this stage but I will say there’s a lot of counting involved. I am one of those writers who plots loosely to start with, but keeps the two-line synopsis as the backbone of the story all the time. This time, however, I have only a very vague idea of the story line – in fact probably just that two–line synopsis and no more. But I do know precisely where the main turning points are going to come.

I’m finding that I’m building my characters up as I go along. Normally, I have a very good idea of exactly who they are before I start. They are no less rounded this time. They feel more real to me because I am getting to know them the same way I would if they were human. They are emerging before me, rather than being created by me.  

This experiment relies very much on word count. Sections are gradually getting longer. So, I’m writing what feels right, editing three times then making sure the word count is spot on. There can be no further editing part from a proof read and changing the odd word or two here and there – one verb or adjective for another, perhaps. I’m certainly writing more slowly than normal BUT editing is going to be a lot quicker. Maybe a read out loud and a copy-edit for spelling. There’ll essentially only be one draft.  

I’m not sure how commercial this novel is going to be or whether it will actually work at all. But it will be interesting to look at and it may pose many questions. It could open up a whole new area of research. I’ll post more on this when it’s finished. I’ve completed 11,000 words out of a possible 75,000.