Tuesday, 2 January 2024

News 2 January 2024

Book-shaped swimming pool, anyone?

Yes, it’s that time of year again when we look back on what’s happened in the old year and make our plans for the new one.

I recently asked the members of my Scribblers Facebook group about what success as a writer looked like for them and so I thought I really should have a go at answering my own question.

When I used to visit schools I was sometimes asked whether I was rich or famous. I would sometimes glibly reply: “Well, have you heard of me?” and I might have occasionally thought, would I be making visits like this if I was rich. Maybe I would have. I enjoyed school visits. I don’t make them anymore because I’m no longer really writing for young people. Not that young, anyway.

There is that joke about would success as a writer mean that you earned enough to be able to afford a book-shaped swimming pool at your home? Well, I would quite like my own swimming pool ….

However, I have managed to get to the stage where I can justify sending a fair amount of the day on my writing. I write quite well, and I believe I’m continuing to improve, though my writing may not always have commercial appeal and I may not always push myself enough to make myself all that visible. I’m retired from the day job and live on the state pension, my teaching pension and a pension from eleven years in a job where I was basically paid to be a writer. I’m quite content with my material existence.

I might like a little more attention to my work, but not to me. However, I have to be pleased that my daughter’s friend has really enjoyed the second book in the Peace Child series and she hasn’t read a book since she was in Year 8 at school – she’s in her mid-thirties now. Add that to the student in the isolation room who wanted to read more of my book rather than the Harry Potter one she had brought with her and the young boy who hated reading but made a point of buying my books when I visited his school.

So, am I going to do anything and differently this year? Not really, though I am going to carry on with something I started mid-way through 2023. I alternate writing days with working on my publishing and marketing activities but on Wednesdays I do none of these things. Wednesdays are for some routine admin tasks but also for working on the bigger picture. So, I might tidy up my sock drawer or do any admin for my U3A groups but also look at a more effective way of administering royalties or making various adverts work better. I absolutely forbid myself to do routine writing or publishing work on Wednesdays. Every week thereby becomes a bit like a year end.

It may not suit everyone to use one day of the week this way but it is probably quite important to pencil in some “down” time both for tidying up and expansion.

I wonder whether it will eventually lead to that book-shaped swimming pool.

Writing news

I’m pottering on with Peace Child 6. I’m now half way through looking at whether the content and length is right for the target reader – which at the moment I’m defining as the older young adult.

I have a couple of reviews on Talking about My Generation: https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/around-the-world-in-80-days-at-the-octagon-theatre-bolton / and https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/review-little-women-at-home-manchester/

Both plays offer interesting takes on well-known stories.

On My Blog

I’ve written a short article about artificial intelligence: https://www.gilljameswriter.com/2023/12/ai-embrace-it-or-fear-it.html This seems to be a very important topic at the moment and one which fascinates me personally.

I’ve also supplied a quiz. Some of you may already have seen it. https://www.gilljameswriter.com/2023/12/writing-trivia-new-years-eve-quiz-for.html I supply the answers at: https://www.gilljameswriter.com/2024/01/answers-to-quiz.html

The Young Person’s Library

No new books added this month I’m afraid but I’m hoping January will be very different.

So, this month I’m recommending: The Storyteller of Casablanca by Fiona Valpy

The lives of two young women in Casablanca intertwine though they lived seventy years apart.

Zoe finds Josie’s diary when she tries to fix a loose floorboard in her daughter’s bedroom. She becomes fascinated by the young girl’s account of fleeing Paris in 1941 because her mother was Jewish. Zoe too has her problems and she and Tom are trying to make a life in Morocco as they flee their old life and its troubles. There are still refugees in Casablanca and Zoe finds that helping them takes her away from her own problems.

What has become of Josie and will Zoe and Tom succeed in establishing a fulfilling life?

Fiona Valpy keeps us guessing in this delightful story worthy of The Storyteller of Casablanca.

Sample pages

This replaces my previous giveaways. If you like what you’re reading you can click through and find out ways of buying the book. However, I’m still happy to give you a free copy if you’re strapped for cash and / or you’re willing to review. Just contact me.

Note: these are usually files to be downloaded to a Kindle. Occasionally there are PDFs.

This month I’m offering January Stones my first flash fiction collection.

Introduction

These stories were written one a day throughout January 2013. They were originally published on a blog called Gill’s January Stones. In fact, they were published in reverse order. The first one you read here, When Physics Got Sick was the last one to be written and originally published on 31 January 2016.

Sometimes the stories would come right at the beginning of the day. Sometimes they would take a while longer.

Do they have a theme? Not really, though the idea of ‘stones’ is one of turning them over slowly on the beach until we find the right one. It’s not a bad time of year, anyway, right at the beginning in January, as the New Year starts and the days slowly become longer.

There was no strict word count. Each story is as long as it needs to be.

In any case, each on stayed with me until it felt finished. It had to be finished though, by midnight of that day.

As I’ve put this volume together, I’ve edited them again. This just goes to show how we’ve never actually finished editing.

Quite possibly if I ever perform any of these pieces for you, I’ll edit them again before I read them out loud.

When physics got sick

The Scientist carefully took the shards of glass out of the cupboard, dropped them in the sink, and watched underwhelmed as the tumbler formed itself. It seemed natural, as if it had happened a thousand times before. Yet his constantly questioning mind wondered whether this, this first occurrence of something quite extraordinary, marked the beginning of the end as the second law of thermodynamics was breaking down.

As he filled the tumbler with water he became aware that at the same time as being in his kitchen he was also upstairs and at the other side of the universe, so clearly Planck’s Constant had suddenly become somewhat bigger.

Later, examining the internal structure of protons, he found that they were indeed made of cream cheese and constantly mumbled nonsensical German so the label “quark” was actually extremely apt. Yet there was a paradox because surely the cream cheese itself was made of atoms, and they, in turn, of protons.

And yet.

There was no problem for Newton. Apples still fell merrily on the heads of those foolish enough to sit under apple-trees in the autumn. The big nuclear reactor in the sky still reacted. His home planet appeared to be carrying on its Maypole dance around its star and keeping up its complex ceilidh with the rest of the universe.

The Scientist paused for a moment and pondered. Perhaps the Humanities people were right after all. Every physicist knew that all of these laws did not work all of the time. Everything was relative anyway – Einstein had shown this. There could be a god, then. Or maybe the Matrix was not so far-fetched. It might even be the philosophers who had got it right – that life is but an illusion.

Scientific advice by Doctor Martin James who identified two subatomic particles, some ten years or so before the World Wide Web was born at CERN, thereby gobsmacking his children’s science teachers.

Weather Behaving Badly

They talked about El Niño and La Niña. So we had quite a few years of proper summer unfortunately accompanied by drought. Then we had several years of miserable weather. They talked of Global Warming and then renamed it Climate Change because the Warming was actually making it cooler for the posh people. But we hadn’t seen anything yet.

They made a film about a new ice age arriving suddenly. It seemed melodramatic. Then came Katrina and the film seemed more reasonable. After Sandy it began to look tame.

The stream winds started moving in the wrong direction. We got snow on snow followed by rain on rain and floods, followed by temperatures going up overnight. Two feet of snow fell and disappeared within twenty-four hours.

Yet, one morning soon after, there was thick ice on the windscreen and cars sliding round the S bend though the temperature gauge said it was six degrees Celsius. Later, after the sun had shone all day and the gauge now said seven, there was, once more, ice on the car.

What’s going on?

Like to read more? Find it here: https://www.thebridgetowncafebooksshop.co.uk/2021/06/january-stones.html

The Schellberg Project

The posts may be helpful for teachers who are familiar with the Schellberg stories or who are teaching about the Holocaust. They may also be interesting for other readers of historical fiction.

I’ve added a couple of new posts this month. One is about Alissa Oldenburg’s excellent novel about a Holocaust survivor (?). You will understand the question mark if you read the book. Read the full review here: When Glass Breaks by Allissa Oldenberg

I’ve also included a short article about Nicholas Winton, in anticipation of the new film about his life. Read that here One Life – Nicholas Winton

Some notes about my newsletters and blogs

They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they all do.

Bridge House Authors For all those published by Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapeltown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by us. General news about the imprints. News for writers. Links to book performance. Sign up here.

The Bridgetown Café Bookshop where you can buy my books and books published by Bridge House Publishing, CafeLit, Chapeltown Books and The Red Telephone. Visit us here.

Chapeltown Books News about our books. Sign up here.

The Creative Café Project News about the project and CaféLit – for the consumer rather than for the producer. Sign up here.

Gill’s News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School Visits and Events. Book recommendations and giveaways. Find it here.

Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and workshops to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.

Red Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up here.

A Publisher’s Perspective Here I and some other editors blog as a publisher. Access this here.

The Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative cafés. See them here.

CaféLit Stories Find these here

Gill James Writer All about writing and about my books. View this here.

Gill’s Recommended Reads Find information here about books that have taken me out of my editor’s head and a reminder of the ones I’ve highlighted in this newsletter.

Gill’s Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.

The House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project. Read it here.

Writing Teacher All about teaching creative writing. Some creative writing exercises. Access this here. I also invite other writers to provide prompts and work for critique.

Books Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new books. Find them here.

The Young Person’s Library The children’s book catalogue. Access it here.

Fair Submissions Find it here.

Opportunities for writers are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I send it out to a list. If you would like to be on that list, sign up here.

Happy reading and writing.

Monday, 1 January 2024

Answers to quiz

Mrs Beeton – her publisher husband needed some books to experiment with and then she got the bug about writing cookery books.
Louisa May Alcott – after twenty years or so she finally wrote Little Women, which is partly autobiographical
Charles Dickens - he had quite a writing routine and a good long walk every day was part of it. Despite this fitness regime sadly he died at the age of fifty-eight from a brain haemorrhage
Dylan Thomas – you can visit his home as Laugharne. Be sure to also see his writing shed.
Sophie Hannah - she writes what she terms “continuation novels” about such characters as Hercule Poirot.
Lee Child - further adventures of his famous character Jack Reacher, former American military policemen are now written by his brother.
Janet and Allan Ahlberg have produced many delightful books together. Sadly, Janet died of breast cancer in 1994. Daughter Jessica has worked on some projects with her father.
Molière Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid), about a hypochondriac who fears death and doctors, was performed in 1673 and was Molière’s last work. During the fourth performance of the play, on February 17, Molière collapsed onstage and was carried back to his house in the Rue de Richelieu to die.
German, French, Spanish have the same word for “story” and for “history”. There may be others.
“Novel” of course means ‘new’ and this was a new form of story-telling. Prose fiction as we now know it was very different from the story in poetic or dramatic form. Prose stories before the novel were “told”, usually spoken, rather than “shown”.
John Steinbeck like many writers had his strong habits. One of his was writing in pencil. That he got through sixty some days perhaps shows how prolific he was.
Four ghosts appear to Scrooge. Arguably though all of the other characters he was shown were also a type of ghost.
The royalties from J M Barrie’s Peter Pan go to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.
This opening line comes from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows which feature anthropomorphic characters and the notorious Toad of Toad Hall. The animals have a lot of adventures and just as they think they are returning to a safe home they find that the problems they had overcome were still awaiting them at home. This is a common trope.
Stephen King, that well-known writer of horror stories, lived though his open horror story when he was very badly injured after being hit by a van in 1999.
Isaac Asimov wrote this story. In it there is a robotic code that we may well need to adopt to keep AI in check.
The Mouse Trap is the longest-running production. There are older plays but none of them have runs as long as this one. If you see it you must not tell anyone who did it.
Kafka wrote many bizarre and somewhat disturbing stories. Perhaps he decided they were so alarming that shouldn’t be offered to the public. Fortunately his friend Max Brod thought otherwise and published his work. Whatever you opinion of his work it will certainly make you stop and reflect.
Balzac was the archetypal poos writer living in a garret. He kept himself alive by drinking lots of cold coffee.
Shakespeare really wanted to be an actor. We all know he became a brilliant writer and also an astute business man. He did not give up easily. And he survived the pandemic.

Sunday, 31 December 2023

Writing Trivia A New Year’s Eve quiz for you.

1. Who started writing cookery books in order to give her husband something to publish?

2. Which writer finally learnt to write what she knew and then invested the hard-earned money from this in the railways, thereby becoming very rich? One of her well-known characters is also a woman who writes.

3. Which writer walked up to fifteen miles a day?

4. Which hard-up writer was gifted a boat-house to live in?

5. Who is writing further Agatha Christie style books at the behest of the Agatha Christie estate?

6. Which crime writer has passed on his most well-known character to his brother?

7. Which husband and wife team produced amazing picture books for children, including one about well-known fairly-tale characters and a postman?

8. Which writer died after collapsing on stage playing a character in one of his own plays? Doubly ironic, as it was a play about medicine.

9. Can you name a language in which the word “story” and “history” are the same word?

10. Why “novel”? How does this word come about?

11. Which writer used up to sixty pencils a day?

12. In A Christmas Carol how many ghosts visit Scrooge?

13. The royalties from which children’s book support a children’s hospital?

14. Which novel opens with the line, “The Mole had been working very hard all the morning spring cleaning his house”?

15. Which writer of horror stories was involved in an unexpected road accident while out walking in 1999?

16. What is the name of the author who wrote the short story “I, Robot” which was also made into a movie?

17. What is the title of the longest-running play ever written?

18. Whose novels were published after his death, even though he had asked for his work to be destroyed? We now use an adjective from his name to describe the bizarre and uncanny.

19. Which French writer lived mainly on coffee?

20. Which writer was the son of a beer-taster and glove-maker, survived a pandemic and really wanted to be an actor?

Answers here.

Thursday, 14 December 2023

AI - embrace it or fear it?

It seems odd to me that we fear it yet we inverted it. We could pull the plug, couldn’t we, and surely it ought to be in our control? Yet we let it continue because we sense it could be used and should be used for good.

I’m reminded of my initial reaction to Google translate. I’ve worked for over twenty-five years in teaching modern languages and speak French, German and Spanish reasonably fluently. As a secondary school teacher I might have been horrified if someone had used Google translate to prepare work. Yet I find myself doing that from time to time for my French, German and Spanish U3A conversation groups. One colleague who runs a French group and a German group has recently joined our Spanish group. He uses Google translate all the time. There are a couple of tricks here; you must know enough to know when the translator has made a howler. But anyway it introduces you to new vocabulary quickly. It is in the end another way of learning.

Can AI do the same for our writing?

I recently asked Chat GPT to put something together on the advantages and disadvantages of self—publishing. I was creating some Tip Sheets for my creative writing students. Each subject should be covered in no more than two pages of A4. So, I asked for about 300 words in bullet points. It obliged. I rejected a couple of its arguments. I added in a couple of extra ones of my own. I rewrote most of it so that it more resembled the style of the other tip sheets. It didn’t really tell me anything I don’t already know. Not much anyway. It in effect helped me to gather and marshal my thoughts. .

Before Chat GPT came along I might have done a Google search. Or similar. After all, Google is your friend. Except sometimes it leads you up the garden path. Again, as with Google translate, you have to know how to recognize the fake and clumsy. We are used to that now, aren’t we?

I read an article yesterday in an academic journal about how one professor encouraged his students to produce their essays using AI. The trick it seems is to make the essays the type that requires original and critical thinking. I remember being encouraged to set up open-ended projects so that each student’s work would be unique. This helped in the war again plagiarism.

Similarly therefore one can use AI to collect and collate the data. How to interpret and apply it remains a human activity.

I guessing I’m tapping into the Zeitgeist a little at the moment. My latest SF YA novel includes a piece of AI that is becoming more and more sentient but still knows it has to serve humans. And I am becoming a little concerned that we are enslaving AI. I’m only half glad to see that local authorities are beginning to use robots to sort out the recycling. What if they rebel?

Thursday, 7 December 2023

Newsletter November 2023

Writerly activities

Sometimes I feel so privileged to be a writer and therefore to be allowed to indulge in several activities that aren’t exactly writing but might be described as “writing related”. There have been two this week:

I attended a meeting of the Manchester City of Literature partners. Yes, we’re very proud that Bridge House is a partner. Take a look at the other partners here: https://www.manchestercityofliterature.com/about/partners/ And have a look at what the City of Literature does. Even more exciting was to find that one of my former students from the University of Salford now works for them. Another former student was representing one of the other partners. Our meeting involved some brainstorming about the year’s literary calendar in Manchester. We also talked about the aims and objectives of the organisation. This was followed by a social event where I was able to network and made a lot of useful contacts.

We Talking About My Generarion reporters were invited to a show case of some younger reporters’ work: https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/stretford-storytellers-project-exhibit-reveals-hopes-and-ideas-for-the-town/ It’s probably also the first time I’ve been to Stretford, so new experiences all round.

I also love going to the theatres and have two visits planned next week. I’m going to the Bolton Octagon to see Around the World in Eighty Days and Home to see Little Women This helps satisfy my continuous need for story. And I can convince myself it’s work; it helps my understanding of how plots work.