Showing posts with label The Curiosity Cabinet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Curiosity Cabinet. Show all posts

Of Blaeberries, Midgies and a Scottish Love Story

 



At the weekend, a couple of Polish friends living in Scotland posted pictures online of a place that used to be one of my dad's favourite hill-walking destinations: the Loch Cornish walk in the Galloway hills. We went there often when I was younger, and we would especially go there when it was 'blaeberry' time. These are the small, sweet, aromatic berries that grow on our hills, our islands, our moorlands and - as my friends reported - in Poland too, where they feature in many recipes. My dad used to make blueberry pierogi, which were particularly delicious. It is just a little late in the year now to find many of them. It's a short season and the birds and small mammals make short work of them. As far as I remember, we would go in late July or early August. 


Bajka who loved blueberries. 
 This also happens to be the height of the midge season here in Scotland. The Scottish 'midgie' has a deservedly fearsome reputation. I remember one year, when I was in my teens, heading for the hills with my parents. Knowing that we would be harassed by flies and midges, my father packed three old 'net' curtains along with the picnic. Draped in these, we picked pounds of the luscious berries. The dog had learned to pick them too, seeking them out and nipping them off with her small front teeth, although since she always ate them herself, she didn't contribute much to the hoard. I remember her finding a good patch and browsing contentedly while we picked. A few other hillwalkers passed us by and - seeing three people draped in white, crouching down and engaged in what must have looked like some primitive Druidic dance - gave us a very wide berth. 

Anyway, our blueberry/blaeberry/bilberry conversation reminded me that I had always wondered why the blueberries I buy in the shops never taste remotely like the blueberries we used to pick on the hills. They are big balls of sweet nothingness, whereas the genuine blueberry has a strong aromatic flavour. My Polish friends (who know all about these things) pointed out that the balls of sweet nothing are known as 'American Blueberries' in Poland. They are vaccinium corymbosum, (the Highbush Blueberry) whereas the luscious European berries are vaccinium myrtillus, the European bilberry, blueberry or - in Scotland - the blaeberry. Corymbosum look good. Myrtillus taste good.

Which makes me wonder why some enterprising fruit farmer over here hasn't turned over some of his or her land to growing genuine native blueberries on a commercial scale. I'd buy them.

Finally - all of this reminded me of a rather sexy passage in my novel The Curiosity Cabinet in which Henrietta, exiled to the small Hebridean island of Garve, for reasons that only emerge at the end of the novel, is gathering blaeberries, and almost trips over her reluctant captor, Manus McNeill, 'lying full length on a bed of heather, staring at the sky, his arms pillowing his head.' For the first time they hold a genuine conversation about her background, and she finds herself touched by his anger on her behalf, without understanding just what lies behind it. For the first time too, they acknowledge a mutual attraction. And if you want to know more you'll have to read the book! 

It was one of my first published novels. I've gone on to use the same island setting in a couple more novels, but I find that I have a genuine lingering fondness for the people in this one - especially Henrietta and Manus who are not really a conventional hero and heroine. Looking at the many nice reviews, a number of other people think so too. 




My Fictional Island of Garve: Here It Is!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to show you the excellent map, drawn by cartographer Joe de Pass of my fictional island of Garve. Although Garve features in the Curiosity Cabinet, the Posy Ring, out now, is the first novel in a planned series - the Annals of Flowerfield. I'm working on the next book, The Marigold Child, even as I write this! You don't have to read the Curiosity Cabinet to understand The Posy Ring, and all the novels will, to some extent, stand alone. But you will meet a few of the modern day characters from that first book all over again in The Posy Ring. They are no longer central to the story but if you want to know what happens to Donal and Alys and Ben, you can find out now!

That first novel is also, like Joe's map, a nice introduction to the world of the book, so although it isn't essential, you could do worse than seek out The Curiosity Cabinet and read it first.

Creating a Fictional Setting - My Imaginary Scottish Island


In the Curiosity Cabinet, I created a fictional Scottish island called Garve. In writing The Posy Ring, the first of a new series with the same setting, I've deliberately set out to find out even more about it. It's an Inner Hebridean island. It's medium sized: bigger than Gigha but smaller than Islay. It sits somewhere between Islay, Jura and Gigha but like the mythical Celtic Tir nan Og, there's a nebulous quality to its situation. Of course the characters know exactly where it is, but readers should be able to speculate a bit!

In the Curiosity Cabinet, I could permit myself to be vague. I knew a lot about the landscape of my fictional island of Garve or Eilean Garbh. The name means 'rough' in Gaelic, and I knew that this was an island that might indeed look a little rough from the sea. Trees would have been planted only later in its history but it would still be a softer landscape than those of the Outer Hebrides. There would be wild flowers in plenty, some trees and some decent grazing, although the upland parts of the island would be less hospitable.

But now that I've been working on the first of a series of novels with the same island setting, I've spent a while happily working out the entire landscape of my made up island: the houses, the villages, the farms, the archaeological remains (a great many of these) the harbours, the roads and where the streams flow through the landscape. My husband has drawn out a map and I've been filling in names and places.


Many years ago, at my primary school, I remember working on a 'desert island' project. We were given a board each and lots of old fashioned plasticine. I can smell it now! We were encouraged to make an island of our own. We could bring in things from home: beads, feathers, flowers, sticks, anything that we thought might enhance our island. I can remember being practically obsessed with it for weeks.

I recognised those same feelings all over again when I was creating my fictional island. I've spent ages poring over my makeshift map, writing in place names, putting in landscape features, imagining what it would look like and feel like to be there, with my two feet on the ground. Inhabiting it, just as my characters do. Now my artist husband is painting a colourful and rather more arty plan of Garve, but I'm still engrossed by my bigger map, deleting things here and there, adding things too. It is displacement activity, for sure - but it's also a necessary part of creating a world that really hangs together, that exists in my imagination.


It now seems so vivid to me that I daily feel a certain amount of disappointment that I can't actually hop on a CalMac ferry and visit it in reality. Most writers spend a large part of their lives living in their own heads, so to speak, and this is a prime example. Garve and its people have become as real to me as any other place that I know and love.

Ayr Waterstones: A Very Welcoming Bookshop.

It always gives me a bit of a kick to see novels with my name on the cover in a book shop. It's the kind of thing you dream of, not just when you're starting out (although you do, of course!) but as you're soldiering on, perhaps with a few successes behind you, when you've hit a rough patch and can't see anyone ever wanting your work again.

The truth is that a career as a writer - probably a career in any of the arts - is a switchback. There will be a handful of people for whom it's a dizzying rise to sustained to fame and fortune and good for them. But for the vast majority of us, it's a game of snakes and ladders and just when you think you've made it up the final ladder, there's that huge snake - an anaconda surely - that takes you slithering down to the bottom of the board again. So although most of us expect everything to be kind of temporary, it's exhilarating to see that you're building up a certain volume of work and that people want to know about it. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that.

Incidentally, everyone thinks that seeing the very first printed copies will be the most thrilling thing about being published, but for me at any rate, it isn't. It's exciting, no doubt about it, but coming to the end of a big project is always a bit of a let-down until you get properly started on the next novel. And there's a sense in which the box of advance copies - although undoubtedly lovely to have and hold and show off to friends and relatives - isn't just as exciting as you think it will be. Maybe it was the very first time I was ever published. Maybe it's a feeling that you can never quite recapture, the novelty of it all.

But seeing your books in a bookshop - especially seeing quite a lot of your books in a bookshop - that is thrilling and brings home to you just how far you've come. A few weeks ago a friend posted a picture of her novel on a table of recommended fiction in another Scottish branch of Waterstones and there was The Jewel as well, keeping good company with all kinds of  'weel kent' writers - and that was even more thrilling. We shouldn't make these comparisons, but it's only human to do it.

Anyway, these heaps of my books were on show because Ayr Waterstones was having its own small festival of local history. There were events for children and events for adults. I was speaking about researching and writing historical fiction and I began by saying something about The Curiosity Cabinet, and what will be coming after. But because we were in Ayrshire, I was asked so many interesting questions about The Jewel, and Jean Armour, that I spent quite a bit of the time chatting about Jean and Rab as well. There was a good, receptive audience in a lovely intimate space and it was a pleasure to be there. It struck me afterwards what a warm and welcoming bookshop Ayr's Waterstones is. Friendly and knowledgeable people, nice cafe, excellent range of books. I know I would say that anyway, but it's true. If you don't believe me, go along and see for yourself!


Linens and Lace and Other Inspirations

The occasional old shawl like this gorgeous Cantonese shawl
For some years now, I’ve been running another business on the side, supplementing my writing income by buying and selling antique and vintage textiles of all kinds. Textiles have been pretty much a lifelong passion with me. It all started when I was a child and used to go with my mum to the saleroom – she would always be looking at pottery and porcelain while I would be gazing at linens, lace, embroideries and the occasional old shawl that was always thrown in the corner of the saleroom, because nobody bothered much about old clothes back then. Or, come to think of it, old teddies. How time have changed!

An old fabric doll, fully dressed in Polonaise style
For me, there seemed to be something quite magical about them. When I went to university in Edinburgh, I was fascinated by the emerging vintage clothes shops there, even though ‘vintage’ had not yet become a mainstream interest. My mum was a very good seamstress and she made me a long Dr Zhivago coat (well – Lara coat, really) in black wool with fur around the hem and neck. There was a maxi dress too, from one of those Vogue Paris Original patterns, a beautiful thing with a weighted hem. I still have that, along with a long white lacy skirt, originally a petticoat, very ornate and detailed, bought from a little shop down in Stockbridge with carefully saved cash. Old army greatcoats were in fashion for the boys, long skirts, Indian cotton dresses for the girls. I remember going to one party in a nightdress from Marks and Spencer, a long candy-striped garment with a high waist, straight out of Jane Austen.

'Do you know,’ said the shocked wife of one of our lecturers, ‘that some students wear nightdresses to parties?’ I’m still not 100% certain whether she guessed what I was wearing or not ...

Nowadays, with a lot of writing to do, I spend less time on the textiles, but I still browse boot sales and the local saleroom, still splash out on a box of old linen and lace and sell most of it on to other textile nuts. But all this has certainly helped to enlighten me about costume in my historical fiction. Finding out what somebody would have worn, the how and the why of it is a vital part of the research for me. And also you’ll spot the howlers, like the mediaeval underpants mentioned in a recent post about anachronisms in historical fiction by Mari Biella. 

A lady's bonnet, rather than a baby bonnet - from France.

A few years ago, a curator of textiles gave a small group of Society of Authors in Scotland members a private viewing of a few of the textiles in storage in one of the big Scottish museums and since they were for study purposes, we were even allowed to handle some of them. It was enlightening, not least because certain items were beautiful to look at but very badly stitched ‘behind the scenes’ as it were. Clearly some dresses were like theatrical costumes - the illusion was everything. She also told us that although the really poor would obviously have great trouble keeping clean, for many ordinary eighteenth and nineteenth century people - tradespeople or tenant farmers, for instance - keeping their linens clean would have been important. 

Essentially, they would not be as smelly as we think. 

Looking at inventories of possessions, you can see that people of even limited means would have several shirts, shifts, etc so that the items worn closest to their bodies would be reasonably clean. Which makes sense when you think about how uncomfortable it would be to play host to fleas and lice, the inevitable result of filth. And for country people, a great deal of linen was spun and woven at home. Elsewhere it could be bought by the yard. Pretty printed cottons were also becoming fashionable through the eighteenth century and ease of laundering was an important factor in their popularity.

If you think about how seldom even today we dry clean a winter coat, for instance – perhaps only once a year, unless we’ve been out in the mud – you can see how little we've changed in this respect although I don't think a daily bath was an option or even thought desirable. But then nor was it the norm back in the fifties, and I don't remember that the world felt particularly grubby, even then.  

The embroidery that inspired The Physic Garden
This interest in clothes has been very important to me in several of my novels. In The Curiosity Cabinet, not only is an embroidery central to the plot, but the clothes of a dead woman, gifted to another woman in desperate straits, provide a turning point in the story. In my nineteenth century Polish historical epic, The Amber Heart  what the heroine wears became a sort of indicator of her character, all the way through - and certainly it mattered to me in terms of how I perceived her relationship with the hero (or possibly anti-hero) of the novel. And in The Physic Garden, an authentic embroidered garment looms very large in the story. 

Perhaps most of all, though, it has been important to my work in progress, the Jewel, about Robert Burns’s wife Jean Armour. The daughter of a master stonemason, she was not hugely wealthy but still cared very much about her appearance as a young woman of some consequence in the small town of Mauchline. This perception of her ran contrary to many subsequent accounts of her as a plain countrywoman, not quite 'worthy' of her famous husband. I never really believed that. The six ‘Mauchline Belles’ of which Jean was one - I always see them as eighteenth century cheerleaders - are described by Rab as being keen on fashion too. ‘Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess, In London or Paris, they'd gotten it a'.’ So even in Mauchline in 18th century Ayrshire, the lassies were happy to imitate London or Paris fashions if they could. 

Jean's silk shawl? Maybe. But not from Rab!
Later on, it becomes obvious that Rab liked his wife to dress as well as possible on their limited budget. He spent money on the finest ‘lutestring silk’ for her gowns, and the latest fashion in printed shawls. His own stylish mode of dressing was one of the things that her family so disapproved of during their courtship– and also one of the things that made Jean fall for him. She continued to appreciate nice things and pretty clothes throughout her long life.

Finally, the single sexiest garment the textile curator showed us on that museum visit, was a linen shirt. I’ve found these kind of things in boxes of old linen, but never something just as wonderful, as old, as well preserved, as that late eighteenth or early nineteenth century linen shirt, a man’s garment, with flowing sleeves, lots of fabric and a smooth, cool texture under the hand: a bit like the ones you see Ross Poldark or the musketeers wearing on the recent television dramas. 

But the really interesting thing is that such shirts were deemed to be very intimate. They were undergarments. So if a young lady actually saw a man in his shirt, like Mr Darcy on that TV adaptation, it would have been very shocking indeed, even for somebody as forthright and brave as Lizzie Bennet! 



I'm hoping that the new novel will be published in 2016. Meanwhile, if you're another textile nut (or even if you're not) you could check out The Curiosity Cabinet in particular. I only wish I possessed an embroidered cabinet like the box of the title - but unfortunately, I don't.

An Island that Inspired a Novel: Gigha and The Curiosity Cabinet

Beautiful cover art by Alison Bell

This is the time of year in Scotland, still more or less spring, but with summer fast approaching, that I invariably find myself thinking about the beautiful Isle of Gigha. We didn't visit last year, and I reckon that was the first time in many years that we didn't manage to go, even if only for a few days. Our son paddled in its turquoise seas when he was a little lad. We visited with friends (sometimes with a lot of friends!) and sometimes it was just the three of us and then just the two of us when Charlie grew up. I think all the young people who spent time there have happy memories of the place.

The island is bathed in golden light.
We are planning to try to get there later in the year, perhaps in September or October when the place is full of luscious brambles (blackberries if you're not reading this in Scotland!) and the whole island seems often to be bathed in golden light. But my favourite time of year there is still May with its oceans of primroses, violets and then bluebells, or June and early July when the place seems to be awash with wild flowers of all kinds, armies of foxgloves, buttery honeysuckle. As Manus, one of my characters in The Curiosity Cabinet says to Henrietta Dalrymple, when she asks him for plants and bulbs to make a garden, 'Henrietta, the whole island is a flower garden.' And of course it is.

The whole island is a flower garden.
Two of my novels have been inspired by Gigha: The Curiosity Cabinet and (rather more loosely, but still recognisable) Bird of Passage. Both stories are fictional, and so are all the characters, but the landscape is a different matter. And of course I've also written a big non-fiction book about Gigha, a gallop through the prehistory and history of the people of the island: God's Islanders. I can't quite leave it alone!


Ardminish Bay
My husband, artist Alan Lees, feels much the same - and he has painted it on more than one occasion: the picture on the left is Ardminish Bay with the boathouse restaurant in the background and yes - the sea really can be that colour. The air is so clean and there are days when the colours seem to be impossibly vivid.

The Curiosity Cabinet has been available worldwide as an eBook on Kindle for some years now and I've just uploaded it all over again - not with any real changes, but with a few tiny edits and with a sample chapter of Bird of Passage at the end.

I'm in two minds about these 'bonus chapters' myself because I know how frustrating it is to think that you have another chapter to go in a book and to suddenly find that it has ended, and what you thought was more of the novel is actually an extract from another book altogether! But I hope readers will forgive me, because it doesn't seem quite so bothersome in an eBook and besides, Bird of Passage is another novel set in a similar island landscape and I have a feeling that if you enjoy The Curiosity Cabinet you might well enjoy Bird of Passage too. It's a bigger, sadder and more disturbing novel altogether than the rather gentle tale that is The Curiosity Cabinet but the island landscape plays a big part.

I've also published both these novels to various other platforms including Apple, so you should be able to find them pretty much anywhere you want. The Curiosity Cabinet was published in paperback some years ago, but sold out and consequently went out of print quite quickly. Second hand copies do crop up for those who prefer paper, but I'm planning a Print on Demand version as soon as I can find the time to do it. I have a draft of a new novel to finish first!

Still, I'm hoping that paperback versions of  The Curiosity Cabinet and Bird of Passage too will be available before the end of the year.

Manus McNeill? 
The Curiosity Cabinet consists of two interwoven love stories, past and present. Nobody goes back in time - although the problems of the past may be continued and perhaps worked out in the present. It's also a story about the way in which small and rather magical islands such as this one can feel as though they hold the whole history of the place, layers of it, one on top of another. 'Thin places' where the boundaries between past and present seem to be somehow blurred.

So - if I've whetted your appetite a bit, here's a little extract from the present day story. After an absence of twenty five years, Alys has returned to the island where she used to come on holiday. And in her hotel, she has come across the 'curiosity cabinet' of the title - not really a curiosity cabinet at all, but an old, very valuable and very beautiful casket, embroidered with traditional raised work.

'Presently she takes her drink and finds the residents’ lounge again. It is still empty, so she moves about the room examining pictures. They are large oil paintings, grim death rather than still life: birds, their feathers tumbled and bloody, hunks of meat, overflowing platters of fruit and vegetables. There is the inevitable stag, on a heathery hill. There is a grimly handsome highlander, staring pensively into the distance. There are a few portraits of bald-headed, pot-bellied, self-satisfied old men, so dark as to be almost indistinguishable from each other.

And then she comes upon a display case of mahogany and glass. There are objects, neatly arranged on three shelves. But the casket is central. The casket has raised, heavily embroidered panels on a wooden base and little gilded feet. The scenes are biblical. A woman stands breast high amid the growing corn. She is Ruth. ‘Whither thou goest I will go … thy people shall be my people,’ thinks Alys, surprised by her own knowledge, remembering the words from some long-ago reading, a school service perhaps. She hasn’t been to church in years. There are birds and flowers too: long-necked swans and plump seagulls, honeysuckle, wild roses with their centres formed of tiny seed pearls, drooping foxgloves.

The embroidery has faded over time but only a little. The two front doors are open to reveal five drawers, two wide and three narrow, also embroidered with flowers and birds and beasts. There is a tall house in grey silk, with fragments of mica for windows.

She can still hear the child pattering about, giggling.

Other objects, presumably the contents of the cabinet, are spread out on the shelves above and below it. Here is a miniature shuttle, prettily inlaid with gold, and with a few discoloured threads still attached. Here is a needlelace collar, very fine and floral. Here is a tiny pincushion, a painted silk fan and a coral teether. On another shelf is a hand mirror, intricately decorated with semi-precious stones in the shape of flowers: forget-me-nots and pansies. Alongside these precious keepsakes, she is puzzled to see a little collection of pebbles and shells and swansdown. Finally there is a scrap of yellowed paper, with a few words of incomprehensible writing: a letter? A poem? Alys is enchanted by these things and suddenly possessed by the need to know more about them. 

Slowly but surely, Alys finds out more about them: who made the casket and why, who owned it and its contents, what became of it, and what is the connection with her childhood playmate, island fisherman, Donal. And perhaps most important of all, who was the mysterious chieftain of the island, Manus McNeill, who had some great treasure which he lost, and who took to himself a bride from the sea? 

But the islanders are people who can 'keep a secret for a thousand years' and it's only when you belong that you can understand the truth of that hidden past. 

























The Curiosity Cabinet, Attractive Highlanders, Two Love Stories, a 3 Day Sale - and Luriana Lurilee

From 1st April (and no, this isn't an April Fool's trick, honestly!) The Curiosity Cabinet will be on special offer at a reduced price for three days. (Here in the USA)

Although it's in that category and is undoubtedly Scottish, and seems to attract some of the same readers, it's a novel that isn't really a 'time slip' story like the excellent and popular Outlander, because nobody actually goes back in time.

But all the same, it slides between two tales, one past and one present, within the same setting, two parallel love stories both set mostly on the same small (fictional) Hebridean island and both involving attractive highlanders. (Or islandmen, if we're being strictly accurate here!)

There are subtle connections between the two stories and between the characters. In some ways, the problems and challenges of the past are being worked out in the present. And yet that isn't the end of the story either. Things may come full circle. But they may also change in unexpected ways.

I think the point I was trying to make, or one of them at any rate - apart from telling two intertwined love stories - was that in small places like this island, the barrier between natural and supernatural is somehow thin. And, moreover, you are sometimes aware of the multiple layers of existence of all the people who have lived and loved and died there down all the years.

Way back when I was at school (and that's a woefully long time ago!) I read Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse.' And in that novel she quotes a poem that has stayed with me down all the years as well.


I wonder if it seems to you
Luriana Lurilee
That all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be,
Are full of trees and waving leaves,
Luriana Lurilee.


Strangely, I've only just found out that it was written by a relatively unknown poet called Charles Isac Elton, circulated to a small number of people and transcribed by Leonard Woolf in 1902.

Who was Luriana Lurilee? What was Luriana Lurilee?

If anything, the last verses of the poem are even stranger:

How long since you and I went out,
Luriana Lurilee
To see the kings go riding by
Over lawn and daisylea,
With their palm-sheaves and cedar-leaves
Luriana Lurilee.


Swing, swing on the cedar bough!
Luriana Lurilee
Till you sleep in a bramble-heap
Or under the gloomy churchyard-tree,
And then fly back to swing on a bough,
Luriana Lurilee.




Those words kept coming back to me - or the version in To The Lighthouse, which as far as I remember seems to be 'changing leaves' - when I was writing the Curiosity Cabinet and they still do. They even came back to me when I was writing another island set novel - Bird of Passage - for which they are even more appropriate, albeit for an entirely different set of reasons.

But even now, when I write or speak about the Curiosity Cabinet - which I first wrote some years ago as a trilogy of plays for radio and then rewrote as a novel - these strange words about trees and leaves, about lives we lived and lives to be, come drifting through my mind.

There's a magic in them - and for me, there was a kind of magic in the landscape and people and lives of the novel too.





January has been so horrible that I'm doing a three day giveaway on The Curiosity Cabinet!

My Scottish island novel
with a beautiful cover by artist Alison Bell
Up here in Scotland, especially in the West of Scotland where I live and work, it has been a truly horrible January. I mean it isn't generally the best month of the year, but we're only half way through and we have had almost constant wind, heavy rain, hailstones, snowstorms and more rain. As I sit here writing this, there is a horizontal blizzard roaring past my window! We have had power cuts and train and ferry cancellations. I know, I know - it's winter. But when it all comes at once after a fairly mild autumn, and when the post-Christmas malaise has set in as well, it's not exactly calculated to cheer you up, is it? And that's without reference to the hideous sad and sorry political situation in the world beyond this small village.

Anyway, apart from gazing morosely into my garden and noticing among all the chaos that some of the bulbs are starting to poke their noses through, and some of the shrubs are starting to show definite signs of buds, and the jackdaws that live among the chimney pots are clearly starting to think about nesting - I thought I might do a three day giveaway on one of my novels, The Curiosity Cabinet, on Amazon. Here in the UK and here in the US.

I haven't done a freebie for years and I don't suppose I'll be doing another one any time soon. I'm planning to release The Curiosity Cabinet, by far my best selling novel on Kindle, onto other platforms and also as a paperback, some time later in the year when I've completed the first draft of my new novel.

But meanwhile, since it's quite a sunny and summery book, set mostly on an idyllic Scottish island, I thought it might cheer a few people up. The island that inspired the book is my beloved Isle of Gigha, just off the Kintyre Peninsula, but I'm told it could just as easily be a number of other small, beautiful Hebridean islands.

The wonderful Isle of Gigha
The novel is listed as a 'time slip' novel but it isn't really. It's set in the past and in the present - two intertwined stories - and it's about the significance of parallel lives and loves. It's a quiet book. It's about the unsung lives of women, and the hidden histories of remote places. It's about the magic of small islands. It isn't really a mystery novel, and there isn't really a 'twist' in the tale. Some readers guess what has happened to bring Henrietta to the island but a surprising number of people don't. Either way, that's OK because that isn't really the point. The point is the sense that sometimes the problems and difficulties of the historical past can be resolved in the present. And then life goes on.

I think this novel was inspired by a fine writer called Elizabeth Goudge and a novel I read when I was still in my teens, called The Middle Window. It was an old novel, even then, but it enchanted me. I recently bought a battered paperback copy and reread it. It is very much a book of its time, but I still found myself caught up in the magic of her descriptions. Back when I was working in radio, I dramatised Kidnapped for BBC Radio 4 and that also fed into this story. I wrote a radio trilogy called The Curiosity Cabinet and then this novel which was different, in many ways, from the radio drama.

Anyway - it's free for three days, today, tomorrow and Sunday. If it cheers you up in the middle of a dreich winter, my job will be done!

The original Manus McNeill.

The Unexpectedly Long Life of an eBook

A beautiful cover image by artist Alison Bell
The Curiosity Cabinet started out as a trilogy of plays for  BBC Radio 4 back in the 1990s. Later, I rewrote it, with significant changes, as a novel but it took a very long time to find a publisher. It was some time in the late 90s, when I was looking for a new agent, that one of them called it ‘a library novel fit only for housewives.’ I wasn’t a newcomer in any sense. I had a long and occasionally award winning career as a playwright, as well as two published novels and plenty of non fiction behind me, so I could laugh it off.

But it still stung a bit.

Eventually, I secured representation at one of the bigger London agencies. My new agent told me that she liked the novel, but she thought it was ‘too quiet’ to sell.  Nevertheless, she sent it out to the big boys. I forget how many there were back then – certainly a few more than the current Big Five, but all the same, amalgamations were rife and the so called mid-list was definitely on the slide. Agents and publishers were already talking about the ‘decline of the mid-list’. One even cheerfully predicted the ‘death of the mid-list’. I knew in my sinking heart that I was a typical mid-lister. It was an invidious position to find yourself in. Back then, anyway. One of the acquisitions editors who responded pointed out that although she liked the book, they had ‘published something similar and it did less well than expected.’ Most of them said that although they liked the novel they 'couldn't carry sales and marketing with them.' Or they 'liked it but didn't love it.'

Nobody wanted it.

Eventually, my agent suggested that while I got on with something a bit less quiet, I should submit the novel to a newish competition: the Dundee Book Prize. It seemed like a good idea. I wasn't doing anything else with it, after all. Some time after the closing date for entries, I got a phone call. My novel had been shortlisted. Would I come to an event aboard The Discovery in Dundee, when an announcement would be made? The reception and dinner aboard Captain Scott's polar exploration ship was very pleasant. We soon realised that the shortlist consisted of only three books, three authors. And at the dinner, we were happy to discover that all three of us would be offered a publishing contract although only one novel would win the big cash prize.

The Curiosity Cabinet didn’t, in fact, win that overall prize but it was published. That was in 2005. I seem to remember that the print run involved only 1000 trade paperback copies, albeit nicely done. There were one or two speaking engagements including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and a three for two offer in a big chain bookstore. I remember all the excitement of seeing my book in several shop windows. But because the publisher was marketing these completely different novels and their authors as a threesome, we didn't get much publicity. I sent a review copy to a popular Scottish TV presenter who gave me a ringing endorsement for the cover. 'How did you do that?' my publisher asked. The truth was that I had simply asked nicely, but I got the sense that their approval of the publicity was warring just a wee bit with their disapproval of such populism. A Scottish women's magazine serialised it. They made an excellent job of the abridgement and paid handsomely.

The run sold out within the year and ... that was that. There was no sign of a reprint. My agent told me that (to her surprise as well as mine because the relationship to that point had been friendly) the publisher had declined to look at anything else from me. My work didn’t fit in with the way they saw the company progressing. Eventually, I reclaimed my rights – a process which, to give them credit, they made remarkably easy. But I soon found out that in the world of traditional publishing it is far better to be a new discovery than to be a writer who has been rejected by her publisher.

An attractive 'islandman' hero.
I was now damaged goods. My agent became cautious. 'If I submit a novel to one of the big publishers, and they reject it, they might not look at anything else from you again,' she said. We needed a sure fire winner. But who ever knows what that will be? Somebody told me that my fiction was 'too well written to be really popular but not experimental enough to be really literary.' Quite apart from the disrespect for readers implied by that statement, it placed me firmly in the despised mid-list again.

Some time in the new millennium, I found myself minus agent, minus any kind of publishing deal except for a couple of my plays and minus the commissions for radio or the stage that had previously kept the wolf from the door. 'But, Catherine,' said an inspirational Canadian friend to whom I was having a quiet whinge on a transatlantic phone line. 'You have inventory. A lot of inventory.'

She was right. I had been doing plenty of writing. I had several edited, unpublished and far-from-quiet novels in which none of the gatekeepers was remotely interested.  I sent my new novels out to various Scottish and other small publishers where they disappeared without trace, never to be heard of again. Sometimes I amused myself by jettisoning the humble supplicant role in favour of the polite but brisk business enquiry. That didn't go down at all well.  One charming individual told me that if I could come to his office, he ‘might be able to spare me five minutes.’ I declined his kind offer. Most didn't even give me the courtesy of a reply.

I think what really kept me going through that dark time was the response of readers. I was still being invited to give talks and readings, and people were always asking me how they could get hold of my books, where they might find more of my work. The problem was that they couldn’t. It was in computer files and printouts and a handful of out-of-print copies. There was a lot of it. I still remember the mingled pleasure and pain of hearing a friend – an enthusiastic reader – say to me, ‘You know, we don’t understand how this could happen. We love your writing, we want to read more of it and we think you’ve been treated very shabbily.’ Pity is never easy to accept but the emails I got from other readers, complete strangers, said much the same thing. 'Haven't you written any more fiction and why can't we read it?'

I’d looked at self publishing in the past, but all I could find were unscrupulous vanity publishers who still wanted to wrest control from my hands and charge me lots of money for the privilege.

And then, along came Jeff Bezos and Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing.

It wasn’t at all hard to decide to take my career into my own hands. In fact it seemed ridiculously easy. I had nothing at all to lose. My only regret was that it hadn’t happened sooner. I had been searching for something like this for years and had never been able to find it: a business partner who would facilitate distribution and let me get on with it, leaving the control of it in my own hands. I started small, with a couple of mini collections of previously published short stories, but eventually decided to take the plunge with The Curiosity Cabinet. An artist friend, Alison Bell, who loved the book, made me a new and very beautiful cover image. This was only the first of a number of novels that I’ve published independently in eBook form, some historical, some contemporary. If I was asked to define exactly what I write, I'd say 'grown up love stories'. But I've tackled issues as serious as child abuse in Bird of Passage and Ice Dancing, I've written a massive historical saga in The Amber Heart, and I often find myself writing about obsession and betrayal within adult relationships. Not that quiet, then, and they don't all end happily ever after either - although some do. I often work on a couple of projects at the same time, letting one lie fallow while I do something completely different. It's a way of working that suits me, but it also suits indie publishing.

So what happened after I began my self publishing venture? Well, since 2011 when I published it as an eBook, The Curiosity Cabinet has sold more copies than I would have believed possible. And it just keeps rolling along. I'm not making any fortunes from this and my other books - yet. But they add a small but healthy sum to my income every month. As I write this, the Curiosity Cabinet has undergone another spike in sales and in its category on Amazon here in the UK is sitting at #9. Sales go up and down. Sometimes I run a promotion and the sales spike again. I reckon the Outlander books have helped. People who like Outlander seem to like The Curiosity Cabinet as well. I'm told my novel is nothing like Outlander and I haven’t even read the series, although I have heard very good things about it. I suspect the only thing we have in common is an attractive highland hero or two. Or ‘islandman’ hero in my case. Two books inspired The Curiosity Cabinet: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped - I dramatised it for radio years ago and it remains one of my favourite novels of all time - and a wonderful old novel by Elizabeth Goudge called the Middle Window. I read it in my teens and never, ever forgot it.

The landscape of the novel. 
Most of all, for me, the Curiosity Cabinet illustrates the potential long life of an eBook. For my publisher at the time, it was over and done within the year (as was the writer!) It seems they must always be moving on to the next project and their next project didn’t involve my kind of novel at all. I'm forced to the conclusion that it was, for them, a sound business decision. But it wasn't my decision and as it turns out, it wasn’t right for me or for this book either.

The fact remains that there are readers out there who still seem to want to read it. Lots of them. I’m planning to release it as a POD paperback, early in 2015. And all while working on a couple of new projects at the same time, with another one simmering away in the background.

The cheering news is that eBooks can have an unexpectedly long life. You never know what's around the corner, what might influence sales. As writers and readers too,  I think that’s something to celebrate.

Visit my website at www.wordarts.co.uk
And if you're reading this in the US, you can find my novels by clicking on the links to the right of this post. 

The Curiosity Cabinet: A Good Scottish Island Summer Read - On Special Offer Now.

'The island is a flower garden.'
This week, The Curiosity Cabinet is on a seven day special summer offer for only 99p. Download it onto your Kindle, and read it on holiday, especially if you're going to the Scottish highlands or islands! (Or here, if you're in the US.)

When I look back on everything I've written, I still have a lot of affection for this novel. I suppose that's mainly because I set it on a small fictional Hebridean island that isn't a million miles from a real Hebridean island - one I love dearly and visit often: the little Isle of Gigha, the most southerly of the true Hebridean isles. The island in my novel is called Garve, and in truth it could be one of any number of small Scottish islands - Coll, for example. Garve isn't Gigha and Garve's people are not Gigha's people, but the landscape of the island was certainly inspirational for me and if you get the chance to visit, take yourself off to Tayinloan on the Kintyre Peninsula - and see for yourself. It's one of the loveliest places on earth in my opinion!

Gigha is tiny - some seven miles long by a mile and a half wide, but since it has some 25 miles of coastline, you can imagine what an interesting place it is. It also has a fascinating history and prehistory, since it was always such a strategic place in the various battles between indigenous people and successive invaders. It lies outside the Kintyre Peninsula and as such - with its fertile landscapes and sheltered harbours - it would have been a very good starting point for anyone wanting to invade the mainland. I love the place so much that I've written a major history of the island, called God's Islanders  so if you're into Scottish history, you could do worse than get hold of a copy while it's still available. I've also set another, infinitely darker novel on a small Scottish Island - and if you've read and enjoyed The Curiosity Cabinet, you might like to give it a try. It's called Bird of Passage but be warned. It's a much more harrowing read - although I also think the magic of this very special landscape shines through.


Such beautiful seashores.
On the way to Donal's boat.'
The Curiosity Cabinet tells two parallel tales set in the past and present. Some three hundred years ago, a young widow, Henrietta Dalrymple, is kidnapped and taken to the remote island of Garve where she is held prisoner by the fearsome Manus McNeill for reasons she can't fathom but which eventually become clear in the course of the story. In parallel with this is the present day story of Alys, coming from Edinburgh to revisit the island where she spent childhood holidays, and renewing an old friendship in the process. Motherhood with all its joys and challenges is central to this novel, as is the gap between urban and rural living, between highland and lowland cultures - but most of all, I think this is a novel about the way certain landscapes seem able to contain past and present, all in one, like the layers inside some precious stone. And it's also about a theme that (I now realise) seems to obsess me a bit - the possibility of redeeming the past in the present. Maybe it's because I'm a part time antique dealer that I'm fascinated by the history of objects, by the way in which each owner, each 'keeper' leaves his or her mark on something. The cabinet of the title isn't really a genuine 'curiosity cabinet' of the kind in which botanical and other specimens were kept. Instead it's an old and precious embroidered box on display in the island hotel - a box which contains the key to Henrietta's fate and Alys's future.

An old laird's house.
 But really, I just hope it's a good and not too heavy holiday read: two love stories in one, in a beautiful setting, a magical place, a magical embroidered box, a couple of engaging heroines and a couple of attractive but realistic heroes. Oh, and a very nice little boy as well. That's what I was aiming for and I hope that's what this is! Meanwhile, cast more than a passing look at the gorgeous cover image, made for me by my good friend, Scottish artist Alison Bell who has a love for islands and the sea - and it shows!
Cover image by Alison Bell


A Valentine's Day Special: Two Love Stories For the Price Of One

Cover by Alison Bell
If you haven't read the Curiosity Cabinet (and although it has definitely been my best selling novel to date I know there are quite a lot of people out there who haven't!) then I've planned a very special offer for Valentine's Day and the following week. From 13th February to 19th February, The Curiosity Cabinet will be on a 'Kindle Countdown' deal and you'll be able to download it for the bargain price of 99p in the UK and around a dollar in the US. That's a lot less than the price of a cup of coffee.  

Many - but by no means all - of my novels, involve very grown up love stories. But with this book, you'll be getting two love stories for the price of one,  two parallel stories, past and present. 

In present day Scotland,  Alys revisits the beautiful (fictional) Hebridean island of Garve after an absence of twenty five years, and finds herself captivated by the antique embroidered casket on display in her hotel. She discovers that it belongs to Donal, her childhood playmate on the island, and soon they resume their old friendship. 

Another ancient McNeill

But interwoven with the story of their growing love is the darker historical tale of Henrietta Dalrymple, kidnapped by the formidable chieftain, Manus McNeill, and held on Garve against her will and with no inkling of the reason why she has been imprisoned. 

With three hundred years separating them, the women are linked by the cabinet and its mysterious contents, by the tug of motherhood and by the magic of the island itself. But Garve has its secrets, past and present. Donal must learn to trust Alys enough to confide in her and, like Henrietta before her, Alys must earn the right to belong.


The island and its people are fictional, but the landscape is very like the landscape of the beautiful little island of Gigha which I know well. I'm told that it seems like Coll too. 

I'm always a bit bemused by the reviews of this book since they tend to be wildly differing, even when they're positive (and most of them are positive, thanks to my many lovely readers!) But it's clear from reading them that some readers see it as a tightly, tautly written book with great depths, whereas others see it as a frothy 'guilty pleasure'. In house agent's parlance (real estate if you're reading this in the US) it probably means that the book is 'deceptively simple'.

The truth is that whether you find it deceptively simple or genuinely simple, it doesn't matter, just as long as you enjoy it. I hope, at least, that you believe in Alys and Donal, and in Henrietta and Manus. Because I grew very fond of them, and of Alys's little boy Ben, as well.  

It's a book about the present redeeming the past - and also about the ways in which a beautiful and largely unchanging place with an  intense history can hold something of the past, even within its present. 

One of my readers called it a 'beautifully crafted tapestry of a book' and I'm grateful that s/he understood exactly what I was trying to do in the novel - and took pleasure from reading it. Because it was certainly a great pleasure for me to research and write it!

Why not give it a try at the links below? 

You can also visit my website to read a bit more about what I'm working on right now, and find out about my other books, especially my new - and much darker - historical novel, The Physic Garden, which has just been published as an eBook by Saraband, and is due for release in paperback in late March.  











The Curiosity Cabinet on Pinterest


I've been a convert to Pinterest for a while. It's a lovely, easy site to use, and I can never visit it without a little lifting of the heart.  Maybe because it's good displacement activity. (Well, it is!) Maybe it's also because I have a very visual imagination. When I'm working on a novel or a play, I tend to surround myself with all kinds of inspirational images, pictures that help to fire my imagination, even when I'm feeling in the doldrums. Pinterest is a nice addition to those resources: pictures of landscapes and food, textiles, interiors, costumes and all kinds of things. Pictures of heroes, too.

I now find I use it quite a lot when I have a work in progress - I'm using it with my Canary Island trilogy at the moment. One of the good things about the site is that it isn't very time consuming, or it needn't be. You can just go there briefly, have a little browse, pin a picture, be intrigued or inspired and get back to work.  Or you can spend hours on it, especially if you follow the pictures back to their original websites. But you don't have to.

Sometimes, like now, I've been moved to create a Pinterest board for a work that was done and dusted some time ago - purely for fun. I've just done it for my novel The Curiosity Cabinet and you can see the board here. Most readers will have their own ideas about the landscape of the novel - and the embroidered box of the title. But all the same, I thought it might be nice for readers to see some of the images that inspired it.

The Curiosity Cabinet is a novel which has had a long and complicated life. It started out as a trilogy of radio plays, was totally rewritten as a novel, shortlisted for a book prize, published by Polygon, and then went out of print but not before it had been released as an unabridged audio reading and abridged (without the sex and swearing - not that there is a LOT of it - but very nicely done!) for the People's Friend. It had been so well reviewed, had so many readers who had taken the time and trouble to tell me how much they liked it, that it became one of my first Kindle books. It had a new and very beautiful cover by my friend, textile artist Alison Bell. And in 2014, I plan to re release it in paperback, via Amazon's Createspace.

I've been visiting the little Hebridean Isle of Gigha for many years now - I even wrote a history of the place called God's Islanders for Birlinn - and I love it. The Garve of the novel isn't entirely Gigha and other islands are certainly available! Coll, for instance. But the landscapes of Gigha definitely inspired the landscapes of Garve, past and present, in the novel. They went on to inspire the landscapes of the anonymous Scottish island in Bird of Passage too - but differently. Maybe I'll do a dedicated Pinterest board for that novel too, in due course.

I'll be adding a few more pictures to the Curiosity Cabinet board over the next few weeks. This is the landscape of the novel - when I visualise the film of the book in my head this is the kind of thing I see. Well, a girl can dream, can't she?




The Curiosity Cabinet on BBC Radio 4 Extra


Earlier this week, a friend pointed out that my trilogy of plays, The Curiosity Cabinet, first written and produced for BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Theatre slot, some years ago, is due to be repeated on Radio 4 Extra on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this coming week, 2nd, 3rd and 4th of October. You can read more about the plays and broadcast times here.  There are three episodes: The Brown Swan, The Mute Swan and The Swan on the Lake.

If you've read this story as a novel (currently available on Amazon's Kindle Store, here in the UK and here in the USA ) you may be surprised to learn that it was first written in dramatic form. It's generally the other way round. Novels are 'dramatised' as plays. But way back when I first thought about this story, I was writing lots of drama for radio and theatre and that was how I first 'heard' it in my head - as a series of plays. The novel came later.

Actually the idea for The Curiosity Cabinet had been in my head for a long time, ever since I visited an Edinburgh museum and happened to read the story of Lady Grange who was kidnapped to a remote Scottish island at the instigation of her husband. Like so many writers, I began to think 'what if?' What would it be like for a young woman (younger that the real Lady Grange) to be snatched away from all she held dear, not knowing why, and then to find herself plunged into a completely different culture? For Gaelic and Lowland cultures were very different and still are to some extent. The Henrietta Dalrymple of my imagination could not even understand the language, could hardly make herself understood, even in her state of panic and desperation. This was how the story began to take shape in my mind, but my Henrietta is nothing like the real Lady Grange. The story is set at a different time. The plot is very different. And my fictional island is a bit like Gigha and a bit like Coll and could be any one of a number of small Scottish islands.

I always knew that somehow the historical story would be intertwined with a modern day tale. I just wasn't quite sure what that story would be.  You can hear the tale in its first incarnation in the radio version but I was never very happy with the present day part of the story. This was, I should point out, nobody's fault but mine. The production was excellent and as always with the wonderful Hamish Wilson in charge it was a very happy time. But I knew I was going to have to revisit the story itself, knew I wanted to do more with it. Felt that it wasn't quite doing what I wanted it to do.

Paperback version by Polygon
When it came to the novel, the historical sections are pretty much the same but the modern day version changed a lot. I wrote the two stories separately, printed them out, and then did a literal cut and paste job of weaving them together, before replicating that on the PC. This was never going to be a real 'time slip' novel. That wasn't quite what I had in mind. My stories were always intentionally parallel. None of the characters move back and forth between past and present although the present day Alys (yes -  even her name was different in the novel version!) gradually becomes aware of Henrietta if only through some of her possessions. All the same, the stories are linked in subtle ways. This is a story about keeping secrets and learning to trust, about belonging, about motherhood and obligation. It's a story about the possibility of redeeming the past in the present. It's about the way small islands often seem to encompass past and present, layers of time, one overlain on another. It's a love story: not just the love between man and woman, but that between mother and child.

The novel was one of three books shortlisted for the Dundee Book Prize and was subsequently published by Polygon. It's well out of print, but you can still find the odd paperback copy on Amazon and there's also an unabridged audio version by Oakhill, beautifully read by Caroline Bonnyman. In due course, I'll bring out a new paperback version with CreateSpace.

There's another thing about the novel. Before I was a playwright and a novelist, I was a published poet (I know, I know. Couldn't settle to anything!) and I found myself pruning and polishing this book in much the same way as I used to work at my poems. But now, I'm not entirely sure it was the right thing to do. Sometimes, you can polish a little too much. There's a fine line between the simple and the facile. With later novels, I gave myself permission to prune less. But as ever, the trick is in knowing when enough is enough and I'm still learning!

Perhaps because of this, The Curiosity Cabinet has occasionally been called a 'bit of froth' and a 'guilty pleasure' at the same time as John Burnside was describing it a 'powerful story about love and obligation.' You pays your penny, as they say...  But of all the many very nice comments and reviews this book has received, (when readers like it, they like it a lot) the one that probably pleases me most is the US reviewer who remarked that the book is 'so tightly written you could bounce a quarter off of it.' That one made me very happy indeed!

I find it hard to listen to Radio 4 Extra, here in deepest rural Scotland. I can only get it on my television. But if you are around next week, why not give it a try? It's a lovely, evocative production and it may also give you some insight into how ideas can change and evolve - sometimes quite drastically - over time.





























THE AUDIO BOOK - CAN YOU DO IT YOURSELF?



This piece -  originally written for the Authors Electric blog - was  very popular with readers, so it seems worthwhile to reblog it here. Lots of indie writers are thinking about audio and wondering whether they can go it alone or not, so here are some things to think about before you do.

For about twenty five years from the mid seventies to the turn of the new millennium, I wrote for radio. I have more than a hundred hours of produced radio drama to my name, including many original plays, series and serials as well as dramatizations of classics like Ben Hur, Kidnapped and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Because most producers want the playwright to be there for the duration of the production – studio time is always tight, so you’re expected to do rewrites on the hoof - I’ve spent weeks in radio studios. Kidnapped and Catriona in ten hour-long episodes involved so much time in a small, stuffy Edinburgh studio with no natural light, that the producer pinned up a quote from Kidnapped on the wall: day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern. We knew how poor David Balfour felt. Although the hot scones sent up by the canteen at tea time were excellent!

I’ve worked with some wonderful producer/directors and equally good audio technicians. I’ve seen huge changes in the way audio is produced. I’ve also read my own work on radio – short stories, talks and poems. And I’ve written audio tours for the National Trust. Which is why I consider myself reasonably well qualified to advise writers about reading their own work for submission as an audio book.

Mostly, my advice would be: think twice.

There are always exceptions. You may be an actor as well as a writer and if you are, you’ll know how to set about it. You may also know all about audio recording or know a person who does. If that’s the case, you can go ahead with confidence. Otherwise, you should approach such a project with extreme caution. The difference between a professional and an amateur reading is marked and obvious to the listener. Anyone who has worked in radio knows that even among actors, there are some who have a flair for the work. Audio is a subtle medium. Bringing a novel to life, not overdoing it, but not making it boring and all while being aware of the technical constraints, demands a certain level of professionalism and experience. If you don’t have that, don’t automatically assume that you are going to be able to do it from scratch and do it as well as somebody who has spent several years learning the craft.

But there’s more to it than that. An unabridged reading of a full length novel presents challenges that you may not even be aware of. I was in the middle of writing this piece when I read some comments elsewhere and realized that many people don't understand that there is a vast difference between a full scale dramatization of a novel and a straightforward reading - even when a novel is read in several different voices. They are birds of a different feather. Hell, they aren't even both birds. It's like the difference between, say, a novel and a film. They are written and made quite differently. Most of my radio work involved this kind of full scale dramatization. The technique is to produce a very rough draft and then leave the book completely to one side and work at producing a stand alone drama for whatever medium you're working in, be it film, television or, in my case, radio, only going back to the book later, to make sure that you have done justice to the original.





But for the purposes of this post, let's assume we're talking about a reading of the text of your novel, either the whole of it, or extracts from it. Trailers are fair game, as are short extracts and I’ve seen and heard some great examples online. But even with an ‘abridgement’, problems start to arise. For radio, these tend to be five or ten episodes of some fifteen minutes duration each and there are audio companies specializing in abridged readings. Fifteen minutes of audio is approximately five or six thousand words depending upon the pace of the text. So you can imagine what has to be cut out of an eighty or ninety thousand word novel to achieve an abridgement lasting ninety minutes. This in itself is a tricky job. I’ve done it a few times - albeit not with my own books - and it’s a great way of finding out the internal structure of a novel, of going straight to the heart of a piece of work. And I can imagine that it would be very interesting (and illuminating) to abridge your own novel for somebody else to read.

But an unabridged audio book? And you’re considering reading the whole of it yourself?
Before you do, here are some practical things to think about.

You’re going to have to read with clarity and subtlety, pulling your audience in, doing just enough but not too much of the ‘voice’ of each character. Remember that wherever you trip over your words – and you will trip over your words – even seasoned actors do it - you have to leave enough space for somebody (who?) to tweak the digital file so that when you resume, it sounds right. And what about turning pages? Although it would be easier and quieter to read from your Kindle. And those astonishingly loud tummy rumbles you weren’t even aware of but the microphone was picking up. Which brings me to how you are going to record it. Well – equipment is cheaper than it was, but you need the right acoustic. You need a dead room that excludes all extraneous sound. So you will still need to hire or borrow a studio and some technical assistance. A local college perhaps? Or you could find yourself a company who will do it for you.

The full length audio version of my novel The Curiosity Cabinet is on Audible. The reading, by Caroline Bonnyman, is superb. It was produced by an excellent small company called Oakhill which - back when it was first produced - paid me for the rights. This was when the novel was first published in paperback. If I wanted to produce a similar recording for my own use, and maintain control over it, I would have to pay somebody to do it for me. If you’re contemplating doing a recording of your own book, download a few similar novels read by actors – either unabridged or in short form - and ask yourself in all honesty if you could do it and keep it up for the several hours needed to read a whole book. Could you be consistent? And get the pacing and the overall tone right. And stop yourself from speeding up towards the end of a page or a chapter. Would you be able to continue a sentence when you turn over a page without hesitating between pages?  What about sitting too close to the microphone. Or moving your head too far away from the microphone. Or moving your chair, which creaks. Or finding when you play it back that you’ve done a horrible combination of all of these and introduced some weird extras into the reading. In other words, can you produce a polished and professional enough version to do justice to the novel you’ve spent so long perfecting? Well, you can do all these things with a good producer and a little practice. But I’ve sat in a studio with a producer and watched inexperienced readers taking an hour or more to record a decent, usable five minutes worth of radio. And that didn't even begin to involve the editing needed. So if you want to do it yourself, I think you need to acknowledge that you will need expert help. Or you could hire the right actor for your book.

I can do the short stuff myself. I’ve read my own short stories on radio. I have audio ‘times’ firmly embedded in my head, so I can judge the pace of a reading pretty well. I'm used to the peculiarly 'dead' acoustic that makes your voice sound odd to your own ears. I’m more experienced than most at this. I know a lot of the pitfalls.

This means that I would definitely like to have a say in who reads my book, just as most writers like to be consulted about casting for a stage play.

But would I read one of my own novels as a full length audio book?

I doubt it. I know too many good actors to believe that I can do it better than they can. I would never say never. But it would have to be the right novel, and it would have to be done in a professional studio with somebody who knew exactly what they were doing, producing and editing. Otherwise, I don't think it's feasible. But I'm quite happy to be proved wrong