Showing posts with label books set in Scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books set in Scotland. Show all posts

Bird of Passage - My Homage to Wuthering Heights.

 





Over the years of my writing career to date, there were two or three novels that I always thought of as the 'ones that got away'. 

Until I took the decision to publish it myself, Bird of Passage had always been my orphan child, the book that a few people read and enjoyed and were moved by, but that nobody in the industry wanted. Unlike The Amber Heart, that kept being turned down with fulsome praise, because 'nobody is interested in Poland', no agent or publisher would even read Bird of Passage, in spite of its Scottish setting and Irish background, and in spite of the fact that it tackles some harrowing issues that are still very much current. In short, it was turned down unseen. 

My big mistake, I came to realise, was in pointing out that it was something of a homage to Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights would be my desert island book. My 'inheritance' novel because my mother and my aunt loved it too, so it was a part of my childhood. It was the novel I read when I was in my teens and I've never stopped loving it. I reread it almost every year,  generally at this time of year. Vitally, it was the inspiration behind Bird of Passage. 

This is a reblogging of an old and popular post with some revisions. Because whenever I reread WH, I find something new and intriguing. This year it was narrator Ellen Dean's reference to Joseph, even doggedly religious Joseph, leaving his cake and cheese out 'for the fairies' on Christmas Eve. Which made me think of my Yorkshire grandfather and his great fondness for fruit cake and crumbly Wensleydale cheese. Then I wondered whether our habit of leaving a mince pie and a glass of sherry out for Father Christmas owes something to that much older custom. 

I'm a Yorkshire lass, although one with a rich Polish and a rich Irish heritage as well. We lived in Leeds until I was twelve years old. You can read more about my family background in a book called A Proper Person to be Detained (Saraband 2019), part personal memoir, part family history. In that book, you'll find a little speculation about whether Emily may have conceived Heathcliff as a dark Irish child, with his 'gibberish that nobody could understand'. This may have been his native Gaelic, given that Liverpool was full of migrant Irish fleeing famine, including my own forebears, at the time when Emily was writing the novel in 1845. Emily's father was from County Down in Northern Ireland and the sisters would have been well aware of the anti-Irish prejudice that accompanied the influx of migrants. 

I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, a doubtful compliment some might say, and I was trundled over the moors in my push-chair to Top Withens, the setting for the Heights in the novel, if not for the house itself. As soon as I was old enough to read and begin to understand the novel, I adored it, although I soon realised that it was a powerful and absorbing evocation of obsessive love, packed with repeated images of cruelty and sadism, with very little of conventional romance about it. 

Top Withens

Many years later, when I became an experienced radio dramatist, with 100+ hours of radio drama to my name, I would plead with the BBC to let me dramatise the novel. They commissioned me to dramatise many classics, from Kidnapped and Catriona to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but for some reason, they never let me tackle Emily's masterpiece. Which was a pity, since so many dramatisations - in my well informed opinion - fell far short of the mark. 
 
Cue forward some years, and after a spell of writing for the stage, I began to focus almost wholly on fiction, with occasional ventures into historical non-fiction. Much of my work at that time was published by Saraband, but I still kept going back to Bird of Passage. Most writers have ‘bottom drawer’ novels. I have several, and most of them should never see the light of day. 

Bird of Passage always felt different. 

It felt like irritatingly unfinished business. I kept going back to it. Tinkering. Thinking about it. It haunted my dreams. It was as though these characters wanted desperately to tell their story. Interestingly, I knew that one of the characters had a secret, but even I didn't know what that secret was till the very end of the writing process. I woke up in the early hours, thinking 'That's what it was. That's what he needed to remember.' But I had to write the book and edit the book many times over to find out.

Back then, I still had an agent but they seemed to be repelled by anything with a Wuthering Heights connection, even though I would insist that it was only 'inspired by' and not some crass rehashing of the story. Later, no publisher would touch it, in spite of some glowing reader recommendations. 

I've often wondered about their wholly and sometimes virulently negative response. Given how many women I know who - like me - love Wuthering Heights, what was their motivation? It wasn't as though they had read it and found it wanting in some way. That would have been excusable. They wouldn't read it at all. Wouldn't you think at least one of them might have thought that they could find a way of marketing it?  

Anyway - Bird of Passage languished on the far recesses of my PC. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody had the time to read it. Nobody cared except me. I cared. 

I couldn't get Finn and Kirsty out of my mind, so when I took the decision to combine some self publishing with my traditional publishing, this was one of several novels that I felt deserved another life beyond the confines of my computer, my own imagination and the doubtful curation of other people. 

That was when I tackled it in a big way, with all the benefit of half a lifetime's experience of writing and editing. When it was finally published, one of my reviewers, Susan Price, pointed out that it is not a retelling. It is a 'reimagining' of Wuthering Heights at a different time and in a different place.' 

Bird of Passage wasn't the only trigger, but it was a significant milestone. I think it was then that I knew that the way ahead for me lay in publishing my own books, under my own imprint, albeit with some excellent professional assistance. I needed to be in control.

The evocative cover image by my artist husband, Alan Lees, is exactly what I wanted. It's a very grown up and often desperately sad story set mostly in the Scottish countryside, exploring the kind of mutual passion that is attractive in theory but ultimately destructive. It's a novel with occasional, albeit very subtle, supernatural elements. It's a book about the nature of obsessive love and the terrible, irreparable damage of childhood trauma.

If you love Wuthering Heights (or even if you don't) and if this sounds like your kind of novel, it's available as an eBook and in a nice, fat paperback as well. 

The eBook of Bird of Passage will be on special offer at the bargain price of 99p from 11th till 17th December.  


Bird of Passage: my Wuthering Heights inspired novel on special offer.

      

Cover art by Alan Lees

My novel Bird of Passage will be on special offer at 99p for the Kindle eBook version, for a whole week, from late on 14th October to the 21st October. If you haven't already read it, do grab a bargain. If you'd prefer the paperback, you'll find that here (at full price, I'm afraid, but it's a nicely produced book and a long one!) 

After all, what else can you do at this miserable time of year, with the country's economy crumbling around us, but bury yourself in a book? I plan to do the same thing, but I'll be writing something new as well.

Over all the years of my writing career, and even though I've been happily published by Saraband  for some time now, with my new non-fiction book, The Last Lancer, due to be published in 2023, there were two or three fairly early novels that I always thought of as the 'ones that got away'. 

Until I took the decision to publish it myself, it had always been my orphan child, the book that a few people read and enjoyed, but that nobody in the industry wanted. Unlike The Amber Heart, that kept being turned down with fulsome praise, because 'nobody is interested in Poland', which seemed in theory at least to be a credible marketing decision back in the 1980s, no agent or publisher would even read Bird of Passage, in spite of its Scottish setting and Irish background, and in spite of the fact that it tackles some harrowing issues that are still very much current. In short, it was turned down unseen. I should add that I can't blame my current publisher for this. There is only so much work that an individual independent publisher can deal with and had Saraband seen it earlier, they might well have taken it. But by the time they became 'my' publisher, there was more work ready to go, more work I wanted to write specifically for them. Writing careers are tricky like that. 

In the case of Bird of Passage, back when I was still sending out submissions, I suspect the kiss of death as far as agents and publishers alike were concerned, was the Wuthering Heights connection. Later, I wondered if I should have been so up-front about it. Perhaps I should never have mentioned it. But surely they would have noticed the faint parallels? Or maybe not. 

Anyway, in all my innocence, I gave the game away. And that was the rock I perished on. No matter how much I was at pains to say that this wasn't a rewriting of the incomparable original, (how would I dare?) but was a kind of homage to it, nobody in my industry believed me enough to read it and see for themselves. 

Wuthering Heights was my late mother’s favourite novel. I was a Yorkshire lass, although one with a rich Polish and (like Emily) a rich Irish heritage as well. We lived in Leeds until I was twelve years old. You can read more about my family background in a book called A Proper Person to be Detained (Saraband 2019), part personal memoir, part family history. I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, a doubtful compliment some might say, and I was trundled over the moors in my push-chair to Top Withens, the setting for the Heights in the novel, if not for the house itself. As soon as I was old enough to read and begin to understand the novel, I fell in love with it, although I soon realised that it was a powerful and absorbing evocation of a cruelly obsessive love, with very little of romance about it. Since then, I have reread it almost every year, and have found more to marvel at with every reading. 

I'm not alone. I know plenty of people who are similarly obsessed with Wuthering Heights. And here we are again, with a new film, Emily, in cinemas from tomorrow ... 
 
But to return to Bird of Passage. Cue forward some years, and after a spell of writing for the stage, I began to focus almost wholly on fiction, with occasional ventures into non-fiction. Although most of my work since then has been beautifully published by Saraband, I still kept going back to Bird of Passage. Most writers have ‘bottom drawer’ novels: the books that you write before you are published. I have several, and most of them should never see the light of day. 

Like the Amber Heart, Bird of Passage always felt different. Felt like irritatingly unfinished business. I kept going back to it. Tinkering. Leaving it alone. Thinking about it. It haunted my dreams. It was as though these characters wanted desperately to tell their story. Back then, I still had an agent, but I had other work waiting for submission, and Bird of Passage languished on the far recesses of my PC. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody had the time to read it. Nobody cared except me. 

All the same, I couldn't get Finn and Kirsty out of my mind, so when I took the decision to combine some self publishing with my traditional publishing, this was one of three novels that I felt deserved another life beyond the confines of my computer and my own imagination. That was when I tackled it in a big way, with all the benefit that so much experience of writing and editing can bring. Suddenly, I knew exactly how I wanted it to be, exactly how the story should be told. When it was finally published, one of my reviewers wrote that it is a 'reimagining' of Wuthering Heights at a different time and in a different place. It is a good way of describing it, and that is perhaps as close as it gets to Emily's masterpiece.

The cover, designed by my artist husband, is exactly what I wanted, and seems to reflect the story as accurately as possible. It's a grown up story set mostly in the Scottish countryside, exploring the kind of mutual passion that is attractive in theory but ultimately destructive. It's a novel about the nature of obsessive love and the terrible, irreparable damage of childhood trauma.

If you love Wuthering Heights (or even if you don't) and if this sounds like your kind of novel, why not give it a try? 



Bird of Passage - A New Cover for an Old Book


A couple of weeks ago, I sent a draft of my new book, The Last Lancer, to my publisher, Saraband. I can't say final draft because it isn't. And I can't say first draft either, because it's about the fifth draft so far. It's an in between draft. As good as I can make it for now, but there will probably be more work to be done. It's a piece of non-fiction about the Polish side of my family, more specifically about my grandfather, a man I never knew but always missed. 

But more of that in due course. 

When you've spent two years and more focusing almost exclusively on one project, everything seems very empty. I have a new project in mind but I'm not quite ready to start it yet. My wee office had Quentin Crisp levels of dust and monumental levels of clutter. It took me four days to sort it out and it's a small room. It's still cluttered, but it's clean, and everything is where it should be. 

Then I went back to the various projects I'd neglected while I focused on the new book. 

When I shared a stall with my artist husband at a pre-Christmas fair, I noticed that my novel Bird of Passage attracted far less attention than any of my other books, traditional or independently published. People DO judge a book by its cover. Now I've remedied that, with the help of my husband, Alan Lees, who provided the cover art, and Lumphanan Press, who made a great job of the original formatting, and then redesigned the cover for me. It already looks a lot more attractive. And much more suitable for a novel set mostly on a small Scottish island. 



One or two friends have commented how much they love this novel, and I've thought 'me too'.  But until I took the decision to publish it myself, it had always been my orphan child, the book that nobody in the industry wanted. Unlike the Amber Heart, that kept being turned down with fulsome praise, because 'nobody is interested in Poland', which seemed in theory at least to be a credible marketing decision back in the 1980s, no agent or publisher would even read Bird of Passage, in spite of its Scottish setting and Irish background, and in spite of the fact that it tackles some harrowing issues that are still very much current. In short, it was turned down unseen.

In this case, I suspect the kiss of death was the Wuthering Heights connection. No matter how much I was at pains to say that this wasn't a rewriting of the incomparable original, (how would I dare?) but was a kind of homage to it, nobody in my industry believed me enough to read it and see for themselves. 

Wuthering Heights was my late mother’s favourite novel. I was a Yorkshire lass, although one with a rich Polish and (like Emily) a rich Irish heritage as well. We lived in Leeds until I was twelve years old. You can read more about my family background in a book called A Proper Person to be Detained (Saraband 2019), part personal memoir, part family history. I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, a doubtful compliment some might say, and I was trundled over the moors in my push-chair to Top Withens, the setting for the Heights in the novel, if not for the house itself. As soon as I was old enough to read and begin to understand the novel, I fell in love with it, although I soon realised that it was a powerful and absorbing evocation of a cruelly obsessive love, with very little of romance about it. Since then, I have reread it almost every year, and have found more to marvel at with every reading.

 
Top Withens


Cue forward some years, and after a spell of writing for the stage, I began to focus almost wholly on fiction, with occasional ventures into non-fiction. Most of my work since then has been beautifully published by Saraband. But I still kept going back to Bird of Passage. Most writers have ‘bottom drawer’ novels: the books that you write before you are  published. I have several, and most of them should never see the light of day. Bird of Passage always felt different. Felt like irritatingly unfinished business. 

Back then, I had an agent, but I had other work waiting for submission, and Bird of Passage languished on the far recesses of my PC. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody had the time to read it. Nobody cared except me. 

 All the same, I couldn't get Finn and Kirsty out of my mind so when, some years ago, I took the decision to combine self publishing with traditional publishing, this was one of three novels that I felt deserved another life beyond the confines of my computer and my own imagination. It has done well as an eBook, but the new paperback copies arrived yesterday. The cover is exactly what I wanted, and seems to reflect the story as accurately as possible. It's a grown up story set in Scotland, exploring the kind of mutual passion that is attractive in theory but ultimately destructive. It's a novel about the nature of obsessive love and the terrible damage of childhood trauma, all set within a landscape that is almost a character in itself. 

If this sounds like your kind of novel, give it a try.