Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts

A Bad Year for Trees and Other Stories

 


Just in time for Christmas, A Bad Year for Trees would make a good stocking filler for anyone who likes short stories. Almost all of them have been published before, anthologised by other people or even broadcast on Radio 4. 

I've been meaning to collect them together for a long time. At the moment, I have a new non-fiction book, the Last Lancer, going through the Saraband publishing process, I also have some ideas for a brand new project simmering away. Assembling this little retrospective has proved to be a pleasant distraction, especially allowing me to look back at what inspired these stories. 

I think they epitomise something I was told by an (ex) agent. 'Your work is too well written to be popular, but too popular to be really literary,' she said. My bad. 

All the same, it makes them readable! Let me know what you think. 

It's available as an eBook, and now in paperback. I've written other stories, over the years, but these are the ones that I believe have stood the test of time. 

The paperback was published with the invaluable help of Duncan Lockerbie at Lumphanan Press  

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? 



New Short Story Collection

 


I've always been fond of short fiction, both as a reader and as a writer, although I must admit that nowadays when I'm writing I tend to want the elbow room of a novel or at the very least a novella. Over the years I've had various stories published in all kinds of magazines, literary and popular. 

In the small hiatus between completing a draft of the current project, The Last Lancer, and thinking 'what next?' I decided to put a small collection of stories together, editing one or two of them. Here it is: a dozen short stories of all kinds from the reasonably literary to a couple of scary ghost stories that turned out to be very popular when first published. 

It's cheap although not always cheerful. But it might entertain you on a train journey or a flight, where you need something that you can pick up and put down as your journey dictates. 

The decision to edit or not to edit past work is an interesting one. On the whole, if something has already been published, it may be better not to change it. As I was working my way through these, I realised that the stories that had been published didn't need polishing. But there were a couple that hadn't found a home, and I took the opportunity to edit them, mainly because with the passage of time, I could see much more clearly what I had wanted to say. Could, in fact, see the wood for the trees. 

You'll find them here - A Bad Year for Trees - and I hope you enjoy them. 

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. 








The Physic Garden on a Kindle Daily Deal - Another Grown Up Love Story.


Today, that's 20th May, the Physic Garden is on Amazon on a Kindle Daily Deal, for one day only, so if you haven't read it and you're fond of historical fiction, you can give it a go for 99p. It was the Sunday Times's pick of historical fiction last spring and their reviewer liked it very much.

The physic garden of the title is the old medicinal herb garden of the mediaeval college of Glasgow University, back when it was in the centre of town, quite close to the cathedral. I never realised, when I named the book, how many people would read that word as psychic. But there's nothing spooky about it, although I'm not averse to writing about the paranormal! Just not in this novel.

When students studied botany back in the very early 1800s, they needed plant specimens and the physic garden was supposed to supply them. But at that time, the garden was suffering from industrial pollution from the nearby type foundry, and was dying. The lecturer in Botany, Dr Thomas Brown, asks William Lang to go out into the surrounding countryside to gather herbs for him and the two men strike up an unlikely friendship. It is on one of these expeditions that William meets weaver's daughter and bee keeper Jenny Caddas, and falls in love with her.

But there's a lot more to it than that. The story is told by William, in old age, looking back on the events of his youth. And we quickly become aware that something bad has happened. What that something is, you'll need to read the novel to find out. This is a book about a terrible betrayal, but also about a city on the cusp of the industrial revolution - a book about medical developments, about the early days of surgery, and how we treat women and their bodies. It's also a story about the painful getting of wisdom.

It's not as racy as some of my novels - Ice Dancing, for instance or Orange Blossom Love - nor as gentle as The Curiosity Cabinet. Nor does it have the big. bold, tragic central story of Bird of Passage (my current favourite!) or The Amber Heart although it's just as heartbreaking. I never seem to be able to write twice in a similar vein although I think the style is all me. But these days, when I'm asked what kind of things I write, I find myself saying 'Grown up love stories' - and that's what this is: literary fiction for sure, the voice a little dry and ironic, because of who is telling it - but essentially a love story. Who loves whom, though - well, that's the interesting part.

There's a Pinterest board too, where you can find out some more about the visual inspiration behind the novel.

The Physic Garden - Ten Discussion Points for Book Groups

There has already been some interest in the Physic Garden from various book and reading groups, which is very encouraging for me. I do feel that it might be a good read for a book group in that it raises a great many issues - issues, moreover, that I can imagine might be quite contentious. Not that it's really an 'issue based' novel. It's a novel in which character is central, a story of friendship and betrayal. It is, now that I come to think about it, a novel with a reliable narrator - but reliable (and lovable) as William is, it's also about his struggle, in old age, to come to terms with the traumatic events of his youth. Although it's undoubtedly quite a literary novel, it's accessible too. And, I hope, readable.

It was favourably reviewed in the Sunday Times this week, which delighted me. It has had wonderful, thoughtful reviews elsewhere, but the Sundays have so many submissions and, on the whole, they review so little fiction that just being noticed seems like an additional achievement!

I've come up with ten points that might be used to spark debate. I'm sure readers will have their own. And I'm anxious not to prescribe any single 'right' response to the novel. All stories are recreated over and over in the minds of individual readers and that's just as it should be. But do feel free to save and copy these and use them in whatever way seems most helpful to you. I'm sure readers will have plenty of additional questions and opinions of their own. I should add that I've tried very hard NOT to add any spoilers. There's nothing in here that you probably couldn't deduce from reading about the book. But if you're in any way worried about it - stop reading now! 

1 The Physic Garden has been described as a ‘beautiful, elegant expression of betrayal’. The author herself has characterised the novel as being about friendship and betrayal. What do you think are the big themes of the book?

2. How did you feel about the novel’s two main characters, William Lang and Thomas Brown? Was your sympathy entirely with William, or did William’s narration allow you to understand something of what motivated Thomas Brown?

3 Did you anticipate the denouement and how did it affect you? Do you think you would have responded to events in the same way as William?

4 Would you describe this as literary or historical fiction? The author describes various traditional activities such as beekeeping, needlework and foraging, but these are important for the story itself. How far does this help the reader to immerse him or herself in the world of the novel?

5 The novel also focuses on the science of the nineteenth century and on the tensions between medicine and the newly developing skills of anatomy and surgery. Did you find yourself agreeing with William, or – from a 21st century perspective – did you find that Thomas had a more balanced view of potential medical developments?

6 Another reviewer has pointed out that the over-arching theme of the novel is ‘the price of knowledge’. This is a dilemma we still face today. Do you think you might have felt differently if you were living in early 19th century Scotland and how much did the novel make you wonder about this?

7 The women in the novel are a little more shadowy than the men but, since it is written from the perspective of one of those male characters in a patriarchal age, this may be inevitable. How do you feel about historical novels in which female characters are given 21st century qualities and freedoms? Do you think it matters? Does it affect your enjoyment of a novel?

8 William’s ‘voice’ has been described as ‘individual, idiosyncratic’ and ‘flexible enough to express emotions from the happiest to the very blackest.’ What were your feelings about William by the end of the novel? Did you like him? Did you feel that he had led a good life, or that he had missed out on something? If he had been alive today, how do you think things might have played out for him, and would he have been any happier as a result?

9 William points out that knowledge is not always the same thing as wisdom. Do you think William has acquired wisdom by the end of the novel? What about Thomas? Apart from his final letter, we only have William’s perspective on him. How much do you think that last letter helps to explain earlier events?

10 William also says of his friend Thomas that ‘it can be a peculiar curse and a burden to be a man whom people love. Better by far to be a man who loves unconditionally.’ Do you think this is true, and if so, why? 






The Physic Garden - Glasgow and Ayr Launches, Coming Soon!

Cover image courtesy of Glasgow Museums
The Physic Garden is, it seems, already 'out there' in paperback. At least that's what some friends and Amazon are telling me (and even sending me pictures to prove it.) But really, the official launch will be on Thursday 27th March, in Waterstones Argyle Street in Glasgow at 7pm and a week later, on Thursday 3rd April, in Ayr's Waterstones at 6.30.  I've been busy inviting friends and acquaintances, and I do hope plenty of people come along.

I'm going to be talking about some of what inspired and lay behind the novel, some of the intensive historical research that went into it and how I feel about my main character, William Lang, who narrates the whole story as an old man looking back on his youth. I'm very fond of him, but there's more to it than that. Actually, I still recall the considered judgement of an 'industry insider' who had better remain nameless that the whole novel was 'just an old man telling his story' which is the kind of remark that burns itself into your heart and stays there, festering slowly. Not even a clutch of excellent reviews and a whole lot of praise can ever quite erase it, although they certainly help!

My publisher Saraband has made a wonderful job of this book - the actual hold-it-in-your-hand artefact  - and the cover, with an image courtesy of the excellent Glasgow Museums, is to die for. This stunning sampler is part of their collection. One of the characters in this literary historical novel, Jenny Caddas, is a fine needlewoman, and in the course of the story she makes an embroidered christening cape. I'm planning to bring a similar cape along to the launches, since I have one in my own textile collection - another source of inspiration, although not the main one.

Now, I'm trying to decide which bits to read out:  just enough to tantalise people into wanting to read more. I've been sitting up late and practising. But really, it's no hardship because I love reading aloud. I suspect most playwrights - and that's what I do when I'm wearing one of my other hats - love reading their work aloud and sometimes even going so far as to act it out. I sometimes think that we're show-offs at heart even though we like to pretend to be quietly self effacing writers.


A Kindle Countdown Special Offer and a New eBook Release as well


I have so much going on at the moment that it's hard to find the time to blog about it! 

But if you're reading this post any time between 30th January and the 5th February, you can download my novel Ice Dancing for less than the price of a cup of coffee. It will be on a Kindle countdown deal for a week. In fact you could get the book to go with your cup of coffee and read about Scottish  village life in all its engaging reality at the same time.

I'm seriously considering rebranding the way this novel is presented. I think the cover, which is very beautiful, actually gives the wrong impression of the book. This is not the artist's fault, but entirely mine. She had much better ideas but I wanted the hockey player. I think I was wrong. I often am! We feel our way into this business and sometimes we make mistakes. So later this spring, I'm going to ask her if she can redesign it for me.

Anyway. What IS it about, if not about hockey? And why the Ice Dancing? 

 It's what I would call a very grown up love story with a lowland Scottish village setting, a novel about the lightning strike of love at first sight, a story of past suffering and the possibility of healing. I think it's quite literary, but then what does that mean? It's intelligent, I hope. But not inaccessible. And - glory be - it has a slightly older heroine. She's approaching forty. And she falls in love. With a younger man. 

Which is probably why this novel just HAD to be indie published. 


It's set somewhere a bit like this.
Helen - who narrates the novel - has almost resigned herself to the downward slide into mildly discontented middle age. She's a Scottish farmer’s wife, living in a rural backwater, with her only child about to fly the nest. But when she meets and falls in love with Joe, a Canadian ice hockey player spending a season with a local team, she realises that nothing will ever be the same for either of them again. 

Joe is nine years younger and a hero to die for, attractive, polite and articulate. But like many of my novels, which so often deal with friendship and betrayal as well as love, this is a story with a dark side. Although Joe skates like an angel, he has his own demons to cope with, a sadder, more complicated and much more shocking past than Helen could ever imagine. 

A bit like this as well!
The title is all to do with partners. Helen has been doing Line Dancing in the village hall. You don't need a partner for Line Dancing. You don't have to touch anybody. But if you're dancing on ice, and you're unsure of yourself, a partner can certainly come in handy.

Anyway, if you'd like to give it a try, and you have a Kindle or a Kindle app, you can get it cheap, here in the UK and also in the USA, (at this link) for seven whole days. You don't have to be a hockey mom or even a hockey fan to enjoy it (although it won't harm) and it might help if you're a wee bit curious about the joys and occasional sorrows of life in contemporary rural Scotland. But really, it's a story about love, about betrayal and damage, and about healing. 

I'm keen to see this novel selling well because I badly want to write the sequel. And I probably will write the sequel sooner or later. But it would be kind of nice if a few people were asking for it!

Meanwhile - but also on the subject of betrayal and friendship as well as a lot of other things besides - my new historical novel The Physic Garden is due to be published in its eBook form on ALL platforms, on 1st February. You'll find it on Amazon, but everywhere else as well. And then, ta-dah! - it will be published in paperback on 27th March with the very beautiful cover below. This one is published in the traditional way by  SARABAND, a publisher in a million and Scottish Publisher of the Year for 2013. Check out some of their other excellent titles. I'm very proud to be published by them, glad to be in such company,  and - if all goes well - I'm hoping to be able to work with them in the future. 

Cover picture, courtesy of Glasgow Museums.

















Bird of Passage, Free on Kindle to Mark the Start of Spring.

Cover art by Matt Zanetti
My novel Bird of Passage will be free to download on Kindle from 4th - 6th April. It's another 'island-set' novel. I seemed to go through a period of setting my novels and plays on islands, until I exhausted that particular piece of inspiration, but it still nips away at me from time to time. So the rewritten version of an old novel, The Golden Apple, due for publication next month, is set on a completely different kind of island: a much warmer place altogether, La Gomera in the Canaries. And even The Physic Garden, set fair and square in early nineteenth century Glasgow, has a trip to the Isle of Arran as a central and very important scene.

Bird of Passage, though, is set on a fictional and unnamed Scottish Hebridean island, which could be just about anywhere, from Gigha, which I know well, to the Isle of Skye, or Mull or Islay, or some amalgam of all of them. Oddly enough, the perception of where it is seems to depend on the reader's own experience and that's fine by me. I love that process which seems to go on, whereby the reader recreates the world of the novel within his or her own mind.

Susan Price, reviewing the novel for An Awfully Big Blog Adventure describes how she realized that there was a connection with a much more famous classic novel:
'I was three-quarters of the way through this book – or even more – before it dawned on me that it was Wuthering Heights in modern dress. I was tipped off by a couple of sly and amusing references to twigs tapping on windows and ghosts, and by the hero disappearing for twenty years and then returning a rich man.
It’s not a re-telling, though – it’s a re-imagining. A dialogue with the older book, if you like. It asks, would the same story, the same deathless love, be possible in the modern age, and if so, how?
'
Link to the rest of the review here.

A very young me, in Wuthering Heights mode!
Susan is right. I wasn't attempting a retelling. I wouldn't dare. But Wuthering Heights has always been my all time favourite novel. I was born in Yorkshire and was trundled over the moors to Top Withins when I was still in my pushchair, or so I'm told. Bird of Passage is a book I was desperate to write, partly because of my own obsession with Wuthering Heights, but I spent years hunting for the right story, the right setting, the right set of characters.

Reviewing the novel for the Indie eBook review, Gilly Fraser writes:
There are no pat answers in this story and no neatly contrived solutions. Endings are jagged, situations remain unresolved. Yet at the end of the book there is a feeling of satisfaction that things did work out as they should – at least to some extent. I think that makes the story and its characters all the more realistic and credible. It’s hard to pigeonhole this book to a specific genre. It’s a love story, yet sometimes defies the label. It’s contemporary, yet dwells quite a bit in the past. As to its audience – I think this would appeal to readers who don’t need to be led by the hand and who enjoy
challenging relationships. Wholeheartedly recommended.

Read the rest of her review here

One of the nice things about reviews - especially when they are positive but quite analytical - is that they give you as a writer a new perspective on a novel. It's odd how often you're not entirely sure what you've written, or what you might have achieved, even though you've been in the thick of it, even though you may have had all kinds of intentions for the book. 

I'm often asked to describe the kind of books I write. It's a question I find genuinely difficult to answer, and reviews like Susan's and Gilly's help me to find some answers. My books aren't really romances in the conventional sense because they don't always have the traditional happy ending or even the traditional structure. They have a resolution of sorts, and I hope they give the reader a sense of satisfaction, but the characters don't generally walk off into the sunset. Or not often. One reviewer who loved this novel still found it heartbreaking, and people who have read The Physic Garden, even while they tell me they couldn't put it down, still tell me that they simply couldn't bear what happens in the end. I know what they mean because I couldn't bear it either, and I wrote it! 

Whenever I finish a novel, I try to work out what kind of book I've written. I know that may sound a bit daft. But when you're in the middle of a piece of work, you're so buried in the time and place, so deep into the minds of your characters, that you really can't see the wood for the trees. So it can be very helpful to stand back and try to analyse exactly what kind of novel you've produced. At first, I despaired of finding any common denominators within my fiction. Everything I write seems to be quite different: some are historical, some contemporary, some are more literary than others, some quiet, some complex.

Quite a while ago, an agent told me (and I'm paraphrasing here) that my work was too well written to be popular but too accessible to be really literary. She saw it as a fault. The more I speak to my readers though, the more I see that a lot of people out there are looking for stories which are well written and grown up, but accessible too. And I think that's what I write. Mainly because that's the kind of book I like to read. Lots of them are love stories. But I suppose they are 'grown up' love stories. I wish Amazon had a category like that, but they don't yet - and 'adult' has quite a different connotation! Even the Physic Garden, which isn't really a love story at all, but a story about male friendship and betrayal, is a grown up tale.

Bird of Passage is a very grown up love story -  about past damage and the obsessive attachment that is the result. And of course it is, unashamedly, a homage to my much loved Wuthering Heights. If this sounds like something you might enjoy reading, it's free to download for the next three days, here in the UK and here in the USA.



The Physic Garden: How William Lang Told Me His Story.

The other day, somebody asked me THE QUESTION. It was a very nice lady, chatting to me in our local shop.
'Where do you get your ideas from?' she said.
Most writers will have encountered this question many times. Don't get me wrong. It's not irritating. Most of us love our readers and love to talk about the inspiration behind our books. But I also think most writers will  find that question - however often people ask it - very difficult to answer. Or if not difficult, then puzzling. Where DO we get our ideas from? Are we puzzled because we don't know, or is it because people who ask it are always genuinely surprised that we can make things up so easily - and it makes us wonder about it too?

The truth is that most writers have heads which are positively stuffed with ideas. We have ideas, characters, settings, stories, coming out of our ears. The problem is hardly ever the ideas. The problem is in making the time to get all those ideas written down in some form and then deciding which of them you want to live with and work with for the next year or so, which of them stay on the back burner, and which of them might as well be consigned to the dustbin. Actually, that's not strictly true either. Whenever you consign anything to the dustbin, you will invariably discover that it is exactly what you needed - but didn't realise it till now - for whatever you are working on at the moment.

I sometimes think it's a question of practice. The ideas, I mean. I remember doing a sort of 'taster' session for a lovely group of young mums, about writing. By the end of it, they had all created an imaginary character, and some of them were starting to have ideas about interesting things that those imaginary characters might do. Making stories for and with and about them. All of them seemed slightly surprised that - once they got over the hurdle of thinking there was some great mystery about 'getting ideas' - it was so easy to make something up. And so pleasurable. It's one of the reasons why writers carry on writing, in the face of troubles which include lack of cash and lack of time, but seldom lack of ideas!

Anyway, here's how it worked with my most recent project.

My first idea for The Physic Garden came years ago when I found a facsimile of an old book called The Scots Gard'ner, by John Reid, first published in 1683 by David Lindsay in Edinburgh and reprinted by Mainstream in 1988. I read it, intrigued by the poetry of it, by the beauty of the language and practicality of the advice. Later, I came across another fascinating book called The Lost Gardens of Glasgow University, by A D Boney, published by Helm, also in 1988, clearly a good year for books about garden history. It was an account of the gardens of the old college, including the old botanical garden which had been polluted by the nearby type foundry. And that, in turn, sent me back to more primary sources. There were other books - a wonderful history of Scottish plant explorers called Seeds of Blood and Beauty, by Ann Lindsay, published by Polygon - which gave me some insight into the possibilities which might have enticed my characters - and another very old book, which I had to spend a somewhat traumatic afternoon in Glasgow University library examining - but if I told you all about that one, it would give my story away!

Part of a christening cape, embroidered with flowers.
At the same time, I acquired an embroidered 'christening cape' - I have it still - and I was told that it probably dated from the early 1800s, which is about the same time that this old cottage where I live and work was built. There seemed to be some correspondence in my mind between the beautifully embroidered flowers on the silk of this cape and the flower specimens which the gardeners were asked to provide for the botanical lectures. And that too fed into the story. Like so many of my novels, this one began life as a play, but it felt unsatisfactory. I didn't yet have the elbow room I needed. I wrote and rewrote but still it felt like a series of scenes from something much longer.

And then William Lang, the narrator, walked into my head and started to tell me his story. 'In his own words' as they used to say in school. 'Tell it in your own words.' Except that these were his words, not mine. Or that was what it felt like. That's still what it feels like. And it is a very Scottish story, with a handful of very Scottish words. I even thought about putting a little glossary at the back of the book, but finally decided that readers could probably guess what they meant easily enough. I plan to blog about it later though!

Some of the characters are very loosely based on people who actually existed, back in the early 1800s, or what little we know about them. But the book doesn't pretend to be true. Not even that curious hybrid called 'faction'. It's undoubtedly fiction. I made almost all of it up, although I hope the setting is authentic enough. William lived with me day and night for a spell, and told me his story as clearly as though he had been speaking into a recorder. I was reminded  of those slightly sinister tales of 'thought forms' that become so vivid that they assume a strange kind of life beyond the mind of the thinker. Except that with William, it wouldn't have been sinister at all, because he is such a lovely, honourable elderly man, looking back on his young self with wisdom and understanding. And that, in a way, makes it even worse. You see this is a tale of a terrible betrayal that permeates the novel, events that have influenced (although not ruined) William's whole life.


Where do such ideas come from? I suppose the answer is all kinds of sources and none, real life events and make believe. It would be nice to know what other people think. How does it work for you?


The Amber Heart and Bird of Passage - the Novels I Feared No-One Would Ever Read


If you just happen to be reading this post on Wednesday 13th or Thursday 14th June 2012, you'll find that you can go to Amazon's Kindle Store and download my two newest novels for nothing. If you've missed the giveaway then you can still download them for the price of a couple of lattes - or a latte and a half, depending upon your cafe of choice. (I'm a Cafe Nero addict, here in the UK - an Italian style chain with cool, stylish interiors, friendly staff, good coffee and good music - and no, they aren't paying me to say as much!)

If you fancy an epic love story in the Dr Zhivago mode (I'm thinking of the movie, rather than the book)  - or a sort of Polish Gone With The Wind - you'll find it here if you're in the UK and here if you're in the USA.

One thing I've learned from the various reviews of this book over the past few weeks, as well as direct messages from readers, is that they have sometimes been uncertain as to whether they'll like the Polish historical background.

One enthusiastic reader remarked honestly that she thought it might be out of her comfort zone, but then got thoroughly swept up in the story and setting, found that she loved it and wanted to tell other people about it. Another calls it a 'rollercoaster of events and emotions' and I hope it's all of that. It's certainly what I intended it to be when I was writing it. And it's certainly what I myself felt about it as a story.



However, I can completely understand why readers might be a bit reluctant. For many of us here in the west, we have a vision of the Poland of the cold war years firmly lodged in our brains - part of that great unknown empire beyond the 'iron curtain.' When I was a little girl, growing up in post-war Leeds with my lovely Polish father and Irish mother, I used to hear them talking about the iron curtain and imagine it as a real barrier, a huge hanging made of shining metal, sweeping across the countryside.

But for me, there was another Poland and that was the one my father told me about, as magical and unattainable as a place in a fairytale.

I was quite a sickly child, with severe asthma, and dad would sit beside my bed and patiently weave his own lost past into fabulous stories for me, describing his family, most of whom had died in the war or in the various skirmishes that preceded it, especially in the east.

But he also told me tales of a time long before that: the superstitions and beliefs, the songs and poems, the eighteenth and nineteenth century history which he had absorbed when he was just a little boy himself.

His tales were full of that long-lost world of the Austro Hungarian Empire, where privileged people drank tea out of silver samovars, ate preserves from porcelain dishes with tiny silver spoons, and sometimes visited Vienna where they would eat cake ... and dance.

Of course it wasn't all like that. This was in so many ways a savagely dangerous world. Human life was cheap  and as well as the cake and the dancing, there was abject poverty and prejudice, bloodshed, misery and disease. All of these things have found their way into The Amber Heart, as well as an equivocal but attractive hero in Piotro, a heroine whose faults match her virtues in Maryanna, and a setting which I still find myself revisiting in my mind's eye from time to time - the big, beautiful, pancake yellow house of Lisko.

Give it a try. You might find yourself swept along too!




The only thing I ask is that if you do download this and enjoy it, you'll snatch a few moments from your busy day to tell other people what you liked about the book - and maybe tell me too. (Even if it's only the Viennese chocolate cakes and pastries, which I certainly had a lot of fun writing about...)


At the same time, you can download my contemporary novel, Bird of Passage. Here in the UK and here in the USA. Although the settings for these two novels are quite different, there are some similarities between them. Both owe something to my passion for Wuthering Heights, although of the two, Bird of Passage is by far the more intentional homage to that book. Even there, the references are quite subtle.

There are other similarities between The Amber Heart and Bird of Passage which I only noticed after I had finished writing and revising both novels. Both are love stories, both are big books in the sense that they are reasonably long and span a great many years.

I realised quite quickly  that I needed the elbow room to tell the whole story in each case.

Bird of Passage, which begins and ends in the present, has something of the 'family saga' about it. Mainly though, it's a haunting tale of obsessive love, betrayal, loss and institutionalised cruelty, set in Ireland and Scotland. I found some parts of this very distressing to write. It took me a long time to realise what had made Finn, my central character, into the person he was. I resisted exploring it. The book felt stuck and stupid for a while. But once I found out what had happened to Finn - and that's exactly what it felt like - finding it out - everything came together for me, even though exploring it was still a painful process. By then, I cared for Finn quite as much as Kirsty in the novel.

Both of these books have something else in common and I'll own up to it here. It was almost impossible for me to find a conventional publisher for these two novels  although I and my agent(s) spent long and frustrating years searching. I'll let you into a secret. One of the many editors who said of Bird of Passage that she 'loved it but didn't think she could sell it' told me that it was 'too well written to be popular but not experimental enough to be literary'. Even back then, when eBooks were just beginning to loom on the horizon, I despaired at the judgement and thought it was a serious indictment of the way in which conventional publishing views its potential readers. The books I loved to read myself were accessible, well written stories that drew me into a world created by the writer. That was what I wanted to write. I couldn't imagine (and I can imagine a lot of things - it's what I do after all!) that I was alone in this.

I don't think I was.
I don't think I am.

The Scottish island setting of Bird of Passage

But really, this is not a complaint. I used to have a few chips on my shoulder, I'll admit. I had too many years of agents and editors raving about work which they could neither sell nor publish. Even the sympathy of friends was unbearable. But now, thanks to Amazon, and Kindle, I'm as happy in my work as I have ever been in my life. And I have more stories to tell, more novels to finish and new books to start. So watch this space.

For those who are still not quite sure about eBooks, or just don't like the medium, I'll definitely be getting both of these out as Print On Demand paperbacks, early next year. Sooner, if I can manage my time just a little more efficiently.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about me, visit my website at www.wordarts.co.uk and if you want to know a bit more about the Polish background to the Amber Heart, visit my other blog at http://theamberheart.blogspot.com

Bird of Passage on Kindle - Disturbing to Read - and to Write.

Cover art precisely reflecting the themes of the novel - by Matt Zanetti 

If you're reading this on 10th or 11th May 2012, you can download my novel, Bird of Passage, free to your Kindle or Kindle App, here in the UK or here in the USA.

To be honest with you, although I'm very fond of this novel, very fond of its central characters, Finn and Kirsty, even I don't know what particular genre it belongs in. So I don't think I can complain too much that mainstream publishers couldn't seem to place it either. It's a mid-list novel, for sure and it's on the literary end of the mid-list. But that doesn't mean it's difficult to read. I hope the story is strong enough to carry you along.  It's contemporary fiction, but the story spans many years. It's a love story, but it also deals with the shocking realities - and the aftermath - of state sanctioned physical abuse in 1960s Ireland, which makes it a serious and challenging read.

The story of Finn and Kirsty begins in 1960s Scotland. Young Finn O’Malley is sent from Ireland to work at the potato harvest and soon forms a close friendship with Kirsty Galbreath, the farmer’s red-headed grand-daughter. But Finn is damaged by a childhood so traumatic that he can only recover his memories slowly. What happened at the brutal Industrial School to which he was committed while still a little boy? For the sake of his sanity, he must try to find out why he was sent there, and what became of the mother he lost. As he struggles to answer these questions, his ability to love and be loved in return is called into question. 

The novel is as much about the crippling psychological effects of physical cruelty as anything else. I've realised that even I, as a writer, found myself reluctant to tackle these aspects of Finn's story. (And even since publication, I realise I've been reluctant to talk and write about them.) I knew that I didn't want to turn this into a 'misery memoir'. But Finn, as he presented himself to me right from the start, seemed like a profoundly damaged individual. And it was quite a long time before I could bring myself to get inside his mind and find out exactly what had happened to him. It became even more disturbing when I found out what really had happened to so many people, when I found out - distressingly - the stories that lay behind those men you sometimes see in UK cities, Irish construction workers or older men now that time has passed, solitary souls, unable to form close relationships and sometimes reliant on alcohol to see them through each evening. Strangely, this reluctance of mine seems to be mirrored in the character of Finn himself who can't remember exactly what happened during his childhood, having buried it so deeply, because it was so damaging.

If this makes it a disturbing read - and I think in many ways it does - then it also made it a disturbing book to write. I found the character of Finn and his history so absorbing that I would constantly wake up in the night, thinking about him, trying to figure out why he was behaving in this way, and what might have happened to make him like this. It strikes me that writers don't always, or even often, manipulate plot and character. Sometimes our characters manipulate us. Finn was relentless.

From some of the  UK reviews, I can see that men have appreciated this novel as much as women. It has an island setting in part but much of the story of Bird of Passage also takes place in Ireland and on the Scottish mainland. It has a rural setting, but many key events take place in cities.

My friend and colleague, Dr David Manderson, of the University of the West of Scotland, reviewed it in these terms: It's not just a cracking read, it's a genuinely powerful one, and once you stumble over the great love story at its centre you won't be able to put this book down. There's real pain here and many different kinds of healing, few of them nice. A story that like Wuthering Heights has as many harsh and knotted bits as deliciously sweet ones, you will be taken to a different world by it, but one as real as your own.'  Writing in the Indie eBook Review, Gilly Fraser says 'There are no pat answers in this story and no neatly contrived solutions. Endings are jagged, situations remain unresolved. Yet at the end of the book, there is a feeling of satisfaction that things did work out as they should - at least to some extent.' 


There have been other reviews, most of them by people I don't know at all, one of them calling the novel,  'A breathtaking read.'  To which I can only say, thank-you, whoever you are - and I'm so glad you enjoyed it, if enjoy is the right word! As writers, we tend to write for ourselves. How else could we spend so much time absorbed in the world of each book or play?  But very soon after completion - if we're honest - I think that most of us want desperately to communicate with other people, our readers. We want to show them the world we have created, to introduce them to the people who have become so very real to us. And we love to hear that they too have become absorbed in the world of the novel - even when that world is by no means a comfortable one.  Finally, when I was looking for a cover for the eBook, I discussed the story and its background with digital artist Matt Zanetti. After a little while, he produced the cover above. It wasn't what I expected. It wasn't quite what we had discussed. But it took my breath away in that it so precisely reflected the themes of the novel: the lonely corncrake, the themes of solitude, imprisonment and a yearning for something better. 

Catherine Czerkawska
www.wordarts.co.uk 



















The Amber Heart - an epic tale of love and loss in 19th century Poland.

Painting by Juliusz Kossak

A beautiful, butter-yellow mansion.
A spirited heroine.
A troubled hero.

When Maryanna Diduska first meets Piotro Bandura, they are both children, but their situations could not be more different. Maryanna is the pampered daughter of Polish aristocrats, while Piotro is the child of a poverty-stricken Ukrainian widow.

Stefan took a pouch from his jacket and, with a laugh, scattered coins, as though scattering grain, watching them spread out and dive, hunting among grasses, squabbling volubly, fighting for what they could find like so many starlings. But one of them didn’t move. He was the tallest and the oldest, a boy of perhaps eleven, his hair black and matted, his face sallow under the grime, his eyes an unexpectedly bright cornflower blue. He stood still, hands hanging by his sides, fists clenched, and he stared up at Maryanna, unsmiling, unmoving. She shifted uneasily. For perhaps the first time in her life, she saw a gaze of pure resentment directed straight at herself. She turned her head into her father’s jacket.
‘Daddy, tell the boy not to look at me,’ she whispered.




But this is also the tale of the beautiful house of Lisko, Maryanna’s beloved childhood home, and the way in which the lives of its inhabitants will be disrupted by the turmoil of the times.

Out on Kindle, before the end of March 2012, The Amber Heart is a vivid, dramatic and unashamedly romantic story of love and loyalty, of personal tragedy and triumph, set against an intriguing backdrop: the turbulent Eastern Borderlands of 19th century Poland.

The first draft of this novel was written many years ago, while my Polish father was still alive. He was the best dad anyone could ever wish for and the book is dedicated to him. The novel was praised by my agent at the time, the late Pat Kavanagh, and then by countless editors. 'I couldn't put it down. I stayed up all night reading it. I wept buckets!' wrote one of them, before adding that she would have to turn it down. You see, The Amber Heart always fell at the sales and marketing hurdle. 'Nobody knows about Poland!' they would say.

Over the years, I've gone back to it from time to time and - rereading it - have realised that it has stood the test of time. Now, a few other people have read it and said the same thing. I've worked on it, of course, honed it, polished it, responded to some useful editorial suggestions and brought the benefit of my own greater maturity to the story. The advent of eBook publishing has finally allowed me publish this novel which, of all the things I have ever written, has been closest to my heart. So many of the elderly Polish people who generously helped me with research for this novel are dead and gone. But they have left me with a great mass of interesting material in the shape of documents, photographs, postcards, diaries and first hand accounts, not least the notebooks my late father filled with stories and sketches of the Poland he remembered.

My dad.

If you read the Amber Heart, and are intrigued by the background to the book, you'll find more to entertain you here. Over the coming months, I'll be mining all that fascinating background information to write the occasional post about pre-war Polish history, customs and traditions, costume, arts and crafts, and food. Whatever takes my fancy, really. I'll even post a few recipes.
I hope you find it entertaining, and that you might  like to join in with your own comments.