Publication Day - Part II

Having now skipped out to Waterstones I can report on a hugely impressive display including a picture of the author which will be familiar to readers of this blog. Photographic evidence will follow in due course.

In another noteworthy event, the July edition of DeathRay magazine includes a short article by yours truly on subject always close to my heart, the enduring excellence of Jack Vance.

The recent death of Arthur C. Clarke leaves Jack Vance as one of the last survivors of the Golden Age of science fiction. Active since the late 1940s, Vance has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards (including a Grand Master Award in 1996) as well as the World Fantasy Award.

But a list of awards understates Vance's influence: cited by writers as diverse as Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons and George R.R. Martin as an inspiration, Vance has also attracted a hard-core of devoted fans across the years. In 1999, a group of those devotees set out on an extraordinary voyage: the Vance Integral Edition (VIE). As a writer who had been captivated by Vance’s work for over twenty years, I was delighted to be part of the project—even if I didn’t realise then that we wouldn’t finish until 2006!

I'm afraid you'll have to buy the magazine to read the rest...

Publication Day!

Well, the Big Day is here. I Am Writer.

I shall be popping into Waterstones after work to see the copies, and I may take a couple of snaps for the blog.

The literary life began last night, though, when I took up the kind invitation of Pallant House Art Book Club to appear as a visiting author. Thanks to everyone there for making me feel welcome. The featured book was Hari Kunzru's My Revolutions, a story about 1960s and 70s urban revolutionaries--a trip down memory lane to the bombing of the Post Office Tower and similar events. The group, on the whole, didn't much like the book, finding the protagonist too unsympathetic and the narrative structure confusing. I was worried what might happen when such a challenging body was let loose on me, but they were kindness itself, with all kinds of interesting questions. The group was not composed of natural fantasy readers, and their palpable relief when hearing there were no orcs or elves might even translate into some sales!

Despite now being A Writer, and thereby expected to have some facility with words, the feeling of waking up this morning as a published author defies ready description. Many of you have been here already, and know what I mean.

The next event is the formal book launch at Waterstones on the 15th, where I will have to sing rather longer for my supper. After being interviewed for 40 minutes, I will give a couple of readings and then, of course, sign books through the night until the teeming multitudes are satisfied. My last job interview didn't run for 40 minutes! Now I need to decide which passages I'm going to read--a tricky one, this: obviously I don't want to give too much away, but I also want to grab the attention. I'm really pleased with the ending, but it's perhaps not a good choice for an introductory reading... At the moment I'm thinking of a humorous episode from one of the plot strands (although this requires me to read out the words "pah!" and "uuurgh!" which may require more sangfroid than I possess) and a nice little self-contained duel from the other. I may need to have a practice read at the weekend...

But for now, in between the need to attend to the seminar on "Debt Recovery for Residential Care" I am co-presenting today, I am going to bask in the fulfilment of the ambition I've held for thirty years...

Publication Week!

For anyone who hasn't noticed (i.e. most of the world's 6.5 billion population), Friday sees the long-awaited--by me, at least--of The Dog of the North. I have my signing paws on, decided which line I'm going to use for 'signing and lining', and allowed myself not to worry about the current work in progress for a few days. On Thursday I'll be making my first public appearance, at the Pallant House Art Book Club in Chichester. Waterstones now has a picture of me in the window and somehow has sold two copies of the book even though it isn't out yet (ask if they have some "behind the counter", apparently, and rootling in the stockroom will see copies ferreted out).

There are plenty of strange and exciting things about the imminent publication. One of the oddest is working on another book at the same time: at the moment I'm answering lots of questions about The Dog of the North while simultaneously trying to smooth the development of The Last Free City (for which I've now devised but not yet written a new opening scene, making the antagonist a much more dangerous and darkly attractive character). The complexity is magnified by bringing forward one of the characters from The Dog of the North into the new work.

For those of you who enjoy closure and consistency--you're in the wrong place... Nonetheless, to tie up a couple of loose ends from previous blogs:

I've finished my re-read of The Last Free City first draft. Some bits need expanding, some scenes duplicate each other; some are underwritten and others, clearly necessary, are missing altogether. The last 15,000 words are probably beyond salvage, and one of my Shakespeare homages (a cross-dressing scene) makes me tremble at my own ineptitude. So far, so discouraging. To compensate, a couple of the scenes seem to me to work extremely well, the relationship between 'hero' and 'heroine' (neither term is strictly appropriate) has a nice dynamic after a hamfisted start, and the subplots fit together neatly enough. Taken in the round, there's something to work with here, although the second draft will need more extensive revisions than usual (and I may make some of the structural changes before I write the last section).

Recent blogs have also featured Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" trilogy, the last instalment of which I have now read. Without giving too much away, the darkness of Abercrombie's vision remains unilluminated to the end, and the conclusion is neither happy nor unhappy, but highly appropriate. In enduring books, characters are often remembered more vividly than plots, and Abercrombie has characters in spades. The torturer Glokta remains my favourite, with echoes of Gene Wolfe's Severian and GRR Martin's Tyrion Lannister (although beholden to neither). Logen Ninefingers, the barbarian berserker, achieves a melancholy ripening across the series, as well as a neatly judged epilogue. These are wonderful books for those who enjoy fantasy in flavours other than vanilla: if your tastes run in this direction you will not be disappointed.

Nonetheless, Mr Abercrombie has his own blog for the promotion of his work, so we will say no more of him here today. The book you should all be buying this week is "a spellbinding tale of loyalty and betrayal, homeland and exile, set in a brilliantly imagined world of political intrigue, sorcery, and warfare on an epic scale". And that' the objective opinion of my publisher, so who can argue?

Tagged

Tags are marvellous for bloggers who can't think what to write today other than posting pictures of their own publicity materials... I'm grateful, therefore, to Alis Hawkins for putting up the following open-invitation tag on her own blog. Without further ado, here goes:

What was I doing ten years ago

Finishing my first novel, The Zael Inheritance. For all its flaws, I still have some affection for it, and its anti-heroine remains in my eyes the best character I've ever written. I was also a month into speed-dating one of my work colleagues--ten years later we are still speed-dating...

Professionally I was doing much the same things with spreadsheets as I do today.

The Vance Integral Edition, a hobby which was to fill much of the intervening period, was still a year away.

Five things on my to-do list for today

1. Go running at lunchtime
2. Find a minimally unflattering hi-res photograph, preferably of myself, to send to the Portsmouth Evening News for a story they are running on The Dog of the North
3. Compere this morning's 'Finance Briefing' at work
4. Continue re-reading the first draft of The Last Free City, despite my resolution not to...
5. Watch Russia vs Spain in the Euro2008 semi-final

What would I do if I were a billionaire

Buy an island, pay people of five feet two and under to live there, and stride through the streets I had constructed, head and shoulders above everyone else. With money left over I would invest in telecommunication jamming equipment and turn it on at 7:30 when the BBC transmits its dismal 'drama' of grunting half-human beasts, EastEnders.

Oh, and end world poverty.

Three bad habits I've got

Only three?

1. Untidiness
2. Laziness
3. Coveting my neighbour's ass (not as kinky in the UK as the US, but clearly not a good habit))

Snacks I enjoy

Muesli. Chocolate. Yoghurt-coated raisins. Curious crisps/chips from America shaped like UFOs.

The last five books I've read

How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman.
As recommended by David Isaak. Can be read just for laughs, but if you don't recognise a liberal sprinkling of your own faults here, you're in denial.

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell
Sorry, Bernard, I like your books normally but this was grim. A largely unsympathetic hero gets himself into various spots of bother, all of which he gets out of by virtue of being an invincible warrior. I gave up halfway through, almost unheard of for me. If you're going to write a book with only one real character, he needs to be a bit more nuanced than this. Like Michael Moorcock's Elric novels but without the irony.

Dirty Money by Richard Stark
The latest Parker novel. Not his best, by any means, but Stark operating at 80% is still pretty damn impressive. The books have been getting longer which dilutes their sinewy power, but Stark remains one of the greats

The Sleepwalker's Introduction to Flight by Sion Scott-Wilson
At once funny, touching and anarchic, this is a "typical" Macmillan New Writing effort--defying ready classification but beautifully written and highly intelligent. The closest match I can think of is Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

It terrifies me when MNW publish stuff this good... it raises expectations of my own work which may not be satisified!

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie
As previously blogged. Brilliant character-driven fantasy, subversive and hard-edged.

Cop-Hater by Ed McBain
The first of McBain's 87th Precinct novels, this was credited as launching the police-procedural sub-genre. Others have subsequently done this much better, and I wasn't gripped enough to expect to read more of these any time soon.

Five jobs I've had

Shelf-stacker
Deckchair attendant (best job ever...)
Identity parade stooge
Accountant
Writer...

Five places I've lived

Willard Price's Adventure series
Jack Vance's Gaean Reach
E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman universe
Ruritania
Mondia, the setting for Dragonchaser and The Dog of the North

Oh, real places...

Sandown, Isle of Wight
Grim seaside resort

Shanklin, Isle of Wight
Less grim seaside resort

Canterbury
Hey, this one we like!

Herne Bay
Grim seaside resort. The arsehole of the universe.

Bosham
But--for those who know Bosham--not the posh bit.

If anyone else would like to be tagged, please treat this as your invitation.

It is a strange feeling--to say the least--to walk past my local bookshop at lunchtime and see this...

Rendering Unto Caesar

The life of the writer is unceasingly glamorous: preparing for launch events and other personal appearances, when not wrestling with knotty problems of narrative strategy before honing exquisitely crafted prose to a sheen which dazzles peers and awes readers.

Since most of my regular visitors to :: Acquired Taste are writers themselves, I'm hard put to get away with this one. Writing involves, even at the best of times, a great deal of drudgery and frustration and this weekend I added a new string to this particular bow: tax returns. I know, I know, you don't come here to read about tax, but trust me, this is important (and, if you have a certain cast of mind, even interesting).

Most writers have a day job, on which they pay tax. In the UK, they don't have to be particularly well-remunerated to pay tax at the higher rate of 40%. This means that of any income you get from writing, 40% has to be paid over to the taxman (the alternative strategy of not declaring it has the disadvantage of being illegal). If, as a writer, you haven't taken steps to deal with your tax liability, you're probably paying more tax than you need to.

If you are pursuing writing as a profession, you are entitled to offset certain expenses incurred in the course of that profession against any income you make. Do you have a home office? If so, a proportion of your energy costs, council tax and mortgage interest may be tax deductible. Do you buy books? They can be tax deductible too. Is your writing income 'lumpy' from year to year? There are ways of averaging it out to make your tax liability stable across years too. If you can wangle it so that your writing expenses exceed your income, you may even get a tax rebate.

I must stress that this is not formal "financial advice". But if you are a writer with any sort of income from the hobby, it's in your interest to secure some professional advice on the subject. The Society of Authors can recommend a number of accountants who specialise in writers' tax affairs if you are a member.

Being serious about writing does not just involve diligence about your craft: it also means being serious about administrative matters which are more easily ignored. Paying attention to tax isn't glamorous and for most of us it's not fun either. But get it right and you might find your royalties stretch further than you imagined.

Normal service will be resumed in future posts...

I Have Seen the Future...

...or more accurately, the present: today Will handed over the first copy of The Dog of the North. In this case pictures are more eloquent than words:



Woo hoo!

Choices

A writer gets to a stage--relatively early, in most cases--of being able to set down intelligible prose. They may have the odd weakness in dialogue, say, but the ability to create a narrative which moves from one point to another can be acquired by little more than diligence.

One aspect of writing which is hard to teach, perhaps because it's hard to see, is the question of choices. Every 'story' can be told in an infinity of ways. How different would The Great Gatsby be if it were narrated by Gatsby himself and not Carraway? What about Bleak House, if it were just the story of Esther Summerson? The most important choice that a writer has to make is not "what story shall I tell?" but "whose story is it and how shall I tell it?"

The simplest of all narrative strategies is the single first-person narrative: one person's story, told as if by that person. It can be highly effective although there are limitations: particularly that the reader can only know what the protagonist knows. Third-person narratives allow more flexibility, since the writer can vary point of view, throw in long shots and provide as much as exposition as seems appropriate.

I have a major choice of this sort to make for The Last Free City. I've never consciously made a decision about viewpoint characters in anything I've written so far. The Zael Inheritance, Dragonchaser and The Dog of the North have all grown out of a particular character I wanted to explore. The Last Free City started the same way, but now that I'm getting close to the end of his story I am not sure it's big enough to carry the novel.

I'm considering two solutions to the problem. The first is to rework the story to give the protagonist a richer experience. This would involve heightening some aspects of the story, and maybe bringing in some new ones.

The other solution, as readers of the blog will know, is to bring in another viewpoint character. This isn't unheard of for me (The Dog of the North has two points of view) but it does change the tone of the story somewhat. I know who I would use as the secondary viewpoint--the character who links The Last Free City with The Dog of the North. Initially this character had only a few appearances (although he's important to the plot). If I make him a viewpoint character, by definition he becomes more central to the novel. The link between the two stories becomes much more explicit--which is not something I was aiming for. It will still not be a sequel, but it does make the bigger story which sits behind both books (and at least one other I have in mind) much closer to the foreground.

It would change The Last Free City from the story of an idle selfish womaniser who learns better (a story which just happens to be set in the same world as The Dog of the North), to a piece in a political jigsaw which will not be complete for at least one more novel. I would, almost by default, be writing a series--something I've had no particular desire to do.

The short-term solution is relatively simple, I think. I'm finding this secondary narrative interesting to think through, and I commit myself to nothing beyond time if I start to write it. So my inclination is to follow it where it leads, and then judge whether it strengthens the book.

Choices of this sort are the most significant a writer has to make. They are different in kind--and difficulty--to choosing whether to excise a scene or tighten dialogue. They are also the choices which define the writer--so a few more days' reflection won't do any harm.

Ventriloquists and Exhibitionists

More years ago than I care to remember, I made the grand generalisation in an A-level economics essay: "Economies of scale come in three kinds". The essay was returned with the wry aside: "like shirts?", and ever since I have been wary of generalisations, and particularly of that airy way of expressing them. (And, twenty years later, I've no idea what kinds of economy of scale there are, or whether there are three kinds).

Nonetheless, today I am going to inflict another on the unsuspecting world another such observation: writers come in two kinds. (No, not "poor" and "destitute"). I'm thinking today about writers' voices and, as the title of the post suggests, I've characterised them as "ventriloquists" and "exhibitionists". The ventriloquist occupies the characters so completely that the voice on the page is that of the viewpoint character, even in a third-person narrative: the writer is obscured behind the characters. On the other hand, we have the exhibitionist. However vigorous the characterisation, it is subordinate to the authorial voice. In practice, this is a continuum rather than two polar opposites: most writers will fall somewhere in the middle rather than at either extreme.

Conventional creative writing teaching would have us believe that the ventriloquist is a more fully evolved lifeform than the exhibitionist. The former creates a fully immersive fictional world, while the latter fails to subdue their ego, and creates a less varied experience for the reader. Like a salad smothered with too much vinaigrette, the taste and texture of the individual ingredients is overpowered by what lies on top of it.

I don't hold to this view at all. There are some writers of whom, presented with a single page of their prose, the reader must think "no-one else could have written this". Such a writer is likely to be an exhibitionist. This sort of writing need not be exuberant or extravagant (indeed, if their voice is so dominant, their writing probably won't be overstated, for the danger here is that they cloy the reader's palate). Many exhibitionist writers--who are often lauded as stylists--write spare, understated prose. Writers we have discussed on ::Acquired Taste who fit into the exhibitionist category must include Jack Vance (the apotheosis of the exhibitionist writer), Dickens (whose varied characterisation is always subordinate to the authorial voice), Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Muriel Spark and Cordwainer Smith. A case could also be made for Patrick O'Brian and Jane Austen, whose rich characterisation in both cases is held together by prose of a lucid and distinctive intelligence. Lest I be accused of failing to declare an interest, I'd put my own writing strongly at the exhibitionist end of the spectrum (the distinction between exhibitionist and ventriloquist does not make a judgement about the quality of the work, simply the method which is employed).

None of the above should be taken as a denigration of the ventriloquist's approach. Indeed, fellow writers are most likely to admire this kind of approach when it's well executed. The ventriloquist may use several different voices within a book to differentiate viewpoint characters (Joe Abercrombie and Kate Mosse are good examples); or they may write each book with voices which are consistent within the story but contrasting from novel to novel (Jim Crace and Mark Haddon spring to mind (this approach is often but not always associated with first person narratives). The best recent example of a voice tailored specifically to the story I can think of is Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders: it's an approach which is well-suited to historical fiction.

I don't think that either approach is necessarily 'better'. Each writer will have different aims and aptitudes, and these will determine their position on the spectrum. Reading a ventriloquist creates a more complete immersion, because there is no sense of mediation between author and audience: the reader is 'in the story'. The exhibitionist, by contrast, sits between the reader and the story, and this has all the advantages and disadvantages of company in general. A garrulous or banal mediator will swiftly bore or irritate the reader, but a distinctive and engaging voice will add an extra dimension to the reader's journey.

Many of my visitors at ::Acquired Taste are writers themselves. Are you ventriloquists? Or exhibitionists? How many kinds of economy of scale do you think there are?