Monday 3 August 2015

Finding a new voice

Every instinct is saying 'write a fictional character' but all that comes is my own story. Lorina's words trigger my own memories, both sympathetic and antithetic. I wrote a few notes about her learning the piano, and my own childhood experiences of pianos came to mind. She wrote about her anger about being unable to complain, I found myself choked up on her behalf as well as my own. I still find it difficult to stand up to doctors. But her childless state, her living at home with her mother (for fifty-five years) suggests a domestic dullness that I have never suffered from! I even found a detail of her will.
I was surprised to find she had so much money on her death, effectively almost three hundred and sixty pounds. Which I suppose explains the various threads and fabrics she had in order to produce her rants! I'm playing around with both an autobiographical voice (I'm reading everything Julia Blackburn has done at the moment - amazing writer!) and my fictional character as well. Part of me knows no-one wants to read about me, but it's a way to compare Lorina's life to a modern voice. Which a fictional character could do. I'm not sure, more head scratching to do.

The story has drawn me in, so much that I find myself writing snippets in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. I wish I could sleep, insomnia is getting a bit tedious. When I was younger I would just come downstairs and work for a few hours, but I'm too tired to concentrate.

The Secrets of Blood and Bone comes out in the US on September 1st and I am writing bits and pieces of publicity enquiries as they come in. It's lovely to get back to book 2 and I find I'm getting more excited about it. It comes out in paperback in the UK on October 8th. Then book 3 will have its turn, and the trilogy will be done, which nicely rounds the series off. Except for me, I'm already drafting out book 4 (just for fun, but it's a bit compulsive).

Meanwhile, it's hard to concentrate on the Twins book, which I hope to get back to shortly, because we have builders coming to take off all the asbestos on the roof and hopefully put nice, reclaimed slates back on. Of course, high winds and torrential rain are forecast...

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