It's official - I'm a runner up

I can't say I have done any work today, because I keep having to upload the Mslexia novel competition page to prove to myself - again - that it wasn't a mistake and Rebecca Allison's Borrowed Wine wasn't actually the runner up. (Apologies to Ms Allison's and her fine book, if in fact she exists, and worse, if she entered the competition with Borrowed Wine. But if she checks the relevant page, she will see it was me and my book that was shortlisted!)

I am now on a complete high and can't wait for my copy of the magazine, so I can carry it around with me and show people at bus queues and DIY shops. Can I suggest that if you shop at Tesco, Ilfracombe, that you might avoid certain evenings for the next few weeks.

I also noticed the children's novel competition slipped in underneath the big announcement. Last year I wrote a kids' book called Marley and the Crow, and it did have some problems (mostly that all the characters except the central one were strongly written) and I think I can fix them by September. Worth a try! I have entries ready for the poetry competition, but I notice Mslexia are introducing a collection competition as well, so there's a thought. I have a whole sequence of a dozen poems about my sister already... but novels have to come first. For me, poetry not only improves my precision of choice of words, but keeps my imagination awake. The downside is, I seem to use completely opposite sides of the brain to do them: I'm either writing poetry or prose and take a few days to change gear. Maybe I should set aside a week's holiday from fiction to concentrate on poetry.   

Progress! (750 and 1450)

My wordometer has reached 17861! This is partly because I'm running into scenes I have already written, though I'm keeping very little. So I managed a whole chapter this morning, bringing in new threats to Jack and Felix now they have met. The same threat has just popped up in the Kelley strand - wow, I feel like a real writer, with a plot and everything (which reminds me, I should get me one!) The kids are decorating the hall stairs and landing(s) which is the biggest expanse of wall we have and doing a lovely job covering the mustard/beige/baby poo shade the previous owners liked. Although, they were heavy smokers, so it could have started out white. The skirting is now darker than the walls and I can't wait to get the terrible carpet up. I guess we're staying here after all... 

Fourteen thousand words! (850)

I'm chuffed to have logged fourteen thousand words on Borrowed Time since I got back from Winchester and it's a substantial chunk of the dissertation. Whether the words are any good remains to be seen! Daughter and betrothed are sanding and knotting the acre or so of tongue-and-groove panelling the previous owners covered up the hallway in (then didn't bother to use knotting solution so the whole thing is spotty). They took down the original Lincrusta...which people now pay to have restored...when they stripped out the fireplaces and modernised the ancient walls with cheap plasterboard and tacky skirting. At least the woodworm are original - and enjoying the old doors. We moved in here and immediately were hit by a driver, head on, and it soured our relationship with the place a bit, so it's good to reconnect and start decorating and improving it. We were measuring up for book cases yesterday, what a lovely bonding experience that always is. He's measuring up for a case for CD's so it's not just me and my insane book habit. In my defence, he does have a lot of guitars, drums, flutes and a violin.
As I write, I'm finding connections between different narrative strands. There has to be a reason to jump between time periods and I've made the account of Kelley written down in documents in the present day, although my character doesn't exactly sit down and read them, they are there. I think they might be archived and translated by the bad guys at the end of the book, come to think about it. Plot, just jumping out while I write, how cool and helpful is that?

Real Life (400)

Today, real life got in the way of writing. The jackdaw we were helping died peacefully, but left a gap in my day, especially as he was doing so well. Russ and I went to the bank to discuss either taking out a small mortgage to do the structural and plumbing work the house needs, or whether we might just move. Mortgaging would save us money, and I love the location but my back doesn't really suit the steep drive and long walk into town. So we thought about moving and talked about mortgaging and came home with lots of plans. There was no room left for writing, although I managed to find a bit of Felix's chapter. I had one of those moments, when a new character walks in and you really like them. Shame he's getting divorced, the soon-to-be ex-wife is great! I shall have to find more interesting things for her to do. Tomorrow, I hope to finish his chapter and get back to Kelley's adventures in 1585.

Chapter 3 (800)

I have to confess, I didn't write a single word yesterday, being entirely occupied by famly stuff and the rescue of a jackdaw. This one literally landed on our doorstep after falling prematurely from its nest. Desperately cold and starving in the shrubbery where it ended up, it came out to attract its parents' attention and the cat pounced. I brought it in to keep it quiet and warm (and die in peace) and four hours later it came round enough to take a little food and a lot of water and so I decided to give it a bit of TLC and see how it does. So far so good - its warm and dry and eating and very inquisitive, even if it's too young to stand yet. So I got up at 12, 3 and 5 a.m. to heat up the heatpad and feed it and I reckon it's got a chance.

So, I decided to try and write a  bit more to catch up today. I managed 800 words of chapter 2 and rewrote chapter 3 from the first person POV. My historical strand seems so much more interesting from a different viewpoint, and he's an interesting rogue and conman. I'm enjoying the challenge now!   

Plotting a Novel

Here is my tried (and tried and tried) and slightly tested method for plotting a novel.

1. Have a brilliant idea for a story. Play around and see if it's still a good idea for a story a week later. Hopefully it still feels slightly interesting by week 2 after which you will begin to lose hope.
2. Taking little coloured cards, map out scene by scene, your characters' journeys, different colours for different characters' POVs.
3. Sit down with card one and write the scene, allowing it to veer a tiny bit from the plan, but that's OK because you can modify card two. Which then means cards three to six need modifying and cards 6a and 6b need to be created.
4. Write the scene from card two,trying to keep it on track even though it wanders wildly down a much more exciting path and your character turns out to be a lot bigger and bossier than you expected.
5. On card three discover that your second hero character is actually the antagonist. throw cards away.
6. Write completely unplotted for 45,000 exciting words, following a rollercoaster of an adventure. Some bits are wild knuckle rides, some bits are look-out-at-the-view and eat your sandwiches. A few bits are sit-quietly-twiddling-thumbs and have no tension at all.
7. Rush for the ending which has eluded you, but it now seems inevitable that the protagonist gets eaten.
8. Rework the last 20,000 words so the antagonist doesn't get eaten, but now seems that the protagonist will have to eat the antagonist. This wasn't supposed to be that sort of book.
9. Scrap whole book. Go and sign up for an MA so you can learn to plot. Start writing again but slower.
10. Start MA and tart up a few chapters. Realise they are hopelessly unpaced.
11. Rope in eldest son (mine) to write a synposis broken down by chapters. You will  immediately see the wallowing-in-the-doldrums middle chapters.
12. Use Vogler's mythic structure to loosely map more rising tension. 
13. Get some white cards (is this the magic trick to plotting?) and put each scene on one.
14. Organise into some sort of sequence and into chapters. Highlight wallowy scenes.
15. Rewrite synopsis from white cards (which I'm sure are significant) moving them around and bringing the tension up. Explaining the loose ends and pruning out others before they even start.
16. Cut out two small characters completely. One of them will have to be rewritten in when you realise the ending doesn't work without them.
17. Make the ending much, much bigger.
18. Throw magic white cards away (this might be a mistake) because the story has moved on. You now have a chapter by chapter and scene by scene plan for the book in about 25 pages. You probably realise how many words of prose you could have written in the same time...

I am optimistic that I have something I can write from, anyway. At least if I write scenes I can just move them around and my first draft gave me a clear picture of the characters. It can't be worse than getting to the two thirds of the way in a book and realise you are completely lost. 

I have a plan!

To my amazement, I have bitten the bullet and created a plan for my novel with the help of my son, Carey. I think I was having a panic attack through the first few chapters so I will have to work on those, but it got easier. The magic ingredient turned out to be someone to talk ideas over with who would usefully (and sometimes contentiously) ask questions and point out inconsistencies. Now I have to work each chapter out into its own little plan, and I'm hoping to get a fellow student to help with that. But for the first time I do feel like the ending, conceived fifteen months ago, now connects to the rest of the story, and the pace works better. I bumped into a fellow student who said they were working on the story arc in their module,

and I was given the Christopher Vogler Mythic Structure overview and from those two I think I have met all the basic requirements of the novel. I noticed that I was introducing characters along the way that didn't add to the action and then needed stories of their own, so I've cut those right back. The action comes in waves now building up to a big, tense uber-battle at the end, and I've introduced enough moral ambiguity to make the antagonists better rounded. I've dropped some of the softer elements that lose tension and kept the story moving better. I can imagine, once I've loosely plotted the scenes and chapters out, being able to write bits. Marcus Sedgwick suggested he can write 'stepping stones' of a story once he's plotted out where they are all going to go, then he can stitch the novel together. I'm beginning to see how that would work. 

Apart from that, I have my toolkit assignment back and it got a good mark though not enough for a distinction overall. I don't know why I got so hung up on a distinction, really, I came to Winchester to finish a book to reasonable standard and I think I can probably manage that in the time. I always knew I wasn't going to write literary fiction but I really enjoyed writing the poetry and will continue that for myself. Somehow having it there is a bit like moving to the foot of a mountain, you start to wonder if you can get to the top! If I want to go onto a PhD (undecided) I really need a distinction but I'm actually finding writing so enjoyable that that is enough at the moment. 

I have my poetry to focus on for light relief and my plan to work on, now. It's all coming together, and the boys are doing well at college so that part of the project worked.

Back on my horse with the aid of Paul Muldoon

Well, after the doubts of the week and the doldrums that followed, I'm going to get on with the beep beep poetry for the Open University assignment. (This is quite likely headed out for critique, sorry Carole.) Then I'm going to start a week of planning for Borrowed Time. We were handed a version of Christopher Vogler's Mythic Structure. I started glancing down it and I immediately realised how much of my novel fitted into it. So I thought I could use that as a starting point to replot my novel, starting further back in time to explain how Sadie came to be in the position she was in. I thought if I could plot Borrowed Time then I could start plotting an alternative novel if needed for the dissertation. I realised how little time I spend thinking and how quick I am to sit down and write.

For the poetry TMA I am working on an unrhymed (well, a slant rhymed anyway) sonnet. It's hard to know whether by removing the rhyme you make it not a sonnet. The Big Blue Book suggests you have to give it more of something else if you're going to lose the rhyme. So, the volta as line eight, maybe a basic iambic pentameter structure even if it gets played about with a bit. I'm relying on Paul Muldoon's Quoof for how far I can stretch the form. It doesn't stick to the iambic pentameter, it doesn't formally rhyme but the slant rhymes are there and the volta definitely. Breaking it at line 8 into a slightly differently focused sestet works too.

In The Old Country Muldoon wrote Horse Latitudes, changing the beat at line 4, 8 and 11 to form a different shape, 4, 4, 3, 3:

Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon 
Every resort was a last resort
with a harbor that harbored an old grudge.
Every sale was a selling short.
there were those who simply wouldn't budge

from the Dandy to the Rover.
That shouting was the shouting
but for which it was all over -
the weekend, I mean, we set off for an outing 

The rhyming is there but less obvious in the last six lines:

with the weekday train timetable.
Every tower was a tower of Babel
that graced each corner of a bawn

Where every lookout was a poor lookout.
Every rill had its unflashy trout.
Every runnel was a Rubicon.

I'm working on the notes I got from the session with Myra Schneider. Like Elizabeth Bishop said of structured poetry forms, 'They seem to start the machinery going'.

Productive weekend

I've been busy. Another chapter for the book and more poems. I've always been a bit baffled by sequences of poems, but I love Douglas Dunn's elegy. It was written around the time that his wife died and in the year afterwards. Quite apart from having had a similar experience when Steve died, the poems talk about a loss as a human experience. It was also interesting comparing the way a man - one particular man - dealt with his loss. It was strange, because I dreamed about Steve last night, and he's been dead for twenty years this year.

I'm hoping to write a group of poems about my sister and her death. I already have several randomly written over the last couple of years, and a few bits of fiction that reflect her. I'm playing with them, seeing if they make a poem. One is a description I wrote of cooking a curry, and it reminded me of Sarah when I wrote it, because she bought me the book (by Madhur Jaffrey) and we both used it a lot. We used to swap recipes, and ingredients. I often got packets of herbs and spices through the post, with aromatic letters full of jokes and laments and ideas, peppered with recipe ideas.

For light relief I have the book to work on and after the fantastic fiction session I had a revelation about the world in which Sadie and Jack live. So I'm writing with the anti-magic Nazis coming for Sadie...All very exciting to write. Also, how do you get a very large dog down a narrow tunnel? We managed it in the end...inspired by memories of my retriever wedging herself under the kids' beds when a bath was mentioned, or considered.

Chapter 7 and the invisible reader

It's been a productive day, though I was distracted when I ran out of teabags. I managed to knit chapters five and six onto the earlier bits and now have started chapter 7. I feel the need for less sitting around drinking tea and chatting and more action, so I might scrap today's words and rewrite as something bigger. The bad character is closing in, but I want to work on it. I wish I could just plan!

Thanks to recommendations I received from another blogger I picked up a copy of Between the Lines by Jessica Page Morrell, and the first thing I noticed is that it's a book that speaks to the female fiction writer, which really suits me. A lot of the time, books brimming with ideas are actually aimed at producing a male style of fiction that I neither write nor, very often read. So I recommend it if you are trying to write subtle, rich prose rather than a bodice ripper or a crime thriller. She also recommends Brian Kitely, and I look forward to exploring his writing exercises after my assignment bottleneck has passed.

One things I'm benefiting from at the moment is the input of fellow students who are willing to exchange work for editing/critiquing. I'm finding this incredibly helpful, and even if I (and they) don't agree with every suggestion (which is all they are) we are getting rare insights into how the reader receives the work. It's no good me thinking I'm come up with something really clever if the reader doesn't get it! I've always though that art, any art, is empty without the viewer. A picture on a wall is nothing, but when someone looks at it, it becomes something to that viewer. I think writing is like that, my ideas, my story acting itself out in my head, gets approximately and thinly translated into black and white marks on the screen or page, then someone else with a rich and varied imagination uses those words as a starting point to create their own story. If their story relates to mine, great. More importantly, does their story progress, is it satisfying for them? Ultimately, I write stories because I want to know what happens to the characters. Editing and rewriting gives me a chance to share that story with someone else, bringing it to life as a piece of fiction rather than an elaborate daydream. So, thank you ladies, I appreciate your help enormously.

Six chapters done!

Having put chapters together for my fiction class, and reviewed and rewritten them, I feel confident that the first six chapters are in a good second draft state and I'm back on course. So have updated my wordmeter to 16k. Chapter six still needs a bit of tying in but otherwise it flows, which was the problem before, when each seemed like a rather naff short story. So lots of progress made today and I can wander into town for lunch!

Back to work.

After a really lovely solstice/Christmas/New year celebration I am finally installed, ahead of time, in Winchester. It's been a terrible wrench leaving home and I found myself wandering around, the day I packed, touching things I think of as completely home - the blue and white china I started collecting two decades ago, much of which is from charity shops, the bookshelves my husband built, the wooden box I bought when I moved to the Island in 1994. I have deliberately not brought favourite things from home, because home is Devon. This is my work place, so I'm supposed to be working. My commitment is to write 1000 words a day, because that's when I feel best about my writing, even if I'm also writing something else like an assignment. This counts, and so does my diary. So I very quickly rack up words anyway. With 4,000 words ready to go off for my fiction assignment (thanks to the very welcome help of a fellow student!) I am ready to start seriously editing the next thing, a collection of poems. The problem is, they all sound a bit similar in style, because I've been reading a lot of Erica Jong and Sharon Olds. I also want to write a sestina, but I've never tried. They seem so contrived when you look at them on the paper yet they sound so gorgeous. Since we're doing sestinas, villanelles and sonnets in A363 shortly, I thought I would work my way through that chapter and see if one of my long poems (which needs serious cutting) will work in a new format.

Otherwise, I'm quietly looking at the novel, not setting myself a huge workload, but pottering with new scenes rather than whole chapters. I need a new way of novelling, just taking a run up at it means the beginnings are full of ideas but I'm running out by the end. So my novels accelerate at the end and fall off into anticlimax. Although I had no fun at all writing the radio play for A363, I have found some of the screenplay writing stuff useful for writing cinematically, like a film. So I'm playing with that.

The assignment I have been most confident of, partly because I've got my head in the sand about it, is the 'creative toolkit' one. For this, I've put together a sequence of poems and a short story, but I've left these until last to work on. I'm going to print them off and stick them on the shelves so I can see them when I'm slacking relaxing after a hard days work. Meanwhile I'm putting a photo up of the silliest cat ever. She was sitting on the desk looking out at the birds and obviously got tired - and curled up like a snail.  Silly Saffy. Or as she is known in the family - (big breath) Teeny Tanley Fat Fluffly Saffy Doolins Bave. And when middle daughter was working at the vet's, she did try and get all that on the computer...I shall miss the cats too.

Looking at the novel (again)

This is brilliant, I'm sat down with sixty thousand words of previous writing without panicking / crying / or tearing of pages. I have written out a synopsis and chapter headings, and now I'm working through each chapter. What do we learn about the characters? What plot needs to be carried through each chapter? What conflicts and tension are present, and does that tension increase? What do we learn about the story world? Well, I'm trying to answer those questions, anyway.

I anticipate dividing the chapters up into scenes in the same way, then work on those scenes before writing the actual rewrite, using the ideas (but not necessarily the words) that I had before. My main characters have come into focus. The main scary moment has to be moved from the middle of the book towards the end, where it can be part of the main conflict. I need to find minor spookies to build up the threat to my main characters.

I've been looking at story structure in my books (Joseph Campbell's monomyth and Vladimir Propp's formalist analysis of folk tales). Me, looking at structure! My principal character is now the one point of view narrator, rather than the narration being all over the show. My teenage second character is less whiny, more consistent as a bit of a heroine. There are less incidental characters, and I've brought in a character from another book, who is fun to write. I'm trying to map my prospective structure into some sort of suggested structure from these two theories, because it does make me think in terms of what works. In many ways, the story is that of a fairy tale, with baddies and goodies and a couple of more ambivalent characters along the way. I'm also looking at Bell's book Plot and Structure. When I get stuck I'm going to have a look at the bigger project, the more serious novel. I'm enjoying writing again.

Starting the MA

I stood in line for two hours to enrol on the MA, after which we met the faculty. Everyone seemed very friendly, and it didn't feel like going on the MSc, which was barely a step up from a BSc, we were still students being thrown information and theories, just expected to write way better assignments. This was what I was looking for, a chance to work on my creativity and improve my skills, but one thing the programme leader said was 'don't stop writing.' Since I've been fairly blocked for the last six weeks from doing anything new, I was surprised to almost feel as if I was being unlocked, and I have written 1000 word synopsis of 'Borrowed Time'. (Look at me, writing a plan!). Can't wait to get back into it.
My partner is coming down to Winchester tomorrow, so I can't wait to see him, and tell him and show him everything (look, shiny ID card! Course handbook!) and hopefully I will get some work down as well to show him. My daughter is coming down on Friday for a night, so we will be able to celebrate my son's 17th birthday (mostly) together. Then they go back on Sunday and the course begins on Monday. I can't wait to get stuck in, to be honest, even if I have to read and understand Mrs. Dalloway, which I am strangely resistant to.... I'm rather enjoying the student life.

Chapter five and a complete review of the character and the book

Chapter five has thrown up the basic problem with my writing. I wanted this book to be a literary work, with an intense, interesting character at the heart. That has somehow transmuted into a book about relationships and romance even. It's become all story and the characters have drifted into stereotypes. My main character was supposed to be so different, so damaged by the death of her identical twin, that she somehow functions as both twins. Always wounded by the loss of half of her compound self, she's supposed to start to allow other people to fill a small part of that empty space, while allowing herself to fill in the gaps. Somehow it's become a story where the character has down shifted to a lonely spinster looking for love. This is not me. I seem to have accidentally channeled someone else. Possibly Barbara Cartland.

I realise that each of my three main characters - all women, all drawn to this place for one reason or another - are aspects of me. I suppose all fictional characters are, or internalised versions of our loved ones. There's a big part of me that never feels like it's fitting in, knows what to do, and that part is Emma. There's another part of me that is generous, gives, loving, funny etc. (all that stuff) and that is Lily. Olivia is my other alter ego, maternal, looking back with an older perspective, moving past motherhood, a crone. I realise as I plough through the editing process, how much of myself is revealed through all my writing. Not a comfortable place to be.

I've also been playing with a short story about an old person wrestling with forgetfulness and infirmity but trying not to let on how bad things are. My mother-in-law is 81 and in this position, and everything she does to pretend she can cope is backfiring on her. In fact, she can't cope and needs help. If she had more help, she could stay in her own home. Problem is, she thinks if she says she needs help, they will scoop her up and put her in a residential prison. It may come to that, but I'd like to squeak a bit longer for her autonomy. I don't really get on with her, but I recognise a certain bloody minded independent gene that I have myself. I'm going to be just as awkward, I suspect. Hopefully, I will have lots more support.   

Chapter three and depression

Editing chapter three has thrown up a number of interesting problems. First problem is point of view: POV. The chapters all start with the POV of the main character, Emma, but then segue into the second character, Lily. I suppose I could write Emma's first person thoughts then go to Lily's more grounded third person limited omniscience viewpoint (can you tell I did A215!). I always think my first person accounts are self conscious though, rather less free that the third person ones.

Using Holly Lisle's method makes sense, but it isn't easy, and it's a lot of work. I can't see any other way of doing it t though, and for all the moaning and faffing about with forms and coloured pens I am actually staying more objective than I would be if I rewrote it. Chapter four today - and then I can get on with planning a short story I've had wandering around in my head.

One of my daughters raised an interesting question that I'm exploring in the novel: 'Do you ever question your choice of partner?' i.e. her Dad. My immediate reaction was 'Every day.' I think we choose to be with each other every day, I don't think we should just think it's a done deal and no matter what happens we have to stay together. I've been single for a long period in my life and I rather liked it - I don't think I need to be in relationship, I choose to be in one because of all that emotional attachment we seemed to have formed. Over time, new stands of that connection have been woven in. Memories, shared difficulties, children's relationships, pets, the house, everything. My characters relationship is unravelling strand by strand. Interestingly, when the same question was put to my partner he said the same thing, sure, he thinks about it. I was a bit surprised (not that he does, I can be really difficult to live with, creative type and all that...) but that he was able to talk about it. Maybe he wanted her to know that was a) allowed and b) useful.

Which made me think about depression. Lots of members of my family wrestle periodically with depression, including me, and unlike the more fortunate ones, I haven't found a medication that remotely works. My sister didn't either, which, compounded with her bipolar disorder, led to her death. I spend some of the un-depressed months and years worrying about the depression creeping back. By the time I know I've got it it's usually too late to claw back from the edge. The last one lasted three years and was hell. There were days when I was paralysed by it, as if I were in unbearable pain and any movement made it worse. TV became my drug, which just sucks any creativity straight out the front of my skull. What little imagination I have left goes on thinking about what could go wrong, making me too anxious to enjoy going out or doing anything. It occurred to me that my main character has lived with the consequences of untreated depression for so long that, even if the depression has long gone, the life style has remained. Don't chance anything, don't get stressed, stay in, don't think too much about anything.

My last depression was broken when I started to write again, and hasn't come back (three years and counting). I'm hoping the move to Winchester won't pile on too much stress and precipitate another one. Even excitement is stressful. Maybe the writing is helpful in itself. Anyway, back to editing.

Learning Edge

I find I get to the edge of what I'm competent at doing and then fear freezes me up. This stops me taking chances, learning new things, because I fear that while I am doing this, I will be crap until I practice and master it. Editing is this edge for me. I know I can do the small editing, better language, better punctuation etc. but doing the big story/plot/pacing edit is hard and I've never found an easy way to do it (yet). So I'm going to have a go anyway today, trying one of the suggested methods of analysing the book in the whole and then chapter by chapter, scene by scene until I have the structure clear in my mind. Tricky stuff.


I find talking to people about what I am doing, about the book in the round, helps me pick out bits that don't make sense or aren't very interesting. Yesterday I was talking to my friend Jo and she's a real enthusiast of good women's stories so another person I can bounce ideas off. The problem is, I think (without slipping into melodrama) the book needs enough drama to keep the reader interested. the problem for me is, I've already read it, I don't know if it's interesting or not any more.


Putting it away for a month is a good idea, at least in theory, so I can perhaps enjoy reading through it and find 'big' changes like point of view (POV) narration and get that consistent and working. I have to have two POV's for this book to work, but I can probably cut it down to chapter by chapter rather than swapping mid chapter. The second novel I'm just playing with, having fun, and I'm trying to avoid the big stereotype 'vampire/werewolf stuff' that's going on in young adult literature at the moment. While still having a bit of fun with the supernatural, which is at least an area where I'm well researched!


This is a snippet of the supernatural book. Hopefully it arouses enough interest! It's the first scene, I wanted to establish Jack as a figure who may be evil or may be good, but is a bit of an action hero!

[COMMENT REMOVED SO I DON'T PLAGIARISE MYSELF!]

The sun is shining and the prospect of doing an MA is becoming real.

What am I doing? This is a question I keep asking myself, I feel torn right down the middle. On the one hand, I'm about to cost my family a small fortune and split them down the middle to develop what has mostly been a hobby. On the other hand, I was making a career as a writer before Léonie was born and want to go develop my writing.

It feels like I'm breaking my family up, leaving the man I love more than anyone else in the world and setting up a second home as a single parent. Just for writing! It doesn't help that I've got two unconditional offers from universities but not from the one I wanted to study at for practical reasons. Actually, I think Portsmouth would suit me best as a course.

Anyway, while we agonise over how we split up the furniture, the kids and the finances, I still have assignments to do. TMA 4 is off being marked, life writing over. I have learned one very valuable lesson though, it's really really powerful. Using that intensity to bring fiction to the reader has to be good. Hate the experience though I did, I have a lot more respect for those who do life writing and I am starting to read bits of it.

I'm most of the way through a short story for a competition, about a Viking funeral. It's nice to be writing something less complicated again! I have one assignment left for the OCA so I must send that off. I am a bit lost about what to send, I have some short stories in the pipeline to edit (and could use the editing part of A215 to do it, I suppose!) but as always, I'm in love with what I am writing. I so enjoy writing first drafts, the subsequent edits are just painful! I expect I'll do the first chapter of the Chancel Hall book. I could do with a bit of a break really. I'm supposed to be planning a trip down to the Island (Wight) for a bit of relaxing camping but I'm not sure we can afford it. I need to sit down with a spreadsheet and work it out.

If there is another novelist out there, gently banging their head against the desk like me, can I recommend a book? The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman is an amazing exposition of all the major cock ups we make - that translate through the whole book. I'm lost in it at the moment, it's making me review everything I write in a different way. Fantastic little book for £8.99, looking at all the reasons your book is rejected within the first five pages - or paragraphs - or even sentences. It's a whole course in a book, fantastic.

MA creative writing

I have an unconditional offer to do an MA! Not my favourite choice geographically, though it looks like a very good course. I'm waiting to see what no. 1 and 2 on my list say. It is lovely, though, having handed over samples of my work, then be accepted. Now all I have to do is take out a hefty loan, find an affordable house to rent, get both boys on their courses and pack up family life here into boxes. I haven't even counted the cost of being away from home and husband, though I imagine that will be the biggest cost for me.

The lifewriting is painful still, but I'm moving on it - it is difficult because the drama is ongoing, with the head of E. Hampshire's social services personally telling me she is her own worst enemy, she's fired/cancelled everyone who could help her stay in her own home and we should step back. It's her legal right (just about, a bit more batty and we can intervene) to lie at the bottom of her staircase and die. Should she wish that. And she would prefer that to going in a home. All the people who care about her now phone or email each other daily and are letting her deal with her problems herself. Basically, she'll end up back in hospital and then maybe we can persuade her to accept carers. It's not that she doesn't want them, but she wants them to do her shopping and wash up, do laundry rather than the personal care like help washing and dressing, which she desperately needs. So the dilemma is in my thoughts, in my work and has spread to my blog.

I have two comps to do, both short stories, both by post for 31st March, so that's this morning's work. Not to mention, I have written quite a few words for 'Borrowed Time' (young adults novel)which keeps me writing while I let the other story sit and fester. I have already thought of some loose ends to tie up.

Old words

I've been looking at stuff I wrote two years ago and it's better than I thought it was. Like Chancel Hall, I lose faith in the process after 50,000 words or so, and start to wonder what I'm waffling about. So it's nearly time to wrap it up and put it on ice until the summer.

The old book, Silent Obsession, grew as almost as fast as this one. I was juggling all the balls in my head which is fine for 10, maybe 20k but then you lose track of what you were going to say, and what you actually wrote. Plus I was going back and rewriting sections - which I'm starting to do now with Chancel Hall. Time to stop meddling and let it rest for a while.

So, for the Debut Dagger competition, I did go back and substantially move Silent Obsession (dreadful title, I'm terrible at titles) around. I 'knew' the lead characters at the beginning but basically they evolved, they grew and took on a different shape by the end. Caroline may be neurotic and have PTSD but she's no faded flower, she needs to deal with the man who attacked her and make him pay.

So: here is a sample of Silent Obsession - new titles suggestions very gratefully received!


Chapter One: Friday 6th November

I remember that night like it was yesterday, I can drop back into the memory when it’s cold or I’m outside in the dark. She was so small, so light. I had rehearsed it exactly in my mind, dozens of times. Get behind her, hand over her face, knife cleanly across the throat, drop. She was perfect, I lifted her clean off the path, the bones of her face dug into my hand, she was so shocked she didn’t even struggle. The knife went in but it was harder than I thought, people are rubbery, the knife gets caught up in the skin and muscle, stretches rather than cuts. Still, her throat gaped open and a black spray spurted over the path, her coat, her breath coughing out of the wound. I dropped her away from me, but she threw her hands up, a few drops were flicked onto my sleeve. I had to burn the coat, shame, but you can’t wash DNA off pure wool. The rasping stopped within thirty seconds, so I heaved her over with my foot. The streetlight glinted in her open eyes, she was still, the blood just oozing.
I was completely certain she was dead.


* * * * *


‘What makes you think you are being stalked?’
She hadn’t even sat down. He looked at her over his glasses, reminding her of her old maths teacher. She pulled the chair back, sat down carefully so she wouldn’t jar her neck, and put her bag against her left boot within reach. He was younger than she had expected, maybe early forties, his dark hair had a touch of grey around the temples. The office was a jumble of files, piles of paper, the desk circled with cup rings.
‘I don’t know for certain. That’s why I came to see you.’ Despite months of speech therapy, her voice was still hoarse.
He rested one hand on the desk in front of him, thick fingers sprinkled with dark hairs. She followed its movements, felt her breath frozen in her chest. When the fingers stopped moving, she breathed out, tried to loosen the tension in her shoulders.
‘Why do you think you are being stalked?’
She lifted her bag onto her lap, took out the tin of caviar in its plastic bag. ‘This is going to sound very stupid. This appeared in my flat.’
He didn’t say anything to her, but leaned forward and shouted over her shoulder at the open door to the shop front of Hammond and Jansen. ‘Bridget!’
She flinched, hands clenching.
‘Sorry.’
The receptionist, a strongly built redhead who had taken her address and credit card details, pulled up another chair and smiled at Caroline.
‘Well, Miss Evans here is actually Miss Caroline Forster, victim of an assault eleventh November 2007. The police thought it was likely she was a victim of James Telford, convicted of three murders blah blah April 2008, acquitted of Caroline’s assault and attempted murder October last year. She lives at 117 Campion Gardens flat 3, as far as I can see, alone. She was born on the seventeenth of January 1984 which makes her twenty-six years old. The credit card was real.’ Her smile was sunny, teeth white in her tanned face, eyes green as they looked Caroline over.
‘Shall we start again?’ He smiled crookedly at her, lines around his dark eyes crinkling. ‘I understand that you are cautious, Miss Forster. But you need to trust us.’
She realised she had stiffened against the back of her chair, a prickling of sweat on her forehead and neck. ‘I have post traumatic stress disorder.’ His eyes slid to the hand painted batik scarf wound around her neck. She touched a finger to it nervously.
‘I can see you are nervous.’ His voice was deep, sounded sympathetic. ‘Bridget and I are former police officers, we have both seen people who act like you, victims of violence. Some of them feel like they are being followed, even threatened, sometimes for years after the attack.’
‘You mean paranoid.’ Caroline’s voice sounded harsher than usual, even in her own ears.
‘I mean naturally defensive. Now, why would a tin of caviar in your flat make you think you were being stalked?’
She put the bag with the tin in it on the desk. It looked innocuous, and she felt foolish for a moment, but its presence annoyed her.
‘A week ago, I went to the cupboard where I keep my cat food, and a tin of caviar was there behind a tin of Whiskas. Three weeks ago I completely ran out of cat food, it wasn’t there then, the cupboard completely empty. I asked my parents, and the few friends who have been in my flat in the last couple of months, but no-one put it there. My conclusion is someone put a tin of caviar in my cupboard when I wasn’t there.’
Bridget was making notes at her side, the pad on her lap. Caroline noticed she had tiny ankles on her rather thick legs, above bright red stilettos. She missed wearing heels.
He leaned back in his chair into a bar of sunlight slanting through the dusty windows at the back of the shop he was using as an office.
‘So you put the tin in a plastic bag and brought it to us. After phoning everyone you know.’
Her breath huffed out of her in frustration.
‘So, you think I’m barking mad as well.’ She put her hand out for the tin but Bridget stopped her.
‘Let me check it over, at least.’ Bridget picked up the bag and stood.
‘Why bother?’ Caroline crossed her arms, staring up at the tall woman, who wasn’t much older than herself.
‘Well, if you are murdered in your bed, we’ll be able to assist the police.’ Bridget’s rich contralto was full of laughter, disarming Caroline. ‘On the plus side, if you have a stalker at least you aren’t paranoid.’ She left the room with the tin.
He leaned forward again, the half smile creeping out again. ‘Oh, I haven’t ruled out the possibility that you are both. Even people with paranoia get stalked.’
‘It’s not just the can.’ She looked at his dark eyes, saw something there, some interest, maybe kindness. Taking a deep breath, she told them. ‘I have a feeling I’m being followed by a man in a car. It’s a dark colour, an old estate car. I’ve seen it several times.’
‘Tell me about the first time you noticed it.’
‘I…I think the first time was about six or seven weeks ago. I was coming home from my parents’ house after my Dad’s birthday. That was the sixteenth, and when I got to my front door I noticed a car going slowly, as if he was looking for something. Then he drove off fast, I think because he noticed me looking at him. I’ve seen the same car, behaving the same way twice since.’
‘Dates?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a week after the first time, and again last Sunday.’
‘Bridget’s got a computer programme that will help you sort out the model of the car, at least to narrow it down to make and model if not year. You thought it was old?’
‘The numberplate said N213 or N218, I think.’
He started making notes, for the first time. Bridget poked her head around the door, into the small office, making Caroline jump, her heart start racing.
‘Sorry.’ She didn’t sound sorry. ‘I’ve tracked down the make of caviar, it’s very pricy, mostly sold in luxury hampers. No prints except a few ridges around the rim, which is weird.’
Caroline craned her neck to look at her. ‘Why weird?’
‘Well, apart from paranoid people, who avoids leaving fingerprints on a tin of caviar? The distributor, packer, the person it was delivered to, all have left a mark of some sort. Now smell it.’
Caroline cautiously sniffed the bag containing the tin. It was acrid, and made her jump back. ‘What is that? Bleach?’
‘Exactly. Easy way to remove DNA. Someone was trying to leave it without leaving any identifying clues. Did you clean it in any way?’ Caroline shook her head, feeling lost.
The man leaned forward, hand extended.
‘I’m Jack Hammond, this is Bridget Jansen. We’ll look into it for you. How are you off for money? We have to keep the agency running.’
‘I have some money.’ She felt strangely elated. It was a relief not to be imagining things, even though the thought of a stalker turned to ice in her stomach.
‘It’s probably someone who followed the case in the papers, so you may just need us to identify them, and let the police warn them off. Now, you have to change your locks immediately. Do not leave any windows open, ever, when you are not in the room. Shred all your personal papers before you throw them away, and preferably hand the bags to the bin men. Bridget will help you identify the make and model of the car.’


* * * * *


The interview room at the prison was stark; scuffed paint, stained furniture, four flimsy chairs and a plastic table. James Telford had seen a lot of them over the years, police stations, prisons. He stared ahead as one of the four prison officers fumbled with the key to his restraints. He could see the man’s pulse racing in his neck, his body language giving away his discomfort in touching the larger man. Telford looked around the large, grey conference room with detached interest. Exits, glass observation window. A chair for a prison officer outside, within view but not earshot. A six pack of cheap bottled water. Having assessed the room, Telford allowed his gaze to stop at the man sitting at the table. He let his superior height and weight register before staring straight at the psychologist he knew from the back of several books. He catalogued the features of the man who gazed quietly up at him. Slim, maybe fifty or a little younger, soft hands, weak wrists. Older than the book jacket photographs. More used to wielding a pencil than tools. Longish, greying hair, cool green eyes.
‘You’re McIntyre. You looked bigger at the trial. You look bigger on TV.’
The psychologist smiled slightly as he looked up at Telford. ‘People do. Thank you for agreeing to help me with my research, Mr. Telford.’ McIntyre’s hand tapped once, twice on the table and Telford looked involuntarily, seeing a tiny release of nerves. He let his gaze wander to the skin, untanned, hairless, on the throat of the younger man. When that got no obvious reaction, he lifted his eyes to lock them with McIntyre. He knew how threatening that was, especially if he didn’t blink. He stood for a little longer, to overshadow McIntyre for another precious few seconds of power, then sat down. The chair creaked under his weight.
Telford knew what was on the forms in front of McIntyre. It must have taken all weekend, even at the home office’s request, to get the prison to agree to the format of the interview. The disclaimer declared that Robert Alexander MacIntyre – they had spelled it wrong, he noticed from his side of the table – would not hold the home office or any branch of Her Majesty’s government responsible should he be harmed while in the prison. He had to acknowledge that he had studied the records of Telford (prisoner) and was aware that he had committed crimes of violence while in prison as well as the three murders he had been found guilty of the previous May. He further would have to confirm that he had brought no drugs, weapons, intoxicating liquors or otherwise proscribed items or substances into the prison.
Telford had a similar sheet, giving consent to the interview. They signed in silence. The door, when it closed behind the prison officers, clicked shut, not the clang Telford was used to. The whole walk through the prison had been metallic clanks and squeaks, grinding of hinges and keys in locks, hard shoes on concrete and tiles. Telford rested his hands on the table, and looked across, dark eyes focused on McIntyre’s own. McIntyre smiled a little, one side of his mouth twitching upwards.
‘It’s good to finally meet you in person.’
Telford tilted his head slightly, unblinking, stretching the silence out until he felt he had the upper hand. McIntyre waited calmly and Telford wondered if he was quietly counting. The idea took him back to his childhood kitchen, his mother counting breathlessly as his father raged over her head.
‘Do you know why I agreed to this interview?’
‘Tell me.’ McIntyre’s pencil was sharp, poised over the page.
‘He had me down for all three murders. He wouldn’t listen to a fucking word I said. I’m going to be banged up, fair and square, for the ones I might have actually done. But that Bristol girl, I never went near her. And somehow, she’s the one with my DNA on her. Not a scratch on me, mind. Doesn’t that sound just a little suspicious?’ He leaned forward, his breath just disturbing the blank papers in front of McIntyre, touching a few hairs on his forehead. The psychologist smelled of soap, coffee. ‘I know why you’re here, you want to “understand” me, learn about people like me. I get that, I do, I’ve got three daughters of my own. I don’t want some bastard like me walking the streets snuffing them, either. But you’ve got to know, I didn’t do the Bristol girl. Some bastard’s out there laughing at me. They have to be part of the investigating team, one of the coppers. Put that in your book.’ Telford studied the smaller man, trying to get a sense of him. McIntyre gazed back calmly, hands folded on the notes in front of him.
‘I’m not writing a book, it’s a report for the home office.’ McIntyre appeared relaxed.
Telford allowed himself a small smile, to see if he would play the game. ‘Well, in that case, tell them I didn’t do it. Any of them. Fucking choir boy, me.’ He stared straight into McIntyre’s right eye, unblinking. ‘Never even thought about making me into a bestselling book, then? I’ve had offers, you know. Books, newspapers, all sorts. I get fan mail, from all sorts of nutters. And they call me the psycho.’
McIntyre stared right back and smiled. ‘Well, I did think maybe a paperback deal. Serialised in the Daily Mail, made into a film with me played by David Tennant, maybe. Who do you want to play you?’
Telford finally blinked, laughed, a short cough of humour. He didn’t laugh often or long, was a bit rusty. ‘I’ll let you know. So, where do you want to start?’
McIntyre’s eyes narrowed, as he took the top off his pen. ‘At the beginning. Your family.’
Telford tapped his hand sharply against his knee, once, twice. It amused him that McIntyre, for all his rumpled suit and floppy dark hair and the way he sprawled in the chair, was watching and trying to interpret every move.
‘My Mum was a crazy bitch. I mean, she was fun, everyone liked her, but get a few martinis down her and she was mad, a real party animal. I liked being around her, it was always interesting, but she didn’t notice us kids most of the time.’ McIntyre narrowed his eyes and Telford realised he was hesitating momentarily before each question, trying to phrase them without being confrontational. Looking sharply across at McIntyre, he caught him looking away, tightly controlled. Telford took a deep breath, leaned forward on the edge of the table.
‘My Dad was just nasty. Violent with everyone, always having fights, accusing half the local blokes of shagging my Mum.’
‘How was he with you?’ The cool, analytical gaze was back, boring into Telford.
‘I already said.’
‘Violent to everyone. Yes, sorry.’ McIntyre waited quietly.
‘He belted us all around, my brother more than me. I was big, could look after myself, but Billy was smaller, used to cry.’ McIntyre looked down at his notes, possibly for dramatic effect, as he must have known what was in them.
Telford reached forward suddenly, enough to startle McIntyre into freezing, his jaw tightening. The big man picked up a plastic bottle and opened it, the plastic slowly giving way with deliberate cracks, loud in the suddenly tense atmosphere.
‘You’re scared of me.’ Telford took a small sip, then a larger one. Resealing the bottle, he put it carefully down in front of him, never taking his unblinking stare off McIntyre.
‘You’re bigger than me.’
After a moment, the convicted killer gave another cough of laughter. ‘Good answer. Look, I’ve been over this stuff. I can’t see how Billy’s death is relevant.’
‘No?’ McIntyre sat further back, relaxed his shoulders and hands a little.
‘I was already getting into trouble, setting fires, torturing animals. I have read the books. I know what I am.’
‘Tell me about the fires.’
‘No, the animals are more interesting.’ Take control, Jimmy. ‘I never understood it but I could get so fucking furious at everyone, then have to kick something to death, you know?’ He blinked once. ‘I never fought with my Dad. He didn’t touch me once I got taller than him. But nothing else was safe around me. Not even Billy, the stupid little prick.’
‘So – what happened to Billy?’
There was a long silence. Telford clenched his fists slowly, seeing tendons straining, his knuckles whitening through the pale skin. He released the tension gradually, seeing the skin pucker and wrinkle, aged by a lifetime of working with mortar and lime.
‘He just - died.’