The Next Next Big Thing (November 2012)

Lancastrian author Deborah Swift has tagged me in this blogging "chain" where authors write about their Works In Progress. Deborah is a "Word addict, book addict. Nature, art and poetry fan, and writer of thought-provoking historical fiction." I'll drink to that.

I joined in The Next Big Thing previously with a blog post about COACHMAN, which was then almost ready for publication and so is now out in paperback and for Kindle.

However, I'm now doing National Novel Writing Month and I'm starting afresh!

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

1.) What is the title of your book?
SECOND WIND

2.) Where did the idea come from for the book?
In 1995 I had a novel published by J A Allen, AGAINST THE ODDS, and I've often thought of continuing the story of the two main characters Madoc and Sian. As it's now nearly 20 years since that book ended, this year's NANO was a great excuse to find out what has happened to them in the meantime.

3.) Under what genre does your book fall?
I am finding the characters pushing me into a murder mystery! I've never tried this genre before but it's one I read quite a lot. It won't be a police procedural, because I just don't have the background for that. I want to look at the way such a big event is both a result of change and an agent for change, in family relationships. It's also interesting to put my characters through a bit of hell, and yet set it in a local backdrop.


4.) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I would rather not type-cast, since it's better for readers to picture their own versions of heroes and heroines. Physically, many of my characters resemble people I have known at some time in my life. Although authors try to insist their people are entirely fictional that can't ever be true - we just hope nobody recognises a character trait that's been lifted. But if someone offered me Daniel Craig to play Madoc I wouldn't object! That's not only because he is famous and good looking. Daniel Craig is a Cestrian brought up on Wirral, as am I, and Madoc worked there for a long while in AGAINST THE ODDS, so their backgrounds would mesh.

5.) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Sian Owen's 18 year marriage to Madoc is in the doldrums and she has a brief fling with businessman Charles Humphreys, but it changes her life more than she expects when Charles is found murdered.


6.) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’ve self published the last 3 of my books and will do the same with this, though not until it's ready. I think nothing does a greater disservice to self-publishing than badly edited and badly produced books. As it happens, I’ve designed the covers for all my books, including those produced by mainstream publishers. So it has been quite good fun to go it alone. It would be nice if an agent picked up my writing, but for now I’ll slog on with selling myself.


7.) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I'm four days into NANO and have only got 7,000 words so far (and I'm procrastinating by writing this) but the outline is there for the rest. Having chosen the murder mystery structure I'm finding I have to be far more strict about which scenes I include at which points in the narrative - sticking far more closely to the 3-act pattern of stage drama. So my lifelong love of Shakespeare and the stage is of some use after all. Who knew?

8.) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I would like it to be as good as Josephine Tey's BRAT FARRAR, though the storyline is only similar in that there is a murder associated with a family who own horses.

9.) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Sian Davies and Madoc Owen were two characters I liked very much when I wrote AGAINST THE ODDS, and I've always meant to follow up on what happened after they married. Knowing your characters really well makes writing a great deal easier. Also, following them up means they can be nearer to my own age and experience, so I don't have to make so much up!

10.) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s a love story about a marriage that survives. (I'm beginning to see a recurring theme here.) How does a middle-aged marriage get over that falling-apart that happens when the kids are growing up and wanting to fly the nest? Is it possible for trust once broken to be reforged?


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I originally sent this on to Mary Witzl but she is not blogging at the moment, being fortunate to have so much work she can't keep up with it all: "I've been lucky enough to find almost more work than I can do teaching English and Japanese, proofreading, editing, and, especially, writing. I am writing this to explain why I'm disappearing: I have so little free time now that I have to spend it on writing." Isn't that fabulous? Good luck, Mary, and remember to breathe!

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Since Mary's busy life means she isn't blogging I will suggest you go on to read Kathleen Jones' blog. Kathleen has recently published her first historical novel, The Sun's Companion (reviewed here) but she has been writing since she was a child and has published ten books including six biographies and a collection of poetry. She lived for several years in Africa and the Middle East, where she worked for the Qatar Broadcasting Corporation. Since then she has written extensively for BBC radio and contributed to several television documentaries. Kathleen is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her biography, "Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller" was published by Penguin NZ and by Edinburgh University Press.

--and also--
Suzie Tullet. Suzie says of herself: "Going Underground is my first novel and its setting was inspired by my observations of the Mod scene, having been married to a Mod for quite some time now. Of course, it's not a social critique in any way, it's an entertaining physical and emotional journey that uses the fun and nostalgic elements of Mod to weave a very human story - elements that we can all enjoy and identify with. I'm a full time writer, lucky enough to live between the UK and Greece. And when I'm not tapping away on the computer creating my own literary masterpiece, I usually have my head in someone else's."

I shall add links to a couple more authors' blogs very shortly.

The next big thing?

English Historical Fiction Authors on Facebook have been writing blog posts based on ten interview questions about their latest Works in Progress. I thought I'd join in.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

1.) What is the title of your book?
Coachman

2.) Where did the idea come from for the book?
A neighbour of ours mentioned that her family’s fortunes had been made by her great-grandfather who had been a coach proprietor in London. He was William James Chaplin (no relation to Charlie). In 1994 she asked me to transcribe a letter written by Chaplin, which a bookseller had bought at auction and brought to show her. Neither of them could read his writing, but I could… I wrote an article for “Carriage Driving” magazine about his career, but I wanted to do more with it. And it simply had to be a novel – the themes were too big for anything else.

Some of the phrases Chaplin used in that letter appear in his conversations in Coachman. Our neighbour also gave me a copy of the family tree, and permission to write the novel.

3.) Under what genre does your book fall?
Historical fiction. It isn’t really a romance in the usual sense.

4.) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
George – Tom Ellis. Chaplin – I’d love to see him played by Kenneth Branagh. For Lucy and Sarah – I’m not au fait with the names of young actresses, can’t think why. The main thing would be to portray their character, though.

5.) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Ambitious coachman George Davenport travels to London with his bride to take up a new job, but he discovers that his boss's daughter has designs on him that have nothing to do with his driving.

6.) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’ve self published the last 3 of my books. As it happens, I’ve designed the covers for all my books, including those produced by mainstream publishers. So it has been quite good fun to go it alone. It would be nice if an agent picked it up but for now I’ll slog on with selling myself.


7.) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The idea has been there for 18 years! It took all that time for the internet resources to appear, like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, where I could read the full text of coaching books that were long out of print and hideously expensive to buy secondhand. The MS took about five months, but I kept going back and rewriting, developing the storylines, then putting it away and coming back and rewriting yet again. It’s been the messiest thing I’ve ever written, because I had to do a lot of U turns – into the history, then back to the characters. Lots of “killing my darlings” as the story itself straightened out in my head and much of my research became unnecessary. I probably have half a novel in the “spike” folder on my computer; journeys George made, and people he met, both before and after this story is told.

8.) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Malcolm MacDonald’s “World From Rough Stones” sequence. I don’t know yet whether I will follow George and Lucy any further, but I certainly like them enough to consider it.

9.) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My own great-grandfather was a coachman. I’ve been involved in carriage driving since 1985, and when I’m interested in a subject I read widely round it so I have shelves full of books about the coaching age, plus lots of stuff in PDF format.

There are many historical novels set during the age when the horse was the fastest thing on the road, and a few written about the dawn of the railway age, but there’s nothing – so far as I know, anyway – about what happened to the men who had been the Knights of the Road and whose work suddenly vanished. So I thought it was time to redress the balance. Of course, that one thread as the main theme of the book wasn’t enough; I had to make up characters and relationships that would be interesting, too. I knew I had to invent people whose lives would touch Chaplin’s, so I could show what might have happened to the drivers, stablemen and horses when railways took the heart out of coaching.

My great-grandfather was in domestic service, not on a commercial route, and he lived 50 years after Chaplin’s time, but his existence in my family tree gave me a name to hang my story on: George Davenport. And my great-grandmother really was called Lucy Hennessy, though she didn’t live in Carlisle and my relatives will no doubt be relieved to hear that I have completely invented her unpleasant mother and their unsavoury history. The religious belief that sustains Lucy in the novel is a known factor in the emotional survival of modern victims of child abuse.

Chaplin had a patriarchal number of children, including twin girls, Marianne and Sarah. Sarah was the only one of his children who died unmarried (not counting Rosa who died aged 8 and Horace who died in infancy). Nothing is known of Sarah Chaplin, so I could safely invent whatever reasons I liked to account for her spinster status. I’ve suppressed any mention of her twin sister for the sake of simplicity. My decision to make her obsessed with power sprang from her father’s dedication and the observation of a former coachman, who remarked that Chaplin’s business was founded on “systematic application ... in which the female members of the family were called to assist.”

Many of the drivers mentioned in Coachman were real people in the Golden Age of Coaching: the Ward brothers, for instance, and deaf George Eade. I’ve invented the less attractive ones like Anderson. Some of the real coachmen, such as Cross, wrote autobiographies during their twilight years for the benefit of Coaching Revivalists in later Victorian times. Their works were rich sources for this novel.

10.) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s a love story about a marriage that survives – not perhaps a popular theme today, but probably true of its time. We think now of 1837/8 as the year of Victoria's Accession and Coronation and the opening of the Victorian age, but it was pivotal in England's history because huge changes began in industry due to the opening of the railways. It’s that change which is the catalyst for many of my book’s central events.

There are threads about abusive family relationships, and about same-sex relationships which were still punishable by hanging at that time; so it’s by no means a fluffy fantasy set in a past era as an excuse for heaving bosoms, tight breeches and randy behaviour. Books like that really annoy me as they are so often inaccurate on the history, habits and behaviour of the time in which they pretend to be set.

Victoria’s Coronation year had lots of celebrations, rather like 2012's Olympics and Diamond Jubilee, so it was fun to set my characters against those colourful backdrops.

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For links to other author's blogs please see my Next Big Thing post for November 2012.