Among good company!

The Book Depository entry for Catalyst shows ‘Other people who viewed this bought:’

and the selection of paperbacks purchased makes interesting reading in every sense!

Blood of the Dragon Trees – Nik Morton

Sudden Vengeance – Nik Morton

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Martian – Andy Weir

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins

Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn

Vicious – V E Schwab

Edge of Eternity – Ken Follett

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

Remember, books ordered from the Book Depository are POST FREE WORLDWIDE!

http://www.bookdepository.com/Catalyst-1-Avenging-Cat-Series-Nik-Morton/9781910510148

When I clicked on Blood of the Dragon Trees, I learned that viewers of that book had bought some of the above thrillers, plus Spanish Eye, I Let You Go, Speaking in Bones and Gone Girl… Interesting!

 

 

 

Book Review - Friendship Cemetery

Adele Elliott’s debut novel Friendship Cemetery is something to be savoured.  Halfway through the first page, I realised I was going to enjoy the book, and, happily, I wasn’t wrong.

The narrator, Emma Grace Lee, is almost nineteen and has a strange affection for Friendship Cemetery, Columbus, Mississippi.  ‘A few benches are also scattered around. I guess this is so that the ghosts who come out at night can sit and chat with each other,’ observes Emma, which may be construed as ‘maybe a bit morbid for an eighteen-year-old’.

Emma’s friends are Pea, Beau, and Tyrone, all of whom are well drawn. Pea is fragile and vulnerable, yet has a strong will, and is a lovely creation. Tyrone is shy and withdrawn, while Beau is clever and hiding a secret. Their parents and neighbours are distinct human beings, with their tragedies and petty jealousies, too.

Throughout, the observations and description put you in Emma’s world, where she is still suffering the loss of her father who died in New Orleans, a man whom her mother seems to have expunged from memory.  ‘When you lose someone there is always one more thing you wanted to say to them.’

The voice of Emma is captured perfectly – reminding me a little of Harper Lee’s Scout Finch, despite an age difference of several years. There’s the humour, pathos, compassion, irony and even satire.  She has never been to New Orleans, but knows all about it from her late father, and rather hankers after leaving Columbus to go there. ‘In this city, unlike New Orleans, dead people prefer to stay in the ground and are apparently quite comfortable there.’

It’s a Southern Gothic tale, not just because of the ghostliness of the cemetery, but also the healing ability of Tyrone’s mother; and the general behaviour of many citizens and their concealed past that is gradually disinterred. As Emma muses, ‘Willowbrook is the mental health facility connected to Baptist Hospital. There are no willows, and no brook. I think a crazy person named it.’

In truth, you’d be crazy to miss this book.

A shorter version of this review will appear on Amazon and Goodreads.

FFB - Write Away

WRITE AWAY by Elizabeth George was first published in 2005, and is still a useful and interesting writing guide.

from Amazon.co.uk here

 

Born in 1949, Elizabeth George wrote since the age of seven yet tended to avoid writing seriously as an adult until much later, finally getting her third attempt at a novel published in 1988. From that point on, she has written a novel almost every year, to great acclaim. She has won several writing awards and taught writing techniques. Much of her writing experience and teaching has been distilled into this excellent book.

Writers must read. It’s surprising how many would-be writers hardly ever read books. They can read and speak English, so they can write, can’t they? Well, probably not... They should read books on the subjects that interest them, the types of books they want to write, as well as books on how to write. In my time I’ve received so many manuscripts that lack even the basic understanding of page layout, sentence construction, paragraph formatting and punctuation – and yet all these basics are plain to see in any printed novel if the fledgling writers bothered to look.

Like all art forms, writing has to be practised and learned. Good writing is a combination of the craft and the art. You can’t teach someone to use the right vocabulary, to paint word-pictures in the reader’s mind – that has to come from within. But you can teach the technique of writing – and this is what George does with the aid of many examples from her own and other writers, such as PD James, Stephen King, EM Forster, Harper Lee, Toni Morrison, Martin Cruz Smith and Dennis Lehane.

There isn’t a right way to write a novel. There are thousands of authors and probably all of them have different approaches. But what the majority do have is bum glue - discipline. If you don’t sit down and write, then you don’t get the work done.

That’s the other thing to recognise – it’s work – hard work. Just because the writers enjoy what they do, it doesn’t mean that it comes easy to them. They have to apply themselves. And this shines through with Elizabeth George. She’s meticulous in her pre-writing planning.

Yes, you need to know what you’re going to write before you start, who you’re going to write about, what it will concern and probably how it will end. That requires planning and research. Not every writer plans in detail or even at all, but George advocates that the whole process of writing is far easier if you have a plan and she starts off by getting the idea then expanding on it to see if it has legs, then concocting the primary event that will propel the story from its beginning – in essence, the plot.

Then you need to people the world your story depicts – list the characters both generically and also specifically. By doing this, you’ll reveal relationships and sub-plots you hadn’t thought of, which is often a great feeling. You must always bear in mind that character is story and dialogue is character, too.

 
Then comes the research. The great danger with research is that it becomes so interesting – and time-consuming – that you never get round to the writing phase!

Up to now she still hasn’t begun the book. It’s still going on in her head in the subconscious. Now she creates the characters in depth then the settings – which include landscape – the physical places and the inner landscape of the characters. This is followed by a detailed step outline which will probably contain phrases and dialogue to be used in the actual writing, but it’s all steam-of-consciousness writing at this stage. A plot outline – where the logic of the storyline is checked - is the last preparation. All this has involved the craft of writing.

 
Now comes the decision where to start the novel – at the beginning, before the beginning or after the beginning, where the beginning is the primary event, the main plot. Once you’ve made that decision, it’s time to start writing the book!

The first rough draft of the novel is, to her, the easy bit – because she’s done all the background and familiarisation. The story flows and she can concentrate on the art side of writing. Usually, she writes three drafts – the third being the finished novel, ready for the publisher.

 
Of considerable use are her examples and guides in the final section. Here she reveals the Seven-step Story Line, breaking down the structure of a novel into seven major elements. Then she discusses The Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler (a book I’d recommend for all budding writers or scriptwriters). This model actually divides a story into twelve parts that follow a pattern long-established in Western mythology.
 
If you aspire to being a writer and you haven’t read any ‘How to’ books on the subject, this is a good place to start; if you have read similar books, this is still worthy of your attention. Aspiring or accomplished, as a writer you’ll take away something from this book.

So, if you fancy yourself as a writer, read. In particular, read this book and learn from it.

***

Of course, if you want another viewpoint, you could try my book Write a Western in 30 Days, which reviewers point out is useful to writers of all genres, not just westerns!

 

E-book available from Amazon.co.uk here

and from Amazon.com from here

Book of the film: To Kill a Mockingbird

It has taken me a long time to get round to reading this book, first published in 1960. Maybe I was daunted by the fact it was a Pulitzer Prize winner and had sold in excess of 30 million copies. I’m glad I waited since I suspect I gleaned more from this as a mature reader than as an adolescent, though I could be wrong there as its appeal is very wide indeed.

Set in the 1930s Deep South, it deals with truth, the lot of Negroes, a small town’s prejudice and hypocrisy, and the bravery of an individual with principles – ‘The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.’ – Atticus Finch.

Its author, Harper Lee, was 34 when she wrote this, her only book. Its huge success – the film of the book being released in 1962 – must have had some effect on the racial Civil Rights politics at the time. From 1865 to 1877 strides were made toward equal rights for African-Americans; Southern black men began to vote and were elected to the United States Congress and to local offices such as sheriff. Yet it was not until 1965 that an Act was passed to outlaw discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States. Maybe Harper Lee’s popular book helped in some small way.

The book begins in classic mode, reflecting on events that are actually revealed at the end of the narrative. Eight-year-old Scout (Jean Louise) and her thirteen-year-old brother Jem (Jeremy) are the children of widower Atticus Finch, a lawyer of the town of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator is Scout who is reminiscing about her childhood past, hence the adult language used in her descriptions. It’s never explained why she is nicknamed ‘Scout’. Anyway, she immediately endears herself to you with her self-deprecating good humour and generally amusing observations: ‘With a click of her tongue she thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of cordiality that cemented our friendship.’

The siblings refer to their father by his first name, much to the consternation of their disapproving and distant relatives; it makes for easier reading, anyway.

The household helper and cook is Calpurnia, a Negro with infinite patience and a heart of gold, more a member of the family than hired help. She, along with so many characters in the town, is drawn with sure strokes so we get to know them, which is the true measure of a good author.

Most towns probably have a house that invokes gossip and tall tales about things going bump in the night. Maycomb is no different. The Radleys’ place is where, at risk of some unspeakable death, children dare to sneak into the yard and touch the walls. Boo Radley hasn’t been seen in years and this causes more stories. Gregory Peck, who starred as Atticus and won an Oscar for the part, said: ‘The characters of the novel are like people I knew as a boy. I think perhaps the great appeal of the novel is that it reminds readers everywhere of a person or a town they have known. It is to me a universal story – moving, passionate and told with great humor and tenderness.’

When Tom, a Negro, is accused of raping a white woman, Atticus is selected as his defence lawyer. It’s obvious that Tom is innocent, but prejudice runs deep, it seems. During the court case, Atticus makes a moving strong plea about all men being equal, not in accomplishment or talent, which is nonsense, but in the eyes of the law – a laudable ideal that, even today, is tarnished by those with money.

Lee never completed another book and shunned interviews. Several sources state that her book was in large doses autobiographical; whether it is or not, the characters shine through as real people, a great accomplishment.

My copy was a reprint dated 1997; and it had been reprinted no less than 42 times in this paperback imprint. That annoys me just a little: there are easily thirty typing errors in the text – even one on the first page – yet no publisher considered correcting them in all those years. A shameful way to treat a classic.

From an editorial perspective, I found the first person narrative spot on. One very minor quibble which her editor Tay Hohoff seems to have missed: ‘One day… we did not see Atticus standing on the sidewalk looking at us, slapping a rolled magazine against his knee.’ (p44) If he wasn’t seen, he couldn’t be written about. Still, the image is a striking one and maybe that’s why it was left in.

From the outset, this was going to be a difficult novel to film. Inevitably, voice-over was employed (by Kim Stanley), ostensibly the mature voice of Scout. Horton Foote won an Oscar for his Adapted Screenplay, deservingly so, considering the difficulties of transferring Scout’s memories to a visual medium. It’s an accomplished piece of work, judicially leaving out certain scenes, events and characters from the novel while combining the odd character here and there, all the time preserving the truth and integrity of the original.

Any re-reading of the novel will mean that the mind’s eye sees Gregory Peck as Atticus, the part he was born to play.