Bill Kirton

People complain about spending too much time online but one of the distinct advantages is that it does put you in touch with others who become genuine (i.e. not just virtual) friends. My guest this week, Mary Smith, is one such person. We met in a Scottish writers’ group which gets together occasionally for entertaining lunches, usually in Edinburgh or Glasgow. The subject matter of Mary’s writing has, at least thus far, singled her out as being a little different. But I’ll let her explain.

 First of all, Mary, it’s your connection with Afghanistan that’s intriguing. Tell us a bit about how you came to be working there.
I was working for the Pakistan leprosy programme in Karachi (how that came about is too long a story for this blog but it involved a spur of the moment decision and a certain amount of whisky). While there, I met lots of young Afghans, some of whom were studying to become paramedics before returning to their country to run health clinics. They talked endlessly – and very emotionally – about their country and by the time my three-year contract ended it was almost inevitable I signed up for another three across the border. I helped set up the clinics and later established a mother and child care project training village women to become health volunteers.

And what made you decide to write a book about it all?
Not many have the opportunity to live in Afghanistan for such an extended period of time. I still feel incredibly privileged to have had those years there and I wanted to share my experiences with others. I wanted to introduce people to my Afghan friends, even if only through the pages of a book. I particularly wanted to provide a different perspective from the one the media presents which tends to portray Afghanistan and her people negatively; to show it isn’t all fighting and the repression of women.

Well, as you know better than I do, there are plenty of books on Afghanistan already. Is yours different?
I think so, yes. I’ve read and enjoyed dozens of excellent books about Afghanistan but what makes mine different is the women and the insight into their lives. Of course, Western men are unlikely to be able to mix freely with Afghan women so I was in a privileged position.

Life is tough, especially for women living in remote rural areas. Most of the ones I met had had a miscarriage or lost an infant. But they don’t go around feeling sorry for themselves; they work hard but they find time to gossip with friends, to make jokes, to laugh, to fall in love. These women deserve more than to be consigned to a few brief mentions or, worse, portrayed as hapless victims.

It sounds as if you felt sort of compelled to write about them. Had you written much before you went to Afghanistan?
I wasn’t a published writer but I always wrote. I used to write stories when I was growing up – heavily plagiarising Enid Blyton. I’ve kept a diary since I was in my teens and wrote quite a lot for my work with Oxfam and, of course, report writing for donors. While I was in Afghanistan I began writing articles which were published in The Herald and in The Guardian Weekly and it sort of grew from there.

So the time you spent there must have influenced your writing quite a lot?
Oh yes, it’s had a huge influence. As well as articles, I’ve written a novel, No More Mulberries, set in Afghanistan and my poetry collection, Thousands Pass Here Every Day, contains a section of poems about Afghanistan. I think it’s time to move on, though, and my next project will be another non-fiction work but about a woman car manufacturer.

That’s certainly a change of pace or direction but it’s for the future. I’m interested in hearing a bit more about the fact that your book, Drunk Chickens and Burnt Macaroni is a finalist for The People’s Book Prize. That’s some achievement. How does it feel?
Very exciting. When it was first nominated and I looked on the website my heart sank when I saw it was up against books by Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace, Roger Moore and others brought out by the big publishers. When I was told I was through to the finals I was over the moon and feel very happy for Indigo Dreams, which is a small independent publisher. There’s no panel of judges; the winner’s chosen by public vote using an online voting system so the awards are very much about what the public wants to read rather than what publishers decide they should read.

Ah, in that case, you give me and my blog a chance to get involved. How can we vote for the book?
From the home page you choose finalists from the menu along the top and choose the Non-Fiction category or you can go straight to this link http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/finalist.php#nonfictionFinalists_829 which goes directly to the book.

I’m afraid then it becomes more complicated and apologise (but I didn’t make the system). To vote click on the box on the right and then click on word “Vote” beneath it and you will be taken to the form to complete your vote.

If you were one of those who kindly voted in a previous round you just need to enter the letters shown on the coloured background, your email address (twice!) and the password you used when you voted before. If you can’t remember the password, guess it and if you’re wrong it’ll give you the option of having it emailed to you.

If you didn’t vote before click on the word “register” and you’ll find a short form to fill in after which they’ll immediately send you a password and then you can vote as in the paragraph above.

Simple really!

Mary, I suspect your final words are a barely veiled allusion to my own incompetence in matters technological, but I’ll shoot across to the site and cast my vote right away. Many thanks for that chat and good luck with the award.
Thank you, Bill. It’s been a pleasure.

Please read Mary’s book and vote. You can read more about her on her website at www.marysmith.co.uk.

The seeming fragmentation and accidental quality of living which I bang on about so frequently may be an illusion. I tend to treat isolated incidents as just that – separate, unrelated events with no causal links and no significance. But a chaffinch, two robins and a piece of wood suggest that I may be wrong.

Let’s start with the piece of wood. Some of you may have heard this from me before but it’s the story of the photo I use as my avatar. I started woodcarving classes when I was researching my novel The Figurehead  because I wanted to know what it felt like to carve an actual figurehead. I enjoyed it so much that I still go to classes. The avatar was based on a gargoyle that’s on one of the Oxford colleges and I hung it over my garage door. One weekend when I was away, someone came in, ripped it free from its bolts and took it away. That was a while ago but I still sort of hope that maybe someone will see the object itself somewhere and tell me on Facebook where it is. If it’s found, I’ll be petitioning to restore deportation for anyone who steals a sheep, a car or anything made of wood.

The second incident is linked to this theft because I liked the first carving so much that I tried to reproduce it. The second version wasn’t as good but it was OK enough to hang on a garden wall out of sight of thieves and marauders. So there’s a causal link between the two.

Incident number three, though, is (or seemed) self-contained. It occurred in May, 2010, when a chaffinch decided to throw himself against my window. In my old blog I described it thus:

I hear a small bang and there he is, still flying but bashing his beak against the glass. And he does it again and again. I’ve just been outside to take a photo of what he must see when he makes his assault. I took it from ground level because he always flies up from there for his attack, bashing against the pane at the very top. OK, I’m not a chaffinch, but I saw nothing there that would fool me into thinking it was a good place to nest, so what’s he doing it for?

Maybe the soul of a critic has transmigrated into his body and he hates writers. Maybe he’s practising some arcane act for the next Simon Cowell show – ‘Nature’s Got Talent’ or something. Maybe he’s a chaffinch philosopher and he’s just proving that life is an illusion and ultimate satisfaction is unattainable. Whatever it is, after all his clattering against the glass, he must go home every night and say to his wife ‘My beak’s killing me’.

In June the following year, he was back and, in another attempt to penetrate the mystery, my speculations went even further.

But now, two years on, all has become clear. The chaffinch was an avian estate agent. I don’t know whether the nest-market has gone the way of the human housing market in the past few years but, if it has (and it seems likely that our Chancellor’s fiscal brutalities will have left no corner of British life intact), the chaffinch’s irrational and near-suicidal frustrations are easier to comprehend.

So how did I reach this conclusion? Well, from one angle, the window in question reflects the carving and, this year, two robins have taken up residence in a small hole in the wall behind its head. As I type, they’re busily coming and going, presumably with small items from IKEA, to turn the hole into a home. The chaffinch’s tireless search for desirable locations has obviously paid off. He himself has not returned but two of his clients have.

And so, on the evidence of these curious but now explicable contingencies, over these years, my hubristic assumptions about life’s absurdities have proved to be baseless. There is a holistic flow, drawing creatures and inanimate objects together, creating a unity of purpose, weaving from a multitude of infinitesimally tiny threads a single fabric of cosmic proportions. In short, there is meaning.

Aye, right.

Other people’s holiday snaps are merely things which test your acting ability and your vocabulary as you search for synonyms for ‘lovely’, ‘nice’, ‘how interesting’ and so on. So the fact that I’ve already droned on about our recent trip to the USA and here I am extending it even further is a good reason for you to stop reading now and leave a comment consisting of one or more of the synonyms. Anyway, this is our friends’ house and we stayed in their cottage, which is out of picture to the left (yawn).

If you’re still here, I’ll make it worse by telling you that one of the evenings was spent with my eyes full of tears because I was laughing so much. I won’t name those responsible but they know who they are and one of the topics that came up was the direction my writing career should take. Taking the success of Fifty Shades as their starting point, they began to plan what my next novel (or, better, series of novels) should be. They had the title of the first and kept trying out various pen names of which the least offensive was Ophelia Groyne. The title itself came in for some close textual analysis when the original suggestion – Under the Scotsman’s Kilt – was refined to Under m’ Scotsman’s Kilt and then Under da Scotsman’s Kilt. You see what I mean? This was just a tiny fragment of what genuinely was a hilarious evening but on the screen, it just looks embarrassing.

So, let’s get back to the snaps. We were a couple of weeks too early to get the full pleasure of the Azalea/Rhododendron Garden near the URI campus but I’d really love to build a replica of its Moon Gate in my own garden. (Here it is, with our friends framed in it. YAWN.)

On the other hand, while I was fascinated by the extraordinary column in Providence made of guns concreted together, it’s a bit sinister and too much of a reminder of less attractive aspects of life in the USA. But, on the other side of the road there’s a great restaurant called Parkside, which had terrific food, a great ambiance and cost far less than I’d have to pay in Aberdeen for rubbish.

My wife and I have come to an agreement about shopping. She won’t let me come with her – ever. Her reasoning is that she can’t look around, compare styles and prices and things without being aware of my glowering, resentful presence. My reasoning is that she’s absolutely right. I hate shopping (unless it’s a hardware store full of interesting things whose function isn’t clear but which I want as soon as I see them). But in the USA, it’s different. I know we have malls, but they have MALLS, and the one in the middle of Providence is the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s like being in a Star Trek set without the Klingons. (Here’s my wife and our friends looking out from one of its cathedral-type floors. Zzzzzzzz.)

Finally, though, another visit, to a beautiful place in Connecticut called Mystic Seaport. It’s much more to my liking because, as its name suggests, it’s

about the sea and boats. It has a great collection of figureheads and I got talking to 3 of the volunteers there who act as guides and general sources of information and enthusiasm about the maritime history of New England. I told them I was planning a sequel to The Figurehead and that I had a couple of problems about the accommodation offered to passengers who were emigrating from Scotland to the USA in the 1840s. I wanted to know how conditions in steerage could be improved and one of them simply told me to visit the Charles W Morgan, the last wooden whale ship, which was originally built in 1841, the year in which my novel will be set, and is being restored and preserved at Mystic. He told me to go aft to the officers’ quarters and look for some particular features. I did and found not only what I was looking for, but things that would be of special interest to the woodcarver in my book. Without the guide’s directions, I would never have noticed them. That was just one of the serendipities of the trip. As you can probably tell, I had a great time.

OK, you can stop pretending to be interested now.

The long gap since the last blog was the result of a trip to Rhode Island where nearly all the time was taken up with real rather than online things (such as visiting beautiful places in hot sunshine and drinking wine). It’s a part of the world we know well and to which I’d emigrate like a shot if only they had decent healthcare provision for all. People talk of New England in the fall and yes, it’s breathtaking then, but it’s beautiful the rest of the year, too.

We’ve been there in all the seasons. It started back in the 70s when my wife and I were doing a revue at the Edinburgh fringe and shared a theatre with a group of students from The University of Rhode Island. They invited us to take the show over there and that was the first of many other visits as a visiting professor and visiting artist. I gave courses on textual appreciation, creative writing and even writing sketches (or skits as they’re called over there). I also translated 3 one act Molière plays for performance there. My wife acted in one of them and I directed another.

I also had the enormous privilege (and I really do mean that) of being asked to direct Shakespeare there. It was As You Like It and, while I’ve directed plenty of plays and video/DVD shoots, that was the only time I experienced the full pleasures (and power) of working with a truly professional company. Costume and set designers, committed actors (all students in the Theater Department), technical staff – all treated me as if I knew what I was doing and helped to create a rich production. I have many memories of the rehearsal and performance process but I’ll just quote two, from both ends of the spectrum.

One was when the lighting technician asked me what sort of moods I wanted for different scenes in the play. The set was (of course) the Forest of Arden and the trees consisted of hanging verticals of a silky material (tree trunks), with swathes of various greens looped between them as leaves/branches. I asked the techie (a student) to create appropriate lighting for dawn, dusk and the four seasons. A few days later he was ready to show me what he had and I sat alone in the centre of the dress circle, the stage was empty, the house lights went down and I watched a sequence of shifting, indescribably beautiful scenes as he worked his way through his designs and colours. Tones and brightness shifted from mood to mood and, minute by minute, the seasons and times of day came and went among those trees. It was magical, and it was all for me.

Then, of course, there were the rehearsals and the notes I had to give to actors afterwards. Toward the end, when we were rehearsing the whole play rather than individual scenes, I mentioned to the student playing Rosalind that she’d made a bit of a meal of a particular speech, whereupon she smiled and several others laughed. I said ‘Oh, don’t you use that expression over here?’ Her answer was ‘We use very few of the things you say over here’.

Anyway, back to this trip and it was as satisfying as ever. The trees, the coastline, the lovely clapboard houses and, most of all, the people. In the UK, lots of our ideas about the USA come from movies and, just as Americans have a stereotypical idea of Brits, so we think we know what they’re like. But when you go there, you realise how wrong the stereotype can be. I’ve only been to New England, California and New Orleans, but in all those places, the people we’ve met have been welcoming, friendly, helpful, generous and nearly always upbeat. Waiters in restaurants don’t have the put-upon quality so many of them seem to have in the UK or the superiority their French counterparts are always keen to show. They chat, answer inane questions cheerfully and genuinely seem to care about the job they’re doing.

And I can’t end without noting an extra pleasure I had this time. I met Lynne Gobeille of the Origami Poems Project and spent 3 very interesting hours at a Starbucks chatting with Linda Faulkner who’s a good Facebook and blog friend but whom I’d never met before. It would need a couple more blogs to cover the things we talked about but one very striking feature we both noticed was that there’s a clear difference between the online images we present to the world and the actual people we are. But then, I’ve no idea how Linda would begin to generate on screen the energy and dynamism she exhibited as we chatted.

There are a couple of more specific things I want to share but this is long enough already so I’ll just end with an expression I’d never heard anywhere before but picked up there on this visit. If you haven’t yet been to the USA, ‘put it on your bucket list’.

Apart from irregular visits by my brother Ron, the blog hasn’t often heard different voices and I want to change that. I’ve asked writer friends for contributions and the first to respond is Myra Duffy. I know that Myra’s been writing ever since she was very young. In fact, her first publication appeared while she was still in her early teens. She’s a successful writer of non-fiction articles and books, but her preference has always been for fiction. In recent years, she’s had plenty of short stories published but her real love is the novel and she’s produced a series of cosy crimes/mysteries set on the Isle of Bute, just off the West coast of Scotland.

So, Myra, you happen to have chosen one of my favourite places in the world to write about – the West coast, I mean, although I haven’t yet visited the island itself. Why did you choose it as your setting?

We’ve had a family holiday home on Bute for many years and know the island well. The setting gives me the benefit of a location that has strong associations for people in the West of Scotland (many of whom spent childhood holidays on Bute) and indeed people of Scottish descent throughout the world. In a small place you have a closed community and lots of opportunities for local gossip and intrigues to move the plot along.

I should say that the island isn’t the hotbed of crime my novels suggest. In fact there is very little crime and it’s a beautiful place with lots of unspoiled beaches and excellent walking. A lot of money is being spent on upgrading facilities, including the Art Deco Pavilion where my most recent book Last Dance at the Rothesay Pavilion  is set.

 So you’re in the great tradition of the Midsomer Murders or Miss Marple – mayhem and multiple homicides in an apparently gentle, beautiful setting. What’s the attraction of the ‘cosy’ genre for you?

As a reader of all kinds of crime novels, the main interest for me has always been the puzzle – who was the culprit and why. In ‘cosy crime’ the sleuth is usually an amateur whose education/life experiences have equipped him or her with various skills and the story is intended as a ‘fun read’ that engages the mind.

There’s no graphic violence or sex and there are plenty of red herrings in the plot.

If you enjoy crossword puzzles, you probably enjoy ‘cosy crime’.

OK, tell us a bit about the main character in the series.

That’s Alison Cameron, who might well be a neighbour. She’s an ordinary woman who becomes involved in the various crimes/mysteries by chance. I like to use ‘outsiders’ as the main protagonists. The interplay between these characters and those who live on the island helps the dynamics of the novel, though I’m very careful not to use real people in the plot.

I think one of the things that comes through very clearly in the writing is the feelings you have for the place and the community there. So far, there have been three in the series: The House at Ettrick Bay, Last Ferry to Bute and now Last Dance at the Rothesay Pavilion. I hope you’re not stopping there. Any more planned?

Yes, my work-in-progress is called Endgame at Port Bannatyne. Alison has been appointed assistant scriptwriter for a film being made on the island, but of course nothing goes according to plan, not even for the writer at this stage! I’m hoping this novel will be available by the summer.

I know your readers will be glad to hear that and I’m guessing that while you continue to enjoy revisiting the place and the people through your fiction the books will keep coming. Unless you’ve got plans for trying a different genre – have you?

Like most writers, I’ve all kinds of novels half-written and yes, I’d like to do something different at some stage. At the moment though, I’m kept busy with Alison and her problems!

I look forward to reading how you help her to solve them. Thanks for visiting, Myra.

You can read more about Myra at  her website  and on her blog.

Before getting to the main point, a little aside about the devaluation of words. First, nowadays there should be a charge levied on using the work ‘like’. I’m not referring to the absurdity of the ‘like’ feature on Facebook, where you’re invited to ‘like’ the fact that someone’s just announced a tragic bereavement or relayed some depressing news about a scary medical diagnosis. No, it’s the superfluous ‘like’ that peppers the conversations of … well, it used to be the younger generation but now the celebs and others whom they revere seem to be using it in a similar way.

I say ‘using it’ but it’s not being used at all, because it means nothing in the contexts in which they put it. ‘And she’s like “So?” And I’m like “No Way”.’ They need to like insert it whenever they’re trying to sound like cool. Add to it the lifting inflections at the end of sentences (the horrible, whining sound of rising terminals) and you have excruciating, unbearable dialogue.

I’ll explain later why I started with that old fogey rant, but you may well not need me to when I tell you that my topic is the website Awesome Indies.

We all know that it’s easier to publish ebooks and paperbacks nowadays and that, as a result, readers have access to many excellent novels which traditional publishers wouldn’t have been able to fit into their commercially-driven categories. Equally, though, it’s failed to filter out lots of stuff which is either badly written or has been badly formatted and never been assessed by a decent editor. Unfortunately, thanks to all the proud grannies and others who willingly give 5 stars to anything with their grandchild’s name on it, the unsuspecting reader has no way of separating the gems from the garbage. The author’s blurb is always going to (like) big up the book and the only real indicators left as to a book’s quality are word of mouth recommendations and/or objective reviews which say more than ‘This is great’.

Which is where Awesome Indies comes in. It’s a site which, in the words of its administrator, ‘lists Indie books that have the tick of approval from other writers, a tick that tells me that no matter whether I like the subject matter or not, the book is well written, a tick that tells me that I won’t throw the book across the room shouting in frustration, “why didn’t the author hire an editor!”’ The aim is to draw up ‘a list of books that I and other authors and editors can unreservedly recommend. My idea is to honour the Indie authors who produce a high quality product and to direct readers towards the Indie Gold that lies hidden amongst the avalanche of available books.’ You’re then invited to ‘consider this [i.e. the list] your treasure map’.

And you’ll probably guess why I’m featuring it here. Yes, it’s the Sparrow again. It’s a recent addition to the list of Awesome Indies.  And I assume that the reason for my opening rant is obvious. Yes, it’s that word ‘awesome’, another which is used so indiscriminately that it’s lost a lot of its power. We can’t do anything about that but, at least, when you see the status of the reviewers and the insistence on excluding any book which doesn’t meet their exacting professional standards, it does seem that in this instance (for a change), the adjective is legitimate. Have a look at the site, send them your own work and, most of all, as a reader, use it to help you choose books that treat you with respect.

My thanks to everyone who voted for The Sparrow Conundrum. This is how the news of it winning its second award, the Readers’ Choice Award for Humor and Satire, was greeted by those most closely associated with it.

Tessa was busy investigating the latest batch of agents who’d been found bloodless in graveyards with two puncture wounds in their necks. She found vampires as believable as politicians so she suspected this was a twisted April Fool’s stunt. When the phone rang she grabbed it and barked a curt ‘What?’ into it.

‘Tessa?’ The caller was tentative.

‘Yes, who’s that?’

‘Chris. Chris Machin.’ Then, with an embarrassed chuckle, ‘Sparrow. You remember?’

How could she forget?

‘What d’you want Chris? I’m busy.’

‘Ah, you haven’t heard then?’

‘Don’t piss me about. Heard what?’

‘The book. It’s won the Readers’ Choice Award for Humor and Satire.’

‘Oh great,’ said Tessa. ‘Terrific.’

Her tone was heavily ironic.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Machin.

‘Why? Because some hack has had his ego massaged for distorting the facts about our line of business? Just think for a minute, Chris. It’s OK for you. You’re a teacher. Nobody knows you exist. But what about me? I’m supposed to be involved in clandestine activities. With all the media attention we’ll be getting now, that’s me well and truly buggered, isn’t it?’

A scream from the outer office made her jump. It was followed by the sound of wood splintering as heavy boots kicked at her door until it was hanging from its hinges and a terrifying figure stepped through it. In its left hand was a red wig. Tessa recognised it as belonging to her secretary, Barbara, whose struggles with shampoos and conditioners were constantly being chronicled by lifestyle advisers in various magazines.

‘Chief Inspector Lodgedale. What a pleasant surprise,’ said Tessa.

She pointed at the wig.

‘I take it Barbara did something to incur your displeasure,’ she added.

‘Shut it,’ said the policeman, throwing the wig to the floor and taking from his pocket an Oxo-sized lump of cannabis resin wrapped in cling film.

‘Ah, no need for that,’ said Tessa. ‘I already have some in my drawer here.’

As well as tangling with him during the adventures recorded in The Sparrow Conundrum, Tessa had had this beast of the constabulary under surveillance ever since he’d arrived back from Russia, sent home by bosses in the Lubyanka who’d found his treatment of prisoners too harsh. Her agents had watched him planting drugs and condoms in nunneries, arresting shoppers who were walking too slowly and subduing pedestrians before they even had time to provoke him.

She put down the phone. The moment Machin had heard the name Lodgedale he’d begun to cry and hung up.

‘Can I help you with your enquiries?’ she said.

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Lodgedale, bafflingly.

‘Indeed,’ said Tessa. ‘And will you be using your new water-boarding facility to do so?’

Lodgedale had indeed had such a facility added to the suite of offices he’d demanded in his new role in Aberdeen’s anti-terrorist organisation.

‘Because, if I may say so,’ Tessa went on, ‘the media interest in the recently-awarded Readers’ Choice accolade might misinterpret its significance.’

Lodgedale’s usual response to words he couldn’t understand was to assault the speaker but he was wary of Tessa. She had access to wrestlers who bit lumps out of teak.

‘What’re you on about?’ he said.

Tessa saw at once how she could get rid of him.

‘Ah, you haven’t heard then,’ she said. ‘I had a call from Chris Machin. Remember him?’

The anger that flushed up through his face as he heard the name made her question redundant.

‘You know, Sparrow,’ she said.

‘I know bloody Sparrow,’ said Lodgedale. ‘A good pluck, that’s what he wants.’

‘Well, you’ll be pleased to hear you can go and give him one. He’s at home right now, celebrating the award.’

‘What award?’

‘Better ask Chris. All I know is the media will no doubt want to ask you about your interpretation of the term “justice” and your predilection for applied sadism will come under close scrutiny.’

‘Bloody Sparrow again,’ yelled Lodgedale.

Tessa scribbled on a Post-It note.

‘Here’s his address,’ she said.

Lodgedale hesitated, then grabbed the paper and stamped out. As Barbara began to scream again, Tessa sighed and reached for the phone. Her bearded boss, Mary, needed to know about this.

There’s still time to go over to the voting page on Big Al’s Books and Pals and cast your vote for The Sparrow Conundrum in the Humor and Satire section. I’ve been in London for a week and I’ve been a bit remiss about canvassing so this is a last desperate push. Voting closes at midnight (Al’s Time) on April 1^st. If you haven’t yet done so, I’d be grovellingly grateful if you’d go there, scroll down, click on the Enter to Win tab below the Amazon gift voucher prize then select Humor and Satire. There you’ll find 7 titles, with the Sparrow at the bottom. Some people have tried but failed to register a vote. This is probably because they’re using Internet Explorer and that doesn’t work on the site. The other popular browsers do, though. My thanks in advance.

Other news, the warm glow that comes when a box arrives with copies of my latest paperbacks in it. I’ve already written about my novella for young people, The Loch Ewe Mystery, UK and USA  but also in the box with it was my collection of short stories, Other People and other stories, USA  and UK. I don’t think I’ve said much about it here but it’s got samples of the different types of writing I do. Crime is well represented of course but, as I say in the short blurb on Amazon, there’s also some which are humorous, some bleak, some long, some short, and they’re all about people. If you prefer ebooks, they’re both on Kindle but, despite the fact that more of my books are bought in their eformats, I still love the look and feel of hardbacks and paperbacks.

I’m also a bit nerdy when it comes to signed copies. I love them and I’ve got lots from the great to the less well-known. But it doesn’t matter how famous the writer is, the fact that he or she has scrawled something inside makes it more valuable for me – not in terms of money but in the greater connection with the writer. So I was pleased to read in a blog on Authors Electric today  that there’s a way of getting ebooks signed by authors. It’s called Authorgraph and I’ve signed up to it. If you click the icon top right on this page, it’ll take you to my author page, where all my books are listed. All readers need to do is click on ‘Request Authorgraph’ under the relevant book and I get an email, write a message and ‘sign’ a copy which is then sent to the reader. It’s not just an automated repeat process – the author can either type the message and a signature or actually sign it.

Finally, this blog was originally going to be about a topic which came up jokingly while I was in London. I was talking about bringing unconnected things together to stimulate creativity and up came the expressions ‘existential slimming’ and ‘gastronomy for existentialists’. But commercial considerations have taken over so you’ve been spared that.

The poor old Sparrow has been taking a back seat for a while as I’ve concentrated on books I’ve published more recently. In its earliest incarnation it was my first ever novel. It’s had at least four different titles, I’ve rewritten it countless times and I still see bits I could improve or gags I missed. Way back, when I wrote the first version (in longhand on foolscap sheets of paper), I had just one aim, to make it funny. I’d laughed a lot at the earlier books of Tom Sharpe (Riotous Assembly, Indecent Exposure) although less at the Wilt series, and it was the extremes and absurdities of his comic style that suited my sense of humour. So it was a farce, a fairly blackish one but one with no pretensions beyond wanting to make people laugh.

As I came to rewrite its various versions since then, I saw different possibilities for getting more laughs out of current political and commercial stances, police procedures, and the whole spy genre. They all seemed to carry their own absurdities – some threatening, some just entertaining. I feel very strongly about many things in life, especially when our elected representatives treat us with such scorn and disdain and claim to speak on our behalf when they have no connection with the daily reality of normal people. I’d find it very difficult, for example, to write anything funny about Tony Blair’s decision to declare war on Iraq and his insulting ‘justification’ for ignoring the strongly felt opinions of millions of us ever since. And, to maintain a balance, I deplore and despise the intellectual and ideological emptiness of the present administration and the callous pigheadedness of George Osborne in dragging us ever deeper into the mire against the advice even of his own advisors.

Phew, glad to have got that off my chest. But back to the gentler, more soothing topic of Sparrow and its mayhem, violent wrestlers, sociopathic policeman, sexual peccadilloes, deaths and broken bones. Over the years, it’s had a habit of reminding me of its existence and demanding my attention and this happened in two ways a couple of weeks ago. First, there was a new Amazon review. Mostly, readers have been generous and said very nice things about it but, for the first time, this reviewer was bored by it. S/he was still generous enough to give it 3 stars but clearly for her/him, it didn’t live up to the hype. And that’s fine. There are friends who’ve read it and not been particularly amused by it. We don’t all have the same sense of humour. So don’t think I’m complaining about this review – the negative ones are as valuable as the positives. It’s just that they seem to have more power and linger longer in the mind. But then it was counterbalanced by the big surprise of an email from the review site Big Al’s Books and Pals, which gave it a great review  in April last year, saying it had been nominated as one of the seven on the short list for the Humor and Satire category of their Readers’ Choice Awards. And, with its first prize for Humor in the Forward National Literature Awards in 2011, that makes it officially my most successful novel. The rest have obviously been rubbish.

Anyway, as you’ll have suspected, this is all a build-up to a request. Voting is now open (until April 1st) and it would be wonderful if the Sparrow made that final leap and won the category. And for that, it needs votes. (At this point I’m kneeling.) I’d therefore be grateful, if you haven’t already done so, if you’d go over to the voting booth, sign on, select the Humor and Satire category and vote for the Sparrow. For some reason, that doesn’t work if you’re using Internet Explorer so Chrome or whatever is better. On behalf of the Sparrow, thanks in advance. I shall definitely keep you informed.

I’ve written before about my three sisters, Gill, Ginge and Les, their energy, imagination and the hours they devote to raising money for charity (and having a bloody good time in the process). They obviously got a marketing gene which bypassed me (and probably my two brothers as well). Anyway, the reason I’m bringing them up again is because their work on flogging Rory the Dragon and Princess Daisy is an example of what we all need to do to shift more of our books.

In case you’re a new visitor I should explain that the book’s proceeds are going to charity. It’s dedicated to my grand-niece, Daisy Warn, who only lived for 16 weeks. During that time, she and her family were given wonderful care, love and support by the Children’s Hospice South West and, since then, the extended family has been continuing to express its thanks by fund-raising for the CHSW through a group called The Friends of Daisy Chain. I blogged about it in more detail in February.

OK, I wrote the story (which meant sitting on my bum in a warm room having a good time and laughing at my own jokes), my nephew Joe illustrated it (and knowing Joe, he probably quite enjoyed himself in the process, too), then I put it all together. But since then, the sisters have taken over and (although, as I said, they too enjoy themselves), they’ve been working very hard and, it seems, being successful. So, without asking her permission and therefore risking being sued by her – which would divert the book’s profits from the charity to some lawyers – I thought I’d just copy a couple of Gill’s recent emails to show you what I mean. So here they are.

March 10th. On Saturday we had a table at a sale in a local church – not much good financially but good in a networking way. Ginger’s suggestion was that we all wore black and used the bowler hats they had for the Cabaret dance at my 60th. These were decorated with a string of daisies and looked really good. We dressed the stall with balloons and all CHSW banners etc.  We created quite a storm amongst the ladies who were manning the stalls (what’s that called – is it an oxymoron?) and about 30 people came up to us and said how much they liked the hats and how smart we looked etc.  We only raised about £37.50 which was rubbish but the Herald photographer came up and asked for a photo shoot – well about 10 photos – how many constitute a ‘shoot’?  We told her the story about the book and she took some more with us holding the books and was very interested. I said I’d send her a press release.

March 13th. Back from Tiverton where we met with about 80 people. Gave a small presentation and the fundraiser had made sure there was a book on every seat so they all had one to look at.  We gave them a handout with the story and the details of all the money going to them etc. It was really well received and the fundraiser for South Somerset & Devon was taking orders while we were there. Some of the women read the book and we could see them laughing. During the presentation I made I asked them their opinion and they said they thought it was brilliant, and it was great to see them walking out with bundles of the book under their arms.
The area manager of the retail side came over and asked us about putting the books in the shops and displaying them properly etc – so that was good.  Altogether a very positive day – it’s all looking good – we also have a table in the CHSW marquee  at both the Devon & Cornwall County Shows – another good place for networking since it is mostly businesses that have marquees there as it’s very expensive to hire one. We could split our time between selling the books and going around trying to drum up sponsorship.

The  book’s aimed at the age range 5-8. It’s £4.99 and if anyone wants a copy, please get in touch with Gill at
gillytom@blueyonder.co.uk

It’s wonderful to think that, thanks to all their hard work, the book’s going to make several hundred quid for the CHSW. Now all I need to do is con the sisters into doing the same thing for my other books where the profits will be ALL MINE.