Grogbox

Lunchtime was a quick spin out of my Clapton home and around the River Lee … checking in with these London turtles along the way.

I’ve often found solace in the animal world. In Scotland, as I set down my pen on finishing a novel, I heard a noise on the wooden patio outside and looked up to find a pine marten standing erect, looking back at me through the french window.
Deer made similar appearances in Scotland as I finished work. In France, it has been an eagle over the mountains. Or last time I finished a book there I looked out from my upstairs window and a grey heron (a bird I which I find especial totemic value) flew past at eye level, tracing the passage of the river below, and turned a tight circle right in front of me.
I’m writing a vampire novel at the moment. (I mentioned this to Deborah Rogers, my former agent, when she trotted across at the Booker Prize event the other night and cheerily asked what I was doing now. She winced.) Monday was the day for travelling back from our mountain refuge in the Pyrenees. I had tucked myself away there for a week, and this is the book that asked to be moved forward. Getting up before dawn, the narrative saw my vampire in a somewhat puzzled situation, and then suddenly after a page or two he broke through. He knew what to do. I wrote the breakthrough sentence down. And then looked up at the sudden flashing movement of a bat flashing black wings right outside the window and then shooting upwards.
I’ve not seen a pine marten before or since that time. I’ve not known any other heron fly at eye level, nor turn a tight circle. And no bat has ever appeared at my window. These moments don’t predict anything, even though I once naively thought they presaged commercial success, but I take them as celebrations of nature. They give confirmation for me that the writing has gone deep, and touched into that layer of life where all things are connected. Writing’s a lonely business and the publishing world seldom pays it due regard. These instances from the animal world startle and warm me. They say, in a way that gives me comfort, that the writing’s worthwhile. In some elemental sense I’m on track.

A separate avenue leads down through London’s Hyde Park to the Orangerie at Kensington Palace, the venue for yesterday’s party celebrating the Man Booker Prize shortlist.
I held back from grabbing the mike and singing ‘It Should have been Me!” – too timid to make the cheap shot for celebrity that might well make a difference in entering the literary stratosphere. Six writers were honoured instead of me (one among 138 books entered), and three cheers for them all. The whole shebang is a phenomenal show, hundreds of the select (very few writers among tyhem) drinking champagne and talking book business.
Part of the big news is that four of the six were published by independents. It’s true, independents do get a shout at this prize, but the likes of Canongate, Granta and Atlantic are hardly small fry. Do they really have more creative independence than the directors of imprint like Fourth Estate, Serpent’s Tale, Vintage and the like?
Maybe they do. Corporate bodies have a more ruthless bottom line. I tried out with one of the sortlisted editors the story I get from agents, that this is a lousy time for literary fiction and nobody wants it. It surprised him, he’s still buoyant and buying. For him, it depends whether those at the top of the house came up through the ranks from being editors or whether their foundations wee more in the business side of things.
Still, the publishing director of one of the big companies told how she spoke recently to students of creative writing, looking for ways that they might break into the publishing bigtime, and confessed to coming up forlorn. There is no obvious way, she realized. So much very good work gets returned all the time.
People are guessing the Booker winner, recognizing how little they know. Will the book about gang culture gain imeptus in the wake of the London riots? Will the Guardian readers’ sUpport promote Carol Birch’s novel? Will Julian Barnes’ be given it as a lifetime achievement award?
Some folk felt the list lacked a real classic – though they were intrigued at my comparison between Samuel Beckett and Patrick de Witt’s THE SISTERS BROTHERS.
And off I trotted down the Avenue into the storm clouds, glad to have been where books are rendered glamorous for a while.

At last … I’ve pulled my act together, followed the Smashwords styleguide, and have one of my backlist titles out in a newly edited digital form. I started with ON SACRED MOUNTAINS because for me it’s a shake the world book, and ideal for the ‘long tail’ of epublishing – it’s pretty esoteric (gay / spiritual / talking mountains, all that sort of thing) but there’s an audience out there for it somewhere. Maybe you?
The Smashwords style guide was helpful. An earlier attempt I made screwed the typography up awfully. I’ve posted it separately to Amazon.
Last Sunday, somewhat amazingly, we were at Knowth, an ancient megalithic site an hour north of Dublin. It’s the most powerful space I have been in since my sacred mountains journey rounded itself off. Today was a simpler but pleasant trip to Epping Forest, also surprisingly moving in its way. Few birds bar three jays, the usual crows, and some sparrows in puddles by the parked car … they do seem to have died out in northern Europe for we saw few in all of Ireland’s wild spaces …. but the forest presented a good stretch of untrammelled nature, plenty of trees with history, and floral meadows.
Tomorrow we head back to France and our retreat house in the Pyrenees, where there are still birds and butterflies, to write and walk for a week. Setting our clocks by nature before the onslaught of the coming year.

That, I was suspect, was my last holiday without an ebook reader – I took a box of books to Ireland and kept replenishing it en route, but that was by car.
The best read of the bunch was Patrick de Witt’s THE SISTERS BROTHERS. It’s on the Booker Longlist, and though I wanted to be on that too I don’t begrudge it. We’re in mid 19th Century western territory, two hired killers the principle characters, but despite the gore it’s oddly warm in tone. The Audio book for the vacation was Samuel Beckett’s MALONE DIES. ‘How many did I kill?’ Malone ponders, in his own words, and reckons on four, all stramgers, before recalling a fifth whose throat he slit with a knife. De Witt in this book kept sounding like Beckett, pleasing ruminations out of the extremes about the oddities and quirks of life. Odds of 14-1 to win the Booker … though if books are like horses the ones in this are not ones to bet on. The voice of the book captured me immediately – and it turns out to be an eco parable as well. Terrific.

I’m back from the hills of France and a week just waking up the writer in myself again. Repairing the house, taking walks, sifting through ideas, and writing. I shifted several projects forward (or sideways or wherever) – and got down a first draft of the new opening chapter to my music and the Holocaust book Play Bach. The idea came for that from a migraine fuelled night banging my head against a pillow when I was in France last Easter. The draft was functional. In redrafting it, it’s a relief to discover the real writer in myself coming back to the fore. That first draft is proving itself to be a template only. I have my characters, settings, conversations and action in place and now it’s a question of actually writing – a sidelong look at that first draft and then going and finding new language. It seems to be locked to its compass point now. Sitting on the Hull train yesterday I was cheerfully writing on.