The novelists of 1993 had it easy… How will today’s writers publish their work?

~ simonsylvester ~ 2 Comments

I’m always interested in articles about the industry. It’s obviously a time of great flux in publishing, and it’s good to assimilate as much information as possible.  Opportunities for conventional publication are becoming fewer, even as new modes are developed. None of it changes my urge to write, nor my hope that people will read and enjoy my work. Stories are stories.

The most amusing thing about this article is the thought that, in another decade, I’ll be 43, which makes me too old to be a ‘young’ novelist. That doesn’t trouble me too much. In ten years’ time, I’d be perfectly happy being a 43-year-old novelist.

LoveSexTravelMusik

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Readers and writers in Manchester should make the time to see this: Rodge Glass and Anneliese Mackintosh are great readers, and Freight are a brilliant publisher. Should be a smasher.

dancarpenter1985's avatarBad Language

Bad Language in collaboration with Freight Books are proud to present Rodge Glass who will be launching his collection of short stories, ‘LoveSexTravelMusik’ at the Bakerie Tasting Store in the heart of the Northern Quarter, on May 9th.

 

Rodge Glass is the author of the crticially acclaimed Manchester United focussed novel, ‘Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs’ which The Guardian called, “an intriguing look at football’s strange, quasi-religious hold over the men who contort their faces in anguish and ecstasy every Saturday afternoon.”

 

His latest collection examines the EasyJet generation, and has been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Traveller Magazine called it, “Beautiful, profound, sometimes heartbreaking, this literary triumph shows the levelling impact of low-cost travel, from the lads’ weekend in Eastern Europe that spirals out of control to the middle-aged woman considering local love options in Tunisia.”

 

He will launch…

View original post 358 more words

Brindley Hallam Dennis reads Turkey Cock

~ simonsylvester ~ 1 Comment

Check out this wicked, vicious little story from Brindley Hallam Dennis. It’s a great reminder that stories are for speaking and listening, as well as reading and writing. I’m keen to start committing more of my work to film; I have the equipment and the stories, but I seldom have the time.

On another note, this clip makes me want to track down more of BHD’s work. It’s a perfect short story – snappy, sharp and engrossing, with a perfect pay-off.

Kingfisher

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Image  Image

I used to go climbing several nights a week, but I haven’t the time any more. And when we lived in the old house, I cycled to work; now my wife drops me off at the college before she goes to paint. In short, I don’t do any exercise. I’m constantly zipping about at a thousand miles an hour, juggling my different jobs, but that’s hardly a substitute.

Walking is the only activity I can really make time for. Mon and I both love walking. We’re lucky enough to live in an amazing part of the planet, and our little corner of it has some excellent trails. We can walk from our wee cottage in Burneside to see friends in town – or strike out in any other direction to find open countryside.

I’m not a purist about the countryside. I like edgelands and places of threshold where the natural and the man-made have grown old together. Yesterday, we walked to Staveley in Kentmere and back. It’s a great walk for rusted farm machinery, gnarly stiles, fallen trees and tumbledown barns. There’s a troll bridge with missing slats, and a beech tree strangled by a noose of barbed wire. The tree’s bark has enveloped the wire completely, lapping over it like the slowest wooden wave. In one spot, a fence has been mended with an old iron bedhead. It’s lambing season – we passed new lambs, minutes old. I saw my first ever kingfisher.

Walking gives me more than physical exercise. It’s a source of constant, ever-changing inspiration. Walking around London fuelled my first short stories. My walks on Islay, Gigha and Kintyre fed into Riptide Heart and the fictional island of Bancree. My longstanding work-in-progress, Year of the Whale, is about walking – and the need to walk. Location is crucial to the way I write, and walking in real places fires my imagination. I try to create a geography – physical, atmospheric and emotional – that I believe in. When I get it right, my characters play out the story in that environment like a drop of water on a slope, finding the simplest route to ground.

Walking is good for the soul.

I’m calling a character in my next novel Kingfisher.

Iain Banks

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Image

I was saddened yesterday by the terrible news that Iain Banks, one of my favourite authors, is suffering with terminal cancer. I enjoy his sci-fi novels (written as Iain M. Banks), but his literary fiction in particular has been a huge influence on my reading and my writing.

Three books have stuck with me above all others: Banks’ debut novel The Wasp Factory was the first of his works that I read, and it completely blew me away. Isolated and domestic but universal and thrilling, I think it was probably the first work of contemporary literary fiction I really tackled, and it paved the way for the next decade of my reading. Short and nasty, The Wasp Factory is also incredibly sad. The images in the final pages are impossibly moving. I remember being astonished that the publishers juxtaposed negative reviews – and there were plenty – alongside positive reviews. It was a gigantic two fingers raised to the establishment. Who gets to decide what constitutes literature? It was a sword in the dirt, a statement of intent: HERE I AM.

As much as I love Whit, The Crow Road, Excession, Use of Weapons, Consider Phlebas or Transition, the other two novels which really stand out for me are Walking on Glass and The Bridge. Their intricate layers of narrative, meaning and genre opened my eyes to what literature was capable of. The Bridge maps out loneliness as well as any other novel I’ve read, while Walking on Glass simultaneously combines existential nothingness with predetermined destiny.

It’s sad to think that forthcoming novel The Quarry will also be his last. More than anything else, Banks is a fantastic read, and – like Roberto Bolano, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Denis Johnson, Sarah Waters or Jasper Fforde – I return to his books time and time again. There is nothing pompous or pretentious about his work, and like all great writers, he ultimately delivers great stories above all else. I’ve loaned his novels out to friends over the years, and I’m now missing many of my favourites; this sad news makes me want to track them down and read them again.

The Authors’ Post-War Guide

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

20130403-202330.jpg    20130403-202505.jpg

Here’s another of the books I’ve unearthed from charity shops. The ‘Authors’ Post-War Guide’ – published in 1947 – is packed full of handy hints for modern authors. Every page has a new gem. Refreshingly for a writing guide, Lawrence G. Green feels the first thing new authors must learn is “to become extremely suspicious and critical.”

Other nuggets include the useful facts that “Women like reading about jewellery”, and “Sharks have always treated me kindly”. I also like this passage, designed to help focus the mind when writing:

“Put the cat out. For this serious purpose the cat is merely a symbol. The cat may be your wife or child.”

…though it pales when compared to this advice:

“No liquor, no Benzedrine, no coffee. You can have a glass of water if you like. If you smoke, have lots of cigarettes.”

…which almost makes me want to start smoking. The “writing game” seems a lot simpler in 1947.

Books in boxes

~ simonsylvester ~ 1 Comment

IMG_0088       IMG_0090

IMG_0089       IMG_0091

For the last three years, Mon and I have been living with her parents. All of our things have been stored in boxes in the cellar, with the inevitable result that whenever we’ve needed a particular item – a plug adaptor, a passport, a DVD – we’ve had to rummage and excavate our possessions to find the missing thing. Some boxes were needed regularly, and these stayed on the surface. Others were out of sight and out of mind, and they sunk deeper into the mire, their contents forgotten.

We moved into our own house on Christmas Eve. Moving has been a slow process, and it’s only today that we brought across the last of our boxes. As we unpacked and sorted the contents, I was delighted to discover my research books. These are the weird volumes that have grabbed my interest in charity shops and jumble sales. I seldom know exactly why they spark my interest, but they’re always about something peculiar, and they trigger my imagination. After three years, it was a strange feeling, both energising and nostalgic, to unpack this box of forgotten books and browse again through a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration. There are studies of sumo wrestling, devils, tattoos, smuggling, bicycle mechanics, Vikings, saints, medicine, art, juggling and more…

Of the titles pictured here, Whale Nation inspired my long-running novella-in-progress, Year of the Whale, while David Pelham’s Kites (a classic of the kiting genre) and Stephen Turnbull’s Ninja are dripfeeding imagery and history into plans for my next novel. Finally, P.V. Glob’s The Bog People (1971) is research for another story to be written in the distant future, if I ever have the time to write it.

Part of me wishes I was called P.V. Glob.

Edgelands

~ simonsylvester ~ 4 Comments

Image

I’ve always been drawn to places and spaces that in some way evolve beyond their origins or conventions – places of threshold, places of change. The stunning photos in this link show factories, fairgrounds and entire towns left to ruin. Caught between wilderness and control, they collapse, combine and intertwine with nature, creating something entirely new. These photos reveal abandonment as a creative act. They show us a vision of the future – of the mortality of our species. 

When I was about 10 years old, my brother and I played in an abandoned, fallen-in building, choked with sycamores and wild garlic. It was close to our house, but I hated being there alone. I remember virtually nothing of my childhood, but the oppressive sense of presence that radiated from those old stones has stayed with me.

The less control we have on our buildings, the more control they take back for themselves.