Tag: publishing

To Do

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t been writing very much lately. I’ve been too busy with real life, scrapping my way through end-of-year marking for my film students and working on videos for Kendal College and Cumbria Wildlife Trust. I’ve still some way to go, and there’s plenty more to do – my Dad’s popping up to help me build a fence, and I need to build a log store. But hopefully the end is in sight. Most important, I should be getting Jane‘s notes for Riptide in the next few weeks, and then I need to work my way through that final draft.

For a bit of a change, I’ve been using the odd evening to (slowly) teach myself the basics of InDesign, trying to put together a booklet of my flash fiction. It’s no big deal – twenty-five stories between 50 and 500 words, provisionally entitled ‘Marrow’. I’ve also booked in my next two readings – first for the Spotlight open mic in Lancaster in July, and then as a support slot for Dreamfired in Brigsteer in October. And in the background, I’m reading and researching towards my next novel; quietly brewing on the story, blocking out the plot. I still have some narrative strands to tidy up, though I know where the book will finish emotionally.

IMG_0091

For the moment: research. I wrote about rediscovering P.V. Glob’s The Bog People a few months ago, and I’ve finally had a chance to actually read the thing. For a 1970s archaeological review – even one designed for jumblies – it’s surprisingly well-written. Some of the bog bodies have held astonishing secrets in their graves. One poor woman was staked down with crooks and buried alive. A man was stabbed through the heart, smashed on the head and strangled. It’s all great stuff for the novel, generating context and building ideas. By happy coincidence, one of the jobs I’m doing for Cumbria Wildlife Trust is on wetland restoration, so I’ve been spending some time ankle deep in peatland. I need some more books, and I’d like to take trips to fen country at some point.

Image

It’s a thrilling stage, all the researching and blocking and plotting, preparing the ground before the hard work starts. I learned a lot from writing Riptide, and I’m excited to start work on a new book. Just need to clear away the hundred other things on my To Do list, first.

It hasn’t been all work. Friends Steve and Clare took us to Chester Zoo yesterday. We went straight to the orangutans, and spent a gloriously peaceful 20 minutes with them before a dozen school trips caught us up. Dora especially loved the bat enclosure, a vast warehouse where the bats swoop and skitter in artificial night. This morning we’re off to Dentdale Music & Beer festival, too. I’m going to take my story dice and drink ale.

Swamp Thing indahouse

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Image

Friends Iona and Ali Shaw stayed with us this week. Ali and I studied English at Lancaster University, many moons ago, long before I started writing and when Ali was already laying the groundwork for his career. He’s a brilliant author, with novels The Girl With Glass Feet and The Man Who Rained winning awards and translations all over the place. I was privileged enough to read an early draft of Glass Feet, and Ali kindly took the time to read through my first draft of Riptide. His subsequent advice, notes and hour-long phonecalls were extremely helpful in shaping my third and final draft. Over the last few months, I’ve leaned heavily on Ali’s experience of being published, and his knowledge has helped me work out some of what I’m doing with the good people at Quercus Books.

Mon and I don’t get to see Ali and Iona very often, so it was fantastic to have a long overdue catch-up. We mostly nattered about babies, but we also discussed our current projects (his new book sounds AMAZING) and some wider publishing news. Ali recommended two things: firstly, that I try Scrivener. It’s a writing program dedicated towards managing large documents, with all kinds of bells and whistles for organising plots, characters, locations and notes. The various features sound extremely useful, and it’s available on a free 30-day trial, so I’ll definitely give it a go.

The second recommendation was for Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing. I was describing my own new work, which is set in a maze of bogs and marshes, and Ali (who reads more graphic novels than me), thought Swamp Thing might be good for inspiration and ideas; another book on my birthday wishlist, then. I enjoy graphic novels, and own several of the real classics (Maus, Watchmen, From Hell, Ghost World, etc.) but seldom know where to begin with trying something new. Good stuff.

Quercus Books

~ simonsylvester ~ 4 Comments

Now then, people: I’m pleased to be writing with some extremely good news. After weeks of turmoil and torment, I am utterly delighted to announce that my first novel will be published by Quercus Books in 2014. The last month has been something of a rollercoaster, to say the least, but I’m just blown away to have landed Riptide with such an amazing publisher. It’s still sinking in, but I’m starting to believe it.

My editor, Jane Wood, is really enthusiastic about the novel, and I can’t wait to work with her on the manuscript. I’m just home from meeting with Jane and Sue, my brilliant agent with the bodacious Conville & Walsh team. It was an incredibly surreal experience to talk about release dates, discuss options for the cover art and explore where I’d like to go with my next few novels. I have three solid ideas plotted out and ready for writing; I know what I want to do with the stories, but it was very odd to expose them to publishing professionals for the first time, as I hadn’t had to vocalise or pitch them before.

So what happens next? For now, it’s business as usual: I’m working on a number of films for Cumbria Wildlife Trust, and college is about to go ballistic with end of term projects and paperwork. I’ll have the summer holidays to get my teeth stuck into another draft of Riptide, then we’ll be looking at proofs in Autumn, and publication in Spring 2014. Around all that, I’m keen to get my head down and start making progress on my second novel. The bogs and marshes idea I mentioned last month is shouting louder and louder – I think I’m going to work on that one next. It’s great to have the ideas lined up – it’ll take me years to complete them all – but now I need to carve out some defined, scheduled writing time. I don’t know where that time is going to come from, but I’ll find it. The further I take my writing, the further I want it to go.

I’ve worked hard to reach these early stages, and I feel extremely humble to have had that work embraced by such amazing people. It makes me want to strive even harder with my stories. I wouldn’t have come this far without the support from Sue, from writer friends Ali Shaw, Iain Maloney and Steven John Malcolm, and most of all from my wonderful wife Monica – and my daughter Dora, in her own way – because this is all for her. I’m fortunate and grateful to have such incredible people in my life.

It’s a sunny day in the Lake District, and I’m going to have a wee celebration – time to take the family for some cider in the park…

Beginnings

~ simonsylvester ~ 2 Comments

When Monica was pregnant, we didn’t tell anyone the baby’s name. We had a funny idea that telling someone else might jinx it, so Dora’s name remained a secret until the moment she was born.

It sounds daft, but I feel the same way about the title of my new novel. I know what it’s going to be called, but I’m not ready to talk about it just yet. I have this strange sense that I don’t want people to know. So, for the moment, I’ll use another name. This was actually the first title I thought of, but decided was a bit of a mouthful; it’ll do for now. When I talk about the new novel, I’ll call it ‘We Are Always Reaching Out For Heaven’.

I mention this because I started writing today. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, because I’ve been stewing on the idea for months, but this morning I divided the story into chapters and blocked out the scenes, then copied the whole plan into a new document. Each of the chapters has a summary of the action, ready to go, so I can work on whichever part of the story shouts the loudest without losing sight of the whole. This method worked nicely for me with Riptide Heart, as I seldom write in chronological order (I like to write my ending early on – it gives me a destination to work towards).

Then I simply started writing. The first line was quick, and the rest of the paragraph took me an hour, trying sentences, rephrasing them, deleting them, rewriting them…. and it evolved, slowly, feeling out the words, building a story. It’ll take a while to settle on a voice and a vocabulary that works for this story – and to keep it distinct from Riptide Heart, which is still fresh in my mind after such intense redrafts.

So there it is – the first 500 words of my new novel, down on paper. It’s an odd sensation to be in a triple figure word count after dealing with a redraft of 105,000 words, but I’m quietly excited about it. And I need something to keep my mind off Riptide Heart while agent Sue starts the nerve-shredding process of submitting the manuscript to publishers.

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.