Category: Sugar And Snails

Retired teachers: Miss Garnet’s Angel & Olive Kitteridge

16/1/2021

I’m sharing my reflections on two novels, published a few years ago about retired schoolteachers who are forced to reappraise aspects of their pasts. Julia Garnet, a former history teacher in South London, has her epiphany in Venice; former maths teacher, Olive Kitteridge, stays in her home town in Maine. Both women have hidden their vulnerabilities beneath a steely shell. Both demonstrate it’s never too late to learn.

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My reading and writing goals for 2021

11/1/2021

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Did you ever get the feeling 2021 might not happen? We’d somehow be stuck in a 2020 Groundhog Day? Or were you the opposite, confident a new diary would create this worn-out world anew? Well, here we are, with some things as bad as ever – or worse: in the UK, with the new variant, hospital admissions are higher than during the first lockdown – but with the promise of life edging towards normal sometime this year.

Meanwhile, we plod on, making the best of what freedom we have. For those of us who live primarily in our heads, the pandemic is no excuse to shirk. So, on the reasonable assumption I’ll survive to implement them, here are my goals and plans for the coming year.

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Heard on the radio (and on YouTube) #flashfiction and singing

12/9/2020

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Do you listen to the radio? I was weaned on “Listen with Mother” at home on weekday mornings and progressed to “Music and Movement” a weekly treat at infant school. Although we did have television, there was more variety on the radio, as I recall. Nowadays, the only time I tune in is in the car and, since the pandemic, I’m in the car less often. It’s a pity, because I’ve discovered some fabulous music through the radio and, despite the competition from podcasts and the like, there are still some excellent spoken word and magazine programmes on BBC Radio Four. But even in during the old normal, my radio regime was flawed, as I couldn’t always dovetail my journeys with the broadcasts that interest me. I find it frustrating that, stuck in queueing traffic after a choir rehearsal, it’s Hobson’s choice between stabbing rap (no thank you), up-your-arse philosophising and choral Evensong (love the music, hate the prayers).

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

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Caterpillars, Butterflies, Sugar and Snails

20/7/2020

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Whoever designed[1] butterflies, must’ve been having a laugh. No mere shapeshifters, the creepy crawlers must dissolve completely for their winged alter egos to emerge. No wonder the butterfly is considered a metaphor for transformation. Where else does nature deliver such a dramatic change?

Thanks to our gorgeous garden meadows, I can observe this metamorphosis almost at my back door. And it strikes me that it’s an oversimplification to view this as a transition from ugly to beautiful: some of the caterpillars are rather attractive too. Take, for example the brown-and-yellow striped creature that feeds on ragwort, or the bright[2]-eyed elephant hawk moth caterpillar (pictured) that graced our willow herb last year.

[1] Don't mistake me for a Creationist, I mean this metaphorically!
[2] Obviously these aren't its real eyes.

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What’s your favourite novel about mental health?

8/10/2019

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Having spent the bulk of my wage-earning life in mental health care, it’s not surprising that the theme crops up in my writing. But, as a reader, my professional experience can make me more picky. For World Mental Health Day this week, I’m asking for your favourite novels about mental health, sharing some of my own reading recommendations and illustrating how I’ve drawn on the theme in my fiction. Continue reading also for news of how to be in with the chance of winning a signed copy of my next novel, which is set in a psychiatric hospital in the process of closing down.

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Celebrating another book birthday: Sugar and Snails turns four

23/7/2019

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One advantage of getting a new car on the day I published my first novel, is that I’ll always remember when it’s due its MOT. And taking the car for its MOT means I easily remember my book birthday. So what’s happening as my baby turns four? Read on for an interview with one of the minor characters thanks to one of Craig Boyack’s alter egos and an update on revamping the blurb.

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Every picture paints a story

1/7/2019

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Although I’m generally more articulate in words than visuals, sometimes the balance swings the other way. Still playing catch-up a busy week and weekend, and with a few things to share before I can fully embrace a new week and new month, I’ve gone for an image-heavy post today. First up, is the gorgeous cover of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, about a woman who has kept her past identity secret for thirty years, which is battling with nine others on cover wars. If you can spare a moment, please follow the link and vote for the one you prefer.

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The trouble with writing book blurbs: can’t see the wood for the trees?

20/5/2019

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Many authors struggle with the task of summarising a book-length project, whether it’s the one-page synopsis we need for submissions, the 10-second elevator pitch ready for the dreaded what’s-it-about question or the blurb to entice browsers at bookstores or online. How do you condense the twists and turns of a 300-page novel into such a small space? How do you tease out the key elements when you’ve lived with those characters for years? Sometimes, it’s impossible to see the wood for the trees.

Another pair of eyes can provide the necessary distance; likewise the passage of time. Almost four years on from the publication of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, I’ve agreed with my publisher the blurb we worked so hard to perfect could be sharper. To get it right, we need your help.

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Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction? #amwriting

13/5/2019

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Much as I despair of living in a country where the birth of a baby is headline news – ditto his naming the following day – I do try to bear in mind that the extended family I involuntarily support via my taxes is made up of human beings, and therefore worthy of my respect. I sincerely hope I’m incapable of channeling my rage at inequality and unearned privilege into a bizarre racist tweet, as a BBC DJ did recently. How could he not know, as he has claimed, that an image of the latest royal baby as an ape would cause offence? But, in reflecting the world as I see it in my fiction, with darkness as well as light, I do risk inadvertently offending my readership, especially in portraying the isms from which, in my other identities, I’m at pains to distance myself.

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Do you fall asleep reading?

28/4/2019

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A lot of people take a book to bed, confident a few pages of text will help them nod off. That’s not me. As a reviewer, I take my reading far too seriously. Yet, settling down after dinner for two to three hours immersed in a book, I often wonder how long it will take for the words to blur, or for that jolt into wakefulness that signals the end of a micro-sleep. Why oh why?

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The Enigma of Gender

23/4/2019

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Women love shoes and shopping, or so the stereotype goes, but since I prefer tramping the moors in my walking boots, I can’t be one of those. But, given that I’m not so keen on getting drunk while watching football, I can’t be a man. That’s the problem with binary categories, they don’t allow for “a bit of both”. They reduce the world to black or white, no room for shades of grey.

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Taking our characters to work

10/9/2018

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If there is one area where struggling-to-be-noticed writers have the advantage over those who’ve been published since they were barely out of school, it’s our inside knowledge of the world of work. Coming to writing later in life, or merely being part of the majority unable to support themselves through writing, we have the experience to bring our characters’ jobs alive. But there can still be challenges in taking our characters to work.

For example, while setting your novel in your current workplace obviates the need for a research trip, you might have to smooth some colleagues’ ruffled feathers once the book is out in the world. From another angle, if you’ve gained your work experience in settings crowded with colleagues, you face the challenge of rendering it authentically without overwhelming the reader with an overabundance of characters.

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The toddler in my laptop

3/8/2018

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Imagine a virus has attacked your vocal chords, when your livelihood – not to mention your sanity – depends on clear communication. You can create sounds, but they are incomprehensible to others – a jumbled babble. Then, one day, as you jabber in frustration while preparing your children’s tea, your toddler’s voice rings out, perfectly articulating what you were trying to say.

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Shiny new novel versus shiny new car: no contest!

23/7/2018

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Three years ago today, we got a new car, all shiny and factory fresh. My husband went along to collect it without me as I had far more exciting things to do. It was publication day for my debut novel and I was basking in the early reviews and congratulatory tweets.

My husband was a little embarrassed to arrive at the dealership to be greeted with a large sign welcoming us both. And although you can’t giftwrap a car, they’d done the next best thing and perched a huge bow on the roof. I think the sales staff were disappointed when he declined their offer to take his photograph to commemorate the occasion.

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Come into my cave! #amwriting

24/6/2018

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As Britain hurtles towards the cliff edge of Brexit, and the President of the United States pays compliments to a dastardly dictator while referring to migrants as animals, it’s as if we’ve learned nothing from the run up to the Second World War. If politics were fiction – if only! – we’d be approaching the crisis point known as the cave.

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Unravelling the mystery of mystery #amwriting

24/4/2018

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Discovering a new review can make an author’s day. If that review emphasises the positives in your published work, even better. If the book has extended the review’s knowledge of the world, that’s a bonus. Then, if the reviewer has analysed the book from the perspective of developing their own writing – and not in identifying the pitfalls to avoid – it’s extra special. So excuse me for revelling in Marsha Ingrao’s review of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails. Her focus on the way I’ve managed mystery in my novel has prompted me to retrieve some of my prepublication thoughts on the matter that have languished on my phone for nearly three years. (With so many articles and blog posts already published, I’m surprised there’s anything still unsaid.) This post is an attempt to integrate those early reflections with what I’ve learned from reader feedback and reviews that might be of use to other writers building mystery into a novel that sits outside the mystery genre.

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Tale of a Tooth by Allie Rogers, plus a forest flash, or two

21/4/2018

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Four-year-old Danny lives with his Meemaw in a cramped rented flat. Like many little boys, he’s obsessed with dinosaurs and poo, loving the first and fearing the second, although perhaps not as much as he fears Karen, the new woman in his mother’s life. Is this down to Karen’s clumsiness around young children, or straightforward jealousy in a child accustomed to having his mother all to himself? Or does Danny intuit right from the start that Karen is bad news?

Danny is a highly intelligent and perceptive child, sensitive to the pressures his mother faces while raging when he doesn’t get his way. As the novel’s narrator, he’s extremely sympathetic and endearing, leaving the reader in safe hands. Despite his child-appropriate fixations, he shows the harshness of the benefits system and the way a disturbed personality can cause chaos in other lives. And how could I not love a story with more toilet scenes than the six novels I featured for World Toilet Day last year put together?

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What’s in a name?

24/3/2018

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Despite some concerns about how I prioritise my time, I recently allocated several hours to a task that is either brilliantly forward thinking or the biggest waste of time since ironing underwear (not guilty: I struggle even to assemble the ironing board). In the process of editing the short stories in my forthcoming collection, Becoming Someone, I altered the names of a few characters to avoid duplication. So far, so sensible. But I couldn’t leave it at that. I also trawled through my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, my second novel, Underneath, and my current WIP, with the aim of abolishing overlaps across my published work. Is this evidence of a professional approach to my writing or an overly obsessive and perfectionist personality?

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5 points to consider when commissioning a professional critique

11/12/2017

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Although I have suggested that the creative writing industry exists as much for the tutors’ benefit as the students’ (as is often the case with helping relationships), I’m not against writing courses, mentoring and professional critiques. I’ve drawn on all three in my own journey to becoming a published novelist, and have a new piece on The Literary Consultancy website about how separate critical readings from members of their panel of experienced writers and editors helped shape my recently published second novel, Underneath. But these appraisals don’t come cheap. If you’re thinking of commissioning one, here are a few questions to ask yourself first.

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Does a ‘first draft’ video reflect badly on my published fiction?

27/10/2017

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Since undertaking my desk time audit earlier this summer, I’m hyper-conscious of time spent away from fiction. It’s especially pertinent right now as I’m on a roll with yet another draft of my currently nameless WIP, about a brother and sister separated for fifty years. But with an event to prepare for recently, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some videos about my novels. Was it?

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No feelings? #amwriting #mentalhealth #Flash4Storms

9/10/2017

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One day last summer, I had an errand to do ten minutes’ drive or half an hour’s walk away from home. Even though the route, along a fairly busy road, isn’t particularly pleasant, I prefer to walk, both for the exercise and to feed my writing. So I grabbed my raincoat (it was that kind of summer) and laced up my boots. On the way back, the sun came out at the moment I levelled with a track I’d never previously taken. It was time to investigate.

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How to have a book launch party

11/8/2017

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While babies might have naming parties, couples wedding parties, a book launch party can be both celebration of a significant milestone and a marketing opportunity. I might be only on my second novel, but I have a fat party-to-publication ratio of 3:2. So, still buzzing from my latest, I hope these pointers based on my experience of hosting a launch party might be of use to others who have yet to foist one on your friends.

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The Unconscious, Dreams and Hallucinations in Fiction

26/6/2017

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Writers are rightly interested in the unconscious as both a source of creativity and a means of revealing our characters’ unacknowledged anxieties and desires. Since Freud considered dreams the royal road to the unconscious, perhaps we should also be curious about dreams. I’m also interested in what happens when the boundary between dreams and reality breaks down, as in hallucinations and delusions, and the thoughts that arise in a hypnagogic state. How do we use these in our fiction? How do we avoid getting it wrong?

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Four Fictional Absent Fathers

17/6/2017

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In a companion essay to her novella, Her Father’s Daughter, author Marie Sizun asks:

What is a father? That’s the real question. A father – even if he’s imperfect or absent – is a mythical, irreplaceable ﬁgure, especially for a girl. If he’s not there during her childhood, she’s likely to spend a long time drifting in vain in search of him.

Having deprived the male narrator of my second novel, Underneath, of a father, I would argue that the gap is equally damaging for a boy, as outlined in my recent guest post The impact of the absent father in Underneath.

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Games in the schoolyard: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

11/6/2017

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Dee is excited when she spots the new boy in the playground. The son of a Ghanaian diplomat, Osei Kokote is the only black child in the school. When their class teacher entrusts her to show him around, their friendship develops an intensity that takes everyone by surprise. But bully boy Ian can’t let that happen. He rules the playground. He knows how to split the couple apart.