Category: Underneath

6 positive social changes in my lifetime: trans visibility; deinstitutionalisation; reproductive rights and more

23/2/2023

January marked ten years since I started this blog and last October I published my 1000th post. Whether or not that’s a good thing, I’m minded to celebrate. How about a retrospective?

I achieved my dream of becoming a novelist almost 8 years ago, but I want this post to go beyond my bookshelves. Yet, when I look at the world outside, with the climate crisis and increasing inequalities, the view is bleak.

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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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My locked-up novel’s #lockdown #bookbirthday … and virtual choral singing

25/5/2020

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The writer’s life is riddled with disappointment, so we need to celebrate the successes when we can. When I’ve remembered – which I haven’t always – I’ve marked the publication-day anniversary for my books. For my second novel’s third birthday this month, I had in mind to write something on the theme She never intended to write a thriller, echoing the opening line of the blurb: He never intended to be a jailer, but the universe knew better. (As it did on this novel’s first anniversary – I don’t know what happened to the second – when I was so moved by the warrior women of Ireland coming home to vote for reproductive rights, I threw the plan away and wrote about the importance of normalising abortion in fiction.) This year, I’m wondering about the parallels between a fictional character who seeks to resolve a relationship crisis by keeping a woman captive in a cellar, and our current experiences of lockdown.

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Sleep, insomnia and mental health in contemporary fiction

3/5/2020

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Early this year, I was prescribed a course of antibiotics. While I’m grateful to live in a time and place where such things are available, this medication did not like me. Not only did they leave a nasty taste in my mouth, they disturbed my sleep to the extent of fleetingly fragmenting my mind in a manner akin to psychosis. So I don’t need convincing of the importance of getting sufficient sleep to our psychological (and physical) well-being; but we can also get too hung up on sleep such that the associated anxiety can be almost as damaging as not sleeping. I drafted this post back in February when I saw that sleep was the theme of this year’s mental health awareness week; although that's now changed to kindness, with many suffering insomnia in lockdown, this post on sleep in my own reading and writing still seems worth sharing.

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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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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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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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Characters in conversation: Steve from Underneath meets Lisa Burton

12/4/2019

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I was rambling around the blogosphere in search of opportunities to promote my short story collection, Becoming Someone, when I came across Lisa Burton Radio. I must admit I didn’t immediately grasp what it was about, but when I did – Wow! Lisa is a robot created by Craig Boyack with a Thursday slot on his blog. Basically, she’s a fictional character interviewing other fictional characters on a fictional radio call-in show translated to text. Once I figured that out, I didn’t hesitate to ask if one of my characters could join in.

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Families in crisis: The Break & Ferocity

21/12/2018

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Two novels about the antecedents and consequences within the family when one of their female members is severely injured, both drawing on multiple perspectives to tell the story. In the first, set in Canada, the women rally around when a teenage girl is assaulted; in the second, set in southern Italy, and focusing primarily on the viewpoints of the men, the violent death of a daughter/sister/wife threatens to lift the lid on a web of corruption.

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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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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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On Underneath’s first birthday, I’m confessing a guilty secret underneath

25/5/2018

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I have a guilty secret pertaining to abortion. Not that I’ve had a termination myself; I have a far worse confession to make. In those long-ago days when we paraded our objections on the streets instead of Twitter, my first ever protest march was against abortion. In my defence, I was a brainwashed Catholic teenager and I’ve been doing whatever I can to atone for that sin ever since.

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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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8 fictional Christmases #amreading

17/12/2017

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Although I’m not enamoured by the prospect of Christmas in real life, I do appreciate it makes fine fictional fodder. With a fixed date recognised across the world, it’s better for marking time than Easter. With raised expectations and family get-togethers, the season also provides the perfect backdrop for the conflict that fires a story. My second novel, Underneath, dedicates around twenty pages to Christmas and its buildup: from a new couple’s negotiations over where to spend it through a flashback to boy being painfully disabused of the myth of Santa to a retreat from the outside world with a love nest in the cellar that subsequently becomes a prison. You can read an extract later in this post, but let’s unwrap some other fictional Christmases.

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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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Five Fictional Depressed Mothers

8/11/2017

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As illustrated in my posts, The Child in the Clothes of the Criminal and The mother and sisters in Underneath, the character of Steve, the narrator of my second novel, has been shaped by his experiences as a child with a depressed mother. This post highlights how the issue is addressed in my own and in other novels I’ve recently reviewed.

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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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The Visitors by Catherine Burns #blogtour #giveaway

15/10/2017

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Middle-aged siblings, Marion and John Zetland, rattle around the crumbling Georgian townhouse that has been their home since childhood. Timid and childlike, Marion has never had a job, and her more educated brother hasn’t worked since being dismissed from his teaching post at a boarding school twenty years before. She spends her time with her large collection of cuddly toys, dozing in front of the TV and heating the tinned food on which they subsist. John occupies himself with making model aeroplanes and attending to the visitors in the cellar, an unpleasant part of life which Marion does her best to ignore. Who is she to judge whether it’s right or not? John has always known better than her and, as the reader discovers as the story unfolds, her parents, teachers and schoolmates were never any help in teaching her how to be a person.

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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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Is Misogyny The Natural Way of Things? #bookreview

14/6/2017

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It was why they were here, she understood now. For the hatred of what came out of you, what you contained. What you are capable of. She understood because she shared it, this dull fear and hatred of her body. It had bloomed inside her all her life, purged but really growing, unstoppable, every month: this dark weed on the understanding that she was meat, was born to make meat.

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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.

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Going away to come home again

5/6/2017

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One of the themes of my second novel, Underneath, is the complex relationship between homecoming and travel, a topic explored in my recent guest post, The passion for travel and the concept of home. Although, as reflected in a recent post on my two accidental visits to Bangladesh, I’m nostalgic for my youthful travelling, these days I much prefer to stay at home and do my travelling in my head.

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