Summer is a rubbish time for writing. Or is it just me?
Too many distractions. If the sun is out, the beach is only a hop, skip and jump away and then I’m no good at staying chained to my desk, or even to a pen and paper for that matter. Which is why I’ve been so lax about posting notes here. Sorry about that.
As the sun grows hotter, I become more cunning at displacement activity. I stare blankly out of my study window seeking inspiration and suddenly spot a begonia or rose that absolutely must be dead-headed right there and then, on pain of death. But once I’m out there, that’s it. I’m done for. It’s only a short step to the woods. To the badger set. To the tennis court. To the ice-cream seller on the beach. (My special favourite: honeycomb dripping with Devon clotted cream. Mmmm.)
But today I have answered an email magazine interview, hunted out the pages on Stalin’s Five Year Plan from my mile-high pile of notes, and written a first personality sketch of one of my new characters. (When you start putting details of a character down on the page, instead of just chatting to them in your head, they suddenly acquire a stubborn life and will of their own which can be quite disconcerting.) This burst of activity is because I’m bunking off tomorrow.
Tomorrow provides me with the perfect guilt-free displacement activity. I can skive off for the whole day without a single twinge of conscience because I’m going up to London by train to meet with my lovely LittleBrown editor, Joanne. But there are Good Things and Bad Things concerning this:
Good Things:-
a) Three travel-hours each way of uninterrupted reading for pleasure.
b) A yummy lunch.
c) Wine.
d) Joanne’s delightful company.
e) Meeting others from LittleBrown for the first time who deal with PR, media etc (I envisage them all scarily Armani suited and with sharp haircuts).
f) Hearing lovely plans for The Russian Concubine launch in the UK – on 1st November - in case you haven’t heard.
g) Talking cover-design, blurb etc for my next book.
h) More wine.
Bad Things:-
a) Have you seen the cost of rail tickets to London???
b) Suffocating on the Underground in blistering summer heat. Nooooooo!
c) No ‘real work’ done.
d) Traipsing up and down St Martin’s Lane hunting for the model-car shop in the hope of getting my mitts on the Schuco my husband craves.
So just to make the day feel more like ‘real work’, I’m planning on a visit to the British Library to get in a couple of hours research. At least it’ll be cool in there. I’ll post the results!
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Research and imagination
Okay, back to how. How I could write a book about China without going there.
Actually I am surprised that people seem to find it so extraordinary. The answer is, of course, imagination and solid research. The world I was writing about no longer exists in China, the controlling web of International Settlements is gone, though of course the cities like Shanghai (once an International Settlement) are still there but they have changed dramatically from the 1928 versions of themselves.
I was extremely fortunate that a whole stream of books has come out of China in recent years, following Jung Chang’s wonderful Wild Swans, that gave me an intimate insight into the detail of domestic life in China, both pre and post communism. These helped enormously. I adored doing the research and found that the magic of that extraordinary vast country flowed like Yangtze floodwater under my skin. Honestly, it was easy to fall in love with the place and its people.
But then I’m a sucker for research. I admit it. I could go on burrowing in books forever and have to kick myself to say enough is enough, it’s time to get down to writing the book! It was the same with my next book – set in 1933 Russia. But more of that later.
Actually I am surprised that people seem to find it so extraordinary. The answer is, of course, imagination and solid research. The world I was writing about no longer exists in China, the controlling web of International Settlements is gone, though of course the cities like Shanghai (once an International Settlement) are still there but they have changed dramatically from the 1928 versions of themselves.
I was extremely fortunate that a whole stream of books has come out of China in recent years, following Jung Chang’s wonderful Wild Swans, that gave me an intimate insight into the detail of domestic life in China, both pre and post communism. These helped enormously. I adored doing the research and found that the magic of that extraordinary vast country flowed like Yangtze floodwater under my skin. Honestly, it was easy to fall in love with the place and its people.
But then I’m a sucker for research. I admit it. I could go on burrowing in books forever and have to kick myself to say enough is enough, it’s time to get down to writing the book! It was the same with my next book – set in 1933 Russia. But more of that later.
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Launch day!
Today is the Big Day. The Russian Concubine is published in the USA.
I’m holding my breath!
I’m holding my breath!
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
U.S. Tour
Back home again. The book-tour of America was an amazing experience – despite the lack of sleep. I’ve at last stopped falling into a doze while my family are still talking to me.
As I zoomed from city to city (just so you know, it was London to San Francisco to Seattle to Los Angeles to Washington to Boston) I met a great bunch of people, mainly booksellers, and their wonderful warmth and enthusiasm for The Russian Concubine was so exciting, I could have travelled round the States without the aeroplanes, I was flying so high.
Check out my website’s American Tour 2007 if you want the details, but here I want to share a few impressions that stuck in my mind.
1) Booksellers in Los Angeles have to shake the sand out of their books before handing them over to customers, if their stores are near the beach. Isn’t that a great image?
2) In Seattle, the Pike Place Market. A crazy warren of stalls that sells everything (I bought two cute Classic Car models for my husband - to soothe my guilt-pangs at abandoning him for a week back in England), And its piece de resistance – the ritual of throwing the salmon. Don’t ask! Suffice to say I saw a whole (dead) salmon flying through the air as if it had grown wings.
3) Nodding Donkeys. Between LA airport and the city itself the landscape is covered in hundreds of these small oil pumps (called ‘Nodding Donkeys’) that look like it’s been colonised by the wobbly-headed plastic dogs you see on the rear shelf of a car. That is so weird.
4) Cosmo cocktails in Washington. Wicked.
5) Alaska Airways. Who is that guy whose face beams out from each plane’s tail?
6) A conversation with one of the drivers of the whisper-quiet, black-glass Town Cars that chauffeured me so courteously around the cities. The driver fancied himself as a bit of a philosopher, full of bright sayings, and when he learned I was on a book-tour for my publisher, Penguin-Berkley, he cracked a grin at me in the rear-view mirror.
Driver: So you’re enjoying the trip because you’re on opium.
Me (stunned): Pardon? Did you say ‘on opium’?
Driver: I did.
Me: Uh? (Were my eyes rolling in their sockets?)
Driver: Got you thinking, haven’t I? That’s what authors are
meant to do, think.
Me (brain addled): I give up. Why am I on opium?
Driver: (speaking slowly, as to a particularly dumb child)
O..P..M. You’re enjoying the trip because you’re on
O..P..M. That’s - Other People’s Money.
We both roared with laughter. I loved him.
7) Another driver in another city played a CD of sorrowful Russian songs to me the whole time I was in the car, laboriously translating the lyrics of each one in a strong Armenian accent.
8) Washington. A beautiful city, bursting with energy. The frustration of being in a hotel in the gorgeous Georgetown area and not having even one minute to go out to explore it.
9) Washington. A night-time drive round the city. Unforgettable.
10) Clydesdale horses and a beautiful blond Penguin representative with a passion for breeding and riding them. Have you seen these animals? They’re huge. In a photograph she looked like a butterfly perched on its broad back.
11) Amy’s table decorations with framed pictures of my mother and grandmother in pride of place. They knocked me out.
12) Standing in front of Nighthawk at an exhibition of paintings by Edward Hopper in Boston – a 20th century icon that in one picture says more than most authors in a whole book.
13) Talking and talking about my book, The Russian Concubine, without stop for a week to groups of people who are into books in a big way. Bliss!
So now it’s back home and back to work. What do I miss most from my coast-to-coast tour of America? A maid to come in each day to clean the bathroom for me!
As I zoomed from city to city (just so you know, it was London to San Francisco to Seattle to Los Angeles to Washington to Boston) I met a great bunch of people, mainly booksellers, and their wonderful warmth and enthusiasm for The Russian Concubine was so exciting, I could have travelled round the States without the aeroplanes, I was flying so high.
Check out my website’s American Tour 2007 if you want the details, but here I want to share a few impressions that stuck in my mind.
1) Booksellers in Los Angeles have to shake the sand out of their books before handing them over to customers, if their stores are near the beach. Isn’t that a great image?
2) In Seattle, the Pike Place Market. A crazy warren of stalls that sells everything (I bought two cute Classic Car models for my husband - to soothe my guilt-pangs at abandoning him for a week back in England), And its piece de resistance – the ritual of throwing the salmon. Don’t ask! Suffice to say I saw a whole (dead) salmon flying through the air as if it had grown wings.
3) Nodding Donkeys. Between LA airport and the city itself the landscape is covered in hundreds of these small oil pumps (called ‘Nodding Donkeys’) that look like it’s been colonised by the wobbly-headed plastic dogs you see on the rear shelf of a car. That is so weird.
4) Cosmo cocktails in Washington. Wicked.
5) Alaska Airways. Who is that guy whose face beams out from each plane’s tail?
6) A conversation with one of the drivers of the whisper-quiet, black-glass Town Cars that chauffeured me so courteously around the cities. The driver fancied himself as a bit of a philosopher, full of bright sayings, and when he learned I was on a book-tour for my publisher, Penguin-Berkley, he cracked a grin at me in the rear-view mirror.
Driver: So you’re enjoying the trip because you’re on opium.
Me (stunned): Pardon? Did you say ‘on opium’?
Driver: I did.
Me: Uh? (Were my eyes rolling in their sockets?)
Driver: Got you thinking, haven’t I? That’s what authors are
meant to do, think.
Me (brain addled): I give up. Why am I on opium?
Driver: (speaking slowly, as to a particularly dumb child)
O..P..M. You’re enjoying the trip because you’re on
O..P..M. That’s - Other People’s Money.
We both roared with laughter. I loved him.
7) Another driver in another city played a CD of sorrowful Russian songs to me the whole time I was in the car, laboriously translating the lyrics of each one in a strong Armenian accent.
8) Washington. A beautiful city, bursting with energy. The frustration of being in a hotel in the gorgeous Georgetown area and not having even one minute to go out to explore it.
9) Washington. A night-time drive round the city. Unforgettable.
10) Clydesdale horses and a beautiful blond Penguin representative with a passion for breeding and riding them. Have you seen these animals? They’re huge. In a photograph she looked like a butterfly perched on its broad back.
11) Amy’s table decorations with framed pictures of my mother and grandmother in pride of place. They knocked me out.
12) Standing in front of Nighthawk at an exhibition of paintings by Edward Hopper in Boston – a 20th century icon that in one picture says more than most authors in a whole book.
13) Talking and talking about my book, The Russian Concubine, without stop for a week to groups of people who are into books in a big way. Bliss!
So now it’s back home and back to work. What do I miss most from my coast-to-coast tour of America? A maid to come in each day to clean the bathroom for me!
Thursday, 14 June 2007
Festival and book tour
I’ve just come back from the Du Maurier Literary Festival in Fowey, Cornwall. There was a special buzz there this year as it is the centenary of Daphne Du Maurier’s birth and her beautiful delicate face looks out at you from everywhere in the town. It’s great to see her independent spirit lives on.
Some good stuff today. I heard the venues of my book-tour of America to promote The Russian Concubine – San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston and New York. Exciting or what? Hard work, of course, and more aeroplanes than I care to think about, but after sitting closeted in a dark room with a keyboard and screen for months, to get out there and meet some of the guys who will be selling and buying my book will be a real thrill. Informative too, to see what turns Americans on – bookwise, I mean!
Some good stuff today. I heard the venues of my book-tour of America to promote The Russian Concubine – San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston and New York. Exciting or what? Hard work, of course, and more aeroplanes than I care to think about, but after sitting closeted in a dark room with a keyboard and screen for months, to get out there and meet some of the guys who will be selling and buying my book will be a real thrill. Informative too, to see what turns Americans on – bookwise, I mean!
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