My own first experience of having an editor was relatively painless. Thornberry gave A Kettle of Fish a thorough proof-read but asked for no material changes. I think I was very lucky in this respect and I’m grateful to my beta readers for ensuring I had done a thorough job before the book went out on offer.

Now I’m part of a new and exciting project in which our writing group will publish an anthology of members’ work (and not just any anthology … stand by for updates!)  This began a few months ago when ten of us all contributed a number of pieces for consideration and met to give critical feedback. Although we had a range of great material, it soon became apparent that we needed someone to ensure the collection woud have the right overall shape and, on the micro level, be rigorously edited. To this end we appointed from our number an editorial board of three,  a unanimous decision which made us all feel we were in safe hands. The editors have now reread our contributions and come back to us with requests for edits.

This all sounds quite straightforward – and it is, but it has for me thrown up a big difference between asking for feedback and actually being edited.  Looking at their suggestions for my short stories,  I’m happy with nearly all of them. But inevitably there are one or two things I’m not so happy about.  What can I do? They represent the combined wisdom of three writers whose opinion I trust and who I know will be equally rigorous with all of our authors.   If I don’t want to risk my place in the anthology, I’m going to have to bite the bullet. I can’t even ask for a second opinion – I’ve had three!

Luckily we’re not talking complete rewrites here, and the overall shape of the stories stays the same. But it is a salutary lesson to have to ‘take orders’ on my writing, which feels quite different from taking suggestions.  Love them or hate them, the edits have to be done. On the bright side, I think it represents one of those hurdles that a professional writer simply has to confront and get over. Progress, then!

Silly old me. I had temporarily forgotten the utter madness vagaries of commercial publishing. After all the book has been out since Feb and I recently availed myself of a special offer Kindle copy for all of £1.49. With the hardback at £8.57 (I’ve paid more for many paperbacks) it’s not so much the money as the inconvenience. I don’t kn0w anyone who, except in very particular circumstances, would choose to own a novel in hardback.

If anyone can remember why the route of hardback/paperback was ever a good idea, and more crucially why traditional publishers are sticking with it in this day and age, I’ll be happy to be enlightened. Meanwhile, I’m always pleased to get a Kindle bargain, but now feel rather sorry for the tree-book reader who must wait longer than the rest of us to get what he or she wants.

Still, they – and you – can take my word for it that this is a touching story skilfully told of a five-year-old girl left to run wild in the meadows around her home in the company of a strangely bossy younger sister. What will happen when they make friends with the  mysterious loner called Claude? Well worth getting hold of, however you do it.

At the start of the novel the heroine Haoua is only ten.  Life in her village is eked out from the land and made only a little less harsh by the presence of aid workers who provide a basic medical service. Haoua has a happy family life and has been selected to be part of a sponsorship programme. This means she can attend school which she loves and in exchange her father receives additional aid. When Haoua’s brother comes home on leave from the army, the cracks in the family start to show. Haoua’s father is a womaniser and it soon emerges that her mother is suffering from AIDS. When she is taken away to be looked after in hospital, Haoua is removed from school and it gradually becomes clear that she is destined to be given in marriage to her uncle, an even more objectionable man than her father. Haoua’s life is also contrasted with that of an Irish family who correspond with her as part of the sponsorship plan.

This book is characterised by detailed descriptions of village life (the author has been an aid worker) and the authenticity of the heroine’s voice. Through her distinctive speech patterns, characterised by elements of French and her native language, we experience the reality of life in the desert, a trip through the night in the back of a camion, a ride through her country’s capital on a bicycle,  the everyday activities of washing, grinding grain and making a dung floor. The impact of politics on the lives of ordinary people is also explored.

There is no tidy or redemptive ending here, but for me this was as much drama documentary as fiction.  As a slice of life in present-day Africa it’s both convincing and absorbing. I learned a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed the read.

I read this on Kindle but it’s now in paperback too.

Of course the one day I had to spend in the National Library of Scotland (lunch-break spent with last week’s blog guest Jane - her book is out now, don’t ya know) was never going to be enough. I had also hoped to spend some time in the City Library finding out more about Victorian Edinburgh but somehow that just didn’t happen. Still, I did get a lot out of my trip and it made me realise there’s more than one purpose (or outcome) to research.

In the end most of my time was spent studying the letters of D.O. Hill, and although this began as an exercise in establishing facts (who did he write to, when and about what) I realise by the end that since I am after all writing fiction, it wasn’t so much about getting to the truth as finding inspiration, in particular ideas for the kinds of things going on in his life in the years that general histories of photography have ignored. And then there were insights into his  family life, the part played by sisters, cousins and aunts, and the warm relations he maintained with his late wife’s family, in some ways as close to him as his own. So in the end I did learn a lot about Edinburgh in the 1840s and 50s since these primary sources brought home the reality of the extended Victorian family and other aspects of life more vividly than any text book.

looking towards Fife from Arthur’s Seat

For instance, who would have thought that travellers routinely walked from Queensferry to Dunfermline? But when I checked the distance it is actually 7 miles. Perfectly walkable. But who would do it now?

Meanwhile -  I may not have mentioned here that I recently had a suprise win in the Southville Writers Flash Fiction contest (my entry’s here) and last night was delighted to accept my prize of a copy  of Jo Reed’s Tyranny of the Blood  and vouchers for a certain online bookstore. Now it’s time to get my head down. As for the book I spotted in the NLS book shop and was too mean to buy. I feel a spot of self-indulgence coming on.

Since then Jane’s novel has been accepted by Thornberry and will be published later this week. I’ve also had the pleasure of a sneak preview and can tell you it’s an absorbing story of sibling relationships and rivalries set in Switzerland – a country strangely neglected by novelists IMO, with one or two honourable exceptions, of course.

So hello Jane, it’s lovely to have you here on my Bristolian blog, even if I am at this moment in your own fair city of Edinburgh!  Please tell us a bit about yourself and your background

Firstly, thank you , Alison, for interviewing me for your blog. I am Glaswegian but defected to Edinburgh in my twenties.  For many years I worked as a dietitian before returning to university to do a degree in Health Studies.  After that I switched to health promotion with the topic of smoking cessation.  In 2006 I took a three year career break to move to France with my family.  Until then writing was a hobby.  In France I had a lot more time to write and learned to regard myself as a writer!
When I returned to Edinburgh in 2009, I studied for a Masters in Creative Writing.  In March 2011, I became the proprietor of an editing business, Choice Words Editing.

 Please give us a short description of Water’s Edge  

Madalena invites her four adult children to Switzerland to celebrate the anniversary of her hotel.  What she doesn’t realise is that there are tensions and secrets among them, which will play out during their visit.

I can see how Water’s Edge fits the brand (?) of ‘quiet fiction’ – how did that idea come about? Which other writers would you align yourself with? Who would be the target market?

I am fascinated by interpersonal relationships, in particular, family ones.  I liked the idea of a family reunion where all is not what it seems, and the idea stemmed from there. Water’s Edge is similar to books such as Friday Nights (Joanna Trollope), Family Album (Penelope Lively) and Trespass (Rose Tremain).   It’s targeted at a mid market female audience. (Someone like me, then!) 

I was really interested that you set this book in Switzerland as I did some travelling there I my younger days. Was there any particular reason for choosing that setting?

As a travelphile I like to set my books in foreign countries.  After I’d finished writing a book based in the south of France, I thought about having an alpine setting for my next one.  I love mountain and lake locations, so Switzerland came to mind.  At that time, I had the chance to have a short holiday on my own, and decided to go to Brunnen, on Lake Luzern, where I’d spent a night on my first family holiday abroad as a child.  It was only when I arrived there that I decided to make Brunnen the setting for Water’s Edge.  It still intrigues me why I didn’t make the connection earlier!

It’s interesting that you refer to Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac at various points. I wondered if in doing this you wanted to somehow compare/contrast your own story, or is it more a coincidence of place and genre?

The location was inspired by Hotel du Lac although at the time of writing the first draft of Water’s Edge, I didn’t know that the hotel used in the film version was actually on Lake Luzern.  (In the book, the protagonist, Edith Hope, is exiled to a hotel on Lake Geneva.)  I am an Anita Brookner fan, although I haven’t the same tolerance of the large chunks of introspection in her stories that I used to have.  I do keep reading her, however, for her exquisite use of language, including her imagery, and her ability to convey mood and atmosphere, both in her London and Parisian settings. At a conscious level, my story wasn’t inspired by that of Hotel du Lac.
(Ah, I did think Hotel du Lac was on Lake Geneva which I know quite well.  I didn’t realise they’d changed it for the T.V. version.)

To me Water’s Edge is very much an ensemble piece, with no one character taking centre stage. I have to ask – of Portia, Madalena, Annie and Vienne, do you have a favourite?

Not really.  I spent more time in my head with Portia and Vienne than the other principle characters, but that doesn’t mean that either of them is my favourite. Although I don’t condone Portia’s behaviour, I feel for her, so anxious is she that her secret will be discovered.  And although I am sympathetic to Vienne’s insecurity, I don’t particularly relate to her.  When I finished the final draft, I did find myself wanting to be with these two characters in particular, though this was more to do with a general feeling of bereavement that I experience when I finish writing a novel. (Yes, I can relate to that!) The life experiences of the main characters are different to mine, apart from the fact that, like the three daughters, I spent four years at a boarding school.

 You have some very distinctive names for your characters, I’m curious about  how you chose them – did they all have these names from the start, or did you  change them as you went along? 

I have always regarded my name as being boring and therefore tend to give my characters more interesting ones.  I don’t know why I opted for Portia as the name for the eldest daughter.  The inspiration for Vienne’s name came from the Joanne Harris novel Chocolat, where the heroine is Vianne.  When I first watched the film, I heard it as ‘Vienne’ and liked it.  In my mind, Annie is short for Annelise, but realise that if too many names are unusual, the reader might find it a bit much.  Madalena – a Danish woman – was originally Francesca, then I realised her temperament was more Northern than Spanish or Italian.

 I see there another novel in the pipeline. What is the inspiration? How is it going?

Chergui’s Child was actually written before Water’s Edge, but I have rewritten it as my writing style has changed a lot since I finished its first draft.  It tells the story of Sienna who inherits a fortune after her aunt dies, at the same time learning something significant about her past which will send her on a life changing journey.   I am now in the final stages of editing it and should be finished by early summer (assuming we have one).

 Do you have any further writing projects in mind?

I have been working on an editing guide for geeks, and hope to have this published soon.  I am also editing a book on English grammar which I wrote (in conjunction with one on French grammar) while living in France.  As for novels, I have several more in various stages of completion.

Water’s Edge (Kindle Edition) will be out  on April 22nd. You can read more about Jane on  http://www.quietfiction.com and at Thornberry Publishing

And then the converse applies – places become defined by the books that are set there, and so we set off to visit Du Maurier’s Cornwall or Morse’s (oops, that’s Colin Dexter’s) Oxford. I know nothing of Baltimore except through Ann Tyler but would be happy to go there for just that reason.

Literature and tourism have always been happy bedfellows and I was contacted by a blogger in the East Neuk of Fife who makes a point of having books with a local flavour in her self-catering property (go there read my book for free!)  And I’ve also found myself on a Postcards From the Edge, a blog that features coastal books.  I’m thinking this reading/tourism lark is getting better and better.

Of course there have always been lots of ways to unearth local literature – you could even invest in something like the Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and plan your route accordingly.

But why not do it the other way around? You’re off on a new jaunt, is there a novel that would round off the trip? Although I hadn’t really thought of this at a conscious level until I stumbled on Trip Fiction.

Type in a location and bingo. A fab idea IMO and if I ever feel the need for ego massage, I just pop over there and search for Edinburgh. This may be the only place where I’m listed with Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin, but it does feel pretty good!

Talking of Edinburgh I’m going to be there next week, and while I’m away Jane Riddell, an author from that very city, will be here talking about her debut novel set in Switzerland.

I’ll let you untangle the real and virtual geography of that one.

This is a quote from Mark Bacon (no relation)’s blog which on the face of it sounds like heresy. I mean, what is t’internet all about if not the absolute delight of hopping straight to a reference and reading it on the spot?

Compare and contrast the days when we followed a footnote which led to a bibliography which might then necessitate hunting in library catalogues and journal holdings lists to dig up an article which might take ages to arrive and when it did probably wasn’t half as important/interesting as we expected. (Well that’s how it always panned out for me).

Those days are gone and I don’t think anyone particularly wants to go back there unless on a literal (literary?) nostalgia trip. But on the other hand, have we gone hyperlink mad?  As a blogger (no serious research, just humble musings after all) I used to think I had failed if my latest post wasn’t strewn with blue underlinings. I owed it to the reader to show them that every other word I used could be referenced somewhere else. Generally, blogs where I have appeared as a guest have also been happy (in some cases ecstatic) to have embedded links sent with the text.

Yes, I have sometimes worried that readers might wander off and not come back, and so I make a point of making link open in new windows or tabs (although I actually get quite cross with some other websites that do this as a matter of course. Who needs that browser clutter?)

Lately I have been more circumspect. I mean if I mention a well-known author I assume we all know about him/her or can do a quick Google if needed rather than go off on a link to the official site. But Mark has gone one step further and removed hyperlinks from the body of his posts (or at least the one I read this week) and listed them at the end. I actually think that’s quite a good idea.

And so I’m doing it now. So if you were interested in any of that, here’s where you can read more. And it’s still quicker than going to the library.

By the way he has also written a very interesting post on the possibility of reselling e-books which I was unaware of, and which, if it happens, will raise a whole hornet’s nest of issues.

Mark Bacon – my unexpected guest

Mark Bacon’s website

Mark’s blog (with the one about the e-books)

Meanwhile a quick reminder to Bristolians that tomorrow (Sat 30th) there’s an Artisan Fair at the Arnolfini (no link cos you know where it is, don’t you?) where I’m looking forward to sharing a stall with Southville Writers. (oops, that link slipped through) from 11am onwards.
Lots of lovely books on sale!

It’s about three people all living in present-day Boston: Nina a ballet dancer who defected from Stalin’s Russia who has decided to auction off her stunning collection of jewellery; Drew, the young representative of the auction house handling the sale, and Grigori, an academic who’s life work has been the translation of the poems of Viktor Elsin, the husband Nina left behind in Moscow and who did not survive the Stalinist terror. But if Nina can rid herself of the jewels, the act of doing so sirs up searing memories. Grigori too, an adopted child still mourning the death of his wife, has never come to terms with the mystery of his Russian birth parents and the fact that Nina has always refused to acknowledge any connection to him. Through all three characters the story of Nina and her life with the Bolshoi Ballet under Stalin unfolds at just the right pace until a whole skein of false assumptions is unravelled and a new set of connections revealed.

What do I like about it? The narrative,  carried entirely by the main characters, is taught, but absorbing rather than gripping, allowing us plenty of time to see the lives of other characters like Grigori’s friend, the dissident poet Zoltan, Nina’s fellow dancer Polina who is prey to constant anxiety and fear, or Viktor’s aristocrat mother (a kind of white Russian Miss Haversham) whom he has to hide behind a plywood wall. The story has many layers but everything is germane to the themes of how  love and loyalty are compromised under a reign of terror.  And by the end I knew so much more about Stalinist Russia, the life of a ballerina and even amber jewellery.

It’s interesting to ask why I didn’t pick this book up sooner. I certainly think the title is bland, and the cover similarly conventional. Nothing about the appearnce of the book stands out, which goes to show how much these things count. Of course this is a conventional novel ,  but in a good way. It delivers in all it sets out to do and I found it entirely satisfying. Who could ask for more?

Thriller? Well sort of, but there’s also a strong dash of romcom and after getting to know the bear I was a tiny bit disappointed the ending didn’t pose more in the way of questions. But this really is a fun read that will appeal to both sexes and anyone who’s more in teh mood for a Highland Fling rather than a tranche of tartan noir.

By the way, for anyone on the right wavelengths (do they stil have wavelengths?) Simon is being interviewed by Claire Carter on Radio Gloucestershire on Friday March 15th at 3 pm. Should be interesting!

I wished afterwards I had also incorporated the fish into chapter headings, so that’s something I might think about for a future edition.

For those who would like to know more about how the designing process went along, I’m hoping to write more about it soon for What the Dickens magazine. which reminds me they have a competition going on at the moment with some amazing prizes, so do take a look.

I’m leaving news of the IMEX event at the top of this page, but next blog stop is at TBR on March 5th – see you around!