I saw an ebook reader for sale in Waterstones this week. This Sony ebook reader, to be precise. Waterstone’s deal with Sony was announced in July, but this was the first time I’d noticed the readers in the shop. I was pleasantly surprised actually, because ebooks have been around for years and never really took off. I always assumed they were the future of publishing, but the electronic dream failed to happen. To be honest, I can see why people were dubious. It meant the end of tactile books, of cover art and author photographs. Plus, how can you read an ebook in the bath? Or on the beach, covered in sand and foul-smelling factor 50? In the early days, I think ebooks also suffered from the same snobbery used to demean print-on-demand services. If you had to resort to publishing through an ebook publisher, your book wasn’t worth jack. Which is a shame, because it was basically another outlet for new authors struggling to break into the mainstream, battling against the big publishing houses’ love affair with the cack (ghost)written by ‘celebrities’ such as Katie Price, A.K.A. Jordan (if you’re from across the pond and haven’t heard of the UK’s silicone filled, horse riding “glamour” girl, knock yourself out - or literally, if you happen to be standing near her and she turns around suddenly).

So, ebook publishing is finally being taken seriously (the Waterstones in Exeter had actually sold out of readers, which is impressive in this current economic crapstorm considering they cost £199 each). Improved ebook readers have certainly helped. The Sony reader can be read even in bright sunlight and holds up to 160 standard books (I have gadget lust!) I’ve read that current ebooks are hideously pricey though. Most mainstream novels can now be purchased as ebooks, but they retail at almost as much as the paper versions.

You might have guessed that I like the idea of ebooks. The future is digital, and knowing that novels and the authors who write them are going to be a part of that future is comforting.

The Independant recently ran an article by John Walsh called Can intelligent literature survive in the digital age? (I found the link on Fiction Bitch). According to Mr Walsh a “…transatlantic debate is currently raging about whether a decade of staring at computer screens… and having our research needs serviced instantly by Google and Wikipedia, has taken a terrible toll on our attention, until our brains have been reconfigurated and can no longer adjust the tempo of our mental word-processing to let us read a book all the way through.”

He argues that ebook readers will cement this reconfiguration of our brains (like in The Matrix!) The screen provides “…don’t-be-scared page dimensions (two-thirds the size of a standard paperback)”, because the modern iPod-listening, BlackBerry-loving public will only read novels if it’s in one bite-sized piece at a time. We’re not only short on time, but on patience too, so no one would ever read Tolstoy (!!) on one of these newfangled ebook contraptions. They might, however, use one to read a book “…big on plot and incident, short on interior monologue – the sort of titles that the Richard and Judy Book Club strenuously promotes.” (For non-UK peeps, that’s akin to Opera’s Book Club).

Mr Walsh doesn’t stop there: “Can this, then, be the future of reading: an increasing number of low-brow, plot-driven works will flood the market, consigning works of literary merit to a watery grave, while the low-brows vie with each other for the attention of readers so badly affected by the moving stream of internet info-processing, that they can no longer focus their attention for longer than a few pages?”

How incredibly insulting! People don’t read “intelligent” novels anymore? Horse shit. And what exactly, in Mr Walsh’s world, constitutes a “work of literary merit”? Perhaps the novel as a form has simply moved on. Perhaps writers no longer write the way Henry James or Tolstoy did because… it’s 2008! The novel has constantly evolved. Was Virginia Woolf ever branded “low-brow” because she didn’t write like Jane Austen? Yes, there is some impressive crap littering our book shops, but should decently written, plot driven novels be swept aside by literary snobs, labelled “low-brow” and only deemed suitable to be read on ebook readers by wannabes with dried-up, reconfigured brains?

Incidentally, the first book Mr Walsh installed on his very own Sony ebook reader was Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Is Ms Christie now considered to be the pinnacle of high-brow literature?! I think I, as a reconfigured brainee, should be told.

Just to change the subject… the copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman I’d ordered arrived today. The Author’s Preferred Text edition, no less! It’s one of those books I’ve wanted to read for ages - it was first published in 2001 - and never got around to buying (until now!) I was surprised by how big it is, you could probably build houses with it (you’d need more than one copy for this… and possibly some sort of quick-drying cement). I’m sure that Mr Walsh would consider it low-brow, but it’s considerably longer than the 70, 000 words he decided the modern reader could no longer stomach and was a bestseller in the US and the UK. Must have been a fluke. Obviously.

Remember these dismal sentiments from a not so distant post?:

“It’s hard to write when you’re low…  Angry with your own crappy circumstances…  I don’t think it’s helping that I will be 26 in just under a month and two of my most revered literary idols were first published (and successfully so, I should add) when they were 25.  I knew it was unrealistic to aim for this same goal, but I did any way.”

Well, a mere four days after my 26th birthday, Dunraven Road was accepted for publication by Immanion Press.

Wait, I need to express this more clearly… I HAVE SOLD MY NOVEL!!!

Crap on a stick!, I was so overwhelmed when I got that email, I still don’t think it’s quite sunk in.  I signed the contract on Tuesday, a day when I text/emailed everyone I knew, or had ever known, spoke to both my nans on the phone and jumped up and down more often than is healthy.  By Wednesday, I was already exhausted (but in a gooood way ).

It was majorly exciting just being asked to send the full manuscript to Immanion (I sent a synopsis to start with).  Getting that far was already further than I had ever come to having a novel published.  I never blogged about that because I was afraid of jinxing it!  Getting an actual offer was almost surreal.

I suppose this blog just got interesting!  The manuscript is currently in the hands of my editor (I love saying that!  I have a goddamn editor!!), who will comb through it, searching for anything that needs to be added (or cut, for that matter), or changed or whatever.  I’ve been told that if everything goes to plan, the book could be published in the first half of next year.

I’m really happy to be with Immanion, they were one of my first choices (and look mum, no agent!)  They seem really professional, their book covers look fantastic and the company was started by none other than Storm Constantine, an author who’s been writing quality fantasy for years (she’s the author of the Wraeththu novels).  If that’s not a reason to jump up and down until I’m sick, I’m not really sure what is.

On a completely different note… While researching for my current work in progress (I can’t bring myself to type W.I.P.  Oh right, I just did…), I found out that Utah is the home of the Dirty Devil River and Goblin Valley.  Coolest place names ever?  Possibly.

Sorry about all the exclamation marks, they really were impossible to control.

!!!!!

I’ve had a good, busy week this week. So maybe this won’t be another depressing post (here’s hoping!) I received my contributor’s copy of Ballista and it looks great. It was nice to see my name next to some really decent stories. I particularly enjoyed Between Mist and Cloud by Alison J. Littlewood. It’s completely different to anything I write, there’s no full-on gore, but it’s really creepy. Me, I like writing about blood… and guts… and sometimes the consumption of body parts. I’m a visual visceral hoochie. Oh, and my name’s on the front cover! Yes, all the contributors’ names are on the front cover, but it still gave me a cheap thrill

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is also out, along with part three of The Undead Alliance. I thought my novella would be ending with this issue, so was pleasantly surprised when I realised there will be a part four published before the end of the year. Very cool.

Both these magazines are professionally put together, well edited and full of excellent writing (if I do say so myself, except I don’t want to because I’ll sound like a big-headed fool…), which is more than I can say for certain other publications I’ve had the misfortune to be associated with. I put up with my name being spelt incorrectly the first time, because I know better than most that typos happen. The second time however, even after my extremely polite email trying to rectify the matter (which was obviously ignored), made me more than a little angry. It’s Barnard-Smith, not BERNARD-SMITH for gawd’s sake. Learn it, use it, it’s my goddamn name, feel free to wear it out.

New writing is going well too, although I’ve been hard at work on something very different from the carefully planned, meticulously sculpted novel I thought I would be hard at work on. There is a character from my first novel who just wouldn’t leave me alone until I continued his story. I have a weakness for tall dark men with fangs and an unholy appetite for blood, so obviously I obliged him. I thought I would take this new story as far as I could before running out of steam (I already knew what happened in the first three chapters before I started it), then go back to the meticulously planned novel and work on that until I had more scenes for the new story. Well, I’m into chapter four now and I’m still going. Writing about vampires is just too much fun. Maybe I’ll finish that grand novel about the labyrinthine city next year…

It’s hard to write when you’re low. In a funk. Angry with your own crappy circumstances. I wouldn’t call it writers’ block. I have plans, outlines, all that good stuff. I’m just lacking the confidence to get anything of substance down on paper (or computer, whatever). I look at where I last left off, read a couple of paragraphs, change a couple of words… and come away believing it’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it’s helping that I will be 26 in just under a month and two of my most revered literary idols were first published (and successfully so, I should add) when they were 25. I knew it was unrealistic to aim for this same goal, but I did any way. If I could emulate their careers in the same time span, it would validate my worth as a writer. It would prove that not only am I a decent writer, I was decent enough to be published at a young age. That was the convoluted reasoning, any way. This will not do…

Basically, the novel-in-two-months mega plan hasn’t come to pass. Big surprise. Maybe I was overly ambitious. Maybe a lot. Maybe I should stop whining and force myself to write something, even if I hate every word of it.

I have whole novels in my head, complete with fully realised characters waiting for me to give them voice and purpose. Sometimes I think they must get really pissed off with me. It’s as if they stand beside me, whispering ‘bloody get on with it, would you? I’m bored. And you suck.’ Sounds like a load of maniacal shite, but hey, it’s my head.

If anyone ever invents a machine that could download the stories in my brain, bypassing the agonising process of eeking it out line by line and criticising it as I go, I’ll be the first in the queue. Because that would rule. Although, I’m not sure I’d want a Matrix-style plug in the back of my head…

Okay, time to force myself to eek out some crap, uh, I mean gleaming prose.

Oh, and why do I care about Facebook? People you knew years ago ask to be your ‘friend’, you accept and then they never contact you again. I should delete my account and leave the stupid thing alone, and yet…

At least I can prowl around their photos and see who got ugly. That always makes me feel better

Addendum: I’ve just gone away and forced myself to sit tight and write something… and I enjoyed it Whoop de whoop, keep it comin’!

The new issue of Twisted Tongue is out which means that the first two parts of my lil zombie novella, The Undead Alliance, are now published :)  If you want to check out the awesomeness for yourself, you can either purchase a paper copy of the magazine or download the free PDF. here.

How cool is this cover?!

I also found out today that a story I wrote about an imprisoned werewolf called The Lycanthrope Technician has been published in Dark Fire Fiction, and it was chosen as this issue’s Feature Story!  Check it out…

Vampires, zombies, werewolves… If I write a story about a Frankenstein-ey monster I’ll have the whole set!

In other Caroline-related news… I’m becoming scarily obsessed with getting a new tattoo.  My lack of money and a disapproving husband have yet to deter me (a girl can dream, after all.  That’s what writers are good at).  But not just any tattoo, oh no.  I want a fan-boi’s wet dream Lord of the Rings inspired tattoo.  I love hobbits and I’m not ashamed to admit it!  I want a tattoo like this…

Or this…

(Minus the goatee beard )

But not this.  Dear God, not this…

This tattoo would give me hideous nightmares.  Me and any innocent bystander who saw it.

Is it over-the-top-geek to want a Lord of the Rings-esque tattoo?  Maybe…  Now I just have to work out the Elvish for “I heart the Shire”…

I wrote a novella a while ago (feels like a long while ago, now) called The Undead Alliance.  And I sort of loved it.  It was the first time I had ever coherently plotted a piece of writing (I was mid-way through the first draft of Dunraven Road at this point, and seriously wishing I had given more thought to the rapidly spiralling plot holes) - and I was amazed at how quickly the story spun itself out once I got to work on it.  It was a joy, actually.  Even though the power to make and break characters, to raise entire worlds and civilisations from the flotsam of your own brain, is powerfully addictive… I have never found it easy.  I stop and agonise over a single sentence for half an hour or more.  I look out of the window.  I stare into space.  Only after much lengthy and profound procrastination do the words begin to flow.  That wasn’t the case with The Undead Alliance.  It was only a strange little story about zombies… tongue in cheek, really… but writing it was largely effortless, and immensely enjoyable.  Plus there’s a zombie sex scene (almost), an eye gouging using a letter-opener and an undead, screaming head on a stick.  What’s not to enjoy?!

In private, I called this my ‘Zombie Love Story’ and wanted to play with that line in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast - “For who could ever love a beast?”  (Or a zombie with a bad maggot infestation and breath like fetid cabbage?)

Much as I enjoyed writing this story, I began to think I would never find a home for it.  It’s very hard to sell novella-length work (and the rather awesome Brian Keene must operate in his own personal parallel universe where publishers worship at the altar of the undead, because it seems especially hard to sell a zombie related work) - too long for most short fiction venues and too short for regular book publishers.  Well, howdy do, I only received an email this morning to confirm my strange little zombie novella has been accepted for publication in Twisted Tongue Magazine.  I was just as excited to be included in the magazine itself as I was to have finally blagged The Undead Alliance into print.  Twisted Tongue is a humungous horror fiction magazine, and you can download it as a free PDF.  I’ve been a fan for ages, and now I get to see my name among all the others on the (very long) list of contents.  Giggity giggity, oh yeah!

So today, I do like Mondays.  Cool.

The Second Novel has a name!  The Second Novel has characters!  The Second Novel even has a plot!  I must be serious about this writing stuff because it took me over a year to get my ideas together for the last book.  In the end, I cut virtually everything but the setting and just started again.  But, this time around I’ve been much more organised.  The plot isn’t a blow by blow, chapter by chapter account because that would be far too restrictive.  There’s a beginning, a middle and an end; and that’s good enough for me.  So… I’ve been doing some calculations.  I can write (give or take) 1000 words in an hour.  Therefore, if I write solidly for two hours a day, I will have completed a 124, 000 word manuscript in two months.  Easy?  Or mad?  Only time will tell!  It would be cool to have one completed novel flying around various agents’ desks and another in the editing phase.  Let the madness commence…

Speaking of agents… Dunraven Road is up to three rejections and counting.  I’m not upset, being snapped up by the first agent you query would be like winning the lottery.  The UK lottery and the European version on the same night.  I also know that vampire novels are numerous and multiplying by the day, which will either make it a hard sell or an easy one depending on your point of view.  Or it could just be a shit novel (quiet, you negative voices!)  I’m sick of being negative, anyway.  I’m just going to keep writing and see what the universe chucks at me.

If any young writers out there need some encouragement, check out Jessica Burkhart’s Website.  She’s recently secured a four-book deal with Simon & Schuster for a series of young adult novels, and she’s only 21!  Am I jealous?  Nah…

Well, maybe a little. 

It feels like ages since I posted anything. Well, I suppose technically it has been ages… Any hoo, I’ve begun submitting my synopsis and shiny opening chapters to agents, which is both exciting and terrifying. Acceptance means I’m shuffling further up the path towards my dream of writing full-time and having real, live people read my work (excluding my mum, of course!) Rejection means I might well be on to a loser, my work sucks and I should have filled out the application for the McDonalds graduate training programme. I can fully understand why so many writers whittle away at their craft for years, only to hide everything they produce in a deep, dark drawer… That way, you can never fail. Obviously, you can also never win; and as Delboy says: “He who dares, wins”. I hold deep reverence for the philosophy of Mr Trotter (from the legendary TV show, Only Fools and Horses, for anyone outside the UK), so thus, I keep taking my efforts out of the deep, dark drawer, brushing them off and sending them out into the world.

I’m also happy to report that the foundations for novel number two, as yet untitled (it’s actually novel number three, but the first one really is staying in a deep, dark drawer… Or at least in a well hidden folder on my USB stick), are firming up nicely. I wanted to create an actual world for this one, dark and rich and full of hidden facets. That’s the idea, anyway I came across something called a Basic World Building Worksheet at The Scriptorium which I’m going to use to set down ground rules for my world. The worksheet’s great because it covers things you might never think of that could create eye-watering plot holes further down the line, such as the ratios of different races and major geographical features. You can print it out or do what I did and paste into Word (I hate hand-writing anything these days… Is that a major character flaw on my part?!)

Now I just have to think of some awesome, completely non-boring names… Which is something I’m very bad at. The novel is set in a grand, all-emcompassing city where the poverty stricken are forced to live underground. That needs a name. My cast of characters are beginning to take shape. They all need names. The only name I’ve decided upon is the name of one of two conflicting religions… So basically, I’m giving myself a major headache over this. I think I’ll have to resort to my tried and tested trick of scouring baby name websites. Any one else have this annoying blockage when it comes to naming your own creations?

I think I may have finished the synopsis for my novel (deep intake of breath…) It was every bit as horrible as every writer says it is. How, after all, can you possibly relay the intricacies of your masterpiece, the motivations of your characters and your flawless, hole-free plot on two pages of A4? It’s enough to send you prematurely grey (incidentally, my family found FIVE pure white hairs on my 25 year-old head recently… That’s not normal, is it?!) But it’s done. Now I just have to write the agent/begging letter and polish the first three chapters until they’re shinier than tin foil.

I’m not happy though. I had so many things planned for when I finished my first draft. I was going to follow Stephen King’s advice and put the novel away before revising (because I always listen to Mr King, my copy of On Writing is so well thumbed, it’s yellow. It also falls open exactly to the page where he tells Tabitha King how much Carrie sold for and she starts to cry… Love that bit!)  After burying the novel and pretending it no longer existed, I wanted to write a short story I’ve been thinking about for a long time and maybe start planning the next novel, which I think is going to be a dark fairytale set in a labyrinthine city (yes, I know we’ve all heard that old chestnut before, but the muse wants what she wants). The thing is, none of these grand plans materialised.

I don’t really know what happened. One moment I was full of excitement, eagerly imagining my dream future as a full-time writer, which is so important for lil’ unknowns like me… The next I was staring at the abyss, wondering where the hell my mojo had gone. I’ve written barely anything since I finished my first draft, and I know Mr King would be ashamed of me. Maybe my muse just wanted a holiday after I forced her to work like a Trojan to finish the book? Who knows…. What I do know is that the muse won’t often arrive willingly. My muse, in particular, is a rude, churlish woman, prone to frequent swear words and large bottles of vodka. I have to poke her with a very pointy stick before she agrees to come out and play. Which means I should get off my behind, get those three chapters ready to send to prospective agents and write that short story.

Here’s a brief side note and probably (?) little-known fact - J.K Rowling’s agent doesn’t accept genre fiction. What’s that all about?! I’m guessing they received a deluge of the stuff after the success of Harry Potter and now they can’t bare to look at another word of it. That’s my piece of wanton speculation for the day, any way

One more side note! - I don’t know why, but every writer seems to have a cat. Which I find harshly unfair seeing as I’ve always wanted a kitty of my very own but live in a first floor flat above a shop (hence, no way can a cat live here). So for now, I’m making do with this cute picture (I wan’ ‘im, I wan’ ‘im!!)

BBC Four have just shown the last part of a series called Worlds of Fantasy, which followed the rise of fantasy as a popular literary genre. It started with Victorian childrens’ writers such as Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie, chronicled the cult of Tolkien and his rise to near god-like status in the sixties (a state of affairs, apparently, that appalled him); and finished with the notable writers of modern times, including Terry Pratchett and China Mieville (who I still haven’t read… so many books, so little time, sigh). As a life long fantasy fan, this series was for me what a doughnut is for Homer Simpson (I didn’t do that drooling thing, “Mmm… Doughnut”, but I certainly felt like doing it).

What I particulary loved was the little insights into the writers’ minds. What compelled them to invent fantastic creatures and awesome landscapes, often during periods when everyone else was writing middle-class, kitchen sink dramas? It also reminded me how much I adore Terry Pratchett, god love ‘im. A real British institution, the man should have his own statue in Trafalgar Square. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which is a ridulously tragic disease for a man with his imagination.

I’ve abstained from picking up a Discworld novel for far too long. When I was in my pre/early teens, Pratchett was my favourite author. I read as many Discworld books as I could get my grubby little hands on. I even had the map of Ankh Morpork pinned to my bedroom wall and cherished the signed copy of Johnny and the Dead I won in a competition (using a photograph of an unfortunate pen pal because I was too wussy to have my own mug displayed in a national paper… but that’s another story). The thing was, I always knew the Discworld stories were supposed to be humourous, but I was too young to get the joke. I loved them because the characters rocked and the plots were engrossing (plus I had a crush on Death, oh dear), but they never made me laugh. Since watching Worlds of Fantasy and finally understanding what that line in The Colour of Magic about Rincewind’s enduring hetrosexuality meant, I suddenly have the burning need to read them all again. Thank you BBC!

I would have posted a neat little clip from YouTube, but for some reason the BBC won’t let you embed their videos (and I’m a license payer, dammit!), so you’ll have to make do with this text link. You can still see the entire last episode on the BBC’s iPlayer site, although it’s only up until Wednesday 19 March so you’ll have to be quick. You’ll also have to be patient. I missed this episode and watched it online, braving the terribly slow rate of download and frequent pauses while it caught up with itself. I would say that rather than making the unmissable, unmissable, the BBC have made it unwatchable. But that would just be callous