My list of recommended reads is even longer this time – I’ve been away and that meant more reading opportunity. Especially as we were without a TV.  Enjoy!

The Humans by Matt Haig

After the Fire, A Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

Strumpet City by James Plunkett

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes

The Flight by M.R. Hall

What Lies Within by Tom Vowler

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

The Boat by Clara Salaman

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Perfect by Rachel Joyce

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Countdown City by Ben H. Winters

The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

 

 

Most of May I spent in Chengdu, in China, researching my new novel. It was a fantastic trip, a combination of soaking in the sights, sounds, smells and everyday life of the city interspersed with day trips out to surrounding attractions. We were staying with my eldest son who works there as an English teacher. He is fluent in Chinese which was a huge advantage for us in negotiating journeys and talking to Chinese people about some of the questions I had. And he was able to show us the ropes so we could get around and fend for ourselves while he was at work. We learnt a smattering of words before we went but it is possible to order food purely by pointing at pictures and performing energetic sign language. I was delighted to be invited to give an author talk at The Bookworm Chengdu, an English language bookshop, library, restaurant and bar. My first international bookshop appearance. It was a lovely venue and a really enjoyable evening. The Bookworm hosts a large literary festival every March with authors from all over the world appearing at their branches in Chengdu, Beijing and Suzhou.

There was some irony in that we were staying in the city that now makes 20% of the world’s computers but there were swathes of the web that were simply not available to us due to internet censorship. So I had no access to Twitter or any wordpress or blogspot sites. I also discovered that I couldn’t send any emails only receive them. Half-way through our visit I got an email from writer and editor Martin Edwards subject: Short Story Dagger, saying, Hi Cath, By the time you read this, I am sure you will know that you have been shortlisted for the Dagger again. I’m really pleased for you!! Talk about a wonderful surprise! I was too excited to sleep that night. Since then I’ve been able to see the shortlist and I am awed to be in such spectacular company. So a big thanks to Martin and to the CWA for all the work in organising these awards which do so much to promote crime fiction. The results will be announced on June 30th along with the results of the International Dagger, Debut Dagger, Library Dagger, Non-Fiction and the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger as well as the presentation to Simon Brett of the Diamond Dagger. And I shall be tweeting all about it. If there’s a signal…

The idea for this novel was quite simple – a bereaved mother writes to the person who killed her daughter in an attempt to move beyond rage, and the desire for vengeance, and to find some sort of acceptance.  There is a long tradition of novels written in letter form, Shelley’s Frankenstein is one, as is Dracula by Bram Stoker and more recently Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin.  There were challenges in choosing to use this narrative style, in getting the tone right and working out what information was revealed when and what would be divulged to the murderer through the letters, but I found it refreshing to try something so different. These days many of us use emails in place of letters but for the most personal most significant events, around love and death and birth, we still may choose to write a physical letter.  Something that can be held and kept safe and re-read.  When I was younger I wrote regularly to lots of people, family and friends, as a way of keeping in touch.  Now decades later that has shrunk to continuing correspondence with just two.  Prison must be one of the few places where personal letters still predominate, as prisoners are unable to send email or use Skype or mobile phones.  And there is no limit on the number of letters a prisoner can receive.  So the epistolary form did seem to be the best narrative device for the story I wanted to tell.  Hope you like it.

When I write I hear the words in my head.  Not just the dialogue but the narration too.  And I see the pictures, the locations, people, their clothes and so on.  I assume everybody does.  Working in radio I’ve noticed that there are sometimes differences between how I ‘hear’ what I’ve written and how an actor delivers it, and that always surprises me.  But I imagine as readers we each translate the marks on the page in our own way, with our own voices supplying that soundtrack as we follow the story.

For my novels I’m using speech recognition these days, reading aloud what I’ve written in longhand (I know – bizarre) through a microphone and into a Word document.  It’s a complete pain when the phone rings or there’s someone at the door or I get a sneezing fit but on the whole it’s quicker than me just typing it all up.  And staves off the RSI.  But I don’t really get to hear the flow of the writing in that part of the process, I’m reading it in quite a clipped and unemotional way in order to get the best accuracy.  Even then there are many errors (I’ll have to save some up for another post).  Once I’ve corrected the mistakes I read my work aloud.  Not only does it help me improve the rhythm and see how the pace changes but it’s great for spotting repetition and abrupt endings and weak sections.  Through pressure of work I don’t always get time to read everything out loud and then when the book is published and I perform a reading in public I notice all sorts of things I’d want to change if I only had the chance.