Guest Post by R.N. Morris: The unbearable weirdness of being published

Great writer and thoroughly good chap, R.N. Morris' latest Porfiry Petrovich novel, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, is published on Thursday, and he's here to talk about it.

Also, courtesy of those good people at Faber and Faber, we have 5, yes FIVE, SIGNED copies to give away. All you have to do is leave a 'pick me' comment and at the end of the week I'll put the names into a hat (or something similar) and pull out five winners - the only restriction is that you have to live within Europe.

So, without further ado, I give you R.N. Morris...

The unbearable weirdness of being published

I’ve got a book coming out on Thursday. My fourth published novel. You’d think by now I’d be used to the experience. But I’m not. I get incredibly apprehensive ahead of the publication date. My overriding instinct is to run and hide. I find the mental image of myself with a blanket over my head strangely comforting. And yet, at the same time, I feel as though I should be doing everything I can to tell people about the event. So every now and then I scribble notes under the blanket and pass them out to whoever happens to be passing (thanks, Nik). Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I veer between being worried that newspapers will ignore it and I won’t get a single review, and terrified that it will be universally and humiliatingly panned. It never occurs to me to hope that people might like it. Amazon exercises a terrible fascination over me. I carefully monitor the ranking ahead of publication, to see if any pre-orders have generated an upsurge in that dread number. But I’m desperate to cure myself of the habit because, to be frank, that way madness lies. Not to mention heartache and despair. So if anyone knows where I can buy some kind of gadget that administers an electric shock whenever I even think about going to Amazon, I would be very grateful to hear from you.

But what truly characterises my feelings about the fact of publication, the thing that I really can’t get over, is sheer incredulity that this is happening at all.

The reason for this, I think, is that publication came relatively late for me. I always tell writers who comment enviously on what they insist on seeing as my “success” (their word, not mine), that I spent longer as an unpublished writer than I have as a published one. In fact, my first published novel, Taking Comfort, came out in 2006, when I was 46. I’m now fifty, as my fourth book, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, hits the shelves. So that’s five years as a published author and over twenty as an unpublished one (counting inclusively, just in case you’re checking my maths!).

I realise that there are writers who have waited longer for publication, but that’s not my point. I’ve been writing all my life, and desperately trying to get published for over half of it. What this means is that I have been living with rejection for years. And years. And years. You know, when you spend so long living with something, you get used to it being around. When it’s gone, you kind of miss it, even though all it ever did was block out the light like a mental and emotional eyesore.

The unpublished writers among you may find all this hard to believe. But I promise you it’s true. I spent so long in rejection’s company, under its dark shadow, that my relationship with it, abusive though it was, became one of the things that shaped and defined me. I was, in my own mind and others’ too I felt sure, a failure. Certainly a failed writer. I still have residues of the massive clump of misery that permanently inhabited me for decades clinging on to my spirit, sapping my confidence and stunting my hope. For that reason, I can’t quite bring myself to believe that the tide has finally turned. And I certainly don’t trust that my new-found good fortune will last.

You may say I protest too much. And perhaps I do. Perhaps I’m also trying to justify my obsessive amazon-checking and auto-googling (in my defence, what I google are my titles rather than my name). What all this activity is about, I would argue, is proving to myself that this is really happening, that I really do have a book coming out. A book published by Faber and Faber, no less. With my name on the cover.

Of course, there’s nothing that proves the reality of publication like walking into a bookshop and seeing your books, ideally on a nice 3 for 2 table at the front of Waterstones. So, yes, I do wander into bookshops and casually look for copies of my own books. Guilty as charged. Strangely, when I see the books I feel even more alienated from the process of publication than I did before. How did they get here? I wonder. Surely there must be some mistake? Or, more often, I must be dreaming.

Sometimes I think that I’m hooked up to a Matrix-like machine that is feeding me the delusion of being a published author (a dream I cherished for so many years and actually came close to giving up on) and almost convincing me of its reality. I must say, if it is a delusion, it’s not quite as great a fantasy as it might be. There are huge tranches of frustration and imperfection – of general crappiness you might say – in my life. So either there are some technical glitches with the Matrix, or it is all real after all: I do have a book coming out on Thursday. Though I for one find it hard to believe.

Roger Morris is the author of four published novels. His latest, written as R.N. Morris, is A Razor Wrapped in Silk, which will be published, or so he’s led to believe, by Faber and Faber on April 1, 2010. The significance of the date has not escaped him. It follows A Gentle Axe and A Vengeful Longing in a series of crime novels featuring Porfiry Petrovich, the investigating magistrate from Dostoevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment. Roger’s first novel was the contemporary urban thriller Taking Comfort. He has collaborated with the composer Ed Hughes on an opera called Cocteau in the Underworld, an extract of which will be performed at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on April 14 and April 16.

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You can see an earlier interview with Roger here.

Buzz

I have been working like the proverbial buzzing thing of late, and as a result I've got a little behind with replying to emails and suchlike. But now I've got Very Important Work done I can both put my fine-toothed comb away and start getting back to people. Apologies if you've been waiting a while.

***

And I've seen this (from here) and it made me laugh a little.

I Have Been Doing Work

I have been doing work. Mostly editing work for my book (out early June, folks, get it in your diary), and while there's not much I can say about the book just yet what I can tell you is that I am exceptionally excited about how it's shaping up - I saw the cover art for the first time the other day and I love it.

AND I've had all the quotes back from people who've read it. These are people whose work I love and who, I don't mind admitting, I'm a little bit in awe of. And they liked it. Wow.

More soon. Promise.

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And everyone seems to be getting married, or just got married, or agreeing to marry each other. I won't mention any names, but you know who you are and I wish you all, all the very best.

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And I have read a book on the Kindle. Well, not a whole one. I started the brilliant In Search of Adam (see my review here) in its paperback guise and, once my Kindle arrived, downloaded the eBook and continued reading on that. And I can happily report that the experience was a good one.

I will still buy books (I've never viewed eReaders as a replacement for actual books) but I would have no problem at all reading more on the Kindle in the future. It works. And it's convenient. And I can put PDFs on it, which means that if, for instance, I want to read through a lengthy ms away from my office I can and don't have to take hundreds of pages with me (or print them out).

And The Winner Is...

First up, thanks to all who entered. I loved reading everyone's entries and I know Kate did too.

But there could be only one winner (who would win a signed copy of this)

And the one person Kate has chosen is

(drum roll please...)

Joanna.

Joanna said:

"I think immediately of Jerusalem. 

I remember singing it for the first time when I started at junior school. I wondered how everyone else seemed to know the words. Someone sensitive to my bewilderment nudged me and pointed up to the huge, blown-up hymn sheets hanging from the ceiling. I was so short-sighted (undiagnosed at the time) that I hadn't spotted them. My eyes were, sadly, unable to focus on the words. It was all a blur.

However, I listened hard to the lyrics and loved them. Every time we sang it, I was moved by the way it began with 'And did those feet...'. We were told not to start sentences with 'and', so I was amazed that this was allowed. The fact that it used this device and also referred to 'those' feet, suggested that something had gone before. Something had already happened before the hymn began. It was a sort of mystery that I was being drawn into.

It also made me feel patriotic in a way that brought tears to my myopic eyes, both then and now.

I loved the way it built up, line upon line, and stirred emotions. My favourite line was 'I will not cease from mental fight'. It made me think I could accomplish anything. Despite the myopia."

Congratulations!

Joanna, if you could email me your address (or where you'd like the signed book sending) then I'll pass it on to Kate. You can mail me here.

Quick Notice

The Kate Long competition will close at 5pm GMT. A winner will be announced later this evening, all being well.

Thanks to all those who've entered - and to all those who might sneak in at the last minute...

A Fool To Myself

The competition where you've a chance to win a signed copy of Kate Long's new novel is still running here, but in the meantime...

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I'm a fool to myself. I really am. I buy so many books or, if I'm lucky, get sent them and then take a bloody age to read them. So, firstly let me apologise to those author friends of mine whose books I've bought but not read. I will do. I promise.

So. I've had In Search of Adam, by the lovely and stupidly talented Caroline Smailes for, umm, just over a year. And I've only just read it.

My excuse, as is often the case, is when it's something I've a fair idea I'll love, I want to put it off until I find the time where I can enjoy it properly. And here's the thing: when it's a good book, when it IS something I love, I DO find the time.

And love In Search of Adam I did. So very much.

Jude's only six years old when she finds her mother dead; she's killed herself and the note she's left reads: 'Jude, I have gone in search of Adam.'

And so begins Jude's journey. It's a struggle against all the odds (including neglect and abuse) and what's so wonderful about the story is that it's never, ever sensationalised or sugar-coated. It is what it is: real, heart-breaking, brave, captivating and, as Dave Hill says on the back of the book, 'handled with outstanding sensitivity'.

What I also loved was how brave and clever the formatting is - at times the words on the page represent perfectly the scattered, confused thoughts of a desperate young girl

This could be my book of the year. Caroline Smailes' second novel, Black Boxes, almost claimed top spot last year and her third, Like Bees to Honey, is published in a couple of months; I am looking forward to it so, so much.

You can read me interviewing Caroline here.

Kate Long: How I Learned To Love Words

It's a genuine thrill and pleasure to welcome the lovely and talented Kate Long back to the blog. I interviewed her about her previous book 'The Daughter Game' here, and today she's going to talk about how she learned to love words.

PLUS.

Yes. There's more.

There's the chance to win a signed copy of her latest novel, 'A Mother's Guide to Cheating'.

Enjoy!

'Writers love language, and they love it for itself: that’s a given. But have you thought about exactly how you came to be enchanted by words, by the sounds, shapes,  rhythms and cadences of the English around you? Lately I’ve been mulling over my own very early influences, the lines that hooked themselves into my brain as a kid and bothered me for years afterwards.

The very first rhyme I can remember learning is the one quoted at the beginning of my novel The Bad Mother’s Handbook:

I'll tell thee a tale
About a snail
That jumped in t'fire
And burnt its tail

I'll tell thee another
About its brother—
Did t'same
Silly owd bugger.

Except when my grandma taught it to me, she used a proper Lancashire dialect so she’d have said “brunt”, not burnt. I can still recall the lowered tone with which she finished, her conspiratorial giggle which suggested I’d better not repeat the poem in front of a teacher.

At my church infant school we sang a lot of hymns, and a couple of those had a powerful effect on me. The devil might have all the best tunes, but those Christians can turn out a mean lyric. Favourite was:

Daisies are our silver,
   Buttercups our gold:
This is all the treasure
   We can have or hold.

Raindrops are our diamonds
   And the morning dew;
While for shining sapphires
   We've the speedwell blue.

There was something fascinating about the listing of jewels like this, gorgeous as the illustrations in my Ladybird Cinderella, and the idea they could be found just lying about in a field for anyone to pick up. Which is, of course, the point. Then there was the more sinister:

Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness, so let shine,
You in your small corner, and I in mine.

The image I took from this was that we were, in the eyes of God, merely mouse-sized, to be found cowering in the gloom alongside giant skirting boards. That picture for me was as vivid as if I’d seen it in a book (engraved by Tenniel, I shouldn’t wonder). Though it’s supposed to be a cheery, encouraging sort of song, I never sang it without a sense of dread.

The next memory I have comes from when I’m in the juniors: I’m lying in the bath prior to having my long hair washed, and my mother says, ‘You look like the Lady of Shalott.’ ‘Who’s she?’ I ask. So that evening Mum gets out her Collected Tennyson and reads me the sad tale. It’s fair to say I didn’t understand it all, but I was absolutely fascinated by what happens at the end:

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darken'd wholly,

Turn's to tower'd Camelot.

What kind of a curse is it freezes the blood in your veins? Who’d cursed her in the first place? For what reason? The fact Mum couldn’t answer me made the scene all the more potent. Now I read that verse again, I’m struck by the remorselessness of that rhyme scheme, and the positioning of the commas in the first two lines which make the stages of the heroine’s death feel like a series of hammer blows falling one after another.

Because the Lady of Shalott had gone down so well, Mum introduced me to other Victorian narrative poems: Richard Harris Barham’s The Jackdaw of Rheims, Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter, Christina Rossetti’s The Goblin Market, and Southey’s romping gothic horror,  Bishop Hatto , the story of a wicked man who gets eaten by rats:

 

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop's bones:
They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him!

There’s something particularly creepy about that last tense shift there, as though again his fate’s inescapable.

As I moved into the top classes, I was lucky enough to be given an old anthology from 1946 - I think it must have been passed down from my cousin Mary – called ‘The Children’s Treasury’. Though the cover was a plain dull green, the pages contained some stirring stuff. There was Lars Porsena of Clusium, swearing by the nine gods that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more (Horatius, by Thomas Babington Macauley). There was Browning’s breathless How we brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he,
I galloped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three

And most morbid of all, the tale of the wrecker who steals the warning buoy and then perishes on the same deadly rock he was using to bring others to grief:

But even in his dying fear

One dreadful sound could the Rover hear,

A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell,

The Devil below was ringing his knell.

(The Inchcape Rock by Robert Southey)

It helped that the poems were accompanied by black and white illustrations of drowning men, stricken horses and people being put to the sword.

Meanwhile the hymns were getting grimmer, and, like Carol’s mum in A Mother’s Guide to Cheating, that was how I preferred them:

O God of earth and altar,
bow down and hear our cry,
our earthly rulers falter,
our people drift and die;
the walls of gold entomb us,
the swords of scorn divide,
take not thy thunder from us,
but take away our pride.

(G K Chesterton)

O come, thou Branch of Jesse! draw
The quarry from the lion's claw;
From the dread caverns of the grave,
From nether hell thy people save.

(translated by John Neal)

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

(James Russell Lowell)

Lyrics of Old Testament gloom and ire they may be, but every one of those still makes my hair stand on end. I learnt them by heart, and not for their religious content; for the construction of their poetry.

So I started secondary school, where, in my first year, I changed from just “liking stories” to being actively and intensely interested in English as a subject, and writing for myself, and wanting to understand how language worked. But now I look back, the foundations for that interest were definitely laid between the ages of 4 and 10. From suicidal snails to heroic Romans, all were busy shaping my brain to think like a writer.

So my question to you is, what were the earliest language influences you can remember? Was there a poem or lyric or line of a story that really had your neurons sparking? There’s a signed copy of my new novel for the best answer: I look forward to reading them.'

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Entries in the comments please, folks. Competition closes this Friday (March 26th).

Acknowledgements And a Thank You

Well, I've just emailed the acknowledgements and thanks that'll go at the end of my book to my publisher, and I'm desperately hoping I've not missed anyone out.

It is all starting to feel very real.

But. More importantly...

What I wanted to say here was a thank you to you - the people who read this blog. I'm not going to go all corny on you but I do want you to know that I appreciate you a great deal. You make me happy.

So, thanks.

On The Tram

Apologies to Facebook friends and Twitter chums who might have already seen this but I wanted to share this here as well.

I was talking to a good friend (big reader) the other day about Kafka. His was the standard response to someone mentioning him, ie he quoted the first sentence from The Metamorphosis (When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin). 

He didn't know much else about him so I said I'd lend him my copy of his complete works. I found the book and, as I tend to do, I had a little flick through it.  And I'm glad I did because I was reminded of how short a lot of his stories are. They're short shorts. They're pieces of flash fiction. And, mostly, they're brilliant.

In the process of my flicking I came across a story I'd not read before. It's called On The Tram and I utterly love it. And as I'm a sharing kind of person, here it is (courtesy of Walradio):

On the Tram

by Franz Kafka

Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shopwindows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

The tram approaches a stopping place and a girl takes up her position near the step, ready to alight. She is as distinct to me as if I had run my hands over her. She is dressed in black, the pleats of her skirt hang almost still, her blouse is tight and has a collar of white fine-meshed lace, her left hand is braced flat against the side of the tram, the umbrella in her right hand rests on the second top step. Her face is brown, her nose, slightly pinched at the sides, has a broad round tip. She has a lot of brown hair and stray little tendrils on the right temple. Her small ear is close-set, but since I am near her I can see the whole ridge of the whorl of her right ear and the shadow at the root of it.

At that point I asked myself: How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?

Initial Thoughts on The Kindle

I've been impressed, to be honest.

I've no complaints with the screen - that electronic ink stuff really is very clever. It's very similar to reading off the printed page.

I've been reading (and thoroughly loving) Caroline Smailes' In Search of Adam so I thought it'd be a pretty nifty experiment to continue reading it on the Kindle. And it's been a joy. No complaints at all on that front. No complaints either on the Kindle's size or weight - it's very similar to holding/carrying around a book.

The only things I've felt negative about thus far have been the limited choice of titles in the Kindle Store, but I'm sure that'll get better in time. I've also found the keyboard a little bit too small, BUT it's not a typing gadget it's a reading one and the only way to make the keyboard bigger would have been to either reduce the screen's size (which would have been stupid) or increase the overall size of the Kindle which would have made it too big to carry around practically (see: iPad).

So that's about it I think. For now, at least. I'll post more thoughts when I have them. In the meantime, for the curious, Scott Pack has been keeping a Kindle diary - see his posts here.

Kindle's Size

Because a few people have asked - this is how big the kindle is - it's next to a pretty standard sized UK paperback. (Ignore the keyboard, it's smaller than the average one.)

Kindle

My Kindle arrived a little while ago. So far so good (not that I've done all that much with it). I shall report back soon.

Competition

Thrilled to be able to draw your attention to this - a super competition over at Sarah Salway's blog to celebrate the release of her new novel, Getting The Picture. All you need to do is give her a quote about love in old age. Go see!

Things In My Office That Make Me Happy

I was talking to a good friend yesterday about things we had in our offices. And I thought: why not share them? So, here they are. Here's a glimpse into the (insert adjective of your choice) world of me.

This was a treat, from me to me, I acquired when my first book was published. It's a scaled replica of Obi-Wan's lightsaber. I am cool. I know.

Its big brother.

 My mug. Appropriate.

Wall.E and Eva. The first thing I did after seeing the film was buy these. As I said, I'm cool, clearly.(The pink thing behind Eva is a kaleidoscope (no idea where that's from) and to her left is a paperweight which used to belong to my grandparents.) 

Postcards. I like postcards. If you've sent me one then chances are it'll be on my wall somewhere.

I bought these from a wonderful art shop in Devon about six years ago. They were the first things to go up in my office for decoration.

...and Worzel. Cos I've been watching him a fair old bit of late.

So, there you have it. A small glimpse into Nik-World. Anyone else going to share?

(In case you're interested - I  talked a little more about how I write over at Teresa Stenson's blog.)

Favourite

I know I've mentioned Etgar Keret many, many times before on here, but there's a reason for it: He's brilliant. Possibly the best.

Anyway, I found this audio clip of him reading one of my favourite stories of his, Hat Trick, and I thought I'd share.

Aren't I nice?

Cyanide and Happiness

Thanks to this post from MeandMyBigMouth I found this. I love it.





And now, I have ordered the book.

Identity: A Competition

Delighted to bring this to your attention.

The lovely Stephanella from The Creative Identity has launched a short story competition. The theme is identity. The closing date is June 30th 2010. The stories, as long as they're on the above theme, should be between 800 and 2500 words, and be entered from anyone over the age of 18 and can be from anywhere in the world, so long as they're written in English.

The overall prize is £100 (which could be increased if enough entries are received) a copy of the anthology (which might perhaps contain some words from me) and a ten week TCI on-line course.

Every entrant will receive a free critique of their story.

Full details, with entry form, here.

Have yourselves a look!

I Have Been Doing Edits

Apologies for not posting anything for a little while. Mostly, I've been doing edits for my collection (due out in the summer - hooray/eek) and I'm happy (and a little terrified) to say that they've actually been easy and (dare I say it?) fun! No major changes. Mostly it's been a case of me rolling my eyes (at myself) and saying 'of course'. So that's all good.

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This found its way to me via Twitter (you can follow me, should you be so inclined here - or by searching @NikPerring) - it's an authors' blogs awards thingummy. I might nominate somebody. Might you?

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That's it for now. More soon.

Free eBook

Courtesy of Scott Pack of The Friday Project.

It's The Equivoque Principle, by Darren Craske.

Enjoy...

Do Apple (and Penguin) Not Like Words?

I know, I know, that heading was a bit on the sensational side.

But, yannow, so is Penguin CEO, John Makinson, telling the world that 'The definition of the book is up for grabs'. And what did he back that rather bold statement up with? Well, this video (I found it courtesy of these fine folk), showing what cool stuff Penguin can put on the iPad.

Now, don't get me wrong. What it shows IS pretty cool. Really it is.

But.

It seemed to me to look more like a cross between one of those old CDroms and a website.

Which is all well and good and snazzy.

But (again)

we're talking about books. iBooks and eBooks and all that. And what do books have that the above demonstration has kind of neglected?

You got it, folks. WORDS.

Now, as you'll know if you've been reading this blog for a while, I'm not the iPad's biggest fan, so this may well be biased. But it's my blog so I can be! I can also tell you why I'm a little bit worried.

Apple's iBooks store and the iPad are supposed to be part of the next step in the evolution of reading (and I'm not opposed to change, I should say) but what they seem to be doing is ignoring the two most important parts of reading: words and they way they are read. They've chosen a device which doesn't use the brilliant e-ink that every other electronic reader uses, instead it seems that they're willing to replace words with graphics. Now that's great for textbooks and educational things and the like. But what about all the other kinds of books? The ones that aren't illustrated. The ones that don't need to be. The ones whose words do the talking? I hope Mr Makinson isn't hoping what he's shown in the above video is what the definition of what the book will be, because that does writers and readers a a huge discredit. Books, or the majority of them, should be about their words.

Any thoughts? Am I wrong? Overreacting?

Even More Short Story Stuff

Firstly, my short story, Modicum, is live over at Fiction at Work.

Teresa Stenson's blogged about a competition, the prize being publication in Tomlit Quarterly. 

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Big thanks to the lovely and talented Hannah, who took lots of photographs of me earlier for my (squirm) author pic (no-one's photographed me since I've lost the beard so I thought it was time that changed). Hannah blogs here and is very good; she covered an event I did for World Book Day last year and I was seriously impressed with the results. I mean, she made me look almost normal.

And that's about it for now, I think.

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[EDITED TO ADD: I should also say thank you to the lovely Sally Quillford who, when I asked for an unusual and interesting word I could write a story about, suggested 'Modicum' - thanks Sally!]

More Short, Short Story Goodness

There's an excellent interview with the brilliant Tania Hershman over at the also brilliant Nicola Morgan's blog today. It's about flash fiction.One of my pieces is up there too, which is lovely. So pop over, have a look, enjoy, and if you've any questions for Tania, or any opinion on short, short, stories, good or bad, leave a comment.