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Comment from the book world in January 2024

2024

'I've been lucky'

2 December 2024

As someone who's on their sixth novel and has had their ups and downs, I'm aware of how privileged and lucky I have been, and what a shock it can be for debut writers - all the reality of that world, and that new voice and when the book doesn't quite take off, it's a shock.

I'm lucky that I had this other job as a screenwriter, also lucky to have a publisher who can ride out the ups and downs. The Understudy didn't do very well but they were prepared to stick with me and then obviously One Day did very well, so I am concerned for those who don't find their way until their third novel, which might be the one where they find their voice and readers discover them. I feel for new voices and recognise I've been lucky to have been supported through the ups and downs of my career...

To me there's a tang to AI that's really horrible, it's really nasty. It's like strawberry flavouring, it's nothing like strawberry at all... I am resistant to it. I'm sure it will get harder and harder to distinguish between human voice and AI but certainly in the creative world I am actively turned off from it. It's not even amusing to me, it's horrible.'

David Nichols, author of six novels which are about love and the experience of love in various life stages, including the bestselling One Day, which was made into a highly successful Netflix series, in The Bookseller.

 

 

Falling in love with Georgette Heyer

18 November 2024

‘She was my favourite author, then and now. It might as well have been science fiction. That world was so alien to my world that I was lost in it, and I've never come out again...

At the time, she was rated as a comic genius, along with PG Wodehouse. It's still respectable to read Wodehouse, but Heyer is in the romance box. She's a superb comic writer. Her favourite is The Corinthian... which follows a young man who is about to be forced into marriage by his family, before he teams up with Penelope, a wealthy orphan who is escaping from her own marriage plans. It was written in 1940 when the bombs were falling - it's totally escapist, and probably my favourite book of all time...

I said: "please give me a job because I love Georgette Heyer. You may be deceived by my two degrees in English literature to think that I am interested in literary fiction, but really I love romance and I'm a Heyer obsessive." She ended up copy-editing Regency romances, which she loved - and she also found romance of her own, meeting her husband, fellow literary agent Luigi Bonomi.

I thought, I'd better start writing these stories down. I had previously written a Heyer continuation novel, and I started to rewrite it in lockdown. I posted it, a chapter at a time, on AO3. (Archive Of Our Own). It's incredible, because readers just find you. You're not advertising it - it's nothing but word of mouth or people seeking out what they're interested in. I had so many people messaging me and telling me how much they loved the stories that I thought I'd try writing an original novel...

I have a really ferocious focus. It's not necessarily always a good thing because I'm not very good when I'm interrupted! But once I'm in the zone I'm in the zone. Because I don't have huge amounts of time, I am really focused in how I use the time that I have. Writing is my absolute passion. I was speaking to Jane Dunn, another Boldwood author - she saw somebody talking about how hard it is to be an author, and we said to each other that we love it - writing is the best thing. Why would you do it if you don't really, really enjoy it?

I think there's a general perception that if you work in publishing and you want to be published, it will be really easy. My book was on submission for over a year before it was picked up, and it was such an unpleasant experience. I know that some aspiring authors think that editors and agents don't have any sympathy with that, but I have been through that experience.'

Bookbrunch

https://www.boldwoodbooks.com/contributor/emma-orchard/

Writing about Scarpetta

4 November 2024

‘I usually go back a little bit and then move forward. The objective is that I want the reader to be transported. Writing is like a ride - you're getting into a spaceship and you're going somewhere where you're going to have an adventure. It takes you away from the moment that you're in and your real life...

It's a strange thing when I start a book. I'm writing about Scarpetta, but I don't feel like she's there. It's like she's saying to me, "When you're ready for me, I'll show up, but you're not ready for me yet." Then, all of a sudden, she populates the character on my screen, and the characters start becoming alive. I don't get tired of her, even though I've been living with her for several decades now...

We all have grief. We wish we didn't, but everyone has it. When I write about Scarpetta, I want to help you experience these things that are very real in our lives, but to do it in a way that's not only manageable, but maybe reassuring, if not a little bit entertaining because we certainly want that when we read a book! Scarpetta is a vehicle for us dealing with things that we fear, such as loss and suffering. I have experienced it up close and personal for a very long time, not just because of my research but even some things in my own childhood. That's how I deal with it...

When I started writing, serial murderers were a really big thing, and it was a perfect environment for what I ended up doing. What Scarpetta did, is make forensic science and medicine accessible. You could understand it, and so therefore Hollywood could understand it.'

Patricia Cornwell is one of the most successful crime writers in the world - she has sold over 9 million copies in the UK, and 120 million copies worldwide, including in 36 languages to over 120 countries. The latest Scarpetta title, Identity Unknown, the 28th in the series, was published on 8 October.

https://www.patriciacornwell.com/

 

Stonehenge - one of the greatest mysteries of all time

21 October 2024

‘Stonehenge is one of the world's most iconic and recognizable monuments but, in reality, so little is known about it. How was it built? Why was it built? Who built it? I've written before about moments of great human achievement and I've always been drawn to stories of ordinary people doing seemingly impossible things, and what could be more extraordinary than the construction of this enormous monument. It's such a remarkable achievement and one of the greatest mysteries of all time and that's a fantastic combination for a story.'

Ken Follett talking to his international publishers at the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. about his new novel Circle of Days, which is coming out next September, in Bookbrunch.

Ken Follett is the author of more than 37 books, which have sold 195 million copies in over 80 countries and been translated into 40 languages. His best-known books are Eye of the Needle, World Without End and The Armour of Light.

https://ken-follett.com/

 

 

'This is the way it feels to me'

8 October 2024

‘One person writing in a quiet room, trying to connect with another person, reading in another quiet-or maybe not so quiet-room. Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides. There are large glamorous industries around stories; the book industry, the movie industry, the television industry, the theatre industry. But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I'm saying? Does it also feel this way to you?

Kazuo Ishiguro is the author of nine works of fiction, including An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day (which won the Booker Prize), Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun. His books have been translated into 50 languages and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.


https://www.faber.co.uk/author/kazuo-ishiguro/

'If you want an audience then the place to go looks like it's TV'

23 September 2024

'Over the past 20 years, some of the best novels written, as it were, or writing that serves the function of a novel, have been on Netflix and HBO. The writing is complicated, the plotting is complicated. It has subtext, and people are really responding to it in a way that, unfortunately, is not happening with books.

It's not like Dickensian fiction, in that lots of people are really watching weekly episodes for something that is very ambitious in scale and scope. Think of the Wire or Breaking Bad, or Succession. Also, if you look at the history of writing, writers tend to shift to wherever the work is. In the 1950s everybody wanted to be a playwright but it's very hard to imagine if a writer had any choice of career now they would start with the theatre. Same with fiction, I'm afraid if you want an audience then the place to go looks like it's TV.'

Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including Just Like You, High Fidelity and About a Boy, several works of non-fiction including Fever Pitch and numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild and, most recently, State of the Union.

 

 

'A projection back of modern sensibilities'

9 September 2024

‘It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to write a character well in the past who is not a projection back of modern sensibilities. My defence would be that the 16th century was the time when rational, sceptical inquiry was beginning. This was the age of the humanists: we're leaving medieval thought patterns behind. I'm not saying a man like Shardlake did exist then, but he could have, when even 20 years earlier he couldn't. That's enough for me...

I find legal practice endlessly interesting. It existed then and now, so it provides a point of contact for readers. And it offers a way into any number of mysteries, and puts Shardlake in the way of an endless variety of characters.'

C J Sansom, who died in April and was the author of the seven-volume Shardlake series, Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone, Lamentation and Tombland, and Dominion and Winter in Madrid, in the Guardian.

 

Sensitivity readings

26 August 2024

‘You can offend somebody in the 21st century with something you said in 1970... By the end of the process I was questioning myself, that was the problem. I wrote innocently and I wrote to make people laugh but when I read the book through I thought, gosh really is this offensive? And that? And that? Am I all these things?

Then I began to think to myself, well how do I know I am not causing offence? And that therefore led me to the conclusion that perhaps it might be better to stick to adult books.

I am being honest with you and open. I am just saying that these are the sorts of doubts that this atmosphere raises. I have an Alex Rider out... but it's quite possible that it's just time to pull up the drawbridge and stop...'

Anthony Horowitz, who juggles writing books, TV series, films, plays and journalism and has written over 52 books, including the Alex Rider series for children, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels commissioned by the authors' estates and his own murder mysteries for adult readers, including Magpie Murders, in the Evening Standard.

https://anthonyhorowitz.com/

 

'The truth of our experience'

12 August 2024

'The miraculous connection between writing and the immune system results from cracking through inhibition. It seems that when we don't speak the truth of our experience, we inhibit our emotions, and that inhibits our immune function. Keeping secrets and maintaining denial require physical energy, energy our bodies could use in healthier ways were it available.'

Peggy Tabor Millin, the author of Women, Writing and Soul-Making: The Sacred Feminine, Writing in Circles: A Celebration of Women's Writing and Mary's Way: A Universal Story of Spiritual Growth.

 

'Non-fiction books are not marketed the same as fiction'

29 July 2024

‘Many people write a non-fiction book and then meet a wall of frustration and delay as they attempt to attract interest from an agent or a publisher. This often drives an author into the arms of a burgeoning self-publishing industry. To the person who has spent years acquiring their knowledge, then more years writing their book, the self-publishing industry can be attractive. They can finally hold their book in their hands, show it to friends and say, "Look what I did. I'm published."

But there are drawbacks and one of the biggest is distribution. Having your book ‘published' and listed on a few websites, (usually as eBooks or Print On Demand) means you buy a few copies yourself, just to keep, then you are working hard (and paying fees) to sell other copies.

What I do is work with non-fiction authors, if they have a solid idea, to take them through the steps of giving their manuscript the best chance of attracting a reputable agent or publisher and, with that, get their book into more mainstream distribution channels, including onto the shelves of bookshops and libraries. One of the first things to be recognised in this process is that non-fiction books are not marketed the same as fiction. Fiction authors usually build a following for their books, so the author's name on the cover is a large part of the marketing...'

Jeff Maynard is an Australian author and documentary maker. His books include Niagara's Gold, Divers in Time and The Letterbox War of Kamarooka Street. Jeff has written widely for television and contributed articles to magazines around the world.


https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/2019/04/01/selfie-to-shelfie

 

'There is magic in this age group'

15 July 2024

‘Even if you are writing stark realism, I think there is magic in this age group, because they are at an age at which possibility is at its most colossal. They are still on the brink of becoming the person that they will be, and there is magic inherent there.

I wanted to say to children, "I think you have been underestimated. I think you have in you a capacity for boldness, and for adventure, and for valiance - qualities that the world has not always saluted in children." I wanted to write about children who do experience fear but who also experience a love that is greater than their fear. I want to write books that will offer children bold language, but I also want to offer them a sense that if you have a barrage of language at your disposal, you can use it to create better jokes. And you can use it to articulate your love and your passion in a way that will cut through people's attention and leave them alert - and perhaps changed...'

Katherine Rundell, the author of 9 books, including Rooftoppers, The Girl Savage, published in the US as Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Impossible Creatures and Super-Infinite: The Transformation of John Donne in Publishers Weekly

'Science fiction, as a genre, is finished'

1 July 2024

‘I've been thinking for some time that science fiction, as a genre, is finished. The world it once imagined has arrived, and interest in the future and new technologies is widespread. Instead of appealing only to a niche audience, sci-fi has been absorbed into the mainstream of fiction. And as fantasy enjoys a boom in popularity - the "Romantasy" subgenre in particular - much of what is now published as science fiction has a fantasy element to it: space opera, alternate histories, sagas set on alien worlds.

Cyberpunk was perhaps the most important trend in science fiction in the 1980s and 90s, but since then it's often reduced in memory to a particular aesthetic of future-noir thriller represented by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. So The Big Book of Cyberpunk, edited by Jared Shurin is a huge, eye-opening, mind-blowing surprise. Two fat volumes with more than 100 stories, by authors from at least two dozen different countries (some published here in English for the first time), ranging from proto-cyberpunk stories from the 1950s and 60s through genre-defining tales by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Neal Stephenson and many newer names, right up to 2021 with a post-cyberpunk story written in collaboration with AI.'

Lisa Tuttle, author of 18 novels for adults and children, including My Death, A Nest of Nightmares, The Mysteries, The Bone and The Flute, Dolphin Diaries, a series for children, various short story collections and several works of non-fiction, in the Guardian.