What, Why and How I Write

Recently, I was asked by fellow writer Keris Stainton (left) to take part in a blog tour on the theme of What, Why and How I Write. I was thrilled to be asked by Keris because she is a super writer, all-round good egg and tireless supporter of UK YA writing.

This is how it works! A participating author answers four questions about their writing on their own blog, and then nominates other writers (ideally three) to answer the same questions on their blog one week later, and nominate further participants. This was Keris' contribution last Monday: What, why and how I write by Keris Stainton

Keris nominated me and Sophia Bennett - and today it's our turn to answer the questions! So here goes.

What am I working on?

I’m just about to start the edits on Urban Legends, the third book in my Forbidden Spaces trilogy (the first book was Silent Saturday, the second is Demons of Ghent, coming out in June 2014). For obvious reasons I don’t want to say too much about Urban Legends, but the book continues with the theme of urban exploration, this time taking the lead characters into more extreme and terrifiying locations. And of course there are some very nasty deaths!
Once I’ve finished with Urban Legends I’ll be starting on something completely new. It will be quite hard doing that. I love the characters in the Forbidden Spaces trilogy and I’ve really enjoyed writing about Flanders.

  

Above: Urban Legends doesn't have cover art yet so you'll have to imagine that one
with the help of this handy sign generator thingy.

How does my work differ from others in the genre?

I guess my genre is “YA thrillers”; I haven’t read tons of other books in the category so I can only really give my own opinion about what makes my novels different from any others. The big thing is the use of international settings. My first three novels were set in small-town Germany, and the Forbidden Spaces trilogy is set in Brussels and Flanders. So there is a lot of local cultural stuff going on – the Saint Martin procession in Germany, the Silent Saturday tradition in Flanders. This also means that I can put a different twist on the old “teen hero(ine) as outsider” thing: Pia Kolvenbach, the heroine of my first novel The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, was half English and half German, which meant she was in both worlds and in neither.

Above: me in Bad Münstereifel (left) and Ghent (right).

Why do I write what I do?

I write the sort of thing I like to read. I’ve always been in love with the idea of “abroad” so I revel in foreign locations. Also, I like thrilling stories myself. I read a lot of ghost stories, crime, thrillers and apocalypse fiction. So it was not really on the cards that I was going to write domestic comedies.

Above: despite the kitchen knife, not a kitchen sink drama...

How does my writing process work?

I’m always working on the next book or the one after that in my head whilst I am writing the current one. I like to mull ideas over for a long time – sort of like marinating them to allow the flavour to develop! By the time I actually sit down to start writing a new book, I like to have the plot mapped out in my head. I’m definitely not one of these people who sits down in front of a blank screen and just wings it. I like to know where the book is going before I write the first line.
The longer I’ve been writing, the keener I’ve become on having a detailed synopsis before I start work. It’s a great way to iron out any plot wrinkles. On the occasions where I’ve been under a lot of time pressure and have started with a less detailed idea of what was going to happen, I’ve inevitably ended up with a whole heap of rewriting to do.
I work Monday to Friday except in the school holidays when I work until my kids wake up! (So I don’t urge them to get up at 7am to go for a healthful run or anything…as far as I am concerned the teenage lie-in is God’s gift to writers). I have a set number of words that I try to write each day. If I get ahead of myself and have the week’s target done by Thursday, I take Friday off. This might sound mechanistic but it works for me. If you don’t have targets it is too easy to end up with nothing done at all thanks to the Scylla and Charybdis which are Facebook and Twitter…

Above: looking for inspiration for future books...

Those are my answers to the four questions! And so now onto my nominees for next week's blog tour posts. I was glad to have a bit of warning about this blog tour because this allowed me to pick three authors whom I can wholeheartedly recommend, and then talk them into it! All three write YA/MG books so if that's what you're into, I urge you to take a look. Here they are:

Catherine Johnson is a Londoner living on permanent holiday by the sea in Hastings. She writes YA and MG fiction, sometimes historical, not always though. Her most recent book, Sawbones, is a forensic murder mystery set in the 18th century, with intrigue and danger and anatomy. She also writes for TV and film including Holby City and Bullet Boy. Her radio play Fresh Berries was shortlisted for the Prix Italia and the Imison Award. 

And she's a contributor to the wonderful collection of short stories Daughters of Time edited by Mary Hoffman; the picture (below) was taken at the launch at Aphra Behn's grave in Westminster Abbey.

Catherine would like a pony of her very own and an endless supply of Freddos. She is freakishly good at knitting.

 Here is Catherine's Blog, so be sure to drop by next week and see how she answers the questions!

Next up, Jane Casey! Born and brought up in Dublin, Jane Casey has been twice shortlisted for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award. She is the author of The Missing and two previous Maeve Kerrigan novels The Burning and The Reckoning.

Married to a criminal barrister, Jane lives in south-west London. Jane has also written two YA novels, How To Fall and Bet Your Life, both featuring heroine Jess Tennant. I devoured both books - they are YA but they make a great light read for adults too. Jane is going to tackle her four questions on her Facebook page, which is here: Jane Casey Facebook page so look out for her replies, which are sure to be interesting! (I for one would love to know whether she is writing another Jess Tennant book - I hope so!)

Last but most definitely not least, I am also nominating the fabulous Che Golden!

This is what Che says about herself on her website: "I have led a typical second-generation Irish life, spending most of my childhood shuttling backwards and forwards between London and Blarney, Co Cork, where my mother comes from. My father is a Scottish protestant, which starts some really good fights in their home.

After graduating from Brunel University, I moved to Dublin where I worked in IT journalism, first as a senior reporter and then as publisher and editor of the ezine IT MONDAY. After ten years in this field I was feeling a little burned out and bored – I had always wanted to be a writer and I had a feeling that I had to just do it. It was now or never! So I moved to Bath, and enrolled in the Masters course in Creative Writing for Young People at the University. and soon after graduating in 2010, I was offered a contract by Quercus for my trilogy, which draws on Irish mythology and faerie tales."

The first book, The Feral Child, was published in 2012 and the second, The Unicorn Hunters, was published in 2013. The final instalment, The Raven Queen, has just been published.

Che adds: "Apart from writing, my other passion is horses, which I share with my two young daughters. We own Charlie Brown, a 10-year-old Dartmoor x, and Robbie, a Highland pony."

Che also writes the Mulberry series  for younger readers published by OUP. The series focuses on the adventures of ponies and their riders at a local riding stable. Here is Che's blog.

NB Friends of Che's and mine on FB will be familiar with our regular slanging matches, in which words like "harridan" and "saggy" are the least offensive epithets traded! Today I'm declaring an amnesty in the name of young adult literature...but normal service will be resumed tomorrow. Che, you have been warned...

Writer in her natural habitat

I seem to be irresistibly drawn to ruins! You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson after the Hallowe'en shenanigans...but seemingly not. 

This week I was part of a very interesting project by photographer Brian O'Neill, of Crieff Photography. Brian is taking a series of portrait shots of people from Crieff - ranging from the guy who works in the whisky shop to the lollipop lady to local artist June McEwan. You can see some of them on Crieff Photography's website, here: http://www.crieffphotography.co.uk/gallery/people-portraits/

Brian has also been posting these photos on Crieff Photography's Facebook page, which is where I saw the one of Alan from J.L.Gill the whisky shop in Crieff. I admired that particular portrait very much as it seemed to me to embody the difference between taking a technically good photograph (which is getting easier and easier with digital camera technology) and creating a real portrait.

Perhaps it was my effusion of admiration which prompted Brian to ask me if I would like to be featured too! I was absolutely thrilled at the suggestion but felt a wee bit guilty because unlike most of the other subjects, I haven't lived in Crieff for very long: only since 2011, in fact, when we moved over from Belgium in an epic seventeen-hour car journey from which my lower back has barely recovered. However, luckily for me, Brian didn't mind this. I'm still a resident of Crieff after all! So we had a chat about where to do the photograph and I came up with...Saint Kessog's, the ruined church near Auchterarder.

You'd think I'd have had enough of the place after being stuck there for hours in the rainy dark last time, but no; it still seemed like the perfect setting. I love poking about in old ruins and this one is a bit special. The east end, which was later converted into a mausoleum, is still fairly complete, with a skeleton metal roof and all the walls intact. Trees have grown up through the floor and creepers hang down from the ceiling. In the kirkyard, mossy gravestones abound and there is also a creepy-looking mausoleum. And it was in front of that mausoleum that Brian took the photograph you can see below.
A writer in her natural habitat, you might say.

Spotlight on...Wish Me Dead

I've just finished and sent off a big chunk of work, and it's raining too hard to go out anywhere, so I thought I'd settle down with a nice cup of tea and do another one of my occasional "spotlight" blog posts introducing one of my books! Today it's Wish Me Dead, which was my third novel, published in the UK by Penguin in 2011.

Wish Me Dead is the last of my books to be set in Germany. It sees a return to Bad Münstereifel, the setting of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden. Although it is a stand-alone novel, it takes place in the same "universe" as The Vanishing did, although a decade later. The same familiar places are mentioned, and some of the characters who appeared in The Vanishing also make a reappearance, although they are, of course, also ten years older.

So, what's it about?

Wish Me Dead is all about Steffi Nett, the daughter of the town baker (so look out for lots of references to cream cakes, rye loaves, and in one scene, death by cherry streusel!). Shy and unassuming, Steffi is always being put upon by other people - her parents, who are just assuming that she wants to take over the family business when she gets older, her boyfriend Timo, who has a wandering eye, and slimy Achim the baker's assistant, who keeps propositioning her. However, events take a surprising turn when Steffi and her friends decide to pay a visit to a ruined house in the forest, where a notorious local witch is supposed to have lived. They hold an impromptu ceremony and make a wish - that a local celebrity should drop dead. And she does... As the friends experiment with further wishes it soon becomes clear that only Steffi's wishes ever come true. What is behind this extraordinary power that Steffi seems to have? And after being pushed around by others for so long, can she resist the temptation to have her own way for once?

Where did you get the idea for the book?

Just as The Vanishing of Katharina Linden was inspired by the genuine folklore of Bad Münstereifel, Wish Me Dead was inspired by the real history of the town and the surrounding area. The seventeenth century saw a proliferation of witch trials in the Eifel. Hermann Löher, one time mayor of Rheinbach and born in Bad Münstereifel itself, wrote a book denouncing the persecution of supposed witches, and was obliged to flee to Amsterdam with his family, in fear of his life. Witchcraft was a hot topic in the Eifel in the 1600s, and the sorry (fictional) tale of Red Gertrud is based on the real life witch trials.

Hmmm, witches. And what about the bakery bit?

The bakery products were researched as *cough* lovingly as the witch trials. I was advised by Herr and Frau Nipp of the Erft Cafe (sadly now defunct) and the Cafe am Salzmarkt, both in Bad Münstereifel, and Frau Quasten of the Bäckerei Cafe Quasten in Kommern. All of these were kind enough to let me go "behind the scenes" to see how a German bakery works, and they also explained quite a lot to me about the different types of breads popular in Germany. And then there are the cakes. I tried quite a lot of those - for research purposes, obviously...

These characters from The Vanishing of Katharina Linden who reappear in this book, do they include Frau Kessel by any chance?

Well, it is about witches...

Did the book win anything?

Wish Me Dead was nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2012 and shortlisted for the Worcestershire Teen Book Awards.

What did the critics think?

"Wish Me Dead is the kind of book that makes you want to curl up on the sofa on a rainy day and devour it in one go."
  - Caroline, Chicklish Blog

"Helen Grant's third book is probably her scariest yet...This book had me too scared to turn off the light, but unable to leave the next page unread. The ending was unpredictable and the characters were believable, responding to Steffi's "ability" in a realistic way. Overall, very, very scary and very, very good!"
 - Derby Telegraph

"The German flavour is what makes the story. That, and the gory horror."
 - The Bookwitch

My Dad also votes Wish Me Dead as the one of my novels most likely to make a cracking film. So if there are any film producers reading this...

So did everyone love it?

Er, no. One Spinebreakers reviewer found the book "tediously average" ...but conceded that "The ending was made of pure awesome."

Who is the book for?

I know I keep saying teens and adults...Wish Me Dead is probably for slightly older teens than the previous two books. Owing to some of the content, I'd put this at 14+. And adults too.

Anything else to declare?

There is a high redhead count in Wish Me Dead. This is because whilst I was working on the idea for the book, I was outraged to read a newspaper article about yet another child who had been bullied very badly for having red hair. Grrr. Red hair is beautiful! So I decided to give the hero flaming red hair. Red Gertrud - the witch - also had red hair and is supposed to have been beautiful - infuriatingly so to the men who persecuted her. Finally, to even up the goodies and baddies, there is a nasty redhead too.

And finally...

If you'd like to see the book trailer, made by the fabulous Lumiere Productions, it's here:
Wish Me Dead book trailer
You can also read a sample of the book on Amazon's Click to look inside function: Wish Me Dead sample

New look Silent Saturday!

I'm very pleased to say that tomorrow - Thursday 27th March - sees the publication of Silent Saturday in paperback!

I never seem to get much of an opportunity to celebrate book-ish milestones! When my first book was published and I was writing the second, we had only just moved to Flanders and were desperately trying to find our feet there. My third book, Wish Me Dead, came out in summer 2011, at a time when I was frantically organising the move back from Belgium to the UK, so I didn't spend much time cracking open bottles of champagne then either. Tomorrow will be pretty much business-as-usual, because I have a huge pile of work to do and some fairly short deadlines.

All the same, I am quietly pleased to see Silent Saturday in paperback. The cover of the hardback edition was wonderful - the design had a really atmospheric feel and the title and my name were in gorgeous big shiny letters. Still, there are some great advantages to paperbacks - speaking as a reader. They are not half so heavy, so you are less likely to drop them in the bath(!), and your arms don't get tired so quickly if you are reading in bed. And of course, paperbacks are that bit more affordable. So I'm very pleased to see this one, and I'll be raising a glass to it tomorrow evening.

Silent Saturday is available through the normal outlets but if you'd like to support your local bookshop, do consider ordering through Hive, here: Silent Saturday paperback on Hive
The Hive website allows you to order online, with the book delivered free to your nearest independent bookshop. If (shock horror!) you don't know where that is, there is a bookshop search function too. There's even a discount on the retail price.

Above: Silent Saturday is an urbex thriller - it will take you to places you really, really shouldn't be...

Ghosts in the library

If you happen to have read my blog post about Hallowe'en, you will know that I spent 31st October as "Writer in Residence" at Innerpeffray Library, Scotland's oldest lending library. Sitting in the upper reading room, with its charming view into the kirkyard, I spent the day composing a series of three ghost stories connected by an overarching narrative. The same evening, I read them aloud to an audience in the library, by the light of artificial candles (real naked flames being inadvisable next to all those antiquarian books). All the stories are set in and around the library and the neighbouring kirkyard of Innerpeffray, so it made for an atmospheric evening, especially as the audience had to leave via a path that runs alongside the kirkyard in question, with its mossy graves!

I wrote the stories to increase awareness of Innerpeffray Library - which is a fabulous and uniquely literary local attraction - and also in hopes of helping to raise funds for it. I am therefore very pleased to say that Ghost Stories of Innerpeffray is now available from the library as an exclusive chapbook. You can order it here: Innerpeffray library shop. It costs £5 plus postage (orders from outside the UK also accepted).

The three stories are:
Nick's Story: The Spell -  in which a scholar inadvertently repeats an ancient incantation aloud;
Lilith's Story: The Unreturned Volume - a tale to delight a librarian's heart: retribution falls upon someone who fails to return a book;
and
Jude's Story: The Book Of Fate - it's dangerous to read - but which book is it?

If you would like a taster of the stories, a single one - Lilith's Story - is available in a free audio version here: Lilith's Story audio. You can listen to it, share it, or download it to listen to later - all completely free. If you enjoy that sample, do consider buying the chapbook to help support Innerpeffray Library!

Above: the library is the white building on the left; the other is the chapel. 

As you can see, the library really does look straight out onto the kirkyard!