Historical novels

I listened to Front Row on BBC 4 last night courtesy of the Listen Again feature and enjoyed 30 minutes of discussion about historical novels.
Interesting to hear the different views put forward. Novelists claim to explore and explain the past, while Tristram Hunt is tired of the relentless detail that fills most historical novels.
Phillippa Gregory, Antonia Fraser and others talk about how they see their work. Some cannot write without the facts ..."I never invent anything," while others are prepared to look at the facts and make a stab at interpreting them. Others, unnamed, the narrator said disparagingly, happily change the dates of battles and other facts without a qualm if it will make a better story! An intriguing listen.

I recommended Lisa McMann yesterday. Today I popped over to read through her advice once more and lo and behold the thing is unobtainable. I guess Nathan recommended her and people flew to her site and crashed it. I'll wait a few days and see if it recovers.

The pic? Looking out from the formal gardens at Cragside. That's the road that takes us home.

Marketing magic

"From the day I got the book deal I started marketing."

Lisa McMann has something to say about marketing her best selling book WAKE and I know I can learn from her. Catch her blog here

Nathan Bransford is talking about the same topic and he says "There's no such thing as "just an author" anymore, and I suspect there never was." (How that man keeps up with his day job I'll never know. His post has been up 2 hours and already there are 38 comments. For any newbie writer who has not discovered him, he is the man who must be read)

The bottom line is that however much we dislike marketing ourselves and our work, publishers are much more ready to put the money behind the author if the author is willing to work at marketing as well.

So now FAR AFTER GOLD is happily with a distributor who knows the business, it is time for me to start work. People can actually get the book now. I picked up a copy from my local library today. Imagine that! My book, the book I wrote, on the shelves in my local library! I feel faint with happiness.

The picture looks through the Debden valley towards Cragside. Armstrong's old iron bridge has been refurbished, repainted and opened up for people to walk across for the first time in a great many years. It trembles, rather like the modern Millenium pedestrian bridges, which is why it is rather blurry in the photograph.

Me, at Cragside

Me, the other day at Cragside. Splendid day out

and the National Trust would be pleased that so many people wanted to visit the house - there was a queue!

Not just for a little while, either, but all the time we were there. The estate is big enough to absorb an awful lot of people so we didn't feel crowded out.

I'm at that tricky time writing wise. I need to start something new, but can't decide among several ideas. Which one do I want to work with for the next three months? Or six months? FAR AFTER GOLD is out and TILL THE DAY GO DOWN is scheduled for November as long as the sky doesn't fall down. I'm waiting on an agent's response to RELUCTANCE and not getting too hopeful, but I need to start on something else. How does anyone decide?

Tudor time period, perhaps? A follow up to FAG? M'mmm, I'll sleep on it. Again.

Eventually I suppose I'll make a decision. Maybe I should try roughing out an outline for several storylines and see which comes easiest? I think it is always easier to start with an outline. I know some authors sit down and say Goody, what shall I write today? and then they just go with the flow and see what comes. They must have very good subconcious minds to get it all to fit together when they don't know what the the next chapter will bring, and I'm not sure I could do that. I'll try the outline method. I suppose if I wrote a historical character's life I'd know what the ending would be - that would make it easier, and if the personage is well known, then there's no hiding it. Start the first page with Mary Stuart's beheading, because we all know that's where she ended; the question is How Did She Get There?

The End

This is probably my final picture of Cragside to show the rest of the south elevation. I couldn't get it all in one picture as I could the north side, because I couldn't stand far enough away from it.

I think I've done all I can do with the Viking story, so I'm going to stop tinkering with it and try to sell it. It is very hard to stop tweaking, adjusting, layering - I shall have to be very firm with myself.

One way to do it is to get immersed in something else, and I have several projects just waiting for me to dive into. I've got one story going through a critique group now, and though no one has come right out and said it, I know it is meandering all over the place. I need to lop off bits at the front to bring the action right to the forefront, introduce the h/h in a more attention grabbing way and then decide exactly what my main conflict(s) are going to be between these two.

The first draft was a delight to write, so I hope I can hang onto the frothy skin and just underlay it with a good, believable skeleton.

Cragside

Yesterday I decided we'd waited far too long for the weather to clear so we took off north to visit Cragside.

It's a wonderful drive to Rothbury and then onto the Alnwick road where Lord Armstrong built his house, but we'd hardly gone half a mile before the rain began.

We drove on, ever hopeful, and left the rain behind. We stopped in an empty picnic spot on the Cragside estate and the heavens opened, so we ate our picnic inside the car.

Every time we stuck our noses outside the car, it rained, so we went inside the house. We've been many times before. There seemed to be far too many people crowding into every room, so we ducked outside again and I took a few more pictures before - you've guessed - it began to rain again.

The arch in the first picture leads into the main hall of the house, but this arch, which is just to the right of the first picture. leads through and out on the other side. The horse carriages must have made a noise as they rattled through. Today the cars creep through at 5mph and are virtually silent.
Lord Armstrong bought the land alongside the Debdon Burn in 1863 intending to make it a holiday home - he loved fishing and the famous Coquet runs through Rothbury. Railway traffic made the journey to Newcastle easy, and the small holiday home grew and grew and became his principal residence to which the Prince and Princess of Wales and their daughters came in 1884.

This is the view from the other side of the arch. The house is famous for many things: a hydraulic lift which the servants must have loved as they used it to carry coal and hot water and baskets of dusters, brushes and polishes about the house; the library was the first room to be lit by Joseph Swan's newly invented filament light bulbs, which were powered by the first hydro-electricity in the world; the suite of steam bath, cold plunge, hot bath and shower plus water closets and changing rooms were first used in 1870.

Many people visit simply to enjoy the gardens, which are vast. If you love rhododenrons and azaeleas, then this is the place for you in late May early June as the whole hillside around the house is a blaze of colour. A lovely walk away from the house takes you to the formal gardens that are a delight for the eye and nose. The huge plant pots on turntables are worth seeing in the Orchard House, too.

The Visitor centre has expanded over the last decade and there are many mini exhibitions detailing Armstong's work for those who like to know more about lifts, rams, turbines, guns and the like. Gentlemen seem to hover longer over these longer than the ladies.