A certain symptom

There’s a story in my favourite book - Garrison Keillor’s Leaving Home - where the whole town of Lake Wobegon gets the Swedish flu -

It’s the usual flu with chills, fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, achiness and personal guilt, but it’s accompanied by an overpowering urge to put things in order. Before you collapse into bed, you iron the sheets. Before you vomit, you plan your family’s meals for the upcoming week.

Dave had a flu-like cold at the weekend.  Usually when he’s ill, he doesn’t go to bed. He scorns the very mention of bed. This is his usual mantra: “I’m going out on my bike to teach this cold a lesson.”

But this time he was so ill he did go to bed. I wanted to look after him. I like looking after poorly people (at least I do until it gets boring.) I wanted to make him drinks, fluff up his pillow, bring him treats and a nice cold flannel for his fevered brow, but he spurned all my offers.

Dave: “Do you think I’m going to die?” 

Sue: “No, Dave. You’ve just got a nasty cold. Would you like me to make you a drink?”

Dave: “Are you being a bit impatient with me today?”

He said this three times on Saturday and three times on Sunday, and I kept answering – patiently, of course  - “No. I’m not being impatient. I think you’re ultra-sensitive because you’re feeling so rough. I’m actually being extremely sweet to you. Don’t I keep offering to do things for you?” (Could paranoia be one of his symptoms?)

This morning he was his usual self again, and even though he was coughing, and his head was aching. and his chest felt as if someone was sticking a loo brush down it, he went out on his bike.

I, however, started sniffing, and then worrying that I was getting his cold, and then manically swallowing aconite every two hours as a prophylactic. And no-one was being very nice to me: Zoe sounded unfriendly on the phone, and the man in the cafe was rather off. Didn’t they like me?

Now Dave is sleeping in the other room so as not to disturb me with his coughing. Or is it because he doesn’t like me? And I am sitting here at midnight unable to sleep, two hours past my bedtime, because my nose is running and my face hurts, and now my eyes are sore.

7 a.m. the next morning. I have got it. And Dave just came in and brought me a mug of sweet tea, without my asking. He always looks after me beautifully when I’m under par.

In my next life…

I once bought a (disappointing) jumper from a Pure catalogue, and since then I have been bombarded with too many other clothing catalogues. I never buy anything from them, but still they plop through the letter box. A clutch of them arrived in the post this week – from Toast, Wrap, Poetry, Brora, and one I can’t recall the name of because the stuff inside was so gross I chucked it out. My question is –

Why are the clothes in autumn and winter catalogues always sludge-coloured? With long grey days and longer dark nights approaching, wouldn’t it be more cheering to wear brightly coloured clothes?  Winter clothes are the sartorial equivalent of literary fiction – serious, subtle and too often miserable.

There is one garment that cheers me up, however. It’s a faux fur jacket from Wrap. You are supposed to wear it and embrace your inner rock chick. (They spell it rock-chic.)  One of my regrets is not dressing like a rock chick when I was young enough to do so. In my next life I would like to dress like a rock chick.

And in the life after that I would like to be be a Quaker who makes an impact on the world (like Elizabeth Fry, or Joseph Rowntree, or George Cadbury who looked after his workers.) Or I could do both at once: be a worthy Quaker who dresses like a rock chick.

It’s a real shame I don’t believe in reincarnation. Enough of this woolgathering: it’s time to get up and cycle to Quaker Meeting (in my cut-price indigo denim jeans and my second-hand T shirt.)

Here and there

So I’ve finally stopped dreaming I’m in America, and I’ve stopped waking in the night and wondering where the hell I am. My sleep cycles are set to England, and specifically Hepworth Towers, and my brain works from 7 a.m. onwards everyday. But I just got an email from Wendy, giving me domestic and family news, and I’m back in their living  room in Bernal Heights, watching laughing Lux chase up and down.

How on earth did people manage with emigrating families before air travel and phone and email? I guess when you kissed them goodbye at Southampton or Liverpool, it really was goodbye. I’m so glad that’s not how it is for me.

And now it’s made me think of a piece I had in The Times, some years ago…

The continuing story of the empty nest: optimum distance

An empty nest is a place that is heartening to look forward to, in the way that the suffering, in olden times, looked forward to heaven. And now I have achieved nirvana I relish it.

But I still love to spend time with my children. Nor is my caring role redundant.

That ridiculous term "life long parenting" - to describe the phenomenon of adult children returning to live with their parents - must have been coined by a non-parent. Haven't children always been for life, and not just for Christmas? Whatever their offspring's pain - whether it be a trapped finger or a mangled heart - a mother always wishes she could bear it for them. Soppy? It's true.

The very week the 18 year old moved out and left us in peace, the 29 year old rang to inform us he had just spent the night hooked up to monitors after an emergency admission to hospital. The medics insisted his condition only required rest and an early check up, and sent him home, but I was unconvinced, and hopped on a train to go and make my own early check up. Mothers do that.

But even if there is an unbreakable bond, once children grow up there is an optimum distance at which parents and offspring should live: near enough to allow travel of either party for an emergency dash, or for a weekend stay, but far enough away to make it unfeasible for anyone to drop in unexpectedly.

Parents, just like children, have their own lives to lead, and their own need of privacy. If a couple of old fogeys are agile enough to want to make love on the kitchen table, they won't welcome someone with a front door key waltzing in unannounced.

The other advantage of having children easily accessible but at a distance is that a weekend visit provides a chance to get away from middle aged cosiness. For several years my eldest two children have lived in London, thus providing me with comfortable bolt-holes from which they could take me out to sample the delights of young urban chic entertainment.

How else would I - a country bumpkin who has led a sheltered life - have the chance to sample tequila slammers in an ex-engineering-workshop bar in Hoxton, with décor so uncompromisingly industrial I expected the ladies loos to consist of a row of galvanised buckets? My last exciting foray into their lives led to cocktails in a private bar with a secret Soho location, which, when I entered the blacked out frontage, made me feel as if I was time travelling back to the prohibition.

But now one of these children has moved to live within half an hour of here (Derbyshire) closing one of my bolt-holes; and the second child is threatening not just to leave London, but to flee the country. Last week he told us of his plans to stop teleworking for his American employer and to move out to Denver to work on site.

I wanted to scream "Don't do it - I'll miss you too much!" but I didn't. I was well behaved and breezy. I couldn't quite squeeze out "What a great idea," as the old man did (with no apparent effort, incidentally), but I did manage some intelligent questions about living in lofts.

Vacating the nest is one thing: leaving the continent is another. What is the point of having children if you can't spend time with them and enjoy their company? And how can you do this if they live a ten hour flight away?

What is troubling me now is the thought that because I voiced no protest he might think I don't care about his going, and that I really shall not miss him. It's the same kind of bind you get into when young adult offspring hint, for the first time, that they might not come back for Christmas. You wish they would come home but genuinely don't want to apply any pressure; but then you worry that if you don't sound disappointed they might think you don't want to see them. And then there is the Christmas when you long for a quiet time a deux with your spouse, but don't want to offend the offspring by suggesting they stay away.

It's a tricky skill to master, this next stage of parenting.

Also, the caring role has started to hover between the generations before it finally settles on the younger one. It was my adult children who were looking after me on our nights out in London. But on one occasion when waiting for the midnight tube, I wondered how safe we were, and if my children ever got nervous, and I heard myself ask “If I weren’t here, would you be scared?”

But we are getting there. On a recent protest march with my children my elder son left early, with the words (to me) "Take care. Have fun." Then, pointing to the other two, he said "Make sure you stay with them."

A woman walking alongside me overheard and laughed.

"That," she said, "must be your son."

© Sue Hepworth/Times Newspapers  2011

published here with kind permission of The Times.

Jet-lag Day 6

 Up till yesterday,  I was so dozy I could manage only one event a day, and yesterday’s event was to see the new Jane Eyre at the Sheffield Showroom. Jane Eyre is one of my favourite classics, and I’ve probably seen all the film and TV adaptations in the last twenty-five years. I know all the scenes, and even some of the dialogue from the book off by heart, so when a screenwriter misses some out, or messes with it, I know.

But I’m not daft. I accept they have to miss stuff out or you’d be in the cinema for days. (Now that’s an idea - Dave’s been saying that people should be in  quarantine till they get over their jet-lag, which actually would be rather nice if it meant sitting in a quiet comfortable place watching an unabridged screen adaptation of Jane Eyre.) As it turned out, the screenplay did miss out a couple of my favourite scenes, and it also skimped on the development of the relationship between Rochester and Jane. But the on-screen chemistry between the actors and their exquisite acting made up for this, so the connection between them was completely convincing.

Anyway…. I love the latest version. Michael Fassbender is probably too good-looking for Rochester, but I’m not complaining. He can sweep me off my feet any time he likes.

He played the part well, and so did Mia Wasikowska, who was suitably plain, and a superb actress: I was so moved by her reaction in the proposal scene, I cried.

It was fun to recognise the places in Derbyshire where some of the scenes were filmed, and so refreshing to have a version in which the characters have Northern accents. Most of the actors were pretty good at this, but oh dear, Judi Dench (whom I love) kept slipping from her good flat Northern vowels into her Judi Dench voice. It was offputting and distracting, and made me wish they’d cast someone else in the part.

I’d like to see more of Michael Fassbender – maybe with some decent ageing make-up he could play Sol in the film of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. what d’ya reckon?

Rag-bag

I am still blurry from jet-lag: it’s the worst I’ve ever had. Since Tuesday, when the execrable US Airways changed my flight and sent me home via Frankfurt (where I had to go through security twice, because I needed to exit the secure zone to get more info about the new flight, which meant two security pat-downs on account of my artificial knee bleeping, and then worrying about my bag disappearing at the end of the conveyor belt and my saying to the security guard “I’m worried about my bag,” and his saying in a threatening German voice “It is our bag, now”)  my days have been ragged.

But I got a lovely email from someone in Pennsylvania who told me how much she had enjoyed my book. I can’t tell you how encouraging it is to get emails from readers – and especially with this book, which I had to publish myself.

Lastly (or “last of all” as they say in California) if you live outside the UK, I want to tell you that you can buy my book – BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU – and get it POST FREE – from The Book Depository. Though if you want details and reader reviews and if you want to buy it for a KIndle, you’ll have to visit amazon.co.uk or amazon.com  I have just checked – there are only reviews on the British Amazon at the moment.

And if you want to be really, really helpful to a poor self-published author, you can write a short review on amazon.co.uk or on amazon.com  It doesn’t matter where you bought the book. I read recently that book reviews on Amazon sell books. Oh, yes. I may be still blurry, but I haven’t stopped thinking about how to sell my book.

Actually, this is last of all: a snap of my friend Karen (aka the ageing hippie) going down the Bright Angel Trail into my new obsession, the Grand Canyon.

 

I left my head in San Francisco

I have been lying awake in bed (in the middle of my night) wondering why I can hear wind in the trees and rain lashing the windows when I am in sunny San Francisco.

Could it be because I am home in Derbyshire? My first night home – last night – I dreamed I was walking round the city with Wendy and Lux.

Even though my brain has not returned to blighty, and I am unable to think clearly through the jet lag, my body is here and I’m happy. When we lived in Sheffield it was usually a bummer getting home from holiday. Now we live here, I never mind. I love to go away and I love to come home. How lucky am I. And I am even luckier than usual, because Isaac says they’ll all be over here in 3 months. Yay!

On my last day there we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, and up country to the family’s favourite winery, Iron Horse Vineyard…

Lux drank water…

It was sunny and warm and wonderful.

The day I left, it rained. It always rains on the day I leave. You could book your holiday by it.

A new obsession: a new ambition

It seemed like a good idea to drive from Las Vegas to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (280 miles and 5 hours) with an ageing hippie for whom a USA coast-to-coast drive is the equivalent of a Saturday morning trip to Sainsbury's, but it might have been better if we hadn't been using her map from 1971.

Moving swiftly along (which we didn't) - the Grand Canyon is more awesome than I ever imagined. We gazed down into it, we watched the changing shadows and colours, we walked along the rim, and we hiked down into it on the Bright Angel Trail.

The information leaflet said it was one and a half hour's walk to get to the first restroom (an earth closet and a water tap) 1,000 feet down. The path was narrow and stony, slippery in some places because of the surface dust, and at the side there was often a vertiginous drop. We got there in an hour and a quarter, but then I discovered we had only gone one and a half miles down! Pathetic! It is seven miles to the river at the bottom. It took us an hour and a half to get back up, and the air is thin at 7,000 feet, so I got a bit puffed.

But now I am totally hooked! I want to fly over it, sail through it on a boat, and walk right down the trail to the bottom ( a feat which takes a day.) The problem - apart from the arthritic knee and the advanced age - is that I couldn't carry all the stuff I would need to sleep at the bottom for two nights, before I tried to climb back up again. So I am on the lookout for a young fit man who will do the honours (by which I mean - carry my backpack. ) He has to be thoughtful and sensitive and patient ( I don't want a macho type) and someone who has a good relationship with his mother. I don't care about perfect abs. (For the record, Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise did not turn me on.)

So if you know such a person, point him in my direction.

Road trip

Today I am going with Karen to see the Grand Canyon. Yippeee!

We are flying to Las Vegas on a cheapo-cheapo airline and then renting a car and driving for five hours to get to the Canyon. Karen has kindly arranged and booked it all - bless her - and she will be doing the driving. I said to her that driving through the desert with her would be just like Thelma and Louise ( never having seen the film.) So she said that first of all, I HAD to see the film before we set off, and secondly (or "second of all" as they say over here) I mustn't be taking a gun.

OK, Karen.

I don't have a gun. Check. Seen the film. Check. Loved the film! But I don't think we'll be replicating the ending (if you don't mind.)

I love you, Margarita

If you're lucky enough to be staying in San Francisco, and your luck is so extravagantly awesome that you also have a warm, understanding, zany and hilarious daughter-in-law, who can turn any evening into a party, then get yourself down to the Velvet Cantina on 23rd and Bartlett. Start the evening with their perfect margaritas (I had one for you, too, Chrissie) and something to eat with the second margarita (Do you expect me to give you details of the scrummy food? I can't remember what I had to eat! Come on, I'm upright and my head is clear - isn't that enough for you?)

A shrine

Karen and I had a fabulous day in North Beach yesterday, walking and talking and soaking up the sunshine. We took in the Coit Tower, and Stella's pastry shop and a couple of cafes (there was a lot of talking to do) and we ended up at the City Lights Bookstore.

Why are they always so snooty in there? There is always someone behind the counter dressed in black who is young and male and sporting some outre constellation of facial hair and they always look at me with an expression that says "You're old and grey and female, what can you possibly want in here? Why aren't you at home, knitting? We only welcome OLD people if they are male. And even then they have to be of vast intelligence and have impeccable literary and political connections. Only old people like that are allowed past our portal."

When Karen asked if they had a copy of How to retire, happy wild and free the guy said "Oh, we don't carry books like that," as if we were in a Christian Bookshop and asking for porn.

I really think they should lighten up in there. If they can carry onesies emblazoned with the word HOWL, they have no right to be so high and mighty about their stock. Or about anything else. And besides, Karen has exquisite credentials. She is a bona fide aging hippie who lived in Haight when it was all happening, and you can bet she's read more books than Mr Snootismo has had hot dinners.

FOG CITY

This is my fifth visit to San Francisco, and I've always denied seeing fog. But that was then - when Isaac and family lived in The Mission, a district that doesn't see fog. Now they live on Bernal Hill, I am always at their sitting room window gazing out at the long wide view, saying "Look at the fog, creeping in from the coast. Look at it - it's sinister!" and they laugh at me, poor wee innocent that I am. It can be a baking hot day and then at 4 o clock, I see it swirl in from the Golden Gate and cover areas of the city not protected by the contours of the landscape, like the Mission is.

So OK. I have seen the fog. And now I learn it has it's very own Twitter account - @KarlTheFog. This week it tweeted: "Back early from vacation. I'm as happy about this as you are."

Waking up in sunshine

I had a horrid journey with flight delays which made my journey 26 hours door-to-door, but a friendly and humorous couple in the same boat (who incidentally had fab Manchunian accents) kindly lent me their phone so i could ring Isaac and let him know I'd be VERY late arriving. And now it's the next day and I really don't care. It is sunny. It is hot. And I am here! I LOVE San Francisco. And I LOVE my family. How wonderful to see them all again. Lux is chatty, smiley, confident and playful. Just like her Mom. (See - I am into the lingo already.)

Flying west

I am flying to California tomorrow to see my lovely family.

I may blog while I’m there.

I may not. There might be too many other more exciting things to do.

Dave will be holding the reins of my publishing empire while I’m away (and painting the kitchen, and making some new compost bins and playing his electric guitar at 6 a.m.)

Carpe diem

Here’s a quote from my Quaker Faith and Practice:

“Are you able to contemplate your death and the death of those closest to you? Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully.”

And here are some quotes from Martial:

“Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur?”

Translation - If someone knows how to live, why would they delay?

“non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ‘vivam’:

sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.”

Translation - Trust me: a wise man doesn’t say “Life starts tomorrow”. Living tomorrow is too late. Live today.

I went to a friend’s 60th birthday party the other night and caught up with a lot of people I haven’t seen for ages. It was fascinating to find out what they’re all doing, but even more interesting to see how they’re approaching retirement.

Some are embracing it and exploring their creative side, taking up activities they’ve hitherto not had the time for. Others have felt they’re on the brink of a scary chasm and have panicked and taken on armfuls of voluntary jobs. One person, a senior civil servant, had decided he wanted to see if he was able to earn some money in the big bad world.

It was a big shock to me when I turned 60, but now I’ve adjusted, I am carpe diem-ing as if there’s no tomorrow. I want to cram in everything I can before I’m too old or ill to enjoy the activities I love. There was a fab little trio at the party with a tenor sax playing the kind of music I love – The Nearness of You, How insensitive, Desafinado, you know the kind of thing, if not, then listen to this   – and for the first time since I took up the sax (when I was 60), I thought it would be fun to play in a band. So this may be my next big aim. Watch this space.

What’s on my mind this morning, though, is that I’ll be seeing Lux in 2 days.(D.V.) Last time I saw her she looked like this:

Now she looks like this:

I’m not the only writer who…

…hated a chick-lit book cover foisted on her by her publisher. Read this.

Excellent Service

One week today I will see this:

And more importantly, this little person:

and this person:

and this person:

Excitement does not cover it.

I have

• collected an extra suitcase from Zoe
• bought my dollars
• registered on the ESTA immigration website and paid 14$ for the privilege(what a cheek!)
• started putting clean washing in the spare room to pack later
• begun my to-do list of things to do before I go.

And, with an eye to my last post….

I shall NOT be

going in a pub on a Sunday evening in the Lake District with Dave and two friends and sitting down to eat and three of us ordering a meal from the menu and one of us asking for a cheese sandwich and being told that the chef does not make sandwiches in the evening.

I MAY be

walking into a smart restaurant (with a view of the Bay) on a Sunday at 2.15  p.m. and asking for lunch and being welcomed warmly and handed menus and one of us asking for a coffee while we order, and being told “Of course” and then when we are served and we thank the waiter, being told “You’re welcome” and NOT as happens over here being told ”No problem” as if it might be a problem serving a customer.

Hooray for American customer service! Hooray for California! Bring it on!

The list

It was fun showing a couple of Yanks round my world. We only had two and a half days but packed a lot in. John was puzzled as to why it’s called the Peak District when he’d only seen a few low hills, so we ended up leaving the White Peak and heading for the Dark Peak and Mam Tor, and climbing to the top. I think he was convinced (or was he just being polite?)

Bakewell Pudding was not appreciated, on account of the almond essence (almondine.) That’s fine. I didn’t make it – I just thought they should sample it as a local delicacy.

The “cute villages” were a big hit, though, with ours being given a 5star rating by Friday afternoon (woo-hoo!) when the sun was warm and Karen walked down to the dairy with a basket full of empty milk bottles.

And she loved cycling up the Monsal Trail – we made it to the end. If you haven’t done it yet, add it to your own to-do list. You can hire a bike from Hassop Station, and you can buy a copy of a Bakewell Love Story at the bookshop there. It’s called BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU.

Lastly, the ubiquitous dry stone walls were a source of fascination…

OK, I admit it: this photo above is not of Derbyshire, it’s Wensleydale. But it’s limestone country, it’s the Pennines, and I’m going to take Karen and John there next time they come. The Yorkshire Dales are even lovelier than the Peak District (and Karen – the villages are cuter.)

 

This and that

People often ask me how much of my books are taken from my own life.

We-e-el-l-lll, one bit in the latest book  is certainly true – I did meet a woman at a peace demo in San Francisco on the first day of one of my visits, and she did show me round the city and we did become friends. And TODAY she and her husband are coming to stay for a couple of days – Woo-hoo!

I have seen her home, but she has never been here and seen how beautiful the Peak District is, and we are both outdoorsy types, and I want to take her cycling on the Monsal Trail, and on our favourite walks round here, and rain is forecast forever and forever amen so please can you all keep your fingers crossed that we’ll have at least one dry day? I’m not even asking for sunshine (though that would be nice) - just one dry day.

The other news at Hepworth Towers is that we are now officially a no television household. Our area went digital and we have no way of watching the big old box in the corner and Dave doesn’t want to have a telly, anyway, so while I consider what I want, I have not renewed our licence. I am willing to give it a go and do without a telly for now.

The fact is that my head is so full of Karen and John coming, and then in less than two weeks my trip to the sunshine to see Isaac and Wendy and Lux in San Francisco, that tellies (is that how you spell the plural?) are the last thing on my mind. I told Karen this and she said “Oh but I wanted to watch Neighbours with you and see why you liked it” – so I told her she would have the full Hepworth Neighbours experience – huddled round my laptop with a glass of wine and a packet of crisps, because we have never been able to receive Channel 5 in our village anyway – digital switchover or no digital switchover.

I am going to get up and get weaving, but before that I might just watch Monday’s episode as I haven’t seen it yet.

 

Yet another lesson in self-publishing: the nitty gritty of the book cover

Only read the following if you like lots of detail…

This was an early idea for the cover of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU:

But although I felt it represented the story, there was nothing about it that would make it stand out on a bookshop table. Also, there was not a hint of humour in it.

So I talked to my friend Ella, who is funny and creative and who had read the first three chapters of an early draft of the novel, and she suggested that the cover should show a greetings card with the title of the book on it. The greetings card would be home-made and possibly tatty. (This is what I remember – correct me if I am wrong, El.)This idea composted for a while in the heap at the back of my brain, while I looked at book cover designs on the net. One design I saw brought me back to Ella’s idea. I think her idea is brilliant, because it embodies the feeling inherent in the title – which is a declaration of love which is really, really anti-romantic. Who sends someone a card saying “But I told you last year that I loved you”? But I thought there would be more of a disjunct and therefore it would be more effective, if the card was attractive.

So this was the first rough mock-up:

Dave did the writing because I couldn’t fit it in. I was writing the words horizontally and it was hard to fit those words in a heart shape, so he suggested we use a template with curved lines and trace over it – which was a great idea:

This is my attempt:

Then we roped in our daughter, Zoe:

Zoe kindly said she would do the writing for us once I had decided on the heart I wanted. It wasn’t this one:

because those tiny red rosebuds are way too girly and a wee bit soppy, to boot.

And it wasn’t this one:

or this one:

At this stage, Dave – a very patient person - was getting to the end of his tether because I was having ideas, and he was making them happen, but once he had made them, I realised I didn’t want them.  So I turned to Zoe. She and her husband make cards for each other all the time, and she had made her husband a valentine card a couple of years ago, like this:

although (of course) her card said something loving and romantic inside the heart.

So then Zoe sat down with a sheaf of paper and the template and practised writing the title over and over until she and I were happy with it. Then she wrote inside the card that she or Dave made (I can’t remember who did it in the end!)

Then we had to decide if we wanted it sitting on a shelf like this:

so that the left hand side would be the back of the cover.

We dithered with this for a while. All right, I dithered with it. In the end I decided that having it sitting on a shelf made it seem too real, as if there was an actual card like this in the book, when actually, the card with the message on it is conceptual. (This reasoning makes sense to me.)

So then I posted the card to our son Isaac in California, along with a snippet of turquoise card to show the colour of the background I wanted. This was what he emailed to me:

and I swooned.

Then he put on the words I asked him to, and tweaked it until I said stop. I chose that ultra slim font for my name on the front so that it was the card and the title that hit you in the eye, not my name. If I were famous, then my name would be more important than the title. But I’m not.

Then I got all the technical details and specifications for the cover production from the printer and emailed them to Isaac and he said he didn’t have the software to do it, but he knew a man who did - his friend, Matt:

So Isaac and Matt sorted out the techie stuff together.

I emailed the cover to the printer and Isaac Fedexed me a hard copy over as well – because that’s what they asked for, to check for colour matching. When the first approval copy arrived, it was glossy! AARRGGHH! I had asked for matt. Nothing screams “self-published novel” louder than a glossy cover. (The paper wasn’t right either. But the paper is another story, and not a happy one, and I really don’t want to revisit my paper problems.)

So then the printer used what they call Matt Laminate, and I was happy. To be perfectly truthful, the turquoise is paler than I would have wanted, but blue is notoriously difficult to match, so I made myself happy with what I got.

And I AM very happy. The cover is striking, pretty, spare and clean, and does what I wanted it to do: it matches the contents, and it makes people pick up the book and check it out.

So thank you to Ella, Dave, Zoe, Isaac and Matt, for your help, patience and all round brilliance.

And special thanks to Dave for not murdering me. I can be an infuriating person to work for.

Bedtime reading

I stick by everything I said about Sebastian Barry’s A Long, Long Way, and yet there are some nights when I go to bed and don’t feel up to reading paragraphs that begin with (brilliantly evocative) sentences like

“The approach trench was a reeking culvert with a foul carpet of crushed dead.”

Reasons to be happy despite the end of summer

Yes, it’s September today, but I’m happy -

• the sun is shining and I’ve just had a bike ride up the beautiful Monsal Trail
• I got my monthly sales report from the wholesaler and I can send in a bill for books sold in August
• 3 weeks today I will be in San Francisco with Isaac, Wendy and Lux
• I am loving not doing any writing, and fettling the rampant garden instead
• I just bought a new vacuum cleaner. I hate cleaning, but I hate (even more) vacuuming and not seeing the difference – the Dyson can go to the tip!

PLJ and Booker nominees

Have you heard of PLJ? It’s a “cordial” you dilute to drink. PLJ is the brand: the product is pure lemon juice. It was advertised in the 60s (yes that’s how old I am)  as a way to lose weight. You were supposed to drink PLJ all the time as a way of retraining your taste so you didn’t like sweet things, and so didn’t eat them, and so lost weight.

Well…for the last year I have been expanding my reading, and in doing so have lost my taste for light fiction (excepting when I’m ill). I’ve been reading some classics I have never read ( e.g. The Grapes of Wrath), and I’ve been reading more books by men than I have in the past. This week I got Sebastian Barry’s A Long, Long Way out of the library, and by the second page I was gripped – by the writing.  Now I can’t believe I am reading descriptions of mustard gas attacks in WW1, or descriptions of violence on Dublin’s streets (the Easter 1916 uprising). Sebastian Barry does indeed “write like an angel” as it says in a plaudit on the back cover.

I have always found Booker winners hard to wrestle with. I gave up on Possession, I lost patience with The Finkler Question, I skimmed The Gathering and Last Orders. I have read several Booker nominees (Room, Digging for America, The Night Watch, Astonishing Splashes of Colour, On Beauty) but in listing them I realise they are all by women. A Long Long Way was also a Booker nominee but it’s the first one I’ve read that’s written by a man. And it’s the writing that hooked me. It is moving, painful and sad, and so many other things as well. I commend it to you.

(p.s. I delight in having odd titles for my posts. I once wrote a post called Buddhism and Dinosaurs thinking no-one would ever Google that – but they do sometimes and then arrive at my blog. If you Google it now you’ll find I am second on the list of links, under Wikipedia.)

Why is our government allowing the sale of arms to repressive regimes?

Read this shocking report about the huge increase in British arms sales to repressive regimes, including ones involved in the Arab Spring.

Another lesson in self-publishing: the blurb

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know how vital it was to me to get the cover exactly right on BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU (my third book, but the first one I’ve published myself.) I think a cover has to represent the contents of the book, to be attractive, and to seduce the kind of reader who will enjoy the story.

OK, so once that reader has picked up the book, what do they do next? They turn the book over and read the blurb on the back. So writing a winning blurb is the next stage on the way to the till. Just as most writers don’t get to choose their own covers, most writers don’t get a say in their blurbs. Self-publishers have no choice. What a responsibility.

As far as I can see, the blurb has to do the same thing as Chapter 1, but it has to do it in one paragraph, not twenty pages. It has to give a potential reader a clue about the theme and the tone of the book, and – for my books - the characters.

Writing the blurb for the back of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU wasn’t too taxing. But I gave it a lot of thought before I began, and I had to make a difficult decision: should I tell the reader that Sol has Asperger’s syndrome, or should I leave them to realise it for themselves, just as Fran doesn’t realise until the end of the book? On the one hand, the subject of Asperger’s might attract some readers who are particularly interested in the subject. On the other hand, it could put some readers off.

And then there is the question of whether one should let out a key part of the plot in a trailer. Would it spoil the enjoyment of the book?

Some recent research at the University of California showed that advance information about a plot doesn’t spoil the reader’s enjoyment of the story. It actually enhances it. The researcher suggested that spoilers don’t spoil enjoyment, because plot is a relatively superficial aspect of storytelling…which is something I’ve always felt. I love theme, I love character, I love dialogue, and I care about the texture of the narrative, but plot is just something that I have to use to achieve narrative drive, to keep the reader turning the pages.

I have a friend who always reads the last page of a book first. She wants to know what happens, so that she doesn’t rush through the book to find out, and in doing so misses all the pleasure along the way.

Getting back to the subject of my blurb, I rather wanted people to LIKE Sol, and I thought they might not judge him so harshly for some of his apparently unsympathetic behaviour, if they knew the reason behind it. So I did dither before deciding not to reveal his ASD in the blurb.  

But in any case, the book is about far more than Asperger’s syndrome. It’s about mature marriages per se, and what a couple does when they get to retirement and want different things. I got a lovely letter this week from a reader (it made my day) who thought the book tackled the unanswerable question - “Is it harder to cling on or to let go?” She is the first person to point this out and I’m delighted that she did – because it’s yet another theme of the book.

  

That missing feeling

Several months ago my family in San Francisco changed their telephone system. Since then they have always sounded 5,000 miles away when they ring (as indeed they are.) This week on the phone it was different. Isaac sounded as if he was in the next room. We had a nice chat (and Lux babbled something too) and when I put down the phone, an awful overwhelming feeling of missing them swept over me. It was so much worse than usual, and I’m sure it was because they had sounded so near - so near and yet so far.