Things You Do When Writing Novels

I bought a Spanish guitar. This Spanish guitar, to be precise. It sounds as beautiful as it looks. Not that I can play it. But for the moment, I'm just admiring it. 

This has been the occasion of some debate among my Facebook and 'real life' friends. 

When I was in my teens, I knew a few chords, and I would often play and sing to please myself. But I can't really play and I know how difficult it is to acquire even a basic level of competence. It's like playing the piano, which I do play reasonably well. I started learning when I was seven, and carried on having lessons when we moved up to Scotland, only stopping when I went off to university at the age of seventeen, by which time I was on Grade Seven and tackling quite challenging pieces.

Much later, our son, then aged seven, had lessons for a year, until we came to a decision that it really wasn't for him, greatly to his relief, I might add! I took over his lesson for a few years. At that point I was the teacher's most senior pupil in terms of experience as well as years, and I thoroughly enjoyed being 'stretched' by her in what I could play. I still play - not half enough, but I do, and I enjoy it. I'm under no illusions about my abilities. There are lots of pieces that are way beyond my technical capabilities (most Chopin, for instance, although I can manage some) as well as pieces that I know I could play a whole lot better if I applied myself. 

But I know enough to know how little I really know - and that's a state profoundly to be desired for anyone embarking on any skill at all, whether it's playing a musical instrument, writing a novel or learning a sport. 

It goes like this. You struggle. Then, you think 'I'm getting the hang of this' and that makes you happy. After which comes a blissful spell of  'look at me, I can really do this' over-confidence. (I often wonder just how many politicians never get beyond that stage.) Then, you fall off a cliff edge and think 'I don't actually know anything about this at all!' 

After which you can really start to progress. All of which is to say that although I'm tempted to re-learn how to play a few chords, I'm never going to learn how to play the guitar properly. At the moment, I'm just looking at it, and touching it from time to time. The case is beautiful too - and that's made in Spain as well. 

I bought it at auction. I was in our local saleroom, hunting for the antique and vintage textiles I list and sell from our Etsy store, the 200 Year Old House. And there it was. The case was closed so I carefully teased it open and gazed at this lovely thing. When I ran my fingers over the strings the sound was mellow and beautiful. It carried me straight into the world of my novel. I told my husband about it and instead of saying 'you don't need a guitar' which would be true, he said 'Try to get it! I love musical instruments!' 

I'm working on a trilogy of novels set largely on the Canary Islands, mainly lovely La Gomera, but partly set in Los Cristianos on Tenerife and partly in Glasgow, of which more in another post. Like many writers, when I'm researching and writing something, I like to surround myself with 'stuff'  relevant to the book - pictures, maps, and even objects that are inspirational. It's a kind of immersion experience and it works for me. Even down to vintage perfumes, which I collect anyway - but right now, I'm favouring Embrujo de Sevilla (the Enchantment of Seville, launched in 1933) and Maja, launched in 1921, both by Myrurgia of Barcelona, both gorgeous old scents. 

Embrujo de Sevilla by Myrurgia

This need for immersion also explains why, years ago, when I was writing a novel called The Physic Garden, set in late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Scotland, I managed to buy a Georgian hand embroidered christening cape at auction - one that proved inspirational, and figured in the finished book. I decided to let it go a few years later, because it had done its work and it was time for it to move on. Like the guitar, it was a thing of great beauty, and I loved writing about it. Most dealers in antiques are well aware that we are only guardians of these old objects for a brief time. But with writing, it's a bit different.

When I'm writing a novel, whether historical or contemporary, I tend to go for immersion in the world of the book. Once you've sent the finished book out into the world, it can be very difficult to let go. It's as though the characters exist. They go on without you, even when you've moved on to something else but it doesn't take much for you to climb back inside that world all over again. Sometimes it can be a visit to an ice hockey game (Ice Dancing) or hearing somebody singing a song by Robert Burns (the Jewel) but sometimes it can be as simple as a spray of spicy, citrussy magical perfume. 

Georgian hand embroidered christening cape.

 

Canary Island Novels - Coming Soon.

 

Miel de Palma from La Gomera

Unusually, I've been neglecting this blog. 

We had a small interruption from Storm Eowyn when we lost all power, including heating, for three chilly days, played a lot of Monopoly and Scrabble by candlelight but eventually had to take refuge in a hotel for one happy night. We stayed in a wonderful old hotel in Ayr called The Chestnuts, and I can recommend it if you're ever looking for somewhere to stay or just to eat. They were beyond welcoming - even putting an extra heater in the room to thaw us out. The bed was incredibly comfortable, the food was fabulous and the staff were kind and helpful. I wish we could have stayed on for a few more nights, but Scottish Power turned up and switched everything on again so we had to go home. 

Anyway, the knock on effect of that was a certain amount of delay with my latest project, which involves the first two novels in what I hope will be a trilogy of books set in the gorgeous Canary Isles, but especially on one of my favourite places of all time - La Gomera. 

There is a long and complicated story to these Canary Island novels, which I'll write about in a later post. We had a couple of blissful winters there when my husband was working as a yacht charter skipper. I've spent the past few months editing the first two books in the series. And then editing them again. And again. Ever more reluctant to let them go.

Essentially, it's the story of a cross-cultural relationship and I suppose one of the other inspirations behind it was my parents' own long and loving marriage. Mum was from a working class Leeds Irish family. Dad was a refugee from an aristocratic landowning Polish family. They met at the dancing in Leeds. And they never ever stopped loving each other. 

Much later, when I wanted to write about this kind of relationship, albeit in quite a different setting, I started on these books. It was a rocky road and it has taken years and several incarnations including a radio play.  Latterly, I think I just couldn't bear to leave the people and the setting, so because I too want to know what happens next, there will have to be a third novel.

In many ways it's a simple love story - but with inevitable complications. 

Anyway, now that the files are off to the designer, they'll be coming out soon as eBooks and paperbacks: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. Watch this space for more about them.

Good friends have just come back from La Gomera, and they brought us a bottle of Miel de Palma - palm honey, which is a sweet syrup produced from the sap of palm trees - and delicious. A very fitting taste of the island where we spent some of the happiest times of our life and where - in some alternate universe - we might still be living. 

 

Tam O' Shanter

Ae Spring, by my husband, Alan Lees

Back in June 1996, BBC R4 broadcast my play on the writing of Tam O' Shanter : the narrative, comic poem by our greatest national poet, Robert Burns. That was back when I was writing plenty of radio drama, and at that time, was lucky enough to work with an international award winning producer/director, the late Hamish Wilson. The play was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of the poet, on 21st July 1796. 

A few days ago, a friend flagged up to me on Facebook that R4 Extra were broadcasting repeats of the production. It's still available online, and will be for the next 25 days, which I'm pleased about since we were in the middle of a prolonged Storm Eowyn powercut at the time! 

I wanted to evoke the older Burns, who seems to have been inspired to write the poem circa 1790, for the second volume of Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. This was when he, his wife Jean and his family were living at Ellisland Farm, not far from Dumfries. The poet was farming and working as an exciseman, all while writing and remaining, by all accounts, a loving father.

I also wanted to look back to the inspiration behind the poem, when a very young Rab spent time in Kirkoswald, not far from his mother's home town of Maybole, learning 'mensuration' or mathematics, but also walking across to the nearby Carrick coast with his friend Willie Niven. It was there that he met Douglas Graham of Shanter Farm, about half a mile from the village of Maidens. Duncan was the model for Tam. He had a formidable wife, and a drinking crony called John Davidson - 'Souter Johnnie', the Kirkoswald shoemaker, whose house you can still visit today.

Essentially, this is a tale of a very drunken Tam setting off home to Shanter Farm after a successful market day in Ayr, riding his 'grey mare Meg'. Increasingly beset by stormy weather and the fear of ghosts and goblins, he is heading for the River Doon, that marks the border between Kyle and Carrick when ...

'glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.—

Drunkenly determined to investigate, Tam advances on the ruins, only to see a dance of witches, 'rigwoodie hags' with the devil himself, Auld Nick, playing the pipes to accompany them. Unfortunately for Tam (or his horse) one of the witches, Nannie, is young and pretty, dancing madly in a very short shift, a 'cutty-sark', leaving little to Tam's imagination. He is so excited that he takes leave of his senses altogether and cries out 'weel done Cutty-sark!' whereupon - as the poet tells us - 'in an instant all was dark.' 

The 'hellish legion' sallies forth to chase him. 'In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'. But witches and warlocks dare not cross running water and 'Maggie' is a noble steed. They 'win the key-stane of the brig' just as the athletic Nannie catches hold of Meg's tail. 

'The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.'

It is a wonderful poem: witty and wise and perfectly structured, with a use of language second to none. I have always loved Burns's poetry and have written a good deal about him and his wife over the years - but I still think this poem is my favourite. 

In writing the play, I was keen to weave in some of the folkloric inspiration behind the poem, stories that the poet would have heard at his mother's knee and that his wife too would have been well aware of during her Mauchline childhood. 

I also wanted to evoke the poem's composition - not in the single inspiration that later commentators invented - but as a creative process. The poet clearly enjoyed himself, and it shows in the perfection and wit of the completed poem. 

The cast included, among various talented Scottish actors, Ayrshire lad Liam Brennan as Rab, Gerda Stevenson with a perfect voice to evoke Jean Armour's 'wood notes wild' - and an appearance by Billy Boyd who went on to play Pippin in The Lord of the Rings. You can hear Liam reading the whole poem, beautifully, at the very end of the play. 

Like all Hamish's productions, it was a happy project. He was skilful, talented, caring and kindly. 

As a postscript to this, you may want to read a little more about Hamish himself. After his death, I wrote a piece about him for this blog, later republished on the Sutton Elms Blog. Sadly the BBC decided that this award winning producer was surplus to requirements and made him redundant. Among much else, he had been a juror and jury chairman in the Prix Italia, Prix Futura Berlin and the Prix Europa - but he wore his distinction lightly. Perhaps too lightly for the BBC that jettisoned him as casually as they have jettisoned so many others over the years - myself included, some years later. My last radio production was in 2007. We were, as somebody pointed out to me much later, 'tainted by experience.' 

It turned out to be a good thing for me. After an initial period of mourning for the radio career I once had, I moved on to many other enjoyable and successful creative projects - and a writing career is always a switchback. Not quite so for Hamish, sadly. I've often thought that if these things had happened just a few years later, he would have been able to go it alone, much as so many writers like myself do nowadays. He was one of the best and I still miss him.

Meanwhile, if you can visit Ellisland, probably the most atmospheric of all the places associated with the poet, don't forget to walk along the River Nith, where the poet walked and remembered his youth and imagined  the first drafts of the tale of Tam o' Shanter. You might like to listen to the play as well! You can find it here for the next three weeks or so: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027csp

River Nith near Ellisland

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Thirteen: Accept That You Are Running a Small Business

 

When I was first starting out on a writing career, I wish that somebody had sat me down and pointed out that I was about to set up a small business. That I was about to be a sole trader and that I had better believe it and act accordingly, rather than imagining myself to be some kind of acolyte, knocking at the doors of literature.

Actually, if I'm honest, they did. Or tried to. I joined the Society of Authors but over the years, they seemed to chicken out of the kind of robust advice they had once offered. Somewhere along the way, I remember booking an advice session with the Cultural Enterprise Office in Glasgow. It still exists, but back then it was proactive and well funded and you could book one to one sessions with people who knew what they were talking about. I also attended a few information days and events with my freelance woodcarver and artist husband, all aimed at prompting us be more businesslike. Although sometimes those sessions consisted of wildly successful people telling us how wildly successful they had been, rather than giving us any concrete advice about how they had done it. 

A few things are preying on my mind as I write this. 

1 I use Amazon a lot, both for shopping - we live in a rural area, and their deliveries are very good - and for publishing eBooks and excellent quality print-on-demand paperbacks. I don't make any fortunes out of the publishing, but Amazon pays me every month, on the nail, with tremendous regularity. They also supply me with data that I can understand. If you've never engaged with a traditional publisher, you will have no idea how rare this is. Hen's teeth doesn't even begin to describe it. 

2 Over the Christmas period, I noticed that most, if not all, of my various Amazon deliveries were accompanied by a small note of some kind. Like this one, from PetShop, the company that supplies me with No Mess Bird Seed, to feed the ravening hordes in my garden:  'Our company was founded with the help of a Prince's Trust loan in 2010.' The letter goes on to describe how one of the founders had moved back home and saw his mother, who had arthritis, struggling to carry pet food. The company aim to supply and deliver pet and wild bird food directly to the customer. And they do, efficiently and at a reasonable price. Another company, supplying my husband's acrylic paint added a cheerful leaflet announcing that they are 'new to Amazon Marketplace' even though they have bricks and mortar stores in the south and are eminently contactable in other ways.

3 Many of my writer friends routinely and very vocally boycott Amazon. Some of them have publishers that sell books on the platform, so I never quite know how they square this with their consciences, but they do. And yes - I'm well aware that most traditional publishers are no fans of the big beast for various valid reasons - but then the whole 'sale or return' set-up that persists for book sales is pretty faulty, wherever they are sold. Most artists and artisans will have discovered by bitter experience that any kind of sale or return deal with a store is a very bad idea. My woodcarver husband once loaned out a hand carved rocking horse to a supposedly reputable shop, only to have it returned with coffee mug stains and scratches all over the stand. On another occasion we had to execute a 'sting' to recover a large rocking horse from a store that we had been reliably informed was about to go bust, taking £3000 worth of his hard work with it. These are extreme examples, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that businesses don't value what they haven't paid for.

As far as Amazon is concerned, the animus is mostly to do with corporation taxes, avoided (but not evaded) by the giant, but many of my colleagues seem unaware that Amazon hosts thousands of small businesses, (2 million small and medium enterprises at the last count) many of which would not survive without the efficiency of the site underpinning their sales. And these days, most UK SMEs, hit hard by Brexit and the near impossibility of selling to the EU without incurring spiralling costs, need all the help that they can get.

These are small businesses that submit tax returns and pay their taxes. 

If you think Amazon itself (as opposed to those selling on the platform) should pay more taxes, lobby your MP.  And bear in mind that if you are aiming to publish and sell your creative work in any way, you are also running a small business. Act accordingly. Look out for yourself. Don't fall for the sob stories.

I should add that I wish I had followed my own advice years ago. But then, years ago, the option to self publish didn't exist as it does now, in various forms. I only wish it had.

Poor, Dear, Unfortunate Jean.

 

 

It has been brought to my attention that the National Trust for Scotland is holding a Jean Armour Supper in Burns Cottage on 24th January. Presumably in case potential attendees are otherwise engaged on the Bard's actual birthday on the 25th. Tickets are £100 a pop, so it's only for 'those and such as those' as the locals would say. 

Back in 2016, I researched, wrote and published what was generally accepted to be the definitive book about Jean Armour, albeit in novel form  - The Jewel. It's still available, both in paperback and as an eBook, which you will find here. Until then, she had been a mere footnote in the life of the poet. In the historical note to my novel, I point out that 'too many Victorian scholars seem to have been content to maintain the fiction that in marrying Jean, a reasonably prosperous stonemason's daughter, the poet was somehow marrying beneath him.'  Catherine Carson went so far as to call her an 'unfeeling heifer'.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. 

The poet called her his muse, in this loveliest of songs - O Were I On Parnassus Hill - one that another poet would later dismiss as a 'strained and vapid lyric.' He should be so lucky as to have somebody write such splendid words about him. 

In spite of living some eight miles away from Burns Cottage, in spite of the fact that the Burns Museum sold my books, and I had actually done a talk for them - admittedly on a different subject - last year, I found out about the event only when it popped up on my FB feed and when a few people asked if I would be there. If there were invitations, one of them wasn't for me. But perhaps it's just as well. 

Here's the publicity for the event. Can you spot the problem? 

It’s time the ladies had their own supper! Celebrate the life, love, and legacy of Robert Burns through the eyes of his muse, Jean Armour.

So it's not about Jean at all, is it? It's about the life, love and legacy of her famous husband with Jean as an also-ran. A 'ladies' addendum to Burns night. Because we can't possibly celebrate this fine woman in her own right, can we?

Back when the book was first published, I attended a particularly wonderful Jean Armour Supper. It was held in Troon's Lochgreen Hotel, it was organised by the Ayrshire Business Women, and the only men in the room were the waiters. I toasted the Immortal Memory of Jean. It still stands out as one of the high points of my working life, one of the most enjoyable events I've ever participated in. 

I sometimes wonder if my big mistake was in writing Jean's story as a piece of fiction. Well, I don't regret it, because I am first and foremost a novelist, and I wanted to get inside her head. But I'm a historian as well, and everything in the novel either did happen or could have happened. Mostly the former. A little while ago, I found myself chatting to somebody on Facebook who had been doing some research on his family's own connection with Jean. Much of what he was saying was what I had discovered as well. When I innocently asked him if he had read my book, his reply was 'LOL no!' 

I'm still not sure what was so funny about the notion of reading a well researched, glowingly reviewed book, fiction or not, about the very topic you're researching.

All this is on my mind because, among other things, I'm currently working on a play about Jean, one that will involve dramatising parts of my own book. There's a definite likelihood of a production. And perhaps we can make it a celebration of Jean herself, without placing her firmly in the long shadow cast by her husband. Who after their marriage, and even though he had once called her his 'poor, dear, unfortunate Jean', always gave her her due. 

'Then come, sweet Muse, inspire my lay! 

For a' the lee-lang simmer's day, 

I couldna sing, I couldna say, 

How much, how dear, I love thee.'

Ellisland near Dumfries, where Jean is properly celebrated.

Ice Dancing - A Very Grown Up Love Story

Cover image by Michal Piasecki

My novel, Ice Dancing, will be free on Amazon Kindle for the next five days, beginning tomorrow, 31st December, so if you're at a loose end over the New Year holiday, you might like to give it a try. And - if you enjoy it - reward me with a short review, or at least some stars! Because it really makes a difference to how Amazon promotes our work. 

It's set in a small village in rural lowland Scotland. As I've said to a few friends, it's 'inspired by' the place I live, in that I know exactly what it's like living in a small Scottish village.  Nevertheless, all the characters are entirely fictional. 

The story involves an attractive newcomer and his effect on a small community where more or less everyone knows everyone else, or thinks they do. But the seemingly glamorous stranger has a more difficult and disturbing past than the village - and one inhabitant in particular - could ever imagine. 

You'll find it on Amazon with a gorgeous cover by Polish photographer (based in Scotland) Michal Piasecki. 

Click on the title below for the UK link or search for it in other countries. 

Ice Dancing.

Rewilding - A Free Spooky Tale for Christmas

 

If, like me, you enjoy reading and telling spooky stories over Christmas, you can download my novella Rewilding, free on Kindle from 24th till 28th December. 

I reread it recently, while I was setting up this Kindle promotion, and I was quite disturbed by it, especially since I was reading it on my own e-reader in the dark, in the middle of the night. I wondered where on earth it had come from! 

If you read it you'll probably see what I mean. You may find it surprising how often writers reread work they wrote some time ago, and wonder how they did it. It does sometimes feel as though something else takes over and tells the tale. 

Oddly enough, the thoroughly scary episodes of Danny Robins' excellent 'Uncanny' series, dealing with a haunted Highland bothy, Luibeilt, were not part of the inspiration for the novella, which was written some years earlier. But this is one of the Uncanny stories that has really stayed with me and is well worth a listen, especially the recent 'catch-up' episode. 

So where did my story come from? 

Partly, it was inspired by a talk I attended about a writer cycling ancient routes across the Highlands, sleeping in remote bothies - and it occurred to me how much more hazardous and nerve-racking this might be for a woman to do alone. It was also inspired by this extraordinary and haunting song from Julie Fowlis. And perhaps an abiding and professional interest in folklore, especially places where the boundaries between this world and another seem to be 'thin'. The glen in the story is one such place. 

One more thing to note: the 'each uisge' is a creature that is a whole lot more dangerous than a kelpie. 

If you want to know how and why - you can read the story. But do listen to the song as well because all may not be quite as it seems. And do let me know what you think in the comments!

Ghostly Heights

My mother, Kathleen, at Haworth, back in the late 1940s.

I love a good ghost story, don't you? Especially at Christmas.

It's just one more reason why I love Wuthering Heights so much. (See previous post!) There are convincing supernatural elements to the story, subtle and always queried by the narrators, but they stay with the reader long after the book is finished and this reader, at any rate, is in no doubt about what Emily herself believed.

The first and perhaps most memorable incident is the appearance of the ghostly Catherine Linton, invading Mr Lockwood's nightmare. 'Why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton,' he writes afterwards. She hovers outside, tapping on the window of her own bedroom, trying to get in, and prompting Lockwood - with an early intimation of the intense cruelty, physical and mental, that permeates the novel - to rub her wrist over the broken glass in an effort to dislodge the unwelcome apparition. Catherine declares that she has 'been a waif for twenty years.' As indeed she has, if one assumes that she can't rest without her soul mate. 

In the last part of the novel, just at the point where Heathcliff's revenge is almost complete, something or someone intervenes. Throughout the novel, Nelly Dean, who tells most of the tale to Lockwood, has characterised herself as superstitious as well as religious. She can only relate in disturbing detail what she sees - or rather what she perceives that Heathcliff watches  - something that she cannot see. 

Most dog or cat owners - me included - will know the uneasy realisation that the animal is watching something that moves about, but it's something that you can't see. 

At this point, towards the end of the novel, most readers can't help bur remember a much earlier scene in which Catherine, after Heathcliff's unexpected return, and the inevitable renewal of hostilities between him and her husband, is driven to distraction by her own self imposed suffering, fracturing her personality.

'Look!' she cried eagerly, 'that's my room with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it; and the other candle is in Joseph's garret. Joseph sits up late, doesn't he? He's waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate. Well, he'll wait a while yet. It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!'

She paused, and resumed with a strange smile. 'He's considering - he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!'

And only a little later, in a final, heartrending scene between the two, Heathcliff cries: 

'You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. WHY did you despise me? WHY did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - then what RIGHT had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, YOU, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - YOU have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh, God! would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?'

We remember that 'be content, you always followed me' during those final disturbing scenes when it's clear that Heathcliff is at last within sight of his heaven, one only to be attained by following his Cathy. Afterwards, Joseph will swear that he sees 'two on ’em looking out of his chamber window on every rainy night since his death', and a little shepherd boy will tell Nelly that 'there's Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t' nab, un' I darnut pass 'em.'

We should always remember that the final lines of the novel are written by a person who, visiting their graves, cannot imagine 'unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth'. Beautiful as they are, these are written by the supremely prosaic Mr Lockwood.

I think Emily had other ideas. 

Bird of Passage - My Homage to Wuthering Heights.

 

Over the years of my writing career to date, there were two or three novels that I always thought of as the 'ones that got away'. 

Until I took the decision to publish it myself, Bird of Passage had always been my orphan child, the book that a few people read and enjoyed and were moved by, but that nobody in the industry wanted. Unlike The Amber Heart, that kept being turned down with fulsome praise, because 'nobody is interested in Poland', no agent or publisher would even read Bird of Passage, in spite of its Scottish setting and Irish background, and in spite of the fact that it tackles some harrowing issues that are still very much current. In short, it was turned down unseen. 

My big mistake, I came to realise, was in pointing out that it was something of a homage to Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights would be my desert island book. My 'inheritance' novel because my mother and my aunt loved it too, so it was a part of my childhood. It was the novel I read when I was in my teens and I've never stopped loving it. I reread it almost every year,  generally at this time of year. Vitally, it was the inspiration behind Bird of Passage. 

This is a reblogging of an old and popular post with some revisions. Because whenever I reread WH, I find something new and intriguing. This year it was narrator Ellen Dean's reference to Joseph, even doggedly religious Joseph, leaving his cake and cheese out 'for the fairies' on Christmas Eve. Which made me think of my Yorkshire grandfather and his great fondness for fruit cake and crumbly Wensleydale cheese. Then I wondered whether our habit of leaving a mince pie and a glass of sherry out for Father Christmas owes something to that much older custom. 

I'm a Yorkshire lass, although one with a rich Polish and a rich Irish heritage as well. We lived in Leeds until I was twelve years old. You can read more about my family background in a book called A Proper Person to be Detained (Saraband 2019), part personal memoir, part family history. In that book, you'll find a little speculation about whether Emily may have conceived Heathcliff as a dark Irish child, with his 'gibberish that nobody could understand'. This may have been his native Gaelic, given that Liverpool was full of migrant Irish fleeing famine, including my own forebears, at the time when Emily was writing the novel in 1845. Emily's father was from County Down in Northern Ireland and the sisters would have been well aware of the anti-Irish prejudice that accompanied the influx of migrants. 

I was named for the heroine of Wuthering Heights, a doubtful compliment some might say, and I was trundled over the moors in my push-chair to Top Withens, the setting for the Heights in the novel, if not for the house itself. As soon as I was old enough to read and begin to understand the novel, I adored it, although I soon realised that it was a powerful and absorbing evocation of obsessive love, packed with repeated images of cruelty and sadism, with very little of conventional romance about it. 

Top Withens

Many years later, when I became an experienced radio dramatist, with 100+ hours of radio drama to my name, I would plead with the BBC to let me dramatise the novel. They commissioned me to dramatise many classics, from Kidnapped and Catriona to The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but for some reason, they never let me tackle Emily's masterpiece. Which was a pity, since so many dramatisations - in my well informed opinion - fell far short of the mark. 

 

Cue forward some years, and after a spell of writing for the stage, I began to focus almost wholly on fiction, with occasional ventures into historical non-fiction. Much of my work at that time was published by Saraband, but I still kept going back to Bird of Passage. Most writers have ‘bottom drawer’ novels. I have several, and most of them should never see the light of day. 

Bird of Passage always felt different. 

It felt like irritatingly unfinished business. I kept going back to it. Tinkering. Thinking about it. It haunted my dreams. It was as though these characters wanted desperately to tell their story. Interestingly, I knew that one of the characters had a secret, but even I didn't know what that secret was till the very end of the writing process. I woke up in the early hours, thinking 'That's what it was. That's what he needed to remember.' But I had to write the book and edit the book many times over to find out.

Back then, I still had an agent but they seemed to be repelled by anything with a Wuthering Heights connection, even though I would insist that it was only 'inspired by' and not some crass rehashing of the story. Later, no publisher would touch it, in spite of some glowing reader recommendations. 

I've often wondered about their wholly and sometimes virulently negative response. Given how many women I know who - like me - love Wuthering Heights, what was their motivation? It wasn't as though they had read it and found it wanting in some way. That would have been excusable. They wouldn't read it at all. Wouldn't you think at least one of them might have thought that they could find a way of marketing it?  

Anyway - Bird of Passage languished on the far recesses of my PC. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody had the time to read it. Nobody cared except me. I cared. 

I couldn't get Finn and Kirsty out of my mind, so when I took the decision to combine some self publishing with my traditional publishing, this was one of several novels that I felt deserved another life beyond the confines of my computer, my own imagination and the doubtful curation of other people. 

That was when I tackled it in a big way, with all the benefit of half a lifetime's experience of writing and editing. When it was finally published, one of my reviewers, Susan Price, pointed out that it is not a retelling. It is a 'reimagining' of Wuthering Heights at a different time and in a different place.' 

Bird of Passage wasn't the only trigger, but it was a significant milestone. I think it was then that I knew that the way ahead for me lay in publishing my own books, under my own imprint, albeit with some excellent professional assistance. I needed to be in control.

The evocative cover image by my artist husband, Alan Lees, is exactly what I wanted. It's a very grown up and often desperately sad story set mostly in the Scottish countryside, exploring the kind of mutual passion that is attractive in theory but ultimately destructive. It's a novel with occasional, albeit very subtle, supernatural elements. It's a book about the nature of obsessive love and the terrible, irreparable damage of childhood trauma.

If you love Wuthering Heights (or even if you don't) and if this sounds like your kind of novel, it's available as an eBook and in a nice, fat paperback as well. 

The eBook of Bird of Passage will be on special offer at the bargain price of 99p from 11th till 17th December.  

Ten Things to Think About If You're Planning a Writing Career

 

1 - Do you want to 'be a writer' or do you want to write? If you find yourself saying that you want to 'be a writer' but haven't actually written much, while making excuses to yourself and your friends - I don't have the time, I don't have the space, I don't have a computer - then you may need to have a rethink.

2 - Getting an agent doesn't mean that you'll get a publishing deal. Even if you win the query letter lottery, ten to one you'll be asked to rewrite. Many times.  And even when you've done those rewrites, you still may not get a publishing deal. At some point, you may realise that you've wasted the time you should have spent writing another book on rehashing the previous book. 

3 - Very few people make a living out of their writing, and this situation has only got worse. Are you prepared to diversify and do other things to earn actual money? The average 'advance' - if you get one, which is debatable - is tiny. £1000 or £500 is not unusual for a book that has taken a year or two to research and write. Lots of jam tomorrow in the publishing world. 

4 - If you have written fiction, you'll be told that nobody is reading fiction. If you have written non-fiction, nobody is buying that either. If you write popular fiction, it's not literary enough. If you write literary fiction, it's not popular enough. I was once told that my work was 'too literary to be popular but too popular to be literary.' It's the equivalent of the indrawn breath when you are trying to sell a car. Nobody wants that particular model, although they absolutely do want the model they are trying to sell you. The Long Tail seems to be an unknown concept. (Read the book. It's a revelation.) 

5 - For most small to medium sized publishers, editing is not what it was. A good editor will ask all the right questions and in answering them you will make the book better. But most are now freelance, and many publishers simply can't afford them. 

6 - Are you prepared to do almost all publicity and promotion yourself? You will be expected to contact libraries and local venues. You will probably have to organise your book launch yourself, and many bookstores won't be keen to host you unless you can guarantee sales. All of this genuinely (as opposed to point 1, above) eats into good writing time. And yet you feel compelled to do it for fear of missing out on sales.

7 - The physical quality of your precious baby - aka the book - may not be nearly as good as it was even a few years ago. In fact it may involve paper like Soviet Era Polish bog roll. (Of which I have some experience.)

8 -  Once you get a modicum of traction, with a reasonably popular subject, you may be asked to talk about your book. Many commercial organisations will expect you to do this for nothing. My maddest moment was realising that I had hauled myself across the country, done a ten minute talk for a big chain bookstore, (there were four other participants I didn't know about and a tiny audience) paid for an overnight stay in a horrible room, and trekked back home. All at my own expense. 

9 - There are, of course, some organisations that may invite you to speak, give you a good meal and somewhere nice to stay and buy copies of your book as well. It has happened to me and I was incredibly grateful. But it's rare and getting rarer all the time. 

10 - Given all of the above, you may want to consider going it alone. You won't be alone. You can get help along the way. But it isn't a simple solution either. These are shark infested waters, and you need to be careful and committed. Nevertheless, it strikes me that the reverted and new titles I'm now publishing myself under my own imprint are good quality. Good physical quality as well, with beautiful covers, and nice paper. I'm the same writer I ever was, albeit with many more years of experience. And you know what? When it comes to the reading public, that long, long tail of people who like books, nobody cares who published them. 

They never even notice.

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Twelve: Happy Days In Fife

The upper flat here was my home for almost two years.

 For a couple of years, in the late 70s, I worked for an organisation called The Arts In Fife, as a 'community writer'. I was part of a small group of writers and artists working in the community to 'facilitate' various creative events - writing groups, art projects etc. Fife is a big place and I needed to be able to drive, so I took my test in a hurry. Those were the dear dead days when you didn't have to wait years for a test. It was the most nerve-racking exam I've ever taken. Twice the same dog trotted over the road in front of me. It was the only time the stern examiner said anything apart from test related stuff. 'Suicidal dog,' he said. But I didn't run the dog over, and I must have looked in the mirror, because I passed first time. Then with my parents' help, I acquired a very elderly green Morris Minor, the only car I've ever truly loved. 

After a couple of months spent lodging with the kind parents of one of my old flatmates in Broughty Ferry (a home from home for a while) and commuting to Cupar where we were based, I managed to rent an upper flat in an old cottage in Kingskettle. It was pretty and comfortable but as so many houses back then, without central heating. As far as I remember there was a coal fire in the living room, and I carted a couple of electric fires back from Ayrshire. 

The job was huge fun.

Two incidents from that time stick in my mind. One was when my boss suggested that it would be a good idea if I put a notice up at RAF Leuchars, to see if any of the Air Force wives in particular might be interested in coming along to a daytime writing group. A little while later, I had a visit from Special Branch in the shape of a polite young man in a white mac, who had been told to 'investigate' me. 

It was the name that did it, of course. Although why any spy worth her salt would use such an obviously central European surname, I don't know. Surely Blunt or Philby would have been better.

On another occasion, myself and the community artist, Rozanne, pottered down to the East Neuk in my wee green Morris, to visit a National Trust property, at their request, to see if there was anything we could do for them. We were, as far as I remember, given coffee. But throughout the meeting, we were driven mad by the appetising scent of cooking. Eventually, we were shown out, politely enough. They were expecting a visit from the high heidyins in Edinburgh. As we ate fish and chips in Anstruther, we reflected that lowly artists and writers didn't merit such lunch invitations. They were only for 'those and such as those' - a status which I have seldom if ever achieved. 

Most writers will have tales of being decanted into the night in a strange town or city, having given a talk or similar, and heading back to some hotel or B&B to eat a packet of M&S sandwiches (if lucky) and drink one of those grim miniature bottles of wine, if you've remembered to buy one in advance. The very worst was an unpaid event for a big bookshop that hadn't even given me expenses, and being wished a cheerful goodnight, as I headed back to a horrible economy room in a hall of residence, with a narrow bed, a desk, a chair and a spider in the corner. 'Never again,' you say. Until the next time. 

I loved Fife and I still do - a beautiful place with friendly people. The job, as it was intended to do, left me some time to write. I was working on short fiction and poetry, as well as the occasional freelance piece for the Scotsman. I visited St Kilda, by helicopter, to write a piece about the island, and later drove to Fort William to interview one of the last people to leave the island. He still had his St Kilda spinning wheel, and showed me how to use it. Then I drove all the way back to Kingskettle, because I was working in Fife the next day.

Mostly though, my own work at that time involved radio plays, first with the late, much missed Marilyn Imrie, and following that with the equally missed Hamish Wilson. Of which more soon. 

When the job came to an end, I was on the verge of moving to Huddersfield, where I had just been accepted for a writer in residence post but was yet to make up my mind about it. Then an Ayrshire based friend decided to stop off in Kingskettle on his way to a fencing tournament. He never got to the tournament, and soon after that, I moved back to Ayrshire, got married and became a more or less full time writer. 

An Unexpected Use for AI

 

Image, courtesy of hotpot.ai/art-generator 

 He's rather nice, isn't he? 

I have to admit, up front, that I'm not a big fan of AI. I never use it for writing (I can do that all by myself.), I don't like the way it harvests the work of genuine creatives, and I keep seeing these appalling AI images drifting past my eyes on social media, most of them ridiculous or inaccurate or both. 

My book covers so far - the ones I source myself - are supplied by my artist husband, Alan Lees, my own collection of very old photographs, or more recently, some spectacularly beautiful photographs by our friend Michal Piasecki  licenced only for this single use. The cover designs are made from these images by Lumphanan Press who also format the books for me.

But here's a thing. Like many writers, when I'm working on a book, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, I do like to surround myself with images of all kinds. They can be photographs, postcards, paintings, landscapes, houses, maps, and characters that reflect whoever or whatever I'm writing about - a whole miscellany of images that will never appear in the book as themselves, but will feed into the inspiration behind it. It's one of the pleasures of creating. My work-space becomes a kind of mega mood board. 

I do the same thing on Pinterest as well, making a board for each project. 

My latest project is going to be a trilogy. I've written two books in the series, and hope to publish them either before Christmas, or soon after: Hera's Orchard and Bitter Oranges. I'll be tackling the third in 2025. The books are set mostly on the Canary Isles, and they are about the challenges and joys of a cross cultural relationship. 

I'm going back to an old project here that has had several incarnations, including a radio play, a short story, and a novel that was so skewed by my then publisher that it bore only a faint resemblance to the book I had written. 'You wrote a sensitive exploration of a marriage and we turned it into a beach bonk buster' said my editor, regretfully, many years later. She wasn't wrong. What I really wanted to do was get back to my original idea, and see where it took me.

I wrote the first book, published it briefly on Amazon as Orange Blossoms, unpublished it quite quickly, because I wasn't happy with it, and then revised it drastically, while working flat out on the sequel. It has taken a while, but I'm finalising edits of both books. 

My husband used to be a charter yacht skipper, so we spent a couple of winters in the Canaries, aboard a 50 foot catamaran. It was probably where my love of all things Spanish began. I'm looking at some of my old photographs as I type this, as well as maps, and a little heap of reference books. 

So - where does AI come in? Well, in an idle moment, last night, I found a site called hotpot.ai, and even more idly typed into the little box the simple line  'handsome Spanish man sitting under an orange tree.' Within a couple of seconds, the site had generated the picture at the top of this post. I was surprised. I mean, not only is he handsome, but he genuinely looks Spanish. (Where was this 'harvested' from, I wonder?) The oranges are a bit OTT  in the way of so much AI, but for a book called Hera's Orchard in which the oranges themselves take on a kind of magical quality, it's fine by me.

Today, I had another go, because my 'hero' for want of a better word, plays the guitar. But it has to be a Spanish guitar. And so it is. Not sure about the beard, but it's still a pretty good image. 

As I say, I won't be using this in any commercial sense. My husband has already supplied me with three lovely cover images. But many writers like to play about with visual images as additional sources of inspiration ...  which these are. Thanks, hotpot!

Guitarrista - hotpot.ai/art-generator

A True Tale For Hallowe'en

 

Michael James Flynn in the middle, with the moustache and waistcoat,
seated next to the man with the tar bucket.

I don't know quite what to make of this story even though it happened to me - but it has stayed with me ever since. I leave you to make up your own minds.

Most writers, whether of fiction or non-fiction (and I do both) will tell you that we become so absorbed in our subject matter that we feel as though the people we're writing about are not just real - as they often are - but alive. Sometimes that sense of reality even rubs off onto our nearest and dearest. When I was  researching and writing a novel called The Jewel, about poet Robert Burns's wife, Jean Armour, back in 2015, I had talked about her so much that my husband swore that he saw her one night, walking through the door between our bedroom and my office - a woman in old fashioned dress, with something like a mob cap on her head. 

My tale for today is quite different, very personal and not nearly so fleeting. 

In 2018, I had been deep into research for a new book, about a murder in my Leeds Irish family. The book, called A Proper Person to be Detained, would be published in 2019 by Contraband. On Christmas Day, in 1881, my nana's uncle John Manley had been stabbed in the street by one John Ross and died where he fell. The two men had been casual friends. John Manley had refused to fight, but Ross was angry and drunk and found a tobacco cutting knife in his pocket. The murderer fled, to be apprehended a few weeks later. He was tried and sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to hard labour, a mercy that I felt was probably justified. 

In writing the book, I explored the situation of this poor Irish migrant family, whose parents had fled famine, only - like so many - to be abused and exploited in the industrial cities of England and Scotland. Researching the book also gave me the opportunity to find out more about my great grandfather, Michael James Flynn from Ballinlough, County Roscommon. (He went by both christian names.) He married my great grandmother, the murdered man's sister, Mary, already a widow with children, in St Patrick's Church, Leeds, in 1888. The Manley family had come from Ballyhaunis in Mayo, but the two villages are only five miles apart, so there may have been family associations. At that time, he was a paviour's labourer, but later, he would describe himself as a paviour. He built roads and pavements. 

From the accounts of those who knew him, he was a good, kind, generous man who managed to transform the fortunes of the family. The household into which I was born, more than sixty years later, was by no means wealthy. It was still a working class household,  but it was warm, clean and comfortable. Nobody went hungry. My nana remembered Michael as the most generous of fathers. If he was wearing a winter coat and he saw a beggar on the street, he was quite likely to hand it over to the more needy man, to the occasional frustration of his wife.

So what about my Hallowe'en story?

It happened in a supermarket car-park of all places. Not long after I had finished the book. It was one of those chilly, misty mornings, with a low sun shining in my eyes as I walked from my parked car to the door of the building. It was early and the car-park was fairly empty. A man walked out of the mist and the sunlight and headed straight for me. I had just crossed the narrow roadway leading into the parking spaces, but halted as he approached. I remember that he put a gentle hand on my elbow and encouraged me to step up onto the pavement. 'Take care, madam,' he said. He was Irish. Not Northern Irish, as so many visitors to this part of south west Scotland, but a soft southern Irish voice. 

'I was wondering,' he said, 'if you might be able to give me something to get myself a bit of breakfast.' He glanced back towards the supermarket doorway. 'They've all been ignoring me,' he said. 

I looked him up and down. He was covered in grey-white dust - it looked like plaster dust - from head to toe. He wasn't dirty or drunk. Just dusty. He wore boots and they too were dusty. He looked like a working man, a labourer. 

I didn't hesitate. I looked in my purse, found a five pound note, and gave it to him. I don't carry much cash these days and it was all I had. He thanked me. 'God bless you,' he said. 'God bless you!' And off he went. I watched him walk into the misty winter sunshine, as he headed towards the steps leading up into the town. I never saw him go up the steps.

I had one of those sudden intimations of something odd. Not frightening at all, you understand, but uncanny. And strangely uplifting. I headed for the supermarket, but had to find a seat and sit down for a moment or two. I felt quite shaky. It struck me that I have seldom, if ever, seen or heard an Irish labourer travelling alone in this part of the world. Ulster yes, but Irish? Tattie howkers used to come, but they seldom do now, and besides, it wasn't that time of year. 

I've never met one since. 

I can see him now, feel his gentle hand on my elbow, his warm 'God bless you!' 

All through my shopping, and all the way home, I thought about my kind, generous, much loved great grandfather, a man I had never known, but who was very much on my mind. Of course the sceptics will easily explain it away. And in a strict sense, it is perfectly explicable. Isn't it?

But I know what I saw. And I know what I felt. And it's an encounter that I still treasure.

What do you think? 

PS, If you would like to read a made-up supernatural tale, you'll find my strange little novella Rewilding  free on Kindle, from 31st October, for five days. 

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Eleven: A Cautionary Tale

David Rintoul and Paul Young as David Balfour and Alan Breck
in my radio dramatisation of Kidnapped and Catriona - a happy production!

Once upon a time when most of my writing involved plays, especially radio plays, rather than fiction, I was a member of a UK union for professional writers, focusing on drama. I had been a fully paid up member for some years. 

Membership involved a banding system, paying a percentage of one's earnings, which had to be declared. I think the same applies now, although when I had a look at the required payments recently they seem more reasonable than they did back then. Nevertheless, I was happy to pay, and membership meant that the BBC had to pay me the agreed rates for my radio drama, which constituted the bulk of my paid work back then. 

Even so (and possibly more so now) the 'agreed rates' for small independent theatres - for example - always seemed unrealistically high for those of us outside London. Funded though regional theatres might be, the vast majority of tiny companies simply couldn't afford these high rates. Most of us managed to hammer out agreements that seemed fair, especially when nobody else connected with the production was earning a fortune.

I think we were always uneasily aware that there seemed to be a focus on London and on the few 'big names' who were working in film and TV and earning what were - for the rest of us - vast sums. 

Some years into my membership, I had my own annus horribilis. It involved family illness and bereavement, house problems and the cancellation of projects I'd budgeted for. In short, our entire income had fallen drastically. We were struggling, mentally and financially.

I wrote to my union, explaining as far as possible what had happened, and asking if a payment holiday might be possible. 

The reply, when it came, fairly took my breath away. The (salaried) General Secretary had written to me personally. If I wanted to spend my money on 'make-up and lunches rather than supporting young writers', that was up to me, he wrote. This at a time when I - only in my mid 40s - was spending my money on food, lighting and heating and buying my clothes in charity shops. 

When I picked my jaw off the floor, I wrote to them, resigning and explaining why. 

I got an apologetic letter from the very starry president, but I didn't rejoin. I've often thought that - as with the theatrical disaster described in a previous post - if it happened now, I would go very public. Back then, there seemed no way of doing it, so I simply soldiered on. Meanwhile, the uneasy perception remains that any man who could even consider sending that letter to a female member was a rank misogynist. There's a lot of it about. Why was nobody aware of it? Or were they aware of it and had decided to ignore it? 

 

The Amber Heart: Free for Three Days Only!

 

My big beautiful Polish saga, The Amber Heart, is free on Amazon Kindle for three days: Thursday 10th, Friday 11th and Saturday 12th October . This was another book that struggled to find a publisher, even when they were publishing other work of mine, mostly because 'nobody is interested in Poland' they said. 

One editor reported that she loved the novel, couldn't put it down and had 'wept buckets' but they 'couldn't take sales with them'. Incidentally, that's another way not to be a writer. If you really don't want to be a writer, make sure you're Polish, living in Britain. Here in the UK, Poland is a very long way away. They do things differently there and nobody wants to read about them. Well, according to most traditional publishers, anyway! I like my Polish citizenship. My dual nationality. But my longing  to write about Poland has done me no favours at all as a writer.

All the same, I think you might enjoy The Amber Heart if you like a good epic love story set during a time of great turbulence. I hope it's accessible and understandable. and besides, people are always falling in love when they shouldn't.  

Unlike Bird of Passage, which nobody would even look at, various agents and editors did look at this one. Two of them suggested that I cut a third out of it. The trouble was that one suggested the first third and the other suggested the last third. One of these was one of my 'disappearing agents'. I had two of them who simply went missing, never to be seen or heard from again. Ultimately, I did some serious pruning but no big chunks. The story needed those 'thirds'. Just a bit less of them. 

You may be interested to know that the story in the novel is very loosely based on truth, and if you want to know more about the real thing, you could read my account of my father's family in eastern Poland - the Last Lancer. My great grandfather Wladyslaw Czerkawski died, my great granny Anna was left a young widow with five children, and she married her estate manager. It was something of a scandal at the time. But not half as much of a scandal as the events of the Amber Heart, which is set more than half a century earlier. 

It's our wedding anniversary on Thursday and we've been together for a very long time. So this is a little gift from me to anyone who thinks they might like to read it. Paperbacks are available, but the freebie only applies to Kindle. If you haven't already read it, I hope you enjoy it!

Great granny Anna

How Not To Be A Writer - Part Ten: A Theatrical Disaster

A few years ago, I had a chance encounter with an actor I had worked with in the past. We greeted each other, trying to remember when we had last met, and suddenly he said 'Oh my God, THAT PLAY!' I had a much younger friend with me, one who had directed one of my short plays, and she looked aghast. We both hastened to reassure her.

'No, no,' we said, practically in chorus. 'It was a disaster from start to finish.' 

It was a play called Heroes and Others about the situation in Poland, martial law and the rise of Solidarity. It was staged at Edinburgh's Lyceum Theatre with a couple of performances at Ayr Gaiety. And it put me off writing for theatre for years. 

What do I remember about it? 

I remember the Director from Hell, whose style involved rewriting my script so that it became a political diatribe, all while mercilessly bullying the Scottish cast members, as well as myself. We would often retreat into the nearest lavatory to have a good cry. 

I was very inexperienced as far as theatre was concerned. I knew that 'developing' a play involved making changes, but the director's rewrites were destructive rather than constructive. There followed a prolonged nightmare of trying to assert my own version, without, I might add, any help at all from the organisation that had commissioned the play. I was on my own, except for the cast, who agreed with me. But we were all browbeaten.

Inexplicably, we were rehearsing in a derelict building, in the middle of winter. I had a serious asthma attack from the mould and dust, and remember walking and wheezing through the streets of Edinburgh thinking that I should be in hospital. Like most asthmatics, I tried to pretend that it wasn't happening. Fortunately it abated, and the rehearsals in that impossible space finished, perhaps because the toilets froze, so there wasn't even anywhere to pee or weep.

The icing on the cake was when the doorman at the Lyceum refused to let me in to wish the cast good luck on the opening night. Although William Goldman was excluded from the premier of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and he wrote the screenplay, so I can't really complain, can I? 

The production had mixed reviews. I had managed to rescue a lot of my original script but nothing about it gelled the way it should. For a long time, my memory of it was of complete humiliation, until I looked back at some of those reviews to find that what most of them were saying was 'this is a good play, struggling with a terrible production.' 

With hindsight, when the whole thing was at its most turbulent, I should have gone to the press about it. I had one or two cautious interviews with Scottish journalists I respected, but I had been persuaded not to rock the boat. I'd bloody overturn it now, but then I'm old and bolshie.

I put it behind me, but it was years before I went back to writing for the stage, with a play called Wormwood, about the Chernobyl disaster, for Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre. The play was a great success, with glowing reviews, although even then, I didn't learn my lesson about not being too amenable, too accommodating to changes. I should have remembered how I worked on my radio plays, with the director asking questions. In thinking about and finding the answers to those questions, I improved the work. But it was still my work, my writing, my solutions. Nobody ever rewrote for me.

Wormwood was fine, but a subsequent full length play for the same theatre, Quartz, suffered from too many rewrites and the last minute imposition of other people's views. There was a fault running through the play and with hindsight and the benefit of experience, I know what it was. Ironically, none of those directing noticed the precise nature of that fault. One simple question, one simple observation would have helped tremendously. Instead, there were meetings and the picking of holes. Not, I should stress, that any of this was the fault of the excellent cast. The play was reasonably successful, but it wasn't a great experience.  

A major London critic hoped that the Traverse would 'nurture this promising playwright'. No nurturing ever went on, and my next play for them was turned down without the courtesy of explanation or comment. Rather, the script was met with a chilly rejection. I had been attempting to write about abuse in sports coaching. A challenging subject that I went on to tackle in a novel called Ice Dancing. As far as theatre was concerned, much like in the real world, nobody wanted to know about it at all. 

As for the Director from Hell - well, he's dead now. He was an actor too. He once appeared in a James Bond movie where he died horribly. I confess to watching it from time to time with a certain amount of relish. There he goes again, I think. Serve him right. 

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Once upon a time, when I was very young indeed, this novel caused a sensation. You can read all about the trial here. The trial was essentially a snobbish, misogynist enterprise. Not just 'would you like your wife to read this book?' but how would the 'working classes' read it? In summing up, the judge said it would 'be available for all and sundry to read. You have to think of people with no literary background, with little or no learning,' he said. In other words, rude books are for the intelligentsia.

The jury took only three hours to find Penguin not guilty of an obscene publication. Yay for the jury some of whom at least must have been part of that 'working class all and sundry'. 

My parents bought a copy. 

I remember it on our bookshelves and I also remember them laughing about it. 

I have it still - it's the 1961 reprint, a yellowing Penguin edition, complete and unexpurgated, costing three shillings and sixpence. We had spent a year in London, where my father was working in a research institute, and came back to a flat in Bramley, in Leeds. It must have been there that I saw it. Nothing was off limits as far as books were concerned, so I must have had a brief look at it, in search of the sexy bits, but there was so much small print to plough through that I quickly lost interest. 

Cue forward till now. In one of those odd, circuitous routes by which we sometimes go back to old favourites - or not-so-favourites - we started watching the whole series of Sharpe, on ITVX. I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It's wonderful. But that made me remember that I'd admired Sean Bean in other performances - and so I went back to the BBC's 30 year old dramatisation simply called Lady Chatterley. (You can find it online.) And then I went back to the book. 

I'm not sure why the Beeb felt the need to meddle with the title, because the original novel focuses quite as much on Mellors, the gamekeeper, as it does on Connie Chatterley. The adaptation more or less does the same thing, although poor old DHL (as snobbish in his own way as those 1960s lawyers) feels the need to make him more educated, more well read, more 'delicate' - more like DHL himself? - than the excellent Bean's performance. In the book, Mellors' dialect comes and goes. He sometimes weaponises it, which I can sort of understand. Still, I much preferred Bean's interpretation, which was his own north country (Sheffield, I believe)  dialect that could fluctuate a little depending on circumstances, but was always there, a barrier or a bridge between two people. Which it might be, barrier or bridge, is really what the book is about. Bean manages to make Mellors attractive, angry and at the same time vulnerable. You can see what Connie, starved of love, starved of human touch, finds irresistible.

I loved the dramatisation, and I didn't love the book. 

It was as though the drama had taken the heart of the book, the important bits, the central story that was engaging and moving, and left out all of DHL's maundering misogynistic diatribes. It was strange because I kept wanting to like the book. There were whole passages that I loved. And then something would trigger him and off he would go again, interminably, with his borderline fascist view of the working classes and women. And I know we were supposed to be hearing Mellors' thoughts, but we weren't. The author was right there, haranguing us. 'I am Mellors' he must have thought, considerably to his own satisfaction. 

This was a book that I thought ought to come with trigger warnings  Not for the sexy bits. No. A sort of 'here he goes again, you can skip this bit' kind of trigger. As in Stella Gibbons' hilarious Cold Comfort Farm, a send up of rural novels, but with a considerable side swipe at DHL, the reader could do with asterisks denoting the most turgid, repetitive passages. Of which there are many. 

It also reminded me that we read quite a lot of DHL at university, albeit not this one. I think it would have embarrassed some of our more perjink lecturers. Many of my female friends either disliked DHL or were indifferent to him. The more I read, the more I fell into the former camp. How on earth did he enter the 'canon' when there was so much more exciting work - much of it by women - out there?