Double or Nothing

One of the first things that those in the business want to know when you submit a novel to them these days is, "Is this a standalone book or is it part of a series?"

This is less so if your book's of a particularly literary quality though. It's as if it's all right for those high-brow works to be one-offs but if you've written a mass-consumption tale, an easy airport read or a story for children, teens or young adults then these will only be picked up by publishers or agents if they show potential to be an on-going money-spinner. It used to be the realm of bad sci-fi but now it seems that every new novel that isn't in the running for the Man Booker Prize has to be part of a trilogy or a seemingly never-ending series.  It can work out really well - Mario Puzo's 'Godfather' novels, 'A Song of Fire and Ice' by George R. R. Martin, even E. L. James's 'Shades of Grey' trilogy have all been massive sellers and rightly so. They all captured something of the times in which they were written (for good or bad) and presented it in a way that huge sections of the reading public wanted. But for every 'Harry Potter', 'Brother Cadfael' or 'Biggles' there are a hundred remainder bins clogged with "a rollicking comedic space opera… volume five".

It makes perfect sense, of course. If your paying reader likes your novel and forms an attachment with the characters that you've slaved long and hard over then naturally they'll want to read more of their adventures. And from a publisher's point of view there's a lot less risk involved in printing and publicising a novel if the author is  already a proven seller and can be signed up to provide five, six, seven books in the same vein. It's simply good economics to milk that cash cow until it squeaks.

But, like a soap-opera actor moaning about becoming type-cast, does a successful trilogy or series stifle an author's creativity? Does it restrict them to one genre, one core set of characters and basic premise? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously said, "If, in 100 years, I am known only as the man who created Sherlock Holmes, I shall consider my life a failure."

Of course, sales are all-important. However much writers might assert that we need artistic fulfilment, we need food, liquid and a roof over our heads even more which is why, even though my first novel isn't even available for purchase through Amazon yet, I'm already working on the sequel. And I've got a file full of notes about a potential third book in what may yet become a never-ending series.

Never let it be said that I don't give my public what they want. As long as what they want is easy, brainless page-turners.

© Shaun Finnie 2013

Proof, Positive

So you work through your manuscript. One draft, two, three drafts. Perhaps more. Probably more, many more. Stephen King says that he never lets a novel leave his desk until he's written at least nine versions. You're not as good as King but you've still been working on it for months, maybe even a year or more. The basic plot or the design of some characters may have been floating around in your head for a decade, but finally it's down on paper (or at least on laptop screen) and it's the best that you can make it. You've pared, honed and polished it and agonised over every word until you've got to the point where you're just tinkering and thinking about putting things back in that you removed several iterations ago. That's when you know that you're not making any further progress; you're just procrastinating. It's time to let go. It's time to send your baby out into the world. It's time to publish your novel.

We'll skip over editing and proofreading (they're obviously unimportant these days given some recent novels that I've read) and move on to the next step. Somebody formats up your novel (or you do it yourself if circumstances dictate) and you wait. Just like I've been doing for the last week.

I knew what it was as soon as I heard the thud when it fell through the letterbox. I wandered over and there it was on my doormat, a small brown cardboard package containing my soul. Or as some would call it, my debut novel. To most people it wouldn't have looked like much but they didn't know the amount of work that had gone into it.

I gently tore the strip that held it secure and paused. I always say that the day before the football season kicks off is the best day of the sporting year because my team doesn't have any points, doesn't have any victories and doesn't have any goals but what it does have is hope. At that moment they could be the best team in the land, as could any other. They haven't had a chance to let me down yet. It was the same with my book. Right now, with it still enclosed in its cardboard package, it could be a future bestseller. It could be the best novel ever written. It could even sell enough copies to pay my gas bill. It carried hope. The minute I looked at it, just like the moment that Sheffield United kick-off every summer, there would be the probability that it wouldn't match up to my hopes and dreams. I'm sure that there's enough in those last few lines to keep a philosophy course going for a term or two but sadly I live in the real world. It was time to look at my work.

It was beautiful. It was exactly as I'd expected it to be. I was so pleased that I posted a selfie on Facebook with me holding the proof copy and grinning inanely to camera. It even has sixty-three 'likes' at the time of writing. Two hundred and fifty pages of perfection. Perfection, that is, apart from that missing full stop on page forty-eight. But I could live with that. And I could ignore the fact that the chapter headings weren't quite as large as I'd anticipated. Nobody else would care. They wouldn't be bothered with the fact that the margins weren't quite as wide as I'd hoped. The original size was only in my head. Just like the fifteen or so other things that were just a degree or two away from perfection or at least, the vision of perfection that had been playing in my brain for months.

So as far as most people would be concerned, there's nothing wrong with it, and there isn't really. There's nothing wrong at all. It's just that it could be more right in quite a few ways. How many minor niggles make up a major problem? How bad does it have to be before I reject it and make further changes? How many people, apart from me, will give a flying purple damn about that missing full stop?

And yet…

I've waited a long time for this. I can wait a couple of weeks longer.

© Shaun Finnie 2013

Incy Wincy

When I was younger I had a small toy spider called Webster. It was made of plastic with some polystyrene inside so that it floated. Little Webster wore a plastic set of goggles and a snorkel, and had a little wind-up propeller in his rear just where his spinnerets should have been. He wasn't built for making webs, this cheerful fella with his painted-on grin, he was made for hurtling around the bath at a rapid rate of knots. I used to think that he was brilliant as he ploughed through the bubbles leaving a little eight-legged wake behind but I understand that some people don't like spiders in general and the thought of one in their bath - even a plastic toy one like Webster - would be the stuff of their nightmares. If you fall into this category then perhaps this is as far as you should read. See you back here next week.

Still with me? Good.

So a few days ago I decided to take a nice long, relaxing bath. I ran the water, poured in a generous helping of Radox bath salts (I'm a traditionalist at heart) and gently lowered myself in.  I had the cricket commentary on the radio and a can of something cold and refreshing close to hand, ready for a relaxing couple of hours. OK, so at the end of it I'd end up looking more wrinkled than Cliff Richard's neck but what the hey, it was worth it. The only thing that could make it any better was if I had something to read so I reach over the bath side and picked up a magazine that I'd placed on the floor a few minutes earlier.

The magazine I had chosen was Take A Break's Fiction Feast, a monthly collection of short stories. Sadly this issue didn't include one of my contributions but it's always good to check out the competition and it's always a good read anyhow.  I lifted the magazine to my face. My  eyesight's getting worse these days and of course I couldn't wear my reading glasses in the bath. Not that I was reading anything steamy, you understand (ho ho, thank you very much). Out of the corner of my eye I saw something black slide across the page and there was a little 'plop' sound of something around the size of a hazelnut dropping into my bathwater.

Can you see where this is going? I bet those people who quit reading earlier are so glad that they did. Here we go…

I looked down to see a huge black spider - easily bigger than a two-pound coin - struggling for its worthless arachnid life inbetween my knees. I don't know whether he was doing some kind of thorax-stroke or a weird octopod paddle but whatever it was, it was ineffectual. The spider was just thrashing on the spot and not getting further from, nor - thankfully - closer to anything attached to me.

I didn't panic. I didn't let out a girly scream. I didn't even leap out of the bath and run around like the world's flabbiest and most nekkid headless chicken. What I did do was reach swiftly into the slightly sullied water, scoop the drowning invertebrate out and fling him a few feet into a nearby sink. Then, like the trooper I am, I slunk back into the relaxing waters and turned the cricket commentary up, just in case he were coughing his spidery lungs up in my basin.

To be honest the entire unsavoury even had put me off my bath somewhat and I curtailed my recreational soak to just under an hour. I wasn't really enjoying it any more. So I got out and dried myself (no further details required) and approached the sink.

I'm not particularly proud of what I did next. I'd saved him from drowning and deposited him back on dry porcelain, hadn't I? I'd given him a fair chance when, lets face it, if I hadn't been there he'd have quickly gone to that Great Web in the Sky. So as far as I knew he was safe and sound.

And that was the last I saw of him because by the time I opened my eyes, he was gone. Mind you, I had been running the cold sink tap for a good few minutes by then.

(c) Shaun Finnie 2013

Perception Deception

We went to a local farm this week. It's one of those show farms like you see in inner cities for kids who think that sheep lay sausages. Ours wasn't in some wretched post-industrial landscape though but in the real, honest-to-goodness countryside near home in wildest Yorkshire.

And it was rubbish.

They had one cow in a barn. Just the one. What kind of farm keeps just one cow? Perhaps they had loads but she was the only one deemed friendly enough to be let out with children? Maybe the others were all man-eaters locked away in a shed somewhere behind a sign saying "Take Care! These Cows Do Not Play Nice With Others!" (notice how I stayed away from the "udders" pun there? Even I have some standards).

There were a few pigs laid asleep in a dark corner, well away from grabbing hands, and a couple of bored-looking donkeys too. A pair of grumpy alpacas ground their cud aggressively, looking as though they were going to spit bile at anyone who even looked at them in a funny manner, and a pair of red deer were anything but timid, sprinting up to the fence as we approached in a "give me some grain or I'll gore you" manner.

There were the usual petting zoo favourite - rabbits, guinea pigs, pigmy goats etc. - and that was it. Apart from the meerkats. They were one of the main reasons we'd gone, to tell the truth. The Beloved has had a passion for these creatures for many years which occasionally reduces her to girlish squeaks of delight. She's a little miffed that other people have jumped on 'her' meerkat bandwagon in recent years too. Fortunately the run-down farm was deserted so on this occasion at least she could chuckle and "awww" at the little critters' antics all on her own with no johnny-come-latelies to spoil her enjoyment. Mind you, it wasn't the world's largest troupe, just four little meer-kitties huddled together under a heat lamp. Their enclosure was fine enough, as with all of the other animals' just a bit cheap- and cobbled together-looking. The entire place looked a bit sad and depressing really and, like a cheap strip club, I felt a little demeaned just by being there.

But…

Did I mention that we had our niece and nephew with us? A very girly twelve year-old and a hyper boisterous boy three years her junior? They saw exactly the same things that we did, they heard the same sounds and they smelled the same smells. And they had an absolutely magnificent time. They couldn't get enough of the small furry creatures, especially the baby rabbits. They spent literally hours stroking and petting the cute and fluffy kits and their parents. There were many cries of "Can I take one home, Uncle Shaun?" and wobbly lips when I firmly rejected the idea. Time seemed to slow as they couldn't be dragged away from the apparently fascinating sight of goats eating cabbage leaves and their delight at the meerkats almost reached the same level as the Beloved's own. Almost.

It was fascinating to note how their enjoyment of the place differed so much from my own. I basically hated it. They basically loved it. Two wildly differing views on the same subject.

I've been asked to review some books recently and have been acutely aware of the fact that, while I've been doing this, some other readers have been reviewing my own novel. I've been doing my best to be objective in what I've written but all the time I've been wondering how the author whose work I'm commenting on will feel if they should read what I write about their book. How would I feel if the roles were reversed? How will I feel when I read what others say about my work?

Perhaps it's safest to just write "everyone's view on this book will differ" and suggest that they read it for themselves, for as long as children will love to stroke furry animals people will have differing views on art.

© Shaun Finnie 2013

The Wings of a Dove

They say that travel broadens the mind.

They say that you should never work with children or animals.

They say that Harry Hill pays £250 for funny video clips on his television show.

"They" should have been in my local train station last week, armed with a HD smartphone. I had one in my pocket but was far too busy laughing to take it out.

We were off on a little weekend trip by train but (as is my usual habit) had turned up at the station very early. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I don't do 'late'. So we sat in an open-air coffee shop for a while enjoying the fine weather and pretending to enjoy the "freshly ground" coffee on offer. I'm not sure what ground they'd freshly dug it up from but it was more mud than coffee.

Their food can't have been much better either as someone who had recently vacated a nearby table had left most of their sandwich behind, a fact which hadn't gone unnoticed by the local pigeon population. Some may see them as flying vermin but these so-called rats with wings are some of the smartest birds to be found around our towns and cities. At least, some of them are.

While a group of them were content to demolish the remains of the sandwich that was on and around the table, one particularly curious bird had noticed something that none of the others had. He had seen that the paper bag that had once contained the sandwich was also on the table. Not only that but it was full of crumbs. Not only that but it was open just enough to allow one inquisitive pigeon to reach the tasty treats inside.

He poked his head in tentatively and obviously liked what he saw. Within seconds his entire body disappeared into the bag until just the ends of his perfectly-preened tail feathers were showing. The bag began to thrash around like an unhappy landed trout as he pecked away at the discarded panini crumbs inside. Presumably they were as attractive to him as pepperoni is to me as he obviously wasn't going to leave any scraps behind. However his jerky movements inside the paper bag dislodged quite a few crumbs from it which fell onto the table, attracting the attention of several of his feathery friends. They flew in en masse, and soon the table was lost from sight beneath their cooing feeding frenzy. One of them even had the audacity to land on top of our paper-shrouded hero as he sat still for a moment, presumably digesting his unexpected panini feast.

So here's the scene: there's one lucky pigeon totally covered, stretched out full length inside a paper bag on top of a coffee shop table. Using this bag and its confused contents as a wobbly perch is another pigeon and surrounding them both are their waste collecting comrades, all gratefully gobbling down this bountiful feast.

And on another nearby table were me and my Beloved, giggling like schoolkids at the comedic cavorting of some pigeons and some paper. We thought that it wouldn't get better. But we were wrong.

The pigeon in the bag suddenly stood up. The fellow on his shoulders lost his footing and took flight. Of course when one pigeon flies his flock-mates are sure to follow and they all took to the air, wheeling around the station, relishing the freedom of the skies.

All except for one.

He shook his wings tentatively but in standing to his full height he'd allowed the paper bag to slip completely over him from his beak to his missing-toed feet. He looked like the world's crappest glove puppet as he stood alone on the table surface, turning on the spot in bewilderment. To be fair I can only assume that the bird within was turning. What I saw was a paper bag, standing on its open end and slowly twirling around like a rubbish Halloween ghost on a turntable.

The Beloved and I were in tears by now and we absolutely howled when he tried to take a few tentative steps around the table top. Being totally hooded by the bag he couldn't see a thing and so had no way of knowing that he was perilously close to the table's edge. Off he plummeted, leaving the Beloved and I quivering wrecks as we sunk further into our seats.

I learned an important lesson that day. I learned that pigeons are heavier than coffee shop sandwich bags. He fell at a slightly quicker rate than his paper prison and so, with a panicked flutter of wings that showered everything in the vicinity with the remaining panini crumbs, he was free. Free to rejoin his pigeony pals with the tale of how he'd taken on the crumb-baited bag trap and lived to tell the tail.

Mere rats with wings? Not this chap. He was the escapologist and a stand-up performance comedian king of the pigeon world. Mr Feathery, I salute you.

© Shaun Finnie 2013

Hot! Hot! Hot!

It’s been hot recently, have you noticed? Not just ‘hot for here’ but properly hot, Mediterranean hot. The kind of hot that makes normal people sweat in a way that makes us fat folks shout, “Now you know how I feel every day, whatever the weather!” It’s been so hot that streets have been melting and so have people. It’s the kind of weather that we in Britain get so rarely that it makes the front cover of newspapers. Who can forget the classic “Phew, What a Scorcher” headline? That’s how it’s been this year. We don’t get summers like the current one very often so people can sometimes let the heat go to their heads – literally and figuratively. They don’t realise that Anglo-Saxons like me aren’t built for this kind of weather. When it’s like this you have to be careful.

I’ve been doing the sensible things like staying inside in the shade, opening and closing the windows so that the ones on the cool side of the house let the most air in, drinking lots of water and having my fan on so much that the oscillating twister thing that turns it from side to side has broken. Now one side of me is frozen while the other is sweating like the proverbial pig. I keep having to turn around as if I’m on a spit. I’ve been taking naps at lunchtime wherever required and feasible, and I’ve not been overexerting myself.

My neighbours however have not being doing any such sensible things. They’ve never been in the house. We have a piece of communal land behind the house and they’ve pretty much commandeered it, sitting outside from morning till (their) bedtime (which is long after mine), drinking coffee and alcohol (both of which dehydrate you even further) and moving their plastic garden chairs to follow the sun across the sky for maximum potentially cancerous effects. They’re sweating even more than I am and permanently squinting into the sun. They have visitors over just about all the time who come for an hour or two or six and join them in their sun-worshipping.

They’re not overly loud, not affecting me in any way really. They’re just doing everything that we’re told not to. They’re blatantly ignoring all the health warnings and deliberately putting their bodies at risk. It’s shocking and I can’t for the life of me understand why they’d do such things.

So why do they permanently seem to have huge grins on their faces?

Turn a Different Corner

Science fiction writers have long had a tradition of creating works of alternative history, a subgenre telling stories based in some ‘uchronia’ – a time that doesn’t exist. The idea is simple: they take a setting or an event that we’re all (hopefully) familiar with and then twist the outcome a little so that the unexpected occurs.

But why do they write this kind of stuff and why do we, the readers, lap it up? Well all fiction begins with the simple question, ‘What if?’ and alternative reality tales ask more clearly defined ‘What if’s than most. It’s a plot device that can be used to answer big questions or show us something about ourselves and our world that we don’t (or don’t want to) usually see. Three famous examples are;

What if the Nazi’s had won World War II?
What if President Nixon hadn’t been assassinated?
What if the Apollo astronauts had found alien lifeforms already on the moon?

How would these changes in events effect regular people?  How would we have reacted in those circumstances? Would it have been how we’d like to feel we’d have acted? A good writer can hold a mirror up to us with these kind of tales while at the same time enticing us to read more with a rollicking good yarn. And that’s the kind of stuff we like. It has a built in backstory that we don’t have to go to the trouble of ploughing through chapters of prose to set up the payoff. We already know that Lee Harvey Oswald was waiting for the President in Dallas and that Neil Armstrong travelled through space in a Saturn V rocket. We don’t need much set up, we can get straight on with the story.

BBC’s Saturday teatime favourite Doctor Who has asked this kind of question for generations. In recent series they’ve had alternative histories involving the destruction of Pompeii, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare to mention but three shows from the last few years. They make little attempt at social comment, they usually just want to entertain and tell a good story. That’s the road that I usually go down too when writing fiction. I can’t see how my social or political views are more worthy of a platform than anyone else’s, so I just try to get a good tale down.

I’ve had my own attempt at this kind of story recently. It’s my first full length novel and it’s finally available for download via Amazon. It will be available through the i-store and other online shops in a month or so and a paperback version will hopefully be out in September. Its called ‘The Happiest Workplace On Earth’ and it asks the question, What If Walt Disney hadn’t died in 1966 but had continued the work that he was planning at the time of his death? What if he had completed the utopian city that he wanted to create and had actually managed to get people living and working in it? And what if that city became a terrorist target?

It's good to finally give people the chance to read it.