Tag: book groups

Saving Lucia. Why this book?

by Anna Vaught, posted in depression, Drafts, editing, killing hapless ally, mental health, mental illness, patrician press, reading, saving lucia, Therapy, Uncategorized, women writers

This is an earlier post, as I finished what will be my next book, Saving Lucia, Bluemoose Books, April, 2020.

****

I have been compiling my notes, bibliography and acknowledgements for the back of Saving Lucia. Writing this book is not a therapeutic exercise, though I know someone will say that! So what follows is (partly) an account of its stimulus and of my interest in this area.

‘Part of the stimulus for writing about mental illness comes from my own jagged experience and from my own shifting notion of what constitutes sanity and who it is defined by. Society? The DSM? Is it culture bound? Sometimes, even an excuse to rid civilisation of its undesirables, whether it be from eugenics, being round the bend, up a curved drive, or having your records burned and your letters unsent so that you can be contained?

My own first novel, Killing Hapless Ally, draws on many experiences of mental health problems in my own life. I have had many different and multiple tags, from GAD (generalised anxiety disorder) to postnatal depression, to low mood, OCD, clinical depression, mood disorder, and a bipolar II query to other less specific things, such as confusion, a response to complex trauma (this from from a psychotherapist in a talking cure—thank you Bertha Pappenheim, otherwise known as Freud and Breuer’s ‘Anna O’!), and a description of poor coping skills in the face of stress. I have experienced symptoms of sustained low mood, auditory hallucinations, frequent nightmares, protracted insomnia, dissociative episodes and anxiety since childhood. I know what it is to self harm and what might lead you to try and take your own life; I also know what it is to be shamed for problems you did not choose and tried your level best to control. Families have a vital role to play here; were you to be categorised, put away or, through disgust or misunderstanding, denied what is your pressing reality, the outcome could be tragic. The last thing in that list happened to me, but had I been born earlier, I might well have been somewhere different and never got out from that place. And even now – and I hope I have expressed this sensitively, for it is not an unfamiliar world to me – where this choice and admission to hospital may be (it is not always, of course) voluntary, then as the psychologist Dorothy Rowe puts it in Depression. The Way Out Of Your Prison (Routledge, 2013), the decision to go into hospital is (still) a difficult one because once you start going down this route, it can be hard to get off it. But go elsewhere for my story, or do, please, feel that you can ask me about it @bookwormvaught or at http://www.annavaughtwrites.com if I’ve written a post you might care to comment on.

I will always be drawn to the case of Lucia Joyce. And to the cases of Violet Gibson, Bertha Pappenheim (otherwise known as Freud and Breuer’s Anna O) and Blanche Wittmann.’ As we go, I will tell you less about me and more, – so much more – about this book.

 

Anna xxx

Epigraph of The Life of Almost

by Anna Vaught, posted in And other stories, books, Contemporary Small Press, Drafts, editing, emma press, Fitzcarraldo, Galley Beggar Press, genre, Great Expectations, patrician press, pembrokeshire, poems, reading, Uncategorized, writing

For Ned. Because Almost is also a love story: Seren, Mfanwy, Perfection, Mammy, the sacred headland and the mermaids. And you are my story and my song. x

This is what it says at the beginning of my next book, The Life of Almost: wish me luck, as it has gone, by kind request, out to an agent who liked the writing in Killing Hapless Ally; the ms has also gone to a press; later in October, it is going out elsewhere and, to my utter surprise, a really lovely person at one of, you know, the big five, said they would look at it just to be helpful. I said it wasn’t really, as far as I could see, a commercial proposition, but then it is the next story I had in me. I know it’s ambitious and I do know about Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs. Ah, but bear with now. This one now is comical, I hope; indebted to Dickens and to Dylan Thomas; to generations in Pembrokeshire and beyond; to the coffin hatch in my own house; to the dead, who are legion and all around; to mermaid lore; The Mabinogion; Celtic Magic, Gwyn Williams, Danny Abse, the earliest Welsh poems, the Southern Gothic I married, books on sex, embalming and death practice, John Donne and Dickens again. And don’t you want to know who or what Almost is? How mermaids love? Why a child was found sleeping on a headland gravestone? Why moss creeps and sucks at your feet as you dare to tread? How a love story happens over the embalming table and how Almost feels, when he meets Derian Llewhellin, both fear and happiness and a blurring of his edges and how it is he begins to understand what he is capable of. The story begins this squalid summer, June 2016, but oh…it is old, old, old.

 

THE LIFE OF ALMOST OR,

A LIFE OF VERY LITTLE EXPECTATION

Anna Vaught

Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction, I swear on The Mabinogion and the sacred headland. Characters in this book are fictional, although I have drawn upon the history of my own Welsh family and diaspora and many things which to me seem normal and maybe which, to you, do not. I make no apology for references to the political situation in the summer of 2016 while a cunning clown and cohorts and a tide of rage pushed through the always unexpected rain. Real places named in the book are at least partly fictionalised and the dead and undead are somewhat mixed up. But enough: don’t you want to know about Almost? He was mine; now I am giving him to you.

All poems (unless otherwise attributed, but out of copyright) are by the author.

Lewis, the Younger, who went away

When I was a kid, Lewis took his own life.

I heard them say he took it, but where it went,

I couldn’t say or wasn’t told. Perhaps it had

been drained, in The Sloop, with all his pints,

or thrown gladly off Stack Rocks with a shout

that he married well and was a man they liked,

but I don’t know. For once, though I was very young,

I saw a look from out the corner of his eye as he shipped

off, went laughing with the pot boys and his girl:

that look it said, I think, that Lewis wanted rescuing,

but no-one came, as the sea foam danced in Cardigan Bay.

“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son—more to me nor any son.”

Abel Magwitch, Great Expectations, chapter thirty nine.

 

To keep going…

by Anna Vaught, posted in A Life of Almost, agents, books, Contemporary Small Press, depression, editing, emma press, Goldsmith's prize, Great Expectations, killing hapless ally, mslexia, patrician press, poems, poetry, reading, short stories, Short Stories, Uncategorized, Wellcome book prize, women writers, Writers and Artists, writing, writing competitions

 

I am crying a little bit here. But read on. It’s fine, really.

Do you know, I am nominated several times for ‘The Guardian’ Not the Booker prize, I am entered for the Goldsmith’s Prize, the new Republic of Consciousness Prize and The Wellcome Book Prize. I also put in a poetry pamphlet for ‘Mslexia”s annual competition.

Do I have a shot? Naaah, not really.

Well, frankly, only a tiny one, at best.

I’m small fry; I’m a newbie and pretty unrefined, still. I blundered into this in the same naive way I have blundered into most things in my life! I sort of…had a go when theoretically it wasn’t supposed to be possible with all my other commitments. I’m a hard worker because, I think, I have had so much experience compromised by mental health problems, illness and bereavement that it has made me more imaginative and keen to seize the day in case we are hit by an asteroid or I go bonkers again (which I am not planning to, obviously). If this is you too, be collected; be encouraged: you would be amazed what is possible and at the way which can be made from no way and from despair.

AND SOMEHOW

In two years, I have written and published a novel, a poetry pamphlet, guest blogged, authored ten articles or so and at this point I am approximately two thirds of the way through a second novel and have poetry and short story publication this autumn and in the spring. So HOLY F*** three kids and a day job and the volunteer stuff. I have to keep going now, don’t I?

On, blunder on. xxx

Anna Vaught's photo.

Not The Booker Prize 2016

by Anna Vaught, posted in books, goodreads, killing hapless ally, patrician press, reading, reading groups, reading lists, reviews, Uncategorized, writing, writing competitions

Super short post this! I was just reading the information on this:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jul/18/not-the-booker-prize-2016-vote-for-your-favourite-book-of-the-year

And here is a wonderful thing, now in its eighth year. I am just about to place my nomination and I wonder: if you have read Killing Hapless Ally, my debut novel, and you liked it and it meant something to you, do nominate that, if you like!

Every year, the list gives you some brilliant reading. Say, a book that we might not otherwise have heard of and which turns out to be outstanding. Oh – there are a lot of writers out there. (Not to mention a lot of small but exceptional presses.)

Have a look? The picture featured is of the lovely mug that a writer might win!

 

 

Anna

The Life of Almost – and an invitation, if you’re local, like.

by Anna Vaught, posted in book groups, books, bookshops, Contemporary Small Press, Drafts, editing, emma press, Fitzcarraldo, Galley Beggar Press, Goldsmith's prize, goodreads, Great Expectations, killing hapless ally, patrician press, pembrokeshire, reading, reading groups, reading lists, The Emma Press, Uncategorized

An invitation if you are a local-ish writer or reader and would like to come for some reading and discussion of the first few chapters of the book I am working on, my follow up to Killing Hapless Ally (March, 2016, Patrician Press).

The Life of Almost is a re-working of Great Expectations, with its protagonist, Almost, roughly modelled on Pip. It has a predominantly Welsh setting, much of it being in Pembrokeshire. As such, it draws on the stories I have been listening to my whole life and so I have adapted these for the book. Stories of sailors, the strange dangers of the sea and those who love in it and on it; dark events at steam fairs; predicaments at village shows; kelp, barnacles, tough salty men, the cree of the curlew and the dead across the estuary and of how gentry moved in and spoiled all. Stories of beatings known about but hidden in plain sight; curses and vendettas; strange harpists, madness, mutism; poltergeists who threw pictures from walls and plants from windowsills and vases from above the fireplace. People who went away and never came back: stories, stories, stories. Shootings, hangings, disappearances. My idea of a picnic could still revolve around sitting by graves describing the dreadful manner in which relatives died, except I desist because I’m the mother of three young boys and I think my upbringing was definitely weird and I’m sure the kids think I’m quite peculiar, already.

So, you know roughly the story arc if you know Great Expectations, I’ve told you a little of the settings, but there’s more to it. Because, as Almost takes you through stories of his world – as he tells them to Catherine, who opens the first chapter, so tired of life – you come to realise that he is not entirely of this world and not entirely of this time: he is something more protean and unconfined; a storyteller who can shift substance in an extraordinary way and who is not compromised by, shall we say, temporal and ordinal rules…I hope, when it finds its home, that you will find the book darkly funny, maybe a bit shocking in places and that you’ll enjoy what I have done with my favourite book, Great Expectations, such as reworked Jaggers into a nasty (Ben Jonson’s) ‘Volpone’, basking in his gold somewhere off a great motorway and given you many elements of the supernatural. I did something a bit radical the other day and incorporated, euphemistically, some of the Brexit scoundrels – they are part of why Catherine, who begins the book, is so jaded and sad and thus why she has Almost come to visit. And, you know, one might question: is Almost really there at all? Or is he created by others when….they need him. Oooohhhh.

Because I stand by this and know it to be true: a story can save your life.

Like a copy of Killing Hapless Ally? Order from Waterstones, your local bookshop (Ex Libris and Mr B’s have copies in our area), the Patrician Press website or Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Killing-Hapless-Ally-Anna-Vaught-ebook/dp/B01CA5F21Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1468239225&sr=1-1

 

 

 

No shame; no stigma. An event for you.

by Anna Vaught, posted in Uncategorized

I realise this is very much a UK and west country event, but if you are in the area, do please come! Or let me just show you what I’m up to. x

For the BOA fringe this year, I am hosting an evening at The Three Horseshoes pub, Frome Road, Bradford on Avon Wiltshire. It’s called ‘No shame; no stigma’ and its focus is mental health. That’s a key theme of my debut novel, Killing Hapless Ally, which was published in March this year and has been featuring in the national press. I have also written a series of articles around its key themes for various publications and stepped up my engagement in mental health campaigning and advocacy. A subject close to my heart, this.

Do please come along. I’d love it. Thursday 7th July, from 8 pm. I will be speaking frankly. Ask me anything! Also, some readings from the book and, with the book as a starting point, a lively extended discussion about mental health, well-being, anxiety, depression and other tricky things. What it means to be ill; what it means to be well, maybe. The language we use and that which is unhelpful. How we challenge taboo. All sorts. Being me, I am not straying away from dark humour  (and the novel is a black comedy rooted in real events) so I hope it will be entertaining for you too. And it’s free. Buy a drink at the bar and come through to the marquee. We’ll stay until we get chucked out. Copies of my book, Killing Hapless Ally, are on sale locally at Ex Libris and Mr B’s in Bath, but you could also order from Amazon, Waterstones and so on, or get a copy from me on the night

No shame; no stigma. 

Do come.

Anna x

Here’s the link to buy at Amazon. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=killing+hapless+ally

 

 

http://www.fringeboa.co.uk/

Latest Goodreads review…

by Anna Vaught, posted in A Life of Almost, books, Contemporary Small Press, goodreads, patrician press, reading, reading groups, reviews, Uncategorized, women writers, writing

I enjoyed finding this review of Killing Hapless Ally this morning. I should love to think that someone would re-read the book and think that it would bear re-reading.

 

‘This is a wonderful book. It’s not one that readers of ‘chick lit’ will take to easily. Nothing is spoon fed to the reader. And yet it is expertly written by someone who not only knows their craft, but enjoys it as well. The author has a habit of placing powerfully upsetting lines, lines that make you want to physically jerk when you read them, in the middle of laugh-out-loud funny scenes. The effect is powerful, making the both the humour and the shock support each other with a sort of literary alchemy few writers can achieve.

I feel like the central character Alison is, if not a friend, someone I know inside out now. The book will bear re-reading (several times over I expect) so I am looking forward to meeting her again.’

Book Groups and Killing Hapless Ally

by Anna Vaught, posted in A Life of Almost, book groups, books, genre, goodreads, killing hapless ally, mental health, patrician press, pembrokeshire, reading, reading groups, reviews, Uncategorized, women writers, Writers and Artists, writing

As far as I know, five local (and local-ish) book groups are currently looking at the novel. That is very nice of them. I’ve said that, if I am free and not too far away, I’d love to come and answer questions if a book group would like that. It dawned on me, too, that when I am out and about I should offer to do groups further afield and have also been writing to some wonderful bookshops to that end in mid Wales, Pembrokeshire, Virginia and New York. Oh, what do I sound like?  Wales – all over: that’s where my family’s from; the US South is my husband’s patch and NYC isn’t so far from VA where I’ll be visiting mom in the fall. If you’re with a small press – and perhaps anyway – you have to think laterally to get the book out there! But most of all, I just want to reach readers with the book and, where I can, build meaningful encounters and discussions.

So, here are some book group starter questions you could use, if you like. Anna x

    Questions for

     book groups

Who is Alison and who is Hapless Ally? Are they the same person or two separate people?

Would you describe Hapless Ally as real?

What is your opinion of Santa Maria?

Who is the most horrible person in the book and to whom do you warm most?

What genre do you think the book sits in? Do you call it literary fiction, or does it read as memoir or even, partly, self-help to you? Is it a hybrid?

Did you guess the ending?

What’s the significance of the book’s title? Is it simple and straightforward, or something more complex and nuanced?

Did you like the names for people and places in the book?

Did you take offence to any of the descriptions – for example, of the f…… caravan, the funerals, dying?

There are many literary references shot through the narrative. Some are obvious and documented explicitly in the text (and thus you will see them on the acknowledgements page) but some are harder to spot. So get spotting!

Did you feel that you learned more about mental health from the book?

Did you think that the book gives us insights into therapeutic practice and the sort of help available (although I feel I must add, not routinely available) through our National Health Service in the UK?

Did the book help you? By which I mean, did it make you feel better about your own problems or state of mind? Did it give you a nudge to tackle things that are holding you back and making you unhappy?

Were you able to read it as entertainment, despite some of the themes it addresses?

If you know me, were you able to separate it from me? (This has been an interesting discussion with friends…)

Was the book shocking? If so, why?

Is it a happy ending? Is it over – in a good way?

Who was your favourite imaginary friend – and why? Dolly, Shirley, Albert, JK….

Did you feel sympathy for Santa Maria? For Dad? For Brother who Might as well be Dead? For Terry?

What do you think of Dixie Delicious?

What makes you laugh in the book? Is it the pickled egg murder/horrible deaths/caravan of evil/revenge on the tutus…?

What does the book show us about the power of literature and, more broadly, of the written word? What of the spoken – the “curses ringing”?

I am a mother of three boys, four to fourteen. Some people have asked, ‘Aren’t you worried about what your kids will think?’ Should an author be? Should I, as this author, be?

Why do you think there’s a shift in narrative from first to third person between the prologue and chapter one? Do you think it’s successful?

What’s the significance of the foreword to the rest of the book?

Is Alison strong, or is she weak?

What do you think of having a bibliography in the book? It’s far from a standard feature!

Did all this really happen? Do you believe it did? Why? 

Now that last one is, I think, the most interesting question of the lot!