Tag: reading

Six months of 2017 in books

by Anna Vaught, posted in agents, amazon, book groups, books, bookshops, Contemporary Small Press, editing, Galley Beggar Press, genre, goodreads, independent press, james joyce, killing hapless ally, lucia joyce, mental health, patrician press, pembrokeshire, poems, poetry, reading, reading groups, reading lists, reviews, saving lucia, short stories, Short Stories, Uncategorized, women writers, writers, writing

Last year, I published a list of what I had read during the year. I thought that, this year, I’d get it down in two instalments. As before, I should love to know what others are reading. So do comment or talk to me! I don’t have time to review all these, but when I am done with the current fit of writing, I will try to post a few reviews, with a focus, I hope, on the independent presses. Also, I will update this list as I’ll likely forget something!

I read as much as I can and I read quickly. In snatched hours, in the bath, on the train, little bits of time carved out. But mainly, I go to bed earlier than I would naturally do purely so that I can read. I want to be frank about this. It’s how, as a child and growing up, I coped with anxiety and trauma. I went to bed and built a world. I do believe that with books, you can rebuild your mind and, to this day, it’s what I do.

Why?

Because every day is a conscious attempt to stay well and to manage, as best I can, my mental health: it has broken several times. Okay, many times. But I am back. Then there’s the pleasure of it all and the way my imagination is hotly stimulated. The way that reading, for me, leads on to discussion and friendship. As, I’ve discovered, does writing. Why did I ever think otherwise? And by the way, if you are feeling low or really, properly battling, I am not an expert, but I can tell you which books have soothed me, including the very few non-fiction texts I have read about mental health – though I have to preface that with, proceed with caution because, as I said, I’m no expert, but I CAN share. x

In no particular order, my reading over the past six months…

Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Finally got round to it. Also, the second book of his Bleak House (a re-read). I also re-read A Christmas Carol because I was teaching it for GCSE. To support my older children I read Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner and  Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree. Now, this I found this an excellent read and was delighted to find a friend had been reading it, too. Cue – memorable and moving discussion en route to the hustings in Swindon, two days before the general election. WHICH REMINDS ME: the same person has left Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (still haven’t read) and C.E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings. Summer reads, then. 

At top speed, for GCSE teaching I re-read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Woman in Black. Which led on to my re-reading of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw in one bit, sitting on the floor, because it was next to The Woman in Black on my sitting room bookshelf. I discovered, through the new OCR English Language and Literature spec, the first poetry collection from Jacob Sam La Rose Breaking Silence (Bloodaxe), which led to some wonderful things. Some of his poems prompted me to revisit one of my favourite modern poets, Tony Harrison. There will have been assorted other reading in here too – going over GCSE (and IGCSE) literature and poetry anthologies and the like; reading for A levels in English Literature and English Language and Literature and the EPQ…but it was Jacob Sam La Rose who was my new discovery.

Edith Sitwell: Fanfare for Elizabeth

Ben Myers: The Gallows Pole and Beastings. Shout out for the independent presses – here, Bluemoose. These are wonderful books. Enormously atmospheric. He’s brilliant, I think, on landscape.

On the subject of indies, from And Other Stories (we have a couple of subscriptions at Bookworm Towers), I am currently reading The Gurugu Pledge by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel (translated by Jethro Soutar), which is stunning, and Joanna Walsh’s Worlds from the Word’s End, a series of sharp and funny stories which make me very jealous too: never have I managed to craft one as she does! I’ve just ordered Hold Tight by Jeffrey Boakye – that’s an Influx Press title. Oh, there are so many indpendent presses – but my favourites – that is, of the ones I’ve explored – The Linen Press, Patrician Press, Galley Beggar, And Other Stories, Influx, Comma Press and Bluemoose. I read from all over, but get some of my greatest pleasure from texts published by risk-taking independent presses. That’s not to say risks aren’t taken by bigger concerns. Why not read both?

Dipped into a favourite book on writing (and close reading), Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer. This precipitated both editing and reading (I hope she knows how useful she is!) – in this case, going back to Chekhov’s short stories.

I am about to read Jess Butterworth’s Running on the Roof of the World, Jo Barnard’s Hush Little Baby and Amit Chaudhuri’s Friend of my Youth. I love Chauduri’s books. Such restraint, so moving and unmistakeably his. I thought his last book, Odysseus Abroad gently broke a few rules (the rules you read about…) including ‘show don’t tell’ (bit bored with this): oh, he tells beautifully, and I felt the book was wonderfully episodic and that some of these epiosdes would have stood as short stories. More on which when I’ve got round to reading the latest one. Jo Barnard is a lovely lady. Very encouraging to others (including me) and a lean, spare writer at the literary end (what do I know? So kill me now if I have this market appraisal wrong!) of commercial fiction and cool in a hot and crowded market. That is a considerable achievement, in my view. I’d recommend her debut, Precocious. Unsettling and very well judged in tone. Jess is an old friend and I am very excited for her and cannot wait to see what she does in this, her debut, a MG set in India and Tibet, subjects close to her heart, as they are to mine.

For book groups I re-read A Tale of Two Cities, read PD James’s Innocent Blood – do you know, I had never read a P.D. James book – and Gilly McMillian’s What She Knew (which, by the way, is the same book as Burnt Paper Sky – hence the odd furious review by folks who bought the same book twice). Regarding the latter, generally speaking, I seem to fail with psychological thrillers. I read the Amazon reviews and those on Goodreads and generally feel like I haven’t read the same book, in that the ‘twists’ seem obvious to me – you know like in Of Mice and Men, when the foreshadowing smacks you round the face so hard – girl with the red dress/mouse/puppy/Candy’s old mutt/Curley’s wife…Lennie gets shot? Never saw that coming! It’s that kind of experience – and I don’t find them nail biting at all. I’ve been told that this sounds sneering, but it’s only my opinion and a statement of what works for me. Apologies if I’ve denigrated Of Mice and Men (quite like Cannery Row and The Grapes of Wrath, though…) but to me Steinbeck is a pygmy compared with giants like…Faulkner and Wolfe. Oh yes: I have an idea. Why not read – although you won’t sleep afterwards – Ali Land’s striking debut novel, Good Me Bad Me before or after Innocent Blood? Some of the same themes rise up. Criminality. The choices that children and young people make in extremis. (Ali was previously a children’s psychiatric nurse and that gave the book a certain heft for me.) What it might mean…not to feel, or to feel unusual things. I don’t want to give more away. Yes. Do that for a book group.

But back to Southern US literature and…

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, which I will re-read in a little while (I want to write something about her), well, that is brilliant. Is all this meandering discussion awful, do you think?

Which brings to me to…

Of Time and the River and (currently reading) The Web and the Rock. Thomas Wolfe. In my view, a genius and we lost him so young.

Patrician Press launched its Anthology of Refugees and Peacekeepers and we had a lovely event at the Essex Book Festival; I read everything in it and that led me on to (two indies here) Refugee Tales from Comma Press.

Now, for my own current book, Saving Lucia (or even Passerines – depending on who nabs it…), I’ve been re-reading Joyce, so I’ve had Finnegans Wake and Ulysses to hand. Also lesser known Joyce works – Pomes Penyeach. I’ve been reading up on Joyce, Beckett, Mussolini, the history of psychiatric care (I listed some of this stuff in last year’s post and also it’s in my bibliography at the end of Saving Lucia – one for the future, if you be interested); I read Annabel Abbs’s The Joyce Girl and continued to dip into Frances Stonnor Saunders’s exemplary account of Violet Gibson: The Woman Who Shot Mussolini and Carol Loeb Shloss’s Lucia Joyce. To Dance in the Wake. I’ve been reading articles in The Lancet, articles on Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann and accounts of Bertha Pappenheim (there’s a need for a bigger study and, I would say, what exists needs to be translated from the German because she is fascinating!); I also looked (in German) at Bertha’s book of prayers – Gebete and found an English translation of her short stories, The Junk Shop and Other Stories and finally read Florence Nightingale’s posthumously published Cassandra – which Virginia Woolf said was more like screaming than writing. I concur. Also, religious texts, archive work (letters and documents) and miscellaneous articles.

And I think we are there!

Two other things on reading and writing. How good it was to see the Authors for Grenfell auction raise so much and I was pleased to be a tiny part of it. I’ve a tea party coming up – and also a tour of Pembrokeshire, visiting all the settings in my second book, The Life of Almost, which comes out in autumn, 2018 with Patrician Press. Also, in September, for the first time, I have a work experience student and I am so excited. I am still a newbie fiction writer (I put pen to paper in mid July 2014, although I’d been a freelance author before and writing is not my day job) and this kind of thing makes it feel…real. We are going to get a writing project off the ground; she’s going to submit work for publication. She may also help me with editing of and suggestions on two anthologies of which I am co-editor and editor, respectively. Said student (she’s in the upper sixth) is reading the manuscript of my third book – which led to her mum reading it too…which led into a date to discuss it. and, I hope, a super-clever new beta reader. Yay.

I’m sorted on my reading for the next few weeks, the manuscript of Saving Lucia goes out again on the 20th of July  – and in the meantime I wait to hear if others are biting…it is a long process and probably a good education for me, seeing as I rush at everything like it’s my last day. (In my defence, it could be: I’ve had a lot of people die on me, some of them very suddenly: another story – some of which is in my first book Killing Hapless Ally, if you are not freaked out by very dark humour. If you are, don’t read the bits of The Life of Almost concerning a love story in a funeral parlour…)

Other booky things: my two Grenfell offers to fulfil in summer and autumn and archive work in St Andrew’s psychiatric hospital, Northampton.

And reading Horrible Histories in bed when stressed or sad. Oh forgot: I had norovirus so badly I was hospitalised. During that period I read Gren Jenner’s (he’s part of the Horrible Histories telly team) A Million Years in a Day. A jolly diverting read.

AND FINALLY

Quibbles and possible spelling errors spotted in some of the books, above (English teacher forevaaa):

prophesise (prophesy) as verb

disinterested (to mean uninterested) – feel free to argue

past (for passed)

Thursday’s…Friday’s…for simple plurals, not possession

it’s when you mean its (ugh!)

passer bys

me/I/myself I won’t blather on about that because I sound like a twat. BUT in a top selling book for which I’ve shelled out, say, £12, it niggles to see a chapter starting (names changed) “Me and Andrew left France…”

I have been spelling fuchsia wrong my whole life. And cardamom. So I’m a fine one to talk. In my Killing Hapless Ally, Myfanwy twice appeared without the first y. My fault. And I swear as if my life depended on it.

Love,

Anna xxxxx

For writers starting out. Do comment, discuss and contribute your thoughts!

by Anna Vaught, posted in A Life of Almost, At Home magazine, books, bookshops, children, Contemporary Small Press, Drafts, editing, emma press, killing hapless ally, mental health, mslexia, passerines, patrician press, peace-seekers, poems, poetry, psychology, reading, refugees, Uncategorized, women writers, writers, writing

I know there are a lot of people out there writing books and a lot of people submitting said books at the moment. I know or have met people who now have stunning commercial success, writers who are agented but yet to have their first book sold, those who work with the small presses and who are not agented, those who are what we might call a hybrid (I am thinking this is likely to be me) – by which I mean agented but also finding publication routes on their own, perhaps with a small press, those who are disconsolate because everything is a flat rejection or they have received no answer at all and those – including recent MA in Creative Writing students – who are, for various reasons, too scared to submit at all. That’s just for starters.

It might come quickly; it could take years. I do think the key thing is not to take rejection personally (while accepting that, maybe, you need to write a different book if nobody at all is biting); also, if you are floored by rejection and delay and disappointment, then this might not be for you. And that, OF COURSE, is fine. Because there is a life beyond writing.

Here’s where I am. I started writing a book, Killing Hapless Ally, a novel, which originally began life as a memoir, in July of 2014; by the 1st of May, 2015 it had a publisher and it was published in March 2016 by the small press, Patrician. I only sent this manuscript to five agents; two rejected it, three didn’t reply at all. I read an article about the press in ‘Mslexia’ magazine and I liked the sound of it, corresponded with its charismatic founder and there we go. I was, I should add, realistic about how visible the book would be, but I have relished the experience and, ever since, the bonds I have made with its readers. Is it a bestseller? Good God no, but it has been important to its readers and the engagement I have had with them has been life changing. With Patrician, to whom I now feel rather bonded, I also published a poem in Anthology of Refugees and Peacemakers (just back from an event at Essex Book Festival on that) and will be co-editor of next year’s anthology, My Europe and editor of its Tempest, which is a book, by various authors, on (Trump) America. And my poetry has been published by the brilliant indie Emma Press, too.

Way leads on to way.

Meanwhile, I spread my wings and wrote another book, a novella, The Life of Almost. I began sending this out before Christmas 2016. I’m a quick worker, apparently. Two agent rejections (one the day I sent it!), three small press rejections (but read on for that and for more on agents), waiting on two further presses and an agent so still out on submissions. BUT during this process, another agent had read a section from Killing Hapless Ally and admired my writing; said agent asked me to send what I was currently working on (as in, The Life of Almost) in partial then in full; told me they thought I was a brilliant writer but that this book was not, though they admired much about it, for them. To their taste, for example, it needed more pace. But I had also told them about my plans for the next book (I actually have four more books sketched out: is that crazy sounding?) and the agent asked me to send them the full manuscript for that as soon as it was ready because they absolutely loved its concept. This was my third text, Passerines.

Meanwhile, one of the other agents told me (having read three chapters of Almost) about how they loved my writing style. That there was much to like; it was innovative and compelling but in the end the book was not right for them. Keep sending! And of the three small presses who rejected me, one said that though they would not be taking this one, they were confident it would be placed and would I send them future work? The other told me there was some lovely writing and they were impressed, but that this text was simply too innovative for them and, on that basis, they would simply not be able to shift enough copies to make it financially viable. I do know that the small presses – whom I adore and champion, by the way – are often those who DO champion the innovative book, but clearly that is not always the case.

So you see, there’s a lot of encouragement in that pile, just as there is a lot of rejection. The rejection is part of the experience and of the learning.

I have almost finished my third novel. So that’s three books – from the first word, I mean – in three years and this is not my day job. I run a a company, teach, have three young boys and I’m a volunteer and mental health advocate, too.  I don’t have a great deal of time so I’ve got to want to do this.

Do you? Take your time and don’t give up.

I may not have hit a super stellar advance just yet and obviously I may never, but I am playing a long game. May those who find later books go back and read my first, for example. We are three years in and I have met so many fascinating people, read hundreds of books – I read a great deal anyway, but I am so much more alive to different presses and sources of reading; it has been such an adventure. I’ve made a film about mental health, presented at a literary festival, had a packed book launch at a wonderful bookshop, spoken to, had dinner with, corresponded with, interviewed and had my work read by – it is happening now – writers whom I admire. I’ve also published poetry and articles and guest blogged. To boot, I think I am a better teacher because I am a better reader and writer and what is more I am able to share my work with students. Right now, I am commissioning those in years 10-13 to write for the two anthologies I have mentioned and, through my company, I felt inspired to set up a year-long bursary so that I could help someone who had had – this is the icing on the cake for me – long term mental health problems (as I have had myself) to evolve and complete a creative writing project.

So that’s where I am now. In the peculiar position of having one book out on subs and another being waited for and…without giving too much away…being discussed. At the weekend I had an offer of publication for my second book, but I am taking my time.

And now I have to make the tea because the kids keep coming in and rooting through the cupboards. Not having the time forces me to write when and as I can and I mull at other times, which I also regard as working. If you wait for your perfect writing environment or space or time, it may never happen. So why not write something tonight and get started – even if it’s just a paragraph?

Do tell me about your experience and about how you are getting on.

Anna.

Killing Hapless Ally: Patrician Press (2016)

The Life of Almost (TBA!) and Passerines (ditto)

Patrician Press Anthology of Refugees and Peacekeepers

by Anna Vaught, posted in books, bookshops, patrician press, poems, poetry, reading, refugees, Uncategorized

From the Patrician Press blog (below) earlier. (I am published in this splendid new anthology with ‘Emigree’). You can buy this book through the publisher’s site http://patricianpress.com/ or, you know, the usual outlets. Few bookshops will stock books from smaller presses but they can always order!

I am proud to say that my dear friend, Susie Freeman, who has been such an encouragement to me in my writing, novels one and two, entered the associated writing competition run by Patrician and the judges (I wasn’t one, I should add; Susie’s just awesome so they noticed her) picked her poem as a winner and have subsequently included it in this anthology. CONGRATULATIONS SUSIE AND I LOVE YOU SO.

I quote from the blog…

This year has been horrendous in many ways but at least on the publishing front we have some good news: our lovely Refugees and Peacekeepers anthology has been sent to the printer today. We are happy to report that as well as quotes by George Szirtes and the Bishop of Barking in the foreword, the back cover contains a quote by the wonderful Robert McCrum. We are hoping to have advance copies in time for our event at the First Site art gallery in Colchester on Saturday 10th December from 12-3pm. All our books will be on sale with a combined raffle. Various pieces of artwork by our cover artists will be the main prizes, as well as some consolation prizes.

We will be in good company as the retrospective exhibition on at the time is by Gee Vaucher:

http://www.firstsite.uk/whats-on/gee-vaucher-introspective/

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.

 

People’s Book Prize

by Anna Vaught, posted in book groups, bookshops, depression, editing, killing hapless ally, mental health, NHS, patrician press, poetry, psychology, reading, reading groups, reading lists, reviews, Therapy, Uncategorized, women writers, Writers and Artists, writing, writing competitions

LIKED MY DEBUT, KILLING HAPLESS ALLY? YOU CAN VOTE FOR IT THROUGH THE LINK BELOW X

 

http://www.peoplesbookprize.com/section.php?id=6

Killing Hapless Ally

Buy this book :

Recommend to a friend…

Killing Hapless Ally

By Anna Vaught
Published by Patrician Press
ISBN 978-0-9932388-6-4
Category Humour
Autumn 2016 (Sept – Nov)

Synopsis

This is a black comedy in which young Alison conceived an alter ego ‘Hapless Ally’ to present a more palatable version of herself to her family and others. Ominously, the alter ego began to develop autonomy. Alison deals with this helped by a varied catalogue of imaginary friends.

Author’s Biography

Anna is an English teacher, mentor and tutor for young people, copywriter and freelance journalist; she has self-published two previous books, been a volunteer nationally and internationally and now writes poetry (to be published by The Emma Press this autumn and Patrician Press in the spring), as well as working on a new novel and some short stories. Anna is also a mental health campaigner and advocate and the mum of three young boys.

Reviews

Amazon (link as above) 7 Reviews
Price £10.00

 

Liked my debut novel, Killing Hapless Ally and want to offer a vote for it? Here’s a link.

 

Anna xxxx

Not the Booker, 2016

by Anna Vaught, posted in books, bookshops, killing hapless ally, not the booker, patrician press, poems, reviews, The Guardian, Uncategorized, writing, writing competitions

So…if you have read and liked my debut novel, Killing Hapless Ally, and it meant something to you; if it made you laugh; you thought it had weight; if it made you fall madly in love with Albert Camus or understand what mental health problems or mental illness might be like (my publisher makes it clear at the beginning of the book that I drew on many episodes in my own life; if you like semi colons, Dolly Parton, poetry and laughing at the dark things…go on, vote for it. The article that follows is from ‘The Guardian’ and below is the link you need to click on, register with ‘The Guardian’, then offer your vote. Actually, there should be two votes, but you need only comment on one of the books.

And look at all those indies! What follows, then, is from ‘The Guardian’; just underneath it, I’ve copied my votes.

**********************************************

 

Not the Booker prize (very) longlist 2016: votes, please!

If you felt this year’s Man Booker selection was not broad enough, get a load of ours. And help decide which books make the shortlist

Composite: Authors Julian Barnes, Don DeLillo, Kei Miller, Sarah Perry, China Miéville and Lionel Shriver
A very small sample of the authors on our longlist … (clockwise from top left) … Julian Barnes, Don DeLillo, Kei Miller, Sarah Perry, China Miéville and Lionel Shriver. Composite: Alamy/Rex/Getty Images/Graham Turner/Graeme Robertson/Sarah Lee for The Guardian

Save for later

Last week the Man Booker longlist was announced. A little surprising, right?

OK, I’m happy to admit that the main prize has a few things going for it. But I always feel that its longlist is just as notable for its omissions as the books that are chosen. This year was no exception. A few good books sometimes sneak on there – but dozens more don’t make it. And you know what? The Booker’s so-called longlist isn’t even that long. Not like the Not the Booker. As you will see below, our list really is long.

There are well over 100 books, making 2016 a record year already. So thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. And I hope you stick around as the real work begins. Because we somehow have to whittle this mighty list down to a manageable half-dozen books.

And how do we do that? We vote! If you want to take part, all you have to do is choose two books from the longlist, from two different publishers, and accompany those votes with a short review of at least one of your chosen books. It would also be very helpful if you included the word “vote”.

The review should be something over 100 words long, although as our glorious and shining Terms and Conditions state, we won’t be counting that carefully. Just make it look like you care.

It’s that simple. So let’s get voting. You’ve got just over a week. The deadline is 23.59 on 14 August 2016. The contenders are:

Megan Abbott– You Will Know Me (Picador)
Lesley Allen – The Lonely Life of Biddy Weir (Twenty7)
Deborah Andrews – Walking the Lights (Freight Books)
Louis Armand – The Combinations (Equus)
Kate Armstrong – The Storyteller (Holland House)
Jason Arnopp – The Last Days of Jack Sparks (Orbit)
Jenn Ashworth – Fell (Sceptre)
Chris Bachelder – The Throwback Special (WW Norton & Company)
Jo Baker – A Country Road, A Tree (Doubleday)
Julian Barnes – The Noise of Time (Jonathan Cape)
Shirley Barrett – Rush Oh! (Little, Brown)
Kevin Barry – Beatlebone (Doubleday)
Louise Beech – The Mountain in My Shoe (Orenda)
Claire-Louise Bennett – Pond (Fitzcarraldo)
Bill Beverly – Dodgers (No Exit Press)
Lochlan Bloom – The Wave (Dead Ink)
Lisa Blower – Sitting Ducks (Fair Acre)
Megan Bradbury – Everyone Is Watching (Picador)
Caroline Brothers – The Memory Stones (Bloomsbury)
Liam Brown – Wild Life (Legend Press)
Rowan Hisayo Buchanon – Harmless Like You (Sceptre)
Tom Bullough – Addlands (Granta)
Paul Burston – The Black Path (Accent Press Ltd)
Jackie Buxton – Glass Houses (Urbane Publications)
Louise Candlish – The Swimming Pool (Penguin)
Joanna Cannon – The Trouble With Goats and Sheep (The Borough Press)
Emma Chapman – The Last Photograph (Picador)
Anna Chilvers – Tainted Love (Bluemoose)
Dan Clements – What Will Remain (Silvertail)
Clár Ni Chonghaile – Fractured (Legend Press)
Chris Cleave – Everyone Brave Is Forgiven (Sceptre)
Emma Cline – The Girls (Chatto & Windus)
Paul MM Cooper – River of Ink (Bloomsbury)
Mark Connors – Stickleback (Armley Press)
Isabel Costello – Paris Mon Amour (Canelo)
Jack Cox – Dodge Rose (Dalkey Archive Press)
Justin Cronin – The City of Mirrors (Orion)
Rachel Cusk – Transit (Jonathan Cape)
Shelley Day – The Confession of Stella Moon (Contraband)
Don DeLillo – Zero K (Picador)
Ruth Dugdall – Nowhere Girl (Legend Press)
Sophie Duffy – Bright Stars (Legend Press)
Ken Edwards – Country Life (Unthank Books)
Jo Ely – Stone Seeds (Urbane Publications)
Guillermo Erades – Back to Moscow (Scribner UK)
Pamela Erens – Eleven Hours (Atlantic Books)
Lyn G Farrell – The Wacky Man (Legend Press)
Julia Forster – What a Way to Go (Atlantic Books)
Harry Gallon – The Shapes Of Dogs’ Eyes (Dead Ink)
Ruth Gilligan – Nine Folds Make A Paper Swan (Atlantic Books)
Jules Grant – We Go Around in the Night and Are Consumed By Fire (Myriad)
Guinevere Glasfurd – The Words in My Hand (Two Roads)
Garth Greenwell – What Belongs to You (Farrar, Straus and Giraux)
David John Griffin – Infinite Rooms (Urbane Publications)
Michael Grothaus – Epiphany Jones (Orenda Books)
Lee Harrison – The Bastard Wonderland (Wrecking Ball Press)
Adam Haslett – Imagine Me Gone (Little Brown and Company)
Noah Hawley – Before the Fall (Hodder & Stoughton)
Matt Hill – Graft (Angry Robot)
Catherine Hokin – Blood and Roses (Yolk Publishing)
Anna Hope – The Ballroom (Doubleday)
Michael Hughes – The Countenance Divine (John Murray)
Dave Hutchinson – Europe at Midnight (Solaris)
Amanda Jennings – In Her Wake (Orenda Books)
Elnathan John – Born on a Tuesday (Cassava Republic)
Anjali Joseph – The Living (Fourth Estate)
Avril Joy – Sometimes a River Song (Linen Press)
Mireille Juchau – The World Without Us (Bloomsbury)
James Kelman – Dirt Road (Canongate)
Claire King – Everything Love Is (Bloomsbury)
Hannah Kohler – The Outside Lands (Picador)
John Lake – Amy and the Fox (Armley Press)
Jem Lester – Shtum (Orion)
Ashley Lister – Raven and Skull (Caffeine Nights Publishing)
Carol Lovekin – Ghostbird (Honno Welsh Women’s Press)
PK Lynch – Armadillos (Legend Press)
Martin MacInnes – Infinite Ground (Atlantic Books)
Kevin MacNeil – The Brilliant and Forever (Polygon)
Seraphina Madsen – Dodge and Burn (Dodo Ink)
Brooke Maganti – The Turning Tide (W&N)
Ayisha Malik – Sophia Khan is Not Obliged (Twenty7)
Michael J Malone – Bad Samaritan (Contraband)
Iain Maloney – The Waves Burn Bright (Freight Books)
Sarah Ladipo Manyika – Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (Cassava Republic Press)
Alex Marwood – The Darkest Secret (Sphere)
Colum McCann – Thirteen Ways of Looking (Bloomsbury)
Tiffany McDaniel – The Summer That Melted Everything (Scribe)
Ian McGuire – The North Water (Scribner UK)
Elizabeth McKenzie – The Portable Veblen (Penguin Press)
Wyl Menmuir – The Many (Salt)
Sarah Meyrick – Knowing Anna (SPCK Publishing)
Dan Micklethwaite – The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote(Bluemoose)
China Miéville – This Census Taker (Del Rey Books)
Kei Miller – Augustown (W&N)
Alan Moore – Jerusalem (Liveright and Knockabout)
Alison Moore – Death and the Seaside (Salt)
Claire Morrall – When the Floods Came (Sceptre)
Yelena Moskovich – The Natashas (Serpent’s Tail)
Sarah Moss – The Tidal Zone (Granta Books)
Sylvain Neuvel – Sleeping Giants (Del Rey Books)
Carl Neville – Resolution Way (Repeater Books)
Suzy Norman – Duff (Patrician Press)
Claire North – The Sudden Appearance of Hope (Orbit)
Barney Norris – Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (Doubleday)
Edna O’Brien – The Little Red Chairs (Faber & Faber)
Paraic O’Donnell – The Maker of Swans (W&N)
Maggie O’Farrell – This Must Be the Place (Tinder Press)
Harry Parker – Anatomy of a Soldier (Faber & Faber)
Sarah Perry – The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail)
Cherry Potts – The Dowry Blade (Arachne Press)
Laura Powell – The Unforgotten (Freight Books)
Christopher Priest – The Gradual (Gollancz)
Lucy Ribchester – The Amber Shadows (Simon & Schuster UK)
Mary-Jane Riley – After She Fell (Killer Reads)
Adam Roberts – The Thing Itself (Gollancz)
Lou Rowan – A Mystery’s No Problem (Equus)
Amanda Saint – As If I Were a River (Urbane Publications)
James Sallis – Willnot (No Exit Press)
David Savill – They Are Trying to Break Your Heart (Bloomsbury)
Anakana Schofield – Martin John (And Other Stories)
Helen Sedgwick – The Comet Seekers (Harvill Secker)
Lionel Shriver – The Mandibles (The Borough Press)
Karin Slaughter – The Kept Woman (Century)
Ethyl Smith – Changed Times (ThunderPoint Publishing)
Francis Spufford – Golden Hill (Faber & Faber)
Sarayu Srivatsa – If You Look For Me I Am Not Here (Bluemoose)
Elizabeth Strout – My Name Is Lucy Barton (Viking)
Emma Claire Sweeney – Owl Song at Dawn (Legend Press)
M Suddain – Hunters and Collectors (Jonathan Cape)
Graham Swift – Mothering Sunday (Scribner UK)
David Szalay – All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Jonathan Taylor – Melissa (Salt Publishing)
William Thacker – Lingua Franca (Legend Press)
Yusuf Toropov – Jihadi: A Love Story (Orenda Books)
Anna Vaught – Killing Hapless Alley (Patrician Press)
Dan Vyleta – Smoke (W&N)
Natasha Walter – A Quiet Life (The Borough Press)
Simon Wan – Love and a Dozen Roast Potatoes (Urbane Publications)
Eleanor Wasserberg – Foxlowe (Harper Collins)
Jemma Wayne – Chains of Sand (Legend Press)
Aliya Whitely – The Arrival of the Missives (Unsung Stories)
Chis Whitaker – Tall Oaks (Twenty7)
Hugo Wilcken – The Reflection (Melville House UK)
Matt Wilven – The Blackbird Singularity (Legend Press)
Charlotte Wood – The Natural Way of Things (Allen & Unwin)
James Yorkston – Three Craws (Freight Books)

I’ll be back here on 15 August to post the results – and no doubt feeling slightly frazzled from all the counting. Let’s go!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/aug/02/not-the-booker-prize-very-longlist-2016-votes-please#comment-80656904

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And here are my two votes:

annaVaught
30m ago

My two votes. PK Lynch’s Armadillos (Legend). Aggie’s voice clear as a bell and has stayed with me; excellent, sustained narrative. Admittedly I did find elements of this difficult to read because of experiences I share with Aggie, but I am glad I kept going. One of the biggest compliments I can give to this book is that she has (and I want to qualify that I am a huge Faulkner fan and of Southern literature in general plus it’s my second home and I’m married to A Georgia Boy!) pulled off the voice, the vocabulary and the nuance, which is no mean feat and something I have seen done poorly elsewhere. The settings are haunting and there are elements of joy and humour in the blackness. It reminded me of a book that is too little known – Erskine Cauldwell’s God’s Little Acre – with its grisly portrayal of the characters PK has as ‘subs’. I think Armadillos is a skilfully written book and its prose is spare but allusive. At least, that is how it seemed to me! I felt I knew all along what the ending would be. Knew it inchoately. Didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the story at all. A familiar -oh yes- and beautiful book.

Book two. Duff by Suzy Norman (Patrician Press). Skilfully done; restrained prose; funny; love the journey and the landscape – its sweep of places, visited and remembered. It is sweet, sad and moving. I felt the rhythms of Dylan Thomas, prose and poetry, moving within it.

I’d love to discuss both these books with their authors. Both are debut novelists. Right, I am off to read A Country Road, A Tree, Solar Bones, The Blackbird Singularity and Sometimes a River Song…I am only sorry I cannot nominate more books. It has, for example, been such a brilliant year for smaller presses!

Anna

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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

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!

WRITING…READING…BIBLIOGRAPHY

by Anna Vaught, posted in books, editing, killing hapless ally, patrician press, reading, writing

WRITING

So, my manuscript has gone back and I have a little time (ha!) to work on the chapter book I’m submitting for both Bath Children’s Novel award and Chicken House/The Times competition. I have also discussed writing a YA novel with someone rather wonderful I met through discussions of all sorts (including writing books) on twitter. I also, chancing my arm, submitted feature pitches to ‘Mslexia’ and ‘The Atlantic’ – both were about mental health and writing.

READING

I read – as I tweeted to him – the whole of James Dawson’s This Book is Gay in one chomp. As an exploration of sexuality FULL STOP this is an excellent book. It’s comprehensive, funny and wise; I hope it will get used in PSHE in schools – and I say this with my day job hat on: as an English teacher and one who used, like James, to teach PSHE. PSHE is the starting point, I think, for teachers: do it well and students may come and find you at other times to talk things over. For the digital natives, there is a great deal of LGTB* support online – but this book is an essential for bookshelves: for young people, for their teachers and for their parents. I have already looked at the book with one of my boys: with my almost twelve year old because he saw the cover and was, of course, intrigued (my fourteen year old saw it and ran away. Make that two copies for this household  – I’ll leave it by his bedroom door).

Other reading…I’ve almost finished John Carey’s The Violent Effigy, his fine exploration of themes, images and symbols in the work of Charles Dickens, just started Ian McEwan’s The Children Act, which I think I will stay up late reading tonight as I am already, as you could predict, hooked by its first characters; I want to know what the dilemmas are; I want to know about the first protagonist and her husband and what the consequence will be of his so unapolagetically announcing an affair with Melanie who wears heavy amber beads…I want to know about the legal papers in a fan on the floor and about the title of the book and whether I am to read ‘act’ as both noun and verb.

And it has been the morning of the em dash, of writing to Catherine Camus, daughter of Albert, for literary permissions and of doing the draft bibliography of my debut novel, Killing Hapless Ally. Why the bibliography? The book is about, shall we say, unusual methods of staying sane; of being less alone; of not being terrified in a home of desolate proportions. Bound up with that is reading and the novel does refer to and quote a good number of books. Some are in the acknowledgements section, which houses Kavanagh, Camus, Larkin, Plath, Auden and Dorothy Rowe. Here are the (draft) others!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I have referred to, used very brief paraphrase, or quoted where the text is out of copyright from the following and I hope my book has piqued your interest in some of those which follow. I have listed the editions I own, but where these are out of print, I have given an obtainable alternative. Albert Camus: The Outsider, (Penguin, 2000, translated by Joseph Laredo), ‘The Myth of Sisyphus‘ (Penguin, 1975, 2000, translated by Justin O’ Brien); Louis MacNeice: ‘Thalassa’, ‘The Sunlight on the Garden’ and ‘Autumn Journal’ from Collected Poems Louis MacNeice (Faber and Faber, 1966, 1987), Simone de Beauvoir: Force of Circumstance (Penguin, 1987, translated by Richard Howard); Jean Paul Sartre: Nausea (Penguin,1966, 1986, translated by Robert Baldick) and Annie Cohen-Solal: Sartre. A Life (Heinemann, 1987); Sylvia Plath: ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit’ from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (Faber and Faber, 2001) and the poems ‘Lady Lazarus’,‘Cut,’ ‘Daddy’ from Sylvia Plath Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2002); Dylan Thomas: A Child’s Christmas in Wales (New Directions, 2009); T. S. Eliot:‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ from T. S. Eliot Collected Poems 1909-1962 (Faber and Faber, 2009), Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient (Bloomsbury, 1992, 2009); Samuel Beckett’s ‘Happy Days’ and ‘Waiting for Godot’ from The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett (Faber and Faber, 2006); and his Collected Poems (Grove/Atlantic, 2015); W. B Yeats: ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ from The Collected Poems of W. B Yeats (Wordworth Poetry Library 2000); Andre Gide: Fruits of the Earth (Penguin 1970, translated by D. Bussy); Dolly Parton: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, (Harper Collins, 1995); Peter Hogan: Shirley Bassey. Diamond Diva (ReadHowYouWant.com LTD, 2013); definitions of disorders are as given on the NHS website on its mental health and associated medication information pages and from the DSM-5. [An abbreviation of] The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition (Various. Published by the American Psychiatric Association, 2013); Robert D. Hare: Without Conscience: The Disurbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (The Guildford Press, 1993) and his site, www.hare.org, which is devoted to the study of psychopathy; Charles Dickens: Great Expectations and David Copperfield, (Gerald Duckworth and Co Ltd, 2005; this is the Nonesuch Dickens six volume collection); Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden (Vintage Children’s Classics, 2012); Helen Bush Mary Anning’s Treasures (Puffin, 1976); Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Dover Publications, 1997); John Skelton: ‘On the Death of the Noble Prince King Edward the Fourth’ from John Skelton. The Complete English Poems edited by John Scattergood (Penguin, 1992); Walt Whitman; ‘Song of Myself’ from ‘Leaves of Grass’ (Penguin, 1986); Andrew Marvell: ‘A Horation Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, from The Complete Poems of Andrew Marvell (Penguin Classics edition, Penguin, 2014); D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers (United Holdings Group, 1922); William Empson: Seven Types of Ambiguity (Pimlico, 2004), John Keats: ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ from Collected Poems of John Keats (William Ralph Press, 2014) and John Keats. Selected Letters (Penguin, 2014), Kenneth Graham: The Wind in the Willows; Robert Browning: ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlin’ from Selected Poems of Robert Browning (Penguin, 2004); Matthew Arnold: ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ from The Poems of Matthew Arnold (Oxford University Press, 1922); Moliere: ‘Tartuffe’ – the title of which is sometimes translated as ‘The Hypocrite’ (NHB Drama Classics, 2002, translated by Martin Sorrell); Duncan C. Blanchard: The Snowflake Man. A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley (Ohio, 1998); W. A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys: Snow Crystals (New York, 1931); Father Ted: Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan for Hat Trick Productions and Channel 4. The poem (my own) you find in chapter one contains the first line of Richard Lovelace’s ‘To Althea. From Prison’ from The Poems of Richard Lovelace (Clarendon Press, 1963) and the rest of the poem is a pastiche of its form, with a hint of its theme of confinement. The story about Eric Newby’s A Book of Travellers’ Tales (Picador, 1986) being found in Kolkata, as signed by the author, is true and the book is on my shelves at home. The story of meeting Johnny Cash in a lift is also true and happened to my husband; as with the Newby incident, I took it for the book. Signposts you see.