Bill – Page 28 – Bill Kirton, Author

Guest appearance: Tahlia Newland. Take One.

By Bill on May 1, 2016Comments

Nowadays, it’s easy to have a chat even when you’re ten and a half thousand miles apart. Here’s the first half of a conversation I had with Australian author Tahlia Newland.

First, then, Tahlia, a bog-standard, basic question. How do you want your readers to feel as they read and when they’ve finished one of your books?
I like to inspire my readers and leave them with some understanding of how they can work with their mind to handle their life issues in a positive way.

That suggests that you have a clear personal philosophy. Do you ever write fiction with the intention of ‘educating’ or ‘enlightening’ readers? By that, I don’t mean indoctrinating them but encouraging them to move outside their normal perceptions.
Yes. Our minds are the cause of our frustration, and all my characters have or are learning skills, whether I call it meditation or not, that they use to help them handle the challenges they face in the books in a calm clear way. Of course, they often fail, because they’re human, but they keep trying and always I give them some success. The way they approach their issues and the skills they learn or strengthen as part of the story are where the possibility of learning comes in for a reader.

Ah, that leads nicely into the next question. You write in different genres and the books of yours I’ve read have all had a firm basis in reality. But they’ve also alluded to a dimension beyond the surface events. It sounds as if this connected with your expertise in meditation. Is that right?
Absolutely. I’ve always been fascinated with the boundary between fantasy and reality, and the way that dreams and other internal and creative experiences reflect and enhance our lives. I find that meditation opens my mind to a space where creativity is unlimited. It’s like a doorway to another dimension where all the stories are, be they about completely different realities or based in our own world. This vibrant realm where anything is possible and everything exists as a potential is just below the surface of our ordinary perception. Meditation is the way to access it, and when you enter that mind state, besides it being good for your creativity, reality doesn’t seem so real anymore, and that allows you to handle reality with a lot more humour and ease. My Prunella Smith books, Worlds Within Worlds and The Locksmith’s Secret go into these ideas quite deeply.

That coincides quite closely with my own perceptions of the worlds we move into as we write (although mine’s much vaguer than yours). And yet, we’re on opposite sides of the actual world. I’m naturally Euro-centric; is it very different being a writer south of the equator? Or are we truly working in a global market accessible to all?
I think it’s truly a global market. My sense is that readers like to read books set in different countries, and many Americans find Aussie culture and terms quaint. I always say that I use Australian conventions so American readers know not to get upset about the spelling and the single quotation marks, but I doubt anyone reads the bottom of the copyright page. I also put a glossary of terms up the front if I use Aussie slang. By far the majority of my books are sold in the American market.

Well, while we’re on the geographical location, do you think you (and/or Australian writers in general) have a significantly different world-view or approach to your writing?
Not significantly different, but there are cultural tendencies that show up in the best Australian writing. Aussies have a quirky sense of humour and an irreverence for social conventions. They are very open and direct people who say what they think and appreciate honesty. You’ll see that in characters and stories, in being freer with literary conventions than in the US, and in a willingness to try something different.

***

I think that’s enough for one blog. I’ll post the concluding bit next time. Meantime, for those of you who don’t know her work, here’s some background on Tahlia.

She’s written and published nine books, three of which have won a BRAG Medallion and an Awesome Indies Seal of Excellence.
She writes inspirational magical realism and fantasy, and also makes masquerade masks and steampunk hats and accessories.
Her wardrobe is full of steampunk clothing which she wears every day because beautiful clothes deserve to be worn.
She works as an editor for AIA Editing and AIA Publishing, a selective, author-funded publishing company. She also co-ordinates Awesome Indies Books‘ accreditation service for independently published books. She lives in an Australian rainforest with a lovely husband and two cheeky Burmese kittens.

You can find out more about Tahlia and her books at http://www.tahlianewland.com/ or on Amazon.

Crime fact and crime fiction

By Bill on April 12, 2016Comments

This should have been a merry, envy-provoking account of a weekend in Paris with my daughter and her daughter on the occasion of the former’s 50^th birthday. It was a lovely weekend and Paris delivered up all the ‘April in it’ clichés. But its conclusion was a bit sour. It came after an afternoon people-watching in the sun in the Place des Vosges. We got to the Gare du Nord in plenty of time for our Eurostar. Just as well because, while it’s always a busy place, I’ve never seen it quite as jammed as it was then. Taxis, cars, buses, all nose to tail, with hundreds of people squeezing between them.

We sat at a terrasse but, as I searched for my wallet to pay the bill, I found nothing. It was in a zipped up pocket of a light jacket thing I’d been intermittently wearing and carrying. Except that it wasn’t. We went through the ‘when did you last use it?’ routines, and I knew it had been in my pocket all the time because I’d kept checking for reassurance.

It had about 70 quid and 30 Euros in it, along with credit cards, driver’s licence, etc. I supposed I’d lost it so went to find a policeman to tell him about it in case someone handed it in. I found a group of three and, as I was explaining it all to them, one made an unfolding gesture with his hands and said ‘Did it open like this?’ He then said he was sure one like that had been handed in. A terrific piece of luck, eh?

Well, no. He thought the story was that someone had seen a man running away with it, chased him but he’d thrown it away. The chaser had picked it up but the thief had escaped. We went to the police office on the station and, sure enough, there was my wallet, sans (of course) the money and credit cards.

And this is where Sod’s Law began to operate. I managed to phone my wife, explain it all and asked her to put stops on the bank cards. But then it was time to get through security to board the train. (A wee aside, anyone contemplating taking the Eurostar to avoid airport-style queues, think again. Yes, it drops you in the middle of Paris and London, but it’s expensive and not a particularly comfortable experience.) Anyway, I made it to the train and was all set to ring the credit card company to stop any further payments on my card. But no wi-fi. I couldn’t get through to them until we reached England and my own network was available. They were understanding, helpful, reassuring, but the guy had already managed to ‘spend’ well over £3000. Worse still, I discovered in a later phone call that he’d used my PIN number to do so. This is completely baffling. I’d used that card to pay one restaurant and the hotel bill. I hadn’t withdrawn any money from ATMs. My number isn’t written ANYWHERE. It’s in my head.

I asked the credit card person whether it was somehow encoded on the card and the thief had used electronic stuff to get it but she hurried past the question and said there’d be a fraud investigation. I won’t be responsible for the money he ‘spent’, which is reassuring, but it’s set my (crime-writer) mind going. If the thief had somehow acquired my number, it must have been at one of the 2 places I used it. Impossible for it to be anywhere else. But then, what did he do? Follow us into the Marais district? Get on the same Métro, change to the same RER, and get off with us at the Gare du Nord? Had he been following us for 4-5 hours? All great material for a short crime story but not when it happens to you.

It’s only money, but the experience generates that feeling of a sort of invasion, an intrusion into your privacy. But it doesn’t merit the use of the word ‘violation’. That has to be reserved for the far greater problems of assault and rape. It’s really made me think of crimes like that. We read of them and naturally sympathise with and are horrified on behalf of the (mostly) women who are subjected to them. What I’ve just described is nothing, pickpockets have been around for centuries and they’ve become very good at it. It’s a trivial thing and shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as those far greater crimes. But because you obsess with it for a couple of days, you begin to sense just how deep the hurt must go for the real victims. Tiny little things I’m doing ever since then have brought the memory and the puzzlement (and, yes, the anger) about it all back. You mistrust strangers, assume hostility everywhere. It’s miles away from sitting at a computer glibly committing murders and confidently assuming you know how your characters are feeling.

Fortunately, I’m not a worrier, so it’s simply become an anecdote. But it’s also made me even more aware of something I thought I knew about. I’ve always felt sympathy and anger on behalf of rape and assault victims, but I’ve never before fully appreciated just how devastating the experience must be for them. As well as the hurt, the shame, the physical damage, there’s the fracturing of their perceptions of others, the undermining of their notions of trust, the irreparable harm done to them as citizens. What happened to me was unpleasant but it was nothing like a violation.

For me, normal service will be resumed very quickly. For them…?

Good. Sort of Bad but Usefully so. And Definitely Ugly

By Bill on March 23, 2016Comments

Between them, two of this morning’s emails gave a balanced reminder of the whole business of having your books reviewed. The first was from Awesome Indies, the second from a friend in the USA

First things first, the Awesome Indies one was congratulating me on having a fourth book approved by their reviewers and being placed on their ‘list of quality independent fiction’. The first three were The Sparrow Conundrum, The Figurehead and The Darkness and now the first Jack Carston mystery, Material Evidence, has joined them. In case you don’t know the Awesome Indies site, it’s a place which has pretty strict criteria as to the quality of the writing as well as the professionalism of the formatting and overall presentation of publications by independent authors. So it helps readers to avoid those all too frequent encounters with books where the formatting’s all over the place, typos and misspellings proliferate and the experience of reading is compromised by all sorts of things which shouldn’t be there.

As I said, however, the pleasure and smugness generated by the email was in no way diminished but given a valuable perspective by my American friend. He was telling me, very gently and politely, that The Figurehead wasn’t grabbing him the way some of my others had. He wasn’t critical of it but it wasn’t for him. I wrote back and told him not to worry and just to stop reading it. There are too many good books around and too little time to read them all. If I’m not grabbed by a book after the first dozen or so pages, I move on to the next on the TBR list; I was simply suggesting he do the same.

But it was a useful reminder that, for all the 5 star reviews, there are plenty of 1 star ones which help us to maintain a realistic perspective on our output. The 5 stars give us that warm, fuzzy feeling and convince us we’re in the right job, then the one stars needle into our self-confidence and make us question whether we’re as good as we think we are.

And, as long as they say what they found wrong, we can learn from them. They ground us, make us more self-critical. One review was highly critical and very specific about the flaws in my writing. In effect, the reviewer listed all the reasons why I shouldn’t consider myself a writer. It was hard, but I learned from it and actually made some changes to the book as a result. He’d overstated his case but I could see why.

Then, of course, there are those which are of no use at all, those which reveal more about the reviewer than the book. One person, for example, didn’t like Material Evidence and…

“having just seen the film of Gone Girl, have to say that there are soooo many similarities in the plot. ” He then added “I think this book came first though.” (He was right – it was first published 20 years before Gone Girl.)

Another confessed that “The fact that this author also writes children’s books creeps me out.”

And a third, disturbed by the fact that there was a nasty murder in a crime novel, wrote: “It makes me question the writer’s psyche”.

So there you have it. I’m basically a highly disturbed socio (or psycho) path who shouldn’t be allowed near children and can’t write anyway. God knows what those misguided people at Awesome Indies were thinking about.