Lucy Atkins's Blog, page 10

 So, how different could one book be in two countries? This is fascinating to me. I’d have thought, if you’d asked me to guess, that the slightly garish blue jacket would be American and the intriguing envelope, British, but nope, it’s the other way around. That’s my national stereotypes (ehem, prejudice?) exposed. Let’s hope the tension translates.

It’s published in the US on February 9, 2016.

I’m thinking it’s a great excuse to plan a spring trip to Boston.

So today I had to perform a Random Act of Kindness for Psychologies Magazine.

I smugly decided it would be a bookish act of kindness. I’d slip a £5 voucher for my favourite café into a book in the local library. But my favourite café, it turns out, does not do vouchers. Four cafés later, still no voucher, and I’d become pretty irritated. I tried my favourite cookie shop instead but no vouchers there either. Finally I found Café Nero: they do vouchers but only £10 not £5 ones. Gritting my teeth, I bought the £10 voucher. ‘Sometimes, there’s nothing better than sitting in a café with a good book’. I wrote, grimly. I’d decided it was too self-serving to put the voucher into one of my own novels, so I’d planned to put it into The Kindness, by Polly Samson, a brilliant book. But that was out on loan. So were both my novels (I cheered up a bit at that). Then I remembered that it was the poet Sylvia Plath’s birthday yesterday. Her angry poems seemed to suit my mood so I went and found her collection Ariel and opened it – no, I am not kidding – right at her bitter, despairing, furious, double-edged poem Kindness.

Kindness glides about my house.

Dame Kindness, she is so nice!

I slipped my voucher into the page. As an afterthought, I added: ‘Sometimes, kindness can be genuine and uncomplicated’.

I loitered a bit, hoping to see someone find my note, but the poetry section is pretty quiet and nobody went anywhere near Plath. But poetry happens to be next to the history section and as I left I found two books on Victorian women that I need for my current research. I glided out of the library feeling a buoyant peacefulness, a sense of productivity and calm, and a flicker of excitement at the thought that someone, maybe someone betrayed and in despair, would open Plath’s poems and find my gift.

‘I write because….’

Are you writing a novel? Do you need support, information, a boost? One winner of The Big Writing Competition, launching today, will get a FREE one-to-one mentoring session with me worth £225. Five runners up (UK only for these) win a signed copy each of my new psychological thriller, The Other Child. 

The winner gets:

– expert appraisal of 10 pages of your work in progress

– 1 hour Skype or phone call with me to discuss your writing

– tips on developing your writing career, finding an agent, and getting published

Prize draw will take place during the Big Writing Club’s first session on Monday 5th October at 8pm

To enter, click here and go to my Facebook page  to answer the million dollar question *I write because…….*

The Big Writing Club is the brilliant brain child of Suzy Greaves (editor of Psychologies Magazine​). Click here for more information about the competition and Big Writing 

This is for any unpublished writers (do please forward this to any friends who might be interested).

The Big Writing Club is an inspired endeavour just launched by Suzy Greaves (who also happens to be the editor of Psychologies Magazine​) to encourage, support and develop new writing talent.

There are conference calls, tutoring sessions and you can sign up for one-to-one mentoring to develop your writing. There will also be a competition to win a one-to-one mentoring session with me (more details of that coming soon).

Suzy will be interviewing me for the first conference call next Monday, 5 October, 8-9pm. We’re talking about How to Write a Novel (& get it published!). Anyone is welcome to listen in.

#creativewriting #novelwriting #mentoring

To find out more go to The Big Writing Club

http://www.suzygreaves.com/join-us-for-the-big-writing-club/ 

So I’m really not surprised to hear that Candace Bushnell would like to get away from Carrie Bradshaw – no author wants to be pursued their whole career by one thing (even if it is the gazillion dollar phenomenon that is Sex and the City ). This brutal Scotsman article makes it all sound really bonkers, which is why I’m curious to go along to Henley Literary Festival tonight to hear the wonderful Hannah Beckerman interview Candace Bushnell: can Bushnell hope to distance herself when there are so many *apparent* parallels in her new book?

http://henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk/

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/boo...

I’m just reading The Sunrise for The Cheltenham Literature Festival, where I’ll be interviewing the marvellous Victoria Hislop whilst eating a two-course lunch consisting of delicious foods from Greek and Cyprus. I am not sure how the logistics of this will pan out (spinach in the teeth…tzatziki on black trousers…) but it will be a thrill to talk to such a much loved author.

It’s on 10th October, 2015 at 1pm.

Tickets here http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/literature/whats-on/2015/victoria-hislop/

Having raced through Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (no mean feat: it’s massive) I’m not surprised this is the book that everyone’s talking about right now.  The favourite to win this year’s Man Booker prize, with its American author (deputy editor of The New York Times Style magazine) interviewed just about everywhere, one thing is obvious: nobody but nobody is neutral about this book. The responses – whether outraged or glowing – are as passionate and crazed as the novel itself.

The story follows four male college friends in New York from their early 20s to their mid-50s. One of them, Jude St. Francis, is physically and emotionally damaged by appalling childhood abuse. Slowly, Jude’s history is revealed, and his friends offer unconditional, if frightened, love.

On Twitter, people are talking about having to put the novel down and walk away from it, too distraught to continue; there is even a Facebook group for people who need ‘a shoulder to cry on’. Some are furiously tweeting that it is ‘homophobic’, and yet an essay in the Atlantic heralded it as ‘The Great Gay Novel.’  Cathy Rentzenbrink of The Bookseller stayed up the whole night to read it in one go, whilst Christian Lorentzen in the London Review of Books finds the book flawed and ridiculous (‘What real person trapped in this novel wouldn’t become a drug addict?’).

I found A Little Life intense, sometimes overblown, largely implausible, overlong, often horribly distressing and completely engrossing.  While the other Man Booker shortlisted authors – Tom McCarthy, Marlon James, Chigozie Obioma, Sunjeev Sahota and the peerless Anne Tyler –  garner impressive reviews, none are provoking the levels of passion and fury that Yanagihara’s book is. Perhaps this, above all, is the sign that A Little Life should bag the Man Booker.

Fanny Blake and I will be running our How to Get Published masterclass at this year’s Guildford Book Festival. We talk about everything you need to know to get your book (non fiction or fiction) published including: dos and don’ts of finding a literary agent (do you even need one?), what editors do, should you self-publish, and much much more.

Fanny Blake is terrific –  a successful novelist, Woman & Home literary editor, and publishing expert (she was a really big cheese in publishing for many years). She also happens to be a marvellous person. So – come and see us!

Wednesday 14th October, 2015.  7.15-8.45 pm

Book your tickets here: Guildford Book Festival

I’ll be running a How to Get Published workshop with Fanny Blake at this year’s Guildford Book Festival: everything you need to know to get your book (non fiction or fiction) published.

Fanny Blake is terrific – both as a successful novelist, and as a publishing expert (she was a big cheese in publishing for many years).

Monday 12th October, 2015. 7.15pm   Go here for tickets: Guildford Book Festival

Nice and close to home (possibly on all levels) – author Clare MackIntosh and I will be at Blackwell’s Oxford discussing how and why we write psychological suspense novels.  Clare is the author of I Let You Go (see www.claremackintosh.com)

Friday 11th September. 19.00-20.00.

Tickets on sale now: £3 from Blackwell’s Oxford. email:  [email protected].