Laurie Graham's Blog, page 27

    An interesting challenge to think about this weekend. The Guildford Literary Festival  -  hurry, hurry, tickets available here   - have asked me to talk, amongst other things, about comfort reading. It’s a pity they didn’t tap me for a lecture on Comfort Eating. I’m quite the expert on that subject. But anyway, without giving too much away, I’ve realised that comfort reading is a thing I rarely indulge in but when I do my tastes are quite infantile. I love a rib-aching laugh, or something that transports me back to my childhood. Or both. I’ve recently discovered Andy Stanton whose Mr Gum books I bought for my grandchildren but have decided to keep for myself. They’re the kind of thing I’d read in the dentist’s waiting room if I was scheduled for root canal.

Romances don’t usually do it for me. They’re generally peopled by improbably gorgeous-looking characters and as we all know, the physically perfect hardly ever make good lovers. They’re too busy checking themselves in the mirror. And they all lived happily ever after? I don’t think so.

Detective novels tend to come in series but they soon wear thin for me, plus they have the built-in disadvantage that you can never reread them. Once you know who dunnit… you know who dunnit.

More on this after I’ve unveiled my sucky-book list at Guildford. The only other thing I’ll say for now is that I’m left regretful that I don’t do more comfort reading. Too short of time. The world is full of enticing books and quite a lot of them are piled up beside my bed awaiting their turn. One of these days nights they’re going to come crashing down on me.

Cause of death: unread books.

Not only am I back at my desk after a week of gallivanting but also, this morning, Telephone Wonder Engineer restored my phone line and my access to the Internet.  In equal measure I’m grateful to be back in business and slightly embarrassed at how my life screeched to a halt just because of a short-circuit. Or something.

The Chiswick Book Festival was a superb event.  I have no idea whether other novelists long to see their characters take on flesh  -  Dickens certainly did  – but for me it was, thus far, the pinnacle of A Humble Companion’s success. What authors and their accountants dream of is the big fat movie option, but that so often ends in disappointment, either because the project never goes into production, or because the finished product is such a travesty of the original book you wonder why anyone bothered. Brief dramatisations are much more satisfying and an achievable airing. Also, they remain under my artistic control. It may be a small thing, but it’s mine, mine, mine.

The Chiswick event was a collaboration and Nellie couldn’t have managed it without Dick Morphew or, as he’s known in the real world, Peter Page, goldsmith, am dram veteran, and all round good egg. Whatever costume a character requires Peter probably has one in his attic. Failing that he knows lots of clever people who’ll create something for him. A man who leaves no sequin unturned, he has even been known to have dental prostheses made, the better to get into character. His next appearance will be in Venice in January playing the role of Mavis Ogre in Jack and the Beanstalk.

So Nellie’s gown and her little boots have been put away. Whether she’ll ever wear them again, who can say. I felt rather sad stashing everything in the trunk, like when a friend goes away with no immediate prospect of returning.  There’s just one straw of consolation.  Next month sees the publication of The Liar’s Daughter, and a couple of new characters to launch into the world. But for now, back to work.

    My regular reader may be forgiven for wondering if I was indisposed. Two weeks without posting. Tsk, tsk. It’s just that it’s that time of year. I can go months without anyone asking me anything, but when publication dates come round my writing habits become of brief interest to the world. And this year there’s a rather annoying crunch of dates with barely six weeks between the issue of the paperback of A Humble Companion and first publication of The Liar’s Daughter. By the end of October I’ll be allowed to crawl back down my burrow but right now Author Promotion is the name of the game.

Questionnaires are very popular.

Q. What inspires you?  A. Fear of destitution.

Q. Did you always want to be a writer?  A. No, I’d have liked to be a ballerina or a surgeon but I was too heavy for the former and not bright enough for the latter.

Q. What is your ideal working environment?  A. An unadorned cubicle. With just enough clearance for a tea tray to be slid under the door every two hours.

Some writers have sea views. That would never do for me. I could watch the sea all day and never do a lick of work. Some writers have a shed. I wouldn’t mind a shed myself. But a cubicle would be better, with strict house rules prohibiting me from hanging, sticking or in any other way garnishing the surfaces. I am the most easily distracted writer in the world. Barely raising my eyes I can see, right now, photographs of my grandchildren, a dog-eared postcard of Horatio Nelson, a London A-Z, a scented candle,  two unanswered letters and the collected poems of George Herbert. Every one of those items tempts me away from the page, either to think non-work thoughts, or open that book, or simply to clean up the clutter. I mean, I don’t even particularly like scented candles.

I’ve had some interesting desk locations in my time. When I lived in Cambridge I worked in the basement and frittered away many an hour watching people’s passing ankles. In Venice I was on the fourth floor, with a great view of decaying roofs and TV dishes, and at Christmas time the bonus of the Carmini Virgin covered in fairy lights. Now in Dublin I have a suburban street. I watch cats, delivery men, magpies, power walkers, foliage, drying paint.  You want work not done? I’m your woman.

This coming weekend is the Chiswick Book Festival, to which I’ll be chaperoning two characters from A Humble Companion. It will be work, but it won’t really feel like work.  In a sense that job ended when I signed off corrected proofs.  All I can do now is lace Nellie into her gown, straighten up Morphew’s wig, and pray.

I just walked past an eatery. It’s not new but I never noticed it before and now I wish I still hadn’t. Eatery is one of those  blue touch-paper words for me: it’s the invention of the kind of people who put televisions in pubs. And serve microwaved lasagne with chips.

I won’t absolutely swear that I’ve never used the word eatery. I actually think I may have served it up, with a  side dish of irony,  in one of my early novels. But still.

I’ll tell you another word I hate. Abode. And the one that brings a red haze before my eyes: tome.

As in, ‘Are you busy working on your next tome?’

Tome me not you pretentious enquirer, because a) I’m Laurie Graham not Edward feckin’ Gibbon and b) of course I’m busy working. What do you think I’m doing? Lying on a couch eating Maltesers?

Yesterday was publication day for the mass market edition of A Humble Companion. Mass market. I like that. It has the ring of fighting talk about it. I’m in Asda apparently.  Yey! Bit of a non-event, mass market release day but I celebrated anyway. A glass of fizz and a rib-eye steak in the company of friends we see far too rarely.

And now confession time. Yes ‘eatery’ does indeed appear in one of my novels. Page 369 of The Unfortunates. Glad to get that off my chest.

       Last week was a mildly shitty week. Nothing drastic, just a low-level hum of discontent, with the weather, with people not doing the right thing, with our dead dish-washer.  But today, what a different story. Over the weekend I got two fabulous mentions.  Libby Purves, blessed be her name, in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph described me as ‘our most underrated novelist’.  And as if that wasn’t enough to make any writer’s cup run over, The Sunday Times said I had ‘proved myself to be a delightfully smart and sophisticated historical novelist’  Moi? Yey!

So basically, whatever the rest of this week brings, I can take it.  The dish-washer’s still dead, however.

As trailed a few weeks ago I’m now delighted to confirm personal appearances by Humble Companion Nellie Buzzard and her coachman, Dick Morphew, at the Chiswick Book Festival on September 15th. I’m obliged, under the terms of the Trade Descriptions Act (1968), to warn you that Nellie doesn’t look anything like as cute as her cover photo suggests. However, what she has lost in dewy and pneumatic youthfulness she has gained in wisdom.

She and Morphew will be sharing a platform with Mr Adrian Teal, caricaturist in the finest 18th century tradition and compiler of The Gin Lane Gazette.  In the pauses between Mr Teal’s narrations Nellie and Morphew will be engaged in laconic conversation. There has been some talk of serving gin although whether that’s to be before, during or after the entertainment I do not know and shudder to think.

I’m required to be in attendance, much as one is enjoined not to leave small children unsupervised around power tools, but I’m afraid my presence is no guarantee of anything. Allow characters to step out from between the pages of a book for even half an hour, there’s just no telling. But look at it this way, Sunday at 1.30, what else are you going to do? Stay at home and watch the Omnibus edition of East Enders?

Admittance to this amateur hodgepodge  refreshing change from Lit Fest authors droning on about their Muse, is by a modestly priced Day Pass which entitles you to a bunch of other stuff. Full details here.

I’ve been thinking which fictional characters I’d like to meet. Martin Amis’s John Self would be a train wreck to behold. Well, if we’re serving free gin perhaps he’ll turn up.  By way of total contrast I’d rather enjoy half an hour in the company of Jane Austen’s Mr Woodhouse. I do love a valetudinarian.

And you, dear reader?

      This week I’ve had one of the greatest pleasures known to writer-kind: choosing a name for a new character. I hadn’t even realised I was going to create this character until a few days ago when she sidled into view and said, ‘Frankly, I think you need me.’ She was right. But what to call her?

Names aren’t every writer’s thing but I’m always amazed when an author appears to have grabbed the first Joe Smith to come to hand. I can take days searching for the right combination and I always feel it’s time well spent. A name can say so much. I have my prejudices, of course. To me ‘Myrtle’ is a lazy choice. I’ve never actually met a Myrtle. I suspect it’s just a name authors get from Old Lady Names, Volume II.

So anyway I had this newcomer to name and she’d have been born around 1875 which knocked Kylie or LaToyah out of the running. I got it down to a shortlist of five  -  Mabel, Hilda, Eunice, Ethel, Ida.  Then I started on surnames. She’s from Somerset, I’d decided. A fine county name-wise. Even a perfunctory trawl netted me Broadfoot, Mogg, Custard, Gauntlett and Peach. You can probably see which way this is going but I decided to take time out before choosing.  I needed to let the novelist bit of my brain coast for a while or, as it’s known in the profession, Do the Ironing.

Many things become clear after an hour’s ironing, not least that it’s time to buy a new cover for my ironing board.  But more thrillingly I knew which name to use. Ethel Peach stepped out of the shadows.  It was a close run thing between her and Mabel Custard but I look at it this way. There’s always another book.

I’m a fan of Jane Austen so I have absolutely no objection to the decision to feature her on £10 notes, starting in 2017. I just rather wish the feministas hadn’t made such a hoohah about it. I mean, it’s not as though we’ve never had women on our bank notes. Remember Elizabeth Fry? Florence Nightingale? As a matter of fact there’s a woman on notes of every denomination right now. Her name is H. M. Queen.

But anyway this got me thinking about how JA might have chosen to have her name memorialised. A writers’ retreat, perhaps?  Or a style of bonnet? And then, because like many self-employed people I  enjoy a pointless faff when I might be working, I started thinking about how I’d like to be honoured. Seeing as the Booker long-list committee lost my address yet again.

I definitely don’t want to be a community centre. Nelson Mandela’s got that sewn up. Nor an airport. I hate airports. Except for Frankie & Benny’s Diner at Gatwick which does a pretty good breakfast. They could name a breakfast after me. The Full Laurie Graham. It will not contain black pudding.

Or I wouldn’t mind being a hitherto undiscovered variety of seabird. Some kind of wader sounds about right, dibbling around in the receding tide, looking for snacks. Like a shore dotterel but with snazzier markings. Iridescent would be nice.

‘Pass the binocs, Mavis,’ some thrilled twitcher would exclaim. ‘I do believe that’s a thinornis lauriegrahamensis.’

Of course no such bird exists. All the undiscovered species live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and look like slugs. Until you bring them to the surface, when they explode and look like a burst balloon.  I don’t want to give my name to anything like that. So back to the drawing board.  I enlisted the help of my friend Chucky D. He was on the train journey from hell, or possibly to hell, and needed distraction. He suggested a benign clinical syndrome, which is a brilliant idea.  I can see it now.

Laurie Graham Syndrome is characterised by a mild but unpredictable personality disorder and an uncontrollable tendency to curl the upper lip in a distinctive sneer.  Exists in hereditary and non-hereditary forms.  There is as yet no treatment.  

So that’s that sorted. Blue plaques? Who needs ‘em!

    Someone said to me, ‘It must give you such a thrill, to walk into a bookshop and see your book on the shelf.’  Well, yes. Also, no. There was a time. Then I went through a brief phase of writing humorous non-fiction that didn’t belong with the joke books and didn’t quite belong in the psychology section either, so would just get chucked any old place. I once found a copy of Parents’ Survival Guide filed in the mountaineering section, a stretch too far I thought, even given the undoubted Himalayan-size challenges of raising children.

I quickly developed a kind of protective tunnel vision. These days when I go into a bookshop I never look for my own books. I mean, why set oneself up for disappointment? No, I head straight for whatever it is I want to buy.

So if being on the shelf, squeezed in next to all those Winston Grahams, no longer excites me, what does? Well I’ve come to realise how very attached I am to my characters,  how much I miss them when a book is finished, and how truly thrilling it is to see them or hear them brought to life on the radio or the stage.  And as there is so far no sign of a stampede of directors gagging to get their hands on my stuff I’ve decided to do it myself. I’m thinking of calling it Pig in a Poke Productions. It will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Laurie Graham Inc.

Some of you may remember I allowed Nellie Buzzard and Dick Morphew out from between the pages of A Humble Companion for a few weeks last year and they had a bit of fun, Tweeting and blogging. Next month, to mark the publication of their mass market paperback, I’m going to let them stretch their legs and air their opinions again, and on September 15th at the Chiswick Book Festival in West London I’m allowing them even freer rein. They’ll be sharing a platform with Mr Adrian Teal of the Gin Lane Gazette for an hour of 18th century shenanigans. Anything may happen. And it very probably will.  

Signs of life on the normally glass-smooth surface of my working year. I suddenly have a couple of gigs in my diary for September and October, one in West London and one in Surrey. I’ll be posting details as they firm up and only mention them today in order to ease into the mushrooming topic of literary festivals. There are more than 200 of them now in the UK. Hay has gone international. Last year I was invited to…. none.

Readers sometimes contact me and ask if they may put my name forward for their local bookfest. I always say yes. And in my twenty years as a published author I have done a few festivals. Well, two actually. Pitiful, isn’t it? I don’t know why. I don’t have bad breath. I’m not high maintenance. Perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps if I put it about that I expect a limo and a personal masseur I’d get more bookings. You know? Up my game?

I’ve attended some festivals as a paying punter, invited by friends. It’s a bit of a busman’s holiday frankly, but one can always learn something. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things I’ve learned.

1. Just because people can write doesn’t mean they’re any good on a platform.

2. Everyone wants to meet Michael Palin.

3. Or John Simpson.

4. There are few more dispiriting experiences than waiting to go on whilst one’s publicist peers round the vestry door, talking up your audience size. As in: ‘Here’s two more. Ah, no. They were just collecting their Christian Aid envelopes.’

5. Your audience is not necessarily a reflection of your fame (unless you’re Michael Palin). Some people will go to anything. Particularly on a wet Sunday afternoon.

So anyway, this year I’m in business. How very nice to be asked. More information soon. Watch this space.