Groningen

Well. my daughter and I flew to Amsterdam and then trained to Groningen to attend the World & Universal Arts Festival held in the University Theatre, and it was terrific! As a first time event for the organisers, the performers (including me!) and the audience, it was a roaring success. I spoke to Jean-Marcel Bikouta-Nkaoulou who did most of the hard work. He personally congratulated me on winning the silver and special award for my unpublished novel, Hot Air. I was asked to speak about the novel and even though I was the only one who spoke in English to the mainly Dutch audience, they laughed in the right places. Fair enough, I could only grab the gist of the stories and poems other writers read to the audience but their passion shone through. Also coming through the air, floor and walls were the percussion vibrations of the Bikouta drums and African style drum ballet. The drummers danced with their large drums. A touch of the event can be snatched from this page on my website along with two Youtube extracts of teh Bikouta drums and Basile, a wonderful mellow-voiced singer and acoustic guitar performer. See here.

My daughter coming along with me added a very welcome dimension as we travelled around the Netherlands. We re-visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. I hadn’t realised, but should have, that Deborah Rey, who asked me to wave at the Martini Tower in Gronigen, used to live next door to Anne Frank during the war. She wrote a terrific book of her experience of being a child-courier, as chilling as Anne Frank’s diary. Deborah Rey’s book is here. 

At my wife’s suggestion my daughter and I experienced again the amazing pancakes at a nearby pancake  parlour – yum.

Back to the award. Yes, I am now an award-winning author – yeay! Besides a glossy certificate, I was presented with a  bouquet of ‘bloomen’, which in turn I presented to my gorgeous daughter. Sadly, we are not allowed to bring them back to the UK so she presented them to the barmaid in the University of Groningen theatre – so they went to a good home   My Hot Air will be published as part of the award – details in a later bulletin.

Finally, I can’t finish without mentioning the heart-warming experience of seeing so many cyclists in the Netherlands. Although most fitted with bells, we hardly heard any street noise. Motorbikes, cars and bicycles seemed to braid really well together and at a gentle patient pace. You know how outside British mainline rail stations you find a multistorey carpark? Outside Central Station in Amsterdam is a multistorey bicycle park – four floors of thousands of bikes!

One final final point. I discovered in my e-mails today that I’ve won another prize – this time first prize! Yes I won a draw in a web forum I dip into about motorbikes. I used a motorbike for my hero in my other thriller, Escaping Reality, and needed help in the research. An advert for Escaping Reality resides in this motorbike forum. What goes around – as they say, comes around… sometimes. I’m on a winning roll. It’s too much to expect the jackpot and have a publisher snap up Left Luggage so I’ll buy a lottery ticket. Then maybe I’ll stop deleting all those adverts saying I’ve won the lottery!

North Gully, Tryfan

John took this one of me scrambling up Tryfan’s North Gully. I look red in the face but I’m proud of myself

Note: this page in my blog gets more hits than any other page – even more than the ones I shamelessly advertise to sell my books.

Yesterday, I looked into the eye of a terracotta Chinese soldier who was supposed to be guarding the First Emperor before the chinese dug him out and flew him to the British Museum along with a dozen mates. Over 2,200 years old he’s life-size and lifelike – amazing. He gave me a stony stare back but I swear I detected a glint. A spirit lurks. While in the British Museum I meandered among the other exhibits. I searched for prehistoric representatins of the human form because the large reclining women statuettes found on Gozo maybe unique. I ogled naked women and men in the ancient Greek and Egyptian rooms and admired the outer space aliens that seemed to have landed on Cyprus two thousand years ago. The humanoids forgot to take off their helmets when the local sculpure created their effigies. With some surprise I couldn’t find any exhibits from Malta or Gozo in the museum. Maybe they have another building.

I’m revving up to attend the World Arts Festival in Groningen tomorrow in order to collect my book award.  Hot Air might be the name of thriller I wrote, but I’m feeling really cool and calm at the moment. I wonder if when I visit Amsterdam too, that I should take a copy of Escaping Reality & persuade a bookshop to stock it?

Funny how many of the gawkers in the First Emperor exhibition seemed to be Chinese tourists…

Rejection smiles

Rarely do us writers walk into a room with so many publishers, who in the course of the last few years sent us so many rejection letters and so few acceptances. So it was with a wry smile that I helloed Jo Fletcher of Gollancz, Peter Crowther of PS Publishing and happy to shake the hand of Steve Upham of Screaming Dreams, Terry Martin of Murky Depths and many others.

 This week a parcel arrived from America with a surprise ready to burst out inside. Galaxies and planets escaped as I opened the package to the delight of both my wife and I. A writer friend of mine, Maria, works at possibly the best place on the planet for a sci fi witer, the Space Telescope Institute in Maryland. She mingles with astronauts and sees fantastic images before we do! With a generous heart she made a pack of useful educational images and information sheets taken with the Hubble telescope. My wife’s school will make good use of that information so thanks a lot, Maria.

Update on my Hot Air novel award in the Netherlands. After much angst we’ve decided I should go to Groningen to collect the Silver Award for my unpublished novel. So some rapid clicking and I’ve now flights and accommodation booked! Yeay. 

I’ve put a few more photos and a link to my hike up Tryfan on Tuesday here.

 Hey, my Hot Air novel has won an award in the Netherlands. A teasing taster for Hot Air is also on my webbie here. The award is Silver and in the thriller novel category at the World and Universal Arts foundation in Groningen. The competition is for unpublished novels. I’m considering going there to collect my award, but it’s only a few days away on the 28th September. I hope they post me a glittery certificate if I don’t attend in person. Maybe I can ask Arthur C Clarke to attend on my behalf – or JK Rowling, Stephen King… they can’t all be busy, surely? The organisers are going to publish the winning novels so you’ll all be able to get your hands on one sometime in 2008 or later.

Tryfan conquered

Yesterday, John Marchant showed me where to park near Cym Idwal and then pointed near vertically up to a ladder stile. ‘That’s where the footpath goes.’ The footpath, as any civilised person recognises the term, ended while we were still in the carpark. After that it was all hands to the rough rugged volcanic rocks of Tryfan. Within a hundred metres ascent, I was puffed and in danger of my pulse exceeding the speed limit, so halted to remove my coat. John easily scrambled up the rocks inventing new routes and offering advice. I worried when with his long arms and legs, he called that he was stretched to the limit over ‘that one’. This meant I had to either find another way or grow six inches in as many seconds.

Halfway up we stopped to appropriately consume half our rations. The two photos are from our picnic spot.

The one with my boot looks down to the road and our starting point. Below the basin-shaped mountain of Y Garn is Cwm Idwal. It’s a favourite geography field trip spot for many teachers and their students. I must have wandered around there telling students about how Charles Darwin speculated about glaciation there. Also telling them about me arriving just after a man died sliding down Idwal Slabs and his clothes on fire from the friction. I very much enjoyed a walk to Cwm Idwal through Devils Kitchen from Llanberis with Robert, my son a few years ago. it is a magical place.

My apologies for being lapse with my postings this week. A US literary agent has asked for the full MSS of my Left Luggage sci fi trilogy – the first book. This is good news even though it doesn’t automatically follow that the agent will take me on as a client. However, in order to reformat the document to that agency’s requirements I have had to spend many hours going through it. As with all revisions of work written more than one day ago, I find phrases I want to expunge, others to improve. I laugh at my own cunning words, and grimace at others. Always a mixed blessing to prepare my ouevre for another showing.

With a long pheeeewww I take a break from so much revising by flattening some more of Snowdonia tomorrow. John M has plotted a route up Tryfan and I am eagerly anticipating the cool winds and great vistas from the summit.

With a new friend, John Marchant, I trampled 800 metres up to the summit of Foel Fras, a Welsh mountain today.  John remained lean and cool while I perspired in order to lubricate my boots as I red-faced to blaze the trail. You can see how I added to global warming by the picture he kindly took of me. I must take one of him on our next hike. He intends us to ascend Tryfan, and so I need to do a little running up and down the stairs for a bit of training. You would think all the cycling I do is good enough but although I put pressure on my feet to lift my body up, the muscles and movement must be significantly different or I wouldn’t get so out of breath!

Hey, my short story Shared Dream has been accepted for publication by the Jimston Journal for their next issue late 2007, or a bit later. Jerry liked the story – a group of people discover they’ve shared the jigsaw pieces of a dream that seems to predict a disaster in their upcoming works outing. Of course it doesn’t quite work out like that, does it? JJ is here.

I left school at the age of 16 in 1964. I’ve not seen many of my former pupil friends since that day so last Saturday was a real buzzing treat to meet two. Chris Lewis was a real buddy in those days in Cheltenham and Arle School was all the better for his whacky sense of humour and dare-devil attitude to life in general. To my delight he hadn’t changed in appearance nor behaviour – excellent! Sue Kelland was also last seen by me in 1964 at Arle so it was a delight to reunite with her too. Others at our lunch date at The Langton in Cheltenham were also school friends, but whom we’d managed to mutually reacquaint three years or so ago. For our first reunion I cycled to Cheltenham the 150 miles from Chester, stopping at Clun Youth Hostel en route. But these days my wife likes to come for the holiday atmosphere & teh Cheltenham shops, so I have to leave the bike behind.

At The Langton, we were back as children pouring exuberantly over Nancy’s photo album and me hearing names I’d forgotten decades ago. Trevor T has, as Chris says, such a zest for life – he’s conquered health problems with so much positive attitude it is a lesson school didn’t teach us! Kate, as elegant as ever, regaled us with her faultless memory and I bumbled along chewing the plateful of grass, the chef mistook for his masterclass in vegan cuisine. Two hours passed like a snap for us and even the WAGs enjoyed themselves. I’ve a few surprise shock visits to make to other Arle survivors I’d not seen for decades so prepare a larger table for 2008.

singing so many versions

Not only do we have to squeeze our brains to eke out our imaginative juices, but to scribble them intelligibly in a format publishers accept. However, each group of publishers have their own formatting guidelines. Not that that should be a huge problem, should it? There are websites saying they have ‘standard manuscript format guidelines’. All different! Because I’m in the UK and go to writing conventions and workshops here, I discover that recent practice is not to indent the first line of sections and chapters. Submit your ouevre to a US agent or publisher and many want it done with indents.  US or UK publishers seem easy over American or British spellings – a good copyedit can sort that later if necessary. But at the threat of having your submission automatically rejected unread, the onus is on the poor writer to reformat their novels according not only to which country they are being sent to, but which publishing group or agency. For my Left Luggage, I now have four different versions – all mostly the same words but in different submission formats! Then every time I make a small or large revision – all four versions have to be worked on. Ho hum.