Reading legs

Two years ago this summer I cycled home from the UK Authors Away Week in South Wales in pouring rain, and it didn’t matter. My head was full of story ideas, and it was warm rain. This last week I cycled from Chester to Cheltenham and back to visit my sister and to enjoy the experience again of day-after-day cycling, stopping overnight in youth hostels and guest houses. My rotating legs seem to pump fresh blood up to my head and it generates ideas – mostly good. I can recommend the Springhill B&B in Coalbrookdale near Ironbridge – food and accommodation are marvellous value for money. I had a four-poster bed and a giant bath – me! I don’t think I was supposed to, but I relished cycling over the world’s first cast iron bridge. Designed and built by Abraham Darby, it was opened in 1781 and is breathtaking in its beauty and provenance.

The cycle track along the Ironbridge Gorge, has refreshing views of the River Severn through the trees, but sadly the horses and mountain bikes, combined with the extraordinary wet weather this summer led to my bike doubling its weight in mud! Luckily, the Severn Valley Visitors’ Centre was en route near Bridgeford and my order was in two parts – one bucket of soapy water, and one mug of hot tea thank you very much. I also bought an orange stretchy plastic lizard for grandson, Oliver. He’ll discover in my cardy pocket next week J

I can also recommend the St Lawrence Hotel in Worcester as a bike stop. My bike had the most luxurious cycle shed in the form of their large conservatory housing large oriental vases and the biggest jade plant I’ve seen. Handy too to have a hose pipe within reach – thanks!

At The Yorkshire Grey pub just south of Worcester, I met my old school friends, Trevor, Nancy, Chris, and Kate with their spouses. The hours flew past and Trevor took this photo of me with my cycling shirt, Nancy and Kate.

I was made welcome in Cheltenham by Lin Bamber, my sister and her granddaughter, Jasmine, who was delighted with my bright yellow plastic banana guard. Cavendish House – part of the House of Fraser – has a large café and I met up with nephew Ben Bamber – a writer of alternative eco-friendly towns and living. His website – wait for it to load. I always enjoy chatting books and family with Ben and he filled me in with interesting stuff about the Doughnut (not so secret building in the town. In Charles Stross’s Atrocity Archives he perpetuates the myth that GCHQ is blank on maps. I’ve printed the maps ready for the book group meeting on the book next month in Chester. Ben had designed aspects of the building and presented them to Tarmac, who kind of admitted they used designs just like his – umm, they owe him IMO.) Lin and I watched Prometheus, the Alien prequel, at the flicks, and I spent time in Cheltenham’s only internet café downloading stories. I am this year’s short-fiction judge of the Helen Whittaker Prize and the first of six rounds came in.

I can only find the time to write this because I have now finished reading all the first round stories of the Whittaker. I take great pleasure (and a fee) for judging this competition. Most of the writers are in The Write Idea forum and are all very good. It wouldn’t be fair to discuss details here but although it takes a lot of time to score their stories and write a critique for each one, it is worth the effort. I try to be as objective as possible and there is a scoring grid, but even so another person would likely come to different numbers. Best of luck with the other rounds to all of them.

Reading is subjective too.

I came away from our twelfth meeting of the rebel science fiction and fantasy reading group with anxiety. It’s proper name is The Esoteric Bibliophilia Society (TEBS) – just enough to make it different from the Chester Library SFF Group – hah. I, and many others, attend both groups. The Wednesday night TEBS met in Ye Olde Custom House pub in Chester. The name reflects the days from medieval to the early nineteenth century when Chester was a port before the Dee estuary silted up too much for most sea-going vessels. The book under discussion last night was chosen by one of our several women members. It was Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It’s a romp of a young adult fairy tale based in London. The novel is Neil Gaiman’s way of ‘correcting’ the TV and graphic novel versions with which he wasn’t perfectly happy. The session explored the varied and lively characters and subplots. I said how I was bemused by the fantasy trend of having a duo set of bad-men characters. In this case they are Mr Croup and Mr Vandemar: long-living assassins with one very chatty and bright (Croup) and one dull-witted, who enjoys killing the more. I quoted a line I enjoyed most:

‘But Mister Croup, we hurt people. We don’t get hurt.’

Mr Croup turned out the lights. ‘Oh, Mister Vandemar,’ he said, enjoying the sound of the words, as he enjoyed the sound of all words, ‘if you cut us, do we not bleed?’

Mr Vandemar pondered this for a moment, in the dark. Then he said, with perfect accuracy, ‘No.’

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (1996)

I also likened this to China Mieville’s Kraken. Also based in the fantasy underworld of London. He also has two evil men – Goss & Subby. This isn’t too surprising as China acknowledges Neverwhere as his inspiration. In my view Kraken is a deeper, better book. The dark is darker, and the weirdness is more so, but the ending in both is rather a cop out. None of that made me worried. Most of the group enjoyed Neverwhere and even declared it their best fantasy book read to date. Two members hated it. They found the characters flat, on the whole, and the ending too happy-clappy leaving plot holes unfilled. One member, Graham, disliked the humour. He is fed up with books featuring an uninteresting protagonist, who has an IT or similar job, who finds himself in strange situations and being taken along by odd characters. Oh dear. I kept thinking then of how many short stories and novels I’ve written with such a protagonist. I enjoy reading and writing about ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. And I like them to use ironic humour as a way of coping with their trauma. Of course I should have guessed not everyone would like that. Maybe they want their protagonists always to be go-getters, James Bond, Lara Croft…

I breathed a sigh when I remembered my protagonist in Exit, Pursued by a Bee, and Hot Air is a feisty woman and that all the characters in ARIA are just enough OTT to not be ordinary.

The book for the next month’s meeting is Charles Stross’s The Atrocity Archives. The protagonist is an IT engineers (oh dear, Graham) and who has a sense of humour. Ha ha. I’ve nearly finished reading it. Full of technical detail, which Stross is famous for and loved by most hard SF readers.

The point, I presume, is that just as writing is subjective, so is reading. One man’s poison, etc. It amuses me how much analysis readers go to in breaking down plots and characters – far more than the authors intend. It doesn’t just happen in A Level Literature classes but in book groups.

The photograph was taken at Ye Olde Custom House last night. One our women members had had to leave before the photograph was taken. I’m in the white T-Shirt. There’s a bar on it saying ‘Please wait, loading answer……………… 43%    Well, I thought it funny in Lanzarote when I found it. No one commented – probably thought me mad.

Summertime?

I know this has been around the internet for years but it still makes me smile:

INSTALLING SUMMER….. ███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 45% DONE. Installation failed. 404 error: Season not valid in UK

It popped up on facebook tonight – I saw it posted by Angela Haigh, who is the first woman to tell me how much she enjoyed Escaping Reality.

Preparations are progressing for me to cycle to Cheltenham later this month. I’m taking it easier this year by stopping in Coalbrookdale the first night, then Worcester. 10 miles south of Worcester is a pub at which I am to meet up with some old school friends from my class at Arle Secondary back in the 1960s. We met up last two years ago so it will be fun to catch up. After a light meal I’ll continue cycling on to Cheltenham to visit my sister and other family members down there.

I’ll be popping into branches of Waterstones en route to arrange book signing of ARIA: Left Luggage – release date August 1st.

Other writing news: I’ve written two short stories going through critique groups. One is Target Practice: an asteroid is deflected from hitting Earth but it redirects itself to keep on coming! The story is therefore grim and yet we have steamy sex – during a fight – in space. Hah. Also Chicken – a horror (again with humour because I can’t help it, and you’re worth it) in which two men agree to commit suicide by a tandem parachute jump. One changes his mind halfway down. Just imagine how that can cause problems!

Hot Air is available on Kindle and so is How to Win short story competitions written with Dave Haslett. Exit, Pursued by a Bee is also on Kindle. All visible via my Amazon author page – for Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk.