August in Ancient Alderney

I’ve been quiet on the blogging front, chiefly because I spent August digging in Alderney.  Running a dig is full-on, 7 days a week but I found time to sit back see the moon rise over Longis Bay, to watch the stars come out over Saye and enjoy plenty of Alderney hospitality. We’d swim at lunchtime or straight after work and it felt very ‘famous five’ at times. My phone thought I was in France (clearly visible 9 miles away).

Our team returned to Longis Common where we found a dozen Iron Age burials and traces or Roman buildings in an electric trench in 2017, followed up with a dig in 2018. The site overlooks the island’s natural harbour but was abandoned by islanders when the land was buried by up to 2m of sand during extensive sand-blows from the early Middle Ages. Since then it has largely been undisturbed by development.

This year’s dig reinforced our belief that Roman buildings spread for some 200m across the common, and confirmed that the Romans built on top of an earlier Iron Age Cemetery they may not even have been aware of. In the Paddock at the western, uphill, edge of the site, Trench 2 from 2018 was partly re-opened and then expanded under my colleague Dr Phil de Jersey. Parts of a large Roman building stood here with clay-bonded walls up to a metre high made of local sandstone. Large sandstone blocks were placed vertically to form parts of these walls and a courtyard of roughly hewn flat stones interleaved between two layers of clay stood between them. Extending the trench this year revealed another room or courtyard with a hearth, and a doorway framed by upright slabs. Very late-looking Pottery points to these buildings being in use in the third to fourth centuries, so still occupied at the same time as the late Roman small fort at the Nunnery nearby. They could have been part of a vicus outside the fort.

A gap in the paved courtyard enabled a very deep excavation to reach the Iron Age cemetery.

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Two skeletons were found interred one on top of the other, with the uppermost wearing two neck rings, one of bronze and the other a combination of bronze and iron (David Nash)

A third skeleton was buried close by, in a stone cist, with a small pot by its shoulder. These are ‘high status’ burials, and taken with earlier discoveries show that the Iron Age population of Alderney was affluent and had links with communities in France. We are pretty convinced that they had a role in controlling trade routes, as northbound ships hugging the Gallic coast carrying wine and Mediterranean luxuries would pass within sight of Longis, as would southbound ships carrying produce from the north. This importance carried through to the Roman period, explaining their interest in the small island.

Some 50m downhill, on the Common closer to the sea, geophysics showed a large sweeping shadow so Trench 4 was dug to investigate. Dubbed the ‘Punishment Trench’ large quantities of sand needed to be removed by hand, to be followed by disappointment when the shadow turned out to be a trackway with tyre-ruts probably dating to the German Occupation of WW2. Removing yet more sand however revealed a medieval wall, and still deeper was a metre-thick Roman wall. At the base of the site was a curious structure of roughly shaped granite cobbles that is still causing some head-scratching.

Within 50m of the Nunnery, I led a group of volunteer diggers to expand Trench 3 dug by school students in 2018. It has been my curse in recent years to dig sites criss-crossed by utilities and this was another. Avoiding two electric mains, a water main and an old sewer we put in a 13m long trench and a trio of companion trenches to reveal a building with three rooms (or three adjacent buildings). These again employed large upright slabs on their internal walls which stood just less than a metre high. A layer of clay appears to have been laid down to seal the earlier soils before building commenced. The central room is over five metres by five metres and the overall plan suggests a civilian building rather than military barracks. A vertical slab once formed one side of a doorway,

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Main Street, Riduna? An area of large slabs could be a courtyard or possibly a road leading towards the Nunnery and the sea. (David Nash)

Given the similarity in building style and dating it is probable that the buildings in all the trenches were late Roman. All had earlier Roman pottery in layers running under the building showing there was earlier Roman activity on the site. The lack of large amounts of rubble suggests that the walls had been little higher in antiquity than they are now, with the upper parts of the buildings being timber-framed with wattle-and daub infill. The small amount of roof tile recovered suggests the buildings were roofed in perishable materials such as wooden shingles.

Late in the life of the building, when floors were no longer intact, the site was used for industrial activity including what looks like ironworking. A surprise find was made in one corner of the southern room of the Trench 3 building where part of a cobbled floor remained.  Beside a crushed pot of post-Roman style was the base of a glass flask with a Christian symbol.

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Flummoxed momentarily by this find, I quickly found parallels suggesting this is Merovingian, dating from the 5th to 7th century when the Franks replaced the Romans as rulers of this region. (Mike Deane)

Frankish material is extremely rare in the Channel Islands, and opens a new chapter in the history of Alderney.

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Sherds of stamped pottery of the same date were found over the same cobbled floor; the glass was found a metre to my right, behind that wall. (David Nash)

After the site was abandoned it was buried by wind-blown sand, the walls themselves probably encouraging it to accumulate. Work is still to continuing on the finds, but this year’s excavation proved that the Iron Age cemetery is extensive, and that its occupants were of high status. Exactly where those people once lived is an open question for the future. Our team has investigated perhaps 1% of the later Roman structures of the settlement at Longis, and we have not seen any traces of earlier Roman buildings or an earlier fort, so there is enormous potential for investigating this pristine site for years to come.

A big thanks to all my friends and colleagues who made this possible including Guernsey Museum staff, local and Guernsey volunteers, and our trio of students. It wouldn’t have been possible without support from the Alderney Society, Alderney Electricity, the States of Alderney, our many friends in the island and kind permission of the landowners.

 

 

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Smoke Gets in Your Plot

Picture the scene. The detective walks into the bar and approaches the femme fatale. Very Bogart and Bacall. He offers her a cigarette, then lights it for her. Yaaawn…

I have read so many thrillers recently which would have been two chapters shorter if the lead characters didn’t smoke. Descriptions of people fiddling with cigarettes, lighters, matches etc are simply boring. People also scratch their noses, fart and go to the loo but we seldom read about it in fiction unless it’s a plot driver.

The same goes for films and TV shows, although these divide fairly neatly into ‘smoking’ or ‘non smoking’ sections. In the latter there is a cuteness reserved for cigars and pipes in the hands of old men, even in fare aimed at children.

It may depend on the writer or the perceived audience, but all media to some extent reflects the attitude of the times. In the modern western world the educated middle class largely do not smoke, so the habit is confined to villains, members of the lower classes and characters the writers think needs a quirk. On the tip side of this, a disproportionate number of writers of my acquaintance are still smoking in one form or another, so perhaps their view of normality differs from mine. There is a trope which links smoking to stress, crisis, fatigue, recklessness, sin, excess and rebellion which of course we meet far more of in fiction than real life.

It does get tedious to watch on-screen and it starts to feel like dramatic laziness, even in shows that are otherwise excellent like Peaky Blinders or Babylon Berlin. What is the character doing? Uh oh, smoking. Like 120 per day for some characters, then. By contrast, the TV adaption of The Little Drummer Girl made the selective use of cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia a period-appropriate part of the plot.

I had fun with this trope in the Jeffrey Flint novels, as despite being a product of the 80s University system Flint doesn’t smoke – he doesn’t see the point and objects to swallowing the lies of tobacco multinationals. Instead he and Tyrone kill time eating Mars Bars, drinking Coke from cans or spinning out a pint of real ale. It’s the villains that are the smokers. As you may guess I’ve never smoked, and part of the reason is that tobacco has killed several members of my family; I don’t want to boost the bastards’ profits by making it glamorous, cute, sexy or in any way ‘manly’. None of my close friends and hardly any of my wider social circle smoke, which makes me rather like a nun writing sex scenes.

I’m currently working on a 1930s plot, so that gives me a dilemma as (a) everyone is smoking in contemporary ’30s movies and (b) ‘period’ ’30s movies made in modern times fall into either the ‘smoking’ or ‘non-smoking’ camp. Films made in the ’30s were still in the thrall of movie star glamour and the cigarette was a fashion accessory – even in fashion magazines. ‘Retro’ films either ape this style to overdose on period feel, or go for a more sanitized version of the past that doesn’t ring true. Golden Age novels also take the same approach, not seeing the problems inherent in the habit that we do now beyond certain questions of etiquette.

So how do I avoid boring not just the readers but myself with endless smoking scenes? First, assume it is just happening (like scratching noses, farting etc). Second, have a non-smoking lead. This is perfectly plausible, as despite the view that ‘everyone smoked’ back then it was not true. Tobacco consumption in the UK in the ’30s was half that in the ’40s and a third of that in the ’60s, when it peaked. With unemployment at 20% big slices of the population were simply too poor, and it was still viewed in many circles as unseemly for women. With a statistic at the equivalent of 4 cigarettes consumed per day per adult, there is plenty of scope for 1930s characters who don’t smoke at all or do so with restraint. I was interested to discover that the male and female leads in both Martin Edwards’ recent Gallows Court and Rory Clements’ Corpus are non-smokers. Perhaps I’m not the only one with this view.

So, a clean-air breathing hero braves the ’30s. I am going to have some fun…

Follow Jason Monaghan Books on Facebook.

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Crimefest 2019

It was not quite déjà vu at this year’s Bristol Crimefest as the venue had moved to the Marriot Grand. The hotel was closer to the historic heart of the City, so was a welcome change, allowing a little exploration in each break and a different selection of local restaurants to sample, where I tasted my first Indian Shiraz. Gala dinners can be indifferent, but the Grand earns a gold star by providing a particularly yummy gluten free chocolate mousse cake for afters; a step up from the fruit salad often offered as my gf alternative.

Panels and talks took place in a set of rooms which required a little detection skill to locate and navigate between. We had our own Crimefest bar, but most serious drinking (I mean, earnest literary conversation) took place in the main bar. If you’ve never been to Crimefest, it operates as two and sometimes three parallel sessions from Thursday to Sunday, each lasting 50 mins with 20 minutes in between to locate the next session. The programme is online, and I won’t bore you by listing the 60+ crime writers who spoke.

One novelty was that we got to see a preview of the first 90-minute episode of the new series of Agatha Raisin, which was a jolly way to spend a Friday evening replete with wine and pizza. I sat on the table with some of the production crew at the Gala dinner and there was also a panel including ‘Agatha’ actress Ashley Jensen.

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Not 007: Claire Kendall, HB Lyle, JD Fennell, Sarah Armstrong, Mick Herron

Take-aways included a comment from Mick Herron, when asked how much research he had to do for the Slough House series of spy novels. He replied that he simply made it up; which worries him when real Security Service staff comment on how accurate his books are. We heard about the challenge of fiction in the Post-Truth world, full of anger and misinformation. Several speakers came out with fact-is-weirder than fiction. Danielle  Ramsey related the unnerving experience of ‘creating’ a British seaside gangster then being confronted by unsavory people who found her story too close to the truth. Jeffrey Seger also found his Mikonos-set gangster was uncomfortably close to a real one. Paul Hardy had to include an author’s note to explain that a horrible act he featured in his story was based on a real case.

Several panels tackled historical fiction, and the need to create period feel. William Sutton made the point that whereas a contemporary writer such as Dickens had no need to explain social or technical subtleties of his era, the historical writer needs to provide this for the modern reader. Familiar periods of history make things easy on both reader and author, although are more likely to attract the detail fanatic that is the bane of all successful writers. Some working in obscure periods such as Indrek Hargla’s medieval Estonia have the challenge, but also the freedom, to make much up. Guy Bolton whose characters work in highly familiar 1940s Hollywood with real moguls and actors, in contrast has to carry out very detailed research.

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Kate Ellis, Leigh Russell, Danielle Ramsey, Douglas Lindsey, William Shaw

The 1930s are seen as the change-over period where policing became more scientifically based but many things which are now illegal were permitted, if not approved of, in the past. Long-running series characters are challenged by changing times, which some authors build into the story arc and some simply ignore, allowing history to wash past unnoticed. Longer in the tooth authors rued the fact that their childhoods in the 50s and 60s were now ‘historical’ periods, but Peter Murphy commented that he still needed to research his 60s novels as relying simply on memory did not suffice. I asked the question as to how writers avoided falling into period clichés. Using the right language, avoiding familiar plot drivers and choosing characters that don’t immediately evoke period stereotypes was the best advice. David Penny suggested that as you can’t visit the historical period at least the location can be researched.

Charlie Gallagher, a serving policeman, opined that modern procedure is so boring that even a ‘police procedural’ aiming for realism needs to take liberties to remain interesting. The writer can get away with this if the set-up is plausible, and strict formalities are less important than plot and character. We considered whether a lead detective is allowed to be happy, how writers avoid creating one who is a cliché and whether series novels should include a cliffhanger to lead into the next book.

In my final panel, Caroline England explained how she likes to introduce love in her stories, then be rotten to her characters. Gunnar Staaleson said that the crime writer’s job was at first to build up believable characters. “Then kill them,” added Kate Rhodes.

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Things We Writers Learn

I’m writing a book set in the 1930s and passed the 30,000-word mark today with a loud hurrah and a celebratory glass of Diet Coke. My last novel was Glint of Light on Broken Glass which all in all took three years to research and write, with one of those years being absorbed by getting the detail of 1913-1919 correct. I was helped by it being set right outside my front door and by its sedate fable-like tone which allowed liberties with language, but I had to carefully avoid modern expressions and Americanisms.

So to the 1930s, and I’m reading as much as I can and catching films made in or about the period. One challenge of my new thriller is that my cast of characters are witty, fast-talking and at times violent. Without delving into cliché I need to get those snappy conversations right. I’m taking a leaf out of Lee Child’s book, in that I heard him at a conference saying that as soon as he hits a point where he needs a piece of research, he does it there and then. Usually I retrofit my research, glossing over the detail until I’m sure the plot demands it. I wasted enough gloriously evocative scenes in my early writing to learn this lesson.

My early drafts are largely conversations, to allow my characters to drive the story forward which I will then back-fill with time and place as the plot becomes clear. However for the 1930s this means stopping and checking when I stumble across a word or phrase that could be anachronistic. A thesaurus, various books of phrase and fable and online versions are hastily consulted. This week I learned that jolly hockey sticks did not come in until the 1950s, but not my cup of tea or right up your street might just be acceptable after 1930. To my surprise Beating up and snitch were much older than I thought, so fine to use.

I also learned how to pick a lock and open a locked suitcase this week. There are Youtube tutorials which will dissuade you of the value of locking anything ever again. I’ve done some work on Swiss banknotes,  obsolescent German firearms and London ‘roadhouse’ clubs. One of the drawbacks of using the web for research is that more and more the search terms come up with adverts. This was particularly the case when looking for hotels to base my skulduggery in. I was surprised to learn, for example, that you can still buy British Union of Fascists flags over the internet. I expected to be able to find a selection of fascist marching songs, but was intrigued to find many carried by Russian websites with explicit warnings that it was illegal to download them in Germany. Having also looked up pederast, Irish street slang and the history of the mafia I must have a very dodgy-looking search history!

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An Eye for Nature

PLV 1Whilst working on a new thriller, and editing the one I ‘finished’ earlier, I have a new project to keep me out of mischief. I’m teaming up with artist Peter Le Vasseur to produce a book on his life and work. In particular the book will feature Peter’s later works with ecological and conservation themes.

PLV3Although Peter was born in Guernsey and returned here to live in the 70s, his formative years as an artist saw him enter the ‘sixties London art scene with clients including film stars, musicians and the aristocracy. The Beatles bought one of his earliest works, whilst he was experimenting with fantasy in what he calls his ‘Alice in Wonderland’ period. His early fantasies are still cropping up in London auctions, with his 1964 work Tattooed Sailor recently selling at Sotheby’s for many times its estimate.

 

Peter finally established his iconic style of highly detailed paintings of the natural world, generally packaged with a ‘message’, although for himself he claims not to be political. At times his work has a dark humour or carries ironic titles as it reflects the impact of the modern human world on both the environment and traditional societies.

This will be a high quality art book with the paintings as its main focus, so is going to need a significant amount of financial support to be produced. It would be particularly relevant to a large international organisation involved in environmental issues, or to a multinational with corporate social responsibility objectives which might like to sponsor a work it can give to its major clients.

I’m interested in ideas from you folks out there. Share with your contacts and see if we can find that sponsor. I can be contacted through this blog page.

For more of Peter’s work see www.peterlevasseur.com .

For those living in Guernsey, Peter currently has an exhibition of his works at the Coach House Gallery, and his large work The Tree of Life is on permanent display at Guernsey Museum where it was voted ‘The People’s Choice.’

 

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Beneath the Sands of Time

Some of you will have seen shots of my time spent on the island of Alderney during July. It was probably the tenth time I’d been there to lead an excavation at the Nunnery, but time shifts and this year brought new experiences and new surprises.

Yes, that’s the view from my room!

The Nunnery itself has been reconfigured as a Field Centre, operating under the eagle eye of the Bird Observatory Warden (okay, that was a bad pun). We hope that bird-watchers and ringers will stay there in migration season, and heritage/natural history buffs in the high summer. I was the first resident of the almost-finished hostel, all on my own for the first night, up in the attic watching the sun rise over France when the oystercatchers and seagulls awoke me at 5am. It was of course mid-heatwave so there was no question of closing the windows. For a week I had no radio, no TV, no internet and not even a live phone signal; which was blissful when it wasn’t infuriatingly inconvenient.

Isabel and Dave mark the width of the original gate

Week one, I was progressively joined by more colleagues  and we started Trench 16 just inside the Nunnery gates. The sun reflected back off the Roman and Revolutionary-era stonework as we battled a giant fuscia then dug downwards to uncover the mystery of the Roman gate. There was a hint that it had been narrower than the modern one, and so it proved – by 800mm or so. It had no fancy quoins like the 18th century gate though – just an ordinary corner.

Mystery building from above

In the back of the trench was another section of the mystery building we’d seen in 2016, lurking just beneath the surface but cut through by the 1793 ‘coal store’ foundations. Loads of what looked like 18th century pantiles had to be shifted to have a look at the foot of the Roman wall – whether they came off the mystery building when it was destroyed I don’t know. Down in the same hole though were glazed ridge tiles peculiar to French churches. Maybe there was a ‘Nunnery’ at the Nunnery once, after all.

 

 

Tanya records the stone pavement

After I left for a break, things shifted gear. My colleague Phil de Jersey opened up two trenches in the field opposite, hoping to find more of the Iron Age burial ground we spotted last year. I was going to lead a group of school students to investigate a set of walls we’d also seen to check if they were Roman. As luck had it, Phil and Tanya found the Roman buildings first. Buried under a metre of windblown sand the walls still stood chest- high and in one trench was an impressive stone pavement.

 

 

The cross-walls emerge in Trench C; the Nunnery in the background

For Trench C, I chose a location indicated by a local dowser as being a likely junction of walling and my students quickly found it – again not far under the surface. Four walls met awkwardly, including one where a huge 85cm square slab made up the first course. As ever we were operating on a shoestring but help came from many quarters when we needed it, from landowners allowing the dig in the first place to that welcome excavator to fill the holes in at the end.

Some historic maps marked that area as ‘The Old Town’, although nothing remains above ground today. Since Victorian times there had been reports of odd Roman finds out on Longis common – a coin here, a skull there, ‘huge walls’ in imprecise locations. Now we had proof that all these disparate finds were linked. Some 100 metres separated Phil’s trench from mine – and once the other evidence is added in we have a picture of an entire Roman settlement buried under the sand-dunes of Longis. Several people used the phrase ‘Pompeii of the Channel Islands’ and I was the one who ended up being quoted using it. Apt in that we could have well-preserved Roman houses, streets and courtyards just beneath our feet; less apropropriate as the Roman town was probably long-abandoned before it was buried beneath a massive ‘sand blow’.

Alderney now has a unique and extensive site bigger than anything we have seen in the Channel Islands or adjacent French coasts. The benign sand preserves  bone, pottery and the metal objects we need to date and interpret the site.  The Common is not threatened by a new motorway or multistory car-park so is a perfect research site. And the views are great – eat your heart out Time Team!

It was my first dig where the sun shone every day for 3 weeks  and the rain held off until 30 mins after we closed the site that final Friday. We swam most days in the wide bay at Longis, Alderney’s natural harbour; probably the reason the Roman fort and settlement were put there in the first place. The sun went down glowing on 4th century stonework, black rabbits emerged from their burrows on the Common and we rinsed off the sands of time before picking one of Alderney’s pubs or bistros for dinner. A site tour and great media coverage sent a buzz through the island, capped by a final lecture. So we ended on a massive high, exhilarated by what our small team had found.

To find out more about the Nunnery and Longis Common digs, follow the facebook page ‘Alderney Nunnery’. We’ll be working on the finds and reviewing the evidence during the winter, and with luck will return again next year.

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Catch Flint While You Can

The current Endeavour Press editions of the five Jeffrey Flint books will only be available on Amazon until 8th March. The e-books and paperbacks will be taken offline thereafter pending further discussions. This follows the liquidation of Endeavour Press which has been covered elsewhere in the publishing media.

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Writing Space

Yes folks, I have a garret. My study is in the converted roof space  of our bungalow. When we first moved to Serenity we created a little room at the back, with dormer windows overlooking the garden and fields, and almost but not quite a view of the Atlantic. Sounds idyllic, but it was not the best place to write. For one thing, the evening sun came straight in, making it uncomfortably hot and too bright to see the computer screen. All that light would surely fade my books too.

So I moved across to the north side, where a chimney had been removed and a velux window popped into the roof to replace it. The sun never comes directly inside, but above me the sky is bright and I can push open the velux and listen to the birds. Mostly it is shady and quiet, with no distracting views and the perfect place to write.

One could tell it was my room the moment you stepped inside. The furniture is all black, originally self-assembly black ash from the late 80’s which I’ve carted around and re-assembled after every house move. It is held together now by inelegant large screws, wood glue and positive thinking. Two showcases for my collections were purpose-built to match.

Five book cases are squashed in here –  a stack of military history and ancient history dominates the room. My hardcore archaeology is in my museum office and my paperbacks are on the landing ‘library’ or over in the den. One shelf holds writer’s aids, dictionaries, a thesaurus and a bible. Below is a shelf of worrying titles concerning murder, forensics and various ways to kill people and then be found out afterwards. A steel filing cabinet holds paperwork, and a black set of drawers is so full of stuff they are reluctant to open any more. More spread into the corners of the room. I’mm sure you can imagine the random untidiness that creeps in.

What wall space is left, plus almost every surface, is covered in souvenirs of travel and random collecting. Native masks, a replica ‘Sting’, Great War medals and a couple of my framed book covers hang around the desk. My mother bought me a bust of Napoleon which sits by my elbow, and my sister bought me a cardboard robot as a joke present but he’s been a sentinel by my computer for a decade. Maybe 1,000 hand painted model soldiers of all periods of history stand in mirror-backed cabinets that double their ranks. Each reminds me of a day – or at least the year- when I painted it.

A pair of whiteboards carry the latest plot twists – but more of them anon. A leather firewood basket holds an assortment of cables, chargers and connectors, each with a different dinosaur on the plug to distinguish them; brontosaurus is for the mobile and so forth. A brass coal scuttle serves as a rubbish bin and never quite overflows.

Three computers are in use, sometimes at the same time. ‘Little Dell’ sits under the big black desk and is for my writing. Alongside is ‘Big Dell’, an older but hefty machine that is used purely for movie editing. As it isn’t connected to the internet and only carries four useful programs it doesn’t get clogged by constant updates or slowed by firewalls, so happily chugs onward despite still using Windows XP. Then there’s this machine (surprise!), my laptop, that sits on the bookcase next to Napoleon. I have a dicky back these days and have got used to standing up to work. Standing typing can be messy but it is a good place to do first drafts, emails, blogs and ‘waste time on the internet’.

Of course there are sundry heaps, and I have a shelf double-stacked with crime books I’m yet to read, but everyone has those, eh? Enough of the guided tour, it’s back to writing.

 

 

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New Year, New Novel

A New Year’s Day tradition for me has been to start a new novel, or kick-start one that has been slumbering as a few chapters in rough draft. A couple of hundred words will do.

This year I got ahead of myself. With the opening three or four chapters of ‘AW’ already in mind, I put down the first page three days ago.

NRT is done, as far as it can be before the next round of editorial comments come back. In the attached photo I am pondering potential titles for the book. Meantime the challenge is to write the follow-up. Not necessarily a sequel, mind. Who is saying that any of the lead characters survived? Perhaps their story arcs are complete.

What I’ve done is start plotting two follow-up books, using the same style and tone. Both are contemporary mysteries. Why two? Firstly because I have two ideas rattling around in my head that I want to explore. Also, although starting a story is easy, there is not always a middle to explore or a neat ending to be reached. Most real-world mysteries are solved extremely quickly or drag on for years in a mess of loose ends and inadequate evidence.

An author’s chat group ’10 Minute Novelists’ carried a story by one writer on how he uses whiteboards for plotting. To date I’d used ‘plot spiders’ scrawled on A4 paper, but this seemed like a great idea so whilst I was out Christmas shopping, I bought two.

The story with code name ‘AW’ hit a plot snag when I was two-thirds the way down that first page. A new whiteboard hung on my study wall is where I’m now planning my way around it. Perhaps the problem I hit as an author can simply be passed to the characters to solve? Meanwhile, I have both beginning and end in mind for the story code name ‘DC’  but need to think out a middle to tie both together.

So I’m daydreaming and doodling through post-Christmas television, starting to ‘remember’ the stories that have not been written yet. The chart on my whiteboard grows more complex, and I’ve opened two folders on my computers where the first ideas are taking root.

2018 is going to be an exciting year.

 

 

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Jason Joins A for Authors

a for a croppedIt is with great pleasure that I can announce that I have signed up with London Agency A for Authors. I am looking forward to working with Annette Crossland and Bill Goodall on a new mystery series. 2018 is going to be an exciting year.

With Annette Crossland

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Rubber Duck Moment

Okay, I admit it. My work-in-progress contains a rubber duck moment. Codename NRT, the novel has a very short timeframe. There is no chance to get to know the characters before they are plunged into the mystery on page 1. Thumbnails must suffice until enough pages have been peppered with hints and clues from their mode of dress, their speech, the background information they let free with and straight prose description. I’ve avoided ‘plot bricks’ as far as I can; those clumsy speeches where someone says ‘But Sally, you are my sister!’

Key pieces of a character’s history should fall out in natural dialogue, challenge and argument.  We as readers are new acquaintances of these people, and within the story come the subtle enquiries new acquaintances make – are you married, do you have any children? If not asked directly people often go for the opening, ‘So you actually worked for NASA?’ This explains the character’s hint of a Transatlantic accent and allows a lead in to how she ended up in the USA and why she came back. We already know she’s scarily smart. Police procedurals are allowed to be more blunt: ‘Exactly what is your relationship to the deceased?’

 Drink is great. In their cups, people often spill their life story. Not always in a coherent fashion, not always honestly and rarely in chronological order but it tumbles out. ‘I was drinking this stuff when I met him in that night club.’

 A point came in NRT where there were still many unanswered questions about character A. She keeps her own council, we never meet her friends or her family or her workmates; all these are usual vehicles for allowing us to expand our understanding of the person underneath. We often see a character at work, we see the interaction with Mum/Sister/Boyfriend and they naturally ask about her day, or remind her of some upcoming appointment. Not so with A. So I needed a rubber duck moment to allow her to open up, drop enough facts about her past to allow us to piece together the last clues to her motivation.

 The classic scene has our grizzled hero explain that the reason he’s hard-bitten and avoids company is because his father threw away his rubber duck when he was six. He never trusted anyone else again, never wanted to be a father himself, never cared for family. Movies often use this vehicle, some well, some clumsily. Unlike novels, a thriller only has moments to create thumbnail characters. Female thriller heroes/villains/femmes fatales often need such a moment to explain why their behaviour is abberant – an abusive relationship, a lost child, an ugly assault, bloody men obstructing their path to the top. By their nature males can often get away with violent, obsessive or antisocial behaviour without needing deep psychological analysis of how they got there.

 So two of my characters come together in bar, tired, jaded at the end of their tether. J is chatty, needing company. She gets very little out of A beyond single-line responses, but is enough for us to finally understand A’s life choices.

‘Do you want to call your people?’

‘I don’t have any people.’

‘Mum?’

‘Died having my sister.’

‘So you’ve a sister?’

‘She died too. It was very Victorian.’

Mother, sister and next her father are dealt with in a few words each. We already know why she quit NASA and are getting to understand how she came to work there in the first place. It is not purely a rubber duck moment though; by using the past, I lead into hints and undercurrents of what is to come. This woman has no family and no ties; but does she have a plan?

 

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Lessons from a Litfest

Another year, another Guernsey Literary Festival. Unlike all the other festivals I go to, this event is more of a smorgasbord; a feast to suit many different tastes. Rather than bingeing on the whole, people I have met are picking at two or three choice morsels. In this way the festival achieves a broad ‘hit’ across the population rather than going for a sharply targeted deep engagement such as (say) Alderney’s historical themed festival or Crimefest Bristol where I’m bound next week. It is a markedly different strategy and local engagement is extensive. There were 60 or so authors and a variety of big names, and I donated a copy of Glint of Light on Broken Glass to each of the goody bags to make them welcome to Guernsey.

WP_20190503_15_32_51_ProThe opening party was fun, only an hour, but chance to hear from a quartet of speakers and mingle with many like-minded friends on the island. On the Friday I was asked to introduce Dr Matthias Strohn (who was quicker to smile than I was when the camera was produced!) speaking at the blow-up Festival Hub in the Market Square. I’d met him at the Alderney festival two years ago and his subject this time was the end of the Great War. As a German historian and reserve army officer who advises the British Army and lectures at Sandhurst, Matthias offered some unique insights. Most telling was how ‘Britain centric’ our view of that war is. The Germans on the other hand were far more concerned with the Russian threat to the east and the French to the west, until the final year of the war at least. He explained how the German view that their army had not lost the war came about via the observation that (1) Germany fought the war because it was surrounded by enemies (2) none of those enemies had any soldiers on German soil at the conclusion of the fighting. The scene was set for ’round 2′.

I was asked initially whether I would moderate a talk by crime writer Mark Billingham, but having seen Mark in action I knew he needed no moderation – he was once a stand-up comedian. In the event he was paired with Erin Kelly, in the bigger venue of St James where even the audience just shy of 100 rattled a bit. Writers’ forums endlessly discuss whether it is best to plan a novel or fly by the seat of your pants (‘planners’ vs ‘pantsers’). Erin takes the same approach as I do, essentially writing a first draft composed of the main scenes of the book not necessarily in order. She then revisits in draft 2 to knit these together into a coherent story. She and Mark also discussed research and the tip was not to write it down as if swotting for an exam, but to use the points that stick. In this way the writer avoids ‘information dumping’, on the reasoning that all this researc =h must show somewhere.

WP_20190506_11_44_27_ProOn the Monday it was a change of venue again, to the spanking freshly refurbished Frossard Theatre at Candie to introduce Dr Gilly Carr. Gilly has worked with the Museum on a couple of occasions and co-created its current exhibition ‘On British Soil’ about Nazi persecution in the Channel Islands. Gilly has worked consistently for the past decade to change the narrative on the German Occupation, which had become in parts saccharine encouraged by cosy tales of wartime make-do-and-mend, partly ‘boys toys’ enthusiasm for the many fortifications and weapons left on the islands and partly by the euphoria of Liberation Day celebrated every year on May 9th. Gilly was talking about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as experienced by Channel Islanders who were persecuted by the Nazis. Victims deported to Nazi concentration camps belatedly got the opportunity to apply for compensation in the 1960s. Many were in no state to describe their suffering, and there was an added complication that PTSD was not recognised as a medical condition at that time. Claims could be made for wounds, diseases or disability, but how could people find recompense for damage that has not even been defined? More can be found on Gillys website https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/

So, I only managed four events, but I’m now warmed up and in the mood for Crimefest Bristol next week.

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Farewell Black Desk

So it’s farewell to my faithful black desk, too old and rickety and too darned heavy to be moved again. I bought it from a pre-IKEA furniture store on the outskirts of York in 1989 and since then it has taken up station in at least half a dozen different studies of mine. Flat-pack, self-assembly chipboard, its veneer is peeling and its structural integrity relies largely on screw blocks and willpower.

As for the drawer unit, the drawers have been reluctant for a decade; piled too high with more pens and paper than they can cope with, stained by ink and tippex and blobs of blu-tac. Together with the desk it is bound for Bulk Refuse Heaven.

This was the desk where I wrote Shadow in the Corn, half of Byron’s Shadow (long story!), Shadesmoor, Lady in the Lake, Blood & Sandals, Islands that Never Were and Glint of Light on Broken Glass. Four dormant novels were also tapped out on is face, together with A Gallo-Roman Shipwreck from Guernsey,  Roman Pottery From York, A Shypp Cast Away About Alderney and a couple of dozen academic papers and the same number of short stories.

A pine desk that did service as one of my children’s homework desks has been commandeered as the place where the next two books will be completed. Smaller, it should be more maneuverable up the steps of the next garret and maybe the one after that.

The Black Desk is dead – long live the Pine Desk!

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Writer Blocked

We’re used to hearing about ‘Writer’s Block’, romantically imagining our author has been deserted by his or her muse; no inspiration, clueless about the next twist of the plot, capable of only writing flat doggerel.

Maybe uncharitably we might quietly think our author is just being lazy. Perhaps too much absinthe, even? You don’t hear of Teacher’s Block or Treasury Dealer’s Block.

However writers dwell in the real world. I’m moving house, and can barely get near my desk let alone find a couple of hours to allow the muse back. That picture is my study, this week. And yes that’s a copy of Fight Club on top of the clutter – ‘You don’t own stuff, stuff owns you’ echoes around the room. Two recycling bags of paper came out of the room just today, to add to the eight already nestling in the hall, not to mention two one-tonne rubbish sacks on the drive.

From the deeper recesses of the filing cabinet come the first drafts of novels, unpublished or unfinished novels from decades ago, short stories, a play and a couple of bad poems. Crime writing conference paperwork reaching back into the 1990s forms a heap on the floor. A few programmes and select souvenirs go into the memorabilia box, but the rest are off for recycling. Files of correspondence with publishers and agents going back to my first works have all been kept. For now.

Friends who write also hit blocks that have nothing to do with a shortage of inspiration. If not blocks, then at least speedbumps; a shift in the day job, election to a committee, the loss of a relative, a long vacation, poor health, having a child or even a demanding new puppy. Real life intrudes the whole of the time, floating icebergs into the path of our otherwise serene cruise.

That’s probably enough dredging of metaphors for one blog. It’s my first for three months, but with a new garret identified, this writer will be unblocked pretty soon.

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Christmas Comes Early

We see it every year. Christmas creeping ever earlier – cards in the shops by September, the first trees and tinsel appearing in October and those ‘catchy’ Xmas tunes of the 70s are playing by November. The Grinches of course complain; 12 days of Christmas, not 42 days, they say.

My American readers may not get this, as you have a lot of hullaballoo over Halloween, then Thanksgiving too. However, you did start the accursed ‘Black Friday’ which has now infected this side of the pond and this year trespassed onto my birthday. In Britain, Halloween is still mostly for kids and Goths, whilst Thanksgiving is reserved for expat Yanks (and just misses my birthday annually too). That November birthday was an important milestone for me as a kid. ‘No Christmas talk until after my birthday!’ was my petulant rule. I didn’t want cheapskate relatives conflating two gifts into one, or my party being upstaged by elves and department-store Santas. Once I had a daughter with a slightly later November birthday this became an even easier rule to police.

WP_20181125_15_02_53_ProThen practicality started to erode my principles. Children, nephews, nieces, significant others and close relatives all deserve presents. I’m a rubbish present buyer, and hate going shopping on precious weekends, so squeeze it into lunch hours. At one present per lunch hour, that’s a long lead-in time. Move to an island, and the lead-in lengthens with those last posting dates and annoying customs rules.

The net result is that I have to start shopping in October so I can drop off gifts as I work WP_20181125_15_03_08_Promy way at sub-Santa speed around the UK. Who can blame retailers for wanting to sell to me? Island life of course poses the logistic issue of boats delayed by weather, shops selling out by December, or never actually stocking the desired items at all; ‘we won’t have a delivery before Christmas’. Really? You are Amazon’s best friend, local retailer.

Once the starting sleighbell has been rung, I admit to being a complete Christmas fan. Carols, Dickensian cards of Christmas-that-never-was, cheesy tunes of yesteryear, turkey and roasties, mint chocs, port, wine, desert wine, beer with turkey sandwiches in front of the movie, Queen’s message to the Empire, bringing a tree inside, trimmings, parties, prezzies, relatives, Dr Who Special, the lot. Apart from the weather, which out here is usually rain, wind, or wind-with-rain.

But this year, Christmas can’t come early enough. I’m sensing it everywhere, a palpable wish to get started on all that hedonism reeled off in the previous paragraph. 2018 has been a grim year of sliding hope. Brexit is depressing and boring, no matter which way you voted (or wished you had voted). The world of Trump and Putin is a fearful place full of conspiracy and rivalry, in which critical problems such as climate change are being forgotten. 2018 has been at best uninspiring. Perhaps this is why people all around me are plunging into Christmas with glee. ‘Tis the season to be merry,  so let’s be merry as soon as we can for as long as we can.

Garden Centre Faux SnowI’m still holding off buying that tree until December, but the boxes of trimmings are already down from the loft and waiting. Half the presents are bought, the cards are ready to be written. On the internet radio there’s a US ‘Christmas Country’ station allowing some escape from the standard 40 UK Christmas pop songs. The Garden Centre is blowing faux snow around and animatronic penguins serenade the shoppers.

I’ve even been to my first ‘Christmas Dinner’ – on my birthday!

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