Black Hours Diary Entry No.1: Research and Damnation

I find myself buried. Buried in pages. No… words. Yes, that’s it. Buried in words, and the images that come from them. My workplace was once a simple affair, yet now I’ve commenced the mammoth task of researching The Black Hours, it looks more like the tower of Babel – a mess of a study with books spewed about, lying open on their spines (I know, a shameful way to treat books) while others have pieces of ripped-up paper inserted between pages appearing as though the tops of the books have gone through a shredder. It’s all for a good cause, I tell myself. I can live with a little chaos, if there’s some order at the end…

Did you know that an average person living in London in the 1890’s needed 22 galleons of water a day?*

The Black Hours was always going to be a big project. I kept kidding myself thinking that a shorter book will mean less work, and you know, it worked for a while. It worked until I started looking for research material and instead of mining that "little" landscape expecting to find a steady stream, I found a sea bursting over me. In fact I wasn’t quite prepared for the volume of research material out there just for the period of history I was looking for: the 1890’s. Now that I’m floating, not drowning in research books, I’m trying to find the best way of navigating through the waves of words from everything on politics to society to culture. I know much of it bears little relevancy to what I’ll be writing, but Victorian England was just so damned impressive. A golden age of hope and innovation. Of culture and civilisation. Not to mention depravity. Yep, there was plenty of that still, and barely buried under the veneer of peeling red paint…

Did you know that the British Army in Victoria’s empire cost on average £19,000,000 to run per year in the 1890’s?*

So here I am, research book in one hand, typing away with the other. I’m quite aware that I may be fishing in the wrong waters, that some of the words I read might be discredited (the risk you take by casting your ‘net wide), but then I’m not bothered about utter accuracy. I’m not Tom Clancy. I’m not going to write about technical aspects of the age to the nth degree. I don’t believe you should flatter yourself or baffle the reader with fancy details that take a page or more of explaining, yet are superfluous to the overall plot. I subscribe to the notion that the story is God while writing a book. Everything else is secondary…

Did you know that painted walls in Victorian houses contained high concentrations of lead, yet if you opted to wall-paper your house instead, you could be slowly poisoned by arsenic? But then arsenic was also in your clothes…*

Nor am I a cheat. I’m not going to plaster over the gaps of my knowledge or write them off with a dismissive sleight of hand or use, to quote Shakespeare’s Beatrice, "a jade’s trick."
In about six weeks time I’ll be sitting down to write these words: "Chapter One: ‘the Dark Malady has returned…’" with a sense of excitement and trepidation. If I can strike the balance between plot and setting, and build a believable world for the reader from those words onwards - a believable Victorian world, that is - then seeing this world collapse under the weight of paranoia, epidemic, fire and damnation, might seem all that bit scarier, even to a 21st century audience.
That alone is worth a little research-purgatory.

(*These facts are gathered courtesy of Whitaker’s Almanac and the books of Judith Flanders. Very handy books, actually, but they’re taking an age to wade through...)

Chuh chuh chuh changes

I’ve decided to change the presentation of A ‘spot of Blood, so if you arrive here to find the blog in disarray, like someone’s moving house or redecorating, that’s my excuse. Shouldn’t last too long (hopefully) and the whole revamp will make it easier to read (and less dark).

However, if you happen to hear hammering and/or drilling, then no, that isn’t me and something has gone terribly wrong.

Catch 22 (the book I haven’t read)

I haven’t read Catch 22. In fact, there are many books I haven’t read. But Catch 22 is one of those oft-quoted books that I think sums up my own problem of the ‘writer’ vs ‘time’ vs 'being well-read.’

When I started this blog a couple of years ago the biggest revelation, and a shocking one for me, is how little I read. For a writer, that’s quite unforgivable. Between the years of 1997 and 2005, I would read between six to eight books a year – if I was lucky. Considering the number of books published a year that’s like reading 0.0001% of books published per annum, not counting all the books published over the last two hundred years.

It wasn’t always like this. During my university years I would read a book every two weeks, either from the recommended reading list for the course, or of my own choosing. This regime stopped when I graduated, blaming the downturn on “literature-blindness” or “reading-saturation”.
They seemed like good excuses to me.
The real reason I stopped reading was something more serious: time. Or rather the lack of it. And it’s a serious problem because there isn’t really a viable remedy.

Time is the killer of reading, because let’s face it, reading is anti-social. Just like writing. You can try holding a conversation with someone while reading a book, just as you can while writing, but the results are often fractured, and in the case of reading you just end up re-reading the same passage over and over.
Having more than one anti-social hobby is not conducive to relationships and friendships, especially if you have a day-job. In the past I’ve opted for writing, but I’ve learnt over the last few years you can’t write without reading.

So the Catch 22 situation is this: a writer needs to read more, and read more widely to help them learn their craft, yet if they are having to support themselves by taking on a full-time job, then where does the writer find the time to write and read? Throw in a family, and you’re forever crawling forward rather than taking mighty strides towards being published, and even then, achieving any modicum of success as a published author will be a miracle.

Over the last two years I’ve started reading more. And more widely too. I haven’t reached the ‘dizzying heights’ of reading a book every two weeks, but I get through about 15 books a year depending on my own writing projects and the lengths of those books. I’m also a slow reader – I can’t speed read, and my reading time is limited to the ten minute commute and maybe fifteen minutes before I go to bed. That’s barely more than half an hour a day.

It’s not enough. I’d like to read twice as many books as that. I’d like to see that pile of “to-read” books diminish rapidly, replaced by others, but I just don’t have the time. And I think that will impact on my writing. As an apprentice author, I’ve learned a lot about my craft over the last 18 months - since my reading regime has stepped up a gear - but not enough to stop the feeling that I’m missing an opportunity to progress as a writer.

Bits ‘n’ bobs

“Grab a mentor today, you lucky writers!” That’s the slogan we apprentice writers should be chanting these days; well according to the Bookseller we should, as the role of the published mentor is being promoted again in the writing world. The problem is finding a mentor who has the time to look after you and give you advice – so thank god for writing sites/forums (well, some writing sites I suppose, some others have too many trolls which can do the opposite and cripple a writer’s confidence).

If you want some writerly advice without the trolls, you could do no worse than hopping over to the Macmillan New Writers blog. I’m adding a link to the toolbar over on the blog, called “Ask a Macmillan New Writer” – a chance to ask any of us a specific author-related question or a general question about writing.

And while I’m at it, I’ve added a similar link here on the right.

*

Following the previous blog entry on the Willesden Herald, there’s a new short story competition on the go courtesy of the Literary Trust. Author v Author was promoted via the local paper here, but it appears to be a national thing too. As I understand it, it’s open to all writers (published or not) on any genre. The only restrictions are the length – 5,000 words (which rules out The Problem with Rats).
And if you don’t care to write, then you might care to judge – you could be the “Zadie Smith” of Author v Author, if you wish. Though I don’t think you have as much say over whether the winner gets a prize or not.

*

Still lamenting the loss of the brilliant Charkin Blog, I’ve been told that Pan Macmillan have made their in-house blog a public affair. Originally aimed at discussing the whole digital-reading thang, the Digitalist has branched out into discussing other literary issues and books as a whole. Not sure if they’ll be indulging in the kind of hijinks that Richard Charkin was involved in (i.e. the Google-laptop heist) but it’s always handy for writers to keep abreast of industry views.

*

And finally, everyone’s talkin’ about Eliza Graham’s Playing with the Moon, or at least we hope they are. Eliza is one of the great writers who found their way to Macmillan New Writing, and has been nominated as one of the top ten books of note and discussion by the World Book Day site. The winning title will go on to win a cash prize and a lot of publicity so we’re all keeping our fingers crossed for Eliza.

Sheepishly, I haven’t read her book yet, but in my defence I’m snowed under with research for my third book that starts next March.

There really aren’t enough hours in the day, are there?

Short stories, not

For an example of how not to run a short story competition, please click here (and thanks to Aliya, author of Light Reading, for alerting me to this).

I’ve almost completed The Problem with Rats and have started looking for a publisher for this strange piece of short fiction (short being around 9,500 words, so not that short really); the Willesden Herald is one place I won’t be going to, though…

Placing my right toe out of the comfort zone

“Girl meets Boy; Boy is a supernatural schizophrenic manifesting magical powers and a significant evil ‘Other’; evil Other goes on a killing spree, and finally Boy kills evil Other before evil Other can kill Girl, but kills himself in the process.
So Girl loses Boy, but the town is saved...”

That’s pretty much my first book, The Forever Chain, summed up in a paragraph. It reveals some common themes in my writing: loss, death, darkness, miracles, and did I mention “death”?
In every book I’ve written, in every short story thrown down on the page from my fevered imagination, “death” is a constant. I have yet to write a whimsical story that doesn’t feature a visit from the Grim-reaper, which surprises me because, if you got to know me, you’d see that I’m a pretty cheerful guy. I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, or psychological booby-traps from childhood that could cause me to write about such things. I’m not a nihilist. I’m not religious. I’m what you might call a “contented writer”.
Yet in my short stories such as Splinters, the main characters are usually tragically flawed, and someone almost always loses their life or takes the life of another by the end. These motifs arise in my longer fictions too. In The Secret War, the main characters suffer untold pain and peril, and loss is prevalent throughout the heroes’ adventures. Sacrifices are made. Likewise with The Horde of Mhorrer.

Now I don’t mind that. I’m comfortable with it. Putting my characters through the metaphorical meat-grinder is something I get an oddly perverse pleasure out of. But it has dawned on me that my writing-comfort zone consists of dangerous adventures, and misadventures, laced with a certain amount of misery and revelation.
And monsters, both human and non-human.
Why this is, I have little idea. I have never met any monsters. I very rarely get into dangerous adventures. Nor misadventures. Yet, whatever I write tends to lean in that direction.

Recently a few people have asked why I am not writing The Fortress of Black Glass – the next book in The Secret War series - this year. And I think it’s for the precise reasons hinted at above. The Fortress of Black Glass is going to be a tough book to write. There’s going to be a lot of death. Much will be lost. And I don’t think all the main characters are going to reach the end. I expect the book to be emotionally draining, and a challenge to my writing skills. Sure, Fortress stays within that writing-comfort zone, but at times I’ll be reaching for an emotional gravitas that will be a) greater than anything I’ve written before, and b) beyond my current writing abilities.
I’ve always considered that I am an apprentice writer. I don’t think for a moment that I’ve served it yet; maybe with The Horde of Mhorrer and The Black Hours I will get closer to that goal – we’ll see. And part of that development will be writing out of the comfort-zone. The Black Hours is the first step, or rather the chance to dangle my toe beyond the zone into unfamiliar waters while Fortress of Black Glass might be a great leap.
For example, The Black Hours will be the most extensively researched book I’ve undertaken. I’m currently reading through a stack of books on late Victorian England (indeed, I think I’ve stripped bare the shelves of Sheffield City library on the subject of Victorian culture) and I reckon this will be the first book where I’ve spent several weeks researching the subject before I even embark on the plotting.

The Black Hours will feature death, oh yes (he say’s gleefully), but it’s not a horror book, nor will it be a fantasy novel. You won’t see tentacled monstrosities or beasties composed of fire walking these city streets. There will be an alternative history element to it, but that’s about it. The Black Hours will be explicitly a Victorian thriller, kinda like an 1890’s James Bond, if you like, but quite darker.

(Can you see that I’m moving out of my comfort zone yet? No?)

Okay, well there’s also the short stories. Sure, A Problem with Rats is bordering on a horror story, but I’d say it’s more Weird Fiction, than horror. The second short story, however - To the Scent of Lemons - will be a bigger step out of the zone. It’s a story about alcoholism, and while there are a few moments of fantasy within it, no one dies, no one is maimed, and they all survive the end of the story. Will it be uplifting? I’m not so sure, but you know, I’m getting there...

So I might be kidding myself that I am writing out of the comfort zone. And I think I’m many years away from attempting a full-blown Romance or chick-lit. I’m certain I’m a long way from writing about everyday people doing everyday things i.e. the banal. And apart from a single project on the horizon called The Forbidden World of the Dead, I don’t think I’m quite ready to write a full-blown comedy either.
But that won’t stop me from experimenting, one step at a time.
After all, The Secret War was written out of my comfort zone way back in 2001. Before then, my books were 20th century horror stories, more a hymn to the works of King and Barker than anything else. Before The Secret War I didn’t think I could write anything remotely like a historical fantasy.
I just took a deep breath, and jumped in.

Whether or not jumping in to The Black Hours will prove as successful, I’ll have to wait and see, but I guess it’s a good thing to get just a little uncomfortable while you write…