I’m taking my books to a new venue this month. On the afternoon of Sunday 25th May, from noon to 4 pm, I’ll be at the John Alker Club, Flixton Road, Flixton, Urmston, M41 6QY. It’s going to be a lovely afternoon in the company of lots of crafters from around the North West.
This Spring has been about re-reading some old favourites. I ended March on ‘Native Tongue’, by Suzette Haden Elgin. It’s long been one of my favourite books. I started April with a reread of the sequel, ‘The Judas Rose.’ This is a complicated book with many points of view, continuing the story of Nazareth Chornyak, a linguist and quiet revolutionary. This was a re-read, and an enjoyable one, although the science behind the colonisation of worlds seems vague compared to the huge detail given to the linguistics that are the backbone of this series. Understandable, but a little jarring nonetheless.
It still surprises me that I’m finding previously unknown sequels to much loved books. This third book in the Native Tongue series has been out there for over thirty years, and I only found out about it relatively recently. A re-read of the first two books prompted me to buy book 3.
It surprised me, although the first two books were light on science and heavy on the linguistics, this book took a giant leap out of the realm of any science that I’m comfortable with, and landed squarely in the land of weird, where humans can sustain themselves with song and without any need for physical food. The women of the Lines find themselves responsible for spreading this knowledge through a scattered humanity that have been abandoned by the Aliens of the first two books. Again, there are many jumps in point of view, and the story stretches across centuries of history, encompassing a period of Earth history where male humans almost become extinct. This feels more like a collection of novellas than an actual novel, but it is held together by the philosophy of Nazareth Chornyak, which runs throughout the book.
The next read was a library book. ‘The Women of Troy’ by Pat Barker. I haven’t read ‘Silence of the Girls’ yet, but am familiar enough with the characters and the story that it didn’t hurt. This is the continuing tale of Briseis, a prize of war and widow of Achilles, who is pregnant with his child and under the protection of her new husband. The book follows her attempts to protect and save the Trojan women who are prisoners and slaves of the Greek army that are trapped near Troy by unfavourable winds. Entwined with their story is the tale of Pyrrhus, the teenage son of Achilles, who is clumsily finding his way in the world, hindered somewhat by his lack of social skills and his reputation as a killer of babies, women and old men. In the background, the kings and heroes of legend go about their business …
I’ve been saving N K Jemisin’s ‘Great Cities’ books until the third book in the trilogy came out, but recently found out that she decided that it would be a duology. All that time, and these lovely books have been sitting patiently on the shelf … Anyway, time to tuck in to ‘The City We Became’. This is a love song to New York, in all its messy glory. True love sees all, and accepts all, and this book loves the grit and grind and endless variety of the city. Fair warning, I’ve only spent two or three days in New York, and by the time it came to leave, I would have happily bought a ‘I hate NY’ t shirt. I don’t do hot, I certainly don’t do humid, and I’m not very good with noisy. If it hadn’t been my husband’s idea of a dream holiday to celebrate a big birthday, I wouldn’t have been there. But still, Jemisin’s book has drawn me in, and helped me to see the charm of the place. So, the plot … New York is a baby city, in the throes of being born, but there’s an Enemy out there that wants to kill the emerging city before it comes into its strength. To be born, it needs a human avatar to guide and protect it. Strike that, it needs six human avatars, one for each borough, and one for the city itself. This is the tale of those avatars, and the city they need to become. Great characters, a nice sideways plot, and worldbuilding that drew me into the book. A little slow in places maybe, but I don’t need every book to get where it’s going at a galloping pace.
And so to Book 2 of ‘Great Cities’. I loved ‘The World We Make’. Possibly even more than I loved book 1. I enjoyed the age diverse cast of characters, it’s good to see older women kicking alien multiverse ass. I enjoyed the shy courtship of NYC and Manhattan, I loved the slow realisation of SI that she’s a bad guy … and her refusal to give up on her monstrous friend. I COULD put it down, but only on the understanding that I’d be picking it up again very soon.
And so, having indulged myself with some of the very best sf of the last fifty years, I went to the library to find something that would be good for my soul. I couldn’t find any sf / fantasy or horror by women, so I decided to improve my mind and finally get round to reading Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Dalloway’. It’s a book that I’ve always meant to read, and time is ticking, so … ‘Mrs Dalloway’ is coming up to it’s century birthday … a couple of weeks from now. I didn’t realise this when I picked it up from the library, but I guess there’ll be some love for this book over the next month or so. I went in blind, I had no idea what the book was about. The nearest comparison my mind could come up with was Adam Roberts, whose books inspire a similar delirious state. You want to know what it’s about? It’s literally head hopping. You know, that thing that a writer should never do. The baseline is a day in the life of Mrs Dalloway, and is set in the book’s ‘present day’ of the early 1920s. The narrative moves via the internal thoughts and emotions of a sprawling cast of vaguely connected characters, as Mrs Dalloway prepares for a party that evening. It is a brilliant book. I closed it with exactly the same thought that I had after reading Shirley Jackson’s ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’ – WHY DID NOBODY MAKE ME READ THIS BOOK FORTY YEARS AGO?
My final book for April was Linda Sherlock’s ‘Shampoo and Set’. I’ve known Linda for a few years now, I met her at a writing group when she was first playing with the idea of writing a book about her mother’s long, long career as a hairdresser. The book came out four years ago, and I finally got my hands on a signed copy when Linda was reading at an event at Chorley Theatre. This is a story about a family, a place, a business. Linda’s mother, Margaret, worked hard to get an apprenticeship as a hairdresser in mid 20th century Ireland. Once trained, she moved to Chorley in Lancashire, married, set up shop as a hairdresser, and then spent the next seventy or so years cutting, setting, perming and colouring hair, eventually becoming something of a local celebrity. The book is told through Linda’s eyes, and we learn a lot about both Linda and Margaret, with honourable mentions to Margaret’s husband and her son. It’s an interesting look behind the scenes at the long career of a determined and hard working businesswoman.
So, that was April, two library books, two unread books from the shelves, two brand new books, and one re-read. Not bad stats. I suspect that May will be all re-reads, because this month I’m REALLY going to indulge myself. Guess which series I’m planning to enjoy all over again?
I’m taking my Ransomed Hearts books to Scorton Village Hall this Saturday, 3rd May, for Big Thinking Publishing’s very first book fair. There’ll be other indie authors there, covering practically every genre imaginable. Personally, I’m looking forward to chatting to Caroline Blake again, and meeting Pete Hartley. I must try to sell more books than I buy!
The book fair is open from 10 am – 4 pm.
Thank you to the lovely people at Lancashire Libraries. They’ve been helping me to organise a library tour of the county. I’ll be reading from my Ransomed Hearts books, talking about why I wrote them, and why I decided to publish them myself.
I’ll be taking books for sale, there’ll be an opportunity for readers to get their books signed, and there’ll be a Q and A session after the talk.
There’ll be more information about each visit closer to the time.
9th June – 5:30 pm – Burscough – Mill Lane, Burscough, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L40 5TJ.
12th June – 5:30 pm – Longridge – Berry Lane, Longridge, Preston, Lancashire, PR3 3JA.
14th June – 10:30 am – Garstang – Windsor Road, Garstang, Preston, Lancashire, PR3 1ED.
26th June – 6 pm – Ormskirk – Burscough Street, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L39 2EN
27th June – 2:30 pm – Great Harwood – Queen Street, Great Harwood, Blackburn, Lancashire, BB6 7AL
30th June – 5:30 pm – Chorley – Union Street, Chorley, Lancashire, PR7 1EB.
7th July – 5 pm – Burnley – Grimshaw Street , Burnley , Lancashire, BB11 2BD.
15th July – 5:30 pm – Haslingden – Higher Deardengate, Haslingden, Rossendale, Lancashire, BB4 5QL
2nd August – 2:30 pm – Colne – Market Street, Colne, Lancashire, BB8 0AP
12th Sept – 10:30 am – Ingol – Ventnor Place, Ingol, Preston, Lancashire, PR2 3YX
25th Sept – 12:30 – Lancaster – Market Square, Lancaster, Lancashire, LA1 1HY
27th Nov – 4 pm – Fleetwood – North Albert Street, Fleetwood, Lancashire, FY7 6AJ
28th Nov – 2 pm – Coppull – Spendmore Lane, Coppull, Chorley, Lancashire, PR7 5DF
March’s reading was very much a mixed bag, with three library books, one December book, and two re-reads.
After the fun of the Elysium Cycle, I decided to widen my horizons a little and picked up Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s ‘Mexican Gothic’ from the library shelves. This book has been on the edge of my consciousness since it was published, it has a cool cover and made it onto several popular reading lists. I’ve read it now, and consider myself Gothicked out for the time being. I think that’s enough ‘Gothic’ for the time being.
The plot of this book and of Ava Reid’s ‘A Study in Drowning’ were pretty much identical, although the setting was different. Reid’s book was set in an imagined future Wales, whereas this was set in mid 20th century Mexico.
Basically – evil English immigrants settle on top of a mountain in Mexico, start mining silver, terrible things happen to everyone connected with them. A scion of the family marries a girl from Mexico City and takes her back to the gothic house, the bride soon after sends a garbled letter, begging for help, to her own family. The girl’s cousin, the heroine of the story, travels to the gothic house to try to save the bride, and inevitably becomes embroiled in shenanigans.
OK, I enjoyed it, is that so bad?
And so to a re-read of a book that’s been on my shelves for at least forty years, and has been sadly neglected for the last twenty. I used to read this book on at least an annual basis, back in the days when I only had a hundred books or so. It deserves an in depth report.
In a time when once again, young men are expressing surprise that there are female authors of sf / fantasy / horror, and when people who are approaching middle age and should know better really DO think that Joke Rowling was the first woman to ever write a book, it’s refreshing and somewhat humbling to revisit this book. The book itself, a celebration of women in sf, is almost fifty years old, so when it looks back in time to the 1940s, it gives us an even longer reach.
What’s even more astonishing is that the editor, Pamela Sargent, is still with us, and was still in her twenties when she was commissioned to put this book together and given the space to write a long essay about women in sf, both as characters, readers and authors. If you do read this book, take the time to read the essay, it’s well worth it.
Having got all that out of the way, what of the stories? We have here a slim collection of short stories / novellas, mostly by writers who I met in the 1980s / 90s The Women’s Press SF imprint. The first story though, is an 85 year old sword and sorcery tale by CL Moore, a frequent contributor to the pulp sf scene. Her hero, Jirel of Joiry, is a tough, determined warrior monarch. In this story, Jirel encounters an adversary who seems to be her match, but proves that sheer bloody mindedness is sometimes enough to save the day. Jirel’s stubborn refusal to give in to powers greater than her own is an absolute joy.
Leigh Brackett is a familiar name to lovers of golden age sf, and like CL Moore, wrote under a gender ambiguous byline. As a screenwriter and novelist, she was well known in mid 20th century sf circles, and wrote a draft screenplay for ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. In ‘The Lake of the Gone Forever’ we see a typical sf rockets and colonisation story set in a future solar system. There is no female main character, but the male main character is strongly influenced by the native woman who guides him through his troubles.
I was born in the early 1960s, and suffer from the common mindset that anything before I was born is ‘historical’ and anything after it is ‘modern’. And so, to the first ‘modern’ story in the book, Joanna Russ’s ‘The Second Inquisition’. I’ve read this book so many times, and have enjoyed finding more little details every time. Russ’s intellect vastly overshadows my own, and it’s always a pleasure to read a story for the fifteenth time and know that I’ll still be wowed by it the next time. Of course, Joanna Russ should need no introduction, but if you’re wondering, most of her books are still gloriously in print. Another of my favourite authors, Gwyneth Jones, has written a great book about Russ, which is well worth reading.
‘The Power of Time’ by Josephine Saxton is so absolutely, purely, Josephine Saxton that nobody else could have written it. I ‘met’ Saxton in her Womens Press novels, and have enjoyed her work ever since. She writes with dry humour and wild imagination. This story is an entertaining dual perspective look at the adventures of a British housewife on an all expenses paid luxury trip to New York, and her many times great granddaughter as a left behind trillionaire on a far future earth, following her ancestor’s dreams.
Kate Wilhelm is another big name from the mid 20th century, and her 1972 story ‘The Funeral’ deserves to be in many more collections. It gives very strong ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ vibes but with, of course, a different perspective. This is a beautiful tale of rebellion against the destruction of love and spirit. It should be on all the school reading lists.
Joan D Vinge breaks my heart on a regular basis, it’s my own fault, I know what’s going to happen every time I pick up ‘The Snow Queen’, but I just can’t resist. The story in this collection, ‘Tin Soldier’ is another reworking of an old tale, and again, it’s a heartbreaker. It’s absolutely solid sf romance and I urge everyone who loves a bit of ‘romantasy’ to find it and read it.
The last story in the collection is Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 novella, ‘The Day before the Revolution’ is a prequel to her wonderful novel ‘The Dispossessed’ and is a perfect way to end the collection. We all have to let go at some point.
And so, back to the library. I gave C J Cooke’s ‘A Haunting in the Arctic’ five stars on Goodreads because it’s well written and does what it says on the tin. It’s a ghost story set in the arctic.
SPOILER
A warning, just in case anyone doesn’t figure out within the first few pages that Nicky = Dominique. This seems to be the big reveal, and the point of the story, but it’s way too obvious, and is even signalled at least once. To be fair, it’s a hard trope to get away with successfully, especially in a ghost story. It still managed to keep my interest because I wanted to know if the other three characters were also ghosts or if they were running a seance, and what their connection was with the ship. I won’t tell you that.
Also spoilerish, there are a lot of rape and mutilation scenes, which didn’t exactly rock my boat (sorry …).
The book conveyed the cruelty and brutality of late nineteenth century arctic whaling very well.
I read it very quickly because it’s a library book, I picked it up because I’m only reading women writers for the first half of the year, and I’m also trying to use my local library more. Sadly, my library doesn’t stock an awful lot of sf / fantasy / horror, so I keep going off genre. Ghost stories are kind of horror adjacent, but this one didn’t light up the spooky / weird bulb for me.
And so to another library book, this time Belinda Bauer’s debut, ‘Blacklands’ One of the things about selling my own books at events is that it gives me time to read, and I polished off most of this book yesterday whilst sat behind a stall at a craft / artisan fair near Manchester. It’s not my usual choice of books, but I read and enjoyed ‘Exit’ last year, and when I saw ‘Blacklands’ displayed prominently in a local library, I couldn’t resist picking it up.
I was expecting a cozy crime novel, something like ‘Exit’ and got a harrowing tale of a psychopathic serial rapist and murderer of small children, and his correspondence with the wise young nephew of one of his long ago victims. This book looks at the devastation that murder leaves in its wake, at the damage it does to families, and the wisdom that lurks in unexpected corners. Apart from my visceral reaction to the evil that the killer has wrought, the main thing I’m taking away from this book is the lovely relationship between Stephen (the victim’s nephew) and his next door neighbour / best friend, Lewis. Lewis constantly and consistently takes Stephen for granted, and Stephen knows this, but forgives him anyway. Lewis is a bit dim, and Stephen knows this, and gives him the leeway he needs to keep his self confidence. It’s a lovely bit of character development.
Bauer won the Golden Dagger for this book, and I’m not in the least bit surprised.
And then, on to a book that I bought with my Christmas / birthday book money. Charlie Jane Anders is one of my favourite ‘new’ writers, and I loved her sf anthology ‘Even Greater Mistakes’. A generously thick collection of science fiction stories that will appeal to readers right across the genre. I loved the imagination and sense of fun that pervaded the book, even when tackling difficult and intensely personal issues.
My last read of the month was Suzette Haden Elgin’s ‘Native Tongue’. It’s one of those books that shaped me, its a book that I love beyond measure, and it’s a book that seems to have disappeared from my shelves. There’s a solution to that, I bought it again. Reading this book was like sinking into a hot bath.
The re-read did not disappoint, the characters were warm and funny and relatable, the story was multi layered and fascinating, and the ending was pretty much perfect. On to Book 2 of the trilogy …
Sat 29th March – Stall at D&D craft and artisan fair, Walkden Town Centre shopping centre, Bolton Road, Walkden
Sat 26th April – Stall at D&D craft and artisan fair, Walkden Town Centre shopping centre, Bolton Road, Walkden
Sun 27th April noon – 4 pm, stall at craft fair at Glasson Dock Village Hall, Bodie Hill, Glasson Dock, LA2 0DN + BOOKS
Sat 3rd May, stall at Book Fair at Scorton Village Hall.
In the spirit of supporting my local library, I borrowed Isabel Allende’s ‘The Wind Knows My Name’. This story of generations of lost children, refugees, murdered parents and government led racism and misogyny is harrowing. Comfort comes in the actions of brave and loving adults who come together to help as much as they can. Samuel escapes Nazis and grows up in England, a beneficiary of the Kindertransport. Letitia and her father return from a trip to find their entire village murdered by government militia. Anita and her mother flee from a murderous man but are separated by USAian government policies. Their stories draw together slowly as hidden links and themes become clear.
By the time I’d finished the Allende book, the three sequels to Joan Slonczewski’s ‘A Door Into Ocean’ had arrived. I didn’t finish the fourth book in the series until earlier this month, but I’ll post them all in this month’s blog.
It’s entirely possible that late 20th Century feminist science fiction is my favourite genre. I felt truly happy whilst reading this book, and am slightly annoyed that it’s taken me this long to find out that ‘A Door Into Ocean’ has sequels. It’s like finding out that your favourite frock has pockets, but you didn’t know until the 20th time of wearing it.
So, Daughter of Elysium … in depth exploration of the problem of wanting to extend human life but also to have kids, lots of kids. Philosophical exploration of ‘compassion’ and who it’s owed to. What is sentience? Who is human?
To come from the first chapter of Book One, with pairs of Sharers visiting Valedon, twin planet to their own Shora, to decide if the human inhabitants were ‘human’ by Sharer criteria, to the last chapter of Book 2 where ‘humanity’ has just got a whole lot bigger, has been a vastly entertaining and interesting ride. I absolutely loved this book.
The third book in the Elysium Cycle has a much simpler plot than the first two books. Again, Slonczewski explores what it means to be a person, and at the same time looks at the evolution of individuals, species and societies. Two centuries on from the events of Daughter of Elysium, the story stays connected to the previous book via three long lived characters and a generational link with the Bronze Skyans who were central to that story.
Genetics and biochemistry again play a big role, along with more questioning of the ethics of terraforming.
I absolutely devoured this book.
And so to the final book in the series, which I’ve read 25 years late.
Brain Plague takes us back to Valedon, the planet where it all started. Sentient alien microbes have found that the human brain provides a wonderful environment, and they find a way to communicate with their hosts. For these tiny creatures, a year is just a day for their host, but they find a way to communicate. They are explorers and would be colonists, and symbionts with their hosts, helping them to work and create. Unfortunately, not all the colonies are beneficial to their hosts, they have discovered that manipulating a human brain to provide a dopamine rush can turn a human into a willing slave to unscrupulous microbial ‘masters’.
When a young artist is inoculated with a refugee colony, her life changes forever, and she finds new friends both within her own body, and with the community of ‘carriers’. She is recruited onto a committee that guards carriers against rogue microbes, and finds that she must act, as the brain plague masters grow bolder and more desperate in their need to recruit new host bodies.
I have loved reading these books, and will have a hell of a book hangover over the next few days. Late twentieth century feminist hard sf is very much for the win. The series explores what it is to be human, it looks at speciesism, environmental destruction, the inevitable conflict between longevity, fertility and environmental protection, and then brings the series to an awesome conclusion by turning human beings INTO the environment that needs to be protected from intelligent microbes with an overwhelmingly ‘human’ urge to breed and explore. I wish there were more books in this series.
I read a lot of books, and published one, in December 2024. Silverwood Rising was published halfway between my 61st birthday and Christmas Day, a gift to myself that I’m very happy with. I celebrated by reading a lot.
My first read of December was a short one – The Stillness in You by Katharina Unverricht. This is her first novel, and I hope it isn’t her last one. It’s a lovely story, full of hope and optimism. We meet Grace as she reaches a crossroads in her life. It’s a comfortable life, as seen from the outside, but Grace needs more. She flees her life and finds Josie, an older woman who takes her under her wing and finds that together they have the courage to reach for what they need.
From a slim indie tale, I moved onto one of Ellen Datlow’s horror anthologies. ‘Fears : Tales of Psychological Horror’. We kick off with ‘Bait’ by Simon Bestwick, a well constructed and expertly told version of the tale of a woman who has turned the tables on predatory men. Annie Neugebauer’s ‘The Pelt’ is a claustrophobic story set in a wide open space, which struck me as both skillful and memorable. John Malerman’s ‘A Sunny Disposition’ puts a child in an awkward position as his grandfather reminisces about a long marriage and a much missed grandmother. The title of Dale Baileys ‘The Donner Party’ does somewhat give the game away. I’m sure I’ve read this story before, or one very much like it, perhaps in another anthology. It’s not the only story in this collection to give off strong 1970s Pan Book of Horrors vibes, but it is the first. Steve Duffy’s ‘White Noise in a White Room’ deals with the dehumanisation of those involved in war. Weirdly, it reminded me in some ways of Third and Fourth Doctor era Dr Who stories, maybe it’s the settings … anyway, I got some real Dark U.N.I.T hints from this story. Margo Lanagan’s ‘Singing My Sister Down’ is one of my favourites from this collection, it’s a story about an execution, told with love and pity. Bracken MacLeod’s sparsely told ‘Back Seat’ has a plot born of equal parts Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King. Tim Nickel’s ‘England and Nowhere’ is one of the weirder stories in the book, I did struggle with it, perhaps I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Stuart O’Nan’s ‘Endless Summer’ is a story about a serial killer. Priya Sharma’s ‘My Mother’s Ghosts’ is another of my favourites in this collection, it’s a tense story of family loyalties viewed through an unusual lens. ‘The Wink and the Gun’ by John Patrick Higgins establishes an atmosphere of brooding menace. Livia Llewellyn’s ‘One of These Nights’ is a creepy little Mean Girls story that I liked a lot. Laird Barron’s ‘LD50’ is the story that this anthology was made for, originally self published on his blog and revived for the delectation and delight of new readers. I would love to read more about the central character in this story. Theresa Delucci’s ‘Cavity’ is another beautifully written study that iterates all the murderers the protagonist has met. I loved it. Sharon Gosling’s ‘Souvenirs’ is a story with an underlying horror that we can all understand, especially as we get towards the end of our lives … but there’s an extra horror, a treat at the end. ‘Where are you going? Where have you been’ by Joyce Carol Oates is an utterly terrifying story that traps the reader in a spiral of hope and hopelessness. Ray Cluley’s ‘The Wrong Shark’ is based on enough facts about the shooting of ‘Jaws’ to make the ending hit hard. I loved Carole Johnstone’s ’21 Brooklands’, it’s the kind of story I’d love to write. Hailey Piper’s ‘Unkindly Girls’ just made me sad. Charles Birkin’s ‘A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’ has been dragged out of its timezone, to poor effect. The last story in the book, Stephen Graham Jones’ ‘Teeth’ is a longer story that takes its time but is worth it in the end.
From psychological horror to cosy crime is a bit of a leap, but I attempted it by borrowing Belinda Bauer’s ‘Exit’ from my local library. I have a tenuous connection with Bauer, which was why I went off genre out of a sense of curiosity. This is a very cosy crime novel indeed, nearly everyone is trying to do the right thing and the main characters are as sweet as sugar. It’s amusing, well plotted and kept my interest throughout.
I returned to my usual genre with Quicksilver by Dean Koontz, another library book. Honestly, I have a tbr pile three feet high at home, but I do feel a moral urge to use the library now and again. It’s sadly lacking in genre fiction though, and this was the most promising find of the day. I am not particularly a fan of Koontz, but decided to give his books another chance, because I did like Odd Thomas. I got a quarter of the way through Quicksilver and realised that my tbr pile was right there next to me. I DNFd this book. I don’t often DNF. Looking at the other reviews, I think I may have picked up the wrong Koontz book. Not for me, your mileage my vary, etc. etc.
I keep buying N K Jemisin’s ‘How Long ’til Black Future Month’, then losing the copy. I don’t mind, it’s worth buying several times. Last month I finally got round to reading it. It’s one of those things where you leave your favourite food on your plate until last. I’ll donate my extra copies to the charity stall and hope that they introduce more people to her wonderful stories. My review is brief but heartfelt. Pure, classic science fiction short stories. Some are set in the worlds of Jemisin’s novels, others aren’t. They’re all great reads.
Last year’s final book of the year was John Scalzi’s ‘Starter Villain’, so when I saw ‘The Kaiju Preservation Society’ just sitting there in the library, all Christmassy and fun, I had to check it out. I’m glad I did. It turned into my penultimate read of 2024, which means that I now have to continue the trend next year. Someone remind to obtain a Scalzi book which can be my third last read of 2025.
This book is an absolute romp, with sf in jokes aplenty. So, basically, there’s an alternate universe with nuclear powered monsters who like to browse on actinides. When we start letting off nuclear bombs, they bimble through the dimensional barrier for a snack. Hence, Godzilla. The KPS is set up to maintain a research station in the alternate universe and look after the monsters. They recruit their staff organically, from people they know and like, leading to a good working environment, if you ignore the fact that everything wants to eat them. Naturally, there are other very nasty people around who would fuck both universes over for a goddamn percentage. And … go.
My very last book of the year was a re-read. Tom Cox’s ’21st Century Yokel’. I’ve been reading a lot of Tom Cox’s rambling ramblings recently, mostly on his Substack blog. It’s always a pleasure, and I find nothing to disagree with it and everything to enjoy. He sparks joy. This was a library book read, and it’s possible that this book is the same one that I borrowed six and half years ago, although the stamp dates don’t line up. Perhaps I auto renewed it? It would be nice if it was the same book. I know this isn’t a review, but Cox’s work is fairly hard to review. He just rambles on and keeps his readers entertained and amused and makes us think.
So, that was 2024. Roll on 2025.
On Friday 20th December 2024 my fourth book will be published. It’s the fourth and final book in the Ransomed Hearts series. No spoilers, I promise.
I have mixed feelings, on some level I didn’t want to get to this stage, because it could be the end of my journey as a self published writer. Self publishing is expensive, and right now I don’t have an income or a lot to fall back on. I got a windfall, some years ago, and decided that some of it would be spent getting my stories out into the world. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot more stories, but my deal with myself only involved these four books. I say ‘mixed feelings’ because on another level I’m proud of the books, and the reception they’ve had. People have been asking for book 4, and are invested in the characters. Those characters are my imaginary friends, the people who have populated my internal world for twenty or more years. I’m glad that I’ve told their story, and that they’re now known outside my own head.
It’s over twenty years since I started writing the short story that would become Ransomed Hearts and Hearts’ Home. It started with a scene that’s barely in the book now, which came from a dream that wouldn’t go away. A werewolf, hunting dark city backstreets, eating rats and feeling that she was in the right place. The dream expanded into my waking life and I had mild hallucinations about this woman. She didn’t have a name. It expanded, she met other werewolves, and we started to find out more about their lives. It finished at about seventy thousand words, and I realised that it had a plot, characters, a subplot and all sorts of interesting things going on. On impulse, I sent the first chapter to a small press. I hadn’t even edited it. It was literally fresh off the keyboard, and my husband was the only other person who’d read it. He’d sat up all night reading it, which was a real compliment.
To my surprise and delight, my email found one of the volunteer readers for the small press that very night, and she asked for the full story. The following morning I got a message from her saying that she’d been up all night reading it, and that she was going to take the story to the boss. Well, that was easy!
Later that week, it transpired that there was no space in the schedule for another book, but the small press did like it, and one of the editors had volunteered to work with me to improve it, to get it ready for next year’s schedule. He said it was too short, and asked for another twenty or thirty thousand words. He recommended changing the point of view to third person. And as we were working on these things, he left the industry. I hope he’s doing really well, because that advice was absolutely on the nose. Unfortunately his change in direction lost me the opportunity at the small press.
Xan wasn’t originally in the book, and neither was Joyce. They were added because I needed to enlarge the scope of the book. Ironically, they seem to be the characters that most readers want more of, perhaps because I was a slightly more experienced writer when they came into my life.
So, I wrote my book, and I couldn’t find another publisher, or an agent. I was working part time back then, and volunteering pretty much full time for a national cat rescue charity. Finding time to write or edit was difficult. And then, I developed gallstones. Gallstones made me into a writer. I was up all night, most nights, with the pain, and I wrote to distract myself from it. I rewrote the first book, I wrote it from two different perspectives, which made it grow and grow. Eventually, I conceded that it was two books, Hearts’ Home being the second one.
I carried on writing, I wrote a sequel, which is now Silverwood Rising. It carries on directly from the events of Heart’s Home. You can view Ransomed Hearts, Hearts’ Home, and Silverwood Rising as one story, spanning three books.
I was too busy and tired to look for agents or publishers, but I did go to a subsidised creative writing class at the Continental pub in Preston. It was organised by Jane Brunning, of the sadly missed Lancashire Writing Hub. Speakers included Nicholas Royle of Nightjar Press, and Zoe Lambert, now a lecturer in creative writing at Lancaster University. It was there that I met the editor Dea Parkin, the proprietor of the editing consultancy Fiction Feedback, along with her friend Victoria Walsh. Victoria is a brilliant writer, but she’s quiet at the moment, writing wise. Other writers on the course were Dana Nadeau and Alan Whelan. Alan’s tales about his travels were fascinating and funny, and I would recommend his books.
In the wake of that course, I joined a small creative writing group at the same venue, and started to go to the Word Soup spoken word events there. I watched and listened to David Hartley, Carys Bray, Emma Decent, Fat Roland, Sarah-Clare Conlon and a host of other talented writers and performers who blew my tiny mind. I never knew, I mean, I never knew that that kind of thing went on in the dark corners of pubs in north west England. It was there that I stood up and read my own fictional stuff out loud for the first time. I have a choppy academic background, of sorts, I’ve written and delivered a postgraduate course, I’ve taught undergraduates, I have never had any trouble standing up in front of a class and teaching. This was different, this was my own heart that I was holding up for inspection. It was terrifying and exhilarating and my hands trembled like a trapped dove. I was hooked.
I wrote short stories, flash fiction, poetry. I read Writers’ Review and submitted a short story, which was printed and earned me £100. To this day it’s the most lucrative thing I’ve ever written. I joined Twitter, and ‘met’ the author, broadcaster and anthologist Hannah Priest, who under her nom de plume of Hannah Kate was putting together an anthology, Wolf Girls, about female werewolves. I wrote a story for it, in the same universe as my novels, and submitted it. It was accepted. Over the next few years I wrote three more stories for Hannah’s anthologies, you can find them in Impossible Spaces, Hauntings, and Nothing.
And the world of Ransomed Hearts and Silverwood kept on growing. There are many stories set after the events of Silverwood Rising, but the story that I needed to tell you all was the tale of Frances and Anthony, of Miriam and Tomas, and of how they met and what became of them. It was a story of the 1960s and two young men who wanted their music to shine, but who had to hide. It was a love story, and a story about twins, and a story about trying to survive the hate of a ridiculous yet powerful force. So I wrote Fight for the Future and once it was finished, I knew that I wanted to publish it.
By this time, the writing group at the Continental had folded, but Victoria Walsh had kindly introduced me to Chorley and District Writing Circle, usually known as Chorley Writers. They met in the upstairs room of the Hartwood Hall pub, on the A6 just outside Chorley. It was there that I met Dea Parkin again, along with a host of other writers including the late, great Dave Harrison. Many of the people I met there are still in my life, as friends and fellow writers. For reasons too boring to go into, I left Chorley Writers a year or so ago, and am now a founding member of Chorley Creative Writing Collective.
Chorley Writers had traditionally concentrated on writing, and on allowing new writers to share their writing. We critiqued kindly. We had guest speakers who advised on description, research, setting a scene, point of view, grammar and punctuation, and all the things a writer needs to know about. We ran events and learned about self publishing. Dave set up his own little publishing company and began to put his own Jenny Parker books out there. He really wanted to write sf and fantasy, and when he was diagnosed with cancer, he threw himself into writing the books that became the Tyrant fantasy trilogy, and also Anomaly, his sf novel. Dave’s gone now, and I miss his humour and gentleness at every writers group meeting we have. There is no doubt that he helped me to decide to self publish.
My husband, Adrian, fully encouraged me to get the books into the light of day. We agreed that I’d publish the first four books, and see how things went from there. I paid Dea Parkin’s Fiction Feedback to critique Fight for the Future and got two contradictory critiques back. The readers had very different reactions to the book, but both agreed that it was worth publishing. I took the sometimes passionate responses as a good thing, but then developed a holy terror of taking the next step.
For the next few years, I avoided the subject of publishing the books, although I did keep writing and rewriting more of the stories. It was a big step. For one thing, people would read them. That was a scary thought. What if ‘they’ didn’t like them. Even worse, what if they liked them and wanted more? I wrote a story for the Manchester Speculative Fiction Group, for their anthology ‘Revolutions 2’. It was accepted and published, and I was so happy about it that I started to think seriously about publishing again. I contacted Fiction Feedback again, and sent them Fight for the Future to be edited.
Also, around this time, I left my part time job. I’d been there for fifteen years, it had lost its shine, and to be fair, it wasn’t a job that anyone should be doing unless they were 100% committed to doing it very well indeed. I think that for those fifteen years, I did do it to the very best of my ability. I hope so. My husband was doing well in his job, and we agreed that I’d concentrate on my writing and my voluntary work. (And the housework, of course, I’d concentrate on the housework …) The truth was, there was enough of the voluntary work to expand into any free time I had at all, and I found it very hard to disentangle myself from it. The other volunteers were my friends, the work was challenging, worthwhile and interesting, and I was doing a lot of writing as part of my role. I wrote the newsletter, I did the social media, I sent out letters in reply to queries. I was the main contact with the press. I even got involved with running the craft stall. I was busy. The book didn’t get the attention it needed, and the edit sat in my inbox, glowering at me. I was too scared to take the next step, and I might have stayed too scared for the rest of my life. Despite this, I got involved with Lancashire Writers Association and What’s Your Story Chorley.
Then the pandemic arrived. It touched every life didn’t it? Some died, many lost loved ones, some were disabled for a long, long time. Adrian and I are introverts, we don’t like mingling at the best of times, so had no problems at all in avoiding other people, socially distancing in public, wearing masks and washing our hands at any given opportunity. In a household of two, we had every opportunity to avoid the virus, and we took them all. Adrian started to work at home, and I got stuck into the edits, engaged a cover designer (the amazing Ravven) and finally published Fight for the Future. It was well received by those who read it, put it that way. To date I’ve sold a couple of hundred copies, but I know that people are wary of starting to read an unfinished series, and now that the series is finished, I’m hoping that things will take off.
Then I had to tackle books 2 and 3, the first things I’d ever written, and the story that I’d rewritten from the perspective of several characters and from third and first point of view. I had half a million words. I had to get rid of some of them. The first step was to establish a cutting point to split the book into two. It was an obvious point that marked not only a major event, but a change in focus. Again, no spoilers. Making that cut was a big event, because it gave me a much shorter book to concentrate on, and when I finally got it back from the editor I was very happy with it. Ravven wasn’t available to do the cover, but the talented Jon Stubbington stepped into the gap and made two brilliant covers for books 2 and 3, keeping to the themes established for book 1. Ransomed Hearts came out eighteen months after Fight for the Future, and I set to work on Book 3. It didn’t have a title. I’ll tell you a secret, I am very last minute about titles. It’s always the last thing to happen. Until I have to actually ask a cover artist to design a cover, I usually don’t have a title. Eventually, it came to me, Hearts’ Home was a little bit twee, but it fit. This was the hardest book to get ready for publication, at a whopping 110 thousand words or more, it had multiple viewpoints, changing points of view, and a lot of story telling. It took nearly two years to bring it to publication, and by this time my readers and I were all ready for the last part of the story.
And so, Silverwood Rising. It was written, it had been written and rewritten for years. It was 150 thousand words long, and in desperate need of a good trim. I sat down and went to work, cutting out scenes, pages, paragraphs, sentences and words until it was only a little bit longer than Hearts’ Home. I sent it to Dea Parkin for the edit, and despite the anxiety about ‘being finished’, I edited and formatted it. Ravven was already booked to do the cover, and I’m delighted with it. I’m proud of my series and hope that you love it.
If it sells well enough, there will be more.
