Elspeth's made a film!

There’s been lots of feasting, festivity and jollity recently, as the local church celebrated its 175^th anniversary.  There were – and are – various parties, masses and events, but the one that’s dominated the Gordon-Smith household is that Elspeth made a film, which was shown at a big party with the Bishop and other luminaries. 

I think it’s really good.  She asked people to send in photos, then linked them together in themes, with an interview from a parishioner played over the pictures, together with a music soundtrack and the whole thing moves along at a cracking pace. 

That pace came from the editing!  Naturally, if people are speaking naturally, they don’t (usually, at any rate) talk in coherent, polished phrases without hesitation or deviation.  I know; I typed up some of the transcripts of the interviews so Elspeth could get a script together and believe me, I know!  The trick is to make it sound natural while cutting out all the bits that would drive you mental if you had to listen to a recording.

It was an interesting exercise, typing up the transcripts.  I write a lot of dialogue and try hard to get it as natural as possible.  But, like the edited version of Elspeth’s film soundtrack, it’s an impression of what’s natural rather than the real thing.

Anyway, take a look for yourself.  (As you can tell, I’m bursting with pride about the entire thing!) 

It’s on Youtube and the title is The Parish.  Stalybridge

I hope you enjoy it!

Can reading fairy tales make you dumb?

Richard Dawkins ruffled some feathers this week by questioning the value of reading fairy stories to children. Buried under the attack in fairy stories is, of course, an attack upon religion, which, for someone who doesn't believe, Professor Dawkins seems morbidly interested in.  I'm not quite so sure why he wants everyone to agree with him - safety in numbers perhaps - but he clearly relishes being controversial

Well, religion is another issue; I don't honesty think anyone has ever been rationally argued into believing or disbelieving.  You either tend to believe or not, then find arguments which support your point of view.

Do fairy tales support a belief in religion?  (This is religion in its broadest sense, a belief in the supernatural and supernatural agencies).

It sounds as if he has a point but... Well, I don't think so. After all, I learned at an early age that Santa and the Tooth Fairy weren't real.  I never did get to the Magic Faraway Tree, find Narnia at the back of the Wardrobe (I looked!  Often!) however many old oil lamps I rubbed, no genies appeared, there were no fairies at the bottom of the garden, Middle Earth was mysteriously missing from history books and by the time Harry Potter turned up on platform nine and three quarters, I had more than an inkling that JK Rowling had made up a story and wasn't merely reporting facts

I like dragons.  Not for pets, you understand.  

By rights I should have rejected the supernatural in disappointed disgust. It's not true, is it?  No.  It's fiction.  And the world of magic and myth isn't true either in the did-it-really-happen sense. But what actually happened is that I went onto to enjoy a whole world of stories (fiction means it's made up, after all) such as Terry Pratchett's Discworld and virtually anything with dragons in it. Readers, even young readers, are more sophisticated than a straightforward correlation between Real=Respect would have you believe.  And the more you read, the more sophisticated you become. 

Anything can happen between the covers of a book.  Be warned! 

And religion?  Well, I still go to church, even though I don't believe in fairies.

Nice review

There was a nice review of After The Exhibition published in Booklist the other day.
Here it is!

Dashing Major Jack Haldean returns in this classic British murder mystery set in London between the wars. The story begins as Jack and his friend, Bill Rackham, a chief inspector at Scotland Yard, attend an exhibition organized by Lythewell and Askern, a respected firm dealing in church art. Colin Askern, son of one of the owners, is there with a young woman, Betty Wingate, a distant relation of his stepmother. The next day, Betty appears at Scotland Yard, claiming she’s seen the dead body of a woman at Beech View Cottage, which is near the Lythewell’s home and where the mysterious Signora Bianchi is staying. Everyone thinks Betty has had a bad dream, but Haldean, already smitten by Betty, promises to investigate. In a case that turns incredibly complex, Haldean finds himself involved with murder, blackmail, mistaken identities, and a hidden fortune. Fans of Agatha Christie and dedicated Anglophiles will enjoy this entertaining and well-wrought traditional mystery, which will keep readers guessing until the very last page.

Dedication

            This is a problem I never expected to have.  Don’t get me wrong;  it’s a nice problem, but it’s still a bit of a puzzle.  I’ve dedicated books to my Other Half (aka Peter) to my Dad, to my sister, to a couple of old mates and to various of the offspring. Fine.  Good.   It’s a nice way of saying “Hi” and it’s a great thing to be able to do.  And, I imagine I’ll carry on doing that as and when the moment arises.

            But with the latest, After The Exhibition, I wanted to dedicate it to one of my literary heroes.  The trouble is, PG Wodehouse is dead and so, come to that, is Agatha Christie.  Which is very inconvenient of them.  So who else...?

            Well, there’s one author who I think is the bee’s knees who is still, happily, very much among us, and that’s JK Rowling. 

            Now, stop me if I’ve mentioned this before, but I loooooove Harry Potter.  I love the way the story’s set up, how the whole arc continues over seven books, how we’re pulled into to a totally believable other world that you could swear runs alongside our own.  I love the humour, the wit and the suspense. I love the characters and the plot, the quirkiness and the whole vast richness of the world.

            More than that, it’s a family affair.  I was introduced to Harry Potter by the girls when they were about ten or so.  From then on, discussing Harry was (and is) a conversation we could always have.  For instance, when Helen was seeking a distraction from a fearsomely academic essay on social anthropology she was writing, she turned up an internet Harry Potter quiz and we all had a happy quarter of an hour or so discussing wizards.

            So, I dedicated After The Exhibition to JK Rowling. I know she loves classic mysteries and the Robert Galbraith series is pretty good, so I thought there was an odds on chance she’d enjoy it.  Naturally I sent her a copy.  And, on Friday, I received a really friendly hand-written letter from her thanking me.

            That is just one of the nicest things ever. That’s special.  And it’s going in a frame.  Wow.  Life is good.

            PS:  so is After The Exhibition!

Take the Pascal Moon away from the first moon you thought of…

            Depending on where you live, you might not agree, but here in Manchester, the weather’s been great.  (That’s a sentence you don’t often hear!)   I’m only hoping it lasts until Easter Sunday so we can get out in the garden!

            Easter is, of course, the season of new life.  The name is the last remnant of the worship of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the Spring, Estre or Oestre.  Easter Bunnies are the scaled down version of the Celtic sacred hares.  Exactly why Easter bunnies should bring eggs, I’m not sure, but I think it’s very obliging of them.

Talking of bunnies, Jessica, the eldest, got a baby rabbit.  He's called Buttons and is soooo cute.  I don't know if he'll produce an egg, but it seems unlikely

Every so often someone has a grumble about the way Easter moves about.  In church terms, this is a Movable Feast. (Yep, I know it sounds like a picnic) celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

However – pay attention at the back there -  the spring equinox is fixed for this purpose as March 21 and the "full moon" is actually the paschal moon, which is based on 84-year "paschal cycles" established in the sixth century, would you believe. It rarely corresponds to the astronomical or actual full moon.  Just to make life even more interesting, the Eastern churches, such as the Greek and Russian orthodox, count it up the same way, but use the Julian calendar (on which March 21 is April 3) and a 19-year paschal cycle.

            I think I’ll just check the calendar same as usual and celebrate at the same time as everyone else.

The new life bit is absolutely unmissable though. The garden’s gone mental.  Only a few weeks ago, there were bare patches on the so-called lawn and now it looks (from a distance) green.  All over. Mostly.

  Mind you, I did help it along. To the intense amusement of my Other Half, I bough a pair of rigid plastic sandals with huge spikes sticking out the bottom and walked around the grass, aerating the lawn.  Apparently grass-roots like a bit of fresh air, which makes you wonder why it grows underground.

  I mean, if  the roots likes air that much, why not stick them above ground to take a breather now and again, rather than waiting for someone with huge spikes sticking out of the soles of their feet to come and give it a dose of the much needed?  It seems like a rum state of affairs to me and one that might have given Darwin a bit of pause for thought.  It’s hardly survival of the fittest, is it?  Although, by the time two dogs and various humans have romped over it, it’s more a case of the survival of the flattest.

            Happy Easter everyone!  I hope you get lots of eggs.

           

Nice weekend

Sometimes everything just pans out to a great few days.  Thursday evening was spent listening to John Sackville read A Hundred Thousand Dragons, my new audiobook which I downloaded from Amazon’s Audible range. 

It’s always a bit nerve wracking listening to your own work being read, but John nailed it.  I honestly couldn’t be happier with the way he got the characters across.  Result!

Friday contained a very unexpected treat.  Would you, said Jessica, the eldest, down the phone, like to come to the Hilton in Manchester for a champagne afternoon tea with me and James?  Well, you know, twist my arm...  But why, O child?  I enquired.  What’s brought this opulence into your (and my) life?  To cut a long story short, she’d been given a voucher for the tea for a birthday present and Sarah and Nigel, who should have been going with her, couldn’t make it.  It’s an ill wind... So me and Angela, who happened to be there for the afternoon, arrayed ourselves in appropriate garments and the four of us had an hour of complete indulgence amongst the champagne, tiny sandwiches and yummy cakes. 

I don't know why I look so startled.  I was hugely happy!

More champagne, Mum? asked Jessica.  I was steadily working my way through the different teas.  I’d done Green Gunpowder and Darjeeling, had tried the peppermint and was considering the jasmine.  Tea or champagne?  It’s my perfect dilemma.

The reason why Angela was around this weekend was that we were going to the Big Do at the BBC’s site in Media City, Salford.

Who's calling?

  The highlight of the day was a studio tour where we all got to play in a radio drama studio.  If you’ve ever wondered why the pages of the script don’t rustle on the radio (I have) it’s because they’re on laminated paper and don’t make a sound as you turn over the script.  Want to know what makes the sound of beating wings, as a flock of birds rise up from crumbling towers?  That’s about seven pairs of rubber gloves tied together with an elastic band and flapped vigorously.  A door shutting is, however, a real door.  There’s one in the studio in a door frame. 

Video killed the radio star....

One really weird part of the radio studio was the Dead Room or, to give it its proper title, the Anechoic Chamber.  It’s a L-shaped room where the walls and ceiling consist of hundreds of foam blocks in various shapes, which completely absorb and deaden the sound.  The BBC’s Dead Room is actually a semi-anechoic chamber, as the floor is tiled.  Because there’s nothing for the sound waves to bounce off, it’s perfect for replicating the sound of outdoors.  (There’s nothing, in a field, say, for your voice to bounce off).  Add a few birds or a cow mooing on a soundtrack and it sounds as if your characters are chatting in the great wide open spaces.  The L shape makes another effect possible.  Say you want someone to fall off a cliff, for instance, and the noise of their protest will fall away (“Arrrrrrrrrghhhh!”)  as they do.  Actors object to falling off cliffs.  (I know, I know, but you can’t get the staff.) So, in the Dead Room, if someone runs round the corner yelling, their voice fades away in a perfect Doppler effect, exactly like someone falling.  Weird.

It’s an odd sensation, being in the Dead Room, with the sound being so – well – dead.  I found a headache starting after about five minutes or so.  Apparently the complete Anechoic Chambers (the floor is foam and you walk on a net suspended over it) that are used in industry to test noise are a bit more than weird.  The time spent in them is limited to about fifteen minutes as, after that, you can hear the circulation of your own blood and the sound of your own lungs, etc., which is very odd indeed.

The weekend finished with us taking advantage of the hour change and the weather with a walk in the park, where the  old stocks have been replaced.  Well, you’ve got to do it, haven’t you?

     

After The Exhibition

I was expecting my brother to call – he’s a real early bird – so I didn’t think twice when the doorbell rang at quarter past eight in the morning.  I put down my cup of tea and opened the door (still in my PJ’s) to find not Mike but a courier, holding a box of what I recognised straight away as books. 

I beamed so happily at the man he blinked.  “There must be,” he said, glancing down at the box, “something nice in here.”

There was.  After The Exhibition all crisp and new and looking just gorrrjuss.  Jack’s latest mystery takes place after an exhibition of church art in London, where various events, complications, machinations and mysteries are set in progress.  Church art, as I’m well aware, doesn’t by itself suggest murder, mayhem and sudden death; I hope it might – after you’ve read the book! 

Film Night

On Friday, ITV showed Practical Magic.  It had a great cast – Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman – and the premise looked good.  A family of New England witches want to rid themselves of a curse thoughtlessly laid on them back in Sixteen-O-Whenever that any man any of the girls in the family fell in love with would die.  (There didn’t seem to have ever been any wizards in the family; the progeny seemed to be exclusively girls.)

Well, so far, so good and the first few minutes were definitely played for laughs in a sort of Hocus Pocus way.  Then Real Life intruded as the two sisters, Sensible Sally and Good-time Gillian, have to face the problem of a bloke picked up by GT Gillian who is what you might call overly intrusive in his attentions.  Sensible Sally bumps him off and then the two sisters, horrified at the thought of murder, try and bring him back to life. 

The trouble is, that the film couldn’t decide if it was a comedy or a horror.  It veered uneasily between both, undercutting itself at every point.  The moral for writers?  Decide what the tone is and stick to it. Obviously, use comedy, suspense and even horror to liven up the story but the overall tone should be very clearly one thing or another.

A film there wasn’t any doubt about is Captain Phillips, which Peter and I saw last night together with the eldest, Jessica, accompanied by a pizza and a bottle of wine.  Tom Hanks gives a wonderful performance, utterly believable as the professional merchant captain whose ship is hijacked by Somali pirates.  The film buzzes from the word go and cracks along.  A great way to spend a Saturday night!  

The voice of Jack

John Sackville.  He’s an actor – a really good one – and he phoned me on M|onday.  Why?  Because he’s going to be reading A Hundred Thousand Dragons, Trouble Brewing and Off The Record for Audible, Amazon’s audio book arm. So, while I was shoving Lucky, the three legged dog off the sofa – I was sitting on his sofa in his place and he resented it and showed it by trying to sit on my knee – I was discussing Literature with some serious talent.   John starts recording Dragons on Friday and wanted to check the pronunciation of names and the various accents the characters have.  Here’s his websites if you want to know more:

www.johnsackville.com
www.theenglishvoice.com

I really appreciated the phone call.  It’s easy, when you’re writing a character, to hear the voice in your head, but that’s no guarantee that the same voice will come across to the reader.  As a matter of fact, it had, more or less, as far as John was concerned.  I’m really looking forward to hear him  read the books.  I must admit (in my dreams!) that so far, my choice of an actor to play Jack has more or less started and stopped with Benedict Cumberbatch.  (After all, he plays virtually anything else on screen that isn’t being played by Martin Freeman, so why not?) However, call me fickle, if you like, but John Sackville looks the part as well as sounds it.

I appreciated the call, too, because it showed what a professional approach he has.  In contrast, poor old Elspeth, daughter no. 3, has just written a script – a really good one – for a music video, a script that really added to the story of the song.  She got an email today from the video company, saying that the singer decided months ago not to go with the company.  She forget to tell them.  So that’s all that development work down the pan, which is frustrating, to say the least.  This was the singer’s debut, and it’s not the best of starts.  However, the company liked what Elspeth came up with, so who knows?  The author of the next YouTube sensation might be about to do her thing...!

After The Exhibition is out next month.  Let the countdown commence.  I’ll have to have something to take my mind off the gaping void the ending of the Olympics is going to leave in my life.  At least Britain’s (Scotland’s) men got through to the semis in the curling.  It’s like snooker on ice, but with lots more shouting and is totally gripping.   C'mon, Scotland!

  

Don't Try This At Home. Or anywhere else

            I’ve been thinking about poisons recently.  Not, you understand, for personal use, but professionally, so to speak.  I remember ages ago now, at the long defunct Dead On Deansgate crime writing conference, hearing four forensic scientists speak on a panel.   One and all, they were dismissive about the idea of someone being bumped off in modern times by poison. “In thirty years,” stated one scientist dismissively, “I’ve never seen a single case of deliberate poisoning.”    I’d never thought there could be fashions in murder, but there obviously are. Poisoning is soooo last century. It’s so outdated, arsenic might as well be the new beige.

            And yet...  I dunno, but I’d think I’d like the aforesaid F.S,’s to at least bear the possibility in mind when confronted with the mortal remains. 

            You can’t nip into your local branch of Boots and ask for poison, admittedly.  In 1861, the Offences Against The Person act was passed which deals with poisoning. It covers the possibilities of causing death, grievous bodily harm or even – I like this – annoyance.

            Yep, I’d be annoyed.  I’d as far as to say I’d be downright tetchy, if not a little vexed.

            Poisoning was certainly a possibility that medical practitioners had to bear in mind in years gone by. The Ancient Greeks and Romans seemed never happier amongst the deadly doses, favouring a natural way of causing unnatural death.  Claudius, for instance, was done in with mushrooms (it was Mrs Claudius who did the deed) but hemlock, belladonna. laburnum and foxgloves were all pressed into service.

            Perhaps the go-to brew of choice as a relative-ridder, however, was aconite.  So prevalent was its use that the Emperor Trajan banned its cultivation.

Aconite is a beautiful plant, which can be bought readily in garden centres and online.  It’s other names are monkshood  and (I have to admit, I think this sounds cool) wolfsbane.  Apparently it used to be used against wolves and Severus Snape includes it in the potion he whips up to prevent Remus Lupin succumbing to the full moon and turning into a werewolf.  It’s deadly.  Seriously, it’s acutely poisonous and not something I’d want growing in my garden. In 1856, two Catholic clergymen, Fr James Gordon and Fr Angus MacKenzie Eskdale died in Dingwall, Scotland, after eating an aconite sauce.  The housekeeper had used the bulbs, thinking they were horseradish. In 1882, a Dr Lamson slipped an inconvenient relative a slice of Dundee cake with aconite.  Andre Noble, the Canadian actor, died after mistaking aconite for an edible plant.  More worryingly – and bang up to date – if you put monkshood seeds into Google you’ll come across the chilling tale of someone who is feeling very ill after eating a plate of leftovers from the fridge.  They found an empty packet of aconite seeds...

Finished the proof!

If you look on Amazon you’ll see the new book, After The Exhibition.  It’s out in March and I’ve just finished reading through the proofs.  And, although I say it myself, I think it’s really good, with lots of twisty turns and general bafflement as to what’s what.

The downside of finishing a book, though, is that I can’t put off any longer thinking about a new one and thinking’s really hard.  Yes, I know X has bumped off Y, but that’s only the start of the story.  The chances are X isn’t who they say they are and Y probably isn’t either, and they all have to have a reason for acting as they do.  And what are they doing anyway? And where do they live and how do they earn their living, etc, etc.

The great thing to get sorted out in this sort of story is what does the villain want.  Now that’s a bit of reverse psychology, as (naturally) our attention is focused on the detective, whether it be Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Jack Haldean, and it’s their thoughts and feelings that we follow.  However, behind it all, like the god in the machine, is the malefactor, malefacting away like mad.  After all, if Moriaty hadn’t decided to become a criminal mastermind and become an accountant, say, instead, Sherlock wouldn’t have hounded him to the edge of the Riechenbach Falls. 

So what does my villain want?  This is work in progress....