One of the things I've noticed, among the more thoughtful and less ooe-er-vicar-ish of the reviews of In Bed With, is that they often say, 'Some of these are real erotica/only erotica, whereas others are short stories with sex in them.' The 'real/only' division is the giveaway: do they approve more of the former, or the latter? The more I think about this difference, the more I begin to feel that it actually reflects a much wider question about what fiction's for, and how it works.

This anecdote is relevant, so stay with me. I think it's Don McCullin who has a story of driving along one night, and seeing a man sitting on the kerb having a heart attack. He could either take a picture which his instincts said might turn out to be one of the truly great pictures, or he could go and help immediately. He took the picture, and then went to help, and ultimately the man died: who knows if he would have been saved, if help had arrived three minutes earlier?

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I read a great post the other day on the Strictly Writing blog:


http://strictlywriting.blogspot.com/2009/02/never-ending-quest.html (I hope you don't mind me linking this, Caro)
I think that everything in this post is true and sums up some of the things that I've been experiencing lately with this whole 'getting published thing'.


First off, all you want is to finish your work to a point that you're 'happy' with it. Then all you want is to hear that someone else likes it. Then it's an agent that is top of your

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As I once again approach submission time, I am bracing myself for failure. Not in a woe-is-me, lack of confidence way, rather from a position of realism based on past experience. I thought I’d pull out all the rejection letters I’ve saved from the last four years and take a browse – but I couldn’t. Some are still too painful. So why keep them all, like some tatty love-letters from a failed relationship? I’m not sure. In a way it’s because they validate the time I’ve spent writing novels. They are tangible proof that I have tried, I have worked hard – that I have put myself ‘out there’.

Surely I should have developed a rhino’s skin after all this time? Surely the rejection still doesn’t hurt? For the most part, I can logically deal with disappointment - tell myself that a standard rejection isn’t necessarily a condemnation of my work. And I appreciate the odd personal comment, I grasp at the occasional letter which is worded with encouragement. But now and again I get caught out. And the obsessive, emotional process is usually as follows and I wonder if it’s the same for you?

1) Paranoia – why has the agent not replied yet? My submission must have got lost in the post. Perhaps in my covering letter I didn’t grovel enough – or maybe I sounded arrogant. The agent must be on holiday or she’s ill or at some book fair abroad. Perhaps it was a mistake calling the hero and heroine Gordon and Mandy because if she’s Conservative it won’t make it off her slushpile.



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As previously discussed, I am more than a little 'challenged' in the technological knowledge department. (We're on to Web 2.0 already? Really??) Forgive me, therefore, if you've already heard about any or all of the following websites and software, or if I fail to do them justice with my brief explanations of what they are and what you can do with them. I was just so impressed - and in a few cases delighted - when I came across them in my recent bout of web-wandering that I wanted to spread the word. I hope that others out there may be just as pleasantly surprised by them as I was.


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I attended the prize-giving party for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize on Wednesday. The event took place in their flagship store in Piccadilly and all eight of the shortlisted authors were there, together with various publishers, agents, press people and friends/family. The venue was hot! That's not a compliment - it really was hot, in an airless, gasping-for-fresh-air sort of way. Mercifully I a) had sussed out the joint earlier that day so could amend my intended clothing for the event into full summer mode and b)I ended up standing by a window. It was also very, very noisy. Imagine more than a hundred buzzy excited people all talking in a cocktail bar not very much bigger than your average lounge, and you might have some idea of the noise. It was also very dim - I liked that, because I'd been up since 5.30am. I was very pleased to be there - in fact I've been pleased for several months after hearing I was on the shortlist - but it turned out to be one of those occasions which seems far more enjoyable in retrospect. For whatever reason, I found it hard to live in the moment - it all seemed dream-like, overly-intense and high-speed - the effect was curiously similar to being on speed. I already knew that I hadn't won (glum phone call from nice editor earlier in the day) so in some ways I was more relaxed, knowing I wouldn't have to give a speech. The winner did give a nice speech, but most of us couldn't hear it, the Waterstones personnel for some reason failing to switch on the very large microphone that stood on the tiny stage. One of the other shortlisted authors proudly informed me that she had come 'second'. Eh? From where I was standing, this seemed an oddly inappropriate thing to both know and to mention. Sadly there wasn't enough time or breath left to speak (or shout) to many of the authors on the shortlist - that was a shame, because of course most of us won't get the chance again. But reflecting after the event, despite it's strangeness and the unfortunately coincidental onset of one of the the worst bouts of acid reflux I've ever had (Canape, Madam? No thanks. Wine? No thanks. Water? Thank God), it still felt very good to have been asked along, and to have written a book that somehow captured the imagination of a few people I don't know. I'll always remember it.

Q: What do you call a lorry with wheels of treacle and a cargo of sloths driven by a somnambulant?

A: The vehicle that’s always in front of me when I’m late



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'This is the life that I treasure,
Writing poems for pleasure ...'



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The violets explode inside me
When I meet your eyes
Then I'm spinning
And I'm diving
Like a cloud
Of starlings
Darling, Is this love?

This lyric from the opening track, Starlings, of the Mercury prize winning Elbow album, The Seldom Seen Kid, is the perfect description of romantic love for me. Lyrics have always been the stand-out part of a song for me, perhaps because I am a writer. My musician partner hears the guitars before the lyrics.

Writing about relationships invariably means writing about things going astoundingly well, like in the Elbow lyrics, or love gone wrong. I don't think there's much of a market for stories where nothing happens! Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end and some conflict happens and is sometimes resolved by the end, sometimes not. The history of storytelling is ancient and a well trodden path in academia, from Greek legends to fairy stories, and much has been written about these enduring stories being a kind of moral backbone and a metaphorical blueprint for behaviour.

As a writer and psychologist, I have an insight into what brings conflict into people's lives. My rationale for writing my series of novels was to situate the knowledge I had attained from a study I conducted into women's life narratives into stories about lives. Each of my novels is based on a dialectical finding from the study.


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Morwenna Thistlethwaite.

She’s a real person. I came across her in an artist’s catalogue and instantly wanted to include her name in a novel. Gamine, wistful and floaty – inclined to cheesecloth and batting enormous lashes – she’d be a pastie-baking girl from a vast Cornish mining family and the inn-o-cent object of an evil pirate’s passion. A pirate called…

Rex Frothichops. See, I can’t help it. A writing friend anagrammed her husband’s name and came up with this, my all-time favourite. He’s so …nineteenth century. But wait – I can also see him at the beginning of time, a rock-dinosaur with rabies – T.Rex Frothichops.
Sorry. Getting carried away there.

Names are so more-ish, don’t you find? And a good name – or rather the right name – is often hard to find.
There are many name-researching websites on the net, and I’ve just been a-sampling. There are the baby names sites, where you can choose a name according to its popularity in any given year; sites giving the meanings behind names (did you know that Harry means Army Power? The poor lad was predestined for the job), There’s a site where you can generate a name in any language – I asked for a female name in Esperanto and a male name in Bulgarian (‘My Gott –‘ Valentin Boyko’s voice roughened with desire. ‘Glorinda Katida, vot are you doink to me?’ ) And, best of all, there are sites where you can enter details of your character and a name is randomly generated to suit. I put in: ‘oozing, slimy, disgusting, putrid’ and got ‘Vilescum’. Count Vilescum, of Totterdown Towers, who only comes out at night and spends his days floating ominously in dirty bathwater…



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Here's a thing. You've got a complete manuscript of a novel. You're hiking it around the bazaars. It's double-spaced on A4 pages, according to the rules for subbing to agents and publishers. You've looked at it onscreen for months, maybe years. You've printed it off and read it through and through. If you're anything like me, by this point you're losing all perspective on it as a book. It's become A Manuscript. You can't read it quickly because you can't hold it in your hands like a published novel. You can't get comfy with it, crease the spine, fit it to the shape of your palm the way you do with a printed book. It's a tome of a thing, takes forever to print off, doesn't look anything like anyone's favourite book. You're starting to wonder if it ever will. Well, wait.

What if I was to tell you that for ten pounds you could turn your Word document into a paperback book, printed in trade size on decent-ish paper, perfect-bound, private to you?

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