Producing and selling anything as complicated and hard to pin down as a novel was never going to be easy, but there seems to be more trouble between writers and publishers over covers than over just about anything else. From the annoyingly smug position of never yet having had a duff or even a merely dull cover (though I think the Russian cover of The Mathematics of Love is probably, shall we say, an acquired taste, even without the watermark) I can still see how painful it is to feel that your book isn't being fairly or elegantly/wittily/powerfully represented, and I know plenty of stories where there's been blood on the editorial carpet as a result.

The obvious problem is when the publisher's made a clear decision to sell a book as something the author deeply feels it isn't. Have they mistaken the nature of the book? You'd hope that's unlikely, after all those months of acquiring and editing, but it does happen. More often it's that the cover's trying to push it into an industry pigeonhole which the author doesn't think it fits. Okay, so so your book has more pigeon DNA than it does ostrich or cormorant, but that doesn't mean you want your lovingly bred and raised Luzon Bleeding Heart Dove dressed up (or down) to look like every other pigeon queuing up to be fed in Trafalgar Square.

'But it's not that kind of book' the agonised author howls, probably to their agent (this is one of the ways agents earn their cut).

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Up early ... again (masochists never have a lie-in), so early that the hens haven't got round to laying. Bring one egg home - instead of six. Fingers recovered from Writathon (Saturday) but mentally knackered. Managed 13 stories over 10 hours, but only 2000 words, the equivalent of walking a marathon. Broken three resolutions to myself (so far) today. The first ...



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Am once more neck-deep in timetabling issues for the refresher talks but, thanks to the totally wonderful Safety guy, it all seems to be relatively under control. For the moment. I’m sure most things are more successfully sorted when I’m actually not there. Which is much like the play, The Dog It Was That Died, where lots of things happen but everything would have been just the same without the main character existing at all. Ah, life’s a wonderful thing, eh …

I also seem to have developed a cold, dammit – just what I need for this week. Not. Still, I am dousing myself in Lemsips, Lucozade and Echinacea so I’m hoping for a clean bill of health by the time the operation comes round on Thursday. I don’t after all want to be too sick to go to hospital. It would be too much like the time many years ago in my pre-marital days when I was planning to go to the Healing Service in Lord’s H’s church, but in the end was too ill to attend. Sad but true ...


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Been covering the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards for suite101.com.

This is the inaugural event and I think the judges and public got most of the awards about right. I'm particularly pleased that Ian Rankin got Author of the Year for Exit Music (ahead of Peter James's Not Dead Enough, Robert Harris's The Ghost and Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble).

I thoroughly enjoyed The Ghost and I have bought but not yet read the Lee Child. Still I'm glad Rankin won. I really enjoy the Rebus books, having read many of them while I was writing Cheetah. They taught me a lesson – character. My first two or three drafts of Cheetah were all plot, with characters so dead they made cardboard look full of beans.

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Dear all,
I would like to offer you free help with editing/proof-reading your manuscripts and/or covering letters/synopsises.
Do you find the feedback you get from your family and friends encouraging but not constructive enough (generally they don't want to hurt your feelings!)? Do you feel that before you send it out to publishers/agents, it needs a professional eye just to make sure it's polished? Are you fed up with reading it yourself (you do lose the ability to judge objectively and see any mistakes after number of readings). Or do you just want someone to review your covering letter and synopsis ( you've followed every rule you've found about how to construct them but want someone to make sure it doesn't sound too 'robotic')?
Well, I can help. All I ask is that you send an email to lahrdla@yahoo.co.uk with a short story outline first (I do need to screen who I send my address to) - I will then send you my address to which you can send your manuscript and SASE (so that I can return it with my feedback). You can send as much of your work as you want - first three chapters/ several pages, the whole thing... If you only need me to look at your synopsis/covering letter, you can email that directly – I don’t need a hard copy of it.
I don't ask for any fee - if you want it to be a free service, that's fine (Christmas has come early for you in that case!). If you find my feedback very helpful and want to reward my time spent on it with a little something - that's great! But honestly, I don't expect anything.
Now for those sceptics out here: who am I to offer advice? why would I do such a thing for free? how do you guarantee that I won’t steal your ideas? Well, the answer to the later question isn’t very satisfactory: of course, there is no guarantee, only my word of honour and the fact that each of you have special writing voice so that even if I wanted to steal your work, it would easy be proven so. I guess that it is a risk for you to take (or not) and you just need to trust your judgment. And why would I do this? I genuinely want to help! I have some free time and want to use it valuably and this combines my passion for books and publishing with doing something good. Finally, to answer the first question: I have a degree in Publishing and Literature; some experience in working at various publishing houses; and I write too (so I am sympathetic to what you may be going through .
I look forward to your emails! I’ll try to reply as quickly as possible (but please allow a week).
Best Regards,
Ladka Abdennour

Lord H and I got up in time to show our faces at church today, which was okay really. Some lovely traditional hymns, and I do always like that. As long as they get the right tunes of course - on the whole they did. St Mary's had a visiting priest today, who seemed very soothing. Just what you need on a Sunday. Mind you, he started off his sermon with an apology for talking about his visit to the family mausoleum and therefore sounding pompous. Actually, Lord H and I are much taken with the concept of having a family mausoleum that you regularly visit - ah, the vaults, the vaults, the family vaults ... - and would do it ourselves if either of us had one. We do wonder what in fact he might have been doing there - were they putting someone to rest or taking someone away? Perhaps they had to make sure old Uncle Albert wasn't up to his usual tricks and were there to put a stake through the old codger's heart or some such excitement? Did the priest have to check his supplies of garlic and silver bullets before he set off?? All very thrilling, you know - and probably not the thought processes the priest meant to encourage. Especially as the point of the sermon was that we turned our minds away from death and towards resurrection. My dears, by then I was already planning the decor on my own personal vault. Something fetching in gold and black perhaps?...


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I have moved out of my hermit phase, at last, and am now trawling the roads with Clio, the lovely wee car. I even went visiting the Pollok mob today and turned back into the wonderful sister-in-law I used to be; picking people up, dropping them off, chatting to small great nephews and neices - taking part in this life. A fabulous day wrapped itself around me: we gossipped, laughed, complemented, lied and were forced to keep crying at bay; the crying will have to wait for the funeral.


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In Where the wild things are, when I was talking about empathy in reading fiction, I had to stop myself going off on a tangent about whether and how writers worry about making their characters likeable. Honestly, sometimes writing this blog is as bad as writing my MPhil critical paper, and now my PhD's commentary. The closest analogy, I remember thinking in exasperation round about this stage last time, is gift-wrapping a porcupine. Every time I thought I had everything neatly packaged, so that I was clutching a tidy parcel ready for the sellotape and ribbon, a clutch of quills would spring out through it, ripping the paper and pointing in yet another fascinating direction. Compared to that, novels are mere hedgehogs to write - a bit wriggly, a bit spikey, might give you a nip and I deal with the fleas by coming over here and scratching the itch - but fundamentally (usually) well-behaved. Anyway, now I've got time to go where that particular quill was pointing, what's it all about?

Ah yes, empathy. The thing is, whoever your main character is (or two, or three, but probably not more), the reader's going to spend a lot of the book in their company. One way or another, you have to get us wanting to care about what happens next, to keep turning the pages.

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Was delighted to see another five-star review of Maloney's Law on Amazon which you can find here (see full post for links), or alternatively below:

"Paul Maloney is a private investigator with an ex-lover Dominic Allen who is CEO of his own international company. He is the one Paul can never forget and as a result he has little hesitation in taking on a job for Dominic. Very quickly Paul realises he is out of his depth in more ways than one. His world will never be the same and he must face his own demons as well as those of his family before he can come out the other side with the hope of a fresh start. As ever the characters are carefully drawn and believable. It is clear both Dominic and Paul are the products of their upbringing and experience. The conclusion is satisfying and shows Paul a sadder and wiser human being. This is not a comfortable book to read and it reveals a ruthless and amoral side to big business which we would all prefer to ignore. It also shows relationships between parents and children as problematic and full of misunderstandings and capable of being resolved if both sides are prepared to make the effort. Well worth reading if you want something different from the norm."



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Anyone got experience of editing a book?

I think I'm due to start working with Iota's editor, Kimberly Cole, soon. Having edited magazines and prepared copy for all kinds of publications I'm pretty au fait with the process for articles and features. But working on my own book manuscript will be completely new to me. I've been wondering how long it generally takes and what the pitfalls are, if any.

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