An important paragraph - The Lady's Slipper

I thought I would post a paragraph featuring Ella Appleby, the housemaid in The Lady's Slipper. Although she is not the main character she is the cause of much of the strife in the novel, and the person I have received most mail about. Although most of the feedback has been that she is a 'nasty piece of work' (to quote one letter) I take this to be a good omen for she has become the lead character in the next book, The Gilded Lily, and at least she is creating some reaction!

As a character she is brazen and manipulative and not very likeable, so in The Gilded Lily I get the chance to show what incident in her past made her that way, and to give her space for some sort of redemption or atonement. One of the difficulties in writing her was that in The Lady's Slipper she is the engine of the story and so her motivations were of necessity hidden from the reader. One of the reasons I think she works in her role as antagonist is because she appears to have no moral compass. This made her a challenge to write a whole book about, but one I enjoyed tackling. She had to grow both in depth and in humanity if The Gilded Lily was to succeed. In the second book we see much more of her relationship with Sadie, her younger sister. This allowed me to examine how Ella had constructed her family memories to suit herself and that these were at odds with how her life really was. Sadie enables Ella to see herself a lot more clearly and thus begin to change into a different person. The Gilded Lily will be published by Pan Macmillan in September 2012.

The paragraph I have chosen is the one where things have begun to go wrong for Ella, and the one where I suddenly knew I had to write another book to finish her story......

Still clutching the bolster to her chest, as if holding it would somehow hold her together, Ella moved to the window. Outside there was a glow on the horizon. Dawn. She felt nothing. It surprised her. No sorrow for his passing. But she knew there would be a hue and cry as soon as they knew he was dead, and that there would be no place for her when his brother arrived, except as the butt of his boot.

She must get away from here. She started for the door, but then turned back. She would need some things to sell. In a panic she lunged for the silver candlesticks on the dressing table, but in the dark she knocked one over and it clattered to the ground.The noise of it startled her and she realized she was trembling.

‘Get a grip, girl,’ she said to herself. ‘Think. Just think.’ It was as if her thoughts were tangled like brambles; she could not unravel them. She plucked the one thought that made sense. She had to go somewhere far away, where they could never catch up with her. The devil was on her heels, searching for her soul, and he already had hold of her skirts.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ she groaned. ‘Sadie.’ Her heart heaved.

She could not leave her sister behind.

The Lady's Slipper - Available on Kindle and in Paperback

'Top Pick!' RT Book Reviews

'Women's Fiction at its best' History and Women

'Brilliant saga' Romance Reviews today

'Rich and haunting' Reading the Past

'Utterly captivating' Karen Maitland, author of The Owl Killers

'Riveting narrative' For the Love of Books

My third novel, Jubilee, was published eighteen months ago. It was the first book I set locally and it meant a lot to me to be able to research by simply walking out of the front door. I remember one particularly glorious early June afternoon spent on a bicycle up on the Ridgeway itself. But in Jubilee I was trying to do more than write a homage to the countryside; I wanted to try something a little more unsettling. 

The Ridgeway above the Vale of White Horse

Here is the opening scene of Jubilee.


By the time the kitchen clock struck seven I knew that my cousin wouldn’t be coming back. I abandoned my rehearsal of the cool response I’d planned for her return: I always knew you were just mucking about, Jess . . .

While we waited for the men to finish searching the hedgerows and the white snaky curve of the Ridgeway path above us, I watched my aunt. Evie sat at the kitchen table twisting the fabric belt of her new dress as though she was trying to wring the anxiety out of herself. She caught me staring at her and managed to twist her features into something halfway to a smile. This attempt to reassure me made me feel even more frightened. ‘Come back!’ I shouted silently at my cousin. ‘It’s not a game any more.’


Jubilee is available in paperback and Kindle format.

My Favourite Moment - Three Things About Me

For the Christmas build-up we MNWers have decided to post some of our favourite moments from our own books on the blog.

This is in the hope of persuading you to consider buying these books as excellent pressies, but also just because it feels good to look back and remember what you liked about your own work; it's easy to get wrapped up in negativity about previously published novels, but the truth is - these novels are good. They're great, in fact. They have something special, something that makes them unique and interesting and, well, publishable.

I'm going to start the ball rolling by returning to my first full-length novel, Three Things About Me. It dealt with seven people, each with a secret, trying to make a new life in the strange seaside town of Allcombe. The novel shared three months of their lives, from each character in turn, as they fell in love, fell to pieces, or fell off the side of the cliff.

Three Things About Me breaks a lot of rules. It doesn't have one main character, and all the characters are, in some ways, grotesques. And yet I felt it really worked, and drew together, and culminated in some joyous moments of revelation and retribution. It also allowed me a freedom to explore reality and fantasy at the same time - superheroes mingle with business executives, bullied teenagers deal with cultists. Looking back at it now, I'm very proud of it.

So here's the first moment where, in the writing, the book absolutely grabbed me and I knew I had to finish writing it. In chapter five, Alma (once a Hollywood superstar but now an overweight alcoholic trying to learn to be an administrator) is walking along Allcombe pier when she sees a little old lady standing in the top window of an old people's home. The old lady is holding up a sign of one word - HELP.

Alma enters the home and creeps up the stairs. Here's what she finds:

There was no light-shade to cover the naked bulb that hung from the high, artexed ceiling. A single bed with a bed rail had been pushed into the corner behind the door, and next to it stood a small chest of drawers in a plain style with an oval mirror fixed above it, a fine layer of dust sprinkled evenly over it. Cheap perfume and face lotion in dated bottles sat upon it, along with a plastic navy blue brush that was caked with grey hairs in a thick, tangled pelt. A brown armchair with a worn-through seat was pushed up against the window and a crumpled ball of white paper lay on the floor next to it.

The only colour in the room was supplied by a crocheted blanket that lay over the lower half of the single bed. It was huge and ugly, made of a thousand different colours from blood red to privet hedge green, whatever wool the maker could get their hands on she presumed, and it must have taken years to complete.

‘I saw your sign,’ Alma said, just to have something to say. ‘Are you okay?’ She turned back to the door and looked at the old woman who was listening at it. She was tiny, with a slight hump and long blue fingernails that looked greasy, along with her squashed up skin. Her grey straw hair was cut short and was thinning on the crown.

‘They’re killing us,’ the old woman said.

"Three Things About Me is available in Hardback and for the Kindle.

Guilty Consciences

The arrival of my author copy a few days ago reminded me that I ought to post on the subject of my latest publication - a short story entitled “Conned” in the new Crime Writers’ Association anthology “Guilty Consciences”.

The CWA anthologies have been an annual event for a few years now and this one, like the last, is edited by Martin Edwards, who writes two excellent crime series, one set in Liverpool and one in the Lake District. This year’s stories include (other than mine) contributions by Robert Barnard, Ann Cleeves, HRF Keating, Peter James, Jane Finnis and by Martin himself.

Martin very generously described me in the introduction as being amongst “the most gifted members of the new generation of crime writers”. It is of course always an honour to be invited to contribute to the anthology and to join the very distinguished list of those who have had stories included in the past.

The cover has the names of the contributors in the shape of a dagger. I, it transpires, am the sharp bit at the end, which I also rather like.

The anthology is available at bookshops and on Amazon

Macmillan New Writers Book optioned for a film

We are lucky to have Ann Weisgarber - double Orange nominee among our ranks. In case you hadn't noticed, she's on a blog tour at the moment with "The Personal History of Rachel DuPree". It has just been optioned for film by Viola Davis, star of The Help. What great news, hope it gets made, it would be a great film.

About the Book:

Winner of the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction and the Texas Institute of Letters’ Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction

Longlisted for the Orange Prize (alongside books by Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson), and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers.

Her new novel "Galveston" is in the pipeline too, so I'm looking forward to another great read.

Ann Weisgarber’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Tuesday, November 1st: nomadreader

Wednesday, November 2nd: Peeking Between the Pages

Thursday, November 3rd: Linus’s Blanket - author Q&A

Monday, November 7th: A Bookish Libraria

Tuesday, November 8th: Man of La Book

Thursday, November 10th: Unabridged Chick

Monday, November 14th: Book Dilettante

Tuesday, November 15th: Book Chatter

Wednesday, November 16th: She is Too Fond of Books- Spotlight on Bookstores guest post

Thursday, November 17th: Book Club Classics

Friday, November 18th: Historical Tapestry - guest post

Monday, November 21st: Raging Bibliomania

Tuesday, November 22nd: The Brain Lair

Wednesday, November 23rd: Broken Teepee

Friday, November 25th: Historical Tapestry

Monday, November 28th: A Bookworm’s World

Tuesday, November 29th: My Bookshelf

Wednesday, November 30th: Elle Lit.

Seven Ways in Which Writing is Like Yoghurt-Making

- There are many different ways to make yoghurt. People argue about the best way to make yoghurt, but really, there is no best way. There's just your own way. You can make yoghurt in the sunshine, or standing in the kitchen. You can use machines to help you make yoghurt, or you can do it the old-fashioned way, with your two hands. (And a bowl and a spoon, but that part of the analogy obviously doesn't fit so well, so we'll gloss over that.) Another person's way of making yoghurt will never work as well for you. You have to perfect your own yoghurt-making.

- Yoghurt can be all things to all people. Sometimes people want exciting, adventurous yoghurt. Sometimes people want soothing, soft yoghurt. Sometimes people even want Greek Yoghurt, which explains why Captain Corelli's Mandolin was such a success.

- Commercial yoghurt is looked down upon by yoghurt purists. Yoghurt with chunkier fruit pieces is usually considered to be harder to get through, but more rewarding when you reach the end of the pot.

- Celebrities should be stopped from making yoghurt. They foist their horrible yoghurt upon the rest of us. That, or they lie, and get a professional yoghurt maker to secretly make their yoghurt for them. This is despicable. Everyone please stop buying these celebrity yoghurts before all the old-school yoghurt-makers go out of business.

- In modern times, yoghurts come with accoutrements, such as little corner helpings of crunchy flakes. Or yoghurt comes in over-processed tubes, to be sucked down and instantly discarded. We are dressing up our yoghurts, but surely traditional yoghurt is the best? However, it is good to be open to changes in the yoghurt industry. Eventually yoghurt-makers will no longer need packaging and will simply squirt their yoghurts directly into the consumers' mouths. This is to be desired. Apron sales will also go up.

- Yoghurt buyers are very susceptible to yoghurt packaging. Women yoghurt buyers like pink pots. Men yoghurt buyers like manly pots in bigger sizes. It used to be true that nobody over the age of twelve wanted to be caught eating a child yoghurt in a ridiculous brightly-coloured little pot in public, but nowadays it's much more acceptable to say you like child yoghurt. Getting in touch with your inner toddler, or some such rubbish. Still, child yoghurts are lots of fun, aren't they? That Harry Potter yoghurt was excellent.

- But, however you take your yoghurt, it will always be a very cultured thing to do.

The Three Authors You Meet in Heaven

All art is theft, right? I'm thinking it's better to steal off a dead person than a living one, although my moral compass isn't exactly clear about it.

Anyway, the other day on the blog I was musing about how the five people I'd meet in heaven would probably be the people I least wanted to see (forgive me for coming over all Sartre there). And that made me think - what if I could choose? On the basis of wanting to learn something about how they did what they did? So I could become a better writer? Although, obviously, I'd be dead myself at this point and probably not likely to pick up a pen again.

Hang on, that raises another question - would it be heaven if I couldn't write in it? Or would it be heaven if the desire to write was taken away? Blimey. Too many questions. So here's the game.

Name the three authors you'd like to meet in heaven. I'm going for three because I can't spend all day on this. I'm writing a new book, you know.

Rule out Shakespeare. Shakespeare meets you at the gate, okay? In writer heaven, he's Saint Peter. So can you name three dead writers that you think could teach you something about your craft? Who would they be? Here's mine:

1. George Eliot. Because although I'm writing surreal crazy stuff at the moment, and have written crime before, all I actually want to write someday is Middlemarch. How did she create that town, and sustain it, and make us care for every single person in it? I have trouble making the reader really care for one.

2. Dylan Thomas. Because he had the gift of putting music in his poetry. And because Under Milk Wood has the best opening monologue of any play, and I include Henry V in that assessment. How do you write something that makes the readers hold their breath?

3. Graham Greene. Because he made the moral processes of the mind so clear to his readers, when I just get tangled up in a sticky web of emotion when I attempt that. Writing a clear psychological intent through a character without making it obvious, and without deviation - that's real skill.

So there you have it. Who would you like to learn from? And would it be heaven for you with or without the desire and the equipment to write?

The Writerly Lunch at Brown's

Six Macmillan New Writers met for lunch at Brown's in Covent Garden last week. It was lovely to see Frances, Tim, Alis, Aliya and Len. It strikes me that the expression "New" probably doesn't apply to us any more as all of us are entrenched in the writing life, and most of our books have been out for a while.

What was really nice, and proves beyond a doubt that we are all balanced people, was that the conversation was not all about writing. We also managed to cover the ins and outs of Downton Abbey, French condolence letters, and the trials of ageing dogs - all this in amongst ordering our bargain lunch, courtesy of vouchers from Eliza.

We had a great waiter who exemplified service with a smile, he would have fitted nicely into the kitchens of Downton Abbey and helped the miniscule staff of six to run that enormous stately pile.

Here's what I gleaned about fellow MNWer's. Out of the six of us, four of us are writing historicals - me, Len, Alis and Tim. Tim had even brought his research with him and seemed totally fired up with excitement. Len and I have been exploring the same ground, so it was interesting to hear that our visions of 17th century England mostly coincide. Alis is embracing historical crime in between her playwriting. Frances is writing a non-fiction and Aliya is writing speculative fiction/fantasy. I have avoided saying too much about these projects because I don't know how much of it they want made public!

Folks, if you're out there please add more in the comments to tell people what you are working on.

It was great to see everyone. I have tried to do the social network thing via facebook and twitter, and although this breeds contacts, it is definitely not the same as a proper social when you can actually pass someone their drink and see their body language as they talk. Brown's lunch was very good and it would be really nice to see more Macmillan New Writers next time we do this. Just to remind you, here are all our books, now available on Kindle and in print!