Blog Interview

I have been interviewed by writer and skating champion Anita Saxena on her wonderful blog (just look at that fabulous banner;-). Here you can find out more about my upcoming book, Haunters, as well as see me give advice to unpublished writers like I know what I’m talking about!

Thank you, Anita, for inviting me. 

My Social Media Roundup (or Breakdown)

As the days tick by and the publication of my debut novel creeps closer (24^th May!), I can’t help feeling increasingly embarrassed by the threadbare nature of my web presence (or ‘platform’, as I believe I’m supposed to call it). The received wisdom is that I should be on every online social medium going, bigging myself up with trumpets and yelling about my wonderful book. And plenty of people are telling me to do just that. It’s interesting though that my publisher’s advice was simply to ‘do one thing, and do it well’. And as more and more on-line voices (here, for example, and here) speculate that you can’t sell books on social sites anyway, or that blogging and even facebook have peaked, the advice to keep it simple and strong sounds appealing. And yet, the trumpets…

I’ve had a quick scout around my platform (ugh) and thought I’d share the sorry results with you.

1. I have a blog. Obviously. I like blogging, even though I don’t post as often as I once did. Whenever I think of something to write, my internal editor usually shouts me down with either ‘Bragging!’ or ‘Boring!’. But he hasn’t killed it off yet, and won’t -- I have met some very interesting people here.
2. I’m on facebook. And I (sort of) like it there. I started facebooking (French word) in order to keep in touch with my scattered family, but I’ve since expanded my ‘friend’ criteria to include anyone involved in writing, art and publishing who’ll have me. And yet, I still have personal stuff on it, and a brother who thinks nothing of tagging photos of me with underpants on my head, etc. I haven’t managed to divide my personal side from what might be called the public at all. I wonder if it’s too late. Or maybe a facebook page for me as a writer is the answer. Though that might be a very lonely place.
3. I am on Twitter. I don’t really get it, and rarely have any sense of a conversation, but I’m hanging on in there. @ThomasHTaylor. Any advice?
4. I have joined LinkedIn. But my eyes immediately glazed over.
5. Google+ as above.
6. I have signed up for Goodreads. But can it really help raise my profile to tell the world what I’m reading right now? Maybe I haven’t explored it enough. I only joined last week.
7. Other things. I’m dimly aware of sites like Bebo and Gothise, but don’t expect to see me there soon – I’m all social media-ed out. I have noted, though, that some kind soul has expanded my Wikipedia entry, with a bibliography and everything! Thank you, whoever you are. I had planned to do this when Haunters was published. Honest.
8. Website. More about this soon.

So there we have it. My on-line platform. All I need to work out now is do I expand it as far as I can, or trim it down to one node of ‘excellence’ (ha!)? Whatever I decide, I see little room for any trumpets.

Any thoughts? And what about your own ‘platfoms’?

Dan and the Drawings

I have finally -- after far more time than I like to admit -- finished the chapter heading illustrations for Dan and the Dead. Here’s a sneak preview.

I wonder why I found them so difficult. It’s slightly sobering. But then, little that is worthwhile was ever created easily. Or something. Perhaps I just need to buy myself a new pen…

Click for a better view.

Blood and Biscuits

Gosh, doesn’t time fly when you’re not updating your blog? I’ve been busy drawing, both sketching out new characters (see here) and working on the final illustrations for Dan and the Dead. My new blog banner is a spin off from that, if you’re curious.

Anyway, after so much writing over the last year, it feels good to go back to mostly drawing. And once again I’m struck by one enormous difference between the two activities.

I need silence to write. If possible, I also need to be alone in the house. There’s absolutely no question of listening to music. The only sound should be the scrape of dry fingertips on the keyboard and the steady drip drip drip of blood as it sweats out of my forehead (it’s probably just as well I’m on my own).

Drawing, on the other hand, is next to impossible for me if I don’t have music. And if you want to phone me while I’m sketching, then fine, go ahead -- I can hold the phone in my left hand and chunter for hours while my right hand carries on. In fact, just pop round. You can stay and listen to the radio with me, to this and this and this, and then we can chat as the coffee-break kettle steams and hopefully agree that the one thing that really puts the ‘great’ in Great Britain is the wonderful, inestimable, sanity-saving BBC. I’m sure they had illustrators in mind when they invented it.

The phrase ‘back to the drawing board’ normally has negative connotations. But not for me:-)

Puffin in the Snow

I was going to write an essay on the iconography of snow in children's literature, but then I thought, nah, and took my little boys out to play in it instead.  Far better use of my time!

Haunting My Younger Self

I have been thinking a lot about time travel lately. This isn’t surprising, given that I’ve just written a book in which the characters can visit their younger selves -- and their ancestors -- in the form of ghosts. What would you do, if you could do that? And what would I say if I got the chance to haunt myself at the beginning of my efforts to write fiction? Apart from ‘boo!’ that is.

I remember that beginning quite clearly -- it was the start of 2005, a year and a half after I’d moved to France. I was house-sitting alone for a couple of weeks, trying to meet an illustration deadline and walking someone else’s dog.  On those daily tramps through the woods, I came to realise that not only did I have a whole novel-sized story rattling around in my head, I was also no longer afraid to try writing it down.

Now that I am on the point of seeing my first book reach print (not the book mentioned above, naturally), I can look back over the whole experience and draw some conclusions. So, as a time-travelling ghost, what writing/crafting/story-telling tips would I give my younger self when I appear before him in the woods? Before my younger self passes out from shock, I think I could get across at least five:

1 – Storytelling trumps everything.

…especially when you are writing for a young readership. And I mean everything. It’s more important than historical (or contemporary) accuracy, more important than the things you worry you should be writing about, and certainly more important than the demands of your ego. People NEED good stories. Just be grateful for the chance to supply them.

2 – Don’t aspire to be a great writer, aspire to be a great story-teller.

 …and don’t call it ‘writing’, call it ‘work’. Above all, don’t aspire to be a writor (with an ‘o’). Writors (with an ‘o’) are poncy people who ‘commune with their muse’ and complain about wine. Instead, go into the ring bare knuckled, and don’t come out till your book is lying face-down in the blood and sawdust. That’s the work. Now you can drink the wine.

3 – ‘Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie’

Okay, I stole this one from Stephen King, but my younger self doesn’t know that. It's time he did. Let’s hope he’s taking notes.

4 – Plan ahead.

…even if it doesn’t come naturally. You don’t have to stick to the plan, just give yourself a clear sense of what you’re aiming for. Trying to make up a complicated plot as you go is a bit like brick-laying in the dark. You wouldn’t build a house that way, so why do it to build a world?

5 – Listen to criticism. Also, BOO!