An interview with author Jacqueline Creek...

AW  Hello and welcome Jacqueline and thank you for agreeing to chat to me today.  So, what is your current release?

 JC  The first volume of my autobiography, ‘The Girl with the Emerald Brooch’, is due to be published before the end of February.  It is written as a novel and told in the first person while allowing the story to unfold through the characters.  It focuses on growing up in industrial Sheffield in the 1950s and 60s.  The plot twists and turns and is realistically gritty, but with a fond nostalgia for the past.  The houses on the cobble streets where I grew up, a stone’s throw from Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground, have now been demolished.  The street where I lived still remains along with its nameplate.  The book will bring laughter and memories to many people in the same way that ‘The Full Monty’, ‘Brassed Off’ and ‘Kes’ do.

AW   What first got you into writing and why?

Jackie and her award - Well done!

JC  I’ve always had an artistic side and a strong need to express it.  As a child I excelled at Art and Composition, as it was called in those days, but I didn’t pass the 11+ exam (spoiler alert!) and ended up at Chaucer Secondary Modern, where my dreams were not going to be recognized and I hardly attended during my last few months.  Going on fifteen years old, I took time out to take wallpapering jobs my Mum found for me.  This was encouraged more than ‘pipe-dreams’. 
After twenty years of varied employment, I set up my own business, which grew and grew.  When I retired and turned seventy, many people asked me to write my life story but I didn’t really think anyone would be that interested.  Instead I carried on writing poetry, which is something I had dabbled in previously.  Then I began writing erotica, which was appraised and credited by Primula Bond.  Animal stories – told by the characters themselves - came next and then flash fiction.  I suppose I was finding my niche.
I joined Barnsley Writers’ group and Penistone Poets’, where I found two lovely groups of people who liked my style and encouraged me to do more.  It was after hearing my life story that the autobiography changed from ‘an option’ to ‘a must’.  After writing the first chapter, I received the Silver Quill Award, for best opening chapter.

AW  You write poetry and novels.  Is it all imagination or do you also undertake research?

JC  With my poetry and stories, I love bringing the characters to life.  So when I started to write ‘The Girl with the Emerald Brooch,’ it all fell naturally into place.  I’m concentrating on my book at the moment and have a great memory for such details and a good imagination, which helps.  I’ve had to do some bits of research to remember such things as the date the trams stopped running and the cost of a pint of milk in the fifties.  The detail I include is just enough to whet the appetite; I don’t want the story to be bogged down with a lot of historical events.  I have read such books and have found the story gets lost in the jargon.  In my stories, the era can usually be depicted by the characters, with their dialogue, gestures and style.

AW  Have you ever had to write a scene that was especially difficult and how did you do it?

JC  This is a difficult question to answer because, if I were to be truthful, I would give far too much away.  As I write mostly from my own experience, some scenes are emotionally difficult to capture, such as writing about traumas, bereavements and break-ups.  So, read my books and all will be revealed and understood.

Jackie''s Garden Room

AW  Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing 'shed'?

JC  I think it would be a bit cold writing in a shed just now.  I can write anywhere that’s peaceful and interruption-free.  Although my favourite room is my garden room, it has too many distractions.

AW  Gorgeous view there, Jackie!  Finally, if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with a character from a book.  Who would it be, and what would you want to discuss?

JC  I am a great fan of Lee Child and of Jack Reacher, the character he created.  I was overjoyed when I heard a film was going to be made.  But then mortified when I heard Tom Cruise was going to play Jack Reacher.  Don’t get me wrong, Tom is a good actor and made some super films, but in reality, he is the exact opposite to the character of Jack Reacher and reminds me of the differences between Arnie Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in the film ‘Twins.’  Over dinner with Tom, I would ask him what so enthralled him about Jack Reacher that he so desperately wanted to play him?  I’m sure I would be intrigued by his answers.  It would be even better if Jack could join us and I could get his thoughts on Tom’s answers!

Jacqueline Creek

Born in 1944 I grew up in Sheffield to the sound of the steelworks’ hammers.  At ten years old I had dreams of becoming a doctor/surgeon. But to do this, a scholarship had to be won and I failed my 11+!

I left school at fifteen and eventually settled into regular work as a shop assistant at a local pharmacy.  I married at twenty-one and did various jobs, but was never totally satisfied.

A new man came into my life at the age of 35 and I started my own business, which grew into a retail outlet and a factory and employed over thirty people.  Retiring in 2012, I took up writing, and now live in the foothills of the South Pennines, with our assorted rescue dogs and surrounded by an abundance of nature and wildlife.

The Girl with the Emerald Brooch

This wonderful tale, set in the industrial city of Sheffield in 1954, tells of a young girl forced unexpectedly to look after her ailing mother, aged father, five year old sister and three-week old brother.  At this tender age when she should be playing with her friends, she is coming to terms with both birth and death.  And then her mother shocks her by giving her an emerald brooch and telling her a secret.  You will be gripped from the first sentence as you meet her family and friends.

If you enjoyed Catherine Cookson and Call the Midwife, you will most certainly enjoy these books.  Available to purchase from the end of next month.

An interview with author Adam S Leslie...

AW  I welcome Adam S Leslie to my blog this week.  Thank you for allowing me to cross-examine you, Adam and can you tell us what your current release is? 

Available on Amazon

ASL  A novel called BLINSBY, published not long ago by Crooked Cat. It was a 20-year-long labour of love for me and my co-writer, Peter, starting in the mid-1990s as a whimsical and very silly exercise in nostalgia, and being refined over the years into a darker and much more complex surrealist thriller.

It’s set in a small primary school in a fictionalised version of rural Lincolnshire sometime during an alternate history 1980s. England is reeling in the aftermath of a civil war between Mercia and Northumbria, but the children of Blinsby Primary School are much more concerned about the disappearance of their new classmate, Jack, who seems to have uncovered a dark secret buried deep within the school.

It’s a comedy, but not a spoof – the thriller aspects are taken absolutely seriously, but we try to wring as much fun as we can from the eccentric cast of characters and dreamlike situations.  It’s loosely based on my and Peter’s shared childhood – a few of the things in the book actually happened to us, but they’re the sort of thing we thought might happen, so in effect it’s a memoir of our imagination.

Aside from the opening chapter, the whole thing takes place in exaggerated real time across the course of one school day, from their arrival in the morning to hometime that afternoon.  We’ve tried to create a fully-populated, immersive school environment – it’s surreal, but also I think sufficiently archetypal that readers will hopefully feel like they’re spending a day back at primary school.  Certainly, those who’ve read it have told us that they recognise characters and situations from their own childhood, which is really gratifying.

AW  What first got you into writing and why?

ASL  Aged around 11 or 12, it felt like time to stop playing with toys, but I didn’t want to give up having fun with narratives, so it seemed to be a natural extension of play to start writing.  My favourite toys were my Star Wars figures. I loved Star Wars itself, but whenever I played with the toys, it was always as part of some other fiction – it was exciting not to be confined by the rules of the movies’ universe, but to spin my own stories and situations.

Peter Tunstall & Adam S Leslie

At around the same sort of time, Peter had already started writing a sort of sub-Tolkien saga called The Adventures of Drinil. That was a similar sort of thing: taking a lot of the iconic aspects of Middle Earth, but shaping them to his own experiences and not being confined by the books’ mythology.  He lent me the first two and a half volumes (written in school exercise pads), and they instantly grabbed my imagination, and so – without even asking permission! – I took over from where he’d left off. Unfortunately, I was far too lazy to learn the myriad of characters he’d populated his books with, so I promptly wrote in a huge battle and killed most of them off!

AW  Famous authors, such as Roald Dahl and Dylan Thomas, had a special space for writing.  Do you have a writing shed of your own?

ASL  I love the romantic idea of writing in coffee shops or the local library, but in reality I’m far too easily distracted by background chat or music, and I do my best thinking lying down, which doesn’t go down to well in public places.  So mostly I just write at my desk in my bedroom like the 41-year-old teenager I am.  If I wasn’t a starving artist, though, I’d probably have a fully equipped office somewhere by the seaside. And while I’m daydreaming, I’d like a pony.

AW  Would you indeed!  You write science fiction/fantasy.  Is it all imagination or do you also undertake research?

ASL  I’m pretty lazy, so most of my research is on-the-spot fact-checking on the internet, and also lying around thinking.  For my research into Blinsby, though, I spent six years living as a child in rural Lincolnshire, which I reckon is a pretty big investment into the project.

It’s really fun letting the imagination off the leash. Sometimes, when writers do a lot of research, it can all end up in the book, which is rarely ideal. I read a techno-thriller recently in which all of the processes were explained in authentically meticulous and tedious detail, page after page of the stuff, when I really just wanted to get on with the story.  You could tell this was the author not wanting all his hard preparatory work to go to waste.

That’s not to say that I think writers should just make facts up, but I do enjoy the freedom minimal research allows. For example, one of the characteristics of Blinsby is that it has its own, hermetically-sealed popular culture. These children aren’t into Star Wars or Doctor Who or My Little Pony like our generation were, they’re obsessed by their own films and TV shows – in particular a creepy long-running German cartoon called Happy Tom and the Summer Man. Not only does this mean that there’s no chance of embarrassing anachronisms, it also makes it a much more universal experience: every reader is coming to this experience fresh, there are no alienating references to Duran Duran or Magpie or Watch With Mother, or any other things which didn’t necessarily survive across different generations.

AW  Is writing for the screen so very different from writing a novel?

ASL  Very much so.  They’re completely different disciplines really, each with their own unique pros and cons.  With films, structure and economy are key.  Because a screenplay isn’t a finished product, but the blueprint for a finished product, it’s important to get the ideas across as cleanly and efficiently as possible. The way you word your script and the language you use isn’t so important (except in writing the dialogue) so long as everything is easy to understand and doesn’t take up too much space on the page.  Of course, you want to make action scenes as exciting as you can, or comedy scenes funny, but you can only ever include things which will either be seen on the screen or heard on the soundtrack.

So, on one hand, it can be a real challenge for someone who’s a natural novelist to rein in their instinct for poetic description, metaphor, inner dialogue and all their other authorial skills, on the other it can also be a lot of fun to write a rattling good yarn using just the bare bones of language. 

But then, when I switch back to novels, the writing (for me at least) is a lot slower and more meticulous, but it can feel like upgrading to Business Class and being able to stretch my legs again – having the whole palette of the English language at my disposal is such a freeing experience.

The same with structure.  With a novel, you can more or less do what you want; but in films, you have 90-100 pages – with a lot of white space – to get the story across, and there’s a definite right way and a wrong way to structure them.  The only commercially-successful film ever to have eschewed the accepted screenwriting template is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And again, once you know the structure, it can be really useful for efficiently and effectively telling your story; but it is lovely, from time to time, to let your hair down and take a holiday in the more free-form, liberating world of a novel.

Philip K Dick

AW  Finally, if you had a whole afternoon to yourself and could choose to spend it with another writer.  Who would it be, and what would you want to discuss?

ASL  If I can pick someone who’s no longer around, I’d go for Californian science fiction author Philip K. Dick.  He wrote strange, mind-bending books and lived an even stranger and more mind-bending life.  I’m not sure I’d want to discuss anything in particular, I’d probably be happy just to listen.  If you get the chance to read Lawrence Sutin’s biography of this weird genius, please do so!

Falling off the Edge

My brother James is a Tour de France fanatic.  He’s obsessive about it.  So, on one bright June day we set off for Mont Ventoux just because it’s ‘on the tour’.  The ascent begins in the small town of Malaucene in Provence and rises steadily.  As we drive up I notice numerous cyclists, one on a monocycle, also making the climb.  Mad, I thought.  The road curves, hairpins and soon leaves the tree line behind.  On one side there is a precipice, on the other rock and not much room in-between.  I daren’t look either left or right to see the magnificent views.

The other mountain

The Observation Station is just below the summit with a parking area.  We stop.  I get out of the car and the wind rushes through me at storm force, the temperature is North Pole and I’m dressed for a Mediterranean beach.  I quickly get back in.  My brother goes wandering off to the edge taking photos.  I can’t look.  I just stare straight ahead at the next mountain.  It’s a great big one with a white cap – so that’ll be snow then, I thought.

We make the final climb to the summit.  I find I’m hanging on to the car door handle.  For some reason it makes me feel safe.  The logic of this is as off-the-planet as I feel.  But I don’t want to fall off the edge, so I keep hanging on.

At the summit there’s a cycle-jam.  We do a three-point turn in no space, with only oblivion for pavement.  We set off again.  The road rises and then disappears.  All I can see over the brow is blue sky.  I throw my arms out as I try to press myself through the back of my seat.  My brother just chuckles to himself and drives on slowly.  At the heart-stoppingly terrifying moment when we reach the brow I slam my eyes shut…the car hairpins left and continues down the steep slope.  ‘I can see where the road is,’ James says.  I’m still hanging onto the car door handle and just staring at the car’s bonnet.

Homage to Tommy Simpson

A kilometre down from the summit is the monument to the professional cyclist, Tommy Simpson, who collapsed with exhaustion and died there in 1967.  We pull off the road, stop and James gets out, camera in hand.  I’ve got the car door handle in my shorts pocket and there’s no way I’m letting go.  Soon my brother returns with his photos and a chunk of mountain.  Sharp intake of breath as I realise that the summit of Mont Ventoux is now unsafe as part of it is missing!  Cyclists beware!

Mont Ventoux kissed by cloud

Back on the tarmac again and we proceed down the hairpins and back into the tree line.  That’s one of the good things about trees.  If you fall off the edge, you’ve always got something to grab as you go careering down the mountainside.

Later, firmly settled in my camping chair at just a few feet above sea level, I’m calmer.  A refreshing cup of tea and I’m feeling brave enough to pick up James’ camera and look at the photos for the first time – but then, I change my mind.

An author's work...

Today I am very lucky to have some space on Jennifer Wilson's blog.  Thank you for the opportunity Jennifer.  I have to say that Jennifer asked me some very tough questions, but the first one was about my current novel and was easy...

Col du Rieutort in snow

'...Messandrierre, which was published on December 8th, is set in the recent past and begins in September 2007 in the Cévennes in France - a place I have visited often.  Whilst I was there in September 2007 it began to snow overnight and the scenery the next morning was stunning.  That was when I had the idea for a body being buried and the evidence of the grave being hidden because of the snow.  It's a description of the burial, the snow and the mountains that begins my story.'

But then, the questions got more difficult and moved on to ‘rewriting’ history and what I would change if I could...

'Another big question!  It would be very easy and noble to say I would ensure the Franco-Prussian war never took place or that slavery never happened or any number of other things.  But the world is the place that it is precisely because of those terrible things and the lessons learned as a result.  If they were changed, we may not be who and what we are now.  So, my choice would be to change a question on the 1841 census.  On that census the enumerators only had to record whether an individual was born in the county in which they were living at the time.  For one of my ancestors - a potboy in a Coffee House in Southwark, London - the answer is 'No'.  So, I will never know who he was or where he was born and therefore who the rest of his family were.  A very large and solid family history brick wall!!

And there's more so scoot on over to Jennifer's blog (link below) to find out what else we discussed.

jennifercwilsonwriter.wordpress.com 

Merry Christmas

For Two Days Only - Yule love this idea!

Today I welcome Ailsa Abraham to my blog.  Read on to take advantage of a wonderful offer...

We celebrate the Winter Solstice or Yule so as my gift to you readers I would like to present - for the two days of 22nd and 23rd December only.....Both books in the Alchemy series at 99p or cents each for an e-book. Come on, less than a cup of coffee? Lasts longer and keeps you awake better!

Click on the link below to see them on Amazon in YOUR country.

Universal Amazon link - anywhere in the world

 Plenty of five star reviews and the third one is on the way - grab them while they're this price!

Book 1 ALCHEMY  A world without war? Professor Sawhele Fielding stumbles across an invention that would change the world; something so monumental, it could spell the end of environmental disaster and conflict. With the help of her father, a shadowy figure in the world of international banking, she begins to set into motion the biggest upheaval the planet has seen. But in a changed world, dark forces are threatening the fragile peace. Where modern technology is proving useless, old magic from a bygone era might just save the day. Adrian Oliver, expert in ancient religions is sceptical until faced with incontrovertible proof that ancient evil is abroad once again. How could a Utopian dream of free fuel and peaceful co-existence turn into a nightmare? Iamo, a priest of the Mother Goddess and Riga, a Black Shaman assassin captain, are thrown together - reluctantly at first - to face a threat that nobody could have imagined before "The Changes". ALCHEMY is the prequel to Shaman's Drum which features the adventures of Iamo and Riga through their world in the near future, where the established religions of our own days had been banned.

Book 2 SHAMAN'S DRUM  England in the near future. Mainstream religions have been outlawed, and the old gods rule again. Iamo has been a priest of the Great Mother and is sworn to celibacy, but his love for Riga, a Black Shaman, a magical assassin, caused him to break his vows. After being imprisoned apart from each other for three years, Iamo accepts an offer to earn them both a pardon and the possibility of marriage. If they survive. Iamo and Riga must discover why demons are breaking through from the other side. Which of the cults are renegades who allow the demons through? Who can they trust? Combining their powers, they face the ordeal with the help of a band of eclectic pagans, spirit creatures, Riga's Black Shaman brothers, an undercover Christian granny, and three unusually energetic Goths. It's a tough assignment, but the hope of a life together keeps them fighting.


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James et Moi at Christmas

I try.  I try my best but my brother James will just not get on board with Christmas.  He thinks it’s

My Christams tree

an ‘over-commercialised excuse to eat and drink in excess.’  His exact words, which are usually uttered round about the end of November.  This year I thought I’d take a different approach. 

‘Let’s do Christmas the French way,’ I said.  ‘Even better,’ I said, ‘would be to go to France for Christmas,’ I said. 

It was a Saturday morning and he was at my house, as usual, reading his paper.  I thought I’d picked an appropriate moment, but then, from behind the newsprint came a groan.

‘Over-commercialised excuse to eat and drink in excess in French,’ he said.  But I was prepared for this.

‘Hmm no it’s not, actually.  We could do Le Révellion on Christmas Eve.  That would be different.’  

He put the paper down.  ‘Revvie what?’

‘Le Révellion,’ I corrected.  ‘It’s a special meal that is traditionally served on Christmas Eve and includes things like foi gras, or escargot or-‘

‘Snails!  I’m not eating those slimy little things!'

‘Well I could replace them with smoked salmon I suppose,’ I said trying to be helpful.  ‘But the main course would be goose or a capon stuffed with chestnuts-‘

‘Goose!’  The paper was discarded to the floor.  ‘Goose!  But I don’t like goose.’

I ploughed on regardless; I was so determined to have a different Christmas.  ‘Then we could do dessert like they do in Provence,’ I said.  ‘Lei tretze dessèrts.  That’s Occitan for thirteen desserts.’

‘What’s wrong with Christmas pudding and rum sauce?’  At this point his face was completely drained of all colour.

‘But you like your puddings,’ I said, ‘and when we’re in France you go into every single pâtisserie and buy a cake or pastry.  I just thought that Christmas French-style might be something we could both enjoy that would be different.’

He picked up his paper and flexed it back into shape.  ‘I don’t like eating late and what’s wrong with your Henry the second stuffing and turkey?’

So, here I am, menu decided.  Smoked salmon, turkey and all the usual trimmings followed by Christmas pudding and rum sauce.  That’s the big day sorted.  However, what James still doesn’t know is that he left his wallet here by mistake on Saturday.  So I popped down the shops and on Christmas Eve I will be having my own celebration of Le Révellion with half a lobster, a few oysters, some foi gras and a bûche de noël to follow.  His Christmas present to me this year!

I think another glass of merlot is required and then I just need Mr Claus to arrive – that’s the tall dark handsome one, not the old guy in the red suit – and some snow!