Paul Magrs

I’m writing a lot every day recently… more than I ever have before, I think. And it’s like the thing I’m on with is exerting a kind of spell. Really, it sounds silly, putting it like that. But February is a good time to be hypnotised, if only to forget about the cold.

I was wondering if I shouldn’t be reading old favourites while I’m writing as solidly as this. Old favourites of the kind that have worn a groove in my memory. They won’t open up new avenues or distract me too much. I keep looking at my TBR bookcases and seeing all these new books… and really, what I perhaps need to read are the soothing favourites. For a week or two at least.

I think I’m right to trust my own instincts, about how best to work on my novel. I guess it’s different each time, with each book – to an extent, anyway. By now i should be an expert in carving out my own unique path…

Enough, musing, anyway. It’s all abstract when I can’t actually tell you what the new novel is about. Poor J. is the one who hears about that. He never reads my books, but he hears them as they’re happening *live*. I gabble on at him about where things are heading and where they’ve been and where they might go next…

For one reason or another, this week I’ve been thinking of what kind of writer I am. This was my facebook status on Thursday, and it was an ironic summation of my overall status in writing since the start… It’s a compendium of all the reasons i’ve been implicitly given for why my fiction just shouldn’t work…

“Too controversial for teen fiction; too common for literary fiction; too camp for science fiction; too wayward for Doctor Who; too warm for horror; too funny for thrillers; too northern and common to *ever* sell in the US or abroad, apparently. Can i just say…. aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh…?”

Here’s a curiosity… and exactly the kind of thing that I love being able to talk about on my blog. It’s one of the great things about a blog – being able to make some noise about something you really enjoyed, that people might not have heard about yet.

I don’t know how I came across this book. Maybe through those strange, targeted ads that appear down the edge of your facebook page. It’s a very short collection of short stories, all set in Manchester and its environs – with all profits going to the Albert Kennedy Trust (which supports young gay people who are homeless or living in hostile environments.) I bought it on Kindle – supporting the charity, but also because I was intrigued to read a gay Manchester author I’d not heard of (although, yeah, i did smart at the blurb that suggested there were *no* other gay Manchester writers…!)

Anyhow… the stories are great. I read them like a short story collection ought to be read – like a big box of chocolates – selfishly, without telling anyone till afterwards, when they’re all finished. I’ve read some *idiotic* reviews of the book – one in particular which carps on about its thin characters and superficiality… the kind of criticism that makes me cringe. It’s the reviewer just not getting the camp sensibility… or the weight of emotion underneath that glibness and outrageousness. One reviewer picked out a story about the suburban nudists and their perilous pancake racing day… how ludicrous, silly and grotesque..!… but when you get to that story it’s a tale of gay men finding their own rituals and relationships… it’s all very touching.

There are ghost stories from Canal Street here, and stories that take us all over the various byways and portions of Manchester north and south. There’s a beautiful tale about an older, pernickety queen taking in a toyboy and quite quickly relinquishing control over every aspect of his life. There’s another about an italian restaurant and its owner, who doesn’t even realise he’s gay until he falls in love with a voice at the end of a phone. These are stories with great tenderness and control, i thought.

I wish there was a contents page on the e-book, though. And i wish there were more stories in the collection. It’s pretty short, with only one or two mis-fires. I do hope there’s more to come from this writer. He reminds me a little of Daphne Glazer, whose stories I read in the 90s, as and when they came out with different small presses, one after the next. Stories with a multitude of different characters – all filled with soft or hard centres and secrets and hopes. The kind of stories that blurb-writers and silly critics can construe to sound grotesque or trivial.. but which hide their profundity with modesty and skill.

In some ways ‘Strange Boy’ – which was my first book for kids – is the book closest to my heart out of all the books I’ve written. Recently I heard from Simon and Schuster, who published it in 2002 that they’ve sold out every copy and have no interest at all in reprinting it. That made me feel terribly sad, as you can imagine (though I felt worse about those other kids’ books of mine that they were just then *pulping*! (Bye bye ‘Hands Up! Ta-ra ‘Twin Freaks!’ i loved you, even if my publisher didn’t..!)

Strange Boy at the time caused a bit of kerfuffle because its lead character was gay – although it never set out to be an ‘issues’ book, and really doesn’t read that way. Anyway, that was the publicity angle taken by the publisher and the PR guru they’d hired, and that kind of thing can garner at lot of knee-jerk reactions.

Luckily, it was liked – and even loved – by the people who came to read it.

It’s ten years on, now! Unbelievable that it’s that long. A nice surprise in today’s Guardian is that a new author for teens, James Dawson, has picked the book out for his top ten of ‘Books to get you through High School’. And there’s my book, on this lovely list with the likes of Malorie Blackman, Roald Dahl, Stephen King and David Walliams. So – thanks to James Dawson and the Guardian!

I really hope this little bit of publicity will bring the book back to people’s attention and make someone want to reprint it.

As i’ve said before, it’s the book I wish i could have read when I was twelve. There seemed to be – and still seems – to be not many books about boys going through the things David does. He’s bright and bookish, obsessed with the imagination and magic and super heroes. We can see he’s going to grow up gay, as he grows up in a household and family that’s been ripped apart around him.

It’s a book that wasn’t just dull gritty realism and nor was it sappy fantasy. I wanted a lovely, magical realist blend of both. Plus, it’s set in the north east, in a new town, on council estates. I wanted to show that kids’ books don’t have to be about posh kids at public schools. It’s a gentle book about a kid who listens and watches those around him very carefully. A boy who’ll grow up to one day be a writer.

It was in some government pamphlet about encouraging reading for boys, as well. And when she was Children’s Laureate Jacqueline Wilson wrote about it, too. She came to the launch party and asked ME to sign HER book! (which almost made my little sister faint!) Reviews were great. (Though Philip Pullman was a bit *weird* about it, i remember.)

Anyway – there it is.

I hope there’s still life in the ‘Strange Boy’ left.

I thought I’d do a post today about some of the books that have come my way recently and that i’m hoping to get into soon.

First, here’s a slim Frenchy thriller that was sent to me by the lovely Gallic books. It seems to summon up the ghost of Maigret to me, and just a glance at its opening chapter already feels delightfully gritty, jaded and slightly seedy. I think this was sent to me for Panda to review, actually…“You’ve only been here for a few days but you already know loads of people. You walk into people’s lives, just like that.” Gabriel is a stranger in a small Breton town. Nobody knows where he came from or why he’s here. Yet his small acts of kindness, and exceptional cooking, quickly earn him acceptance from the locals. His new friends grow fond of Gabriel, who seems as reserved and benign as the toy panda he wins at the funfair. But unlike Gabriel, the fluffy toy is not haunted by his past…”

Isn’t that a great blurb? and actually, i’ve just been round the house looking for my copy, and I think it’s been snaffled by someone black and white and no more than ten inches tall.

Next up comes a book I fancy the look of just as much: ‘The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet.’ It seems to be a sexy historical novel, full of intrigue and mystery. Its published in the US by Harper Perennial and its author, Mrylin A. Hymes got in touch via Twitter to see if I’d like to give it a spin. I must say, it sounds like it’s going to be great fun.

The next one was sent by Headline, my own publisher – because they know how much I love the novels of Julie Cohen. I’m actually a year behind – only just catching up with last year’s book by her (‘Getting Away with it’) as I write. But here’s the cover of the next one, plus blurb –  and it comes out in March. It’s good to know that it’s waiting for me!

“Alice Woodstock has her life under control. She’s successful and she’s happy – as long as she continues to ignore the hurt from her past. But when said past walks back into her life in the shape of Leo – the man she married too young, ran away to Paris with and who ultimately broke her heart – Alice is desperate for an escape route. She finds the perfect thing – a new job as a tour guide in a Regency stately home. But as she immerses herself in acting out the stories of the house, Alice begins to see parallels with her own life, forcing her to confront her feelings about what she wants and, finally, live in the real world.”

And the last one in this pile comes from Simon – and it’s a novel I’ve wanted to read since hearing about it last year. I once read with Jo Baker at Lancaster University, where she teaches and where I spent a huge number of years. She was a lovely person, and I made up my mind to read her novels at once. Except I haven’t yet – and intend to remedy this by reading this temptingly transhistorical tome…

“Set against the rolling backdrop of a century of British history from WWI to the ‘War on Terror’, this is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli, then his son Billy, a champion cyclist who survives the D-Day Landings on a military bicycle, followed by his crippled son Will who becomes an Oxford academic in the 1960s, and finally his daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London. Just as the names – William, Billy, Will, Billie – echo down through the family, so too the legacy of choices made, chances lost, and secrets kept. Rich in drama and sensuous in detail, “The Picture Book” is a beautifully crafted story about fathers and sons, about fate and repetition, and about the possibility of breaking free.”

One of the things I’ve been investigating this January is the business of e-publishing. I’ve been reading a bunch of books that are – in some cases – only available as e-books. Some you can get as actual books too, and some come from established publishing houses. But there are others that are self-published and e-book only… and, curiously, they are mostly about vampires.

Amazon and Kindle seem to be awash with series of novels by people who’ve cut out the middleman and are selling their multi-volume vampy sagas for a matter of pennies each. It’s like a dark proliferation of cut-price monsters. At the poorer end of the scale it’s like wallowing through treacle – this morass of unedited, mis-spelled, dodgy erotica… but there’s good and entertaining stuff there, too.

There was a lot of kerfuffle in the press about the fortune made last year by american author Amanda Hocking, who self-published her unsold fantasy novels on Amazon. I loved the story less for its supposed heralding of big changes to the Publishing industry, than for Hocking’s declared reason for self-publishing in the first place. She wanted $400 to go to a Muppet convention and so resorted to desperate measures…!

I read the first in her vampy series, ‘My Blood Approves’, which was actually far better written and shaped than I expected. It’s a teenage vamp story, so it’s all about boyfriend quandaries and the usual ‘how far is too far when your boyfriend’s undead’ business. It’s a book about having crushes – and that’s ok. it’s perfect YA territory – and there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s a gay brother, too, so all’s good. It’s a bit limp narratively, for its length – but there are sequels to be had, of course.

And it’s with the sequels that this stuff comes into its own. Because, of course, your kindle is your book – but it’s also the shop window, too. And i can’t be alone in getting to the end of these kinds of books and going – straight away – BUY! BUY! CLICK CLICK! BUY THE NEXT ONE!

Which brings me to Stephani Hecht… It’s become a joke round here that in January 2012 I became a little addicted to shape-shifting were-cat homoerotica – which is only a slight exaggeration and all the fault of Stephani Hecht. She opened my eyes to a world of outrageously sexy homoerotica – all written by straight women (though some men are involved, too) – and all revolving around multi-book sagas about were-cats / wolves / vampires / angels / time-travellers. Any single genre-trope you can think up has been gayed up and sexed up and zapped out into the ether for your breathless delectation.

I read ‘Primal Passions’ – the first in Hecht’s ‘Lost Shifter’ series – which is about the gathering of a feline shape-shifter clan. They were fragmented by their enemies years ago and are now rallying – in order to work for the US secret service – and in order to have all kinds of sexy fun. And, actually, this introductory tale was pretty convincing – with the lost brother being dragged back into the fold – and falling for his lower-class rescuer. I love the mix of mundane motels and road trip iconography with the gothic shapeshifting and explicit sex and violence. It’s a very winning combination and reminds me of ‘Supernatural’ on TV, if that was just a tad gayer than it already is. The next in the series is called – thrillingly – ‘Feral Christmas.’ Although I’ve already snapped it up, I’m not sure I want to read it out of season…

Have you read any Kindle’s free or cheap books? Or the self-published or the bizarrely obscure? Have you fallen into a series unwittingly… having begun it assuming that it was going to be terrible? And is this sort of thing a hopeless addiction…?

I realise I’m falling behind a little with telling you what i’ve been reading since the end of last year..! That’s partly because i’ve been writing like absolute crazy for the past three or four weeks. I don’t think i’ve ever written so much per day, ever. I’m not sure what that’s about – whether i’m making the most of all this fizzing, creative energy that i’ve suddenly got access to – or whether it’s that, combined with just *loving* the three separate projects I’ve been working on this January,…  and all of this plus the fact that, for the first January in living memory i’m not doing anything academic-y like marking complete novels or teaching classes in the evening.

Anyway – no excuse for not telling you about what i’ve been reading…

I finished the year getting stuck with a Barbara Erskine  timeslippy novel, ‘Whispers in the Sand’ – which I should have loved, because it was all about past-lives and shenanigans aboard a Nile Cruise… but I gave up only about a hundred pages from the end, because it became so repetitive… with the hiding and losing of a magic bottle of perfume and the bothering of the wet heroine by two loathsome male characters – one of whom she was bound to fall in love with… I’m not sure what happened to my patience here. It’s usually boundless when it comes to Barbara Erskine’s transtemporal nonsense… but, you know those moments when it all seems a bit endless and you hit the eject button?

Well, anyway – that gave me the chance to start on the first volume of a new cosy mystery series – the Dorothy Parker Mysteries by J J Murphy. ‘Murder Your Darlings’ is the first of these, and it sets up the world of 1920s midtown Manhattan that Dorothy and her literary cronies knock about in beautifully. The Round Table at the Algonquin hotel at lunchtime is a hive of conversation, bitching and badinage that I’ve often wanted to eavesdrop on, and Murphy places us right at the centre of the action here – by making Mrs Parker and her fellow journalists, wits and wags participants in a murder mystery, when a rival newspaperman is found dead, stabbed through the heart by a fountain pen, beneath their legendary table.

It’s done so brilliantly and funnily – with Dorothy bustling around tipsily, clutching her lapdog to her and being cleverer and kinder than almost anyone in history. I loved the fact that her down-at-heel companion in this was William Faulker, before-he-was-famous, whom Dottie takes under her wing, and protetcts again accusations of homicide.

I’m looking forward to the second in the set, ‘You Might as well Die’. It’s quite a new series from Berkley Crime – and just the right point for you all to pick up and get into. These were a lovely present from a friend who went shopping in New York just before Christmas. I don’t think they’re published over here in the UK yet, but they should be. (As should that other Berkley Crime favourite of mine – Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mysteries. I don’t get UK publishing – don’t they think Cosy Crime would sell over here..? I’m sick of that nasty, violent, salacious crime that you see everywhere in British bookshops.)

Next time – i’ll tell you about how, mid-January I became a bit obsessed with kindle-only somewhat-supernatural novels… with vampires, were-cats and all sorts of crazy, mixed-up, misspelled, badly-punctuated stuff.

“Mr Stink stank. He also stunk. And if it was correct English to say he stinked, then he stinked as well…

“It all starts when Chloe makes friends with Mr Stink, the local tramp. Yes, he smells a bit. But when it looks like he might be driven out of town, Chloe decides to hide him in the garden shed.

“Now Chloe’s got to make sure no one finds out her secret. And speaking of secrets, there just might be more to Mr Stink than meets the eye… or the nose.”

*

I need to talk about the final books I read in 2011. I dipped into one of David Walliams’ books for kids – ‘Mr Stink’ – because it came up for 99p in the (amazing!) Kindle Twelve Days of Christmas Sale. I’d kind of resisted reading his books till now – even though they looked like just the kind of thing I’d have enjoyed as a kid. I suppose I’m very resistant to the ‘celebrity’ author thing. All those comedians and their rotten novels! What makes them think that they can write sustained, fully-rounded fiction, etc etc?

Also, there was the Roald Dahl thing with Walliams – and the book being illustrated by Quentin Blake. How lucky can you get? The very thought of such a thing..!

Walliams’ tv persona gets on my nerves – and I really grew to dislike ‘Little Britain’ the more it went on. Like many contemporary comedy things – it seems okay now to slip in a little misogyny / homophobia / racism / class-ism… as if we’re all past the danger zone somehow, and anything is fair game (especially to white, middle aged ex-public schoolboys on the telly…)

Anyway – as it turned out – I enjoyed Mr Stink. It’s an easy-going cross between The Twits and the BFG – with a soupcon of David Almond’s shed-dwelling tramp ‘Skellig’ in there. I enjoyed it. It was *likeable* and the characters were *there* on the page – which I wasn’t expecting, somehow. I was expecting a whole load of gags run together – but it was definitely more than that. It wasn’t original in any way at all – but it was okay.

But… having invoked ‘Skellig’ in the above… it does make me think twice. It’s not a *great* kids’ book. It’s a book by someone who’d *quite like* to write one. Not like David Almond – where you feel that his books *have* to be written and *need* to be written. And, because of his complete originality, that it took it a long time for the author to make the world listen… It felt, in other words, *earned*. Same with Dahl, actually – who had to *create* the kind of writer he wanted to be.

Comedians and TV people – well, the world already listens to them. And it doesn’t mean they’ve got a book in them that’s going to last.

We’ll see. i’ll read more of him, i think. It’s better-natured, even sweeter, than i expected – and that was a pleasant discovery.

As I know I’ve said before on here, I love libraries. Libraries of all kinds – but especially the ones that get used a lot by everyone, every day – by all sorts of people, from all walks of life, popping in to borrow and armload of books. I grew up using a lovely, tiny library in Newton Aycliffe that has now been knocked down. It was a really sanctuary for me – and the place I first discovered certain authors and books that have stayed with me all my life. I think I’ve pointed out before that even water out of your tap isn’t free – but fiction from the library is.

And, when I published my first novel, I was advised by other authors and friends that I must register my book for PLR – Public Lending Right. This meant that, when your details were ratified at its base in Middlesbrough (near home!), the PLR scheme paid you a certain amount of money for each time your book was borrowed by a member of the public. Back in the mid 90s I think it was one or two pence per loan. Over the years this has gone up, as has the number of books i’ve got in libraries all over the country, and my PLR has become a significant portion of my annual income.

PLR for 2010/1 was divvied up and emails and letters were sent out yesterday – and that’s when it hit home. The rate of PLR has been cut by the Government. I did some quick sums straight away – and it turns out last year I was down 10% and this year I’m down 20% on top of that.

It is such a footling, fiddly amount that the Govt is taking off authors. It’s nothing to them. But it means a lot to writers like me.

I know everyone is having money taken off them. i know it’s happening everywhere, by all sorts of means. But i bet it’s not proportionally debilitating, across the range of incomes.

What was that statistic that the Society of Authors published a few years ago? I believe it was that only 5% of published writers make over 20 thousand pounds a year. Is that right? (please someone correct me if i’m wrong.)

It’s vile to have money clawed back like this. Especially since the sheer volume of loans from libraries is a clear indication of how well used our libraries are. What a lifeline they are to the people who use them every day. I’ll say it again – our Government is eroding the very things that really matter to ordinary, everyday people.

Anyway – rant over. I’m out of pocket – and so are all the writers i know. And I’m not talking about millionaires and bestsellers necessarily. I’m talking about people who are hanging on, daily, trying to get on with a vocation and keep going at the job that only they can do.

Meanwhile… in nicer news… I had my photo in the news page of this month’s Doctor Who magazine, grinning alongside Michael Stevens and Tom Baker…

Also, the mag gave fantastic reviews to both ‘The Hexford Invasion’ and ‘Survivors in Space.’ Both were very welcome – though the reviewer was the same one who gave their predecessor ‘Aladdin Time’ such a stinker in December…! I think it was the surrealism and magic that offended her. Some folk really don’t think there’s any place for such things in Doctor Who. I’d strenuously resist that take on things.

All SF – but especially Doctor Who – has an element of magic about it, no matter how ’scientific’ it pretends to be. I think of SF as being a bit like myths and legends from the past – but coming from the opposite direction in time…

She’s been appearing in my fiction for a while longer, but next month sees the tenth anniversary of Iris Wildthyme – as played by the marvellous Katy Manning. It’s a full ten years ago since the release of ‘Doctor Who – Excelis Dawns’ – a feature length adventure I wrote what seems a lifetime ago. It’s a great big romp through an exotic world of killer nuns and warriors. The Doctor (Peter Davison) is joined by Anthony Stewart Head as an urbane barbarian – and both are whisked away aboard the Number 22 ostensibly bound for Putney Common. And that was just the start! It’s been rollicking adventures and ludicrous laughs ever since – at sporadic but much-loved intervals.

It’s a while over ten years, then, since Gary Russell – who commissioned and directed this first Iris drama and most of them since –  rang me up in the flat J. and I had in Manchester then and said, ‘Er, Iris is quite mad, isn’t she? What would you think if we… cast Katy Manning..?’

I was surprised and delighted by the left-fieldedness and brilliance of the choice. We’d been thinking of all sorts of names – Patsy Rowlands, and Julie Goodyear, even.

Everything changed overnight when Katy went in to play Iris. She became northern, for one thing, which she had never been before. And she made her her own. Seemingly effortlessly. When i sit down to write anything to do with Iris now, it’s Katy that comes to mind. Long, long may she reign.

And in the ten years since then we’ve had further apprearances with other Doctors – and then… amazingly … we’ve had Iris’s own series developed from Big Finish. We’ve had other writers come in and do their own thing in Iris’s world. We’ve had the advent of Panda, of course – Iris’s perfect travelling companion – played spookily and fabulously by David Benson. Ten years have gone by…!

Come the spring and we’ll have a new boxset of adventures from Katy and David and Team Wildthyme at BF. And we’ll also – with any luck – have a live appearance by the Stellar Baglady herself… when she temporally manifests herself in person at a certain convention in Oxfordshire this May…!

Thanks for Iris – Katy and David, Gary and Mark and Cav and team. She’s the spin-off that kind of became a way of life…!