19 Conversations Writers Can Only Have with Other Writers

From Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King, Honore De Balzac to Enid Blyton, the introverted Brontes to the quixotic personalities of JK Rowling, Ian Rankin or Neil Gaiman… writers are a weird bunch. It’s something of a trend in amongst the big names and the small names, the full-fledged authors and the still-trying scribblers.

Writers are quite candid about weirdness. Call it egoism (most people do) but we’re happy to acknowledge the quirks that make us quirky. Especially when we’re surrounded by other oddballs who understand a little of what we’re talking about. 

1. When we're with other writers, we know they get us

2. They understand the writing process. 

"Oh my god, I had the best writing day today. Everything I wrote was just so effortless. Like magic. There was a blank page and then there was thirteen written pages. Nothing else matters. Today was amazing."

3. Also: the right way to commiserate.

"Everything I wrote yesterday is complete horse dung - like seriously, I reread it all today and there's nothing salvable. I can't even explain. It's like having a screaming baby attached to your head whilst you paraglide towards a cliff when you realise your parachute is broken." "I'll bring the gin."

4. Talking about writing instead of writing is nerdtastic.

"If his mother comes from a line of more general magic users, there's no reason he wouldn't be able to work with it. He wouldn't have the same facility with it as a human, but he can do it. It would definitely explain his difficulty in grasping the spell and making it work. And Hermes is known for being clever, so that helps, too. So long as his ability to access that magic isn't a go-to..."

5. Even when we're talking about not-writing instead of writing.

"I spent four hours yesterday writing one sentence. One sentence. And then I deleted it because it didn't even make sense so really I spent four hours writing nothing." "Know how you feel. I'm sitting here with my laptop and those cold unfeeling keys are glowering up at me, mocking me with their pitiless QWERTY know-it-all-ness, telling me I'm never going to write another word again."

6. Plus other writers understand our oddities

"Do you think it's creepy that I spent all day listening in on other people's conversations in Starbucks?" "Nah, I stalked a guy through the tube last week because I wanted to figure out how hard it would be to follow someone home."

7. And that the voices in our head can be really annoying…

“Urgh I’m so tired today, I was awake all night long. I had this ridiculous argument with Laras [insert other fictional character name here] about whether or not he’d kill his father with a gun just to spite him or whether they have an epic showdown on the top of a space hanger. He just wouldn’t let me go to sleep.”

8. Ideas can be equally unhelpful with their timing.

“So frustrating, I have an entire chapter plotted out for this week, but I’ve got this new character in my head and I really want to write down her story now before I forget it.”

9. Other writers get that even literary research can be killer.

“Do you think you could come over next week? I’m thinking my villain kidnaps this girl and I can’t decide whether he uses chloroform or Rohypnol, so I think it’s best if I try them both to figure out which symptoms last longest and stuff. Can you help?”

10. That some can really put you off your food...

“I want to figure out what a decaying body would smell like and I heard sausages left for a couple of days outside can give you a good idea… what do you think would be more authentic: sage and apple, or Cumberland leek?”

11. Which explains why we're all paranoid about Google research…

“I’m really nervous about what people would say if they saw my search history...”

12. Even for those of us writing non-fiction it can still get pretty weird…

“This was my editor today: hey can you sub the sanitary towel story? And what happened to that interview you did with the dominatrix last week? Do you want to run that online today or do you want to put it up with the article on the transsexual mother that’s really a father?”

13. Who else can understand why rejection is so terrifying?

"What if they hate it? What if they hate me? What if no one will ever like my book and the paper it's printed on turns to dust and I've just wasted my life?"

14. Why negative reviews are so exquisitely painful...

"Do you even know what he said about my story? He said it was a nice idea. A Nice idea. Nice is what you call your neighbour's grandmother's Millionaire Shortbread. Nice is what you call a curry with no spices. Nice is sex with someone whose feelings you don't want to hurt but who you're never going to booty call again. Nice is people-pleasing and spineless and boring. Nice is the absolute worst."

15. Or why good reviews are the best thing in the bloody world?

"She called it brilliant! She loved my characters and thinks the narrative voice is super compelling! No, no let me read the review to you again... see this bit here."

16. The highs and lows of editing aren't strange to other writers.

Monday: "I love editing. It's so much fun! I forgot how much I love this story." Wednesday: "I hate editing. I'm killing my darlings. Killing. My. Darlings." Friday: "When will it end?!" Sunday: "Ah editing, thank you for letting me procrastinate from writing."

17. Neither is our caffeine addiction

"Tea. Coffee. I don't care. There's too much blood in my caffeine system right now for productivity and it must be rectified."

18. There's no judgement on our need for more books than we could ever finish

"I just loved the first book so much I bought everything ever written by the same writer..."

19.  In other words, it's nice to have a kindred spirit

"I know it's ridiculous but this sentence is just so gooooood... One day I'd like to write a phrase as perfect as this." "I know exactly what you mean. Ooo look at this one - imagine how satisfied Dickens must have been when he wrote that."

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
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Book Review: Pretty Girls, Karin Slaughter’s Chilling New Thriller

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Killer read from Queen of Crime, but is it chiller or thriller? 

Karin Slaughter is one of my favourite crime writers. So when I received a proof copy of her upcoming novel from Dead Good Books I was thrilled.

A new, standalone novel, Pretty Girls revolves around the Carrolls – a family devastated by the unsolved disappearance of eldest sister Julia. Whilst the father never gave up looking, the younger two sisters and their mother tried to move on even under the shadow of not knowing what happened to the family’s ‘golden girl’. Now 24-years since Julia went missing, a missing girl is in the news, and Claire Scott (nee Carroll) cannot help but be reminded of her sister. But when her husband is killed and she is reconnected with her estranged older sister, Lydia, she begins to learn the truth about what happened to her family.

Pretty Girls is different from Slaughter’s other books for a variety of reasons; not least that it is a standalone.

It is also the first full-length novel that’s not a procedural crime thriller. Instead, she turns her talent to a tightly plotted family tragedy told through three points-of-view. In this sense it is chillingly psychological, focusing more wholly on the interior experiences of her characters then her other books have done. For whilst her other novels are undoubtedly interested in the personal perspectives and problems of her characters, in this instance, it is safe to say Pretty Girls takes it to a different level. This is clear from the outset, where a first person narrator – quickly understood to be a diary entry written by her father – introduces the central mystery: what happened to Julia Carroll?

Following from the diarist opening, we are introduced to her leading ladies –the wealthy and well-married Claire, and her ex-addict, single-mother sister, Lydia. Without giving too much away, these two both start their narratives focused on the headline news that a young girl has gone missing. The Amber alert is out, and they are both brutally reminded of the unending horror of not knowing what happened to Julia. We therefore start with all eyes on the past, all voices narrowed on a mystery that is embryonic in its development but still nonetheless permeates every page and every sentence.

Now, there are a trio of things I love about Karin Slaughter’s novels: the characters, the ability to evoke atmosphere, and her attention to detail. These are things I admire, things I somewhat expect.

To an extent, Pretty Girls delivers.

It is a grisly, gory testament to Slaughter’s skilful ability to illustrate unimaginable torture and terror teetering on the edge of sensationalism. The characters have depth; somehow two characters that are exquisitely unlikeable in the initial chapters become fascinating by half way and sympathetic by the end. And of course, each page needs to be turned. The book is an intense thriller. A gritty, action-packed story full of twists designed to keep readers reading.

Yet there is something, a small niggling sense at least, that the novel doesn’t quite work as effectively as some of her others.

Slaughter has always been recognised for her more lurid style. She never shies away from piling on the descriptions in brutal, bloody, detail. This works exceptionally well in procedurals where criminal investigators have to get up close and personal with every tiny scrap of evidence. So for forensics like Sarah Linton and detectives like Will Trent to be confronted relentlessly with the violence and pathos of murder makes sense. It’s something I usually appreciate in her writing.

On the other hand, there are passages in Pretty Girls that feel overwrought in their brutality. This is because of the recurrence of almost identical ‘killing’ scenes. With voyeuristic glee, Slaughter replays the same images over and over, adding further gore with each repetition. Extended through the repeated images of television and video, which act as a metaphor for our insatiable social and personal desires to pry like a contemporised Pandora’s Box, there’s a point two-thirds of the way through where the imagery becomes something of a broken-record. It’s still gruesome. Still terrifyingly violent, but there’s nothing more to add. Yet still it goes on and on.

Admittedly, I can see why she does this from a writer’s perspective: it mirrors the experience of the protagonists. But as a reader, the scenes become desensitised, anaesthetised of meaning, skippable (or at least skim-readable) because there’s no additional clues actually in the barbaric act presented. The clues are after those scenes, in the moments where we return to the internal thoughts of Claire and Lydia.

It’s also in these moments that the suspense, which would normally ratchet upwards, slips. As the scenes recur, and as the images reappear, what should be a twist becomes achingly obvious. If it’s intended as dramatic irony, then that’s fantastic. Presuming this is not what she wanted however, it’s safe to say that other than one mammoth, what-the-hell moment, many of the twists are more like small, beckoning crooks of the finger. Saying that, suspense is a start-stop progress in Pretty Girls, but it’s still compelling reading. In fact, in the final chapters, readers are at serious risk of whiplash.

Another area that felt off – though I’m sure others may see it as the natural difference between stand-alone and serial – is that the characters were not as convincing as Slaughter’s others. This reaches from the under-developed and slightly predictable side characters (mainly police force), to the sisters themselves. Though they start off strong – three distinct voices are heard between father (pointedly told in the first-person), Claire and Lydia. Upper-class Atlanta contrasts starkly against working-class Atlanta between the sisters in the early chapters.

However, almost as soon as they meet their voices elide, swiftly shimmering into each other so that by half way through their mannerisms and individual idiolect vanish into one third-person style. This can make for odd changes in narration, as it’s only helpful but overt guidance from their author that keeps their closeness separate. Whilst not artless, and at times fascinating, compared to the rendering of previous protagonists (especially the love-to-hate ones like Lena Adams and Amanda Wagner), Claire and Lydia lacked distinction.

The same goes for that wonderful, brutal, tragic, deeply Southern landscape readers of Slaughter have learnt to love and fear, and which is decidedly absent. Instead, the novel deals primarily with private spaces and car journeys. Again, we can read this as a metaphor. Here we are dealing with a family saga, a tragedy that has trapped each of the characters in their own small world. Slaughter makes this explicit in the over-egged chorus around how Claire’s house reminds Lydia of a prison. Moreover, we are looking at personal journeys that are reflected in road travel. Yet the character of Atlanta, the one that’s so well-rounded it pulses within her other novels, is missing. It deprives Pretty Girls of vivacity and suspense.

By no means is Pretty Girls a bad read.

Powerful, poignant: it is brilliant though harrowing, and I sat stunned after finishing.

Slaughter’s meticulous detailing and vivid prose will keep most readers gripped – providing they have a strong stomach. For those seeking a psychological thriller you’ve come to the right place, but for Slaughter fans, it’s probably best to be aware that this is a crime master challenging herself rather than her readers.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter is out in the UK on 2nd July, and in the US in September, published by Penguin Random House. Hardcover Retail Price £20.00; Amazon Prime Pre-order Price Guarantee £13.60; Amazon Kindle £7.47

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER

Book A Day : General Edition

Prepare for Waffle! Book A Day UK Challenge

Today's #bookadayuk is a great one, and an important one. Book to convert a non-reader. Go! pic.twitter.com/1gxSyGBg7F

— Readership (@ReadershipBooks) February 28, 2015

Disclaimer: So many of these questions were answered by a) Harry Potter, b) crime fiction, and c) literary classics,  d) fantasy and e) young adult… I've decided I'm splitting those off into their own little subsects. Some of the answers are in here anyway. And you'll be able to link through to the other editions once they're live. 

Are you ready for the bookishness to begin? If so: PREPARE FOR WAFFLE

1. Book that defined my teenage years

Pfft. Start with the hardest why don’t ya?! Most people will probably come up with something like Huxley’s Brave New World or Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I read these, but I didn’t find them life changing or defining.  I had to study Gatsby and The Lord of the Flies, so let’s count them out – they were pulverised of meaning by GCSEs and IB. For me? I have so many books that defined my childhood but I'm not so sure about my teenage years. I entered my teens after thirteen years of adventure novels; having continually re-read Moonfleet, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Swallows & Amazons, not to mention the entirety of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. If we exclude Harry Potter (Harry Potter and midnight book launches were quite a defining feature of my teenage years. I doubt there will be anything like that again.) and fantasy novels (ah The Belgariad) … you’re left with A Clockwork Orange (read aged 13), Middlemarch, (read aged 16),  Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer (read aged 15), … I suppose Kingsolver should win, it was the first of her books that I read and it’s stuck with me ever since.

2. I’d like to know what @_____’s favourite book is #passthebook

All of you! Anyone reading this – pop in the comments what your favourite book is. Not only will I love you forever for commenting, but I’d be stoked to hear about your favourite books!

3. My favourite character’s favourite song would be

I have to agree with Emily Temple actually. Lyra 'Silvertongue' (His Dark Materials) would definitely love  “Supertheory of Supereverything” by Gogol Bordello. As Temple says: 

For the anti-Magisterium girl in books about killing God: “I don’t read the Bible/ I don’t trust disciples/ Even if they’re made of marble/ or Canal Street bling/ From the maelstrom of the knowledge/ into the labyrinth of doubt/ frozen underground ocean/ melting, nuking on my mind/ Yes, give me Everything Theory/ without Nazi uniformity. 

4. Matchmaking: these two characters should get together

I feel if Branson Cable (Thursday Next) met Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), both of them would be a lot happier. Also ‘bromantically’ speaking, Silk from The Belgariad meets Sirius Black (Harry Potter) and The Marquis de Carabas (Neverwhere)

5. The author I would love to meet (living or dead) ?

Dead: Philip K Dick. Alive: Jeremy Lethem or Richard Powers. Actually probably Richard Powers wins because I wrote my dissertation on his books, Plowing the Dark, The Echo Maker, and Galatea 2.2, so I have some serious questions for him. 

I added a video to a @YouTube playlist http://t.co/3nSEbTKCA0 The Extended Mind - Mind Beyond the Brain (Sheldrake Series #3)

— Robert Cumberbatch (@rocum56) February 27, 2015

6. And the question I would ask them is:

What do you think of your use of colons and semi-colons, Richard? Vonnegut told off writers for using them, but I think you apply them to indicate brain-states, shifts between internal and external patterns. Was my entire dissertation a lie or do you agree?

7. My favourite opening line

“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time." - Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

What a line! It's one of those lines that instantly pulled me into Zafon's (and narrator Daniel's) Barcalona. A city that celebrates the imagination. 

8. Bought entirely for its cover

I'm so guilty of this, I can't tell you how many books I own for precisely this reason. The latest is probably The Miniaturist. Mainly because it has blue pages. 

9. The book that has always stayed with me

I have two that stick with me that deserve to be here (and aren’t already in other questions) The Complete Works of Beatrix Potter has to be included, especially Peter Rabbit, for nostalgia’s sake. And the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, anyone who reads these innovative and fantastical books will never be the same.

10. A great book to read aloud

When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne and pretty much all of his other poetry books too.  Also The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan.

11. These two characters should not have got together
Harry Potter with Ginny Weasley. I know, I know. Total cliché. BUT aside from the obvious mummy-issues, the girl is defined by the ability to throw a bat bogey hex. I’ve heard the argument that it’s all about her sense of humour, (they once both laughed at Percy Weasley in Book the Third, and in Book the Sixth she manages to make a bitchy joke – or five – about Fleur, and then they have a little banter about bad tattoos before they make out) but as far as I can tell Ginny is the source of zero hilarity of her own making. Rather, she’s a whole lot of girlish scorn. So sure, she can throw a hex and isn’t completely vapid like the majority of female characters Harry’s age, but that’s about as much love as she’s ever going to get from me. #BadShip

I'm just so into you, they each said silently, staring into each others eyes.
Uh... sorry, no.  

12. Feel-good read

I do love a good romcom / chiclit. And for me the best are usually Sophie Kinsella's. Therefore, my 'Feel-Good' read is probably 'I've Got Your Number', the rib-crackingly hilarious story of a girl who discovers that perhaps her perfect boyfriend isn't going to be her perfect husband after she ends up with the phone of a total stranger. Someone explain why this isn’t a film already?!

13. This book is precious to me because…

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson is the perfect adventure novel. My dad read it to me when I was very young and then when I was eighteen, my friend helped me find a beautiful first edition of it in Portobello Market. I treasure both the memories and the actual text.

14. The book that reminds me of an ex

How to Be a Heroine: Or What I’ve Learnt from Reading Too Much. Not for any particular reason, other than the fact I came out of the relationship feeling like the protagonist of my own life. Any woman with a remotely bookish childhood should gobble this up; it’s honest, warm, and fizzes in the brain like sherbet on your tongue.

15. Book set in the place you’re from

Fairly certain there isn’t a book set in or even near to where I grew up. Fortunately, I now live in London, and one of my favourite books set here has to be Barbara Vine’s King Solomon’s Carpet. 

16. Favourite book in translation

The Cemetary of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Obviously. This isn’t to say I don’t love my Russians. Crime and Punishment has to be one of the best books I’ve ever studied and Master & Marguerita is wickedly brilliant; also the French Realists, Albert Camus’ The Outsider, and some of the most curious translations of all from Garcia Marquez to Horacio Quiroga and Otavio Paz. I highly recommend to everyone that they read everything on this list as well:  50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read

17. Book you were wrong about

I didn't expect Fifty Shades of Grey to be as bad as everyone said but it was.  It really, really was.

18. Book you read after seeing the film

The Hunger Games. I heard so much about the books that I didn’t want to read them. And then I watched the films but since the last film wasn’t out, what was I supposed to do. Wait for the film? Actually, this happened with The Lord of the Rings too - I never found myself interested in The Fellowship, but I did love the sequels. 

19. Favourite book about music

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. It’s definitely blow off your best friends to curl up on the sofa until you finish it good. Capturing the smell of rosin on a bow, the satisfaction of slow scales played with a partner, the sleepy somnolence of working a piece through in your head just before sleep… it’s the perfect romance for music lovers. My mum gave this to me to read when I was about fourteen. It was the first romantic novel I ever read but the plot felt about as original as it can possibly be. It was so beautiful and so exquisitely painful.

20. Slept with the lights on after reading

Criminal by Karin Slaughter. Actually most novels by Karin Slaughter keep my eyes wide open, peering into shadows, mistaking jackets for intruders, and jumping at my own reflection.

21. Brings back good memories

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Admittedly, I have never ugly cried as much before or since I read that book. I remember turning to my parents who were staring aghast as I sobbed uncontrollably in the middle of a tranquil Caribbean cove, and trying to tell them why but the words were completely lost behind tears.

22. Glad you took a chance on...

Haruki Murakami. My life would be infinitely less surreal if it wasn’t for that hazy summer day reading Kafka on the Shore.

23. Favourite book published in your lifetime

There's so many!? His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, The Shadow of the Winds, Neverwhere, Criminal... I couldn't chose. 

24. Character you’d least like to turn up on a blind date

Discounting the number of serial killers from Tess Gerittsen, Karin Slaughter, Ian Rankin etc and every single character included in Nico Lang’s 17 Truly Awful Literary Characters You Love To Hate, it has to be the one and only Jean Brodie, controlling and manipulative little sociopath that she is. I’d 100% diagnose that woman as a borderline personality with narcissistic tendencies.

25. Book you would give to a lover

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It’s a test. I can’t give anymore away.

26. A book you’d love to discuss with your favourite author

I would love to chat all books with Joss Whedon. But mostly, when will make a film or TV series about Thursday Next?

27. Longest owned unread

War and Peace.  I have no excuses. I was given it for Christmas before I started university so it's been in the pile a while. In fact, it’s soooo hefty, it makes a brilliant book to prop up other books with, and therefore it’s now at the bottom of the Leaning Tower of Penguins. 

28. Book to convert a non-reader

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. If you can't enjoy something as irresistibly readable, something so irrepressibly exuberant and fun, I really don't think anything will convert you. Saying that,  my dad bought himself a Kindle, and he's gone from reading a handful of books a year to reading a couple every month. The Kindle is a brilliant thing for people who perhaps find a hard copy tedious. 

Je serai poète et toi poésie,
SCRIBBLER