The Next Big Thing

Susan Price

          I don't know who first had the idea for this, but it's become a bit of craze among on-line writers.

         First, you answer the ten questions below about your work-in-progress.

        Then you link to the blogs of other writers, about their work in progress.

          So, here goes -   

Q1. What is the working title of your book?

          I usually call it ‘Sterkarm 3’ because it will be the third Sterkarm book. But its official working title, at the moment, is ‘A Sterkarm Embrace.’ It’s also been called, ‘A Sterkarm Cure’ and ‘A Sterkarm Potion’. The title’s in progress too.

Sterkarm Handshake and Sterkarm Kiss

Q2 where did the idea come from for the book?

          The second book in the Sterkarm series, ‘A Sterkarm Kiss’, ended in a cliff-hanger. This one takes the story on from there.

Q3 What genre does your book fall under?

          The time machine makes it science-fiction or fantasy, but the realistic scenes set in the 16^thCentury Border Lands make it historical. The love between 21^stCentury Andrea and 16^th Century Per make it a romance. All the fighting makes it an adventure.

          Is there a Science-fictionish Historical Romantic Adventure genre?

Q4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

          That’s a poser.  I don’t think the film industry have it in them to cast my heroine, Andrea, because anyone in the film world would say, ‘She’s fat, so she can’t be a lead.’

          Andrea is a big, bonny lass, with child-bearing hips. It would kill the film industry to cast her properly. I doubt they’d even try – they’d go on auto-pilot and cast some tiny, bony waif. (I give my reasons for making Andrea big and bonny in this interview.) In character, she’s quite shy and gentle, but has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and is quite brave and determined in acting on it. I don’t know that she always gets it right.

          I’m equally clueless about who to cast as Per, the hero. He’s a tall, fair, blue-eyed Border Scot – his nickname is ‘The May’ or ‘The Girl’, so he is pretty, but there is nothing girly about his character. He has been raised since childhood to ride, fight and lead. He’s also been raised in the belief that it’s his family, the Sterkarms, against the world, and he recognises no authority except that of his family elders - and not always them. He thinks for himself. He has a lot of charm, but underneath the good looks and charm, I have to say, he is a dangerous thug. Don’t get on his wrong side.

Any suggestions for casting these two?

Q5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

          Love, war, poison and deer-hounds.

Q6 Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

          At the moment I’m hoping that my agent will find it a publisher for the new book, and for the two older books. But I’m not ruling out the possibility of publishing it – and republishing the first two – myself.

Q7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

          Three years. I started working on it in 2009, about the time I was appointed Royal Literary Fellow at De Montfort University. Throughout my three years at DMU, I worked on ‘Sterkarm 3’. It’s still not finished. I daresay that even if my agent can find a publisher, there will be rewrites.

Q8. What other books would you compare the story to within your genre?

          I almost stopped writing the first book, The Sterkarm Handshake, when my brother lent me a story called, I think, ‘Mozart in Mirrorshades’ by, I think, William Gibson. It described – brilliantly - a time-travelling future society pulling out of the 18^thCentury in much the same way as the Americans pulled out of Vietnam. Marie Antoinette, who’s become the mistress of an executive, and Mozart, whose music has been influenced by the music he’s heard from the future, are desperate to be taken to the future too. For a while, after reading this story, I thought there was little point in writing my book. But I recovered.

Q9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

          I was fascinated by the history of the Border Reivers – and I’d loved the ballads since my teens. I’ve loved folk-lore and legends for even longer. I wanted to write about the reivers, but didn’t want to write a straightforward historical novel. I thought about bringing time-travel into it, so I could have characters from the 21^stand 16^th centuries interacting. I liked that idea – but thelight-bulb above my head didn’t really light up until I thought that the 16^thcentury characters would think the 21^st century people were Elves from the Hollow Hills because of their ‘magical’ technology.

Q10 What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

          It features an unexpected use for plastic carrier bags!

          And here are the writers I'm linking to:-

          Cally Phillips - Scots playwright, screen-writer and novelist

          Joan Lennon -  An originally Canadian adoptive Scot, and warm, witty writer.

 

A Sterkarm Twenty Minutes

Ice on the inside of the windows

          About three decades ago, when I was already a published writer but still lived with my parents, I wrote on my typewriter wherever I could set it up and get a bit of peace.  That usually meant on the big table in the rarely used front room.

          We didn’t have central heating and, in winter, only ever heated the living-room (and there were no fireplaces upstairs.)  Most of the house was, in winter, literally freezing.  There would be ice on the inside of the windows.

         One cold Sunday, I wanted to write.  I forget what I was working on, but I was deeply into it.  I put on my coat, thick socks, and a woolly hat.  I would have added mittens, but it’s hard to type in them. The rest of my family were gathered in the living room, about to watch a Hammer Horror film on video (I forget which one.  Witchfinder General?  Countess Dracula?)  I said to them, “I may be some time,” and plunged into the arctic conditions of the rest of the house.

      As I wrote, my ears were nipped, my nose dripped, my toes went numb and my fingers stiff.  I kept thinking, ‘It’s too cold, I can’t stand this.  Just another paragraph and I’ll give up.’ After about twenty minutes, I reached what seemed a natural break, and I was so cold, I couldn’t stand it any more.  I charged back into the warmth of the next room, stripping off my cold weather gear as I went.  The film was just ending.

          But wait!  A different film was ending, not the one they’d been watching when I’d departed for the North Pole.

          “Did you switch the other one off?” I asked.

          They looked at me strangely.  “We watched it right through,” they said.

          “But this is another film.”

          “Yes,” they said, as if to an idiot.  “We watched this one too.”

          “But – “ I said.  But I’d only been writing for about twenty minutes.  It had been too cold to do more.

          “We’ve watched two films while you’ve been writing,” they said. “And paused them while we made tea and fetched snacks.”

          They’d fast-forwarded through the slow bits, surely?

          Not at all.  They’d watched two films from beginning to end, with breaks for tea and snacks.  My twenty minutes had been two hours.

      For the past three years I’ve been working on Sterkarm 3 (and that, folks, is why a writers’ work shouldn’t be available free-to-all on the internet, as some argue).  I’ve been working hard on it, constantly climbing a metaphorical tower (perhaps an ivory one) and scanning far horizons with my imagination’s spy-glass, trying to see where the plot-lines might converge to an ending.

      Last Friday, I thought I might be drawing it all to an end – the first time in three years it’s had what felt like a conclusive ‘right’ ending.  About 9pm I looked at what I had sketched out and thought: If I keep going, I could finish this in the next few hours.

I made a decision: I’m not going to bed until I finish this, however long it takes.

      Some head-down time after, about twenty minutes, I was wandering around a sheiling with the cattle, somewhere in the drizzly hills of the borderlands, when I glanced at my watch and saw that it was midnight.  Okay, on we go.

      I wrote and wrote.  It was concentrated work, but didn’t take very long.  About twenty minutes.  That’s what it felt like.  I reached The End.  Collapsed on sofa.  Cheered.  Looked at watch.  It was 3-50 a.m.

      I think ‘twenty minutes’ may be the writers’ equivalent of ‘a country mile’ which is defined as, ‘any distance that has to be walked.’

Deerhound striking noble pose against mountains

     Of course, Sterkarm 3 still isn’t finished.  That ending is knocked into a rough shape, but it has to be polished.  There are characters who haven’t had their say yet – and who won't rest until they do.
          And there are two large dogs running around loose, I’m not quite sure where.  I’ve got to track them down and drag them to where they’re supposed to be.  (I’m sure Madwippet would never forget her canine characters and leave them roaming loose to worry cattle.)

A collie about to round up a synopsis

          But I’m starting to feel confident that, towards the end of August, I shall have a version of Sterkarm 3 that I can send to my agent without feeling ashamed of it.  (I may even decide definitely on a title.)
          I have another synopsis to send her too, again involving dogs, though these are border collies rather than large deer-hounds.

          But I’d love to hear other’s experience of ‘the writers’ twenty minutes.’
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     Edinburgh E-Book Festival

          Just a reminder that the on-line Edinburgh E-Book Festival really starts today.  There's all sorts going on over there - reviews, interviews, poetry...

             And over at the Facebook page, the cool e-readers are gathering, in their sunglasses.  Yours is invited to join.

          Right: my Kool Kindle, in James Dean style red leather jacket and sunnies, kicks back with a glass of white...

          Over to Blott...