Is it ever acceptable to read other people’s personal letters? ( This isn’t Question Three in my Virtual Treasure Hunt, you’ll find that further down the page.) I’ll get back to those letters in a minute or two.

Meanwhile, I want to mention that more correct answers to my Virtual Treasure Hunt are still arriving in my in-box, and it’s not too late to join in. For those of you who haven’t yet entered the TREASURE HUNT, you’ll find Question Two here

You’ll find the THIRD QUESTION below, and I’ll be posting a few more over the next couple of weeks. The first five people to contact me with all the correct answers will receive a free copy of either Paper Lanterns or The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

It’s exactly a year since I posted this picture of a Greek Island – If you didn’t read that post, you’d probably wonder what possible connection there could be between a course on Novel Writing in that idyllic setting and the terrible Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001. (There’s more than one HINT in this paragraph that will lead you to the answer to this question – via a link to another post)

QUESTION THREE:
What was the last line of the poem which won me a cheque for £100?

As for other people’s letters, I wouldn’t dream of reading something personal that wasn’t meant for me. However, when the letters were written nearly one hundred years ago, it’s a different matter. Though, as I explained in an earlier post, it is still a very strange and moving experience.

Here is one that was written in 1916 by a young Chinese woman. You’ll need to read Paper Lanterns to see how I’ve woven this into the novel, which is set mainly in Hong Kong.

“Dear Sir

Shing Mui”

Congratulations to the six readers who have already contacted me with the correct answer to the first of my questions in the Virtual Treasure Hunt.

If you get this one right, and the others that I’ll posting over the next couple of weeks, the first five people to contact me with all the correct answers will receive a free copy of either Paper Lanterns or The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

For those of you who haven’t yet entered the TREASURE HUNT, you’ll find Question One here

I’ll give plenty of notice when I’m about to post the final question, and will let you know the latest date for submitting your answers.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about writing this blog is the opportunity to use some of my own snapshots – I make no pretence to be a photographer – all I do is point the camera and press the button. I’m always amazed when I see the picture on my monitor with details that I hadn’t noticed at the time. Hurray for digital cameras!

My TREASURE HUNT is giving me an excuse to display photos a second time – This is one that I’m quite proud of!.

Here’s PART TWO: with just one question. This will involve scrolling down through some previous posts – and the Peacock is the first HINT.

Once you’ve landed on the correct post, you’ll need to follow ANOTHER LINK to find the answer to this question:

QUESTION 2:
What was the date of Nicola Morgan’s ‘Party’ for her blog’s first Birthday?

Woops!! I missed my first blog birthday!

I only realised that after what should have been an occasion for celebration on 10th May this year, so now I’m drawing attention to my ONE HUNDREDTH BLOG POST. This seems like a good time to launch my VIRTUAL TREASURE HUNT.
ALL the ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS can be found somewhere on this blogsite.

THE TREASURE HUNT will have at least THREE PARTS, and some of these will contain more than one question. The first FIVE READERS who come up with the correct answers to ALL THE QUESTIONS will receive a FREE copy of either Paper Lanterns OR The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society

PLEASE USE the ‘Contact Me’ page to give me your answers. In this way, I’ll be the only person to see your answers .

PART ONE: A single question to start with.

1) What is the title of the post in which this picture appears, and what is the name of the cat? (HINT: Notice the archives on the right: June is the month for strawberies!)

Look out for PART TWO of the TREASURE HUNT in my next post

Meanwhile, I want to tell you what I was doing this afternoon. One thing I enjoy (almost) as much as hearing other writers talk about their work, is giving talks and readings to groups of other writers myself. There’s nothing that develops a taste for self-promotion quite as much as having a novel published. I won’t go as far as saying I was a shrinking violet before The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society was published in October 2005, but I’ve definitely acquired a taste for it since then. (you might guess that from this photo of my first book launch!)

So there I was in the new community room in Erdington library, being introduced to a lovely group of local writers, led by Jan Watts. I’d already met some of these writers at a talk I gave last year, in a cramped corner behind the bookshelves in the library itself. What a wonderful resource this room is!

Although I also enjoy talking to reading groups (or, to be honest, to anyone who’ll listen to me) there’s a particular stimulation in the questions asked by fellow writers. Just as I learn from listening to what more experienced authors have to say, I know that many aspiring writers may be looking for some practical tips and encouragement from me. I have to take extra care with my answers because I want to be honest about my own experiences, both good and bad, without saying something that might leave people feeling disheartened about their own endeavours.

I can’t deny that it’s a tough old world out there for writers (look at my post on rejection letters!)but we all need something to aim at, and there’s more than one way of getting your work into print.

The most important thing for me, is the satisfaction I get from the writing itself - playing around with the words until they are conveying exactly what I want them to do. (This doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, it’s definitely its own reward.)

I have to admit that I experienced a twinge of annoyance and a dollop of disappointment last Saturday morning at the Spring Thing Literature event, organised by the Birmingham Book Festival. But before I tell you why I felt like that, I have to make it clear that those feelings were quickly replaced by enjoyment and I was grateful that the organisers had kept some last-minute information close to their chest.

I’d been looking forward to hearing Helen Dunmore giving a talk about her latest novel and prize-winning poetry, and it wasn’t until I’d seated myself in the large auditorium of the Birmingham Conservatoire that I found out that she was unable to attend, and two other novelists would be taking her place. I had a lot on my plate that weekend (a long drive down to South Wales that evening, followed by an even longer drive to East Sussex the next day) and if I’d been informed beforehand, I’d have chosen to miss that first session – so I’m now grateful to the organisers, because I’d have missed hearing Judith Allnatt (The Poet’s Wife) and Clare Clark Savage Lands) in Conversation with each other, expertly led by Jonathan Davidson of Writing West Midlands .

It was fascinating to hear both authors explain what had inspired them to write their historical novels and compare the particular logistical problems they encountered and how they resolved them. They make a very good combination for a session like this.

When they were talking about their research methods, I particularly enjoyed Judith’s description of the process of accumulating information almost randomly, following whatever paths presented themselves, immersing herself in her chosen period almost randomly until she ‘knew’ it so thoroughly she didn’t need to think about it – it had become a part of her. The analogy of growing a crystal in her school lab was something I understood at the time, but couldn’t explain it clearly now!

The next session was also excellent: a Panel Discussion, again chaired by Jonathan, with three more novelists, Aifric Campbell ,(The Loss Adjustor) Samantha Harvey (The Wilderness), and Amanda Smyth (Black Rock).

The only difficulty for me was to resist the temptation of buying all three of those novels to add to my To-be-Read mountain.

Stuart Maconie’s books sounded amusing informative and I felt that his latest, Adventures on the High Teas, (wandering through Middle England) would make an ideal present but at that time my mind couldn’t come up with the exact person to give it to.

The day itself was a satisfying feast, with just enough down-time between each of the five sessions and plenty of opportunity to chat to other readers and writers over coffee and lunch. I was sorry that I had to leave early, missing Carol-Ann Duffy’s session at the end, and only allowing myself a brief taste of Jo Bell
and another last-minute stand-in, Nick Walter, stepping in to the gap left by Jenn Ashworth. (That was another disappointment, as I’d been looking forward to Jo and Jenn’s ‘Too Much Information’ . Maybe I’ll be able to catch that show somewhere else on its journey.

Oh! and I mustn’t forget to do my share of eavesdropping on July 1st!

No, I haven’t really got the recipe, but right now there are three subjects in my head that in a strange way seem to link up.
1: Getting published.
2: A novel for young adults called Wasted
3: An inspiring poetry Workshop
If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know that it’s mainly about my writing life as a poet and novelist, and that this can be split into two stages: before and after publication. The ‘before’ part is a good deal longer – I‘m an expert in the art of dealing with rejection: : it took me twenty years from completing my first novel to finding a publisher for my fourth.

You can find out here about Novel oneand Novel two. I nearly made it with Novel three, when I won a competition to receive a free read from The Literary Consultancy. Several amendments later, the novel was recommended as ‘deserving to be published’ . That was where the luck ran out: although I now had the backing of T.L.C., the agents on their list of contacts turned it down. They loved it, but not enough to take me on.

After at least forty more rejections, Novel Four was recommended for a free read from… The Literacy Consultancy! This didn’t feel like good luck to me. I’d been editing this novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society, for over a year, and I knew that it had reached its final form. I wasn’t going to attempt yet another re-write.

I sent it anyway. Was that luck, or chance or sheer doggedness? All I know is that if I hadn’t grasped that opportunity, I wouldn’t have heard of “the new publisher, Transita about to bring out its first novel in a few months’ time”, and I wouldn’t have become the published author of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society in October 2005. You’ll find a mention about the demise of Transita here ,and there’ll soon be more about my second way of being published.

2: A novel for young adults called Wasted by Nicola Morgan which I finished last night, made me think about the role of luck or chance in our lives, and for me, specifically, the chance that led to publication at last. Nicola has an inspiring blog, ‘Help I need a Publisher’ and has set up another for her new novel, Wasted: which, in spite of my reluctance to buy yet another novel for my t.b.a. pile, I bought.

Although when I taught English in secondary schools, I used to enjoy reading fiction for teenagers, I haven’t done so since my own children were in their teens. I’m not going to say much about Wasted here – apart from saying ‘BUY IT!’ and quoting from an email I sent her after I’d read the first six chapters: “ I love the way you kind of dance through the words on the page with such energy and sensitivity. You’re ridiculously, arrogantly original and you’re making me want to write for teenagers. (not that I could)”

Last night I couldn’t sleep until I’d finished Wasted. This morning I visited the Wasted blog and came across this review.. It expresses my thoughts and feelings exactly.On another blog, where Nicola was responding to questions about Wasted, I find her voicing my own sentiments:
“As Jack says in Wasted, “Luck is just what we call it.” I think we very largely make our own luck. Terrible things happen to people through no fault of their own, and sometimes good things happen to those who don’t deserve it, but I believe that there are lots of ways of maximising our chances in all aspects of life. With trying to be published, there are right things to do and wrong things. The more right things you do, the more likely you are to be “lucky”…”

3: Yesterday afternoon I was at an inspiring poetry Workshop in the beautiful Shakespeare Memorial Room in Birmingham, led by Mario Petrucci and organised by Jaqui Rowe of Poetry Bites. I came away feeling grounded again, and with a few notes that might become a poem. I’ve been reminded of what I need to do and, more importantly, not do. I’ll write more about this soon, but meanwhile I shall follow Mario’s advice and do - what might look like to anyone who might see me – nothing!

Please go the ‘Contact Me’ page above, if you’d like to order a copy of one of my novels, but would prefer not to use Paypal

Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and the films based on these, I wouldn’t ever have expected to find myself at an event dedicated to his life and work, but there I was, last Sunday in Sarehole Mill Recreation Ground in the Shire Park, Birmingham.

This large grassy space, enclosed with high hedges of flowering May, was filled with marquees, jousting rings and make-shift stalls and tents, staffed by Hobbits, Elves and Medieval Humans.Unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead on arrival, so I’ve had the make use of photos taken from the Middle-earth Weekend site.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I can be relied on to turn up at any event that offers me an opportunity to talk about my writing and I tend to be open to almost any new experiences - as a writer I can never know what unfamiliar sights or sounds might provide useful material for a future poem or story - so when Chris Morgan, Birmingham Poet Laureate 2009, invited me to read some of my own poems at the annual Middle-earth Weekend, I thought, ‘Why not?’
and as usual, said, ‘Yes, I’d love to!’.

The warmth and brightness of the sunshine after so many weeks of grey cold days somehow added to the illusion of stepping into a film set, where small family groups in ordinary clothing strolled around holding ice creams and cans of pop, mingling with characters from The Lord of the Rings. These included a medieval lord and lady each with their own pet baby dragon which looked and felt extraordinarily life like, almost seeming to purr as I stroked one under its clammy chin.

The poetry recital was programmed for 1.00 in the Performance tent, where four of us delivered our poems to a small audience which seemed to be split into two groups: the enthusiasts who’d found their way there on purpose, and the bemused who only wanted a a cup of tea and a piece of Victoria sandwich. Nonetheless , they all listened politely.

I didn’t have any Tolkein-themed poems, so I’d selected a few that seemed in some way to fit in with a fantasy theme and started off with one which is usually popular, even with people who aren’t particular fans of poetry, Becoming a Seal

It’s a long time since I’ve posted a new ‘poem of the Week’ so here’s another of those I read on Sunday.

Goldilocks

After that startled awakening and chase through the woods
bears lumbered almost nightly
into her dreams

folded in on his unblemished self
as though he’s tumbled through a crack in time
and she can’t touch him.

I wrote this several years ago and was delighted when it won a place in a Mslexia competition.

It started on Monday morning with a talk to a group at Northfield library – what a treat to start the week like that!. Quite apart from my personal use of libraries, especially for their unabridged audio books on CDs, which allow me to catch up on ‘reading ‘ novels, I love visiting the different libraries around Birmingham. After The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Societywas published, I was invited to talk to reading groups and other interested people in libraries all around the city, but for some reason that I can’t now remember, a planned visit to Northfield library didn’t happen, so I was delighted to be invited there by Lesley.

It’s a bit of a Tardis: once you step inside, there seem to be all sorts of bright open spaces on different levels. There were lots of people already seated in the large meeting room upstairs, and when I found that none of them had yet read my first novel, I realised that I’d need to make time for Agnes Borrowdale, the 75 year old heroine, before I moved on to talk about my new novel, Paper Lanterns.

Because part of that novel was inspired by some real-life letters, I usually start by reading one from the married English woman in 1920, and then one from the young Chinese girl. I think in future I’ll have to suggest that people bring some tissues with them as I’m sure there were hints of tears on some faces. You’ll see why, when you read that letter in one of my next posts, (or in the book itself!)

I didn’t really know what to expect from the event on Thursday. I’d been emailed by Tim, the organiser of Three Act Structure, saying: “We are hosting a celebration of Birmingham’s Literature at Birmingham City University School of Art, Margaret Street, Birmingham on Thursday 13th May 2010.”

I was familiar with the building, a beautiful Victorian structure with a stunning interior featuring oak panelled walls and stained glass windows but the event itself was something of a mystery for me – “The exhibition will follow a Three Act Structure with a beginning, middle and end. The focus being on the past, present and future of Birmingham’s Literature and the New Birmingham Library.”
Would it be mainly about creative writing or a celebration of an as yet un-built library?

Whatever! I always sit up and take notice when there’s anything that looks like an opportunity for networking with other writers and I was especially pleased with this next sentence as it shows that I must be on somebody’s list: “As a local author we would be delighted if you could attend to join fellow and aspiring writers for a day of mutual performance, critique and appreciation.”

“Try anything once“, is one of my mottoes, and ‘go with the flow’ is another. It always pays off in one way or another, and Thursday was no exception: lively poetry performances from a previous Birmingham Poet Laureate, Charlie Jordan, the current one, Adrian Johnson, and Matt Nunn, well known Birmingham Poet, and co-founder of Nine Arches Press.

Since this event was all about Birmingham I decided to give a brief talk about the Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society which is set mainly in the Midlands. I’ve really enjoyed dipping in to that book again - all those characters are still very real in my head so it was nice to be able to give some of them an airing.

I’d have liked to stay for Suzanne Wright’swriting workshop, but this was my first opportunity to nip across to the Ikon Gallery, the scene of my wonderful launch of Paper Lanterns a couple of weeks ago. The Ikon Bookshop (mainly for Art books) is one of the very few Independent Bookshops in Birmingham now, and I’d promised, Eva, the manager, that I’d pop in and sign the copies of both my novels that are now on sale there.

I was back in time for the Third Act, and had a chance to give another short talk and reading to a different audience - Up till then, I’d not really taken much notice of the fact that the construction of the new Central Library has started. If I hadn’t taken part in Thursday’s event, with its inspiring presentation about the new library, I wouldn’t be feeling as excited as I am now about this project – it looks as though it really will be a fantastic facility for us all.

It’s a whole week since my book launch and I still smile with delight when I go over the events of that evening, so I’m about to indulge myself shamelessly by giving a few more details of my conversation with Clarissa about Paper Lanterns, and how my writing career has been linked to our friendship as you can also see in my profile, published last week in the Birmingham Post, and now available to read on-line

As I said last week, we’d been treated royally by the Ikon Cafe staff, and you can read here about Clarissa’s comments on the food.

Friendships forged in childhood, especially those based on shared incarceration at boarding school, can last for a lifetime, and Clarissa felt that the best way of explaining how we’d met was to read a short extract from her autobiography, Spilling The Beans.

Our lives have taken very different paths through adulthood. It’s no secret that Clarissa is a recovering alcoholic, and when her drinking was getting more and more out of hand, I was so worried about her that I wrote a short story based on this.

I entered it for a competition run by BRMB and the Birmingham Readers & Writers Festival in 1985(the forerunner of the Birmingham Book festival) and I still have the clipping from the (then) Sutton Coldfield Times with the account of my prize winning story.

That was my first ever success with my writing, and in 2005, Clarissa was there to introduce me at the Birmingham Book Festival’s launch of my first novel,The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society.

Neither of us could have predicted this wonderful event and the changes in both of our lives 20 years later – Clarissa was no longer drinking and had forged an amazing new career for herself in television, and I was a published novelist at last.

We talked about other events in my writing career, and the ups and downs of my attempts to get published, and then I explained the ideas, inspirations and themes that produced Paper Lanterns. This included the story of how I discovered the original letters from 1920

First I read a long letter from the married English woman, and then the one from the young Chinese woman written 4 years before that to the same man. (I’ll post that one soon, but meanwhile, here’s an extract from the English woman. As I explained during the launch last Tuesday, I brought the dates forward to 1930, and changed the setting from Canton to Hong Kong, as this is a place I know well. In my novel, I’ve kept as closely as I could to the original letters, and have invented a series of journal entries, involving a totally fictional story line for a key section of Paper Lanterns.

Thursday
Ah, Mr McFarlane, you are a disturber! What do you mean by upsetting the equilibrium of two highly respectable (!) ladies in their heretofore blissful states of married and single blessedness? And two at once, mind you! And you so young and all. The poor young idlers that we endeavour to teach to shoot must certainly not have got their money’s worth this morning and now at our first opportunity (recess) we two rush together to weep on each other’s shoulders for what we haven’t got and will never get. It’s a great bond, this being crazy about the same person. I only hope I’ll be able to preserve enough of a sense of decency from the wreck to give her the chance I wish I could take myself.

After these letters I read more extracts from the novel itself, and then went on to explain about the founding of Novel Press. I was delighted with the comments of Jonathan Davidson on the Writing West Midlands blog, where he suggests in his article “New Ways of Publishing” that:

“the means of production is moving away from being held in the hands of one conglomorate… Good writing will surface for us all to enjoy: poor writing won’t be quite so often foisted upon us in an attempt to get a return on investment or to distort our reading tastes for purely commercial gain.”

What a week this has been for me and for my latest ‘babies’: Paper Lanterns, and my publishing venture, Novel Press. On top of all this, I nearly jumped out of my skin this morning when I was leafing through today’s Birmingham Post. I was scanning for an article and a photo that I’d been informed would appear last week.

It didn’t.

Although I don’t tend to expect more than my share of luck to land on my doorstep, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed, especially as the photographer had come to take my photo the Tuesday before. ‘Oh well! Never mind,’ I thought. ‘It’s a shame, but they’ve obviously got better things to print.’

However, I never let myself be put off by low expectations , so before I went to work I stopped at the useful shop at the top of the hill. I slowly turned the pages, thinking, ‘Not likely to be in this week with all this election stuff jostling for space.’

It wasn’t in Books, Films, History, Outdoors, Motoring, or Travel. Business Briefing? Not likely! Then, over the page, under the heading, Business Profile there was my face occupying the entire page! And on the facing page, another photo and a whole long article about ME!! AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER CHRISTINE COLEMAN

But I’m running ahead of myself. This amazing double-page spread happened today, and I haven’t yet said anything about Tuesday evening at the Ikon Gallery. What a fabulous venue for my launch! This was all thanks to Sara Beadle and staff at the Birmingham Book Festival who organised the whole event, liaising with the staff at the Ikon Gallery.

They were all keen to help promote me as a local author and publisher, together with my childhood friend, Clarissa Dickson Wright who has loyally supported me in my writing endeavours (more of this in my next post)

When we arrived, Clarissa and I posed for photographs, in the Ikon Cafe and then we and my husband were treated to an excellent meal of tapas and other mouth-watering dishes. Clarissa is well known for her interest in good food, and was genuinely enthusiastic in her praise of our meal.

We were then taken up in a glass lift . Here’s the description from their website
“The dramatic second floor galleries offer 228.2m² of space and are light and airy, retaining the original arched gothic ceiling.”

The Ikon staff and volunteers had to wait till the gallery had been closed to the public before they could bring in the 90 chairs, erect the platform for me and Clarissa, arrange the copies of Paper Lanterns and my first novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society on a table at the far end, and lay out the drinks for the audience at the other end. It was all done with amazing speed and efficiency, ready to welcome the audience at the appointed time of 6.45.

All the seats were taken and everyone in the audience was wonderfully attentive and appreciative. They laughed in the right places and I was amazed and delighted at their reactions to my readings of two of the original letters that partly inspired the novel. I’ll be writing more about this event (including book sales and Novel Press in future posts,) and about the Birmingham Post article.

In the meantime, take a look at this excellent article by Jonathan Davidson, Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands, with his hard-hitting piece ‘New ways of Publishing’

If you can’t get a ticket for my book launch next week, you do have a chance to hear me talking about Paper Lanterns, thanks to Radio Wildfire. “The Loop” is always worth listening to in its own right, and not just because it’ll let you hear me talking about the real-life letters that partly inspired Paper Lanterns. It’s a nonstop transmission between their live monthly broadcasts - two hours of lively interviews with writers , musicians and generally creative types from around the West Midlands region.

The whole ‘menu’ is there for you to read, so you can see what’ll be coming up next. You can’t predict which part you’ll land on, but you’ll be able to see whether or not I’m next on the list. If you’ve worked out that you’ve just missed me, and my turn won’t come round again for ages , you can decide to go out for a walk or dig the garden and then come back to listen to me. (There are lots of other interesting things though, so you might prefer to listen to everything else (instead, or as well!)
All you need to do is click on this link then click ‘Listen’

So what about those letters? Briefly, the story behind the novel relates to some original love letters that were written in China in 1920 by a married English woman to a young colleague of her husband. There were five letters that related to her, and the final of these had been written by a female friend of this woman, informing the young man why he had not heard from her friend. It turned out that the husband had discovered that ‘something’ was going on, so the errant wife had given up her would-be lover for the sake of her children.

Reading these letters, I felt like an intruder even though the writer herself must have been dead by the time I came across this material. I was intensely moved by this glimpse into the private life of a woman from a different era, but then, when I then found that there were the two short letters in broken English, written in 1916, I was almost in tears for the young Chinese girl as she struggled to express her grief at his absence.

There were a few other accompanying documents in the same package, and when I turned to these I realised that both sets of letters had been addressed to the same young man. In spite of my feelings of sympathy towards both these women, the writer in me was already dreaming up ways in which the stories of those two women could be woven into fiction.

I’ll be writing more about these letters soon, but meanwhile, in case you were wondering why I’ve included pictures of a peacock and pink magnolia, it’s because these were taken on a gloriously sunny day in Kew Gardens, while we were visiting our daughter and her fiance in Chiswick for the weekend.

Getting back to recommending other websites to visit, you might like to follow this link I’ve already mentioned Nicola Morgan (aka ‘crabbit old bat’) in a previous post, and the new link is to her new novel, with lord knows how many exciting competitions etc. What a wildfire of energy the woman is!