Cat in the Bag

Well, the pleasant part is done. Good Australian and Chilean wine, a mustard dress (made by Gazèl, feelin' swell - thanks Ale), a shoe competition (Susi won!), a shaky read of a not-too-inappropriate short story ('Gorgeous Eyes' - and now I must explain a 'dessicated road' to a reluctant reader who prefers his authors not-living or, well, dead!), a debate on the merits of the short story (which some continue to find dissatisfying: read PELT!). And a splendid hat. (Penny, I wish I had a photo.)

It was a swell night. Books sold and cheese consumed. A warm, intimate group while the London rain pelted outside. Haha Pelt! Get it?

And now the hard work continues. Blog tour articles and interviews, requests for reviews. Pushing and weighing up. Making proposals. Sounding sassy and interesting. If you thought having a book accepted for publication was difficult then you should try promotion! These days, unless you are Stephen King you will have to pull out a spade and shovel deep. It's as endless as the internet is a frontierless, 24-hour heaving monster. Enter and you will exit with cramped wrists and warped eyes. Hungry and exhausted, the fridge empty and dinner over hours ago...

Who said writing was creative, solitary work? Solitary yes, and creative in terms of being original, finding a entry point into busy, distracted brains. At least I passed through the frosted glass doors of Waterstones Piccadilly and there's a chance 'Pelt' might be stocked there.

So photographs. There aren't many. Said author and friends were too busy drinking and catching up, telling stories, talking of stories. Penny came in a stunning hat. Susi wore divine shoes. Book? What book? Oh yes, that one. Mmmm. 'Pelt and Other Stories'. What on earth was she thinking?

Thanks to all who have bought books, written lovely supportive words, allowed me air space on their blogs, become readers and short story mates.

I have two new lovely interviews this week. Don't be shy and do read them!
Her Royal Majesty, a Paris-based Literary Arts Magazine - an interview with editor Harriet Alida Lye
Ether Books - Who do you think you are? A discussion about voice and authenticity - are you allowed to change gender/race/culture in a short story?
A Guest Post on the lovely Vanessa Gebbie's blog involving art and short stories!
My Life in Short Fiction on the talented Dan Powell's blog

* * *
I'll also be reading an excerpt from the story 'Claudia Cardinale's Flesh-Coloured Lips' at the Literary Marathon of the Women's Fiction Festival at Matera next week. Can't wait!

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Last week's giveaway winner is Jennifer K. Dick with her spectacular answer to short-story-lover question. Please email me Jennifer or leave a message here (stromboli27@yahoo.com)

For genuine short story lovers: PELT GIVEAWAY !

prosecco in San Marco, Venezia. Move over, Mr. Clooney

The past few days have been heady, full of champagne, white wine and lovely September light. The Pelt Blog tour has kicked off. It started with a radio interview - in Italian - with Australian national multi-cultural radio station SBS (links will follow when I have them - it's not been broadcast yet) and was followed by my guest post Sex and the Short Story (somebody had to write it!) on Averil's naughty blog. Next, a guest post about assembling an interlinked story collection on the talented Tom Vowler's literary blog.

Prolific Mel Ulm of the vastly followed blog rereadinglives.com has written an insightful and appreciative review. And I have interviews and guests posts to follow in a lazy fashion over the two months (by then you'll be sick of this book!). Here goes. I'll insert the links as they happen:

Interview with Maria Gismondi - SBS Radio Australia 
Sex and the Short Story - chez Averil Dean
Guest post on Tom Vowler's blog
Interview with Rae Fenton - Snow Like Thought blog
Guest post on Kimberly Sullivan's Blog

Guest post with Nuala ni Chonchuir - Women Rule WriterGuest post on Ether Books 
Guest post with Vanessa Gebbie - More News from VG
Radio Interview with Hannah on Talk Radio Europe
Interview with Cate Allen - Aerogramme Writers' Studio
Guest post with Liane Spice - Novel Spaces
Interview with Sue Terry - Whispering Gums

There'll be reviews hopefully, and I'll post a few snippets without driving you mad.

I'd love to offer a virtual glass of champagne and invite you to a mild (not wild after the Young Adults last week) party out in the garden. But, failing that, I can still do a super giveaway. Just tell me: Who is your favourite short story writer and why? Come on, I love competitions! Write your comment below and my soprano daughter will choose a random winner next week.

***BTW If you are near London do come to the Pelt and Other Stories Book Launch!

7pm, Friday 13th September,

The Big Green Bookshop,

Unit 1, Brampton Park Road,

Wood Green

London N22

Venice across the lagoon from San Servola island

for an evening of red wine and raw tales from a dreamy author currently in a Pelt Daze !

Tales of Lust and Dirt

Things that happen on that momentous day when your book copies arrive at the house.

You wake after a dream of salt and sloshing water, scratching the spotty red jellyfish sting on your wrist.
You remember you have a book coming out and are suddenly shit-scared.
You read your favourite mate's daily email and feel uplifted.
You read the newspaper on your iPad and feel shitty because of your comfort and the awfulness in Syria.
You look around at the beautiful late summer day, your garden.
You drink green tea.
You blog.

You release kittens and dogs and feed them and blah blah.
You think you should be getting to work on those blog tour articles.
You drive your daughter to the bus stop.
You think it's a good time to weed the driveway, now that the ground is soft.
You make barley coffee.
You open the computer.
A woman calls with a heavy Roman accent, lazy and uninspired and you can tell she doesn't give a shit whether you say yes or no to a new Sky deal.
You say you are a foreigner and don't understand Italian.
You reply to twenty emails.
You have a headache.
You make tea.
You write the headings for two articles. One of them is called Sex and the Short Story. If I write this, you think, no one will ever, ever take me seriously.
You don't care.
You frantically write down the details for two radio interviews and think, Ha! I can do that in my pyjamas. Or worse!
You go through your manuscript looking for sex scenes for your article.
There are a lot.
You sift through them, choosing just three to put at the end of the piece.
Your son tells you there is a big red truck at the gate.
You are pissed off.
The man kindly brings a heavy box onto the kitchen table.
You can't look.
The books are here. They truly are.

There is no alcohol in the house except two last Corsican beers you promised to your eldest son. You are able NOT to drink them.
Your ex comes to the house when you are finishing your article. He says his girlfriend says she has read your blogs and you are sex-obsessed.
He goes to buy a cat cage.
You scan through your blog posts and don't feel you are sex-obsessed.
You also write about racism and politics and shoes.
Your other ex calls from Copenhagen.
You think, Hang on, this is my damned day. 
But you feel a turnaround, a step ahead. A little click inside.

It is joy.

www.indigodreamsbookshop.com 


www.thebookdespository.com
www.amazon.co.uk

In Good Company

This morning, very cranky after the teens partied just about all night, I opened an envelope on the table. This is what I found inside:

This story was accepted around two years ago - perhaps more - and highlights the exquisite pain of being a short story writer. Previously, I had very ambitiously sent it to The Paris Review, and received my copy back with squiggles and crosses over it. I had the feeling it was some college graduate with a heavy hand and flicking pen. Rejection. Oh well. This is when Catherine-the-secretary kicks in. Revision. Review. New horizons. A new submission.

As the story deals with neo-colonialism in West Africa, I decided to try a review I used to subscribe to called Wasafiri. Fat chance. The story talks about Eugene, a failed British Ghanaian doctor, who travels home to assist his dying sister. Recently left by his girlfriend, he experiences his tropical homeland in a fray of discomfort and pain, reflecting at length on the failure of the independent government, on his sister's malady, the phony aid workers dotted throughout the country, the tricky power his old mother still has over him. And a terrible, irreparable secret he holds close to his soul.

Surprise. A year of so later I received a reply. They liked it. But it was way too long. Could I cut down by a third? Whaat? I tell you, I learnt more about words in that edit than I did in the whole 300-page-long experience of my novel edit last year. Judging, weighing up. What really counts, what adds to what you want to say. What do you want to say anyway?

It's one of my favourite stories. The first big piece I wrote after returning from Ghana to Europe. It means a lot. And as our household hero Ngugi wa Thiong'o is one of the esteemed members of the editorial boards, I decided I was going to get in there by hook or by crook.

And I did! Formal acceptance came a long while back, and now finally the review is here on my desk. With my name on the same page as my hero Ngugi wa Thiong'o (I'm not silly enough to print it here, but just believe me.) I even went up to Ngugi to have a dog-eared copy of 'Devil on the Cross' signed at the last Mantova Book Festival, and shyly said I had a story coming out in Wasafiri.

A wondering smile. A wonderful man. You can download 'Infection' through this link. And in next month's Wasafiri you can read Ngugi's compelling introductory article on Mazrui and Achebe, full of memories and reflections about the art and politics of these two great intellectuals of Africa.


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More astounding news from the ranch. PELT AND OTHER STORIES IS UP FOR PRE-ORDER! Here is the author-friendly link to my publisher where you can order a copy. It is also up on Amazon and will later be coming out in the USA and Australia, and well as a Kindle version. Publishing date is 2nd September 2013. More news on events shortly.

Excitement! This Corsican queen is organising her blog tour and book launch with a glass of Pastis..

Book thieving; stealing lives

Have you ever stolen a book? I confess I have. Years ago, impoverished student, all that stuff. It was a hardback copy of Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse'. I still have it. And look upon it with shame.

But what a book to steal!

Do you ever walk through bookshops inhaling? Or plunge into a sofa and drink up as much as you can? The last time I did that was in Piccadilly Waterstones, where the chairs are very comfortable and no one frowns in your direction. I read nearly the whole of Helen Garner's last book, 'The Spare Room' . Garner's friend is dying of cancer and comes to Melbourne to endure a final, non-Western treatment. She has come to die. Interspersed with these ravaged scenes Garner's grandaughter pops through the side fence in her flamenco costume, looking for some grandma attention. Kid stuff. A gentle laugh.

I felt like a voyeur, allowing myself to be gripped by the what stood up as a crafted story - and yet whose central drama was the real and painful demise of a friend. Her death. Is that allowed?

Why is she writing this?
Why am I reading this?
There was a horrified pull and push to my involvement. I was magnetised, repulsed, compelled. I read on and on until at certain point I realised I wasn't breathing anymore and my chest was caught. I had to look around, get my bearings, get away from Garner's fetid house.


About halfway through I decided I couldn't read anymore. I also decided that London was too expensive for me to justify buying a half-read book, and that my cheap-flight bags were already overweight (other books, my tireless daughter's shopping). I still don't know how the book ended. Though I suppose Helen's friend Nicola dies. She had to.

And I didn't even contemplate stealing the copy. I wouldn't dream of doing that these days. I put it back slowly and walked out into the busy street, feeling guilty that I had stolen some of Helen Garner's hard work.

But it made me think of theft. What we steal from those around us to write a story. I don't think I could ever document life as vividly as Garner does, but I know I use it as a springboard. Real things. Real places. In Penzance where I presented this book last month I was asked about my title story 'Pelt', where a pregnant Ghanaian woman tries to win back her German lover when his ex-wife comes to town.

Where did it come from, Catherine?

The truth? Years ago a German man knocked on our gate in Ghana, said he grew up in our rented house. Said there used to be a monkey cage behind the kitchen. He even went onto the veranda to point out the place. I could see the little boy he once was: grinning, unreeling.

My story has nothing to does with monkey or cages or little boys unreeling. But when this German man walked away down the street I could see him through the hedge. His back was a little too straight, as though he'd had an injury, been thrown from a horse. There is nothing in the story about horses or back injuries either. But way he moved - even though I never mentioned it - that was Rolfe.

Oh yes, that was Rolfe.

How to Pick Short Story Ideas Out of a Hat

It was a lovely idea. I had rocked up to Lisa Clifford's inaugural writing retreat - The Art of Writing - in the Tuscan hills to give a talk about 'Blogging from the Heart'. I gave my talk, accompanied by nerve-soothing white wine, and in the following days found myself swept up in writing lessons given by expert tutor/novelist Jim Friel ('The Posthumous Affair').

I was daunted. I've never taken part in a writing exercise in my life. I never show my work to anyone unless it's at submission stage. I never open up my ideas to anyone, toss things about, shake down my story line.

Perhaps I should. Do you?

One of the exercises that really had me rolling was this: Jim put a batch of different locations typed on slips on paper into a big colander. He put a batch of different characters into two empty fruit bowls. He then put a batch of different plot lines into another container. Then he barked: Get To It!

A group of writers stared at each other, some squirming, others already rising from their seats. You took one slip from each bowl and sat down for a matter of minutes - constructing a story sketch with your location, two characters and plot line. A recipe.

A field of bright strawberries
A gambler
An only child
A compass error

What would you make of that? Or,

A spaceship
A reluctant bride
A detective
A gift is returned

Astonishing, isn't it? Fun. Crazy. Belittling. A cusp.

Oh dear! My way of writing short stories is so gluey compared to this - I have to have a springboard of a sort, a nexus to head towards, or a jarring first line. Not so much characters as shadows to work with. Movement and action, direction. Then I like to let something magical take place. I can't say I will get great stories out of these hats - but it is good to have one's thinking upended, no?

F.Scott Fitzgerald by Carl van Vechten

One morning Jim read the most bewitching passage by F. Scott Fitzgerald and showed us a master a work. Deft description. Action. Dialogue. Ahhh! Another day he used a passage from Joyce's 'The Living and the Dead' to show words in motion: this time he asked those present to extract, understand and reshuffle the great writer's shimmering words, and create a poem. A poem - yes - but less of a poem than a new sensory way of reading words, of slipping them into place.

It all had this writer quite dumbstruck, enthused, keen to get back to work.

Have you ever been to writing workshop? And?

Kindness, Book Jackets and Taxidermy

Kindness is astonishing.  The world of writing can seem very unkind. You send off your best stories and you are often rejected. It is not personal though it feels as if it is. You are a début novelist so you volunteer for events – you are keen and excited – but other bigger writers tell you they can’t come on board because they need to be paid, and you should be too.  You help out with your book design, you beg writers you adore for a cover comment, something to give your new book a push. Most don’t write back at all – you feel so stupid, who would ever write to Nam Le??? – but there are surprises. Two names, one of them big, are willing to help. Then a young award winner who has published you in a review offers to write something for you. Words come together. Your book feels as though it has a kind pat on the back, a little hug.

Rosa Rankin-Gee, author of  The Last Kings of Sark (out in September with Bloomsbury), Paris editor of A Tale of Three Cities, wrote this:
 
‘I read Catherine McNamara’s work once, twice then three times and it gets even better with each read. Her words are deft and swift, yet have such weight.’

 Here is an interview from i-D onlinemagazine with co-founder Alex Tieghi-Walker about A Tale of Three Cities, where my story ‘Taxidermy’, a tale inspired by druggie friends in Berlin, was published in April. Issue One featured Zadie Smith and Issue Two has a wicked interview with the ever-smug and enquiring Alain de Botton :

Text by Courtney Georgia Sklar 

A Tale of Three Cities: Titular nods to Henry James and Dickens coupled with artistic output from contributors inhabiting the European mega trifecta of London, Paris and Berlin make for a wonderfully beguiling read.

If you’re tired of London, Paris and Berlin you should probably just move to Florida and be done with it. Founded in 2011 Alex Tieghi-Walker and Rosa Rankin-Gee’s split personality arts journal celebrates emerging young writers, artists and photographers coming out of these three European chrysalises. Now onto its second issue, this beautiful hand numbered, dust jacketed journal interrogates our concept of “home”. i-D Online pow-wowed with co-founder Alex Tieghi-Walker about de Botton, Proust and what home means to him.

What inspired you to start A Tale of Three Cities? Rosa (Rankin-Gee) and I founded the journal when we went to find our fortunes in London and Paris. We wanted a journal that bridged work by creatives in the two cities and made it a menage à trois with the addition of Berlin.

Have you ever been down and out in Paris and/or London/Berlin? In all three, though I actually had one of the best holidays ever in Berlin with about 50 Euros to last me two weeks. I bought a crappy bicycle, ate free samples from the Türkenmarkt and swam across the river to avoid the entrance fee to Bar 25.

Do you agree with Alain de Botton that Proust can change your life (beyond developing a predilection for madeleines)? I like that Alain has the conviction to declare that any novelist can change your life. In a way he’s focusing a brilliant argument on just one writer but the belief that literature has a seminal power like no other, is one I totally believe.

What is your design inspiration for the zine? We turned to the beautiful artists’ manifestos of the 1920s and 1930s when putting the journal together. The manifestos were bound with an incredible permanence, even if the ideologies and discourse were only fleeting. While the writing in A Tale of Three Cities only sum up certain feeling our generation, we hope they sit on bookshelves for many years to come.

What does home mean to you? I’ve lived and grown up in so many places that actually home is so nebulous now. Home is more than a physical comfort, it’s also somewhere that you can relinquish all emotional duties and fully relax.

Which city has the best sunrise watching venue? Berlin and Paris both have long triumphant avenues which make perfect platforms for the sunrise. Watching the first light come up over the Straße 17 Juni and from the far end of the Rue de Rivoli are experiences unparalleled in London. The London sunset, however, from Parliament Hill looking towards the Highgate ponds in late summer is something magical.

A Tale of Three Cities is available to buy online via Protein.
www.taleofthree.com