The Blog
SCLHO 2019 Retrospective
It’s hard to believe that it’s two weeks since I attended SCLHO (South Coast Lesfic Hang Out) in my first event alongside other lesfic authors. There was so much literary talent in the room that I felt a little in awe rubbing shoulders with the likes of Kiki Archer and A.E Radley.
For those of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, SCLHO was the brainchild of the marvellous Claire Highton-Stevenson and it involved getting loads of lesfic authors together in a room in Crawley. Authors got to mingle with each other, readers got to cross-examine authors in the politest way, and we all got to listen to some fab readings from books.
I have to say, I had a brilliant time. It’s always nerve-racking walking into a room when you don’t know what to expect, and I hadn’t met any of my fellow attendees in the flesh before (except my wife, of course). But from the moment I walked in there and got my name badge, I felt at home.
Being situated between Jenn Matthews and Lise Gold definitely helped! They dispensed words of wisdom (not to mention chocolate and sweets – thank you, Jenn), plus they were amazingly friendly to someone who definitely wasn’t sure of her place in the room. The calm corner devised by Jenn worked well too, and I enjoyed hiding for five minutes at a time to regroup!
My stall was evenly split between But By Degrees and Valerie. Gerberas play an important role in But By Degrees, so that’s become the unofficial emblem for the novel. For the other side of the table, I owe the rosettes idea to my wife. Buy a book, get a rosette encouraging you to vote for Valerie Smythe.
The day went so well that we’re already planning on doing it again next year and I’ve already signed up. It’d be great to see some fresh faces there and – hopefully – there’ll be more books and goodies on my stall next spring. See you there?
Photo credits: Marie Keen
Thinking Bibliographies for Novels
This is a case of my two personalities crashing headlong together and waiting for me to put the pieces back together.
Some of you will know that I’ve got a PhD in Victorian Literature. As a consequence of that, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life wrestling with research and referencing – generally the things that make grown women cry if they think about them for too long.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love research (even if it can be a never-ending mountain with adjoining molehills to sift through), but referencing remains painful. If there is another me in a parallel universe who followed her original plan to be an academic, I suspect she’ll be sat in a corner somewhere weeping over article referencing mishaps.
But that isn’t my life. So why am I talking about it?
The truth is, the two projects I’m working on at the moment are heavy on the research. I announced last year that I’m writing a sequel to Valerie, but I’m also working on something historical that I’ll explain about really soon.
So, basically, I found myself stuck in between two towers of research. On the one hand, I was stacking up books about the British political system in the 21st century and why it doesn’t work. Over on the other side, there was a teetering pile of books about Victorian England (some, admittedly, recycled from my PhD). It struck me that I was going to have to do what all reputable academics do when I finished these books – write a bibliography.
I think that’s what tipped me over the edge into panic mode. Perhaps it was just this vision of my two worlds colliding or the fear that I felt throughout my PhD of “getting it wrong”.
Now, the thing is, you can always get it wrong. Just because you research it carefully, it doesn’t necessarily mean your sources are accurate. An anecdote told about a politician in a book about government blunders may be funny, but it still might not be true. Short of getting primary sources for everything (and I’m not a time-traveller so I can’t fill in the gaps around the things I really want to know), you have to try a little trust sometimes.
Accuracy matters to me. Research matters to me. Heck, even my bibliography matters to me. But if I get so bogged down in that bibliography that I’m scared of typing anything, what am I doing all this for?
It’s time to strike a balance.
Power of Feedback
It’s the time of the year when writers are asking readers to leave reviews as presents, while still reminding them that feedback is for life, not just for Christmas.
In all seriousness, writers often squawk about how important reviews are to them and that they’d love you to leave one as a present at any time of year. It’s not just about rankings and sales, though. Sometimes, those reviews can be just the nudge a writer needs at a difficult time. I’m not just talking about the rave reviews either. Thoughtful feedback that offers suggestions on how the author can improve are more than welcome. We want to keep developing and we take every bit of feedback on board, even the bad stuff.
This was brought back to me in two conversations I’ve had this week with friends, one who’s read one of my books and the other who saw me perform at an event last month.
The first comments came from my childhood best friend who’s read But By Degrees and not Valerie. She says she keeps getting halfway through Valerie but can’t finish it – and not because she thinks it’s terrible. It’s about the book and what it represents to her.
She said that she sees my books as helping her to end chapters in her life, that But By Degrees was the book that closed a particularly nasty chapter and that she’s not quite ready to close another one by finishing Valerie.
To me, that’s incredible. The idea that my books have such an impact on one of the people I love most is amazing, and I don’t care how long it takes her to close those chapters and continue her story. Valerie will be waiting when she’s ready.
The second conversation I had was with someone I know through attending a life drawing class (where, coincidentally, my best friend was the model this week). He’d seen me “in action” for the first time during the November Artwalk (Wakefield’s bi-monthly evening of culture) and approached to tell me how good it was.
He didn’t stop there though. Instead, he gave a bit more detail about why he thought it was good, namely that the delivery was packed full of emotion and that it combined with quality writing to create something special (I’m paraphrasing but he won’t mind).
For someone who enjoys that type of dramatic writing but doesn’t think she’s very good at delivering it, that was beautiful to hear. It’s given me the confidence to consider performing more in the future, not to mention recording more for posterity.
So, while the kind of feedback that promotes sales and spreads the word about my work is more than welcome, this type of quieter, more personal feedback is also welcome too. It can give writers the encouragement they need to continue and develop. And that is a truly a great present at any time of the year.
Here’s that performance that my friend was talking about:
Write What You Wish You Didn’t Know
Office politics gets me down. To be fair, I suspect the politics of any workplace is equally as frustrating, but office politics is the one that I’ve had experience of and, therefore, office politics is my bogey.
I’ve written previously about the initial ideas for But By Degrees and how offices played a big part in the evolution of that novel. What I wanted to discuss in this post is how I channelled my frustration about that environment into the development of a story and – most importantly – the point where the story broke away from my reality.
Maybe I should preface this by saying that I’ve made some great friends from working in offices. They’re places you can have a real laugh and have fun while working. Maybe my problem is that, like Danni (the protagonist in But By Degrees), I’ve got a bit of a short fuse. For me, that’s coupled with an intolerance of procedures that are just there to increase bureaucracy. If you can’t answer my simple “why” when you’re enforcing a rule, it’s a pointless rule. As well as that, if your explanation includes being a micro-manager and not trusting your team… Let’s just say I don’t like that either.
Can’t have the door shut while you’re doing some printing? Why not? Oh, because you don’t trust that I’m working. Great. I’m so thrilled about this trusting relationship we’ve got.
There’s also something about an office that brings out the pettiness in people. I’d experienced that in various ways and so, by the time I was writing But By Degrees, it was primed to flood out. It wasn’t the first novel I’d drafted, but it resonated with me in a way that the first one hadn’t. I think it was the honesty of it that made me more confident about writing and editing it. Within the novel, certainly, there are “types” that anyone who’s worked in an office will recognise.
Danni doesn’t like conflict and would rather just get on with things. Jude is the more motherly one, looking out for younger employees. Matt is the congenial guy (or gal) that everyone likes and knows will help them out. Michael is the distant manager type who doesn’t really understand the dynamics properly because he’s not exposed to them everyday. Harriet is the opposite – a manager who is forced to live amongst the people and is being driven slowly up the wall by it. As for Caroline . . . Well, she’s the troublemaker who gossips and actively looks around for backs to stab. Maybe it’s boredom, maybe it’s a personality type. However, I’ve yet to work in an office that didn’t have a Caroline in there.
With But By Degrees, I hoped to evoke the claustrophobia of an office environment and tighten the screws a little more. At the time, the idea of being trapped with the people I worked with every day was terrifying to me. How would I react? What emotions would come to the fore?
Those thoughts were part of the catalyst for But By Degrees. Those were the real emotions that helped me transform the draft into a novel that I felt confident enough to publish. So, really, I have a lot to thank offices for.
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Whatever made Anne Hagan think she could write a mystery novel? Find out how ‘Relic’ began as a lousy novel about a lonely Sheriff and became the catalyst for a mystery/romance series and more. Anne Hagan is the author of the Morelville universe of mystery novels and spin-off romance novels. She also writes short stories outside of that universe and has plans to take the plunge into legal thrillers in 2019. https://annehaganauthor.
Seasons of Love – Plus an Apology
For the last two years, this has been the time of the year when I’ve released novels. Both But By Degrees and Valerie were released on this week in 2016 and 2107 respectively, and it was my hope to stick to that sort of release schedule. The best laid plans always turn to mush, however. The last year has brought several changes to my life and my writing plans have been derailed.
The most important development? Two weeks ago, I got married. Although it was a low-key affair, the planning and execution (pardon the word) took a little time. However, one of the wonderful things about my new wife is that she’s a writer too and is getting herself known on the local spoken word circuit. That means she “gets it”. We spend a lot of time in coffee shops, sat together yet apart in our own universes, and that’s great. There’s no chance that marriage is going to impede on my writing – she wouldn’t dream of letting it as one of my biggest supporters. Here we are just before we headed off to Scarborough for a mini-honeymoon:
There’s no denying, though, that this year has proven difficult on the writing front. I think it comes down to one fundamental point: each of the novel projects I’ve earmarked for release in the short to medium term (out of the 13 I’ve got in progress) need careful attention and I’m not willing to put them out into the world before they’re ready. These are the four:
- “Amy” – The sequel to Valerie has the benefit of coming with fully-formed characters, but I owe it to those characters to tell a story that’s befitting of them. Three drafts in and we might be getting somewhere with that.
- “Nights at the Majestic” – This was the third novel draft I ever completed, although the emphasis shifted slightly in the most recent draft. It’s an age-gap romance that deals with some messy themes about love, bereavement and a political conspiracy.
- “Make Old Bones” – Set in a residential care home, this is rather different to anything else you might have read from me. That’s why I’m reluctant to say more at this stage – it could still undergo a second metamorphosis into something else!
- “From Such Crooked Wood” – This project has the distinction of being the first one I ever completed way back in 2009/2010. Since then, it’s gone through several huge changes and, naturally, this latest seventh draft has taken it along a different tangent altogether. I’ll give you a couple of hints: painting, an old church and a good old-fashioned love triangle. That’s all you’re getting for now.
The one I’m currently working on is “From Such Crooked Wood” and, provisionally, I think this one might be my next release. But it needs attention and it needs love. Having lived with the protagonist in my head for nearly a decade, I’m not going to let her down by releasing a book that isn’t as good as I can get it. For me, if I don’t love my final piece of work (then seesaw back to hate and then love and then hate and…) I haven’t done right by my characters, by myself and, crucially, by my readers.
I’m working, I’m writing. I hope you’ll be around to read when I’m done.
Another Year of Experiences
One of the perks of getting older has to be the accumulation of experiences. Sure, others may recede into the distance as your memory fails (I’m trying to keep too much in this brain of mine, I think) but the new ones can be assimilated into stories. That way, the kernels survive and thrive, even as the outer shell disintegrates and blows away.
Birthdays are always reflective times for me. I’m one of those people who always believe I could’ve done more in the last year. For instance, I’m frustrated that it’s still uncertain whether I’ll be able to release another novel before the end of 2018. In the classic case of an author arguing against herself, though, I know that I’d rather wait and work carefully on my next release – I can’t countenance anything else.
My work over the last year isn’t too shabby when I sit down and think about it. I’ve written a third draft, three second drafts and a first draft that was completed during NaNoWriMo. As well as this, I managed to get Valerie completed and released. It might not be as much as I would’ve liked to accomplish within the year, but I’d always want to push myself further anyway.
And what of those experiences I’ve had in the last year? Some are good, some are bad. A mixture of both keeps you fresh, I suppose. Thanks to being incredibly busy with the “day job”, I haven’t escaped from Wakefield as much as I would’ve liked, but that didn’t stop me seeing friends and going to local gigs. A highlight was definitely Long Division 2018, a Wakefield music festival that introduced me to some fantastic bands and musicians. In the recent hot spell, I went to Haworth (just ahead of Emily’s bicentennial) and Brimham Rocks in North Yorkshire. My fiance caught those two visits on camera and I feel a story brewing somewhere in there…
With any luck, I’ll manage to release another novel this year. If I don’t, I know that it’ll be the best it can be when I do release it. That’s what this is all about for me. After another year of being a writer, that’s still the point that resonates with me – I still want to write stories that I want to read. As long as that’s my guiding light, I think I’ll be okay.
Smashwords – Valerie & But By Degrees Available Now
I’m happy to announce that both Valerie and But By Degrees are now available over at Smashwords. I know that some people don’t use Amazon and are frustrated when there are no alternatives, so I’ve remedied that.
Valerie on Smashwords
But By Degrees on Smashwords
I originally uploaded But By Degrees to Smashwords when it was first published. However, I had some technical difficulties with the platform, so I pulled the book and focused on Amazon. I’ve decided to take another punt with it now, although please do let me know if you download and there are any issues.
Lesfic Sale Going On!
Once again, the fantastic folk over at I Heart Lesfic have coordinated a massive sale of lesbian fiction of all varieties. Whether your preferences are for romance, erotica or thriller novels, there’s something in the Mega Spring Sale for you.
I’ve listed both Valerie and But By Degrees for 99p/$0.99 as part of the sale (those links will take you straight to the Amazon pages), but there are plenty of other books for you to grab too. I’ve listed a few of my personal highlights below:
- There’s a romance novel by Lila Bruce which looks good. I’ve just finished one of hers so quickly added this one to my Kindle too.
- Secrets by Barbara Winkes is one I read recently with plenty of twists and turns.
- Escape to Pirate Island is probably the best lesbian novel I’ve read in 2018 so I’d recommend that one. Niamh Murphy also has a couple of others in the sale, including a retelling of Hansel and Gretel.
- Alice & Jean by Lily Hammond was one of my highlights of last year. It’s a beautiful book.
Hopefully, these recommendations will get you started and there’s plenty of other novels on there to fill up your Kindle. I’ve tried to be a good girl and only downloaded 7 so far (there’s still time though). Thanks to all the authors involved, there’s a great range and I’m looking forward to the novels by Harper Bliss and MJ Duncan especially. It’s going to be a good summer with these novels lined up to read, but I’m still intending on doing lots of that other thing I’m meant to be doing – that writing thing!
The sale runs until Friday and you can find the full list here.
Remember, after you’ve read any of the books, consider leaving a review on Amazon. It really helps!
Thinking Sequels and Stories
For anyone who missed my recent announcement on Facebook, you might be pleased to learn that I’m in the process of writing a sequel to Valerie. It was something that I was considering before I launched, feeling that there was more these characters wanted to do and say. As their author, the least I can do is listen to them.
I’ve always had an ambivalent attitude towards sequels. Sometimes, it feels as though there’s nothing new to be said and that inevitably leads to a book that doesn’t live up to the first one. That’s part of the reason why I’ve got twelve distinct novels in various stages of writing and rewriting – I was determined that I’d never be tempted to write a sequel just because it was easier than coming up with fresh ideas. That way, if I ever got the urge to develop a sequel, it’d be on genuine merit, not simply because I was worried about writing something new.
Valerie is very much a novel about a trio – Valerie, Max and Amy. The dynamics between those three are crucial to every chapter and every scene. It’s not just a love story, it’s a story about family and how families are formed, what they mean, how they function. There were some deliberate loose ends in Valerie, some ambivalence that mirrors real-life. I understand the need for happy endings (especially in fiction about lesbian characters), but life isn’t all hearts and flowers. My novels aim to grapple in the undergrowth of emotions and, perhaps, that’s where the best stories are.
As yet, I don’t have a release date for the sequel. I’m in the process of rewriting it and it’ll go through as many edits as it needs before I release it. There’s also something else in the pipeline which I’ll reveal in the coming weeks. Sign up to my mailing list to receive updates on my releases and monthly freebies during 2018.
One thing I can tell you now… The title to this sequel? ‘Amy’.
A Man Once Told Me…
It’s difficult not to get caught up in the swirling scandals that are engulfing every facet of modern society. I have nothing but admiration for all those women and men putting their stories out there. I’m fortunate never to have experienced anything too bad in my time, but I’ve been reminded of various conversations I’d had over the years. One, directly related to my writing, has stuck with me.
This man whom I respected and considered a friend (at the time) pointed out that I didn’t portray men in my novels as particularly nice. It’s taken me a while to realise that what he actually meant was that they weren’t prominent and at the heart of the plots. Now, for a self-avowed writer of lesbian fiction, that’s not exactly a big shock to me, but I did go through the characters in my novels to work out if the men were all evil. Shock horror – they’re not.
Matt in But By Degrees is lovely, not exactly based on anyone I know but just a nice, decent guy. Even Michael doing what he does (trying to avoid spoilers here) is understandable when you look at it in context (I think, feel free to argue). In Valerie, the two prominent men are Drew and Ed. Drew’s an idiot and a bit of an arse but I don’t write saintly characters, male or female. Ed, too, has his faults, although I’m very attached to Ed as the kind of guy I’d like my nieces to grow up around.
Looking back, this friend made a judgement on Drew mainly and that rankles. I’ve known many guys like Drew and I get on with some of them. Just because a character – or human being, for that matter – has some flaws, it doesn’t mean that they necessarily jump into the “bad” camp. I’m not keen on that camp at all, to be fair. Life’s made up of grey people and grey areas a lot of the time, and that’s something I try and put across in my fiction.
I don’t write lesbian fiction because I want to write about men. Nor do I brush them out of existence and pretend that women don’t have male friends who can be a bit irritating sometimes. I write stories that are about lives, centred on lesbians, and men are on the periphery of those lives. What’s so wrong about that?
