Editor’s Letter
April has been a great month for working on a variety of projects. At the beginning of the month I was completing edits on two YA (young adult) vampire novels for an author in Western Australia.
Emmerson Short is publishing through SilverWood Books and is currently working through my structural and line edits for their books. Emmerson originally wanted to publish these as one volume, but after working together has decided to publish as two separate volumes. Emmerson is now busy plotting a series which will explain the intervening thirty years between the two volumes. You can find out more about Emmerson’s writing in this month’s author showcase.
I’ve also been working with one of my ex-student’s, Peter Denton, on his novella: Blemished. This is Peter’s first big piece of writing and tells the story of a young girl whose childhood was blighted by acne and school bullies. More about that next month in my author showcase!
In addition, Peter is a qualified SEO and has been helping me with my website’s visibility and click-through. If you’d like to work with Peter then please drop me a line and I will pass on his details.
In March, I started a bi-monthly Zoom writing retreat for authors who were struggling to find the time to write. I admit that the idea came from my own struggles, but it has developed and we now regularly have nine writers at the group. It’s a very supportive group and we discuss our work and any issues we’re having before getting down to a series of three half hour writing sprints.
Have a great month with your own WIP.
Happy writing,
Lesley
Contents:
Author Showcase: Emmerson Short
Writing Prompts
Book Reviews: Calypso by David Sedaris and How Do You Like Me Now? by Holly Bourne
Author Showcase: Emmerson Short
Emmerson is the author of two YA vampire fantasy stories. They come from Western Australia and wrote their stories prior to beginning a BA in Creative Writing. Now in their third and final year, Emmerson is keen to get their vampire stories out to a wider audience. As with another of my author’s, Veronica del Valle, Emmerson will publish through Bristol based, SilverWood Books. Echo in the Crypt (EinC) and Scream on the Wind (SotW) are two books that Emmerson originally hoped to publish in one volume. They follow Ada and her brother, Matthew, as they discover their vampire heritage, and which forces them into battle with other covens of witches and vampires.
Emmerson says, ‘I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember: most of my childhood was spent learning about the ways you could make a person laugh or perform so that someone enjoyed themselves in the moment. There was never any real inspiration for me to write, though. It just felt like the right thing to do, regardless of my emotional state, and it was very therapeutic. Academic writing, however, is a different story.
Vampire and fantasy novels hadn’t appealed to me until I began reading The Witcher. Kapowski has a keen eye for dialogue, particularly in a medieval, stylised vernacular. His descriptions of the supernatural creatures are so wonderful, I’d recommend the series to anyone who enjoys the subject.
I found myself sampling vampire lore and exploring all the perceptively gory details within the supernatural, such as: incestuous relationships from Vampire Knight, super-human abilities from Twilight, the stake-through-the-heart cliché birthed by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and various species inter-breeding, to create hybrids, from The Vampire Diaries. This marriage of various media into a single book is what, I think, sets it apart from the rest. I’ve made my vampires a pastiche of old and new, along with my own interpretation of vampire’s origins.
I was in school when I began writing EitC and SotW and had taken to writing fanfiction; but it was quite unfulfilling. Writing a full-length novel was something I’d been thinking about for a while, so it felt like the right time to start. Completing it, though, was the most difficult part. I had three years of writer’s block! Between 2016 and now, I’ve attempted to publish another novel, which was accepted at three separate publishing houses. The publishing fell through, but now, the priority is seeing this volume through to the end.
SotW was originally going to be a completely unrelated storyline to that of Matthew and Ada, EitC’s main protagonists. It’s working title was Vampires in Suburbia. It wouldn’t have even been in the same universe as the rest, but when I realised that I didn’t want to leave Ada’s fate to chance, I developed the plot for SotW. It also allowed me to explore the problems we’re facing in the current decade, without stirring up political discord or commenting on things which I don’t understand. I hate to have an opinion and be woefully ill-informed.
Keeping on top of the plot lines and character details across two stories is necessary to ensure consistency and that the stories follow distinct story arcs, and while professors, tutors and editors alike would faint at the notion: the key bind CTRL+F has gotten me out of many scrapes. Be that as it may, a key bind is no match for a fresh set of eyes or an outsider’s opinion, particularly if a friend or family member enjoys your writing style. EitC had been re-written so many times, that SotW only needed a handful of notes.
Most of my consistency edits were about what colour people’s hair and eyes were, rather than their character. Anything related to plot and character arcs stayed stored in my brain, where I could change and develop it. Rather than typing and setting them in stone. That’s when I resigned myself to flattening out wrinkles in the plot, through my own basic editing.
Sexuality plays a big part in both halves of the plot, while race is a focus of the story far later: this is because I knew I needed to understand people’s plight on both ends of the scale. While being a person of colour (POC) and LGBTQ+ make both groups’ minorities, their struggles are far different.
Like vampires, people of colour have been put to work by white colonisers, represented by human oppressors. They were separated and treated like second-class, or the lowest class of humanity, regardless of the fictional or real contexts. In creative writing, you can explore these themes, without fear of repercussion. Simply because it isn’t real.
The LGBTQ+ treatment, however, is also very real. Bigotry, torture and mutilation, as ways to control the unnatural urges of unorthodox sexuality or gender identity, are methods which have been used throughout history. As a demisexual-bisexual myself, these themes were suddenly very topical for me, and for the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. There’s a lot of debate among traditional and progressive Christians regarding our lifestyles, as well as political figures who believe that we are inherently archaic. My novels had to show us that bigotry, not our sexuality or gender identity, is the thing that corrupts a person’s life. As I grew comfortable with myself, so did my LGBTQ+ characters and their respective partners, which is probably why I relate so much to SotW.
Echo in the Crypt was meant to be a stand-alone novel, but after deciding to cover more personal and topical issues, I realised I couldn’t separate the siblings or their stories. This is one of the first works which people will see of mine, and I felt like a small book would not do my characters justice: the time I spent on them should be reflected in the volume I amassed. At almost 99,000 words, I’d like to think I made a fitting monument for them.
Currently, I’m not planning any more stories for Ada and Matthew. They were the duo who started this strange, rambling story about love, loss, and hopefulness, but I needed their story to end. I don’t want to cover an entire eternity of life and span genre after genre, simply to continue their story or that of their children. It feels like a monopoly, rather than a story, and I don’t see a need for a third, fourth, fifth instalment etc. I made these characters, and I couldn’t put them through any more heartache than I already have.
Alongside editing EitC and SotW, I have several options which I’m exploring, including more supernatural themes and drama, but the project which I am looking forward to putting out is a crime novel based on the relationship between myself and my girlfriend, called Private Guys.
Rather than being feminine figures (and to protect our identities), I have reimagined us as two men, thrust together when Balthazar Collins’ neighbours are murdered in a house fire, which he has been framed for. The local police know that Balthazar is innocent, and PI John Little plans to prove it; or lose all credibility trying. Though he is initially unsure of the younger man, John decides that the reclusive artist is not the monster people believe him to be.
I considered using a pen name and the main reason for this was to allow myself time to get used to people wanting to talk to me about my work and react to criticism without taking it personally. My nervous disposition in a face-to-face situation makes public relations quite scary, but this barrier between my personal and private life affords me some safety. It also means I can make the reveal myself; when I’m comfortable having the two merge.
As for writing as myself, without barriers, I feel I’d have to write about my life as if it were one, big joke. Not to be crude, but because I love to poke fun at myself, like any fun-loving Aussie does! It’s in our nature to turn bad things on their head and show people that bad words aren’t bad, unless you give them that meaning. I changed my name, not just to protect myself, but because it can hurt me, too.
When I first entered the BA in Creative Writing course, I had hoped to develop my skills, hone the craft, and discover new genres to explore: around this time EitC had been completed. Since then, I’ve learnt to be subtle with innuendo, or outright, and it shows in SotW. Of course, the main goal of the Bachelor’s degree is to demonstrate that I can work in a professional capacity.
Academia wasn’t what I expected, but my advice to fellow university students, old or young, is to be sure that you’re enjoying what you do. Without enjoyment, you will quickly become overridden by big essays and long presentations. Take it from someone who was a struggling student in their first year, and is now a flourishing academic by the third. The hubris needs a little work, though.’
Writing Prompts
She peered through the steam rising from her morning espresso …
Reflecting on his life as he squeezed his toddler’s foot into the fifth pair of shoes to be rejected that morning …
Her footsteps echoed in the now silent streets …
Book Reviews
Calypso by David Sedaris
This book was recommended to me towards the end of lockdown, when everything seemed a little bleak and the opportunity to laugh out loud was grabbed at like a bobbing suitcase off a sinking ship.
David Sedaris writes with a great eye for the ridiculous and of those moments in life which are filled with regret for what might have been. The result is a fresh look at life and too maybe a reassessment of what’s important and the reminder not to let a moment pass you by. There are so many moments in this book when I exploded with laughter, moments when I nodded sagely at something which resonated and moments when my heart felt like breaking for the loss of his sister and all their could have/should haves. I’m still chuckling at his story about British slugs vs their US counterparts.
What I liked best was that David simply writes it all down, there’s no apology or self-deprecation – it’s simply an opportunity to get to know a funny man who’s comfortable in his own skin. It’s a great read and I thoroughly recommend it.
How Do You Like Me Now? by Holly Bourne
The story begins with lots of Twitter alerts telling the news of Tori’s friends and it all sounds very boring mid-30’s stuff but then Tori – the main character’s – Twitter handle appears at the bottom of the page and is: Tori’sWhoTheF*ckAmI? Official Fan Page and you know she’s the oddball non-stereotypical member of the bunch.
We meet Tori at the end of page one and then the first chapter focuses on her and her success story. It’s immediately obvious that she’s a self-help guru, but her character is full of contrast and contradiction: immaculately coiffed and coiffured and talking about how she found herself during a nervous breakdown. It’s incredibly cleverly written because even though you know she’s a made-up character, you empathise with her and warm to her character. She’s someone who’s made it through the wilderness of mid-twenties and is generously sharing her wisdom with the hordes.
Repetition is used well to show that this is a story Tori has been telling for years and that she’s a professional who knows how to play her audience – it’s a performance and you sense that at the outset from the language the author uses. Holly tells you so much about character, story and setting without having to resort to exposition; she simply chooses the right words and phrases to do so. You get a sense too of the responsibility that this woman is aware she holds in her hands. That if her world goes wrong. If she fucks up when she’s found the answer to all the questions, that in some way the hopes, dreams and lives of all her fans will be dashed at the same time and they will have nothing because they haven’t personally lived the experience she has.
You just know that Tori understands this weight too because at the end of the performance she doesn’t sell any books and doesn’t have anything new to offer her fans but she gives them her time and talks to them endlessly, hugs them, has selfie’s with them and signs their battered read and re-read books. Even going to far as to repeat to her publicist that she’s happy to keep going as long as the line is snaking in front of her.
We discover by the end of the chapter that the likely reason for this is because her life isn’t the success story it should be her happy-ever-after man has morphed into someone who can’t be bothered to accompany her to events, who hasn’t had sex with her or even touched her for months and who uses positioning language to make her out to be the bad guy and destroys her confidence in the process to the point where she’s jealous of his relationship with their cat. So she has to take her single best friend as a plus-one to any events, but what happens to Tori when Dee finds the man of her dreams? You’ll have to read on to find out.
If I could have awarded this book six stars out of five then I would have done. It’s such an important book for any gender who finds themselves in a relationship that is gradually chipping away at their self-esteem.
For any writers out there: this is a great book to help you get to grips with show and tell. For example, look at how much we can read about Tori’s life from the line that snakes on with fans clutching books they’ve owned for years. Think about how much insight this shows us into Tori’s life and her character?