Artist's roughs for 'Mr Stephenson's Regret'

The artist Peter Fussey is now working on the front cover of my new book Mr Stephenson's Regret (provisional publication date 25 February), so I thought it might interest readers to see how the cover is taking shape through the early roughs against the brief given, and to get a flavour of our conversations about the image.

As the novel is based on real historical figures and events, the cover challenge is a tricky one for Peter, and a challenge for me to provide a coherent brief. I am anxious to convey the historical context while retaining the look and feel of a novel. I want to include the essential element of the railway/the steam train while emphasising the personal, especially through my central character Robert Stephenson, upon whose life, relationships, and inner thoughts the story revolves. I want to give the casual browser in the bookshop an immediate sense that this is a story with a historical context, but is certainly not a history book.

After entertaining and dismissing several possible scenes from the novel as the basis for the cover, we settled on one which alludes both to a significant event in the book - the unveiling of the Rocket at the Rainhill Trials - and the relationship between Robert and the woman who became his wife, Frances (Fanny) Sanderson.

I have a scene in the novel where Robert takes his new wife for a ride on the footplate of the Rocket during a break in the Rainhill Trials. I dismissed the notion of the two of them actually riding the train (the wind in Fanny's hair) as over-romantic, settling instead for a simpler image of the two of them together in front of the train.

Our attention should be on the couple, who should be shown not in the giddiness of young love (which would strain against the sombre title of the book) but in a state of thoughtful stillness. In the immediate context of Rainhill, I suggested to Peter, Robert would be looking slightly anxious, Fanny holding in some excitement. Perhaps Fanny's head is a little cradled into Robert's shoulder - the merest trace of incipient sexuality behind her affection. They will not be looking 'at the camera' as it were, but somewhat abstractedly into the middle distance. Penny for their thoughts.

They are at this point in their early-to-mid twenties, and dressed in late Regency middle class clothes, quite smart though Robert, lately returned from three years in South America, might look a little more informal than some of his contemporaries in this situation - no top hat, for example, and not too much fuss around the collar. The couple would indeed look quite 'modern' for their time.

One of Peter's challenges is that most of the images that exist of Robert are when he is older. This is the youngest-looking we found:

Robert Stephenson

Of Fanny there are no images at all (how females are so often shunted to the side of history), just this brief contemporary description: not beautiful, but she had an elegant figure; a delicate and animated countenance, and a pair of singularly expressive dark eyes. At least there is plenty for the imagination to work on.

Peter worked first on a black-and-white sketch of the scene, his aim to get the composition right, begin to render a faithful impression of the Rocket, and make a start on the faces and forms of our two characters. Here is Peter's first rough:

There's a lot I like about the rough, particularly Fanny's face - she is how I imagine her to be. The man too looks like Robert, though I wonder if he's looking a little older than he should be at this stage, and a little too formal. His coat seems very wintry when placed against Fanny's lighter wear. (The Rainhill Trials took place in mid-September.) Also I'm not sure about him appearing to stare at us directly from the picture - Fanny's abstracted look by contrast is excellent. The hands obviously need work. I love the composition and the typeface. The Rocket looks great in the background, and I like Peter's use of the steam to bed in the author's name.

I've passed these comments on to the artist as he develops the cover further. Before working more on the characters Peter has spent some time on the train and in adding colour to the background. Last night he sent me this:

I feel this is really coming to life now, and I'm looking forward to seeing the cover progress to a final version. Your comments at this stage would of course be welcome.

Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down for BBC's 'Great Expectations'

Thumbs up

The opening scene, dripping and dank with the sight, sound and imagined smell of the marshes. Magwitch's appearance shocking but compelling. The boy Pip, emboldened through his fear.

Thumbs down

The lack of humour throughout - humour so evident in Dickens even in the most serious of his works. Here its absence was most felt in the portrayal of the Gargerys - no simple sentimentality or touching gaucheness from Joe; Mrs Joe's harshness not reflected in the mirror of absurdity, and therefore not tempered as it is by Dickens. Herbet Pocket, enthusiastically played here by Harry Lloyd, but not the hilariously lovable character of the book - the fight scene between Hebert and Pip, for example, was robbed of all its comic potential, dismissed in one blow.

Thumbs up

Miss Havisham's haunted appearance. The spectre of her beauty in Gillian Anderson's performance, more tortured as the years pass by.

Thumbs down

The grown-up Pip all too poster beautiful; Estella (forgive my saying) not nearly beautiful or alluring enough. And Pip as a pouting, supercilious adult descends so far that we can't recover enough sympathy for him to cheer his redemption, such as it is.

Thumbs up

David Suchet's Jaggers - his intelligence and smouldering scorn for Pip so well expressed in voice and eyes. His cutting precision - we can easily believe his success and reputation as a top London lawyer.

Thumbs down

Miss Havisham's death - while applauding the BBC effects department I can't comprehend or forgive the decision to make this a deliberate act of self-immolation. Dickens means the fire as fate's revenge on Miss Havisham for the two lives she has tried to ruin; it is hellish retribution not willed oblivion.


Overall score: 7/10

A Christmas quiz - books, films and music

For your festive fun and entertainment, try my Christmas quiz. Click on the Show/Hide button at the bottom to find the answers. Please comment to tell me how many you scored (but don't check out the comments until you've tried it yourself - there may be spoilers).

Round 1 Books

1. Which much-loved Christmas classic of 1978 is wordless?

2. Who wrote of a child's Christmas in Wales?

3. Which Shakespeare play has the lines: 'At Christmas I no more desire a rose/Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;/But like of each thing that in season grows.'?

4. A page from which Christmas book?

5. What are the opening five words of Clement Clarke Moore's poem, A Visit from Saint Nicholas?

6. What are the closing five words of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol spoken by Tiny Tim?

7. Apart from A Christmas Carol there are four other works by Dickens generally grouped together as 'the Christmas books'. Can you name one of these?

8. Which Agatha Christie novel has 'Christmas' in its title?

9. Who wrote about 'the journey of the Magi'?

10. In which Victorian classic does Tom Tulliver come home for Christmas?

Round 2 Films


1. Who played Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)?

2.  In which 1994 film does Father Christmas fall to his death from a roof on Christmas Eve?

3. In Love Actually what is the title of the Christmas Number One hit recorded by Billy Mack (Bill Nighy)?

4. In which 1942 film does Bing Crosby sing White Christmas?

5. Name this 2003 film.

6. What name is given to the Pumpkin King in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas?

7. Which 'miracle' was originally seen in 1947 and has since reappeared differently - for example in 1959, 1973 and 1994?

8. What is the first name of the character who was 'home alone' at Christmas in 1990?

9. Name this 1946 Christmas classic.

10. Which 2003 film was publicised with the strap line 'He doesn't care if you're naughty or nice'?

Round 3 Music


1. Who went 'rockin' around the Christmas tree' in 1962?

2. A Facebook campaign helped prevent a fifth consecutive X Factor winner from topping the UK Charts for Christmas 2009 and helped which US performers to Number One instead?

3. In 1973 Elton John invited us to 'hop aboard the turntable' and... what?

4. According to the well-known carol, 'Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen.' What date is that, in Western tradition?

5. Who featured with the Pogues in the recently re-released Christmas favourite Fairytale of New York?

6. Which song featured in the film version of 'The Snowman'?

7. Which Christmas artefact did Lady Gaga sing about in 2008?

8. The title has been brushed out of this famous Christmas album cover. What is it?

9. In the song Twelve Days of Christmas how many birds are there in total?

10. Which 1980 song became a Christmas favourite even though it has nothing to do with the festive season except for the line 'Wish I was at home for Christmas'?

Show/Hide

 

Round 1 Answers

1.1. The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

1.2 Dylan Thomas

1.3 Love's Labours Lost

1.4 How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr Seuss

1.5 'Twas the night before Christmas'

1.6 'God bless us, every one.'

1.7 One from:
The Chimes
The Cricket on the Hearth
The Battle of Life
The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain

1.8 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (also known as Murder for Christmas)

1.9 T S Eliot

1.10 George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

Round 2 Answers

2.1 Michael Caine

2.2 The Santa Clause

2.3 Love Is All Around (a variation of the hit by the Troggs)

2.4 Holiday Inn

2.5 Elf (starring Will Ferrell as Buddy Hobbs)

2.6 Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon)

2.7 Miracle on 34th Street

2.8 Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin)

2.9 It's a Wonderful Life (starrring James Stewart)

2.10 Bad Santa (starring Billy Bob Thornton)

Round 3 Answers

3.1 Brenda Lee

3.2 Rage Against the Machine (with Killing in the Name beating Joe McElderry's The Climb)

3.3 Step into Christmas

3.4 26 December

3.5 Kirsty MacColl

3.6 Walking in the Air

3.7 Christmas Tree

3.8 A Christmas Gift for You (produced by Phil Spector)

3.9 23 (7 swans, 6 geese, 4 colly birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves, 1 partridge)

3.10 Stop the Cavalry (by Jona Lewie).

.

Writing is talking to an ear in the dark

Shortly before our music and reading collaboration Born at the right time, the singer Billy Mitchell called me at home. ‘I’ve just finished reading your stories, David,’ he said. ‘You’ve told my life in there.’ I still cherish this as one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been given as a writer.

Billy was talking about the stories in my collection We Never Had It So Good. Like me, he grew up in a North East mining community and at one level must have seen parallels in the locations and characters I used for the book. His comment seems to go deeper though, and certainly much of the writing is interior, based on the perceptions and sensibilities of a young boy such as he and I were in the mid-to-late 1950s.

Was Billy the reader I had in mind when I wrote the stories? Or was I, in a sense, talking to myself, or rather to the young boy I may have been then? The answer lies somewhere between the two. Did you ever as a child camp overnight (if only in the back garden) with a friend, or have what is these days called a sleep-over, perhaps one of you lying in a sleeping bag next to your friend’s bed? If you recognize this situation, or some variant of it, chances are you will remember too, after the jokes and the horseplay and the repeated calls from downstairs - ‘Do you two know what time it is? Go to sleep’ - how you would lie there talking quietly in the dark together, in a kind of intimacy. That’s the best way I can describe how my writer talks with my reader.

Nor is this confined to semi-autobiographical first person narrative. My thriller 11:59 has the central character Marc getting things off his mind in a confessional way. Though I tell the story in first person present tense for immediacy, I always felt while I was writing that I was inhabiting both Marc and his trusted, listening confidant.

Even the soon-to-be-published Mr Stephenson’s Regret, a third person historical, seems to work best where I can hear the central character Robert unburdening himself to me in the role of friend, perhaps a surrogate of his close friend George Parker Bidder who comes to the fore in the novel’s epilogue. And the articles I write for this blog and various publications are often conceived in the unsleeping darkness and shaped for the unknown bosom pal who is my reader (always one in my head, though I hope there are a few more of you out there).

I don’t consciously set out to think and write like this; it’s the way it comes out of me, as if I’m acting as a medium for my characters, my words, in a one-to-one seance of imagination. When the spirit is truly with me, I would not be alarmed to hear someone say in the dark, ‘That’s him, that’s Uncle Albert, I know it is,’ or maybe the voice of Billy Mitchell: ‘You’ve told my life in there.’

Review of 'At Home' by Bill Bryson

It's a while since Bill Bryson has written a travel book, but he certainly wanders far and wide with this one, though he never leaves his own house.

The answer to this paradox is in the structure of the book. Bryson packages his short history of private life into a sort of rambling tour around the rooms of his home, a mid 19th Century former Church of England rectory in a Norfolk village. (This American writer has lived for many years in England.) He uses the function or former function of each room, or sometimes its contents, as his starting-point for a wide-ranging, leisurely and digressive examination of the way our domestic lives have been shaped by innovators of the past. Many of those had enough idiosyncracies and obsessions for our guide to spin humour from, in much the same way he does with characters he meets along the way in his travelogues. Here he is not taking us along the Appalachian Trail or for a walk in the woods, but across time and continents, drifting pleasurably, with occasional swoops and dives, so that we feel sometimes like the boy being taken for a magic ride by the Snowman, where walls are no barrier and there's no particular schedule to worry about.

And that's the feel of the book - an engaging adventure, a fun exploration in the company of an amiable, cherubic narrator - if not the Snowman perhaps a jolly, anecdotal uncle. Don't look for structured history in Bryson's work, still less for philosophy, as some reviewers seem to have expected and been disappointed not to find - these are not Bryson's style. He's a dipper-in, a snapper-up of trifles, a jackdaw for twinkling facts.

Bill Bryson

The only further gem it would be a delight to have seen revealed by the author as he guides us through his home would concern the daily detail of his own living there, and his family's, but he keeps that particular private life out of these pages, and we can't really blame him for that in these prying days.

The tour through the house is anyway nothing more than a convenient device, and Bryson cheerfully drops it in several places when he can't map out a starting-point for what he wants to include precisely from the room we are in.

The whole tour is so discursive that I get the feeling he could have taken us back to the beginning and started again with a whole different set of interesting things to say. I'd happily sign up for that tour too; Bill Bryson is very good company.

Preparing for publication

I have been 'off-post' for a couple of weeks as I have been busy preparing my historical novel Mr Stephenson's Regret for publication by Wild Wolf in the Spring. Final preparations like this are by turns interesting, tedious and worrisome as one labours to ensure the book is ship-shape and ready for the voyage, for there's no turning back after the launch. There are quite a few tasks involved.

Final edit

The book has already been through half a dozen drafts; this is my last chance to get it really tight, coherent and smoothly readable. At this stage I feel as if I'm working with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. I'm looking closely to see (even though I've done this in earlier redrafting) if I can spot redundant words and phrases that I could pluck out: especially I'm hunting for 'he saids', 'she saids' that I don't really need; a few 'thats'; subordinate clauses that might be getting in the way of clarity; sentences, made too long by conjunctions, that might read better as separate shorter, simpler sentences; any 'ing' words, adverbs or adjectives that even now I can banish from the text.

This novel is set in the first half of the 19th century. I'm not looking to be 'faux-historical' in the diction, but I've been pretty strict about linguistic anachronism and have made good use of the etymological dictionaries (one of my favourite reference sites deserves a plug here Online Etymology Dictionary). In general, though, I've made the language a little less confined for today's reader compared to early drafts. My final edit gives me a chance to double-check I am being both accurate and plain.

Pulling further out to a wider focus, I'm checking that my characters are appropriately and clearly introduced so there is no confusion (especially tricky when you're dealing, as I am here, with several characters who share the same name that history forbids you to change - so I have to be distinct about my four Georges, three Roberts and two, er, Fannys, and at least four Mrs Stephensons). I'm doing some final checking too over what I might call my signature writing - ie words or phrases I tend to use a lot if I'm not careful; I need to avoid repetition, aim for 'elegant variation' without too much recourse to the thesaurus, which can tempt you into choices that do not fit your overall style.

Wider still, I'm giving my book a final medical once-over - approving its shape, monitoring changes of pace and rhythm, attending to the beat, throb and hum of the whole in motion.

Penultimate proof-reading

I say penultimate because there will be a last-chance proof-reading of what we used to call the galleys - ie the final typeset text immediately before printing. I really don't want to be making changes then, so this is the time for a forensic examination of the text that sits on the page, not for meaning or aesthetics this time (that can distract your attention from technical faults) but for accurate layout on the page.

To help me, I have two magnificent tools. The first is human - my son Joe, who is a superb proof-reader, and one unlikely to be fooled, as the author can be, into thinking what is typed onto the page is actually what one meant to type. Joe normally reads three drafts at various stages; he provides valuable editorial advice earlier in the process. The second tool is Microsoft Word. Used alongside the little tool for showing formatting marks, the Find function in Word is great for detecting those tiny errors (of spacing for example) that can so easily creep into the typed text, and which can be so hard to spot with the naked eye. I use it to check for double spaces that shouldn't be there, and for the odd space that can mysteriously insert itself in front of a punctuation mark or at the start of a paragraph.

Proof-reading is also about checking for consistency. I will already have carefully spell-checked the manuscript several times, but one of the many things an automatic spell-check will not pick up is possible inconsistency in optional spellings of the same word. For example, the use of s or z in certain words, such as realise/realize, organise/organize. It's very easy to find yourself spelling words like that in one way on page 53 and another on page 231. Here again, the Find function comes in very useful; in my final proof-reading, whenever I come across a word with an optional spelling I type it into the Find box and set it to look out for each occurrence of the word in the book so that I can check that choice is consistent throughout. We should be consistent across spelling conventions too - if I use the z option for the world realize, I should use it for organize and so forth.

Consistency of format is also essential. At proof-reading stage I display all formatting marks and look carefully to check I've used the same vertical spacing, indenting etc and, if not, amend them for complete consistency. It's damned tedious, but necessary for a professional finish. And let's be clear, it's the writer's job. We must not just blithely expect the publisher to pick up on errors we have made, however small.

Between the covers and the story

As well as the blank flyleaves you might find at either end of a book, there is the title page and often some printed matter, which the publisher prosaically calls front matter and back matter. In preparing for publication, the author will usually have some part to play in what goes on these printed pages. Some books include a foreword, preface or introduction from the author. In this case I have written a short note reminding the reader that Mr Stephenson's Regret is a novel not a history, and explaining in a paragraph how I've dealt with the question of historical accuracy. I've also included in my short introduction a few acknowledgements, and ended the note with a dedication. As my contribution to the back matter, I have updated my profile as Wild Wolf like to include a little biographical information about the author inside the back cover.

The covers

Peter Fussey is the Wild Wolf artist who was responsible for the outstanding cover of my first novel 11:59 and it's Peter who has been given the task again for Mr Stephenson's Regret. Peter is more accustomed to the thriller and horror genres which are Wild Wolf's stock in trade, but I'm confident he will come up with another excellent cover for my work of historical/literary fiction. My job is to brief him properly. I think our challenge is to get the subject across effectively without making the book look either like a history or a work of romantic historical fiction. I've sent him a few suggestions and one fairly detailed brief for my preferred option which focuses on the young Robert and his new wife Fanny, with the iconic Rocket engine in the background. I'm looking forward to seeing what Peter can come up with.

For the back cover I have written a 'blurb' that I hope will attract the interest of the browsing book-buyer. One of the difficulties of a first edition is that before publication there are normally no reviews to quote from. In this case, however, we have an excellent pre-publication review from the influential Publisher's Weekly. An extract from the review is going on the back cover under the blurb. For your interest, this is what it says:

"This richly detailed and meticulously researched storyline breathes life and a palpable sense of intimacy into these historical figures and immerses readers in an England embroiled in political and social upheaval as it teeters on the cusp of the industrial revolution."

Marketing

Mr Stephenson's Regret is not due out until nearly the end of February, but already I am collaborating with the publisher on a marketing plan. The lead times for magazines, in particular, require us to make contact early if we are not to miss the boat on some publicity. I've also been talking to my contacts who organise readings, and though I've managed to put quite a few things in place as a result, one or two festivals I'd hoped to be involved with in the first weeks of publication already have their programmes finalised. For the most part, though, things are set fair for the launch. 

World's shortest stories, and mine

Ernest Hemingway

US author Ernest Hemingway was famously economical in his style. He was once challenged, supposedly for the price of his bar bill, to write a complete story in only six words. Hemingway rose to the challenge brilliantly:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

The science fiction writer Frederic Brown is also credited with writing one of the shortest stories ever, though in truth his 1948 story 'Knock' goes on to develop a plot from the story that is introduced thus:

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door...

A complete story in itself. 'Knock' inspired a response by Ron Smith who gave his story a tongue-in-cheek title that was almost as long as the story itself. He called it 'A Horror Story Shorter by One Letter than the Shortest Story Ever Told' and it goes like this:

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a lock on the door...

Augusto Monterroso was a Guatemalan writer who devoted himself almost exclusively to short stories, many of which were very short indeed, but none as terse his 'El Dinosaurio':

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.

which translates as:

When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.

Margaret Atwood

The Canadian author Margaret Atwood equalled Hemingway for brevity with her forthright six-word story:

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

This next could be apocryphal, but I read somewhere that a college class was assigned to write a short story in as few words as possible covering the themes of religion, sex and mystery. One story was rated A+:

Good God, I'm pregnant; I wonder who did it.

Some of the world's shortest stories have arisen from a competition called 55 Fiction, started in 1987 by an American editor and publisher Steve Moss. I believe the competition still runs annually in The New Times. The basic premise is that every entry must contain 55 words or less, and must have a setting, one or more characters, some conflict and a resolution. The forerunner, I guess, of the many Flash Fiction competitions you see around today. You might want to check out Steve Moss's original 1995 anthology The World's Shortest Stories.

As a writer, I couldn't help rising to the challenge myself. Unable to match the six-word gems of Hemingway and Atwood, here's my fourteen-word effort which I call 'The Proposal':

He asked her as the lift gave way. She smiled. They fell, in love.

David Williams

I'll be pleased to hear any other examples readers have to offer, whether written by themselves or others.