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The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Monthly Archives: March 2013

Boat Race Day

31 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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Tags

boat race, cambridge, memories, Oxford, personal, sheffield wednesday

boat race

Hurrah, it’s one of my favourite days of the year: Boat Race Day. I’m reliably informed that it’s also Easter Sunday, but really, priorities people.

In my books and, occasionally, on this blog, I write about all sorts of Oxford traditions, but there’s nothing as high-profile and popular as the annual Varsity Boat Race against Cambridge.

An awful lot of Oxford’s traditions seem to be deliberately complex and odd, almost as if half the point is to confuse outsiders: Merton students running backwards around their quad on the day the clock changes, ultra-prestigious professors at All Souls hunting the ghost of a duck, or the almost pagan-seeming celebration of May Morning at my own old college of Lilith Magdalen. Not to mention the fact that said college is pronounced Maudlin. Now that one I really do think is purely for the purposes of making tourists look stupid.

Even the normal term-time boats race between colleges are pretty complicated if you’re not used to them, based as they are around several boats setting off at once and trying to bump the ones in front of them.

The Varsity Boat Race however is entirely simple. In fact I’d say it’s one of the most straightforward sporting events going. The participants are always the same – one boat of eight men and a cox from Oxford and one from Cambridge. They row along a stretch of the Thames and the first one past the finishing line wins. There’s no offside rule or complicated scoring system to worry about here.

Perhaps because of this, pretty much everyone in Britain seems to at least vaguely like the Boat Race. In some countries, university sport is really popular. In the UK, that isn’t the case and the Boat Race is pretty much the only university sporting event that gets mainstream news and television coverage. And if you go down to the river, you always find the sort of crowds you’d usually only associate with a major national occasion. I think some of the bars near there must be kept afloat almost entirely from their takings on this one day.

The really weird/fun thing is that in my experience, most people with no connection at all to either university seem to have a team they nominally support. I liked the Boat Race long before I ever seriously thought about applying to Oxbridge, and to my eternal shame, when I was very young I randomly supported Cambridge. I think I liked their colours better or something.

There’s lots to admire about the Boat Race. It’s one of the few genuinely big ticket amateur sporting events left. Although in practice both teams nowadays often contain a good few people who row for their country and are doing slightly suspect post-grad degrees, in theory I love the idea of normal students training so incredibly hard for their moment of glory, and you still always get a few rowers who genuinely fit that mould. Looking at this year’s Oxford squad, one is a doctor and one is a vicar – in what other sporting event would that happen?

The other great thing is just how physically demanding it is. With the possible exception of those really long distance cycling races, I think it probably requires some of the highest fitness levels of any sport. They row for 4.2 miles at top speed.

Now, in my first term at Oxford, for some reason best known to myself, I thought it would be fun to give rowing a go. I’m 5’2”, 8 stone and have all my life been reliably rubbish at any sport I’ve attempted. However, I spent most of that term in a bit of a frenzy, wanting to do Oxford properly, so taking up rowing, a sport predominantly based around being very strong and very fit, seemed eminently sensible because IT’S WHAT PEOPLE AT OXFORD DO.rowing

 

Although I immediately gave it up once that term was over, it actually didn’t go so badly. In fact (and I hasten to add that this was in no way thanks to me), my college’s women’s boat actually won the term’s competition. The point of this story though is that the race I did was over a course about 750 metres long. And afterwards I was absolutely physically exhausted. I literally cannot imagine how tiring rowing for 4.2 miles must be. It actually makes me feel slightly sick when I think about it too hard! So my respect for the people who are fit enough to do this is phenomenally high.

And speaking of being fit, every year at least some of the crew are just gorgeous. And usually the really attractive ones tend to be really quite posh too, which needless to say is a combination I like. Here are this year’s squads – http://theboatrace.org/men/squad-list I think I have to treasonously conclude that Cambridge’s Ed Bosson is winning my “hot posh rower award” this year, but he faces some stiff competition. (See update note at the bottom of the page)

Despite all this, when it comes down to it, what I really love is the tribalism. I want Oxford to win to an extent that borders on the irrational. And that’s just the way I like my sport. As a rule, I love sport, but generally only if I have some personal interest in the outcome. Growing up in Sheffield, everyone was into football. You supported either Sheffield Wednesday or Sheffield United, and you did it wholeheartedly. I was (and indeed still am)  firmly in the former camp, because supporting Wednesday was what my family did, going back several generations. On Steel City Derby Days (when the two teams play each other) the city is like a ghost town. Everyone was watching, at the stadium, in a pub or at home on TV. There is no logical reason to love one group of footballers based in your home town and hate another group of them based in the same place, but there’s something oddly satisfying about doing so. It creates a real sense of belonging. Occasionally, in London, in the middle of a busy street or train, I’ve spotted someone in a Wednesday shirt and I’ve just had to go over and speak to them.

hendersons_wednesday

In Sheffield, even condiments come in rival team packaging

In Sheffield, even condiments come in rival team packaging

The Boat Race gives me a similar feeling and arguably with slightly more reason. I went to Oxford. Oxford made me the person I am today. I owe it my job, my fiancé  an awful lot of my friends, some of my hobbies and interests, and I suppose, my books (I’m not convinced I could have made “UCL Blood” work). So watching those boats speeding down the river, I really feel like the result personally matters for me.

Anyway, the race is on the BBC at 4.30 (for foreign viewing, see here:http://theboatrace.org/men/tv-and-radio). Whether or not you have any connection with Oxford, Cambridge or any other university, I strongly suggest that you pick a side, get yourself a glass of Pimm’s and settle down to watch the best sporting event in the world.

Oh and Happy Easter too.

UPDATE – It’s just been pointed out to me that Ed Bosson isn’t actually rowing today. So I can, thank goodness, now give the hot posh rower award to an Oxford rower instead – for the second year in a row, I’m voting Constantine Louloudis http://theboatrace.org/men/compare-blue-boat/2013/7

Boris Johnson and the Cavaliers

25 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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Tags

bbc, boris johnson, bullingdon club, Oxford Blood, personal, the cavaliers

If you’ve ever read Oxford Blood and wondered what an Oxford Union debate looks like, what a dining society is (when it doesn’t involve vampires) or just what sort of accent the Cavaliers speak in, watch the first half of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01rlx9l/Boris_Johnson_The_Irresistible_Rise/

I don’t watch much TV, but tonight,  I watched this documentary in a giggly blur. There are certainly no politicians I like more than Boris Johnson. There are very few people I admire more, full stop.  If you’re interested in British politics, the whole thing is worth devouring. If not, you should still watch the first bit and revel in the wonderful poshness of it all. I think anyone would understand my novels a little more after this. 

Incidentally, when I was on the committee of the Union, I met Boris. I think our entire conversation consisted of him asking me where the bar was, but I still spent the next few days being too excited to do anything constructive. 

Mothers Day and Paranormal Mums

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Uncategorized

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mothers day, mums, Oxford Blood, vampire books

“In a genre full of dead mothers, it’s interesting to see one taking such an active and powerful role in her daughter’s life.” Fangs for the Fantasy Blog on Oxford Blood.

“You’ll see that I was right in the end darling,” Adelaide called after her. “Just give it time. Mothers are always right.” from Oxford Blood

“For Mummy, who passed on to me her love of reading, writing and pretty dresses, and who makes Adelaide look positively scruffy.” Dedication to Screaming Spires.

Today it’s Mother’s Day (in the UK anyway. I think it probably falls on a different day in most other parts of the world). I’m back in Yorkshire, visiting my mum. It’s snowing, despite the fact that it’s March. My parents basically live in Winterfell.  Nonetheless, it’s lovely. My mum is one of the people I’m closest to in all the world. She’s impossibly glamourous and had always instilled a belief in me that I can do anything I want to do.

My weird outfit is due to the fact that this was the day I qualified as a barrister

My weird outfit is due to the fact that this was the day I qualified as a barrister

Anyone who’s read Oxford Blood will know that in my book, the mother/daughter relationship plays almost as big a part as the romantic relationships. I think that’s true to life – for most women, their relationship with their mother, whether good or bad, plays a major part in shaping their life. An advice column I often read claims that well over half of the letters she received are about mothers – mothers they no longer speak to; mothers who want to see them too often; mothers who disapprove of their life choices. Throughout so much of paranormal fiction though, mothers seem to fall into two categories: dead or clueless.

The former has become a complete cliché – see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ParentalAbandonment for examples. It’s particularly convenient in Young Adult fiction, where it makes it much easier for the heroine to go off having adventures and wild relationships without the problem of their mum telling them they’ve got to stay in and get on with their homework that night. In more adult tales, it’s a simple shorthand for a tragic past, and an easy way to provide a motive for revenge if, as often seems to be the case, it’s the villain who was responsible for their death.

The clueless ones are something I’ve tended to notice. Again, they’re particularly pronounced in YA, but far from exclusive to this subgenre. Probably the best known example of this isn’t in a book at all – it’s Buffy’s mother in the TV series (at least in the earlier episodes), trying to ground her daughter on nights when she needs to save the world. The other one that stands out for me is the mother figure* in the Vampire Diaries books. That series is probably the neatest example of the good guy/bad guy vampire love triangle, and she gloriously takes the side of the bad guy, (not realising he is a vampire), inviting him round and trying to persuade the heroine that he is so much nicer than her boyfriend.

Whenever I used to watch or read things like this, all I could think was “if I was going out with a vampire or involved in some ancient conspiracy, my mother would know about it within days.”

I started to think that it would be fun to have a mother character who knew exactly what was going on, maybe even knew more than the heroine. A mother who entirely approved of relationships with vampires, concerned only that her daughter chose one who was suitably eligible. A mother whom the world thought was dead, but who was actually very much alive, or at least, un-dead. I came up with the character of Adelaide, the mother in Oxford Blood, a good five years before I had a story for her to appear in.

I like to play around with clichés a little and this is probably the best example of it in the book.# Adelaide is one of my absolute favourite characters. For those who aren’t familiar with the book, my character guide describes her thus:

“Harriet’s mother looks more like her slightly older sister, as a result of being made a vampire when her daughter was a baby and she was in her late twenties. Her second husband is Augustine, leader of the Cavaliers, who turned her to save her from dying in a car crash, having become convinced she was the reincarnation of his centuries dead wife. Glamorous, ruthless and ambitious, she’s determined to see her daughter settle down with a nice eligible vampire.”

People often ask me to what extent characters in the book are based on real people. The answer is that while there are characters who have borrowed a trait or two from people I knew at Oxford, in general it isn’t the case that x character equals y acquaintance. There are however two major exceptions – Tom, who is pretty heavily based on my fiancé, and Adelaide, who is just as heavily based on my mother (in both cases, for better and for worse). Adelaide is also partly inspired by my favourite mother in fiction, who has the same combination of glamour, love for her daughter and borderline evilness – Mrs Coulter in His Dark Materials.

Anyway, happy mothers day to any yummy mummies reading this. And in case anyone is wondering about my take on fathers, who have so far taken a bit of a back seat in the series, I’ll pick up on them on Fathers Day in June, because by that time, Screaming Spires will have been published, and that puts fathers (both step and biological) much more at the fore – as you’ll see if you read the prologue on the extract page…

*Technically she’s an aunt, the heroine’s real mother falling into category one, but it’s much the same principle.

#My other favourite bit of playing around with cliché is that in The Cavaliers, the “good” romantic interest is just as evil as the “bad” romantic interest, but the heroine is so in thrall to the expected nature of things that she fails to realise this. Sadly I think I underplayed it a bit, because readers don’t seem to realise either.

Screaming Spires (The Cavaliers: Book Two) – Release date, Cover, Blurb and Extract

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

arc, cover reveal, new release, screaming spires, the cavaliers, vampires

Screaming Spires cover

Exciting news . Screaming Spires (The Cavaliers: Book Two) is finally complete and ready to go. Below you can see the cover, the blurb and a link to the Prologue and Chapter One.

It’s going to be released on 12th April. I’m dying to release it right this second, but this time around, I’m exercising self-control – there’s a blog tour to organise and reviewers who need to be given chance to have an advance read.

In the meantime, if you’ve read Oxford Blood and are looking forward to finding out what happens, why not go and add it to your Goodreads to-read list: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17522801-screaming-spires

While you’re there, you may want to enter the Giveaway to win a pre-publication paperback.

If you’ve got a book blog or are a prolific Goodreads/Amazon reviewer and are interested in an ARC, please get in touch.

“A Tale of the Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal…

In her first year at Oxford University, Harriet French became inextricably tied to the Cavaliers, the university’s most elite society. Though its members are universally wealthy, charming and handsome, they have a darker side – they are deadly vampires who have been secretly running the country for the last four hundred years.

Now Harriet’s back at Oxford for her second year. Armed with a vampire boyfriend, some great friends, and the truth, she’s expecting an easier time. She’s wrong. Her best friend is now a vampire and the Cavalier who turned her to save her life is facing death for the one good deed he’s ever done. Just when it seems that things can’t get any worse, the Cavaliers’ ancient enemies decide to strike at the heart of the society and they’ve got Harriet in their sights.”

Read an extract here: SCREAMING SPIRES PRE PUBLICATION EXTRACT

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