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The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

The Posh, the Privileged and the Paranormal

Category Archives: Books

My Love is Vengeance published

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, My Love is Vengeance, Uncategorized, Writing

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amazon, book deals, book release, fantasy, My Love is Vengeance, new release

Just a very quick post to say that My Love is Vengeance is now available on Amazon, and for the moment, is just £0.99/$0.99. Do take a look and if you read it, I’d love a review.

This special link will take you straight to the right Amazon store for your country: http://geni.us/mylove

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TORN BETWEEN FORBIDDEN LOVE AND BRUTAL REVENGE…

Tara plots revenge on the duke who killed her twin while trying not to fall for his charms or give in to her dark side.

Tara Moran’s psychic bond with her twin, Gene, allows them to combine his strength with her intelligence so they can both wield power. Until Gene dies in a duel with the arrogant young Duke Longville.

Vowing revenge, Tara becomes Duke Longville’s personal advisor to manipulate him and provoke an uprising that will lead to his death. Destroying the Duke she’s sworn to serve could result in her execution, but to avenge her brother, she’s willing to take any risk. Tara expects to despise working with Gene’s killer. Instead, she feels a traitorous attraction towards Longville and discovers they share the same telepathic connection she once shared with her brother—a connection that only twins and soulmates possess.

Tara’s sense of right and wrong blurs as her love for Longville increases and her schemes against him escalate. Tara must decide which is more important: the bond she once had with her brother or the one with the man responsible for his death, before she becomes a villain neither of them would want to know.

MY LOVE IS VENGEANCE is a dark romantic fantasy, aimed at adult readers who love YA fantasy novels. It combines the political scheming of RED QUEEN with the deadly romance of THE GRISHA and the dark, anti-heroine protagonist of THE YOUNG ELITES.

My Love is Vengeance – Kindle Scout

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, My Love is Vengeance, Uncategorized, Writing

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fantasy, kindle scout, My Love is Vengeance, Writing, ya

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I’m hoping to get back into blogging a little more regularly this year, but just a quick one for now.

I’ve entered my as yet unpublished YA Fantasy novel, My Love is Vengeance, into Kindle Scout, in an attempt to gain a publishing contract with Amazon. Nominations are open for thirty days. I’d be so grateful if you could take a moment or two to check out my campaign page and give me a nomination. All you need is an Amazon account. If it’s selected and published, you’d then get the e-book for free.
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2EIVFGDYBQ4EU


Torn between forbidden love or brutal revenge

Once, Tara dreamed of being the power behind the throne. Now, she plots revenge on the charismatic young duke who killed her twin brother, while trying not to fall for his charms or give in to her dark side by destroying his innocent family. MY LOVE IS VENGEANCE combines the political scheming of RED QUEEN with the deadly romance of THE GRISHA and the dark, anti-heroine protagonist of THE YOUNG ELITES.

More info on My Love is Vengeance here.

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Dictator’s Wife Spinoff Story 3 – Julien

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, The Dictator's Wife, Uncategorized, Writing

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I’m currently supposed to be doing an in-depth revise and resubmit on My Love is Vengeance. And on the whole, I’m working quite hard and staying focussed. But of course, I got distracted and wrote another Dictator’s Wife short story. You can find the other two here and here  But where the earlier ones play around with secondary characters’ POV’s, this one is all about Julien – everyone’s favourite villain/love interest. I thought this would be the hardest perspective to write from, but it actually really flowed, to the extent that if I ever write a sequel, I’m tempted to make it dual point of view…

 

I stood on the rooftop terrace and looked out at my city. At the centre of my empire. Wordsworth had once claimed earth had nothing to show more fair than the view from Westminster Bridge, but I preferred the vista from Waterloo.

From Somerset House, perched at the far end of Waterloo Bridge and almost touching the water, you could see London’s ancient past in the Tower of London (older than many countries), and its future in the equally impressive towers of Canary Wharf (built a thousand years later).

To some degree or another, all of it belonged to me.

The concept was hard to truly absorb, even after a few years to acclimatise. The financial transactions happening on the fiftieth floor of that skyscraper happened at my pleasure. The people on the bridge, walking hand in hand, kept their freedom only at my say so.

It would have disconcerted a lesser man. It thrilled me. Truly it did. But I still struggled to really believe it, to accept that my dreams – such grandiose, unachievable dreams – had honestly come true.

London was mine. England was mine. And they were better places for it.

Usually, self-assurance came easily, but tonight, I needed to remind myself it was all worthwhile. Convince myself that I’d made the right choice.

To bomb or not to bomb? The eternal question of every leader. God knows I wasn’t weak or over-burdened by moral scruples. If I’d thought it would grant us peace or increase our power, I’d have already mobilised the airforce.

I’d made the right call. I absolutely had. But disagreeing with Marianne discomfited me. Our propaganda exaggerated the extent to which we were always in accord, but we’d based the fantasy on fact. We had healthy disagreements on details and theories, but we usually agreed on the basics. Yet she’d been so adamant that we needed to crush the rebels and damn the repercussions. And she was so right about so many things.

I tried to lose myself in the view again, but my mind whirred. I glanced behind me. The terrace was empty, barring two heavily armed and aggressively trained guards. It was as alone as I got nowadays. They lurked unobtrusively in the background, clearly understanding my mindset.

I turned as the door to the terrace opened. It was well-crafted and oiled – a less observant person might not have noticed the sound at all. But people forget about my military training. I’m not some ancient, clueless despot, whatever the terrorists and insurgents might like to think.

A lesser man might have screamed that they’d given orders not to be disturbed. I merely raised an eyebrow at the high-ranking member of the counter-insurgency team who stood there bowing, while visibly trying – and failing – not to tremble.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my Lord,” he murmured.

“Not to worry, Jack,” I replied with a smile, dredging my memory to locate the man’s name. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have invaded my privacy without good reason. You look like you have something to tell me.”

He pressed himself lower into the floor. “My Lord. I need you to come with me. Come to the dungeons. We have a new prisoner. You need to hear what he has to say.”

“Get up, Jack,” I said, gesturing for him to rise. Despite his deep bows, his words were unusually abrupt and demanding. Fear, urgency, or something more sinister? Either way, it didn’t look good.

I glanced at the two guards, still standing to attention, still silent. Acting like they saw and heard nothing when they actually absorbed everything. Surely they were loyal. Surely all of the army, all of the staff were. But somehow, I didn’t want to go down to that dungeon, either alone or accompanied by anyone I didn’t trust 100%.

“Get me Tyrone,” I demanded. “He’ll accompany me to the interrogation chambers. And in the meantime, perhaps you could deign to give me a summary of this prisoner’s revelations.”

Jack climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Major Jackson is indisposed, my Lord. A broken leg, or so I hear. And I don’t know precisely who the prisoner is or what he wants to tell your lordship. My superiors sent me to find you. There’s only so much he would tell them without you present.”

If I didn’t have my body under such perfect control, I’d have shuddered. Tyrone didn’t get injured. And my interrogation experts got answers. None of this felt right. But I’d be dammed if I’d allow myself to feel fear in my own palace.

“All three of you stay where you are,” I ordered. “I’ll go to the dungeons alone.” I stormed inside before they could protest.

***

I made a detour via one of my dressing rooms. Changing out of my relatively casual clothes into body armour below and the full Victorian Field Marshall uniform above. If someone wanted a scene, they were going to get a scene.

Once entering the dungeons, my heartrate normalised. The Head of Security himself stood guard outside the deepest cell. I didn’t fully trust him, simply because fully trusting anyone was a fool’s game, but if he’d turned against me, everything was truly lost. Surely that wasn’t where we stood.

More reassuring yet, Peter stood by his side. I made an exception to my rules on trust where my oldest friend was concerned.

They both bowed, but Peter remained uncharacteristically silent. He left the talking to Alex,  the Security Chief.

The Chief rose out of his bow and saluted. “We have the Treaty’s Second-in-Command in there. He came to us voluntarily.”

I frowned. “A turncoat?”

“No. Seemingly still loyal to the insurgents. He wanted to give you a message.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Frankly I’m a little bemused that you’re allowing this traitor his moment in the spotlight. But I’ll assume you’ve got the perimeter under surveillance in case this is a distraction and this room heavily secured in case it’s a trap. And on that basis, I’ll hear what he has to say.”

I pushed past him and flung open the door.

I recognised the man secured to the interrogation chair from Treaty broadcasts and from my men’s surveillance.

I despised him on principle, of course, as I did all rebels and disloyalists. He’d probably die a horrible death before the night was out, and I’d be glad. But on an objective level, he looked decent and friendly enough. Just a man on the wrong side of history. It was something of a token hatred. Nothing like the all-consuming fury that consumed me whenever I had to look into the overly chiselled face of that smug, sanctimonious cunt who ran his pitiful organisation.

“Well, you’ve got what you wanted. I’m here, and I’m listening. What is it you’ve risked everything to tell me?”

I sensed Peter and Alex behind me and saw other guards in the gloomy corners of the room. I stared at the prisoner, expecting either the sneering refusal to speak or the melodramatic, self-aggrandising speeches these people seem to delight in.

Instead, he took a deep breath, stared into my eyes, and spoke a simple, devastating sentence in his thick northern brogue. “We killed and captured your wife.  I have her rings to prove it.”

His voice seemed to come from a million miles away. I could hear and comprehend individual words, but they made no sense as a sentence. The room blurred around the edges. This couldn’t be happening.

Perhaps I was supposed to challenge his assertions, demand further proof. But I saw the distinctive rings sparkling on a side table, and I heard the ring of truth in his voice.

“We’ve already given him the truth serum,” the Head of Security said. He was the hardest man I knew. He sounded like he was about to cry. Whether for himself, myself or Marianne, I wasn’t quite sure.

“Everyone please excuse me for ten minutes,” I said, in my calmest, most commanding tone. “Everyone stay here. Do and say nothing until I return.”

I bit my lip, clenched my fists and strode out of the room with surprising poise. I kept walking, ignoring the stares and bows of the guards and courtiers. I kept my head held high and my face studiously neutral, and then I flung myself inside my official drawing room, barging past the guard outside.

“Out,” I snapped at the guard inside.

He fired off the sharpest of salutes then marched outside.

“Keep your distance. And let no one inside,” I ordered, slamming the door and drawing the curtains.

I stepped to the dresser at the far side of the room and poured half a bottle of Laphroaig into a pint glass. I closed my eyes and drank it down in as close to one as I could manage, pausing merely to catch my breath between choked gulps.

The whisky blurred the edges, made the Treaty prisoner’s words feel like a hideous dream. I pulled out my pocket watch – antique casing refined with modern technology – and set an alarm for ten minutes time.

Ten minutes. I’d allow myself ten minutes of weakness, of sorrow, mourning, hysteria. And then I’d be strong again, and I’d make them all pay.

The tears began to pour before I was ready for them. I sobbed in a way I’d never allowed myself to before, in a way I’d never allow either my worst enemies or my closest allies to see. I didn’t think of the consequences and repercussions, of the steps I’d have to take to right this wrong. I thought of her scent, the touch of her hand on my arm, the way she could say something amusing and jolt me out of the worst of moods, or say something serious and convince me to change my path.

Flashes of memory assaulted me as I dug my nails into the palms of my hand. I raised my fist and drove my right hand through the window, relishing the pain and disregarding the blood and the shards.

It had all been too perfect for too long. I’d taken the sort of power no man could hope to hold, and I’d known I’d have to face the consequences at some point. But this. Of all the punishments I’d dreamt could be inflicted on me, the fates had found the worst of all possible worlds.

I gasped in air, my cries wracking my body.

The door swung open and Peter strode inside, wide-eyed and tense. I closed my eyes, making no attempt to disguise my sobs, but trying to pretend he wasn’t there.  I gave orders not to be disturbed, I wanted to say, but my trembling lips couldn’t form the words. Besides, I knew that Peter would never take no for an answer and few guards would dare to resist him.

His fingers dug into my arm. “Julien, are you alright? Julien, listen to me.”

I forced breath into my constricted lungs. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard him use my full first name or show so much unrestrained emotion.

“Julien, seriously. Open your eyes. Look at me. Breathe.”

Any minute now, he was going to say something unutterably practical. He was going to insist on a press conference or an interrogation, and I was going to punch him.

“Go back to the prisoner, Peter,” I choked out. “I don’t trust anyone else with him, and I need to be alone for now. Really alone.”

I made no attempt to disguise my tears, my utter devastation. I’d hide them later, and I’d surely manage to be convincing. But for now, it was all too raw. Besides, there was no point trying to hide my feelings from my oldest friend.

Peter released his grip on my arm. “I’m going back to the cells. If you want to be alone, I’ll respect that. But when you’re ready, we’ll mourn. And when you’re even readier, we’ll attack.”

I opened my eyes long enough to see him walk out and gently close the door, then I collapsed in on myself, sobbing, shaking and embracing the devastation.

Long before I was ready to be calm, the alarm rang, marking the end of the period of hysteria I’d permitted myself. I counted down from ten in my head. I breathed in for a count of four. Held for four. Out for four. Held. In for four. Repeat and repeat and repeat. It was a trick they’d taught me in the army. A way of maintaining calm under the worst of provocation. I’d used it in war, and I’d used it in our coup.

Two minutes of that, another swig of the whisky, then I stepped into the adjacent bathroom, washed out my mouth, splashed my face and smoothed back my hair.

I studied my reflection in the mirror and thought of anything but Marianne. I could do this. I could go back there and confront the prisoner. Then I could tell the world what had happened. I longed to grant myself a day or two to shake and rage and mourn, but that way danger lay. Two days was enough for my enemies to gain momentum, for my rivals to manipulate my weakness. That wasn’t what Marianne would have wanted.

I was an ocean of horror and sadness. But above all that was a thin, icy crust of composure. I’d give it all up to hold my wife against me one more time. But that wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t lose both her and the Regime.

One more glance in the mirror satisfied me that I looked in control of my emotions, and one more deep breath satisfied me that I could speak without breaking down. I’d waited long enough.

I left the room. The guard’s bow held a distinct hint of nervousness. How much had he heard and how much more did he suspect? But that wasn’t my concern.

I made it back to the dungeons without the slightest hint of a tremor wracking my body or a sob escaping my lips. Guards bowed fervently. I usually bestowed a nod of acknowledgement, but today, I ignored them.

The security chief was back at his post outside the door. “My Lord,” he whispered, bowing exceptionally low.

“Let me past,” I demanded.

“Of course, my Lord. If that’s what you wish. But I assure you we can deal with this traitor ourselves. Mine him for information and make him pay. You don’t have to worry yourself.”

I frowned, a subtle hint of the raging emotions below the surface. “I want to worry myself.”

I pushed past him without another word and he threw himself out of the way like my touch was poison.

The scene in the dungeon was much the same as it had been before I left. The Treaty’s man strapped to the chair. Guards surrounding him, tense and watchful. Peter at the back of the room, trying to look as laconic as usual and doing a spectacularly bad job of it.

I ignored the rest of the room, despite Peter’s frantic attempts to force eye-contact, and stared at the prisoner.

“Has anyone hurt you?” I asked, in an almost supernaturally calm tone of voice.

“My Lord, you gave strict instructions, and we obeyed,” one of the guards simpered.

“I’m asking him,” I replied levelly.

“No one’s touched me,” the prisoner replied. “I’m actually rather impressed by the discipline of your guards and the control you have over them. It’s rather different from the behaviour of the FLA in the provinces.”

When I looked at him, I saw Marianne lying dead on the ground. How had they killed her? Had it taken long? Had she suffered? I longed to ask him for every last detail and use each little fact as another stick with which to beat myself for ever more. But I couldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Why did the leader of your godforsaken organisation choose you to send this message?” I asked instead. “Why his second-in-command? Why not some wide-eyed new recruit? It’s a task that combines the utmost simplicity with no chance of a successful outcome. An idiot-proof suicide mission.”

He stared me down. “I couldn’t say.”

One of the guards cleared his throat and spoke up. “My Lord, should I bring one of the special serums? Or perhaps a set of scalpels? Electrodes?”

Memories of the things we’d done to those who’d committed crimes a fraction as horrifying as this echoed in my mind. No doubt my interrogators would give it their best shot, but there was surely no way to give this the escalation it required.

“Did you kill her personally?” I asked, sounding for all the world like I was making smalltalk at a party.

He shook his head as much as he could within his restraints. “No. David did it. Our leader took care of this job personally.”

“Were you present? Were you involved?”

“In this instance, I’m just the messenger.”

There were some men who’d say anything to save their skin. But my experience of the Treaty was quite different. They bragged. They insulted us in the hope of dying as a martyr. Far from claiming innocence, they laid claim to impossible crimes. If this man claimed not to be involved, I believed him. And believed him to be different.

“What’s your name?”

“Michael.”

“And how is your relationship with this David?”

“We share the same broad aims.”

“My overthrow? The destruction of everything my wife and I have worked for?”

He gave a half smile. “Something like that.

Again, the difference was clear. Normally, Treaty prisoners couldn’t wait to say their piece, to lay my supposed crimes at my feet.

The shell of my composure trembled. I’d achieved my basic aim. Everyone in the room – allies and enemies alike – had seen my emotional strength, my lack of emotion. If the loss of my wife couldn’t faze me, surely that meant I was untouchable. I needed to keep up the act for a little while longer, then I needed to collapse.

“Let’s face it. David sent you for one reason, and one reason only. If I’m truly the monster he believes me to be, whoever told me such terrible, soul-destroying news would inevitably die a horrible death. He could have sent someone disposable. Instead, he gave the suicide mission to his supposed lieutenant. It’s clear that he fears you. He wanted me to kill you so he didn’t have to. And I won’t give him the satisfaction.”

I turned to go.

“My Lord, what do you want us to do?” one of the guards spluttered.

“Escort Michael to one of the guest rooms. Keep him under armed guard, but otherwise grant him every courtesy and luxury. In time, I’m confident he’ll chose us over a supposed ally who’d sacrifice him out of petty jealousy.”

I paced towards the door before either Michael or the guards could respond. I trusted the latter to obey my orders, and the former to obey my faith in human nature.

“Peter, summon the Council for an hour’s time, and arrange a press conference for an hour after that. I’ll inform my generals and ministers. I’ll tell the public and declare a period of mourning. Then I’ll bomb the rebels’ stronghold out of existence.”

I left the room and closed the door behind me. I’d done my duty. I’d shown my strength. And I’d do it again for the benefit of my council and all my loyal citizens. But the adrenaline was already fading away. A chill settled over my heart.

Marianne was dead.

I could put a good spin on it. I could make the perpetrators wish they’d never been born. I could show everyone I wasn’t fazed or weakened, and perhaps even use the moment to consolidate my power. The cold, calculating part of my brain could see it already – we’d have posters mourning the Eternal Blessed First Lady. We’d crush the Treaty and a mourning populace would cheer. But none of it would change the fact that forever more, I’d be alone. The Dictator’s Wife was dead.

 

 

The Dictator’s Wife Playlist

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, Music, The Dictator's Wife, Writing

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If there’s one thing that helps me write and keeps up my enthusiasm for my books, it’s listening to music that reminds me of the characters, plot or themes. Ages ago, I made and shared a playlist for The Cavaliers, which you can find here. Today, I’ve decided to share a snapshot of some of the songs that I associate with the Dictator’s Wife. It’s quite a mix of musical styles, which seems fitting for a book that can’t be neatly slotted into any one genre.

If anyone has read The Dictator’s Wife and has any other ideas, I’d love to hear them.

You can listen to the whole list here:

Blank Space – Taylor Swift

“Darling I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream.”

You want an antiheroine/borderline villain protagonist? This song delivers it in spades. Almost more than the lyrics (which suit Marianne beautifully), it’s the accompanying video of this which really reminds me of The Dictator’s Wife. That vibe of beautiful blonde woman in vintage clothes and tall, dark, handsome guy alternating between romance and violence and a stunning mansion – it could pretty much be a trailer.

  • You’ll Be Back – Hamilton Soundtrack

“You say, the price you my love’s not a price that you’re willing to pay.”

If I was only aloud to pick one song for this list, it’d be this. In the actual musical, this is King George III complaining about America declaring independence, presented like a psychotic break-up song. But to put it another way, it’s an absolutist British ruler losing it because someone he loves has left him. And as such, each and every lyric is perfect for the way things stand at the start of The Dictator’s Wife and for the overall themes of the book.

The combination of jaunty tune and chilling lyrics captures Julien’s demeanor perfectly and the slightly too forced attempt at a cut-glass English accent is exactly how I imagine him speaking.

One of the most memorable lines of the song  is”I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love” – which is literally what Jules does: “It was total overkill. He flattened the town. But he did it in memory of you, so in his eyes, he did what he had to do.”

  • When We Were Young – Adele

“You still look like a movie, you still sound like a song, my God this reminds me, of when we were young.”

This gorgeous ballad is all about meeting up with someone years after you were together and hoping there’s still some magic there. It perfectly captures the moment that Marianne returns to Somerset House, unsure whether she’s going to be killed or reinstated as First Lady. And the focus on reminiscing about how things used to be works perfectly with the novel’s duel timeline.

  • The Bagman’s Gambit – the Decemberists 

“They flashed a photograph, it couldn’t be you
You’d been abused so horribly
But you were there in some anonymous room”

Lots of the Decemberists songs – particularly their older ones – have a lot of plot going on. But this one, which appears to be about an American Government official and a Russian spy in the early twentieth century, is particularly involved. The specifics of the complex narrative don’t particularly tally with the story in my book, but the general themes of political plotting and a cycle of obsessive love and violent betrayal are very similar. Plus, the song jumps back and forth in time “It was ten years on, when you resurfaced in a motorcar” in a rather familiar way.

That said, the lyrics quoted above absolutely capture that moment that Julien finds Marianne held prisoner and tortured by his own men and, let’s say, does not deal with the situation in the calmest manner.

While I’m on the subject of the Decemberists, the song I listened to the most while I wrote the first draft was one of their newer releases, Make You Better. As a result, that song is also indelibly associated with it in my mind, though apart from the line “like the perfect paramour you were in your letters” I can’t find much of a logical connection.

  • I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You – Evita Soundtrack  

“It seems crazy but you must believe
There’s nothing calculated, nothing planned
Please forgive me if I seem naive
I would never want to force your hand.”

Quite simply, the best song I’ve ever heard about a scheming woman getting together with a military dictator. There are a couple of references to Evita scattered through the book (generally whenever Peter is trying to wind Marianne up) and it should come as no surprise that my favorite ever musical was a major inspiration. As a result, whole swathes of the soundtrack would be relevant to this playlist, but I’ve settled on this one, as it’s genuinely romantic and beautiful, while still functioning as a hymn for Lady Macbeth types. I see this song as the perfect backdrop for the moment in the initial flashback chapter when Julien and Marianne meet for the first time.

  • Run This Town – Jay Z/Rihanna/Kayne West

 

Basically, it’s a song about power – the highs of it, the lows of it, and the things people will do to get it. I see this as the song for J&M’s coup, when everything could go horribly wrong for them but they choose to take their chances.

And what I really love is that it’s the guys who are making all these bold claims about their wealth and their control and how their enemies are going down, but it’s the woman, with her chorus of “Life’s a game but it’s not fair, I break the rules so I don’t care” who’s the really sinister one.

Plus, even if Taylor Swift and the man in the Blank Space video look rather more like the way the characters are canonically described, I just love the idea of Jay Z as Julien and Rihanna as Marianne. I guess that would make Kayne Peter…

Holiday Reading Update 1 – The Luminaries

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, Personal

≈ 1 Comment

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Got my Kindle, got my giant coconut and got my floppy hat. I am good to go.

Ahh, holiday reading. Every summer, with weary predictability, the recommended beach reads appear in all the papers, the highbrow equivalent of all the “get a beach body fast” articles in the fluffier magazines. 

There seem to be two broad schools of thought on what constitutes a beach read.

For some people, it’s about choosing the biggest, hardest, most literary tomes they can lay their hands on, on the basis that they’d never have time to get through them during the rest of the year, and don’t really have the energy for such things after a long day of work.

For others, beach reads are pretty much synonymous with “light hearted trash.” It’s hot, you’re wearing a bikini, and you may well have drunk a cocktail or two. Concentrating on something heavy is not going to happen, and why spoil the mood of relaxation and joy anyway?

As a general rule, I take a similar approach to my beach reading as to my beach body – pick up my Kindle, put on my bikini and work with what I’ve got. 

But this year, it wasn’t just a holiday. It was a honeymoon. And seen as I’d obsessed over every other conceivable detail of the wedding, there didn’t seem much point in skimping on my beach reads (or my beach body for that matter, but that’s a whole other story…)

Now, some of you might want to know why on earth I was spending time reading on my honeymoon. Firstly, apart from the literal beach reading, there was a 50 hour round trip to get through, during which I clung to my Kindle for dear life. Secondly, I love reading almost as much as my wonderful new husband, and for me, no perfect fortnight would be complete without a good book or two. And thirdly, rest assured that I did lots of other things, like visiting a monkey forest and a snake temple and surfing and swimming and eating lots of delicious food. And all sorts of things you’re meant to do on honeymoon, which I won’t go into, though if you’re curious, Chapter Eight of Oxford Blood (amongst others) will give you a general sort of overview 😉

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See, I told you I visited a monkey forest.

In the end, I got through three books, which equated to about 2000 pages. The first of these, The Luminaries  definitely fell into the first category – literary fiction I wouldn’t usually have the energy for. I expected it to be like swallowing vitamins and it turned out to be like devouring a box of chocolates. The review’s below, and then over the next two days, I’ll review the other two books, We Were Liars (which I had filed in the “light read” category but which turned out to be rather darker than I was wanting or expecting), and Outlander, which is more historical romance than literary fiction, but which, at 900 pages, I classed in rather the same way as something I’d never get through in a working week.  

THE LUMINARIES – ELEANOR CATTON – 5 STARS

LUMINARIES

 

I approached this book with some degree of trepidation. Several reviews from hardened literary critics implied that while its technical merits made it worthy of its Booker Prize win, actually reading it was a bit of a hard slog, thanks to its length and its complex structure. It sat on my Kindle for several months, until, confronted with the prospect of a 27 hour plane journey, I decided that it was now or never.

From the first page, I was astonished by how much I enjoyed it, not in an cold, “appreciating great literature” sort of way, but simply in the sense of getting wrapped up in the plot, speculating about the mysteries and feeling strong emotions towards the characters. It was beautifully written, apeing a late Victorian style perfectly, but the story drew me in and kept me turning the pages as if it were the most salacious, trashy thriller. The plot is complex, featuring at least twenty fairly major characters, but while it requires a fair degree of concentration to keep track of everyone’s comings and goings, I never felt lost or overburdened with detail, just fully immersed in a well-developed world.

It’s a tricky tale to summarise, but basically, on the same night in a nineteenth-century goldmining town in New Zealand, a hermit dies alone, only for both a stash of gold and a long-lost wife to appear; a prostitute collapses from an apparent opium overdose and is arrested, and the richest man in town disappears. There are mysteries underlying all three of these events (and several others) and endless connections between these three characters and the rest of the sprawling cast. With so many characters, it’s perhaps inevitable that some of them were more interesting and memorable than others, and that some of the supporting cast blurred into one slightly. But the best characters were very well done with some interesting nuances – and less nuanced, but just as enjoyable, was a wonderfully villainous sea captain.

I didn’t know much more about the plot than the book’s setting, and on paper, it wasn’t a period or location that really appeared to me. However, the author really brings the town of Hotika to life and really piqued my interest in a piece of history I had no prior knowledge of. While the plot is mostly rooted in the gritty realism of life in a frontier town, there is also a slight touch of the paranormal, which I suspect some people will dislike, but which I quite enjoyed.

I’d heard that this book was heavily based around astronomy, another factor that seems to have daunted some critics and put off some readers. If you have no interest in the subject, then don’t worry. The plot and the prose are perfectly enjoyable without this knowledge, and although the strange chapter titles and shortening chapters make you aware that something strange is going on, for the most part, it doesn’t get in the way of the story, just leaves you with a vague sense that the author has probably pulled off something quite clever. I’m by no means an expert, but I had some interest in astronomy in my teens, and had just enough remembered knowledge to get something extra from the book. I’m sure that anyone who is genuinely knowledgable about the subject would be fascinated by the way it is handled. As far as I could tell, the idea is that some of the characters represent signs of the zodiac (I had fun guessing who was which, until I noticed there was actually a chart – woops) and some other represent the planets. Mostly, the planetary ones are the ones doing things and moving the plot along, while the stellar ones are caught in the fall out of their actions. I think the latter were acting according to the general attributes of their star sign, and also been affected by the position of the actual planets and stars on any given day. I suspect that a greater knowledge of astronomy would help to explain what sometimes feels like odd behaviour and U-turns on the part of certain characters, as well as some of the stranger coincidences and plot twists. To reiterate though, all this underlying cleverness doesn’t get in the way of the story and it isn’t necessary to even vaguely understand it in order to follow the plot.

The other noteworthy thing about this book is the structure. It’s in twelve parts (presumably another reference to the signs of the zodiac). The first part has twelve chapters, the next eleven, and so on, until part twelve only has one chapter. At the same time, the chapters get notably shorter as the book goes on (part 1 finished 48% of the way through the book, according to my Kindle, part twelve is one page long) and though I didn’t bother to count, I’m reliably informed that each is half the length of its predecessor. I didn’t feel that this structure added much, but like the astronomy references, neither, for the most part, did it get in the way of the reading experience. My only complaint is that the book reaches its climax at the end of Part Five of twelve- (although to be fair, that is 90% of the way through the book). At that point, most of the mysteries are revealed and loose ends tied up. The following sections then go back in time to fill in some of the gaps. To some extent, this was interesting, but a lot of it felt like rehashing old ground or needlessly spelling out things that had been clearly implied beforehand. I was hoping that these flashbacks would put a new spin on events or characters, but with the exception of the interesting sections explaining how Anna (the prostitute mentioned above) came to be in her current situation, they felt extremely redundant and repetitive, which slightly dulled my love for the book. It felt like the one time the author really put structure over storytelling.

This book is undoubtedly long and clearly very cleverly written. But I’d emphasise once more that it’s far more enjoyable, far more of a page-turner and a far easier read than either its length or its reputation would suggest. Marvel at its structure and style, puzzle out its astronomical mysteries or simply enjoy a riveting historical drama – whatever level you choose to read it on, I’d highly recommend this book.

 

The Cavaliers Playlist

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, Music

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adele, maroon five, Music, soundtrack, the cavaliers, vampire weekend, vampires

I’m feeling extremely excited tonight. Ivory Terrors is finally released tomorrow, and that’s the Cavaliers Series completed and four years of work come to an end. Earlier, I did some last checks and double-checks and bits of formatting, but now, I’ve uploaded the book to Amazon and Smashwords and that, substantially, is that. 

Tomorrow, I intend to get emotional on here. I need to do some looking back and some looking forward, and offer some thanks. But for tonight, I’m keeping things fun, with a post I’ve been meaning to write for ages.

Books will always be my first cultural love, but music comes a close second. I’ve often said that when it comes to books, for me, while brilliant prose is always a bonus, the plot is by far the most important element. I take a rather similar view with music. I love a great tune, but it’s the lyrics that make a song for me.  My favourite books often remind me of my favourite songs, and vice versa. And having spent so long thinking about The Cavaliers, it’s unsurprising that there are a number of songs that I always associate with the series. 

I love finding playlists for my favourite books, and I’ve been meaning to put together one for the Cavaliers almost since Oxford Blood was published. The main think that finally made me get round to it (apart from feeling a bit demob happy after the final Ivory Terrors edit) was receiving an email from someone who’d read Oxford Blood, and alongside some other lovely comments, mentioned that, “During the early scenes of Harriet with Tom, before they were actually an item, before she knew what he was. The way they connected without understanding why, I heard Rihanna’s “Stay” playing in my head. Not just the lyrics but also the angst of how she sings them definitely reminds me of Harriet during those parts.”

I hadn’t consciously heard the song beforehand (though I’ve obviously listened to it since) but it made me so happy to think that someone was connecting with something I’d written in just the way I’ve connected with all the books I love. Anyway, here’s my list. You can listen to all of these songs via my Spotify playlist:  

1)Moves Like Jagger (Maroon Five) and Break Your Heart (Taio Cruz)

If you fall for me
I’m not easy to please
I might tear you apart
Told you from the start,
Baby from the start.
I’m only gonna break, break your, break, break your heart. 

I associate both of these songs with the Cavaliers in general. The charming “no girl can resist them” side, and the flip side, where “no girl can keep them.” I think both songs apply very well to pretty much all the members, but they particularly rmeind me of George. 

I don’t need to try to control you
Look into my eyes and I’ll own you
With them moves like Jagger
I’ve got the moves like Jagger

2) A Lady of a Certain Age (Divine Comedy)

Back in the day you had been part of the smart set
You’d holidayed with kings, dined out with starlets
From London to New York, Cap Ferrat to Capri
In perfume by Chanel and clothes by Givenchy

This is a song about how it doesn’t matter how rich and beautiful you are, one day, you’re going to get old. Adelaide French begs to differ. The opening verse sums up her lifestyle, and the (in the song, self-deluding) chorus seems eerily appropriate for a woman who looks like her daughter’s slightly older sister:

“You wouldn’t think that I was fifty three”
And he’d say,”no, you couldn’t be!

3) Love Lust (King Charles) and Love Blood (King Charles)

Well I’ve got love in my blood, and I’ve got you on my brain.
I haven’t got enough blood, I cannot love you enough.
If you’ve got love in your blood, if it is bolder than death
Oh let it spill, let it spill, over the heart you love best.

I mentioned this way back in one of my first ever blog posts on here. I don’t think it’s meant to be about vampires, but the combination of obsessive love and darkness (not to mention all the blood references!) work perfectly. 

Love Blood (a different song by the same musician) also has the slightly discomfiting refrain, “Never let a woman go even when you know she can always be replaced. She can always be replaced.” Firstly, it was utterly bizarre to see King Charles in concert and listen to the whole audience (me included) cheerfully singing along to that chorus. Secondly, all I can ever think of when I hear it is what Harriet always refers to as, “George’s little fan club,” the girls he keeps half-mesmerised so he can call on them whenever they need a snack. 

4) Pretty much anything by Vampire Weekend – if pushed, I’ll go with Taxi Cab

They may be American, but few bands better sum up the atmosphere of Oxford than these guys. I don’t think I’d ever have got Oxford Blood finished without their first album on repeat. This one is less about any specific lyrics, and more about the general preppy mood they conjure up. And then there’s this wonderful quotation from the lead singer about their three albums. You’ve got to like one of your favourite bands referencing one of your favourite books, and I can’t imagine many other musicians saying this,, which reminds me why I tend to love trilogies, and which applies to my novels to some degree:

“It reminded me of Brideshead Revisited,” said Mr. Koenig, who writes the band’s lyrics. “The naïve joyous school days in the beginning. Then the expansion of the world, travel, seeing other places, learning a little bit more about how people live. And then the end is a little bit of growing up, starting to think more seriously about your life and your faith. If people could look at our three albums as a bildungsroman, I’d be O.K. with that.”

That said, I do love the following verse, which reminds me of one of my favourite scenes in the whole trilogy (albeit one I sometimes wish I’d managed to put a slightly better spin on) when Harriet goes to the Cavaliers Dinner with George, shortly after he bit her on the Steele Walk:

In the shadow of your first attack
I was questioning and looking back
You said, “Baby, we don’t speak of that”
Like a real aristocrat

And of course, there’s always Oxford Comma’s rather apt, “I’ve seen those English Dramas too. They’re cruel.”

5) Atlas (Julia Johnson/Gray)

I struggle to put into words just what it is about this song that reminds me of the books. It’s much less easy to relate the lyrics to the plot, but there’s something about it that really catches the same part of my imagination. If Vampire Weekend was the soundtrack to writing book one, her album and King Charles’ got me through Screaming Spires. In particular, it’s these lines, which always make me think of Harriet’s progression through the series. I came so close to emailing the author and asking if I could quote them in the final part of Ivory Terrors:

They say take what you want and pay for it, so I do

They say learn from your mistakes and I learned from you

6) Set Fire to the Rain (Adele)

This is a relatively new addition to the list. It’s a great song about intense, destructive relationships. I’ve suggested before that I steer well clear of this sort of emotional torture in both real life and contemporary fiction, but somehow, for me, everything is better with vampires. The song works well for the whole series, but I’m also going to be ridiculously specific and suggest that you put it on in the background for Chapter Eighteen and a certain section of Chapter Nineteen of Ivory Terrors, because it’s just perfect for it. 

But my knees were far too weak
To stand in your arms
Without falling to your feet

But there’s a side to you that I never knew, never knew
All the things you’d say, they were never true, never true
And the games you’d play, you would always win, always win

I’ll stop there, otherwise I could easily carry on all night. I’m very tempted to do another of these at some point, or maybe even a chapter by chapter run through of one of the books. I hope you’ve found some new songs through this, and don’t forget to grab a copy of Ivory Terrors tomorrow. 

Does anyone else have any songs they associate with the books?

Top Ten Tuesday – Characters I Would Crush On If I Were Also a Fictional Character

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books

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books, cavaliers, cloud atlas, curtis sittenfeld, discworld, forbidden game, game of thrones, hilary mantel, kingkiller chronicles, lord vetinari, sandman, thomas cromwell, top ten tuesday

It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly feature hosted by the blog, The Broke and the Bookish – http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.co.uk/

Each week they ask people to write a top ten list of something on a literary theme. This week it’s characters you have a crush on. I’ve been waiting for this topic  for weeks. All I can say is that it’s a good job I’m not writing this ten years ago or I’d never have kept it down to ten. In my mid-teens, I just couldn’t read a book without falling in love with someone in it, and I was reading everything from literary classics to the trashiest of the trashy novels.

Now my hormones have calmed down and I’m freshly engaged, I’m not quite so easily impressed, and indeed, I’ve read several books recently with someone who’s meant to be a great romantic hero and felt a bit non-plussed. This list however seems to stand the test of time.

It’s probably worth bearing in mind that I havea  slightly worrying taste in book boyfriends. This lot are nearly universally arrogant/power-mad; a good few of them are outright evil or at least highly amoral , and in one especially worrying case, after reading I found out that a character was meant to be based on George Bush. Oh, and one is about 90% based on my actual boyfriend. You can draw your own conclusions about whether he’s an exception to this rule or not…

Also, at least four are dead by the end of the series they appear in (don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the books by saying which ones). I strongly suspect that two more are going to join this list by the time their series’ are completed. I’m just a glutton for punishment.

 

1 – Julian – LJ Smith – The Forbidden Game

forbidden game

There’s no way I could write a list about book boyfriends and not start with an LJ Smith character. I don’t think any author has so consistently managed to write characters that I felt a wild attraction to. Yes, the fact that I read all her books in my teens helped, but I read lots of similar paranormal romance around the same time and no one had quite the same effect on me. If I let myself, I could quite easily have filled the whole list with her dark romantic leads, filled a back up list with the lighter side of her inevitable love triangles and probably have got a good way through a third on the strength of her random supporting characters.

However, I’m restricting myself to one character per author (except me, because I make my own rules), so there’s really only one choice. Julian from the Forbidden Game. In many ways, Julian is a bit of a stock character, artfully balancing being hot, evil, charming and utterly in love with the heroine. I can’t quite put my finger on why he is so much more memorable than all the other sexy paranormal cads out there, but somehow he is. Partly, it’s just because he has such a good storyline to work with. Partly because he’s such an unusual character, being a Shadow Man, a creature from Norse Mythology, rather than a vampire/werewolf/angel/fairy. Partly it’s because he gets some great lines. And partly, as with really life, I guess sometimes the chemistry is just right.

2)Morpheus/Sandman – Neil Gaiman – Sandman Series

This one scores even higher on the “you really wouldn’t want to go out with him in real life” scale. His girlfriends all seem to end up in hell or cursed or trapped somewhere, which isn’t really what you want. On the plus side, he’s good-looking, romantic, more powerful than any god and a great storyteller. And whileever the ill-fated girlfriends are still in favour, they seem to be utterly adored. I don’t usually go in for graphic novels, but the nice thing about them is that they let me see exactly what he’s supposed to look like and in general, I absolutely approve. Except that the way some of the artists draw him, he looks disturbingly like my brother. (Using a picture to illustrate this fact has been vetoed!).

3) Ned Stark – A Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

I read Game of Thrones and the rest of the series so far before the TV show and adored it. As a good northern lass one of my favourite things about it was the cold frozen north full of grimly self-sufficient men and the way it was initially contrasted with and ultimately plunged into war with the softly indulgent south. I was rooting for the north all the way, especially House Stark and especially their wonderful patriarch Ned.

Unlike most of my selections here, who are basically terrible people once you strip away the glamour and the power, Ned seems like a really nice chap. He has a castle, a private army and huge reserves of power and respect. But he’s also a family man, fiercely loyal and utterly honourable. Plus he’s good at fighting (though by no means the best, which is a touch I like) and the sort of dad who gives his kids giant wolves as a present, but also remembers to tell them they have to look after them properly. He also, in one of my favourite minor scenes, gets up from his overheated bed in the middle of a freezing night and stands by his open window to cool down. I do that all the time. We’d be the perfect match.

The TV series only solidified this for me, because a)I love Sean Bean and b)he played him with a Sheffield accent, which was the way I’d always imagined lovely lovely Ned.

4 Thomas Cromwell – Wolf Hall/Bring up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel

 thomas Cromwell

Even more so than literary characters, I have a tendency to fall head over heels in love with historical characters. That said, despite taking a final paper on Tudor History, I never gave Thomas Cromwell a second thought. But on reading Hilary Mantel’s twin masterpieces, I suddenly thought he was amazing. Much like Ned Stark, he seems to be the only decent man in a world of total dicks. Unlike Ned, he knows when to admit defeat and arrange someone’s execution in order to stay on the king’s side. I like a bit of pragmatism in my men.

What I really love about him though is the way he starts life as the son of a blacksmith and through his own intelligence, ambition and energy becomes one of the most powerful men in England. He supports apprentices. He educates his daughters in Latin and maths. He throws great parties. He tries to set up a proto-welfare state. He’s probably the least physically attractive man on this list but I emphatically do not care. On the basis that you can’t spoil history, I think it’s fair to say he’s going to join my list of horrible deaths in Book Three. I’m not sure I can physically face reading that.

Note – definitely not to be confused with Oliver Cromwell, who I absolutely do not have a crush on as either a historical or fictional character. I didn’t call my series The Cavaliers for nothing.

5 Lord Vetinari – Discworld Series – Terry Pratchett

This is actually Lorenzo de'Medici

This is actually Lorenzo de’Medici

This one’s in a similar vein, only with an extra streak of cunning and evil. I’ve always thought of Terry Pratchett’s (mostly)benevolent dictator as being based on Lorenzo De’Medici, one of my top five history boyfriends and I think that was the author’s intention too. However, writing these two paragraphs side by side has made me realise that’s he’s actually uncannily like Mantel’s version of Cromwell. He’s ruthlessly ambitious, but treats personal power and the good of the country he’s governing roughly equally. He’s startlingly clever, and you know he’s always going to overcome any crisis he faces and beat anyone in a battle of wits. He doesn’t seem to have any kind of family and I’ve always thought he could do with a nice supportive girlfriend to help him run Ankh-Morpork.

6  Robert Frobisher – Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

 I’ve touched on this in another blog post recently (by touched on I actually mean “stuck pictures of Ben Whishaw playing him in the recent film all over the place”) so I’ll keep this one short. Frobisher’s story is set in the early 1930s. He’s good-looking, well-dressed, a musical genius,  an old Etonian, a Cambridge drop-out, a manic-depressive, a writer of beautiful witty letters, an accomplished seducer and a fan of Nietsche.

That’s not necessarily a universally positive list but the end result is that he’s utterly fascinating. In real life I think I’d end up hitting him within about five minutes of speaking to him (though I did once know someone who massively reminded me of him and who I kept trying to force this book on)but he’s a perfect book crush.

7 Kvothe – The Kingkiller Chronicles – Patrick Rothfuss

Some people say Kvothe’s a bit of a Mary Sue. I say, “Fine, I’ll keep this guy who is: a brilliant musician; an amazing storyteller; pretty much the most naturally talented practitioner of magic in the world; trained in sex by a love goddess and trained in fighting by the world’s best assassins, ALL FOR MYSELF.” Because that’s basically exactly the qualities I look for in a man. On the downside, he has ginger hair, but you can’t have it all.

 8 Charlie Blackwell – American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld

This one only gets to stay on the list because it wins my “biggest romantic head fuck of all time” award. Alice Lindgren is quiet and prim and proper. Her glamorous friend gets all the men. She goes to a BBQ and Charlie, the richest, best looking, most popular guy at the party falls totally and utterly in love with her. He takes her to his Cape Cod mansion where she meets his glamorous and sprawling family, including his senator father. At this point in the book I wanted to be Alice so much. Charlie seems so lovely. And then the book carries on and suddenly it’s clear that Charlie is based on George W Bush and  I have the horrible realisation that I’d just developed a crush on young George Bush. I couldn’t watch any news featuring American politics for about five years afterwards.

Joint 9 and 10 . The Hon. Tom Flyte and Lord George Stewart – Georgiana Derwent -The Cavaliers Series

Forgive me a moment of self-publicising, but this list honestly wouldn’t be complete if I couldn’t include these two. After all, if there’s one thing better than coming across a character you fall in love with, it’s writing one to your exact specifications. And I know I said I was restricting myself to only one character per author, but it’s all or nothing here, I couldn’t possibly show any favouritism.

George and Tom are both aristocratic vampires, from the English Civil War and the 1920s respectively. As members of the Cavaliers, an elite dining society, they are pretending to be ordinary Oxford University students whilst secretly recruiting promising students that they can turn into vampires and use to run the country.

tom

Tom has floppy dark hair and deep blue eyes. He went to Eton followed by Oxford. He likes indie music, partying and culture. He’s also extremely good at fencing, punting and apparently rowing. Oh, not to mention sex. He’s generally dressed extremely smartly, up to and including white tie. If I were single, you could probably take that description and set an online dating profile up for me. On the downside, he likes seducing people for their blood (including one person he killed) and being only eighty years old isn’t that powerful.

George has long blond hair and was basically brought up to be a soldier, but ended up cultured somewhere along the way. He’s half French and half Scottish (though speaks with a cut glass English accent), Catholic but pretty thoroughly lapsed, and fervently loyal to the monarch of the time  from Charles I onwards. He hates the Roundheads for killing the king, killing his brother (even though that made him the heir to his father’s Dukedom) and for generally being dull and lacking in style. He has a reputation around Oxford as being both exceptionally attractive and charming and a total womaniser, even by the standards of the Cavaliers. As a Senior Member of the Cavaliers, he oversees the creation of the new vampires (who all have to kill someone to be turned) so he has a lot of blood on his hands. He has exceptionally strong mind control powers and tends to solve most problems with mesmerisms or duels.

End 

So, do you like any of these characters or have I just shown what incredibly odd taste I have? And indulge me – if you’ve ever read my books, which of the two characters do you prefer?

Would you like it if your book was made into a film?

24 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books

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Tags

cloud atlas, film adaptations, game of thrones, Oxford Blood, the dark is rising, vampire diaries

Authors – would you like it if your book was made into a film?

At first glance, this sounds like a stupid question on two levels. Firstly, because it’s not very likely to happen – only a tiny minority of books ever get made into films and if yours isn’t already  bit of a household name, it’s probably not going to be one of them. And secondly, because isn’t the answer obvious? A film deal gets you cash up-front and probably a huge rush of interest in your original books. I bet there isn’t a single author, literary or populist, who hasn’t at some point idly dreamed about seeing their book on screen and done a bit of fantasy casting in their head.

So yes, let’s be honest. If Hollywood came calling, brandishing an Oxford Blood screenplay, I wouldn’t say no and I doubt anyone else would either. I’d do it for the money and the exposure and the bragging rights, but that still leaves the deeper question – would I actually like that this was happening?

I started thinking about this because I went to see the film of Cloud Atlas last night. As someone who reads vociferously across a wide range of genres, I struggle to pick one book as my all time favourite, but if I was forced to pick, Cloud Atlas would be a pretty strong contender.

Somewhere on here, I describe my taste in books as “I love to read literary novels that don’t forget about plot and fantasy/paranormal novels that don’t forget about prose. My absolute favourite books are generally those that blur the boundaries between the two categories.”

Cloud Atlas is an unashamedly post-modern literary novel. It has a complex structure, cleverly parodies a number of different writing styles, namechecks philosophers and deals with big questions around the point of existence, the inevitability of conflict and evil and ideas of reincarnation and recurrence. And yet it’s formed of six interconnected stories, one of which is the best futuristic dystopia I’ve ever read and another of which is a post-apocalyptic fantasy. How many books can claim to have been nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Nebula Award?

Oh, and if you’ve read my books or this blog, you might have noticed that I rather like aristocratic historical cads. Robert Frobisher – hot bisexual artistocratic old Etonian composer on the run from 1930s Cambridge (Oxford would have been better but you can’t have everything) – is one of my all time favourite characters.

I’m getting slightly off the point here, but this is a book I can’t help rhapsodising about. If you haven’t read it, go and do so. If you have, read it again because you probably missed lots the first time around.

cloud atlas poster

When I heard there was going to be an all-star film of this masterpiece, I felt excited and horrified in roughly equal measure. In theory, what could be better than a film of a book you love? The opportunity to see all the characters and places you’ve imagined in your head up there on the screen in front of you should be an utter treat. But I’d got my hopes up and had them dashed one too many times to be entirely happy about the idea.

Just before Christmas, I wrote about how much I love The Dark is Rising. A few years ago it was turned into a travesty of an abomination called The Seeker. Having read the synopsis of the film, I couldn’t face watching it in the cinema. I finally cracked and watched it through my fingers when it was on tv a few years later. I can safely say that it is both one of the worst films I have ever seen and bears practically no resemblance to the book it’s meant to be based on. Everything’s been modernised and dumbed down. The hero’s suddenly American, despite one of the greatest charms of this book being its absolute sense of place in the Home Counties and then Wales and Cornwall in the sequels. The film was utterly panned by critics, book fans and those poor hapless people who happened to go and see it. I couldn’t help but think that if they’d actually made a faithful adaptation of the brilliant source material it might have done rather better.

This scene is not in the books I have absolutely no idea what it going on here!

This scene is not in the books. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here!

The other adaptation that regularly gets to me is the tv series of the Vampire Diaries. The original books are the ones that originally got me into vampire fiction and though I’ve since read things that are probably technically better, they are still my favourite vampire novels. I was so excited to hear there was going to be a tv series. I watched the first episode in a frenzy of excitement that as the series went on gradually turned into confusion. Where was the plot going? Who were some of these characters? Had the director read the book or just a list of characters names on Wikipedia? About five episodes in I had to stop watching as it was driving me mad. As I tend to visit a lot of paranormal themed websites, I’ve remained vaguely up to date on what’s happening with the plot and most synopsises I read make absolutely no sense to me as a fan of the books.

It’s reasonable light entertainment rather than the jaw-dropping crappiness of the Seeker, but what it’s not is the Vampire Diaries as I know them. If someone wanted to make a high school vampire TV series to capture the Twilight market, I cannot understand for the life of me why they didn’t just write an original story rather than nominally base it on some books and then made an adaptation that has very little to do with them. I’m pretty sure that at the time the books weren’t famous enough to bring a huge fanbase along with them, so that’s not the answer).

Let me pause there and clarify something. When I complain about film adaptations that are nothing like the books, I’m not doing that super- fangirl thing of starting from the point that the text is sacred and nothing can be changed or omitted. I fully appreciate that films are a different media to books. I understand that for reasons of running length and cost, some characters and sub-plots might need to be cut and that for the cinematic experience, action scenes might need to be emphasised and quiet moments of introspection rushed over. I can even accept that parts of the main plot might need to play out subtly differently. The sort of “Nooo, they’ve cut Tom Bombardil from the Lord of the Rings film” thing is not my concern. What I hate is when a book is turned into a film that keeps some character names and a few big events and then spins what basically amounts to a different story around them.

Another of my favourite series is a Song of Ice and Fire, or as everyone now seems to know it, A Game of Thrones. The HBO series gives me faith that good adaptations are possible. That tv series is both a wonderful adapation of the source material and a great piece of entertainment in its own right. Of course, some things had to be changed (and there are one or two changes that I didn’t think were necessary and found a bit irritating) but it’s clear that the screenwriters and directors knew and loved the books and they made something that was recognisably A Song of Ice and Fire. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this has been one of the biggest tv hits in recent years. If you’re starting with good source material, trust it, don’t squander it.

So this brings me back to Cloud Atlas. Two horrific adaptations of my favourite books and one great one – which side was this going to land on? I didn’t think it could possibly be good. Unlike the other books I’ve mentioned, where the main thing I loved was the plot, Cloud Atlas is a book with a capital B. So much of it’s brilliance comes from it’s structure and the way it’s written. It could also fairly be described as basically six short stories. How on earth would it work as a film considering the problems directors seem to have with adapting basic linear narratives?

To my frustration, the film opened in the UK nearly five months after it had opened in the US, which is almost unheard of. Wildly impatient to see what the directors had done to it, I went on opening night, dragging along my reluctant fiancé who has often heard me going on about the book to anyone who’d listen but who wasn’t entirely convinced.

I reassured myself that Ben Whishaw (swoon) was playing Robert Frobisher. Even if everything else was horrible, at least I could enjoy watching one of my favourite actors play one of my favourite characters.

If Ben Whishaw was cased as Tom Flyte, I'd happily let them make the story be about zombies and set in Australia.

If Ben Whishaw was cased as Tom Flyte, I’d happily let them make the story be about zombies and set in Australia.

Somewhat to my amazement, I loved the film. It was brilliant. The individual stories were well told and the overarching themes were brought out and with a few exceptions (only one of which really bothered me – for anyone who has read it, they took away the twist from the end of Somni’s story), it was oddly faithful to the book. My fiancé really enjoyed it. Hurrah.

So to return to my original question. Say there was a film adaptation of Oxford Blood. I’ve gleefully cashed my royalty cheques and seen a boost in book sales – so that’s all good. But now it’s time to actually watch the thing. Am I overjoyed or horrified?

Let’s face it, there’ll be at least a few things that have changed. And if I get this defensive about books I’ve merely read, how would I ever cope with a book I’d written? Not to mention the fact that having been to Oxford, the slightest inaccuracy about what life is like at the university would probably get my hackles up.

And then there are the big issues. Most film productions are American, and they seem to like to have at least some American connection. Surely they couldn’t move the action to Harvard and rename the society the Confederates could they? But I have a horrible suspicion that they would at the very least make Harriet a visiting American student.

I’d also imagine that a director would pick an audience and play with it, so the blood and sex would either be ramped up to ten or completely toned down. I’d prefer the former if it came to it, but either would feel odd. I’m trying to decide what plot changes I could live with and which I couldn’t, but so far I’m drawing a blank on the latter.

The next thing is the characters. Apparently Anne Rice was beyond furious when she heard that Tom Cruise was going to be playing Lestat in the adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. I think if my film was getting such big name stars I’d probably manage to grin and bear it, but seeing a character in a film who doesn’t look like the book character in your head if disorientating – I imagine it’d be a thousand times worse if they look and sound nothing like the characters you’ve spent hours creating, who you sometimes dream about, who are in most part based on an unholy alliance of historical portraits and people I know.

What I really need is an actor who looks like this

What I really need is an actor who looks like this

Does any of this matter? After all, a bad adaptation doesn’t destroy the original book. I think the problem, whether we’re talking hypothetically about Oxford Blood or practically about real adaptations is that more people tend to watch films than read. Even minimally successful films will have a bigger audience than all but the absolute best selling books. Therefore for many people, the film is likely to be their first exposure to the material and they’ll generally believe that that’s broadly what the books are like. Apart from everything else, when watching Cloud Atlas I was worried it would be bad and my fiancé would wonder why I like the book so much. Also, once an adaptation has been made, there probably won’t be another one or at least not for decades. So every bad adaptation of a book means a good, faithful adaptation that is never going to happen. I’ll probably never get my wonderful, life affirming, “the scenes on the screen look just like the pictures in my head” versions of Vampire Diaries or the Dark is Rising, and however much I re-read the books, that’s a sad thought. If it was Oxford Blood, it would be a horrifying one.

So authors, apart from the base emotion of “woo, I’m going to be rich” how would you feel about an adaptation of your novel? Readers, do you tend to like book to film adaptations? Which do you like or hate and why? And what does anyone think of Cloud Atlas, the book or the film?

Ps. Check out this link for a very interesting article on this issue by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578060870111158076.html

The illustrated Oxford Blood

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books, Personal

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

black tie, Oxford, Oxford Blood, personal memories, photographs

A few days ago, I was round at an old university friend’s house for drinks. They mentioned they’d read Oxford Blood and I asked them what they thought.

“I really enjoyed it. It brought back loads of memories. But I think we could find a Facebook picture for nearly every scene.”

So feeling nostalgic and a little tipsy, we proceeded to do just that. The lawyer in me feels compelled to say that the fact that someone appears in one of these pictures in no way implies they inspired any character!

The evening was going to begin with a pirate bop. Harriet fastened herself into the corset top she’d bought for the occasion and looked forward to the fun that would be occurring. She accompanied the top with a short, floaty black skirt and the fishnet tights that were an almost inevitable part of all the women’s bop costumes and half of the men’s. She threaded a ribbon printed with skull and crossbones through the laces of the corset and finished it all off with a pirate hat and sword she’d bought from the fancy dress shop. Having forced her hair into wild pre-Raphaelite curls and put on a ton of black eyeliner.

pirates

 

It was almost a relief when the exams actually started. It was rather surreal to dress up in sub fusc, the required outfit – white shirt tied with a ribbon, black skirt, black tights and shoes and of course the gown. It was traditional to wear a white carnation for the first exam, a red one for the last one and pink ones in the middle, all purchased by friends and given as a sort of good luck gift.

exams

 

The Founder’s Tower was smaller than the main college tower that the choir would sing from, but still one of the highest points in the city. She’d never been up it before as it wasn’t open on a day-to-day basis. It was worth it when they got to the top. She could see out across the city in all its glory, bathed in the pre-dawn half-light. Always slightly fantastical, it looked like a bizarre medieval toy town.

tower

 

The second dress was even better. It was almost ethereal, made of different shades of gold and bronze silk that overlaid each other. Tiny crystals subtly covered the bust area. She’d never seen a dress quite as beautiful. 

gold dress

 

The party began the moment that the sun went down. Each guest had been picked up from their college by an unordered taxi and driven out into the Oxfordshire countryside. One by one they had been deposited in a large clearing in the middle of a wood, several miles outside of the city. Stephanie was enchanted by the lanterns and flaming torches.

torches

As she walked into the hall, Harriet stared in amazement. It was huge – long and wide and high ceilinged. Windows decorated with various crests alternated with giant portraits of kings and soldiers and famous alumni. Some, like Queen Elizabeth I she recognised immediately; others were a puzzle. Long wooden tables filled the hall, each of them covered in candles and silverware and seating around twenty people. 

hall

 

That’ll probably do for the moment, though I’m happy to take requests. Got a favourite Oxford Blood scene or even just a favourite outfit from the book? As long as it’s not sex or murder, I’ll find the appropriate picture…

2012 Reading Part One – List and Stats

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by georgianaderwent in Books

≈ Leave a comment

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books, reading, year in review

This year, for the first time ever, I resolved to review every book I read. It’s not quite the end of the year, and I intend to boost the total quite a lot over the next ten day , thanks to the combination of books as presents and time to read.

However, everyone seems to be doing their end of year book recaps this week, so I thought I’d join in. Tomorrow, I’m putting up my rather random awards. For today though, as I’m in a very geeky mood, here on some stats on my reading and a list of what I read:

    •  I read 25 books. I’d have liked it to be more and I’d estimate that it usually would be, but writing/editing/promoting my books inevitably eat into my reading time.
    •  2 were fiction (both self-publishing advice) the others were all fiction. Apart from my university years when I’d probably read about 4 history books a week, that’s always been roughly my ration. I like my writing to be as far removed from reality as possible.
    • I was keen to review books that I re-read cover to cover, as well as new ones. In the end, there was only one re-read, The Forbidden Game. I was surprised but pleased to find I still loved it almost as much as when I was a teenager.
    •  It’s a slightly artificial distinction, but of the fiction, I’d say 10 were YA and 13 “proper adult.”  Note to self: grow up!
    •  I don’t like the distinction that’s often made between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction” Out of interest however, I’d say that at face value, I read:
          • 2 books that were fairly clearly literary (probably my worst record since my teens, but in my defence I was researching a vampire novel)
          •  9 that were broadly paranormal
          • 4 that were fantasy
          • 1 that was sci-fi
          • 4 dystopian (when that did become a genre all of its own?!)
          • 2 “chick-lit” (urgh)
          • 1 crime
          • I’d add that 2 that I’ve classed as fantasy and one that I’ve classed as crime could easily be regarded as literary too by a sympathetic, open-minded reviewer.
  • Ratings-wise I gave:
          • Three 2 stars
          • Eight 3 stars
          • Twelve 4 stars
          • One five stars
  • Looking at that I think I’m definitely on the generous side with reviews (I’m not sure all those ‘four starrers’ really merited it) but I think it shows I’m also getting good at picking outs books I’m going to enjoy. There’s nothing worse than when someone gives a book a 1 star review on the basis that “I hate vampires/elves/time travel, they’re stupid and over-done” when the blurb made abundantly clear that that’s what the book is about.

Here’s a list of the books, in order of when I read them.

  1. Forbidden Game Bind-Up (LJ Smith)
  2. The Wise Man’s Fear (Patrick Rothfuss)
  3. The Lies of Locke Lamora (Scott Lynch)
  4. Soulless – The Parasol Protectorate (Gail Carriger)
  5. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
  6. Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins)
  7. Got You Back (Jane Fallon)
  8. Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)
  9. Pretties (Scott Westerfeld)
  10. The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas)
  11. Girl Reading (Katie Ward)
  12. The Fledging of Az Gabrielson (Jay Amory)
  13. Nightfall – Vampire Diaries 5 (LJ Smith)
  14. The Urth of the New Sun (Gene Wolfe)
  15. Shadow Souls – Vampire Diaries 6 (LJ Smith)
  16. Midnight – Vampire Diaries 7 (LJ Smith)
  17. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
  18. The Secret Life of a Slummy Mummy (Fiona Neill)
  19. The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
  20. Smart Self-Publishing (Zoe Winters)
  21. Consider Phelbas (Iain M Banks)
  22. Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing (Catherine Howard)
  23. The Iron Witch (Karen Mahoney)
  24. Oxford Whispers (Marion Croslydon)
  25. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

So how does that compare with your reading for the year, in terms of quantity, quality or variety? What did you think of any of these books?

Tune in tomorrow for my pick of some of the best and worst of these, alongside some more personal awards…

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