Covers for novels are so important: I’m sure we’ve all bought books just because we love the cover. It’s vital that they match the mood of the book, and give some hint of the genre and plot.
Our youngest, Beck Hemsley, has designed a cover for ‘Two Steps Away’. I asked for feedback from various groups about what it said about the book. People’s responses varied from ‘teenage romance’ to ‘thriller’! But most people mentioned isolation, searching, loneliness, mental health and said that the cover intrigued them enough to make them pick the book up and read the back page.
My three nouns were ‘calm attic spaghetti’! Challenging! After about four days ruminating, I managed to come up with a story, which is below.
I wonder what other stories people would have come up with from these three words? Has anyone else tried this ‘take three nouns’ idea?
Anyway, here’s the story. I’m quite pleased with it.
Calm Attic Spaghetti
As I was measuring spaghetti, Adam ran into the kitchen.
“Hey, Tanya! Look what I found in the attic!” he said, holding out a dusty wooden box, and wiping his sleeve across it. Brass inlay glinted against the dull wood.
“Pretty,” I said, touching the ornate scrolls engraved on the hasps. “Where was it?”
“By the chimney breast. I put the Christmas decs there and saw something covered in masses of cobwebs. Honestly, Tanya, I swear the spiders there are big enough to take on a mouse and win.”
I shivered. “Ugh! Rather you up there than me.”
He slowly opened the lid. “And look what’s inside.”
Several glass jars lay on their sides, showing labels with neat faded lettering. Adam lifted one and read the label.
“Zesty spice and herb mix. Adds life to dull stews and sauces.”
He opened it. Suddenly a strange, savoury smell filled the air.
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Oh, wow! That smells amazing!”
We both drew in deep breaths.
“Like really expensive red wine, or like … like those dark mushrooms wrapped in bacon,” Adam murmured.
“I can smell basil, lemon, pepper, something else too. Coriander? Something, oh, it makes me think of roast lamb with garlic and wood fires and dark chocolate and – and just pure deliciousness.”
Adam turned and prodded the bolognese sauce with a wooden spoon.
“Shall we put some in here?”
I looked at the contents. Pale, watery, with hopeless fragments of onion drifting through the grey-tinged cheap mince and supermarket basic tinned tomatoes.
“Hmm. I dunno. We don’t know what’s in it,” I said.
“It’ll be fine,” said Adam enthusiastically. “Remember that bottle of blackberry whiskey we found at the back of the cupboard?”
I hesitated. The woman we’d bought the house from had been very odd: staring eyes, long plaits of jet black hair, dirndl skirt draped with fringed shawls; wearing bracelets and necklaces dripping with charms and seashells and pieces of coloured glass. But the whiskey had ben exquisite, extra-ordinary. We’d drunk the whole lot to toast our new house and – to our relief – woken up the next morning feeling fantastic and with no trace of hangovers.
“OK,” I said.
Adam poured half the contents into the sauce.
“Steady on!” I started to say, but stopped as the delicious smell strengthened and the pallid bolognese thickened and deepened to a rich, warm sauce the colour of mahogany or roasted beef.
When the spaghetti was cooked, we decided to eat properly, at the table rather than watching some rubbish telly. Adam got a jazz mix playing on the blue-tooth speakers and we lit a candle. The sauce glistened on the pale yellow strands of pasta. I paused to savour the scent then wound the spaghetti through the sauce and onto my fork.
The taste filled my mouth, my whole senses, with flavours of beef, tomato, basic, garlic, umami, red wine and some deep, subtle tang I couldn’t identify. I ate slowly, savouring every moment. Adam was rapt, staring at his bowl, swallowing then thoughtfully twisting his fork in the pasta.
“That’s odd,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you see that?”
He pushed his fork through the sauce-coated spaghetti.
“It moved…” he said.
“What!” I said, and leapt up.
“Yeah – it’s moving!” he said, leaping up too.
We stared at our bowls. He was right. The strands of pasta were stirring. There seemed to be more sauce and more spaghetti in the bowls. It was moving and growing. The bowls were fuller. As we watched, the sauce-covered pasta overflowed onto the table.
“Oh, shitake mushrooms…” I whispered and clutched Adam’s hand. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know!”
The strands were thickening and writhing over the table. One slithered towards me and reached out, waving like a tentacle. We shrank back against the wall.
“It’s like ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’!” I gasped.
“Don’t be silly! It’s bloody amazing!”
A long strand wavered and stretched towards him.
“Don’t touch it!” I yelled, but it was too late. Adam reached out and took it.
Suddenly, more strands, now as thick as my fingers, rose up from the bolognese covered table. They moved and twirled and, to my astonishment, slid to the floor then upwards. They twisted into two strange shapes.
“They’re alive … like … “ I whispered.
“Yeah – like people!” Adam said. He was right. The spaghetti had formed two flowing, intertwined figures with arms, legs and waving pasta hair, all glistening and dripping with the red, unctuous sauce.
Both figures bowed to us. The shorter one reached out a tentacle … arm … hand? towards Adam. He took it.
“They’re friendly,” he said, smiling.
The figure started to gently sway to and fro in time to the music.
“It wants to dance!”
Adam took its hand, put his arm around the intertwined strands of its body and waltzed round the table as the sauce dripped and spread across the floor.
I laughed hysterically. Then the other figure took my hand and I too was swept into a mad dance.
“Waltzing spaghetti, waltzing spaghetti,” sang Adam as they swayed and twirled out into the hall. We followed, dancing too, while the scent of basil and tomatoes and mushrooms and that strange dark pungency filled the air.
More pasta figures appeared in the doorway to the dining room, and a tide of sauce crept around our feet as we pranced up and down the hall. My foot slipped but my strange partner held me tight. I looked at the slippery interwoven strands forming a pale, featureless mass instead of a face and suddenly I shivered.
“I don’t like this, Adam,” I said, as we danced past.
“Think I’ve had enough too,” he gasped.
Feeling oddly weird, I said to my spaghetti partner, “Thank you, but I’d like to stop now … please?”
It shook its head.
I let go of its hand and pushed it away with all my strength. Adam did the same. We’d reached the stairs and both, instinctively, stepped upwards to escape the pool of sauce on the floor.
The strange figures, now dozens of them, swayed towards us.
“Run!” I yelled.
We dashed up the stairs. The ladder was still there. We scrambled up it into the attic, pushed it away and dragged the hatch shut. Fortunately – typical Adam! – he’d left the light on.
Something pushed against the hatch. A pale thread snaked through the gap by the side of the hatch. I screamed as we scrabbled over the chipboard towards the chimney breast.
The hatch was pushed open. Several dreadful blank heads, dripping red sauce, rose through the hole and stared at us. I screamed again and clutched Adam’s arm.
“Keep calm!” Adam yelled at me. “I’m sure it will be fine!”
“Fine? Calm?” I yelled back. “When we’re about to be swallowed up by mad living spaghetti?”
“They’re friendly, I’m sure…” Adam said.
Hysterical laughter shook me.
“Friendly? I don’t bloody think so. They look furious. Probably mad ‘cos we didn’t put parmesan on that bloody sauce!”
Adam gasped. “Say that again!”
“What? Bloody sauce?”
“No! Say it all again – all that last bit!”
“Probably mad ‘cos we didn’t put parmesan on that bloody sauce?”
“Parmesan…” Adam muttered. “Yeah… look! Parmesan!”
The pasta figures seemed to hesitate.
“Parmesan!” Adam shouted. “You lot just watch it! I’ve got a grater in the kitchen and I’m not afraid to use it!”
They wavered.
“Cheddar! Parmigiano!” he yelled. “I’m warning you!”
They shrank visibly.
“Cheese! Grated cheese! Come on, Tanya, join in!”
“Parmesan. Cheddar. Red Leicester! Brie!” My voice grew louder. The weird figures were definitely getting smaller.
“Don’t you remember?” Adam exclaimed. “That Italian waitress saying you should never put cheese on a good bolognese sauce? That it killed the flavour?”
“Yes!” I said, nodding and shouting. “Camembert! Wensleydale!”
“Goat’s cheese! Blue Shropshire!”
They fell back through the hatch. Staring through the hole, yelling “Mozzarella! Cheshire cheese!” we saw them cower and scamper down the ladder. We followed. With each shout, they quivered and diminished.
As we reached the dining room, the sauce and spaghetti had reduced to a trembling heap on the table.
“Stilton!” Adam yelled. “Rochefort!”
“Stinking Bishop!” I shouted triumphantly and with a faint gasp the heap vanished.
Calm silence filled the room. Even the strange scent had gone.
Adam and I looked at the empty bowls.
“That was weird,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Very. But I’m still hungry. Um … how about fish and chips?”
I’m reposting this blog because, having had a writing haitus for a few months now, I finally seems to have recovered my ‘writing muscles’, helped by re-reading both this post and also a novel I put aside several months ago and, after reading it, realising that it is, imo, not too bad. In addition, I have had some wonderfully encouraging comments about the Hued duology: even one man saying he ‘couldn’t put it down’!
So, apologies if you’ve read this before, but I felt it was worth updating this blog post…
What is the scariest thing for a writer? The blank page. Especially if, like me, you’ve been through several months of ‘writer’s block’. How do you get through the block and get writing again?
Here are some suggestions, in no particular order.
Write rubbish: just accept that whatever you write may be appalling but write it anyway, knowing that you can change it later. Write the opening sentence of your next scene, even if it is pedestrian and hackneyed. Keep writing. At some point, I promise you, something clicks, your critical brain is turned off and your creative brain takes control and that magical flow starts.
Get something published: probably the best cure for writer’s block is the proof that what you are writing is worth someone else’s time reading. Consider putting some effort into sending stuff you’ve already written to competitions or magazines or agents. You may as well use the time you’re not writing to be productive in a different way.
Write something different: work on the timeline for your novel, the family trees for your characters, draw a map of the location, decide on the film stars who will star in the movie version.
Eavesdrop: go somewhere (a café, a train, a pub) and listen to people talking. Get some ideas, scribble down expressions and idioms from real speech.
Go for a long walk. Many writers find that they have their best ideas when they are doing something physical and mindless like washing up, walking, ironing. Whatever yours is: do it.
Delve into your characters: complete a few character interviews and rough out some speech patterns for them.
Procrastinate until you can’t bear it any more: do the chores, scrub the kitchen floor, clean out the fridge, weed the garden, dig the vegetable patch.
Tidy your desk! (I’m sure it’s a mess…)
Read your old stuff and enjoy it.
Remind yourself who you are writing for and how much they are going to love this story.
Write deliberate rubbish: write the worst paragraph in the world.
Have a look at the self-published books on Amazon and see how bad some of them are. Critique them, mock them, imitate them.
Do some writing exercises: there are lots on the net. The one I found useful recently was a small book called ‘642 things to write about’. I made myself do one every day for a month. It was hard-going, I had to think about them, I couldn’t just write something good straight off, but reminded me that I still have an imagination, even if it is taking a while to get going these days.
Get drunk and free write. Something exciting may emerge from the drivel.
Write something completely different. Get your writer’s group to challenge you to write in a completely different style or genre. Or try your hand at hexambic pentameters, flash fiction, haikus.
Proof-read: always a good idea. Read your existing work out loud and give yourself a pound for every mistake you spot. Then spend the money on treating your writers’ group to dinner.
The government heat pump strategy is on the rocks. I present an alternative, with data to prove that it would work.
The government is offering a ‘boiler upgrade scheme’ whereby the present boiler is replaced by a heat pump. This is failing because the cost of the heat pump are typically over £7000[i]. And on top of that, radiators may need to be increased in size in order to provide the same heat as the boiler that is being replaced. Installation would be disruptive and take many days. People are unfamiliar with the technology (although it is in their fridge) and don’t want to risk it not working properly, or the efficiency gains not being as high as expected. The approach is an ‘all or nothing’ approach, whereby the existing heat source is scrapped and fully replaced – there is no going back if it doesn’t work.
I’m always on the lookout for good, non-preachy, well-written Christian fiction from British authors. This book, Braver, is written by a friend I met at Scargill.
It is compelling reading right from the start, with its exploration of the impact of a misconduct accusation against a minister. Drawn in by precise, evocative prose, and intriguing, complex characters, I read it through in a day, wanting to know how it would turn out, and again a few days later, slower, in order to enjoy it.
Although Deborah’s writing has a poetic beauty at times, and her depictions of the impact of grief and bullying, and of the struggle to deal with mental issues such as OCD, are descriptive and insightful, it is her finely-drawn, unusual characters and their struggles, who make the novel so powerful. Virginia is a minister of a successful, inclusive church in outer London, whose passion to help the lonely, vulnerable and lost is threatened by the unexpected accusation. The impact spreads to affect a young lad, Harry, as he struggles against bullies and an appalling home. But it is Hazel, a young teaching assistant who is drawn into the situation, who is the most memorable character. Her struggles to deal with her difficulties (OCD, slight autism, mental issues) are told with calm precision in an empathetic but unsentimental voice, giving an insight into another, unknown, life – which is what the best fiction does.
The novel is threaded through with acute observations of the world and beautiful descriptions . I particularly loved the line “there’s an eyelash of the moon as if God (if there is one) is having a lie-in”. But one of Deborah’s strengths is describing how it feels to be broken. There is absolute honesty here, with no evangelical sugar-coating and no easy answers. With its themes of grief, brokenness, bullying, fear and bravery, and the redemptive potential of friendship and community, I highly recommend this book.
Here is my friend Cathy’s sequel to The Gifts . Well done Cathy!
Her amazing imagination and incredible capacity to create names and geography for a whole new world have once again been applied to this follow up story which (no plot spoilers) ends with a sense of completeness.
It starts with a very violent and shocking story in which one of the main characters becomes disgusted and disillusioned by those in meant to lead her. In the same incident a second main character is filled with hate and a desperate desire for revenge. From such a bleak beginning you might not expect things to turn out that well. But in the end this is a hopeful story and the hope comes from the power of courage and friendship.
If you’ve read the first book, you’ll enjoy picking up with all the previous characters but there is just enough backgroud…
The sequel to The Gifts, covering what happens to the protagonists in that story after the destruction of the gifts, as well as including the adventures of a few new characters, is nearly published!
I am especially pleased with the cover design, by Beck Hemsley.
Beginning was always dubious. The paper might be damp, the wood green. Andrew frowned as he watched the curving scorch marks sidle along the torn edges, His heart thudded at his chest as he waited. It was going to work. The dark arabesques were blooming against the white, turning into orange flickers and gleams. His breath stirred the velvet flames and they bent, licked the paper, and grew. As the fire slithered through the crumpled sheets, he ripped a drawing down from the corkboard and threw it into its path. The stick figure stretched out its arms; imploring, welcoming; its rictus grin bright red, the trees next to it blobs of melting paint. Andrew tore every drawing down and added them to the growing fire, then the flimsy paper lanterns covered in glue and glitter on the window-sills, the piles of workbooks on the teacher’s desk. He smashed chairs and fed the wood splinters into the greedy blaze. Smoke roiled around him, stinging his eyes, so he slipped through the open window and retreated into the dark. He stood, watching, until the inferno was victorious; an oriflamme flickering against the canvas of the sky, its glory filling his weeping, exultant eyes.
The headmaster, a year later, indicated the white sentinels that studded the ceiling tiles.
“Of course, the new building has fire alarms and sprinklers in every classroom. CCTV, security doors, controlled entry,” he told the reporters. “Much better. In fact, a vast improvement, as you can see.”
He pointed at the digital whiteboards, the computers lining the walls, the sterile desks, then waved through the windows at the spiked-topped fences surrounding the playing field. The reporters nodded obediently and scribbled notes into their spiral-bound pads.
“The Phoenix Primary School,” he continued. “An apt name. Renewal from the ashes. Clean, modern, far more secure. A fresh start.”
In his cell, Andrew stared at the ceiling and thought about colours: scarlet, charcoal and living, blazing orange. The governor had agreed he could do art classes. He grinned. He could do art. Easy. Yeah, it would be easy. Big sheets of pastel-coloured cartridge paper, pads of A4 lined paper, thick rough-textured sketchbooks, whatever. He fingered the stolen lighter hidden in his pocket, scratching his nail along its serrated wheel. Remembering his masterpiece, he clenched his fists. He’d show them that he was good, really good, at art.
Is Narnia All There Is? 