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Monday 3 September 2012

A long way fromWiegenlied


Getting up at 6.25 am (to write Blest Redeemer) leaves a hole in the middle of the day; reveals exactly the nature of a “postprandial” state. Six hundred millilitres of self-brewed coffee slide down my throat and very quickly I’m gone, flittering about on that uneasy boundary between dozing and deep sleeping. To the accompaniment today of Shostakovitch’s Leningrad symphony. 

Believe me it ain’t music to doze by. One non-intellectual on BBC3 Radio described the most memorable movement as “tanks crossing the steppes”. As I drifted into and out of mental silliness I reflected on why Dimitri’s regularly repeated mini-theme turns into perfectly legitimate and absorbing music while Ravel’s equally repetitive Bolero is merely a bore. There are at least half a dozen reasons but I’m still rubbing the silliness out of my eye-corners and a coherent explanation must wait for a period of greater alertness.

I NEVER asked Mrs LdP to read either of my two finished novels; I felt she might be irritated when she recognised the shared roots of certain events, characters and snatches of dialogue. Abruptly she asked me to download them on to her Kindle, which I did. Time passed. A week or two later she said several kind things about Gorgon Times. More time passed.

A Kindle prevents the outside observer from knowing what’s being read. So I was quite surprised when Mrs LdP said, à propos nothing, “By the way I’ve just read Risen on Wings. She (that’s Jana) should have stuck with Dirk. He’s more fun.”

I was inordinately pleased. It meant that RoW was finally out of my hands and into those of a reader. Readers are entitled to have whatever opinion they wish about a novel. The writer no longer matters. Not that I agreed, you understand.

NOTE: Gorgon Times is now available. The download to Kindle (dead cheap at £1.53) arrives in minutes; if you want the paperback (still cheap at £7.95) please be patient, it is printed on demand.

3 comments:

  1. I'm thinking as I read this via the feed, when will we get our hands on your books? Going to your blog to comment, I then see on the right that you have posted that 'Gorgon Times' is to come soon. What about 'Risen on Wings'? And you are on your third already - somehow I missed that, thinking you were on the second one. Bravo!

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  2. One thing amongst many that I like about Shostakovich is that everybody in the orchestra, and quite a number that you wouldn't normally find there "have a go".

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  3. M-L: It's all part of a grand strategy:

    (1) Gorgon Times. Published in a deal with Amazon to give me "presence".

    (2) Risen on Wings. Finished over a year ago; soon to be circulated to potential agents together with the offer of a free copy of GT as proof of what I can do.

    (3) Blest Redeemer. Started over a year ago and referred to occasionally in both Works Well and Tone Deaf. Longer and more ambitious than the other two; presently 116,000 words written (out of a vaguely projected 150,000 - could be longer).

    General philosophy. It would be nice to be published but what counts is writing because that's what I enjoy and it's what I believe I can do, aiming to improve as a writer (tested via submissions to Plutarch; recently I had to break off for a fortnight to incorporate several quite radical suggestions he'd made), and cursing the fact that although I had over the years written other novels I didn't take it seriously until I started GT.

    Sir Hugh: With the string quartets I wouldn't have it any other way.

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