14 posts tagged “can't let go”
Here's an interview I did recently for a website/cable TV thing. I'm talking about Can't Let Go.
(I've taken the interview clip out until I can work out how to embed it without it starting automatically every time the page is opened).
A sudden burst of publicity has marked the launch of my new book Can't Let Go - with newspapers and various other media taking more of an interest than usual, thanks to a fascinating biographical press release that my publicist and I concocted.
On launch day itself I was in Southampton with John Harvey and Peter James to talk to the assembled throng (well, thirty people) about crimewriting and to read bits from our books. The following day I was holed up in a little BBC room in central London talking to a variety of disembodied voices from BBC local radio stations across the nation. Then last week I returned to Lincoln, where I lived for about ten years, to do a reading/signing at Waterstone's.
Tomorrow I am heading for a TV studio somewhere in London to record an interview for some satellite TV channel that I've never heard of, that is connected with Borders Bookshop. And then the following week I head for Dursley in Gloucestershire to do a reading/talk in a library.
Three books in, I shouldn't get so excited by this, but I do. If you happen to be on the Waterstone's website and do a search of author events, you'll find that I am doing three whole bits of Waterstone's-associated publicity for the new book. Here we are:
We found 3 events for author Jane Hill
Crime Evening
Jane Hill, John Harvey, Peter James
Cold in Hand
WATERSTONE'S SOUTHAMPTON ABOVE
Thursday, 6 March 2008, 7:00PM
£3, redeemable against the purchase of any crime title on the night.
Another of our crime evenings. This time we will have Peter James, John Harvey and Jane Hill in attendence; discussing their own books and the crime genre in general. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk to some of the leading authors in the field in person.
Further details: 02380 633 130
North Herts Literary Festival Crime Readers Day
Sophie Hannah, Jane Hill, Mark Billingham
The Big Sleep - Penguin fiction
The Sun Hotel, Sun Street, Hitchin
Wednesday, 12 March 2008, 1:00PM - 5:00PM
Tickets £6, available from the shop and to include light refreshments
Three bestselling writers discuss three great crime novels in panel format and then in groups with us, the audience! A chance to discuss books with real authors so why not read one (or more!) beforehand and voice your opinion. The books for discussion are: The Big Sleep, A Quiet Belief in Angels and In the Woods.
Further details: 01462 422329
Jane Hill - Talk & Signing
Jane Hill
Can't Let Go
WATERSTONE'S LINCOLN HIGH ST
Thursday, 13 March 2008, 7:00PM
Tickets £3
Jane Hill will be talking about and signing her latest psychological thriller.
Further details: 01522 540011
My second novel The Murder Ballad is published by Arrow paperback on Thursday, price £6.99 (although you'll probably find it cheaper in certain shops, the internet etc). If you have friends or family who love thrillers, this is the perfect gift.
More details on Facebook or check it out on Amazon.
Meanwhile the third book, Can't Let Go, is out in March. And as I sit here at my computer, I'm also just starting the fourth book as well. If I can think of a plot.
It's not out until March 2008 but I got to see the cover of my third book Can't Let Go today. It's coming out in hardback, and my publishers keep telling me it's going to be my breakthrough book. I certainly hope so.
Meanwhile my second book, The Murder Ballad, will be stocked by Asda when it's published in paperback in early December. And it's going to be a BOGOF deal! ("Buy one, get one free"). Apparently if you buy the book, you'll be able to send off to the publisher and get a free copy of the first book, Grievous Angel. Because, you know, there are so many thousands of unsold copies out there. The offer is a good thing, I think: it's going to hit Asda in time for the Christmas market. (For my American friends, Asda is a downmarket but hugely popular supermarket that's owned by Walmart.)
After all the agonies of writing it, I'm really pleased with the response that Can't Let Go is getting so far. I went up to have lunch with my editor and assorted sales and marketing people from Random House last week, and when I arrived at the offices the receptionist told me that I'd kept her awake until three in the morning. She'd been reading a manuscript copy of the book the night before, and wanted me to know that she'd had to stay awake to finish it. This meant such a lot to me. She was the first person apart from my agent and editor who I knew had read the book - the first "real" person, if you like - and I was delighted with her response.
Meanwhile my agent is busy, and we're just agreeing foreign rights deals with both Germany and the Netherlands. This is exciting and also very reassuring from a financial standpoint. It's not easy to make money from fiction when you're not a well-known and successful writer, and sometimes the returns seem tiny compared to the work involved. So it's good to get some totally unexpected money coming in from foreign sales.
In my other life, I've had a couple of good comedy gigs recently that gave me the chance to build on what I'd learned at Edinburgh. Comedy at the Kirk is a lovely club above the Selkirk pub in Tooting Broadway, run by people who seem to love what they're doing. It was a return visit, and it was a slow night because it coincided with England-Russia at Wembley. But it gave me the chance to do some completely new material in a supportive and non-combative atmosphere, which was fun.
Big Jack's Laughter Club in Reading was another repeat visit, and another favourite club of mine. I did a 15-minute set there, mixing some old and new material, and was thrilled with my reception. It gave me a lot of confidence, and a reminder of why I love doing stand-up comedy.
At one o'clock this morning I emailed 92,041 words to my editor. I'm still not happy with the final chapter, but I expect I'll get it sorted eventually. But the big news is that after a year of writing, I have completed a version of my third novel that I am, mostly, happy with. There will be more rewrites, I'm sure. But for now, Can't Let Go is complete and I can start thinking about:
- the show at the Edinburgh Fringe
- the plot of the next novel
- how I'm going to continue to earn enough money to live on
Today I re-killed someone who I first killed a few months ago, because I wanted to make it much more chilling and scary. My rule of thumb when writing (for of course I am talking about fiction here...) is that if it sends chills up my spine when I read it back to myself then it's probably going to chill my readers too.
Anyway, today I have managed to chill and unsettle myself, so I'm feeling fairly pleased with my output. I am so nearly there with this book (Can't Let Go). I am doing final, final revisions this week to try to make it genuinely thrilling and involving, and it's quite emotional work.
Also, I have discovered there's a limit to what you can say about blood, besides the facts that it's sticky, it's red, it gets everywhere and it has a vaguely metallic smell.
I've been thinking recently about opening lines for books. The one I'm writing at the moment, Can't Let Go, began its life with this sentence: When I was eighteen I killed a man and got away with it.
I really wanted to use that as the opening line, and I ended up writing the whole book around it.
That got me thinking... a few year ago I made up a quiz of opening lines from novels. I thought some of my friends on Vox might want to have a go at it. A signed copy of Can't Let Go (when it's eventually published, March 2008) to the person who gets the most right.
There are 25 first sentences (in one case, slightly less than a sentence, but that's because the sentence was about a page long) from a range of novels. Some of them are among the most famous opening lines of all times, others are more obscure. None of them is wilfully obscure. They're all from books I own. A clue - I love Victorian literature, crime fiction, contemporary American fiction and classic children's books. That might help you out. Have fun!
Oh, and if you're playing, please send answers by MESSAGE and not COMMENT so no one else can see them - thanks!
ONCE UPON A TIME
1. Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little grey house made of logs.
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
3. This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
4. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
5. When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city – which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.
6. Mary Ann Singleton was twenty five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.
7. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
8. It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.
9. Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.
10. It was a queer sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
11. The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
12. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
13. “Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs Ramsay.
14. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
15. “The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all.”
16. “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?”
17. Call me Ishmael.
18. My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.
19. My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.
20. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me...
21. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
22. All children, except one, grow up.
23. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
24. One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
25. I planned my death carefully; unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.
ANSWERS...
1. Little House in the Big Woods – Laura Ingalls Wilder
2. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
3. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
4. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
5. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
6. Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin
7. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
8. 1984 – George Orwell
9. A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett
10. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath.
11. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
12. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
13. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
14. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
15. A Room with a View – E M Forster
16. Appointment with Death – Agatha Christie
17. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
18. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
19. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
20. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
21. The Catcher in the Rye – J D Salinger
22. Peter Pan – J M
23. “City of Glass”, The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
24. The Crying of 49 – Thomas Pynchon
25. Lady Oracle – Margaret Atwood
I'm in the middle of rewrites at the moment. That sounds like a writerly thing to say, doesn't it? What I'm doing is adding bits and changing bits in my forthcoming novel Can't Let Go to make sure it's taut and exciting and involving, and the plot hangs together, and everything makes as much sense as it ever does in a psychological thriller. And I think I probably enjoy this bit more than the original first draft.
It's like doing the decorating rather than doing the plastering. Or doing fun eye make-up rather than slapping on foundation. But sometimes it goes wrong, and you metaphorically stick the mascara wand in your eye, and then you have to take all the make-up off one eye, and redo it, even down to the foundation, and hope it still looks the same as the other eye.
Or, to return to my original simile, imagine you've finished all the decorating and then there's a big leak in the attic, and it floods through all the floors (like what happened on this week's Property Ladder to the gay couple in Greenwich), and you have to strip back to the plaster in certain places, redo it, and make sure it matches everything else.
Anyway, that's what rewriting is like. It's mostly fun, occasionally soul-destroying. But I shall get it finished by the end of this month, I hope. And then comes the fun stuff like looking at the cover design and deciding who to dedicate the book to (I have no idea at the moment - are you allowed not to dedicate a book to anyone, I wonder?)
Here's a song I was listening to a lot as I frantically finished the first draft of the book. I don't know why, except it came up on shuffle and it seemed to fit my mood, so I kept repeating it. Judee Sill's "The Donor", all nine minutes twelve seconds of it:
