Good news. Draca’s publication date will be 14th May 2020, hopefully in time for everyone’s summer holiday reading.

As publisher Unbound moves into the production phase, they will close the supporters’ list at midnight on Monday 27th January. So if you’d like your name inside the cover, now’s a good time to pre-order your copy, here.

For those who haven’t seen previous posts, Draca is the story of a war-damaged veteran who struggles to rebuild his life restoring vintage sailing boat. Is he haunted by his past, or just haunted? He’s on a mission to self-destruct and his controlling father is pushing him ever closer to the edge, while his yachtswoman friend gives all she has to pull him back. Half the royalties go to the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress.

For a synopsis of the book and an extract, here’s all you need. If you’d like to know more about Combat Stress and their work, click the Combat Stress logo.

Next stage; the cover. I’ve already seen the first draft, and it’s going to be good. Then come the launch events, both before and after publication date. Exciting times.

Before I started writing, I imagined authors staring into space as they dreamed up the next best seller, spending a few creative hours scribbling, and then quaffing wine at book launches while they signed books for an adoring public. It was a good vision to hold in my mind as I crawled through the concrete canyons during the morning ‘rush’ hour, because one day, I thought, I’m going to write that book. Now I know the slog, the insecurity, the bruising rejections, and the small-change royalties, I ask myself ‘why do we do this?’ Perhaps even more, ‘why, when other careers are open to us, would we not do anything else?’

I persuaded Jacquie Watts to sit in the hot seat. Jacquie pinged me last month in the ‘meet my character’ blog hop, and I discovered that she read English at Somerville College, Oxford. She’s had poetry, short stories and book reviews published in Acumen, Envoi, Hand + Star, Mslexia and Orbis, and broadcast on BBC and independent Radio. Her novel, “A Darker Moon”, a dark literary fantasy, is published by Vagabondage Press. She was brave enough to answer some fairly hard questions:

GG: You’re an Oxford graduate. You could do lots of things. Why write? 

JSW: Oxford graduates don’t have all the fun, you know, but the very simple and direct answer is because I want to. I have actually done a lot of things since graduating from Oxford, including spending over 25 years in British education, but my passion has always been writing. I’ve written stories and poems for almost as long as I can remember. As a child, I even wrote plays that I forced friends and family to act out. Okay, as an eight year old I also coerced friends into a rather ridiculous pop group that fortunately came to nothing, but that’s just proof that the thing that really, really mattered to me, writing, was the thing that I pursued and persevered with. 

GG: In the literary field you’re a published poet, a published author, and a reviewer. How do you answer when someone asks ‘what do you do?’

JSW: I usually say I’m a writer and then, if the person’s interested, they can ask what I write. If I say poet, it seems to preclude writing anything other than poetry. If I say author, then people assume I only write novels. Sometimes if the situation demands it, I will say poet and author, but mostly I refer to myself as a writer as that seems to sum it up nicely and is how I see myself.

GG: I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) your short story in the June/July Plasma Frequency Magazine. Its main character is a woman whose memory has been erased. Your book ‘A Darker Moon’ has a protagonist who can’t remember his past. Why do you return to this theme?

JSW: Mmm… good question and I’m really pleased you enjoyed ‘e-razored’. Now you’ve got me thinking about it, I’ve written other stories where memory (or lack of it) plays a key role, for example the short story ‘Jenny’.
The theme of memory attracts me for a variety of reasons. On one level I like the dichotomy between the known and the unknown and when memory is involved it’s possible for me as a writer to keep everyone in the dark for longer, including the main character.

My fascination with memory goes beyond that, though. I think there is a fundamental question to be asked and it is an increasingly important one as more and more of us live into advanced old age and experience the impact of conditions such as Alzheimer’s. The primal question for me is, who are we? Are we more than the sum of our memories? If you take away memory, the recollection of where we have been, what we have done and how we have felt about it, what are you left with? I know that as an individual I have changed over the years because of what I have achieved (and failed to achieve), what I have experienced and felt. If my memory of that goes, what do I have left? I also pride myself on having a good memory. I would hate to lose it. It would be like losing a key part of me. Having said that, I recognise I do not remember everything in perfect detail, so my memories are selective rather than complete. Some people have memories they yearn to forget, that make their lives worse not better. Like everything in life, memory per se is neither good nor bad, but it’s what we humans have. Ultimately, I have no real answer to the question of memory and self, just my gut response, so I come back to it because it fascinates me.

GG: In the past few days I’ve come across an impressive variety works by you that include a psychological fantasy novel (A Darker Moon), a sci-fi short story (e-razored), some delightfully witty poetry (Songs of Steelyard Sue) and another, prize-winning, literary short story on Radio 4 (Jenny). You seem to be covering a lot of bases. Where’s your heart?

JSW: I think my heart is multi-faceted. I like classical music and heavy rock. I like literary fiction and genre fiction. I like poetry and prose. I like variety and I don’t have a problem with liking lots of contrasting things simultaneously.

Having said that, much of my writing does contain elements of what many would call speculative fiction: sci-fi, fantasy, magic-realism, the supernatural, myth and fairy story. My first full poetry collection, ‘Cats and Other Myths’ aimed to explore myth and legend through modern life and visa versa. I believe the stories we make up from scratch, the ones written on a totally blank page, contain a good deal of ourselves. We pour in our anxieties and interests, the questions we want answering or are pondering. It’s a way of exploring our humanity and, if I go delving after my elusive heart, I guess a fundamental fascination with what makes ‘us humans’ tick lies at the bottom of most things I have written. ‘Songs of Steelyard Sue’ is first and foremost a sequence of poems exploring the life and times of an everyman character (or, in Sue’s case, an everymechanoidfemale character) and the point of an everyman is that he’s supposed to stand for all of us. I can’t comment on whether Steelyard Sue achieves this, but I do know that amongst the humour (and the sadness) I have tried, in my own clumsy way, to explore the human condition and the myths that drive us.

GG: Like other poets I could mention, you write clean, evocative prose that’s better than many genre best-sellers. Does the lack of recognition frustrate you?

JSW: Thank you for the very kind words. It doesn’t frustrate me, as such. As a writer, and especially a writer of poetry, I’ve come to expect it. I’d love to be able to say I write only for the love of it and lack of recognition doesn’t matter at all, but that would be lying. I do write for the love of it, but I also want my stories and poems to connect with people. Writing is communication and the more people read my books, the more I am communicating. Finding someone who likes what I have written or is moved by it is tremendously rewarding. Also, I have a cat to feed and a mortgage to pay, so earning money from my writing doesn’t go amiss either. I should love my writing to earn praise and gold alike, but failing that I remain motivated by the writing itself. At least if I’m writing I can cling to the forlorn hope that one day recognition will catch up with me. My second novel, ‘Witchlight’ is due out sometime in the next twelve months (publication schedules permitting), I’m writing the third novel and am working on my next poetry collection, so at least there’s some hope that one day recognition might come calling, if not with the current book, then the next one.

GG: Jacquie, thank you so much for participating. I echo many of your thoughts, especially the need to engage with people, and the reward of finding that people like what you’ve written. I shall watch for ‘Witchlight’ with huge interest. Good luck.

Cindy Callens, on the Belgian book review site Draumr Kopa, kindly asked me to do a guest blog. I shared some of the more amusing comments people have made since Saxon’s Bane was launched. Click here for Draumr Kopa.
Here’s what I had to say:
People have said some strange things to me since Saxon’s Bane was published.
“I never knew you were like that,” an elderly lady from my local church said one Sunday.
“Like what?” I asked. The question made me stop in my tracks, and the departing congregation flowed around us.
She shuffled, making that eyes-lowered squirm with which Christian ladies of a certain age simultaneously mention and avoid mentioning delicate subjects. “Well, you know…”
“No, I don’t know. What’s the matter?” I sensed that the subject causing her such embarrassment was of a reprehensible and possibly sexual nature, and my mind raced in a frantic ‘Oh-God-what-have-I-got-to-be-guilty-about’ way. I drew a blank, but the worry remained.
“I read your book.”
Ah. Huge sigh of relief. Saxon’s Bane includes pagan practices and probably isn’t a book that the vicar would read from the pulpit.
“And?”
“Your character, he, err, notices women.”
Oh, that. Perhaps she had an innocent understanding of the male psyche. I explained that the main character was a single, heterosexual man in his thirties who has been cooped up in hospital for four months, when his only female company had arrived carrying a hypodermic needle. He may be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress, and is certainly a little insecure. He’s courageous but stubborn, emotionally incontinent, and flawed. Yes, he notices women. Is that a problem?
The elderly lady made a slight flutter with her hands, vaguely indicative of an area below the waist, before she repeated herself. “I never knew you were like that.”
It was an early lesson for me in being a published author. The autobiographical element is assumed, but assumed selectively. Female characters may be “well drawn” but the male protagonist can only be me. His strengths are my aspirations, and his weaknesses are mine. I wonder what reaction Sebastian Faulks had after writing his brilliant novel Engleby in the ‘voice’ of a man you’d want to scrape off the bottom of your shoe. Perhaps after you’ve written Birdsong and Charlotte Gray your readers take a more balanced view. For those of us still establishing our literary credibility, it’s worth remembering that although good stories match flawed good against complex evil, the trick is to make the flaws appealing.
The reality, of course, is that there is inevitably some autobiographical content. As I wrote Saxon’s Bane the characters became so well known to me that I was able to become the individual I had created, even the female ones, and as I set them loose they’d tell me how each scene must develop. The boundary between self and artifice became so blurry that I sometimes had to stand back and unpick myself from this world of my own creation.
I’ve found I can also write from a female point of view, with a little help and critiquing from my wife and from women at my writers’ group. Over half of my next book is written in a female ‘voice’, and I’m told it sounds totally authentic. I shall be fascinated to hear readers’ feedback, if and when it is published. Will the few, lyrically-crafted moments of female sexuality be dismissed as ‘pure male fantasy’? Will someone again say “I never knew…”?
It is a strange and delightful thing, this ability and willingness to craft a female persona from within a male brain. I think that by the time I finished Saxon’s Bane I may even have been a little in love with one of the female protagonists.
“Great character, that Eadlin,” a man said about her after Saxon’s Bane was book of the month at his book club. “Wonderfully fleshed out.”
“Excuse me?” I looked in vain for signs that the double-entendre was intentional. Eadlin’s character, I should explain, has an earthy, girl-next-door sexuality. She has curves.
“No, I mean she’s well rounded.”
It’s great to watch someone else dig themselves into a pit of their own making. I wish, eight months after the book was released, that I’d made notes of the best remarks that have come my way. Some have been amusing, like the ones I’ve shared. Some have been gloriously, ego-boostingly flattering, while some have been crushing, like the local independent bookseller who declined to stock because she was “inundated with local authors”.
But the prize for the funniest has to go to my wife’s mother, who held on for some time to the view that her son-in-law should be out earning a salary rather than indulging in all this writing stuff. My wife rang her up when Solaris bought the English language rights to Saxon’s Bane.
“Wonderful news, Mummy! Geoffrey’s got a publishing contract!”
“Oh.” A pause. “But has he got work?”
 
 

In the last week, there have been a lot of threads on Facebook and writers’ sites about genre, and the challenges of classifying books. Back in August, the Hugo Award-winning SF & Fantasy site, SF Signal, asked me to write a guest blog on the subject. Here are my thoughts; click the image for the original article.

Literature, Genre, and Geeks

Tag me with a genre label and I’ll probably wince. They’re like that childhood game of pinning the tail on the donkey, blindfold, except I’m the donkey. Every now and then there’s a pinprick and I find another useless appendage dangling from my ear or nostril. HF, UF, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy…I’ve been stuck with them all.
My irritation with labels began with the slight sneer of superiority about genre; that sense, on my journey to publication, that I was on the wrong side of the tracks. I had this bizarre vision of being greeted by a marketing executive at a great but imaginary literary establishment. “Literary Fiction? Over there, sir, the smart chaps in suits and cufflinks. Historical? Down the passage, mate, look for the swords, sandals, and bodices. Fantasy? Downstairs, guv. We don’t let no geeks up ‘ere.”
Literary snobbishness aside, the real problem with genre labels is that this convenient, box-ticking marketing machine has little room for grey areas. It seems to be designed for publishers’, distributors’, and retailers’ convenience. By superimposing structure onto a craft that is inherently qualitative, it primarily benefits the publishing machine, not the author or the reader. It thinks in lists; the SF list, the HF list, the Chic Lit list (and I couldn’t say that after a glass of wine), whereas writers create word pictures that should be art rather than paint-by-numbers. We need the freedom to stray across boundaries.
I like ambiguity, you see. I inhabit the hinterland where history becomes fantasy, and both cross the border into literature. I enjoy ghost stories where a plausible explanation still lingers in the background, or the kind of fantasy where the real world is touched by magic the way sunlight glints on water. Blink and the light may have gone, but the scent of an otherness remains.
I suppose I should blame the world I live in. The real one, that is, not the caverns of half-constructed mental space called ‘Works In Progress’. My real world has history written across its landscape; place names that tell of Saxon settlements, winding lanes that an English drunkard made as he lurched home from the mead hall. The past lives around us in the present, but what if those distant ancestors could speak to us? What stories would come alive?
So much of writing, I find, starts with that question “what if…” Take the village of Allingley, for example, a dreamy place on the banks of the Swanbourne. Allingley would have been Aegl-ingas-leah in Anglo-Saxon, the clearing of the folk of Aegl. What if this was the Aegl of Saxon legend, the mighty archer whose love was Olrun, the Swan Maiden?
I like joining the dots, even if the dots sit in different boxes of the marketing machine. When Saxon’s Bane was still a vague idea, I saw an article about the millennia-old bodies that are occasionally found in peat bogs, with their features sometimes so well preserved that they seem simply to be sleeping. Many of them were ritually slaughtered. Now, what if a peat-preserved Saxon grave was discovered on the outskirts of Allingley? What if an archaeologist developed a preternatural understanding of her project? What if the present day started to mirror the ancient, bloody past?
I’m back with the marketing exec. “Bit historical, are we?” he asks in a tone of voice that suggests ‘historical’ is a nervous condition. “But set in the present day? That won’t do, then…” Much sucking of teeth as he looks down his lists. “And a ghost, you say? That’ll be fantasy, then. Mind the steps; it’s a bit dark down there.”
I know, I know; genre labels help to point readers towards books they might like. Labels become banners under which people of similar interests can congregate, for example in forums like this one. But sticking a genre label on a book is not an indicator of quality. A bad book doesn’t become an Iain M Banks classic just by labeling it ‘SF’. A good publisher, on the other hand, is highly selective, invests in its authors, and won’t touch cr@p. First division authors such as the late and much loved Iain B are sufficiently established to have a brand of their own, but for the rest of us, being associated with a publisher’s brand helps us towards stardom. Maybe there’s a case for publishers to promote their brand values a little more? More branding, less tagging?
And in the mean time, I’m writing fantasy. With more than a dash of history. It’s quite literary, I’m told, but reads like a thriller. Oh, and there’s a dash of romance thrown in.
Hell, it’s a ghost story.

My E-book of short stories has now been published by Solaris, and is available for free download in both Kindle (.mobi) and iBook (.epub) formats.
What’s inside:
MUSE: A powerful, emotionally charged story where old lady teaches a young pianist the true, evocative power of music. Winner of the ‘Get Writing’ Prize 2011.
THE OTHER WOMAN: In this light-hearted and amusing tale, a sailor becomes obsessed with restoring a vintage sailboat, which seems to have a character and a mind of its own.
SHORT BURSTS: The poignant story of an elderly veteran confronting his demons in an old people’s home.
Click the links to download. Enjoy!

iBOOK/epub

KINDLE/mobi

Today is the UK release date for Saxon’s Bane. To mark the occasion, Jonathan Oliver of Solaris sat me in front of a video camera and asked me loads of questions, ranging from my thoughts on genre, to the background to key characters in the book, and my writing journey. We even touched on the healing power of horses! The interview has been posted on YouTube at:

A wonderful crowd of friends and family swelled the shoppers at The Forbidden Planet in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, on Wednesday night, for the launch of Saxon’s Bane.
My agent Ian Drury of Sheil Land Associates kindly kicked off the proceedings before I was persuaded to read the first chapter. A Q&A followed, in which the questions were mercifully uncontroversial but lively enough to swell the numbers queuing to buy the book.

I’d found a very suitable wine, so perhaps it was inevitable that a little frivolity would creep into the occasion, in which a Saxon replica helmet (gratifyingly close to the book’s cover image) featured heavily! 
I was humbled by the number of friends who came along in support, some of whom had traveled a long way to be there. The Forbidden Planet team were stunned that I was still signing books when they were preparing to close the shop, which I gather is almost unknown for a debut launch.
It was great to share a glass with friends and the guys from Solaris afterwards in De Hems. A great evening, with brilliant company.

Saxon’s Bane is now available in print form (Mass Market Paperback) in the United States and Canada, and will be released in Trade Paperback format in the United Kingdom on 12th September. It is also available worldwide in all standard eBook formats.

This fabulous replica helmet was a gift from a friend. Something tells me it is going to spice up many book signing sessions. And for those coming to the launch at Forbidden Planet, London at 6pm on 4th September, there may be a little extra surprise…

Let me share a little happiness; my author copies of Saxon’s Bane have arrived from the wonderful people at Solaris. It is almost exactly six years since I stepped off a corporate ladder and went freelance, specifically to release time to write. Six years from ‘I’m going to do this’ to publication, and I tell you this moment feels better than any business deal I ever landed. My thanks to those who’ve helped along the way, many of whom will find their names inside the cover. It seemed appropriate to record the moment in the arbour, where much of Saxon’s Bane was written.
Saxon’s Bane will be released in the USA on 27th August and in the UK on 12th September.