Proof Reading
The route to publication has moved on another step. I have checked through the printers proof again. This time instead of doing it on the computer screen I printed a hard copy of my novel. There are 350 pages so I printed four pages using both sides of an A4 sheet of paper. It is beginning to look like a book, with an acknowledgements page and the publication details as well as the publication rights. I found only six changes needed making. I’m sure there are others but I’m missing them. I will get it returned to me again to check there are no more changes necessary. I do hope there are none, as I’m sure the law of diminishing returns sets in and I will fail to spot any mistakes in it.
I think the next version will have the front and back cover in place. We have yet to finalise the draft blurb, so that’s another step
Sculpture/fountain by Naum Gabo at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, London, U.K. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
to get through. Interestingly I met a writer friend on Tuesday, who complained that the blurb for her book was written by the publisher and she was not consulted. One of the differences between traditional publishing and independent is the lack of control, once a writer has sold the publication rights, over the presentation of the novel to the public.
The same author expressed how dissatisfied she was with the marketing of her book. I am paying for a marketing campaign, so I do expect some publicity to be generated. The other job I had this week was to answer a questionnaire about my book which included providing another summary of the story and biography which included any media interest in my personal story. During my Twenty-five years at the Bar I did do a number of cases which attracted a great deal of publicity at the time, but most of it was some years ago. I thought two might still attract some media interest today.
The first was the killing of the fashion designer Ossie Clark by his lover Diego Cogolato. Ossie Clark was very successful designer in the 1960’s along with his then wife Celia Birtwell. There is a wonderful painting of them both by David Hockney in the National Portrait Gallery. By 1996 Ossie was living in a one bedroomed council flat in West London and Cogolato under the influence of a mixture of drugs killed him. He was diagnosed as suffering from a drug-induced psychotic state. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and after I mitigated on his behalf he received a sentence of six years.
The other case featured in the newspapers only five years ago, when a young woman called Alex Griffiths was successful in her A level examinations. The Times, no doubt looking for a different angle to report on the announcement of the results chose to write an article about her, because as the baby she was stolen from St Thomas’s Hospital within hours of her birth. A nation-wide search followed, and she was found alive and well three weeks later. I represented the woman who stole her, coincidently also called Griffiths, Janet Griffiths. She too was diagnosed with mental health issues, in this case she had Munchausen’s, not the by- proxy type that has been much in the news over the last few years, but the original illness. She received a hospital order and was released after about eight months. She was to die about four year later of cancer. It is not often a barrister gets to know what happens to the victims and defendants in cases in which they appear, but I am pleased that on this occasion I did.
Serious Stuff
Listening to Radio 4 this morning and hearing Keir Starmer, the current DPP, I thought how unrealistic when he said that the behaviour of those complaining of sexual abuse should not be taken into account when deciding to prosecute.
I was defending a sixteen year old on a charge of raping a fourteen year old. She said he had come to her home, uninvited when her mother was out, and had dragged her into her bedroom and raped her. His case was that she had invited him to visit her and had taken him to her bedroom where they had sexual intercourse to which she had consented.
English: Engraving of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury. Français : Gravure basée sur Trial by Jury de Gilbert et Sullivan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Now obviously no witnesses to the event, so how is a jury to decide who is telling the truth about the incident?
Let’s call them Joe and Lindy. They had met at their local youth club. Joe was a good-looking boy, doing well at school and hoping to go onto college. Lindy instantly took a fancy to him and followed him around all the time. The youth worker at the club, confirmed that she always made a bee-line for him when she came to the club, and he thought Joe found her a bit of a nuisance, but was too polite to tell her to go away.
After a few weeks she invited him home to the flat she shared with her mother. When Joe got there, Lindy’s mother had cooked dinner and the table was set for two. Lindy and Joe were left alone to enjoy a candle-lit supper. None of this was in the statements either Lindy or her mother had made to the police, but they admitted it was true when I cross-examined them. Joe said she had given him a note at the youth club inviting him to visit her on the evening in question. Again the youth worker confirmed Lindy had given him an envelope at the club. Something she denied.
A few nights after the alleged rape, Joe refused to talk to Lindy when another young woman who he liked came to the youth club. It was then that Lindy told her mother that he had raped her and her mother went to the police.
If you were on the jury, wouldn’t you like to have known all that? Wouldn’t you have asked yourself why Lindy kept all the background secret? Was it because she consented to the sexual intercourse? In order to prove a case the prosecution have to make the jury sure of the defendant’s guilt. The jury didn’t take long to acquit Joe and I think rightly on the evidence.
Of course I had to call Lindy a liar as part of the defence case is to put the defendant’s account to the witness. There is no way of doing it without saying she was lying on the crucial issue of consent. As an aside, rape is not having sexual intercourse when you don’t want to – it’s without consent and there is a difference. We all do things we don’t want to but still consent to. When I said that to a jury I found most of the women nodding in agreement.
And what about taking responsibility for you own actions. Lindy really shouldn’t have invited Joe to her flat when her mother was not there. If a juvenile takes part in a criminal activity they are not excused because they are too young (unless they are under 10) they are meant to understand they were doing something wrong. Similarly drunkenness is no excuse for committing a criminal offence that you would not commit if you were sober. The law expects you to be responsible for your actions. If you left your handbag on a bus and it was stolen, you would say to yourself, I’ve been very silly, and most people would agree. Are we encouraging young women to be reckless, by telling them it’s not their fault?’ I don’t know, but my experience with these case leaves me feeling very uneasy that we are following some feminist agenda on the lines that ‘all men are rapist.’
It’s also worth saying that although the legal age of consent to sexual intercourse is sixteen, that is a decision made by Parliament and is often broken by young girls. Of course the law is there to protect them, but it can’t stop puberty happening much younger and both boys and girls becoming sexual aware.
The current debate appears to me to be very one-sided, and sometimes I feel very sorry for young men, whose own sexual experience and behaviour is often uncertain and where they risk seven or eight years imprisonment if they get the signals wrong.
Writing a Blurb
In between telling the various authorities, banks etc where I now live, I have finished the first set of amendments to the Printers Proof copy of Crucial Evidence. The next stage is to write a blurb for the back cover. Trying to condense a 90,000 word novel into 120 is really difficult. Which bit to include, which to leave out. Are the bits I think important the true turning points in the story? This is my first attempt;
English: The word “blurb” was coined by Burgess, in attributing the cover copy of his book, Are You a Bromide?, to a Miss Belinda Blurb. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lenny Barker pleads not guilty to a charge of murdering prostitute Shelley Paulson. Cassie Hardman, junior barrister for the defence, believes he is just another defendant trying to avoid responsibility for his crime. Then, just before the trial begins, she discovers he has an alibi. Cassie is determined he will have a fair trial and risks her career to locate the crucial witness.
Will he be found before the jury retire to consider their verdict and will his evidence establish Barker’s innocence? If Barker is not the killer then who is? Can Cassie help Detective Constable Alexis Seymour in her efforts to solve the crime?
Is this enough? I don’t say where the novel is set or that the story follows Barker’s trial at the Old Bailey, which is an important part of the book. I could do to look at the blurb on other books, but all mine are in store at the moment until we get some bookshelves built.
Printers Proof
View from my office
I have been so busy with moving home and then sorting out the new house that I have failed to write anything at all. Virginia Wolf said that a writer needs a little money and a room of ones own. I have finally achieved the later, fortunately a career at the Bar provided me with some money. My computer is now in a small upstairs room with a great view. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not – I fear I may spend too much time gazing out of the window rather than writing.
Progress on the publication of my novel Crucial Evidence is very slow. I received the printer’s proof at the end of July just as the process of moving really got underway, so checking it for errors is having to take second place to all the other things one needs to do after moving house, like finding a new doctor and a new vet for our Springer Spaniel. Incidentally he doesn’t like my new office as he isn’t allowed upstairs and he hates being left alone, so he sits on the second step of the stairs, his head resting on the third watching and waiting for me to reappear.
The other difficulty with checking the proof is that I am not entirely sure what I am looking for. What are the mistakes that creep in when the Word document is formatted for printing. Apart from finding some blank pages and some misalignment of the lines of dialogue I can find very little wrong with the proof. I have found some editing mistakes and I have noted those as now they will be corrected by the publisher. I am working through it again and preparing the proof changes for the printer. My hoped for publication date in October has I think vanished and it looks like it will be some time in the New Year, but it’s better to get it right than hurry this process.
Moving Home
Just no time to do a post as we are moving home this week. We are surrounded by boxes and have just a skeleton collection of
Wine Glass (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
plates, knives and forks etc. We made a big mistake and allowed the removal men to pack all the wine glasses; a state of panic ensued until I remembered the two in the picnic set.
Literary Festivals
Dartington Hall, Devon, UK in late autumn light. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This week I have been to two very different literary festivals. The Ways with Words Festival has been running for over twenty years at the very beautiful Dartington Hall, and is well established. Sponsored by the Daily Telegraph, the speakers, not surprisingly, are authors who have published books that the arts editors consider to be important. The other smaller and more community minded was in the small market town of Chudleigh about six miles outside Exeter.
I was one of the organising committee at Chudleigh and we put together a programme that would appeal to both readers and writers. Ways with Words is primarily aimed at readers although many writers do attend in the hope of learning something about the craft of writing from some of the countries most successful authors. Nevertheless I found a common theme in both.
One of the workshops at Chudleigh was taken by Chris Waters, a poet and member of the Dartmoor Poets, who provoked us into thinking about landscape by looking at photographs taken by James Ravilious of places and people in north Devon in the 1960’s although they looked like they were from a much earlier period. Later the author Fay Sampson www.faysampson.co.uk talked about her novels which she said were inspired by place, indeed her latest series, the Aiden mysteries are set in the sacred places of Britain. At Dartington Jane Feaver the author of ‘An Inventory of Heaven’ talked about how difficult it was to write about the countryside unless you had lived in a landscape since birth and your family had lived there for generations. She described the land as having no sense of humour. So three authors and three different views on writing about nature.
Notes from Old Venn: Amazon.co.uk: Margaret Taylor: Books
Old Venn
I have published this book of poetry about the countryside around our home in Devon. If you like nature, you might enjoy this.
Next Steps
The edited version of my novel Crucial Evidence arrived last week, together with a clean copy which includes the corrections the copy editor had made. I’m checking through carefully and have learnt a few things about presentation, like deleting the extra space we all tend to insert after a full stop. I’ve also, courtesy of my friend Elizabeth Ducie (check out her book of short stories ‘Parcels in the Rain) learnt how to insert one of those elongated dashes, called an em dash like so — . Clever or what. I’ve got to chapter 10 so far so quite a way to go before this stage is completed.
Also some proposals for the front cover have arrived. I’m quite excited by them, but keeping it under wraps for now. It will appeal to the intelligent reader I’m hoping will like the novel.
Although I don’t need it for submissions to agents I have rewritten my synopsis. The first two paragraphs read:-
‘Cassie Hardman, an ambitious barrister, wants justice for her client, Lenny Barker who faces trial for the murder of call-girl Shelley Paulson at the Old Bailey. The evidence against Barker hangs on the reliability of an eye-witness and Barker’s admission he was at the scene of the murder in Holland Park, West London. There is little forensic evidence to link him with the murder. DNA from
English: forensic DNA evidence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
fingernail scrapings taken from the deceased are not Barker’s, and the Prosecution case is that they are irrelevant. Fingerprints on a bracelet appear to Cassie to be a good match to Barker’s, although a fingerprint expert will not say the prints are his. Barker, she concludes, is just another defendant trying to escape responsibility for his crime
Then just before the trial begins Cassie uncovers an alibi witness Edwin Walker aka Hinds, who could provide the evidence to clear her client. She pursues Walker into the sordid underworld of illegal ticket touts and drug dealing, where she is threatened to stay away from Walker and then arrested during a drugs raid. Desperate to avoid being charged with possession of drugs, and being disbarred, she calls DC Alexis Seymour. Alex is investigating a drug dealer who she believes left a blood stained knife in the garden square where Shelley Paulson once lived.’
Does that leave you wanting to read more?
Power to Authors
This was my second year on a row at the Winchester Writers’ Conference, and what fun it was? A course on writing conflict in your novel, by Adrienne Dines and a course on Social Media Marketing for Authors by Eden Sharp. (www.wordshaker.co.uk should find her)
English: Amazon Kindle e-book reader being held by my girlfriend. The color and scale of the device are accurate. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Both interesting but I think I learnt most from the Marketing course. The message I took away from that was, I need to get on Twitter. That’s going to be a big step as every time I’ve looked at Twitter I find my self totally confused by the site. But I have added it to my do to list.
Although a few of the direct publishing companies have had a presence at the Conference in the past, this year Amazon had a tabletop. They were doing presentations on how to publish for Kindle and on CreateSpace. They were so popular that the venue was moved from the rather cramped conditions in the Book Fair into the large lecture theatre. Which takes me to the theme of this post.
To explain – one of the attractions at the conference are the One to One’s. This opportunity to place your work in front of authors, agents and publishing representatives is an important use of the writer’s time. Because I have decided to publish my book directly I only went to see two agents and the rest were publishing experts. There was a difference in the approach between the agents and the others. The agents were very critical of my novel. One of them was rather infantile in her approach, demonstrated by her failing to realise that a barrister needs time to qualify and therefore the date she left home might be different from the date she began to work. The two publishing consultants, one the editor of the Writers and Authors Year Book, were complimentary about my writing and suggested ways of improving my synopsis and pitch letter. Which led me to think that agents who have acted as the gatekeepers for the publishing industry, and were the power brokers, need to realise that they have to offer something to the writer or she will publish their work directly to the reader. And that’s goodbye to their 15%.
Decision Time
Kindle 3 moved all major operates to the bottom. No comments on this point. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have made the decision to engage Authoright to provide a publishing package for my book Crucial Evidence. Gareth Howard, the CEO, has experience of both self publishing and of traditional publishing deals and he is passionate about authors having the choice of how to publish and indeed,making the right choice; something that suits them rather than the agent or publisher. Indeed the message I took away from the Author Lounge at the London Book Fair is that if a writer wants to keep control of the publication and marketing process then direct publishing is a good alternative. When I saw a publisher last year at the Winchester Writers’ Conference she said the publisher would want a series of five books, while I though three would be sufficient to take my main character Cassie Hardman from successful junior barrister to QC. Indeed I’m not sure I want to write so many books based on the same character or to write books to someone else’s timetable.
I am aware of some authors who have written amazing books getting very little marketing support from their publishers and having to do so much themselves. Paying for those front tables or window displays in well-known bookstore
is costly, only the books publishers think will be best-sellers get that kind of treatment, otherwise it’s do it yourself.
So perhaps direct publishing is the way forward for me. Decision made, I sent off quite large sum of money (think of it as vet’s bills for that imaginary horse) a copy of my manuscript and a synopsis and wait for Authoright to copy edit the novel and produce a cover, just as if it was produced by a mainstream publisher. I may be self -publishing but that does not mean it is going to be anything less than professional.
On another front I have formatted my skinny volume of poems for Kindle, very difficult, and for a paperback on CreateSpace, much easier; the two Amazon platforms for self-publishing. The proof copy arrived on friday and I need to check it for errors and then continue with the publishing process. Although the book will be for sale, it’s really a memento of our time living in this sixteenth century farmhouse which comes to an end this summer.
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