Smokingboot

Well, there it is, my little book. Today I have gone over the proofs; only one serious amendment needed, lots of typos though. How I am supposed to add my changes when the thing's been sent to me as a pdf I've no clue. Guess I'll just email the list across.

It has been edited very gently indeed.

Many months have passed since I looked at the manuscript. Now I see with fresh eyes its weaknesses and flaws, glitches I cannot remove without major rewriting, and I wouldn't want to do that. It is what it is, and I am astonished by it.

What a pretty filigree it is, cold and delicate and intense.

I read on someone's lj recently a quote from Chesterton about how a bad book tells you about its author. By such criteria, The Spider's Bride must be a very good book,* because no climate could be further from me than this snowflake construct. This is not me, the lacemaker who put this together should be a part reptile girl with fragile features and luminous eyes. Her hair should be black, her body consumptively thin, and her room full of dolls and spiders with a decapitated My Little Pony in the corner. She shouldn't make it past her teens - the brat is clearly mad and will be dangerous by then. We'll know it's happening when her eyebrows meet in the middle and she renames herself after a poisonous plant.

Tomorrow I will send the proofs back with corrections. Today, I wonder who this woman is I see in the mirror, who wrote a strange little story with a lot of help from friends, seen and unseen. Cos for all my love of The Spider's Bride, I just don't recognise her.

*Or perhaps Chesterton was just talking more unmitigated rubbish than usual.

I've been here since before it rose.

Incredible pain in my shoulder and neck; I've had it for a couple of weeks now. Time for a new mattress perhaps.

Stretching my limbs and back feels incredibly good. I'm drenched in sweat right now, and it's not just the heat of a beautiful day; my right shoulder and neck are burning up. It's not illness, I don't think, it's something else.

The pain is unpleasant, but the underlying exhaustion is leaving me; I have the start of three books to work on. Don't know where to begin. Publishing party? A private party would be better, cos really I need to work. The final proofs will be arriving soon for correction...after that will be the time to concentrate on the new. There's nothing to go crazy about for one little book, however much I love it. Shelling out the publisher's cash on a black dress bash with cardboard cutouts of the cover is unnecessary. The appropriate applause is more work, more inspiration, more everything. Right now I'd rather carry on working and maybe have a celebratory bop with friends. Assuming I could actually move my head...

The drive to write rises just as I am preparing to go down south. Settling to write in London is not easy for me right now, because all I do is work and drift in and out of sleep between shows. Maybe I need to talk to my boss about taking a month away so I can dedicate four weeks to writing, just as I did before. Something in me tells me that November or January might be good for that. I love work in winter.

My temperature's come down again, for a while. Wish I understood what was up with me, can't sleep, can't think, writing nonsense...but the sun is still pouring in. Looks like it's going to be a lovely day.

Naughty larians let the cat out of the bag. My first novel, The Spider's Bride, is out in October. It can be pre-ordered here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/026-1205551-9747629?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Spider%27s+Bride
Or here:
http://www.amazon.com/Spiders-Bride-Debbie-Gallagher/dp/0809572117/ref=sr_1_20/103-5787982-3547817?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185789186&sr=1-20
Or here:
http://www.tesco.com/books/product.aspx?R=9780809572113

Or some other places I can't be bothered to check.

I can't pimp this up properly. Suppose you buy it and hate it? I guess I would just have to clutch my cheque and get over it, but a part of me would be gutted. So rather than sell, which I simply cannot do, especially to my friends, I want to talk about the book a bit. If you are interested in the things below, you may well like The Spider's Bride, because these are the main sources and inspirations for it:

Novacaine
Winter, frost and spiders' webs
The video for 'There There' from Radiohead's album 'Hail to the Thief'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs1DX32t38c
Richard Dadd's life and paintings, in particular 'The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke'
http://www.pemcom.demon.co.uk/queen/queen2/ffms.jpg but I was also inspired by his Bacchanalian scene, Come Unto These Yellow Sands, Crazy Jane and Levant paintings.
The Tempest of course, now and always.
The work of Walter Potter and victorian anthropomorphic taxidermy in general http://www.walterpotterfoundation.org/
The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk
Rackham, Fitzgerald et al, natch.

And somewhere at the back of all this, the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon traditions of fairies, Tam Lin and the long lost folk before him, who could be beautiful and generous, and very cruel if you crossed them; they hated cold iron, changed their shape as they pleased, drove mortals mad, kidnapped the special ones, and understood perfectly that time is just a dolls house.

So there you have it. It's not Ankh-Morpok, it's not Harry. But in total honesty, and this is the nearest I can come to pimping it, if it was not mine, I would still relish it. No reason for you to, though. I have more to say about this book but for now, that is quite enough of that.

The magnificent mamapusscat wants to create a publishing party for it. I don't know, a part of me wants to get on with the next and not look back at all. And anyway, I am confused as to what I want; an elegant little promo with copies for sale and the whole Bridget Jones little black dress and wine thing...or just a party for friends to celebrate my baby. If anything comes of it, you know you're invited!

Life is really sweet.

Have a fantastic weekend y'all:-D

Or, the producer previously known as Genius Love Puppy because he's a) a genius and b) a love puppy. You never know just how gifted he is until he shows you his work, cos he spends his entire life clowning around like a ninny, earning the studio's unanimous title of 'The Idiot.' Stark and simple though the accolade seems, one must consider the calibre of the competition around him. We are legend or deserve to be. To stand out among such a mob of promising morons is an achievement indeed.

The thing is, this guy totally brings out my Inner Fan Girl. Conversations tend to be embarrassing:
( Lost in Translation )

No, I have no idea what that was about either. And they're all like that, though usually less linear. Nice guy. Films, clear and strong, conversations, uh, charming but incomprehensible.I was dreading reading his story. And then I did. It's in front of me now.

Well hmm. I can write off some of this as gifted undergrad stuff as he tears through the language and forces me to re-think the way he uses it. Is this poetry? is this prose? Too self aware maybe, until he lets himself go and gets inside the thing. OK, he's not worried about pace and he knows no-one talks like his dialogue, he gets that; I have been trying to pare excess adjectives out of my writing since I was 13, he just doesn't, he uses them to reshape everything. He pulls me into the undercurrent, the subtext and the feeling. Just as I reach for my red pen, I stay my hand and can't edit out what seem to be mistakes. Because they aren't. This isn't bad language, or overly self-conscious stylisation. It has evident derivations (Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Gerard Manley Hopkins and James Joyce spring to mind) but this is something else. He isn't working outside the box, he just isn't aware of the box. I think he's good. Extremely good.



Just as well my IFG didn't know this the other night, cos the sound of popping awe would have drowned out the pub chatter. He insisted on getting us all another drink, went over to the crowded bar and made bashful eyes at the barmaid, who smiled back and served him straight away. Even with her efforts we were a tiny bit late for the briefing (first time ever for me since I began working at the studio). He swept us through reception where a curmudgeonly gentleman signs us in. One look at mein beaming host, all facial granite dissolved and the lost minutes magically reappeared on the signing sheets. We went upstairs where the night's organiser was waiting for us, a stern frown replaced by grin at the sight of the Puppy, everyone's sweetheart, fortune's favoured son. No-one gets a reprimand, hugs go on forever.

Well here's the lowdown, homeboy; am a bit stunned by your talent, just like every other idiot in the 'hood. Tain't a fancying thing, just an admiration thing. You win, you win! Thankfully you're too smart to notice. Now get out of here and give my IFG a rest, OK?

First of all, it is the beautiful wild child bytepilot's birthday. Happy Birthday, oh most exquisite of popes!

Second, the wind blew wild, and the rain has come, my pear tree is budding and the air is still electric with last night's magic!

Thirdly; the moon was red and black, colours always beautiful for me, and now more than ever. Want to see why?
http://pics.livejournal.com/jjarrold/pic/0000482w/


Thank you jjarrold I spent ages trying to upload this and finally ganked it off your lj in despair!

I wanted to comment back to everybody for being so supportive, but I found myself getting weird and weepy whenever I started (I began by answering the lovely erestania and then found I couldn't go on without turning into Gwyneth Paltrow).

Happy though it has made me (seems to have taken me 24 hours to realise I am happy) this is really a very tiny step. I have a long way to go.

I hope to thank you more warmly in person when I see you. To those of you who have asked for details, you may regret the question; I can babble for England and may well do so until, out of genteelly concealed boredom, you force alcohol/your tongue/someone else's tongue/my own words down my throat in an attempt to shut me up.

Until we meet, little words will have to do. Please accept my heartfelt thanks.

XXX

So for further writing I have done a little research including a frustrating hunt for an old (not very good) piece I was sure I put up on lj ages ago, and now can't find; if only we had tags then. If only I could remember to use them now. Oh well.

The hunt led nowhere, and, as is the way of all research, when I start, doubtless it will be about something else entirely. The idea isn't usually with me at the beginning. I stare at a blank screen, and find the headspace needed; this should be optimum time for me, now my love is away for a week, and I have house and computer all to myself, only instead of flitting off to fantasy realms, my brain pulls off in a hundred directions, all of them here, in the real world, whatever that is. I'm caught up in earthdreams, sensual, resistant to word pins; I can't even make this feeling a story, it's too real and shadowy for that. It exists under fur bedspreads, by candlelight where the heat of a fire has thickened the air til you breathe it in like silk, or petals on your mouth.

Maybe it's because I am alone, my thoughts drift towards hands and eyes, lips and fingers, someone else's touch... or maybe I'm just bloody cold, and all my backbrain wants is some victim to mercilessly suck heat from. There may be a whole collection of them under the bed, dessicated ice-mummies who, over the years, surrendered their body-warmth at the touch of my frozen feet. I won't check, just in case they're annoyed.