Gary William Murning Online

Today has generally been a very good day. I got three very nice shirts from Marks & Spencer (those lovely linen and cotton mix, soft-touch jobs) and, this morning, I heard from the assistant to the agent I’d approached regarding Children of the Resolution. She — the agent — was “very interested” in reading the full manuscript. She’s read a couple of my novels in the past, so I was quite pleased by her reaction to my enquiry. She clearly seems to enjoy what I do enough to keep reading my new work. Always encouraging.

So everything was trundling along quite nicely. I tried on the shirts and was rather pleased with the result (not to blow my own trumpet, or anything, but I looked bloody gorgeous ), I emailed the full manuscript to the aforementioned agent’s assistant, receiving a prompt and courteous reply to let me know that they had received it, the outlines for my new novel are progressing quite nicely — and then the wheels came off. Something had to come along to utterly ruin my mood.

Yes, all right, I’m exaggerating a wee bit. My mood wasn’t utterly ruined. Far from it. But I did swear a bit when, tucking into my tea, Katie Price (a.k.a. Jordan) popped up on the television screen — looking like a reject from Barbie school and publicising her latest novel.

Now, I’ve never had much time for this particular glamour model turned Uber-self-promoter. She epitomises many of the things I dislike most about the whole celebrity culture thing. More than anything, though, I’m constantly appalled by the fact that she successfully publishes and sells books off the back of a career that is built around who she is and not what she does (what the hell does she do, anyway?) These books — the novels, in particular — she freely admits to not writing herself. She doesn’t sit down and write. She thinks up storylines etc, hands them over and then reads through the chapters once the ghostwriter has done his/her job.

All this is bad enough. Having done the hard work myself (with no reward, as yet) and seen many others, most of them extremely talented, do the same, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But I can live with it. It’s the way the publishing business works today and it will probably run its course and turn around once people tire of Katie Price and her kind and start wanting quality fiction again.

But what really galls, as it did today, is having to listen to Ms Price accuse some in the industry of literary snobbery. This comment was made in an interview at a book award ceremony, to which she had been invited because — horror of horrors — she’d been nominated! Firstly, I’d like to state very clearly that, in my opinion, Katie Price should never have been nominated for a book award. Where her novels are concerned (and her children’s fiction, I believe), she doesn’t write them. I’m not a literary snob, but selling a certain number of units is not what literature or literary awards are about, for me. They are about rewarding literary excellence, and however you might define that it surely requires that the author in question did actually author the work. Clearly not the case here.

Okay, now to this little issue of the people in the industry who didn’t think she should receive an award being literary snobs. It’s rather more complicated than that, Ms Price, I’m afraid. I’m perfectly happy to have someone who can’t even speak properly (”fink” instead of “think”, for example) consider me a snob. In fact, I probably am in this instance. I certainly believe that I’m a better writer than you are. I mean, I actually write every word of my books myself and I think I do a bloody good job of it.

But that is to miss the point. Why are people like me really annoyed about this? Put simply, we work hard for years at what we do, investing hour upon hour, decade after decade in our work — making sacrifices and dealing with rejection after rejection. I’ve been doing this twenty years and I still haven’t achieved publication. That isn’t because I’m not talented. Check out my samples if you don’t believe me. It’s because it’s a tough industry, made tougher by its current focus on ghostwritten trash that conveniently has a celebrity name attached to it. It isn’t snobbery. It isn’t even jealousy, because if being published meant that I had to be like you, I’d give it up tomorrow. It’s about pride in the work. It about a love of the written word and the power it has to communicate intense feelings and complex ideas. It’s about all that and more — but most of all, it’s about those writers we all know and love and admire who are being neglected because you and your ghostwritten nonsense is too much the focus of the marketing department’s attention. I don’t really blame you for this, of course. You’re taking care of you and yours. I can’t really condemn you for that. But just think again before you trot out the literary snob dig.

Real writers have every reason to consider themselves better than you — at least where writing is concerned. But the bottom line is, they simply want the chance to do what they do best. A chance that people like you — who gets someone else to do it for them — make much, much harder.

This is partly in support of my friend Lottie, who’s been getting quite a bit of flak recently for addressing very genuine and much-needed points in a debate from a position of experienced authority. I won’t go into the details here, and nor will I link to the website where all of this occurred (it’ll send them a pingback, if I do, and I really don’t need them bringing their shit over here!), but if you want to read more about it, all the relevant information can be found on Lottie’s blog.

Let it suffice to say, Lottie addressed one of the difficult questions/subjects — and some found certain comments offensive because they inferred that they meant/could mean that a particular victim was somehow, partially or otherwise, to blame for what happened to them.

Although I was reluctant to get into the debate — because, admittedly, it was not an area that I have any real experience in — it brought to mind something that I had to write about in Children of the Resolution. Heavily autobiographical, I had to deal with my experience of the bullying of disabled children in integrated education during the 1970s and 1980s. Carl, my protagonist and, in effect, the me-guy, stated very emphatically that he’d never been bullied and that, in his experience, the bullying he had seen had had very little to do with actual disability. He was very quick to say that he’d never bought the victim explanation, that some people just naturally attract bullies. It is too simplistic for him. But he did stipulate in no uncertain terms that the reaction of the person being bullied decided whether the bullying continued. Carl was lucky. He acknowledges this and the complexity of the issue and its various scenarios. He’d always been able, even though he’s in a wheelchair, to stand up for himself (pun intended.) He’d never been bullied, but they had tried.

It was a difficult piece to write, not least because I knew that a very good (able-bodied) friend who was reading it at the time had had a pretty unrelenting bullying experience. I was afraid of what reactions I might get but she at least understood the point and agreed with it.

Nobody could ever seriously blame a victim. And I for one would never want it to be thought that I was. But if we are to ever understand the complex dynamics at work in these kinds of relationships, we have to be prepared to ask and be asked the difficult questions. Questions of this kind are not (at least from intelligent, caring human beings) about apportioning blame, they are about finding a way to empower the victim. If we understand, we can fix (possibly.) Gagging people, holding personal offence up as a reason for not addressing serious points that taken objectively aren’t offensive, solves nothing.

So let’s keep asking the difficult questions, even if some people might not want to hear them. Maybe we’ll find the answers, maybe we won’t. I don’t know. But at least we’ll have tried.

A new Idiosyncratica topic has just been announced! Enquiries from those wishing to join always welcome.

Well, you knew it wouldn’t be long, didn’t you? Today I officially started working on the chapter outlines for We Are Watching. Far earlier than I had intended, but what can you do? Addicted I may well be, but at least I have something positive to show for it!

So, what progress have I made? Well, I have my beginning. Three single spaced pages of notes for chapter one (Times New Roman 20 point)… so far! It begins in a completely different place than I had originally anticipated and — wouldn’t you know? — my protagonist Austin Wright has been renamed Charles Rigg! When I saw him… well, he just looked like a Charles, you know? Not a Charlie, mind. No, he definitely isn’t a Charlie — proper or otherwise. Charles fits him, funnily enough, even when he has his hand around his best friend’s throat, pinning him to the kitchen table (which is where we find him at the beginning of the novel.)

Details apart, however, my overwhelming feeling upon starting to get everything discovered, shaped and outlined was one of excitement at doing something so different to my last project. As much as I enjoyed writing Children of the Resolution, it was by its very nature restrictive. When you’re writing about a bunch of disabled kids experiencing the dawn of integrated education in the 1970s/1980s, there’s only so much that you can allow yourself to do. Electric wheelchairs aren’t quite speedy enough for convincing “car chases” and Johnny and Carl’s fight in chapter four was never about to become Kill Bill volume 1 or volume 2. We Are Watching… okay, so I probably won’t take it to those extremes. But I will at least be able to build some action packed scenes — something with fluidity, tension, a sense of threat, all the good stuff. The stuff that I hadn’t realised I’d missed so much!

Incidentally, does anyone know what police missing persons procedure (in the UK) is? Charles’s wife “disappears”. He gets it into his head that she has been abducted (he’s unclear about who by), but all of her clothes and possessions have been taken, too. How seriously would such an incident — given that there is no history of domestic violence, or anything else, for that matter — be taken? I tend to think, not very. Formalities followed, but little else?

[EDIT: For further details on police missing persons procedure in the UK, click here.]

Okay, I’m the first to admit that I’m not very good at doing nothing. The in-between-novels stage is never a period that I find particularly satisfying, no matter how much other stuff I try to cram into it. The need to create is fundamental to who I am, I suppose, and even though it is less than a week since I finished the edit on Children of the Resolution, I’m already getting “twitchy”.

So I’ve started researching proper We Are Watching — watching endless YouTube videos on remote viewing and visiting fascinating sites like this on RAF Fylingdales. Regarding the latter, I’m actually quite surprised by just how much information on the base is available. Granted, the Cold War is well and truly over, but looking at it from the road as we drove by last Wednesday, it looks peculiarly vulnerable sitting out there on Snod Hill.

I know, however, that Fylingdales is going to feature heavily in one of the principal scenes, at least, of We Are Watching. It’s a simple scene involving a group of friends, much alcohol and, as I have hinted elsewhere, a remote viewing exercise — which they attempt in much the same way as many of us have probably messed about with Ouija boards at one time or another. It’s not a serious exercise. It’s just a bit of fun.

Or that’s what they think!

Well, I finally made the push and started, after many exercises in avoidance, Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

I read it in one sitting and… only kidding! I’ve been on with it for a few days, now, and I’m about 160 pages in. I realise, of course, that it’s far too early to judge just how readable the novel as a whole actually is (this edition runs to in excess of 1,400 pages) but so far I’m finding it absolutely riveting. Tolstoy through necessity draws his characters with an economy that I find extremely attractive. The brushstrokes are quite broad, but for all that there is an enviable subtlety to it that gives it a relevance that I hadn’t expected.

I should have known, though. As I have said before, I read Anna Karenina many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve already used the word “relevance”, I know, but that’s the overwhelming feeling I get from it. It doesn’t seem at all dated. I watch and listen to these characters and despite our obvious differences, I understand their dilemmas and concerns in a way that I seldom do when reading contemporary fiction

To write this quality of work and knock out twelve children… that Tolstoy — what a guy!

(Expect more on this subject over the coming weeks, months, years… why not, decades! From the comments and reviews I’ve read, I’m expecting a few difficulties up ahead!)

I always think I’ll have plenty of time to concentrate on blogging once I get to the end of a novel, but I never do.

Most of this afternoon was spent on the moors and out around Helmsley way, looking for atmospheric locations for my next novel (We Are Watching, in case you don’t know already!) It’s a beautiful part of the country, especially at this time of year. One minute you’re travelling through a tunnel of trees of cathedral-like intensity, and then they drop away, open out to reveal a beautiful, hilly landscape of just about every possible shade of green imaginable. I never tire of it.

Anyway, I’m a bit short on time so I’ll cut to the whatsit, as they say.

After last week’s Idiosyncratica topic post, which went quite successfully, with some truly fascinating and inspirational essays written, Mike’s been keeping busy by setting up a group blog. I’d recommend that existing members run along right away and take a look, if you haven’t already. Don’t forget to add it to your feed reader. All announcements will now appear on this new blog, and all participating members will be given administrative powers so that they too can post announcements, suggestions etc.

Anyone who is interested in joining but hasn’t already should contact either myself or Mike and we’ll do the necessary (always assuming we think you’re worthy, of course )

Tomorrow, I will write more. I don’t know what, yet, but it’ll probably be utterly intoxicating and unmissable — so don’t forget to drop by (if only to tell me that I lied and that the post isn’t utterly intoxicating and unmissable!)

Ta ta!

My first preliminary email regarding Children of the Resolution has now been written and sent. And so the process begins…

Wish me luck!

Saturday morning — cooler and greyer than the past few days — finds me four chapters from the end of my edits and feeling very satisfied with the result, if somewhat tired. Settling into that “end of project” feeling, I’m looking forward to a short break before properly starting the research and planning for We Are Watching. Said break might not last too long, however, as I rarely find I am at my best “in between” projects.

Speaking of We Are Watching. Earlier this morning I read this BBC article concerning Google’s plans to launch the Street View mapping tool (a function of Google Earth) in the UK. For those who aren’t familiar with it, this particular tool allows you, on certain streets, in certain cities, to view the street and surrounding buildings etc as if you were actually there. There are privacy concerns, which you can read about here, but that isn’t really what I want to talk about.

The article prompted me to boot up Google Earth and head over to the States to check out some of the Street Views. Whilst I was doing this, I was also thinking about We Are Watching. As the title might suggest, my next novel is definitely going to have “surveillance” overtones — so the possibilities that Google Earth might provide as a research tool were playing through my mind. I’d used Street Views previously and, to be honest, even then I found it a little unnerving. Today, however, the mild discomfort I’d felt before this time hit me full force.

I was on a street called Maple Avenue. I won’t give exact details, but I suppose there are many such locations in the States. Autumn leaves, wooden faced buildings and an overwhelming sense — no doubt the product of the Google Earth Street View tool — of desolation and emptiness. The stillness that the photographs invoke made the place seem like a ghost town. It was oddly intense, unlike anything I’ve experienced whilst sitting in front of the computer before, and my first reaction was, “I want to capture this feeling on paper.” Watching, looking at those empty streets, those dark windows, I realised with a shudder that I felt watched.

A metaphor for the 21st century? I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that I’m really beginning to find We Are Watching.

There are always writers that we know we should have read earlier — that got set aside for something more pressing or beguiling. For me, whilst I have read many, many writers, from the sublime to the ridiculous, the list seems endless. I’ve still to read anything by Dostoevsky, Gunter Grass is waiting patiently on the pile with Tolstoy (though I have read Anna Karenina), Isaac Asimov has only just been discovered and I can’t imagine ever subjecting myself to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But with many, we do get around to reading them eventually. And one such case in point is, for me, Richard Matheson, American screenwriter and author of, amongst other things, the wonderfully crafted novel I Am Legend.

I had always intended to read Matheson. Many of the writers I grew up reading, whose work I then admired, cited him as a major influence and it seemed ridiculous not to go back and see “where they came from”. So his name got added to the ever-growing list and, sure enough, in time he was taken over by (positively drowned in) more “important” writers.

Until recently when Mike happened to mention his name in passing (I think in relation to the new movie version of the book — which, by all accounts, bears little resemblance to the original product.) My memory jogged, I went along to Amazon immediately and popped a copy in my shopping basket. It arrived months ago and I’m ashamed to say I’ve only just made time for it (if I’m truthful, as a way of avoiding War and Peace, which was slated as one of my summer reads but which may have to stay on the “to read” list well into the autumn!)

In many ways, I’m kind of glad that I did leave it this long. If I had read it in my youth, I may simply have seen it as yet another vampire novel — albeit a highly accomplished one — and if I had plunged straight in when the novel arrived, and whilst I was still up to my neck in writing Children of the Resolution, I may have been too distracted to lose myself completely in its subtleties.

I Am Legend is more than just a horror/SF novel. A clever, well paced study of isolation and loss — of how personal standards, beliefs, motivations and needs mutate in ways that we might not have imagined — it entertains and makes the reader think… more than that, Matheson makes it incredibly easy to empathise with the protagonist, Robert Neville. The stages and crises of character development are perfectly honed, crafted with a finesse that most of us can only dream of. The unbelievable becomes palpable, beyond question or doubt, and this more than anything makes me know that I will not be leaving the rest of Matheson’s fiction on the list for too much longer.

Based on this, all those more “important” writers don’t even come close.