Why Panels are Not Scary...

This Tuesday, I went to Chesterfield Library to read the opening chapters of Infinite Sky. Emma Pass (fellow Lucky 13) read from ACID and Helen Mort read from her upcoming pamphlet, Division Street too. We then answered questions about writing and our books from another Derbyshire writer, River Wolton.

River, Emma, me, Helen, and various unidentified back of the heads.

I was nervous about this event. Not only was it was the first time I'd answered questions in front of an audience, it was also the first time I'd read in front of my dad and his partner. It didn't help that I forgot my story (first time I have ever done it!) and had to print it on arrival. Or that I arrived late, due to casually assuming Chesterfield was just up the road rather than Actually Checking A Map.Or that my dad arrived even later due to having the same genetic disposition towards this terrible habit as me. (I hold him responsible as the Creator.)

I always feel I have too many arms right about this point.

Guess what? There was no need to worry! The audience was warm, my fellow panel members were fascinating, and most important of all: I knew all the answers to the questions! They were in my head, put together after years of experience. No need to revise at all! Also, my dad didn't walk out during my reading, or throw eggs at me. Really it was relief all round.

"Yeah, so basically I just sit at a desk and make stuff up."

It was lovely to see River, Emma and Helen again, and Ali Betteridge who set the whole thing up as part of Derbyshire Literature Festival. (Which continues until May 20, so it's not too late to have a look.) I look forward to returning to Chesterfield Library to read from Infinite Sky when it comes out in February.

Do you get nervous about reading in public? Would it scare you to have your dad in the audience? I love to hear from you, and as ever, commenters get put into the prize draw. Win a crit of 3,000 words OR a 500 word personalised story for yourself or a friend.

I got my edits for INFINITE SKY!

Yes, everyone, hurray to the power of a hundred, I got my edits! Another exciting moment in the journey to publishing my first book. (Will it be in your house? Certainly. I will creep in and put it there.)

And so will she. She's on my payroll.

So, editing. It's a strange process. I sold the book in September, and after thinking about it almost 24 hours a day for the two years up to that point, I'd pretty much put it aside. My thoughts, naturally, had turned to the second book. And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, without any warning at all, I have to work on that other thing again?

This actually turns out to be a marvellous system. Almost as if it had been tried and tested over centuries. For the first time in years I can actually SEE THE BOOK!

She can see it too!

I can hear phoney bits, and bits where I'm trying to be hard to be literary (hurl) and creaky plot directing. In fact, so far I've enjoyed editing a lot. That's not to say I haven't also played an extraordinary amount of table tennis, washed everything I own and rearranged my bedroom, but overall, editing good!

It helped that the edit was light. This unnerved me initially. I was hoping my lovely editor might magic my book into SKELLIG or JUNK but I've come to terms with the notion that this is better. This means the writing must be pretty solid. The revisions I did with my agent, and all that other stuff, before any publishers saw it is paying off.

So, anyway, yes. Editing good! I have come up with ways to deepen elements of the story, complexified characters and deleted sentences trying a little too hard. I have no doubt that when the book comes out there will be things I want to change, but that is the nature of having an imagination. It doesn't give up.

How do you feel about editing your work? Do you dread it? And how do you cope with hearing feedback? Maybe editing is your favourite part of the writing process? I would love to hear from you. So much so that in exchange for a thought from your mind I will give one lucky commentor (picked from a hat, or more likely a sock as I don't have a hat) a free critique of up to 3000 words OR a personalised 500 word story. You choose. Hurray!

Review: 'The Coward's Tale' by Vanessa Gebbie

Today Vanessa Gebbie is visiting my blog too, so don't miss what she has to say about writing scams, writing other and superheroes.

Review of The Coward’s Tale

So, before I get to the review I must tell you, I have met Vanessa Gebbie once, at a Riptide Literary Journal reading a few years back, and she has been supportive of my career ever since. One of the reasons I offered to review her book was in response to a question in the media at the time, of whether peer reviews were useful or not. I thought they were. A writer’s sensitivity to what it takes to write a book, and the inside knowledge of the complicated feelings writers have about their work would lead to a sensitive review. True, the fact that I knew Vanessa might make me a little generous. If you like a person, you probably can’t help liking their work all the more. But so what? Worse, of course, would be if I hated it. Perhaps then, I would do as Chris Cleave admitted and be silent.

Luckily, I didn’t hate the book. 

The Coward’s Tale tells the story of the disaster “down the pit called Kindly Light, although it was neither.” Through the storytelling of the town beggar, Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, and the observations of an omniscient narrator, we see how this disaster affects the local community, not only those who die or lose loved ones, but the generations that follow too. 

The unlikely friendship between Ianto Jenkins, the town beggar, and Laddy Merridew, a boy staying with his grandma while his parents thrash out their relationship, is at the centre of the book. Laddy is adorable as he tries to make sense of his own dilemma, and Ianto is a mystical creation, kind of like the town’s inhouse ominiscient narrator. He tells stories at the local cinema in exchange for toffees or coffee, and the townsfolk often miss the latest showing because Ianto’s stories capture them before they make it to their seats.

Reading The Coward’s Tale I am struck by the way Vanessa writes friendship and love. The small tendernesses: kisses blown up to the window of a sleeping wife; daily sandwiches made for a homeless man; silver secreted in the homes of neighbours and feathers carved from shavings of wood. The book overflows with small and large acts of love, which easily shroud its moments of betrayal, violence and theft. 

Not so easily overshadowed is the disaster at Kindly Light. Since the mountain collapsed, it is not only these villagers’ lives that have been impacted, the village itself seems no longer to work properly. There is ‘the shed whose keys cannot be found’ and the clock that tries “to tell the town it is one of the hours but it doesn’t know which”. Without the industry that created it, the community is falling apart.

The depth of perception about what it is to be a person make the writer stand out as special. This for instance: “In which bit of my body did Ianto Jenkins live before the accident? And in which part was he living now?” It’s a vivid and terrible insight into the dislocation of grief. Throughout, the writing is lyrical, poetic, striking. The characters are complex. There is humour and whimsy and intrigue. Throughout the book the everyday is transformed by whimsy and significance into something touching and extraordinary. 

My only criticism of the book would be that it felt more like interconnected short stories than a novel. Coming to the end of a three part tale was as satisfactory as finishing a good short story. It seemed more natural to put the book down for a while than to turn the pages immediately to Ianto’s and Laddy’s continuing story.

I found it had to be read slowly, like poetry or short stories. Returning to the book, after an accidentally especially long gap, I noticed how happy I was to be back here, with this group of people, this community that looks out for each other and spies on each other and feels so much a part of each other’s lives. More than anything, The Coward’s Tale is a hymn to things lost: ‘real’ men, established work and life roles, the mines, community.

The Baker’s Tale is the most powerful, I think. It is a feat in controlling the release of information, and respecting the reader’s intelligence. Vanessa allows us to understand the baker’s actions (the throwing of bread into the river which becomes an event for the whole town eventually) and as I came to understand his motives, I felt the same thrill of understanding that I would in coming to understand the quirks of a friend’s personality. There aren’t many writers that make me hold my breath as I read, but Vanessa, at her best does.

Putting the book down after The Baker’s Tale, I actually spoke out loud. I wrote down what I said, thinking I could include it in this review.

“That was so good,” I said to myself. “I wonder if I’ll ever be able to write like that.”

Meet Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Coward's Tale

As part of the blog tour for the paperback edition of The Coward's Tale, Vanessa Gebbie is with me today, captured in my blog. Hurray! I asked her questions about writing, scams that beginners should watch out for and other important questions like what would her superpower be. Elsewhere, I also reviewed her debut novel.


Blog readers, meet Vanessa Gebbie!





Hi Vanessa! Thanks so much for stopping by.

Hi Chelsey! It’s great to be here - and lovely to catch up. Many many congrats on your forthcoming novel(s)!


Thank you! I've been a fan of your writing ever since I first heard you read at the launch of Riptide Journal in 2006.

Well, thanks. I really enjoyed your writing too.


You read Irrigation, a moving, funny story, which went onto be in your first collection Words From a Glass Bubble. I remember being impressed by how well you read - you seemed to inhabit your characters. A lot of writers struggle with this part of the job, how important do you think it is for us to be impressive when reading our own work?

I love Irrigation. For those who don’t know, the story takes place during a colonic irrigation. I read it at once at an event at a London bookshop - and a woman in the front row screwed up her face after a few minutes, pulled a book off the nearest shelf and began to read it instead, turning the pages with as much noise as she could. Ha! I carried on regardless, maybe even a little louder in the more graphic bits - and got a long round of applause at the end - though not from her. The only thing you can do is your best, I reckon!

But to answer your question - I think in today’s world, writers have to be Jacks and Jills of all trades. We have to not just write, but we have to be prepared to help publicise and market our books whether we are with big publishers or not. Doing readings, whether at small gatherings or at larger literary festival-type events, is part of that. People like to go and see authors read. So it makes sense to do it as well as we can. There are plenty of tricks to make the reading better... forgetting the audience, and focussing on the words, for one. They are your words, you know them, and can read them better than anyone else.

But it is important to slow the words down, not rush to get it over with. Remember to breathe, too. Have a glass of water to hand, and if your mouth dries up, stop and take a sip. And one great tip - if you are reading from a print out - a few sheets of paper, put them in a stiff folder with a smart cover. Maybe put the title of the story on the folder, and your name. The reason, apart from it looking good? Paper shakes if your hands shake. A folder won’t.

But the most important thing to remember is that everyone is with you. They are interested in what you have written, and are ready to enjoy your words. The woman in that front row in the London bookshop was only allowed out once - she’s now been locked in a cell and can never come out again. So be proud of your work, enjoy it!


Excellent advice. I will buy a folder immediately... And I am so glad that woman has been locked away now! I hope she's being well looked after. I was reading at the same event – my first ever – and I was so nervous (necking wine, in fact). You gave me some tips, praised my story and invited me to join your online writing workshop, The Fiction Workhouse, and have continued to be supportive of my career since. Do you feel as a writer you have a duty to help new writers come through? Do you ever have to say no to new writers?

It was a great party - lots of wine and nibbles, at Exeter University. Really lovely to be there - I was at Exeter yonks ago myself, so it was a nostalgic journey for me. Were you nervous?? I don’t remember - so it obviously didn’t show in the end. I do remember being impressed by your writing though. Sometimes, I can pick a winner. Yay!

At the time, as you say, I was running a small closed writing group online, called The Fiction Workhouse - we were all writers, broadly speaking, of literary short stories, working steadily together to improve - already writing well enough to be published in good places, and our work was placing in competitions. When I met a writer like you whose work fitted, who didn’t have a group to work with and wanted one, I asked them if they’d be interested. Always better to work with people you have met, I think.

I was helped myself by some really lovely writers - and I do think it’s a good thing to do to pass that help on. It’s a tough old world out there, and it makes sense to help each other, not do the opposite. It’s nice to pool information, knowledge, tips and so forth.

If I’m asked for help, I try to give it - if it’s something quick and easy, then that’s fine. But I do say no, increasingly, even though I don’t like doing that. For example, in the last week I was asked if I’d read two collections of short stories by two complete strangers, and then provide them with endorsement quotes. I said no to those requests. But I do understand how hard it is to get endorsement quotes - so I didn’t like saying no.

Another writer last week, via my website, asked if she could send me a few draft chapters of her novel for critique. I said of course... and my rates for reading and giving feedback were £xxx. She didn’t reply. That’s different - she was asking me to work for her, to read, and give professional advice, write a report - for nothing! Cheeky sod.


Your letter to yourself as a beginning writer at Teresa Stenson’s blog was lovely to read. In it you talk about there being ‘so many traps for the aspiring writer’. What would you warn new writers to be vigilant against?

Scams, for one. “Vanity Publishers”, “Agents who ask for money”. ‘Scouts” and “Consultants” who appear to be there to help writers, but who are only in it to make money for themselves. I fell for a ‘scout’/‘consultancy’ scam in the very early days. It went like this:

Email: “ Dear Vanessa, I work for xxxxxxx Ltd (insert important-sounding name). We are an accredited scouting agency working with some of the largest most well-established literary agencies in the UK and the USA. We’ve read your story “xxx” recently published in xxx, and loved it - we are all very excited and think you have a real fresh talent. We’d love to read more of your work with a view to recommending you...”

I got all excited too and sent them a load of work. A day or so later, “Thank you for sending your work. I have read it and really loved it - I am so glad I contacted you! This is incredibly exciting for me. I am a new employee in this scouting agency, and have shown your work to my seniors, who would like a few tiny revisions before sending it out and recommending you to our contacts. xxxx (Insert solid-sounding name here) will be in touch.”

Next email is from xxxx. He tells me he loves my work, can see I’m new to this because of some tiny errors easily rectified, but have vast talent. He has worked on my stories, and made careful notes about the tiny revisions needed before they are going to make me into the next best thing since sliced bread. (Or words to that effect.). If I could send £150 to cover his time (a special rate - normally, he would charge far far more, and does not work with many writers, only those with vast talent.....) He will get the editing suggestions to me. I must do the work quickly - as he has alerted two agents about this new writer, and is meeting with them next week. He looks forward to meeting me with them as soon as it can be arranged.

I Paypal him £150. Borrowed from my husband.

I get my work emailed back with a few scribbles. I revise quickly, exactly as asked, and send back. I am on my way to fame, money, stardom. We go out for a celebratory meal.

Next day, an email from xxxx. “Thank you for sending back your revised work. On second thoughts, we don’t feel you quite fit our current remit - but wish you every good thing in the future.”

They don’t reply to any further emails. Go figure

I would urge new writers to make use of the resources available to them online, to help in spotting scams and other tricks and troubles.

There are great places like Writer Beware’s blog, where such scams are made public. And it is free.

and the super and also free, Absolute Write and their Water Cooler, where writers talk - share info, good and bad. A brilliant place to join and ask if anyone’s heard of this bloke who is promising you fame if you just send him... £150.

And there are places like the wonderful Nicola Morgan’s Help I Need aPublisher blog, and Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works, which frequently air all sorts of useful stuff. Jane also runs The Self-Published Review - where she pulls no punches in her attempts to make self-published authors see that good writing and good editing skills are not things you can do without!

Beware of false gurus, those people who gather groups of adoring fans round themselves, and whose own writing is - er - well - but for some reason everyone hangs on their every word.

Beware of flattery. It opens you to those who want to take advantage somehow.

Beware of following all the advice you are given without assessing it for yourself.

Beware of sharing your work too openly.

Remember, learning to write well takes a long time, and a lot of effort. Writers who insist they never wrote a thing, then suddenly woke up one morning able to write a Booker-winning manuscript, might be fibbing.


A while back you were involved in a debate around cultural tourism or ‘writing other’. This is an issue especially on my mind as Infinite Sky features a family of Irish Travellers. I am not a Traveller. I know it's a big question, but what are your latest feelings on this topic? Do you continue to write other? Or have you stuck to ‘your’ subjects? And do you think too much focus is placed on a writer’s writing responsibly?

It was a very interesting debate. But ultimately, we write what we write. The themes we have to explore as writers are far far more important than the subjects we choose to illustrate them, I think. But we can and do make mistakes sometimes!

I could get upset or antsy every time I read a story about adoption, making assumptions, getting it rather wrong - but I don’t. That writer had as much right to use that subject to illustrate whatever themes they were exploring, as I would have as a writer who also happens to be an adoptee. Sometimes, I might wish they’d done a bit more research before blundering about - but that’s all part of the learning curve. We all have to learn, and if we don’t allow writers to make mistakes we’re lurching towards something indefensible.

Isn’t it better, if we are moved by something, and want to explore it in fiction, to try? Like all work, once it’s out there, we have to accept the criticism it attracts - positive and negative... but criticism that is just saying ‘keep off my patch’ is at best unhelpful and at worst censorship and I don’t listen. Many readers will not notice or mind one way or the other anyway, and will just enjoy the story. It’s only a few who make a fuss. And we can never please everyone, so shouldn’t try to.

I’ve read some unkind debates for example, about Stephen Kelman’s ‘Pigeon English’ - asking what right he had as a white writer to write a novel about a black boy on a London estate. He has every right I reckon, and the book is great.

But yes, I think far too much focus is placed on what we ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’ write about. We can write about anything, surely? It’s straying too close to George Orwell’s 1984 to consider limiting what an imagination wants to imagine. A travelling family is only a family made up of other human beings. I doubt that they experience any different human emotions to you... so in my book, you are as able to create them for me, the reader, as anyone. Where they go, how they go, issues surrounding their non-acceptance by other communities, are the stuff of research. Or the stuff of imagination!

I do understand advisors on writing courses wanting to protect us from possible censure, and pointing out the pitfalls. I was advised strongly at one such course not to write The Coward’s Tale, for reasons which are not dissimilar to the ones at play here - in the end, one man’s view of what was OK and what wasn’t. But at some point we just have to say, “I am glad of the warning, but I will still write this, because I must. I will do my darnedest to create this thing with care, and love, and as much skill as I can - beyond that, I cannot go. And I will stand by my creation, come what may.”


Laddy Merridew is one of my favourite characters in The Coward’s Tale. He is wonderfully sweet: honest, kind, unpopular with kids his own age. Like all of your characters, he seems to be written with such love. How much did having two sons help with his portrayal?

Thank you for loving Laddy - he needs that, doesn’t he? I’m sure, having had boys, it was easier for me to write Laddy and make him real... but the most crucial thing in his creation was that he is very like I was at the same age. It doesn’t matter that he was a boy - kids are kids - so memory was important. He’s a bit of an outsider, naive, doesn’t trust easily, doesn’t take things at face value, is disliked by other kids, is quite feisty and can cope, asks endless questions, loves liquorish Catherine wheels (!).


I was happy to read somewhere that you’re writing a follow up to The Coward’s Tale taking Ianto and Laddy’s story forwards. Is there anything more you could say about this? What else are you working on at the moment?

I am giving it a go, certainly - the working title is ‘Kit’, it will be another split timeline novel - and it will take a bit of doing! More than that it’s hard (or not sensible) to say. I’m also writing poetry and learning about it. I’m very much enjoying learning with the poet Pascale Petit when I am able - just finished the Tate Modern course, and am off on a Ty Newydd course in the summer. I'm doing lots of teaching, planning residencies here there and everywhere. Busy busy.


Finally, and most important of all, if you had a superpower based on a thing you already do rather well (if you do say so yourself) what would it be?

Easy! Anything I imagined would just appear - come to life. It could be seen and experienced by everyone - until someone questioned its viability - then it would disappear.




Isn't Vanessa lovely? Can you believe she ever got scammed? A surprise to me too. Just goes to show, these scammers are cunning, and you must watch out for them. Please comment and let me know what you thought of the interview. I love to hear from you!

How I got My Agent

Thought it was about time I wrote up my How I Got My Agent story. As all writers know, getting an agent is an enormous milestone. It means someone believes in you and your book and your writing enough that they are willing to work for you to get your book out there. It validates you as a writer, plus you get to say things like, "My agent has my manuscript at the moment' or perhaps, 'My agent called today'. It doesn't really matter what you say so long as those two keywords are in the sentence. Even 'my agent thinks my new haircut makes me look like a pervert' has a certain ring to it. It can also brighten up otherwise dull information, i.e. 'My agent shops predominantly at the Co-op.'

This is not Catherine Clarke

But, I digress.

I remember before I had an agent how badly I wanted one. I hoped that doing an MA at UEA would be a good step towards getting one, and fortunately enough for me, it was. I remember being thoroughly prepared not to get one, as our tutor Andrew, frequently talked cheerfully about our terrible odds. When the agents turned up for the series of meetings UEA arranged, I sat at the back mostly, hating myself for not being able to remember that agents and publishers are only the same species as me and talk to them as such. I ate a lot of sandwiches on these occasions, and drank a lot of wine.

Actual photo

The problem was, I still couldn't sum up my book in a single sentence. I could only ramble incoherently about Irish Travellers and mothers who leave their children and corn fields. After a couple of embarrassing attempts to be a normally functioning social animal I stopped interactions and merely ate sandwiches, drank wine and escaped for frequent cigarettes.

It was different when Catherine Clarke and Caroline Wood from Felicity Bryan Associates came to talk to us though. Light shone through the windows and I heard this high pitched, almost choral AAAAAAAH sound ringing magnificent in my ears. Not really. It was different though. They were joined by agents from Aitken Alexander Associates, and the whole presentation was less intimidating somehow. The different agents knew each other and seemed to get on.

And when Catherine talked about How I Live Now, one of my favourite books of all time, I decided I would speak to her. And so I did. I introduced myself and told her that I loved her client's writing, especially that book, and we had a conversation. I talked a bit about my main character, Iris, and why I enjoyed writing characters of that age, and it was all quite nice and normal.

I remember that I didn't know how to end the conversation politely, and so I kept asking questions like some kind of infinitely curious monster, and finally Catherine politely excused herself, and I thought Nooooo, I trapped her! I made her answer questions about the male to female ratio of her list that even I myself, the unstoppable asker, was not especially interested in!

But she gave me her card before she left, and invited me to send my work when it was ready. And afterwards Giles Foden said that she had mentioned me to him. I was so excited. She represented Meg Rosoff and David Almond! She had mentioned me! I had a business card in my sweaty little hands!

Do not use without my permission. Thank you.

It was a stressful time in general, the last few months of the course. My work wasn't going well and there were all these opportunities that I didn't feel ready for. The Creative Writing anthologies were sent around to literary agencies, and people started getting emails. Some students signed with agents. Our meet ups for drinks became ever more tense as news got around who was being contacted by who, and who wasn't. I felt sick every time somebody else got an agent. Happy for them, but sick. I wasn't going to be one of the lucky ones. I knew it.

And then something really exciting happened. After the anthology launch in London, at which I saw Caroline Wood from Catherine's agency, I got an email from Catherine saying that Caroline had loved my work and called it the stand out piece of the night, and that she would love to see what I had, whether it was finished or not. I was dizzy with excitement! But now I couldn't send anything because I was going into the UEA agent mentoring scheme.

At the end of the MA, those without representation were assigned agent mentors for six months. This was a fantastic opportunity, and I was assigned an excellent agent who really got my work. I was offered representation through this scheme, but didn't want to decide anything until I had at least sent Catherine my work.

When the scheme finished and it was ok to send work to other agents I was worried. What if Catherine didn't remember asking to see it? What if my story couldn't hold her interest? Or, my most common fear, what if she had just signed somebody else with a book just like mine?

Within a day of sending it she got back to me. Lovely prompt person! She'd loved it and invited me to London. I wish I'd taped our conversation as I was so nervous and excited I don't remember much of it. I know I drank Earl Grey, and we talked about Berlin and some kind of dancing, maybe Tango? It was a bit like one of those job interviews where you think you've got the job but it hasn't been said explicitly and so you're still on your best most hopeful behaviour.

And then, Catherine said she would be delighted to represent me, and I remember saying I'd think about it, even though really it was a dream, and I left all giddy and fizzing. It still makes my stomach ripple when I think about it. I emailed her as soon as I got home and said yes, and it was the first thing I thought of before going to sleep and after I woke up for days and days and days.

It really is the greatest and strangest thing that I have an agent (and a book deal, eek! but I'll write that story later)... For so many years, I felt I was hardly getting anywhere with my writing, and it seemed that suddenly my luck had changed. Not so surprising as my work improved a lot over the year on the course since I had so much more time to put into it.

Anyway, it has given me a very hopeful outlook for aspiring writers. I published my first story when I was twenty-one. Eight years ago. And kept toiling away at it over the years. The thing is not to give up. Keep working and writing, even when you feel like you're barely treading water. Keep trying to improve and looking for opportunities and it shall be yours.

Or if it shall not, you will at least not hate yourself for not trying. Which is just as important in the end.

Creepy school days and writing

A gorgeous post up at Emma Pass's (also a Lucky 13) blog. She talks about feeling like an outsider growing up, and wanting to fit in, and what it's like to finally find a group of people where it is enough to just be yourself. A lot of people commented saying how much they agreed with her (including me) and it made me wonder how many people felt this way growing up. Did everyone?

This is a theme I seem to be obsessed with, this idea of the individual within a friendship group or family or community or system, and the invisible insidious pressure from all around to conform to the group's ideals. At school it really is the most enormous all-encompassing force. Kind of terrifying when you think back. And creepy. And fun to write about.

Join us.

Isn't it a strange idea? To get all the kids to come along in the same clothes and teach them the same things as if they are all just the same as each other. No wonder hardly anyone learns anything. Eurgh, and you had to call the teacher Sir and Miss (note the strange sexism in the title difference) and put your hand up before you were allowed to speak. No wonder I used to be so naughty.

My new novel, at the moment at least, is looking into this idea of conformity, in a school setting. It's amazing to write, because I remember it all. It all comes rushing back to me when I sit at my desk. I remember the tiny things I worried to death about, and how afraid I was of standing out. It was like its own tiny little fascist state (without quite the focus on eugenics), except you weren't even sure who had made the rules in the first place. You just knew what they were and what might happen if you broke them.

Things you weren't allowed to do in my gang at my school:
Concentrate in class (square!)
Be nice to the teacher (bumlicker!)
Bowl properly/do your best at shot putt (lesbian!)
Ask boys out (desperate!)
Have sex (slag!)
Abstain from having sex (frigid!)


Ah, what fun we had... But Emma is right, all this not fitting in and feeling like an outsider, it seems to help the writing. It seems to be necessary or natural. Either born writers don't fit in, or those who don't fit in turn to writing. Who knows? I'm just glad that what has often seemed to be a curse has finally delivered some gifts.

Book review: Jonathan Pinnock’s 'Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens'

Beginning Jonathan Pinnock’s Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens, I was disappointed. I was hoping for a more Austenesque prose style, more Austen-style jokes. Quickly, I realised this was ridiculous. For one thing, it’s not easy to emulate the masters. For another, the title of this book is Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens.

I continued, thinking, This is going to be a drag. The writing’s plain. The sentences are too short. Maybe I should send this book back rather than giving it a terrible review. And then something happened. Reluctantly, and against my will (because of some mad loyalty to/defense of Jane Austen’s memory), I got into it. 

What gripped me was the mention of Lydia. She is missing, and I read on to see what fate Pinnock has come up with for the silliest of the Bennett sisters. The book became more fun (or I stopped trying to take it seriously), and I turned the pages quickly, keen to uncover what role Mr Darcy had to play in all this, whether Lydia really was some kind of spy and what the deuce Mr Collins was doing with all those prostitutes. 

Once I accepted and understood the intentions and mood of the book I enjoyed it. Wildly self-indulgent, it is fan-fiction at its silliest, and it is obvious that Jonathan Pinnock had a marvellous time writing it. The tone is uneven in places, which prevented me from suspending my disbelief somewhat, but I suspect plausibility was in a long forgotten corner of Pinnock’s mind as he worked on this book.

The jokes are relentless, and though frequently too bawdy for me, in its absurd moments the book is funny. More than paying homage to Jane Austen, Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens pays homage to British comedy: from the Pythons to the Fast Show, many nods are given. In fact, this novel has such a wide variety of laughs that there is something for every sense of humour – as well, perhaps, a fair amount of groans. 

Comedy highlights are when, on being hit in the face by a tentacle of something Wickham has slain, Elizabeth retorts:

"Once again, sir, I find myself showered with the debris of your encounters."

And the novel's logline:

"The truth is out there though it is not yet universally acknowledged."

 

Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens is only in the flimsiest way possible a sequel, and readers approaching it with a serious desire to see how their beloved characters have fared might be better off having their heads investigated, or reminding themselves of the book's actual title. It really is quite the clue. Fans of Carry On, Dennis Potter and Have I Got News For You will likely love this book, as will readers who find Austen’s prose style ridiculous in the first place.

Find out what others thought of the book at the Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens website. 

Find out more about Jonathan Pinnock's writing projects at his blog.

Buy a copy of the book from Amazon.