Category: Books

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2014 A to Z Challenge: F

AuthorsE. M. Forster

Wikipedia says,

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH (1879 – 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster’s humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: “Only connect … “. His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success.

Ian Fleming

Wikipedia says,

Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908 – 1964) was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer, best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through a number of jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels.

Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952. It was a success, with three print runs being commissioned to cope with the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two short-story collections followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels revolved around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children’s story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming fourteenth on its list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.

He was married to Ann Charteris, who was divorced from the second Viscount Rothermere as a result of her affair with Fleming. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker who suffered from heart disease; he died in 1964, aged 56, from a heart attack. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously, and others have since produced Bond novels. Fleming’s creation has appeared in film twenty-five times, portrayed by seven actors.

The Link

Both authors travelled widely and this informed their writing.

Fleming studied in Austria, Munich and Geneva, spent some time in Moscow and also travelled as part of his war service.

Forster travelled extensively in Europe, Egypt and, of course, India.

Travel is a great aid for authors, whether they write non-fictional accounts or novels set in the places they visit. There is a lot to be said for the opportunity to see a place as an outsider.

***

Here are a few of the other bloggers who are taking part in the A-Z Challenge:

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Books

2014 A to Z Challenge: E

AuthorsGeorge Eliot

George Eliot (1819-1890) was the author of Middlemarch, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda and three other novels. They were known for their realism and psychological insight.

Rosemary Edghill

Rosemary Edghill (born 1956) writes mostly science fiction and fantasy, although she began by writing romance. She has written about 37 novels altogether.

The Link

Both names are pen names and both authors took on pen names to hide their identities as well as for better known reasons.

George Eliot took a male name to ensure her works were taken seriously. Novels by female authors at the time were generally considered to be frivolous. But she also wanted to prevent scandals over the fact that she lived with a married man (George Henry Lewes).

Rosemary Edghill is also known as eluki bes shahar (lower case intentional) and her real name may be Eluki Besshahar, although there seems to be some confusion over which name is the pen name and which real. She may have been advised to choose a pen name that was more “American” but she probably also wanted to hide her personal details, as there are very few of those to be found.

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Books

2014 A to Z Challenge: D

Authors

A bit of self-promotion today. Sorry about that.

Emma Darcy

Wikipedia (with my corrections) says,

Emma Darcy is the pseudonym used by the Australian husband–wife writing team of Wendy Brennan (b. 28 November) and Frank Brennan (died 1995); they wrote in collaboration over 45 romance novels. In 1993, on the Emma Darcy pseudonym’s 10th anniversary, they created the “Emma Darcy Award Contest” to encourage authors to finish their manuscripts. Following the death of Frank Brennan in 1995, Wendy now writes the books on her own. Wendy lives in New South Wales, Australia.

Darcy sold 60 million books from 1983 to 2001, and averages six new books per year.

In 2002, Darcy’s first crime novel Who Killed Angelique? won the Ned Kelly Award for best first novel. In 2003, the next novel, Who Killed Bianca, was a finalist for the Ned Kelly Award for best novel.

Miriam Drori (me)

Crooked Cat says,

MiriamBorn and raised in London, Miriam graduated in Maths. She worked as a computer programmer for several years and later as a technical writer. She began writing creatively in order to raise awareness of social anxiety. Since then the scope of her writing has widened, but she hasn’t lost sight of her original goal.

Miriam has had short stories published in the anthologies 100 Stories for Queensland and Hitler Did It.

Neither Here nor There will be her first published novel.

 The Link

Wendy Brennan, real name of Emma Darcy, used to be a computer programmer before taking up writing. I also used to work as a computer programmer.

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Books

2014 A to Z Challenge: C

AuthorsPeter Carey

Wikipedia says,

Peter Philip CareyAO (born 7 May 1943) is an Australian novelist, known primarily for being one of only three writers to have won the Booker Prize twice—the others being J. M. Coetzee and Hilary Mantel. Carey won his first Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda, and won for the second time in 2001 with True History of the Kelly Gang. In May 2008 he was nominated for the Best of the Booker Prize.

Carey has won the Miles Franklin Award three times and is frequently named as Australia’s next contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In addition to writing fiction, he collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders and is executive director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.

Vanessa Couchman

Vanessa Couchman has lived in southwest France since 1997. She works as a freelance writer, offers copywriting services to international clients and writes magazine articles on French life and the art of writing. She is a member of the online, ex-pat writing group Writers Abroad. She has also been a Writers Bureau tutor.

Vanessa is passionate about French and Corsican history and culture, from which she draws inspiration for much of her fiction. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and on websites. She has also won and been placed, shortlisted and long listed in creative writing competitions. The House at Zaronza is her debut novel, to be published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

Apart from her writing site, linked above, Vanessa has a blog about French life: Life on La Lune.

The Link

They both write historical fiction.

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Books

2014 A to Z Challenge: B

AuthorsPair 1

Bill Bryson

Wikipedia says,

William McGuire “Bill” Bryson, OBE, FRS (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and science. Born in America, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before returning to the U.S. in 1995. In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and served as chancellor of Durham University from 2005 through 2011.

Bryson shot to prominence in the United Kingdom with the publication of Notes from a Small Island (1995), an exploration of Britain, and its accompanying television series. He received widespread recognition again with the publication of A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), a book widely acclaimed for its accessible communication of science.

Sue Barnard

Crooked Cat says,

Sue Barnard lives by the principle that an immaculate house is a sign of a wasted life. Hence, her house is chaotic but her life is very fulfilled.

Sue BarnardAfter graduating from Durham University with a degree in French, Sue had a variety of office jobs before becoming a full-time parent. If she had her way, the phrase “non-working mother” would be banned from the English language.

Since then she has had a series of part-time jobs, including some work as a freelance copywriter. In parallel with this she took several courses in Creative Writing. Her writing achievements include winning the Writing Magazine New Subscribers Poetry Competition for 2013.  She is also very interested in Family History. Her own background is stranger than fiction; she’d write a book about it if she thought anybody would believe her.

The Ghostly Father was published by Crooked Cat Publishing on 14th February, 2014.

The Link

BillBrysonBookYou may have noticed from the above that the link is Durham University. Sue studied there from 1974 to 1977. Bill Bryson was its Chancellor from 2005 to 2011. In addition, Sue has a signed copy of one of his books and she sent me a photo of it.

Thank you, Sue. Some time in the future you should write a memoir and people will have to believe you.

Pair 2

Enid Bagnold

Wikipedia says,

Enid Algerine Bagnold, Lady Jones, CBE (27 October 1889 – 31 March 1981), known by her maiden name as Enid Bagnold, was a British author and playwright, best known for the 1935 story National Velvet which was filmed in 1944 with Elizabeth Taylor.

She was born in Rochester, Kent, daughter of Colonel Arthur Henry Bagnold and his wife Ethel Alger, and brought up mostly in Jamaica. She went to art school at the school of Walter Sickert in London, and then worked for Frank Harris, who was also her first lover.

She was a nurse during World War I, writing critically of the hospital administration and being dismissed as a result. She was a driver in France for the remainder of the war years. She wrote of her hospital experiences in A Diary Without Dates and her driving experiences in The Happy Foreigner.

Her brother Ralph Bagnold founded the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) during World War II, a precursor of the SAS.

In 1920, she married Sir Roderick Jones (Chairman of Reuters) but continued to use her maiden name for her writing. They lived at North End House in Rottingdean, near Brighton, Sussex, (previously the home of Sir Edward Burne-Jones), the garden of which inspired her play The Chalk Garden. They had four children. Their great-granddaughter is Samantha Cameron, wife of the United Kingdom’s current Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

Jane Bwye

Crooked Cat says,

Jane Bwye has been a businesswoman and intermittent freelance journalist for fifty years, mostly in Kenya. She cut short an Oxford career to get married, was widowed in her early twenties, and left with three small children – but was lucky enough to remarry. Now her six children and seven grandkids are scattered over three continents, so she’s developed a taste for travel. She has “walked” round the world, buying a bird book in every country she visited.

She has edited a cookbook, “Museum Mixtures”, in aid of the Kenya Museum Society, and is working on a short History of her local church. Her first novel, Breath of Africa, which is dedicated to the youth of Kenya, had a gestation period of thirty years. The plot and characters are fictitious, but the story draws on Jane’s experiences in a country going through the throes of re-birth.

The Link

Jane says of Enid Bagnold, “She lived just up the beach, in my county, East Sussex, and we share a love of horses: her novel ‘National Velvet’ was a favourite of mine as a child.”

Thank you, Jane.

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Books

2014 A to Z Challenge: A

AuthorsDouglas Adams

Douglas Adams was an English writer, humourist and dramatist. Wikipedia says,

Adams is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a “trilogy” of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams’s contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame.

DouglasAdamsAdams also wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Ailsa Abraham

Ailsa Abraham is the first of several Crooked Cat authors who will be featured in these posts. From the Crooked Cat website,

AilsaAbrahamWriting under two pen-names, Ailsa Abraham is now the author of five novels. Scots/Irish in ancestry, she has lived in France since 1990. Her life revolves around her chaotic farmhouse, nicknamed “The Bingergread Cottage” as it is an upside-down witch’s home. Passionate about animal welfare, motorbikes and crafting in yarn, she is also fascinated by all religions, having been trained in Wicca to the rank of High Priestess but now follows a solitary shamanic path although she is also a member of the local Roman Catholic rosary team who are glad of her healing skills.

The Link

Ailsa says,

When Miriam Drori invited her fellow Crooked Cat authors to find another writer with the same initial I wanted (no, I desperately wanted) to find that I shared something with one of my all-time favourites.

Douglas Adams author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy amongst other work has been a personal hero of mine ever since I discovered that reading his work aloud to my dyslexic ex-husband (including all the voices of course) was a way of getting him interested in books. By the time we reached So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, he was reading it himself. This was way after I became a fan of the radio series that was broadcast late at night.

It turns out we do share some attributes although he had “a brain the size of a planet” and I don’t.

What we share is depression. I’m Bipolar and Douglas regularly suffered from long downers. I imagine Marvin the Paranoid Android was drawn from his own experience. There is a memorable quotation from Adams: “I have terrible periods of lack of confidence [..] I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realised it was like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.”

One other coincidence I discovered was that Douglas Adams and I shared a love of wildlife conservation. He was brought up in an RSPCA refuge run by his grandparents. I worked for years as a volunteer with the French equivalent, the SPA.

Oh – and I also get these terrible pains in the diodes all down my left side!

Thank you, Ailsa, for starting off my author posts in such an interesting way!

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Books

A to Z 2014

That month is almost here again and I have to admit to not being completely ready and being involved in several other things. But I’ll manage somehow, as always.

This is my fourth A to Z year.

In 2011, I didn’t have a theme.

In 2012, my theme was Jerusalem. I showed you places in my home town and we learned about them together.

In 2013, I highlighted features of memoir writing and learned so much from your comments. One day, I will write a memoir.

This year, to celebrate becoming a published author (almost), and to learn more about the people behind the books, I’ve decided to write about…

Drum roll…

Authors

See you on Tuesday!

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Books Bullying

Blurred Vision

I remember three books I’ve read about bullying in the past. In all three, the victims were boys.

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Piggy is an obvious victim. He’s obese, he wears thick glasses and he says all the wrong things. He remains that way to the bitter end.

Marcus, in Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, is a bit strange. I loved this book but was disappointed in the end when Marcus stopped being strange with no transition from one state to the other.

In Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult does a great job of portraying Peter, the boy who has taken as much as he can and gets his revenge by going on a shooting spree. (I’m not giving anything away because this happens right at the beginning.) When it comes to Josie, the plot becomes unbelievable, in my view, but that’s another topic.

Jeff Gardiner‘s Myopia, which I read recently, has a much more believable plot. It’s aimed at young adults, and so I had to get used to the style, but it works very well and definitely held my interest.

And yet I was disappointed when I finished it. Jerry, the victim, seemed too normal. The bullying eventually turned him into a hero. It all seemed too easy.

Then my vision cleared as I realised what my problem was. This story isn’t my story. It’s very different. But that doesn’t make it any less valid. In fact, it’s probably more typical than mine. And all stories about bullying serve a useful purpose in helping readers to understand what bullying does.

Well done, Jeff, for tackling this difficult topic in such a sensitive way.

***

Writing the above list made me realise that I’ve never read a book about a girl who is bullied. Have you? Can you recommend one?

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Books

The View from Heaven

If you follow my blog, you will have seen this story when I posted it last year, but I’m delighted that Morgen Bailey has now posted it on her blog, here.

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Books

I Am Fearless!

Jodie Llewellyn asks this question today:

As a writer, what do you fear the most?

Fifty-three writers, so far, have responded with their fears. Clearly writers fear a lot and want to express those fears.

I could have responded, too. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to talk about fears and I don’t want to think about them.

It’s not that I think I’m a perfect writer. Far from it. I know I have plenty to learn; probably always will.

But if I concentrate on fears, I will never succeed. If I don’t believe in my ability to reach my goals, then I won’t reach them.

I felt this way even before I knew I was going to be published. I saw all those posts by writers in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group!, in which they list all their insecurities, every month. And I thought, surely by doing this they are perpetuating the fears. Because no one replies, “You’re doing fine; don’t worry about it.” The respondents write, “Me, too.”

And I still feel that way. I know that getting published is only a first step and I need to stay positive if I want to advance along the writing path. Which I do.

So I’m not going to join that support group or think about fears. I’m going to plod on, because I’m determined to get there.

Hands up those who want to banish fears and believe in themselves.

HandUp