Like Bees to Honey: A Book Launch (and a very strange date)

First, apologies: this blog post is long overdue. I attended Caroline Smailes’ Liverpool launch party for Like Bees to Honey way back in May (which brings me to the very strange date I took: more on that later) and have been intending to write a review for months. It was a fantastic experience to hear Caroline read from the book and explain how inspiration was taken from her own family’s stories and culture. So here’s the review:

Like Bees to Honey by Caroline Smailes is a book that will make you cry so be warned. You will especially cry if you have children, have ever lost anyone, have ever followed your heart rather than pleased someone, pleased someone rather than followed your heart or have in fact, ever had a regret or a family rift. This book will speak to you whoever you are.

Nina travels back to Malta with her son Christopher to reconnect with her family and culture but finds an island full of ghosts. This isn’t an ordinary ghost story though. It’s a story about people: their regrets, their mistakes, their injustices, their loves and their truths. It is a story of forgiveness: not only forgiving others, but yourself. It also includes the most original (and witty) portrayal of a (Cisk) beer swilling Jesus I have ever read, as well as beautiful descriptions of Malta and its culture. There is plenty of sadness in this book, but also humour, uplifting moments and wonderfully colourful characters.

If you are a fan of Caroline’s previous books you will be glad to see that her novel presentation of text is used to the full in this book. Lines down the side of the page (visible from the outside of the book) indicate when the ghosts are narrating and different fonts and page breaks are used to great effect. Caroline transports us into the psyche of Nina right down to the sounds and minute details she focuses on as well as the conflict between her two cultures. This is a writer who understands how people think. The story itself unfolds in a subtle way that leaves you sighing ‘ah’.

And now onto my date. Mmmn. Never take a blind date anywhere important with you, especially if you are experimenting with dating a new type (in this case people my friends think are normal). And if the first words you hear out of their mouths are ‘you don’t look anything like the picture I was shown,’ pitch them back onto the train right that moment and send them home. Don’t do what I did and say ‘Neither do you,’ and then take them to a book launch (now both feeling rather shit about yourselves (actually I‘ve lost three stone since that date so a little loss of self esteem may have been worth it)).

I feel I’m probably fairly safe in writing about this as I don’t actually think the gentleman(??) in question actually bothered to learn my name let alone my website address. Anyway, I feel I have let Caroline down a little as while she was signing my book she asked how the date was going. Thinking he was standing close to me I said it was going quite well, thank you. He wasn’t: he’d wandered off somewhere: so sorry Caroline for telling that little fib. (I was however punished for this by having to take a long train journey home with him). Especially as she was so lovely in wishing me a ‘happily ever after’ in my copy of Like Bees to Honey. Don’t worry. I will find my fairy tale ending, but it’s likely to be with my usual type of long haired or bearded eccentrics and bikers because at least they are charming and exciting (although obviously not until I’ve lost the next 1.5 st).

An Update in the Life of Me

I thought I would post a quick update about what I've been up to since my last post and what I have planned for the Summer. As far as writing events go (and I am very late in posting this) Talking Books at Chester Library in June was a fantastic night. It was great to hear successful writers, Caroline Smailes, Nik Perring and Jon Mayhew talking about their writing process and sources of inspiration. Hopefully there will be similar events in the future. I will be reviewing both Nik Perring's Not so Perfect and Caroline Smailes' Like Bees to Honey as promised in the near future so watch this space.

As far as my writing goes, I am busy polishing up some stories and also a radio play. In the spirit of my favourite activity (procrastination), I am considering sending some of my work to a professional reader before testing the market with them. Any advice on this would be welcome. The novel is still plodding along but I really need to get some wordage on paper (or screen). The summer holidays are starting next week, but I have discovered that the local soft play area has free wifi. This may just save my sanity. I'm also looking into joining a writer's group. The end of A363 has left me missing my fellow writers and their valuable comments on my work. I can't make the local group so may have to look further afield.

Finally, if you know me personally, you'll know my son, Jake had a bit of a nasty accident at school a couple of weeks ago when a bench went through his cheek. He's back at school this week and healing up well, you can hardly tell he's had 15 stitches. We're going camping this weekend and I know he's looking forward to that.

So Quiet

Apologies for this being my first post in almost a month. I've been using the time since my course has finished to catch up on my reading and start work on editing some of my short stories and poems ready for submission. I think it's finally time to start 'getting out there' a bit. I'm mentally preparing myself for lots of slim rejection letters, but you never know and they won't get anywhere languishing on my Hard Drive.

Reading at the moment is extremely fun as I am working my way through the set books for the OU's Children's Literature course, (Any excuse to re-read Harry Potter). It has suprised me that children's books today deal with so many painful subjects such as child abuse, slavery and drugs. Having spoken to the local bookshop owner, it appears that at the other end of the spectrum, she is no longer able to stock Charlotte's Webb or many other farm yard tales due to the threat of death of animals causing complaints from parents. I'm sure this is the kind of debate the course will address.

Anyway, here's to filling some more blank pages.

Powerful Places

I've had a bit of a weird writing/reading coincidence recently. As I mentioned in my last blogpost, I visited Jamaica Inn a couple of times on holiday and bought the book of the same name. I didn't let myself begin to read it until I had completed my last assignment and also I have not read a Daphne Du Maurier before. However, when I started reading the book, I realised how similar the mood and themes were in her book and the short story I had just written. I have to wonder, do some places have specific moods and influences?

It would be easy to say that as it was the same place we were searching for inspiration, that's the reason for the similarities, but the inn has changed so much that it is now completely commercial complete with a gift shop (yes I did get a mug as well). Also, the weather was beautiful on both occasions. It would certainly have been much more rugged when Du Maurier stayed there.

I'm also having a quick panic that whoever marks my writing is going to think it is very old fashioned and (heaven forbid) cliched. Thank God I didn't mention smugglers (or moors come to think of it).

By the way, I absolutely loved the novel and didn't see the twist ending even though I now see it was hinted at from half way through. It was one of those books you read until your eyes have to be held open by your finger tips in bed. I will definately be reading more by her. Any suggestions for another good one?

It's all Over

The last assignment has been entrusted to the Royal Mail (I won't hold my breath for it making the deadline but I have Proof of Posting). It is the story that I feel most attachment to out of everything I have written this year, but I am also aware that it is quite dark and may not be to everyone's tastes. I will have to wait and see until August to find out how it was received.

It feels very strange that the OU Creative Writing course is over. I now have a huge gap until October to fill. Then I wil be starting Advanced Creative Writing and also Children's Literature. I have a whole stack of children's book to re-read before the course starts ranging from Harry Potter to Swallows and Amazons. I am very much looking forward to it as you can imagine.

For the moment I am reading Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier. I ate at the pub twice whilst on holiday and couldn't think of a better souvenier to buy than a copy of the book (and a bookmark). I don't normally read classics. I don't dislike them, I just seem to stay on the more modern side of literature, (and sometimes on the Chicklit side of that). I am, however making a real effort to read much more widely. So far I have just got through 3 chapters of Jamaica Inn but I am gripped. I will update you when I have finished the story.

So now it's on to three month of unashamed reading and writing. Maybe I might even try to sell some of the stories I have written during the course.

Panic Attack

A sour cheese stench fills the bathroom. I can’t be sick again. I try to catch my breath but nausea catches me first, sweeping upwards through my torso. Deeper, deeper, quicker, quicker I breathe, trying to find fresh air. It’s not working. Lights start to flash. A furnace rises rapidly into my head, my brain. I’m dying.

I grapple at the door. It’s locked. I scratch and scrape at the door. It gives way. I fall into freedom. Darkness.

My eyes try to open. Dapples of sunlight force them to close. The memory floods back. My screams for help are rasps. She comes. At last she comes. My head is bleeding. I don’t know why. She reaches down to me. I can’t reach back.

‘I can’t move my hands, I’m dying, I can’t move my hands,' Panic is erupting again. He’s here now picking me up, bundling me into the car in my hysteric state. I recognise everything, everyone. But places and people have no names anymore.

The journey is a blur. I stumble into the doctor’s surgery and catch sight of my reflection. I’m calm enough now to feel humiliation. My hair is lank and vomit flecked, unwashed since the salmonella hit. Skin, greasy pale, with sallow grey marks like a heroine abuser’s. My hands are frozen still, not listening to what I want them to do. I pray to be out of their sight. Their staring faces sit in rows, spying eyes peering over magazines.

‘Just a panic attack,' the doctor checks me over. ‘Nothing to worry about.'

‘But I can’t move my hands.' Is the doctor blind? Can he not see I nearly died?

‘Just some tetany. It will go. You hyperventilated and the oxygen and carbon dioxide couldn’t get to your brain.’

They look satisfied. We go home. I start to move my fingers and my memory slowly returns.
The horrifying experience not to be repeated for another ten years.