Friday 29 June 2018

Twitter me this - a tongue-in-cheek-view

I visit Twitter once or twice a day and I am not one of your prolific tweeters. I don't have many followers, I prefer my account to be exclusive. I do tweet this blog so that my readers know it is updated.
Today I had a bit more time on my hands, having finished the second draft of my Christmas novella CHRISTMAS WISHES, so I started touring Twitter. I checked out #Fridayfeeling and had to smile. You get just about everything under any hashtag heading and this one is great. I read that writing is a gift, is hard work, is for posterity, is for eternity, is wonderful, is the source of happiness. That left me breathless and exhausted so I got a glass of water.
I checked out a few more hashtags including #heatwave and learned that in #Ireland and #England everyone is affected by these hot temperatures. Water shortages, sunburn, not drinking enough, feeding ice cream/water melon to your dog, crowded beaches, tarmac melting on some roads, tips for sleeping in a hot bedroom. And there are complaints against those who complain that it is too hot. In Ireland people are smugly tweeting that it's hotter than Spain or the Algarve. So I slapped on some more sun cream and topped up the glass of water.
I looked at other tweets and learned that most Britons say "sorry" about 2 million times in their lives. How can you check the accuracy of that statement? I ask myself. And more importantly, do I care? What am I doing scrolling through all these tweets from people who seem to have even more time on their hands than I do? You know what? I'm getting out the suncream, that awful unfashionable sun hat and heading for one of those overcrowded beaches - oh, almost forgot that bottle of water.
Have a fun weekend everyone wherever you are in whatever temperature.


Saturday 16 June 2018

The World Cup in Russia and what Writers can get out of it.

Too many years ago to admit exactly how many, the boyfriend of one of my flatmates asked me if I minded if he watched a World Cup soccer game while she was getting herself ready to go out. I started moaning about "nothing but football" to be seen on television for the next month and he said "football is a great game" and proceeded to explain all the rules to me: offside, what's a penalty, what's good play, etc. etc. He made it so interesting that I was hooked from the start and since that time I have tried to watch every game of this competition. (As far as I know, my flatmate and her boyfriend lived happily ever after and I never laid eyes on him again - not such an interesting ending as you, dear reader, might have thought...).
My point here is simply that he had the ability to make something in which I was not remotely interested so intelligible and make me want to see how it all played out in the match we were watching. That is a talent that good writers possess: they reel you in from the first page and you stay happily with them as they take you on the journey they have written.

The World Cup is exotic, flamboyant, heartbreaking, fun. It's all there: drama, pathos, penalties given and penalties denied, tears, and triumph.You never know how a game is going to go. And you have the big stars and the players who stand out - there is always one player no one noticed before who saves the day, gets that vital goal and makes himself the hero of the hour. You get carried along with the excitement. If you can inject some of these emotions into your writing, you can hook your reader just as I was hooked into watching soccer.
There is no other competition that grabs me in the same way and I've got a whole month to enjoy it all!




Tuesday 5 June 2018

On the Street in Big Cities

I am currently reading Lifeless by Mark Billingham. It was first published in 2005 but it is as relevant today as it was then. It is about homeless people being murdered on the streets of London and a detective going underground to try and solve the crimes. Having lived in London, I know the places in the book. Not only that, but a few years ago I attended a writers' event in the West End and was intrigued to see how many people chose to sleep in the doorways of theatres (as the protagonist in the novel) or in sheltered doorways around Covent Garden. I suppose it makes sense to pick a quiet but well-lit spot.
You can substitute London for Paris or any big city. Last weekend I was in Frankfurt. The suburban train tunnel around the city centre was closed for much-needed repairs which meant I had to take quite a detour to get to where I wanted to go and I got to see a lot of the inner city. Frankfurt has its fair share of homeless. They frequent the main shopping area, Zeil, which some people say is the most expensive mile in Europe. Be that as it may, for writers like me, it was rich in interesting detail. I saw a man sprawled in the middle of the pedestrian zone, totally oblivious of the sun on his face (and it was getting to be pretty hot by 10 o'clock in the morning), he rolled over and woke up as I moved past him and I was surprised to find that he looked well dressed for someone on the street. Maybe he'd been out on a binge. I saw a young lad with two plump little dogs who looked altogether in better shape than he was, several professional beggars and the inevitable addicts hoping to get enough for their next fix, tired people, people who stared at us from expressionless eyes.  I found myself wondering what they thought of all the luxury in evidence in the big stores and expensive boutiques around them.

I arrived late and had to change trains at the main railway station - never a healthy place to be on your own late at night. The city is a different place at night when the office workers are safely at home in suburbia and the street dwellers take over. I saw people rummaging in refuse bins for thrown-away food, one old lady who discovered a cigarette butt and looked at it with obvious delight, another woman sitting on a bench and having an earnest conversation with an invisible person next to her. A man gave vent to his inner rage and shouted abuse at everyone who walked past him.

Where do they all come from the Beatles asked in their song All the Lonely People? It would have been good to sit down and talk to some of them and hear their stories. I couldn't help thinking that Mark Billingham had got it absolutely right in his novel Lifeless. In the acknowledgements he thanked some of those he had spoken to and certainly his descriptions are true to life. Not only does he tell a good story, he also shows compassion for the street people and is never the slightest bit judgemental in his writing. While negotiating the tram or the train late at night in Frankfurt, I was often reminded of his novel.

My novels are set in the Irish countryside. There are no street people. But there are lonely people, people with problems, people who kill. I try to bring these elements to my Sergeant Alan Murray mysteries.