Waxwings by Johnathan Raban

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the first time I've read anything by Raban and on the basis of this book I will be going back for more - and better prepared this time!



There are no spoilers here, don't worry, but the book - especially its blurb - wrongfooted me. By a third of the way through I was sure I was heading for the dark heart of Seattle so when it ends on a relatively upbeat note (all the major characters get something of what they want, if not all of it) I was really rather surprised.



Raban writes with verve and a love of words that gives a lot of his work a manic energy reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's Mother London, he likes to play with words and that is sometimes a little intrusive, but his love for his characters and his ability to fillet a city in the boom years and lay out the hidden mechanisms stops it being a pain.



His Chinese character resonated with entrepreneurs I met in Beijing a few years ago and the dissolution of the marriage between his protagonist Tom and wife Beth is neatly delineated. Their son, Finn, is an interesting character who seems to be heading for darkness too but is redeemed by that most venerable of discoveries, the love of a good (or at least sometimes good) puppy!



I did enjoy this novel, would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been misled by the jacket notes, and I really liked the energy and enthusiasm of the material which is a fantastic contrast to the morose cynicism of many contemporary writers. I think it's given me a yen to visit Seattle, so definitely Raban has worked some magic on me.


View all my reviews.

P.S. - I lied on my end of year statistics. Carmel has just had an acceptance for an erotic short story reprint, so Ren didn't get the last acceptance of the year from Polluto after all! And I had 34 acceptances in 2008, not 33.

End of Year Statistics Submissions/Acceptances/Rejections

Well, it’s that time of year again, and I’ve opened my submissions programme and worked through my year’s activities. Here’s a sad confession (second one in seven days!) I’m really very crap at numbers and statistics are an arcane mystery to me. So it took me as long to work all this out as it would have to write a flash fiction. Isn’t that terrible?

Anyway, to the nuts and bolts:

• Submissions = 122

• Acceptances = 33

• Rejections = 71

• Pending = 18

• Still pending from 2007 = 7 (hmmm …)

This is a lower submission rate than 2007, but I have written a novel in the twelve intervening months, which cuts down on one’s ability to write and send out short fiction.

Am I happy with this set of figures? Yes, although had one of the acceptances been a radio play I would have been truly happy, not just mostly happy. Getting a radio play accepted was on my 2007 goal list, and although I got close, I didn’t get my coconut, so it’s back on the 2008 list and I really hope that with the help of my excellent producer I shall be able to produce a wholly happy set of stats this time next year.

And you … how did you do?

Writer Neurosis Revealed

Okay, time to admit to one of my rare neurotic fixations. Tea.

Specifically – Assam tea. Ultra-specifically – Whittards Loose Leaf Assam tea. I drink it. A lot. In fact, compulsively. It is one of my three remaining addictions, the others being yoga and chocolate … (not talking about the addictions I have recovered from, you'll notice).

Which is why panic has ensued. If Whittards do call in the receivers, will it be a good or bad thing for this writer?

• On the plus side: potentially large purchases of heavily discounted Assam tea.
• On the minus side: after said potentially large purchases, no more glorious large-leaved malty tea.

And I’m not sure if I can write without my tea. Really I’m not. Worried. More than somewhat. A tea quest may be necessary.

Assam tea picker courtesy of ahinsajain

All I want for Christmas I already got! (Well, nearly)

Yup. This writer’s cup ranneth over last week.

Actually that’s not true. It wasn’t this writer’s cup, it was Ren Holton’s jet black coffee mug that runnethed, because Ren has just had a very long, somewhat weird and profoundly satirical steampunk story accepted at Polluto.

It’s a bit of a fanfest really. Polluto publish writers I very much admire, and illustrators more so, such as the truly estimable Vince Locke(remember Sandman, lovely people? If not, you are remiss – Neil Gaiman and Vince Locke working together was a beautiful, terrible, hypnotic combination) and apparently they quite like me (or Ren) too.

And so cracking Polluto was something that had been in the back of Ren’s mind for a while, and to do it in the last week of the year, and with what will probably be my/our last acceptance of the year, was a great and happy culmination, devoutly to be wished.

But at the moment of what one might call happy consolidation, a tiny chink of discontent emerged in Ren’s soul. Not discontent with Polluto, nor with the story (called Vasty Deep: a totally misleading title, Ren and I hope), but with the world as it is. Ren was reminded of that years ago moment, reading a particularly good Sandman issue (by particularly good, we mean it was like pouring vintage brandy onto a paper cut finger and then licking it off: that kind of good), when Ren decided to write a graphic novel or die trying …

Thus far, we have achieved neither.

So 2009 may well be the year when Ren hunts down an illustrator – anybody know any good ones looking for a warped writer to work with?

Sandman image courtesy of Hiltch because somebody stole all mine and I hope the karma has caught up with them by now ...

Why Writers Hate Boilers (and other distractions)

There’s a problem with our boiler. It keeps cutting out surreptitiously, leaving a cold house and a disturbing smell of gas that can’t be traced. As a stay-at-home, full-time, writer, I’m the recipient or the endurer of this process and it is simply, honestly, categorically, driving me insane. The engineer has just been, and told me that next time it happens I must not restart the system, but sit in the cold until an engineer can turn up to work out why it’s happening.

The thing is, I can’t work without having the boiler in the back of my mind, and quite often, in the front of my mind. I’m on Chapter Nine of a sort of a murder-mystery that is also a love story and also an exploration of attitudes to mental illness and colour in the 1970s. 1976 in fact.

Remember 1976, the hottest summer ever? Well, not the hottest summer ever, but the hottest in living memory in the UK– the one where the tarmac melted on the roads and we ate ice-cream for breakfast. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to write about the glories of that year when one ear is listening for the sound of the heating ceasing. In other words, trying to hear silence occurring. Both an aural and mental strain, neither of which conduces to good prose.

And the worst thing of all is, as soon as I get into my stride, and am actually producing a few words of value, the bloody heating does switch off, without my noticing, and ten minutes later I’m bloody freezing and can’t type and have to wrestle with the ignition (or not as the engineer now insists) and can’t get back to work until I’ve got the bloody thing sorted.

Bloody, bloody, bloody. That’s how it is today. So, having missed coffee with Annie through having to wait in for the boilerman, I’m bloody well bloody going to bloody Brighton anyway, and I’ll bloody well drink coffee on my own (but hopefully, not bloody coffee, as that would be vile).

1976 courtesty of Jef Poskanzer

Grab bag of writerly thoughts – some neurotic

This week I’m not organised, for reasons I am unwilling to share just now. So instead, I offer you a series of things that have been puzzling, fascinating or disturbing me during my writing week:

• The hardcover issue – a mate has just been offered a publishing contract, but her book will be going straight into paperback. She feels that this is damaging her chances of getting reviews, but is it? And is that the real issue here? For me, as a book buyer, and a review reader, I have the habit of reading reviews and then bookmarking the title until it turns up in paperback. Hey, get real people, I’m a writer! I’m a fairly successful writer, but nowhere near successful enough to buy books in hardcover when waiting six months more than halves the cost. Equally, I tend to buy books that are recommended by reviewers I know: the Goodreads gang whose reading patterns are enough like mine for me to know that what they enjoy is probably going to be interesting to me. The London Review of Books is great, but I’m not sure how much it actually influences my purchases.

Am I typical? I don’t know. But I do know that recession behaviour is going to promote paperback buying over hardback. There is another point to bear in mind though – libraries buy hardbacks, and some writers make their midlist careers out of being library-friendly. What should my mate do? I have no idea – do you?

• Teaching teaching teaching – I’m working on the course outline for Recession-Proof Writing which I’ll be teaching as a one day workshop in Brighton on 7 February and in Canterbury on 9 May. I love teaching, but I’m always scared I’m going to bore my students so I spend a lot of time working on learning psychology as well as on writing tips. I’m not sure how useful the bulk of students find this, but the ones who ‘get it’ really do become successful, productive writers.

I’m coming up with titles for different parts of the course and so far I have ‘Being Pete Postlethwaite’ as an homage to ‘Being John Malkovich’ for the section that explains what a sustainable career actually looks like and ‘Lessons Learned From Rabbits’ for the section on editing and sending out work. I hope these titles make the workshops fun and interesting, but perhaps I’m just a weirdo. You can tell me the truth, I don’t mind …

• Lessons Learned From Rabbits (LLFR) – if you’ve ever read Watership Down, you will know things about rabbits you probably didn’t want to. Part of LLFR is about the process of managing work that hasn’t placed in a year. Did you know that female rabbits (called does) can actually reabsorb a foetus if conditions are not good for gestation and birth (and would that change the nature of sink estates and teenage pregnancies, if humans could do it?) Well rabbits can. And then, some months later, they can use the component nutrients they’ve retained to become pregnant again.

So I want to explain to those attending the workshop that a piece of work that is shorter than a novella, and has been sent out at least six times in twelve months, and hasn’t placed, is probably due for re-absorption, which, in my vocabulary, means putting it in a drawer for a long time (at least six months) and then, instead of editing or revising it, using the best parts to create a new story that is radically different to the former version but draws on its highest elements. Like the doe does. But does that sound to Frankensteinish for the average writer? And are my sentences getting worrying long? You can tell me the truth, I don’t mind …

And the last thing that was vexing me was tracking down my favourite lipstick, damnably discontinued by Benefit, but I managed it and now have two tubes of the necessary stuff winging their way through the post. How very frivolous ... but not as frivolous as this shop window (in Hove actually). Look more closely, those flowers are actually lollipops!

What do you want for Christmas?

Fame, fortune, a three book deal? Francis Ford Coppola to option the film rights to your as yet unpublished novel? Well join the queue!

Actually, all those desires boil down to the same thing – you want to be published, to have your work read. And if that’s what you want, then one of the things you should give yourself for Christmas is a subscription to a magazine that publishes fiction.

Yes you. You, the writer. The one who wants all those things above. You cannot expect to find the platform for your work, the adoring fans, the respect of your peers, the five figure advance that pays off your mortgage, and the chance to spend a night with George Clooney or Angelina Jolie (or both if you like: who am I to limit your desire, or your stamina?) - none of these would be possible (and in fact, the ultimate item on my list is probably impossible under any circumstances) without the presses and anthologies that keep the beginning writer in hope and expectation, and tiny crumbs of money.

So here are three of the British best from this year – pick one and add it to your Christmas list, or treat yourself to a present from you to you, because when these magazines are gone -and we’ve lost far too many recently, due to Arts Council funding slashes - THERE WILL BE NOWHERE FOR YOU TO GET YOUR WORK PUBLISHED.

Ambit one of the oldest, the greatest and simply the coolest of British journals – this publication is chilled enough to freeze a Mod’s knackers.

Crimewave - part of TTA press: they have a bloody awful website in my opinion, but a crackingly good publication.

Frogmore Press a prettier publication you will not find, and the poetry in particular is superb.

Message received?

Jolly good. Help yourself to a cookie then.

What will you do when you can’t write?

It’s a question that people rarely stop to consider when they are thinking of a career as a writer. “I’ve always wanted to write,” they say and, “It’s been my dream since I can remember.”

All well and good. But there will be plenty of times, some short, some possibly long, when you can’t write. It will happen for physical, mental, geographical, political, spiritual or emotional reasons. It may be that you can’t write for an hour, or you can’t write for a year, or you can never write again.

What will you do?

It’s a serious question, and any writer who wants a career should take care to answer this one early, clearly and definitively. With any business that demands ‘inspiration’ you can find yourself uninspired. With any business that has a built-in lode of luck, you’ll find your luck running out (ask William Goldman, better still, read his Which Lie Did I Tell – Further Adventures in the Screen Trade), with any job that has downturns, your down will turn until it reaches bottom.

And sometimes you can’t write for good reasons: ask a breastfeeding mother, marathon-training runner, or anybody who’s just heard that their dog or cat is about to produce an unexpected litter. Stuff happens.

The most common thing that happens, as you write regularly (and hopefully, well) is that you see the times coming when writing must stop. I’m at one of those times now, where a new realisation about my current novel has to be processed before I write any more, or I’ll end up having to rewrite the whole thing because I didn’t stop and think it through. So instead of writing I’m making bread. Specifically, fancy Christmas bread.

Breadmaking is what I do when I can’t write. Sometimes I garden, but gardening is season specific and breadmaking is always possible, so that’s my release. It isn’t always bread – I make cakes, biscuits and other forms of baked goods, and I cook for my family every day, but breadmaking is the thing that burgeons when writing doesn’t.

I also have a freezer, for the times when writing refuses to return and I end up making bread seven, or fourteen, or twenty-one days in a row. I take requests, I deliver bread to friends, and generally, my life become cereal-centric.

And then it passes and I can write again. But I didn’t waste a day worrying or fretting, and I do believe that makes the writing come back quicker.

So what will you do?