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Campaigns and Coffee ShopsUpdate - May 2002 Well, Beholden is gaining a cover. My editor has sent me a suggested design and very smart it looks too. I have to confess to a little frisson of excitement (if I can use such a phrase in this context) when I saw that the mock-up of the cover had space for an ISBN number and a barcode. (It's the little things, you see.) It's real. It's official. There'll be a copy of it in the British Library, or wherever it is these days that they store the copy-of-every-published-book that gets preserved for Posterity and The Nation. Exciting? You bet. All that's needed now is to get the book out there and sell a few copies. Which involves people actually reading the thing - or at the very least, pretending they've read it, or adding it to the bookshelf with the other books being saved for a rainy day when there's nothing even half-decent on the telly. Funny, when people come to my house and gravitate towards the bookcases (yes, most of my friends do head straight for the bookcases, which tells you something though I'm not sure what), they always pick something off the to-read pile and ask me if it's any good. So I tell them I haven't read it yet, and they arch one eyebrow as if to say 'Have you actually read any of these books, then, or are you faking it?' 'No, no, no,' I insist. 'That's my to-read pile. I've read all the others.' 'All of them?' they ask, eyebrow still dangerously arched, poised to test my knowledge of my own book collection. And then I have to decide whether to say yes and risk them pulling out the one volume tucked away that I haven't actually read (probably by Camus, or Woolf, or Sartre, it always is something you can't bluff about), or go for the fudged, 'Well, most of them,' and justify their arching of the eyebrow. I usually fudge it, but sometimes I'm brave enough to risk it. Distracting them with alcohol does the trick too, of course. My to-read pile is groaning at the moment. Moaning and groaning - saying, 'Clare, don't you dare buy any more books, there just isn't room, we're full, I tell you, full, and if you buy any more books it'll be tools down and all out, like the old days, because you can only push us so far.' Or words to that effect. Which is a shame, because no matter how fast I seem to read the books, more mysteriously appear amongst my shopping whenever I go into the city centre and venture within the magnetic influence of the-big-new-Waterstones-with-the-café-and-sofas. (I mean - sofas, in a bookshop! - it's so New York I wasn't sure it would catch on out here in the wilds of the East Midlands, but I think there are enough branches of Starbucks and Costa and Pret a Manger springing up in every available retail space that we've been introduced to this weird new sophistication gradually enough to accept it. Like boiling a frog, I guess.) From all this rambling you could be forgiven for thinking that I haven't actually done anything of note since my last posting. That would be a gross error, so I'd better tell you some stuff. Beholden continues to grind through the publication process. My next book goes well and has me very fired up at present. One of my friends, Stephan Collishaw, has managed to get a book deal with Hodder, which really excites me - he's a wonderful writer who deserves success, and I no longer feel like such a freak for having a book deal when I meet up with my writing buddies. A win-win situation, as they say. Talking of winning, I was briefly involved in a community campaign recently. There's a patch of land in the centre of Bulwell, where I live, that carries a special significance for all Bulwellians (and no, I'm not a Bulwellian, your grandparents have to have been born here to qualify, or something like that; my four years living here qualifies me as a supporter rather than a resident, from what I can gather.) This patch of land is known, with typical Bulwellian charm, as 'the Bogs'. It was founded in 1872 when the Lord of the Manor tried to enclose the land and local people fought back and got the area preserved for the 'leisure and pleasure of the people of Bulwell'. There's a little iron bridge over the River Leen, concrete steps down to the water so kids can play with fishing nets, a playground, a large paddling pool and some scrappy grass, concrete and bushes. There isn't much else that's pretty about the centre of Bulwell, so when the City Council suggested they would build a transport interchange (linking trams, trains and buses) on top of the playground, and a wide road bridge over part of the river where kids currently fish, everyone was outraged. The Bogs Campaign was born. Meanwhile, I was trying to get some freelance work with a community group, setting up a community newspaper - so in I go, reporting on the campaign. I interviewed everyone involved - from the protesters who had collected 1000 signatures on a petition in a couple of hours, to the (extremely circumspect) Planning Officer dealing with the proposals. I researched the 1872 'Battle of the Bogs'. I chased the Council for plans and comments and explanations. Just as I was ready to pounce and use the community newsletter to spearhead the campaign and inform all 36,000 local residents of what was happening on the Bogs, the City Council backed down. There would be no interchange. The Battle of Bulwell Bogs Part II was won, and I hadn't even fired off an article. But I did get to meet some very nice people, and the freelance work may well still be mine, so it's not all bad, I suppose. While I was on the phone to the rather reticent but very nice young man at the planning office, I was struck by the thought that this man probably worked in the office that I imagined Peter, the narrator of Beholden, to work in. He probably did the same job. I felt a strange affinity for this man, trapped by his job on the wrong side of the great Community Campaign dividing line. I felt I knew where he was coming from - or at least Peter did. But as soon as I thought that, I realised how ridiculous that was. My book is fiction. Peter is fiction. His office doesn't really exist. The day I actually think I'm talking to one of Peter's colleagues is the day I need to get out more, or take a holiday, or something. On that cheery note, I'll sign off until next time! |
