I am happy to say that the search for a title for my new book is over. As I discussed in my previous blog entry, my first choice - Thief of Light - was unavailable and my second choice, Dragonfly, was deemed not worthy by my editors. As I also mentioned, when it comes to the title and book jacket, the hapless author is very much sidelined. While the bun fight between the editorial and marketing teams takes place, authors try to find solace in Zen thoughts, self-help tapes and comfort food.
My great fear was that I would end up with a different title on each side of the ocean, and for a while it looked as though this dire scenario was inevitable. This is bad news for an author and you really want to avoid it happening to you if at all possible. Reviews don't carry over, there is confusion in chat rooms and on discussion boards and readers become very irritable when they order books online and find out they have paid twice for the same story. Barry Eisler is one author whose novels are published under different titles and I watched him at a signing event trying to explain that this was not some devious ploy on his part to sell more books. Even celebrated authors sometimes seem to have given way on this issue. Philip Pullman's first instalment of his Dark Materials trilogy was published as Northern Lights in Britain and as The Golden Compass in the States. The marketing people will tell you this is necessary because the two markets are different and I don't doubt they are. However, I still believe if you want a buzz to start around a book - especially in borderless cyberspace - it is best to have a single, unified focus.
But enough of the throat clearing. Here, without further ado, is the title under which my next book will be published. Drum roll...
Keeper of Light and Dust
Intriguing? Evocative? Or does this make you say, huh?
I know some of you are going to tell me that it is impossible to say if Keeper of Light and Dust is a successful title if you don't know what the book is about. But the title should be so powerful, that even if you have no clue as to the story, it will still engage your imagination. I am quite happy with this title myself, although I do worry that it might be a mouthful. I was pushing for the shorter version -- The Keeper -- but my editor vetoed it on the grounds that it would conjure up images of sturdy men dressed in corduroy pants and Burberry coats striding the moors and scanning the horizon for game. For a while it looked as though the novel would be known as Book of Light and Dust but that idea bit the dust because of possible confusion with Book of Air and Shadows.
There is one area where Keeper of Light and Dust scores high. Books are usually not referred to by their full titles inhouse and both the marketing and editorial departments delight in using acronyms. My titles have always fared poorly. Midnight Side became MS, Other Side of Silence, OSOS and Windwalker, WIWA. Season of the Witch was particularly unfortunate: SOW. But KOLD has that coolness factor to it.
On to other news: Season of the Witch has made the shortlist of The International Horror Guild Awards. The Award was created thirteen years ago and recognizes achievements in the field of Horror and Dark Fantasy. I am deeply thrilled, of course, and let me confess immediately that I covet that funky statuette that is presented to the winner. It used to be an even more inspired design - an actual gargoyle, which looked as though it had stepped straight off a spire on top of Notre Dame Cathedral - but I think you'll agree that the present one, which is in the form of a tombstone, pretty much rocks as well. You can find it on the website of the IHG. Take a peek: http://www.horroraward.org/award.html
For a full list of the nominees, click on the home link on the page above. You'll notice I'm in good company: one of the other nominees is Elisabeth Hand, a highly accomplished writer who is a New York Times notable and multi-award-winning author. She was nominated for her book Generation Loss. I can recommend it: it is a highly disturbing tale, written in beautiful language. Smashing.
And that's it. Hope you guys are having a great summer!
Before I get to matters literary, thanks to all of you who have been inquiring about the state of the ankle I broke six months ago when I was kickboxing. I am happy to say that my surgeon has finally allowed me to return to the dojo! YES! He did, however, warn me that for a considerable time to come, the ankle will "hurt like the dickens" when I work out.
I've never been sure what exactly "the dickens" are - but he wasn't kidding about it hurting. At the moment my training sessions sound like this: Punch, punch, kick, OW! Punch, kick, kick, YO-O-W! Fortunately, there is something in martial arts called a "spirit shout." This is the noise a martial artist makes when he gathers his chi -- vital energy -- in his hara -- abdomen. ( Think Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.) It is also a sound you make to intimidate your opponent. My instructor isn't fooled but I am hoping my fellow students are interpreting my howls of anguish as battle cries. It is fair to say that a number of them already seem quite cowed by the sheer raw intensity with which I let rip.
From howls of anguish, to whimpers of distress. I have finished the first round of edits - which means the manuscript is back with my two editors and I now await any further comments they may have. And if there is one thing for certain, it is that these two ladies will have additional comments. Before the manuscript is finally sent on to the printers, I can expect to go through two or three such editing rounds.
In the meantime, we have moved on to a sensitive area: the title. The title and the jacket cover are probably the most contentious issues between writer and publisher. My contract states that I need to be consulted on these two all-important points. It also states that the final decision rests with the publisher. In practice, this means that the title I choose has about a 99% chance of getting ditched. Of the five books I've written so far, only two of my titles were accepted: Windwalker and Season of the Witch. The others got booted straight away... including the title I had chosen for my new book.
So what does a good title do? Ideally a good title has to be a hook: it has to deliver enough of an emotional punch that it will catch the eye and engage the mind of the jaded book buyer. If you are given a terrible cover ( a topic for a future blog entry) a good title can still rescue you. And it has to be "sticky" - a title cannot afford to be forgettable.
Does it have to tell you what happens inside the pages of the book? I don't think so. But it helps if it reflects the mood of the story and the texture of the writing. Here are some of my favourite titles, which I think are all exceptionally evocative and resonant: The Church of Dead Girls, Neuromancer, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Deja Dead, The Time Traveller's Wife, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Blood Meridian. This last title was unintelligible to me when I first saw it -- and before reading the inside subtitle -- but I didn't care. Even if I hadn't known that the book was written by Cormac McCarthy (I'd pick up one of his novels even if it was titled The Egg Price in China) I would still have been fascinated by that title.
Non-fiction is different, of course, and should probably be a little more topic specific, which still doesn't mean it has to be blah. One of my favourite titles of all time is Robert Twigger's Angry White Pyjamas. For those of you who haven't read this book, I can recommend it wholeheartedly -- even if martial arts is not your thing, I guarantee you, you'll love it. Twigger, a poet educated at Oxford, joined the Tokyo Riot police on their brutal one year course in Aikido and this is a brilliant and hilarious account of his experiences. (The book won him the Somerset Maugham award so that tells you something about the quality of the writing.) As for the title, I think it does everything. It conveys information -- the white pyjamas refer to the gi worn by Aikido practitioners; it tells you this is going to be a witty read and it is sufficiently original that it piques your curiosity. Another non-fiction title I love is Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This book says: I am Woman, hear me Roar!
My first book has the title The Midnight Side, which is not the title I had in mind when I wrote it. I wanted it to be called Precious Dust. It is a quote from the Thomas Carew poem "Elegy on Maria Wentworth" and as you can probably tell, it is a poem about a corpse. I thought it was erudite, classy, chilling, altogether terrific. My editor dismissed it immediately on the grounds that readers would think I'm writing a National Geographics study on precious metals. She was probably right. However, Midnight Side now gets mixed up with Sidney Sheldon's The Other Side of Midnight. What's more, people seem to think I did it on purpose to poach his readership. Actually come to think of it, my editor was one smart woman.
An interesting fact about titles: there is no copyright in titles. This means I can call my book The Da Vinci Code if I want to. (Unless Brown had trademarked his title and then I can not.) I desperately wanted to call my new story Thief of Light and both my editors liked this title as well but it was already on the cover of another book. If it had been an obscure, not very well-known novel, we might just have decided to go ahead anyway, as legally we wouldn't have had anything to fear. Sadly, however, Thief of Light, published in 1995 drew a lot of publicity. Why? Because the author was paid a million dollar advance. My editors therefore decided that a) it is not fair to confuse readers (they have more scruples than my Midnight editor) and b) I need to establish my own identity as an author and the confusion could be to my disadvantage.
So what will my new book be called? That is the question. Dragonfly, my choice, is not to be. Some of the titles my editors want to be, I find unacceptable. In the end, they are going to overrule me, but for what it is worth, I'm still kicking up a fuss.
I chose Dragonfly because that is what my villain, a brilliant but deeply insane and dangerous man, calls himself. Dragonflies are lethal predators. Their legs are studded with sharp spines, which allow them to scoop their prey out of the sky and consume it while in flight. They are incredibly acrobatic and can change direction so rapidly, their prey has little chance of escape. They can even fly backwards. Dragonflies are also the ultimate survivors - there are dragonfly fossils that are 350 million years old - and the tag line of my book is: To live. To live for ever. (Makes sense?) And finally, the dragonfly is the totem of the god Hiro -- the god of thieves -- which is highly relevant for my story.
But my dragonfly was swotted to the ground with two swift blows. Neither one of my editors liked it. We still haven't found common ground and I hope to inform you of the new title in my next blog entry.
In closing: an anecdote. Going back to Midnight Side, this title was chosen by committee - more specifically by the marketing team. None of them had actually read my book, they relied on the blurb written by my editor. One of the titles they were keen on, was The Midnight Lair. When a perky publicity person called me to tell me about it, I muttered sullenly, "Kill me, kill me now." This was my way of trying to convey to her how utterly underwhelmed I was by this idea. Two days later I received an email from her with the new short list:
The Midnight Lair
The Midnight Side
Kill me, Kill me Now
Can't win.
So let me know some of your favourite titles -- and why!
In my last blog entry, I mentioned that I was waiting to hear from my editors and that this was a nervous time. Well, I've received their first notes and the nervousness has been replaced by bruxism, obsessive snacking and failed attempts at Zen meditation.
First, let me state that I firmly believe a writer without an editor to be a writer at a loss. Yes, it is true that you can strike it unlucky and get saddled with an editor who is a frustrated writer and who brandishes her editing pen like a Katana, lopping off chunks of perfectly serviceable prose and even beheading characters of which she disapproves. These kind of heavy-handed assassination attempts are extreme, but they can happen. On the discussion board of my website, a member recently mentioned that another writer shared with him his despair at having one of his characters eliminated by his editor, which made his work read "disjointed". I can well believe this. It would be rather like dropped phone signals, I would think. Or those outlines left by cartoon characters smashing through walls.
On the other hand, if you're lucky, you have an editor who prunes your prose with a firm but generous hand, reigns in your narcissistic tendencies (those pages where you are getting just a little too happy with yourself), picks up inconsistencies in the story and champions the book in-house with so much enthusiasm that the jaded marketing staff can't wait to rush out and peddle your book to the booksellers. Booksellers don't automatically stock every book that is published; they have to be seduced by the reps and it can be a bumpy courtship. A rep who is psyched about your book will move like Mata Hari but a rep who feels blah about your book, will not dance the dance of the seven veils. Some authors go to extraordinary lengths to get the reps in their corner. Here in the UK, one famous author who obviously doesn't trust her editor to do the job, is known to bake brownies for the reps and deliver them in cute little gingham baskets.
It is also worth keeping in mind that books published within the same publishing house are not part of one happy family. Books - even if they are published under the same umbrella - are in cut-throat competition with each other: think Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. The star authors -- the Rowlings, the Meyers, Clancy's and Kings -- are allocated the biggest chunk of the marketing budget. For envious, mean-spirited midlisters like myself, this doesn't make any sense as these books are practically guaranteed print coverage - not to mention huge sales -- and those marketing dollars can be put to so much better use. What's left of the publisher's budget is doled out to the likes of moi and this is where your editor has to be a gladiator and fight to get your novel noticed in-house. If you have a senior editor with substantial clout, your book stands a much better chance of getting some lolly and this is important: any posters you see in the book store, any cardboard cut-outs or dump displays (those lovely pyramids of books carefully arranged on the front table) are paid for by the publisher and they cost many, many thousands of dollars. It is up to your editor to persuade the publisher that your book -- among all the others on the list -- is the one to push.
I have worked with some demanding editors in the past but at present I am blessed in that I have two lovely editors - one in the UK and one in the US: women of great sagacity, skill and stamina (my UK editor would probably frown on this last showy alliterative sequence but you get my drift: they're pretty good at what they do.) So why the teeth grinding and the attempts at Buddhist Zazen I mention in the first paragraph? Well, precisely because I have two. Double pleasure; double pain. My editors work for different publishing houses, which means they do not have to defer to each other and are free to edit the manuscript independently and according to their own vision. For an author, this presents a challenge. At the moment I have two sets of notes and I am trying to find common ground. The last thing I want is to have two widely differing novels appear under the same title on either side of the ocean. But I know that even if I try my hardest, the two editions will turn out to be different in small but sometimes quite significant aspects. This holds true for Season of the Witch - my previous book - as well. If you buy the book in the States, you will have a slightly different reading experience than if you buy it in England. As for translations: my UK publisher is considered my primary publisher so therefore translators will always follow the British edition.
British editors tend to be more gloomy and American editors more chirpy. American editors like characters who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, whereas British editors enjoy watching those bootstraps severed. Nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to the ending. In Season of the Witch, my American editor was desperately unhappy with the ending and found it far too melancholy. My British editor was all for making my hero suffer even more. I trod a careful path.
Of course, I count myself fortunate that my new book will be published in both markets. There is a common misconception that all books published in Britain are automatically printed and distributed in the US and vice versa. Not so. A relatively small proportion of authors are cross-over authors and the best-seller lists in the two countries often do not correspond. My second book, Other Side of Silence, was never published in the States. My agent at the time was of the opinion that the book - set in South Africa - would not appeal to American readers because the milieu was too "foreign." Brits, on the other hand, are used to playing rugby and cricket against the South Africans (who usually trounce them with gusto - not that this has anything to do with literature but I thought I should mention it, anyway 
) and are open to books set in former colonies.
So who has the final say? Can I simply refuse to take on board my editors' suggestions? Technically, yes. But there is a standard clause in my boiler-plate contract, which states that if the publisher doesn't feel the manuscript to be up to scratch, then the publisher has the right to refuse publication. You get to keep your advance, but no book on the shelf for you. This is a pretty big stick, or big carrot, depending on your perspective. Do I follow all the instructions my editors throw at me? Not at all, but I pick my battles. Furthermore, it is probably fair to say that if you keep sending your editor hate mail, "Your woeful misreading of the underlying subtext in chapter seven is inexplicable if not downright laughable" or voodoo dolls covered in pins, chances are she will not look kindly on your next offering and will refuse to buy it.
In the end, compromise but not selling-out is probably the name of the game. And T.S. Eliot may have nailed it on the head when he said: "Some editors are failed writers, but then so are most writers..."
A friend recently directed me to the following link, http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html, which opens into a humorous piece written by author Robin Hobb on the perils of blogging. Mr. Hobb is not a fan of blogging and compares it to pole dancing - something that can be done by anyone who wishes to "stand naked in the window of the public's eye... and twitch and writhe and emote" in stark contrast to skilled story tellers who dance "the dance of a thousand veils". "Blogging," he sighs, "condemns us to live everyone else's tedious day as well as our own."
Right, then. Let me sashay straight into my tedious day(s) and tell you exactly what I've been up to since that joyous moment when I opened a bottle of wine and emoted sloppily over my finished manuscript all of a five weeks ago.
For the first two weeks I slept in, read until two in the morning and had lunch with friends I haven't seen in eighteen months. They are used to my emerging from my cave only infrequently and they always speak to me in soft tones and give me gentle glances because they believe that after finishing a book I'm in a fragile state. 
I play along and ham it up: exhausted author who is slowly making her way back into the sunlight of every day living.
What else? Well, I've been immersing myself in housewifely things! I've baked! I've shopped! I've done creative things with socks. Usually after doing the laundry I simply chuck all my husband's socks into the anarchic sock drawer and leave it to him to try and bring the partners together. I firmly believe this to be a character-building exercise and that I'm doing him a favour. But over these past few weeks, I've found myself rolling the socks into those cute little balls. Challenging.
About three weeks ago my first readers started giving me their feedback on the new manuscript. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, these are friends whose judgment I trust and even though they tend to couch their criticism in diplomatic terms, they do not hesitate to tell me what they think is wrong with the book. Their feedback was gratifying - everyone seemed to have had a good time reading my story - but there were one or two... or maybe three little things, which had escaped my attention and needed to be fixed. One of my characters had inexplicably turned brunette after being a blond for most of the book. One character had simply disappeared never to be heard of again and a few of my readers, not unreasonably I suppose, wanted to know what had happened to him.
I also received feedback from my brother who lives in the States. Deep breath here. My brother is my mother's clever child - doctoral degrees from Carnegie Mellon in physics and electrical engineering - and my mother swears his first word as a baby was "quark". ( Actually, I have two talented brothers - the other one lives in South Africa and looks after my website www.natashamostert.com and also designed my MySpace page but he and I move to the same mellow vibe and we have boundless tolerance for each other's eccentricities.) My mathematically gifted brother, on the other hand, despairs of his sister's fuzzy thinking. In my new book, I had dipped a toe into the realm of quantum physics - courageously I thought - but my brother used a different word. I took his comments on the chin and rewrote those passages, which were causing him such distress. I won't say he is one hundred percent happy with the finished product but at least he is no longer talking to me through clenched teeth. For some reason he took it personally that I had criticized Einstein.
I also heard from my agent and oh happy day, he liked the book as well and decided to send it through to my editors immediately. And now I'm waiting for my editors to send me their notes. This is a nervous time.
This is also the time I should be thinking of a plot for the next book and the characters whose company I will be keeping over the next eighteen months. Usually by this stage I have a pretty good idea where I'll be heading but this time around I am coming up empty. One or two anaemic ideas are rattling hollowly and forlornly through the caverns of my skull. No dance of a thousand veils, for me yet. Did I mention this is a nervous time?
Oh, yes, I also had a gig two weeks ago at the Brompton Library in South Kensington in London. After the reading, I removed the blog entry in which I alerted friends to this event and I've been receiving messages from some of you curious to know if the evening went well. It turned out quite fun although at first I thought: tough crowd. For the first ten minutes no-one smiled when I made eye-contact, no-one except my good friends in the first row laughed at my jokes and I felt as though I was slowly settling to the bottom of the ocean. But then things started to improve -- whether because of my fantastic presentation or whether because of all the free wine and very little solid food that was on offer, I'm not sure -- but by the end of the evening we were rocking!
This is probably enough pole dancing for now -- thanks so much for emoting with me. And now, I spy an errant sock... 
Before I get to my news, let me share with you the following. I recently came across a quotation by someone called Edmund Bergler: "Every writer without exception is a masochist, a sadist, a peeping Tom, an exhibitionist, a narcissist, an injustice collector and a depressed person constantly haunted by fears of unproductivity."
I have no idea who Mr. Bergler is, but he has, sad to say, captured the essence of what it is to be a writer. However, I don't think Mr. Bergler is a writer himself. I rather think he may be the spouse of one. There surely is a special place in heaven for the husbands and wives of writers. Not only do they have to put up with our mood swings, but they also have to fend off our terrible neediness. And believe me, there is no-one more needy than an author with an unfinished book. The relief on my husband's face when I told him I had finally wrapped up the final pages of Dragonfly, said it all.
I am finished! YES! After eighteen months of talking to myself in the mirror, swallowing tubs of ice cream and gobs of melted cheese, I have a finished manuscript. Tonight I will get maudlin over a bottle of wine and read choice passages out loud (my poor husband) and convince myself that no other writer has ever produced anything remotely as good. It is the best moment.
It is a fleeting moment. Tomorrow...well, tomorrow the realization will sink in that the time has arrived for me to share with my agent and first readers. No-one - not even my nearest and dearest - has read the book.
My husband has no choice: he has to say nice things about it -- that is if he wants a quiet life. My mother is tough and doesn't pull any punches. She lives thousands of miles away so she feels safe. My agent - well, the word "forensic" comes to mind. Let's just say I need him more than he needs me, so he feels safe too.
Then there are my first readers : these are friends whose judgment I trust. Two of them are writers themselves and three are what I call "talented" readers. Although they usually try to couch their criticism in diplomatic terms, they know it is not in my best interest for them to lie. So they dish it out and I am grateful -- they have kept me from making a complete fool of myself more than once. I'll never forget a passage I wrote in one of my previous books, Windwalker. My hero, a cave diver, is walking across the beach in full diving gear. Now, when divers enter the water, they do so backward - and I got that fact right, thanks to a real-life cave diver who was advising me while I was writing the book. But instead of just saying, "Adam walked backward into the water" I wanted to make it poetic. So I wrote: "Fins splaying his feet in a bizarre approximation of a balletic plie, Adam inched carefully backward until he reached the water's edge."
So what's wrong with this sentence?
First, it shows that the author was trying to be too cute and second, that she knows nothing of ballet. I thought a plie was the posture ballet dancers take when at rest. You know, fully upright, feet turned sideways. I felt rather proud of coming up with this inspired analogy. Thankfully, one of my first readers does know about ballet and gently pointed out that yes, a plie requires your feet to go to the sides, but it also requires you to bend at the knees. So imagine the image I would have conjured up in the minds of knowledgeable readers by having my hero shuffle backwards knees bent. In the end I changed the sentence to "a bizarre approximation of a balletic movement" but I think I should simply have deleted the sentence altogether. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
First readers are essential, and once I receive their feedback - probably within the next two weeks - I will return to the book. I don't take all their suggestions on board, but if more than one reader complains about the same thing, I take notice. On 31 March I'll hand over a bunch of sweaty pages to my editor - and then...Sigh. But let's not go there yet.
Before I forget: the paperback edition of Season of the Witch came out in the US this week. It has a different cover from the hardback and I'd love to hear what you think of it. For readers in the UK, the British soft cover won't hit the shelves until 14 July but Australia and South Africa - you guys get the UK edition this month already. I thought it might be fun to line up all the covers and ask you all to tell me which one you prefer. I'd be especially interested to see if there's a split along gender lines and according to nationality. My publishers keep telling me that UK and US audiences have widely differing tastes.
Oh, and I should mention that both paperback editions have a little bonus. They include the first chapter of Dragonfly, or rather the Prologue. My editor thought it might be interesting to add it to the back of Witch to provide readers with a taster of what's to come. Of course, it does mean that I'm not allowed to change the beginning of the book ever again. For a writer like me, who can't keep her hands off the manuscript until the day it is actually sent off to the printers, this is a tough restriction.
But for now, that bottle of wine is waiting... 
Hi every-one,
I received a message on the discussion board of my website: www.natashamostert.com from a Portuguese reader who read Season of the Witch in translation and was inspired to make a "movie trailer" of the book and post it on YouTube. It is also a fan site for the actors Christian Bale, Bryce Dallas Howard and Zooey Deschanel, who my Portuguese reader believes would be the best actors to star in an actual movie production of the book.
Does any-one have Christian Bale's email address? 
Take a peek: fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH_MkTPnoQk
I'm working like blazes to finish the new manuscript. Please send good energy my way. My hero is not co-operating at the moment. 
Natashaxx
(PS I've received messages since posting asking where the house is that features in the trailer and my Portuguese reader tells me that the outside facade is that of a mansion in Sintra, Portugal , called Quinta da Regaleira.)
Last week my physiotherapist allowed me to jettison both Brad and Johnny (crutches) and walk unassisted. Yes! I am Crutches Tiger, Hidden Dragon no more. The sad news is that I will not be allowed back in the dojo until May. No kicking of bags or instructors until then. Still, I shouldn't complain. At least I can now sit on a bike and pedal with both legs. Up till now I've been pedalling with one leg only, which is very hard to do and does not look cool.
Instead of the dojo, I've been hanging out at the fracture clinic. Be assured, this is a highly competitive environment. My fellow fractees (?) are either young guys who broke their bones snow- or skateboarding, or more elderly victims who suffered quite horrendous injuries falling in the bathtub or down the stairs. What we all have in common is a fervent desire to outdo each other in the war story department. I had rather thought I would scoop the prize for best "injured-in-action" tale - puny woman felling 190 pound kickboxing champion with one blow -- but not so. There is a very good-looking gentleman in our group who tells of breaking his ankle on some remote island off Argentina, dragging himself through miles of swampland, then taking a rickety ferry to the mainland, then flying on a prop plane (at first I mistakenly thought he had piloted it himself, as well) before making his way back to the UK -- all with his broken bones unset. Top that one. As for the injuries themselves - seventy-one year old Stella who suffered 'spiral' breaks has bragging rights here. Her spiky X-ray makes the hardware they've drilled into my leg look like chopsticks.
The line at the fracture clinic is often long, which is why many people bring their own reading material with them. Looking around the room I was sad to see not even one 'Season of the Witch' and rather predictable choices: J.K Rowling; Tess Gerritsen, Dan Brown but also The Executioner's Song - aha - in the hands of a kid who couldn't have been more than sixteen. Doesn't that just give you hope.
Personally, I like browsing through those old dog-eared magazines that are always on offer. They're an adventure. What, Posh and Becks are having marital problems? This is also the only time I ever get to read my horoscope. I was immensely cheered to learn that my financial prospects were about to 'move to the next level' although rather sad to discover that this particular copy was three years old. Seriously though, magazines in waiting rooms have been good to me in the past. When I was thirteen years old and waiting for my appointment with the dentist, I read an article about Thomas Edison. This article ended up providing me with the plot for my first novel many years later. Edison, whose parents were Spiritualists, tried to design a telephone that he hoped might connect the living with relatives who had "crossed over". When I sat down to write Midnight Side, I decided to make use of the concept of phone calls from the dead. After all, what could be more creepy? A ghost wouldn't scare me that much, I don't think - but picking up a ringing phone and recognising the voice on the other end as someone I know to be no longer alive? See Jane run.
Anyway, thanks very much to all of you who have been sending me good wishes and speedy recovery, and who still do. You warm my heart!
BTW This blog entry was originally posted 26 January 2008 but because I wanted to move it to the back of the list I had to play around with the dates
I have been receiving messages of condolences from MySpace friends about my fractured ankle and I am very touched by your concern. I did have trouble at first figuring out how you guys knew about it! But it seems my brother had posted a notice on the discussion board of my website (www.natashamostert.com). Having a brother as a webmaster has definite perks but it also means it is impossible to be a woman of mystery.
Just to put the record straight: I wasn't being incredibly clumsy when it happened just incredibly brave. OK, and stupid. I have been trying to sweep my kickboxing instructor off his his feet for many years now, but in vain. On Friday, much to my -- and his -- surprise, I managed to do so. We were in a clinch, sparring and I swept his ankle. This was an aggressive move on my part but usually my feeble attempts do not even register with him. He is a champion after all and there is about a 40 kilo weight difference between us (www.myspace.com/carloslionheartandrade). But on this occasion my technique must have been devastating because he went down like a sack of bricks. Unfortunately, he collapsed on me. My ankle was still entangled with his and when we both hit the floor, it broke. The man needs to go on a diet.
I'm also sad to say my long-suffering husband has finally lost his sense of humour about the situation. I can't blame him. In a previous kickboxing mishap I cracked my nose. The effect was quite spectacular as the one half of my face turned black and blood pooled underneath my eye. The other half showed no sign of trauma. When I looked into the mirror it was like looking at a rather grisly rendition of the two theatre masks: happy and sad. My husband was sympathetic until the day the greengrocer's wife gave me a piece of paper with a telephone number, explaining that it was the helpline for battered women. When I tried to tell her what had happened she told me I needed to work through my "denial". We now buy our vegetables some place else.
I had surgery on Friday evening and I'll be on crutches until end of December. However,as I have a book to finish by February, I need to be desk bound anyway. And after pushing myself around on crutches for eight weeks my upper body strength is going to be fearsome. 
This doesn't mean that I do not feel incredibly sorry for myself, of course. So what I need is lots of sympathy and not messages (this is for you, John) that I have only myself to blame for taking part in such ridiculous pursuits.
Thanks for the good wishes everybody and stay safe...
BTW This blog entry was first posted in November 2007 but because I wanted to push it to the back of the list, I had to play around with the dates
In my previous blog entry I wrote about what authors get up to in private: hanging around the house in sweats, eating too much cheese, talking to themselves in the mirror. This blog entry will be about the public life of a writer: the interviews, the book signings, the literary festivals. Oh, yes. We are talking GLAMOUR.
My first book signing took place in Borders, Oxford Street in London, on a desperately cold and rainy Halloween. The event was billed as an evening of South African writing and two other South African writers - Deon Meyer and Gillian Slovo - shared the gig with me. The idea was that we would not only sign books but do a reading and talk about our novels as well.
I was excited. I was really excited. It took me two hours to decide what to wear. Should I go for the bohemian writer look - ankle-length skirt, unstructured jacket, beads - or should I go for the sexy look - short skirt and well, short skirt? I chose sexy. The chairs they gave us to sit on were these low slung monstrosities where your seat almost touches the ground and your knees are pushed up to chin level. Ms Slovo, an old hand at these events, wore slacks and looked unruffled.
We had nine people in the audience: one agent, three long-suffering editors, my husband, the store manager, two people who were browsing the shelves (before deciding that the free South African wine on offer looked good) and one homeless guy. As the rookie, I was on last and when it came to my turn, we were down to six people. By the time I had finished my reading, we were down to five. The homeless guy had decided the rain outside was preferable to the boredom inside.
Book signings can be depressing affairs but if you mess up or don't sell any books, relatively few people are witness to your humiliation. Interviews? Now that's where it gets tricky. You can end up with the incestuously friendly interviewer who does not give you a chance to get a word in edgewise; the hostile interviewer whose goal it is to make you look stupid or my personal favourite: the interviewer who hadn't read your book -- this is when you know you are in for an adventurous time. My first novel, The Midnight Side, is a ghost story about two cousins. In one memorable radio interview - at least I will never forget it - the interviewer who had obviously read only the blurb, fixated on the word "cousins". Her first question to me was, "Could you please give us your views on family relationships in the twenty-first century?" Her second question was, "China's one child policy means children grow up without cousins. How do you feel about that?" As I was expecting questions on the topics of lucid dreaming and telephone calls from the dead, I found this line of questioning rather challenging.
Visiting book clubs are the promotional events I like best. They feed you and give you glasses of wine and everyone tells you how wonderful you are and how fascinating your book is. Most of the time, that is. At my last book club event one member complained that the characters in Season of the Witch were unrealistic. For those of you who haven't read the book, my characters are two sisters who live in Chelsea, do bungee jumping, practise witchcraft and pose in the nude. So I was rather baffled by this comment. When I told her that I bump into women like these every day on the King's Road and whenever I step into Peter Jones (department store on Sloane Square), she was not amused. When I added that I had not set out to write a kitchen sink drama, she became aggressive. (It later transpired that her favourite read was Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.) Another member told me that the book "dipped" for her at one point. When I asked -- rather feebly -- where exactly, she snapped back: 'Well, you can't change it now, can you?' True, very true.
And then there are the literature festivals. How wonderful: a chance to exchange ideas with fellow writers and interact with eager fans. Admittedly, I have never been invited to Cheltenham or Hay-on-Wye; the kind of affair I get to go to is altogether more modest. But even high-profile authors cannot escape the low profile festival. If you look through the photographs in the revolving carousel on my page, you will find a pic, which shows me in the presence of two very well-known and successful authors: John Connolly and Paul Johnston. On this particular occasion (the venue was glamorous Clacton-on-Sea) the attendees were bussed in and their average age was around 80. But make no mistake, these ladies - and the odd gentleman - were avid readers and critical. They had all read our books before the event and were asked to fill in cards with their comments. One reader wrote the following about The Midnight Side: "Interesting story. Obviously written by a woman with a past." I took this as a huge compliment and ever since the card has been tacked up on the message board in my office.
My most cringe-worthy moment did not happen during a promotional event for one of my own books, however, but at a book signing by another author: none other than Ruth Rendell. As was expected, I bought a copy of her new book but also pulled from my handbag an older novel, which I had brought along specially for the occasion. Placing the book reverentially in front of her, I asked if she would please sign this copy for me, as it is one of my very favourite suspense novels. She opened the book on its title page and smiled gently. Yes, she agreed, PD James is one of her favourite authors as well.
Years ago, I read an interview with Dame Barbara Cartland. As I have never read any of Ms. Cartland's novels, I cannot comment on her work, but two things about the interview struck me forcibly: the lady's work ethic, and her pale blue velvet sofa. Ms. Cartland wrote more than 700 novels. I manage to finish a novel every two years. Ms. Cartland dictated her books to an assistant, while lounging in a silk gown on a pale blue velvet sofa. I have no assistant and no silk gown but these things matter not. It is the sofa I covet.
I mean, think about it. Who has a pale blue velvet sofa in their living room? It is demurely decadent. More than a little unpractical. Frivolous and glamorous. And at some deep level it confirmed my suspicion that other writers lead far more interesting lives than I do.
I sometimes receive emails from readers asking me what my day looks like. Let's just say, it is a walk on the tame side. My working day begins shortly after I have made my husband a cup of tea in the morning (around 5.30) and it ends when I make him dinner. In between these two highpoints are squeezed in roughly nine hours of writing and research. I write creatively every day except weekends although this is now starting to change and my Saturdays are becoming writing days as well. What exactly do I do in those nine hours? Well, I type. I stare at the screen in quiet desperation. I wrestle with the hero of my book, who is often disappointingly lazy and inarticulate. I eat Haagen Dazs Belgian chocolate ice cream from the tub and I melt Marks and Spencers shredded Mozzarella cheese in a microwave and eat it straight up. I know, disgusting. I'm sure Ms Cartland insisted on Earl Grey and cucumber sandwiches. When I can't stand it any longer, I go to the dojo and kick a bag or punch my trainer, Carlos. Before you give him the sympathy vote, he is a former WKA European light-heavyweight kickboxing champion and can take care of himself.
Surely it must be different for other authors? Think of Bruce Chatwin exploring far horizons; Hemingway wrestling bulls and doing manly things; Ann Rice ferried in a hearse through the streets of New Orleans; Bret Easton Ellis, OK... let's not go there. But the point is, these authors obviously required more than ice cream, a punch bag and a room of their own to write. They needed adventure, bull runs and designer clothing to keep the creative juices flowing!
It was therefore with trepidation that I accepted an invitation by Dan Crowe, former editor of the literary magazine, Zembla, to contribute to a book called How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors. I was also thrilled, of course - how could I not be? I would be rubbing shoulders with A.S. Byatt , Jonathan Franzen and Joyce Carol Oates. Am I cool, or what. But my apprehension was acute. Sixty-four of us were asked to contribute an essay on something we consider to be essential to our writing lives: something we simply cannot do without. It could be anything - an object, a memento, a ritual - anything, which helps us arrange words on a page. I was convinced my fellow authors would be writing about Cristal champagne, yoga in the desert, smoky jazz bars, balloon rides at sunrise. Not Haagen Dazs and stringy cheese.
So what does inspire my illustrious colleagues? Hot showers (Jane Smiley), chocolate (Douglas Coupland), post-it notes (Will Self), cigarettes (Anthony Bourdain), a large desk (Alain de Botton). Good grief, their lives are as boring as mine. Seriously, all the contributions in this book are wonderful and written with imagination and flair - Nicholson Baker, e.g. manages to make ear plugs seem almost unbearably sexy - but they do bring home one inescapable truth: to be a writer, you have to be able to sit in a chair.
My contribution? I decided not to go for the mozzarella cheese, but I did choose my trusty boxing aid. No, not Carlos, but a speedball, which is attached to the wall in my office. It has a potent, plum-like shape and it beckons me several times a day. When my brain is sagging and slumping, I tap out a triplet beat and then no more sagging and slumping but swaying and spinning...
Is not the brain shaped like a pair of boxing gloves?
How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors is published by Rizzoli and is now available (see below). Edited by Dan Crowe.
IN MY STUDY:
I recently read Stephen King's The Shining for the second time. The first time was many years ago when I was a young girl living in Johannesburg, South Africa. I had never seen snow. I had, in fact, never stayed in a hotel. King's description of snowbound Overlook seemed alien and monstrously wonderful. When I picked up the book after all these years, I wondered if the novel would still pack a punch as powerful. It did. It scared the stuffing out of me all over again. This is a great book: it takes you into the heart of darkness the way a good horror story should.
I know Mr. King is not fond of having this label slapped onto his work and I understand why. The horror genre does not get much respect and frankly, it doesn't often deserve any. Too often "horror" means clumsy over-the-top plots and prose as purple as a the festering boil on the forehead of a flesh-eating zombie. The kind of book that makes you go, Ooh!, then yuck, followed by yawn. And like badly written sex scenes, horror can easily tip over into the ridiculous.
But place a story of subtle evil in the hands of a masterful writer who uses elegant language and he'll mess with your mind like no-one else can. Good horror writing takes skill. It requires a clammy hand but a light touch to convince the reader that something ephemeral is lurking at the periphery of his vision and if he moves his head quickly enough, he will come face to face with something so devastating...
I'm not happy either when my own books are classed as horror and it happens all the time. Borders, for example, insisted on buying Season of the Witch on the understanding that it will be shelved in the horror/fantasy section. So when I walked into the Borders store in the Time Warner Building in New York City three weeks ago, it was with mixed feelings that I finally tracked down my witches. There it was: my book with its beautiful cover of a woman with wanton red hair and long, sexy white neck squeezed in next to a book with a vomit-hued jacket featuring a female with no teeth and breasts like rotting apples. But to the left of my witch, was perched a fluorescent crow. Another Stephen King classic: The Stand. If my witches were going to hang with someone, who better than Mother Abigail or Randall Flagg.
Two days after I had searched out my book in Borders, I attended the Edgar Allan Poe Awards ceremony. Each year the members of The Mystery Writers of America get together for a day of seminars and discussion, followed by an awards banquet. This was the first time I attended and I was as star struck as a groupie. There was Lee Child! He has sold a gazillion copies of his books about loner drifter Jack Reacher! There was Barry Eisler! He has sold a gazillion copies of his books about loner assassin (but what a sexy assassin) John Rain!There was Harlan Coben who has sold more than a gazillion copies and had won more than a gazillion awards. Actually, as Mr. Coben and I share the same publisher, I was seated at his table the night of the banquet and I was able to introduce myself to him as his MySpace friend number 2034. I'm happy to say it created an immediate bond between us. And there was Stephen King. Oh, wow.
At the banquet Mr. King was crowned Grand Master: a life-time achievement award. Earlier in the day, he had signed books. When I approached with my copy of Lisey's Story for him to autograph, he started talking to me about my own novel. Not that he had read it, but he could hardly fail to notice the T-shirt I was wearing. I was shamelessly self-promoting Season of the Witch and emblazoned across my chest were the words "Prepare to be seduced." (I'm all for subtlety in my stories but when it comes to publicity...) We also talked about Bag of Bones, one of my favourite King novels and I managed to quote a sentence from the book, which I have always found magical. "I can smell pine - a smell which is both sour and clean at the same time - and the faint but somehow tremendous smell of the lake." The tremendous smell of water. Is that not beautiful? Well, my memory - for once flawless - got me a once-in-a-lifetime. The King leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Just like that.
An aside: Later that day, I left the Edgars to attend a panel discussion arranged by Pen World Voices. One of the participants was Neil Gaiman, another author I admire greatly and one whose sense of horror is rather nicely developed as well. I think I may have had visions of a second kiss, but sadly, Mr. Gaiman left before the end of the evening and I had no chance to quote at him a line from American Gods.
What is scary? My own books feature almost no graphic scenes of violence because I am the first to admit that I am very poor at writing gore. Still,reviewers often use the words "chilling", "disturbing" and "creepy" to characterise my work and book stores like to stick me into the weirdo section located at the back of the store behind the stairs. But for me, it is all about the mind. Jung once said there is nothing more fascinating than watching your own mind self-destruct. I agree. Which is why the Jack Nicholson character in the movie version of The Shining cannot compare to Jack Torrance of the novel. You look into Nicholson's eyes and you are reminded of what Samuel Beckett said: "We are all born mad. Some of us remain so." Nicholson was crazy right off the bat. But in the book Jack is losing his mind one tiny slippery step at a time...
So here is my question to you: What do readers find frightening? What do you guys find suspenseful and deeply disturbing? I'd love your feedback on this topic. Do you require blood spattered sheets, eyeballs impaled on toothpicks, psychopaths supping on people's brains while they are still alive? What gets the goose bumps going for you? Do you find it more frightening when horror is tinged with the supernatural, or is it the stone cold serial killer lurking inside the pages who makes you check the doors and windows?
Probably because my new book, Season of the Witch, is attracting quite a bit of review interest, I have received a number of messages from readers who are new to my work, asking me how my previous novel, Windwalker, got to be classed as a romance novel. The answer has to do with ex agents, publishers, marketing decisions and other gruesome things. Suffice it to say that in the process Windwalker became my most controversial - although biggest-selling - book.
I wanted to write a great love story in the tradition of Wuthering Heights. Not that I would ever be as arrogant as to think myself in the league of the divine Ms. Bronte, but I too wanted to write a dark, gothic tale of two self-destructive lovers. I placed my story inside Namibia, a country I love passionately and whose terrible beauty I believed was the perfect backdrop for a story about murder and redemption. As always I seasoned the narrative with a dash of the paranormal. Readers of love stories, I was convinced, would adore it.
They hated it.
Or at least, some of them did. Up until the publication of Windwalker I had been fortunate: reviewers had been kind to me. So I admit to being a little spoilt and unprepared for the venomous grass-roots reviews that came my way when Windwalker was launched. I'm talking about the kind of reviews you would find, for example, on Amazon. In other words: the views of ordinary readers, the people I care about most.
It is flattering - and from a professional viewpoint essential - for print reviewers to like your work. But I write for ordinary book lovers who rely on stories to add joy to their lives and fantasy to their bread. If I disappoint them, well, then I'm not happy. I should immediately add that for Windwalker I've also received some of the most positive and heartfelt reviews I've received for any of my books: people have written to me that they're keeping it permanently on their bedside tables, that they've bought it for all their family members, that it is the most heart-breaking story they've ever read and so on. It became clear very early on that readers either hated the book with a vengeance or loved it to pieces. Again, take a look at the Amazon reader's review page for Windwalker: both viewpoints are represented in technicolour.
Below you will find a humorous piece I wrote when the controversy was at its peak. I had meant to submit it for publication but in the end I decided against it. It was written more for own benefit - I was starting to take myself a little bit too seriously - and I needed to remind myself that humour is what keeps us sane. As G.K Chesterton said: "Angels fly because they take themselves lightly..."
So for all of you who had contacted me about this book, I post this one for you. And I would love feedback on the topic. What is the definition of a love story? What constitutes romance? Are they one and the same? Let me know!
HEART BURN
Someone once said Agatha Christie gives more pleasure in bed than any other woman. Sadly, I can not match the allure of the redoubtable Ms. Christie, but the great lady has often served as inspiration. As a writer I am well aware that writing is all about seduction. It is about romancing the reader.
But the course of true love rarely runs smoothly as I discovered with the recent publication of my book, Windwalker.Since its release, I've had reason to ponder the Scheherazade-like (amuse me or I'll chop off your head) relationship between writer and reader. Readers can be unforgiving. Especially, as I've discovered, romance readers.
By googling myself (a masochistic pleasure authors tend to indulge in from time to time) I have discovered that readers either adore my book, or loathe it with a passion. Some reviewers state that my book had moved them profoundly and had even brought them to tears. Others sound as though they feel like bursting into tears as well, but for wholly different reasons. The venom of some of these reviews has startled me, especially as the main reason for the invective appears to be the fact that I have broken the "rules". Somewhere along the way, I have violated a contract I made with readers when a romance imprimatur was stamped on the spine of my book.
But what then, is "romance?" Is it really a cookie cutter term? Windwalker is my third book. I'm usually marketed as a mystery writer. But Windwalker was my attempt to write a story about soul mates, surely the most romantic of concepts. It is the story of two lovers travelling through time, desperately searching for each other, but the one always walking just a little too far ahead of the other. In this lifetime, however, they are destined to meet.
So what is the problem with this scenario?Windwalker "breaks the cardinal rule" thunders Wendy Crutcher of theromancereader.com. "[It] has an ending that has no business being in a novel marketed as romance." And S.Cook from Alabama complains bitterly on the amazon.com customer review page that the hero "stays around for only a few days and then poof he's dead."
Well, it isn't exactly "poof", it is a sensitively - even, dare I say, poetically - described demise, but I sympathise with Ms. Cook. She obviously expected a conventional happy ever after, not an ever after with a twist in the tail.
The great romance characters of all time - Cathy and Heathcliff, Scarlett and Rhett, Amber and Carlton - all loved and lost. Madness, betrayal and hopeless yearning permeate these magnificent tales of grand passion. Consider The Hunchback of Notre Dame: one of the most poignantly romantic books ever written. In the very last scene, two years after the main events of the book had already taken place, two skeletons are discovered in the vault of Montfaucon. The female was buried after she was hanged but the male - a hunchback - shows no fracture of the neck and had obviously come to the vault to die. When an attempt is made to disengage it from the female skeleton in its grasp, it crumbles to dust! Now is that not a scene that will linger in the mind far longer than if the two lovers had hobbled off hand in hand into the sunset with the bells of Notre Dame pealing merrily in their wake?
Another reviewer accused me of not including in my book any of the "good stuff." She did not specify what the superior stuff is and I puzzled forlornly over this comment until I read an article about the success enjoyed by writers of historical Scottish romances. It contained an extract from Devil in a Kilt by Sue-Ellen Welfonder in which the novel's heroine spies on the hero as he undresses. The sight of so much unadulterated maleness takes her breath away especially when "he rolled a pair of thin woollen braies down his muscular legs. Faith, even his buttocks appeared fierce and proud!"
I like the perky buttocks - yeah! The idea that there can be something erotic in watching a guy take off his socks is more problematic for me although I suspect my husband may not be removing his socks in quite the right way. But I finally "get" what the "good stuff" is. And I agree: I need more of it. Having said that, for much of the book my hero is dressed in rubber (he's a diver). Titillating, yes? Well, I thought so.
Not enough eroticism and the wrong kind of villain. I was accused of creating an over-the-top villain who enjoys clubbing baby seals. The Romantic Times Book club advises "animal lovers and fans of traditional romance to give [the book] a pass." One Amazon customer who actually liked my book (five stars) states unequivocally that my villains are too "twisted" for a romance novel. She wasn't prepared for their "sheer evilness - not dark, sexy evilness, but icky, sicko, can-sane-men-really-think-like-this mess."
Ah, not fair. First, I did not want Count Dracula as my villain. Second, my villain isn't swinging his club about in a mad frenzy because he enjoys watching seals die. He is making a living. He lives in, a country where sealing is, unfortunately, legal business. I certainly do not advocate this line of work and I was careful not to indulge in gratuitous excess: no graphic descriptions of splattered brains and no villain giggling madly with glee. When my villain kills animals he does so not as an exercise in sadism but because he is trying to earn money or wishes to cause my hero distress.
Did I want readers to react to what he's doing? Did I want to create a realistic sense of place? Absolutely. This is - a beautiful but raw environment. The animals don't wear cute outfits and the lions don't burst into song. Well, at least not Elton John songs... But maybe realism and romance are mutually exclusive in the contemporary romance novel and I have unwittingly broken another rule.
We writers have ambitious hearts and we are needy. Some writers even admit to being addicted to the love their readers show them. I think the greater addiction is not wanting to be loved, but wanting to be read. Not all readers will be content with what they find in my books, but as long as they are intrigued enough to continue reading, contented author am I.
Writers are often asked to name the one book, which triggered in them the impulse to write. I am unable to pinpoint such a Eureka moment but the reading experience I remember best is Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. For a girl just entering adolescence, this novel had everything: passion on a grand scale, dark eroticism (remember the priest's wanton desires for the fair Esmeralda?) and a powerful myth at its heart. I still consider this tale of beauty and the beast the most romantic book I've ever read.
At that time, I was already a serious addict: reading and writing with a voracious, if untidy energy. I wrote pages of overblown prose and read everything -- from Louis L'Amour to Hemingway -- with a joyous, uncritical eye. The child reader/writer is a tiresome child. Either exhaustingly precocious or seething and sullen ( I went through both stages), our imaginations run riot. We're the ones with the imaginary friends. And even as children we tend to prefer books to people.
Ah, books. Both potion and poison Reading is the creative core of a writer's life, but your attitude towards reading changes as you age. Once the insidious thought enters your mind that maybe you could get published as well, innocence is lost. Of course, you'll continue to read in order to make sense of the world. And you'll always be seduced by the beauty of words. But now you're not just reading...you're competing. Every time you open a book, you are measuring yourself against the voice of another writer.
Despite the pinpricks of envy, writers rely on each other for wisdom. Whenever I'm writing a passage which, frustratingly, refuses to soar, I try to remind myself of what G.K. Chesterton wrote about angels and flying. They fly, he believed, because "they take themselves lightly..."
In ancient times, man was a fly walking across the piano keys of the universe: he made no noise. But that has changed...
From: The Other Side of Silence
At the heart of The Other Side of Silence, lies a warning: sound, and music in particular, is a powerful force. If you abuse it, you do so at your peril.
Years ago I read a book by Mickey Hart, drummer for The Grateful Dead, called Drumming on the Edge of Magic. My knowledge of the band and their music was scanty and vaguely mixed in with what I knew of the potent mythology of Haight-Ashbury, the Summer of Love, Timothy Leary and psychedelic drugs. A different continent; a different generation. From where I sat these events seemed sloppily self-indulgent - even quaint. But I was in for a surprise. Hart's book blew my mind and one passage, in particular, rocked:
"I stood in the woods... my ear to the trunk of a tree...trying to push the edges of my sound envelope. I realized that everything must be making sound; the process of photosynthesis must be producing vibrations, if only we had sensitive enough ears. I began hearing the sacred in the music."
A world assembled with building blocks made up of sound. The words thrilled me, knocked me into awareness. I started reading about the power of sound and music; everything from the thoughts of philosopher-mathematicians like Pythagoras, who believed in a musical cosmos, to the theories of modern-day particle physicists who propose that atoms react as though they have resonance. Brilliant minds, cool ideas. They made me listen to the world in a different way. And what I've come to believe is this: Sound is not for the faint of heart. Music is staring at the sun. And maybe, just maybe, we are a little too much at ease. Perhaps the time has come to think consciously of what it means to live on Planet Sound.
We live in a world that is drenched in noise. Unless you dunk into a sensory deprivation tank or go down a very deep worked-out mine -- the kind they have in South Africa -- you will be unable to find any spot on earth where there is absolute quiet. Such a place no longer exists.
Even our oceans are polluted. As we test for global warming, we rig up giant underwater speakers which send out soundwaves that travel right around the globe. Air traffic pollute the skies and deep in space are satellites: an army of whispering spies. In our daily lives we are insects caught in a sticky web of noise. Around us the sounds of sorrow and laughter; the sounds of the dying and the living; ambulances wailing, police cars screaming, frenzied chatter, jackhammers throbbing, cellphones beeping, the incessant beat of music, pounding, pounding. Man's activities - his resonance patterns - are impacting on the whole of the planet. And now the earth itself is humming. Japanese geophysicists have identified 50 notes over two octaves that make up the earth's background hum: a constant low frequency noise.
Sound affects every one of us every single day but we appear sublimely oblivious to its power. We go to the movies and sit happily munching our popcorn, largely unaware of the background music even though for two or three hours it will cause our heartbeats to fluctuate and turn our adrenaline on and off like a tap. We turn up the speakers on our CD player and rarely consider that music can drive up our blood pressure, lead to a drop in body temperature, a decrease in the skin's conductivity, a change in mood. Parents fret about the headbanging sound of an AC/DC song, but all music has insidious power. Even, it seems, music as innocuous as Country and Western. Garth Brooks packing the kind of visceral punch of Eminem or Trent Reznor? The hatted one deserving a spot on the hit list of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center? The mind boggles. But some research suggest that country ballads, those 'tears in beers' songs, may increase the risk of suicide.
Sound can set in motion an avalanche. Soldiers have to break step when they cross a bridge. Loud sounds can put a person at higher risk of having a heart attack. Certain frequencies can kill off bacteria. Studies of plant life show that it can be affected adversely by a constant onslaught of sound. Noise from underwater sonar systems have caused whales to beach themselves and die.
Think what it was like on earth a thousand years ago. Imagine how quiet it must have been; how incredibly rare and precious music was. Now imagine that right this minute, sound waves are suddenly becoming tangible like long trails of fibre. Everyone unable to move. All of us choking, smothering - enmeshed in a dense, unforgiving tangle.
The casual way in which we treat sound stands in sharp contrast to the belief systems of ancient civilisations. In the mystery schools of Egypt, Rome, Tibet and India the knowledge of sound was a highly developed science based on the understanding that vibration lies at the heart of all matter and energy in the universe. Pythagoras reduced music to numbers and mathematical ratios and believed the very same ratios to be applicable to the universe and everything within it. This view of a musical cosmos was adopted by Plato and became the standard throughout the Mediterranean world. Sound was regarded as the very cornerstone of civilisation. Music, especially, was never to be at the disposal of the stupid or the wicked. Said Confucius: 'If you wish to know if a people be well-governed, if its laws be good or bad, examine the music it practises.' In the Shu King, the Book of Odes, it tells of the emperor regularly travelling within his kingdom to test musical instruments to ensure that they corresponded with the five perfect tones and with each other. If they did not, conflict and political instability was sure to follow.
Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensees: 'The silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.' And as we start our journey into the twenty-first century, we do indeed seem to find terror in silence. When we're by ourselves, what is the first thing we do? We switch on the CD player or the TV. Some people have radios in the shower. Bill Gates even have speakers inside his swimming pool. And music is the drug of choice. Everyone from the paper boy on his rounds to the surgeon in his theatre works to its beat.
Churches are empty but rock stadiums are full. In the last week in March, 592 million songs were downloaded from Napster - this after the site attempted to block copyrighted music. With earphones clamped to our heads and minds blissed out by Deftones, Massive Attack, Chopin or Bach, we hook onto a strand of sound a billion years long and we're given wings. Under the influence of Mozart, rats run through mazes faster and more accurately, Alzheimer sufferers function more normally and women giving birth find relief from pain. Yes, not all the music we listen to is Mozart. Some of the music we become addicted to speak of unrelenting alienation; of pain and anger and violence. Demon poetry. But poetry all the same.
But is there something in our genes which predispose us to become addicted to sound? Why is it that music speaks to us so? Scientists are now proposing that the human brain is pre-wired for sound. With PET scans and MRIs they seek to establish that music has biological foundations and that musical preferences are wired into the music centre of our temporal lobes since birth.
But maybe the answer is simply that music brings us close to what is sacred. There must be a reason why sound plays an important role in creation myths; why it is seen as the tool with which cosmos was created out of chaos. The Ancient Chinese believed the origin of the world to lie in an inaudible sacred sound. In the Upanishads it says the sound that is OM is the universe itself. And for Christians the beginning started with a Word. We even talk of the Big Bang - although as David Hykes, musician extraordinaire points out, this term is modelled on the 'noisy violence of our own culture.' Hykes prefers the concept 'Big Ring' for that moment when unknown forces brought the universe into being. Michael Hayes, in his remarkable book The Infinite Harmony, sees in the composition of the DNA molecule - the four nitrogenous bases, the triplet RNA codons, the 64 possible combinations of bases and the 22 signals at the amino-acid stage of development - a biochemical manifestation of the heptatonic musical scale. He concludes: 'As I looked deeper and deeper into the workings of the genetic code, I became convinced that God himself was a musician.'
Maybe it is simply a question that in the presence of music we find grace. As Tori Amos says: 'My fear is stronger than my faith but I walk.' Music will give you that strength. Or to borrow a phrase from Thomas Carlyle, dead these past one hundred and twenty years: 'Music is well said to be the speech of angels.'
In ancient times man was a fly walking across the piano keys of the universe. He left no noise in his wake. That has changed forever. Modern man with his myriad of activities is creating excessive sound. What the long-term impact will be on our environment and our mental health remains to be seen. But maybe the time is now to start listening to the world anew; to be a little less profligate when it comes to noise. Our fragile blue planet is spinning through space like a tumescent, pulsating drop of sound. Earth: pumped up and wired. Feverishly vibrating.
Authors are privileged. Writing is a passion and we are blessed indeed that we are able to share that passion with others. However, the writing life is not without its problems. Moments of serendipity and epiphany are rare. Writing is a lonely business and facing your computer all day long without any-one around can lead to fairly bizarre monologues, not to mention the occasional episode of outright hallucination.
But it is not so much the writing as the publishing process, which is the test. Bring together a group of authors, open a bottle of wine and some searing tales of publishing woe are bound to follow. These usually have to do with the publicity - or rather lack of it - given to the novels of less well-known authors. Publishers reserve their publishing dollars for the latest Clancy or J.K. Rowling. For us lesser scribes the logic of this strategy is a little hard to follow although, admittedly, there probably is still the odd nomad in outer Mongolia who hasn't heard of Harry Potter and who needs to be informed....
My husband, bless his heart, decided to take matters into his own hands. Ever since he was a little boy, Frederick had dreamed of owning a Ferrari, an Aston Martin, a fire truck and a London taxi cab. The first three have as yet eluded his grasp, but a year ago his fantasy of tooling around London in a handsome black sixteen year old Fairway, became true. Not only did he derive great enjoyment from driving down the bus lane illegally and waving airily to would-be passengers trying to flag him down, but he also had the satisfaction of knowing that he was making a contribution to furthering his wife's career. On the doors of the cab were reproductions of the covers of my first two books.
Even the dead have secrets it proclaimed mysteriously on the back left-hand door. The catchy slogan, You will never listen to the world the same way again, was stencilled on the other side. Whether this exposure led to an increase in my sales is debatable but the cab certainly drew some appreciative - if slightly mystified - glances from passers-by.
Sadly, the cab has since been sold: parking problems becoming too onerous. Added to this, I had to ride in the back (no passenger seat next to the driver) and my husband had developed the annoying habit of simply closing the little window behind his head whenever we had an argument and he was tired of listening to me.
Before the cab left my life, however, we took some pictures. They are posted here and I hope you enjoy them!
Where would I rather be right this minute...
Season of the Witch, my fourth novel, is to be published in April this year. It was a challenging book to write and I only finished the proofs in early December 2006. So I am feeling rather drained and at the back of my head I have the sense that I should now be allowed to take it easy - shoes off, tacky drinks with floating umbrellas, bubble baths, marshmallows, B-grade movies on TV.
Sadly, there is no rest for the wicked. My next book has a December 2007 deadline. So I need to work the keyboard!
It is always difficult to get started on a new book: you're not yet comfortable with your characters, the world you're building for them has gaps and the plot is wobbly. Most of the time I find myself thinking I'd rather be some place else than behind my desk facing my laptop. When I told this to a friend of mine who is also a writer, she and I ended up trading emails of where we'd rather be. This was my list.
I'd rather be:
a) in a Cirque de Soleil performance
b) in the dojo
c) in the reading room of the British Museum - but with no specific goal in mind and no pressing research to do.
d) having a meal in Rubens restaurant in Franschoek in the Cape Province
e) having a glass of champagne with the TWACUs in the salon upstairs from the Cheyne Walk Restaurant in Chelsea
e) in Namibia. It is my favourite place in the world and I try to visit as often as I can. Too bad it has now been discovered by every-one and his brother since Brad and Angelina's adventure.
More about Namibia: Long before it became fashionable, the hero in my third book, Windwalker, made his home in a deserted mining town in the Namibian desert. As a fugitive on the run, it was the perfect hide-out: a place where the ghosts walk even during the day...
