Strangers on a train

There’s a guy on this train who keeps smiling to himself. He’s maybe twenty, well-built, with an open fleece top, and tracksuit trousers that have a local rugby club badge on them. And he sits there, staring at the back of the seat in front of him, with an involuntary grin on his face.

This is what I’ve missed about travelling – people watching.

All sorts of wonderful little dramas play out on trains, but I’ve been somewhat reluctant to go on longer rail journeys of late. Waiting for a kidney-stone makes you edgy – the frequent bouts of discomfort really break your concentration – and staying close to home feels safer.

However, with book two off to the copy editor, my focus is back onto number three, and I have a backlog of Bristol locations to research. Normally, this is a job for the weekends, but top of today’s list was the Pervasive Media Studio down at the Watershed, where they have an open day on Fridays. One of my characters needs a suitably creative environment to work in and, as it happened, the studio was everything I’d hoped. A very helpful member of staff showed me around and answered my questions – by the end of the tour, I wished I had the opportunity to work there myself.

Next, I spent some time at Bristol Crown Court, getting to know the workings of the building and watching some of the proceedings from the public galleries, before heading up to Stokes Croft.

There, in a cafe just a few streets from the key locations where book three is set, I was rather startled to discover that the man on the next table had exactly the same day-job as my next villain. These life-imitates-book coincidences just keep occurring, and I’m never quite sure whether to be spooked by them, or simply accept them as uncanny anecdotes, to be stored up for future interviews.

I spent some time walking-off my lunch, round Montpelier and Redland, before it was time to head back to Bristol Templemeads and the train home.

Which is where I am now.

The guy is still smiling. It’s busy tonight, so he spent the first twenty minutes of the journey standing in the aisle, then managed to get a seat next to an extremely attractive young woman. They clearly didn’t know each other – hardly anything passed between them – just a couple of polite words when he took his seat, and again when she got off ten minutes later. But while the train was waiting at her stop, I saw him glancing out of the window and there, walking along the platform, I saw her glance up, pause, and flash him a broad, blushing smile. His face lit up – I can’t remember seeing anyone look so genuinely chuffed – and I suspect he’ll be feeling good all day.

No wonder I get so many ideas on trains. It’s a people-watcher’s paradise...
...and this was one of the nicest moments.

Three

Today (Friday) was an interesting day, at least as far as writing goes. My day job required me to travel to a meeting in Exeter, so I knew I’d have plenty of time sitting on trains and I decided it was time to start fleshing out the draft of book three.

The core of this story has been in my head for some time – in fact, I remember the idea of it really seemed to creep out my lovely agent Eve White when I first met her – and I’ve been jotting down notes and fragments of it for the last few months. There have been several research trips to Bristol, figuring out the key locations, and discussions with some wonderfully helpful Police officers to explore procedures.

But today was significant milestone.

When I write, I have the dreadful habit of going directly from notes to (relatively) final text. I agonise and adjust and I subject each paragraph to many whispered readings as I go. While it may entertain my fellow train passengers to watch someone whose lips move as he tests the wording, I’m told that aiming for something as polished as this is an extremely bad idea. “It’ll take you ages to get a first draft,” they say, and I know exactly what they mean. However, it’s also the way that works for me, so “tough”.

In any event, today I set out with several pages of notes and, by the time I got home this evening, I had the first half of a scene that really pleased me. A little bit of book three now exists!

Of course, this was also the day that I received a list of final book two changes from my editor, so I’ll briefly need to pause and work through those, but it doesn’t matter – the board is set and the pieces are moving.

An Unexpected Journey

Okay, so I'm a bit of a Tolkien fan. Maybe even a huge fan. I re-read The Lord Of The Rings every couple of years and I just adore the whole, epic majesty of Middle Earth. So the release of the first film in The Hobbit trilogy was kind of a big deal for me.

I remember stealing myself for disappointment when I went to see the first part of The Lord Of The Rings, worrying that Peter Jackson might have pushed the book through the Hollywood blender. Thankfully, he stayed close to the plot and the spirit of the original, and delivered a very enjoyable series of films, despite rumoured unhappiness from the writing team about Tolkien's alleged absence of strong female characters (and the curious downplaying of Eowyn, Tolkien's strongest female character).

So this time I wasn't overly worried about The Hobbit being mauled by the movies and, as it turned out, it was really a very enjoyable adaptation. Yes, there are one or two face-palm moments, such as Radagast's racing rabbits, and the Indiana Jones sequences in Goblin Town, but these are minor points that do nothing to spoil the experience. They also seemed to please the younger members of the audience, and this seems entirely appropriate as The Hobbit was always a tale for children to enjoy.

Perhaps that's the thing that pleased me most about it – that it was generally faithful to the spirit of the original story. Where things have necessarily been changed, care has been taken to ensure that the changes don't trample the books underfoot. Even the additional plot thread of the Pale Orc uses characters and back-story created by Tolkien, weaving them into the plot to keep up pace and tension.

The film cleverly manages to bring real individuality to the thirteen dwarves, rather than treating them as a group of extras, and Martin Freeman does a fantastic job of playing the younger Bilbo. Sir Ian McKellen is on fine form as Gandalf, and somehow Andy Serkis and the FX team at Weta deliver a Gollum that inspires both revulsion and pity – an amazing achievement for a wholly digital character.

It's exciting, it's engaging, and it's visually stunning. I think my only real complaint is that we have a rather long wait for the next instalment.

Brave

I was watching BBC Sports Personality Of The Year this evening. It’s humbling to hear so many inspirational stories, in particular those of the Paralympians, who overcome so much just to be able to compete. You can’t help but feel pride in their achievement, admiration for their bravery.

But as I watched, it occurred to me that I know someone else who exhibits the same spirit, the same bravery.

My beautiful wife Anna has had a profoundly difficult eighteen months. Since she became ill last year, she has been in a constant battle with four serious medical and neurological conditions, any one of which would have stopped me in my tracks. But despite her physical pain, and the extraordinary neurological challenges she faces, she has never given up.

It’s hard to explain how proud I am of her. We’ve been together since we were teenagers, but I have never been more impressed by who she is than now. And I am certain that the same spirit and determination that drove those Paralympians forward, is in her.

She’s the bravest person I know. And if they gave out medals for resilience, she’d win gold.

Restoration

The last few weeks have been unusual, what with the hospital visits and the sudden bouts of unexpected discomfort, but despite the distractions I’ve managed to complete a reworked draft of book two.

It’s been a story of highs and lows – there was a true feeling of elation when I completed the initial draft, and a little bit of gloom when I had dismantled the “finished” book to restructure a number of plot elements – but the pieces have all come together again and, thankfully, they seem to fit.

Having gone through the publishing process with Eye Contact, I know that there are still a number of edit stages to go through, so I’m not agonising quite as much as I did that first time (otherwise I’d have been too angst-ridden to email it). As it is, the reworked version has now been sent, and I’m hopeful that it will be a stronger, more enjoyable read.

I’m certainly glad that this phase is complete and, best of all, it means I can do something I’ve been putting off for quite some time – get back into book three!

Ouch!

I've always had a thing about hospitals. I hate them. There's never a happy reason to go to them (except for the Maternity wards) and I have an absolute horror of even visiting.

So I suppose it's a good indication of how uncomfortable I was feeling that I didn't mind one bit when the ambulance came. The nice paramedics, with their fabulous gas & air, and their delicious morphine, were most welcome. I'm told that renal colic / kidney stones aren't a lot of fun and I have to say that I agree.

After a weekend in hospital, and with the pain subsided, I came home feeling fragile. Today was my first day out - it was oddly unsettling to leave the house, but it gave me a reason to get dressed and that definitely improved my outlook. Here's hoping that the worst of it is over, and my scan next week comes back with good news.

In the meantime, if anyone was planning on buying me alcohol this Christmas, please don't - I have a new favourite tipple, and it's name is Entonox: gorgeous gas & air!

Broken

It was all going so well. I wrapped up a draft of book two that I was happy with, let a select few people look at it, and collated their feedback. And then I made my big mistake.

 

I got cocky.

I started thinking about book three, confident that book two would just require a bit of editing and polishing. This is the writer's equivalent of Wile E Coyote adopting a self-satisfied smile, blissfully unaware of the huge, boulder-shaped shadow growing around him. I was completely unprepared when, out of the blue, my agent asked a question about one of the principal characters. It seemed like a straightforward "What about XYZ?" sort of question, and I remember thinking "Hmmm, that might require me to change a couple of things."

Unfortunately, once the question is in your head, there's no getting away from it. And in a story where everything is connected to everything else, changing a couple of things has quickly evolved into changing a lot of things.

I've just returned from a weekend, locked away, cutting and pasting and rewriting. It's certainly been productive – I achieved more than I hoped and I've got lots of new material – but lots more is needed. And with every change breaking something else, it feels like I've spent two days working to take something that was essentially complete, to something that looks like it has been disassembled by men with hammers.

I'm sure I had an uplifting closing-point in mind when I began this post, but for the moment it escapes me. I'm hitting the Publish button in the hope of a triumphant follow-up post, some time in the next week or so, where I share my relief that it all worked out and the loose-ends were tied up. That'd be nice.

But for now, that's all folks!