BG: Now with Added Translation

For my friend Di, who claims not to be able to read German, though I doubt it because she is so damn clever at everything else she does, here is a very rough translation of the Balthasar’s Gift promo materials:

Pietermaritzburg is the capital city of the South African province KwaZulu-Natal. And the two main beats of the local Gazette are crime and health, which says something about Pietermaritzburg.

Crime reporter Magdalena Cloete knows her town and has no illusions about it. One morning, a man is shot on the front verandah of the local AIDS Mission. A political murder? Maggie’s instincts go into red alarm, since the victim, Balthasar Meiring had tried in vain only the week before to draw her attention to an ongoing court case. It focused on the sales of AIDS medication that fraudulently claimed to cure the disease. Was there more to it than the usual business machinations?

As she starts to investigate, Maggie finds she has a gang of thugs on her heels. Threats and physical attacks only serve to heighten her determination. In the meantime, she learns enough about Balthasar’s life and his commitment to his cause that she loses all professional distance and risks her own skin …

And the back cover text:

Farmer’s son Balthasar Meiring was active in an AIDS Mission – until someone put four bullets in his chest. Crime reporter Magdalena Cloete suspects that there is much more to Meiring’s murder. On her search for truth, politicians and gangsters do their best to get in her way.

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Balthasars Vermaechtnis – Publication Date 17 April 2013!

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The Next Big Thing

I’ve been tagged by my new friend, writer JJ Marsh, to do this meme.

The idea of this is that a writer puts up a post on his or her own blog answering ten questions about his/her work in progress, and then “tags” three writers to do the same. Then, the writer posts a link to his/her “tagger” and to the people he/she is “tagging” so that readers who are interested can visit those pages and perhaps discover some new authors whose work they’d like to read.

I’ve chosen to focus on my completed – and soon to be debut – novel Balthasar’s Gift, rather than my work-in-progress, because the latter is still in bits and nowhere near being a coherent, pleasing whole of which I can speak in sensible sentences. It’s still at the stage of being a feeling, a synopsis and a few thousand words on my laptop. However, when I do think about it, I feel little short shards of joy that are painful and pleasing at the same time – but it’s too close to talk about.

So, herewith, I give you The Next Big Thing meme:

What is the working title of your book?

Balthasar’s Gift. It was always so. My German publisher has indicated that it will need a different title in German, which is probably sensible as Balthasars Geschenk doesn’t have much of a ring.

Where did the idea come from for this book?

Two places. First, a huge feeling of rage that Thabo Mbeki’s government were denying that HIV caused AIDS and thus killing people with their lack of action. Second, an image of a juggler. I put the two together.

What genre does your book fall under?

It’s crime. The first draft was literary fiction, but luckily I woke up to the fact that this story needed to be told in a very specific way, and by a very specific character who I needed to create specifically for the purpose.

Which actors do you have in mind to play in the movie of your book?

I wrote this role for Charlize Theron. But if she turns it down, my other choice is Jodie Foster, circa The Accused. As for the love interest, Spike, I spotted him on the street in Heidelberg a few weeks ago but I’m not sure if acting’s his gig.

What’s the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Oh bloody howl. This is so difficult. Here’s a little something I wrote last night but it’s by no means the final version:

Journalist Maggie Cloete has no idea what she’s in for when she investigates the murder of Balthasar Meiring, an AIDS activist, and discovers that the family of AIDS orphans he’s taken in are being targeted by a dubious local politician and a posse of vengeful gangsters.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have an agent, who has sold the German rights to a publisher in Hamburg. We are still looking to nail down the English rights. However, if we don’t succeed in selling BG into the English market, I have not discounted self-publishing. It’s a lot more respectable nowadays, especially if authors are happy to be both professional and entrepreneurial.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the novel?

Fifteen long months. This baby has been slow in the making: four years, in fact. However, I think by writing a novel I have learned how to write a novel and with better planning, Karkloof Blue will take less than half that time.

Which other books in this genre would you compare to your novel?

It’s Nadime Gordimer (South Africa, politics, pain, race, redemption) meets Janet Evanovich (gritty, acerbic, tart).

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Inequality – the unfair deal some people get and the privilege others get just by dint of birth – and how people challenge their birth-right to make a new world for themselves.

What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

It’s feminist crime fiction. I believe in turning over stereotypes – men as warriors, women as victims – and giving power to the disempowered. Writing that was a lot of fun, but it was also a challenge to me, as I had to keep to keep questioning my own filters and biases and trying to break through those. Whether I’ve succeeded fully still remains to be seen.

Who to tag?

Well this meme has been around some, but how about these favourite writer friends of mine?

Melissa Romo

Christine Lee Zilke

Nicole Doherty

Nova Ren Suma

Liz Fenwick

If I haven’t tagged you, please feel free to play!

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A book deal for BG (and me)

Dear readers, I am so very, very happy to be able to tell you that I have sold the German rights to Balthasar’s Gift to Argument Verlag! I can now, without conscience, call myself an author.

The book will be out, in German, in Spring 2013. Argument have an imprint called Ariadne, which focuses on crime fiction by women. They tend to publish left-leaning, feminist fiction with edgy female protagonists. Ahem!

I have known since late April, so have already drunk my body weight in celebratory alcohol, but tonight I will sleep happy knowing that the contract is signed and we are on our way.

Next step: a contract with an English publisher so that my friends and family can read BG in the language in which it was written. Hold thumbs as BG wings its way around publishers’ desks in the UK!

If you want to get a feel for some of the themes in the book, here’s its mood board on Pinterest.

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Turning Up

If you have 60 minutes to spare, here’s an amazing video on creativity and the brain with neurologist Oliver Sachs and artists Chuck Close and Richard Serra: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11264

About halfway in, Chuck Close says something that electrified me. Charlie Rose asks him about inspiration and how that figures in his art and Close says, to great general amusement, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just turn up for work.”

This week I turned in draft 13 of Balthasar’s Gift, the draft that, if they are happy about it, my agent and her co-agents are going to start shopping around. Thirteen drafts and three-and-a-half years of writing. If I was still relying on inspiration, I’d have given up years ago.

Close’s off-the-cuff comment also made me realise why it took me so long to commit to being a writer. I was waiting for the inspiration. Now I know it’s mostly about the work.

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Happiness and Revisions

I’m still unpacking boxes but am gloriously happy in my new home. Living without a kitchen is interesting, but since I was the one who sold the concept to my family as a big adventure, I’m not allowed to complain. Let’s just say that once the cooking on camping plates and the washing up in the bath comes to an end, I’ll be even happier than I am now. Fit to burst happy. Disgustingly, floating on air happy.

I had more happy news about Balthasar’s Gift. My agent M works with a fabulous London literary agency who sell her books in the British market, and she sells theirs in the German market. A couple of agents read BG over Christmas and reportedly ‘loved it.’ They have asked for some revisions and after a call with them next week, I will be getting to it.

This is the third set of agent revisions I will have done since August last year. The road to publication is not easy! And ’tis filled with revisions!

However, I can see BG getting stronger and stronger and that makes me – you guessed it – happy.

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Hot Music

In two weeks I’ll be swinging down to Stuttgart with Germany’s Top Husband and our very good friends M and P to see South Africa’s hottest band, The Parlotones, in concert.

Here’s their very sexy song, Push Me to the Floor, courtesy of YouTube:

Now that I feel inspired, I’m off to chisel a sex scene.

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Carving and Chiselling

You’d think by draft seven, my novel would have reached a place of repose. You’d think after two and a half years of writing, I could wipe my hands and say, ‘This is finished.’ You’d think that by now, every plot connection would be in place, every character would justify her presence in the narrative and the beginning and the end would be singing hymns to each other.

You’d be wrong.

This process of learning how to write a novel by writing a novel has not ended. It has been a long and trying test of my patience, but it has also been a time to learn the craft. And the learning is not over yet.

I’m at the place in a manuscript where I know what happens to whom and why. I know my protagonist and her antagonists very well. I have a narrative arc, a beginning, a middle, a crisis, a climax and an end. I have a setting. I may even have a voice.

Now I’m at the point where every part of the story has to work for its place. I’m threading the connections together, trying to make them clear. It may be a mystery but nothing can be murky. At every juncture, I’m asking myself, ‘Why?’ Why does he say that? Why does she do that? Does this character move the story forward? Is that character just a nice piece of furniture or does she have a role? What makes the protagonist suddenly decide to do that?

Last night, I met my agent for the first time. She’s in Frankfurt for the Book Fair and I drove up to have dinner with her. She said writing a novel is like carving a statue. You start with a block of stone. You take a chisel and make a shape. When you have a shape, you stand back and look at it. Then you start again. Then you stand back and look. Then you start again. Each time you carve, you make an area clearer. Sometimes you have to go away and rest. After that, you come back with a new vision of how it should be and you start carving again. But it’s still not finished.

You keep chiselling until the planes are clear and crisp, until the piece of stone in front of you matches the vision in your head.

That’s where I am. Chiselling. Making sure the planes are crisp. So that one day I can sit back and say, ‘That was what I was trying to do.’

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Writing the Details

I’ve just attached five Post-its to the top of my computer screen. This is what they say:

Smell

Taste

Feel

Sound

Look like

It sounds banal, but when I’m writing, I get so caught up in the plot and the characters, I forget the sensory detail. As a reader, I know it’s those details that keep a reader immersed in the plot and attached to the characters and their experiences. Once I have finished this pass of making the final final (note the self: these are final ones) plot changes, I’m going to do another pass for sensory detail.

As a writer, and a writer of initial drafts, I err on visual details. I’m describing a town I know and love and I hope that my putative one-day readers will be able to visualise it too. However, to increase that experience, to make it more three-dimensional, I need to include smell, taste, sound and sensation.

What does a thunderstorm smell like?

How does a curry taste?

How does it feel to drive a motorbike at top speed along a highway? (Don’t know, but I can guess.)

What does a forest sound like at night?

I’ve read two books recently that were wonderfully competent, with fleshed out characters and a narrative arc to die for. Both have received literary plaudits. But they were so lacking in sensory detail that as a reader I felt emotionally detached. I started out willing to care, but by the end I no longer did.

I don’t want that.

I want my readers to feel heart-stopping thrill, I want them to be immersed and come out at the end saying, ‘I felt that.’

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The Story of My Novel So Far

I started writing a novel in January 2008.  I had a germ of an idea and a burning feeling that if I didn’t start writing a novel Right This Minute, I would never do it and would one day die old and bitter and angry with myself. I spent all of January writing, and at the end of the month, submitted my first page to Nathan Bransford’s Suprisingly Essential First Page Challenge. Then I went on holiday.

I spent the time fighting my fear on the ski slopes and not thinking about my novel, but back home I logged on to discover that there had been 645 entries in the competition and I was one of the six finalists. I felt faint and a bit nauseous and an incredible joy. Someone, somewhere, thought my tiny germ of an idea had legs. I didn’t win the competition, but being a finalist gave me the confidence to carry on.

That was not to say it was without fear. It wasn’t. Every time I sat at the computer, I had dizzying anxiety that I had to force down. But there were moments when it flowed and that felt so good that I kept writing, right until the end of the first draft, fifteen months later. It took that long because I am a pantser and also because I write in the cracks and corners of my life, between school runs and play dates and writing for money.

At that point, my novel was literary fiction, written from the perspective of three different characters. On rereading I had a strong sense that it wasn’t pulling together, but I wasn’t sure how to fix that, so I went on holiday. Driving home from Berlin, a brand-new character popped into my head, complete with voice and attitude. I wrote a storming new first chapter, and as I did so, it dawned on me that the vehicle this story needed was not literary fiction. I was writing crime! A murder mystery! Six months later, I finished the second draft. On the advice of my online writing friends at Litopia, I put that draft in the drawer and concentrated on writing other things.

I started the third draft in January this year, a process of weighing and balancing, and posted my early chapters on Litopia for critique. Receiving critiques was exquisitely painful, but incredibly useful. I learnt what my tics were, began to understand why telling was bad and showing was good, and started to think about my story at word level.

I gave it to two other people to read: my husband, who is clever, loves books and crime fiction in particular, and another friend, who has been my writing mentor. She has always encouraged me to find the time for my writing, to make space for it my life.

I finished the third draft and then mailed Nathan Bransford, to collect my prize from February 2008 – a query critique from the lovely NB himself. He agreed, I sent it, he sent suggestions and then wrote some words that made my heart skip several beats: ‘Is this ready to be considered? If so, I’d be happy to take a look at the first 30 pages.’  I quickly made his suggested changes and sent him my new query and the first 30 pages.

My novel was not for Nathan. He sent me a very polite email saying, ‘I think you have an intriguing premise and this is an interesting setting, but …’ Disappointed, I decided to ask the advice of a dear friend who is a very successful talent scout. Her words were tough: lots of rookie errors, too much tell not show, first person is all wrong.

After a couple of days of rubbing my solar plexus where the punch landed, I started on draft four, changing it from first to third person. I sent the new version to my beta readers, who agreed with me that Maggie, the novel’s protagonist, was coming alive. However, one of them told me that she was still not relating to Maggie and the reader needed some back story to understand why she was so prickly. I wrote draft five, threading in some back story, giving Maggie a history and a reason for so passionately wanting to solve this particular mystery.

My husband and my mentor said, ’It’s ready. Submit.’

In July, I wrote an email to an agent in Berlin. We had had a brief conversation in 2008, when I had confidently told her the novel would be finished by the end of the year. In my 2010 email, I said there had been many drafts since then, but that I was now feeling ready to submit. She said, ‘Sounds intriguing. Send it to me.’

Dear readers, the long and the short of it is, you are now looking at an agented writer. I signed the contract this week and have started on the revisions requested by my agent. I’m still fighting the fear, but the joy in my belly is beating down the nausea and dizziness.

Writing this novel has been a long journey. It is by no means over. Many revisions and changes lie ahead of me and publication is not guaranteed.

But I love what I do. I’m proud I took that first step into the abyss 31 months ago. And I’m grateful to the kind, intelligent, wise, thoughtful people who have helped me get this far, from the ones who’ve been shouting encouragement into loud-hailers since I was six to the ones who’ve read this blog and listened to me talk about the process to the ones who’ve picked over words and helped me write better sentences.

You know who you are. Thank you.

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