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Making it up as I go along

Making it up as I go along

Tag Archives: Guest Post

Guest Post with Jan Baynham

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

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Guest Post

It’s a strange time for authors to be letting their new books loose into the world, not least debuts. Lockdown means a very different approach to publishing. So, this month it’s a genuine delight to invite Jan Baynham to be my guest. Jan is one of the most hardworking writers I know – my admiration for her is boundless. She’s also great fun, kind & incredibly generous towards other writers. Her debut novel, Her Mother’s Secret was published on 21 April by Ruby Fiction.

The book is described by the publisher as, ‘A wonderful sixties saga from a promising new talent’ & I couldn’t agree more. I asked Jan to share some of her thoughts on her path to publication. So, without further ado – over to you, Jan!

It was September 2015, my first visit to Tenby Book Fair, as it was called then. I got talking to Carol who’d signed a contract for her debut novel, ‘Ghostbird’, to be published by Honno the following March. I was about halfway through the initial draft of my first novel and loving the buzz of writing. My dream of becoming a published author was just starting to lurk at the back of my mind, with me never really thinking it would happen.

I came very late to the party having only started writing fiction when I retired. At that first meeting, Carol’s excitement and enthusiasm for what she had achieved shone through and was a definite motivating factor in my journey to publication. Our genres could not be more different, but her attitude and sheer delight in writing influenced me a great deal. She has been very supportive ever since even though we’ve actually met in person a mere handful of times at book fairs and literary festivals.

I started to build on what I’d learned on the novel writing workshop I’d taken the previous year, taking on board recommendations for workshops and reading articles about honing the craft of writing. A turning point for me was when I was invited to join a local Chapter meeting of the Romantic Novelists’ Association in Cardiff. My novel wasn’t a romance, but it had a love interest in it so in January 2016 I joined the association’s New Writers’ Scheme. In it, published authors critique your manuscript and give detailed feedback.

That first critique gave me both the confidence to carry on and plenty of advice as to how to edit the manuscript to become a tighter novel. Once I started submitting to publishers, I had to deal with rejection. It was always a disappointment and the wait could be endless, but once the rejections started to contain feedback rather than a ‘thanks but no thanks’, I knew I was making progress. My dream of publication was moving closer. Words like ’perhaps’, ‘maybe’ were entering my thoughts. I’d joke with friends that if it did happen, I’d be the oldest debut novelist!

‘Her Mother’s Secret’ was taken up quite quickly in the end. I had a one-to-one session with a publisher at the RNA Conference in 2018 who asked me to submit the finished manuscript. After reading it and giving positive feedback, she sent it to the company’s submissions panel, so I was one step further again towards publication. They did finally reject it but sent such detailed feedback that I worked on and Ruby Fiction offered me a contact in May 2019. Because the novel is mainly set in Greece, there wasn’t time for it to be published and marketed for the summer season last year, but I achieved my dream of becoming a published author in April 2020. It was both exciting and nerve-wracking, but I did it! My advice to anyone reading this is never give up. It’s never too late!

Thank you, Jan for taking time to chat! Best wishes for your book – I hope it flies!

My review:
For a story that, on the face of it, might appear to be a light summer read, Her Mother’s Secret is as dramatic as it is entertaining. In her debut novel, Jan Baynham lends an assured confidence to the traditional ‘love story’. Yes, it’s very much a love story, but there are dark dealings & darker agendas lending the book a crucial edge; a sense of excitement that never lets up.

In 1969, Elin Morgan, an art student, arrives on the Greek island of Péfka to attend a painting school run by a famous artist. The sun beats down on the idyllic setting but in the shadows lurks a grimmer story. In true 60s style it features sex & drugs (drug dealers) & one assumes, rock ‘n roll! Twenty-two years later, Elin’s daughter, Lexi follows in her mother’s footsteps, in search of the secrets hinted at in a diary belonging to Elin.

The author’s love for & knowledge of Greek society & customs shines through, giving the book an air of authenticity. And Her Mother’s Secret is redolent with vivid descriptions. The Greek family dynamics are beautifully observed; a sense of quiet menace ripples beneath the surface as Elin becomes embroiled in chaos, love, family drama & murder. And two decades later, Lexi discovers that some love stories never end. This a well observed story; contemporary & light but with a depth that suggests a fresh, new talent.

You can buy the book here: tinyurl.com/y8dvtlbf

Links to Jan’s social media:
twitter.com/JanBaynham
www.facebook.com/JanBayLit/
And her blog: Jan’s Journey Into Writing:
janbaynham.blogspot.com/

Blog Tour – Day Three mash up!

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Carol Lovekin in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blog Tour, Day Three, Guest Post, Review, Snow Sisters

Yesterday, SNOW SISTERS made her first live outing & went to a book fair. She looked very pretty & behaved impeccably.

narberth 2

While we were hanging out & having fun, in a galaxy far away, the charming Annie (THE MISSTERY) hosted Day Three of the blog tour here. And she left a generous review for me to come home to.

Annie also offered me a guest post. She gave me the freedom to write what I wanted & when the sometimes vexed question concerning ‘IDEAS’ cropped up, it gave me the opportunity to take a sideways look at it.

“The Nature of Glimmerings & the Unanswerable Question by Carol Lovekin

If I could choose a genre in which to place my books, it would be Quirky. Since authors aren’t allowed to pick and choose let’s call mine ‘contemporary fiction’ with hints of magical realism. (Which isn’t at all the same as fantasy, let’s be clear.) My stories are firmly rooted in reality. I explore possibilities: the fine line between the everyday and the world of enchantment.

I’m a feminist and my stories reflect this too. I explore family relationships: how people, women in particular, respond to loss and how they survive. My books have ghosts, although there are no clanking chains or blood-chilling wails. All it takes to embrace my ghosts, and the magic I conjure, is a temporary suspension of disbelief.

Enter my loyal reader, with her penchant for a quirky ghost story and a liking for strong women. And her question: ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’

Until I began writing seriously I would have claimed my ideas came out of ‘nowhere’ which is of course nonsensical. Ideas, however obscure, have to come from somewhere. And yet, paradoxically, the notion that a story must stem from a single concept is absurd.

It’s the word ‘idea’ itself I find problematical. It posits the notion that the genesis of a novel lies in an idea per se: a definable moment the writer can recall.

The origin of most stories is, for me at any rate, a random gathering of scattered thoughts; glimmerings as slender and obscure as a line in a poem or novel triggering a sideways digression. And as I forget most of my night dreams the moment I wake up, I’ve never dreamed a story into existence. Any I do recall are rarely logical – and I don’t write fantasy remember – so my dreams are unlikely to serve me on any level whatsoever. Day dreaming however is another thing entirely: it’s where glimmerings evolve, the ‘what if’ moments and barely discernible fragments that come out of left field.

Singular words have always appealed to me. I collect them: words like cwtch which is Welsh for hug. And more often than not, a single word can entice me and suggest a theme for a scene, or present me with an unexpected tangent.

My study overlooks trees and low hills. Some mornings the mist lies as heavy as sleep and it’s like living on an island. I like to imagine the Avalon barge emerging between the mists to collect me. It never does, and chewing my pencil I sigh, scan a sky full of birds and watch instead for the ones I call my word birds. They circle a tall beech tree, ignored by a big bossy crow – my hunched, feathery muse. (I kid myself it’s the same one every day – shouting kraa from the topmost branch, urging me to stop lollygagging and get on with my work.)

These word birds are my writing familiars; they drop their glimmerings onto my windowsill; leave words and phrases in the edges of my hair. I gather up these offerings and it’s anyone’s guess what they will become. Not all the words make it onto the page and many get away. Or I put them away, because no sensible writer ever throws anything out.

The glimmerings may not at first gift me entire plots or even vague outlines. What they do is hover in a ghost location in my imagination. The place where I wave my pencil wand and cast my story spells; listen for my word birds, in case they have more enchantment for me.

My loyal reader is a gem and I love her. The fact remains, next time she asks me where my ideas come from, I shall have no choice but to answer, ‘I have no idea…’ “

My sincere thanks to Annie. You can read more on her interesting blog:
themisstery.com

 

My novels

Wild Spinning Girls
Wild Spinning Girls
Snow Sisters
Snow Sisters
Ghostbird
Ghostbird
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