Rebecca Lloyd's Blog

This year, my short novel, Oothangbart, will be published by Pillar International Publishing in Ireland. Because it's a truly guileless book, I've tended to keep it close to me and not try to get it published. I guess in many ways it feels very personal, as I wrote it at a time in my life when I myself was feeling vulnerable and was conscious that I was on the verge of changing my job, my house, the city I lived in .... and therefore, I supposed, something would happen to my writing, something bad that is. It did take me some time to get back into my stride with writing when I moved, but I didn't have any real need to be so anxious about it.

I hope that Oothangbart will be a book that most people can relate to as it is about identity, longing, bewilderment, and being in love which many of us could have been from time to time.

The following is a short quote from the book:-
In The Time of Dreaming, some fellows had talked openly about Bristol, and although there were a few differences in the detail, many had agreed it was a far grander place than Oothangbart, and that all the fellows and sweetfellows there were strong and noble. ‘Much higher flagpoles,’ a large fellow had suggested, ‘very ornate statues and a fellow can reach high office quickly. And where in Oothangbart someone might only have one or two little fellows doing things for his comfort, in Bristol a Grand Fellow has at least ten, if not more.’
‘I shouldn’t suppose they have an escalator that only escalates on the upside either,’ someone else had murmured. ‘Rather, a Grand Fellow steps on, and is taken round full circle without having to move his legs one bit.’
Donal had listened quietly, and said very little, for his own ideas about it were quite different, and he knew it was wise to keep silent. In his imagination, it was a place where a fellow’s own business was not constantly scrutinised, a place where no one needed to compare himself to the next fellow, or put another fellow in an awkward spot with prying questions whose only purpose was to bring comfort to the one who asked. He was much in accord with Hutchinson on the subject of questioning for its own sake, or for devious purposes.
He had not wondered much about the physical properties of the place itself—the streets, the houses and the public buildings. Of course, some fellows, in his imagination, and maybe even sweetfellows—for why not?—had management tasks, otherwise things would not get done. But to Donal’s way of thinking workplaces were not awash with managers, over-managers, sub-managers, under-managers, small bosses and big bosses, and each of them overbearing and pompous. Those in important jobs were modest and quiet, and kept that way in the knowledge that they only held office for a short span of time. In such a place, a street escalator wouldn’t even be needed.'

I'd love to be able to find something good to say about the act of self-publishing. Perhaps there is just one thing that's not discouraging, and it's that the numbers of vanity publishers who prey on writers with big egos and little understanding of the publishing business, have reduced in the wake of the rash of self-publishing that goes on now. The only thing that anyone else has ever offered up as 'a good thing' is the idea that there is always the chance for a self-published book to be 'discovered.' But I would say why publish it yourself in the first place if really you wanted it taken up by a professional? That's a difficult question to answer with any honesty, unless self-publishers are prepared to admit that they have gone down that dreary route in desperation because they can't tolerate being rejected by the industry and have actually tried to get their work accepted by a publisher. Then you'd have to ask how many rejections does it take to throw someone into self-publishing mode? What? ten, thirty, seventy rejections for the same piece of work? What?
The truth about idea of the self-published book that gets picked up by a real publisher is that it's simply a stupid myth that further encourages would-be authors into that act of sheer vanity. It might have happened once or twice, but that's all, and it did NOT happen to 50 Shades, by the way.
The other observation that's worth mentioning is that every time you go on a tour of publishers' sites, you see that the numbers of them that are refusing to consider any 'self-published' works is increasing ... exponentially. I suppose it must be like someone walking into a shoe menders with a home made shoe and asking if it could be fixed.
I find self-publishing utterly bewildering, because surely there is zero credit in doing it? Surely you just come out of it looking like a vain egocentric person... who quite likely isn't really a writer. And isn't that shaming? Perhaps the people who resort to it, underestimate the level of patience, discipline, love of the craft, self-belief yet lack of ego, that it takes to become a published writer. Quite recently someone in the publishing industry likened 'self-publishers' to people singing opera in the bath, or words to that effect, in other words not the real thing. I have my own hardly ever spoken aloud word linked to the idea of 'self'that I think is an appropriate description of the 'act.'

It was hard to think of what to say at my book launch for The View from Endless Street [WiDo Publishing] and Mercy [Tartarus Press]. But I had chosen the story I was going to read and managed it with hardly any glitches, in fact I got right inside the story and relished reading it out aloud. But the event itself was only two hours long... not long enough. It would've been better if it had been three. Anyhow, The View from Endless Street is 4th in the ten best sellers for this week in Foyles and that's great. Mind you, the other book is a beautiful hardback and does cost a deal more money and so it stands to reason that Endless Street would move faster.

I have recently come across a short story competition in which the contributors were asked to put all their details in the footer of their submitted stories, I couldn't find the organisers, so I wrote to some people who probably do know who they are and said the following:-

I can't find out who might be organising the XXX Short Story compo, but if you know, I wonder if you could suggest that the name of the writer is not put in the footer of the story, rather each writer gets a number, and that number is put on the ms, and then later matched with the name. Otherwise, suppose a well known writer entered a story, I would defy anyone not to react to the name in the footer and be affected in their judgement of the work. The other issue is that if the situation is left as it is, I believe you may have many inexperienced short story writers, but those of us who are published and experienced in the form would certainly not participate. I mean this in the kindliest way, but it is such a fundamental error not to ensure all is anonymous.'

I hope they take it to heart, it's even worse in my opinion than my other bugbear around this issue which is that competitions that run annually sometimes keep the same people to do the judging and don't even have a guest judge on their panel. This means that, gradually over time the stories that win the particular compo. will become more and more like each other, and how can that be good?

Richard Thomas has compiled and edited a remarkable collection of stories in his anthology The New Black: A Neo-Noir Anthology. I’d long despaired of finding literary writing and good ideas in contemporary ‘horror’ after Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes written in 1962. Instead, I’ve felt that from then until now the reading public have for the most part been swamped in cliché characters and ill-thought out storylines. If there have been a few good writers of dark stories over this time, I’ve missed them, [but that is not to say that there haven’t been writers who are well known in the Horror genre of course.] However, having read The New Black, my interest and faith in writing of the dark kind is restored as each story in the anthology is unique and the quality of the writing is excellent.
While all the stories that make up The New Black are unique, there are also a few breath-taking ones. Loneliness is easy to find amongst these stories, and so it should be as it is something humans fear almost as much as death itself. Addiction crops up strongly as well, but I think you could view those two conditions, addiction and loneliness, as being more or less the same thing anyway.
Father, Son, Holy Rabbit by Stephen Graham Jones is one of the two stories I noticed had a slightly Carver-esque quality to it in its simple bold statements and its tenderness. The story idea is fantastic, and when you realise what’s happened, you’re compelled to go back and re-read a bit, this time asking yourself, ‘does the boy know?’ The other story that struck me as Caver-esque was Fuzzyland by Richard Lange. I liked the sinister splinter-sentences that begin to creep in such as, ‘Nobody ever noticed that I would leave the room so cramped with anger that it hurt to breathe.’ The writer takes you on a real journey full of wonderful detail about ordinary American life, and I loved this: ‘A flock of birds scatters across the smoky sky like a handful of gravel.’
Each story is strong and unique in its own right; there is That Baby by Lindsay Hunter whose language use and sentence structure fits so precisely with her wonderfully horrible story, and I loved this image of the baby’s eyes ‘…grey milk ringed with spider’s legs…’. And there’s The Etiquette Of Homicide, a sparse, acidic and frightening story by Tara Laskowski. I loved the sensual writing in Michaela Morrissette’s The Familiars. Her story is one of possession, and it’s a hypnotising read. Another very dark tale is Dial Tone by Benjamin Percy. This story echoes a kind of despair, although it’s written so cleverly that I am unable to explain its darkness properly until towards the end when the story begins to beautifully congeal.
There are stories in this anthology that have terrific endings, The Truth And All Its Ugly by Kyle Minor is one of those, this is an all too ‘human’ story with a wicked ending.
The way the writers have handled the sinister is very different, in some it creeps up slowly as in It’s Against The Law To Feed The Ducks, by Paul Tremblay. A delightful little refrain, perfectly matched to the terrifying inference beneath, punctuates this wistful story that reveals little about itself for quite a while, and what it deals with is so big that it is never told as an outright fact. In other stories the sinister is immediate as in Craig Clevenger’s Act Of Contrition, where the horror is suggested rather than stated. Not only is the setting creepy, but right from the beginning, the attention to detail that only matters to the main character suggests something is very wrong indeed. The writing style is really powerful, the build-up is relentless, and the refrain, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ heightens the tension wonderfully.
I always think there is plenty of horror is to be found in everyday life, and Dredge by Matt Bell is a riveting and very atmospheric story that fits this idea well – ‘When Punter pictures the place where other people keep their feelings, all he sees is his own trapped scream…’ Not only is this a very powerful story, but it’s compulsive reading because you can’t help wanting to know what exactly Punter is going to do. Again, all that happens in Roxane Gay’s simply told and strong story How, is perfectly possible in real life. Some of the darkness here is the nature of the male characters; their fantasies and expectations. The story is encapsulated in, ‘Hanna looks at all the broken people sitting in her living room on her broken furniture…’ And, Blue Hawaii by Rebecca Jones-Howe, an unflinching story about addiction with ants as a repeated theme and clever echoes of longing and loneliness, is again all too possible in real life. Likewise, Sunshine For Adrienne, by Antonia Crane is a powerful and realistic story about addiction with some extraordinary descriptions. Thinking still of ‘real life,’ Rust And Bone by Craig Davidson is a stunner of a story. The writing is awesome and intelligent and the story narrows down to reveal the main character and his life skilfully, and then on top of that, the story itself is excellent. Another one which is not only skilfully written but is a terrific idea for a story is Christopher Hitchens by Vanessa Veselka. One of her characters says, ‘…all beliefs, are like a series of tunnels. What we are after here is an open road.’ It’s a sophisticated and funny story with a strange subtlety, and there are some terrific little phrases such as, ‘Lyle thinks small talk puts people at ease.’ [I love that]. A slightly similar story to this, in that both feature organisations that can change people, is Instituto by Roy Kesey. In this strange and haunting story, Stanley and his surroundings are made perfect and he should be glad, but then he thinks about the three most important people in his life.
The anthology is not without humour and in particular Joe Meno’s odd and enjoyable Children Are The Only Ones Who Blush, is, if creepy, also darkly comic. It brings to mind the novel Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and it features an ex-psychiatrist with a second career as a dentist, [how could you ever trust him?]
Then there are a couple of stories that were a great pleasure to read and would’ve fitted easily into the more traditional horror genre. The first of these is Dollhouse by Craig Wallwork, whose deadly creepy story is the only one in the anthology that has an old-fashioned ghostly theme. The other was Windeye by Brian Evenson. There is a wonderful spooky premise to this story; a windeye is a special aperture that resembles a window, and it’s how the wind looks into a house. [I love that idea]. This is an extraordinary neat little story that brought Arthur Porges’ Puddle to mind because of its simplicity and magic.
To end, however, I’ve kept His Footsteps Are Made Of Soot by Nik Korpon. The grizzly subject of ‘home-surgery’ is mentioned early on in this story and it is right from the get-go a very creepy story indeed: ‘…pupils floating like drowned flies in a pool of yellowed milk…’ did it for me. For the sheer creepiness embedded in the everyday if you have eyes to see it, this story is stunning!

With twenty or so of my short stories due out on April 8th under the title 'The View From Endless Street' with WiDo publishing, and another 15 or so out with an English publisher soon after, I should be able to clean up my writing files. I suspect I have the exact same version of various stories of mine in lots of different places amongst my files. For example, stories that I might have written last year but which have not been compiled into a collection or submitted to a publisher,I have made copies of and brought into my 2014 writing files... but can't bring myself to delete them from 2013. Some awful psychological barrier about it. It could be that what the files are and the way they're laid is like a curious record of my work for that year ... say like what you might see in last year's diary, and I don't want to make it disappear; I want to remember what I did. Thinking about it, I also never throw away old diaries, I've got them all going back to the last century. That'll be it I think, both these things are records of my existence, and if I get rid of them, I might vanish too? Could I be that primitive? Yep, I think so.

I'm going to start teaching fiction writing again this year and my first job will be an afternoon creative writing workshop, where, amongst other things,I'll be talking about the myths surrounding writers and their lives... things like the idea that writers are born, not made. Some people can't quite believe that you can teach fiction writing, as if somehow it's a magical skill that only a few people have. It's not; the craft of writing can be taught by any experienced writer. It is simply, if you like, a bag of tricks and tips that are perfectly easy for new writers to understand. I'm talking about things like how to produce effective dialogue, points of view, how to show a story rather than tell it and so on. However, there are three vital aspects of a writer's life that you cannot possibly teach someone, so no matter how acquainted a writing student might be with the 'bag of tricks' they won't succeed as writers without these three things. And the things are imagination, [something very private and personal that each of us can only nurture alone], discipline,[a writer must have a fully fledged work habit and write each day],and finally perseverance, [in order to put up with the disappointments, rejections, and endless waiting associated with the publishing industry].
On the business of what you can teach: while there might be differences in approach between one creative writing teacher and another,we all teach the same stuff, so don't be fooled into thinking that if your tutor happens to be a well-known writer that they'll know something none of the rest of us do, because it isn't so. It also isn't so that their success will somehow rub off on you, although they just might have useful contacts that bring a bit of luck your way, and God only knows we can all do with luck.

I had the most delightful fan letter today from a ten year old boy who had just finished reading Halfling with his volunteer reading tutor from Beanstalk, [a charity that helps children who have fallen behind in reading].
I felt kind of sad that I couldn't say I would be writing another book like it. Of course in my thinking there isn't another Danny Broadaxe, although I know that sequels and follow-on books about the same characters are pretty normal these days. People seem to want more of the same, rather than something new. This might be a phase the reading public is going through and the publishing houses are cashing in on, as with all the Potter books. But I have to say that it kind of reminds me of a day I watched a man doing several paintings at the same time on canvases lined up in his studio, first each canvas got a bit of sky, then each got a piece of sand, then waves etc. Like a machine. I expect you might have to be a bit older than ten to appreciate the idea of something that is unique, but the commonality of what the sweet child asked for was a bit saddening somehow.

My new story collection with WiDo Publishing, forthcoming on April 8th, contains twenty one stories, quite a few of which have been published before, but all of which have been like old familiar shoes to me, and now that they're together in one book, it feels as if they've all gone on a journey and I've been left behind. I guess that shows just how involved you can get with the construction of an imaginary world and the characters you create to people it with.
The collection is called 'The View From Endless Street' and it has a wonderfully surreal book jacket. The description of the book is:-
"With this collection of short stories set in the south of England and beyond, Rebecca Lloyd explores relationships and the brave or foolish things they can make people do. These stories about murder and ghosts, delusion and desperation, obsession and arson, show readers a sometimes sweet, sometimes macabre vision of humanity.
Rebecca Lloyd channels Roald Dahl’s wit and flair for the unexpected in this collection that will appeal to the quirky side of the literary reader."

...The wonderful effect of feeling slightly bereft was that it gave me the energy to write a new collection, Whelp and Other Stories, which, although not yet published was short-listed in the Paul Bowles Award in short fiction with C&R Press a few weeks ago. And further to that, I have started a series of stories in a darker strain still.

My thought for anyone reading this who is entering the writing world themselves is that you never really do know how a story is going to turn out and if it will work well or not. Sometimes what you write won't be the best you've done and you'll be conscious of that, but the most important thing is to keep going because the habit of writing is one you can fall out of only too easily and then it takes a huge effort to get back into it because part of getting back into it means re-energizing your faith in yourself and that can be a big job.