NICE GIRLS DON’T
By
Sue Barnard
Who knows what secrets lie hidden in your family’s past?
Southern England, 1982.
At 25, single, and under threat of redundancy from her job in a local library, Emily feels as though her life is going nowhere – until the day when Carl comes into the library asking for books about tracing family history.
Carl is baffled by a mystery about his late grandfather: why is the name by which Carl had always known him different from the name on his old passport?
Fascinated as much by Carl himself as by the puzzle he wants to solve, Emily tries to help him find the answers. As their relationship develops, their quest for the truth takes them along a complicated paper-trail which leads, eventually, to the battlefields of the Great War.
In the meantime, Emily discovers that her own family also has its fair share of secrets and lies. And old sins can still cast long shadows…
Can Emily finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest and look forward to a brighter future?
A tale of discovery, love and fate.
Southern England, 1982.
At 25, single, and under threat of redundancy from her job in a local library, Emily feels as though her life is going nowhere – until the day when Carl comes into the library asking for books about tracing family history.
Carl is baffled by a mystery about his late grandfather: why is the name by which Carl had always known him different from the name on his old passport?
Fascinated as much by Carl himself as by the puzzle he wants to solve, Emily tries to help him find the answers. As their relationship develops, their quest for the truth takes them along a complicated paper-trail which leads, eventually, to the battlefields of the Great War.
In the meantime, Emily discovers that her own family also has its fair share of secrets and lies. And old sins can still cast long shadows…
Can Emily finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest and look forward to a brighter future?
A tale of discovery, love and fate.
SUE BARNARD
Sue was
born in Wales some time during the last millennium.
After
graduating from Durham University with a degree in French, she returned to
Manchester (where she had spent her formative years) and got married, then had
a variety of office jobs before leaving the world of paid employment to become
a full-time parent. If she had her way,
the phrase “non-working mother” would be banned from the English language.
Sue has
dabbled with writing for most of her life.
Her first success was at primary school, where she won a competition run
by Cadbury’s which involved writing an essay about chocolate. Her prize was a tin containing a selection of
Cadbury’s products. She still has the
tin to this day, and keeps it as a reminder of her humble writing origins. The chocolate is long since gone, but the tin
is now home to her supply of pens and pencils.
In recent years she began to take writing more seriously and studied a
series of writing courses with the Open University. As well as having work published in Best
of Manchester Poets (Volumes 2 and 3), her achievements have included
winning a T-shirt for writing a limerick (which summed up the plot of Macbeth
in five lines) and winning first prize in Writing Magazine’s 2013 poetry
competition for new subscribers. In 2013
she joined the editorial team of Crooked
Cat Publishing, who also published her debut novel The Ghostly Father
(a new interpretation of the Romeo & Juliet story) in February 2014, and
her second novel Nice Girls Don’t (a romantic intrigue set in 1982) in
July 2014.
Sue’s
mind is sufficiently warped that she has also worked as a question-setter for
BBC Radio 4’s fiendishly difficult Round Britain Quiz – a phase of her
life which caused one of her sons to describe her as “professionally
weird.” She lives in Cheshire and
Anglesey (thought not at the same time – she isn’t THAT weird) with her husband
and a large collection of unfinished scribblings.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE JOURNEY – the path to
publication
Way back
in 2008, I did an online Creative Writing course with the Open
University. It was called Start Writing Fiction, and lasted for about three
months. As part of the
course the students were set two tutor-marked assignments, one of which
involved writing about an emotion.
The
choice of emotion was left up to us, but were advised by our tutor that it was
much easier to write convincingly about a negative emotion (such as anger) than
about a positive one such as happiness or contentment. Having tried both, I very quickly
discovered that she was right; my attempt at a “positive” piece sounded trite
and shallow, whereas the “negative” emotion produced a powerful passage which
was so toe-curlingly harrowing that I still cringe whenever I read it. But the tutor did give me full marks
for it, so in that respect at least I must have done something right.
But for a
very long time after that, I found I couldn’t write anything which wasn’t dark,
or brooding, or in some cases downright depressing. This wasn’t, I hasten to add, because
of any serious angst in my own life – it was purely and simply because I’d got
into the mindset that the only way I could write anything “serious” was by
going over to the dark side. Even
when, a couple of years later, I made a tentative start on writing a
full-length novel, I still found it very difficult to shake off that doom-laden
mantle.
Then, in
January 2012, I chanced across an advertisement for an online workshop run by
the romance writer Sally Quilford, on the subject of writing Pocket Novel
romances. Romance writing
was something I’d never had the courage to tackle, but this six-week course
looked interesting, manageable and affordable – and I desperately needed to
learn how to lighten up my writing. Despite
(to my shame) knowing next to nothing about Pocket Novels, I signed up.
Before
the course began I bought and read a few of the DC Thomson Pocket Novels, which
are published fortnightly by My Weekly
and The People’s Friend, and sold
alongside the magazines in supermarkets and newsagents. It didn’t take long for me to realise
that a Pocket Novel offers a lovely dose of escapism, and is usually intended
to be read in a single sitting – ideally whilst either lounging on a sunny
beach or curled up in front of a roaring log fire. I ought to be able to write something
like this, I thought. After
all, how hard can it be…?
How naïve
of me.
I very
quickly discovered that writing a Pocket Novel is nowhere near as simple as the
experts make it look. As I’d found during the OU “emotion” exercise, easy
reading makes for very hard writing. The
story needs to be light but not bland, readable but not simplistic, and with
likeable and credible characters and enough action and conflict to keep the
reader’s interest until the last page. Not
easy, when the Pocket Novel Rulebook is (or at least was at the time) a long
list of Thou-Shalt-Nots. All plots need conflict, but how on
earth can a writer produce a convincing plot when so many of the usual sources
of conflict (crime, infidelity, divorce, death) are totally off-limits?
And yet,
under Sally’s expert tuition and kind encouragement, I gradually began to learn
that yes, it is possible – if one regards conflict in terms of a problem that
needs to be solved. This
can take the form of (for example) fear, or insecurity, or separation – all of
which can be tackled without recourse to any of the traditionally more
traumatic themes. As one of
the rules for a Pocket Novel is that the Happy Ever After ending is
non-negotiable, the story is all about the journey towards it, and how those
problems are overcome along the way.
By the
end of the six weeks I had a title (Nice Girls Don’t), a hero (Carl), a
heroine (Emily), a few secondary characters, a basic storyline and a selection
of scenes. Plus a whole new
set of friends and writing buddies – all of whom are every bit as valuable to
me as everything I learned during the course. It took me another few months to
produce the rest of the book – during which time one of the characters
completely floored me by saying something which went on to change the entire
course of the subplot. Until
then I had no idea that my fictional creations could take on personalities and
ideas of their own! Clearly
I still had a lot to learn.
And that
learning curve included one of the hardest lessons of all: rejection. Nice Girls Don’t was turned down by both of the DC
Thomson outlets – probably because it didn’t tick all their very stringent
boxes.
So Emily and Carl discreetly
withdrew to the murky depths of my hard drive, whilst I turned my
attention back to the novel I’d started a couple of years earlier. This was a retelling of the
traditional Romeo & Juliet story, but a version in which the star-crossed
lovers didn’t die. At that
stage I was writing it mainly for myself, because it was the ending I
wanted. But now, armed with the
knowledge I’d gained during the workshop, I was able to go back to the rough
first draft with a fresher and more critical eye, and a better knowledge of
what a publisher might look for. As
a result I was able to fine-tune the manuscript and eventually submit it to a
publisher. The
Ghostly Father, published by Crooked Cat Publishing, was
officially released (very appropriately, given the subject-matter) on St
Valentine’s Day 2014.
After Crooked Cat accepted The Ghostly Father, I was inspired to resurrect the manuscript of Nice Girls Don't, give it a few tweaks, and submit it to them. Once again, they were brave enough to take me on as an author. Nice Girls Don't (a romantic mystery set in 1982) was officially released in July 2014. We are now halfway through November, and it still hasn't fully sunk in.
No comments:
Post a Comment