From studio and study to print

We’ve been waiting for lockdown to ease before putting our latest book in the hands of the printers. Tomorrow we visit Short Run Press, Exeter, to see how Peter’s page layouts, which he has worked out on paper, will translate to digital.. SO FAR, SO GOOD is a 150-page book with illustrations on nearly every page. It shows, in words and pictures, how we have made our life together, shaped by our separate years of childhood, meeting as young adults and sixty years of marriage. We began working on the book in the summer of 2020, the year of our diamond wedding anniversary. Now, in April 2021, we are about to go into production. The back cover will show this oil painting of our local lane.

‘Along the lane’, oil painting by Peter Barrett

back cover text:

When Peter and Susan met and married in 1960 they shared similar ambitions – Peter to paint for a living, Susan to write. The present book completes an unintended trilogy charting the way they have fulfilled their dreams: Travels with a Wildlife Artist, the Living landscape of Greece, Columbus, 1986; The Garden of the Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s, 2018; and now this book, So Far, So Good, sixty years together in words and pictures, which celebrates their diamond wedding anniversary in the midst of the covid pandemic, 2020.

COPIES WILL BE AVAILABLE AT £15 (+ £3 p&p) FROM MAY 2021

More information from susan@susanbarrettwriter.com

Delayed admiration

My mother’s only surviving and much younger brother was an occasional part of my and my sister’s childhood. He was a childless widower, his wife having died early on in their marriage. He used to visit us in Devon, riding to Tavistock from Sutton in Surrey on his BSA Bantam. On the day of his arrival, the pressing question always was: would Uncle Dicky cross the moor from Moretonhampstead, or take the longer, less exposed route via Okehampton? If his visit was in the summer, then he’d cross the moor and arrive looking like a tightly-wrapped, red-faced, camouflaged parcel. He was not a tall man. I think I’d reached the top of his head by the age of 14 or so. However, the energy contained within his small frame was boundless. He’d cram any number of rounds of golf and hands of bridge into the short time he was with us, before jumping on the Bantam and disappearing over the hill bound for his Sutton home.

What did I know about him? In childhood, not a great deal. His house had a brass cover to its front step which I used to polish when we went to stay with him. He had a housekeeper called Mrs Jones. Sometimes he had to ring her half way along a road out of London to ask her where he was going. (An absent-minded professor type for most of his life, he veered into dementia in his mid-90s). He took us to The Wizard of Oz and we went backstage because he knew the Tin Man. Or was it The Lion? Whoever it was, it was a supremely exciting meeting. Uncle Dicky masterminded London for us country bumpkins. He had a friend who was a writer with a mulberry tree in a Chelsea garden. In boat race season my sister and I were conflicted because Uncle Dicky had been at Oxford and our father at Cambridge. Our loyalty was mainly for Cambridge but we could equally well celebrate if Oxford won.

I knew he taught economics and economic history which was not, for me, exciting in any way at all. But my elder sister Jane appreciated Uncle Dicky and went to live with him so that she could study at the London School of Economics. I remember taking in the information that Uncle Dicky was something called a socialist which disturbed our grandparents. His sister, my mother, didn’t seem to think it mattered very much, but she was unhappy about his address: a socially undistinguished number 110 in a very long road of indistinguishable suburban houses. In the 30s, she said by way of explanation, many undergraduates were so left-wing they became communists. I could have learnt more about his views had I been up for it. In timid compromise between upbringing and inclination, I voted Liberal when I was old enough to vote. The schoolfriend who I shared a flat with was working for the Liberal Party and asked me to think of a slogan to print and place in the back windows of cars. Go with the Liberals! I suggested. Goodness knows what Uncle Dicky thought of my job as an advertising copywriter. Too capitalist for words. But he never indicated a shred of disapproval of his flighty younger niece.

Today he’s back with me, freshening up my memories, despite dying many years ago. This is because I’ve got down from the loft a huge great volume of ancient newsprint which I acquired from his second wife. It is a collection of the daily editions of The Times for a whole year: 1793. It measures 14 inches wide by 20 inches in height by three and a half inches deep. Within scuffed cardboard covers its layers of crinkle-edged pages look like the strata of mouse-coloured sedimentary rock. They smell mousy, too; yet they are amazingly unnibbled. I, and my predecessior owners, wrapped the volume securely. I will be able to extract nuggets of information about life in 1793, as reported in the Times, my unrealised intention for the last 10 or more years. This year my ideas have at last crystallised into the framework of a novel, which I’m calling HARRIET, NOW AND THEN. ‘Now’ is nowadays. ‘Then’ is the reign of George III, 1760 – 1815. Uncle Dicky’s volume, which he probably inherited from our mutual Mellersh family in Godalming, is coming into its own as background material – just so long as I can see the print clearly enough through a magnifying glass. My eyes could similarly date from the 18th century, judging by the difficulty I have in deciphering complete words due to macular degeneration.

However, the reason I’m writing this post does not lie in the volume itself. It comes from a cutting tucked between the first two pages. It’s from a 20th century newspaper and headed Men & Matters. Under the title Economy class, the writer (by-line “Observer“) describes Uncle Dicky on the occasion of his retirement after 30 years as secretary of The Economics Association. It starts: “The spread of economic literacy in Britain owes a great deal to Dickie Phillips.

It continues: ….”An Oxford boxing blue and former teacher, he joined the Association in 1951 when the ‘dismal science’ was allowed in few British schools. The Association itself had only 100 members – mainly teachers interested in stimulating economics education.

“We had a lot of opposition at the start from some of the universities,” says Phillips. “They thought economics was too difficult to be taught in schools and were afraid that bad teaching might spoil the ground for them.

...”Under his cheerfully eccentric but efficient administration the Association has exerted a growing influence in the educational world.”

Cheerful, eccentric, efficient – what a great combination. I think there may be many economists today who owe a lot to my uncle Dicky. I send salutes to him from today’s more understanding distance. I have no idea what he thought of my novels, but I can guess: he wouldn’t have bothered to read them. Fiction for him was a waste of time. The books on his shelves were all non-fiction, so he might have approved of the way I presented the family letters exchanged during World War Two. And I’m sure he would have been glad that the massive, mouse-grey volume of the Times of 1793 is about to be used as a vessel for research, even if it is in aid of fiction.

Collection of editions of The Times for 1793

The impact of Covid on fiction writing

I know it seems beside the point to be talking about fiction in the face of the appalling pandemic. But Covid is having its deadly impact on every aspect of our present day life, no matter how we earn (or don’t earn) our living.

As I have begun writing a new novel, a problem has become apparent. The fiction I write is usually set in the present and the plots are wound around contemporary dilemmas and characters. How can I, and writers like me who like to create a credible reality, treat the pandemic? Do we take it into account? Or do we pretend it doesn’t exist in our “real” world?

This is not a dilemma for writers of genre novels set in the past or future – fantasy, sci-fi, historical or crime novels. Nor is it a difficulty if you want to write a story with Covid as the driving force. There will be lots of stories that deal with the pandemic. My puzzle is akin to those situations which prompt the expression “the elephant in the room,” that is, any subject too big to mention.

Should my fictitious characters, living in the present, be affected by the pandemic? Or should I let them live happily without a mention of it?

How can readers discover the well-written fiction in the self-published whirlpool?

Novels reach the hands of their readers through reviews, recommendations, bookshops, libraries and readers’ groups. Naturally enough, readers want books that have the kind of objectively-awarded, quality hallmark that comes from being published by a traditional publisher. There is no such hallmark for self-published books.

Ever since I took a ten year break from writing and fell off my perch with mainstream publishers, I have tussled with this question: how can writers of thoughtful, well-written fiction assure potential readers that their work is worth reading? We swim in the vast ocean of self-published material, which has no arbiter of quality at all.

When I set up writersreadersdirect.com, I hoped to help myself and other skilled writers of thoughtful, entertaining novels to reach a readership. But the business of selecting the better from the worse was tiresome and time-consuming. Marketing and publicity were impossible on no budget at all. I now just look after myself, bringing out my recent novels on Amazon and contenting myself with a very small readership among my known contacts.

Every so often my mind reverts to my headline question. I know of Goodreads, of course, based in the US. For an outlay on review copies, you can get your novel reviewed but where do the reviews get you? Nowhere very much. Today I’m thinking of the many readers’ groups in England whose members read literary novels of a good standard. I wonder if it would be possible to marshall the support of these keen readers? Trouble is, they like to borrow the books on their lists from libraries, rather than buy them. So they don’t actually support the writers of those books, leaving aside the small sums that come from PLR to the authors who are most read in any case. If each group agreed to include one self-published novel a year in their reading list, chosen from a small selection circulated by … but here the mind fogs over.

We need something on the lines of an apple-sorting system. If there was a way to run novels down a shute which only let the well-written fiction drop into the collecting box, we’d have the necessary quality control in place! Has anyone out there got any ideas? And/or fellow feeling?

Same name, different writer

I’ve been a published writer of fiction and non-fiction since 1968. After roughly twenty years, someone with the same name appeared on the scene. Every so often in more recent years I’ve tried to sort out the confusion. I have failed to get in touch with her, which I’m sure I could have done but it never seemed urgent; it was simply annoying. This week an advertisement for her latest novel (her third, I think) which was out on Kindle on July 10th, arrived in my Inbox, because “you follow Susan Barrett”. But the Susan Barrett, who the machine thought I was following, was not the author of the book being advertised. It was me and led me to all my novels.

I think the other SB must be as irritated as I am. We want to be known for the books we write, not for other people’s books. I found an interview with her on some site when I googled her this morning. She sounds nice and may write the kinds of book I’d admire. However, we really ought to sort this out in some way. I’ve been on to Amazon.com, and co.uk, hoping they can do something to distinguish one SB from the other. A middle initial for the second Susan B, perhaps? She was after all second on the scene. Susan Barrett, are you there? (I won’t answer!)

The Housekeeper, a novel by Susan Barrett, on Amazon Kindle July 10th 2020

Elfrida Next Door, a novel by Susan Barrett on Amazon Kindle July 1st 2020

First review for Elfrida

It’s wonderful when a writer you admire praises your work. I have permission to quote the whole of Anthony Peregrine’s review which he posted as a Verified Purchaser on the book’s Amazon page. Anthony is an excellent travel journalist who writes enticingly and knowledgeably about France for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and other publications. I’m so pleased with what he’s said about my writing.

Anthony Peregrine reviews Elfrida Next Door

“I read Elfrida Next Door through in one afternoon – which perhaps tells you all you need to know about my appreciation of the book. Very difficult to let it go, even though I should have been doing other stuff.

The story romps along. I particularly liked the fact that bad guy Nicholas was just so recognisably normal. Not some kind of evil svengali, but an ordinary fellow having let extraordinary circumstances catch up with, and overtake, him. That was utterly convincing, as was the whole “confinement” story

In truth,, I thoroughly enjoyed the company of the characters. I thought at first that maybe locked-up Angela was a bit unbelievably wimpish – but then I thought back to all those women who emerge after years of confinement at the hands of abusive men, and so many of them seem, at least, ambiguous about their captors. After that, I realised that Angela worked well. That’s one of the key strengths of the story – none of the main characters is a caricature. And there’s uncertainty on all sides.

So, well, in short: terrific. And, if I thought the story ended a bit abruptly, it’s maybe because I wanted to spend more time with these people. Ms Barrett has a great gift for creating characters like that – normal men and women whose complexities run deep.”

Read less

The rare, high points in the process of writing a novel

I’m speaking from my purely personal experience in writing fiction. Other writers may have a whale of a time writing a novel from the first sentence to the last. I’ve been writing fiction for the last 58 years and I find the following account of the miserable process to be the standard for me. Why do it, then, you may ask. Answer: I’m driven by the need to tell stories. Most of the time I’m full of doubt about the quality of my writing and the story’s trajectory. I begin the first chapter in a wobbly way. It’s like hunting for an elusive hamster in a gooseberry bush. With a struggle, I capture an animal which will – I think – do for the time being. With persistent work, the story gains traction. I battle on, with days of despair. Then there comes a moment about three quarters of the way through when I think, “Heavens above! I think this is going to work!” High point Number One. It’s a moment of transitory glee which gives me the impetus to write on with something almost amounting to pleasure. I finish the story. I re-write, once, twice, three times, checking and re-checking with bleary eyes. Then comes the lowest point of all. I consider I’ve written utter balderdash. Even though I have no faith in the work, it was work and I will bring it out into the world. Latterly, this has all been on my own initiative, with self-publishing. After agonising over a cover blurb and a short bio, I’m ready to think of the cover’s design. In the old days with traditional publishers, Peter designed my jackets. Of course they were of their time, and now look quaint. These days I go with Amazon’s system of self-publishing and choose from their templates. High point Number Two is seeing my title on the chosen book cover artwork.

You’ll understand from this that my high two high points are not likely to last longer than a day. What a life! However, with the cover of my latest novel, I guess I’ll continue to be thrilled each time I look at it. The background image I found on the KDP site has an intriguing glitter. The typeface is no-nonsense and just right for the book. So I shall put it up here, for my own enjoyment. I hope others, too, will enjoy the look – and the book! https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Elfrida+Next+Door+by+Susan+Barrett&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

cover of paperback edition of Elfrida Next Door

A novel unlocked

Before lunch, I was in despair of ever getting back into the behind the scene workings of this website.  What on earth had changed?  I seemed to have entered all the wrong information, wrong user name, wrong password.  Yet for the last four years of having this website, it was all so easy.  The right things popped up on the screen.  So what had changed?  No idea.  I think the clever people who run these things grow bored.  They change the system subtly and people like me, innocently sitting at their desks doing their normal routine, are thrown.

Have I even got it right now?  I’m writing away on a page that is unfamiliar, although it has some of the same choices in Bold Italic and quotes

I can align left

or centre

or even right

but can I add an image?  All I want to do today is announce that I’ve got what I think of as my lockdown novel out into the public arena.  It’s available on Amazon as a paperback and ebook.  It’s called Elfrida Next Door.

Taking coercive control to an extreme, Nicolas Clarkson keeps his wife Angela imprisoned in a cell in the priory ruins at the bottom of his garden.  In this cell a 13th century recluse called Elfrida lived out her life in solitary prayer, having been raped at the age of 14 by the man to whom she was betrothed.  All Rachel, Nicolas’s new next door neighbour, knows is that his wife went missing, presumed dead, years ago.  She becomes fascinated by the legend of Elfrida – and this leads her into serious danger.  This is a light, dark tale that looks at the human spirit under enforced confinement, an appropriate entertainment for covid times.

A NOVEL ON LOCKDOWN

A NOVEL FOR LOCKDOWN

One of the hardest things about writing a novel, I find, is describing it in a few short sentences.  With Covid 19 this is particularly hard. It seems such a frivolous waste of time to be writing fiction in a pandemic.

I didn’t realise when I started writing my present novel in 2019 how apposite it would turn out to be in 2020. Its underlying theme is the balance of power in relationships, and imprisonment of various kinds, in life, work and love. This theme echoes the effects of the virus.

Covid 19 has come along and taken us by surprise. Its immediate effect around the world has been, and will continue to be, tragic. But its lasting effect may turn out to be good rather than bad. There may be a re-balancing of power in the relationship between the poor and the rich, and the underdeveloped and developed regions of the world. Humanity may pay greater respect to, and take greater care of, the natural world we depend on. The virus, in its containment measures, has caused a kind of imprisonment in life, work and love. But it has also brought joy and happiness, companionship and emotional proximity.

It seems heartless to be writing fiction at such a time. But I bet there are thousands doing it. Judging by the flood of inventive and clever videos on YouTube, created by talented people usually employed outside the home, I expect there will be an increased flood of novels hunting for agents and publishers. Very few people don’t believe that they have a novel within them. They’ve heard it often enough. The men will be bashing out science fiction and thrillers; the women, romance. They will be thrilled with the completion of their work and expect fame and fortune pretty well at once.  Some will self-publish. A few will find publishers. There will be readers who will be entertained, whose minds will be stimulated. Does creative work add to the world’s well-being? Yes, it does, as much for its providers as for its recipients.

So here’s the blurb for my just-completed novel ELFRIDA NEXT DOOR:

Taking coercive control to its limits, Nicolas keeps his wife in a hermit’s cell in the ruins of a priory at the bottom of his garden. Rachel, his new neighbour, becomes interested in the legend of Elfrida, the cell’s first occupant. This leads her into danger and gives Nicolas a new problem to solve.  The balance of power in relationships, and imprisonment of various kinds in life, love and work, provide the underlying themes of this light, dark novel. Or is it a dark, light novel.

Despair and hope

It’s so good to be reminded that, as Hamlet said in Act 2 Scene 2, “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
We’ve been despairing about the way we humans have been destroying the natural world we depend on. We are a dangerous species. Out of our reckless greed has come the present pandemic. And out of the pandemic has come some extraodinarily good things. It has evoked the best sides of human nature. (I won’t mention the way it’s also evoked the worst sides of a minority). There ae some marvellously cheering videos going around. The most joyous I’ve seen was one made by African children, dancing a covid-avoiding message. Then there’s a very funny one, The Sound of Music scene on the mountain top but with new words. Self-isolation seems to bring out the creativity in people who usually don’t have the time for it. My study feels suddenly crowded with digital warmth and companionship from a host of unknown people who are usually out at work.

Let’s celebrate the best in human nature. Today two good Chinese friends brought us a cooked meal which they left in our porch. I had flowers from the garden ready to put there before they came, but they were too quick and silent. So I’ve taken in the fried duck and photographed the bouquet which I’ve sent them as an email attachment. Were it not for my eagerness to eat the fried duck and trimmings, I would add the photo here in thanks, not just to Lansi and Amie but to everyone who is cheering everyone else on – thanks to the virus!