fiction | Marie Marshall

November 5, 2013

The Vampires are coming! The Vampires are coming!

VampireE3

I have finished the first rough draft of my teen vampire novella. It’s a trashy blast of steam-goth that ricochets from action-episode to action-episode. it’s unashamedly derivative, paying intertextual teeth-service to the whole vampire genre. Basically, there are only two plots in teen-vamp fiction: plot one is the vampire-as-misunderstood-teenager going steady with the girl from school (think Stephenie Meyer); plot two is the fearless, teenage vampire-killer (think Joss Whedon’s Buffy). Mine is plot two, with a little of the misunderstood teenager thrown in for good luck. I don’t pretend it’s going to be great literature (OMG, I’m channeling JKR!), but I do hope it’s going to be fun. I think its greatest asset is its total implausibility. I wrote it more quickly than I have ever written anything of comparable size.

The next stage is some preliminary proof-reading, and for that I will be roping in a friend or two. After that, it’s going to be sent to the publisher who asked me if I could write a teen vamp story.

I wonder if I will want to get back to serious fiction. I still have notes for at least one novel, along with some trial chapters. It had been giving me a great deal of trouble, and so I was really glad of the light relief of charging head on at this trashy novella. Let’s see if I’m back in the proverbial groove. If not, never mind – faithful readers will be glad to know that my second novel, The Everywhen Angels, is due for publication before Christmas, and hopefully will be available for your stocking via Amazon. Stay tuned.

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October 19, 2013

Angels, Mothers, Vampires, and Others.

Michael

This morning I finished my final read-through of The Everywhen Angels, my forthcoming novel, and gave a small list of unresolved typographical issues to my publisher. I think that’s the job done. I’m still awaiting the cover artwork, but that’s for the ‘house’ artist.

Having done that, I turned my attention to The Milk of Female Kindness, an anthology of prose, artwork, and poetry on the subject of motherhood. Contributors are drawn from as far afield as Australia, North America, and Britain. The Australian editor is Kasia James, and I am privileged to be doing a little editorial consultancy for her. The contents are marvelous – poetry ranges from Alison Bartlett’s ‘Reasons to Breastfeed’ to my own ‘The Maclaren’, about someone who can’t breastfeed – and I would especially recommend Maureen Bowden’s short story ‘Hiding the Knives’. I don’t have any information as to when the book will appear, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.

I have also heard that the international anthology of modern sonnets The Phoenix Rising from its Ashes, for which I am Deputy Editor, is now ready to go to print. Publication is a little behind schedule, but it has a bit of a struggle to get this far. Being a deputy means you don’t get final say. I have often thought that it would have looked a lot different had I been at the helm, but it wasn’t my baby, and so all the recognizable facial features will be those of its very loving father, Editor-in-Chief Richard Vallance. Richard has sunk considerable energy and personal resources into this collection, and deserves to see it thrive. Again, more news as I get it.

Having work edited – the most chastening part of publication for an author – is damn good schooling for doing editorial work oneself. It sharpens up one’s initial presentation, for a start. Shortly, I hope, I shall be in a position to hand over the first draft of my teen-vampire novel. I’m winging it. I didn’t want to write a romance, where another Bella falls for another Edward*, so I launched straight into an action scene without even pausing to dream up a plot. I figured that my protagonist would suggest to me how the story would go and so she did! Imagine a tomboyish, even ‘boi-ish’, version of Buffy in a New York setting, a generation into the future, when energy resources are running thin and vampires are finding their way into positions of influence in the world. Imagine her reading a book about a nineteenth-century vampire hunter and finding connections. Imagine that despite her heroism she makes fatal mistakes. Imagine vampires with whom any person-to-person understanding is next-to-impossible (hence no cheesy romance). Imagine, most of all, the feeling that as a teenager one is marginalized and kept in the dark. That’s the way the novel is shaping up at present. The question of teenage alienation and lack of understanding is not a new theme for me. I deal with it a lot in The Everywhen Angels, for example. In my teen-vampire novel it is going to be dealt with a little more simply and superficially, amongst the episodic, crash-bang plot. I have to say it feels a little as though I’m writing a pot-boiler, but we’ll see how it comes out…

It’s a while until the next Showcase at the zen space is due out. Nevertheless I’m currently thinking about it. My aim this time will be to feature, strictly, writers whose work has not yet been seen in a Showcase. This means I will have to start sending out invitations and calling for contributions soon. I’m taking a little rest from writing poetry myself, but will be back at it shortly, I’m sure.

Finally, have you picked up your free ebook copy of my novel Lupa? If not, go here to do so – and also think about writing a review for me.

__________
*That’s a Twilight reference, for those of you who don’t instantly get it.

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October 11, 2013

Vampire moments

Wompeer

Today I’m remembering two of my favourite vampire moments. The first has to be from the movie The Fearless Vampire Killers. Veteran British actor Alfie Bass, playing a Jewish innkeeper, has been turned into a vampire. He invades a maiden’s bedroom at night, she screams, and holds up a crucifix. “Oy, oy!” grins Alfie, “Did you pick the wrong vampire!” The old jokes are the best. FVK has to be my favourite vampire movie ever, if only for the irony of the title – the hunters seem to spend the whole film in a state of abject terror, and never kill a single vampire.

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

Another moment comes from a TV show from the 1960s, Michael Bentine’s It’s a Square World. In the sketch I recall, another veteran british actor, Clive Dunn, arrives in Transylvania on a cultural mission to bring cricket to the peasants in the Carpathians. At a village inn he finds a group of terrified peasants, led by Michael Bentine, cowering in a corner in fear of the local nobleman, a notorious vampire. Dunn brings out his cricketing gear, but the language barrier produces a hilarious result, as Bentine, in a cod Eastern-European language, mimes to his fellow peasants how to cosh a vampire with the cricket bat, and drive stumps through its heart. Enter the vampire, probably played by John Bluthal dressed a la Lugosi, and the peasants flee. Not realising what this newcomer is, Dunn promises to turn him into “a first class bat”, and off they go together, Dunn folded ominously in the vampire’s cloak.

I mention all this because my teen-vampire novel-in-progress has now passed thirty thousand words. I can’t help thinking that just writing it is the easy part…

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October 5, 2013

From Shogunate Japan to the Bayous with Sam Snoek-Brown

If you have fifteen minutes to spare, I recommend watching this video clip of Sam Snoek-Brown, a writer for whom I have enormous respect. In this televised interview he talks about such things as how he teaches his creative writing students all about getting rejected by publishers. But the main topic of the interview is his forthcoming novel Hagridden, and the influence of classic Samurai movies on his writing. The novel is set at the time of the American Civil War, but its action happens well away from the battlefields, cities, and plantations of North and South.

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October 4, 2013

I’ve been here before

angels

It seems like only days ago that I was proof-reading the final draft of Lupa. There were three of us on the task, and we still let a glaring typo go through into the first print run. Now I’m at the same stage with The Everywhen Angels, and I’m a little jumpy about making the same mistake. I always blame typos on my legendary North Korean keyboard, but no one really believes me. The other thing that has me on the edge of my seat is the prospect of seeing the cover illustration. I have passed my own ‘vision’ to the house illustrator, but who knows what he will come up with. Reactions to his cover for Lupa were very good – not without exception, but you can’t please everyone.

Meanwhile my new teen-vampire-themed novel is progressing slowly, after an initial burst, but it definitely is progressing, and probably more quickly than anything I have ever written. A bit.

I would like to remind you that if you would like a free e-book copy of Lupa you can still get one – but hurry! You’re also invited to send in a review, with the possibility that you could win an autographed copy of the novel. You will see from the on-line review form that it doesn’t have to be a long review, but the text box on the form does expand to allow you to ‘wax lyrical’.

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October 1, 2013

100 free ebook copies of ‘Lupa’!

Lupa

That’s an offer you can’t refuse. For a limited time, and in a limited amount, my novel Lupa will be available as a free ebook, along with Lyz Russo’s futuristic adventure The Mystery of the Solar Wind, Douglas Pearce’s weirdly witty Almost Dead in Suburbia, and Leslie Hyla Winton Noble’s Tabika for younger readers. There are no strings, but you are invited to take part in round two of the P’kaboo Facebook Share Contest. Step one of round two is reading the book of your choice (all four, if you wish!) and writing a review. Read all about this on Lyz Russo’s blog, or just go direct to P’kaboo’s online bookshop and download any of the books from there.

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September 16, 2013

Demons and Angels

A few days ago I asked you this question: What well-known character in children’s fiction is known in Chinese as Fú Dìmó? I had many interesting answers either as comments or tweets, some of which are contained in the montage below – including the correct character, which nobody guessed. Have a look at the montage, and see if you can spot the correct character. I’ll reveal the answer below.

Who is Fu Dimo?

I’m guessing that you had no trouble identifying each of the characters in the montage. Each answer was imaginative, even if Fu Manchu and the cast of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon stretched the idea of ‘children’s fiction’ a little far. Whoever guessed Harry Potter probably got the closest, but still ‘no cigar’.

The correct answer is… Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter canon. You could have spotted the phonetic similarity between ‘Voldemort’ and ‘Fú Dìmó’. It might have been easier to spot if the translators had gone with their first idea, and had used a character ‘Fo’ instead of ‘Fu’. However ‘Fo’ can have associations with Buddha, and that might not have seemed appropriate for such a villainous character as Voldemort. It has been pointed out that the etymology of the name ‘Voldemort’ suggests ‘wish of death’. This fact reminds me of the difficulty of translating literary texts (I have done a little translating, mainly between French and English, and I briefly worked with the late Vera Rich, proof-reading an unfinished translation from Belarusian to English). JKR’s translators went for a phonetic rendering with an appropriately sinister meaning, rather than taking a meaning from the etymology of the original.

Anyhow, thank you to everyone who played the game with me.

That takes care of today’s demon. Now what about tomorrow’s angels? Just a quick update on The Everywhen Angels, my soon-to-be-published novel. We have completed the major editing stage and are now looking at the first full draft, with our eyes open for any missed typos and new glitches. I received this comment from the publisher’s editor, himself no mean novelist: “… the book is something special. The characterisation is convincing. The narrative is entertaining and gripping, but at the same time shows a wealth of knowledge and research and introduces challenging food for thought on abstract matters…” That is quite something for a YA book. We’re still waiting for cover art, but hopefully the book will be out well before Christmas and in time for the publisher’s schools promotion.

More news as I get it.

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September 12, 2013

伏地魔

Beijing

Now, you can find the answer to this puzzle via a search engine, but it’s much more fun to guess. This piece of information comes to me via my agent, who is not so much a mine of information but a whole information fracking operation.

What well-known character in children’s fiction is known in Chinese as Fú Dìmó? The characters literally mean ‘crouching’, ‘earth’, and ‘devil’, and the whole name could be translated as ‘demon crouching on the ground’. By the way, the picture above isn’t going to help you one bit!

After you have had your guess, feel free to put it below as a comment. But if you do look it up with a search engine, don’t enter that answer in the comment box – you’ll spoil the fun for everyone else!

I’ll post the right answer in due course.

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September 6, 2013

We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files…

bestchicklit

Nikki Mason at BestChickLit.com followed up her review of Lupa by conducting an interview with me. Read it here.

August 26, 2013

Reviews, vampires, and storybook witches…

“Yes, my name is Miss Smith. No I will NOT ‘take a letter’!”

BestChickLitLogo Blast! I could do with a reliable secretary. It’s a funny old day. I feel as though I’ve only just sat down at the computer – in fact I logged on at about 5am and it’s nearly lunchtime. Thank heavens its a bank holiday! There has been a welter of tweets and emails, and a shed-load of stuff for me to deal with. The most pleasant was finding a review of my novel Lupa at BestChickLit, courtesy of Nikki Mason. It’s always gratifying to get exposure of this kind.

Another task today is dealing with my publisher’s editor, as we chip away at the imperfections in my second novel The Everywhen Angels, which is due for publication soon. We’re approaching the galley proof stage, and I can’t wait to see what the house artist will have dreamed up for the book jacket.

Meanwhile, what I am supposed to be doing is getting on with is my third novel, the vampire story. But it’s strange where research can take you when you’re doing something like this. I’ve been sidetracked by a chance reference in my research material (posh term for the rubbish I was scrabbling through on line) to one of my favourite anti-heroines of children’s literature, Miss Smith, ‘the wickedest witch in the world’. Before my pagan friends begin to complain about ‘negative stereotypes’ let me say two things: firstly, she’s fictional, and secondly she is far from stereotypical. Ever heard of a witch keeping toads in a fridge? Live toads? She sails blithely through four of Beverley Nichols’ novels, written between 1945 and 1971 on a tide of delicious malice, dressed like a Vogue model. Actually, delicious malice is just what I am looking for right now; an image has popped into my mind of a vampire bound to a dentist’s chair with ropes woven from fibres extracted from garlic plants, while someone forcibly removes its canines. And what about the next scene where its ‘Sire’ replaces them with a stainless steel pair? The thick plottens!

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Tag: fiction