SYP Author Showcase

Posted on January 24, 2010 in Uncategorized

The penultimate London speaker meeting of the SYP’s 60^th year took place in Foyle’s gallery. The event was a showcase of some of the best of today’s award winning authors across fiction, non-fiction and children’s publishing.

RJ Ellory was the first to take to the floor. He is the author of seven published novels, including A Quiet Belief in Angels which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the American Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction, amongst various others awards. His novels have been translated into 19 additional languages.

‘A foolish business to get into’ was Roger’s opening description of the publishing industry. Born in Birmingham in 1965, Roger’s background story is tragic in nature. His dad left when he was very young and he has no memory of him as such. His mother died of a brain haemorraghe aged seven and he was then sent to an orphanage where, upon discovering the library there, he began his life long passion for American literature. After this he returned to Birmingham where he attended Art College. Thiswas cut short however, by the death of his grandmother. It was when his brother nearly died of a drug overdose that he decided to start studying drug therapy. This was an industry that he stayed in, right through until two years ago.

When asked by an audience member if he had drawn on his sad childhood for his work, Roger explained that he never considered his childhood as being a particularly sad one. The four main things he remembers from his childhood are cross-country, reading, table-tennis and being hungry. None of his work is autobiographical.

It was upon coming across a friend who was reading It by Stephen King that he realised that he wanted to be a writer. He watched his friend do nothing but read this book for days on end, ignoring everyone around him. His friend’s explanation was that he simply could not put it down. It was the idea of being able to create something like this that had this much of an effect on another human that inspired Roger to start writing.

Roger was an extremely prolific writer. He started his first novel in 1987 and wrote 22 books between then and 1993. At this point he stopped, after tirelessly doing all he could have to get his work published. His stories of countless rejection letters and agents who emigrated, or just stopped phoning him, was a stark reminder of just how hard it is for authors to get their work noticed in the publishing industry. The problem that UK publishers had with his writing was that they would not be able to sell a British author writing American fiction. Their advice was to send his work to American publishers. Unfortunately American publishers said the same thing.

Having become disheartened by the experience, it was six years before Roger started to write again. Despite the frustration of trying to get his work published he realised that writing was all he had ever wanted to do. He made 35 copies of the next book he wrote and sent it off to 35 publishers. The only publishers not to return it were Bloomsbury. Not expecting any results, he phoned them to get his copy back. He was told that they had sent him a very complimentary letter about the book, which he had not received. He ended up couriering another copy to them. This ended up at Orion in the hands of John Wood.

John tried to call Roger to explain he loved the book and wanted to publish it. However, he could not get to speak to Roger and kept catching his wife instead. Unfortunately she did not pass the messages on, certain it must be a hoax. In the end John had to write a letter. Luckily, Roger received this one and phoned back. John explained in order to get the book published he had to get 11 people to read it and a decision would be made at the next editorial board meeting in ten days time. It took four months for the majority to read it apart from John’s boss who said he would need another two weeks at this stage. Determined not to make Roger wait any longer, John took out his credit card and said if they did not accept it there and then, he would pay the advance on his credit card and publish it privately. Orion did end up publishing the book. Candlemoth has since been translated into German, Dutch and Italian and is due to be translated into numerous other languages. He has published seven books with Orion, all of which have been a huge success.

Roger told us more about what it is that he is aiming to do when he writes a book. Right from the start he was driven to write one of those books that people can’t put down. Roger spoke of what he thought of as the three categories of fiction. There are books that are mainly driven by the plot. There are then those he thinks of as ‘literary fiction’. These are the ones where the author has spent as much time on the language as he has on the story line. An example of one of these might be Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. The third type of book is the one where the narrative and storyline are equally as compelling as the language used. These are the type of books Roger believes are the ones that people will read again and again. These are the ones that make people ‘book-lovers’; books that define identities. The most important thing for Roger is how his writing makes the reader feel. Powerful fiction engages us emotionally and that is his constant aim throughout his writing.

The next author to speak was Marcus Sedgwick. He also started by giving us a potted history of his life, describing it as ‘free-therapy’. Before becoming a bestselling author, Marcus worked in children’s publishing – a very “fluffy environment” is how he remembers this area of the industry.

Marcus said he never really had an inclination of what he wanted to do as a child. Well, this is not strictly true. He did have a strong desire to be a cat burglar (strangely this met with much enthusiasm from Roger in the audience who revealed this was also his childhood dream). However, he soon realised this was not a viable option and went to university and studied maths, changing his degree to politics after a year.

Like many such things, Marcus realised he wanted to be a children’s writer while working in a book shop. He describes the experience of working in a bookshop as a positive one. In terms of it being a kind of precedent to a career in publishing/writing, it gives a great grounding in the industry. It is inspiring seeing the quality of books being published and gives you a high exposure to a lot of what is out there. It was this exposure though, that also made him realise that a lot of what was being published was not of that high a quality and made him consider that he could perhaps do better himself.

His next job was as a travelling salesman in books. Marcus described this as the perfect job for an aspiring writer – a job where you are not doing the actual job for 80-90% of the time left him with plenty of time to sit with his laptop in a car coming up with ideas. The first book he wrote was, by his own admission, a bit ‘rubbish’ – a sci-fi of sorts, involving a teleporter. He sent this to Egmont who, while not accepting it, did give some encouraging feebback. He then wrote two more books, after which he got an agent. She did not publish these two books however. It was a short story that he wrote for an anthology that got him his big break. Whilst it was not accepted for the anthology Orion picked up on it and commissioned him to turn it in to a full book.

Throughout most of his writing career Marcus has also had quite a few jobs in publishing. Marcus advised to always try and get a role in a smaller publishers when starting out as there is much more opportunity to learn about all aspects of the business and get involved at different levels. Throughout his career he moved up to UK sales rep at Walker Books. Last year he quit this role in July and is now able to write full time. To be able to give up the day job was always his goal – in the end Marcus felt it had become too difficult to write and keep up the day job at the same time.

Marcus’ books have been shortlisted for many awards. Blood Red, Snow White – a fairy tale/spy thriller/love story set during the Russian Revolution – was shortlisted for the Costa Award. He has just completed his 10^th novel, Revolver, and he spoke of this as being the first of his books he feels quite proud of due to the fact that it is the only one that has ended up like he initially visualised it. Marcus touched on Roger’s theme of how a book should make you feel and emphasised the importance of the cover as being the first thing that evokes a sense of the effect the book is going to have on you. He felt it was more important that a book cover serves this purpose rather than giving away any of the plot. On discussing the art of writing Marcus felt that, unlike most things in life, it gets harder to do – not easier. You always want to improve for yourself and at the same time your publisher always wants ‘what you did last time, but a little bit better.

The audience then had the chance to ask Marcus questions. The first was, ‘As an adult, how do you write for children?’He denounced the common theory that you set out to become a children’s author because you love children. The truth is, in his case anyway, you write for a certain age group because there is still a part of you that is stuck at that age and can therefore truly relate. His proof for this theory is that his own books are getting slightly older as he goes on – he estimated that, in book terms, he has now reached the age of 17.

The audience were also interested to hear how working in publishing had influence his job as a writer. In this respect he thinks it has made him a much better author for his Editors to work with as he know the importance of submitting in time etc.

The last author to speak was Chris Lloyd, the non-fiction representation for the evening. Chris was a former journalist for the The Sunday Times who moved into the management of News International. Chris has written two books, the first one only having came out last year.

Chris also did know what he wanted to be when he was younger. In the end he opted for journalism and this led to him being a graduate trainee for The Sunday Times. He soon realised that as a general reporter you are easily dispensable - you need a speciality. It was this that led to him becoming a technological correspondent – this, andfthe act that he was one of the few people at the time to have a laptop. However, being in this position did put him in the spotlight, giving him more opportunity. He ended up helping to launch The Sunday Times Online and stayed there for ten years. After this he moved to Oxford where he worked in educational publishing for five years.

He decided to take a rather different route after this. He and his wife decided to take a year out and go travelling, taking their two children and home schooling them for a year. In the UK the laws around this are very liberal – it is specifically the parent’s responsibility to make sure their child receives an education and it makes no difference whether this is in a conventional school or not. He and his wife ended up home schooling their children for six years as it proved to be a lot of fun, and a learning experience for them too.

It was when travelling round Europe that the idea for his first book came to him. He was doing the washing up on a campsite in Rome. The washing up was always a communal thing – after dinner members of each family would gather round the same taps to do their families washing up and would gossip whilst doing so, catching up on the day’s news from the campsite. On this particular day he was disappointed to find there was no one else there to talk to. As a result he started imagining what he would say if he could talk to the trees and grass around him. This developed in to him wondering what he would ask them if he could talk to them – simple questions such as how old they were. He concluded that human beings were so obsessed with themselves as a species that we did not really care or question the history of the earth around us. This then developed into the grandiose plan of writing one book that connected all the history of all the subjects.

When he got back from travelling he started straight away on writing this book. He realised he would need an agent and was one of the lucky authors who was able to get one fairly quickly. After this he finished the book quickly too. His ability to work so well to deadlines is something he attributes to having worked in the fast-paced, deadline driven newspaper industry – Chris described the book industry as being ‘painfully slow’ in comparison.

In order to promote the book Chris decided to develop an hour long presentation that tells the whole story from the Big Bang to the present day. He still does these lectures and finds them one of the most entertaining parts of his job – they are especially fun to do in schools. His second book is called What on Earth evolved… in Brief; 100 Species That Have Changed the World. The plan is for the third one to be a history of the material world – not the periodic table but a history of materials such as gun powder. Chris was extremely enthusiastic about how much fun he was having being a writer. He wanted to emphasise that non-fiction was not just about the conveying of information – the real art of it is all about how you convey the information and finding new ways to present material, giving age-old subjects a new twist.

The first question from the audience was: ‘How did you go about your research and how do you manage to condense what some people have spent their lifes studying, into a sentence?’ Chris again attributed his ability to work concisely and to deadlines to his time working on a newspaper, which helped him in his ability to process information. Also, the internet is one of the best tools when researching. As well as this he spent a lot of time emailing academics – a group who are always willing to go out of their way to help you, he has found. The audience also wanted to know if anybody has found any mistakes in his concise histories. Chris said he had not had any complaints yet and that it had been the translators who had been the most diligent in picking up any errors that had slipped through the net. Chris’ plan for his next book is to have a history of the next 300 years – he will position himself as a 300 years in the future and write as a historian looking back.