How To Lose Friends, but Influence People by Steve Gladwin

 

 

 I am back in the world of paid work, but it's more than a little odd as I'm sitting in the meeting room of the Oriel Davies gallery in Newtown, Powys, where Rosie and I are based two days a week for the 'Hidden Voices' series of creative workshops we are doing for the entirely wonderful Credu Powys Carers. This space is the pretty big and the sort of multi-space room I would have killed for in my career as a further education drama teacher. There's only one problem! The voices we are talking about are so hidden that they have never actually turned up. The space which Rosie, (ill today, sadly) and I regularly post videos and her lovely poems on our facebook site Stories of Feeling and Being and try to get a certain amount of comedy gold about the large spider plant which is the only other inhabitant is starkly empty. The real problem of course is that in this area at least - where covid cases in schools are pretty rife - people are more likely to retreat back to safety than venture into possible adventure and enlightenment of spirit. I myself am hardly one to talk because there is an increasingly large hermit part of me at the moment.

Luckily I have a few things to work on, but at least one doesn't come naturally to me and never has. I am not great and now at the age of 62 am unlikely to ever be at self-promotion. Even the phrase makes me feel nervous. I have been, amongst other things, a confidence and assertiveness trainer, but I don't know how tele sales people ever do it. I spend almost as much of my time feeling sorry for them when they're trying to get me to commit to something, as being annoyed how they got hold on an ex-directory number.

But now, dear reader, the shoe is very much on the other foot. I was never any good at phoning schools to get bookings for my own theatre company, so how am I expected to raise the huge sum that's needed to fully fund my wonderful book  with 'Unbound', 'Land in Mind', which originated from these very pages. Today, the 22nd day of November, equidistant between my parents' birthdays it is a month since I began to get pledges. Here, then is not so much a list of impressions and advice about trying to do this, but more like what the Americans might call 'a mess of stuff.'

 

 

 

* Be prepared to lose your friends.

I'm not saying it's going to happen, but be prepared that it might. Your timing might be lousy when you approach your first 'victim'. They might be on their way to a funeral, or standing in the middle of a flooded kitchen. Not that you need to think of them like the priest in 'Father Ted', who Ted always phoned when he was on the verege of doing something tricky or dangerous, but you get my point!

* And don't think of people as victims.

No, these are your FRIENDS, and not just pledged in the form of variously shaped humans. Part of the appeal of your book is because it is yours, and people like you and want to support you! Right!

* Don't sell away your life and sanity for a pledgeometer.

 You will be drawn to it constantly of course and if you are a dyspraxic worrier like me, far too often. But do try to get a life somewhere in between looks. Wars could happen, monsoons could overwhelm large areas of land, and regimes could fall, and you might not nudge up that extra per cent.

* Even though it is probably an act of madness to create an anthology which involves fifty plus people, stories and poems, features, articles and photographs, rather than something simple like say - a novel, you will automatically have that number of advocates for your (and their) book, to be drawn on in various ways.

NB You might also run a slight risk of losing their support if you approach them too many times, so that, like a grumpy sleeping animal, they just want to stick two metaphorical fingers up, and roll over in the straw.

* Use social media in a way in which you feel confident.

 In our first marketing seminar, Cassie, the head of marketing advised us to concentrate our focus mainly on one social media outlet. In my case that would be facebook, where I have had a presence for many years and already annoyed a great many people, (so they're used to it, presumably!) In my case, I have also reintroduced myself to twitter, for the short and snappy one-liner, which also sneakily adds a link to your book at every opportunity. And once people start posting about your book, post back a reply so that those of them who don't know you as some sixty two year old pot-bellied, grizzled old reprobate imagine that they must be talking to the very fount of wisdom itself, especially with a cerebral book like mine, which rather imagines some wise and benevelolent sage scratching away with a swan quill in hallowed cloisters.

* Be able to describe your book in a couple of sentences rather than waffling round the subject every time someone asks you. 

'Land in Mind', (it's surely about time I named it - what a lousy marketer I am!), is about recapturing the childhood landscapes that form us and reforming them in our memories so we can continually draw on them when we need them as a form of sanctuary. It's not about 'sort of' anything, and it has a definite absence of 'maybe'. It's a tough trick to learn, but well worth the mastery.

 

 

 

*Think of as many and as different ideas for both marketing and new pledges as you can.

Include copies of your one and only novel, or your partner's artistic talent, as part of a package. Ask contributors to do you an audio, or video, which you can either do in your official update on your 'Unbound' page, or on your own site/social media. Do a regular podcast and - in my case at least - persuade some of those lovely contributing friends to perform their audio or video in favourite landscape. I already have a lovely clip from Philippa Francis by the sea in Sussex, with the moon rising in the background, and another of John Matthews reading two of his Green Man poems, the second of which closes the book. Basically, keep the ideas coming.

 

* Be prepared for disappointments with contributors, or individual components. I came so close to getting TV explorer and historian Levison Wood, but in the end a quiet covid period for him gave way to a new adventure and we just couldn't fit in a chat first. Alan Lee continues to be elusive, although he has agreed to be involved, and Phil Rickman has provided a tantalising fragment of what could be!

 

* Try not to get overwhelmed or disheartened by what your running mates are doing.

I begun my pledging period with two other new Unbounders, Louisa and Tree. Because Louisa is better known by her twitter handle of 'Roadside Mum' and has a huge following on there and elsewhere, and because her book 'One in Five' is people talking about poverty through their own stories, she hit the ground running as a huge influx of people supported it in the first week. Now, she's heading steadily towards 50%, while Tree, who has written a fascinating but clearly niche book about the Rider Waite tarot, has made a slower start than me. I find myself willing Tree to get more when I look at her page, while being sort of relieved that Louisa has reduced her thundering pace a little. We still have five months to go.

* For as many pledge disappointments and bad responses you can have delightful ones. My first pledge was Jackie Morris, who is also one of my contributors, and, having announced that she was my first pledge, then told me how ******* hard the whole process would be.  (She's dead right!) Then, last week, I remembered I want to pledge for Elizabeth Garner's book of folktales. Having done this, I messaged her on facebook to tell her I'd done that, and to tell her about the book, whereupon she responded to tell me that she'd pledged £75 for the launch and then directed me to the event the evening after where she would be discussing her father's new book 'Treacle Walker', at the Yorkshire Festival of Story. The event was hosted by the festival's director Kevin Crossley Holland, who is also a generous contributor to 'Land in Mind'.

I immediately bought 'Treacle Walker', one of the finest stories of apprecticeship you will ever read, and was drawn back to 'First Light', the incredible collection of essays on Alan Garner and his work, which had been hiding low on my kindle list. The contributors to that anthology include Hugh Lupton, Ronald Hutton, Kath Langrish and Neil Philip, all of whom appear in 'Land in Mind'. It is - needless to say - an 'Unbound' book. Of course it is!

* Which brings me to the last and most important of my musings. I've got the chance to work with 'Unbound', which is turning out to be as unique, as warm and above all, as supportive an organisation as you might hope it to be. It is wonderful to be an 'Unbounder; and that's the case where you are near to the finishing line to a background flourish of trumpets, or just getting into your stride, while still hanging on to the rail a little. Masterminded by the wonderful John Mitchinson, who believed in the idea for 'Land in Mind' from the start, (thank you, Neil Philip) and looks like the rare sort of old testament prophet you can trust, his assistant Aliya Gulemani and Cassie Waters, head of marketing, (who missed our three launches through being in hospital), 'Unbound' is a family. And like all families it groans through the ups and downs of a book's family life, laughs politely at my bad jokes and allows for my dyspraxia. Having been supported a little on reins while you make your first tentative steps, they then allow you to stumble on until you can wander off on your own without going anywhere near traffic. And later, when it comes to your homework, the red pen is used very gently indeed!

So, this is my chance to sell the book to you and encourage you all to pass all this on to like-minded friends. Although 'Land in Mind' was first conceived in a 2018 conversation between Kevin Crossley-Holland and I at Ty Newydd about his poem 'Lifelines', (which begins this anthology), and later almost accidentally provided with it's name and ethos by Catherine Fisher, (coincidentally Kevin's co-tutor on that course), the book really began with two years of interviews on this blog. That is why it seems so appropriate that Sue and Penny provide the introduction to 'Land in Mind' and Kevin's poem follows it.

Without you SASSIES there wouldn't have been a book, so here's me taking another opportunity to thank Sue and Penny, Jackie Marchant and John Dickinson, Kelly McKain and Mary Hoffman, Elen Caldecott and Sharon Tregenza, Lu Hersey and Jasbinder Bilar, Inbali Isserles and Kath Langrish, Malachy Doyle, Frances Thomas, anyone I might have briefly forgotten, and the much missed Kit Berry, to whom the book is dedicated and by whom all of these lovely photos were taken..

 

 

 

Thank you. And now a brief word from our sponsors.

 

 

https://unbound.com/books/land-in-mind/

An Writer in her Landscape. My Interview with Catherine Fisher by Steve Gladwin

I'm really delighted to be interviewing Catherine this month. She's a hugely successful writer for Middle-Grade and YA. Based in Newport, Gwent, she won the Tir Na n-Og prize for ‘Candle Man’ in 1996, the first of her dystopic series, ‘Incarceron’ was TheTimes Children’s Book of the Year and New York Times bestseller. Winner of the Cardiff International Poetry Prize, Catherine has published four collections of poetry and one pamphlet called 'Folklore.' Her work has been labelled fantasy, but in truth is not at all easy to describe. It has a huge range of scope and takes the reader all over the world and backwards and foreword in time, into the Norse sagas and to the Celtic otherworld, between faerie and Ancient Egypt and many other places besides. I attended two of the courses on writing from Myth and folk-tale which Catherine co-tutored at Ty Newydd with Kevin Crossley-Holland. It was there that I first became aware of her love of landscape.

 

Catherine, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us. Can I start by asking you to describe just how different the landscape surrounding you now is from the landscape in which you were born?

 

 It’s actually pretty much the same. I was born in Newport in Gwent and that’s where I still live. Obviously there are more roads and houses than there used to be, but the underlying landscape of the rivers Usk and Ebbw and the levels with the hills behind doesn’t change. I live near the Usk and the river and its tides are very important; I always like to know what the tide is doing.

 

 What are the most vivid of your childhood memories?

 

 The earliest thing I can remember is playing on the floor while my mother was ironing. She told me I would have to go to school soon. I told her I wasn’t going, but she explained you had to. I was appalled, and hated the whole idea. I was probably 4 years old, or even 5, because at that time that was the age school education began- we had no nursery or kindergarten. I could already read and when I got to school it was just as bad as I had expected. In fact I never got to grips with it, and only when I got to A Levels was it at all bearable. It’s a characteristic memory really, and shows I was suspicious of authority even then.

 

 And what about books? Were there ones which inspired you more than others, or made you want to be a writer?

 

I was lucky in that there was a small public library round the corner and I went there every week for books. All the usual children’s books of course, but Stevenson stands out, especially Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll. It was there I read a whole shelf of myths and legends and fairytales. Also about that time I found a battered paperback of the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in a junk sale and thus entered the magic world of Baker Street. Later I read Alan Garner- a revelation!-, Tolkien, Holdstock,David Jones, Keats, Yeats. And then Arthur Machen.

 

 As a writer is landscape and the ability to write about it something that’s important to you?

To take just two of your books, Corbenic and Dark Henge, the landscapes alternate between the mundane and the otherworldly – in each case with the one leading to the other. I notice that it’s been a theme all the way since your first book, ‘The Conjurer’s Game’.

 

 

 The way the land is formed, its woods and rivers and valleys, are a sort of entry into the imagination. Land and Mind are so similar. I have often set books in real landscapes and then travelled through them, or used real landscapes in Otherworlds. There are certainly plenty of portals in the books! Maybe I learned that from Alice in Wonderland, but also a book like Elidor, where the streets are very grim and real, but lead to astonishing things. If fantasy is grounded in the mundane, it adds to the power, somehow. Gondor would not be so high and perilous without the Shire.

 

Have you ever had a wish list of plots and themes. Welsh myth is clearly particularly important to you, but you have travelled much farther afield. Can you give us an idea of your range?

 

I wish I had a wish list. I usually just start with some tiny idea or image or place and then see where it goes. I am very unwilling to plot in advance or even think about the book too much when it is being written. I avoid thinking about it or talking about it. I have used a lot of Welsh themes but also Eqyptian and Greek motifs in The Oracle series, and more sf ideas in The Obsidian Mirror set, where I wanted to mix fairies and time travel..I enjoy historic fiction, and of course time travel is ideal for setting stories in other periods. Books like Incarceron are usually called distopias, certainly alternative futures. 

 

 

Having seen you confidently striding off on our courses at Ty Newydd, I’ve imagined that walking and getting out into landscape is especially important to you. What are the places that call to you and why?

 

I walk a lot in the woods around Tintern, and the Wye valley. Then there are places on the Gwent Levels- wet, marshy, wide-skied places that I like. I walk on the Marlborough Downs a lot, usually in summer- thoise open chalky landscapes with their ancient architectures are magnetic places. But I also like walking around unfamiliar streets in old cities, where the buildings hint at undiscovered stories. The very act of walking helps with getting your mind to that liminal place where stories are formed.

 

Is there a right and wrong way of writing about landscape, or is that a bit too black and white a way of looking at it?

 

 I don’t think there are right and wrong ways of writing about anything. It’s just the way it happens.

 

 What about your own personal landscape – the place where you live. How well does it reflect you the writer?

 

 

 

 The Gwent Levels are a strange in-between sort of place, between sea and land. Like all estuaries, there are big skies and wet underfoot and flat roads. We also have words like reen and gout which are local. And the Severn is a huge presence. I have set stories here- The Candleman in particular. But I do like to vary settings, so not often.

 

 You’re labelled a fantasy writer. Are there any tricks of the trade you might offer to any aspiring writer of fantasy?

 

 Only to find what fascinates you and write about that. Keep it inventive, play tricks on the reader, keep them guessing. Above all think about language and how you use it because that is the only tool you have.

 

 

 

OK, Catherine, we have come out of lockdown and we can have people round to dinner again. If you had three great fantasy writers, living or dead at your table, who would it be and why?

 

 

 

I would invite Arthur Machen, Dafydd ap Gwilym and David Jones, and then just sit back and listen. What a conversation that would be! Welsh myth, local places, strange tales. And I’m sure ap Gwilym would know a lot of stories we have lost.

 

Do you think there have been phases in your writing? Where do you think you are at -the-moment, and what are you working on?

 

 Yes, there are phases. I began with shorter books for 9-12s, then the books got more complex and longer and older, for young adults. Suddenly I wanted to go back to a younger audience, with the Clockwork Crow trilogy. My next book is a collected short stories, gathering old and new short pieces together. It’s called THE RED GLOVES AND OTHER STORIES and will be published by Firefly in September.

 

Finally, how well have you been able to work and cope with lockdown? What are the most important lessons we need to learn for the future?

 

 I have worked as normal through lockdown, on the short stories and some other projects. What has been difficult, of course, is not receiving as many stimulating experiences as usual- theatre, opera, ballet, sport, museums, galleries, trains and travel- which is where I spend a lot of time. I think we will learn to appreciate these far more than before.

 

Thank you, Catherine, for sharing all your thoughts with us.

 

Thank you, Steve.

And Catherine's new collection of short stories, 'The Red Gloves' and other stories will be published on September 16th 2021.

The photos of the woods around the Wye Valley were taken by Catherine.

If you want to find out more about Catherine and her work, her website will tell you all you need to know.

https://www.catherine-fisher.com/