Why My Next Novel Will Be Called “The Girl In The Fabulous New Leather Coat” October 31, 2009
Posted by Caroline Barnard-Smith in Writing.Tags: celebrity novel, Coleen Nolan, crystal, jordan, katie price, Lynda La Plante, Martine McCutcheon, sapphire
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The most horrifying thing I’ve ever read about Jordan’s (a.k.a. the delectable Ms Katie Price’s) literary career is the fact that she decides upon the titles of her novels with the eventual book launch in mind. The title of her latest offering, Sapphire, was chosen because she thought it would be fun to dress up in blue sparkly outfits while promoting it. Good gawd. She’s also not ashamed to admit that the title is about all she does come up with. The nuts and bolts of her trashy, chick-lit lite novels (i.e. the actual writing) are hammered together by ghost-writer, Rebecca Farnworth.
What I want to know is… who is buying this horse shit?! Somebody certainly is. Jordan’s books (which span two autobiographies and four ghost-written novels) have sold more than three million copies (yes, that was million). Her 2007 novel, Crystal, outsold the entire Booker shortlist and at the time of writing, Sapphire is number 408 on the Amazon.co.uk sales rank (just to give you an idea of what this means, Dunraven Road is currently riding high at number 383,300).
Glamour muppet Katie Price wows the literary world with the utter awesomeness of her book launch outfit
Obviously, publishers haven’t been slow to jump on this bandwagon of badly “written” fluff as pushed by gormless, Botox-loving media whores (or, celebrities to you and me). Jamie Oliver’s wife, Jools, has tried her hand at some ridiculously old-fashioned, hideously middle-class children’s books; while a long list of similarly misinformed morons including Martine McCutcheon and Coleen Nolan have signed on to produce novels that will soon be piled high in a Waterstones near you. Oh joy.
I’m well aware this all sounds like sour grapes on my part (especially when the huge advances these literary posers command literally take money from the mouths of real writers, although that’s a completely different blog post…), but I think this modern trend for ghost-written cack with a D-list name on the cover upsets me more as a reader than as a writer. I just can’t get my head around why people are reading these books in their millions. Why would you want to read second rate chick-lit with vacuous characters, knowing full well the celebrity whose name is on the cover didn’t even write it? Just what, exactly, is it that you’re buying into? Inquiring and bewildered minds really, really want to know!
Apparently, I’m not the only bewildered writer in town. I’m not even the angriest. While accepting an award at the recent Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, screenwriter and novelist Lynda La Plante took her stage time as an opportunity to mouth off about celebrity novels: “Publishers are spending millions on TV faces – these books are a phenomenon and they are awful.” All this while Martine McCutcheon (whose debut novel, The Mistress, has been trashed across the blogosphere since her publishers released the first rancid chapter online) sat looking on in the audience. If Nelson Munce had been in attendance (and if he was real, of course…), the room would almost certainly have echoed with the familiar strains of “ha, ha!”
Happy Halloween!
Cazz’s Radio Debut October 13, 2009
Posted by Caroline Barnard-Smith in Dunraven Road.Tags: BBC Radio Devon, Dunraven Road, Fatally Yours, Mookychick, Richard Green, TeensReadToo, Writing
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This has been an exciting week in the life of Dunraven Road. I’ve received reviews from TeensReadToo, who said that “DUNRAVEN ROAD was an enjoyable way to curl up and pass the evening. Although, granted, it’s not one I’d want to read on a dark night, alone!” (mission accomplished!); Mookychick, who described the book as “…a refreshing change of pace from the bloated, sugary-sweet Twilights of this world. A novel about the often bittersweet pain of passionate love set against a backdrop of sadism, drug abuse and violent inhumanity – this will appeal to fans of real vampires with bite” (ace!); and Fatally Yours, who confirmed a lot of the feedback I’ve been getting when they said “As for the human characters who take center stage for most of the book, unfortunately they are a rather unlikable group. Most are hopeless addicts, womanizers, cheaters, thieves, killers or doormats. Also, it takes a while for anyone to be identified as the lead character in the book… the story itself is nonetheless engaging… so that you wanted to keep reading” (very fair comments… I think I’ve unwittingly created a bit of an Emma. No, I haven’t written a novel about gossip and privilege in an isolated English village, but I do seem to have created characters that not many people can warm to, yet they’ve still enjoyed the story. I’m strangely proud of that because if I don’t like the characters in a novel, I usually don’t continue reading it. Jane Austen wrote of Emma: “I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like”; and I suppose I did the same with my character, Sapphire. Everyone seems to like the vampire Dylan though, which is handy because he’s currently in the last stages of starring in his very own sequel 
)
The week culminated with my interview on the reassuringly nice Mr Richard Green’s afternoon show on BBC Radio Devon. I’m pleased (and extremely relieved!) to announce that I didn’t say anything butt-clenchingly awful during my first live radio interview. I had worried about this event all week, trying to guess what his questions might be and coming up with suitable imaginary answers (although when I told Richard I’d been doing this after the interview, he gave me a very strange look…) After actually getting into the BBC Radio Devon building – I had to go through the strange rigmarole of holding a button in to speak through a locked door (“Um, hello, I’m Caroline Barnard-Smith!”) – I sat with my mum in the lobby (she was so excited about my first radio outing, I couldn’t keep her away) and made ridiculous small talk to allay the knowledge that I was about to speak to the third largest county in the UK live on air, not to mention all the friends and family members who were waiting with baited breath to hear the show online. Mum was quite content to wait in the lobby and listen to me over the tannoy system, but when she was told she could sit-in in the actual studio, she jumped at the chance. That was her first mistake. I’m sure when Richard Green told her that anyone inside the studio was expected to speak on the air and placed an obscenely large microphone in front of her face, she wished she’d waited in the car with my husband. She could have joined him as he listened to me while chewing on his fist, hoping I didn’t say anything ridiculously stupid that I could never live down. Ah, the sweet benefit of hindsight.
I was placed opposite Richard and provided with my own obscenely large microphone; which stared at me and dared me to answer his questions like some squat, eyeless monster. Thankfully, I refrained from descending into a mute panic attack and actually provided answers I was fairly satisfied with. He asked me about my background and about growing up in Devon (“As you can probably tell by the accent, I’m an Essex girl”); then moved on to my inspirations and my reasons for wanting to be a writer. During one short break, he asked me if it was sexist to wonder why a woman would want to write about vampires and horror (!) When I told him I’d always loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer and she was a feminist icon if ever there was one, he omitted that particular question once we returned to the air…
I’d like to thank Richard Green and BBC Radio Devon for having me and for making me feel so comfortable when I was nervous 
I’ve uploaded the interview to YouTube so if you fancy a listen, follow this link. Listen out for my mum’s cameo appearance! My dad still hasn’t let her forget about the “bursting” comment… Poor woman!
Independent Hell October 3, 2009
Posted by Caroline Barnard-Smith in Dunraven Road, Living With the Undead.Tags: Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris, Clive Barker, Dunraven Road, independent bookshops, L.J. Smith, neil gaiman, Stephanie Meyer, stephen king, Twilight, vampire fiction, vampires
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Everyone is always telling readers and authors to support their local bookshops. ‘They’re run by people who are truly passionate about the written word!’, they cry. ‘The large chains are evil, corporate monsters who only care about screwing profit from writers and publishers’. Well, I’ve tried to support my independents, I really have, but apart from a few notable exceptions, I seem to be hitting a brick wall.
Eager to get my book into more brick and mortar shops, I pitched up at a local independent this week, my bag full of pristine copies of Dunraven Road. Now, I don’t expect every bookshop to kneel before me and beg to stock my novel. Besides the fact that would be both disturbing and inappropriate, I am fully aware that I’m an unknown, first time author trying to distinguish myself in a world crammed to the rafters with unknown authors. Give me a cheery thanks, but no thanks, and I’ll be on my way. Simple. But what happened at this particular shop has left me reeling.
After asking what my book was about, the owner took the copy I offered her (practically between forefinger and thumb), before announcing, “It contains the words ‘bitch’ and ‘fucking’”. (After flipping through some more pages) “We don’t stock this sort of thing”.
At this point, I would have been happy to leave. Ignoring the belittling fact that she called my work “this sort of thing”, I can appreciate that Dunraven Road isn’t for everyone. There’s gore. There’s sex. Swear words are sprinkled about with wild abandon. My uncle told me he needed a stroll in his garden after reading some particularly distressing passages (which I took as solid proof that I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do!) I was therefore not offended by the shop owner’s rejection. That was, until she continued…
“What genre is it?”
“Well, it’s categorised as dark fantasy.”
“Hmmm (still peering at my book and riffling through the pages), we don’t stock dark fantasy. I would only stock what I’m comfortable with and I can’t even watch horror films. My customers like the fact that any book in here can be read by anyone of any age.”
“So you don’t stock vampire fiction?” I asked, rather incredulously.
“Oh no, no, nothing like that,” she retorted with the sort of superior smile I assume she reserves for customers asking to order The Big Book of Breasts or Blowjobs For Dummies (okay, I made those up )
She then launched into a lengthy spiel about the sort of book they do stock – mysteries (“They have to be well written. Style is important to me because I was an English teacher for thirty years”) and children’s books that can also be enjoyed by adults (i.e. Sir Harry of sodding Potter). While she was talking, I was still finding it hard to reign in my shock over her disregard for vampire fiction. She obviously didn’t know about the current Twilight madness gripping the entire planet, or the fact that two major US TV shows have debuted this year, both based on bestselling vampire fiction (L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries and Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries). But she knew about Harry Potter. Sheesh, nothing gets past her! I wonder what she would make of these novels seeing as the Twilight series and The Vampire Diaries are both written for young adults. There may be no ‘fucking’ or ‘bitch’ involved, but the frankly disturbing birth of Bella’s child in Breaking Dawn would probably give her nightmares for weeks – yet these books were written by a mormon and are hailed as a shining literary example of how to hang onto your virtue. Would the shop owner have told Stephanie Meyer they “don’t stock this sort of thing”?!
Just as I was about to ask for my book back, turn on my heel and run like the wind, the shop owner noticed the £11.99 retail price. Cue another lengthy spiel about how people don’t like paying that sort of money for a book. All this while looking as if I’d just hopped up on her counter and dumped a load next to the till. That sort of multi-tasking is a genuine talent.
Seeing as she was shocked to hear that I’d found the address of her shop on the internet, I should have told her: If you’re worried about staying competitive against the major bookshop chains, I’d be less concerned about price and more concerned about not having a web presence (let alone an online ordering system), or not keeping up to date with current trends in fiction. If you don’t stock “this sort of thing”, I suppose that also vetoes Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Anne Rice… I could go on and on… All extremely successful, bestselling authors. How is this shop making money?!
Just as I was losing the will to live – the shop owner pulled one more gem out of her sleeve: “Would you consider writing something more suitable for the shop?”
What?!
Yes, certainly. I’ll go home right now and whip up 100, 000 words of nice, fluffy mystery story starring annoying middleclass children with ridiculous names, convince someone to publish it, wait for it to be printed; and run it up to your shop just as fast as I can.
Idiot.
