One Big Dilemma

Aspiring author down in 'that London.'

I'm trying to decide what to do about what could be a marvellous opportunity.  Or alternatively, a spectacular waste of time and money.  I've no idea which, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that if the opportunity is presented to me, it'll be because the latter guess is closest to the truth.

Enough riddling, though.  The dilemma is whether to try and hastily knock the last rough edges off of 'Limited Capability', the paperback doorstop of last autumn's ebook serial, in order to enter it into a competition, or allow myself and my 'proof-reading' team of friends time to get it just right. 

With the book almost 600 pages long, proof-reading isn't a task to be taken lightly.  I've had the advantage, not that he might see it that way, of having a housebound husband recuperating after a foot operation to read my copy too as reading text aloud, especially after you haven't seen it for a few months, is a really good way to track down the bugs.  It's not just that the text needs the odd 'typo' zapped.  Already, I've found a few lengthy sentences that don't flow at all well when read aloud; since they are dialogue, they'll need restructuring to ensure that they do.  I'm sure my CAB colleague Tina (who is both proof-reading and, I trust, spotting legal errors) will notice that twice at least I've referred to the 'Personal Capability Assessment' when I mean the 'Work Capability Assessment' (the former being the now redundant 'medical' for Incapacity Benefit, the latter the test for Employment and Support Allowance).  It may not matter to many readers, but I bet Dick Francis didn't misname bits of tack when writing his horse-racing thrillers nor Hilary Mantel send Thomas Cromwell off to the Globe to watch The Tempest.

And I'm not really satisfied with the cover.  I think I need to re-align the image on the front and definitely adjust that on the reverse to make the text more legible, and tackle 'the mystery of the vanishing apostrope'.  I wonder whether to include a 'by the same author' list inside the first title page, or whether that looks pretentious with just two earlier non best sellers to my name, or the 'blurb' for the earlier books at the end of this one.  In short, there's a lot to do to get this book right and I only have a week to deal with most of that and submit my entry if I want to be considered for CompletelyNovel's 'One Big Book Launch' event, where ten selected writers will get the chance to share a central London venue, with the obligatory wine and nibbles and, hopefully, a few movers and shakers from the publishing world.

Now if this really is a great opportunity for self-publishing authors to get noticed by the big guys, thus getting deals and publicity beyond their wildest dreams it'll be very heavily subscribed and, if I am successful, it will be a reflection on the quality, potential and relevance of my work.  If it isn't, and the only entries are a handful of the most confident CN authors rather than the more talented, I'll be in with every chance of winning a place, but for what?  It's the 'Big Book, Little Book' competition from last summer that makes me wary.  Five authors had the chance to be featured on a blog's 'Self-published Sunday' slot; four of us won the opportunity.  As they say in the USA, 'you do the math.'  And it had no impact on sales either.

So, on balance, I think I'll probably pass.  If it is a success for the people involved, hopefully CN will do similar events in future and I can have a go with a completely fresh story, not the equivalent of  The Empire Strikes Back for the rebels at the Solent Welfare Rights Project.  With a little luck and perseverance, 'Limited Capability' might be good to go in time for Stoke's literary festival in June and as it doesn't open with the villain being compared to the Daily Mail I may yet blag a mention in the local paper.  In the meanwhile, at least I've finally plucked up the courage to send my dad a copy of 'Severe Discomfort'.  But that's another story...

Hot Air and Homicide

There's going to be a literary festival in Stoke-on-Trent this summer.  Exciting news, isn't it?

Well, it seems not.  So far the stories the local paper have printed in anticipation of the event and for World Book Week have attracted few comments, and those somewhat snarky - a photo of Stoke City superstar (and former Saint) Peter Crouch, reading with local children, elicited only rude remarks about the school and incredulity that Crouchy could read.  It's a crying shame, because Stoke-on-Trent has a lousy reputation for educational attainment and a sense that the community is getting behind this idea might help to dispel that.  But it's early days, and with just over three months to the event, I need to consider whether I can use it to promote my own literary efforts.

Opportunity number one is the writing competition announced by the Sentinel.  A chance to show off my skills in a short story competition, no less.  And sadly, no more: a mere 1,000 to 2,500 words.  A hundredth of the wordcount I usually reach telling a tale.  By my standards, 1,000 words is practically Haiku, a mere tweet.  Still, I could have a go - I even have an entertaining idea for what I could use as a theme.  I'm just not sure 2,500 words will enable me to do it well enough.

Opportunity number two is to promote what I already have and the fact that, all being well, I should have a 'new' book (the paperback of Limited Capability) ready to 'launch' in time for the event.  It'll take a clever bit of marketing and a massive chunk of luck to get the Sentinel interested in novels that fly against their usual line on Social Security issues, by casting alleged benefit cheats as the heroes and a fraud investigator as the villain (not to mention that infamous reference in the preface to Gary Pike as 'the Daily Mail in human form').  But it may be that raising an issue that always gets the comments flying in on real life stories is the very thing to get people interested in a literary festival who would otherwise think it's not for them.  If, that is, they can get past the fact that Severe Discomfort and its companion volumes take place 250 miles away, apart from Stoke-on-Trent's cameo appearance as adopted home to the redoubtable Geordie feminist Daphne Randall.

Opportunity number three is to attempt to catch the attention of any literary movers and shakers in town for the event.  I think I can safely rule out David Starkey as a potential patron and my writing seems to have little that would recommend it to Joanna Trollope.  There's always talented local crime writer and self-publishing success story, Mel Sherratt, though.  I have considered getting in touch with her before, but it's difficult to know how.  I'm sure high-profile writers get sick to the back teeth of being pestered by 'fans' wanting them to read their own work, and I haven't even got the feeble excuse of being a fan.  That's no criticism of Mel's writing; I simply don't read crime novels, just as I don't tend to get into police procedural TV shows or series.  Or gore, violent crime or serial killer-themed writing or films generally.  And if there is a polite way of striking up a conversation with a writer that begins, 'I haven't read any of your books and they're not really my thing, but...', I haven't worked it out yet. 

But perhaps there's a thriller waiting to be written on whether a small city like Stoke-on-Trent big enough for two fringe-haired former housing officers with literary ambitions?  "With the city's first literary festival approaching, a charismatic local crime writer seems sure to be the star of the show.  But an ambitious and jealous older rival, hungry for success, has murderous plans to steal the limelight..."

Not really, of course - even Iain Duncan Smith isn't really in mortal peril from me (not while my archery kit is buried away in a spidery corner of the loft, at any rate), so Ms Sherratt can surely rest easy.  Mind you, as a story it could be a proper page-turner, but it'll definitely take me more than 2,500 words to tell it! 

Over to you, Mel?

Proof

On Tuesday, I came home to find a chit advising that a parcel had been left with our neighbours.  It was either the maincrop potatoes for this year, or the proof copies of the paperback of 'Limited Capability'.  It was indeed four copies of 'LC'; with the book of the serial weighing in at 577 pages, the taters would probably have been lighter!

I still remember the strange thrill back in January 2013 of opening a neat parcel and finding within two paperbacks with the title 'Severe Discomfort' and my name on the front.  They were the original proof copies of my first book, hot off the press!  I was pleasantly surprised with the quality, that the cover design (home-made) seemed to work and that there were 300 pages of real words inside, all written by me.  Aided and abetted by a trusted friend who had rashly agreed to proof read a copy for me, I slowly worked through the glitches.  Correcting the indentation, which was too deep; culling the excess commas - though with hindsight, I should have taken an equally tough line on the exclamation marks.  Adding the odd sentence, taking out a word here and there, re-ordering a line or two.  Between us, Anna and I caught most of the typos, though a couple slipped through the net. 

The calculation error in Lyn and Terry's benefits escaped detection for months, despite the book being read by both friends and strangers from a benefits background, until my colleague Tina reminded me of the 'Enhanced Disability Premium'.  Sadly, by that stage the book was in general circulation and it would have been prohibitively expensive to correct it.  So we'll have to leave it that the DWP miscalculated and diddled the Walkers out of about £15 per week (that sort of thing does happen, you know).  I thought I had done a more thorough job on the original manuscript of 'Continual Supervision', but when the two proof copies arrived with the spring in their tidy cardboard box with that delicious new book smell, in no time at all I was spotting hiccups, and sure enough a sheet of further corrections arrived from Hampshire in due course.

So I hold out little hope of 'LC' being trouble free.  I've already promised I'll take a tough line on those exclamation marks, and having read the first couple of chapters I really must spare a blameless character's blushes and correct his (my!) miscalculation of ESA at the 'support group' rate for 2011/12.  There's also something peculiar happening with the apostrophes on the back cover 'blurb' (which I recall being a problem with the first proof of 'Severe Discomfort') so I'll probably rewrite it to take them out, as a glitchy cover lets a book down badly.  I may need to adjust the font or print size to make the blurb more legible - or adjust the picture behind it.  The colour scheme has turned out a more browny-red than I intended too, but it still works so I may leave that as it is.

Whatever I do, I mustn't rush and overlook corrections, but I mustn't dawdle either.  Last year, I missed the chance to launch 'Severe Discomfort' during the Eastleigh by-election, when Lyn and Terry's home town was suddenly centre stage of UK politics.  In June, my adopted home of Stoke-on-Trent is holding a literary festival, but stories about it in the local paper have largely failed to generate debate and comment in the way that, say, court reports about people accused of benefit fraud tend to.

I may just have had a cunning plan..! 

Stop Press

I need to stop grumbling about 'the press'.

An odd observation perhaps from a writer of 'counter-propaganda' on the day the Sun leads with a story about a woman allegedly blaming her obesity on over-generous benefits funding her take-away habit (truly Goebbels would blush at the antics of the Murdoch press!) but there are reasons to be cheerful this week.

After having a good moan in the 'Sour Grapes' post about how benefits experts never get their voices heard, I managed two separate mentions - with quotes - in the Sentinel (our local paper) and a reprise of one of the stories (a demonstration outside the Atos assessment centre) made the Mirror.  Sadly the photographer for the other story thought taking a portrait shot of a group with a fish-eye lens was a good plan and the resulting photo gives me a bigger head and scarier teeth than the 'Glenda the Lender' shark costume being modelled by a colleague at my side!

While at the Atos demo, I managed to get a few words with the local BBC political reporter and having agreed to do a longer interview by 'phone that evening, was subsequently called and asked to rearrange that to 7am the next morning in the studio.  'When was that again?' I asked, hoping I'd misheard him.

'7am'

It's still dark up here at 7am - isn't it?

You know that notorious George Osborne jibe about the people whose curtains are still drawn when you go off to work?  Those curtains are mine!  Luckily, I work quite flexible hours and as inspiration often strikes late in the evening, it's just as well I can get ready to go out according to Sally Archer's timeframe and come in to work at 9.30am. 

Actually it is light at seven by this time of year, as I found out on Thursday.  And they make fairly decent tea at Radio Stoke.  They even made the estimated £50 million of unclaimed benefits in the city their top news story for a little while.  But they don't warn you in advance that all they're after is a couple of minutes of chat and ideas to get a few people phoning in and that the crib sheet with all the benefit rates won't be needed, and you won't have time to explain why claiming Carers Allowance even if you won't be paid it makes sense.  And you certainly won't have time to do the severe disability premium!

I also discovered that 7.15 on a drizzly morning was a bad time to find that my CAB staff pass wouldn't let me into the building before 8am - luckily our caretaker did (despite claiming to be a Portsmouth supporter).

What I failed to do, being a benefits specialist rather than a politician or celebrity, was to plug my book.  I had an open goal to shoot at too.  Asked a 'curved ball' question about what I would do if I had a clean slate and could start again with the benefits system, I trod water for a few moments discussing the difficulty of addressing people's complicated lives without an equally complicated benefits system, and when pushed for an answer plumped for a non means-tested Basic Income for all - 'like retirement pension, but for all ages'.  Wrong answer!  The practiced celeb/politician would have seized the opportunity to explain that their deliberations on the subject could be found in their latest publication, priced £20.99 and available from all good bookshops.

Limited Capability won't be £20.99, by the way.  It should be under a tenner even at nearly 600 pages!

So that was a missed opportunity and sadly the media in my old home town (the Daily Echo and BBC Radio Solent) don't seem to have appreciated the PR copies of Severe Discomfort I sent to them a couple of weeks ago as nobody has been in touch.  But one of the PR books made a happier landing - on a desk at my Union's head office - and I was invited to do a blog about the book for them, which you can read here:
http://www.uniteforoursociety.org/blog/entry/the-other-side-of-benefits-street/

Let's hope that'll keep the biscuits coming in!

Have a heart?

Spoiler-free, despite being about designing the cover for Limited Capability.

I spent most of my lunch break yesterday looking for a Valentine's Day card - and not for my husband - and tomorrow I'll be forging a page or two of a set of Employment and Support Allowance appeal papers.  Rest assured that this isn't the beginning of a life of crime with a 'seecrit admiorer' (see LC episode eight for the reference) - I'm simply working on the cover design for the paperback version of Limited Capability.

Having written the story and already described the card in question, I had to find something to match.  Had I thought up the cover design before publishing, I could have tweeked the story to fit the cards available (I actually did do this for Lyn Walker's birthday card on the cover of Severe Discomfort which arrives in a yellow envelope in the first draft).  But with inspiration following publication, this time I was stuck with tracking down a suitable card - not too expensive-looking or especially tasteful - with a 'sparkly heart' on the front.  How hard could that be?  You'd be surprised...

After visiting all the local newsagents, co-ops and card shops, it was starting to look like rewriting episode eight was on the cards after all, but luckily I got back to the office from my morning commitments early enough for a dash round Hanley and while the card I have isn't quite as I pictured it in my mind's eye, it does have the requisite sparkly heart. 

I thought I had some ESA papers I could use - a set I used to use for training, with the client details blotted out - but after taking a few photos of key sections with unsuitable wording hidden under the card, I realised my old training 'bundle' used the pre 2011 'descriptors', so was no use.  So one wet afternoon (tomorrow, perchance) I'll be using these as a template for a fabricated set.  Geeky, yes - but when my keenest readers are advisers and claimants (if the reviews are to be believed) you can't afford to get stuff like this wrong!


Spot the deliberate mistake!

I must admit I am a control freak where my books are concerned and I like designing the covers myself and setting up the photos.  If you've got beyond the first couple of chapters of Severe Discomfort you'll realise that the cover reflects the key moment when Lyn Walker receives more than just birthday cards in the post one November morning.  Continual Supervision has a cover based on what might be found on Hilary Carrington's desk as she sits down to snatch a quick lunch in the late summer of 2010 - a copy of the Guardian, a letter Martin Connolly needs her to check (written in haste - there is a typo) and a colour chart of emulsion paints in classic shades as she contemplates the on-going and unexpectedly pleasurable  redecoration of her home. 

Once the paperback is produced and when time permits, I'm planning to do some new covers for the Limited Capability ebooks.  I already know what some of them are going to look like.  The paint sample cards might make a reappearance, though for a good quality trade emulsion, and there will be at least one gloomy view across Southampton Water, but shopping for props for episode four's cover will be definitely be fun!

The Word on the Street

Another 'repeat' here - a post from my 'serious' blog about benefits looking at the phenomenon of 'Benefits Street', billed as 'showing the reality of life on benefits' by Channel 4, who also shamelessly wallow in its notoriety.  It's due to finish on Monday with supposedly a 'debate' about our Social Security system; let's hope they can get a better quality of 'expert' than Channel 5 did when they brought in Edwina Currie and Katie Hopkins!

If a production team and camera crew followed you around for a year, what would the resulting documentary about your life look like?  Here are a couple of possibilities for mine... 

The first, portraying the delusional political activist, concentrates on shots of me hunched over my computer, trawling the national and local media for Social Security related news to share with my Facebook 'friends', doing battle with the 'trolls' on our local rag's website and writing desperately uncommercial 'Welfare Rights Lit' (ensure shots with alcoholic beverage on hand are utilised).  A few shots of washing up waiting to be done, an overfull laundry basket and Himself cooking dinner convey failure to deal with proper feminine domestic chores.  Cut to meetings with fellow activists in cluttered rooms bedecked with CND posters, a little sequence of us being ignored by passers-by when handing out anti-Bedroom Tax leaflets and some marching through the streets of London or Manchester against the cuts - again, splicing in some bored-looking members of the public to stress the irrelevance of it all.  Any suggestion that I have non-leftie friends and non-political interests - in short, a Life - would go.  And because the audience isn't supposed to approve of this idealistic and anachronistic politicking, they'd be a snarky voice-over and an ironic music score.

Another version follows the do-gooder adviser: it could be sympathetic, looking at the issues brought to the doors of advice centres in these tough times and showing how dealing with unremitting poverty and injustice can be demoralising, depressing and frustrating.  A true picture would catch colleagues moved to anger and to tears.  But why do that when you'd have enough shots of us gossiping with each other, eating biscuits and drinking tea behind the scenes to give the impression that precious little real work gets done without private sector commercial rigour?  They might be lucky and catch some unguarded uncomplimentary comments about clients and funders to spice things up - indeed, if they had earned our confidence and become our friends, I'm sure they could elicit some with a couple of gently leading questions.  So a thoroughly decent and highly committed team appears on screen as burnt-out, callous and lazy, and there's precious little public sympathy when a few 'characters' get their redundancy notices. 

Of course I pose the question as 'Benefits Street' continues to make headlines.  I have to be honest and admit that I haven't watched it, but I've caught a fair number of clips and trailers which appear intent on stirring up controversy by presenting deliberately negative images of James Turner Street, its residents and its piles of rubbish.  As I've said before when discussing the 'On the Fiddle' type programmes, you never will get benefits reality in 'reality TV' as the most typical non-pensioner claimants are either too shy to step forward and face the perils of publicity, or their lives are too tedious to be entertaining.  Television wants controversy and 'characters', not the quiet but dull life of the chronically sick middle-aged woman living in fear of the 'brown envelope' calling her for an Atos medical, and her year-long struggle on the minimum income for a fully-fit person while waiting for an appeal to put right the flawed assessment. 

That's reality, but it's not television.

An aspect of all this that hit me today is that not only do these programmes hurt benefit claimants, by making it politically popular to cut Social Security and political suicide to defend it, they also make cuts in funding for welfare rights projects and law centres more palatable.  There are already local 'trolls' who hurl the accusation 'Traitors' at my own workplace for having the affrontery to advise asylum-seekers and migrant workers, but if our 'indigenous' clients are perceived as 'scroungers', who will speak out against Legal Aid cuts, the loss of grants for benefits casework and the annual salami-slicing of our Council grant? 

And so the luckless claimant looses again.  Found fit for work when you're seriously ill?  Paying the 'Bedroom Tax' when you should be exempt?  Accused of benefit fraud when you've made a genuine mistake?  That's just too bad, because there's no place for Justice on Benefits Street.

In-jokes and Inspiration

A look at the intentional - and accidental - cultural references tucked away on Hilary Carrington's bookshelves and elsewhere.  See how many you spotted!
This blog contains spoilers, so if you haven't finished reading Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision, you might want to look away now!

Once upon a time, an under-employed gardener and former benefits adviser resolved to write a book.  An old-fashioned sort of book, with a chronological storyline, a big cast of characters and a strong message about justice and fairness.  And, because that threatened to be very heavy going for anyone not already prepared to die for The Cause, it needed some laughs and a love story...

The principal love story in Severe Discomfort and Continual Supervision is that between Hilary Carrington and Thomas Appleby; it's also the source of quite a few light-hearted literary references.  Before we meet Tom, we know he's burdened with the nickname 'Heathcliffe' on account of his Yorkshire origins and somewhat dour demeanour, but that Hilary thinks this inappropriate for someone so 'dull'.  As she notes in her wedding speech, that's only the first of a series of unsuitable literary comparisons applied to him. 

However, while Tom tells Hilary she's his 'Bathsheba Everdene' - the proud and spirited heroine of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (and one of my all-time favourite books), it would be fairer to say Tom is her Gabriel Oak - patient and constant through the years while she dallies with far less worthy suitors.  And he's 'no Angel' in the penultimate chapter heading of Continual Supervision - a reference to the faithless Angel Clare who deserts poor Tess Durbeyfield when she confesses her (supposed) shame.  Hilary's late brother Aidan's old schoolbook is deliberately A Christmas Carol as she confronts the 'ghosts' of her past.

As Hilary takes centre stage on her return to the Solent Welfare Rights Project, there's more than a hint of the diva in her first appearance, and that was the cue for an operatic sub-plot.  It's no coincidence that her fateful night out at the theatre with Tom is to see Tosca - the melodramatic love triangle tale of the beautiful actress, her artist lover and the dastardly chief of police who desires her.  Hilary's seduction of Tom in her garden has deliberate overtones of the ill-fated Caravadossi's poignant aria at the beginning of the final act of Puccini's tragedy, but while Dr Appleby plays his part with due devotion and passion, Gary Pike is an unpleasantly twisted but spectacularly incompetent Scarpia.  Like his operatic counterpart his lust is his downfall, though not by a knife in Hilary's hand - that does no more damage than to cut her wedding cake.

On a lighter note, there are the team's Lady Chatterley jokes.  When I first drafted the story, Hilary's relationship with Tom was conceived as quite gentle and possibly entirely platonic, with the joke being that her team assumed otherwise.  But this seemed at odds with Hilary's forthright personality, and it turned out to be much more fun inverting that theme to give Hilary and Tom a thoroughly steamy romance.  Influenced by the very 'bodice-ripper' novels she derides, Hilary has a tendency to perceive their affair in somewhat Mills-and-Boonish terms, but she's the complete antithesis of the naïve and submissive leading lady of the typical 'romantic' novel, and of course modest, warm-hearted civil servant Tom is a far cry from the brooding mill-owners and multi-millionaires that traditionally cause our heroine's bosom to heave.  But the biggest break with tradition is that they are - however Hilary might perceive herself - middle-aged!

Tom's artistic talents determined how another cheeky in-joke played out.  Someone was always intended to have painting and decorating skills as a nod to The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, the ultimate tale of ordinary people's lives told for a political purpose and very much an inspiration for Severe Discomfort.  Tom was obvious candidate after the Tosca theme arose, although Toby was originally the nominee.  The change of trade for Mr Novak allowed for Terry Walker's clumsy comments to him about 'Polish plumbers', and giving Tom the paintbrushes sets up a truly dreadful pun from Hilary.

It's no accident that tomboyish Sally Archer gets to quote To Kill a Mockingbird' in her first scene, since the nearest any of the team get to an 'Atticus Finch' moment in their tribunals is Sally's cross-examination of Andy Burrows.  She's a 'chip off the old block' in this respect.  Meanwhile, Daphne in Staffordshire had to be a fan of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.  That's a nod to the benefits team at Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent CAB where a colleague joked (some years ago now) that you couldn't put two of the team together for more than five minutes without someone making a Tolkien-related remark.  That was true, especially if you added beer.

One literary link slipped in quite by accident, though.  I discovered only after publishing that Richard Parker, the captain who often seems at odds with his crew, shares his name with the Tiger in The Life of Pi.  I gave that name to my Project Manager as it sounded uremarkable and - with all due respect to any actual Richard Parkers out there - a good name for a 'pen-pusher' (more on naming characters another day).  But Richard's tendency to use nautical similies may suggest a sub-conscious recollection that I had heard it before.  After all, a memorial to a local lad called Richard Parker stood in the churchyard of the chapel where I was married about 400 yards from my former Southampton home.  The ill-fated cabin-boy of the Mignonette has an unfortunate place in maritime law and history as the victim of his shipmates' cannabalism after an 1884 shipwreck.  No wonder his namesake is such a worried man!