Here I am (and some friends)

Awww, you are so lovely. I’ve had kind messages asking why I’m not blogging. Am I still unpacking? (Pah, no, there are still boxes everywhere.) Thank you to those that have told me (or Husband) they missed my posts. *Waves* to those in the office.

I think I underestimated the stress of moving… and I’ve been feeling down in the dumps but yesterday I woke to find my low mood has lifted and I’m feeling back to normal (whatever normal is…)

Sometimes life in Thailand is hard. You might want to locate something but you don’t know where to find it and your Thai will only stretch to ‘where’s the loo? ‘Please could I have chicken fried rice’ and ‘I want to go to soi 42.’ So, lovely readers in Thailand… more specifically, lovely readers who are Thai natives, I wonder if you can help me. I need someone to do some research for me. Mostly I eventually find things but this one’s a bit obscure.

I need to buy a child-sized mannequin.  There are several types of mannequin. A is a display mannequin – you see her in shop windows wearing and hopefully selling clothes. B is what I call a dressmaker’s dummy (I don’t mean to be rude; I’m sure s/he’s no dummy) and s/he’s usually soft so you can stick pins in her/him.

And really what I want is C (because they are pose-able) but I might have to compromise because of cost and availability. I’ve had a look in the Pratunam Centre at a place I know has shop fittings including mannequins but they didn’t have what I wanted. I suspect the general answer will be ‘Chinatown’ but that’s a big place… 

Can anyone narrow it down a bit? Feel free to email me – find the address on the profile page – if you don’t want to comment.

Thank you in advance.

Still scared

Things have calmed considerably in Bangkok. The original curfew that was instigated on Wednesday night between 8pm – 6am was extended. The following three nights were 9pm – 5am and last night until tomorrow it’s 11pm – 4am.

I feel a bit manic. We’ve raced around trying to be normal. On Friday after the biology exam we went to the cinema (Daughter and I saw Bounty Hunter which was just the sort of nonsense with pretty faces we needed. Son saw Robin Hood – I have a very low tolerance for dodgy/slipping accents (Johnny Depp, I'm talking about you in the first Pirate film) – I’m not sure I’ll cope with this film.) On Saturday all four of us went to see Shrek which had us all laughing. I do love Shrek. I saw lots of friends while we were out all trying to be normal or trying to cheer themselves up.

Everyone has taken a bit of a bashing but I expect we’ll get there in the end.

However, it turns out I’m still scared.

Not about Bangkok – though I am a little, if I’m honest – it’s the novel again. I’ll stop a minute while you all sigh. *Collective sigh*

Scared scared scared. That’s what I am. I’m fairly certain that I know what I have to do but I’m too frightened to start.

(I need Dummies Guide to Twentieth Century Britain. Does anyone have recommendations for researching twentieth century life? How we used to live?) 

I think I've gone too far...

There’s something really wrong about googling ‘man bleeding to death YouTube.’

These are the lengths that writers will go to in order to get things accurate. How people die in my book seems to be strangely important to me; like playing God. Even those occurring off-stage are significant.

My brother, a doctor, has been consulted over all of the deaths in my book. You been a bad person? You’re gonna get a nasty death… I love it.

Is that wrong?

Anyway… my googling ‘man bleeding to death YouTube’ also included the words ‘Holby City’ because my internet research threw up (Ha! pun intended) a character on the BBC medical drama with oesophageal varices (Link WARNING) bleeding to death and I wanted to have a watch of it! I couldn't find it on YouTube....

Oh blimey, hark at me. It IS wrong…

More bits and bobs

• This is definitely taking research too far… particularly the penultimate paragraph! So nearly a big ‘ouch’.

• Liz has been to the Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature in Dubai and she is doing some great write ups from her notes – go here to check out some more. This post, following a talk from Kate Mosse (in conversation with Paul Blezard) had me cheering loudly when I read Kate Mosse did not become a writer until she was 43! YAY TO THAT.

• And finally, gorgeous Angie has given me an award. I am very touched by her lovely words and those that come with the award.

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers."

I’d like to pass it on to Leigh, HelenMH and Karen.

• No doubt as a result of my smugness, there’s already a suspicious pile up of paper on my desk. EEEEK. How did that happen? Must deal with it; must deal, now! Breathe! Breathe...

It's not funny

If one of your characters is an archaeologist and you know nothing about that, you do some research, right? That seems straightforward.

It seems to me that it gets a bit harder when one of your characters is cleverer than you are or is funnier. What do you do then?

Maybe when a character is cleverer than you, you can be smart with dialogue and syntax to convey intelligence. And you could research subjects that they talk about to show us the things that concern them.

But funnier?

No book I write will be a laugh a minute funny. I mean there may be a smirk here or there, possibly I could even raise a chuckle from you. But I won’t be writing a comedy anytime soon. People tell me I make them laugh … but I'm never quite certain how or why. If it happens it happens.

I just can’t turn on the funny.

So if a character is funnier than I am … how do I do that?

Research

I managed a rather wonderful 704 words yesterday, which for a tortoise writer like me, is pretty good.

I’ve had lots of help from a man I don’t know, called Peter. He has been answering my questions about a first edition book that I’ve never seen and cannot find an image of on the internet. The book ‘appears’ in my novel and I need to know what it looks like. He’s emailed back and forth enclosing answers and now images. He couldn’t have been more helpful. Thank you Peter.

My sister has asked a friend of the family if he can help with questions about local building/planning applications for a very small subplot and I’ve now emailed him.

My poor brother is still being bombarded with emails about complicated medical complaints - I think I'm maybe running down his reserves of goodwill.

But I’ve still not heard back from either of my ‘classics’ connections.

Nor have I had a reply to the antiquarian bookseller my sister put me on to. If there’s anyone out there who knows one that might be willing to answer a few questions, please can you email me?

And a biochemist? Anyone manage to put me in touch with one of them?

All contacts gratefully received.

Research

‘Write about what you know’ the saying goes, so the mother of my MC is a university lecturer in the subject of my first degree (classics). As well as being a classicist, if I refine the character’s special interest, it enhances the growing symbolism appearing, quite of its own accord, throughout the story.

Classics, it’s perfect. I studied it at, in the words of Edmund Blackadder, “one of the three great universities… Oxford; Cambridge; Hull…” One tiny problem is that all my textbooks are currently residing 6,000 miles away in the attic of our house in the UK. But, there is another wee problem. I’m sure I’ve told you this before, Husband says I know so little about the subject that I did my first degree in, that really, I’m obliged to give my certificate back to the university.

So I got to thinking some more. One of our cohort went on with his study and is still an academic of the subject. Oh so, straightforward: a little bit of googling and I found an email address for him at a British university. I’m not sure … he won’t mind the twenty year break since asking him for help with my Latin…

Not a nanosecond went by and I got a bounce-back from Mailer-Daemon. Who the hell is Mailer Daemon anyway? And how did he know so quickly that clever friend from many years ago is no longer at said university?

Well, I checked, but Facebook, Friends Reunited etc isn’t his thing, but he was listed on the university alumni site – they will forward my message to him. But they may think he’s at the useless email address too. And how long will it take? Oh well, it’s gone now, so let’s see. There’s always his publisher too. I suppose I should try that next.

Next on the list of people to contact, is clever brother who’s a doctor. I’ve only just discovered the god complex of writing. I don’t feel it with all writing because crap stuff happens in books to nice people. However, when I’m killing someone off – even before the story starts, I take great delight in how I kill the not so nice characters off.

Finally, I’ve got a contact from my sister for someone who deals in secondhand books… but that’s written on the back of an envelope currently residing somewhere in my paper mountain: hmmm that could take some time to find too.

Bits and Pieces

I can almost touch the end of my holiday now; I fly back to Bangkok on Friday.

What I really want to write about is my notion of home, which is being seriously questioned in some part of my heart. I tried yesterday to write about it too, but I can’t get it down or correct or something ... so instead, let's go on with other, less enigmatic topics …

The last few weeks have been proper holiday with Husband here: no work and too much food. I’ve been extremely naughty about 100 words a day but I shall get back into it when I get home. I’ll be reporting in every day with my word count.

Yesterday I talked on the phone to a woman at a local prison … about one of my characters who has been inside. He has to have done something, been punished and served the right length of time to fit in with the rest of the story … I’m hoping to see the vicar this week about the funeral and my sister has dug out a contact that deals in antiquarian books, so all the research is coming together too.

Another funeral and my contact lenses

Thank you for your comments. I’m feeling a little happier today. I have an article due so I will think about that and apply my words to that instead of the novel. Then I will do some research on the novel. When I am stuck I often find that research is the answer … for me; I don’t think this works with everyone.

So update to my spooky funeral story from Tuesday: the village to which my MC returns is an amalgam of several villages/small towns that I know here in Kent. The town that my opticians is in (do you remember the saga of my contact lenses?) has leant itself to my fictitious place – particularly the road layout. Yesterday I returned to the opticians for her to check the contact lenses that she fitted back at the end of April (the saga is ongoing… I was wearing my lenses in the wrong eyes! I am such a klutz. Not trusting myself to keep the right one in my right eye, we are sending them back to have a ‘ler’ (L) and a ‘reh’ (R) engraved on them.)

Anyway, I’m in this lovely little town with Sister, and we’re walking along the very road that in my story I’ve put the church in which the father’s funeral takes place. The MC walks from the station, around a kink in the sloping road to see the silhouette of the funeral procession about to move into the church. So there I am with Sister, and WHAT do I see? I see another hearse, in the midst of a funeral. I am now officially freaked out.

DON'T come home with a dog

Yesterday morning I had an appointment with Claire at SCAD (Soi Cats and Dogs) in preparation for writing for them. I was off early to meet her at their new premises, Retails Too; Husband wished me a good day and said ‘DON’T come home with a dog.’

I don’t know about anyone else but one of the things I love about writing articles is finding out about new things. If I know a little already about the subject the joy is in discovering how I feel about them. In this case I love cats and dogs: I’ve just about always lived with them – apart from here in Bangkok and as a student.

I’ve always loved research and it makes the writing so much easier – the ideas come directly as a result of research. In the case of SCAD my investigation consists of finding out about the history of the organisation, understanding what they do (and don’t do) and how they arrived at the present. But because being involved makes writing easier I also just want to spend time there. Being told something is one thing, but watching how they deal with frightened puppies tells me so much more.

After a tour of the premises (no new cats or dogs present yet) we sat down with a coffee and we talked. Claire told me that there were three dogs coming that morning to be photographed – could I hang around to see them? (During the morning, Husband texted me with an email address I’d requested – and a postscript, adding ‘DON’T come home with a dog.’)

Conversation finished when Carol (not Carol and Chris) arrived with three dogs: bouncy dog called Maggie; shy white terrier like puppy called ‘shy’ in Thai and cute chunky puppy called ‘Nay-pon’ or ‘General’ in Thai. We went into the grounds with the three dogs and I watched Claire and Carol commence with the photoshoot – and there was my first article.

This is the chunky chappie, Nay-pon. I only just managed not to bring him home, but just as a joke, I texted Husband and asked him to stop off and buy some litter on the way home…