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Mythago Wood with John Jarrold
295 Plays2 years ago
We're joined by one of the kings of UK science-fiction and fantasy, the literary agent John Jarrold, to talk about Rob Holdstock's majestic 1984 novel Mythago Wood, winner of the World Fantasy Award.
Over a career spanning almost fifty years John has become one of the leading lights and champions for British genre fiction, and a household name within that community. In the publishing industry he has run three SFF imprints: Legend at Random House; Earthlight at Simon & Schuster, and Orbit books, where one of his authors was none other than Rob Holdstock. These days he runs the John Jarrold Literary Agency, with and continues to be a hugely influential and popular figure in the industry and SFF community.
We talk about the peculiar Englishness of Mythago Wood, with respect to its post-war setting, which informs the damaged male characters at the heart of the book and how this in turn has an impact on the representation of the female characters present. We also touch upon the cycle of myth and history, the myth of the hostile brothers, and Holdstock's wonderful writing style.
John brings his enormous experience to bear as we talk at length about the publishing industry and how it has changed over the last fifty years. He is armed with great anecdotes, and the list of people he's worked with over the years read like a Who's Who of international SFF.
Elsewhere Damaris Browne dishes up some salacious details on how to handle the issue of privacy, and how to approach using real-life people in your stories (spoiler alert: very, very carefully). Christine Wheelwright reads Weeping Willows, her winning 75-word entry from June's writing challenge, and the trees in Slish Wood are not - I repeat not - of interest to the CIA.
Join us next month when our guest will be the novelist, poet and essayist Naomi Foyle, who'll be talking with us about Jo Zebedee's alien invasion-cum-prison break thriller Inish Carraig.
Further Reading
There'll Always Be An England in Mythago Wood
Index
[0:00:00 - 49:15] John Jarrold Interview Part 1
[49:16 - 50:24] Voicemail 1
[50:25 - 1:05:10] The Judge's Corner
[1:05:16 - 1:06:14] Voicemail 2
[1:06:15 - 1:07:20] Writing Challenge Winner
[1:07:21 - 1:08:36] Voicemail 3
[1:08:37 - 2:02:12] John Jarrold Interview Part 2
[2:02:13 - 2:04:18] Credits and Close
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Crohn's Cast
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Crohn's Cast, the official podcast of SFF Chronicles, the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community. I'm Dan Jones. And I'm Christopher Bean.
Overview of Mythago Wood
00:00:25
Speaker
Today we're talking about the winner of the 1985 World Fantasy Award, Rob Holstock's Mythago Wood. Mythago Wood was published in 1984. It's set after the Second World War and is ostensibly a tale about two brothers who are reunited at the Herefordshire home after the death of their father.
00:00:41
Speaker
They find the eerie ancient forest behind their farmhouse, Ryhope Wood, begins to encroach upon their world in more ways than one. Mythago Wood becomes a dark, weird story about the awakening and reawakening of mythological figures known as mythagos from the eons past of England's colourful and eldritch history.
00:00:59
Speaker
The novel spawned a cycle of books, known as the Mothago Cycle, and as well as winning the World Fantasy Award, it won Rob Holstock the 1984 British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, the Grand Prix de Maginaire in 2003, and was included in Eastern Press's Masterpieces of Fantasy series.
Guest John Gerald's Influence
00:01:17
Speaker
And joining us today to discuss Mythago Wood, I'm delighted to say is none other than the king of UK science fiction and fantasy, John Gerald. Well, that's very, very kind of you. Thank you, but lovely to be here.
00:01:30
Speaker
Over a career spanning almost 50 years, he has become one of the leading lights and champions for British genre fiction and is a household name within that community. In the publishing industry, he has run three science fiction and fantasy imprints, Legend at Random House, Earthlight at Simon and Shuster, and Orbit Books.
00:01:49
Speaker
During this time, his list of authors reads like a who's who of British and international SFF. Robert Jordan, David Brin, Arthur C. Clarke, Anne McCaffrey, Ian Banks, Mary Gentle, Guy Gavriel Kay, Michael Moorcock, Mark Gatiss and of course, Rob Holstock.
00:02:04
Speaker
Since 2004, he has run the John Jowed Literary Agency and has represented such authors as Chris Beckett, Hanu Rajaniemi,
John Gerald on Mythago Wood
00:02:14
Speaker
R.R. Heywood, R.B. Kelly and Crohn's his very own Toby Frost. So we're delighted to have you John. Thanks so much for being with us. Absolute pleasure. So I've got a feeling I know the answer to this, but please tell me why you picked Mythago Wood to talk to us about.
00:02:34
Speaker
Well, I knew Rob from about 1973, so a decade before this was published. And we were friends until the day he died in 2009. I was lucky enough to publish him twice, both at orbit and at Earthlight. And Mythago Wood is one of my favorite fantasy novels and has been since it was first published. In fact, since I read the short fiction version in 1981. So can you tell us a little bit about the history of Mythago Wood then?
00:03:02
Speaker
Well, because it didn't pop into existence in 1983 or 84. There's a bit of history to it. The short story was published by Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine in 1981, and it won the World Fantasy Award for short fiction.
00:03:16
Speaker
and then three years later, the novel. Rob's background was as a scientist, and he'd written science fiction for several years before he started writing fantasy. So there's always that sort of forensic sense of reality to his fantasy, a sense that you're not just reading something that's come from a whole cloth from somebody's head. They really thought about how this works in background terms. So there's a real sense of reality to it.
00:03:45
Speaker
And it isn't, of course, just about the story. It's about the story of stories, how stories work, how stories come to be. I've loved archaeology and history since I was nine or 10 years old.
Exploration of Characters and Themes
00:03:58
Speaker
And I think that just adds to the sense you get of centuries, millennia, eons in this book of stripping back time as the main character goes into the center of the wood and further and further back in time.
00:04:15
Speaker
There's some really interesting stuff in there. Do you know what discipline of science he specialised in? I think it was to do with medicine.
00:04:30
Speaker
Right, okay. Possibly in theology. Yeah, it's interesting. I think zoological medicine, it says on the research I did. Right, okay. And there is, I mean, mythology is really interesting for a number of reasons. But it's interesting that you pick up the fact that
00:04:48
Speaker
Rob was a scientist. There is, at the beginning of the book, when we're looking at George, the father of the two brothers. So the two brothers, we'll give a quick pracie of the plot. Chris did that in the introduction, but the two brothers are Steve and Christian Huxley. Steven is the one who returns from a village in rural France after the Second World War to his brother, Christian, who lives in the Herefisher farm just around the back of Ryhope Wood.
00:05:18
Speaker
And the father george's just died and it seems to it comes to like that george has been conducting some experiments on what's been going in riho would because there's some strange. Eldritch sort of goings on there and where these myth are goes red mythical representations of mythical figures are emerging from the wood but they're being projected by the people observing the activities in the woods so it's a kind of.
00:05:45
Speaker
symbiotic relationship between the people of the present, the contemporary characters, and the characters of antiquity. Anyway, George, the father, the recently deceased father, is undertaking a series of scientific experiments to see what's going on in the wood. There are all sorts of encephalographic readings and psychological metrics and testing and all sorts of different things. It doesn't seem to be
00:06:13
Speaker
Doesn't seem to be yielding much fruit so it's really interesting that Rob being a scientist is writing a book which is essentially for me the first one of the first things that came out was that science does not is not able to provide the answers. To what is lying at the at the heart of the wood so I wonder what you thought about that.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think the fact that George is a scientist gives you that sense of he's looking for explanations as any scientist would in that situation and testing out possible hypotheses and theories together with a friend of his. So as Steve reads those sections of George's diary,
00:06:58
Speaker
you, the reader, get a sense of what George was looking at, what he was trying to find out, and also Steve's frustration that there's no answer yet, because obviously he's also seeing his brother Christian now getting to that same drawn in to the wood in the way that his father was, which ended up his mother committing suicide. So it's something that has run right through that family.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's, it seems to, Christopher made a good point when we were talking about this before, before we came onto the air, that the wood is, is a catalyst for the destruction of that particular family. And there are a number of reasons for that. But it's coming from within the wood, but it's also coming from without the wood because the family is being destroyed by the patriarch's own obsessions, which is then inherited by the children.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, obviously one of the things that draws all three of them in is the young woman
00:08:02
Speaker
Spelt Gueneth, she pronounces herself Trenave, so I'll stick with that. But obviously Gueneth, there you've got an echo of Guinevere. And there are so many echoes in this book of Robin Hood, of Saxons, of Normans, of the Celts going back into the Neolithic and possibly pre-Neolithic period. It's a fascinating mixture of all of those civilizations.
00:08:31
Speaker
It's a peculiarly English book as well, isn't it? It's a British book, but it's primarily an English book. And the character of Gwyneth, and we should talk about Gwyneth a lot because she is one of the most interesting characters in modern genre fiction, as far as I can see. And that's partly because she's not a fully realised character, which I think, you know,
00:08:57
Speaker
Well, we'll come to that later, but back to the English question, let's say. There is a sense that it's a story of stories and that the book, Mythago Wood, is telling the story of various stories of England and how they're put together.
00:09:13
Speaker
I think at some point it's Stephen who says that the myths reinvent themselves all the time and that they have to reinvent themselves, even though they're telling a tale that's been told in antiquity forever and ever, they have to reinvent themselves superficially on the surface to make themselves relevant to that particular contemporary audience. And every new generation and all the different types of people
00:09:39
Speaker
who have inhabited, colonised, ruled over, invaded, visited, immigrated to England, whatever. All the different people from, like you said, the pre-Neolithic era, through to the Celts, the Druids, the Romans, the Picts.
00:10:01
Speaker
the Vikings, the French, the Normans, the Roundheads, the Cavaliers, the peoples of the British Empire and into the 20th century, the World War I Tommy, for example. All of these people have coloured the history of England, and England's a very, very peculiar place in that it's been able to, it's been flexible enough to absorb all of those different things. And you can't say that there's one unique
00:10:30
Speaker
piece of Englishness that runs through the whole thing, other than its ability to absorb these things and to endure. It's a Mongol nation. It's a Mongol nation, yeah, and it sounds like a pejorative term, but I'm not sure it is, because it's part of the- No, not in any way. No. And as you say, one of the great things is that
00:10:50
Speaker
you will have an invasion and gradually that invading force, that invading person and those invading people will become part of the English tapestry. And some things will change here, but some things will change in them. And so it is that ongoing tapestry throughout history.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's talk about Gwyneth, as we've already mentioned her before. I mean, Chris, you had some interesting observations about Gwyneth, so maybe we'll start with that. Mine were from a sort of, you know, the male gaze or the patriarchal sort of side of things. I understand that she's not pretty well drawn because she's got to be
00:11:32
Speaker
something to Christian, something to the father, something to Stephen. She's something different to everybody in their own essentially a thought form, avatar of their, you know, their minds. But the fact that this woman seemed quite capable with her own agency of dealing with herself, dealing for herself, but
00:11:50
Speaker
There's this obsession by the men in the family and men with her that she needs to belong to one of them. You know, the father, not that she needs to, but that they want, you know, they have the need. So even when Stephen says three-quarters of the way through the book, I don't want to own her.
00:12:09
Speaker
the language around her from men in this book is always about rescuing her or taking her back to the farm. And it was really strange because out of all those three, the person I thought was the least qualified to do that was the protagonist, because he seemed so inept at different times. Academically, he was great, but his actions sometimes were very
00:12:38
Speaker
they just seemed a little bit wanting. So I just found it really interesting because this really strange, sorry, this really strong sort of female thought form avatar, mythago, who seems to be patronized by these men who admittedly may have created her and taking that idea of belonging and possession a stage further by wanting to take her out of her zone and bring her back to live with them.
00:13:08
Speaker
And obviously the only form of her we see is Stephen's form. Obviously there will be differences with Christian's form, with George's form. We see her as Christian's form as a corpse, don't we? A headless corpse. Which is not quite the same, and certainly not a rounded character, so to speak. But no, I think the fact that she isn't entirely a rounded character in one way,
00:13:35
Speaker
allows one to project onto her as a person. I think certainly she shows Stephen how to do things in some cases. When Christian comes back, obviously he is saying, I will take her. It's not the fact that I'm in love with her anymore is that I will possess her. And although, you know, Stephen absolutely wants
00:13:59
Speaker
to give her a chance to be outside the wood and to live at the farm. He is, I feel, less possessive than Christian becomes. And obviously, one doesn't know because Christian, as he said, spent 15 years in the wood, in one of Stephen's years, because time changes within the wood. He has become a different person than he was when we saw him towards the beginning of the book.
Rob Holstock's Style and Legacy
00:14:25
Speaker
So one of the things about Ryhope is that it changes everybody and everything. I would be fascinated just personally to have seen all three versions from the three members of the Huxley family of Gwyneth because they will have been different. They will have been creators.
00:14:46
Speaker
You only see Stevens in the whole of the cycle as well, don't you? There's no other recreation of her. We should probably just give a quick description of Gwyneth because it's very important. She's essentially the idealized manifestation of a beautiful flame-haired Celtic warrior princess.
00:15:07
Speaker
She has the flowing red hair. She's capable with a bow and arrow. She's very beautiful. I think Stephen describes her as having a terrifying sexuality. She has pale skin, a childlike yet strong body, and is a warrior.
00:15:25
Speaker
The thing which came to my mind when reading Gwyneth was Tinkerbell. That's the thing that reminded me of Herb. And the reasons... Okay, so Tinkerbell is, to Peter Pan, the idealised
00:15:41
Speaker
feminine form but from the perspective of a wantaway 12 or 13 year old boy who refuses to engage with the world and so he has this idealised feminine, highly sexualised form in the body of a fairy but he can't have a real relationship with her because she's not real.
00:16:01
Speaker
And in doing that, he sacrifices a relationship with Wendy, who's a flesh and blood girl, and she may have her flaws and her faults, but she's real. And Peter Pan sacrifices that for something that's not real. And I think there's something similar going on with the Huxley brothers and the father, actually.
00:16:22
Speaker
The important thing to... Christian is the most overt with the question about possession. He says, I no longer care for her. I care about having her. He's quite explicit about that. He says, I care about having her, possessing her. But these are not what you would call...
00:16:43
Speaker
powerful, dominant men. These are ruined men. These are all men who have been devastated by the war, whether physically or psychologically. Same goes for Harry Keaton. We talk about Harry Keaton as well, because he carries around a scar on his face, he's physically deformed from piloting in the war. But these men are somehow brought low. And so they're incapable of having
00:17:05
Speaker
a real relationship with a real woman so they projecting their fantasies on this this method who is awakened by their interaction with the with the strange word at the back of the farm so i think i'm minded to be. To feel a little to give them a cut them a bit of slack let's say that the male characters because they're not.
00:17:29
Speaker
all that they could be. They've lost something. They've lost something in the war. They've sacrificed a large part of themselves for freedom, for England actually, that's putting it a better way. They've sacrificed a large part of themselves for England and it's left them perhaps incapable of continuing a relationship in that very real flesh and blood sense.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think back to George and the fact that his wife committed suicide and the boy's mother and the fact that she obviously saw Gwyneth as George's new girlfriend. Yeah, she's like Wendy. She's the Wendy character.
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I found that terribly sad. It's great because it affects me emotionally. And that's what you want from any book, any novel, is that emotional connection. And certainly, I can remember reading it in 1845 and connecting totally with Stephen and hating Christian. And more and more of the book goes on.
00:18:30
Speaker
And thinking this is fascinating. I mean, I, Rob was born in hiding Kent, which is about 10 miles away from where I am now in Roy in East Sussex. And very nice part of the world. It is. And there's a lovely sense of
00:18:46
Speaker
the country in Romney Marsh and all those areas. And there's actually a place mentioned in the Mythago books called Shadoxhurst. And Shadoxhurst is a place about five miles away from me. So he always brought that sense of the chalk bones of England into this series.
00:19:06
Speaker
And it's fascinating how that works together with characters, because there's a point where Godeth says, you know, I'm not flesh and blood, I'm chalk and bone. And it's really interesting to see how he uses that. Yeah, can I come back to the thing about his wife?
00:19:28
Speaker
because the thing that I got, so I was speaking to Dan earlier in the week and I said, you know, this place ruins families. But the more I think about it and the discussion now about his wife and her, you know, as you go through the book, you realize the whole thing with closing the eyes of the story doesn't change, you know, when the storyteller is doing it.
00:19:53
Speaker
So I understand that the wife is seeing and putting her own spin on it and therefore her own whatever's going on in her mind. But I found it strange that she would see Gwyneth
00:20:05
Speaker
why would the wife see this idealized woman as opposed to maybe anything else? I felt that there's an element of these men being pulled, oh, I'm just at the whim of this Gwyneth, but I felt it was
00:20:28
Speaker
I felt that you can talk about the stuff, them fighting for the country, Dan, and the stuff about England. The woman is just as much a part of England. Why was she keying into their avatar of, their mythago instead of making her own up? Is there something I've missed there?
00:20:48
Speaker
I suppose it's the strength of the thought form that you see. And I think with George particularly, because he's the first in that family to create a form of Gwyneth, the only thing I can imagine is that his wife sees what he sees in her. I don't think there's a complete answer. I don't think there ever will be a complete answer.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think to go back to a point you made at the beginning, John, you said that this is a story of stories or the story about how stories...
00:21:22
Speaker
are subsumed into a greater narrative or a greater story. And these thought forms, they are archetypes, they're archetypal. So in some sense, they're fundamental. So Gwyneth as being the... I mean, she's a cliche. In one sense, she's a cliche in that she's a beautiful flame-haired Celtic warrior princess.
00:21:45
Speaker
like, you know, like Merida in the film Brave or something like that. But it's because you can't distill that idea down into anything more fundamental. That's what she she's a buddhist character as well. That sort of character. She's fundamental. She's mythological. So I think
00:22:02
Speaker
the fact that, and I can't remember the wife's name now, but we only really see her in the second hand. She's terrible. Anyway, but she sees her in the same way because I suppose the myth is fundamental. It can't be distilled down any further than it is. The same with the other characters that appear are the Cockney World War I Tommy, the round head soldier, the French Norman Knight. So they're very
00:22:34
Speaker
typical mythical characters of a type and they can't really be distilled down into anything more than they are. In the same way that he talks about the hood rather than Robin Hood. Yes, it's boiled down to the bones, let's say, it's boiled down to the bones of what these archetypes can represent and
00:22:57
Speaker
the people, the contemporary people of any age, can project their own fantasies onto them. And the myth goes, they come, the myths
00:23:08
Speaker
of any particular time come to help the people of that time, even though they're very dangerous, they are dangerous, because they can be wielded one way or the other, but they come to, they're more meaningful for the people of that time, I suppose. And so in some sense, maybe you could say that the mythargos that Christian and Stephen see, they are, they're in some way, they're useful. I don't know. I don't know what you think about that. I think that
00:23:35
Speaker
Absolutely right. Whatever that individual sees is different. But equally, when Christian comes back with his men, and Stephen almost dies, and Harry Keaton is shot,
00:23:52
Speaker
and Gwynis is kidnapped. That seems fairly solid, not human beings maybe, but certainly fairly solid beings in the same way as they go into the woods in the second half of the book.
00:24:09
Speaker
the many of the beings they see are things we've heard about earlier, like the jaguth, the shamika. And you get a sense of them as, although they're archetypes, as actual living beings, you almost get a taste and a smell of them.
00:24:25
Speaker
Well, smell is really important, isn't it as well? It is. It's very important. Yeah. Yeah. It's mentioned in every single description of every single, you know, encounter. Yeah. This fecund, you know, fecal, you know, smell. Yeah. Right of the earth. It's tied very strongly to sexuality. Yeah, absolutely.
00:24:49
Speaker
Yeah, when Stephen is talking about Gwyneth, there is very much not just a tactile sense, but the sense of her spell, of her being. And also when Christian does return, although, as he said, he's 15 years older, Stephen smells him as much as he feels him and touches him. So,
00:25:18
Speaker
Let's talk about Christian returning from the wood because that seems to be the key pivoting moment for me in the book. What do you think happens to Christian in the intervening 15 years when he becomes this Saxon warrior king, this brutal Saxon warrior?
00:25:39
Speaker
Well, it seems to me that he's looking for Grinnith all that time. And as he says, 15 years has changed where he is. One year has changed for Stephen. And the wood has affected him as well, because he now has this group of warriors with him.
00:25:56
Speaker
and you never really know exactly how that came to be. But I certainly get a sense that the wood changed him during his quest for Gwyneth to become almost an archetype himself. I think that's hit the nail on the head actually because in becoming
00:26:20
Speaker
a more malevolent character, or at least in allowing the wood to bring out the malevolence that may have already been latent in his own character, that's probably a slightly better way of thinking about it, then he's made not just him, but him and Steven as a dyad, as a duo,
00:26:40
Speaker
and you have the story of the outlander and the kinsman. Which obviously would not have been the case before Christian went into the wood probably. So that's another story in the list of stories we're being told through this.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, because it's the warring brothers, the hostile brothers. So it's Osiris and Horace and Cain and Abel and the Batman and Joker and the armored bears in Northern Lights and all of that. So it's the same story. What I like about Mythago Wood is that it's quite overt in stating that we tell the same stories over and over again. But the veneer is different. We'll change the names and we'll change the images.
00:27:25
Speaker
But they are acting out things that have been acted out for time immemorial. I think it was a really sophisticated way of placing the action. And in the end, Stevens...
00:27:39
Speaker
We're on Steven is the protagonist and it's ultimately him who has to decide whether he can cut out the malevolent side of himself, which is Christian. Essentially they're acting as two sides of the same coin. I think by the time we get into the wood and they're delving into the street, the biological stream of prehistory that they're both inhabiting and reproducing at the same time, they've become
00:28:07
Speaker
they can't both exist at the same time. And you said Christian becomes the outsider. Yeah. Yeah, the outsider is a shaman calls him and what other people call him. Yes. That's a story that's being created here. And the kinsman has to either slay the outsider or die himself.
00:28:27
Speaker
which is another way of retelling the hostile brothers myth. And I think also it's worth saying that Robbie is never pretentious. As you say, he's very straightforward about this. But you get a sense that, yes, it's a story about stories. There's no sense of an author saying, well, you'll only see this if you're really, really intelligent, because I've put another level in this.
00:28:54
Speaker
is there. You know it. You see it straight away. And although you've got this great driving almost thriller plot of Stephen looking for his brother, looking for Gwyneth, you've also got that history of stories throughout the book. So there's never a sense that isn't true. Well, that's that's that's sorry. Go on, Chris. I was just saying that's one thing I really enjoyed while I was reading it was the fact that I was familiar with a lot of the characters from mythology and history. But
00:29:24
Speaker
Also, my own cultural references reading it came into play. So, I mean, Dan and I talked about the Green Man, but also even things like there was one part I was thinking about, a Kate Bush song where it called, Oh England, My Lion Heart. I was thinking about if a Southeast Asian person or a West African was to occupy that place for 50 years, what kind of mythargos would be coming there? All that kind of stuff. It really is food for thought. You know, it's really, really interesting. And also,
00:29:53
Speaker
the fact that for me, I tend towards the weird fiction and horror and dark fantasy. So the first third of the book for me, I was reading weird fiction. It was like reading weird fiction rather than straightforward fantasy. And then when they go to, you know, across the veil, then it becomes a far more, you know, straightforward fantasy. But I mean, I really enjoyed it. It's not something I was expecting to enjoy as much as I did. But
00:30:20
Speaker
I love the setup and I love the fact that because of the idea of these mythargos that I could key into it myself and personalise it even without this incredible relation with the characters. Yeah, it's also, we've talked about the series, I mean there are five books in the series, I was lucky enough to republish four of them at Earthlight, including mythargos.
00:30:45
Speaker
and Lavondis, which is the first sequel. It's one of the very unusual sequels that people think is at least as good as the first book and features Talis Keaton, a younger sibling of Harry.
The Role of Voice in Publishing
00:31:00
Speaker
And it's a series of books that affects people. I've got a good friend who called his daughter Talis purely and simply because of that book. So it isn't just, oh, this is a good story. I'll read this. It can affect people over 20, 30 years.
00:31:16
Speaker
Well, I was given it in 97, I think. No, no, it was later than that. I was given it in 98, 99 by a friend and it sat on my bookshelves and I didn't read it until this week. And I've kicked myself, you know, because I've really, really enjoyed it. Oh. There are the books I've republished about 20 years ago now. Wow. But I'll certainly check out Lavondis. Lavondis.
00:31:44
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, as I say, there are three more. So if you love Lavender's, do read the others as well, because obviously you get drawn more into the wood and into the story of the main characters, not just our human characters, but the other characters within the wood.
00:32:02
Speaker
Yeah, what's great is that the thought forms, although they're in a literal sense, they are not fully rounded, fleshed out characters. But in a mythological sense, maybe they're more real than literally real. So they're real on a
00:32:20
Speaker
on a mythological scale, which is, yeah, primal. Yeah, that's a good, they're primarily real. We look at the Saxon warrior and his wife and their mute son, who's Stephen and Harry Meade. And I certainly see them as real people. And I think that the shaman is absolutely real. The 12 year old female shaman who's naked and painted green from head to toe.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. And also the older man, the one in the book, who takes them down to the river. Even the Norman Knight, the amount of this amounted Knight, with whom Stephen has an altercation, doesn't have any speaking parts. But he's very real and he's terrifying. You've got the Civil War, the Cavalier, who at one point shoots, tries to shoot Stephen, and then shoots the Knight to save Stephen.
00:33:13
Speaker
So we still don't know. And again, this is one of the great things that there are very few certainties in this book. It isn't a matter of there's a guy in a white hat and a guy in a black hat and the guy in the black hat dies. It's you can make your own feelings about what's going on and possibly your own feelings about the wood and your own feelings about Gwyneth and your own feelings about Stephen and Christian.
00:33:40
Speaker
I think that too many books people feel have to be cut and dried and there is no flexibility in there at all. In a book that is about the stories of history, it shows in a very literal sense that history is messy and it's complicated and you can't divide it up into good and bad and black hat and white hat, it doesn't work so easily. It was interesting that you mentioned Rob being
00:34:08
Speaker
very overt about what the book is about. And he's not hiding the symbolism or the themes away from that. From a writerly perspective, because on Crohn's, we have a very strong writing culture. We have writing competitions. There's lots of talk about publishing, about the techniques of writing, and so on and so on. And for me, it's instructive to show that you can write something
00:34:37
Speaker
and not try and hide away the thematic elements of the book, you can put it right front and center and make it great. And actually, people are more likely to go along with it because they understand that you don't have to decodify it, you don't have to analyze it, decryptify it, whatever you want to call it, in order for it to make sense. It's right there. And it's a real depth for it. I receive roughly 40 submissions a week to the agency.
00:35:05
Speaker
One of the things I say to so many new authors is, I don't understand what's going on in the first 200 pages. Now, there are two reasons for that. Either it's in the author's head and they don't realize what isn't on the paper, or they think that that's intriguing.
00:35:26
Speaker
Because what you should be doing is concentrating on the story. You shouldn't be thinking, what the hell is that all about then? Or what empire? So I always say in the first 50 or so pages, give people a firm place to stand.
00:35:42
Speaker
so they can concentrate on the ongoing story. Don't tell me the entire background. Don't info dump for God's sake. Don't give me a sense, tread it through so that we understand the main background. Well, I'm going to pick you up very challenge you just a tiny bit on that because mythargowood starts with a prologue, which is essentially an info dump. It's a short one. It's only a couple of pages. Mythargowood is also 40 years old.
00:36:08
Speaker
Well, this is what we wanted we were talking about this and we were wondering what's you know, what flies what flew 40 years ago is that necessarily going to work today and we'll use myth I go would as an example because it does have a prologue and to my mind the prologue is unnecessary because that almost the story is Repeated verbatim halfway through the novel That the main part of the novel
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, as far as 2022 is concerned, the only thing that a new author has to worry about is the last five years in terms of debuts, because that's all the book trade care about. If I go to the Waterstones or WH Smith's head office and make comparisons, they only want to know about comparisons with debuts for the last three, four, five years. Nothing before that matters. So you've got to deal with that as a writer in 2022.
00:37:00
Speaker
I know people are quite down on prologue. It doesn't cause me an issue. In fact, there's certain books where I know they would have been these days asked to cut it, but I've enjoyed the prologue. Not because it's not world building, it's not anything, but it's just
00:37:19
Speaker
part of the story. Mood building. Yeah, it sets the scene. And it might not be directly related to the two characters or however many characters you're then going to start reading about. But it puts you in a position of, okay, I can trust this author. This is what I'm getting. This is what they're promising. And this is the world I'm going to inhabit. I don't mean the world as in the world building world. I just mean as in this is the headspace I'm going to inhabit. Yeah. And one of the things
00:37:46
Speaker
I do a Twitter Q&A once a month. And one of the things I say so often is no absolutes. I say, what I'm saying here may well be right 95% of the time. It will not be right 100% of the time because nothing is. And in terms of prologues, it depends entirely on the book. It depends on how that story works. It depends on the writer's voice, how they want to tell that story.
00:38:10
Speaker
Don't do a prologue because you think you need to, but equally don't think, oh my God, I can't have a prologue, if that works. So it's absolutely down to that individual book. Because again, when any editor, when any agent looks at something, I've known almost every debut novelist I've taken on, both as a publisher and as an agent in the first two pages. Now that's not the story. That's not the characters. That's the voice.
00:38:35
Speaker
So it's how you do it. When I published Kemma Cloud's debut, Star Fraction, at Random House, I knew in two pages I wanted to publish that book. Then I had to read it all to make sure he could do it right through the book. But that's the thing, that you do get that, oh wow. And if it's not like Christmas morning and it happens about that often, you say no. Now it may be that another agent or another editor will see that and they will be the right person. They will get that wow. No absolutes.
00:39:06
Speaker
One thing about Mythago Wood that struck me, and I think Chris hopefully will be in agreement with me, was that the Prose, Rob's Prose was crystal clear. It's absolutely beautiful. It was beautifully written. And whatever your writing, you need to aspire to be technically great at your craft. And that's the only going to come with practice and practice.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. It took Ian Banks over 10 years and six different novels before he got his first publishing deal. Ian is the best author with no way ever worked. If he took Ian Banks out long, why the hell should somebody else think their first novel is the one that they should concentrate on for the rest of their lives? It's a learning process.
00:39:48
Speaker
Most of the authors that I've come across who've been successful in having at least something published have at least binned one manuscript and had to use that to cut their teeth and develop their writing chops and in some cases maybe more than one.
00:40:06
Speaker
I can't think of anybody who hasn't actually. A lot of our stuff is getting to know ourselves, getting to know our own writing style, getting to know our practice and so it is just exercises and workshops before you actually make a successful story. Yeah and a lot of authors will start
00:40:24
Speaker
as a homage to their favorite writer. So they're almost in the style of their favorite writer. I can think of a number of people who've done that. And it's only maybe with a third or fourth novel that they've got their own style and their own voice comes through. It doesn't mean the others were bad books. It means that was part of that learning process, which every author has to go through.
00:40:48
Speaker
Let's bring it back to Rob with Argo Wood and we'll finish up for the first half of the conversation and then perhaps we can talk a little bit more about this and the practical side of writing a little bit later in the podcast.
00:41:05
Speaker
Mithago Wood was published and Rob gained some success out of it. How did he change his approach to writing? How did it change his life? How did it change him professionally? What did he learn? What did he do differently? Well, he was a full-time writer, I think from 1976, so eight years before Mithago Wood.
00:41:29
Speaker
In the earlier years, he was certainly writing some stuff outside the Robert Hallstock novels under pseudonyms. That slowed down without doubt. And as Mythago became the book that changed his life in the terms of how well he was known and how seriously he was taken by the bookselling trade and by publishers. Once you've got to that position,
00:41:57
Speaker
then obviously it's not that you relax, it's that your mindset can be different. Again, this depends on the individual writer. Through the years, I mean, Rob was a great convention-goer, as am I, and he loved conventions. He loved talking to people. He was always a very outgoing person and helped authors. So I think it was a part of the learning process. It was a part of growing up. It was a part of getting older.
00:42:27
Speaker
I was lucky in the later years that I published his novels of the Merlin Codex at Simon & Schuster. And again, there was the historical feel to those as well as the fantastical side. And that was something that certainly fascinated him. We discussed Vaughan Williams a huge amount over the years, because we both said that Vaughan Williams is one of those
00:42:50
Speaker
composers who, and again, you hear the chalk bones of England in Vaughan Williams' music. Yeah, I completely agree. Vaughan Williams is, I think he's undergoing a little bit of a renaissance at the moment. And it may be, is it a significant centenary year? It is, 150 years since he was born. There you go. And Radio Stray are having a full month of Composure of the Week. They're doing Composure of the Month for Vaughan Williams in the month of his 150th anniversary.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's worth, for people interested in that English mythology, I got a very strong sense of Vaughan Williams just from reading Mythago Wood. Well, it's interesting, I mention Love on this and then the main character Talis Keaton. And of course, that comes from Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a thing by Thomas Halis.
00:43:42
Speaker
16th, 17th century composer. So certainly, and again, that's going back in time to come forward in time. There is that sense of Vaughan Williams looking at folk songs. So he did a Fantagio in Greensleeves as well, didn't he? Yeah, absolutely. Which is in the opera, Sir John in Love, which is about Falstaff, which is Shakespeare. So again, there are so many connections, there are so many levels to that.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's, I want to wrap this up by finishing kind of on that note, actually, I'll segue into it, that sense of mythago wood being a representation of the ongoing stories of England and how it takes from different cultures and different cultures dip into it and it absorbs and it adapts and it changes and it grows and it matures and it evolves. Mythago wood, I get the feeling that
00:44:38
Speaker
It's a towering work in genre fiction, in UK genre fiction particularly. I just wonder if it's destined to rumble under the surface for some time, but then in...
00:44:53
Speaker
In time it will be recognized as a great piece of literature in its own right. That's the sense that I get from it. I think it's one of the great books, but maybe it's not recognized as such because it's tagged with the genre fiction category. But I do think that in time it's going to rise to the surface of great literature full stop. I don't know what you think about that.
00:45:16
Speaker
I agree. It's something that we spoke about over the years that some literary critics took wrong very seriously. You will get the lazy ones.
00:45:29
Speaker
will basically say if it's science fiction or fantasy, it's not good. Well, this is good, but it's not science fiction or fantasy then. So that has been true for 50, 60 years. And many authors have fallen foul of that. And I think that Mythagawood is one of those books that speaks to me. I've read it probably 20 times over the years.
00:45:52
Speaker
that still speaks to me now in the same way it did in 1984. And I couldn't be more proud to have been one of Rob's friends. I could not be more proud to have published Rob both at orbit and at Earthlight. And I could not be more proud to be talking about Rob now.
00:46:11
Speaker
Excellent. I was going to ask, what would you say its influences have been on subsequent genre fiction? It's difficult because if you look at
00:46:24
Speaker
For the sake of argument, Tolkien, you can see where Tolkien's influences are in epic fantasy, even now, although it's very different. You can still see those influences play out. With Misago Wood, because it is so different and so unique in the time it was published, how it was published, without doubt, there is a sense that some authors have taken from that
00:46:52
Speaker
with stories about stories. But it's more difficult to do it with a book that is that different. And I don't think that's over yet. I think that there will be more authors who find that challenge that they want to take on of not rewriting that book, not writing in the same world as that book, but using some of the ideas, some of the thoughts. And that's fascinating and very, very exciting.
00:47:19
Speaker
But it could become a genre in its own right. One of the other books that we're looking at in Cronkast is House of Leaves. And this is a prime example of a story about
00:47:34
Speaker
stories within stories and how they're woven together, the stories that we tell ourselves, the lies that we tell ourselves and the labyrinth that we weave to hold, to contain the monster at the heart of ourselves. Absolutely. And yeah, so I completely agree. I think there's a whole new web of stories that can be woven by the authors who are willing to pick up the baton and run with it.
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, and add to that, the thing that I found about House of Leaves, and I don't want to get into that because we've got a whole other episode of that dedicated to it, but the thing I found with House of Leaves was that, again, similarly to the mythargos in mythago wood,
00:48:20
Speaker
the veneer changes, the surface images change, and they may hide things. Okay, I'll start again. The surface image changes, but the kernel of truth that hides at the heart of it is still the same fundamental myth that we have to act out. And in House of Leaves, it's buried beneath layers and layers and layers of fiction and deception and
00:48:48
Speaker
and misdirection but it's still there you know that that fundamental the fundamental myth arc and the myth narrative is still there but it's told in such an ingenious fashion and yeah i think mytharga wood does essentially the same thing in a slightly different way i think that's probably a good point to take a break so we will come back later in the show with our special guest john gerald
00:49:16
Speaker
Hello SSF Chronicles. I'd like to report some suspicious trees. I take their part of an American plot to take control of the woods. I was on to the Department of Agriculture and they said to give you a call. Hi, such a waste of space that Department is. I told them, listen lads, if you aren't destroying your enemies, it's because you've been conquered and assimilated. You do not even have an idea how your enemies are. You've been brainwashed into believing you are your own enemy and you're set against yourself. And they just went,
00:49:46
Speaker
Sorry, we only do regret the applications. Could you give the head off as a call? Such a dose! What's the point in having an agricultural department if they're not going to investigate suspicious trees? Anyway, there's about two dozen of those trees above it in slish wood. I've been watching them for about a week now and every time I turn my back, they swat places with each other. And they're cheeky too! When I told them to stand still, they just laughed at me.
00:50:13
Speaker
Well, not exactly that, but you know what I mean? They're taking the trays down when they're taking a piss out of you. Anyway, could you send someone down to take a look when you get this? Thanks. Hello, I'm Damaris Brown, and this is The Judge's Corner, where I talk about legal matters which writers need to consider. Back in my March talk, I raised the issue of using real-life people in our novels, either as themselves or as the basis for invented characters,
00:50:43
Speaker
And I confirm there are potential problems in doing this, the first and most obvious being defamation. In this talk, I'll deal with other possible headaches, starting with the issue of privacy. As always, I'll mostly be talking of the law in England and Wales, but even for that legal jurisdiction, this is only a general guide and is no substitute for targeted advice on your particular situation. And for those living and publishing elsewhere,
00:51:09
Speaker
It's imperative you get local help, since the law on this point varies greatly across the world. France and Germany in particular have strict laws on privacy as a whole, so are very likely to extend their protection to the use of real people in literary works. As with the issue of defamation, the greatest risk is run by those of us who write exposés or memoirs, even if they're somewhat fictionalised. But novelists must also take privacy into account.
00:51:38
Speaker
And as with defamation, the law applies to social media too, not merely our formal writings.
00:51:46
Speaker
The law surrounding privacy in England and Wales is a relatively new concept, and its current incarnation derives from the European Convention on Human Rights, brought into English law as a result of the 1998 Human Rights Act. But, for good or ill, it has developed not through specific legislation, but as the result of judicial activity, with courts perhaps giving less weight than in the past to the concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yet there is still no specific taught called invasion of privacy here. Rather, it's an extension of the long-established taught of breach of confidence, which, despite its name, isn't concerned with secrets as such, nor with whether something is true. What you write could be the absolute truth and 100% accurate, yet it still might create a problem, since the target of the law is the intrusion into people's lives. Or as one judge put it,
00:52:46
Speaker
The law is concerned to prevent the violation of a citizen's autonomy, dignity and self-esteem. As a by-the-by, this appears to be similar to the situation in Australia where there is also no specific tort of invasion of privacy. But the common law does recognise the tort of breach of confidence. And in 2008, it was held in Victoria that damages should be available for breach of confidence, occasion and distress.
00:53:15
Speaker
But in Australia, there has been discussion resulting in a Law Reform Commission report about creating a statutory cause of action for serious invasions of privacy, which hasn't been the case here in the UK. New Zealand, incidentally, has long had a recognised tort of wrongful publication of private facts. But since 2012, this has been extended to cover intrusion into seclusion, that is,
00:53:42
Speaker
intimate personal activity, space or affairs where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. Judicial decisions in England have frequently arisen in cases of footballers or actors or others in the entertainment world seeking injunctions to prevent disclosure of their extramarital affairs or liaisons with sex workers.
00:54:05
Speaker
Then in 2008, Max Moseley, the then president of the FIA, took issue with a rather salacious article in the News of the World, complete with photographs and a video recording, which detailed his sadomasochistic activities with five women who might or might not have been prostitutes.
00:54:25
Speaker
In sexual encounters, confidentiality is usually implied and expected. But in the mostly case, the judge specifically confirmed that it was not necessary for there to be any kind of relationship giving rise in and of itself to a duty of confidentiality, since the law would apply to any private information in respect of which there was a reasonable expectation of privacy.
00:54:52
Speaker
So, it's not only intimate liaisons which are protected, as long as the revealed information is of a private nature and worthy of protection.
00:55:02
Speaker
If you heard my talk on copyright, you'll recall that I referred to the legal action the Duchess of Sussex brought against associated newspapers after the publication of extensive quotes from a letter she had sent to her father. Her case also included a successful claim that publishing the letter was a misuse of private information
00:55:22
Speaker
It's contents related to her private family life, not her public profile, and it disclosed her intimate thoughts and feelings, which were personal matters, not matters of legitimate public interest. And though it's trite, it bears repeating that what is in the public interest is very often different from what the public is interested in.
00:55:48
Speaker
When deciding her case, the judge had first to consider whether the Duchess had a reasonable expectation of privacy in connection with the letter, and he listed the circumstances which must be assessed in every action to determine that issue, including the attributes of the claimant, the nature of the activity in which the claimant was engaged, the place at which it was happening,
00:56:10
Speaker
the nature and purpose of the intrusion into the claimant's privacy, the effect on the claimant, and the circumstances in which, and the purposes for which, the information came into the hands of the publisher. After that exercise, the judge must then balance that reasonable expectation of privacy against the freedom to publish, taking account of the subject matter, how well known the claimant is, and the claimant's own prior conduct
00:56:39
Speaker
and whether publication would contribute to a debate of general interest. The Mosley and Duchess of Sussex cases both involved publication in newspapers, but the same principles hold good for all writing. And if in your novel, you're disclosing personal information about a real person, even if that person is disguised, the factors the judge laid down are those you must bear in mind in order to stay on the right side of the law.
00:57:09
Speaker
Obviously, intimate activities will carry more expectation of privacy than mundane ones, and activities behind closed doors are more protected than those in a public setting. And while public interest revelations of a person's criminality or hypocrisy might outweigh those factors, catering for mere prurient interest would only reinforce them.
00:57:33
Speaker
And whereas someone who has thrust himself into the public eye has less expectation of privacy than a person unknown to the general public, someone with mental health issues perhaps liable to be a suicide risk will undoubtedly have more protection than a person easily able to weather the publicity storm.
00:57:54
Speaker
Even the fact of the claimant having young children who might be distressed or bullied as a result of the publication can be irrelevant, as has been made clear in anonymized injunction actions, so that also has to be taken into account when you decide what to write. The US allows for similar claims for invasion of privacy, and it's perhaps not surprising that they emerge alongside defamation actions where real people are used.
00:58:21
Speaker
In the case I discussed in March, in which Haywood Smith based her main character rather too closely on the incidents and life history she'd learned of her friend Vicki Stewart, there was a specific claim arising from Public Disclosure of Private Facts.
00:58:38
Speaker
and in an appeal the court confirmed that in order to sustain the claim, Stewart must demonstrate the defendant's public disclosure of private facts about her that are highly offensive and objectionable to a reasonable person at the ordinary sensibilities and that are not matters of public concern. In that case, which was heard in Georgia,
00:59:02
Speaker
Embarrassing was also a term used. But other legal commentaries suggest that embarrassment alone is not usually enough to found an action of this kind. And instead, there has to be some harm caused. So it would appear the precise requirements to establish the tort of invasion of privacy, no matter what it's called, differ from state to state. In addition, there may well be differences as to the kind of harm which has to be proved. That is,
00:59:32
Speaker
whether it encompasses mental or emotional distress, or requires harm to reputation. Note that in England and Wales, harm isn't a requirement, though if it has occurred, that would undoubtedly strengthen the claimant's case. As with English law though,
00:59:51
Speaker
It appears that privacy claims in the US require there to be some expectation that the revealed information would remain private. So things happening in public are less likely to be protected and people in the public eye will find it harder to claim such protection. In the Stuart action, the court specifically confirmed that, as one might expect, a privacy claim differs from one for defamation because the statements of issue are true but involve private matters.
01:00:21
Speaker
But in the US, there is another tort which appears to be something of a hybrid between privacy and defamation, namely false light invasion of privacy.
01:00:32
Speaker
In the Stewart case, the court said that, in order to sustain a false-light invasion of privacy claim, a plaintiff must show that the defendant knowingly or recklessly published falsehoods about him or her and, as a result, placed him or her in a false-light which would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.
01:00:55
Speaker
But, in order to survive as a separate cause of action, a false-like claim must allege a non-defamatory statement. If the statements alleged are defamatory, the claim would be for defamation only.
01:01:12
Speaker
This claim for false light was also put forward in the case brought in California by the chess player Nona Gaprindashvili against Netflix, which I also discussed in March. There again, it dealt with a falsehood, which sets it apart from an ordinary privacy claim. And to my eyes, its inclusion appears to be a common legal technique of using in one's pleadings a kind of if not then argument.
01:01:40
Speaker
That is, we argue that the untruth is defamatory, but if not, i.e. if the court determines otherwise, then it is nonetheless hurtful and humiliating and casts a false light on the claimant who ought to be compensated.
01:01:56
Speaker
However, in other states in the US, this false-like claim would appear to be defined differently and involves revelations that are strictly or technically true, but which nonetheless give a false impression of the claimant. So it's more connected to privacy in the breach of confidentiality sense.
01:02:16
Speaker
Yet, whether the US false-like claim has to relate to actual untruths or merely accurate but misleading statements, it's yet another potential problem for us as writers when we use real people in our stories.
01:02:34
Speaker
To avoid it, use the same rules as for defamation. Ensure that everything you write is verifiably true and not just in a strict technical sense, and that you've left no opening for false impressions to arise. And although active malice might not always be required to prove the tort of false light, its presence is likely to harm any defense, so avoid any suggestion of that too.
01:03:02
Speaker
Another possible problem when using real people is an individual's right to exploit his or her own image, or what in the US is called the right to publicity, which isn't restricted to the type of fake advertising which wrongfully uses a star's photo to imply the endorsement of a product.
01:03:20
Speaker
I've seen it suggested that as far as US law is concerned, using a celebrity as a character in your work, presumably as a major character and not just a walk-on part, might fall foul of this. And while I'm doubtful of its applicability in the UK, it is more likely to be an issue if you use the celebrity's presence in your novel to promote the work.
01:03:45
Speaker
And just in case it needs saying, you certainly can't fabricate a quote from a celebrity or famous writer to try and promote your writing. Well, it's possible you might get away with a truly outrageous supposed quote, which was so obviously ridiculous no one could possibly think it genuine, on the same basis that parody and satire can't be a defence in a defamation claim. But unless your novel is a parody or satire, it's scarcely worth the risk.
01:04:13
Speaker
One final problem if you're using real people in your work, if those people include royalty, heads of state, or even public officials. Less magiste, impugning the dignity of a sovereign, might sound like something out of the middle ages, but it's still alive and kicking as a criminal offence even in Europe, though fortunately not in the UK or the US.
01:04:38
Speaker
In some countries, not least in the Middle East and Asia, you're risking imprisonment for insulting their rulers. And insults can be very broadly defined. So unless you're set on being a martyr to free speech, it's really not worth the risk. As always, in anything you write, think about what you're writing and why. And when it comes to writing about real people, perhaps think again.
01:05:17
Speaker
Hello SSF Chronicles. I just ring it again to tell you to be careful. I think the Americans are onto us.
01:05:24
Speaker
I was on earlier looking for you to send someone out to check for suspicious trees. And the minute I hung up, this lad turned up with some sort of tracking device. What do you own about ya? Wish I'm trying to warn the science fiction lads about the CIA agent above in Slishwood. To learn what to beach ball? Yes, and that's not a beach ball. It's a scientific technological device. And anyway, why would you land up to Slishwood to have a game of beach ball with yourself? I don't know. Sure mightn't have been nothing on the telly. Don't be daft, he's a spy. And I tell you something.
01:05:54
Speaker
It's a good job I'm not paranoid because even the trees are spying on me. Sorry about that SSF Chronicles. When you're out looking at those trees keep an eye out for an American lad in a Hawaiian shirt and a beach ball. I'm fairly sure he's one of the trees. The 75 word writing challenge for June was on the topic of trees and plants.
01:06:19
Speaker
and was won by Christine Wheelwright, who is here reading her victorious entry, Weeping Willows. The Weeping Willows. Hegnir, the gardens are beautiful, said the princess. My green fingers, they replied. You're a troll. You have green everything, she laughed, running down towards the lake.
01:06:49
Speaker
He lumbered after her. My mother kissed a frog here, and it became my father the king, she said. Kiss me, replied Hegmeir. See what we become. She did, her lips playfully finding his, their hearts becoming wood, their skin bark, their screams, the wind in the leaves.
01:07:23
Speaker
My name is Zort Chuglemeyer and I'm ringing about a telephone call you may have received from an individual identifying me as an agent occupied in the subversion of Slishwood. This is an untrue assessment of the situation and a failure to realize the actualization of the situational mechanics whereby I am simply engaged in activities relating to the pastime of beach volleyball.
01:07:52
Speaker
Do you copy? This activity is in no way compatible with claims that I'm an agent contacting the trace. If you fully analyze the messages you received, which I am unaware of, you will become aware of their incorrectfulness. It is important that you take cognizance of the fact that you have received incorrect data and what you believe is false is true. And what you believe is true is false. Possibly.
01:08:21
Speaker
It is also important that you stay away from the forest because there is nothing to see there. Over and out.
01:08:36
Speaker
Welcome back to Con's Cast. We're here with John Gerald of the John Gerald Literary Agency and many different SFF publishers from times past. We were previously talking about Mythago Wood, but now we'll talk a little bit more generally about agenting and publishing and writing and what's going on with the markets. For me, I wanted to know, because you've sat on
01:09:00
Speaker
Both sides of the fence with respect to agenting and publishing so i want to know what your what your what the differences of experience are in in operating in those two fields i think it's very useful having been a publisher.
01:09:15
Speaker
to be an agent now because firstly in terms of new novel new writers I can tell them how it works on a day-to-day basis sitting in an office at a publishers how the week how the meetings work the mindset of publishers which is never how much does the author need to live it's how much is this book worth to us it's as simple as that
01:09:39
Speaker
It's worth, I guess it's probably worth, I don't want, sorry to interrupt, it's probably worth, I always try to remember that publishing, it's a very strange beast is publishing because it deals with content that is coming from the liberal arts and is pushing imaginative ideas and
01:10:04
Speaker
giving a platform to people who have something to say, but it's also governed very strongly by conservative economic principles and the mitigation of risk. And so it's a very strange sector to be working in, in balancing those two things. It's a commercial business. Very straightforwardly.
01:10:26
Speaker
When you're looking at the first I worked in publishing, January 1988, so this is not a new thing, this is not a corporate thing, my boss said to me, if you have any doubts about a book, any doubts at all, say no. Unless you are really, I must publish this book, say no. So isn't this author will be great in four books time, is are they great now? That's what you're looking for.
01:10:50
Speaker
Again, that's not a new thing. As an agent, obviously, one is looking for new authors, debut authors, whereas as a publisher, sometimes one is talking to somebody who's with another publisher and is not happy, and maybe you would love to publish them. I did that with John Courtney Grimwood. John was being published by a publisher, first two novels, very obviously wasn't very happy, and we met at a library event.
01:11:19
Speaker
And I said to him, would you mind if I spoke to your agent tomorrow? And I was able to publish his third and fourth novels and sell a lot more copies than his previous publisher. So sometimes it is about the right publisher as well as the right agent, the right author. Nobody is right for everybody else.
01:11:43
Speaker
It really is that simple. And you've got to have both head and heart, 100%. Anything less than that, you say no. Is it a case that if publishers, let's say, are coveting authors who are with other publishers or in other stables, they may want to take them on rather than looking at debuts? Is it a case of, to him, who hath shall be given?
01:12:11
Speaker
No, because nine times out of 10, they haven't sold enough copies. And one of the major differences with publishing now to ATA is that everything is based on Epos, on electric point of sale, how many copies, and everybody can check that, which was not the case 20 years ago. You can check it down to the last individual sale. So what you're looking at
01:12:38
Speaker
with a debut novelist is a tabular answer. You can absolutely go to the book trade and say, we've got this new author, connections, comparisons, or that, that, and that. Here's a great cover, wonderful book. If you've got an author who's anything other than a best seller elsewhere, the book trade will come back and say, oh, they only sold three copies of their book, not interested. So in some cases, it's about the debut novelist.
01:13:07
Speaker
I'm going to jump in there because we don't usually talk about ourselves on the podcast, but I've got sort of a case study that may be pertinent. My debut novel was published by Snowbooks. I had a one book contract, so I just published a book and that was that.
01:13:25
Speaker
you know, not great, I'll be honest, for various reasons, which we won't go into. But does that, does that count as a blot on the copybook if I'm looking to secure, secure or sell a subsequent manuscript? Certainly. Because I'm not the only person in that position. No, you're not. 90% of published authors are in that position.
01:13:51
Speaker
I will go back in time for this and talk about an author, Peter F. Hamilton. Peter's first three science fiction novels did not sell particularly well. However, then he had The Big Idea, which became the reality dysfunction and its two sequels. The reality dysfunction sold more copies in large format paperback than the first three novels put together in mass market paperback. So sometimes it's about reenergizing, renewing yourself,
01:14:20
Speaker
not writing in the same area again, thinking of a bigger idea. It is difficult because, as I say, everything is based on Epos now. So every publisher and the book trade will be able to check any author's sales views. And a publisher will say, when you take something into an acquisitions meeting, you'll get a couple of people there from the sales department saying, well, we've checked. How many sold 1,000 copies? Not interested.
01:14:50
Speaker
And you've got as an editor, you have to have a very good reason, commercial reason to take on an author in that position. So yes, it does matter. I can't say it doesn't. So tell us, you talked about the mindset of publishers.
01:15:05
Speaker
So can you tell us a little bit about that? For example, how do the meetings go? How do the practicalities of working with publisher work? And actually, how does working with the publisher if you're unagented? Because some publishers will work with an author if they're unagented as well. Some will, some won't. Yeah, some will, some won't. The thing I will always say to an author is look at the publisher or agent's website. Don't just bump something off because you've got an email address. Look and see what they want.
01:15:34
Speaker
My website says I want the first six chapters. It doesn't say I want a synopsis because I'm not interested. The only reason I haven't mentioned interest in synopsis is to send it to the publisher after they've done a deal so their sales and marketing people can have a look at it. Again, it's about the voice. So at a meeting, a lot of publishers will have two meetings. I have the editorial meeting.
01:15:59
Speaker
where all of the senior editors will have read everything that's been taken to that meeting, no matter which area it's in, of commercial fiction and nonfiction, and all have the right to say something about what they've read. If it gets through that meeting, and lots of books don't, then it will go to an acquisitions meeting. And at that meeting, you've got the publishing director, the senior editors, finance director, sales director, marketing director, publicity director, and CEO or managing director.
01:16:30
Speaker
Now, if you're at all sensible as an editor, you've already spoken to the sales and marketing directors and primed them for what you're going to talk about and explained why you think it works commercially because you don't want to go into a meeting like that cold. And at that point, again, if it's agreed at that meeting, if it already has the right to say yes and no,
01:16:52
Speaker
that you want to make an offer, you will sit down with the sales director as an editor and decide on how you feel you should publish the book, whether it's hardback, trade paperback, mass market paperback, or a mixture of those three. How many sales, what sales figures they're going to put in for it. If you have rights, you switch to the rights director about how much money they're willing to put in. Then you do a costing. So every book has a costing done for it.
01:17:19
Speaker
Once you look at that, you'll see a percentage, and you'll see a certain amount of money based on that. And that is roughly the sort of money that you're allowed to go to. You don't start at that level, because you want to get a book as cheap as you can. But that's the sort of money you're allowed to go to. And you'll talk to your managing director about that, your publishing director. And there we go. We'll start at 3,000 quid. We can go up to six, something like that. Obviously, in the best of all possible worlds, we'll start at 25,000 pounds, and we'll go up to 35,000 pounds.
01:17:48
Speaker
Um, but that doesn't happen very often. How many times does it happen to you? I was involved in the auction for Game of Thrones in 1994 when I was the SF Infinity publisher at Random House. Um, and that went for not much shy of a lot of money. Let's say this, that, um, a lot of money for three books. George got more money in the UK than he got in the US. And that doesn't usually happen because of the size of the market.
01:18:17
Speaker
But I was, I came second in that auction. Malcolm Edwards did the deal for HarperCollins Voyager, and I was at Random House, and it was just for Christmas. So we were sort of running back from Christmas lunches to make the next offer. And George wrote, both of us, very nice, less self was saying, thank you. But I offered less than 5,000 pounds for a book far, far more often than I offered more than 5,000 pounds.
01:18:47
Speaker
Remember, that's 20 years ago. An average debut novel, SFM fantasy, if you're going for a mainstream publisher now, world rights, you're looking between six and 10,000 pounds a book. If they really love it, then it's more than that. And they want to make a preemptive deal to say, I will accept that deal. I will take it off the table. I've got everybody else. We have a deal. It will be more than that, obviously. But in general terms, yeah.
01:19:18
Speaker
six, seven, eight, nine thousand quid for a novel, if you have world rights. And the critical thing at that point is to make sure that the book sells and you make sure that the publisher is earning out while you're earning out the advance and that they start earning properly on the book. So once you get to that stage and we can maybe we could go into the querying stage a little bit while we're talking about this. Yeah. Well, we're talking about this. What can the what can the author do or how can the author prepare
01:19:48
Speaker
for the actual book being on sale and helping along with the promotion and the marketing of the book. And this couples in with self-publishing as well, as I think a lot of people fall down. And self-publishing I think is a perfectly viable way to do things. Absolutely right. Yeah.
01:20:07
Speaker
That the promotion and you can create a perfectly beautiful book through self-publishing but it seems to me that the promotion is where things fall apart things fall down i hit the biggest brick wall so what can authors do me to get out of the self-publishing but first she was successful self-publisher so i know what kind of spend around fifty percent of time or promotion. So that's that's the point you got to you got to do everything that the publisher does.
01:20:35
Speaker
in terms of, as you say, not just a beautiful cover, editing, copy editing, proofreading, and then the promotion. So I work with Ben Galley and Rob Hayes, who are successful self-published authors because they're interested in translation rights deals and other possibilities. In terms of, as an author, then obviously social media makes a huge difference. But you've got to use social media in the way it works for you.
01:21:04
Speaker
Not think, again, that there is one way to do it. Look at what other authors do. Maybe look at six or seven different authors. See what they do. See what you feel would work for you from that. And then think about it. Take your time. And yes, a lot of publishers now also have somebody in the office who deals specifically with explaining how social media works, new authors. So that conversation needs to be had.
01:21:31
Speaker
Some authors are naturals, some are not that keen on social media. Again, it's an individual thing. Well, it's funny. Chris and I were talking about the socials for Kranzkast. I approach social media with a bit of a crucifix around my neck because it would stay away from it, but Chris embraces it and is really good at it.
01:21:53
Speaker
This is something that I've learned over the years and contrary to what Will Self says about novel writing in that it's an isolationist pursuit and if you can't stand your own company then you need not apply. That's partially true but the best stuff I've got and the best opportunities I've got from
01:22:16
Speaker
writing and publishing have come through interacting with other people and finding out how you can compliment your skills with with the skills of another. So I mean, for example, okay, so Chris and I doing this, we do we have very different strengths. And that's, that's hugely complimentary, hugely advantageous for us in able to put this together. So I think I think writers often think, you know, I've got to be head down and do everything myself. But there are
01:22:44
Speaker
There are ways that you can mitigate that by maybe teaming up with other people. And I don't know how exactly you could do that. But the fact that we were talking with Richard Shepard on a previous episode of Conquest about the do-it-yourself nature of podcasting, and that can take you in unexpected directions. I do think that you can do the same thing with writing, whether you're forming a sort of writing cooperative or a writing group.
01:23:12
Speaker
To get the best out of something, I genuinely feel that you have to be engaging with other people, which is difficult for a lot of writers because we're naturally introverted, most of us. And if you've got to deal with a publishing company and you've got somebody in the publishing department and marketing department, talk to them. Ask them questions. Don't sit there worrying. Don't sit there wondering. Always ask. Now, if you've got an agent, obviously, you should talk to the agent as well.
01:23:36
Speaker
But there have been times I've said, look, this is what I think. But the point is we need to ask your publicist about that. So do you want to do that or would you like me to do that? Because I like the author to have that personal connection. As a publisher, I loved talking to authors.
01:23:54
Speaker
And I think it's very important that as an author, you have a connection with your publishing company, not just with the editor, but with other people as well. So that the publishing company is on your side, not just the editor on your side. As the editor, you're the spokesperson, you're the flag weaver for that author. But if you've got somebody in marketing, somebody in design, somebody in publicity, somebody in the sales department who thinks that's a good person, it helps.
01:24:23
Speaker
I think the point you made about the fact that you love talking to authors, and I mean, that's clear. We're getting that from this conversation. I don't think you can overstate the importance of that because there's a sense that certainly for the people who are outside
01:24:39
Speaker
outside the window, pressing their nose up against it and looking in. There's a sense that agents and publishers act as gatekeepers. But from my interactions with agents and publishers, that's not the case. And they genuinely love talking to authors. They genuinely love talking about new ideas and new books and different directions. Yeah. I just talked about myself conventions. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of my first convention. I still love any of these conventions.
01:25:04
Speaker
EasterCon, right? 1973 EasterCon. I ended up on the Sunday night sitting in the bar with Brian Aldiss and James Blish. 19-year-old, skinny, first convention. We were there. Jim Blish went to bed about 4. Brian Aldiss and I stayed up until 8 in the morning and had breakfast together. At my first convention. God almighty. How lucky am I? And I came home from that convention 10 foot in the air thinking I've come home.
01:25:31
Speaker
It was 15 years after that before I got into publishing and 10 years after that, I saw Brian at a publishing party and we looked at each other and said, bloody hell, we didn't think this is 1973. But one of the great pleasures for me is that you can meet your heroes in science fiction and fantasy and horror, which you can't do in mainstream publishing on a regular basis.
01:25:50
Speaker
So you can sit in a bar, the next year I went to the World SF Convention in Washington, DC. I had a chat with Brian Allis, with Isaac Asimov, had a chat with Harlan Ellison, had a chat with Larry Niven. Again, yeah, I was 21, just 21, and just this kid. And I had the huge pleasure of doing that. Roger Zelazny was the guest of honor, and Roger's one of my absolute heroes at the time. Ended up in a room party, sitting on a bed with Roger Zelazny for half an hour, talking about life.
01:26:20
Speaker
I couldn't do that if it was historical fiction or romance or mysteries or thrillers. So one of the great pleasures of science fiction and fantasy to me is that you can do that. And a lot of authors... That sense of community. And there is a strong sense of community, isn't there? And then became an author. So there's a real community. I was involved in running an essay convention once and it didn't suit me, but I'm really pleased I did it once to get that side of it.
01:26:48
Speaker
But I always say to Easter, look, stick me on anything you like. These are the times I'm here. Maybe not always on an agent's panel because I've done a few of them. But it's that awful American phrase, pay it forward. I was incredibly lucky in the early years at conventions.
01:27:06
Speaker
And I will spend half of my time at EasterCon in the bar chatting to authors and say, yeah, ask me questions, whatever you want to know. Again, that's why I do the Twitter Q&A, to help authors, because so often they think it's the great amorphous thing that works in one way. It isn't.
01:27:28
Speaker
How long should my synopsis be? It doesn't matter. If an agent's website says, I want a one-patient synopsis, that's what they want. If an agent's website says they want a three-patient synopsis, that's what they want. Again, it's not one-size-fits-all. So take your time. It's not about getting it fast, it's about getting it right.
01:27:50
Speaker
I was going to ask, actually, I was going to say, when you're talking about networking, I think there's a misconception nowadays with the boom as relatively still nascent boom of, you know, sort of the internet as a marketing tool and a publishing place is
01:28:08
Speaker
Certainly on Crohn's, we will get a new member who might come trying to increase their platform or their profile and there'll be carpet bombing. This is what I'm talking about. I haven't actively networked in terms of Gone to Con's yet. I haven't done that. All my publishing credits have come from, oh, this is somebody who's also a writer or in the business and we have something in common and we talk about it and we're friends foremost.
01:28:37
Speaker
And that leads to something else. That was my first publishing credit and my subsequent publishing credits have been in that way. And I think it's because it's this aspirational thing where somebody, I think, also writing's changed, you don't have this tortured artist sitting in a top floor flat in France. Yeah, yeah. The now you have it's not it's not a useful
01:29:01
Speaker
archetype that, is it? No, but it's... Or also they are computers, aren't we? It's democratised. Top floor flats using computers instead of a bottle of absinthe. If you think that, since I started working in publishing, Amazon, eBooks, self-publishing, the end of the netbook agreement, which is where you get discounts from, in the mid-90s, you still had to sell a book at the cover price.
01:29:27
Speaker
So there were very no books in supermarkets, because there was no discounting in supermarkets.
Book Sales and Publishing Dynamics
01:29:34
Speaker
And obviously, because of the size of their pockets, they can discount to a large degree, which has problems for independent booksellers. So imagine, booksellers, Waterstones and Smiths and Amazon are basically where it is now. I know a lot of people ignore Smiths, basically, because they have like 10 best-selling authors and that's it.
01:29:54
Speaker
used to be autikers, they used to be dealers, they used to be boarders, they used to be books, etc. So if you didn't do a deal with waterstones, you could go to one of the others and get a major deal with them. You can't do that anymore, because they're all subsumed within waterstones. So that's a difference to the layout of how you do things on the sales side in publishing. You have to be reps, you have to be 13,
01:30:17
Speaker
publisher for different areas of the country. And now over 70% of sales are done at head office level. So basically you've got one person who deals with major key sales. There's one person at Smiths who buys every science fiction and fantasy book in every WH Smiths. If they don't take it, it ain't in Smiths. So you go to Smiths three times a year, you take them through the next four months books that they're going to make off. And going away from myself and fantasy, I've seen
01:30:46
Speaker
tables of romance novels or saga novels where there are 20 or 30 covers put like that and the bio said well that one that one and that one and they spaced it entirely on the cover.
01:31:00
Speaker
So that's how it works sometimes. Yeah. This is going to make some people very upset on Crohn's because... Yes, it is. It's pointless for me not to tell the truth. No, no, no. I'm not. I'm not. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think the harsh, the harsh, you know, tough love is the way to go with something like this. It's not we're not stacking shelves or delivering papers. You're trying to get into something highly competitive.
01:31:22
Speaker
And I think just because you've managed to write a story, that's not the end of the story. That's not the end of the beginning. Yeah, that's the beginning. And we see some dreadful covers from self-publishing on Amazon. We see people talking about them on the website, on the Crohn's. And there is an unwillingness to listen because I think people think their job as a writer is just to write if they're self-publishing. No, I'm just self-publishing.
01:31:49
Speaker
No, exactly. And there's some dreadful, dreadful stuff that looks like 1990s paint, you know, Microsoft paint covers, and they're expecting to make sales with that. I'm going to jump in and say,
01:32:06
Speaker
I think the reason that people want to write because they want to write and your writer is going to write. And if people have got something very strong that they want to say, then they're going to put it down regardless of whether it's going to sell. And just to be highfalutin about it for a second, Nietzsche said that the way to beat death anxiety was to engage in the creative arts and be creative. So there are good reasons to be writing, even if you're not making bestseller status.
01:32:35
Speaker
selling at all. But if you do want to make a success out of it, you have to acknowledge these things. And even if you can't get to the point where you're one of the 30 covers being selected almost at random by the sales director at WH Smiths National, then you can mitigate against the sense that you're shouting into the abyss
01:33:03
Speaker
by being part of the community. And I think that's something, like you said, this genre and genre fiction, and we'll include horror, fantasy, and science fiction under the same umbrella, that sense of community can bring a huge amount of satisfaction, a huge amount of enrichment for the writing experience, even if you're not reaching the heights of, well, whoever your favourite author is, it doesn't really matter. You will get a buzz.
01:33:33
Speaker
I saw today, one of my clients, his new novel was being boosted by another author. And you do get that sense of community on Twitter, on Facebook and elsewhere. You will see new authors who are on Instagram regularly. And sometimes they will make from a new book and within 24 hours, they've had 270,000 likes. Now, not all those people are going to buy the book.
01:34:02
Speaker
But to be honest, if 10% of them buy the book and 27,000 people buy the book, that's a hell of a lot more than the average sale in the UK. When I started in publishing, your base level costing, which I mentioned earlier, was done on 10,000 paperbacks. Now, if you base it on 4,000 paperbacks, you're lucky because there are so many differences in the market.
01:34:30
Speaker
computer printing, the trade know you can reprint faster than they used to. So they take fewer copies upfront than they used to. In the mid-90s, when I was publishing David Gemmel at Random House, I could tell David a month before publication what the selling figure for his new novel was. Now, it's really on publication day or maybe a couple of weeks after publication day, and that will be a much lower figure than it would have been in 1994.
01:34:58
Speaker
Smiths used to take three months stock up front. Now, if you're lucky, they take three weeks stock up front. So again, you don't get the scale of a first print run that you had 20 years ago. All those things go into the thinking in a meeting at a publishers now. So yes, there are major differences in the landscape than there were 20, 25 years ago.
01:35:26
Speaker
Well, isn't it just that just passed par for the course, though? I mean, that's what we're Yeah, I mean, I remember the best sales marketing director ever worked with said to me, it's dead simple, John, you get right three times out of five, you're a hero, you write two times out of five, you're a villain. And basically, you are using both your gut reaction and your head in terms of what works in 2022.
01:36:09
Speaker
We are lighted on the fact that you don't want to bet the farm on this because the chances of success are so low. So you need to be able to have yourself sorted out in other ways. So have the foundations of your life put together.
01:36:15
Speaker
you can't second-guess the public, which is a great and good thing.
01:36:23
Speaker
first, really, unless you unless you have wealthy parents who can bankroll you all the way to success. But really, you know, you want to have your life relatively well organized before you get into this because the amount of rejection is high, the likelihood of success is very low. But you can you can create a ballwalk against that and you can resist that and you can you can you can deal with it if your life's put together in other ways. So I
01:36:53
Speaker
I get the sense, and I speak to certainly younger authors sometimes, and I said, this is my experience. If you're well equipped to deal with the inevitable failures and rejections and difficulties that come along the way, then you're more likely to be able to persevere with it. The basic thing is probably 70% of the authors I've worked with over 34 years have had a day job. You're not going to become rich as a writer, 99.999999% of the time.
01:37:24
Speaker
So do that and work out when it works for you the writing because some people it works better in the morning before they go to work. Sometimes it works better in the evening where you came home from work.
01:37:41
Speaker
Just again, there isn't one-size-fits-all. Try all those different things. I used to travel internationally before lockdown here. I used to travel internationally quite extensively, so I did a lot of writing in airport waiting rooms. Yeah, yeah. It worked for me.
01:37:56
Speaker
Exactly. I write on the Tube. That's where I write. A lot of the write from Waltham State of Brixton, I'll be on my iPad on Scrivener. I love, I can tidy it up and then it takes me to expand it when I get home. But yeah, it's just when you can switch your brain off from the outside world and focus on the task. But coming back to
01:38:17
Speaker
Coming back to what you said, Dan, about having
Passion for Writing and Publishing
01:38:23
Speaker
to be resilient, the thing is, my question is this. If it's so hard,
01:38:32
Speaker
So what, you're not going to write that story. If you're a writer, if you're an author, that story is eating away at you. You can't not write it. It's not a case of, am I going to be an author or am I going to be successful? It's, am I going to be successful? Am I going to sell it? Because I bet if you said to anyone on Crohn's, okay, you're not going to sell anything in your life, you know, if you could see in the future, you're not going to make a sale, a substantial sale, they wouldn't give up. You'd keep writing because you've got to write. Writers write, getting published is the gem of the bread. It's not the bread. Exactly. Yeah.
01:39:03
Speaker
So basically, as I said earlier, you can't say and guess the public. You can have two books. I can actually give you this. I mentioned Chemacloud earlier. So we published The Star Fraction in September 1995. We launched it at the Worldcon in Glasgow in August 1995. Great cover. Wonderful book.
01:39:23
Speaker
I made bloody sure there was really good marketing on it. We sold 4,000 hardbacks of a UK science fiction debut when the average sale was 850 copies. Now, as I say, we did a book proof, we did everything for that book, which gave Kent
01:39:40
Speaker
not just for the paperback of that book, but for his career. We published another book and I won't tell you what it was that year. Again, great cover, great marketing, wonderful book, it failed. You cannot second guess the public. So all you can do is take something on because you believe it works, heart and head. And nobody gets it right 100% of the time. As I said, get it right three times out of Five Year Hero, get it right two times out of Five Year
01:40:07
Speaker
That goes back to the earlier point that even if you do have a failure on your copybook, it's still possible to persevere and come back.
01:40:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mentioned John Grimwood earlier, and those first two books did not sell well at all. But because we did much more for them than his previous publisher, because we did book proofs, because I went to Smiths and Waterstones head offices and talked them through what we were doing, because we did covers based on various other things. So they worked really well as B format covers, not just as science fiction covers. The thought that went into all of that, from me, from the marketing department, from the design department, from everybody,
01:40:46
Speaker
allowed us to sell five times as many copies as its first two books had sold. So it is very much about how you position the book, how you talk to the book train about the book. Then it's out there and then the public will tell you because you have seen books get 50,000 copies out on publication day and get 45,000 copies back because it's a sell or return business. So unless you get word of mouth, which is still the most important thing of all,
01:41:15
Speaker
Your book will fail. It's a struggle. Yeah, it's a struggle. It really is. It's the cover and word of mouth. Those are the two things. Last market research I saw said 50% of paperbacks are sold purely and simply on the cover. So the cover is incredibly important. Does that include the back cover? No, that's just the front cover. Just the artwork.
01:41:38
Speaker
I wrote all the blurbs for the books I published. I love writing blurbs. That's good, because authors hate writing blurbs. Well, you see, I know some authors who want to do it themselves, and some authors say, for Christ's sake, will you please do this? I can remember writing The Blurb for Eye of the World by Robert Jordan when I was at orbit.
01:41:57
Speaker
And I was really delighted to get deep into that book. I think they still use it on the Orbit paperback, based on the book I wrote in 1989. And it's huge fun. I love writing blurb. So all those blurbs on Rob Holstock's books I wrote, the blurb on chemical star fraction I wrote, the blurb, I'll tell you about blurb, E&M Banks, Use of Weapons. Now that was the first blurb we did.
01:42:23
Speaker
at orbit. We'd bought his paperback rights before that from Macmillan. It took me several days to get that blurb right because it's almost a three-card trick. You have to hide the reality of the story within the blurb.
01:42:40
Speaker
And I sent Ian that blurb and he said, well, I won't tell you exactly what he said because if it was BBC, we get thrown off the air. But he said he said he was quite pleased with it. And it is for me that yes, it's an art to write a blurb, but also for me, hugely enjoyable to do that. I love writing blurb.
01:43:02
Speaker
Oh, good. Well, you can come again in that case. Shall we go back to the question of querying? Because for the vast majority of people listening, that's going to be the thing in front of them that they've got to negotiate. And I'm conscious of not regurgitating the same advice about querying, because you go onto online and you
01:43:31
Speaker
you can get a million different websites about how to write a query letter, what to include. But I know, Chris, you had something specific. I'm not sure what it was, but you want to talk about. Yeah, I was going to talk about synopses and queries, but synopses have been sort of dealt with quite summarily. But yeah, we have people who fall over themselves with their synopses and their query letter. And I just wondered if you've got any sort of insight on
01:44:00
Speaker
on query letters and what, you know, other than like Sam says, the do's and don'ts, because if... Okay, well, here's a question. How much difference does the query letter make? Assuming that it's, you know, it's not full of spelling errors and it's not, it doesn't look like it's been written by the five-year-old. How much difference does a query letter make compared to the quality of the manuscript? Yeah, I mean, the only thing that puts me off is when somebody is arrogant.
01:44:28
Speaker
This will be the best book you've read this year. Or indeed, as I get the once or twice a year, this is better than Charles Dickens. There are many answers to that. But yes, it is about the quality of the program. The thing I would always say is keep it brief. Keep it concise. So many young new authors angst about their query letter. What you should be angst about is your bloody book. Get that right.
01:44:59
Speaker
By all means, you know, on Crohn's you talk to each other about query letters regularly. But basically it's keep it concise. Maybe a couple of comparisons from recent authors, recent books, debut books. You said recent being three to five years. Three to five years. And specifically of debuts. Specifically of debuts because that's interesting. That's because I've not heard of that before.
01:45:28
Speaker
For instance, I would not be comparing somebody with, you know, all those years ago with David, with a book that David Gemmell wrote 10 years in. You'd have to, you'd have to have been comparing with legend with his first novel. Right. Because, you know, that's really interesting. Because I've been, I've been trying to sell a manuscript and one of the comp titles was The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry. Magnificent book. It's not her, not her debut.
01:45:55
Speaker
No, it's not a debut. You can use two or three. So you can certainly use one that isn't a debut. And some people say to me, am I allowed to use films instead of books? And I go, look, use two books and one film.
01:46:10
Speaker
then that's a more rounded thing. So again, no absolute absolutes, but think in those terms in general. And I entirely understand why you say that about the Essex Serpent. That gives a good sense, but two other books that are recent debuts would be a good idea as well. But basically, yeah, in usual common sense, don't panic. I blame Douglas Adams for everything. Don't panic.
01:46:38
Speaker
please. Yeah, Douglas Adams is like, he's like the science fiction fans. A version of alcohol, isn't he? He's the cause and the solution to most of the problems. I was lucky enough to meet Douglas back in the day. We were talking about life, the universe and everything strangely enough. Of course. But no, it is it is very much a matter of where the not just that
01:47:04
Speaker
where the market is. Don't write for the market, but be aware there is a market. Because as I say in the meeting, that's one of the conversations you have. Where does this fit in the market as it stands today? Well, that's a good question actually. So how do
01:47:21
Speaker
Do authors have their finger on the pulse of trends and the way that the market is moving? Or is it simply a case of just keeping an eye on those recent debuts? I would certainly keep an eye on things. I mean, predicting trends is like trying to play chess with smoke pieces, isn't it? On a board of water. A particular area. Humorous fantasy.
01:47:47
Speaker
Now, late eighties, early nineties, we all had a couple of human's fantasy writers on the list, and they sold 15,000 copies, and they did well. By the late nineties, those sales had dropped off a cliff. I remember talking to their buyer at W.H. Smith's, not the head science fiction buyer, the head buyer at W.H. Smith's head office, and she said to me, we no longer see a human's fantasy market in our sales figures. We see a Terry Pratchett market.
01:48:12
Speaker
that changed in the same way that people say, why did publishers stop publishing Westerns? Because they stopped selling. That's why you stopped publishing something. If you're making money from something as a commercial publisher, and the clue is in the name commercial, you'll keep on selling it. If it isn't there anymore, it's because public taste has moved on. And you're talking about mass market publishing, paperback publishing.
01:48:38
Speaker
So in terms of an area, you know, obviously epic fantasy is a big market, but there are huge differences within epic fantasy. So it's a matter of thinking, well, this is what moves me because you shouldn't write because it's right for the market. You should write because it moves you because believe me, it sits there like a three day old dead fish on the page. If somebody writes like that and you can see it on the first line, I've turned down books on the first paragraph because there's nothing there.
01:49:09
Speaker
So it's very much about how does this story, how do these characters move you? And if it works as an epic fantasy story, fine. The other thing is that I'm hearing more and more from publishers that they want to be able to say to the book trade, it has the possibility of crossing over to mainstream market, not just to the science fiction or fantasy market. And the other thing I'm hearing a lot is it has the possibility of crossing over to YA.
01:49:34
Speaker
So those are the two things that publishers are saying to me more and more in the last six months. And obviously it's a huge pleasure to see both non-Anglo and women in the genre. Because there I was in 1988 at Auburn, there are far more of all of those areas. There aren't enough yet, but there are far more.
01:50:00
Speaker
And that's something that I love seeing. As I said, I get 40 submissions a week. It's far more diverse now than it was 10 years ago, than it was five years ago even. And that's one of the great joys for me. I love, you know, you talked about the kiddal earlier. I mean, I'm a kiddal every day, reading stuff and hopefully thinking, wow, but only three or four times a year. 40 books a week, I take on maybe three or four authors a year. That's an average percentage.
01:50:28
Speaker
So that's how special you have to be. Being good is nowhere near good enough. As well as being more diverse these days, have you found that the general quality of submissions has risen over the years? Yes. Yes. And it's much higher than it was in 2004 when I started the agency. I could turn down roughly 50% of the submissions then in the first three pages.
01:50:56
Speaker
As I say, I asked for six chapters, and probably 80% of them I now read the six chapters. So it's a much higher standard than it was, which again is a joy.
01:51:11
Speaker
And I will say probably six times a year to an author, look, I think this is terrific. It ain't moving me. It ain't making me go wow. So I'm not the right agent. However, I would not be surprised to see published. And another agent might well grab you because again, that'll be the subjective reaction to that book. And if you would like me to, I'll mention four or five other agents you might try. You may have done it already. But if you would like me to, I will do that. Because a Davian novel being published is good for all of us.
01:51:39
Speaker
It reminds the book trade, they can sell debut novels. And that is a great and good thing. But yeah, I mean, it's, again, no absolutes. You just keep on looking for that one book that makes you think, oh God, you can do it. As I did with Kevin Cloud, I sat on that train. I lived in Hastings at the time, so I had 90 minutes on the train. And it's 400 page manuscript there. And I read 100 pages before I got home. And I was just smiling.
01:52:07
Speaker
And it's the cliche, I stayed up until three in the morning finishing it. Went back to the office the next morning saying, right, I'm going to publish this. I want to do this, this and this. Much more difficult to do that now because at that point publishing was much still, was still much more editorial led. Now it sells a marketing led. So it's a different world, but you want that sort of enthusiasm before you consider taking an author on.
01:52:36
Speaker
And again, because one publisher doesn't like it and they'll admire it. There are many authors I published that other editors whose taste I admired had turned down. They all did the same with books I turned down. So again, no absolutes. You mentioned Jokindl before. Is there anything pertinent, you know, authors, beginning authors we should know about eBooks and that sort of thing?
01:53:02
Speaker
Oh, only in as much as it's a different market now because of e-books. I mean, in some cases, 25-30% of sales are on e-books.
01:53:13
Speaker
it's a part of the market. It isn't separate to print books. It's just a part of the market. Whereas everything used to be print books. Now it's print and ebook. Um, and obviously Amazon overall has made a huge difference to the market. Um, and the fact that people can get something immediately, I mean, I, I ordered something on my phone from Amazon last night on my Kindle and 30 seconds later, there it was on my Kindle. Um, so that's, that's one of the major differences apart from that.
01:53:43
Speaker
Again, some people love ebooks. Some people hate ebooks. I have no problem with ebooks. I never did. As far as I'm concerned, it's about the words. It's not about how they're delivered. It's the words. People talk about hybrid authors these days in as much as some will do a bit of self-publishing.
01:54:02
Speaker
and they'll publish traditionally. I think Brandon Sanderson is doing something at the moment around that. But there are hybrid readers as well. So people will have a collection of books, physical books on the bookshop, but they'll also have their digital library on the Kindle. That's the case for me. I've got loads of hard copy books, which I still love. When you're traveling, instead of taking three big newspapers like that with me, I take the Kindle. But I do feel a little bit guilty because I'm not paying as much to the author as I used to.
01:54:33
Speaker
Well, of course, remember that the author gets a higher percentage from e-books than they get from a print book. So that's a difference. But the main thing is you're the reader. You're the public. You're the person who the writer wants to connect with. So the way you connect is by an e-book rather than a print book, or by a print book rather than an e-book, or by a mixture of both. That's fine. It's the words. It's always the words.
01:55:03
Speaker
So you've seen it all, you've done it all. You have acquired many t-shirts, I suppose, over the years. What challenges do you still see yourself as having in the future or things that you still would like to achieve or things that you still want to uncover? What you're always looking for is a wonderful debut novelist. I mean, I will be 69 in May.
01:55:34
Speaker
anymore, but I feel for it. This is audio only, so you don't know. Exactly. I can see myself. Thank you. But I will die on my desk. As David Gemmel did, they found him slumped over his computer one morning, and that's how they'll find me one morning, because there is no way I'm ever going to retire. Because look, my father's a docker. He did not do that because he loved it. He did it to bring on the table for me and mum.
01:56:01
Speaker
For 34 years already, and until I do fall over, I've done something I love. I've made a living out of doing something I love. And I'm incredibly lucky. And I owe that all to my parents for inculcating the love of reading in me at a very early age. So I'm very proud that both of them live long enough to see publishing work for me. And to meet Liam Banks. And to see me on TV chatting to Michael Caine.
01:56:29
Speaker
because I was invited to his book launch. He's very big. Yes, he's very big. And it's a joy. I work with words, but sometimes one is lost for words because it is such a joy. What I'm looking for always
01:56:50
Speaker
is that voice that makes me think, wow, straight away. I love talking to publishers now. And I think, again, because I was a publisher, I understand how difficult their job is. And there are times I will say to an author, no, I can't ask that. This is why I can't ask that, because I've been there and done that. However, I cannot this. And this is why this makes sense to ask.
01:57:16
Speaker
So with a debut novelist in particular, it's about explaining how the business side of things works.
01:57:24
Speaker
It's worth reminding writers that they need to be adept readers as well, or voracious readers. They can't stop reading. I mean, Chris, you said you've got to read outside your genre as well. Stephen Cox just read readers widely as possible. Why would you not? Since I was 12, I've read everything I could lay my hands on, with the possible exception of organic chemistry.
01:57:53
Speaker
And I, why would you not do that? Yeah. Even, yeah, look, I discovered SF and fantasy when I was 12, 13. And of course, I was getting 10 paperbacks a week or going to the library every week and getting three more. I never only read science fiction and fantasy. I always, always read as widely as possible. And talking at conventions with authors,
01:58:22
Speaker
outside their books, outside their genre, in general terms, sometimes about non-fiction science, sometimes about history, sometimes about archaeology, sometimes about whatever it might be, literary fiction. It's about an inquiring mind, basically. It's about not running on rails and just grabbing everything you can.
01:58:48
Speaker
That's true of everybody, as far as I'm concerned. That's true of everybody, not just writers. You can be inspired by so many different styles and so many different authors' styles and so many different languages and cultures. I've always liked, well, we talked, mentioned, MI James before. I love Ian Forster. I read a lot of Ian Forster. And recently I read, for the first time, I read Wuthering Heights. And I was reading it and I was thinking, this is weird fiction to me.
01:59:15
Speaker
It's so atmospheric and strange, and I know it's not weird fiction per se, but there is a strong element of weird fiction in Wuthering Heights. It's almost a ghost story at some point, and it's about emotion. I think you look at the classic authors, and just because I say that the comparisons are with authors from the last three or five years,
01:59:39
Speaker
That doesn't mean that Charles Dickens doesn't have stuff to tell us, that Turkinyev doesn't have stuff to tell us in Dostoyevsky, and all the Bronte's. George Eliot I find a little bit hard personally.
01:59:54
Speaker
just take it and think that might be one thing that you get from that. You think, yes, and I wonder I can use that. In the same way that Raymond Charles used to write down a metaphor whenever he thought of it or similarly. She was the sort of blonde or make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. He wrote that down and one day he used it. Yeah, the big sleep wasn't it? All those things. Again, there are so many routes through them. We talked about forests, certainly it was Rojo's talk. So many roads through the forest.
02:00:24
Speaker
to doing that. I'm going to have to go before too long, guys. That's okay. Look, is there anything else that we need to ask you? Well, I've got the last two questions which are... Yeah, go on. Go on with the last two questions. The last two questions which we ask everyone are, what is your current read, which probably seems a bit redundant, and what, in your opinion, is required reading or, you know, one of your best, your favourite books?
02:00:48
Speaker
Oh, well, I suppose there are huge numbers. At the moment, all my reading is work related. I'm going away this weekend, and I will take at least one book, there's nothing to do with work, but I don't know what it is yet. Because probably on Thursday evening, I will go on Amazon, and just find something to download to the Kindle to read while I'm away. I mentioned use of weapons earlier.
02:01:12
Speaker
by Ian M. Banks and that is an absolute favourite. We mentioned Misago Wood, that's an absolute favourite. I was lucky enough to commission River of Gods by Ian MacDonald when I was at Simon & Schuster and I think that's a remarkable book. There are too many. I could go on for the next hour and a half. It's an unfair question but we ask everybody to answer.
02:01:40
Speaker
No, no, I understand. But no, we should get you back for another episode just to answer that question. Yeah, we'll call that a good place to stop. It's been, it's been a real privilege and a real pleasure, hasn't it, Chris? Talking with you, John. It's been absolutely, yeah, it's been highly instructive, really enjoyable, hugely enjoyable. And I hope that we'll get to talk again in the future. Yeah, indeed. So thanks very much. Thank you very much. Goodbye, John.
02:02:11
Speaker
Cheers. This month's episode of Cron's cast was brought to you by Dan Jones and Christopher Bean and our special guest John Gerald.
02:02:32
Speaker
Additional content was provided by Damaris Brown, Brian Sexton, Jay Starloper and Christine Wheelwright. Special thanks to Brian Turner and all the staff at Crohn's and thanks to you for listening.
02:02:44
Speaker
Don't forget to sign up for free to the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community at sffchronicles.com and join us next month when we'll be talking to the novelist, poet and essayist Naomi Foyle to talk about Joe Zebedee's acclaimed alien invasion cum prison break thriller, Inish Karak.
02:04:02
Speaker
You're not coming here.