I have spent a lot of the last two years reading writing about writing, as I studied literary criticism. In Not Another Happy Ending I’ve been doing much the same but in a fun and light-hearted way for a change. David Solomons’ book, adapted from the screenplay for the film of the same name, takes all sorts of clichés about writing and shakes them up.

Have you ever written a dramatic domestic scene where the tension builds as the kettle rises to the boil? Read ‘Not Another Happy Ending’ and you’ll be taking the red pen to all mentions of kettles. What about stories of would-be novelists who get the deal of their dreams, and discover that the reality of being a successful author isn’t all they had hoped? Well, that’s the cliché that Solomon’s book explores. There’s a handsome French publisher, with a hapless assistant, who takes up Jane’s first novel, a ‘misery-lit’ thinly disguised story of her childhood. The book sales start slowly, but then take off. Jane wins an award, meets a Hollywood screenwriter who soon becomes her boyfriend, and reconciles with her father. For the first time in a long while, she’s happy. But … and there’s always a but … she has to write another book. Second novels are called ‘difficult’ for a reason, and Jane’s struggling with the weight of expectations, while her screenwriter boyfriend is happily working on the screenplay of her first book.

There are plenty of fun twists and turns in the tale – a pub quiz team, a character from Jane’s book who becomes real, a run down cottage in the wilds of Scotland, and a book launch on a double decker bus. In Not Another Happy Ending David Solomons has done a great job of delving into the preconceptions surrounding becoming a successful writer and shaking them up.

This is an easy read, and I’d recommend it for holiday reading for writers … and anyone else who wants a fun romance where the girl gets her guy, of course!

You can also watch the film on Netflix – the trailer is below.

ETA: Having now watched the film, it’s fine, it’s fun … but the book is better!

Not Another Happy Ending costs around £7.99 in paperback and £3.49 on Kindle at the time of writing

 I’m very excited to receive an early review copy of The Birdwatcher. William Shaw is a great writer, I’ve loved his Breen and Tozer detective series set in 1960s London, and I’ve been looking forward to this new standalone crime novel.

As usual with a good, gripping book, I managed to read it straight through in a couple of days. The Birdwatcher follows police sergeant William South,  a quiet man who’s Kent coast beat usually involves liaising with the local community rather than murder. Things are further complicated by two factors, the arrival of new detective Alexandra Cupidi, and the murder victim is William’s friend and neighbour. Then, in the first lines we discover that William has two more reasons not to want to get involved in the murder: it’s migration season (he’d rather be watching birds) and he is a murderer himself. You’ll see that this book has great potential for a compelling, complex, story, and I’m pleased to say that Shaw delivers and kept me gripped all the way through.

I enjoyed the characterisation. William South is, much like the hero of Shaw’s other books, a quiet man. He likes his life on the wild, barren coast at Dungeness, and his job as Local District lead for the Kent police. He fights against getting involved in the murder even before he finds it is so close to home, and he’s unsure about the new DS who has moved down from London. Against his better judgement, South gets sucked further and further into the case, his local knowledge helping him uncover link after link that tells him the death of his neighbour and fellow birdwatcher wasn’t just a random killing.

The other character who worked well for me was Zoe Cupidi, Alexandra’s teenage daughter who is angry at being dragged away from her friends and school. South finds himself forced to play babysitter and take Zoe birdwatching. I’m not sure how many teenage girls would genuinely manage to become interested in birds, but Shaw writes persuasively!

I also enjoyed the flashbacks to South’s childhood, growing up on a Protestant estate surrounded by Catholic areas in Northern Ireland in the seventies. At first I was a little unsettled by the change of setting, but soon I grew used to this part of the book which gradually showed us how South became the man he is, and raises the question of whether his past is catching up with him.

The final part of the book I want to highlight is Dungeness itself. I love to write in Dungeness, it has a special characteristic of it’s own, a wide expanse of beach overshadowed by the power station, and I guess Shaw has spent quite some time there too. It’s the ideal setting for a murder, and I may not be able to write there in quite the same way again!

The Birdwatcher costs £12.99 in hardback and £6.99 on Kindle and is due out 19th May

I just read AK Benedict’s Jonathan Dark or The Evidence Of Ghosts. It came out last week and I read it in it’s entirety in two days. Compelling, multi-layered,  this a good book for anyone who likes detectives and the supernatural.

I love to read detective and crime novels, but I’m not sure that I’d want to write one. There is a degree of complexity, of multi-layeredness, of a problem with a solution that is drip fed in a subtle way but which ends in some sort of denouement, that seems like a lot of hard work! AK Benedict sews many threads into her second novel: a conspiracy theory with a major criminal Ring that runs much of London, the personal stories of Maria who was born blind but has reluctantly regained her sight, and detective Jonathan Dark. There’s cybercrime, mudlarking and cross dressing, stalking, obsession and romance, and diamond rings made from the ashes of the deceased to throw into the mix too.

Benedict plays with the reader: Dark is separated from his wife and sometimes it seems like he is as much a stalker as the man who he is trying to track down. And then there is the supernatural element. Not just a detective story set in modern day London, this book takes place in a world where some people can see ghosts, in a London where ghosts are all around us. Is there a seat on the tube that no-one takes … that’s because a ghost is occupying it. You pick up a taxi one night, and the driver doesn’t say a word: they could be a ghost. Some of the ghosts in this book are content, but most are involved in struggles just like their human counterparts, and this interweaves with the key parts of the plot where Jonathan Dark tries to find the stalker turned murderer and at the same time investigate The Ring.

This is a compelling story, with perhaps too many ideas for each to get its due weight. One of the interesting threads which I felt could be drawn out further is Maria’s experience of regaining her sight. We know she was born blind but has gone through a new treatment that has restored her sight. We don’t discover how much sight she has regained, and we don’t really get to grips with the experience of seeing for the first time which i think could be fascinating. By the time we meet Maria she has decided that sight is not for her, and she wears a blindfold throughout the book. As the subject of a stalker this means that she is easily watched, and I wonder if Benedict is challenging the idea that ‘she asked for it’. To most of the population it is easy to say that Maria should take her blindfold off to protect herself. For Maria, this is an unthinkable step. She argues that seeing diminishes what she experiences through other senses. She is adept at navigating her London locality, and uses touch and smell when she goes mudlarking, tracking down antiquities that wash up on the banks of the Thames.

There are some great characters in the book: I like Frank the undertaker, Keisha the feisty policewoman, and Maria and Jonathan too. I think there’s more to Jonathan Dark than can be achieved by this one novel: I hope AK Benedict has a sequel in mind. Jonathan Dark or The Evidence Of Ghosts costs £6.99 on Kindle, and from £4-£12 on Amazon at time of writing.

What I’m going to be writing about next: I’m very excited that I’m getting a nice early review copy of The Birdwatcher. William Shaw is a great writer, I’ve loved his Breen and Tozer detective series set in 1960s London, and I’m looking forward to this new stand alone book.

I thought that I had reviewed Kate Gross’s Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) but it seems that I haven’t. I know I haven’t written about Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh, because I wrote about that in a term paper rather than on the blog. I’m not sure if it’s my age (!) or whether closeness to death just makes a good story, but I love how these two books show you life right on the edge. Kate Gross describes her life and end of life after diagnosis with cancer at 34. Henry Marsh writes as a neurosurgeon, looking back on a long career dealing with people with life threatening brain disease and injury.

Somewhere in between Late Fragments and Do No Harm, lies the new release, When Breath Becomes Air. It is written by Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon and writer. Kalanithi had degrees in English literature, human biology, history and philosophy of science, and Medicine, and he brings all that knowledge to bear in his writing, sharpened by a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer in his thirties.

The book takes you from when Paul started to suspect cancer, to the diagnosis, then right back to his time growing up in Arizona, his studies at different universities, a beautiful description of what made him. The second part of the book returns us to his last two years, his treatment, improvements, relapses, and his struggles to work out what it meant for his sense of self, his relationships, his career. None of it is maudlin: instead Paul writes with the clarity that I think we would all like to achieve given the same situation. The book is not long: I read it on a return train journey in less than three hours. Paul’s writings were cut short by the progression of his illness, and the book is completed with an epilogue by his wife Lucy. Nonetheless, it is a book I would read again, and again. It seems that, as with Late Fragments, Kalanithi has discovered something truly special. In his book he somehow transfers to the reader a little of the change in the way that you value life when the date of your death is suddenly brought near.

Listen to Paul and watch the video, A Strange Relativity: Altered Time for Surgeon-Turned-Patient, that he made before his death. It is beautiful, a thoughtful meditation on what time meant for him as he watched his baby daughter grow up while his own time was running out.

At some point I’ll write more about Do No Harm and Late Fragments, both great books and very different examples of writing from life changing experience.

When Breath Becomes Air costs around £9 at time of writing.

Disclaimer: I was sent this book to review

He’s still here. Still here. Still, lying in bed, but asleep, not dead.

Is your New Year’s resolution to write more? Or do you just want to get started with writing? I’ve found that regular writing, whether you do Julia Cameron’s Daily Pages from The Artist’s Way, or pick some other way to write every day, is the best was to clear writers block and get through to what you really want to write about.

This Christmas, my daughter gave me 712 More Things to Write About , a book full of prompts to inspire you to write. It is packed with ideas, and there is a fairly small space-from a quarter page to a whole page – for you to fill in with your writing. There are so many ideas that I have found it easy to open the book at random and pick one that appeals most days this year, even when the children were on holiday. The small space allowed means that you can fill it in a few minutes, so perfect for a commute, a lunch break or while you are waiting. the book itself is lovely quality, which I think adds to the inspiration.

Below, I have include an example of a prompt, and my response:

A woman travels continents and oceans to be at her dying father’s bedside and when he doesn’t die, even though she loves him, she’s disappointed. Why?

You’re still here. Still here. Still, lying in bed, but asleep, not dead.

I told you I loved you, over and over, when they said there was no hope. Somehow it seems that  you’re going to pull through, this time. Yet I don’t feel joy, just resignation, maybe even disappointment . This is going to happen again, I can see now. It’s the perfect way to make me put everything on hold and focus on you, exclusively, just like you always wanted.

I stand up, touch your hand, and say, “Goodbye Dad!”

 Sometimes I could do with more space, and in filling the slot feel that I have only just started a story, so if you had time this would be a good way to take the ideas that seem fruitful and expand on them. So, if you have had some book vouchers for Christmas, or simply want to invest in your writing, I’d very much recommend 712 More Things to Write About which is £12.99 at time of writing.