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Tag Archives: Arachne Press

The Hierarchy of the Dead

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by Peter Cooper in The Contexts of Writing

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Arachne Press, Babies, dahliapublishing.co.uk, Hierarchy of the Dead, Tales from the Grave, What the Dickens?, Zimbell House Publishing

Tales-from-the-Grave-Front-Cover-200x300

It’s been so long.

I blame it on what my daughter would call baby-brain. With me, of course, it’s more granddad-brain! I have been so besotted with our first grandchild and all the joy which that has brought that I have neglected to write my blog.

baby brain

My preoccupation with babies did set me to wondering about babies in fiction though  – and, indeed, I’ll get to that in a subsequent blog (if I don’t come over all foggy again). However, I’m afraid that, as of this moment,  I am about to employ a dire cliché (I blame it on the baby-brain). I am now going to write about a new story I have just had published as if it too is a baby.

A mewling insignificant little thing it is. A mere squib of a short story. A little fantasy with comic pretensions. Hardly out of nappies and already with aspirations to be a grown-up moral fable. Of sorts.

But it is mine. And, as you might with all babies, you feel proud of it simply because it’s yours. But you do worry for it.

It’s a little supernatural tale called The Hierarchy of the Dead and is one of many other stories (by many other authors as well as me) in an anthology called Tales from the Grave. Jess-does-the-graveyard-shiftI’m sure my reader will be pleased to be informed (you know who you are) that it’s out now, published by Zimbell House Publishing and available in paper back and e-book.

I didn’t actually write it for this particular anthology. It’s a story I have had tucked away for a while and have been struggling to find a midwife for. (Sorry.)

For a number of years now I have been amusing myself writing a whole series of, what might be called. dark stories for, hopefully, a collection of stories I am on with to be called Nineteen Nervous Breakdowns. These are to be stories dealing with extreme mental states of one kind or another. I have about nine or ten at the moment.

mental
I do occasionally write things with a particular magazine or book in mind but I’m also usually disappointed when the story is rejected. A hard knock for any parent.

I have been lucky with a few of my Inspector Bucket stories, it’s true, writing two of them specifically for themed editions of the What the Dickens? magazine (March Hare, issue 3 and Olympia, issue 4) and one other for Arachne Press’s Stations anthology – again, specifically tailored. And there are one or two of my other stories lying around out there all neglected too, should you be interested (The Carebot in the Mirador Fantasgamoria and The World is not Good Enough in The Busker. 

But after rejections of stories that  to me seemed much healthier babies than this one, stories that I thought would be able to walk and run all by themselves, it’s a mystery to me why this particular story caught the midwife’s eye. But what does any parent know?

This one was inspired by a phrase I heard on the radio about the hierarchy of the dead, as in the title of my story. Someone was making a jokey comment about how amongst the dead in a graveyard you probably might gain kudos depending on how many visits you get. An absurd notion of course. But, nonetheless, I picked it up and ran with it,  and this conceit, of the dead arguing about who gets visited most and thus who is the top dead body, is the simple gist of my tale, though, as I say, I try to tun it into a little bit of a moral fable.

Graveyard skeleton

The phrase, the hierarchy of the dead, of course, has an altogether more serious and sombre meaning, related to how the media, the military and those in power, rate the importance or otherwise of people who die in accidents, in terrorist outrage or in war. Own Jones had an interesting article about such things here.

But, as I say, my story is just a baby thing.

Blog Tour Monday

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Peter Cooper in The Contexts of Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Arachne Press, dahliapublishing.co.uk, Inspector Bucket and the Beast, The First World War

image Ah, what’s this then? Well, If you must know, I’ve been given a helping hand to climb on board the Blog Tour Monday (a sort of blog-bus) by my writing friend, (fellow Arachne Press author and Ilkley Fringe Festival performer) Louise Swingler and her pal, traveller and writer, Jo Nicel, who wrote a very entertaining blog last Monday. Jo described Blog Tour Monday as a sort of relay race. I like to think of it as a way for writers across the land to hold hands, to make connections, to tell each other and their readers a bit more about themselves and about their writing and to generally feel, well, that there’s somebody out there whose hand they can hold. holdinghands Holding hands before me, apart from Jo and Louise, were novelist and musician Dr Steve Hollyman (‘CreepJoint’ sounds a most crepuscular name for a band, Dr Steve!), Graeme Shimmin (author of ‘A Kill in the Morning’), Sara Jasmon (author of ‘The Summer of Secrets’, to be published by Transworld next year) and writers David Hartley and Emma Yates Badley. If you click on those lovely people’s names you will be linked to their contributions to the Blog Tour and find out much more about them. As for me, it’s good to shake you by the hand. bucket cover As you might know (where have you been?) I’m the writer of Inspector Bucket and The Beast – Dahliapublishing.co.uk (available also from Amazon) – and various other Inspector Bucket short stories (see my previous blogs). But what I’m supposed to be doing here  is answering some questions about my current writing. What am I working on? Well, since you ask, at the moment I’m 80,000 words into a family saga (currently called No Father Was There), very loosely based on the lives of my Australian grandfather and my English grandmother during the First World War. The tale deals with their rather tragic relationship and the effect it had on my father, who was brought up in a children’s home in Sidcup, South London.  Pertinently, given the anniversary of World War One about to be upon us, it deals with the war itself, of course, but more so the impact the war had on people’s family and emotional lives. There’s a chapter of the novel (in much adapted form), entitled The Trumpet Calls, already available in Stew and Stinkers from the ‘Stringybark Book shop’ if you want to have a look at it. image However, The Blog Tour demands that one should answer the question: How does your writing differ from others in its genre? Of course then you have to pin yourself down (always a difficult job that can cause bruises and fractures) to work out what on earth your genre is! (Sounds like a very nasty complaint to me.) Well, my first book, ‘Inspector Bucket’, sat in the historical-detective novel genre quite comfortably, I suppose – though it has Gothic qualities too – and, I like to think, it might also be seen as a comic-romance. Sort of. ‘No Father Was There’, on the other hand, (the title comes from William Blake’s Little Boy Lost) is clearly a War Time story – and I’m happy with that description – but it’s also about childhood, class and cultural and racial tensions. I hope its multi-narrative structure gives it a different sort of dimension too. I shall now unravel myself from the floor to answer the next question, which is: Why do I write what I do? Ah, that one brings the priest and the doctor running over the fields! ‘Inspector Bucket’ was (though based on Dickens’ character from ‘Bleak House’)  a completely imagined story. The new novel is, I confess, very definitely based on some real people. However it’s still complete fiction, a way to imagine lives that were close to me but that I actually know very little about. The imaginative recreation is a kind of emotional analogue of genealogical research for me, a way of exploring lives that I hope are interesting for their own sake but that might be illustrative of certain times and places in the past. Now I need a lie down in a darkened room. The final question I have been asked is: How does my writing process work? Haphazardly must be the answer. I wish I could say I write a disciplined thousand words a day but, in fact, I can go for weeks without writing much at all – but, when an idea hits me (perhaps through something I’ve read or seen or heard about), I get completely engaged and don’t look up again until I have come to the end of it. (Clothes unwashed, hair and beard down to my knees.) But, in between, I love the fiddly process of editing my own mad scribbles. This bit I find very akin to painting – an extra touch of colour here, a change of position for a character or object there, a complete paint-over when it all looks wrong. (Chuck the whole dratted canvas in the bin over there and go up the pub.) Enough, or too much. So now it’s time to hand over to two writers to take the Blog Tour Monday further on its motley way. And they are Christina Longden (who describes herself as a ‘Funny Female Who Gives A Toss’) author of ‘Mind Games and Ministers’, amongst other delights, as well as being a leading light in the ‘Holmfirth Writers’ Group’. And then there is David Ellis who duets with Julienne Victoria in a collection of poetry called Flying from the Heart and, like me, (you fool!) has a story in the ‘What the Dickens?‘ Busker anthology. Click on their names to find their contribution to the Blog Tour next Monday, 17th March, and they will keep you company. I shake your hand. hand to shake

I could hear every word you said!

16 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Peter Cooper in The Contexts of Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Arachne Press, Ilkley Playhouse, Stations, Trains

image I went riding on the Write Track alongside my co-driver, Louise Swingler, and wonderful fire-woman (and expert slide-clicker and general ideas-stoker) Mavis
on the fringe at the Ilkley Lit Festival last night (Tuesday 15 Oct). And after a few shunts and diversions we  built up enough steam to arrive safely at our destination.

We arrived for work carrying guitars, Station Master hats and coats, a top hat, books, and lots of nerves to a busy Wildman Studio at the Ilkley Playhouse and were escorted to our dressing room (well of course!)

image

Once on stage (that’s luvvie talk) we performed our odd mixture of songs, brief sketches from ‘Brief Encounters’

image WP_001751and strange ones from ‘Strangers on a Train’, as well as rousing readings from train-related incidents by Richard Yates, Kate Atkinson, Paul Theroux, Angela Carter and Arundhati Roy, before entering the tunnel of our own tales from the ‘Stations’ anthology.

stations

https://www.arachnepress.com

We finished by asking the audience for their own favourite train stories or episodes – and were re-railed along the lines of: The Railway Children, Ghost Train, Murder on the Orient Express, Slum Dog Millionaire, The Night Train, Train to Pakistan, and Thomas the Tank Engine – to name but a few.

(Feel free to add your own!)

It was lovely to get such engagement  – and many positive responses to our performance too, including:

 “I could hear every word you said!”

(There’s Yorkshire praise for you!)

SAM_3530

People hovered on the platform for some while afterwards, chatting, sharing more train anecdotes and even buying a book or two at the station bookshop.

Or was it the free cake from the buffet that kept them there?

http://www.exquisitehandmadecakes.co.uk/

Chocolate vinilla

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  • On the Write Track (petercooperstellingtales.com)
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On the Write Track

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by Peter Cooper in The Contexts of Writing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Arachne Press, Arts, Ilkley, Otley, Stations Anthology, Train stories

Just back from Otley, rehearsing with fellow scribbler Louis Swingler for our stint on the fringe at the Ilkley Literature Literature festival next Tuesday. image

We’ll be having bit of fun with train related stories (and a couple of films) as well as reading adapted versions of our stories from the ‘Stations’ anthology. I even sing a chorus or two from a couple of songs. (Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that!)

We enjoyed preparing it anyway, and hope our pleasure gets across to any audience who might turn up! There’s a link here to an interview we’ve just completed.

arachnepress.com

Oh, and there’s free cake!

 

Pechakutcha, the March Hare, the MVMNT Cafe and the Kindle Launch

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Peter Cooper in The Contexts of Writing

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Arachne Press, BettaKultcha, dahliapublishing.co.uk, MVMNT Cafe, Pechakutcha, Two Valleys Radio

imageI was at Huddersfield Literature Festival’s Pechakutcha night at the Media Centre on the 14th March and enjoyed it immensely.

Pechakutcha is basically an intense powerpoint presentation where you talk about anything you want to whilst showing 20 (obviously relevent) slides and talking for a maximum of 20 seconds per image. Quite a challenge actually. The theme for the night was, being a literary festival, books. (Come on, keep up!)

I talked, breathlessly, about some of the background ideas in Inspector Bucket and the Beast. This image is of me talking about how easy it was in Mid-Victorian England for husbands and fathers to get wives and daughters committed to mental institutions – something one of the characters in my novel does to his daughter. The slide is actually of a wax work from Madame Tussauds from towards the end of the Victorian period. I’m the one on the right just in case you’re confused!

As you can, just about, see I attempted to dress up for the part, as Bucket – not a mad woman.

image

This is actually how I was dresssed. I don’t know who I think I’m trying to be here, but I look like I’m chewing a wasp.imageIt was quite a well attended event (about 50 people) and I managed to sell some more books! The slide is of Inspector Bucket from Dickens’ Bleak House, an image you could find on a 1930’s cigarette card.

Despite my nerves, I must have gone down quite well because I was invited to deliver the same presentation for BettaKultcha (another version of Pechakutcha – mad isn’t it?) in Leeds on the 24th April. (I think it was my topper that the chap who invited me liked the best!)

There’ll be a link to the presentations on here as soon as Brent at the Media Centre in Huddersfield sends it to me.

More fun was had on Sunday, 17th March, at Two Valleys Radio where I was recording a radio drama adaptation of one of my other Bucket Stories, Inspector Bucket and the March Hare. (You can find that in What the Dickens? magazine, issue 3, online or on Kindle.)

march hare

My friends, David Jones and Vince and Lewis Duffy helped me out with the acting (for an exorbitant fee in pints of beer and red smarties) and we were steered through all the techy stuff by the wonderful Matt and Paddy from Two Valleys.

TWO-VALLEYS-RADIO-LEAFLET-A4-pg1-279x400It should be aired some time on Wednesday, 27th March at around 3pm (I think)  but if you miss it you can catch up by clicking on their Listen Again facility.

stations me

Now I’m off to London to give a reading of Inspector Bucket Takes the Train at the MVMNT cafe in Greenwich. (That’s to be found  – the story not the cafe – in the Arachne Press Stations Anthology.

images

Finally, Bucket and the Beast itself is out in its Kindle incarnation from the 20th March. A snip at £2.49!flyer-inspector-for-web

I think that’s enough self promotion (ed)

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