Writing Class, this last of my books so far, is now available. See the Non-fiction section. Read the blurb carefully. I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone. But I think intending writers may benefit from my experience. It is also a platform for the kind of bits and pieces any writer collects. Curiously enough it has already aroused more interest than I thought it would - further evidence of the changing taste of the modern world, which prefers snippets in many things (e.g. news, and interviews) to the in-depth, leisurely consumption of a subject. Indeed, the greater interest in Gallimaufry, as opposed to Daniel To Frances makes the same point.

Alexey (inevitably) has emailed me privately (through Naaran, of course) to add his enthusiasm for this unique book. But allowing for his characteristic brio (which I have to say, Alex, got you into this pickle in the first place - after all, what passes for male approbation of an attractive female in Italy and may, I can only guess, get you either an easy one-night-stand in swinging Gillingham (Dorset, that is - I cannot speak for Kent) or of course a retributive slap, has got you a jail sentence in Ulan Bator) and his enthusiasm for all things Narcissus-istic (to coin an adjective) - I think I may take his comments as encouraging. Still, one has to deduct a certain percentage for his inevitable reaction to his surroundings. Cell-sharing is never easy. Any views on that, out there? All opinions welcome - from screws and lags alike, past, present, or Parliamentarian.

Naaran! Gyalailaa!

PS  To avoid any misunderstanding, I put in that bit about Mongoliam mores purely in the hope of improving inter-racial harmony, not adding to it. After all, I think I can now say without fear of contradiction that at least one of my best friends is Mongolian. Not a lot of people can trump that, I imagine. What do you think, Philly? Know anyone east of Dungeness?

‘Neville Conway, our featured author, is a talent largely unrecognised within mainstream publishing and we cannot understand why. His novels are page-turners, skilfully paced, insightful, thought-provoking, witty and enjoyable, plus they contain all the stuff bestsellers are made from.’

I am of course delighted, and humbled to receive such recognition. Douglas McLean, came from general publishing to set up his own publishing company in the Forest of Dean, which deals not just with general publishing but also with literature devoted to the deaf, and has a world-wide reputation. The stature and reputation of his bookskop now needs no further recommendation. Members of the Society of Authors may remember his article in the Society’s Journal about the difficult situation independent bookshops face nowadays, with supermarkets and the internet retailers trying to cream off the profits of bookselling, and chain stores and mainstream publishers being forced by the competition into seeking celebrity books, and television tie-ins.

Such compromises may work for a while, and help the strong to survive at the expense of the weaker, but what choice can readers hope to look forward to? Independent booksellers must survive, or we shall all be the losers. Support them! For while the internet may boast it can stock any and every book, only the committed bookseller can act as the reader’s guide, and friend. And if intelligent fiction is crowded out (novelists of stature and proven track record are now being discarded by publishers because their last book failed to reach an arbitrary profit target), who but the small publishers, like Narcissus, and the independent bookseller, like Forest, will cosset the flame? Please visit Forest Bookshop

I have further to thank Alex for his plug of WHY (see comments on Mystery Solved, in this blog). Of course, you must judge for yourselves if he is telling it as it is. All I can say is I laughed myself, even as it poured out of me from nowhere.

On a related matter, Trevor (Accounts) asks me to clarify the nature of his past contact with Alex, and I am happy to put any misunderstanding straight (to use the mot juste, as it were!). Trevor and Alexey were just good friends. Trev has been totally faithful to Dave for at least a year (well it will be a year at Whitsun). 

I am joined in this expression of faith not just by Euphemia, but also by Carmel in Dispatch, Jocasta in Public Relations, and Trevor in Accounts (who has known him longer, and better than anyone, he says, something I was, well, surprised to learn, shall I say - no offence, Trev).

Alex, Amjilt husey! 

(Good luck!)

Alexey, sain bainuu? Bayarlaa!

PS. I hope my Mongolian is correct. I would hate inadvertently to have said something indecent. Your information concerning the touchiness of the average tribesman over questions of family honour has been an eye-opener to us in Hampshire, I can tell you.  Your side-kick Naranbaatar sounds quite a character! Medeezh!

Sometimes I think the self-exposure writing entails (particularly writing fiction) induces such embarrassment among people who know you they look away mentally, as they might do if you had inadvertently done something improper. Forgotten to zip up, perhaps. Or cracked an unseemly joke. Well, if writing is that odd an occupation perhaps we scribblers deserve all we get. All I can say at this sensitive stage in a slightly unusual enterprise, publishing-wise (the virtually simultaneous issuance of eight new books) is that those of you who have anything to say should not be afraid to expose your minds. Unlike me, you can do so anonymously, if you wish. And think, if you feel as you do it a little undefended to the world, how we authors feel! 

 Try to be constructive, and positive if possible. My experience after I published my first novel was that a surprising number of my friends knew how to write it better than I had managed. If only I had done this, or that. I encountered the same reaction from agents, some of whom were would-be novelists themselves. Well, that’s what opinion is all about, though it’s a useful exercise to try to imagine what effect your suggested alteration will have on the end product. There’s not much point in transforming a neurotic protagonist, say, into a happy laughing chap, and hoping to get a novel out of the situation. But when I comment on any work I try to keep in mind a saying from someone famous whose identity I can’t remember (so he can’t have been that famous) who when asked what he regretted at the end of a long life said, ‘I didn’t praise enough.’ I often quote that remark. I guess the sentiment is a worthwhile aim in general. Not so much a question of always looking on the bright side of life, but of always looking for whatever good you can extract from it.

I state these obvious and banal contrasts not for rhetorical effect, but to buttress my main point, namely, that all these attributes, admirable or otherwise, can co-exist in the same person. I have not found people to be purely one thing or the other. I have to admit some characters seem to have fewer flaws, or fewer virtues than most of us (say, Mother Teresa, or the late unlamented Fuhrer) but even they are not all good, or all bad. Look into yourself - honestly - and see if I am wrong.

Now, serious fiction has a function other than that of a means of filling the hours on long plane journeys, or more usefully, while waiting for them to begin. Yes, it hopes to entertain, yet it also should seek to illuminate dilemmas, to challenge accepted beliefs. If from time to time in any novel you do not receive a jolt which makes you pause and think, you are not reading serious fiction - at least in my view. I say more about this in Writing Class. But if that is true, it follows that characters in a novel cannot be black or white.

This came home forcefully to me first when I wrote An Ornament To His Profession. One or two people in it are, to say the least, unsympathetic. Yet when you learn more about them, or discover their past, or simply speculate what that past must have been (I have in mind Muriel and Elaine, of course) you have to feel that possibly they have been sinned against too. I don’t say that makes them lovable. And one thing has proved undoubtedly true:  paradoxically, my “bad” characters are usually sympathised with by readers. Well, that just goes to show we’re not all bad ourselves!

Ornament, then is a novel of psychology, with action, and although it is sad, it has to be, given the predicament I set up - a doctor who enters his profession to give an outlet for the love he yearns to express but is not able to. And Adulteress Anonymous is also one, with less action, but is not really sad, although the underlying situation is, because Frances is wrestling with her twisted ideals and immaturity, but with love which she can express, and for everybody. May I add at this point, to avoid misunderstanding, or even possibly, disappointment, that despite its title, this novel is not a mindless series of sexual encounters described in embarrassing detail. And yet it is frank enough when necessary, as you can read in one of the excerpts. Sex is one its subjects, because sex is an inevitable participant in affairs of the heart. As Daniel says in one of his sonnets to Frances “Our lust is but a messenger, made hot / with self-important scurrying between,”… But you will have to read those for yourself.                                                                                                                                  

When you come to WHY, however, you have an entirely different situation. This is a satire on, well, just about everything. Our entire modern society, and all human behaviour. Simon, the narrator, is clearly not exactly in his right mind. Indeed, as someone contemplating suicide, he is in that state almost by definition. But it frees him to see the world through entirely new eyes. His hang-ups distort that vision, true, even caricature it, but they do not make his observations and conclusions valueless.

Think of how a cartoon can encapsulate, often hilariously, a political situation. I am reminded of one in The Times years ago in the John Major era, when whales had been stranded on beaches and people had tried to rescue them. The cartoon showed a whale with Major’s face, some ministers anxiously comforting him, others trying to drag him up the beach even further to make his plight worse, and Heseltine standing back with his arms ostensibly folded, not helping, but taking no responsibility. That said it all. WHY is such a cartoon, in literary form, exaggerating, mocking, but containing truths which are frankly highly uncomfortable to the rest of us. Simon can say the un-sayable. And because of his situation, do so without having to justify it in a real-life context. But the corollary is, the one thing he doesn’t do is find any amusement in it. If we laugh, we do so without him. To him his situation is perfectly serious - as indeed in a very real sense it is. We will lament what has happened, but not very deeply. In the tragi-comedy which WHY really is, the tragedy, although there, is muted.

The fourth novel, Man To Mann, again inevitably, is a psychological drama, the outline of which is reasonably clearly represented in the blurb accompanying the cover page. Here the problem is totally different - one of self-recognition. Mann is not deluded. He understands the world all too well. But although he knows exactly what his own problem is he cannot bring himself to confront it. It takes the events of the novel to clear his vision, and heal the wound.