Magic Realism Blog

Just after I had published Girl in the Glass I went to an alternative literature festival in Leicester. I was still incredibly green about publishing and was unclear what sort of story I was writing. I knew it didn’t fit neatly into the usual genre headings that one gets on Amazon. I had got as far as knowing that it was a) women’s fiction and b) not quite fantasy. I was having a soup for lunch when I got chatting to another writer, who asked me what I wrote. I gave a short description and he repled “Oh you write magic realism.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Well Terry Pratchett described it as fantasy for people whose friends went to Oxbridge.”

“Oh,” I said thinking that indeed many of my friends were graduates of Oxford or Cambridge.

I wrote the genre down on a piece of paper, stuffed it in to my handbag and continued eating. When I got home, I could not find the paper nor could I remember what genre he had said I wrote.

A month or so later I found a review of the book on Amazon. The reviewer Iain M. Grant said:
“Zoe Brook’s novel is a true magic realist story. Its setting is a world that is not ours but is nonetheless recognisable. It is a novel in which the almost magical and vaguely supernatural are an accepted reality. Reading it, I couldn’t help but be reminded favourably of other authors. The setting and Anya’s sprawling and occasionally grotesque family put me in mind of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Having said that the harsh, epic landscape of the story and the fable-like quality of a narrative held shades of Paulo Coelho.”

Lawks a mercy me! Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all-time favourite books. Now armed with the name of the genre I did a Google search and discovered not only that I wrote magic realism, but that I had been reading it for years and not knowing it. There still seemed to be a lot ambiguity in my mind about what constituted magic realism, but I think this was because the term gets used wrongly. I decided that I would get to know my genre better. But how would this be achieved?

I knew that in order to do it properly I should set myself a task, one which is public and which I would feel obliged to complete. So I decided I would read one magic realist book a week for a year and that I would record my progress and what I found out about magic realism publicly on a dedicated blog. For the purposes of selecting books for the blog I chose the simplest definition I could find.

It’s now a month since I started and I’m loving it. I have drawn up a to-read list, following suggestions taken mostly from Goodreads, where there are at least two Magic Realism groups and several booklists. The books are very diverse – some literary, some for the popular market – which adds to my enjoyment. The requirement that I review what I read has proved extremely useful in solidifying my thoughts on the book and the genre.

So after all that work what is magic realism? I’m glad to say that the definition I chose is still remaining true: “Magical Realism is a literary genre that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction.”

Please do visit the Magic Realism blog and check it out, better still join me in my challenge or at least part of it. It’s on https://magic-realism-books.blogspot.co.uk

Celebrating Women - A Special Lady

Today I am taking part in a blog hop celebrating women. I have chosen to write about a very special woman in my life – a teacher who was more than a teacher.

I have been blessed with having a series of inspirational women educators in my life, but the first and probably therefore the most important was Elizabeth Webster. Without her I doubt I would be writing, without her I would not have got in to Oxford University and without her I would not have met my husband.

Elizabeth or EMW as she was better known was a little red-head with a liking for brightly coloured scarves, who commanded any room she was in. She stepped into my life when I was eight and newly arrived at my junior school. She was the creative English and music teacher and although I did not shine at music, Elizabeth recognised the writer in me. On that first lesson she asked us to write a poem. I wrote about Queen Boudica dying of poison after her defeat by the Romans. Elizabeth loved the poem. She praised and encouraged me, recognising the need to feed my love of poetry and confidence in my abilities. She was no regarder of age: she believed that children should be encouraged to read the best, so I was soon sitting cross-legged under her grand piano reading Under Milk Wood and Murder in the Cathedral. The first Shakespeare play I saw was performed by ten and eleven year olds directed by her at the end of the school year.

When ill-health forced her to retire from school, she set up an arts centre for children and I followed her. First in a church hall and then in an old bakery she continued to encourage writing, acting and the visual arts for a further twenty-five years. The Children’s Arts Centre Cheltenham became the Young Arts Centre as we turned teenagers, but the motto remained the same: “Everyone is Someone.” Saturday morning was for the younger children, and Sunday afternoon for the older members to rehearse the next play we would perform. I was soon to act in Under Milk Wood as well as read it. But best of all was Tuesday evening, when the EOS group met. In a side room, seated on second-hand sofas and armchairs, we would shuffle the papers in our hands mumbling “I’ve got a poem, but it’s not very good.” before reading it to the rest of the group. Encouragement followed (Everyone is Someone) and discussion. I was for some time the youngest in the group, but there was no compromise for my age. I learned to hold my own with the others on subjects such as Milton’s interpretation of the devil. Not that I had read Paradise Lost at that point, but that didn’t stop me. Every year we would give at least one public reading of our poems together with those of published poets and in so doing learned not only how to read poetry but also how to speak in public.

Encouraged by Elizabeth, I entered national poetry competitions and won. I was published by the age of thirteen. At the same age I wrote a full-length verse play, which of course was performed at the Arts Centre. I had found what I was good at. How lucky is that? And that luck had a name: Elizabeth Webster. But I was not the only one – a number of my fellow Arts Centre members have gone on to enjoy successful careers in the arts. Others found their lives enriched in different ways by the experience: principles were established for life, friendships were forged and relationships begun. What a wonderful place to meet your first boyfriend (or in my case my last as I met my husband there).

And what reward did Elizabeth receive for this work? Nothing but the reward of knowing that every child in the Arts Centre realised they were someone. It is only now with writing this post, that I realise how the central character of Girl in the Glass is a girl who, unlike me, was told she was nothing. When at last she had to retire Elizabeth started a new career: that of a novelist. She used her books to give her predominantly female readers an insight into the lives of young people. Even in that I seem to be following her.

You will find a website commemorating the Young Arts Centre here.

How To Find A Good Book – Ask A Blogger

Over the past few weeks the press and internet have been full of stories of dodgy goings-on in the frantic world of “buy-my-book”. There was the scandal of 5 star reviews being bought on Amazon and that of well-known authors setting up bogus Amazon accounts in order to give themselves glowing 5-star reviews and (worse to my mind) vicious 1-star reviews to their rivals.

Too many people have as a result thrown the baby out with the bathwater, saying that you cannot trust the free-for-all of the internet and you should stick to traditional print reviews by professional reviewers. But how many books would you discover that way? I have a women’s fiction newspaper in which I pick up the best articles and reviews from across the web and I therefore monitor the major newspaper sites. What I have found is that they all review the same books.

How is this? Is it because the publishers only promote a very limited number? Is it that the reviewers act as a cabal? Is it that newspapers only review books by “established” authors? And dare I say it – does money exchange hands, just as it does to ensure that a book ends up on major booksellers’ three for the price of two tables or even just prominently displayed on the shelves? I’ve no idea, but what is certain is that the majority of books (and I am talking about traditionally published books as well as indies) never get reviewed by these professional reviewers.

What is worse is that the newspapers tend to review only literary fiction and not genre fiction. This of course has an implication for women’s books, which can be dismissed as chick-lit, romance or just women’s fiction. No matter that romance outstrips literary fiction and all the other genres in terms of sales.

Where then can you turn for reviews you can trust? Where can an author go for reviews? The answer is I believe the burgeoning phenomenon of the book blogs. Until I published my first book only six months ago I had only been slightly aware of the wonderful, selfless world of the book blogger. The proponents of the traditional professional reviewers would pooh-pooh the amateur book bloggers (and have done so in various comments I have seen). But they are wrong to do so. Yes, many, but not all, book bloggers have no qualifications (such as English literature degrees), nor do some professional reviewers for that matter. But what book bloggers do have is a love of books. They write reviews in order to share what they have read with you. And some of them clearly do nothing else than read and review. I have a magic realism review site and I just about manage a book a week.

How do you know which book bloggers to trust? Simple – look at their reviews. Have they liked the same books as you and better still for the same reason? Do they provide you with the sort of review you need to make a decision? If the answer to these questions is yes, then start following the blog.

But how do you find the right blogs in the first place? You have a number of options:

• Try a search with two book titles you like and the word “blog” to find a suitable blog.
• Use one of the book blog directories, such as http://directory.kaysbookshelf.com, and http://www.bookblogs.org/blog-list. If you are interested in indie writers try http://www.theindieview.com/indie-reviewers/
• Or you might like to join the book blogs forum on http://bookblogs.ning.com

This post is part of the Celebrating Bloggers Blog Hop organised by Terri Guiliano Long.

Notes from a Story Editor - Structure

This article was first published on the Indie Exchange website

What is a story?
Every story we tell is an adaptation. There is a great deal of discussion and several books on the subject of how many basic plots there. Suffice it to say there are a limited number to choose from. For my novel the Mother of Wolves I chose the revenge story form. But every story will be unique because we make choices in telling it – which characters to use, which events to come out of the underlying story world. But even these are adaptations.

The underlying story world
The underlying story world contains the context of your story – its past, present, and future. It also contains the seed(s) of that world’s potential destruction. The main character reflects this world and indeed has within her the seed(s) of her own potential destruction.

This seed, (which is often a lack), upsets the equilibrium of the world and the central character and in so doing initiates and drives the story. As an author I need knowledge both of my character and her world and of the why – why this story, why told by me, why now,  i.e. I must plant a seed of potential self-destruction in the story world. I need to know the best way of testing the main character(s) so that I can develop the why.

For example for my novel Mother of Wolves although it is a story about revenge, I was interested in the choices one makes and their consequences.

We need to examine the physical and emotional world of the story – the home of the story.
For this we need to choose the main character(s), and their goal(s), the place, the period, the society, the main source of conflict and opposition. To this we add secondary characters and their goals, secondary sources of conflict and so on, until we have people the world.
For example in Mother of Wolves I chose:
1)      to make Lupa, the wife of the King of the Roads, the central character and tell her story
2)      to make the story Lupa’s search for revenge and safety for her and her sons
3)      to place it in a fantasy landscape along a great river bordered by a forest
4)      to set it at in a historical time
5)      to create two societies – the tribal world of the People of the Roads and the settled world of the Others
6)      to make both societies patriarchal and prone to politicking and betrayal, additionally Lupa’s People are subject to persecution by the Others
7)      Lupa’s enemies are her husband’s uncle, who plotted his murder, the Newharbour Guards who carried it out and lastly the Rebel general and his army.

N.B. There is a whole blog post to come about the issue of the flaw/lack in the home world and the central character when I write about the protagonist/antagonist relationship, but for the time being we’ll stick with story structure.

The Timeline
We unfold what we have developed on to a time-line. This is what Hannah referred to as the “Ur Story”. This normally breaks down naturally in to a three-part structure (more of that in another post).
So for Mother of Wolves I decided to start the story with the murder of Lupa’s husband and end it with the defeat of the rebel army. The three parts are:

1. Lupa’s pursuit of revenge against the guards and Uncle and their attempts to kill her
2. Lupa’s pursuit of Jo and the decision whether to kill him
3. The consequences of that decision with the fight against the rebel army.

There are two important things to note. Firstly as writers we do not need to follow the Ur story timeline when we structure our book or film, we can jump around, move backwards and forwards, whatever is best for the narrative, but the underneath it is the Ur story. And secondly the Ur story, whilst being limited by the timeframe, also can contain relevant history and even future.

I find these concepts of establishing the underlying story world and the Ur story extremely useful when approaching a novel. As a result of working with Hannah, I find that I have a novel’s structure in my head before I ever set pen to paper or rather finger to keyboard. As a general rule I don’t find I need to do major structural reworking at second draft.

Lupa – the woman leader, lessons from history

Lupa, the central character of Mother of Wolves, was originally a minor character in a children’s book I wrote (and abandonned). However she had made such an impression on one of my beta-readers that he suggested I write a book about her. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it a good idea, but the book was definitely not a book for children.

In a previous post I wrote about how I was inspired by three Czech 18th century folk paintings of the persecution of the Roma to write Mother of Wolves. As those of you who have read Girl in the Glass will know, I am interested in women overcoming prejudice and discrimination. As a historian I am also fascinated by great women leaders: women who, despite living and ruling in a male-dominated society, commanded the love and/or respect of their people. I first came to the attention of my mentor and junior school poetry teacher with a poem about Boudicea at the age of 8. My first major piece of writing (at 13) was a verse-play about Joan of Arc. Of all my historical heroines Elizabeth I is perhaps the most influential on the character of Lupa.

The book allowed me to explore what makes a successful female leader and what might trigger such a leader to step forward. In Lupa’s case the trigger is the betrayal and murder of her husband and the need to protect her children, but once on the road Lupa becomes the leader her people need in the face of the threat of genocide.

So what are the traits that Lupa shares with historic women leaders? Like Boudica Lupa is spurred into action by a desire for revenge, like Elizabeth I she has a genuine love of her people, like Joan of Arc she has self belief. Like Boudica she pulls together disparate tribes, like Joan of Arc she leads her troops into battle, and like Elizabeth I she surrounds herself with good counsellors. She is both charming and ruthless.

When I was younger some people suggested that as an up-and-coming poet I should study English Literature at university, instead I studied history. I have never regretted it.

Lessons of history - suppression of the women healers Part 2

The main character of my trilogy (Girl in the Glass, Love of Shadows, Fear of Falling) is a woman healer. My books are fantasy/magic realism, nevertheless I am by training a historian and the lessons of history inform my writing and themes, so I began to research the story of the women healers.

Having destroyed the educated women healers (see previous post) by the end of the 14th century the authorities turned their attentions to the lower class women healers. As with the educated women healers the wise-women were faced with an alliance between the church and the new university educated (and therefore male) medical profession. The alliance’s motives were financial self-interest, misogyny and social control.

The majority of the population had no access to any form of medicine other than that provided by the local wise-woman. Even if they had, the medicine taught in universities was closer to magic than the empirical approach of the wise-woman. But whether the wise-women were healing their patients was not a consideration, the very act of healing was a crime and that crime was witchcraft. As one English witch-hunter said:

For this must always be remembered, as a conclusion, that by witches we understand not only those which kill and torment, but all Diviners Charmers, Jugglers, all Wizards, commonly called wise men and wise women…and in the same number we reckon all good Witches, which do no hurt but good, which do not spoil and destroy, but save and deliver…It were a thousand times better for the land if all Witches, but especially the blessing Witch, might suffer death.

The witch-hunts were not a case of mass hysteria, but organised state persecution. At the heart of it was the book Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), which guided the witch-hunters. At the beginning of the hunt a notice was posted in the village commanding that if anyone knew or suspected a witch they should report her to the authorities, failure to do so was itself a punishable. If this resulted in the identification of a witch, she would be tortured to reveal more witches in the community. That torture is detailed in Malleus Maleficarum . The “witch” was stripped and shaved of all her body hair, and inspected for signs of the devil such as moles and marks, although not having such signs was simply seen as an indication that the witch had hidden them. Beatings, thumb screws and the rack, bone-crushing boots, and starvation followed. Soon other “witches” would be identified and so on. On continental Europe these witch-hunts resulted in many thousand executions usually by burning. At Toulouse 400 were killed in one day, 1000 died in one year in the Como area, whilst in 1585 two villages in the Bishopric of Trier were left with only on female inhabitant each. 

Women healers were not alone (there were also some male healers although they make up approximately on 15% of the numbers killed), it is hard to credit now but midwives were also under attack:  
Midwives cause the greatest damage. Either killing children or sacrilegiously offering them to devils. . . . The greatest injury to the Faith are done by midwives, and this is made clearer than daylight itself in the confessions of some of those who are afterwards burned.

The witch-hunts lasted from the 14th to the 17th century. By the time they finished possibly over a million women had died, much of the knowledge that had been acquired by generations of women healers had been lost and women’s roles in healing had been so denigrated that women had to fight even to be nurses.  

Notes From A Storyeditor - Where to start

This is the first in my series of notes about what I learned from my friend and professional story editor Hannah Kodicek. This was first published on the Indie Exchange website. 

The starting point for any story-making is the relationship with the audience. Although we writers may be sitting alone in front of our computer in a garret somewhere, the story exists only in that relationship, otherwise you’re not telling anything.

We start by understanding what we all have in common (audience and writer):

• Curiosity – this is inherent to human nature, it’s the reason we do so many things, one being picking up a book.
• The need to find context – what is it like, how does it fit with what I know/feel, how does it feel like to be someone else
• Need for pattern – again part of our nature, we will look for patterns and order even if they are not there, and there are a load of patterns which we will expect in stories
• Need for balance (equilibrium) – we feel disturbed if things aren’t fair, we want to put it right.
• And conversely the need to upset equilibrium – the need for the unknown, the thrill of risk.
• The need to think ahead causally – this is an extension of our need for pattern,
• But there is also the thrill of the unknown.
• Common cultural context – myths, history, fairytales, belief-systems etc.
• Archetypes – which Hannah described as “deep subconscious forces shared by all” and which are the subjects of numerous books
• The need to relate to others, which for me is the most important.

These commonalities are what we as writers build our stories on, for example every story starts with an imbalance which propels the story forward. We may play with them e.g. encouraging the reader to detect a pattern that isn’t there and so think ahead incorrectly. But the single most important thing is to access people’s emotions. Everything we write will stir some sort of emotional response in the reader. They will be gratified if their curiosity is satisfied or they feel they see a pattern or context. They will be thrilled and scared when we take them to somewhere unknown. But they will be dissatisfied if we promise and do not deliver.

Which brings me to us the writers. There are a number of questions we need to ask ourselves as we approach a story:

• Why am I telling this story? – Why me? Why now? Why do I care? (If you don’t the reader certainly won’t).
• How does the story fit with or challenge the context familiar to my reader?
• What is the emotional key to the story? What touches me most deeply? How will it resonate with the reader?
• What will I and the reader take from the story?
• What tools do I have to do the job?

These then are the fundamentals from which all storytelling flows and I always go back to them when I am working on a story. I find them particularly useful when I am working on the second draft.