Stuff lists...read books!! by Miriam Halahmy

It is the summer holidays - HOORAY!!

I've spent two glorious weeks by the sea on Hayling Island. Here I am at seven o'clock in the morning at one of my favourite places, The Kench. There are a few house boats here which have been converted from WW2 landing craft. One of them features in my book, ILLEGAL.

Then I went to Cornwall to stay with a friend. That was also by the sea and a whole different terrain from flat gentle Hayling. This photo was taken on the South West path at Lamorna. We had just watched an amazing helicopter rescue. A man had had a heart attack in the car park and they were literally pumping his heart as they lifted him up into the machine. We couldn't find any news as to whether or not he survived.

So what should I read on all these wonderful holidays and for the rest of the summer? After all, it's only August and I'm in no hurry to bring on the winter and those long dark nights - although of course, they're great excuses for reading loads too.

Of course, I needn't worry because everyone is falling over themselves to bring out the latest list of what they think everyone should read - the top 100, the final fifty, the only books children should ever read, blah, blah blah.
Then another load of people are arguing over the choice of books on whatever list and putting forward their own lists.
Then people comment on those lists and it goes on and on into wearydom.

Can't we just choose books and read them? I quite enjoy reading the odd review especially of books I probably wouldn't know about otherwise. Quite a lot of my reading comes from recommendations and then I'm the sort of person who wanders into bookshops and reads along the entire fiction section from A-Z just for fun anyway. Then I move onto the biography - but now I'm boring you...
But lists? Nah - not for me, anyhow.

I have read all sorts of books this summer - some more memorable than others. Go Set a Watchman was a revelation and now I have my own theory about the two books but will only discuss it with those who have read the book. I loved it. I've carried on with the Poldark novels because of my new love affair with Cornwall and read Jeremy on the way back. Really captures the poverty and what an ass the law is/was. I'm re-reading War and Peace because I'm starting a lit course one evening a week in September. Can't wait!  It's my third time round on this massive tome and it's still as wonderful as ever. I've read After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross which flips the migrant problem through the Channel Tunnel on its head and is a very good dystopian novel. I've read the latest biography of Edward Thomas by Jean Moorcroft Wilson and gone back to reading Thomas' poetry all over again.

But this is not a list - its not even my list. It's just books I've read and there is a nice pile sitting on my desk waiting for me, as well as a few more I've downloaded onto my Kindle.

I hope you are having a wonderful summer wherever you are and that you are blessed with books you are enjoying and being sensible enough to ditch those which you aren't. Life's too short and there are too many wonderful books out there.
Happy Summer Reading folks!!

www.miriamhalahmy.com

WRITING TIPS #4 ...Take a break....by Miriam Halahmy

I know that everyone says, To be a writer you need to write.

And I say exactly the same in my workshops all the time.

But at the end of last year I ground to a complete halt. I had written a book a year for five years, plus 19 scheduled blogposts each year and umpteen guest and extra blogs, I write on social media most days, I also review books and write occasional articles for books and journals and I write poetry.

That part of my brain and my body which is the writer bit of me rebelled.

So I stopped.

Completely.

For over two months.

I did other things like walking in the woods and seeing family, especially the new grandbaby, I visited friends and I went to my beloved Hayling Island and walked the route of the old railway line - the Hayling Billy.

Ah ha  you're thinking! But were you happy - that writer not writing?
No - I had all sorts of mixed feelings - I'm not writing a novel, will ever I ever write a novel again, will I want to, what will I do instead - etc., etc., etc.
So was my soul and my confidence and my creativity shot down in flames?

Sometimes it felt like that and a sort of numbness too.
But....
THEN.....

KERCHING!!!

It changed...

All those feelings inside me that come together to make me a writer.

I wrote a poem.

I wrote a picture book text and then I wrote another one. A whole shiny new genre for me and a flutter of excitement ( you know that feeling writers) began to blossom inside me again.

I wrote other things too.

.

If you feel stale, if you have no ideas, if you have been writing for a very long time and you feel drained, then I would thoroughly recommend a complete break from writing. I mean - DO NO WRITING AT ALL.

Because it works - just as your body needs a prolonged rest after illness or extreme stress,

so does your writing part.

It is a risk - I know it is.

You might be under enforced deadlines - I wasn't.

It is scary.

But I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

My batteries are recharged. I am writing new and fun and good and creative and more than anything else - I am enjoying all my writing again.

If you choose to give my writing tip a try - good luck and stick with it. The outcomes will amaze you.

www.miriamhalahmy.com

ILLEGAL : the soundtrack...by Miriam Halahmy

Every novel has its own soundtrack. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding there is the roar of the ocean and the buzz of incessant flies. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett moves from the miserable sound of winter rain against the windows to rising birdsong as spring unfolds.

My new novel Illegal (Meadowside Books, March 2012) is the second book in my cycle of three novels set on Hayling Island. So the soundtrack includes the sounds of the Island – the tide pulling over the pebbles on the beach, the wind in the pines, the rattle of the shrouds from the boats moored in the channels. But each of the three books in the cycle has its own particular soundtrack.

Illegal has a soundtrack to match the mood and action of the book. Fifteen year old Lindy’s family have been rocked by the death of two year old Jemma. Mum doesn’t get dressed anymore and sits round all day drinking, Dad spends his time in the bookies, the two older brothers are in prison and nine year old Sean nags for food. Vulnerable and lonely, Lindy thinks her cousin Colin has come to rescue her. But she soon realises he has trapped her into the shadowy and dangerous world of international drug dealing. Lindy is terrified she will end up in prison like her brothers. Support comes from a surprising quarter, fellow misfit fifteen year old Karl, who is mute. But Karl is resourceful and intelligent. Together they embark on a desperate path to ensure Lindy’s freedom.

There are lots of illegal things in this book. Karl rides around on a motorbike, underage.  The soundtrack fills up with a variety of effects from roars to putters to the squeal of brakes. Karl's friend Jimmy, who is deaf and communicates only with sign language, rides a 1953 Triumph with a side car. The volume of motorbike noise goes through the roof when a group of Hells Angel wrinklies on Harley Davidsons rush past them near the pier.

Lindy’s job is to look after cousin Colin’s cannabis farm in a house down the back lanes on Hayling Island. But Lindy is spooked by all sorts of noises in the house, creaking and scraping, thuds on the floor upstairs, with the sound of the motorbike in the lane outside. Lindy half thinks the house is haunted and has a very nasty experience one evening. 

Part of the soundtrack of this novel is silence. Karl doesn't speak at all and Lindy finds herself very drawn to Karl’s silent world.  Why waste words? Lindy wonders. Probably helps the environment if we breathe out less. The problems both Lindy and Karl experience from their difficult home backgrounds reflect my experience as a special needs teacher for 25 years. I worked with young people who were mute for all sorts of psychological reasons. Mutism isolates young people from their peers, holds back their education and is a difficult condition to treat and overcome. But I was also interested in the whole issue of communication and young people. Lindy enjoys Karl’s silence. Most of her verbal exchanges with her family, her teachers, the other kids at school, the drug dealers, are negative, In Karl’s silent world she feels that they can almost read each other’s minds and this helps to strengthen the growing bond between them.

My soundtrack flows between the engine sounds of bikes and motorboats, the cries of seagulls and the rush of the waves over the beach.  There is the spitting of eggs frying, mobile ringtones and laptop start-up sounds, the crack of gunfire and the gloop gloop of mud in the harbour. And in the third novel, Stuffed, Ian Dury and the Blockheads play in the background.

What is the soundtrack to your novel?

www.miriamhalahmy.com