25/6/2013 It's alive!I've had a few weird ideas for The Book of Thoth. There's an alchemist, ghosts, "melting portraits", time travelling, Ancient Egyptian gods, that sort of things...
But I didn't even think about having a ROTATING EGYPTIAN STATUE. Proof that reality can be weirder than fiction! We had a lovely - and very informative - time last Tuesday evening at the London Review Bookshop in Bury Street. It was one of those evenings that make me want to move back to London NOW.
We spent about an hour and a half in the erudite company of Andrew Whitehead, one of the co-editors of London Fictions, and three of the authors who have contributed to the book: Cathi Unsworth, Lisa Gee and Rachel Lichtenstein - three very different personalities and writing styles! London Fictions is a book about our monster of a capital published by the small press Five Leaves. Twenty-six contemporary writers write about writers who write about London! To my shame, I have realised that I haven't read any of the books on the list! I expect London Fictions to make me want to pick up some of them. The always captivating Cathi Unsworth has written about the L-shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks, set in West London in the 60s - and she got quite a shock when she was told that the author was actually in the room with us! The very dynamic Lisa Gee talked about Zadie Smith's ode to the controversial issue of multiculturalism, White Teeth, and Rachel Lichtenstein about Simon Blumenfeld's Jew Boy set in the East End of the 1930s - without any notes! There is a lovely accompanying website, London Fictions, where you can read even more contributions - and get in touch if you wish to contribute to the project yourself! As a collector of vintage books, I love the section with the vintage cover artworks! I am looking forward to reading London Fictions, as my fourth book will be entirely set in contemporary London and will deal with the ever accelerating changes I have observed since I moved to the capital back in 1998. I wish to write about the high rise towers of glass and metal that seem to be sprouting out of the ground at an accelerating pace whilst the old buildings, sandwiched between the glittering tower blocks, stubbornly stay put, the only witnesses to the history of the city. I will also try and capture the uneasy relationship between the glossy corporate face of the city and a murkier, mysterious, edgy underbelly - imagined or real. By the time I start working on the book - I still have to publish two other ones before I settle down to write that one - London will have further evolved and developed beyond recognition. Who knows what I will find... 24/5/2013 I like reliable technology ...Pictures taken in Portsoy, on the Moray Firth coast, Scotland, by my father last week!
I just love it! 15/5/2013 Another book about Dorset!So yesterday I had my first interview as an interviewee... I was waiting for the journalist inside Waterstones in Southend - unfortunately, we do not have any independent bookshop in town and the nearest one is The Book Inn in Leigh-on-Sea - and having a look at their "NEW BOOKS" section, when my eyes fell on a great cover illustration; then I saw the name Robert McFarlane on it, and so I picked it up. It was a book about South Dorset! The evocative lane on the cover reminded me of the "haunted" lane we followed last September, Common Lane near Corscombe (as described in Louise Hodgson's Secret Places of West Dorset.) I will purchase Holloway in the forthcoming weeks, it sounds fantastic - although it is quite pricey! In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres and great strangeness. The interview itself went ok, although I can still hear the sound of my own voice buzzing in my head. Did I say too much? Not enough? Unfortunately, the journalist hadn't had time to read the book and we didn't delve too deep into it, which I guess would have been quite a challenge for me... I am not sure how the journalist is going to get something together out of my waffle, but I guess doing that is a specific skill, isn't it? Not everyone can be a journalist, despite what the majority of people thinks. So I talked about art, inspiration, I Am a Muse, self-publishing, the English language, education - not in any particular order. What I like about writing is that you have time to organise your thoughts. When I speak, everything gushes out and I kind of panic. I guess I will learn with time... The article should be published on Friday 24th May, and I will post a scan on this website. Not too sure whether I am looking forward to it or dreading it... 13/5/2013 Some Dorset picturesA few images from Dorset taken during my recent fortnight there... To get into the mood for my third book, The Right Place, which will be set in that beautiful county. All photos all taken by the author's father! © M.T.
20/3/2013 When reality meets fiction...In my debut novel I Am a Muse, the former artist's muse Alda Thunberg lives - or rather survives - in an old house too big for her surrounded by the remnants of her life before her husband's death. Herself an artist, Alda cannot create anymore. At 70, she is the shadow of her former self.
For more than 40 years, Alda was married to the painter and sculptor Alastair Maynard and together, they had acquired a certain enviable status, that of the golden couple of contemporary art. Now Maynard's art seems to be relegated to a few appearances into catalogues and not too much else. A mysterious American publishing magnate is going to change everything: he hires a New York gallery manager and instructs her to put on a major exhibition of Maynard's art in New York; he also commissions a biography of the author to be published at the same time as the exhibition opens. This is when the story of I Am a Muse starts... I have a strange habit of reading magazines as I spend time on my exercise bike - believe you me, in 30 minutes, you've got time to read quite a few articles. I read pretty much anything, usually magazines found in the Sunday papers and free commercial ones my boyfriend picks up on his commute from London. It's good to keep your fingers on the pulse of mainstream culture, especially if, like us, you write and sell books and create artworks to sell at markets and fairs. It's essential to keep an eye on trends and to know what people have been ordered to like on a particular week. Since we've started doing markets and such, we have noticed that people like the familiar, get easily unsettled by the unknown and need to get gently nudged into trying out different things they like but are not sure they should be liking. Hey, it's not on TV... To us - a debut writer and independent publisher and an artist, designer and stallholder(s), that kind of attitude - and the fact that people get bombarded with cultural references that only appear in the media because someone has paid for it to get there - represents a huge challenge. Anyway... All this waffling to say that while I was leafing through the pages of a free woman's magazine, I found a page about a new art gallery in London called The Piper Gallery. Located in Fitzrovia, not a million miles from Tottenham Court Road station, it was opened in June 2012. But there is a twist to the story: the gallery's 28 year-old owner, Megan Piper, showcases "the work of contemporary artists whose careers have spanned forty years or more. The gallery aims to present these artists to a new generation and to demonstrate both the strength of their lifelong commitment to their practice and the continuing dynamism of their recent production." Wow! Just like the story in my book, in which the career of a deceased artist (Ok, the artists at The Piper Gallery are thankfully alive and still practising!) gets resurrected and made relevant again! Reading the article and browsing the website genuinely made me smile. Strangely enough, I immediately started thinking about my characters and the life I have imagined for them... You can read the article on Megan Piper HERE. I have never worked in the art business or in a gallery and I am not an artist myself (although everyone thought I would be when I was younger. WORDS and BOOKS won the battle.) I do not know a lot about this world, and everything in the book has been inspired by observations, readings, visits to gallery and museums, music, films, a love of and obsession with art, imagination and creativity. I will be paying a visit to the gallery this Friday and I will have with me a copy of I Am a Muse and a print out of the press release. I'd love the gallery owner to read the book. If I get chucked out, at least I would have tried! The Piper Gallery is at 18 Newman Street, London, W1T 1PE THE PIPER GALLERY WEBSITE 17/3/2013 First bookshop to stock I Am a Muse!I am delighted to announce that the first bookshop to stock I Am a Muse will be my local independent bookshop, The Book Inn in lovely Leigh-on-Sea! They also have a large children's section, a travel agent and a wonderful cafe on site too!
9/2/2013 Another fab find!So yesterday afternoon we spent ages in Cecil Court.
My best find was this wonderful, huge book "50 years of movie posters" which was left on the tables outside Marchpane. At a mere £10 and full of wonderful reproductions, it is one of my best ever finds! I have posted below a few pages of the book (they are all fantastic!)... I feel extremely lucky! |
AuthorI think therefore I write. Archives
March 2024
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