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Showing posts with label The man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Friday, 4 March 2011
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: 1 day to go
This is the final voice in the book, that of Shuji, the Japanese schoolboy obsessed with Agnieszka, who hasn't set foot outside his bedroom for years.
Chapter 3
Shuji Nomoto stands with his head pressed against the door. He has been listening for ten minutes as his mother, Junko, and his older brother, Yuichi, argue about something inconsequential downstairs. At last he is satisfied there is no one on this floor, but still his muscles pull against him as he puts his fingers on the handle. His grip falters; the sweat on his palm slides against the metal. He swallows hard and listens to the sound of blood in his ears, the quick, quick, quick beat of his heart, the only fragile thing that separates life from death.
Silently.
Silently – every day he uses oil from his fried tofu lunch to keep the door from making a sound. A crack of strange light appears from the corridor and Shuji winces. Cooler air and the smell of bean curd catch his face and he feels giddy. He closes his eyes, pushes, feels for the tray with his feet, pulls the door, eases the handle back, turns the lock, and leans back against the door, fighting back shameful tears as he waits for his heart to slow.
Eventually he is calm. He sits at his desk, his back rod-straight, and moves his finger in a perfect nautilus spiral on the mouse pad to bringing to life the ageing laptop his mother bought before his confinement began.
One morning, when he was 14, Shuji stepped out of the shower in the corner of his Kobe room and towelled himself dry. He pulled on his underwear, trousers, socks, a vest, and a clean white shirt. He stood in front of the mirror, pulling wax through his short hair, expertly teasing it into spikes between his fingers. Without any warning, he stopped, stared, and saw someone he didn’t recognise staring back at him from the mirror. It was like he was looking at a mannequin in a shop window, a model on a billboard.
There was a stranger in his room, and the stranger was him.
He took off his school uniform, emptied the identikit outfits from their drawer, bundled them into a bag, placed them outside his bedroom, closed the door, and locked it behind him. He washed the gel from his hair, dressed in jeans and a Nirvana T-shirt, sat at his desk, fired up his laptop, and began scouring the internet for every reference he could find to the Byfield Effect (1).
He hasn’t spoken to, seen, or been seen by, another person since.
At first he was fascinated. He devoted every second of his time to understanding the Effect. It felt to him as though knowing it better than he knew anything else in or about the world was all that mattered. He had been given a task of monumental importance, but he had no idea what, or why. All he knew was he had to prepare for it by mastering this theory.
Two years later, Shuji saw the clip of Agnieszka Iwanowa’s death. He played the clip through five times. Each time Agnieszka turned her head to the camera, he pressed his face closer to the screen, trying to decipher her words, to make out what she was saying to him. He knew what he was watching change his life forever, but he had no idea how.
Eventually his eyes hurt so much from the concentration he cradled his head in his hands, massaging his brow with his fingertips. Through the gaps between his fingers, he saw on a piece of paper handwriting he recognised as his own: Nomoto-Byfield Conjecture.
(1) The Byfield Effect, named after the English astrophysicist Professor Sydney Byfield, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the subject, is the phenomenon whereby a cluster of waves – to an observer travelling at close to the speed of light, and in the same direction as the waves – appears to behave like a solid object. It marks the point where the Doppler Effect, whereby waves appear expanded or contracted according to their velocity towards or away from an observer, breaks down. The Byfield Effect notes that as the velocity of the observer approximates the velocity of the waves, a point of turbulence occurs and the waves no longer appear as lengthened or shortened versions of themselves, but begin to appear as particles. Known as the Byfield Point, this is the place where quantum physics and the chaotic mathematics of turbulent systems intersect.
Chapter 3
Shuji Nomoto stands with his head pressed against the door. He has been listening for ten minutes as his mother, Junko, and his older brother, Yuichi, argue about something inconsequential downstairs. At last he is satisfied there is no one on this floor, but still his muscles pull against him as he puts his fingers on the handle. His grip falters; the sweat on his palm slides against the metal. He swallows hard and listens to the sound of blood in his ears, the quick, quick, quick beat of his heart, the only fragile thing that separates life from death.
Silently.
Silently – every day he uses oil from his fried tofu lunch to keep the door from making a sound. A crack of strange light appears from the corridor and Shuji winces. Cooler air and the smell of bean curd catch his face and he feels giddy. He closes his eyes, pushes, feels for the tray with his feet, pulls the door, eases the handle back, turns the lock, and leans back against the door, fighting back shameful tears as he waits for his heart to slow.
Eventually he is calm. He sits at his desk, his back rod-straight, and moves his finger in a perfect nautilus spiral on the mouse pad to bringing to life the ageing laptop his mother bought before his confinement began.
One morning, when he was 14, Shuji stepped out of the shower in the corner of his Kobe room and towelled himself dry. He pulled on his underwear, trousers, socks, a vest, and a clean white shirt. He stood in front of the mirror, pulling wax through his short hair, expertly teasing it into spikes between his fingers. Without any warning, he stopped, stared, and saw someone he didn’t recognise staring back at him from the mirror. It was like he was looking at a mannequin in a shop window, a model on a billboard.
There was a stranger in his room, and the stranger was him.
He took off his school uniform, emptied the identikit outfits from their drawer, bundled them into a bag, placed them outside his bedroom, closed the door, and locked it behind him. He washed the gel from his hair, dressed in jeans and a Nirvana T-shirt, sat at his desk, fired up his laptop, and began scouring the internet for every reference he could find to the Byfield Effect (1).
He hasn’t spoken to, seen, or been seen by, another person since.
At first he was fascinated. He devoted every second of his time to understanding the Effect. It felt to him as though knowing it better than he knew anything else in or about the world was all that mattered. He had been given a task of monumental importance, but he had no idea what, or why. All he knew was he had to prepare for it by mastering this theory.
Two years later, Shuji saw the clip of Agnieszka Iwanowa’s death. He played the clip through five times. Each time Agnieszka turned her head to the camera, he pressed his face closer to the screen, trying to decipher her words, to make out what she was saying to him. He knew what he was watching change his life forever, but he had no idea how.
Eventually his eyes hurt so much from the concentration he cradled his head in his hands, massaging his brow with his fingertips. Through the gaps between his fingers, he saw on a piece of paper handwriting he recognised as his own: Nomoto-Byfield Conjecture.
(1) The Byfield Effect, named after the English astrophysicist Professor Sydney Byfield, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the subject, is the phenomenon whereby a cluster of waves – to an observer travelling at close to the speed of light, and in the same direction as the waves – appears to behave like a solid object. It marks the point where the Doppler Effect, whereby waves appear expanded or contracted according to their velocity towards or away from an observer, breaks down. The Byfield Effect notes that as the velocity of the observer approximates the velocity of the waves, a point of turbulence occurs and the waves no longer appear as lengthened or shortened versions of themselves, but begin to appear as particles. Known as the Byfield Point, this is the place where quantum physics and the chaotic mathematics of turbulent systems intersect.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: 2 Days to Go
I would like to claim credit for originality in writing 1st person plural but I'll acknowledge my debt - as so often - to Murakami. I think the first person plural Eri Asai passages in After Dark are just masterful. They made me want to write in a similar tone. What I have tried to do with that voice, though, is much more like the complicity in the film Man Bites Dog.
Chapter 2
We can see her clearly. She’s sitting with her legs folded underneath her, gripping the phone with both hands. It takes a moment for us to register things are wrong with this image. We have to blink several times, but still our eyes don’t feel right. We look closer, and then we see that although she is sitting on her legs, her legs aren’t on anything.
She’s not floating. Nor is she in a darkened room, lit only by an infinitely precise light. We don’t even have noticeably tunnelled vision. It’s just that we only see her.
Sometimes when we stare at a flecked carpet in summer we sense that something is amiss. Then we notice a movement. A few seconds later we see an ant scurry through the fibres, and suddenly our optic nerve turns on a switch and we see that the whole floor is a teeming sea of ants.
In the same sickening way we see all at once: this is Emma, and she is still 14 years old, the age she was when she disappeared; but the telephone she clutches like a parachute rip-cord is an iPhone; her skin and clothes are blurred. It’s not our eyes. We see the iPhone perfectly well. It’s her.
She is blurred.
She turns. Her eyes make us seasick. Instead of colour there’s a soup of grey strobing and fuzzing. “Where am I?” she asks.
She sounds sad. Or maybe we just imagine that she must be sad, because through the white noise in the pits where her eyes should be it’s impossible to say if she’s crying or not.
“I don’t know,” we reply. “How long have you been there?”
“I don’t know. No, that’s wrong. I’ve been here a day. Only this day seems to happen again and again and again. I don’t know how many times. It feels like someone’s caught it on tape and they keep playing it over and over and over, and the tape’s wearing thin in places. What will happen if they play it too many times and the tape snaps?”
She’s speaking quickly, like she only has one lungful of air and she has to get everything out in that single breath. We daren’t interrupt, even if we could answer her questions, in case she goes silent for ever.
“I’m scared. I don’t understand what’s happening. Would it be better if they stopped the tape and left it in an archive somewhere it could never be played again? Does that make any sense?”
“Tell Dad,” she begins but whatever the connection was, it’s cut. We blink several times. Everything is sharp again. We stare at our computer screens, and Emma exists only in the words we see there.
Chapter 2
We can see her clearly. She’s sitting with her legs folded underneath her, gripping the phone with both hands. It takes a moment for us to register things are wrong with this image. We have to blink several times, but still our eyes don’t feel right. We look closer, and then we see that although she is sitting on her legs, her legs aren’t on anything.
She’s not floating. Nor is she in a darkened room, lit only by an infinitely precise light. We don’t even have noticeably tunnelled vision. It’s just that we only see her.
Sometimes when we stare at a flecked carpet in summer we sense that something is amiss. Then we notice a movement. A few seconds later we see an ant scurry through the fibres, and suddenly our optic nerve turns on a switch and we see that the whole floor is a teeming sea of ants.
In the same sickening way we see all at once: this is Emma, and she is still 14 years old, the age she was when she disappeared; but the telephone she clutches like a parachute rip-cord is an iPhone; her skin and clothes are blurred. It’s not our eyes. We see the iPhone perfectly well. It’s her.
She is blurred.
She turns. Her eyes make us seasick. Instead of colour there’s a soup of grey strobing and fuzzing. “Where am I?” she asks.
She sounds sad. Or maybe we just imagine that she must be sad, because through the white noise in the pits where her eyes should be it’s impossible to say if she’s crying or not.
“I don’t know,” we reply. “How long have you been there?”
“I don’t know. No, that’s wrong. I’ve been here a day. Only this day seems to happen again and again and again. I don’t know how many times. It feels like someone’s caught it on tape and they keep playing it over and over and over, and the tape’s wearing thin in places. What will happen if they play it too many times and the tape snaps?”
She’s speaking quickly, like she only has one lungful of air and she has to get everything out in that single breath. We daren’t interrupt, even if we could answer her questions, in case she goes silent for ever.
“I’m scared. I don’t understand what’s happening. Would it be better if they stopped the tape and left it in an archive somewhere it could never be played again? Does that make any sense?”
“Tell Dad,” she begins but whatever the connection was, it’s cut. We blink several times. Everything is sharp again. We stare at our computer screens, and Emma exists only in the words we see there.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: 3 days to go
If you want a little something to keep you going till the release, don't forget you can order my other books through the sidebar links, as well as Cody's and Oli's masterpieces.
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is told in three distinct voices. We meet each of them in the first 3 chapters. Here's chapter 1. In it we meet what I guess we could call our protagonist if he could be described with such a word. Dan Griffiths is an everyman and a nobody. A 50-something magazine cover designer. The only thing remarkable about his life is what isn't in his life - his daughter, who went missing without a trace one summer's day ten years ago. But like the thousands of other missing persons she's long since been forgotten by everyone except him. He voweed to himself that he wouldn't get locked in the cycle of endlessly pretending she was still there, trapped in a single moment of grief. But the numb nothing his life has become, reduce to Friday nights at the pub with an old college friend and a once a year ritual phone call with his editor, suggests that in this, as in every other aspect of his life, he has failed.
Chapter One
It’s nearly midnight, and I’ve watched Agnieszka die 103 times since I woke.
In that time, the clip has had 274,392 views.
I click the play arrow for the 104th time.
Agnieszka.
Running on the treadmill like millions of other middle class woman in their twenties. She looks fantastic in her lycra – she has the time and money to do this on a regular basis. Stop here and you’d never have noticed the silver and greens on her feet.
The camera wobbles. Has her friend turned to check out someone on the pec deck? Another tiny wobble, enough to remind you how casual the whole scene is, that she has no idea what she’s about to film – although there’s been speculation about that, of course, just like everything else.
Here it is. Three seconds of footage, the seconds before she stumbles. She turns, and over her shoulder she says something to her friend. It indecipherable. Not one of the people at the gym that day can remember her speaking at all. The best Polish and English lipreaders are clueless.
Everyone in the chatrooms devoted to her has their own theory. She’s calling out to a child she gave away as a teenager in Gdansk; she realises she’s lost her footing and lets out an expletive; she’s begging her friend for help; she’s fluffing up the camera for posterity. The truth is she says something different to everyone who watches the clip. It’s as though, in those final seconds, she’s stepped out of her own body and time and speaks straight to you, the viewer.
Just you.
Just me.
See you, Dad! I’m sure that’s what she says. Every time I watch I’m even more certain. I pause the clip. Play. Pause. Play. Pause. I see her mouth form the shapes.
The gate closes. Her hair moves first, and then her head turns; she looks at me over the burgundy uniform; “See you, Dad!” she shouts. “Take care, love!” I shout back from the kitchen window but she’s already turned away, heading for school.
See you, Dad!
Was that the last thing she ever said? Why say it that morning? Was she worried? Did she know something I didn’t? No matter how many times I go through it, I just don’t know.
“Take care, love,” I whisper at the screen.
Play.
Ten seconds and it’s over. Nothing left of Agnieszka but her silver and green Mercury 500 trainers, logos filling the camera like startled eyebrows. The image of the year; of the decade, probably. The picture on every student’s wall, on T-shirts and placards and newspaper spreads. And the reason my boss will call me tonight – the front cover for Epoch magazine’s Review of the Year.
Give me a different angle on it, Sarah will say. Make it fresh. Sure. Three weeks to find a completely new take on the most reproduced, rehashed, reformatted image of the century.
There’s the phone. The ringtone’s the riff from Smells Like Teen Spirit. Emma had Nevermind in her CD player when she left. I let the second bar finish and press accept.
“Hi!” I get ready for the inevitable banter about calling the wrong side of midnight, and click the mouse out of habit.
105.
It’s not Sarah’s voice. It takes a few seconds to place and by the time I do the line’s dead. The phone’s still against my ear and I hear every word in real time, as though the line’s on a delay.
“Dad? Can you hear me? I’m safe but I don’t know where I am. Dad, I can’t explain it but it feels like I’m fading. Like now; I’m shouting but it feels like nothing’s coming out. And sometimes when I look down at my feet I think I can see through them. Does that make any sense? Dad, you have to come and find me. Please.” The line clicks dead.
Find me. Please. The words synch perfectly with Agnieszka’s lips.
“I’m coming, love.”
But she’s already turned away.
She trips, tangles, and the film ends.
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is told in three distinct voices. We meet each of them in the first 3 chapters. Here's chapter 1. In it we meet what I guess we could call our protagonist if he could be described with such a word. Dan Griffiths is an everyman and a nobody. A 50-something magazine cover designer. The only thing remarkable about his life is what isn't in his life - his daughter, who went missing without a trace one summer's day ten years ago. But like the thousands of other missing persons she's long since been forgotten by everyone except him. He voweed to himself that he wouldn't get locked in the cycle of endlessly pretending she was still there, trapped in a single moment of grief. But the numb nothing his life has become, reduce to Friday nights at the pub with an old college friend and a once a year ritual phone call with his editor, suggests that in this, as in every other aspect of his life, he has failed.
Chapter One
It’s nearly midnight, and I’ve watched Agnieszka die 103 times since I woke.
In that time, the clip has had 274,392 views.
I click the play arrow for the 104th time.
Agnieszka.
Running on the treadmill like millions of other middle class woman in their twenties. She looks fantastic in her lycra – she has the time and money to do this on a regular basis. Stop here and you’d never have noticed the silver and greens on her feet.
The camera wobbles. Has her friend turned to check out someone on the pec deck? Another tiny wobble, enough to remind you how casual the whole scene is, that she has no idea what she’s about to film – although there’s been speculation about that, of course, just like everything else.
Here it is. Three seconds of footage, the seconds before she stumbles. She turns, and over her shoulder she says something to her friend. It indecipherable. Not one of the people at the gym that day can remember her speaking at all. The best Polish and English lipreaders are clueless.
Everyone in the chatrooms devoted to her has their own theory. She’s calling out to a child she gave away as a teenager in Gdansk; she realises she’s lost her footing and lets out an expletive; she’s begging her friend for help; she’s fluffing up the camera for posterity. The truth is she says something different to everyone who watches the clip. It’s as though, in those final seconds, she’s stepped out of her own body and time and speaks straight to you, the viewer.
Just you.
Just me.
See you, Dad! I’m sure that’s what she says. Every time I watch I’m even more certain. I pause the clip. Play. Pause. Play. Pause. I see her mouth form the shapes.
The gate closes. Her hair moves first, and then her head turns; she looks at me over the burgundy uniform; “See you, Dad!” she shouts. “Take care, love!” I shout back from the kitchen window but she’s already turned away, heading for school.
See you, Dad!
Was that the last thing she ever said? Why say it that morning? Was she worried? Did she know something I didn’t? No matter how many times I go through it, I just don’t know.
“Take care, love,” I whisper at the screen.
Play.
Ten seconds and it’s over. Nothing left of Agnieszka but her silver and green Mercury 500 trainers, logos filling the camera like startled eyebrows. The image of the year; of the decade, probably. The picture on every student’s wall, on T-shirts and placards and newspaper spreads. And the reason my boss will call me tonight – the front cover for Epoch magazine’s Review of the Year.
Give me a different angle on it, Sarah will say. Make it fresh. Sure. Three weeks to find a completely new take on the most reproduced, rehashed, reformatted image of the century.
There’s the phone. The ringtone’s the riff from Smells Like Teen Spirit. Emma had Nevermind in her CD player when she left. I let the second bar finish and press accept.
“Hi!” I get ready for the inevitable banter about calling the wrong side of midnight, and click the mouse out of habit.
105.
It’s not Sarah’s voice. It takes a few seconds to place and by the time I do the line’s dead. The phone’s still against my ear and I hear every word in real time, as though the line’s on a delay.
“Dad? Can you hear me? I’m safe but I don’t know where I am. Dad, I can’t explain it but it feels like I’m fading. Like now; I’m shouting but it feels like nothing’s coming out. And sometimes when I look down at my feet I think I can see through them. Does that make any sense? Dad, you have to come and find me. Please.” The line clicks dead.
Find me. Please. The words synch perfectly with Agnieszka’s lips.
“I’m coming, love.”
But she’s already turned away.
She trips, tangles, and the film ends.
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: 4 days and counting
(please note the links in the sidebar to where you can buy my current books :))
Two years ago, I started a project. I wanted to write a book that was unlike anything that had gone before. That was semi-interactive, with story arcs prompted by readers, a world that moved in and out of focus, gained and lost segments as readers and characters decided, zoomed in on those aspects people really wanted to learn about.
There was a flurry of branding during which I opened my blogger and twitter accounts under the Agnieszka’s Shoes name, and started the Facebook group that became the centre for discussions. A community slowly built, chapters got written, questions got asked, and I learned as much about the story from what was happening in the writing process as I did from the content of the interaction.
And so Dan Griffiths’ dual quest – to reinvent the world’s most copied image; and to find a daughter whose image had been universally ignored – emerged, along with the more important quest behind it – to answer the question why some pictures and stories grab the collective consciousness whilst others are ignored. It’s something we ask ourselves all the time as writers.
I don’t think I’ve answered the question in the book that has emerged. I don’t think that would have been right. I hope I’ve asked lots of the right questions, though. And I hope I’ve created characters and situations that connect in some way with all of us on an emotional as well as an intellectual level.
This isn’t a “story” as such, for all it is structured more conventionally than anything I’ve ever written before – it features not one but two classically constructed quests. Characters enter and leave, some have their own stories that are resolved, others do so leaving traces of questions and no answers. Rather like life. But this isn’t a philosophical book – for all it casts its gaze over the meaning of many of the elements that make up (post)modern life – art, the internet, loss, memory, love, beauty, and most of all numbness. If it is any one thing, it’s an emotional scrapbook, in which some of the cut-out pieces are ripped from our own lives.
My sincerest thanks to everyone who was part of that original group, for your support and your inspiration, and for the directions you sent me in – in particular thank you for the prominence you wanted me to accord Shuji – he’s turned into a character I am very fond of. A special mention has to go to three people. First, the wonderful Penny Goring. It was, if I remember rightly, this rather bonkers idea that first brought me into contact with Penny, and as I prepare to publish her debut collection I can’t begin to say how grateful I am for that. Second, I want to say thank you for her encouragement to the amazing Jessica Brown, one of the most creative people and fertile imaginations I know, whom I met through the group and who has gone on to run the incredible Defiled Curator site. But most of all a huge huge thank you to Tony Malone (whose great Reading List blog you’ll see in my blogroll) for kicking me up the backside consistently for two years every time I thought it would be easier to stop one chapter before the end. The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes is dedicated to him.
Over the next 3 days, I will post the first three chapters from the book, and then, on Saturday, I will post the buy link – it will be $0.99/£0.70 like my other books. I hope you enjoy reading it. I can honestly say of everything I’ve ever written, it’s the thing about which I have most doubts, but the thing of which I’m proudest – which is exactly as it should be for a book like this.
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes
Why are there some images we just can’t look away from, whilst others fade without us ever noticing they were there?
When mysterious Polish woman Agnieszka Iwanowa's tragi-comic death in a gym accident is uploaded to YouTube, the film's final image of her upturned trainers is rehashed by everyone from right wing extremists to a reclusive installation artist who only speaks through his dominatrix PA.Now Dan Griffiths has to make the image fresh.
The search for Agnieszka's secret slowly overtakes Dan’s search for his own daughter, missing for ten years, ignored by the media, and now sending him - and the reader - glimpses of messages from what seems like another world.Dan’s journey sucks him into the worlds of political extremism; BDSM; a haiku-composing graffiti artist; an online community devoted to the dead girl, and its reclusive Japanese schoolboy moderator who has just paid half a million dollars for the diary of a scientist whose work he believes will enable him to bring Agnieszka back from the dead.
This is a story about a world gone numb, a world in which pain is the only thing that's real
Two years ago, I started a project. I wanted to write a book that was unlike anything that had gone before. That was semi-interactive, with story arcs prompted by readers, a world that moved in and out of focus, gained and lost segments as readers and characters decided, zoomed in on those aspects people really wanted to learn about.
There was a flurry of branding during which I opened my blogger and twitter accounts under the Agnieszka’s Shoes name, and started the Facebook group that became the centre for discussions. A community slowly built, chapters got written, questions got asked, and I learned as much about the story from what was happening in the writing process as I did from the content of the interaction.
And so Dan Griffiths’ dual quest – to reinvent the world’s most copied image; and to find a daughter whose image had been universally ignored – emerged, along with the more important quest behind it – to answer the question why some pictures and stories grab the collective consciousness whilst others are ignored. It’s something we ask ourselves all the time as writers.
I don’t think I’ve answered the question in the book that has emerged. I don’t think that would have been right. I hope I’ve asked lots of the right questions, though. And I hope I’ve created characters and situations that connect in some way with all of us on an emotional as well as an intellectual level.
This isn’t a “story” as such, for all it is structured more conventionally than anything I’ve ever written before – it features not one but two classically constructed quests. Characters enter and leave, some have their own stories that are resolved, others do so leaving traces of questions and no answers. Rather like life. But this isn’t a philosophical book – for all it casts its gaze over the meaning of many of the elements that make up (post)modern life – art, the internet, loss, memory, love, beauty, and most of all numbness. If it is any one thing, it’s an emotional scrapbook, in which some of the cut-out pieces are ripped from our own lives.
My sincerest thanks to everyone who was part of that original group, for your support and your inspiration, and for the directions you sent me in – in particular thank you for the prominence you wanted me to accord Shuji – he’s turned into a character I am very fond of. A special mention has to go to three people. First, the wonderful Penny Goring. It was, if I remember rightly, this rather bonkers idea that first brought me into contact with Penny, and as I prepare to publish her debut collection I can’t begin to say how grateful I am for that. Second, I want to say thank you for her encouragement to the amazing Jessica Brown, one of the most creative people and fertile imaginations I know, whom I met through the group and who has gone on to run the incredible Defiled Curator site. But most of all a huge huge thank you to Tony Malone (whose great Reading List blog you’ll see in my blogroll) for kicking me up the backside consistently for two years every time I thought it would be easier to stop one chapter before the end. The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes is dedicated to him.
Over the next 3 days, I will post the first three chapters from the book, and then, on Saturday, I will post the buy link – it will be $0.99/£0.70 like my other books. I hope you enjoy reading it. I can honestly say of everything I’ve ever written, it’s the thing about which I have most doubts, but the thing of which I’m proudest – which is exactly as it should be for a book like this.
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes
Why are there some images we just can’t look away from, whilst others fade without us ever noticing they were there?
When mysterious Polish woman Agnieszka Iwanowa's tragi-comic death in a gym accident is uploaded to YouTube, the film's final image of her upturned trainers is rehashed by everyone from right wing extremists to a reclusive installation artist who only speaks through his dominatrix PA.Now Dan Griffiths has to make the image fresh.
The search for Agnieszka's secret slowly overtakes Dan’s search for his own daughter, missing for ten years, ignored by the media, and now sending him - and the reader - glimpses of messages from what seems like another world.Dan’s journey sucks him into the worlds of political extremism; BDSM; a haiku-composing graffiti artist; an online community devoted to the dead girl, and its reclusive Japanese schoolboy moderator who has just paid half a million dollars for the diary of a scientist whose work he believes will enable him to bring Agnieszka back from the dead.
This is a story about a world gone numb, a world in which pain is the only thing that's real
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
I'm on Kindle and I have a new book
As many of you will know, I'm currently on a break from the internet. After 18 months on the go with Year Zero and eight cuts gallery, I finally burned myself out pretty much completely, as well as losing all sense of my own worth as a writer. Add to that mix not one but two particularly nasty bugs (no doubt caused by an immune system dramatically lowered by stress). I hope to be back and in the swing of things mid March.
But I haven't been totally inactive, and as I claw my way back into things I wanted to share two pieces about my own writing, because as I've had a chance to look through it away from the relentless melting pot of the internet I've realised there is some merit to it. In fact, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a book I'm rather proud of.
I just wanted to let people know that it's now available for Kindle at just 70p
the link to Songs on Kindle is here!
and of course I would dearly dearly love it if people who thought they would like it bought it. I'd also really really love it if those of you who have enjoyed it were to leave a review - I've had some lovely reviews over the past 18 months, but all of them before it has been available for Kindle. I've decided it's time to relaunch my own writing career as well as the other things I do, so this is sort of an official relaunch for Songs. So if anyone has any space on their blogs for a gentle literary read...
For those of you who don't know anything about it, here's a little something blurbwise:
After her mother walks out and returns to England when she’s just a week old, Szandi grows up on the vineyard in Hungary that has been in her family for 300 years. Now 18, Szandi is part of Budapest’s cosmopolitan art scene, sharing a flat and a bohemian lifestyle with her lover and fellow sculptress, Yang. She has finally found her place in the world. When she discovers that her father has only weeks to live, Szandi must choose once and for all: between the past and the present; between East and West; between her family and her lover.
Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a coming of age story for all who love Murakami's Norwegian Wood that inhabits anti-capitalist chatrooms and ancient wine cellars, seedy bars and dreaming spires; and takes us on a remarkable journey across Europe and cyberspace in the company of rock stars and dropouts, diaries that appear from nowhere, a telepathic fashion mogul, and the talking statue of a bull.
And here are some reviews:
“captures the rhythms and nuances of how we live now in a way that has rarely been done better” LA Books Examiner (read full review)
“Holloway’s accomplishment is in rendering a world in exquisite detail and still conveying the universal via the personal.” Emprise Review (read full review)
“a lovely book written in that rare thing: beautiful, lyrical prose.” Jane Smith, The Self-Publishing Review (read full review)
“Songs From the Other Side of the Wall is a *very* good book” Erica Friedman, Yurikon publishing (read full review)
“genuine promise”, Scott Pack, Harper Collins Fifth Estate/The Friday Project (read full review)
“In threads that shimmer like the novel’s central image of petrol-colored silk, what could have been weaves itself into every situation.” Pank (read full review)
Which brings me to the other news. The reason my blog has the name it does has to do with a book I began writing 2 years ago. And now, finally, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is complete. It will be available on Kindle from March 10th. For those who don't already know, here is the blurb:
When mysterious Polish woman Agnieszka Iwanowa's tragi-comic death in a gym accident is uploaded to YouTube, the film's final image of her upturned trainers is rehashed by everyone from right wing extremists to a reclusive installation artist who only speaks through his dominatrix PA.
Now Dan Griffiths has to make the image fresh.Dan's search for the reasons behind the picture's magnetic pull suck him into the worlds of political extremism; BDSM; a haiku-composing graffiti artist; an online community devoted to the dead girl, and its reclusive Japanese schoolboy moderator who has just paid half a million dollars for the diary of a scientist whose work he believes will enable him to bring Agnieszka back from the dead.
And as the search for Agnieszka's secret slowly overtakes the search for his own daughter, missing for ten years, ignored by the media, and now sending him - and the reader - glimpses of messages from what seems like another world, he is confronted by the question - why are some images impossible to look away from, whilst others fade without ever being seen?
A story about a world gone numb, in which pain is the only thing that's real
But I haven't been totally inactive, and as I claw my way back into things I wanted to share two pieces about my own writing, because as I've had a chance to look through it away from the relentless melting pot of the internet I've realised there is some merit to it. In fact, Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a book I'm rather proud of.
I just wanted to let people know that it's now available for Kindle at just 70p
the link to Songs on Kindle is here!
and of course I would dearly dearly love it if people who thought they would like it bought it. I'd also really really love it if those of you who have enjoyed it were to leave a review - I've had some lovely reviews over the past 18 months, but all of them before it has been available for Kindle. I've decided it's time to relaunch my own writing career as well as the other things I do, so this is sort of an official relaunch for Songs. So if anyone has any space on their blogs for a gentle literary read...
For those of you who don't know anything about it, here's a little something blurbwise:
After her mother walks out and returns to England when she’s just a week old, Szandi grows up on the vineyard in Hungary that has been in her family for 300 years. Now 18, Szandi is part of Budapest’s cosmopolitan art scene, sharing a flat and a bohemian lifestyle with her lover and fellow sculptress, Yang. She has finally found her place in the world. When she discovers that her father has only weeks to live, Szandi must choose once and for all: between the past and the present; between East and West; between her family and her lover.
Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is a coming of age story for all who love Murakami's Norwegian Wood that inhabits anti-capitalist chatrooms and ancient wine cellars, seedy bars and dreaming spires; and takes us on a remarkable journey across Europe and cyberspace in the company of rock stars and dropouts, diaries that appear from nowhere, a telepathic fashion mogul, and the talking statue of a bull.
And here are some reviews:
“captures the rhythms and nuances of how we live now in a way that has rarely been done better” LA Books Examiner (read full review)
“Holloway’s accomplishment is in rendering a world in exquisite detail and still conveying the universal via the personal.” Emprise Review (read full review)
“a lovely book written in that rare thing: beautiful, lyrical prose.” Jane Smith, The Self-Publishing Review (read full review)
“Songs From the Other Side of the Wall is a *very* good book” Erica Friedman, Yurikon publishing (read full review)
“genuine promise”, Scott Pack, Harper Collins Fifth Estate/The Friday Project (read full review)
“In threads that shimmer like the novel’s central image of petrol-colored silk, what could have been weaves itself into every situation.” Pank (read full review)
Which brings me to the other news. The reason my blog has the name it does has to do with a book I began writing 2 years ago. And now, finally, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is complete. It will be available on Kindle from March 10th. For those who don't already know, here is the blurb:
When mysterious Polish woman Agnieszka Iwanowa's tragi-comic death in a gym accident is uploaded to YouTube, the film's final image of her upturned trainers is rehashed by everyone from right wing extremists to a reclusive installation artist who only speaks through his dominatrix PA.
Now Dan Griffiths has to make the image fresh.Dan's search for the reasons behind the picture's magnetic pull suck him into the worlds of political extremism; BDSM; a haiku-composing graffiti artist; an online community devoted to the dead girl, and its reclusive Japanese schoolboy moderator who has just paid half a million dollars for the diary of a scientist whose work he believes will enable him to bring Agnieszka back from the dead.
And as the search for Agnieszka's secret slowly overtakes the search for his own daughter, missing for ten years, ignored by the media, and now sending him - and the reader - glimpses of messages from what seems like another world, he is confronted by the question - why are some images impossible to look away from, whilst others fade without ever being seen?
A story about a world gone numb, in which pain is the only thing that's real
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
All in the Past: Why I'm Getting Tense about my New Project
“You’ve gotta come see it, Szandi,” says Yang. I slam the phone down but it misses the base. I hit the clock instead, which flashes 03.00.
I put the handset on the pillow and turn over so I’m looking at it. The white plastic appears faintly red in the clock’s LCD glow. “Szandi?” I hear. The black dots of the speaker seem to wink in the dark as she talks.
Those are the opening words of my last novel, Songs From the Other Side of the Wall. So what? They’re OK – apparently it’s unfashionable to mention time in the opening paragraph, but as it’s a reference to the KLF’s 3 a.m. Eternal, I figured why not. So, perfectly passable and uneventful, right?
Well no. These two brief paragraphs turned my writing world upside down. You see, they just came out like that, natural as anything, and it was only much later – pages later, in fact that I noticed: THEY’RE IN THE PRESENT TENSE.
Half of you are probably still saying so what? But the other half probably winced the moment you read “says”. And when I wrote the words, I was one of them. I hated present tense. With a vengeance. So much so that I stopped reading Patricia Cornwell’s The Last precinct after 5 pages, and haven’t picked up a Scarpetta novel since. It feels contrived, showy (exactly the reasons outlined when I held a straw poll on twitter yesterday) – as though it’s there to keep the reader guessing what’s going to happen. We’re always aware of the author, and never quite lose ourselves in the story.
Furthermore, my favourite agent’s reader, Jodi Meadows, made the very good point that it is very hard to maintain the present tense without letting the POV slip. And as Miss Pitch pointed out, the incessant battering of first person present tense can actually get rather dull (and, I would add, a little bit shouty).
So imagine my horror when I found I was writing in the present tense. Only then the horror started to subside. I found myself reading a whole slew of books where the present tense seemed not to get in the way of the narrative but to enhance it. After Dark by Murakami and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis are the two that stick most in the mind. They just couldn’t be written any other way.
So why does it work so well for these authors, and so badly for Cornwell? It might seem at first glance that it’s a question of first person against third person, which would in itself be strange because the objections I encountered (single POV, maintenance of a sustained character, claustrophobia) all seemed to apply to the first person. But I have a feeling it may be more to do with genre. I think in a thriller (I have the same issue with Simon Kernick) it feels as though you’re using it as a trick – a “will the character pull through?” or “keep the reader in the moment” kind of thing.
What Ellis does – and this sounds arty nonsense, the very opposite of everything I mean to convey – is perfectly reflect the throwaway lives and casual violence of teenage rich kids in The Valley. The tense is part of that “yeah, so what” voice he has, and that makes it work.
With Murakami, it’s something different, something specific to that kind of literary fiction that I can only describe as poetry. The other day I tried to analyse it, just why the present tense used well sounds so exquisite, and all I could come up with is that the sound “d” is ugly and “s” is elegant. Which is rubbish. Only it isn’t because we so often forget as prose-writers the absolute importance of the way words sound – and poets so often remember.
So I became happier in my present tense. It suits the loose, liquid style I like to write in, where sound matters more than strict meaning – no, where sound often IS the meaning (I write magical realism so I can get away with saying nonsense like that!). AND I write about teenagers.
Now I can’t imagine writing in anything BUT the present tense. It just seems so natural, so flowing, so loose and easy (not, I hope, floppy, stream of consciousness, but it’s not my place to say). Indeed my current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, is written in the present tense from three separate POVs, one third person, and two first person (one of them plural).
NOW imagine my horror as I sit at the keyboard, tingling with excitement to begin tapping out the opening of my new novel, “Life Drawn Freehand”:
I remember the phone was cold in my hand when they called to tell me Simon was dead. I thought, it’s summer and I’m holding slick, plastic ice, and it’s talking.
The voice was Andrew’s. He said “Mrs Hart?” and I said yes, once, and his voice kept saying “Mrs Hart?” and I thought isn’t it strange this cold thing in my hand keeps repeating my name. Then there was another voice, not Andrew’s, not anyone’s I knew, and it said “Mrs Hart I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident” and I said “Oh” and for a few seconds I thought the frozen thing in my fingers was Simon’s skin.
Then I put it down while it was still repeating “Mrs Hart” in the other voice, the one I didn’t know, and it was just a hot summer day, and I was staring at the telephone, and my son was dead.
My deepest thanks to @jodimeadows @pitchparlour @pattyjansen @brennig @triplecherry @tommyjaybooks @George9writer @remittancegirl and @vpynchon for their helpful input on twitter
I put the handset on the pillow and turn over so I’m looking at it. The white plastic appears faintly red in the clock’s LCD glow. “Szandi?” I hear. The black dots of the speaker seem to wink in the dark as she talks.
Those are the opening words of my last novel, Songs From the Other Side of the Wall. So what? They’re OK – apparently it’s unfashionable to mention time in the opening paragraph, but as it’s a reference to the KLF’s 3 a.m. Eternal, I figured why not. So, perfectly passable and uneventful, right?
Well no. These two brief paragraphs turned my writing world upside down. You see, they just came out like that, natural as anything, and it was only much later – pages later, in fact that I noticed: THEY’RE IN THE PRESENT TENSE.
Half of you are probably still saying so what? But the other half probably winced the moment you read “says”. And when I wrote the words, I was one of them. I hated present tense. With a vengeance. So much so that I stopped reading Patricia Cornwell’s The Last precinct after 5 pages, and haven’t picked up a Scarpetta novel since. It feels contrived, showy (exactly the reasons outlined when I held a straw poll on twitter yesterday) – as though it’s there to keep the reader guessing what’s going to happen. We’re always aware of the author, and never quite lose ourselves in the story.
Furthermore, my favourite agent’s reader, Jodi Meadows, made the very good point that it is very hard to maintain the present tense without letting the POV slip. And as Miss Pitch pointed out, the incessant battering of first person present tense can actually get rather dull (and, I would add, a little bit shouty).
So imagine my horror when I found I was writing in the present tense. Only then the horror started to subside. I found myself reading a whole slew of books where the present tense seemed not to get in the way of the narrative but to enhance it. After Dark by Murakami and Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis are the two that stick most in the mind. They just couldn’t be written any other way.
So why does it work so well for these authors, and so badly for Cornwell? It might seem at first glance that it’s a question of first person against third person, which would in itself be strange because the objections I encountered (single POV, maintenance of a sustained character, claustrophobia) all seemed to apply to the first person. But I have a feeling it may be more to do with genre. I think in a thriller (I have the same issue with Simon Kernick) it feels as though you’re using it as a trick – a “will the character pull through?” or “keep the reader in the moment” kind of thing.
What Ellis does – and this sounds arty nonsense, the very opposite of everything I mean to convey – is perfectly reflect the throwaway lives and casual violence of teenage rich kids in The Valley. The tense is part of that “yeah, so what” voice he has, and that makes it work.
With Murakami, it’s something different, something specific to that kind of literary fiction that I can only describe as poetry. The other day I tried to analyse it, just why the present tense used well sounds so exquisite, and all I could come up with is that the sound “d” is ugly and “s” is elegant. Which is rubbish. Only it isn’t because we so often forget as prose-writers the absolute importance of the way words sound – and poets so often remember.
So I became happier in my present tense. It suits the loose, liquid style I like to write in, where sound matters more than strict meaning – no, where sound often IS the meaning (I write magical realism so I can get away with saying nonsense like that!). AND I write about teenagers.
Now I can’t imagine writing in anything BUT the present tense. It just seems so natural, so flowing, so loose and easy (not, I hope, floppy, stream of consciousness, but it’s not my place to say). Indeed my current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, is written in the present tense from three separate POVs, one third person, and two first person (one of them plural).
NOW imagine my horror as I sit at the keyboard, tingling with excitement to begin tapping out the opening of my new novel, “Life Drawn Freehand”:
I remember the phone was cold in my hand when they called to tell me Simon was dead. I thought, it’s summer and I’m holding slick, plastic ice, and it’s talking.
The voice was Andrew’s. He said “Mrs Hart?” and I said yes, once, and his voice kept saying “Mrs Hart?” and I thought isn’t it strange this cold thing in my hand keeps repeating my name. Then there was another voice, not Andrew’s, not anyone’s I knew, and it said “Mrs Hart I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident” and I said “Oh” and for a few seconds I thought the frozen thing in my fingers was Simon’s skin.
Then I put it down while it was still repeating “Mrs Hart” in the other voice, the one I didn’t know, and it was just a hot summer day, and I was staring at the telephone, and my son was dead.
My deepest thanks to @jodimeadows @pitchparlour @pattyjansen @brennig @triplecherry @tommyjaybooks @George9writer @remittancegirl and @vpynchon for their helpful input on twitter
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Not Writing
This week I am too busy to write. I even sent a message round to the wonderful members of The Man Who Painted Agineszka's Shoes to explain. This is, after all, the week that I have to get Songs From the OtherSide of the Wall finally ready so I can start selling physical books on September 1st. And I need to help my fellow Year Zeros, Larry and Oli do the same so they can also get their books on sale for then. Oh, and my wife's textbook has a final deadline of Jly 31st, so I really should help her proof it.
In other words, for a week, the fiction needs to go on hold. So I set up what I believe to be an important debate over at Aggie's Shoes, on the question of whether culture should be free, as part of giving participators an all around experience.
but then - rather like what happens in Marie Darrieussecq's biting Pig Tales that I've just finished, something started happening.
I went out in the pouring rain yesterday to deliver a form to the finance office (yes I DO lead an interesting life), and came back to find a fully developed pitch for my next novel written out longhand in my head. And no matter how much I thought about gutters and margins and formatting page numbers, all that was going round my head was the scene of Dan (my protagnist, not me), sitting in a chair in Gdansk with Agnieszka's parents, as it slowly dawns on him there is soemthing very very wrong and they may, after all, be totally mad.
I was almost feeling feverish (perhaps Pig Tales had put the H1N1 in me?). My fingers were twitching. My skin started aching and itching. I sat down at my computer and, lo and behold, come this morning an 1100 word chapter had appeared on the Aggie wall. My skin went calm, my temperature subsided, and all was calm.
Now, though, I feel that itch that urge all over again. I have some notes and before very long I have a terrible feeling the opening of my new novel will have emerged, squirming and squeezing itself through my pores until it hits the screen.
A simple message, then. If you're considering it might be better not to write: don't. The words will find their own way out. Far better to let them do it on your terms.
Oh, and I believe those of you who wish may be able to purchase a copy of Songs From the Other Side of the Wall now by clicking here. But I'm not 100% sure. I do know it will be on Amazon in plenty of time for September 1st, though. Which, if I hadn't given in and written, may well not have been the case.
In other words, for a week, the fiction needs to go on hold. So I set up what I believe to be an important debate over at Aggie's Shoes, on the question of whether culture should be free, as part of giving participators an all around experience.
but then - rather like what happens in Marie Darrieussecq's biting Pig Tales that I've just finished, something started happening.
I went out in the pouring rain yesterday to deliver a form to the finance office (yes I DO lead an interesting life), and came back to find a fully developed pitch for my next novel written out longhand in my head. And no matter how much I thought about gutters and margins and formatting page numbers, all that was going round my head was the scene of Dan (my protagnist, not me), sitting in a chair in Gdansk with Agnieszka's parents, as it slowly dawns on him there is soemthing very very wrong and they may, after all, be totally mad.
I was almost feeling feverish (perhaps Pig Tales had put the H1N1 in me?). My fingers were twitching. My skin started aching and itching. I sat down at my computer and, lo and behold, come this morning an 1100 word chapter had appeared on the Aggie wall. My skin went calm, my temperature subsided, and all was calm.
Now, though, I feel that itch that urge all over again. I have some notes and before very long I have a terrible feeling the opening of my new novel will have emerged, squirming and squeezing itself through my pores until it hits the screen.
A simple message, then. If you're considering it might be better not to write: don't. The words will find their own way out. Far better to let them do it on your terms.
Oh, and I believe those of you who wish may be able to purchase a copy of Songs From the Other Side of the Wall now by clicking here. But I'm not 100% sure. I do know it will be on Amazon in plenty of time for September 1st, though. Which, if I hadn't given in and written, may well not have been the case.
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