So I write as much as I can of the bit where I don’t know enough, then find an expert to fill in the gaps. If you start with the expert (I have discovered) you end up with far too much information and (as you are NOT an expert) it can be hard to know what to cut out. 

Judi Moore – 30 April 2015

The Back Flap

In 2039 the enormous potential of Nanonics has finally been realised. Now it can heal the terminally sick at a molecular level. But the tiny machines can manipulate any matter – and not necessarily for good: they have no conscience.

Gates Hanford is a disaffected scientist whose career imploded when Nanonics failed to appeal to the British public and was abandoned: the single estate of nano-built houses stands resolutely empty. Now he is using Nanonics secretly in an attempt to break the strangehold the petrol-based engine has on the world. His initial results are promising, but … In the USA a swarm of nanites has gone rogue and Nanonics – already unpopular – is immediately banned on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, Teddy Goldstein is dying of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. All the resources of her father’s prosthetics company cannot save her. Nanonics was her only hope.

But Gates’ work continues. Will he achieve his goal? And, if he does, what sort of world will exist among the rusting hulks of the world’s automobiles?

And how long will Teddy have to enjoy it?

About the book

What is the book about?

Is death really necessary? is set in 2038, when climate change is beginning to bite. Teddy Goldstein is terminally ill with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. She has just inherited her father’s prosthetics company In Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2038 almost any body part can be replaced. But they can’t replace Teddy’s tubercular lungs because her immune system is shot. There is one chance. Nanonics: the treatment of disease at a molecular level. But nanonics has been outlawed after a batch of nanites went rogue. However, they are the last hope of killing the bacilli destroying Teddy’s lungs. She throws all the considerable resources of Gold Prosthetics at the project. But where to find a specialist in this discredited field? She finds Gates Hanford, conspiracy theorist and eco-terrorist. Unsurprisingly, he has his own agenda. However, once they meet it is apparent that the chemistry between them is more than just … er … chemistry. Having caused the end of the world as we know it, they go on the run up the east coast of Scotland, like Bonnie and Clyde, in a series of golf carts, eventually arriving at Teddy’s childhood castle home in Caithness. Here they are safe for a time. But after a long, hot bath there are going to be serious questions to be answered in the morning.

When did you start writing the book?

An embarrassingly long time ago. I submitted it to a lot of publishers and a few agents before deciding to publish it myself, which I did in 2009.

How long did it take you to write it?

About five years. I was teaching creative writing for the Open University (our distance teaching university here in Britain) at the same time. That took a lot of creative energy. Although there were amazing synergies. It was a very fruitful time for me. I retired from the teaching last year. It taught me a lot. I hope I helped my students as much as they helped me. I have more quality time for my own writing now.

Where did you get the idea from?

I’m a flitter and sipper: I pick up a sound bite here, a picture there, a quote from what’s in the news, a bit of interesting history, a dollop of current science, a snippet from my own life. I like my writing to be a rich stew of influences. For instance, I used to play a lot of golf.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

The science. I have none. Couldn’t handle it at all at school. Which is a bummer for someone who enjoys writing science fiction.

So I write as much as I can of the bit where I don’t know enough, then find an expert to fill in the gaps. If you start with the expert (I have discovered) you end up with far too much information and (as you are NOT an expert) it can be hard to know what to cut out. The father of a friend of mine used to be a Chemistry teacher: I grilled him for an hour. He was quite nervous! That’s how I knew what molecules my nanites needed to change and what effect it would have. Even so, I still needed to know the whole (fictional) process. So I had to project what Steve was telling me into my fictional situation. Then I needed to find a way to keep 90% of the process off the page (we all hate information dumps, don’t we?) and it still make sense to the reader. That’s the challenge. I love it.

Oh – also always difficult: to know where the book really starts, and where it really ends.

And what order to tell the story in.

What came easily?

Storyline. A story is more or less complete in the back of my mind by the time I sit down to write it, so it flows out easily onto the page, following byways, meandering, often departing from the original idea. The downside to this is that occasionally the story steers itself into a dead end. I still have half a book (set in Rome at the time of Nero) with my heroine stuck under an oxcart in the middle of a square in the middle of the night. One of these days – preferably when Ancient Roman fiction is in fashion – I must find a way of extracting her from under there and geeing the book up again. After all the meandering, of course, there must come shaping and cutting to bring the characters into focus and make the plot sharp. But the first draft is always a delightfully sloppy one.

I also love writing dialogue. That too tends to meander. But one of the joys of writing, for me, is the wielding of the scalpel at second draft, when one starts to cut the book out of the big wodge of words one’s laid down.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

All my characters are composites. They all have something of me in them (so that I know what their motivations are). I draw on everyone I know. And I’ll source character traits wherever I can – from friends, enemies (!), telly, movies, biography (that’s a fruitful source), other fiction. My father turns up a lot (not only in male characters). ‘Teddy’ in IDRN? Was based partly on the young, troubled Aileen Getty (are we allowed to say that?) with added threads of me and my Dad.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

Perhaps the biggest influence on how I write is poetry. I strive to be pacey, vivid and concise. Poetry needs to have rhythm; to drive forward. It needs vivid and original imagery and it has to be concise. I try and use those virtues in my prose. I do also write poetry.

Specific authors? Isaac Asimov, John Le Carré, Gavin Lyall. (Partly that is because I’m so ancient!) Ask me next week and I’d probably give a different top 3. I’m struggling to think of a female writer who I particularly want to emulate (although there are many whose work I very much enjoy). What I try to write are well-plotted stories in which Stuff happens to believable well-rounded characters. I think I round my characters more than Asimov (he was VERY plotty). But, like him, I am unashamedly plot driven. Very unfashionable to say that. 

Do you have a target reader?

As I’m not interested in writing the same sort of book again and again, I suspect I don’t. However, I do seem to be producing quite a lot about the Goldsteins. There is now Little Mouse, (which you reviewed kindly last autumn) a prequel to Is death really necessary? And there is at least one more part to that series to be written, maybe two.

If I don’t write any more long SF (I still have some short stories in that genre to get down) I think I may turn into a writer of historical fiction. It’s sort of the other side of the coin from SF. Most SF starts with an historical premise, really. Whether ‘historical fiction’ is specific enough as a genre to attract a target readership, I doubt. These days historical fiction is Big – but it has spawned many sub-genres (the Tudors and the Plantagenets for instance here in Britain – I don’t know so much what historical subgenres there are in the States – Civil War literature?). And readers find reinforcement, I think, in sticking within a particular period. As do writers.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I know I need to have plenty of time at my disposal before I can creative. I get stressed and unproductive if I have to shoe-horn writing into a short space of time. But then if I have too much time, I waste it!

I cannot write a coherent sentence in the mornings. The creative writing done round here gets done after noon.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

I outline novels on index cards, and then never look at them again. I might do that for a long short story too, if it won’t come clear in my mind. I suppose the help the cards give is that a useful order of things is suggested to my subconscious.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I used to keep going forward, doggedly, until I had a full first draft. But I work a little more elegantly now, and revise lightly what I did yesterday so as to get a pull on to what I’m about to write.

The danger with editing as you go is that you keep right on editing, making this one bit perfect, and never, actually, proceed. A lot more people would finish writing novels if they stopped editing.

There is little point in doing a major edit of a novel draft until you’ve reached the end. Not if you work in the organic way that I do, anyway. The beginning of the novel may need to be quite different when one looks back at it from the end. One revises the beginning – chunks in the middle may need to be seriously redone. And then you find the end doesn’t work any more. It is a moveable feast.

Did you hire a professional editor?

I’m in the fortunate position of having trained as a copy editor and proofreader, even if that was so long ago that we were still using hot metal. So – for good or ill – I don’t buy in editorial expertise. I think there are a lot of freelance ‘editors’ out there, offering expensive services which often result in a product little more coherent than it was when it was handed over. How to find a good editor? Ye gods – I can’t even find a reliable gardener! And I like being able to set my own house style. Especially now I’ve started publishing under my own imprint.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

No can do. I can put myself in the mood by listening to Radio 3 (does that make sense to an American? I can expand). But the minute I open the file and get started the music has to be switched off.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

Several have showed an interest in my work as a result of good placings in various short story competitions over the years. But nothing ever came of any of those approaches in the end.

Back when I was last submitting, publishers weren’t as chary of reading unsolicited manuscripts as they are now. I guess they still had staff! So I targetted publishers who published stuff more or less like I’d written and send it to them directly.

There is a development of peer reviewing, leading to potentially getting picked up by an agent or a publisher which is a good idea. I expect you have that in the States, too? Publishers need to winnow. Writers need shop windows. Win: win.

I see publishers and agents over here are now holding, or attending, events which cultivate creative writers. This is another helpful development for writers.

But at bottom finding someone to publish your work (unless you are a celebrity) is HARD. I don’t know if it was ever easier – but it is awfully hard now.

I saw something interesting in the Literary Review last week, tying the blossoming of British publishers at the end of the last war to two things: Jewish émigrés settling in London and unmarried women (shortage of men to marry) who had become used to earning a living. The women read slush piles and proof read for the émigré editors. All gone now. Publishing wants something different and it is staffed by very different – and very many fewer – people. Certainly the industry is in a state of flux.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

I was fed up getting rejection slips for work I knew was entertaining. At about that time when my frustrations peaked, Kindle appeared. And in this country also appeared, at much the same time, FeedARead (then YouWriteOn) a very inexpensive way of self-publishing good quality paperback books. I tried both and liked both.

In this country there is also Matador. And in the States Lulu. There are probably others; these are the Big Two. They are much more expensive than FeedARead. They undertake to do much of the work for the writer – editing and marketing mainly. They may also help with covers. But I haven’t seen much evidence of marketing. And I haven’t liked the layout of some of the books I’ve seen. I’m lucky to understand much of the technical side of publishing and I much prefer to hang on to control of that side of things.

I shall send out my next novel (a history and mystery about Genghis Khan’s burial place) to agents and publishers when the time comes. If nobody wants to buy it, then ‘The Seed of the Khan’ will be produced by Moo Kow Press. I have other projects that I want to self-publish. I’m now putting together a volume of short stories, for example.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

I have a friend who is a very talented designer and who seems to enjoy the challenge in exchange for nice presents! Lucky me! I give him the gist and a copy of the text and give him pretty much carte blanche.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

This is where the whole ‘self-publishing’ thing crashes and burns, for me. I could not sell warm socks to Eskimos. I once had a job in marketing. I lasted a week before they found me out. Fortunately I no longer need to make a living, not even of any kind (I am a pensioner – aargh!).

I put my nicely produced books where people can see them – and that is soooo not enough. I blow my own trumpet on Facebook and none of my chums log in that week. My marketing plan is a black hole. But sadly this seems to be another area where the self-publisher can be taken for a ride. One can pay a lot of money to have someone else fail where one has also failed. I hear people say that there are magic formulae for putting books in front of potential readers. And how much it will cost me to buy in to that magic. But I, actually, don’t believe there is a magic formula. And I don’t have the money to test the magicians’ theories. And I would so much rather be writing than selling. Not promising, is it? Sigh.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

Do it! It is technically easy and not expensive. But DO IT WELL. Make sure what is between your covers is the best work you can possibly write. Don’t expect Your Reader to enjoy blobby covers, skimpy gutters, tiny print, nasty margins and a novelty typeface. Make your book look like an industry standard Penguin. You can do that. It is immensely satisfying to hold that first book in your hands. Enjoy.

About You

Where did you grow up?

In Cornwall, Britain

Where do you live now?

In Milton Keynes (where the Concrete Cows come from) in Britain.

What would you like readers to know about you?

That I’m a helluva writer and where they can buy my books.

What are you working on now?

a ‘history and mystery’ about a modern day search for the burial place of Genghis Khan.

I’m also working on various short stories. And poetry.

As Moo Kow Press, I’m putting together a volume of my short stories as my next self-publishing project.

End of Interview:

Get your copy of Is Death Really Necessary from Amazon US (paper or ebook) or Amazon UK (paper or ebook).