Apologies for the radio silence but have been in the throes of moving house. Oh yes, and launching THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS at Waterstones Newcastle, along with Dan Smith who launched his fabulous book THE CHILD THIEF on the same night. We had a fantastic evening. New Writing North hosted the event, replete with lollipops for the kiddies (wonderful idea – kept my 5-year-old occupied all evening :)) and vodka and wine for the adults. Oh yes, and a designated chair for those amongst us who were 8 months pregnant and hobbling due to SPD. Here’s a little snapshot of me and my daughter Melody on the night* -
Notice the lollipop? She had about 15. Subsequently she was bouncing off the walls all night, but that’s fine. We had a really wonderful night and I was so pleased to see so many people there rallying behind the book!
Tomorrow night’s post will be about the Italian edition of the book and some reviews, but before I go check out the rest of the pics from the evening here and an interview I did with Culture Northern Irelandhere.
Til next time!
*photo taken by Simon Veit-Wilson, used courtesy of New Writing North. Lovely people.
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 18th, 2012
Continuing on from last night’s post about the character of Ruen in The Boy Who Could See Demons, my final post before the book’s publication (tomorrow! eek!!) concentrates on the role of music in the book.
So last night I was saying how I’d started constructing a story based on CS Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters and ultimately couldn’t get the film rights. Back then I composed a lot and so I wrote a couple of pieces of music that I felt would maybe wind up in the film and which ultimately helped set the writing ‘mood’ for me.
This last bit is crucial. The tone of a book, or its voice, is something that can happen immediately or which takes a lot of drafts to get pitch perfect, so to speak. It’s a much more subtle nuance than genre. It conveys the emotional core of the book, the feel of it. It’s like body language, I guess. It’s the aesthetics and charisma of the piece all in one. For me, music, art, textiles, cinema, and writing all go hand in hand. When I’m able to I’ll spend as much time as possible immersing myself in these when I’m writing, because each of their qualities lends themselves to the particular narrative experience I’m trying to create.
When I was writing The Boy Who Could See Demons in May/June 2010 – at least, the first draft that I cranked out in 3 weeks before my last child was born – I didn’t plan on music playing as much a role as it does, but then something startling happened one writing day and it intrigued me: Ruen, Alex’s demon, told him to write out a piece of music for Anya. I won’t go into much more detail than that, but as soon as I typed out that scene I heard a piece of music in my head that I’d composed and abandoned many years before. It was a piece I’d composed for the adaptation of The Screwtape Letters. Now, this piece had always struck me as a funny wee piece because when I wrote it I wasn’t really sure what purpose it served. It just seemed to spring up out of nowhere. So when Alex transcribed the score and handed it to Anya, I was typing like the clappers – I couldn’t believe how it now had a purpose in this story. But it did.
As the story goes on to show, the piece of music is pivotal to the plot. From this point Anya begins to question everything and Alex similarly challenges Ruen. But beyond its purpose to the plot, the piece of music encapulsates the various emotional registers of the entire book. I managed to persuade my publisher to print the score in the opening pages of the book and apparently if you click this link you can hear it: The Boy Who Could See Demons.
The thing is, you may well listen to this piece and find that it doesn’t marry with your own sense of the book’s nuances – and that is because the writing of a book is always as personal an experience as reading one. For me, this music represents that experience. But yours may well require an entirely different soundtrack – and that is the beauty of reading.
Til tomorrow!!!
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 9th, 2012
Tonight’s blog post gives a little bit of insight into the construction of the character Ruen, or Alex’s demon, in THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS.
Way before I wrote THE GUARDIAN ANGEL’S JOURNAL I read CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters and thought it was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I reckoned I should start writing a screenplay for it and build a story around the concept of the novel – which investigates the workings of hell via a series of letters between a senior demon and his apprentice nephew – and attempt to obtain the film rights. I sent some emails to Lewis’ stepson and eventually tracked down a company based outside Dublin who held the rights, and who told me in no uncertain terms to get lost. The story I’d been developing stayed with me, and formed the ‘soil’ from which the demonic element of THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS eventually sprung.
In the novel, Alex claims he can see demons. As with my construction of angels in THE GUARDIAN ANGEL’S JOURNAL, I didn’t want to play too much to the music of demons in popular culture or in religion. Google the word ‘demons’ and all manner of horned beasts spring up on your browser. Not very pleasant to look at, and indeed Lewis’ book didn’t back down from the view that demons are far from cute and cuddly. I wasn’t attempting to write about the demons as portrayed in the Bible, nor demons as portrayed in various world histories, mythologies or cultures – I wanted to use demons as a lens through which to view the depths of human nature.
In Alex’s case, his best friend Ruen takes on four forms which, as the novel progresses, seem to be linked to various aspects of Alex’s own personality and his particular methods of processing a past trauma. On the other hand, Anya begins to question whether Ruen might actually exist after all. Ruen as a character is conniving, intelligent, and cultured. He is 9000 years old. He was once besties with Nero and Mozart. As such, he’s keen on the piano. When he forms an attraction to Anya, he manipulates Alex to get his way.
Writing about a demon is probably the weirdest writing experience I’ll ever encounter. In no way did I approach this task lightly, and it affected me a great deal. When I was writing the character of Grogor the demon in THE GUARDIAN ANGEL’S JOURNAL I got so freaked out by being ‘under his skin’ – or writing with the express knowledge of his will, his personality, and all the extraneous details that a writer must know but which don’t necessarily go down on paper – that I implored my husband to stay up another hour until I finished writing that scene! It maybe sounds crazy, but it was the same with Ruen. Each scene with him made my skin crawl, because I wrote him in such a way that the possibility of his existence was left open to the reader. As such, he had to exist to me, and so all the details of his being were right there in my head. I knew exactly what he wanted to do to Alex. I knew what he had done to thousands of other people. I knew the limitations of his hatred and rage, which were zero. The real task was ensuring that the text conveyed what I wanted it to – I never wanted to get the reader too bogged down in all the bad stuff crawling through Ruen’s veins. I wanted Alex’s perspective to prevail and for his bouyancy to shine through the story.
Similarly, I didn’t want Ruen’s character to sink into the stereotype of a demon, if there is such a thing. It was a great relief to find out he liked bread and butter pudding! At 9000 years old, he had to have adopted some human qualities, right? Hence the Mozart thing. His character was such that the refined, mathematical style of Mozart’s compositions appealed to him. I thought deeply about his clothes, his posture, his face… And when he shifted appearance, he had a different kind of movement and used different speech, but he was essentially still Ruen.
I hope I haven’t given away too much of the story here, but suffice it to say that I did have my own take on whether or not Ruen was real. Exactly which take however, I refuse to divulge. Read the book. It’s up to you to decide.
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 8th, 2012
Tomorrow night I plan to continue my pre-publication series of blogs on various aspects of THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS - upcoming features include a blog feature on the character of Ruen, the role of music in the book, the dreaded ‘second novel syndrome’ and the writing process of this book, and the themes of this story. I may also include a recipe for bread and pudding, just ‘cos. DO tune in!
But for now, a brief interval to peel back the pages, as it were, on the other stuff going on at Jess-Cooke Towers right now…
Important Announcement Number One: Jess-Cooke Towers is currently spread across three houses in England. That is to say, we managed to buy our little dream house and are still in the process of renovating/redecorating the new place while packing up our old place and resting our weary, paint-splattered bodies at my mother-in-law’s place. Phew! Good grief, moving is stressful. Perhaps it would be less arduous if I wasn’t 8 months pregnant. Not sure. Everything from confronting the possibility of having to replace the roof to choosing which shade of grey to paint the office has felt a bit like rebuilding the pyramids. But we’re almost there. Shall post some pics when we’re done. Though is a house *ever* ‘done’? Already I’m mentally redecorating the freshly decorated sitting room and renovating the loft…
Important Announcement Number Two: My Italian publisher has created a book trailer for THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS (translated in Italian as ‘Cose che il buio mi dice’, or ‘Things the Darkness Tells me’, which is awesome). I am IN LOVE with this trailer, is just mega cool. Have a peek:
Yay!! I adore it!
Important Annoucement number three: In case you didn’t catch the previous blog post, the new novel is being launched at Waterstones Newcastle-Upon-Tyne on 15 May at 6.30pm – I would LOVE to see you there if you can make it!
Lastly, the reviews for the new book have been coming thick and fast from all corners of the globe. Here’s what Linda Hall at The Aucklander had to say about it:
This is an extraordinary read. It’s one of those books that you think about while you are at work or play wondering what’s going to happen next, Then when you have finished it keeps popping back into your head.
There are books you will like. There are books you won’t like. And then there are books you like so much that you can’t put them down and that make you feel like you lost a friend when you finish reading them. The Boy Who Could See Demons definitely belongs to that last category.
Thank you!! Woop!
Now to rinse the yellow paint out of my hair.
See you all tomorrow night!
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 7th, 2012
OK. That’s probably a completely misleading blog subtitle, because I don’t exactly purport to have the full 101 on how to research each and every novel. But hereafter follow some ideas for carrying out novel research which will hopefully prove useful for someone attempting that very thing.
Oh, you’re not? Well read on anyway. Some good stuff about Anya, the other main character in my new novel. She’s cool.
So. When it became apparent that ten-year-old Alex might well have a mental health issue, I think my response was to do a spot of googling with the intent of filling in the blanks surrounding the particular treatment, approach and diagnosis within a day or two.
Boy, was I daft. A day?? I could have spent years researching the subject of mental health disorders. To backtrack a little, I thought long and hard about Anya, Alex’s child pyschiatrist, who has her own story to tell in the book. Born and raised in a tough area of Belfast, Anya identifies very closely with Alex’s own background. Anya has beaten a lot of odds to become a child psychiatrist. Motivated by the suffering and subsequent death of her young daughter due to a mental illness, Anya is particularly driven to help Alex with his own problems. As the novel progresses Anya’s own past becomes intertwined with Alex and she risks everything in her pursuit of saving a child who reminds her so much of her own.
I started out by conducting internet searches on mental health. When the vast terrain of mental illness revealed itself to be less a mere jaunt through the park and more of a hike up the Himalayas replete with Sherpa, I began to compile a list of books on the subject. From there I was a little more informed about the specific kinds of psychic disorders, and that I couldn’t be in the slightest bit vague about which kind of disorder Alex was suffering from – which in turn meant I needed to know all about what sort of psychiatrist Anya was, how she went about her training, what approaches she might use etc.
Yes, it was exhausting. But fascinating.
So I put the textbooks on hold and started emailing the experts. A few got back to me and agreed to be interviewed. One of them – Dr Marinos Kyriakopoulos – very nicely said he’d read the manuscript and invited me to visit the child inpatient unit where he worked, which was invaluable in giving me real insight into the specific procedures, layout, what goes on there etc etc.
In other words, it just wasn’t enough to Google mental health or read a book about it in my kitchen. I had to get out there, meet the people with expertise, and visit the relevant venues in person.
And even then, it wasn’t quite enough. I started to find contradictions between what each of the experts were saying, not so much in terms of theories or categories of psychic disorders but in terms of, say, how a ten-year-old patient might be medically attended to, exactly which kind of drug might be used and how a breach in security might be dealt with. Seriously, these kind of niggles had me in absolute knots.
More and more it became apparent to me that the real task of researching is not just to gather the facts, but to work out how to make them serve the novel. It’s pointless dishing out cold hard data to a reader if it distracts from the story. On the other hand, a writer has a responsibility to be truthful. Knowing how far one should venture down either path – truthfulness and fiction – is the real undertaking.
In the end, I had to draw a kind of line and decide when to stop. Or at least, focus more on the development of my story and characters and less on the research. I kept on tweaking things right to the end, particularly when Dr Kyriakopoulos carried out his second reading of the manuscript – after I’d finished my edits – and pointed out a few things, and particularly when I realised that mental health services in Belfast differed from those in London or the US. By the end of the writing process I needed to return to Anya’s voice, viewing the research I’d conducted through her eyes and hers alone.
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 3rd, 2012
Tonight’s blog follows on from yesterday’s, which was about Belfast as a character in my new novel. Here I want to write a little bit about the main character, Alex, who provides one half of the narration of The Boy Who Could See Demons– the other half is from Anya’s point of view, and I’ll write about her tomorrow night.
When I started developing the story I worked from what my ‘gut’ told me: there was a little ten year-old boy, his name was Alex, and he could see demons. To give you an idea what he looked like in my head, he bore a striking resemblence to the little boy on the cover of the Italian version of the book:
So. I sat down one night and produced what is more or less exactly the opening chapter of the book: there’s a wee extract of it here.
Part of the inspiration for Alex’s character was the tragic Baby P case. I was profoundly moved by the death of this child, not least because I had a son the same age – just 17 months old – and every time I picked him up I just could not imagine how a child so young had suffered so badly and at the hands of the people who were meant to love him most. But although the media focused on Baby P’s injuries, there was a media element that caught my attention and angered me as much as it provoked my curiosity: several news articles chose to speculate on how Baby P would have turned out if he’d survived. Unloved, poverty stricken, raised in a violent household – surely Baby P was a victim from the outset, destined to grow up as a violent, no-good drain on society? These articles were undoubtedly insensitive, but they raised the question of whether a person can ever overcome such horrific circumstances as those faced by Baby P.
It was this question I set out to answer.
Alex’s situation in the novel is this: he is living with his mother Cindy in a poor area of Belfast and in a very vulnerable situation. That is to say that Cindy, bless her cotton socks, is a struggling single parent in her late twenties and suffering from depression. Alex has witnessed her attempt suicide many times. He feels protective of her. But despite his home life, Alex is no wimp. He is resilient. He tells fabulous jokes and has aspirations to be an actor. His mum doesn’t have enough money to buy decent food, and so he’s got by for a long time on the cheapest and easiest kind of meal available: onions on toast.
Then of course there’s the issue of Alex’s demons. When Cindy attempts yet suicide again Alex lets slip that he has a best friend called Ruen who happens to be one of these. What freaks Anya out – Anya is Alex’s psychiatrist – is that Ruen seems to know details about her own life that Alex has no way of knowing. As she interviews Alex she is pushed to the boundaries of belief, and similarly the reader must decide whether Ruen exists, too. Only thing is, Ruen has very bad intentions for Alex, and by exploring these intentions Anya is able to gain insight into the possibilities for his existence in Alex’s psyche. In so doing, she risks pushing Alex to the edge and fulfilling Ruen’s darkest plans.
What I loved about writing Alex was his resilience. I adore writing characters who come up against huge obstacles and show me ways to overcome them. In Alex’s case, I didn’t know the outcome. I deliberately forced myself not to work out the ending in advance. I set out with the issues raised by the Baby P case swimming in my head and I wasn’t sure what would happen: would Alex turn out like his own father, or his mother? Would he achieve his aspirations or succumb to his deepest fears? I had to be careful not to project any personal wishes on to his character, not to force his hand.
Alex is a fictional character, yes, but as the Baby P case highlighted there are many young children living in vulnerable positions and outside the boundaries of social intervention. What Alex showed me that, contrary to media speculation of the ‘nature versus nurture’ issue, a human being is not a mathematical equation. You simply cannot sum up a person according to their circumstances. No media speculation should ever write off a young boy’s future character. As I’ll write about tomorrow night, Anya’s line of work brought her into contact with young boys whose home life is the exact opposite of Alex’s – stable, loving, affluent – who nonetheless suffered extreme bouts of rage and self-harm. Nature or nurture?
Tune in tomorrow night!
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 2nd, 2012
In the run-up to publication day for The Boy Who Could See Demons (May 10) I thought I’d blog every day about a different aspect about the book: writing it, researching it, and what the heck it’s all about. So today’s blog is about Belfast and the role it plays in the book.
I didn’t set out to make Belfast an actual character in the book – I knew the story was based there from the outset but turning a place into an actual character is quite a leap from a mere backdrop for the plot. I was born and raised in Belfast, east Belfast to be precise, close to the Holywood Arches. Here it is around the year of my birth:
I lived in the same house until the ripe age of 25 – with the exception of a couple of years in Australia during my early 20s – in an area that, as a child, was referred to by a friend as ‘the slums.’ One of my earliest memories is being dragged out of a swimming pool and standing outside the leisure centre wrapped in tin foil during a bomb scare. As I got older, I grew to loathe the month of July. This is because of all the hoo-ha surrounding July 12, which is when the Orange Order tends to march throughout Belfast and there would usually be riots between Catholics and Protestants. The city would come to a complete shut down, and lots of roads would be barricaded. I have a problem with being trapped. My solution was to get a job at the age of 14 and work like a maniac so I could spend every July in a different part of the planet. As a result, I did a fair bit of travelling. So I guess it wasn’t all bad.
In The Boy Who Could See Demons Anya – a child psychiatrist from Belfast who has returned to treat little 10-year-old Alex, who has a dysfunctional family and claims he can see demons – notes that place plays a huge role in the development of a person’s identity and psychology. In Alex’s case he had taken for granted that the things he had experienced were ‘normal’. In the shift from cultural chaos to what is blithely referred to as ‘peace’, Belfast’s own development has impacted upon Alex to the extent that past and present bleed into one another. The transition from one state to another is felt in his psyche. Anya must distinguish between her own past and Alex’s present state, between what is real and what is a product of Alex’s psyche. Just like ‘peace’, neither is particularly clear cut.
As Alex told his own story during the writing process I understood that there was a lot more than what he was telling me. It wasn’t just that he was having a tough time watching his mum suffer from depression, and it wasn’t just that he claimed to have a best friend who happened to be a demon. There was something more. As Anya did some searching she found some specific links between Belfast and Alex’s state of mind, just like this mural:
It’s been painted over, but it was indeed a mural of Margaret Thatcher portrayed as a demon.
Interestingly enough, the more research I did, the more murals and cultural references I found to the demonic. Maybe it was a subconscious thing, but I certainly didn’t opt for Belfast as a setting because of any investment in demons. The whole city seemed to have been demonized by The Troubles. The Belfast I return now in my 30s is a far cry from the Belfast I grew up in. As a child I felt the weight of the Troubles press down on the city, stomping out its growth, dampening spirits. The city felt full of dark shadows. It felt to me that there was a huge link between Alex and Belfast, much more than just the city where he was born.
A man being searched by a British soldier on the Fall’s Road, 1984 – a common event, and one that drove massive disparity between Irish and British. Image credit: Brendan Murphy.
In 2009 over £500 million was spent developing the city.
Having taken a battering through the Troubles, Belfast’s Grand Opera House has been brought back to life by a series of extensive refurbishments.
But the way the city really functions as a character in the book is in terms of its pull on the characters. Michael, Anya and Alex each have a particularly complicated relationship with their hometown; each of them has a mixture of pride, shame, love, devotion, and fear towards this city. To me, the characters’ relationships with Belfast were akin to a blood relative whose past is somewhat rocky, whose character is somewhat shaky, but to whom each of them owe a certain emotional debt.
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on May 1st, 2012
There is nothing quite like (a) being 7 months pregnant and (b) having three children under the age of 6 and (c) writing 2 novels at once while finishing a poetry collection and (d) moving house* and (e) about to launch one’s second novel in 3 weeks’ time to completely melt time and space. Seriously, you must try it sometime. The equation of (a) + (b) + (c) + (d) alone amounts to some serious universe meltage. Throw (e) into the mix and reality drifts into some kind of supergalactic blender.
That said, I’m stoked about all of the above. All of these little facets of my life have proved to be extremely tough in their various ways but I feel like I have a lot of celebrating to do over the coming months. In particular, I’m launching THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS at the Newcastle branch of Waterstones on 15th May at 6.30pm. My good friend Dan Smith is launching his third novel, THE CHILD THIEF, as it’s being published on the exact same day (a total coincidence) and we thought it would be cool just to throw a big old party on the same night to mark the occasion. There will be drinks, crisps, a very pregnant, supergalactically-blended author and, of course, Dan – so come along! You’re more than welcome!
*if you’ve been following my blog you will recall that I wasn’t quite sure whether I would have a house to move to this time a week or so ago. Well, m’dears, I’m very glad to say we managed to pull everything together in time so that the lovely peeps selling our new house didn’t get a chance to swipe it from under our noses, and subsequently I’m very excited and knee-deep in wallpaper. Take that, house-swipers!
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on April 23rd, 2012
About 8 years ago I attempted a chick lit novel about a chocoholic who falls in love with a lovely man who cures her of her addiction and winds up getting married on the same day as her mother weds her childhood friend. I know, it sounds pants, which is why I never finished it. I’m just not a chick lit author, but I’d read Marian Keyes’ ‘Watermelon’ and laughed until I thought I was going to burst. I thought, I’d LOVE to burst people with laughter. But, alas, I couldn’t do it. Probably for the best, really. The point is, about three months after I abandoned this novel I met a man with the same name as the romantic interest in my book. I married him. On the same day as my mother also wed her childhood friend.
Sometimes fiction is a bit like going to a clairvoyant – they ream off a list of vague predictions which, on hindsight, are waaayy off the mark and would therefore indicate that your twenty quid or so would have been better spent on something like bubblegum. But then there’s those handful of smartingly accurate insights, the tidbits of information and perception that make you wonder about whether they really are just coincidence, or something more. Like that novel I was writing. I suppose you could argue it all stems from the subconscious. Which is why I’m currently researching hypnosis and mind control for my next book.
I also happen to be writing another book, which is part ghost story, part modern-day couple struggling to deal with the recession and its financial effects. This couple are trapped in the snare of house purchasing and are reeling from being gazumped, which means that the seller of the house they were buying kindly allowed them to wade through the mires of mortgages and conveyancing only to accept a higher offer at the very last minute.
So, as I’m writing this story, I’m also buying a new house. I love this house, just like the couple in the story adore the house they are buying. But now the seller of the house I am buying has kindly decided to allow me to wade through the mires of mortgages, conveyancing, and selling my own house before scheduling the house for auction next Friday. Also, instead of taking the house off the market, they’ve simply attached a nice little notice on Right Move inviting any offers higher than the one we’ve made.
To clarify, I started writing this story well before I put an offer on the house. I had no idea what it was like to be gazumped – and I still don’t, though by next Thursday I’ll know if I have a house to move to or if we are all to be made homeless, having sold our current property. On the upside, I have a lot of insight now into the quandary faced by the couple in my story, particularly as the woman, like me, is pregnant. So that’s nice, though I’ll doubt it’ll keep the rain off if we really are all made homeless.
How does one explain these coincidences???
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on April 12th, 2012
One of my favourite movies of all time is Forrest Gump, and there’s this bit in it where Tom Hanks is beating across a football pitch and the spectators hold up posters that tell him when to stop running, otherwise he’d just keep going – literally.
Editing, rewriting, redrafting – same thing. Sometimes it can feel like you don’t know when to stop, and for sure there is a point when it’s detrimental to keep hacking at what is otherwise good work, especially when you’re convinced it’s rubbish. This is why I think editing needs to happen little by little, over a period of time. Doing a little here, a little there, making sure you return each time with fresh eyes, and NEVER doing anything major when in a particularly extreme mood. It’s like DIY. We had this door frame that irked us for YEARS because, for whatever reason, it was the wrong shape for the door. A smart person probably would have (a) sanded down the door (b) called a DIY expert to replace the door frame (c) lived with it. One day, my husband got so angry with the door frame (as you do) that he went to his tool box and, on not finding a suitable instrument for sanding down the frame, took a chisel to it. Did he regret that move? Yes he did. Did I regret the day I decided to edit after far too little sleep and basically hacked a decent story into a quivering little shadow of a plot?
Well yes, actually, I did.
The ‘stop editing’ sign does not appear, unfortunately. You know a piece is good enough when you’ve allowed enough critical distance between the writing and editing process and when you’ve re-read it at different times of day, in different frames of mind, in different moods. When it still reads juicily, when it still pleases on the whole (as one’s writing will always, always appear devastatingly and irredeemably awful at one stage or another), it’s time to stop.
Posted in: Carolyn's Blog by Carolyn Jess-Cooke on March 26th, 2012
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