Author, actress and freelance journalist, Giovanna Fletcher is married to Tom Fletcher from McFly. She grew up in Essex with her Italian dad Mario, mum Kim, big sister Giorgina and little brother Mario, and spent most of her childhood talking to herself (it seems no one wanted to listen) or reading books. Giovanna is a firm believer in the power of magpies and positive energy. To find out more about Giovanna, view her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Her debut novel, Billy and Me, is out this Thursday (23rd May 2013).

Anyway, over to Giovanna as she tells us about a day in her life...

Every day varies, but my writing days are a fairly consistent array of distractions that I struggle to knock on the head before getting on with the pressing task of writing.

I get up at a respectable eight o'clock (I'm conveniently forgetting the times I struggle to get out of bed before ten - they’re rare!), and potter around having breakfast with the hubby, showering, getting into a fresh pair of PJs or comfies, and then pottering around for an hour or so. I then like to watch the beginning of This Morning for their quick round up of the news. Now, this can sometimes work against me as occasionally there'll be someone being interviewed that I think will be interesting to watch. But, let's say this is a day I prise myself away from the telly . . .

I then go to the office and sit at my desk in front of my laptop. First task? Checking my Twitter, Facebook and the Mail Online (I like the pictures), and then, before I know it, it's one o'clock and its time for lunch. Not that I've earned the break, of course!

After lunch (usually soup in case you're wondering), I start reading what I'd worked on the previous day to get my mind focused . . . Occasionally I feel tired and have a nap at this point (let's blame the Italian in me - I love a siesta), although I've tried to stop myself from doing that - grabbing a quick cuppa is much more time effective. I'm then ready to write for the rest of the day and late into the evening, usually getting a solid six hours distraction-free-writing in the bag. 

Yes, reading back over this, my working day is pretty disgusting really. I promise to rid myself of a few distractions and leap over obstacles with speed so that I can get to work a little quicker in the future . . . This is said from my PJs while I nurse yet another cuppa. I guess with writing it's all about finding a way that works for you and gets the creative juices flowing.

Joanna Rossiter is the author of The Sea Change (her first novel). She grew up in Dorset and studied English at Cambridge University before working as a researcher in the House of Commons and as a copy writer. In 2011 she completed an MA in Writing at Warwick University. She lives and writes in London. Last week The Sea Change was announced as one of the Richard and Judy Summer 2013 Book Club titles. Here Joanna expands on some common misconceptions about the wonderful world of writers.

The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter

1.    Being an author is glamorous.

Before I had managed to write a book, I had an image of what an author should be in my mind that was something akin to Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge; sitting down melancholically in the middle of the night at his type writer with the Eiffel Tower outside his window and, after a sip of absinth, typing the words ‘This is a story about love’.

In reality, novels are rarely the results of flashes of inspiration, although they may often begin this way. I like to think of them as a long-standing marriage; the writer weds themselves to one particular idea and then sticks with it through thick and thin, through romance and conflict – times when they wish they could separate and times when they feel like they want to do nothing else but spend time together. Sometimes writing is a lonely business – to finish a book, authors must spend days and evenings in a room on their own filling their head with made-up people. Often, there’s little chance for genuine feedback until the book is complete and nobody except the writer can see the full picture until the book is written.  There is a lot of hard graft and very little glamour, but it’s worth it for the satisfaction of a well-told story.

2.    Authors are full of new ideas.

It has been said that all the plots in the world can be summarized in one of two phrases: ‘A stranger comes to town’ or ‘a hero leaves home’.  Whilst I wouldn’t go this far, I would argue that modern day culture places a lot of emphasis on originality when, more often than not, stories are found rather than invented. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays from stories he had come across elsewhere; renaissance writers recognised that the talent of a writer lies not as much in the chosen story but in the way that story is told.

3.    Authors don’t read reviews of their own novels.

Given than my first novel only came out last Thursday, I have had very limited experience of this! However, already I’m finding that the desire for feedback from readers has overtaken my fear of reading a bad review. Authors spend long spells alone with their books in order to get them written and it’s a joy when we finally get to meet people who have read our books and hear what they have to say about them. Every writer writes for a reader, whether they admit it or not.

Note from the Editor: You can read Richard and Judy's reviews of The Sea Change here. 

Novels are born out of an enduring desire to persevere with an idea until it is fully realized on the page.  I spend far more time editing than I do writing; for me, it’s the most satisfying part of creating a book. Once the bones of the story are on paper, it’s a great feeling to be able to start drawing out a structure and looking for the hidden meanings in each scene. I often don’t know exactly what a story is trying to say until I have written a first draft; the imagery and echoes and symbols that I want to build on only become clear when I start to edit.

5.    Authors never plan their books.

Even though a lot of a story’s nuances can’t be determined until it is written, authors still put large amounts of time and energy into planning their novels before they put pen to paper. The level of detail varies from author to author but I would say that it’s almost impossible to write an engaging novel without a plan to follow. Without a preconceived plot structure, it is difficult to convince the reader early on in the novel that you, the author, know where the story is going and have control over its outcome. It’s like being on a rollercoaster; for the reader it’s great fun not knowing where the twists and turns lie but the ride can only be enjoyed if the reader is confident that the author has built a trustworthy track for the story to follow.

6.    A book can be written in a month.

Initiatives like NaNoWriMo are a wonderful tool for helping people get started on books and cultivating the commitment required to finish them. However, they are also misleading in the perception they create about novels. Contrary to what they suggest, I think it’s impossible to write anything readable in a month (others may prove me wrong!). Novels, like wine, need time to mature. They need to be laid to rest and then picked back up again at a later date in order to be read and edited with a fresh, objective mind.

7.    Having a story to tell is the only ingredient required to write a book.

The most common response I get when I tell people that I’m an author is not ‘what do you write about?’; it’s actually something along the lines of ‘I’ve got a great idea for a novel myself; I’d turn it into a book if I had the time.’  One of the wonderful things about writing is how accessible it is: unlike paint or a musical instrument, language is a tool that the majority of us use on a daily basis. As a result, there is an unspoken assumption that any one of us could write a book if we had the time.  I do believe that anyone can learn to craft a good story, just like anyone can learn a musical instrument. However, there is a craft involved and this craft takes more than time; it takes practice. You wouldn’t expect someone who had never played the trumpet before to pick one up and come out with perfect jazz. Similarly, stories require skill and perseverance and they are as much a practiced art as music or sculpture. 

There can be a lot of snobbery on the side of published authors towards unpublished authors. And yet, the fact that a certain author is published is not just down to the quality of their writing; as a published author myself, I would be the first to admit that at some point along the line, there is an element of chance involved. Editors are inundated with manuscripts on a weekly basis. My own editor is sent ten manuscripts from new authors via literary agents every week and, out of those manuscripts, she publishes only three or four a year. There are far more publishable manuscripts out there than there is scope for publishing them.  A whole host of factors outside of a writer’s hands go into the decision to publish a book: from the extent to which a story resonates with the culture of the time to its appeal to a particular audience to whether or not it complements the other books on that publisher’s list. As much as editors want to nurture new talent, publishing is a profit making venture and one eye always has to be kept on the ability of a book to generate sales.  Yes, there are plenty of manuscripts that are turned down because they are poorly written but there are also thousands that are rejected for reasons outside of an author’s control. A large part of me does want to believe that a good book will always find a way through eventually…

We all dream of making a living from the thing we love to do the most and authors are no different. Whilst we can convince ourselves that it isn’t about the sales, which writer would turn down the chance to have a bestseller? With the move into the digital space squeezing the amount of money a writer makes from each book, it’s not a career that is entered into for financial security. In most cases, it’s a hand-to-mouth profession that goes alongside a series of other day jobs.  However, writers, like everybody else, will (albeit sometimes secretly) welcome the affirmation that good sales figures bring. Popularity is not always seen as a good thing in the literary world: literature that is valuable and literature that is popular are often viewed as being in contention with each other.  Yet, deep down, I don’t think any author would turn their nose up at the prospect of more readers, a higher profile for their writing and, yes, a royalty statement that doesn’t make you want to weep into your green tea.

All authors ‘borrow’ aspects or experiences from their own lives when they write. In order to create compelling characters, writers often need to be able to relate to the characters themselves and this can mean incorporating into them certain traits that we have seen in our own lives or in others. Whilst stories have their root in the author’s personal experience, they often grow into something else entirely. I’m a great believer in readers forming the meaning of a story for themselves; it’s more about the experiences that they bring to the page than it is about the author’s. In fact, I as a writer can often only spot the resonances of a particular novel to my own life once I have written it and become a reader myself. A good author can present their reader with a carefully chosen set of ingredients that complement each other; but, more often than not, it’s the reader who decides what to concoct.

The Sea Change is out now.

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Today (April 23rd) is World Book Night, a time for readers and publishers accross the world to come together to celebrate our favourite things: books.

As well as live events in London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Liverpool, World Book Night, along with publishers across the country, will give 20,000 volunteers half a million books to give away to members of their community who do not or are unable to regularly read.

At Penguin we're proud to have contributed two books to this year's list of 20 World Book Night titles. The first book is an enduring classic, one of the most famous adventure stories of all time...

Penguin Press editor Simon Winder says of Treasure Island:

"Within moments of starting to read it you realize that Stevenson has set out very self-consciously to write as enjoyable and gripping a book as possible, and - because Stevenson was a genius - he pulls it off.  He distills the essence of every pirate tale, takes the brilliant decision to see it all through the eyes of a boy, and simply lets rip. 

Parrots, doubloons, curses, shanties, castaways, a map and of course treasure pour from the story.  The villains could not be more villainous (surely Blind Pew must be in any rationally managed Top Ten), the forces of good more colourless.  I envy anyone who has not read Treasure Island as they have something wonderful to look forward to.  But, having read it myself off and on for some forty years, I can't say that it ever gets less good."

Also as part of World Book Night, we're distributing 20,000 copies of JoJo Moyes's heart-breaking Me Before You.

Julia Bookford, World Book Night CEO, had this to say about this best-seller:

"We all read for different reasons, and those reasons will change by the day, the time, our mood and our perception of a book and what we expect to get from it. It could be that I enjoyed Me Before You so much because I wasn't expecting to (based purely on my judgement of it's cover), but I completely fell in love with it. I was intrigued, I was gripped, I was entranced, I was educated and in the end I emerged a little bit changed by having read it.

It is, of course, a love story (but aren't all our lives to some extent?) but it's about as far as 'girl meets boy, they go through some complications but eventually live happily ever after' as it can get. It's about playing the hand we were dealt, however unfair it may be and what happens if we decide we simply don't want to play any more and about how our lives can be utterly changed by meeting the wrong person at the wrong time. There's a good chance, if you're that way inclined, that you might cry your eyes out at the end (I did, but please don't let that put you off if you're not quite so sentimental!), but whatever your emotional state I challenge you not to be a tiny bit effected by the story."

We'll be hosting hourly book bundle giveaways on our Twitter feed all evening tonight - be sure to follow us and look out for the links from 4pm to win a selection of fantastic books. From classics to cookbooks, and erotic fiction to hot literary prospects, we've tried to cater to something for everybody, and demonstrate the breadth of delights that await you in your local library or bookstore.

So why not close your laptop, switch off your monitor, put your phone on silent, and settle down with a good book this evening?

A very happy World Book Night from all at Penguin!

 

I’d always wanted to write a novel, but didn’t think I had the ability. When, at 50, I made a mid-life career change, I decided to enrol in a screenwriting program rather than creative (prose) writing. I had previously written a screenplay for a feature-length film made purely for fun, so I thought I could do that. So The Rosie Project was my school project over five years. Two factors drove me to adapt it into a novel: the first was that with a story in place, I thought the jump to writing a novel was not so great so I could achieve that ambition; the second was to get more attention for the script to help fund the making of the film.

How difficult was it to adapt it as a novel?

I found the “reverse adaptation” very straightforward. In fact, I realised that the story was perhaps better told as a novel. I was able to work quite quickly – the first draft took only four weeks. I already had a clear plot, characters and dialogue. The big addition was Don’s inner world – his thoughts. Although these were not on the page in the screenplay, they were very clear in my mind, so quite easy to add. They are, in the novel, an important source of comedy. In a film, you can generate comedy from physical movement and expressions and from timing – these tools are not really available to the novelist. So in the novel, the main source of comedy moves from the external world to what’s happening in Don’s head.

Did you do a lot of research on Asperger’s Syndrome or Autism?

I did read a couple of technical books and a couple of memoirs but their influence on the character of Don Tillman was minimal. My first degree was in physics – lots of science and maths! Then I worked for many years in information technology and also taught and did research at several universities. So I met many people who were technically very capable and often had “left field” ideas, but who struggled with understanding and communicating with other people. I guess today, many of these (mainly male) guys would be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, but that diagnosis really only became popular in the 1990s.

Is Don Tillman based on anyone in particular?

They say a character is a third someone you know, a third yourself and a third made up. A particular friend, an information technology guru, had a dramatic true-life story around his quite-focused “Wife Project” and this was the original inspiration for the script. Initially I channelled his voice, but Don soon took on its own character. I was also a bit of a nerd in my youth, and a bit beyond. And I added in mannerisms and stories from others – “greetings” and “I’m in human sponge mode” come from colleagues.

How do you feel about using autism / Asperger’s as a source of humour?

Don is a person with big strengths (high intelligence) and weaknesses (poor social skills). I see him as atypical rather than disabled. Most stories, drama or comedy, require the hero to overcome a weakness to achieve their goal. Comedy arises when the hero is seriously under-equipped for the journey. And sometimes Don’s view of the world makes more sense than ours. So far, the novel has been very well received by people with Asperger’s, their families and organisations. Many have commented that they appreciate the socially-challenged person being the hero and the person we identify with rather than someone for the real hero to learn from (as in, for example, Rain Man). No doubt there will be other views but if the book prompts discussion, all the better.

Does Don actually have Asperger’s? You never say he does in the book.

That was a very deliberate decision. As soon as you say “Asperger’s” or “Autism”, people, in my experience, focus on the syndrome rather than the character. Don is not a bunch of symptoms – he’s a quirky guy who probably would be diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum – but I don’t claim to be an expert. The citation for the Victorian Premier’s Award said Don had “undiagnosed Asperger’s” and I say “undiagnosed except by the judges of a literary award.”  If, reading The Rosie Project, you note that Don drinks alcohol, and you think (as one psychiatrist friend did) that “aspies don’t drink”, then, in your diagnosis, he doesn’t have Asperger’s. Fair enough. Read on.

Where did the Rosie character come from?

The original story was titled The Klara Project, and Klara was a nerdy Hungarian studying for her PhD in physics. There was a plot around plagiarism and Don helping her out. About 2 ½ years into the project, I decided that Klara wasn’t a strong-enough character – she didn’t require such a big change and effort from Don. And he didn’t learn as much as I wanted him to. So I replaced her with the antithesis of what Don was looking for – to see how far he could go. I didn’t consciously base her on anyone but there are elements of a couple of people I know in there.

Have you ever met anyone like Gene? I mean, really? At a university?

Yes.

What happened to the screenplay?

We have had firm offers from production companies in UK, Australia and the US. I’m very confident we will do a deal and have every hope that the film will be made.

Who would you like to play Don?

I don’t answer this question, because it puts an idea, and not always a good one, of what Don is like in the heads of people who read the book. One of the joys of reading is to use your imagination. But I want the film to be laugh-out-loud funny – genuine comedy. So the most important factor is the comedic chemistry amongst Don, Rosie and the director.

Will there be a sequel?

I am working on one now.

Your wife writes erotic fiction. How does that work?

She writes under the name Simone Sinna – and is currently working on a mainstream novel. We work well together – we discuss story ideas, review each other’s work, and know that if the other person is on a roll, it’s our turn to make dinner. Or order in.

How does it feel having rights for The Rosie Project sold in 35 countries?

It’s great that people in such a range of cultures – from China to Iceland - can relate to the story and particularly to Don. On the financial side, I’ve been able to give up my day job to focus on writing.

What was your day job? What exactly is data modelling?

I was an information technology specialist focusing on data modelling, which is basically specifying how data will be organised and represented in a database. I wrote a couple of books on the subject – one is entering its fourth edition. In the 80s I founded a consultancy that I sold in 1999 – and after that I focused on teaching data modeling and consulting skills around the world. I met quite a few people like Don.

What advice would you give to writers?

I’ve written a few things about this on my blog, but basically I work with a plan, which I update as I go. If you’re writing well without a plan, I’m not going to suggest you change, but if writing without a plan isn’t working for you…  
And good writing is re-writing. You can always make it better. Enrol in a writing class or join a writers group or both – for feedback, knowledge sharing and encouragement. Write for publication.

How do you think The Rosie Project compares with The Big Bang Theory / The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time / One Day?

I haven’t seen / read any of them. Deliberately. Once I realised I was working in the same territory, I avoided reading them so as not to be hamstrung by worrying about copying. Sometimes different writers just end up at the same place, coincidentally or because some things are just common to certain types of people. Of course now people thrust Asperger’s-themed books at me to review...

What do you read?

Not much fiction when I’m writing. In the past I read a lot – typically taking an author and reading all of his / her works until I got exhausted – when I was in teens / early 20s Hemingway, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Kurt Vonnegut…  later Philip Roth, John Irving, Joanne Harris, Rose Tremain, John Fowles.

As an adolescent, I read science fiction – lots and lots of it. The most recent books I’ve read were Addition by Toni Jordan (a book Rosie has been compared with) and Waiting for the Barbarians by J M Coetzee.

What books influenced The Rosie Project?

Many years ago (I’d have been in my teens) I read a 1950s book that was a huge hit in Australia – They’re a Weird Mob by Nino Culotta (John O’Grady).  It was the model of a humorous book, first person, about a fish out of water, an Italian in Australia. I never consciously drew from it, but in retrospect it probably provided the first model for Rosie. I like John Irving’s ability to create character and plot that seem just a bit heightened – but never actually incredible.

Don is a bit of a foodie – and a wine buff. Where did that come from?

Me.  I like to cook, eat and drink. I do a lot of travelling – in the past with seminars, now with the book – and an interest in food and wine fits well with travel.  And I was keen to give Don some characteristics that were not traditionally associated with Asperger’s.

Jennifer McVeigh's debut novel The Fever Tree, the epic tale of a British woman embarking on a new life in nineteenth-century southern Africa, has been critically acclaimed and selected for Richard and Judy's Book Club in March. Here, she reveals her 10 Tips on How to Stay Sane as a Debut Novelist.

1. Don’t quit your job before you have a book deal. Very sensible advice that I spectacularly failed to follow. I left my job as a literary agent and stepped into the terrifying world of no salary, no professional support and no real hope of achieving what I was setting out to achieve. It was a very rocky ride.
2. Do join a writing group – they will keep you sane, help you to stay on track, and remind you that there are other people in the world crazy enough to be battling all day with words on paper.
3. Don’t divulge your plot, or writing problems for that matter, to friends at dinner – they’ll say very unhelpful things like: Isn’t that a bit predictable? How can you not know what’s going to happen at the end? And – most gruelling of all - hasn’t Wilbur Smith written a novel just like that?
4. When you’re writing sex scenes, don’t imagine your parents looking over your shoulder – a passionate kiss will quickly disintegrate into a prudish peck on the cheek.
5. Don’t obsess over the perfection of other novels. Read them, learn from them, but don’t let them cast your own into shadow. I always wanted my protagonist to be as dynamic and real as Cathy or Emma, but it wasn’t until I had reached the end of her story that I felt I really knew her.
6. Don’t let yourself imagine all the unpublished authors in the world being turned down by agents, like the millions of lost souls waiting at the gates of heaven. If you have written something good, then someone will spot it – you just need to have faith and determination.
7. Don’t be your own judge. After I had written my novel I shelved it in despair, convinced that it was worthless. It was only by some stroke of luck – a chance meeting with a literary agent – that I was convinced to send it out into the world. Thank goodness I did.
8. Don’t demonise the agents who reject you. More than likely your manuscript fell into the hands of some poor, unpaid 17 year old intern with a hangover, desperately trying to reduce the size of the slush pile. Wait a few months, and send it in again. I was offered representation by an agent who must have afterwards let my manuscript fall into the slush pile. A month later I received an earnest typed letter from the agency: “Dear Miss McVeigh, many thanks for sending in your manuscript. I’m very sorry to inform you that…”
9. Once you are published - in the interests of sanity – try not to check your Amazon sales rank more than twice (OK – that’s not realistic – perhaps 5 times) a day. If sales are good your publisher will tell you, and a shift from 3050 to 2095 is almost certainly meaningless.
10. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’ve got one novel behind you, the second will be easier. It won’t. Sweating over a novel is part of what makes it brilliant. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I do have a very frustrating writer friend who keeps telling me that her second novel is a breeze…

The Fever Tree is available now in paperback (RRP £7.99). Follow author Jennifer McVeigh on Twitter and Facebook.

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To celebrate the Oscar successes of Argo, Lincoln, and Les Miserables, we're offering 50% off the books at Penguin.co.uk for today (February 25) only. To claim your discount, simply enter the coupon code 'readthefilm' at checkout.

Doris Kearns Goodwin has loved history all her life. She has focused her career on the lives and stories of presidents past: Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and presently Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

For four decades, she has lived with dead presidents. She wakes up with them in the morning, and thinks about them when she goes to bed at night. She has imagined them in their youth, in the White House, with their families and friends. She has spent significant time thinking about how their voices sound, the cadence of their speech, their posture and stride. She has sought to understand the inner person behind the public figure. For her, this study brings the presidents to life and allows us to learn from their past successes and struggles. Through her writing, she hopes readers will feel like they, too, know these presidents in a new and intimate way.

Goodwin’s bestselling book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln film. She visited the set in Richmond, Virginia, and saw up close and personal Lincoln’s world coming to life.

Q: Let’s start with your book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which was the basis for the movie Lincoln. How did you expect the movie to tackle the 900-plus pages?

A: I knew that they couldn’t deal with the whole book. The only way to make the story come alive in a feature film was to make a story within a story. So Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner decided to focus on Lincoln’s tumultuous final four months in office, the ending of slavery with the passage of the 13^th amendment, and the Union victory in the Civil War. The only way to tell the whole story is through a miniseries. Maybe that will be next!

Q: This is the first of your books to be made into a feature film. How does that feel?

A: Seeing all the actors in their costumes, the cinematographer, the lighting people, the technicians and dozens of people working on the set, and knowing that somehow this book helped to inspire Spielberg’s team to create an entire world is very exciting.

Q: And what thoughts did you have upon arriving in Richmond and visiting the sets as Lincoln’s world was coming to life in this old pinball factory?

A: What Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner have been able to do so masterfully is tell a big, historical story in such an intimate way. It’s an up-close and very personal, detailed look at the life Lincoln led and the people closest to him during this most important time. For the 10 years I spent writing Team of Rivals, everyday I imagined the world Lincoln inhabited.The loving fidelity the filmmakers paid to recreate his life, his world, is astonishing. I felt magically transported back in time to the 1860s.

Q: One of the most important locations in the film is Lincoln’s office, which was essentially the center of the Lincoln White House. Was it comforting or unsettling to be in that room that you must have imagined time and time again.

A:  As I walked in the Lincoln office, I had a sense that I was really there. I could see him there, sitting in his chair, picking up his pen. It was so much like what I had imagined while I was writing my book, that I could almost smell the cigar smoke lingering in the draperies! It was an extraordinary experience to see the attention to details: from the genuine Belter piece to theold maps on the wall and the portrait of President Andrew Jackson.

Q: Lincoln’s desk is a beautiful and important piece of furniture. Set designer Jim Erickson said he added all those cubbyholes for authenticity. Please tell us about the particular meaning the desk holds.

A: I suppose it’s because Lincoln’s office is at the heart of the movie.He would sometimes write little fragments of his speeches and tuck them away in the drawers and cubbyholes. People thought he wrote his speeches at the last minute, but he had thought about themes and sentences for weeks. The desk drawer is also where he would put his hot letters, the letters he would write in a moment of anger or frustration. He would not send the letters, but would wait for his emotions to settle. Especially near to me are the first-edition books atop the desk; books that he would have read at the time – The Poetical Works of John Milton and The Bigelow Papers.

Q: The attention to detail, as you mentioned, is extraordinary. How do those details impact or enhance the storytelling?

A: The research that went into replicating the furniture, the gas lighting, carpeting, and wallpapers is exceptional. I loved hearing about how they found a place in England to hand-weave the carpet and in Richmond to make the wallpaper using silk screening. But yet, even with the beautiful sets and furniture, costumes and linens, clocks, candelabras, china and crystal, and books, bringing Lincoln to life is the most important thing in the whole movie. Obviously, the story matters and the 13th Amendment, but people adore this man Lincoln and he fascinates them. And if you can better create him through his surroundings and the people who mattered, then all of that makes a profound difference.

Q: So tell us, what did you ultimately think of Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Lincoln?

A: Daniel Day-Lewis has brought this iconic figure to life in a way that I could not envision before seeing his performance on the big screen. I was told that when he arrived to start filming, he completely embodied Lincoln – and didn’t break character. His performance was remarkable in every way - from the way he looked to his posture and gait. His storytelling ability, and way his face lit up with those sparkling eyes, to that voice that could carry throughout the land were spellbinding.

Q: When you see the movie, there is something so particular about his posture and the way in which he walks. How would you describe it?

A: Lincoln at 6-feet-4-inches tall had this singular way of walking, which gave the impression that his long, gaunt frame needed oiling. He seemed toplod forward in a slightly awkward manner, his hands hanging at his sides or folded behind his back. His step had no spring; he lifted his whole foot at once rather than lifting from the toes and then he would thrust his foot down on the ground rather than landing on his heel.

Q: Tell us about Lincoln’s voice. There had been some online chatter that people were critical of the high pitch.

A:Lincoln’s voice was thin and high pitched, but I think you’ll see in this movie that his voice also had tremendous range. In his day, Lincoln’s voice had much carrying power, allowing it to be heard from the far reaches of the crowd. He would also become increasingly impassioned as he spoke, gesturing with his head and body rather than with his hands. His speaking went to the heart because it came from the heart. Lincoln’s eloquence was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of the conviction he possessed.

Q: When he speaks, it seems to me his face changes dramatically. Do you agree?

A: Yes, when Lincoln would begin to speak, his expression of sorrow dropped immediately. His face lit up with a winning smile – a genuine, deep and knowing smile. It was through his words and his facial expressions that one could know his keen intelligence and genuine kindness of heart.

Q: Tell me what surprised you most in your own research of Lincoln and how is that demonstrated in the movie?

A: The vitality of the man, the magnetism of his personality, and the life-affirming sense of humor were much greater than I had realized. His sense of humor was one of the ways in which he combatted his own melancholy. Those who knew Lincoln described him as a very funny man. Lincoln himself recognized that humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep. He saw laughter as the joyous, universal evergreen of life. His stories were intended to whistle off sadness.

Q: You have mentioned that Lincoln’s storytelling was key to his personal and professional success. Can you tell us how it helped him and brought him closer to the people of histime?

A: He had hundreds of stories that he could all on at any time. The stories often had a point relevant to the moment, but sometimes were just hilarious. His humor would today rival that of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. I think he could have matched them one for one. There’s a moment when somebody says to him, "Lincoln, you're two-faced." And he looks right back, he said, "If I had two faces, do you think I'd be wearing this face?" So many people say that he couldn't possibly be elected in today’s time. But I disagree. With his strength of conviction, with his humor, with his intelligence, with his lovability, our country would really be in trouble if we couldn't elect him today.

Q: At the core of your book and presumably this movie, is Abraham Lincoln’s political genius.

A: Both movie and the book focuson the political genius of this man at a time when we're so distrustful of politicians. The movie demonstrates that it takescompromise, attention to detail, willingness to bargain and masterful timing to get something done, but the system can work. And that's an important lesson for today.

Q: What is it about Lincoln that continues to interest and excite people generations later?

A: People feel a deep emotional attachment to Lincoln than perhaps any other president. In part, it is his life story, the trail of losses and failures before he reached the presidency.  And of course, the soaring words that have been studied and memorized by generations of students.

Q. What do you hope readers will take away from your book and the movie?

A. I would like people to realize that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we normally associate with decency and morality—honesty, sensitivity, compassion and empathy—can also be great political resources.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is available now, RRP £12.99.

Jennifer McVeigh's debut novel The Fever Tree, the epic tale of a British woman embarking on a new life in nineteenth-century southern Africa, has been critically acclaimed and selected for Richard and Judy's Book Club in March. Here, she discussses he inspiration for the book and reveals her top five favourite stories set in Africa.

People always ask me – so what inspired you to write The Fever Tree? And of course there are lots of answers: the Victorian diary on which the story is loosely based, the landscape of southern Africa, my fascination with a character – a girl who cannot recognize love until it is too late. But there is a different answer; one I have talked about less.

I grew up as a tomboy, happier making blood brothers in the woods than painting my nails scarlet. I longed for adventure – real adventure, and spent my weekends camped in an old army tent in the garden, where the dawn light filtered through holes in the canvas (were they bullet holes or cigarette burns?). When I was twelve my dreams came true - my father took me to East Africa on safari.

We rode horses for ten days across the Masai Mara, camping at night under a sky glittering with stars, listening to the low grunts of a lion carry far across the grasslands. We galloped with herds of zebra, clouds blackening into storm. The plains lit up underneath to an iridescent gold, and I remember thinking as the horse pounded beneath me that there could never be anywhere in the world as beautiful as this. We chased ostrich, and – on a hot day – stripped the saddles off our sweat soaked horses and pushed them deep into a lake until their feet left the ground and they were straining and blowing, and it felt as though we were flying. I fell madly in love with the simplicity of the life and the exhilarating dangers of the bush.

One afternoon towards the end of the trip I felt acutely light headed. An hour later I was in the grip of a high fever. I remember the local hospital – a small, flat concrete block with the toilets ankle high in urine and water, and a man with a muddy looking bowl of instruments submerged in water who pricked my finger with one of them and took a blood sample. Malaria they said. There were no planes available to fly me to Nairobi hospital and by the time my father managed to charter one I was hanging on by a thread.

I recovered in Nairobi but the trip left me changed. The exhilaration, the adventure, the vast, remoteness of the landscape, and – at the end – the terrible sickness, had a profound effect on me, and these experiences lie at the heart of The Fever Tree.

Jennifer McVeigh's Top 5 Africa Stories

“In the biggest, brownest, muddiest river in Africa…” The Enormous Crocodile waded into my four year old life with a terrifying snap of his jaws and a reckless disdain for morality as I knew it. He wasn’t just eating children because he was hungry. He was eating them because it was fun. And I was thrilled. So began a lifelong love of the wild spaces and wild creatures of Africa.

It was Jock of the Bushveld – the most famous dog in South Africa – who brought this wilderness to life. Has there ever been a more loveable, loyal companion? My childhood hero – Jock, the runt of the litter, who was almost drowned at birth in a bucket of water – grows up to be the bravest dog on the veld. His adventures opened up to me the landscape of Africa – the lives of transport riders travelling across the great plains, the hidden dangers of the bush, the nights huddled around the camp fire, the roar of the lion, the open skies, the early mornings and the bush teeming with game.

Later, came Out of Africa, the story of my teenage dreams. ‘I had a farm in Africa.’ I couldn’t speak the words out loud, I so desperately wanted them to be true. My father had taken me on safari in Kenya. We had ridden horses across the rift valley, galloping alongside zebra and ostrich, and camped out under the stars at night. I was in love. Karen Blixen – God how I envied her. I wanted to buy a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills; to lie in bed at night listening to the rain drumming on the earth outside; to ride out with a herd of cattle many hundreds of miles across the bush to meet my husband, fighting a war with Germany. And most of all I wanted a white hunter who would take me on ‘safari’, just the two of us, for months at a time.

It wasn’t until I went to Oxford that I engaged with Africa as a real place, and began to learn a little of her history. Heart of Darkness opened my eyes. Here were Europeans in spotless white suits, and Africans in chain gangs. The dream was tainted. Africa was not a place about which one could spin fantasies. There was something terrible and degenerate at the heart of the European experience which Blixen and Hemmingway had omitted. And I felt ashamed and a little foolish for ever having wanted a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

At last, when I had spent some time in various African countries, humbled but still enamoured, I began reading A Grain of Wheat. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s story of Kenya’s fight for independence was, and remains, one the most arresting and beautifully crafted novels I have read. It showed me a different side of Africa. I learnt a little of what life was like for black Kenyans living under British rule, and – for the first time – I was reading an African novel which wasn’t from an imperial, European perspective. The difference was radical.

The Fever Tree is available now in paperback (RRP £7.99). Follow author Jennifer McVeigh on Twitter and Facebook. 

To celebrate Valentine's Day, this week we held a poll to find the nation's favourite Penguin love story, asking our Facebook fans and Twitter followers to vote for their favourite from a shortlist of ten of our most enduring romantic classics.

After much discussion and in-fighting among the Austen aficionados, Bronte-botherers and Hardy die-hards, the results are in:

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: 24% - 70 votes

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: 18% - 51 votes

3=) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: 15% - 44 votes

3=) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: 15% - 44 votes

4) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: 8% - 24 votes

5) Persuasion by Jane Austen: 8% - 23 votes

7) Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: 5% - 13 votes

8=) Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan: 3% - 8 votes

8=) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin: 3% - 8 votes

10) Le Grand Mealnes (The Lost Estate) by Henri Alain-Fournier: 1% - 2 votes

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Austen's romantic comedy-of-manners will top pretty much any book list it is eligible for; and so it proved here, winning the vote in the end at a canter with a 24% share. The perennial favourite was perhaps still fresh in the public's imaginations after the recent 200th anniversary celebrations. 

There was little to separate the Bronte sisters however, with just six votes to separate Charlotte's Jane Eyre (18%) and Emily's Wuthering Heights (15%). F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was by far the most popular non-English title on the list, also garnering 15% of the vote.

To celebrate the results of the poll we're offering a Valentine's Day 50% discount on Pride and Prejudice at Penguin.co.uk - to claim your discount, simply enter the coupon code 'Love' when prompted.

Happy Valentine's Day!

On Sunday 27th January 2013, we launched the first Penguin Chat (#PenguinChats) with Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia, authors of the fabulous Beautiful Creatures series. #PenguinChats was launched to offer the chance to get an author's undivided attention on Twitter - to ask them any burning questions you just needed to get off your chest.

The Beautiful Creatures Penguin Chat lasted 30 minutes, and so many of you participated that Margaret and Kami couldn't even answer all the questions in time! We really wanted to share some of the questions and answers for you, so we created a Storify to capture just some of the conversation.

Watch this space for more #PenguinChats coming soon - we'll annouce the latest over on the #PenguinChats blog page, so do keep checking back.

In the meantime, did you take part in the Beautiful Creatures Penguin Chat? We'd love to hear what you thought. And, if you have any suggestions for who you'd like to have a Penguin Chat with, let us know in the comments below.  

It’s an odd and wonderful thing as a bibliophile to be able to work with authors and books. Getting ‘behind-the-scenes’ and helping books find their audience, as a marketer, is often about finding ways to extend your own enthusiasm and passion for a book and get the message across.

So when you get to work on a book that you like with a great author, it’s good fun – and a real privilege.

But when you work on THE book that served to remind you exactly why you work in publishing, that makes all the long hours, blood, sweat and tears utterly worth it and has the power to inspire a whole new generation of readers – there are, ironically, no words.

John Green is already an icon in American YA literature, known equally for his mastery of social media, particularly via the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel. With almost 1,000,000 subscribers and 300,000,000 video views, John and his brother Hank are living legends in the video community. This is where I found him, and then I discovered his books.

Teen and YA fiction has come a long way since I was technically the right age to read it. There wasn’t much beyond Judy Blume, Point Horror and Sweet Valley High back then, and although they were great, they’re nothing to the choice on offer now. With limited high street shelf-space and the advent of self-publishing, the genre has opened up even further, so making a mark and really resonating with readers is harder than ever.

Enter The Fault in Our Stars. You can often look back at someone’s career and clearly recognise their big break – their defining moment. It slammed onto the New York Times bestseller list at number 1 in January 2012, then stayed on the list for the entire year; selling in excess of 1 million copies in the USA and being voted as TIME magazine’s Number 1 book of 2012. This enabled John to sell out his one-off show last week at New York’s Carnegie Hall in under 48 hours.

And it’s not just teens raving about it. The Fault in Our Stars was gradually, and now is rapidly becoming one of the most talked about books amongst adult readers, not just standing its own ground, but owning it. Many YA phenomena have crossed over – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Twilight, The Hunger Games – but I challenge you to find a book that will grip you, shake you up and make you think quite like this one.

One of the 80,000 five star ratings on Goodreads.com (and yes, I’ve trawled through most of them!) sums it up beautifully:

‘I don't think any other book has impacted me in ways which I can't even describe myself.’

And so, as John Green arrives on our shores to begin his 2013 UK and Ireland tour, I’ve got a feeling this is another defining moment.

For me personally, I’m finally meeting my favourite author, the one person growing up that I never thought I’d meet – given that the title was previously held by Jane Austen. For everyone else, welcome to the world of John Green. This is just the beginning.

John Green is in the UK and Ireland this February 2013 for a five-city tour across London, Swindon, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin. Plus, a live-streamed Puffin Virtually Live event from Sadler’s Wells on Monday 4th February at 2pm (watch John Green's Puffin Virtually Live Event On Demand). 

Gemma Green is Marketing Manager at Penguin Children's [and a massive John Green fan]. 

If you know a love story that's worthy of the Penguin Classics livery - download our template from here and show us on facebook by tagging it @Penguin Books. 

If you're in need of inspiration, have a look at here.

Despite being 200 years old today, the story of Pride and Prejudice resonates as strongly as it ever did. To those who believe that love will prevail, the love affair between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy has become an archetype for everything a romance could be. To mark the anniversary, here are some classic covers of Jane Austen’s most famous work.


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2012

That's it. FINISHED!! We have finally Done Dickens. Over the past year-and-a-bit the tireless trio of Becky, Sam and I (with a few other hardy readers joining us occasionally) have braved 16 novels, countless late nights and over 10,000 pages to finish our mammoth quest to read all his novels. To be honest, I'm exhausted. It's just magazines until Christmas now. Or maybe just drooling in front of the television.

Our final novel was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which Dickens died halfway through writing - leaving its mystery (who caused the disappearance of Edwin one stormy Christmas Eve?) unsolved. I was relieved to discover, however, that the culprit is so obvious a claxon almost sounds every time he appears, and that Dickens told practically everyone he knew the ending anyway. Phew. The joys in this book come from it feeling both reassuringly like Dickens's earlier novels in its pastoral setting and manageable number of characters, yet also rather experimental and modern with its Agatha Christie-like structure, its racy opening scene in a drug den, and the respectable choirmaster-slash-sexually obsessed, opium-addicted maniac, John Jasper. 

We were very satisfied by Edwin Drood, but also left very, very sad that Dickens was cut short in his prime. There's no sign of a dropping off in talent. Instead his novels seemed to be getting darker, weirder and more experimental every time, and each one was utterly different from every other. He could have gone on to write a dozen more masterpieces. But we'll never know what came next.

I remember saying when I read our first novel, The Pickwick Papers, that I felt I was going to make a friend for life, and I did. Dickens is like the loudest, funniest person in the room at a party. True, he might get drunk and maudlin and go on a bit, but he's really the only one you want to talk to. I'd defend him to anyone.

Why? Firstly he is HILARIOUS. I genuinely didn't realise how funny his writing would be. Whether it's Betsey Trotwood and her donkey fixation, the Fat Boy in Pickwick storing food in his mouth overnight or, of course, cheeky cockney Sam Weller, Dickens creates characters of comic genius. Secondly, no-one does dialogue like Dickens. Apparently he used to practice his characters' verbal tics in front of a mirror, and you can always tell. Whenever I read a piece of dialogue by another writer now, it just blends into one voice. Thirdly, there is no such thing as a bad Dickens novel. Even the ones we liked less (step forward, Oliver Twist), had a hundred times more invention, imagination, memorable characters, scenes, descriptions, speeches and pure fun than most other books of the time - and today. I could go on all day but you might fall asleep, so instead I'll finish with the novels in order of our favourites.

Behold, our festive Dickens hit parade!

1. David Copperfield is our top book. Moving, memorable, hilarious perfection, with more great characters than most other writers could create in their whole career.

2. Dombey and Son. We can't understand why this gripping, heartbreaking story of a dysfunctional family isn't more loved or popular.

3. Great Expectations. I wanted this at number 2, but Becky and Sam overruled me. Still, we all loved its elegiac, grown-up sadness and fairytale beauty.

4. A Christmas Carol. A story so perfect it feels as though it's always existed, and couldn't possibly have popped out of one person's head.

5. A Tale of Two Cities. A rollicking, blood-soaked weep-fest.

6. Nicholas Nickleby. We'd put this above the Big Beasts for its theatrical exuberance.

7. Little Dorrit. Now on to the serious ones. Best last line ever.

8. Our Mutual Friend. Perplexing, murky, haunting, utterly dark.

9. Bleak House. Also grimly brilliant, but I didn't take it to my heart as much as some others.

10. The Pickwick Papers. Such a drunken joy that I nearly put it above the big famous novels, but then remembered that it doesn't really have a story.

11. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Such promising weirdness.

12. Hard Times. Too short! (but still has some great baddies).

13. Barnaby Rudge. The thrilling mob violence almost makes up for the parts where not much happens.

14. Martin Chuzzlewit. Frustratingly excellent in parts.

15. Oliver Twist. Becky wanted this at the bottom, but I thought Nancy's murder saved it.

16. The Old Curiosity Shop. Thank goodness for Quilp.


Thanks Dickens, it's been a blast.

Louise Willder, Copywriter

Sitting in a café in Istanbul, eating baklava and drinking coffee whilst reading Orhan Pamuk. I am, as a tourist, distinctly unimaginative. But that is how I chose to spend my days off, having spent three days meeting publishers and visiting the İstanbul Kitap Fuarı, or Istanbul Book Fair, on my very first sales trip.

Before leaving, I was fairly convinced that no amount of preparation would be enough. Reading profiles, looking at past submissions and trying to become fluent enough in Turkish to be able to understand publisher’s websites (Google translate only goes so far) somehow didn’t seem enough. It turns out however that one of the greatest pleasures when meeting foreign publishers is not wowing them with what you do know, but rather admitting what you don’t. This gives the publishers – the obvious experts in the field – the chance to tell you about their market. And the picture painted by the Turkish editors I met was a refreshingly positive one.

The Turkish market is growing. According to some, it has quadrupled in the last five or six years. New publishing companies are springing up and building their lists. Book shops with floor to ceiling shelves, wooden floors and a healthy supply of interested customers are open until late. The number of foreign publishers visiting the yearly book fair in Istanbul is growing and grants are on offer from the Turkish government to help agencies cover the cost of making more international trips.

There is also however a fair amount of trepidation. While publishers such as CAN, Siren, Yapı Kredi and Everest are producing literary fiction, historical romance remains the most popular genre by far. One editor speaks of a disparity between what editors will buy and what sells, suggesting that not everything in the book shops is to the public’s taste. There also appears to be a lack of a Young Adult market, although Twilight and before that Harry Potter managed to overcome the competition from video games and other media to go on to sell well.  Time will tell how the new publishers will fair. As one editor from an established house put it, ‘we’re all in the same boat.'

The ebook market in Turkey is still small but people appear confident that it will grow here as it has done elsewhere. The despondency of one non-fiction editor who told me that this meant that in ten years we’d all be out of the job was tempered only by his editor/translator colleague chiming in that he’d been hoping to retire to a small place by the coast anyway.

Lots of the people I’ve met seem to have come to publishing after working somewhere else first. Working in a bank, for the government or as a translator, the effect is one of perspective –publishing doesn’t feel like an isolated industry but rather part of the country’s identity, its history and its language. Academics edit, editors translate, banks own publishing houses and literary agents study for Masters Degrees in their spare time. A history editor happily translated my name into Ottoman Turkish, whilst chain smoking and discussing which of our titles might work for their list.

If Turkish publishers are all in the same boat, then it certainly seems that the waters they’re sailing on are calmer than our own, for the time being at least. While publishers in the UK nervously watch to see whether arrows will be green or red, pointing upwards or downwards, talk in Turkey is of growth. Visiting a new publisher in an office consisting of five chairs and three desks and discussing their vision for their list gives the impression that something exciting is going on; long may it continue.

Ansa Khan Khattak
Penguin Rights Executive

I've always wanted to say "We're gonna have to pull an all-nighter!" in the manner of a 70s journalist breaking Watergate whilst eating Chinese food from cartons. Staying up until 3am to finish Our Mutual Friend, the second-to-last novel in our Dickens marathon, almost felt as good.

This is a long, murky devil of a book, but I'm glad I persevered. Our Mutual Friend is dark, fantastical, mysterious, uneven, often frustrating, but I loved it. This story of a fortune made from 'dust heaps' (according to the notes, mountains of waste!) has the weird humour that the Big Monsters Bleak House and Little Dorrit sometimes lacked, but with all their grimy atmosphere and obsession with money. It has fantastic melodrama, murders, doubles, disguises, sexual obsession, disappearances, blackmail and con artists. It has a psychologically fascinating villain in repressed schoolteacher Bradley Headstone, possessed by lust, grinding his fists against walls until they bleed. And it has the dark, swirling Thames, which runs through the story and sucks everyone into its power.

Best of all are the women. Yes, the familiar creepy father/daughter relationships are still here, yet I felt something had shifted. The women are interesting and (mostly) non-saintly. They are stronger than their fathers; they make their own livings, they change and develop, and the central heroines Bella and Lizzie both, in different ways, save the men they marry. Jenny Wren, a crippled doll's dressmaker of childlike appearance, is a strange presence, but also has a sharp brain, seeing through the 'tricks and manners' of the men around her.

I don’t think the upper-class characters in the novel work so well, but perhaps that's because it's the weak, the humble and the odd that really interest Dickens. Please, please don't be put off by the gargantuan size of Our Mutual Friend, and give this strange and brilliant book a try.

Next time, we shall be wearing black armbands for our very last Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood...  

Louise Willder, Copywriter

So now we’re into the final day of the Chicago TARDIS convention and last night was the Masquerade in which all the fans who love the costuming element of Doctor Who strutted their funky stuff, to the adoration of the crowds.

Judging then took place with guest fashionistas Ian McNeice (who played Winston Churchill in the series) and Simon Fisher-Becker (who played Dorium Maldovar) deliberating alongside “cosplay” experts from fandom to award certificates of merit.

As usual, I was amazed by the levels of creativity on show for not only do cosplayers make precise replicas of onscreen attire, they also make wild departures from the televised versions to adapt costumes, creating a sub-genre called “Fem”.

In this category, women will take the costumes worn by men (and especially the Doctor himself) and tweak them into feminine outfits of dresses and corsets. There was even a Fem Dalek ballerina and a TARDIS ballroom gown.

And it’s not just the grown-ups; children love to play dressing up and younger Doctor Who fans are no exception.

To me, these costumed fans are an excellent example of what the show is all about. Because, no matter what anyone might tell you, Doctor Who is not a children’s show. It’s a family show that everyone can enjoy.

And these guys really do wear their (two) hearts on their (meticulously-crafted) sleeves!

Richard Dinnick

Richard Dinnick is a writer of TV, comics and books who has contributed to the Doctor Who and Moshi Monsters ranges that Penguin publishes including: Doctor Who: Alien Adventures, The 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Sticker Book coming next year. You can follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/richarddinnick) or find out more by visiting his website (www.richarddinnick.com).

Having survived the madness of the Black Friday sales, the Doctor Who convention Chicago TARDIS is now in full swing.  But what, you may well ask yourselves, happens at a Doctor Who convention?

For the uninitiated, a Doctor Who convention is the mutated offspring of a television chat show and a fancy dress party with renegade DNA elements of a stag or hen party. The stars of the show along with us lesser mortals are interviewed on stage or sit on panels discussing the finer points of writing, or acting, or the rich history of the TV programme itself.  One panel even asks is Doctor Who is a religion (well, enquiring minds want to know)!

And of course there is the dealers’ room (pictured, right) where every possible merchandising opportunity has had a Police Box slapped on it – from t-shirts to teacups and posters to coasters – along with the more usual DVDs, books, comics and action figures.

The several hundred fans attending the “con” mingle and chat, queue for autographs, watch the aforementioned panels and interviews, view their favourite episodes on the big screen and compete for the most outlandish or intricate costume. I will be blogging about the costume pageant tomorrow with a few images of this amazing spectacle, but the most important aspects of these conventions is the camaraderie, the sincere friendships that people – professionals and fans alike – make.

These things are great fun and a wonderful way to meet one’s readers, listeners and viewers. And, as you’ll see tomorrow, the creativity of the professionals is equaled by that of the “cosplayers” who go to such extraordinary lengths to make their costumes the best and most accurate.

There is such a lovely atmosphere at these US conventions. Everyone is upbeat and out for a good time. The cliché of the reclusive, awkward Doctor Who fan is blown away by the gregarious gathering of people here.

Because, in the end, that’s what we’re really here  for: to meet up with old friends and maybe make a few new ones along the way. Although, it does helps if you know your Hath from your Eldrad…

Richard Dinnick

Richard Dinnick is a writer of TV, comics and books who has contributed to the Doctor Who and Moshi Monsters ranges that Penguin publishes including: Doctor Who: Alien Adventures, The 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Sticker Book coming next year. You can follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/richarddinnick) or find out more by visiting his website (www.richarddinnick.com).

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

If you missed out on a trip to Shakespeare’s ‘wooden O’ this summer, you’ll be pleased to learn that its unique swelling scenes can now be yours to behold from the comfort of your local cinema, as the brand new Globe on Screen season begins this week. Cinemas across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and America will be screening three plays originally staged at the Globe during 'The Word is God' 2011 theatre season, including All’s Well That Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, and Doctor Faustus. Last week, the Penguin Classics team was treated to a sneak preview of some of the upcoming shows and how they’ll look on screen.

We spent a fascinating hour discussing the uniqueness of the Globe experience with some of the actors, directors and the team at the Globe, and the fantastic opportunity this new season represents for a new worldwide audience to get a taste of that magic usually contained to a sunny (or not so) spot on London’s Bankside. Ross MacGibbon, Screen Director of The Taming of the Shrew – which was recently filmed for a future Globe on Screen season -  talked us through the long, careful process of editing and fine-tuning that takes place after the plays are recorded live, and Charles Edwards, who played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (which begins showing in UK cinemas on 10th October) admitted to being a little nervous but ultimately excited to see how his performance would translate to the big screen. We also discussed with that play’s director, Jeremy Herrin, the potentially discomfiting idea of a theatrical experience, usually such an intimate, singular moment in time, being immortalized forever on film and broadcast around the world – it’s this frisson and conversation between a live and mutable thing, a play, and something recorded, a film, that makes this season so brave and exciting.

The season is the perfect compliment to another tribute to Shakespeare’s time and experience currently gracing London – the wonderful new British Museum exhibition ‘Shakespeare: Staging the World’.

Like the Globe on Screen season, this exhibition celebrates the pivotal role of the playhouse as a window to the world, and offers a unique view of London as it was around 400 years ago. And we can’t recommend the beautiful accompanying book highly enough: Shakespeare's Restless World (out this week).

All’s Well That Ends Well kicks off the Globe on Screen season on September 26, and you can find your nearest venue here: onscreen.shakespearesglobe.com.

Rose Goddard
Classics Editorial

In 2012, as the world’s gaze turned on London for the Olympic year, the British Museum explored this capital city from a slightly different viewpoint – by trying to get inside the heads of the people who lived here over 400 years ago.

In Shakespeare’s Restless World, a series presented on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year and now accompanied by the book (released 27th September), we explored the stories of 20 objects – some grand, some everyday things – that help us imagine what the world looked like to the groundlings inside the Globe theatre around 1600.

I talked to Shakespeare scholars, historians and experts on the fascinating issues these 20 objects raised – everything from exploration and discovery abroad to entertainment, monarchy and even the deadly threat of plague closer to home.

As well as objects from the British Museum, many are from collections across the UK. I have travelled across Britain to get a closer look at what these objects, such as a fork found on the site of the Rose Theatre, a book of royal murder plots, and sunken treasure from Morocco, can reveal to us about daily life, national politics and global economics at the turn of the 16th century.

Throughout the book, there is something else that allows us to picture these turbulent times so vividly: the works of William Shakespeare himself. In the chapters, we delve into his plots and characters, his speeches and soliloquies, to seek glimpses of the uncertain times in which he lived.

Right now, the British Museum is presenting a major exhibition Shakespeare: staging the world, bringing together a vast and eclectic array of Elizabethan and Jacobean objects, including the 20 featured in the radio series and book. This exhibition provides a unique insight into the emerging role of London as a world city four hundred years ago, interpreted through the innovative perspective of Shakespeare’s plays. Featured alongside these objects are digital media and performance created in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Neil MacGregor

Director of the British Museum
Author of Shakespeare’s Restless World
(accompanying the BBC Radio 4 series - Shakespeare’s Restless World)

Well knock me down with a weighty tome, we are officially three-quarters of the way through our mammoth attempt to read all of Dickens! I can’t quite believe so many words have gone into my brain. Our latest is the ironically-titled ‘Little’ Dorrit, a monster at 860 pages. It’s the third in Dickens’s ‘condition of England’ novels (after Bleak House and Hard Times) and, in our group’s view, easily the best.

Set partly in the notorious Marshalsea debtors’ prison (which, fact fans, you can still go and see the remains of), the story of pint-sized Amy Dorrit, her imprisoned father and their family’s rapidly changing fortunes has all the darkness, dirt, mystery, meatiness and obsession with money of Bleak House, but combined with the humour and memorable characters of earlier novels. It’s gone straight into my top five so far. These are just some of the reasons why:

• It has proper, complicated, psychologically damaged characters with rich interior lives. Arthur Clenham, ostensibly the hero, seems indelibly scarred by his miserable upbringing. Amy, while unfeasibly good and wise (and whose childlike appearance is somewhat icky), had a serenity that made her very moving to me. Even Flora Finching, Arthur’s ex, once a coquettish beauty and now a faded embarrassment, could have been grotesque, but is portrayed with subtlety and humanity.

• It made me snort with laughter on several occasions, particularly at Mrs Plornish of Bleeding Heart Yard, who convinces herself she can speak Italian in the same way I ‘spoke’ Danish after watching The Killing.

• It has one of the strangest, most unnerving and ambiguous chapters I’ve read in Dickens’s novels – ‘The History of a Self Tormentor’, where an emotionally disturbed woman tells us how she got that way.

• It has an utterly fantastic death scene. I won’t give too much away, but the description of a body in a bath, the ‘white marble veined with red’, is surpassed only by the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist.

• It has one of the loveliest, most moving last lines of a book, ever. I defy you to read it and not get choked up.

Next, we race on to the blood-stained streets of revolutionary Paris and A Tale of Two Cities …

“Each of us has skeletons in his soul, as the English say.”

Hello fellow challengers. Well, if you’re anything like us, you’ll have had a busy few weeks, and reluctantly experienced a little bit of a lull in your reading because of it. But don’t worry – we set ourselves plenty of time for this challenge precisely to allow for a set back or two.

So a quick look at what’s been happening up to now (we’re only up to page 250 but what we have managed to read has been eventful to say the least!)…

Kitty’s health has been failing since her humiliating rejection by Vronsky, and she is advised to go abroad to recover.

Meanwhile, in Saint Petersburg, Vronsky continues to pursue Anna, who, despite an initial attempt to reject him, eventually gives in to his attention. The narrative jumps forward a few months, to a point at which their relationship has been consummated, and Anna is pregnant with Vronsky’s child.

When Vronsky falls from his horse during a race, Anna is unable to hide her distress and when Karenin reminds her of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is fast becoming the subject of gossip, Anna confesses all.

Recounting it like this, it seems pretty simple, doesn’t it: Anna and Vronksy have committed adultery and done a terrible thing? But what’s struck us most in these last few chapters is that morality for Tolstoy isn’t that clear cut...

His narration is such that at no point amid all of the gossip, guilt and lying around their affair is judgment passed on any one character. In fact the narrative, which shifts from character to character in attention and focus, seems engineered precisely to generate opposing views - even Anna herself describes the sensation of loving Vronsky as a “criminal joy”.

Linked to this is the idea of emotional self-knowledge, the conflict between inner and outer lives - something we picked up on at the very beginning of the novel, and something that’s kept coming up since.

Anna and Levin represent the extremes of self-knowledge. Vronksy explains their predicament with absolute resignation: “Whatever our fate is or will be, we have made it.” As a result of this they seem (whether we consider it shameful or not) very public with their affair - so much so that when Vronsky falls from his horse during his race, the strength of Anna’s feelings for him make it physically impossible for her to hide her horror.

In fact, it’s the public nature of their affair seems to bother Karenin more than Anna’s adultery itself, and Tolstoy’s portrayal of him is very much as her cold, restrained counterpart; “not a man, [but] a machine” – someone who believes that “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that might have lain unnoticed” and who finds his own feelings “illogical” and “senseless.”

When Anna does confess, we feel that surely it’s is a truth he can’t ignore? But his response is only that she must maintain the status quo until he can find a suitable solution, ensuring that her admission, her attempts at truth (which is fast becoming the currency of morality in the novel), change nothing about her situation. Meanwhile we see Karenin, whose conscience is theoretically clear of any social wrong, as guilty of a preference for deceit.

That’s quite a cliff hanger to end on so we’re dying to read on! Expect more from us next week and until then happy reading.

Crying while reading Dickens's novels is getting to be a regular thing with me. Maybe it's because I know we're getting near to the end of our mission to read all his novels, or maybe it's because number 13, A Tale of Two Cities, is such and exciting and moving yarn. For sheer storytelling brio, this is up there with the best.

You may well know the set-up: two men, one woman, blood on the streets of revolutionary Paris and, of course, LA GUILLOTINE (as well as terrible family secrets, baby-killing aristocrats and lashings of revenge).

The set pieces are sensational: a cask of wine breaks and everyone laps it up from the streets, mothers squeezing it from handkerchiefs into babies' mouths. The murderous crowd sharpen their weapons on a huge grinder, whipping themselves up into a frenzy of bloodlust. So much blood is spilt that it poisons the water supply (apparently this is true!). There's even a fantastic bitch fight between the devilish knitter Madame Defarge and a doughty Englishwoman. As if these treats aren't enough, A Tale of Two Cities also features one of my favourite heroes, the lawyer Sydney Carton: worn-down, world-weary, drunk, despairing, tortured by what he could have been, made noble by unrequited love.

If you took away the boring bits from Barnaby Rudge, Dickens’s other historical novel (also featuring plentiful mob violence) you might come near this for excitement, but not for the emotional intensity of Carton’s heartbreaking story.
 
As Becky says:

I loved A Tale of Two Cities. Sydney Carton, the dissolute lawyer, is one of my favourite Dickens characters (along with David Copperfield from David Copperfield and the horse from The Old Curiosity Shop). Not all the characters in this book have that much depth, but who cares when there is such an excellent narrative arc, and so much galloping, and so many rivers of blood. A great adventure story, but also a book that should be read by anyone who's planning on starting a revolution to overthrow an evil dictatorship, just to make sure they've thought it through.

Next time, there will definitely be more weeping as we move on to Great Expectations. I'm filling up at the thought of it.

Louise Willder, Copywriter

I've finally discovered a greater pleasure than reading Dickens – and that's re-reading Dickens. Great Expectations, the 14th in our epic Dickens readathon, was, shamefully, the only one of his books I'd read properly before (at school), and visiting it again was an unalloyed joy. George Orwell said that once Dickens has described something you see it for the rest of your life, and here the images of Pip looking at the little graves of his family, the lawyer Jaggers obsessively washing his hands, Wemmick posting his dinner into his letter-box mouth, were just like flashback.

Yet there were surprises too. I'd forgotten just how quickly the hero Pip goes bad, becoming an unbearable, snobbish idiot even before his life is changed by coming into money. In fact, he's a complete tool for pretty much most of the book. Yet the changes in his character are turned into something so psychologically true, so gripping, and rendered with such unbearable honesty that it's car-crash compelling. When Pip describes his shame as his childhood protector Joe comes to visit him in his new life as a London gentleman ('If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have'), it's like a stab through the heart.

I'd also forgotten just how dark, mysterious, ghostly, weird and violent the novel is. Dickens describes how the feelings of guilt and fear that accompany childhood trauma (in this case an escaped prisoner threatening to eat your heart and liver) can taint your entire life and warp everything that comes afterwards. It's such a haunted book. Perhaps I still love David Copperfield slightly more, but it's very close. This book is like David Copperfield's sad, dark, grown-up and heartbreaking shadow. I cried like a baby at the end. What more can I say?

Next time, the last Big Beast and the second-to-last novel in our list – Our Mutual Friend …

Louise Willder, Copywriter

Every November for the last few decades, Doctor Who fans have gathered in Chicago to celebrate the world's longest-running Science Fiction TV show. The current incarnation of the event is called Chicago TARDIS and coincides with both the broadcast of the first episode on 23rd November 1963 and the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

This year the convention is marking the 7th Doctor' era with main man Sylvester McCoy (about to appear on the big screen as Radagast the Brown in Peter Jackson's new version of The Hobbit) and the lovely Sophie Aldred who played his companion, Ace (now voicing Tree Fu Tom, the hugely successful computer animated series on CBeebies).

Of course, most people in the UK will be familiar with the concept of Thanksgiving from US films and TV, but one thing I never knew about until I came for the first time last year is the mysterious shopping event known as Black Friday.

Every year many retailers in the USA slash prices by huge margins and open their doors at midnight on Thursday 22nd November and let the punters who have often been queuing around the block and in their hundreds storm the aisles.

This is nothing like our own rather tame January sales or the myriad mid-season sales that litter the high streets of the UK like Autumn leaves. No. There is a feeling of Mardi Gras to a Black Friday event. Last year I donned a Viking helmet to wait in a freezing line of jovial, upbeat Americans and enter into the merchandising madness, running up and this year was no different. Except for the headgear.

That's not to say this was any less crazy, with those who had waited patiently at the front of the line coming away with shopping trolleys full of electronic goods (huge LCD TVs being the highest badge of honour).  Later arrivals then strip the shelves of lesser  but still impressive bargains like a plague of locusts on retail therapy.

It's fun and frenetic and everyone has a good time (pictured above are the queues at Target, Westin, circa 11pm last night). The closest I can think of an equivalent in the UK is the pictures we used to see of Harrods Sale in which hundreds of bepearled ladies would vie for the finest furs and crash crockery into baskets in a peculiarly British frenzy of bargain hunting. Only, Black Friday seems so much more good natured.

This morning the Doctor Who convention begins in earnest and I'll be bringing you edited highlights as the weekend progresses. And if you think black Friday looks and sounds strangely eccentric, then you ain't seen nothing yet! Wait for the Doctor Who costume pageant on Saturday night...

Richard Dinnick

Richard Dinnick is a writer of TV, comics and books who has contributed to the Doctor Who and Moshi Monsters ranges that Penguin publishes including: Doctor Who: Alien Adventures, The 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Sticker Book coming next year. You can follow him on Twitter (www.twitter.com/richarddinnick) or find out more by visiting his website (www.richarddinnick.com).