Date
I opted for a couple of weeks after the publication date for two reasons, because things have been known to not run smoothly at the printing stage, and because if I left it too long I'd lose the high that seeing the spines of your new book produces. I can never imagine people wanting to come at the end of the week when they could have a wild night out, so I picked a Tuesday.
Venue
Previous launches had been at Borders (such a shame it disappeared), and View Art Gallery in Bristol. This time I thought it would be more businesslike to go back to a bookstore so I chose Foyles in Cabot Circus. Robb, the events organiser, is also a drag queen so if you want a rather fabulous intro, he's the go-to man.
Invites
Invitations aren't my job. Luckily I live with clever people. Guest list
was my job - I invited friends, teenagers aplenty, librarians, and every teacher I know. I didn't count the replies because I didn't want to set my expectations high and be disappointed. This is a head-in-the-sand approach. Robb asked me how many people were coming so he could order the stock. I answered with a well-considered lie.
Food and drink
I don't like messy food and books - it doesn't seem right. Majestic delivered red and white wine, fizzy pop and ice to the shop. I brought Maltesers and Flying Saucers (because there are drones in my book).
What to wear
Charity shops are the answer to everything. I invested £5 in a wee silver skirt.
THE TALK
There's something tricky, for me, about an audience of all ages, some that know you really well as a friend, and others that have met you briefly as an author. I was a bit nervous, despite being in the middle of a tour of secondary schools with audiences of up to 250 teenagers. Adopting the usual head-in-the-sand, I scribbled some notes at two in the afternoon, and arrived at Foyles at five with a postcard of drivel.
How did it go?
Like a wedding, in a blur, but there were lots of people, lots of books sold and a satisfying level of laughter. By half-past seven the crowds had thinned and a group of us headed over to Giraffe for something with chips.
Was it worth it?
I know not everyone has a launch, but I think the arrival of a book, knowing the ups and downs of the process, is something worth celebrating, but that's not to say I'm not pleased when it's over.
Tracy Alexander
A typical meeting of the writing group starts at two o’clock on a Monday or Tuesday at the Queen’s house. There are four of us.
The Queen – in overall charge.
Eeyore – in charge of doom.
Dylan – anything goes.
Muttley (me) – in charge of disruption.
As we approach the door, we all stop to admire the garden. Hollyhocks, black pansies, trailing clematis and shrub roses, all line the route to the porch. It’s hard not to feel envy. The Queen has fingers greener than the Hulk.
Once assembled, we share news. Of family. Of films seen. Of food eaten. Of builders. Of fellow Bristolians. At some point the Queen guides us onto matters of writing. We are reluctant, like a book group where no one has read the book. Dutifully we report any happenings. This element is short. We move on, taking it in turns to read aloud our latest work. There should be a method in deciding who goes first, but no, we argue about it. Every time.
Eventually, one of us sighs, brings out a few sheets of A4 and the process begins. One voice. Three scribblers, pens at the ready. We mean well, all four of us, truly we do. But it might not seem that way. The reader, sharing her tortured words with us, is rewarded by giggles, sly glances, outbursts . . . There is a rule that we don’t interrupt, but we break it gaily.
Whether it’s Eeyore’s made-up words, my endless internal monologues, Dylan’s love for continuous present or the Queen’s arty descriptions, we let rip. Small tears and then often huge great gashes. The problem is that we don’t agree. Hardly surprising if you consider our books. We have a plotter, a dreamer, a lover of tangents, a repeater, a spiritualist, a pragmatist, a weaver, a schemer, a joker . . . We like first person, third person, omniscient, accents, fantasy, reality, the past, the future . . . We all think the pace is too fast, too slow, non-existent . . . We’d all write the scene differently . . . although not necessarily any better.
The feedback is only about a quarter useful – we ignore the comments we don’t like. (They’re the same every time anyway – old dogs, new tricks.) However, the relationships, support and conviviality are invaluable. Tea and sweet things add to the pleasure.
When we’ve all had our moment in the spotlight, we try to arrange the next meeting. This takes some time. The Queen likes to holiday. Dylan has a roundabout to play on, Eeyore doesn’t know when she’s free, and I cannot plan ahead. But we manage, noting the date, and then emailing the Queen a week later to ask what we agreed.
I was invited to join the group after a random chat in an aisle at the supermarket. I barely knew the Queen, and had never met the others. The first few occasions were nerve wracking. Not only did I have to produce a few hundred words I could bear to read, I had to try to make clever comments. I failed at the latter, but they let me stay. Three and a half years later, I still look forward to going. In a world with no structure, the discipline of stumping up the next chapter – because turning up empty-handed is just not the deal – has been a huge part of getting my latest book in shape.
It’s a lonely business, but less so, thanks to the camaraderie in the kitchen of the house with the garden to die for. Long live the writing group.
As I contemplated cracking on with my novel this morning – I’m only on Chapter Three – I had a comforting thought. The exact words in my head were Synopsis as friend. My mind’s circuitry led me straight to a case study from my long gone life as a marketer. The subject was dog food.
For ten years I was a proper PAYE employee, selling the likes of frozen food, tennis shoes and booze. For the next ten years I was freelance, selling money in the form of mortgages and investments. At some point I was invited to give a guest lecture at the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Given that I was seven months pregnant, I probably should have declined. Instead I pulled on a pair of black trousers with an oh-so-attractive stretchy panel fetchingly topped by an elastic waistband (for that little known waist that is in fact directly beneath your breasts), buttoned the matching black maternity waistcoat (what joker thought of that) and drove to Cookham.
I wasn’t nervous, until I opened my mouth and realised that my lung capacity, whilst adequate for conversations where you only have every other turn and the person is close by, wasn’t up to the job. I cut short my introduction, offering the delegates a chance to say a little about themselves while I recovered my composure.
My subject was segmentation. Bread and butter stuff. I had all sorts of examples from the world known as FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), from retail and from financial services. All I had to do was teach the theory, show examples – the brilliant dog food slides were ready and waiting – and then relate it to the fields they were working in. I could do that with or without oxygen.
The first attendee mumbled her name and said that she worked on treated mosquito nets. My mind gave a sarcastic ‘yippee!’ Never mind. The others were bound to be working on cars, shampoo, biscuits . . . something I could relate to.
The conch was passed round the room. My confidence ebbed. My smile became as fixed and unresponsive as my twenty-something pupils.
It turned out that I had a global monopoly on marketers of mosquito related products.
Inside I did the equivalent of a refusal at Becher’s Brook.
Whether it was the peppering of the content with irritating little breaths, the hideousness of my maternity waistcoat or my lack of engagement with the mosquito market, by the time I got to the segmentation of the dog food market, I’d lost them. A shame, because it was my favourite part.
Here’s the gist:
Categorising dog food in terms of form – dry, wet, raw – or flavour – lamb, rabbit, chicken – didn’t help marketers understand how to make their products attractive to dog owners. Nor did using the breed, age or size of dog. Research showed that the most meaningful way of sorting the market was by looking at how dog owners thought about their dogs.
Four segments were identified that most influenced the type of dog food chosen:
Dog as grandchild – indulgence
Dog as child – loveDog as friend – health and nutrition
Dog as dog – cheap and convenient.
My audience woke up slightly. Proof that a pet can always be relied on to liven things up, be it in business or school visits. We had our first interaction of any length, a welcome reprieve for my pulmonary gas exchange. The treated net marketers had never considered the relationship between dog and master.
Had they not read The Call of the Wild? Seen Bill Sykes mistreat Bull’s Eye? Or Hagrid berate cowardly Fang? Timmy was surely as much a friend as Anne, Dick, Julian and George.
They eagerly volunteered product names and quickly slotted them into the four segments.
Cesar Mini Fillets in a foil tray – Dog as grandchild
Asda Smartprice Dog Meal. – Dog as dog
Pedigree Chum Chicken – the clues in the name . . .
In what was overall a pretty grey-with-clouds lecture, I enjoyed the little spell of sunshine. Motivation wasn’t something mosquito experts thought a lot about. They thought about geography and insects and shelter and disease and mosquito net fixing kits. They didn’t think about what might be on the mind of the traveller, setting off alone to try and find traces of the Hairy-nosed Otter in Borneo, or maybe the traveller’s nervous father, buying the very best treated mosquito net for his passionate but impractical son.
Marketers often end up segmenting by demographics e.g. age, gender, income, despite the power of psychographics like motivation, personality and attitude. Perhaps writers should lecture at the Chartered Institute of Marketing instead . . .
Quite why my inner voice chose the words Synopsis as friend, inextricably linked in my hippocampus to Dog as friend, who knows, but it made me reflect on my changed relationship with synopses.
My first few books grew in a free spirit sort of way, meandering towards a vague nirvana shrouded in uncertainty. The synopses written afterwards, if at all.
This was: Synopsis as bureaucrat.
My new book,
Hacked, out in November, was the product of a synopsis I HAD to write because the publisher, Piccadilly Press, was interested in an idea I’d mooted and wanted it fleshed out.
This was: Synopsis as unwanted dependant.
I developed the beginning, middle and end of the story, my lovely publisher made a few suggestions and then I forgot about the four-page plan until there was a problem, at which point I reluctantly referred to it.
The synopsis for the sequel, however, is printed out and has its own space on my desk. It feels reassuring. Trustworthy, but not prescriptive.
857 words in, with 50 000 ish to go, I’m glad that I’m not alone.
This is: Synopsis as friend
I even enjoyed the discipline of writing it.
Tracy Alexander
So, my eldest child, aka Dino-Boy, trotted off to Canada back in December to work with wildlife, and in exchange reports came back via Skype on Sundays – his day off. Daily life seemed to be along the lines of: prepared the feeds, cleaned out the cages, mended a fence, went to town to fetch the donated food, ate stir-fry.
The content started to vary dramatically as, having learnt how to handle wild animals, Oscar was given responsibility for his first creature – a snow hare with a limp, AND allowed to go out on 'rescues' – what a word!
The most dramatic was catching two skunks, stuck at the bottom of an eight-metre well. There’s a video of him dangling on a rope, more Mr Bean than Ethan Hunt, and being bitten and sprayed before he can grab the skunk. The scent was so strong that people turned and stared for a few weeks afterwards.
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| Oscar and Meisce |
When a beaver was spotted swimming in salt water in Vancouver, Oscar was given the job of detoxifying the very sick animal. They don’t name the newcomers – too distressing if they have to be euthanised. Happily, Oscar called him Meisce after he responded to the treatment. He’s now back in the wild. Check out the feet!
More animals arrived at the centre and more bites. I only found out that an angry raccoon had taken a lump out of my boy when someone else tagged him – hand wrapped in ice, on Facebook. I demanded a close-up – it didn’t look too bad.
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| This raccoon is back in the wild |
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| This adorable cub will be released next year |
Oscar was due home last weekend, but at the end of March he texted saying he thought he might stay – he’d been offered the chance to look after the 2013 bear cubs, about to wake up after the winter but needing care until their release in summer 2014. No brainer, as Kevin Bacon would say. No surprise either, that April saw me boarding a plane with my daughter, Honor, to go and visit him.He was big.
The same size, but bigger.
We had an amazing holiday, spending days off with Oscar and the rest of the time doing tourist stuff, but the best part was seeing him at the wildlife rehabilitation centre. It wasn’t the fabulous animals, or even the lovely people he works with, as much as the sense that he was in his element, absolutely.
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| White Rock B.C. |
Wandering one evening along the beach at White Rock with Oscar and Honor, a bald eagle flew over. Further along a blue heron lazily flapped a few times to move out of our path. Ten years earlier, there’d been a similar scene. That time we were in Tofino, on Vancouver Island, as part of a six-week escape prompted by my husband losing his job. Bald eagles were as common as pigeons, black bears were everywhere – one crossed the road as we were walking to the beach, whales were blowing, seals collapsed on rocks.
I wonder whether that once-in-a-lifetime trip, Oscar aged nine, tipped the scales, turning the little boy fascinated by dinosaurs into the one living the life in Canada, where wildlife is truly wild (and let’s face it, bigger).
And the raccoon bite, well . . . the photo he sent was of an entirely different finger with an old wound. This one swelled up like a pumpkin, leaked pus, was as shiny as Downton silver, and had to be sliced open by one of the supervisors.
'Didn’t want to worry you, Mum.'
Me, worry?
My son currently goes into the bear den, picks up the poop, feeds them and jangles about to keep them wary of humans. The bears are around a hundred pounds each. There are four of them. Who’s worrying?
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| Halo - turning blacker as she sheds her winter coat |
Tracy Alexander
www.tmalexander.com
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