So Close To Home

My short story titled "So Close To Home" has just been published in Languages of Water, an anthology edited by Eugen Bacon. As usual, I'm blogging a few words discussing how the story came to be written. There may be spoilers within.

This anthology came into being via Eugen's short story, "When The Water Stops", which was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "Languages of Water" - Eugen blogs - is a cross-lingual hybrid birthed from the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange (WrICE). At the heart of WrICE is a simple idea: to give writers of different backgrounds a chance to step outside familiar writing practices and contexts and connect deeply with writers from different cultures and across generations in an immersive residency. The respectful and generative space for reflection, conversation, creative sharing and surprise that WrICE offers affords writers a muse - a precious opportunity to explore possibilities outside comfort zones and borrow something new into own creative practice. It sparks connections and grows a cohesive community of writers that spans boundaries.

"When The Water Stops" becomes a source story in "Languages of Water" where it appears in multiple translations and interpretations. Eugen asked me to contribute to the project, and "So Close To Home" is therefore inspired by that story.

Envisaging a world where water is in short supply led me to consider how the impact of aridity might affect countries that would normally have no fear of drought, namely the UK and those in the Northern Hemisphere. How they might repurpose water from elsewhere, or add other liquids to it in order to bulk it out. How they would ration it. The story is split into two sections, centered around a child - Joel - who accompanies his father on the morning trek to a repurposed filling station in the first section, and in the second section is older and in a gang that seeks to intercept one of the water trucks. The title - of course (perhaps) - is appropriated from the Raymond Carver short story, "So Much Water So Close To Home."

Here's a bit of it:

Joel didn’t understand the ins and the outs, the hand-me-down jokes, but when he suggested the plan, they listened. The trucks made pre-determined journeys, not dissimilar to the passage of water down a mountainside in the golden days. From the source they spread, fanned along tributaries, turned where the land grooved. In Joel’s city they arrived in the early hours, twin orbs lighting darkness. In amongst the metalwork at the rear of the garage Joel found the tyre iron he had hidden three days ago. Gripping it in his right hand he left to join the others.

Languages Of Water is edited by Eugen Bacon is published through MV Media. It can be bought here.

Thoughts After Reading: White Spines

I've decided to write a series of posts, when the fancy takes me, regarding books recently read. Not reviews as such, if you want those then check out my Goodreads page, but considerations. The first of these concerns "White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector", by Nicholas Royle.

I shortly began reading this book after the long Easter weekend. As we do every few years, my partner, Sophie, & I had decided to put all our books into author alphabetical order. When I say all our books, I'm not including Sophie's new books which are kept separately upstairs in order of her preference, but my books and our secondhand books which are downstairs split over four shelves (some doubled up). Despite having numerous unread books, we keep buying, so rather than account for space to slot them in as we go, new books have a temporary space until we do the alphabetical thing every couple of years. It's something that we enjoy.

Of course, despite us logging all our books on LibraryThing, this process always seems to throw up a duplicate that we bought and didn't realise. This time around it was "Serenade" by James M Cain. Oh well. I'll have to give that a good home. Rather pleasingly, this reshuffle also meant I could add two letters to the ten books whose spines now spell "M A R T I N B E C K" rather than "M A R I N B C K", being the full set of novels featuring that detective by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. It also means I will no longer keep buying one of those novels thinking I don't have it, when I do (at least three duplications in that series in previous years). However, annoyingly, I see the first book doesn't have 01 on the spine unlike the others which are numbered.

For some time now I have kept a list of my unread books as a Word document. I have two lists, one of regular books and one for books by friends. For a while we've said I should also include the books Sophie owns as another list, so during this reshuffle we added the books of hers that she recommends I should read. This means I now have three lists, whose numbers are: main list (310 books), friend's list (57 books), and Sophie's list (183 books), meaning I have 550 unread books in the house (or at least, those unread which I intend to read).

I keep these lists because I decide which will be my next book to read by having Sophie pick a number at random once I've finished my current read. Apart from a few exceptions (books to review, Maigret novels I slot in once or twice a month from the library which I'm reading in order of publication - all 75 of them(!), and other books where there is some pressing need), I stick to this on the basis that it uncovers gems in the house I might otherwise not have bothered to read. The intention now will be to have a number chosen from my list, then the next from the friend's list, and then from Sophie's list, in rotation. It should only take me ten years to read all the books unread that we have...on the basis that we don't buy any more books.

I was speaking to a writer recently at the Dragon Hall Social event organised by the National Centre for Writing who believes that "collecting books and reading books are two separate things entirely". I'm inclined to agree.

Shortly after putting all our books in author alphabetical order I finished reading "Slave Stories: Scenes From The Slave State" edited by Chris Kelso (in which a story of mine is included), and the next random number generated led me to pick up the non-fiction title, "White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector", as you might well have guessed.

Whilst at the optician's today (Sophie's eye test, not mine), a couple came into the waiting area and I overheard the male say, "Another optician's I have sat in. You could write a book on that." To which his partner replied, "Sssh."

I mention this because overheard conversations about books are included in Royle's "White Spines." And I mention the author alphabetical and random number generation as examples to prove that it isn't only Royle who is obsessed by getting things right coupled with the excitement of luck and coincidence. Initially, reading "White Spines", where Royle regales the reader regarding his collecting Picador 'white spine' books (I've taken the liberty of using his photograph below), one gets the impression that he's completely bonkers. It's only as you read on and identify with almost every aspect of collecting that you realise you're bonkers too.

Whilst I don't collect certain publishers, reading "White Spines" has made me realise how few Picadors I own. Glancing around now I see I have a couple of Ian McEwan ("The Comfort of Strangers", "Black Dogs"), "The Marvellous Adventure of Cabeza de Vac by Haniel Long, sat alphabetically alongside Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", and Susanna Jones' "The Earthquake Bird" (which is out of the date that Royle collects and I see the title on the spine is in blue rather than the usual black on white). There may be others hidden behind (in fact, I later find "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sacks and "Rat" by Andrzej Zaniewski), but this paucity of Picadors makes me feel like a fraud.

In my teens, I was more specific with my collections. I loved the numbered spines of Willard Price's Adventure series of (what would now be called) YA novels, and was deeply uncomfortable when number 13, "Tiger Adventure", followed a different format to those which preceded it. I also loved Ian Fleming's James Bond series, specifically the Triad Panther editions with female models draped over exceedingly large replica firearms. Additionally at that age I bought many Agatha Christie novels, particularly those with covers designed by Tom Adams in the Fontana series (I preferred those with the Fontana logo at the top on a white background, with "Agatha Christie" and then the book title underneath, with the artwork underneath that). Sadly, both the Fleming and Christie titles I car booted in bulk fifteen years ago, and have spent the past five years steadily buying them back.

According to Wikipedia, Nicholas Royle has had fourteen books published in total (including novels, novellas, short story collections, and "White Spines"), of which I own thirteen and have now read twelve. I need to get this one, at some point, to complete my collection:

Living in Norwich there are several bookstores to choose from. I prefer Oxfam on Magdalen Street which unlike the Oxfam Books & Music Store on Bedford Street isn't a dedicated bookstore and this is reflected accordingly in more favourable prices. It's been a while since I was in the Tombland Bookshop (lovely building, but somehow I find it off-putting for no particular reason), and whilst I used to buy regularly from the J R & R K Ellis bookshop on St Giles (where I am sure I would find some Picadors) I haven't done so for quite some time (I wonder if the floorboard between the shop's two rooms still squeaks?). The bookstore I wish still existed was The Scientific Anglian on St Benedict Street, which was packed to the rafters with books in precarious states of arrangement. The owner, Norman Peake, was described as a Cretaceous geologist and bookseller whose work on the stratigraphy of the English chalk was truly ground breaking. Those who staff the Oxfam stores may have equally focussed lives, but these are less worn on their sleeves. And at least they never write the price in biro in the top right hand corner of the cover and then draw a box around it.

"White Spines" mentions Nicholas Royle's namesake, another Nicholas Royle who is equally an author, as well as several other examples of author duality. I am reminded of my own namesake, the Andrew Hook who - unlike me, is a professor - and writes non-fiction (most recently, "From Mount Hooly to Princeton: A Scottish-American Medley"), who also gives his name to the Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies in Glasgow), and who - also unlike me - has a dedicated Wikipedia page. Goodreads also provides a third Andrew Hook - unless the Scottish Hook has a predilection for writing erotica as well as non-fiction, whose titles include "Hot Vacation: Naughty Friends #1" and - presumably - the equally hot #2. Finally, I see there is a non-author Andrew Hook who is a Geography lecturer at the University of Sussex where - rather bizarrely, perhaps - Nicholas Royle's namesake also holds residence. To my knowledge, none of us have ever been mixed up.

When Nicholas Royle's publishing venture, Nightjar Press, published my short story, "Throttle Body" as one of their chapbooks last year, Royle came to my house whilst I signed the 200 copies and I noted his eyes roving the few Picadors on my shelves. Having already been aware of his collection prior to reading "White Spines", I mentioned that whenever I saw a Picador in a secondhand book I would think of him and wonder if he had it, but that I wouldn't dream of buying it and passing it on because presumably it would suck all the joy out of collecting. As expected, Royle agreed.

Finally, Royle also mentions in "White Spines" the delight in finding what he has come to call "inclusions" - whether bookmarks, receipts, concert tickets, or otherwise that people tend to leave inside books and which - for some odd reason - booksellers also tend not to remove. I've never had much luck with inclusions - I'm obviously not buying enough books - or perhaps not enough Picadors - however my best example probably couldn't be bettered. In New York around 2004 I visited the vast Strand bookstore and picked up a copy of Jonathan Carroll's "Sleeping In Flame" (Vintage) that sometime afterwards I realise included a short religious pamphlet and a photograph of a girl in some kind of traditional dress. If anyone knows this kid and wants the photo back, drop me a line.

"White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector" is published by Salt Publishing, is highly recommended, and can be purchased - new - direct from the publisher, here.