We\u2019ve been talking a lot about marketing: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also said that I would \u201cshow you some snippets of how the book itself lines up behind its marketing promises \u2013 not just early on, but all the way through.\u201d So that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week we said that my books were: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the marketing message we wanted to deliver everywhere. But is that actually true of my stuff? We\u2019re about to find out. I\u2019m going to look at the first book in the series, Talking to The Dead<\/em>, but in principle we could do the same exercise with any of the books. Here goes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n First chapter<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first chapter opens with Fiona being interviewed for a British police job by a British police officer. So I obviously tick the boxes for British-set police procedural and it\u2019s already evidence that Fiona is going to be the detective who propels the series. So at the most basic level, my opening chapter reassures readers that they\u2019re going to get what they came for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As for the \u201cliterate\u201d requirement \u2013 well, the literacy doesn\u2019t shout out at you, but it\u2019s there all right. Take this passage: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthews is a big man. Not gym-big, but Welsh-big, with the sort of comfortable muscularity that suggests a past involving farm work, rugby and beer. He has remarkably pale eyes and thick dark hair. Even his fingers have little dark hairs running all the way to the final joint. He is the opposite of me<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That last line is inventive enough that it will catch the eye of people wanting to engage with decently written and thoughtful prose. But it also hints at more. What is the opposite of Matthews? Well, Matthews has a \u201ccomfortable muscularity\u201d to him. The ingredients making him up involve farm work, rugby and beer. So Fiona\u2019s the opposite of that. If Matthews is physically grounded in his body, Fiona is the opposite. Where Matthews is literally comfortable in his skin (and muscles), Fiona isn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a very roundabout way of suggesting that where Matthews is comfortable with the basic task of being alive<\/em>, Fiona is not. But roundabout is fine. The theme is there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And (not to beat about the bush) it\u2019s there in the last paragraph of the first chapter too, just after Matthews has told Fiona she\u2019s getting the job: <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m standing up. Matthews has stood up too and comes towards me, shaking my hand and saying something. His big shoulders block my view of Bute Park and I lose sight of the kites. Matthews is talking about formalities and I\u2019m blathering answers back at him, but my attention isn\u2019t with any of that stuff. I\u2019m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Boom! You want a story about a detective who used to think she was dead? Well, here she is, chapter one, telling you she used to be dead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Page 50<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n On page 50 (in my Word document, not the actual book), I have this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve never cried once during my time on the force. Indeed, that hardly says it. I haven\u2019t cried since I was six or seven, ages ago anyway, and hardly ever even then. Last year, I attended a car accident, a nasty smash on Eastern Avenue, where the only serious casualty was a little boy who lost both his legs and suffered significant facial injuries. All the time we were getting him out of the car and into the ambulance, he was crying and holding his little tiger toy against his neck. Not only did I not cry, it wasn\u2019t until a few days afterwards that I realised I was meant to have cried, or at least felt something.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I reflect on all this as Amanda cries and I say, \u2018It\u2019s all right,\u2019 like a mechanical toy, wishing one day to find some tears of my own.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The core elevator pitch is present here too \u2013 albeit only very obliquely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But obliquely is fine! Obliquely is actually good. If you bash away at the same thing in the same way for 300 pages, you\u2019re going to produce a tedious book. So really you\u2019re pasting together a thousand jewelled pieces, no two of which are quite the same, and which all have slightly different lustres and qualities, but which combine to give the effect you are seeking to deliver. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And this passage \u2013 Fiona failing to cry when it might be normal to do so \u2013 points again to the core oddity of Fiona. What\u2019s wrong with her? Why no feelings? Why does she talk of herself as a mechanical toy? And, golly gosh, if you wanted to summarise in two words the self-view of someone who used to think she was dead, then \u2018mechanical toy\u2019 gets you pretty darn close, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Page 150<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiona gets ready for a date: <\/p>\n\n\n\n I go up, get dressed and put on some make-up. I don\u2019t often make the effort, but if I put my mind to it, I can look all right. Not Kay-like gorgeous. That\u2019ll always be well beyond me. But nice. An attractive girl. That\u2019s all I\u2019ve ever hoped to achieve, and I feel a kind of satisfied relief at being able to achieve it. More than relief. Pleasure. I like it. I like the way I look tonight.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n At seven ten, I skitter out of the house. I\u2019ve still got an undercurrent of anxiety about my physical safety, so I carry a kitchen knife in my clutch bag, but the knife is quite a small one, and the clutch bag matches my dress, has silver trimmings and boasts an extravagant silk bow, so as far as I\u2019m concerned, I\u2019m still in girly heaven<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two things here. First, the relationship between Fiona and physical looks is slightly non-standard. It feels like she is wanting to tick a box \u2013 to fit in. It\u2019s not quite that there\u2019s anything forced about that impulse, just that it doesn\u2019t feel to flow with real naturalness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And second \u2013 more strikingly \u2013 she goes on a date with a knife in her clutch-bag. Fiona\u2019s version of \u2018girly heaven\u2019 still involves something intimately bound up with violence and death. All that is highly consistent with a woman who has a very complicated relationship with the fact of being alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Page 250<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re getting towards the end of the book now. The big denouement is about to take place. Naturally enough, the prose is more concerned now with setting up the next stage of the action. Except that here is how the chapter starts: <\/p>\n\n\n\n A mile or so away from my destination, I park up. The verge is so thick with tall stalks of cow parsley that I have to mow a swathe through them to get off the road. All their pretty white decapitated heads<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That last sentence is classic Fiona description. Yes, British verges in May are gloriously lacy and white. Yes, if you park on them, you\u2019re likely to knock over some flowers. But \u2018pretty white decapitated heads<\/em>\u2019? Only Fiona would join some springtime floral loveliness to a particularly gruesome image of mass murder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, the reference to our elevator pitch is notably oblique. But it\u2019s present \u2013 that\u2019s what matters. Fiona has a strange relationship to life and death. And here, looking at flowers, those two things get joined in a very unsettling way. Even on page 250, where the book is getting ready to let off some fireworks and then close down, the theme is there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh yes, and the reason why I chose to look at pages 50 \/ 150 \/ 250 is simple: I wanted to prove to you that I wasn\u2019t cherry-picking extracts. Truly, truly, the theme is there pretty much anywhere you look. (I checked page 100 and page 200 too. And yep. You find the basic pitch all present and correct there as well.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Closing chapters<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I won\u2019t talk about the closing chapters in detail. Suffice to say that in the pre-penultimate chapter, Fiona tells her boyfriend (and the reader) about the psychiatric condition that she used to have. She tells him: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018In a mild form [of the illness], patients suffer from despair and self-loathing, but my form wasn\u2019t mild. Not mild at all. I had the full monty. In a severe state, patients hold the delusional belief that they don\u2019t exist, that their body is empty or putrefying \u2026 For two years, I thought I was dead.\u2019<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Boof! That\u2019s the promise of the elevator pitch fully and completely discharged. All those earlier clues and hints now line up between the fact that unifies and makes sense of them all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The penultimate chapter is something of a riff, a monologue, from Fiona. As part of that, she imagines talking with one of her former psychiatrists. In that (imagined, not real) conversation she tells the doctor that she spent a night once in a mortuary. The doctor is shocked and she responds: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes, The mortuary, Doc. Where they keep dead people. Why? Are you bothered by the dead? Do you have uncomfortable feelings around them that you find hard to deal with? Perhaps you should find someone to talk to.<\/em>\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, that keeps the core pitch front and centre of this chapter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We then move onto the final chapter where Fiona learns another deep secret about her past. She is moved and finds that something very strange is happening to her: <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not a painful sensation, as I always thought it must be. It feels like the purest expression of feeling that it is possible to have. And the feeling mixes everything up together. Happiness. Sadness. Relief. Sorrow. Love. A mixture of things no psychiatrist ever felt. It is the most wonderful mixture in the world.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I put my hands to my face again and again. Tears are coursing down my cheeks, splashing off my chin, tickling the side of my nose, running off my hands.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n These are tears and I am crying. I am Fiona Griffiths. Paid-up citizen of Planet Normal.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n She cries. For the first time in twenty years. The person who started the book as the \u2018opposite\u2019 of big, Welsh, muscular Matthews is now not exactly the same as him, but on the same planet as him. She\u2019s come home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Elevator pitch \u2013 delivered. Reader (assuming they are in the market for this kind of book) \u2013 satisfied. Marketing task \u2013 done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s enough about marketing. We\u2019ll be on something completely different next week. Bring a glass of ros\u00e9 and a bowl of salted almonds. We\u2019ll talk till the sun sets beneath the wine-dark sea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Til soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019ve been talking a lot about marketing: I also said that I would \u201cshow you some snippets of how the book itself lines up behind its marketing promises \u2013 not just early on, but all the way through.\u201d So that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing today. Last week we said that my books were: That was the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n