Review: from the field book by Carol Thistlethwaite

I never knew how little I know about birds till I read this book of poems. The poetry dances with movement, the movements of birds, light, airy, full of flights and dips, insights like flashes of wings and tail feathers. There are a few humans mixed in, but not enough to spoil this wonderful play of wildness and nature. Dip into it, drown in it, fly with it, 'from the field book' is a delight of avian (and alien) culture.

Carol Fenlon

It's full of sharp imagery and observation and a treat whether you are an ornithologist or a poet.
Graham Rippon

These poems are skilfully crafted and immensely satisfying to read and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Dee McMahon

Walk through these poems and you will find yourself on shores, in woodland and marshes, amongst mudflats, rocks and creeks. These places are evoked with as sure a touch as the vital and often ebullient descriptions of the birds, who are the heroes and heroines of this collection.

Carol, a long time member of the RSPB, knows and loves the Avian world in a way many of us could not begin to understand, but through her eyes we gain a deeper awareness of the morals and mores of the feathered community. We are lulled as we listen…

…to each tern gently rustle down,
on the islet of sleep, where plover already rest
with feather over beak,

then startled awake by redshank…

Quick stepper of the mud,
run, run, stab,
run, run, stab,
to life's rapid beat,

We are taken on a journey of discovery to a greater knowledge of birds, we grasp their essence, their infinite variations, their ways of moving and flying, there is an intensity and urgency in many of the lines that is almost painful, as in 'Kestrel,'…

Hunger hunting
eyes cut the marsh,
focussed like a scimitar,
razored as the air.

I think these poems will inspire any reader to look more closely at what is happening on our shores, in the countryside, in our gardens, all around us, by the way these delicate, often elegant, and sometimes aggressive creatures, come to life on the pages.

Kate Edwards

Carol Thistlethwaite's love of ornithology inspired this collection. Her acute observation and knowledge honed and shaped the contents to make each poem as individual as each bird.

Les Merton

From the beginning, these poems get to the essence of human perception, but which enter - as much as is humanly possible - the consciousness of birds which are their focus. The delicacy of line and line-break enacts this, though sometimes it's the work of diction. Intense observation precedes translation into the most memorable of literary language.

Robert Sheppard

Excerpt

Author biography

What’s so Funny ’Bout Fiction by Magdalena Ball

Another day, another literary scandal. First (Well maybe not first. See this list here) there was Helen Darville’s faked history behind her Miles Franklin winning novel The Hand that Signed the Paper, then there was James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, novelist JT LeRoy, who finally admitted to being Laura Albert, Nasdijj, the Navajo memoirist who turned out to be porn author Timothy Patrick Barrus, Misha Defonseca, who turned out to be Monique De Wael, author of pretend memoir Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, and then Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer, who has admitted that Margaret Jones is a pseudonym and that her memoir Love and Consequences was also faked.

So what’s with all these faked memoirs and identities? Does the fault lie with the publishers for not fact checking? Some would have it so. Does it lie with the authors for duping their publishers, their agents, and of course the angry public who feel cheated of a real life story when all they got was fiction? What’s so funny 'bout fiction anyway? A good story is a good story, whether it really happened or whether it was pulled together by someone who imagined it. Frey’s book for example may not be damn good history, but it surely it is still the same damn good fiction that Oprah cried over. Perhaps even the bigger truths of the work – those characters and situations that we find verisimilitude in--remain the same. Writing a novel is no easier than writing a memoir – it takes an awful lot of work, talent, research, and inner searching to produce a full length book that takes the reader somewhere that he or she can recognise as real regardless of genre. The books have to be truthful in one way or another or they won’t touch the reader.

Perhaps novelists are faking ‘memoirs’ rather than writing ‘novels’ because of the public’s insatiable hunger for ‘what really happened’ and the flow on effect this has with publishers, who are much more willing to take on memoirs than new fiction. My own novel Sleep Before Evening, is entirely fiction, but you can’t write a novel without putting an awful lot of yourself into it. There are plenty of moments that really happened, and the novel is full of the truth, because that is the whole point of fiction – to show something real and meaningful in a narrative construct. We don’t live in a linear, narrative type of universe. Our lives are bombarded with a range of sensory perceptions, memories, diffuse narrative threads and anticipations. Both memoirist and novelist take these things and use art to create something structurally accessible that others can understand, but there’s always construct, selection, re-invention. There’s always artfulness. Even relating a recent memory involves that kind of construction. I’m not condoning the literary hoax; nor am I suggesting that these hoaxes don’t matter – of course it’s wrong to go on the record as being someone you aren’t – particularly when you are dealing with sensitive issues or race, experience or influence where you might steer someone wrong because of your pretence or create inappropriate propaganda because of your bias.

But I am suggesting that the kind of reverence that the public places on “what really happened” – the obsession we seem to have with “reality TV” and gritty revelation talk shows – might be misplaced. James Frey was a successful author long before he faked his memoirs, but it was only the attention from Oprah and the ensuing scandal that made him a literary superstar, or super villain if you prefer – I’m not sure there’s that much difference from a sales point of view. But should I really care whether James Frey really went to jail for 1 day or 10? Should I begin investigating because there’s a small discrepancy in the dates in Ismeal Beah’s latest memoir, A Long Way Gone? The key issue here is whether these are good books or not. If we buy them because they’re shocking, or amazing stories (“hey madge, you won’t believe what this kid got up to”) that don’t ring true, and are full of ridiculous rubbish we are happy to believe (“he swore in his memoir that aliens took him to Mars and I believed him”) then we might deserve to be lied to. If the memoir is beautifully written, and full of rich, vivid detail which touches something very real in the reader, then maybe it remains good fiction even if it isn’t good fact. The truth is about something deeper and more powerful than simply the bald facts.

In Jill Lepore’s excellent piece in the New Yorker, “Just the Facts, Ma’am”, she makes this point wonderfully, exploring the relationship between historical writing and fiction: “For Fielding, there are two kinds of historical writing: history based in fact (whose truth is founded in documentary evidence), and history based in fiction (whose truth is founded in human nature).” There are many different kinds of truth, but the memoir, real or faked, certainly doesn’t have a greater claim to it than fiction does.

Magdalena Ball is author of The Art of Assessment and Quark Soup. She runs the popular Compulsive Reader website. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in many printed anthologies and journals and have won several awards.





Magdalena's debut novel, Sleep Before Evening, was published by BeWrite Books in 2007.

Azam Gill - The Warrior Bard

Azam Gill is a writer and a warrior. And his thrillers are based on first-hand experience of front line fighting, covert commando operations, under-cover intelligence work … and on a seemingly incongruous lifetime’s love-story with literature, study and teaching.

Now a French citizen, Gill was born in Pakistan, the son of a renowned jurist father and a talented playwright mother. He is fluent in several languages, but it is in English that he writes his novels. He was educated in English schools and colleges run by British and Americans and he gained his BA from Forman Christian College of the Punjab University in English literature and Political Science.

Accepted as a ‘gentleman cadet’ at the Pakistan Military Academy, he passed out among the top 10% of his graduation year and was commissioned to a light infantry battalion of the Punjab Regiment in Kashmir. He also won his paratrooper’s wings. In Kashmir, one of the world’s flash-points, Gill and his troops lived in underground earthen bunkers, crossing snake- and rain-filled crawl trenches and minefields as part of daily routine. The Kashmir border is known for a war of attrition involving intensive patrolling, fire fights, artillery duels ... and a chilling casualty rate.

He served as Intelligence Officer, Company Commander and Regimental Adjutant and was also in charge of the crossing of spies through his sector.

“It was all vital experience for the kind of novels I wanted to produce. I earned the right to become a thriller writer the hard way … I suppose you could say I wouldn’t ask my lead character do anything I couldn’t do myself.”

Gill received a Master’s in English Language and Literature from the Punjab University and published a pamphlet, Jail Reforms, and a book, Army Reforms. Although Jail Reforms was on the syllabus of the Prisons Training Academy, both books were seized and burnt by the authorities.

“I was angered by what I saw around me and the best weapon available to me was the pen,” he told Twisted Tongue. “The trouble was, the enemy was more heavily armed.”

One of his former instructors was the late President Zia ul Haq’s private secretary. He called Gill to Islamabad and warned him that he should immediately leave the country before his imminent arrest for angering the authorities by his writing.

Harassed, seeking protection and a new life, Gill decided to take the advice – he followed in the footsteps of beggars and princes who have served in the ranks of the tough French Foreign Légion.

After basic training, he was posted to the 1er Régiment Etranger de Cavalérie and became the first Légionnaire to gain a PhD, which he received from Grenoble University.

At the end of his Légion contract, which added a wealth of experience to his writer’s arsenal, Gill worked as a language teacher and became a lecturer at Grenoble University’s Polytechnic. He was then seconded to the French Navy, where he taught English.

He never laid down the pen during this busy period and wrote a monthly column on Geopolitics for The National Educator, a Californian monthly paper. His political articles were published in non-fiction book form under the title Winds of Change: Geopolitics and the World Order, available at Amazon.com.

But he told Twisted Tongue: “I needed to express myself to a wider readership than I could reach with my more academic work, so I turned my hand to fiction … and it worked!

“Rather than stating hard facts and opinions, I learned to make them apply to characters that came to life on the page. Readers could relate to the people I created and hear what I had to say by following them through gripping stories of love and hate and triumph and disaster. Fiction is a wonderful medium.”

His first novel, Blood Money, was published by UK-based BeWrite Books and was closely followed by Flight to Pakistan, also by BeWrite Books.

He said: “I was motivated by the horror of Islamic terrorism and its covert funding in the west. All I needed was a hero and a gripping plot, so I created a character who was a battle-hardened Foreign Legionnaire and drew on a lifetime of experience to bring the scenes to life.

“Some of the seemingly wildest people, places and situations in my books are one hundred percent real. I’ve met them, I’ve been there and I’ve done it!

“I wanted the book to be absolutely realistic, so I also put in a lot of extra research – and it turned up other facts much stranger than fiction.

“I was working full time when I wrote the novels, but I set myself word-targets to meet and the pages seemed to fill themselves. BeWrite Books saw potential in the first manuscript, Blood Money, and I worked closely with one of their editors, Neil Marr, for three or four months, pruning, rewriting and even adding passages until the book was ready to go.

“My second BeWrite Books novel, Flight to Pakistan, came more easily because I’d by then had a grounding in fiction. Again, though, there was the guidance of another seasoned BB editor, Hugh McCracken, to see the work through to publication.

“Much of the editing process involves curbing my enthusiasm for providing lavish detail. It’s the teacher in me.

“The editing process itself is an experience no writer should miss. The BeWrite Books team is pretty spread out with its professional editors and admin and technical staff in France, Germany, Canada and the US, so everything was handled by email and telephone. It’s a tremendously streamlined and efficient way to work.

“When I took my family to meet some of them at a get-together in the French Alps – it was between the two books – I found that they were just as passionate about my work as I am myself. Neil Marr was there, Cait Myers, the publisher, and Neil’s son, Alex, who handles the technical side of things. We talked books, politics, religion, French cheeses and what have you until the sun came up again.”

Gill now has two other novels in the pipeline and has no plans to ever stop writing in spite of a heavy day job schedule and hobbies that include cooking, swimming and French Savate Boxing.

In his forties, he lives in France with his wife and three young children. He said: “We have a lively family life, but the children are wonderful – they know when I’m at work writing and leave me in peace.”

Gill – informally, he prefers his French-sounding surname to his first name, Azam – is one of several new names in fiction to find the answer to the closed-door policy of major publishing houses in a handful of editorially driven independent small publishing houses whose main sales outlet is the Internet.

He said: “Even the small presses are swamped with submissions. But at least they’re open to as proposal from an author who isn’t exactly a household name. And the entire process is thoroughly professional.”

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from Blood Money, Flight to Pakistan

Click here for Azam Gill's biography

Silenced Cry at New York Book Festival

Congratulations to Marta Stephens.

Her debut novel, Silenced Cry, has been awarded an Honourable Mention at the 2008 New York Book Festival.

25 for 25 - Free Books!

We are offering an exclusive opportunity for people to get their hands on 25 pre-publication eBook copies of Harry Hughes' debut novel The Bait Shack.

The book itself isn't out until late October, so this is a chance to read this book before anyone else. All we ask is that you promise us a review of 25 words. Why 25 words? Well 25 copies for 25 words! We'll then chose a winner at random from those we receive and the winner will get a signed copy of the paperback at the end of October.

We'll use the reviews in promotion and publicity with your name on prominent display, including posting it on Blippr, the new site for reviews of 160 characters or less.

So for your chance to receive this pre-publication eBook (pdf) before everyone else, send us an email and we'll send the eBook to the first 25 people who email us here. And then you send us your review before October 10th 2008.

Here's the book's info:

Unemployed whiz kid Dale Cooles struggles to save his marriage and his sanity when his previously charmed life’s turned topsy turvy by a cadre of killers and clowns.

Dale and wife Lacy – daughter of an eccentric but filthy rich Tennessee lumber magnate – unwittingly adopt into their domestic wrangle Twist, the brain-damaged orphan, and Lieutenant Revels, the beat-weary yet determined conservation officer seeking revenge for Lacy’s unscrupulous boss’s part in the mysterious extinction of rare birds on a prime piece of real estate.

And then there are the other extinctions ... the human ones.

In the parade of offbeat characters in Hughes’ ingenious and ’90s-set street smart black comedy of crime, we meet cutthroat businessman Henry Meredith, out for what he can get, psycho hitman Connie Jablonski, out for what he can hurt, mobster Johnny Avalino, greedy to enhance the value of his beach-front property by any means, Nancy Littlecrow, the shameless and cagey Native American attorney who gives new meaning to the term ‘Indian Affairs’, Seymour L. Bram, the retired and retiring Air Force Major suffering from chronic depression and delusions of easy money, Duncan Slochbauer, the slovenly and obsessed amateur producer of grisly news videos ...

And we don’t quite meet poor Karen Kern and the faceless others who might have crossed the path of a crazed and kinky serial killer nobody seems to have noticed lurking somewhere in Hughes’ uniquely colourful dramatis personae.

ISBN: 978-1-905202-92-8 (paperback) 978-1-905202-93-5 (eBook)
Price: £7.99. $15.99 (US), $16.99 (Ca), €10.99
Page count: 264
Release date: October 2008
Author’s blog: http://hughesauthor.blogspot.com/
Excerpt: http://www.bewrite.net/bookshop/excerpts/bait_shack.htm