So good it should be a movie!

This is the sort of thing fans often write to me about Stravaganza, specifically City of Masks, thinking I'll be pleased.


The trouble is that there's a sneaking feeling that a book hasn't really made it till it has been made into a film! Of course it's good news for writers to sell film rights, which increase book sales. And good news for fans, who get to see their favourite stories translated into a new medium.

But how many films of books do you know that are as good as the books they are based on - let alone better? Women in Love? I'd argue for that. And I think I Capture the Castle was pretty close. With LOTR, there's a lot of controversy. I loved Peter Jackson's films but regard them as a separate thing from the books.

The first Harry Potter film was good but The Golden Compass lacked charm, in spite of a good performance by Dakota Blue and some great CGI.

Would I want to see the Stravaganza books of movies? You bet I would. But it might be a disappointment and what matters is the books and always will be.

The importance of a timeline

I am going away tomorrow for two weeks in Italy, partly researching Lucca for Stravaganza: City of Swords, partly checking up on Carrara and Settignano for David. And on my list of "jobs to do before I go" was Answer Fanmail.

This I did but one email took much longer than all the others and I had been rather putting it off, because the sender had queried my timeline in Stravaganza from Flowers through to Ships (three books!)

So there was a lot of digging about to do in cupboards, files and filing cabinets and in the end, dag nammit, she was right!

I had made an error, albeit a small one, that can be corrected in the second printing of City of Ships. In my defence, neither editor, nor copy-editor (two of them) nor proofreader had noticed and they are usually pretty hot about these things. But the responsibility is mine.

And it's not as if I don't make a timeline. I have one for every book after the first one and for all the historicals. But it is easy to make a slip. And how anyone manages without one I can't begin to imagine. Anyway, well spotted, Elizabeth.

And I now feel up there with the creators of Doctor Who in having fans whose obsession is great enough to get things checked. Be back in July.

This week's questions

The Contact Page of my website carries this very clear message:

IMPORTANT
If your question refers to the publication dates of Stravaganza novels in specific countries, please direct it to the publisher, as I don't have this information.

You can find more information on this and on other topics on my FAQs page. Please read it carefully before you write to me. The answer to your question may already be there.

It's in red and in a box. And yet, the most recent batch of emails from readers includes an enquiry from Sweden about when books four and five will be published there, another from Italy about how to find the further books there and one from France about when City of Ships will be translated.

It's perhaps not unreasonable for fans to think I would know this stuff. But actually, I don't! hence the box in red above. There is also one from a reader who wants me to notify her when auditions take place for a film of Stravaganza. Even if there were to be such a film, I could not possibly write to all the young women who have expressed an interest in playing Arianna!

What it seems to show is that there is a big gulf between what a writer's life is actually like and how readers think it is. I do get informed about sales to foreign publishers but have no schedule of publication. I put news up on the website as and when I get it - and I hope you are enjoying its new design and easier navigation.

Readers also often ask "Why did you change the covers?" of  the Stravaganza sequence, but i didn't; the publishers did! Really, writers don't have as much power as you imagine!

And now I must go and answer all those fanmails.

Plotting

We all have our methods - and they may vary from book to book. I like a novel to be 21 chapters, for instance, though several of my 21 chapter novels have ended up with 24 or 25!

My writer friend Nicky Nrowne (N M Browne) draws a circle and divides it into ever smaller segments and works out where the climaxes need to come. I always make a timeline of events so that I don't have characters going to school on a Saturday or something and, in the case of the Stravaganza series I have to have a card index of characters because it's all got so complicated.

This time, now I'm writing a historical novel based on Michelangelo sculpting the statue of David, I thought I'd try plotting the chapters out on index cards too and see if I could match them - all 21 of them - to Nicky's exciting happenings circle.

I was doing this last weekend but felt there was something missing. Then Lonza, the chocolate Burmes car turned up and I realised what it was!

You see, I needed a familiar. Clearly chapter eight/nine is where it's all going to hot up, according to Lonza's tail. I'll let you know when I get there.

Getting started

This is my first Newsletter to go with my brand new website at: www.maryhoffman.co.uk

I'm going to use it to update readers on my latest writing exploits and to answer reader/follower questions. plesae do feel free to comment.

But to get us started, I thought I'd talk about how I got started. I've read lots of blogs about how people first got published and there's a fascinating range of stories.

In my case, when I left university (for the 2nd time - slight blip in career plan then), I was much clearer about what I didn't want to do than what I did. Specifically, I did not want to be a teacher. No disrespect to the profession but I knew I wasn't suited to it - far too impatient.

So, in the absence of any other plan, I decided to write a children's book. Why children's and not adult, I don't now remember, but I got myself a wonderful place to live in Belsize Park, as a dog-walker and house-companion to the utterly wonderful Eva Reckitt, who started the Collett's bookshops.

She was already eighty, a communist, a member of the Wine Society and someone who knew how to continue making friends with people of all ages and how to enjoy herself. I had an almost self-contained flatlet at the top of her house in Lawn Road, where I gave one-to-one tuition to school students in English, Latin and once (memorably) to Artemis Cooper, Anglo-Saxon!

When not teaching, I walked the cavalier King Charles Spaniel Barty, made friends with the accidental patchwork cat Candy and wrote my first novel, White Magic.

I didn't really know what I was doing but bought several books like Alan Garner's Alderley Edge novels and decided I must write 80,000 to 90,000 words. I gave myself a year.

In fact it took eighteen months and then I had to pay someone to type it up for me. (I didn't even own a typewriter in those days). I didn't know about getting an agent so just started sending it out to publishers - who started sending it back.

I had started, almost accidentally, writing for the Times Educational Supplement by then (a story for another day, involving sex and the sunset). Someone from Curtis Brown wrote to me and said "I don't know who you are but you can certainly write. Are you thinking of a book?" or words to that effect. I wish I could say the rest was history but my first agent, Elizabeth Stephenson at Curtis Brown, had no more luck placing my novel than I had had. We both got very polite letters but no offers.

Then I met Richard Adams. Watership Down had just won the Carnegie Medal and the TES sent me to interview him. This I did in an Indian restaurant in Islington where I was rather embarrassed by his loud references to what he had said to his psychotherapist. Afterwards we went back to his house for coffee and he drove me back to Belsize Park.

In the course of the evening I had mentioned that I had written a novel for children (I even looked hungrily at his Medal) and when he dropped me off he sent me in to fetch the ms, which he offered to read for me. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in. HE OFFERED TO READ MY BOOK!

I had no idea just how kind this was then but I do now, so thank you Richard Adams. A few days later he rang and suggested I submit it to his publisher Rex Collings. Rex was in the habit of having books read by two young readers before accepting them for publication. Their reports were good and I got the acceptance letter - still the highlight of my career to date.

I should have asked Richard Adams for a cover quote, shouldn't I? (Though I doubt "perfectly publishable" would have sold many extra copies). The book came out, got 2 good reviews in the TES and the New Statesman, as I recall, and then sank without trace. Not a starry début. But by then it was too late; I was hooked for life. Page struck, as I sometimes describe it.

Ninety plus books later, I am still at it. I type my own novels now, straight on to the laptop, and I've had the same wonderful agent, Pat White, at Rogers, Coleridge and White, for over 25 years. But just think, if the TES had sent another freelance to do that interview, or if Richard Adams had been less kind or as inundated with requests to read unpublished WiPs as he doubtless later became, who knows what might have happened?