VinceT

For too long
these shapling
structures
consumed our air
and swallowed
our
best
hearts

Drowning
out yearning
disavowing all
desire
for freedom
to choose
our
best
paths

Finally abandoned
obtuse orders
constrictions
fighting free
yielding promise
our
best
ideas

Our muse swelling
creative
“Here we are!”
Yelling at bonds
Those pitiful
objectionable
meaningless
fear-driven
tethered restraints

“These!”
we cry
“These are
our
best
hearts!”

Flooding
dungeons
Emitting
Radiant
Exultant
Breaking
senseless bounds

We screamed
emergent…

Emerging
from
the shroud

I was interviewed at The Examiner over the weekend as my last formal stop on the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… I can, and do, write pretty much anywhere. At home, my office is chaotic, but I fall through the computer screen pretty quickly and all the junk and paraphernalia on my desk disappear.

I always have music on when I write, and I count that as the most important part of my writing environment. I usually write to what I call ‘transport music’, floating away from my own moment and into the landscape of the story. For Family Rules, and especially the redraft, I was listening a lot to the Scottish band Mogwai, who make epic heavy instrumental rock, very powerful stuff.

So, I tend to think of my writing environment as my MacBook Pro, a screen and transport music, all taking me into the heart of my stories…”

I was humbled to read this review of Family Rules at Word Up Nerd Up today:

“… I picked this up for a casual afternoon perusal, intending to read the slim volume over the course of a couple of days. Within the first few pages I was lost in the time warp that is brought on by a really good story. There was no way I was ending the day with Family Rules unfinished.

The story ricochets between the UK and New York, the 1980′s and present day, all narrated [sic] in Kenny’s plaintive voice. He was at once a child who had to grow up too quickly, and an adult who never did grow up, suspended in a state of perpetual discomfort and discombobulation.

Kenny’s life as a child actor is central to the story, but surprisingly it is not accusatory. Throughout it all Kenny is damaged, but he is not deviant- a small, but important, distinction.

My biggest problem with this book was the inconsistent use of American and British spellings and colloquilisms. Quite truthfully, it is exactly the kind of inconsistency you would expect from a young man who spent his first years in the UK, then moved to the US with his British parents. I know this, yet I still found it distracting. What can I say? I’m nerdy that way.

My verdict: Read it! One thought I had as I raced through Family Rules is that it is what A Million Little Pieces could have been, had it been good. For all the over the top angst and drama spewed by Frey, he didn’t get it right. Tuckwood has managed to create a believable story that leaves us feeling both saddened and hopeful for the main character. It is still early in the year, but I have a feeling that Family Rules may very well end up on my list of top reads in 2012…”

Today, I’m interviewed over at As The Pages Turn as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… To understand Kenny, it’s really important to know that he spent the first five years of his life raised by a television-family, often being treated as little more than a prop or dummy. It’s also worth noting that his addictions began in those years, his minders giving him Valium in honey to keep him calm between scenes. The upshot is that psychologically, Kenny runs away from reality whenever it gets too close. He’s quite a poignant, tragic character; as a writer, he feels very real to me, more-so perhaps than any character I’d written before.

Ivvy is like the Yang to Kenny’s Yin. She’s a junkie cop, working undercover for Vice. Older than Kenny, she’s drawn to normality like a moth bashing its head against a porch light. This push-pull between Kenny and Ivvy is key to understanding their relationship. She’s clinging to him for some sense of a normality she can attain, while he’s repelled by her neediness because it feels too real.

The joy for me in writing Family Rules was to take these two damaged people and make them ‘parents’…”

Today, I’m guest blogging at Idea Marketers as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… To write to an outline or by pure intuition?

Ah, the artist’s endless dilemma!

With structure and plan, we know where we’re going, so get to travel easier, safe in the knowledge that there is a destination; comfortable that we will arrive, even if the journey meanders.

Riding the intuitive lightning? It’s a mercurial roller-coaster of channeled creativity, while in the background, the whispering critic challenges us that we don’t know enough, aren’t clever enough, aren’t worthy enough to bring this crested wave to fruition. An extreme activity for sure, and it carries its fair share of highs and hangovers.

In the past twenty years of writing, I’ve written books at both ends of this spectrum…”

And, before you even think of calling me

[Mum]

I’m not thinking of starting up again.

I just finished Certainty, the screen adaptation of Do Sparrows Eat Butterflies? and am very pleased, and humbled, by how its turned out.

That last may strike you as odd, to be humbled by a story. But if you read Memento: 2001- My own time and space oddity, you’ll remember that the novel was written against a backdrop of seismic shift in my life. Most of the writing still feels like a dream to me.

In the 8 years since I published the book, I’ve tried to start writing the screenplay a number of times but never gained traction with my muse. And, as ever with my novels, all the time I’ve had readers telling me that they can see the movie when the read the story, and that I should really think about adapting it.

Last year, around the time I started work on Team Building, I took tentative steps to begin Certainty, but all the other stuff of last year held me off any serious work until December.

And when I did turn my attention to the adaptation, I realized just what had been holding me back.

I was stuck in the how of telling Ray’s rebirth.

For those who haven’t read Sparrows, it’s told in first-person, present-tense – i.e. what happens to Ray happens to the reader in real-time. By necessity, there’s a LOT of internal dialogue and Ray’s weighing up of events, and of his reactions. This lends pace to the writing and, truly, is what brings people into the story so deeply – we experience Ray’s rebirth, we don’t observe it.

All of which is great in a novel but, frankly, crap in a movie – unless we’re making 1960′s French art house, which we’re not.

[believe me, if I'd written and published this in the 60's, there's a good chance that's exactly what would have happened]

There was a real risk that this would be a) a boring film, b) completely lost in self-analysis, and c) totally unworthy of the original novel. This is a story I love, filled with characters I know intimately, and I couldn’t let myself do that to myself.

So I was stuck.

Until, one day in the shower

[oh, how the movement of water, and idle reflection, opens my sub-conscious]

I had a very clear and vivid snapshot of how to bring the internal dialogue to the screen.

[and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is]

Tentatively, I started carving the screenplay – lifting the whole book over, chopping out all the unnecessary, and porting the internal dialogue into the vehicle I’d imagined. And boy did it work! In the space of a couple of weeks, I reworked, tightened and shaped this story for the screen. A couple of days back I registered it for copyright and it’s already heading out into the world.

And, yes, I was humbled by the process – as I often am. When you give yourself to your art, and allow it to flow through you, it can feel other-worldly – a scary feeling, a joyous feeling.

Once again, Ray’s story has told itself and, though the hard work of getting it out there now begins, right now I feel like a post-coital cigarette.

If only I still smoked.

Which I don’t.

But you get my drift anyway, right?

I’m being interviewed over at Broowaha today as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… I read voraciously, both fiction and non-fiction, so it’s difficult to pin down specific books.

Some books that now feature high on my list didn’t make sense at first, mainly because I think I read them when I was too young. A good example of this is George Orwell’s 1984, which I tried to read several times as a teenager, and could never get past the first few chapters. I read it again recently and was stunned by Orwell’s prescience – especially given the idiocy of modern politics, the shock doctrine and double-speak media, where it feels like 1984 is being used as a “how to” manual. I guess I needed the maturity of the intervening years to be able to open myself to its political insights…”

Today, I was interviewed at Blogcritics as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour:

“… Of The Tribe was a vampire tale, Jeremiah Whispers a metaphysical homage to Clive Barker, and Jumbo a take on the media and its fascination with quasi-messianic characters in the midst of tragedy. The triggering event in Jumbo is a 747 crashing in Central London and, bearing in mind this was written six years before 9/11, when the planes struck the twin towers, I just gave up any idea that it would get published. With a complete rewrite to reflect 9/11, it could have current credibility – but, to be honest, I’ve not got much energy to revisit that path, not when there are new stories to tell…”

If it’s Wednesday, then I must be over guest-blogging at Waiting on Sunday to Drown as part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“…Unless we are born with deformity, or suffer an accident, we human beings have basically the same skeleton – number of bones, how they’re organized, etc. – yet we couldn’t be more different when the flesh and skin are layered over the top. It’s what sits atop, and within, the structure that makes us come alive.

It’s the same with story – the structure that has been distilled into the typical movie formula is as present in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as it is in an episode of ‘Teletubbies’. Story arcs form the skeleton of human existence…”

Today, over at Literarily Speaking I’m sharing 5 things you need to know about Kenny Walsh, the former child star whose story is told in Family Rules. This is part of the Family Rules Virtual Book Tour.

“… 2. On the set of ‘Family Rules!’, Kenny was given a spoon of Valium in honey to keep him calm between scenes. He grew to look forward to the gaps between scenes more than the scenes themselves…”