Wednesday 8 February 2012

The Difference Between Delusion and Illusion


So ten days into the new career, do I feel different?  Yes, I feel like a little round plastic thingy, maybe yellow, maybe red, with a line of string tied around my waist – otherwise known as a yo-yo.  My initial bravado of selling my writing was swiftly followed by an attack of inferiority complex and then the burdening weight of responsibility that when people read my books they are expecting the truth.  The first two peaks and troughs seemed to have levelled out now but the responsibility still lingers.
I also felt this almost overwhelming feeling that now I was publicly trying to sell my name that I had a reputation to uphold.  Now I know this is a delusion of grandeur but what if in the far off future somone says ‘No, I’m not going to buy Hannah Hooton’s book; I saw her littering at the train station’?  In my defense I do try to avoid littering and what can you do if there are zero bins at the station?  This public persona delusion seemed to fold pretty quickly when the day after At Long Odds went live I was slipping and sliding the half hour walk to the station at an icy six o’clock in the morning to catch the Cambridge train so I could attend eighteen hours of university and commuting.  Oh yes, I was in a really chirpy mood.  A group of youths, yelling and tripping over each other, approached and the one girl draped herself over me breathing toxic fumes into my face.  Did I think of my author’s reputation at that moment?  No, I was thinking how ridiculous it was to be still out drunk at six o’clock when I was on my way to work.  So in no uncertain terms I told her where to go and shrugged her off.  She then replied with some surprisingly imaginative insults.
Walking away, I thought that it was really quite ironic.  I don’t recall ever telling anyone to eff off unless I was joking.  I chose to curse publicly the first opportunity and really mean it not 24 hours after becoming published.  Now, I’m under no illusions such a thing would have a long term detrimental effect, or indeed have an effect at all – the girl was obviously never going to recognise me again – but it did make me wonder.

That’s the psycho side of becoming published for the first time.  The other side is the facts.  I’m not about to list my sales numbers etc., but I am amazed and thrilled by just how well received the free promo weekend went for At Long Odds.  It has resulted in some lovely reviews on both the US and UK amazon sites and my latest addiction is checking the Kindle Charts to see if it has moved in the last five minutes.
Naturally, my WIP is feeling ignored and unloved.  To make it feel better I completed another chapter (hit the 40,000 word mark – hooray!) and played around with Title and Chapter headings.  Oh, and I found a new picture for my hero, Rhys Bradford.



In other news, I’m preparing to do the last edit and polish of Keeping The Peace and finding someone capable of designing a cover to do it justice.  With any luck that’ll be up for sale at the beginning of April*.
As part of my degree course myself and two other students made our first ‘movie’ on Monday.  Untitled as yet, it is barely a minute long, is one continuous shot (project requirement) and runs to the soundtrack of Postman Pat (not project requirement).  Not Scorsese-material yet, I grant you, but if you ignore my dodgy camerawork and Mark’s dodgy acting and everyone’s dodgy idea of mise-en-scĂ©ne, then I think we did all right.  We’ll find out soon enough.

*deadlines have never been my friend so consider that date tentative

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Book Release and Film Capture

It’s so tempting to start each new blog post with ‘Crikey, look at the last time I blogged! I’m so sorry I haven’t got on my soapbox for three and a half months.  It’s because of...’ and then insert a list of lame excuses.  My only excuse this time is that I’m instinctively lazy when it comes to blogging and do you really want to hear how my Christmas went?  No, thought not.  I will say though I hope you were at Kempton Racecourse on Boxing Day.  I can’t remember the last time a horse winning made me cry like Kauto Star did in the King George...  Oh yes, I can it was when Kauto Star won at Haydock Park earlier in the season.  That horse is turning me into a wreck.  If he wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup, I shall need to be hooked up to a saline drip.

What this post really should have started with is an apology to the lovely Clare Wartnaby.  She very kindly nominated my blog for the Liebster Blog Award.  So totally undeserved I feel, I never found a way of saying thank you and before you know it, weeks and months have gone by and I felt too embarrassed to speak up.  I can feel the guilt shawling me as I write this.  But Clare really is a great gal.  If you haven’t checked out her blog already then I’d recommend you do here.

If I was even vaguely marketing savvy I should also probably have already mentioned my novel At Long Odds is now out on amazon as an e-book.  Woohoo!  There’s something about writing blog posts that unleashes the secret metaphorist in me and I can’t help but write in bizarre disguises of reality.  I was going to compare At Long Odds’ launch to attempting a pike to double twist somersault off a 6 metre board but since I never had the guts to do anything but divebomb off the 3-metre board, I don’t actually know what that’s like.  I do know however what’s it’s like to unleash my imagination on an unsuspecting audience though now.

It’s bloody scary.

‘You write about horses and love? Are you the next Jilly Cooper?’ I’m asked.
Noooo. As much as I’d like to adopt that tag, I think anybody looking for a Jilly Cooper read should go read Jilly Cooper.
‘Are you the next Fiona Walker?’ they then ask.
Noooo again.  But only because I’ve never actually read any of Fiona Walker’s books (sorry Fiona - I will, I promise).
At Long Odds is all me.  I hope you’ll give it a bash (not too hard though, they’re really strict on whip use these days).  If you honestly don’t think you can, then tell someone who you reckon might enjoy it.
When it was available as a free download it got some great reviews so without trying to blow my own trumpet too loud, it can’t be that bad, can it?  Each £1.98 (minus tax) goes towards the Hannah Hooton University Fund since the loan which the government deem acceptable for students to live on only keeps me in home and food eight months of the year.



In other news?  Not a lot, to be honest.  Well, nothing that would be of riveting interest to anyone but myself (I have an eccentric taste in interests I’ve found).
Oh, I did go see War Horse at last.  Well!  I waited impatiently for about a year for that film to come out and all we get is Equine Lassie?  I’m sorry, maybe I’m being too harsh - it is a family film after all.  I just feel that after the massive build-up it had, it fell a little short of the mark.  It had its moments, don’t get me wrong but it didn’t hit the spot which triggers the waterworks.  I had much the same impression after watching Secretariat back in 2010 - they’d turned a gritty but magnificent horseracing tale into a chocolate-chip Disney ice cream cone.  I rewrote a partial script of Secretariat for one of my film modules last semester and received a first for it.  Take that Disney.

Okay, I’m going off on a tangent so I’d better stop there (you never know, I might be looking for work placement with these production companies someday if I get this degree).
Cheers for now and hopefully it won’t be another three and a half months before the next exciting thing happens in my life.