Final instalment

Here you are: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/chapter-31.html Enjoy! 

Chapter 30

Better late than never.  Here's the penultimate chapter for you: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/chapter-30.html

THE END IS NIGH...

Only two more chapters to go after this, and the big themes of the book have come into focus for me.  Judgment and mercy.  Come to think of it, those are probably my only themes.  This is the stretch of theological wall I seem to need to bang my head against.  Sometimes I think that writers don't really get to choose.  I also reflect upon wash day and housework in this chapter, however.  Enjoy! http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/chapter-29.html

Bonfire Night in the Diocese of Lindchster

Here we are.  Chapter 28 for you.  More trouble for Freddie, I'm afraid. http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/chapter-28.html

CHAPTER 27

Is that a happy ending I glimpse over there on the distant horizon?  http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/delay.html

Advent Approaches

Advent is at the end of this month, which means that I now have only 5 weeks left to tie up the loose ends.  Or at any rate, to poke them through to the back of the tapestry, and hope nobody looks too closely.  Here's the latest instalment, in which I'm sure the reader will discern the blogging equivalent of Jane Austen's 'tell-tale compression of the pages' that signifies we are all 'hastening together to perfect felicity':   http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/chapter-26.html

The Delayed Chapter 25...

...has now arrived, bearing news from Lindchester.  Apologies that this is a day late.  I was away in Chichester for a family wedding, and could not persuade my iPad to upload the chapter without removing all the formatting.

Anyhow, here it is: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/chapter-25.html

ONLY SEVEN MORE INSTALMENTS LEFT

The end is in sight!  Unseen Things Above is due to finish on Advent Sunday.  I think a few of my characters deserve a happy ending, so I will do my best to sort that out.  In the meantime, here is Chapter 24, in which Neil explains himself at some length.  I hope you will be patient with Neil.  I have a soft spot for him, and my secret mission is to make you care for him as well.
http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/chapter-24.html 

The Latest from Lindchester

Here's this week's instalment for you.  Chapter 23 Unseen Things Above http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/chapter-23.html

Who will be the next bishop?

And here, in Chapter 22, we answer the question we raised in the first chapter: who will be the next bishop of Lindchester?  Not everyone is happy with the result.  Read about it here: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/chapter-22.html

Trouble at the Lindchester Mill

Of course there's trouble.  You can't write a novel without trouble in it.  People occasionally chide me for not creating nice ordinary vicars etc, who are not constantly cocking things up.  I could do that. But you'd all fall asleep reading about them.

Here's the latest cock-up round-up.  Chapter 20 Unseen Things Above: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/chapter-20.html

Chapter 17

Is ready and waiting for you, over on my other blog.  Here it is: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/chapter-17.html

It's a bit like herding tortoises at the moment.  So many plot lines and characters, so little space.  The trick is knowing what to leave out.  

THE LATEST FROM LINDCHESTER

We've now just about reached the halfway point in Unseen Things Above.  Catch up with the latest developments here, http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/chapter-16.html  or wait for the whole novel!

A New Instalment...

Here's the latest from Lindchester for you.  In which we see the bishop's chaplain in a slightly softer focus than usual.  Please try to like Martin.  He's doing his best: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/chapter-13.html

Midsummer Frolics in Lindchester

For the stout-hearted, here's what's going on during the summer solstice in the Diocese of Lindchester: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

JACK SHALL HAVE JILL OR MAYBE JACK...

This week over in Lindchester, Jane and Matt finally manage to talk to one another again.  Meanwhile, wedding preparations continue in the vicarage of Gayden Magna, where all is not quite as rosy as I thought it was.  Oh dear.  Love and marriage.  They go together like a horse and yoyo, apparently.

Check out the latest here: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

A VISIT FROM OLD FRIENDS

Every so often people ask me what happened to Johnny Whitaker. If I'm feeling mean, I say 'Nothing.  He's not real you know.'  Well, for fans of my earlier novels, this week's instalment of Unseen Things Above might be a bit of a treat, as there are some cameo roles for a couple of my old characters.

You can check it out here: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk

Enjoy! 

Freddie's Back...

Yes, it's the week of the tenor lay clerk interviews in Lindchester cathedral, and Freddie May is back in town.  Find out what happens here: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

 I don't tell you what he decides to sign as his audition piece, but I reckon it was this, from Il Trovatore,  sung here by the divine Jonas Kaufmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBd87H8TGTk

Enjoy!

NEXT INSTALMENT

Here's the link to the newest episode of Unseen Things Above.  There's a wedding in the offing...
http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

Next gripping instalment...

Here's Chapter 4 for you.  In which we continue to gnaw our knuckles in anguish over the C of E and equal marriage: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

Why I Write What I Write

Well, the next instalment is ready for you here: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

I will confess that this sequel is not tripping off the pen as easily as Acts & Omissions.  With hindsight, I can see just what a clever wheeze it was to start in January and write for a whole calender year.  The structure is there for you on a plate.  Starting on Low Sunday feels plain arbitrary.  Low Sunday isn't the start of anything.  It's the narrative equivalent of 'Oh, yeah, as I was saying: Lindchester.  Where were we again?'

This will matter less and less as the weeks go by and the new story gathers momentum, though.  I've got past the feeling of 'Oh heck, better invent stuff quickly!' to the point where the various carry-ons in Lindchester have become my mental screen saver once more.  So if you see me staring blank eyed into the middle distance and ignoring you, don't take it personally.  If you think I'm about to step out into a busy road, I'd be grateful if you stop me, though.

The theme of Unseen Things Above is once again that long family row the C of E is currently having with itself about marriage and sexuality.  I sometimes feel that writers don't get to choose the bees in their bonnets.  There are certain questions we can't seem to leave alone.  Even when I tried to take a holiday and write about a flying girl detective in a fantasy universe (Wolf Tide), I fear I still ended up writing about the C of E.   All those fairies and men in thigh boots--who was I kidding?

One of the discoveries I've made about writing serialised fiction is just how porous the boundary between fact and fiction is.  I don't mean I'm writing a roman a clef (but by all means amuse yourself trying to work out who everyone is).  It's more the way my own experience bleeds into the world I'm creating.  Sometimes this is conscious, and I deliberately make use of the events of the past week, or some remembered experience.  At other times--and this is the exciting bit--themes and imagery start to develop, my story gathers pace, and the real world appears to adapt itself obligingly to fit in with my novel!  I write it here, it happens out there!  I am all-powerful!

I make light of it, but one of my genuine fears is that as I spin my fictional yarn, I accidentally hit upon some truth others would rather keep secret, and end up apparently writing an exposé thinly disguised as a novel.  If this happens, all I can say is 'sorry'.

Next Instalment

A bit of a scramble this week, but Chapter 2 is now ready: http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

I don't think I've quite adjusted to writing 3000 word extracts rather than 2000.  It may take me a few more weeks to get the timing right.  At the moment I'm spending too long over the first part, lavishing lots of editing and honing on it, then rushing the last third because the deadline is looming.

But if it weren't for the deadline, this thing would not get written.  I'd still be polishing the first paragraph.  Please overlook the errors and enjoy the tale!

UNSEEN THINGS ABOVE STARTS!

Yes, over on my other blog, the return to Lindchester has happened.  Catch up quickly, or get left behind again! http://unseenthingsabove.blogspot.co.uk/

This sequel to Acts and Omissions has been commissioned by SPCK.  I'll be blogging it between now and Advent, and it will be published some time in 2015 as an actual book with paper pages, and also as an eBook, specially for you.

ACTS & OMISSIONS

It's an exciting day in the life of an author when the new book jacket arrives.  Usually it is accompanied by a letter from the publisher, which says, 'Here's the jacket look for your novel. We hope you like it.  Everyone here is really thrilled with it!'  The author examines the design and bursts into tears, because it totally fails to capture the essence of their book.  This feeling is registered with the publisher, who wrings his or her hands and says, 'Oh dear! That's a shame.  Because we're really thrilled with it.'  I.e. it's what you're getting.  (This is what your contract means when it says you have the right of consultation over the cover.)

Well, happily, the process of finding the right look for Acts and Omissions has been a lot more pleasant and satisfying than that.  For me, anyway.  The design team at SPCK may tell a different tale, quite possibly one which includes phrases like 'high maintenance' and 'control freak'.  But here's what we've decided on:

The painting--called 'Evensong'--is by Ian Scott Massie, and you know what?  I'm really thrilled with it!  I hope it tempts you to buy a copy for yourself, another for your friends and family, and one for every clergy person you know.  Finally (just to be on the safe side so nobody feels left out) twenty more for everybody you can think of.  Published on July 17th 2014.

POWER AND PASSION

This is the text of my recent BBC Lent talk.  Apologies, a bit of rogue highlighting has crept in for some reason.  You will just have to imagine my Radio 4 voice.

CHRIST’S PASSION

As a novelist, I find it really annoying when other people tell me how to write.  If it’s a copyeditor, I try to rein in my annoyance and address the list of queries I’ve been sent about my latest manuscript.  I try not think, ‘Write your own book, if you’re so clever.’  One thing I am not prepared to tolerate, though, is Word’s grammar check, with its impertinent squiggly green underlining my prose.  Fragment.  Consider revising.  I know it’s a fragment.  I did it on purpose.   For effect.  Because I’m a writer. 

Besides fragments, one of the things grammar check sets its pedantic face against is the use of passive verb forms.  ‘Instead of “Catherine was hit by the ball”, consider “The ball hit Catherine”.  Clearly, the sensible thing is for me to disable grammar check before the laptop is hit by Catherine, or—more properly—Catherine hits the laptop.   

It turns out that no piece of prose, however venerable, escapes the vigilance of grammar check.  Take these words from the Creed: ‘He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under Pontius Pilate.’   For a livelier and more persuasive sentence, consider rewriting your sentence using an active verb!  ‘The Holy Ghost conceived Jesus.  The Virgin Mary gave birth to him.  Pontius Pilate made him suffer and crucified him.’  But even if we do rewrite the Creed in this livelier and more persuasive style, there’s still no getting round the fact that Christ is passive here.  He is the object of the sentence, not the subject; the one things are done to, not the one doing things. 

This, of course, is what lies behind the church’s use of the word ‘Passiontide’ for the period before Easter.  The church has been using this language for millennia.  These days Christ’s ‘passion’ is taken to be a synonym for his ‘suffering’.  And of course, it is—but only if we understand ‘suffering’ in the right way.  Not pain and misery, so much as suffering in the sense of ‘being on the receiving end of’ something.  Being passive, not active.  The word has shifted meaning in English; as we can tell from that resonant but rather baffling phrase in the King James Bible, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’.  This means ‘let little children come’, allow it to happen, suffer it to happen.  Rather than ‘little children are suffering’—which is what you might suppose it meant, if you judged by the thriller and song titles which have borrowed this phrase.

So what lies at the heart of Passiontide is not suffering in the current sense of ‘enduring pain’—although there is certainly enough of that—but Christ being on the receiving end of things, being done to.  Christ relinquishing control and ending up in the hands of others, completely at their mercy.  Suffering things to happen to him, not acting.  This makes a surprising contrast to his earlier ministry, which was packed with action and powerful deeds.  He preached, he healed, he worked wonders, he was in control—even of the wind and the waves. 

This kind of Christ is a more straightforward proposition.  The sort of powerful charismatic leader you’d follow to the ends of the earth.  Die for, even.  The disciples were up for that.  They had swords.  Peter even struck a blow and chopped an ear off.  But how can you rally to the cause of a man who won’t fight, won’t stand up for himself, who in fact forbids you to defend him and meekly suffers himself to be led off?  That’s when the disciples abandoned him and ran.

Passivity of this kind is unsettling.  It verges on being a bit victim-y, which goes against the grain.  Even if I do fall victim to something, I can sense a pressure to redefine myself as a survivor, not a victim.  To get closure, and regain control of my own narrative.  Nobody wants to embrace a victim mentality.

Or do they?  Do we ever voluntarily hand ourselves over to others, and relinquish all control of our destiny?  Well, if you’ve ever undergone surgery which required a general anaesthetic, the answer is yes.  If you have ever waddled, vastly pregnant into a labour ward, the answer is yes.  You might think you’re in control when you’re having a baby, but sorry, you’re really not.  Ask any midwife and she’s likely to tell you that when she sees a detailed birth plan, all intervention- and medication-free she thinks ‘Uh-oh.  Here comes trouble.’

I remember the moment when the midwife rolled an empty cot into the labour room the night my first son was born—five weeks early, not part of the plan.  For a second I thought, ‘What’s that for?  Oh!  She really thinks I’m going to have an actual baby to put in there by the end of this night.’  It was probably at that point that I realised there was now no way out, no choice, no power left for me to exercise.  There was no option of saying ‘Right, I’ve had enough, I’m off home.’  Though plenty of women do say that, ask any midwife.  No—one way or another, this baby was about to be born.

We agree to hand ourselves over to the care of others, to put ourselves at the mercy of events, to relinquish control for a mixture of reasons.  Because we no longer have much choice, maybe, and for the sake of what lies beyond.  We go through labour and childbirth because there will be something to put in the cot when it’s all over.  A new life.  There is no other way.  We have the pacemaker fitted or the gall bladder taken out, in order to gain a new life.  There is no other way. 

This resonates for me when I think about Christ’s passion, his passivity, his allowing himself to be handed over.  Was it for the sake of new life, because there was no other way?  Why was there no other way?  Maybe ‘suffering the cross to happen to him’ was an antidote to something?  Not a homoeopathic cure, treating like with like, but a cancelling out, a neutralising, an undoing of something.  What might that something be?  What is the polar opposite to Christ’s passion? 

There’s a hint in one of the very earliest Christian hymns written.  It’s found in a letter to the church at Philippi:  ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’

It is this ‘grasping at equality with God’ that offers a way in, I think.  The word suggests a kind of robber-like grabbing.  Plundering.  Think back to that summer of looting, when people seemed to lose the plot in a fever of aggravated shopping.  Or else consider that little kink in our nature that makes us go, Pah! when a friend is promoted.  The child in us that protests ‘How come SHE gets the big piece?’  Or experimentally stomps on ants for no good reason, other than because we can, to see what happens, to check what it feels like to exercise that kind of power.  That doesn’t really want the house, the lover, the children, so much as not want the other person to have them.  The urge that ends up, writ large, right across human history: the Scramble for Africa, Lebensraum, genocide, the blithe ransacking of the planet for short term profit.

The opposite to this kind of Me first! snatch-and-grabbiness—the antidote to this, according to the hymn in Philippians, is a self-emptying.  Abandoning godhead with its phenomenal cosmic power, in favour of—to quote Disney’s genie—the itty-bitty living space of the human body.  I sometimes wonder how that must have felt.  For all our sense of the human body’s potency, its powerful agency, and capacity to do things and act upon the world, surely for Christ it was the first step on that downward path to utter powerlessness.  It began with him divested of godhead, utterly dependent, a babe in arms, totally entrusted to flawed and finite human hands.  And it ended the same way: with him putting himself back in our hands, suffering death, even death on the cross.

Behind this talk of ‘grasping at equality with God’ lurk our great fore-father and mother in Eden.  Adam and Eve, taking a long look at the fruit of the forbidden tree, checking nobody was about in the garden, and making a grab for it.  The chance to be like God.  The shortcut to omnipotence.  To godhead.

It still has the power to provoke panic, this finiteness.  This creatureliness.  Humans begin helpless in this life, and rage, rage against the dying of the light. Fighting that descent back into helplessness again.  Doesn’t it feel a bit like an affront, to retire, to age, to become dependent on others, at the mercy of public transport and the NHS?  Nobody wants to become a nuisance, a burden, reliant on the good will of friends and relatives, fitting in with their schedules, in need of hand-outs, trapped in a culture of dependency. No, I will not go gentle into that good night if I can help it.  I’ll be obliged to die one day, but on my own terms, I’ll be in control to the very last if possible, thank you very much.

Easy to forget that you’re only mortal.  Especially when you’re young.  Crash helmets, seat belts, speed limits—who need them?  I see the youngsters tear past me, their laughter and shouts trailing after them—pretty much as I did when I was twenty—not believing in my own mortality, expect as a vague concept. The way I believed in Russia, without ever expecting to go there. 

Maybe this explains the urge to grasp at youth, as though that were the fruit of the tree?  Youth, with all its connotations of power, of being in control of our destiny?  Fight those signs of ageing!  But who am I kidding?  Things are only going in one direction.  The choice is between wrinkles and being already dead.  This is the stark message of Ash Wednesday and the ceremony of the imposition of ashes.  That cold smear of ash placed on your forehead, and the words: ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’  Remember you are dust.  Remember.  Remember.

Those are the words spoken to Adam and Eve, when they were driven out of the garden, snarled up and out of kilter their creator and the creation and with themselves.  ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.  In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’  Sometimes it still feels like that: panicking, endlessly looking for the road home, the way back in, grasping, grasping for power, for answers, for control, raging, fighting against the dying of the light.  Still homesick for the garden.  And another chance.  Another life.

There was another garden.  Gethsemane.  And another Adam.  The choice was still there: to seize earthly power, muster the zealot freedom fighters—weren’t they ready with their swords?  Palm Sunday was still ringing in their ears.  Here comes the king!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  A word from Jesus—that’s all they were waiting for!  Then call down heavenly reinforcements—let God reveal his power, his mighty arm, and put this mess right. 

The agony, the blood, sweat and tears of that decision in Gethsemane.  There was another way, but that doorway was so small, so low, that the only path through meant the stripping away of everything, it meant being utterly crushed, destroyed.  And all the time, the possibility of cosmic power still hung there, like the fruit of the tree, ripe for the picking—was he not entitled to it?  If the son of God is not entitled to exercise power, then who is? 

That early hymn suggests an answer: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.’

‘If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!’ the passers by taunted Christ.  Prove it.  Prove you are who you claim to be.  Prove your power.  Act.  Do something.  Don’t just hang there, don’t just take it. But the temptation to treat like with like, to trump power with still more power, that temptation was seen off in those forty days in the Wilderness. And renounced once again in Gethsemane.  It was going to take more than a spectacular coming down from the cross backed by twelve legions of angels to put this one right.  There was no shortcut.  No other way to unkink that bias towards power-grabbing that undid—and still undoes—our race.  No other way to mend it all and put us right.  Fix the broken juddering heart, take out all that gall.  And give us new life.  No other way, than by just hanging there and taking it.  Every last bit of it. 

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

My younger son wandered in to pester me the other day, while I was working.  

        'What are you doing?'

        'I'm proofreading a novel I wrote before you were born.'

My son is 20.  Yes, it really is that long since I was working on Angels and Men. The novel is set in the early 80s and it reads like a period piece now.  All those students smoking in their bedrooms!  No student loans; very little binge drinking; no concept that one might simply 'get over' some people being gay.  

The reason I've had to revisit the hallowed corridors of Jesus College and Coverdale Hall is because SPCK are reissuing Angels and Men this July.  Here's the new cover:

Isn't that wonderful?  It's a watercolour by Ian Scott Massie and I see that I am quite right to like it: "At last - someone in the North who can paint!" Brian Sewell    http://www.ianscottmassie.com/

The temptation, while proofreading, was to start editing as well.  I resisted, because it would seem churlish to tinker with the novel of what is, essentially, a different and much younger woman.  All I've done is correct a few minor errors that have always bugged me.  But if that younger me were now in my MA workshop, I'd have some advice to give, believe me.  This ought to be encouraging, though.  It suggests I'm now better at my craft than I was two decades back.  

With hindsight, I'm now profoundly grateful that my editor suggested cuts to the original typescript.  She felt its length might be 'a little daunting to readers and reviewers'.  This was an example of exquisite tact.  I can see now that she was saving me from myself.  I reckon between 10% and 15% ended up on the cutting room floor.  Most first novels need to be taken firmly in hand.  Be prepared for this, if you are currently writing one yourself.  It's counter-intuitive to the sensitive soul, but the best way to improve your writing is to take stuff out, not put more stuff in.

On a happier note, I find that on re-reading Angels and Men, I still have a soft spot for my characters.  Although that Andrew Jacks is a right nob, isn't he?

AUTHOR CRUSH

Just as royalty are alleged to believe that the world smells of fresh paint, famous authors are surely under the impression the world is made up of tongue-tied blurters.  I am basing this on my own world class blurting display last Wednesday in Manchester, when I stood in the queue to get my copy of The Days of Anna Madrigal signed by Armistead Maupin.

I know.  Scream.  I waited for an hour, and judging by the length of the queue, there were people waiting as long again.  The trouble with waiting that long is that you have time to craft your tiny introductory speech to perfection, turning your exquisite gems of wit on the lathe of your intellect until they gleam.  And then you butter-finger them and scatter them across the floor.  Metaphorically.  Which is a really poncy way of saying you blurt out the first thing that comes to your lips, bypassing the cerebral cortex entirely.

Here's what I heard myself say: 'Hello.  I'm the one who's been stalking you from Liverpool.'  And here is the photograph capturing the moment when Mr Maupin realises it's now too late to get away.

Meanwhile, outside a storm was busy trashing the north of England, ripping stations roofs off, and making it impossible for me to get home to Liverpool.  I was rescued by a colleague with a spare room, and what I now realise is an infinite capacity to put up with me ranting about how I've met Armistead Maupin.

This, then, is just one fan's account of the power of fiction--the power of a completely made up world to move, entertain, instruct and open new horizons to the reader.  My experience has been replicated thousands of times over across the UK during the last week.  A good novel is a hospitable space.  It invites you in and says welcome to my world.  And it was clear that for many there braving the storm in Manchester, entering the world of Tales of the City was like being welcomed home for the first time.  I'm sorry that The Days of Anna Madrigal is going to be the last in the series.  But I'd have to tell you, the view of the queue was 'I'll believe that when I see it.'