The Lord of the Rings, Dirty Dancing, why it takes so long to write a story, and Mali.

Aged thirteen I would spend Sunday evenings... 

doing what? To find out, pay a visit to Vamps, Weres and Cassay to read the GUEST POST I WROTE...

Alternatively you can read about Mali.

Mali
i
/ˈmɑːli/, officially the  Republic of Mali  (French:  République du Mali,  French pronunciation: [maˈli]), is a
landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the
Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over
1,240,000 km² with a population of 14.5 million. Its capital is Bamako. Mali consists of eight regions and its borders
on the north reach deep into the middle of the  Sahara, while the country's southern part, where the majority of
inhabitants live, features the Niger and Sénégal rivers. The country's economic structure centers around agriculture
and fishing. Some of Mali's natural resources are gold, uranium, livestock, and salt. About half the population live
below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
[5]
Present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled  trans-Saharan trade: the  Ghana
Empire, the Mali Empire (from which Mali is named), and the Songhai Empire. In the late 19th century, during the
Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali making it a part of French Sudan. French Sudan (then known as
the Sudanese Republic) joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the  Mali Federation.
Shortly thereafter, following Senegal's withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the
independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new
constitution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali

Stories Long in the Making

In Britain, book shops with cafe tables in amongst the shelves were unheard of. Twenty one years old, I left and went to live in New York. Barnes and Noble was a marvel. I worked in a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, and every day, on my way back to the Gershwin Hotel, where I lived, I would call in at the enormous store between 22nd and 23rd and read from EMMA WHO SAVED MY LIFE. Sadly the store is now GONE  but the book is still a solid recommendation.
It was in the lovely store on UNION SQUARE, though, that I once saw a woman, so striking, that I had to write a description of her on a napkin.
That was my writing in those days, notes of description on napkins, and scraps torn from paper bags and waitress pads. Eventually I came back to the UK with my stack of descriptions and laboured to find a plot to cram them all in to (plot, oddly, was my biggest struggle in those days). I bought HOW TO WRITE A MOVIE IN 21 DAYS and from it learned the first nuts and bolts of story. I also, incidentally, produced a complete filmscript in 3 weeks, mainly at a table in the Rat and Parrot Park Street, Bristol, between shifts. How proud was I? It was rubbish.
Following on from that, I used the last of my New York restaurant tips to buy a second hand laptop, and used Microsoft Write to produce a short story called 'The Songbirds Egg', which I then recycled into a novel called 'The Cloud Ceiling.' Both of them heavily influenced by ROSAMUND LEHMAN and Lawrence Durrell's incomparable ALEXANDRIA QUARTET.
The stories were lumpily written, heavy on sentiment and awkwardly poetic description. But they had a character called Madeleine, and the description of her face, copied from the New York napkin, isn't bad.
It's not bad, and so, with so many of these things, it will be recycled into Lullaby of Lies. Most of the words I write have an awkward ancestry of some sort, but these - randomly - will be known. These lines will be pared down and will crop up in chapters nine and ten. Hopefully you'll read them there...

She is nineteen, preoccupied, a steep and selfless beauty.

Madeleine's hair is dark and as she talks swings, smooth as glass. The straight grain lightly crossed by paler, coppery strands in lazy half curves, like lines of water snaking across a car window.

Her skin is so pale and her features dark and finely drawn. Thick lashes and clear curving brows. Her face never blurred. Clean lines on white like crisp type on new paper, symmetry like the phrasing of verse.

Her eyes dark, lower lids heavy with strong vertical surface, into the vertical planes of her cheekbones. Lips restrained but tilted upward along the tiny seam between lip and face.

Fine half circles under each eye, and a crease along the middle of each lid. They make her eyes seem even larger, with an extra layer of focus. They make the light in the black ringed irises stronger through her gaze and the whole was even more beautiful.

Madeleine's hair flickered behind her and then twisted under her chin. Squinting, she tried to hold it away from her face. I gathered it in one hand and held it at the nape of her neck. She leant toward me and this was how the photograph was taken. Her hair was very cool, soft, straight as pouring water. 

I wanted to study at Hogwarts and live in the Lord of the Rings, It's not how you tell it but WHERE you tell it.

Location Location Location.
Not just about the house you buy, maybe, but also about the books you read. Every story I loved as a child had something about the setting.
For a while I was obsessed with Brendon Chase, by 'BB.' I tried to find it on maps, and the place names and their descriptions enchanted me so much that I remember them easily now. The town of Martyr Bar, Blind Pool, deep in the forest.

I stared at maps from the Lord of the Rings until my eyes bugged out. I was seriously disappointed that I could never actually go there. The writing of Laurie Lee had the same effect, apart from I COULD go there, and so the first holiday I went on by myself was a bike tour of Northern Spain, visiting Burgos and Leon, and other destinations he passed through in the beautifully written, wonderfully titled 'As I walked out One Midsummer Morning.'

And now I write myself, and magical, real life places are where I try my hardest to set my work. There are several, but the most important is Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels, where I lived for two years, where I set 'Song to Wake to' and th source of the name for the characters school and the entire series itself.
Truth is stranger than fiction, and why make somewhere up, when there is a real place as wonderful as the Levels?

Big News...

Levels 3 has a name...
After mulling over dozens of options I've christened it 'Lullaby of Lies.' Next I need to get onto Olly Prentice and get a cover sorted...
Thanks to everybody who had some input. What do you think?

See Keira Knightley! Win an eBook! Complete a Fun Survey! Decide how to save the world!

By now you probably know that my LEVELS series of stories has something to do with King Arthur. If you don't, please feel free to click on the link on the right and find out for yourself...
You probably read some King Arthur stories before, the original myths. Maybe you've seen one of the King Arthur movies. Doubtless you have some preconceptions about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, what they did, what they were like.
I would love to know what your concept of Camelot is, and so I've put together a fun little quiz to find out. Please complete it, let me know what you think, and put yourself in the running to win a free copy of ROCK ANTHEM, 2nd in the Levels series.
This survey has now been included in the Autism awareness Blog Hop, and I have upped the prizes to ten (TEN) copies of Rock Anthem...

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

What do Famous People Read?

Do celebs read? This post is much more question than answer. All I've really got is this picture of the Twilight movies' Chaske Spencer with 'The Emperor's Tomb' by Steve Berry.

You can find more pictures of celebs with books HERE, including a Spiderman Star also drawn to the very popular Steve Berry...

Do famous people tell us about the books they read? Have you heard them? If you have please let us know in the comments section below. If not, what do you think they read? For example, I can completely see Robert Pattinson digging into Proust, while Emma Watson - I think - is much more about re-reading the lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for the 14th time. Make a guess...

Brad Pitt on a horse, win a book, have genuine input into the title of another book, and some Mortal Instruments.

What's in a title?
In the case of the title of this post, the answer's easy.
Too much.
But title's can fail in all sorts of ways. Don't judge a book by it's cover. Absolutely. That's right. But its title? Judging a book by it's title is one of the things you're supposed to do.
The Mortal Instruments series are my current favourite YA books, amazing characters, plotting, imagination.
Rubbish titles. 'City of Ashes,' 'City of Glass.'
Yawn.
'City of Fallen Angels' is the best, but it's not actually true, so that's hardly fair.
'The Iron King.' Similar.
There's definitely something about books in a series having vanilla titles. I guess it's difficult to be both striking, and fit into a theme, but I'm going to give it a shot. After 'Song to Wake to' and 'Rock Anthem' the third levels book will have a title that's got something to do with lullabies. I've got two options.

'Lullaby of Lies'
or
'Lullaby for a Sleeping Lion.'

Please tell me what you think. I'd be really grateful for any input. Use the comments section to tell us which title you prefer, and if you like, tell us your favourite book title. I'm going to start off with 'Legends of the Fall.' Not the film, the book by Jim Harrison, which is brilliant. The film is overblown and histrionic, but if you advance the clip at the top of the page to minute 3:00 you'll find its winning scene. This is how all men should ideally arrive, preceded by a vanguard of galloping horses. It's an Eddy Moon moment.
I look forward to getting your input. One of the comments will win a FREE copy of Rock Anthem...