Jane Cable starts working through her ‘to be read’ pile
Two weeks ago I wrote, with some trepidation, about my slightly difficult relationship with reading now that I’m a writer. I have to say I was really pleased by the positive comments I received from other authors feel the same – I certainly don’t feel so much of a freak. But nevertheless I made a decision: this month I’m not going to write – I’m going to read.
I have, however, imposed a basic rule: the books I choose have to be in my genre – contemporary romance. Of course this exercise is for pleasure but it’s also research into how other writers and their publishers achieve excellence. So, what have I been reading? And what have I learnt?
The Girl on the Beach by Morton S Gray (Choclit)
You simply can’t be a romance author and ignore Choclit. They have such a huge presence in the market it felt irresponsible not to have read anything they’ve published. I decided to start putting that right with The Girl on the Beach because it was a mystery as well as a love story so right up my street.
It was completely different to my own books in that much of the intrigue was fairly obvious and initially I wondered how it was going to hold my attention. But it did – largely because of the wonderful characters; I cared about Ellie and as with every great romance, even fell for Harry just a little bit myself. The writing was crisp and unpretentious and I found it hard to put this book down. It re-enforced my belief that well written mainstream romance will never die.
Last Dance in Havana by Rosanna Ley (Quercus)
I have been a big fan of Ley’s for some years and was delighted when she provided me with some lovely cover quotes for Another You. Last Dance in Havana flips between Bristol (which I know) and Havana (which I don’t) and tells the story of a step-daughter’s and step-mother’s searches for love. Ley’s descriptions brought both places to life to the point I could feel the Cuban sun on my back but it was her superb characterisation that made the book for me. In particular Rosa, the older woman, will remain in my head and heart for a very long time.
Writing as well as Rosanna Ley takes years of experience but thinking about this book (and her others) they show me that with a good story, great characters and an amazing sense of place you don’t need gimmicks to write a first class commercial romance.
Sealskin by Su Bristow (Orenda Press)
Sealskin is the book everyone is talking about at the moment. It’s a re-telling of a Scottish legend about the selkies, seals which can turn into people, and is a fairly short but thought-provoking read. I was completely transported to a remote Scottish fishing village and one of the really clever things about the book is its timelessness – there isn’t a clue about when the story takes place and it actually doesn’t matter. It’s a multi-layered romance which sits equally well in the realms of literary fiction which is where its publisher’s interests lie.
It’s also been marketed incredibly well by Orenda and I’m delighted that the dynamo behind this amazing independent publishing house, Karen Sullivan, will guest on this column in April. In the meantime I’m trying to work out what I would need to do before I’d even consider sending a manuscript to them. Although I can recognise literary fiction when I see it, how to create it is another matter entirely. Definitely something to aim for, though.
Training is changing and we are becoming a nation which is more mindful when concerned with the question: are we active enough? Fitbit’s and Apple Watches seem to be revolutionising our ability to check our statistics frequently. We are in competition with ourselves to beat our steps, practise one minute of mindfulness and compare our data to our friends. With many different types of tracking technology on the market it’s hard to know what is going to work for us. MYZONE have now unveiled that they are not only introducing their new heart rate monitor to the market but they are to go one step further by introducing a subscription service too.
The heart rate monitor technology has cleverly been adapted to be clipped into ‘smart’ clothing, which the company have created, including a men’s compression vest and a women’s sports bra. But the real beauty of the MYZONE subscription is that the MYZONE app will have a library of over 500 interactive classes from Yoga to Cycling for to try wherever you are in the world. The app will not only be available on a wide range of smart devices, but will also provide you with realtime feedback based on your physiological boundaries making this a truly individual service.
All of the products are available to buy via www.myzone.org and the physical activity belt is currently priced at £129.99
The MYZONE app is free to download and available for iOS and Android
I am going to start this review off by being honest: I found this book a bit scary. Not horror scary, but anticipation scary. That is the biggest compliment I can give to Lisa Jewell. She has written a novel tight on anticipation and suspense. A proper thriller book which can sit alongside Gone Girl.
It was hard to put this book down, even when I wanted to. There are numerous twists and even moments of unbearable sadness. It is a good novel and the writing is done with so much technical talent that I was in awe as a fellow writer. Tightly wound and with enough surprises to keep any reader happy; this novel works on every level. I also loved the cover. It is so lovely seeing a female writers book being marketed to both genders. I can recommend this novel but, as I said, I also found some of it sad. I don’t want to give too much away, but it also leaves you angry at some of the characters.
Recommended.
Everyone has secrets. What if you can’t remember yours?
Lily has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one.
Alice finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement, she invites him into her home.
But who is he, and how can she trust a man who has lost his memory?
Two women, twenty years of secrets and a man who can’t remember lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell’s brilliant new novel.
Lisa Jewell had always planned to write her first book when she was fifty. In fact, she wrote it when she was twenty-seven and had just been made redundant from her job as a secretary. Inspired by Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, a book about young people just like her who lived in London, she wrote the first three chapters of what was to become her first novel, Ralph’s Party. It went on to become the bestselling debut novel of 1998.
Thirteen bestselling novels later, she lives in London with her husband and their two daughters. Lisa writes every day in a local cafe where she can drink coffee, people-watch, and, without access to the internet, actually get some work done.
If Not For You is a delightful and engaging novel. Debbie Macomber is so skilled at drawing out the characters that it is impossible to feel like you do not know them. This novel is not a standard girl-meets-boy novel. It is a novel about what happens when something unexpected throws two very different people together. The novel jumps straight into the action and has plenty of twists and turns to keep you occupied. Definitely worth a read.
Sometimes, just one person can change your whole world…
If not for her loving but controlling parents, Beth might never have taken charge of her life.
If not for her friend Nichole, Beth would never have met Sam Carney – a tattooed mechanic who is her conservative parents’ worst nightmare.
And if not for Sam – who witnessed a terrible accident and rushes to her aid – Beth might have never survived and fallen in love.
Yet there are skeletons in Sam’s closet that prevent him from ever trusting a woman again. Will he be able to overcome his past and fight for love?
Debbie Macomber is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author and one of today’s most popular writers. In addition to fiction, Debbie has also published two bestselling cookbooks; numerous inspirational and nonfiction works; and two acclaimed children’s books. The beloved and bestselling Cedar Cove series became Hallmark Channel’s first dramatic scripted television series, Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove, which was ranked as the top program on US cable TV when it debuted in summer 2013. Hallmark has also produced many successful films based on Debbie’s bestselling Christmas novels. Debbie Macomber owns her own tea room, and a yarn store, A Good Yarn, named after the shop featured in her popular Blossom Street novels. She and her husband, Wayne, serve on the
Guideposts National Advisory Cabinet, and she is World Vision’s international spokesperson for their Knit for Kids charity initiative. A devoted grandmother, Debbie and her husband Wayne live in Port Orchard, Washington (the town on which her Cedar Cove novels are based) and winter in Florida.
Now look, I am falling on my sword here, tasting wines to recommend for Mother’s Day. You can see that the merest of tastes grew, much like Topsy, into a couple of glasses of the Sauvignon 2014. OK, not on my own, ‘him indoors’ removed the cork, so felt he was owed something. But this is the first of two wines I consider essential for Mother’s Day. They are both good hearted wines, both worthy of the best mothers in the world.
Max Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2014. The label says this red wine is from old vines grown in the gravel soils of the Valle de Aconcagua in Chile. It is a full and aromatic wine and its barrel-ageing causes a silkiness. Get them to cook lamb or beef with this, as it’s your day off. I have to say I did a double take at old vines, and feel it entirely suitable for an old but good ‘un of a grandma like me.
RRP £14.75 available from Waitrose and others.
Now for the Villa Maria Reserve Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. I love New Zealand wines. Clean and full of flavour as a rule. Is this? From the Wairau Valley, Marlborough this has been awarded the designation ‘Reserve’ which is reserved for wines of exceptional quality.
Indeed it deserves this accolade. This is bursting with the ripe fruit characters found in this sub region. Lovely fruit nose, and leaves a entirely satisfactory flavour of … gooseberry I think. Great stuff.
So once you have been fed and watered, how about unwrapping the gifts?
I like The Flower Year – an adult colouring book created by Leila Duly
It is hard backed, and a celebration of the botanical seasons. You could work through it month by month, or just pick and choose. I have been thinking of reworking the back garden so my thoughts are full of what to plant, once it’s dug. Quite who is to dig, is still open to discussion.
It is from the publisher that brought you Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest. Leila Duly is a textile print designer, and her work is inspired by old Victorian etchings. It follows her debut colouring book: Floribunda: A Flower Colouring Book.
The Flower year: A Colouring Book, pub 13th March hb £9.99
The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse
Inspired by her own miscarriages Prowse writes a novel around the subject.
With her 40th birthday approaching and the biological clock ticking Lucy Carpenter’s life seems set firm for happiness. Until the miscarriage. As the stresses of work, grief, uncertainty take their toll on her marriage the final straw seems to be the arrival of her step-daughter to live with them. She is adolescent (say no more). Is this the end of all Lucy has, or a new beginning? There will be lots of step-mother’s out there, who can relate to this novel. And Mother’s Day is for them too, isn’t it?
The Idea of You by Amanda Prowse. Pub 21 March. pb £8.99 and eBook £3.98
Wave this book in front of your family as Mother’s Day looms or buy it for yourself – anytime – if you are at all interested in art and history
I say ‘book’ but Vietnam Eye – Contemporary Vietnamese Art – is a reference work highlighting one of the most fascinating contemporary art scenes in an area that has known war, and radical change – from a closed door policy to an era of globalisation.
The book showcases the work of seventy-five outstanding contemporary Vietnamese artists working across a variety of established and new media, from painting to sculpture, from photography to video.
Some artists’ work I didn’t like, but explored with interest, others, in particular, gave me pause for thought in this complex world.
A Partition of Chance by Tran Trong Vu as shown is interesting. Tran Trong Vu does not create paintings to be an end in themselves but as a means to seek his place as an artist outside the contemporary artist system. For me, it is a painting of stillness and repetition into which one can import one’s own theme.
Nguyen Trong Minh reflects the artist’s disappointment with the education system of his time, in which any deviation marked one as an outsider. The very stillness of the images, the rigidity, is thought provoking. I have just reviewed The Outsider, Frederick Forsyth’s memoir, and his life as an outsider was different: joyous, creative.
This work of Nguyen Trong Minh’s is equally creative, but internalised. For Minh the world needs to be paused, clarified in black and white, distilled. But into what: into work that gives him the ability to respond to life effectively. It made me want to see some of them in the ‘flesh’ but perhaps I can:
Vietnam Eye is published in anticipation of a major exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery in September 2017 so we must find the time to visit, having perused the catalogue.
Serenella Ciclitira has an honours degree in art history from Trinity College, Dublin and has worked extensively with artists and galleries throughout the world. Along with her husband David Ciclitira, she is the co-founder of Korean Eye and a member of its curatorial board.
Vietnam Art – contemporary Vietnamese art: pb £38.00 (amazon.co.uk)
The Soap Kitchen, based in Devon, is one of the top soap making companies in the UK and Europe. As well as supplying soap and candle making kits, the Soap Company also have a wide range of handmade soaps and toiletries available to purchase.
For a luxurious, bubbly wash why not try the Soap Kitchen’s range of foam washes. With exotic scents from Lavender and Snowberry to Orange and Neroli, these soaps should be on the top of your list for a Mother’s Day surprise. The Prosecco and Clementine soap from the foam wash collection is a particular favourite. Now you can enjoy Prosecco in the shower too!
Made with natural ingredients, the Clementine and Prosecco fragrance oil can be used for a facial or as a hand wash or even poured into a hot bath for a fresh and invigorating wash.
With Mother’s Day coming up why not treat your mum to a luxurious soap from the Soap Kitchen?
Band/Artist: Sterile Jets Location: Long Beach, California Styles: Noise Rock, Old School Metal, Punk, Post Hardcore Similar to/RIYL: Melvins, Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Butthole Surfers, Shellac CD: No Gods No Loss Release date: May 4 2017
The Arsonist
Rehabilitated Truth
Go Out And Bleed
Piss On Your God
Soliloquy Of A Heartbroken Loner
Fireside Drive (first single/video)
White Satan
A Sterile Existence
Free Pork Bougie
Olive Spoil
Sterile Jets make music that doesn’t conform to a single style or genre, with lyrics that mirror the struggles the band, and their fans, confront on a daily basis. The band – singer/guitarist Robert Bly Moore, singer/bass player Wm. Partnoff and drummer GS Bean – is a true democracy. They compose and arrange every song to bring out its best elements, delving deeply into punk, post rock, jazz and metal, with stimulating side trips into rockabilly, grunge and even pop. The result is a winning combination of noise and melody, romanticism and irony, love and anger that captures the complexities of everyday American life. Those looking for music steeped in the courage, honesty and energy of punk’s primal explosion will find it in the uncompromising sounds of the Sterile Jets.
Stoner Punk, Art Punk, “Rebel Noise Rock,” call it what you will, but there is no denying that the brand of caterwauling that STERILE JETS (SJs) produces is absolutely FUCK YEAH! Formed in year nine, after the break-up of Bass’r B. ILL’s former band Dynamic Ribbon Device, B. ILL set forth to start a band that would ultimately satisfy his artistic needs. He went straight to the to the Internet (Craig’s List to be more specific), to complete his conquest. After a few revolving members, the band became the complete trio, it is now, in 2012. The lineup includes: Robert “Bly” Moore (Lead Guitar/Vocals), Wm. “B. ILL” Partnoff (Electric Bass/Vocals) and Matthew Bean… “Bean” (Trap Set). SJs self describes their unsettling sound as if Sonic Youth fucked the Velvet Underground and had an unruly Black Flag baby. Other influences for the band are Rudimentary Peni, McLusky, Ponys, Husker Du and Dead C. Also, the band has covered songs from Fang and Flipper. SJs also take influences from the literature and art scene, such as Charles Bukowski, William S Burroughs and Raymond Pettibon. Drawing from life experiences, dive bars, drug abuse and the absurd hypocrisies of civilization, SJs music has been described as original, jarring, loud, noisy and weird. The current incarnation of SJs have been gigging in Southern California for nearly a year, focusing on the Long Beach and Orange County areas. Venues the SJs rocked include Fern’s Cocktails (Long Beach), Harold’s Place (San Pedro), the defunct Puka Bar (Long Beach) and The 2010 OC Punk Rock Picnic (Irvine).
No Gods No Loss was co-produced by Sterile Jets and audio engineer Bil Lane, a close friend of the band. “We wanted the raw sound of a live show,” Moore continues. “Except for the vocals, the album was recorded over a long weekend, with everything stripped down to the basics. We spent more time writing, arranging and refining the songs this time. Bil has a ton of expertise and a laid back attitude. He gave us the freedom to make the music sound how we wanted it to sound.”
“Fireside Drive,” the album’s first single, contrasts the band’s quieter, more melodic side with their love of distortion. Melodic bass and guitar introduce Moore’s playful, seductive vocal before flipping the switch into an interlude of grinding distortion. By alternating between quiet passages and jolts of noise, the band amplifies the passionate yearning of the lyric. The song builds to a beautifully chaotic climax, complete with a few random quotes from Voltaire about the exploitation of the working class.
“Rehabilitated Truth” opens and closes with screeching feedback from Moore’s guitar. Bean’s galloping drums play variations on a fractured samba rhythm that pushes the guitar and bass in all kinds of twitchy directions. Moore’s growling half spoken vocal plunges into a maelstrom of hopelessness that reflects the agony of a dying relationship.
“Olive Spoil” is a sonic assault drenched in grimy guitar overtones, free form bass lines and out of control drumming. Its random tempo changes, unexpected bursts of silence and rapid shifts between noise and melody suggests some unholy combination of Hendrix and Motörhead. Partnoff’s rolling, bluesy bass and Bean’s rock steady drumming support Moore’s mixed down vocals on “Free Pork Bougie” before the tone shifts with a slow, roaring avalanche of earsplitting distortion. The mood swings of the music hint at the tension between the 1% and the country’s working class. “We’re dealing with job loss, expensive or non-existent education and not knowing how we’re going to pay rent,” Moore says. “The rich and powerful are just playing a game.” Beat writer Charles Bukowski inspired “Go Out and Bleed,” a slow, straight-forward, metallic rocker with grim, surrealistic lyrics and an impressive display of Moore’s guitar pyrotechnics. Partnoff’s noisy bass opens “White Satan” as Moore’s guitar provides a shower of quiet, playful arpeggios before moving into sinister, doom rock territory. With the help of Partnoff’s descending bass, Bean’s ponderous backbeat, Moore’s massive power chords and Partnoff’s harsh, snarling vocal, the song shatters the tenets of the conservative agenda.
“Our inspiration comes from what’s going on around us,” Moore says. “This record was written during a point of collective turmoil. We were grappling with chaos, the death of close friends and toxic relationships. That uncertainty comes out on the record. The songs have more anger and darkness this time around, but we don’t write with preconceived notions of what it’s going to sound like. We just do our best to give you something that’s truly us at that moment.”
Wm. Partnoff was born in the LA suburb of Whittier. He was inspired to pick up the bass by Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris. After spending years playing in bands in the San Francisco Bay Area, he moved to Long Beach in 2008. GS Bean started drumming to combat his extreme ADHD, but didn’t get serious about music until he was 19. His love for politically and socially progressive bands like England’s Subhumans profoundly influenced his life and taste in music. After finding Partnoff through Craig’s List, the duo searched for a guitar player and found Robert Moore, who’d just moved out from Indianapolis. His desire to blur boundaries and play whatever he felt, as loud as he could, clicked with the newly formed band’s vociferous, anything goes outlook.
“If you listen to our last record, and compare it to No Gods, you can hear our evolution,” Moore says. “We’ve found our voice and gelled into a tight band. We’re always working to stretch ourselves, and do something different and No God sees us exploring new time signatures, new rhythms, new lyrical ideas. We’re constantly challenging ourselves to be better.”
Jane Cable starts working through her ‘to be read’ pile
