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In from the cold

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

There was somewhere in Len’s remote memory the image of a girl. Or maybe she was actually a woman, a being fully grown, an adult? But no, Len preferred the girl image instead. The girl he was thinking about would be a woman now he understood, but the memory of her from his schooldays was far more engaging. She was winsome and pretty, with mouse brown hair and the occasional spot amongst her freckles. Maybe he’d see her again sometime and she’d remember him. Such were Len’s musings as he ambled along on his dog walk, smoking his eighth cigarette of the day, unaware of the scent of early bluebells drifting from the woodland floor as he trampled them underfoot. His dog was off somewhere and Len’s big boots raised soft divots from the saturated ground.

The trees swayed and shivered in a chill spring wind as Len’s dog came bounding up and turned almost immediately away again. He took a long drag and fancied he saw a girl come slowly into focus. Len’s memory flashed so many convincing images that he almost called out to her. It was as well he didn’t because the girl that Len could see wasn’t a girl at all, definitely not a teenage girl and not even a young woman. The person who came into view was muddy, slightly overweight and dressed in too-tight jodpurs and top boots. An ugly crash hat was crammed down over her brow, its forlorn silk hanging wet and loose. This was definitely a woman, older by far than the pictures in his head now evaporating into wispy scraps and fragments. Noting the mud and that she wasn’t walking quite straight, Len called “are you alright?” As she approached he saw a tear stained face and the drooping silk. He could see it was attached to the helmet and wondered what it was for.

“No I’m not alright,” she said crossly and then more politely. “Have you seen a chestnut horse come this way? Filthy dirty? We fell over in a boggy puddle that was deeper than it looked. She took off”. Dozey Bitch was fawning at the woman’s knees and she pulled off a glove to fuss with the dog’s ears. She waited for some response from the man who seemed to Melanie to be a few pennies short of a pound. He might have been trying to parse what she had said as he puffed his cigarette. Too impatient to care Melanie decided he was probably just a bit simple. “Have you seen a loose horse pass this way?” she said slightly more loudly and with suppressed impatience. He wasn’t short of pennies, but in the wake of his nostalgic musings Len was indeed struggling to keep up. He watched his fickle dog make a new friend and mumbled something about horses not really being his thing, but that Dozey Bitch was enjoying herself. He stumbled forward to reclaim the dog apologising, “no, sorry, no sign of a horse, but we’ve only just come onto this path”. He tried to be helpful adding “your horse maybe headed up to the fields, maybe it followed the light?” He’d heard somewhere that animals and people went for the light or downhill when they were lost. He wasn’t sure if it was made up or not. He was sure that he’d headed downhill when he’d started losing track of his life. Perhaps it made some sort of sense for horses too. 

Melanie considered this a not unreasonable suggestion and revised her opinion of the slow-witted man, upgrading him from stupid to simply vague. She glanced about looking for where the most light might be, standing in silence with the man and his dog for a moment. Len couldn’t bear the empty quiet and started to move along saying “we’ll be off and we’ll keep an eye out”. In an effort to be helpful he added “maybe you should head up that way”. And as he turned and pointed away towards the fields at the edge of the wood, they saw the golden outline of mud splattered horse. It was nosing at a patch of grass, its reins on the ground and a stirrup flung over onto the wrong side of the saddle. The horse gave its nose a blow as it looked up, noted their presence and then went back to grazing.

Melanie was beaming. “I don’t suppose you’d mind just standing here while I catch her would you? I don’t want her to think she’s being chased. She can be a bit flighty sometimes.” “Not at all” Len said wondering if the horse was looking flighty or not. She just looked like a horse covered in mud and eating grass. He admired her tail floating sideways as the chilly breeze gave it a lazy push. Len looked on as Melanie walked carefully towards her horse. Something in her movement brought back the image of that girl he knew at school. It was the same image that had been floating in his brain when he’d seen this horsey woman from afar, and past bled into present. He watched her approach the horse and catch hold of the rein as she gave the horse a little pat. He continued to watch as she peered about looking for something that would work as a mounting block. Len wondered what she was doing. Horse people. He didn’t understand that the days when Melanie could just vault into the saddle from a standing start were no longer hers. They belonged to a time long ago, to her teens. And the times when she could put her foot into the stirrup and spring up into the saddle were also long gone. She remembered sometimes that they ended somewhere around the time of her second child’s fourth birthday. Much ended at around that time, although it had taken some years for Melanie to notice.

With nothing to use as a step, Melanie had no option but to ask for help. “I don’t suppose you could give me a leg up could you? My name is Melanie by the way, and this is Rizzo.”  It took Len a moment to understand that Rizzo was the horse and not an imaginary friend, as he raised a hand in greeting. He pulled Dozey Bitch back in time to stop her planting a couple of paws on Rizzo’s foreleg. “Len. And this is Dozey Bitch, DB for short. Happy to help. Not sure if I can but I’ll try, a first for everything right? What do I do?”

Rizzo and Dozey Bitch were giving each other little nose to nose kisses, but the mare was less inclined to get up close and personal with Len. He had a strange scent about him and he held onto the dog a little too tightly. At least that’s what Rizzo had got from the dog in their brief conversation. Melanie still could see nothing she could stand on where overhanging trees didn’t get in the way of her swing, or where there would be room for Rizzo to stand while Melanie climbed aboard. The wind was getting colder, she was wet and her hands were freezing. What had started as a glorious excursion in the early spring sunshine was turning miserable. Len was still there standing with a dead fag end in his fingers and a gormless smile on his face. It was a kind face Melanie noted.

He repeated that he was “willing to have a go, but what should I do?” “Ok. What you have to do is to cup your hands, so that I can put my foot into them like they’re a stirrup. “Right” said Len observing the muddiness of her booted foot. “Then on the count of three, you give me a boost and I get into the saddle. Does that make sense?” Len pondered this. Given his twenty a day habit, total lack of upper body strength and Melanie’s general bulk, he should have said that it made no sense whatsoever. But with remnants of his teenage fantasies tangling his memory and his manly pride in play, Len did not say this. Instead he crushed his defunct dog-end into his pocket and found himself bellowing with considerable enthusiasm “Perfect. Absolutely. Let’s get this done”. Melanie looked at him askance as he crouched down and leading her horse away took Dozey Bitch to a nearby tree. She looped the lead over a low branch and knotted it tight. She then came back to Len, still bent over, positioned Rizzo closer to him and waited. He became aware that Melanie wanted to give him instructions, so he uncurled and stood upright. “This is how you need to stand and how you hold your hands,” she said, crouching down in a half-squat with her hands cupped in front of her, arms extended, elbows slightly bent.” 

As she showed him what to do, Len was reminded of how rugby players get into position for a scrum and remembered that once upon a time, he played rugby for his school. He could even run quite fast. But that was before the fags and the stress of business, marriage and kids, relocations and missteps, all the things that made him feel so very old. How did he get such a distance from the Len who played rugby, the Len besotted with a spotty teenage girl whose image had unexpectedly floated up from the bluebells on chilled spring air.

He cleared his throat with a little harrumph and looked to the side. He made a vague engineer’s calculation of the total load, the height he would have to lift up to and the duration of the carry. “How hard can it be,” he said with a laugh as he approached the mare and went to half-heartedly pat her neck. She immediately swung away from him, a suspicious look in her eye. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll have hold of the reins and keep her head facing in your direction.” Rizzo, well aware of the entertainment value in swinging away from Melanie when she tried to mount, understood that this new version of the game might even be better. Rizzo could smell the stranger’s concern mingling with his peculiar bodily stink and the sweet aromas of bluebells and aconites. Melanie was waiting. Len nodded and stretched up manfully ready for a go at the required half-squat. “Let’s give it a try shall we?” she said trying to sound encouraging. Melanie was getting cold and the mud was drying on her clothes, as well as on her horse. It would be too chilly to hose Rizzo down once they got home so she’d need to be brushed, she thought crossly. “Ready?” she said plastering a bright smile on her face. She gathered up her reins taking care to hold the nearside one a little shorter and half turned towards Len who shuffled closer, his hands ready to take Melanie’s left foot. But he wasn’t quite close enough and as Melanie placed her muddy left boot into his cupped hands the mare took a small step sideways and Melanie swung over into empty space as Len tumbled forwards into her ample rear. He let go of Melanie’s foot and fell to his knees as she also fell while DB barked her encouragement. Unperturbed Rizzo rested a hind foot and gave her head a little shake. Melanie tried hard to be patient and not irritated, as she helped Len back onto his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m so sorry. What did I do wrong? I’ll get it right this time.” His voice was shaking a bit, as he searched for the someone lost in his life’s maze who was the man who could do this. Surely he was still there. Surely he could be sufficiently bold to stand close enough to a horse to help a lady get back into the saddle. Trying hard not to hiss as she spoke, Melanie pointed out that he needed a) to be sideways on to the horse and b) close enough to said horse that his shoulder was almost touching her. She added that c) he should give her, Melanie, the biggest boost he could muster. And that he should let go of her foot once Melanie was airborne. 

These instructions Len repeated, a), b), c) trying to joke that c), a), b) probably wouldn’t work. Melanie gave him a blank look and began to think that walking home was an attractive option, despite the lowering sky and the oncoming dusk. One more try though, so they got into position for the second attempt. Rizzo’s reins were more tightly held and Len’s back more tightly bent, his legs more firmly planted. Melanie got her foot into his hands once more and felt an upward boost at best described as pathetic. It got her ample bosom only as high as Rizzo’s saddle, and she had no prospect at all of casting a leg across the horse’s back. Dropping back to the ground Melanie noticed that Len was wheezing as he tried to make light of the second failure. “Well, at least she stood still this time,” he observed encouragingly. “Let’s give it another go, I think I’ve got the movement now”. 

Len crouched once more, braced and ready to put every bit of his middle-aged unfit self into the heaveho. On the third attempt Len lifted her so forcefully that Melanie shot up into the air and came down hard onto her horse’s back. A much surprised Rizzo shot forward in alarm almost unseating her rider and knocking Len once again to the ground. Melanie lost hold of one of the reins so Rizzo, pulled to the left and circled back towards Len now on his knees coughing and spluttering. He struggled upright in time to feel Melanie’s foot hit square and hard in his chest, as she reached for her stirrup. An epic coughing fit turned his face a shade of sunset crimson and he dropped his hands to his knees in an effort to get back his breath. Her stirrup, reins, control and composure regained, Melanie pulled up her horse, turned her and returned to her new friend at a measured jog. His face still puce but his breathing getting steadier, Len was wrestling with the very tight knot Melanie had put in his dog’s lead. He had almost stopped coughing and wheezing and vowed aloud that he should stop smoking. “Yes you should,” Melanie agreed as she turned towards home. “Thanks again for your help. Are you sure you’re alright?” “Fine. Fine. Glad you’re back on board” he wheezed. Len clutched at Dozey Bitch’s lead and headed for home. He watched as Rizzo, carried her bouncing mistress away and out of sight. He leant over to cough with more vigour but the cold air was making his lungs hurt. He let DB off the lead and saw her head off at speed after Rizzo. DB ignored Len’s feeble calls and he soon reverted to his coughing. The afternoon chill reached into his over extended lungs, slicing like razor blades. Len tried to find the space where he’d been a mere half an hour ago, calmly smoking and lost in the memory of a teenage crush and youth’s warm glow. The sound of his wheezing reminded Len that he wasn’t dead yet and that he probably shouldn’t try to hurry after his dog. He even wondered if she might follow Rizzo home, and that Melanie might try to bring her back to him in the dark and chilling woods. A teenage girl on a horse and a promising rugby player might yet end up somewhere warm, somewhere they could come in from time’s unrelenting cold.

A Christmas message

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

I It’s Christmastime and here we are

Each alone and yet in shared space

We’re secret and shared, random, but gathered in

We watch as one sips wine or waves across the room

We see another pick stray hairs from a dear one’s shoulder

We wonder at their constance, what they love and hold dear

We think of late night trains and sunken lanes in darkness still

And we know we don’t stand alone.

II It’s Christmastime and here we are 

Sharing spaces, affirmations, discourse and shapes

We are the passion, the remembered yet unspoken lusts

We watch for unknown moments, desires and secrets, none quite the same

We see memories lost in eyes at once remembered, that may never have been

We wonder at friends, at skies rent with lightning, at moments of awe

We think of instruments whispering somewhere far away

Pound’s petals on a wet, black bough

III It’s Christmastime and here we are 

Beyond our walls, new connections, the spit and echoes of ancient stories

We are each others’ lost memories quick silver dulled

We watch and set the lenses straight for what we’ve found

We see beyond the blah blah getting in the way 

We wonder at common memories, yet yearn for what’s missing

We think can we embrace unseen shadows, and then we do

A whistle’s echo hovers, and flutters leaves on the branches

IV It’s Christmastime and here we are 

We tell our stories of connections, of being kind, of patience with fools

We’re the keepers of tales, of the how, the who, of what we love 

We hear of families, horses and hounds, kittens, goldfish, the books, the music, all the others 

We listen to sounding angers, loss, the chaos of joy, calamity’s descent

We catch each others’ sounds and see and we are present

We hear harmonies, coherence conjoined

And how we come together is mysterious and wonderful

And as you are mine I am yours, we are ours

We are companions all, in these our endless moments.

© Laurel Lindstrom 2025

The Draftsman in brief

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Martin Cox left school at 16 with stellar grades. But too traumatised to progress any further academically, he instead took a low-paid, low-skilled job in a local drafting office.

Over the course of a couple of years Martin progresses in skill and appreciation of design and structure. He is an engineering genius and when he makes recommendations to change a patent application his life is turned around. He becomes very rich, but Martin Cox is a damaged man, a man whose past has left deep and abiding scars. He’s high-achieving, autistic, and craves routine and consistency in his life, yet he lives in chaos. He cannot relate to other people and is barely even aware of his own identity or his considerable limitations. Child abuse is not unusual in modern fiction, but a mother’s abuse of her son in the name of love is less common. Its legacy is rarely addressed.

When Martin Cox buys a house in the countryside, it is the first time ever he has spent any time out of London. He is slowly intrigued by the landscape and the history of the property. He starts to learn more about the original house, about the wartime hospital, about the school and about a young woman and her Canadian airman. As he becomes more fascinated, Martin starts to grow away from himself and towards others. He gradually comes to recognise the damage he has suffered at his mother’s hand, and even to care. His relationships become a source of healing, first the connection with his boss and later with his business minder. But these relationships are unclearly defined. The ambivalence with which the writer addresses Martin Cox’s sexuality is deliberate, a device to keep the reader guessing and a reflection of Martin’s own uncertainty and confusion.

Martin’s fascination with his house and its landscape, the local history, the wartime realities he learns more about as the book progresses, lead him to a mystery. As Martin’s sense of identity develops the reader sees his unacknowledged and unrecognised victimhood, mirror the solution of a mystery that only becomes apparent in the book’s climax.

The Draftsman is a compelling and highly original work of fiction. Readers come to understand Martin’s curious obsessions, contradictions and motivations through the course of the book. Martin’s logic, extreme orderliness and control are his default, but they mask his capacity to care or love. These limitations are a function of his mother’s unwelcome attentions.

© Laurel Lindström 2024

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I can’t…

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

I can remember George Lewis and how the room smelled of smoke and beer and sweat. Breathing deep I can remember being up so very high and seeing the top of my Dad’s head. I can’t remember why I was on George Lewis’s shoulders when I was two years old, only the persistent rumbling noise; shapes, shadows dancing random across my eyes. Maybe the pictures were real, maybe not.

I can remember later in the street feeding the rag and bone man’s piebald horse. The horse couldn’t see me unless I stood front of him and my mother wouldn’t let me do that. She didn’t understand that the blinkers blocked the view or how the scent and heat of his shining black and white coat embraced me. I stared up not down, breathing deep. I never saw what Dad helped the toothless rag and bone man load up onto his cart. I can remember too the meandering echoes of Billie Holiday and New Orleans jazz. 

I can remember much later standing on the corner of Cambridge Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue waiting for you. Looking. Would I know you now that you are old, would you know me now that I am nineteen? And then there you were, I saw you. I watched you looking furtive and anxious and guilty. But for whom the guilt? Maybe for all of us. Then we sat awkward and afraid of each other, no mention of sitting on a man’s shoulders or wanting to look a piebald horse in the eye. It was just uncomfortable words passing as conversation between a lonely daughter and her estranged father. The girl was unacknowledged. The man was unknown. They were anonymous, cloaked a hidden shared yearning, wanted none of this to be true, wanted that none of it had happened.

But it had; it could only keep on happening unless the pattern changed. She wanted it but he didn’t. “It was a long time ago.” Denial, hiding, blocking, rejection. Rejection again, but that wasn’t true either, just the thing he knew he had to do. There were other considerations, other truths, other hearts he must not let break.  

The sounds and chaos of emotions grown and slowly settled over many years, over many sad walks around Cambridge Circus, over many times in the 100 Club and the Pizza Express in Soho. The tears in the dark, the heaving gulping sobs, the weeping and slow tears for what was so long gone, were ceased. The laughter came back, the joy of hearing him play, of seeing faces smiling from the past. “It should never have happened” Monty said. And then Dad died. And no it never should have happened but it did and out of destruction he had build much more. He had given something to share, something of love remembered.

A new CD with tracks from 1959. Dad on drums and George Lewis on clarinet. Listen to it? Absolutely. But not just yet. I can’t …

Delete #2 New Boy

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

(The first in this series was published here: https://writetime.org/anthology/)

The whisper went around the classroom, every time Miss turned to the board. Fight. They’re going to get him. After school. That’s what John Carter said. Little new boy‘s gonna get it. But Mrs Vurley didn’t hear it as she turned back to her year 9s and reminded them of the homework. Pointing to the board and “… by Friday no later please.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley watched them pile out from behind their desks, rushing towards the door. She hadn’t heard the dark whispers but she watched as the new boy slunk away from her, separate from the rest. Did she see fear? “David, David? How are you settling in?” “Yes Mrs Vurley,” he mumbled. Mrs Vurly put her pencil behind her ear and looked at the boy again, eyebrows raised. She sighed. “Hurry now, it’s hometime, you’re out of here for today.” Looking up at her he said, “Yes miss, but John Carter said …” “John Carter? What about John Carter?” Mrs Vurley didn’t have a John Carter in her class. “John Carter? I don’t think I know him. What about John Carter?” “Nothing miss” said David moving quickly to the door. Delete.

Mrs Vurley looked out of her window at the usual scene of children milling towards the school gates, the lines of cars waiting for some, parents waiting for others. A few were on foot heading home or for the bus. There was only one small knot of boys, with a couple of girls in tow, lingering by the gate. She didn’t see David out by the gates and gradually the group of boys and their groupies drifted away. 

When David came to school the next day as soon as his dad dropped him off he ran a gauntlet of teases and taunts. His dad smiled as he watched with fond memories of his own school days. He didn’t see what he was seeing as he drove away, lost in reveries of a super posh school for boys. Delete. He didn’t hear when they said “white boy, hey whitey, come on, come on tell us who’s in that picture. We got the picture innit. Who is she?” As he drove away his brain had the scene with his boy centre stage, but he wasn’t seeing it. Delete. His brain heard the voices, unhearing the words. Delete. He moved on and stopped thinking about his boy. Delete. 

The catcalling was lost in the group, and no one was brave enough to be seen specifically to call out to the new boy. “Fresh off the boat are ya? Fresh from Alabammer are ya? Black Lives Matter ya know, yeah.” Fist saluting and laughing and then mocking his accent, like he was from the deep south and not from New York City. That accent was harder to copy his dad said David had told him when it first happened. And his dad, strong and tall and believing himself a streetwise New Yorker had no idea of how alone his child was. Delete. And so David didn’t speak much at school, not after the first day when he said his name in class and they were all supposed to welcome the new boy. Instead they stared at him and laughed at the way he spoke. Afterwards a couple of them had asked him his mobile number, although he didn’t know what they meant at first. “Oh, cell you mean my cell?” And that had set them off. “Yeah, your cell Yank. Give us your cell.” And they’d all laughed. David small and living in his head, processing the new country, this city school, the scale of it, the weird sports and having to read so much, write so much, confused and uncertain and very alone.

In the staff room Mrs Vurley was reminding herself of what they were supposed to look out for so that they could submit a pupil concern email. In her day bullying was just part of the day, some children were just marked out for it. Would it be how fat or thin they were, how shabby their uniform or beaten up their shoes? Would it be how clever they were or how stupid? Would it be their accent or how clean or dirty their hair was? Would it be how small or big they were, geeky, Jew, Christian or Muslim? She knew that it was impossible to predict, but that it hung on a chance moment, a thin thread and an unpredictable hook. And it was part of school life, ugly or not. Now they had guidelines and rules which at least gave an opportunity to do something. Now at the first sign they were alert and could take steps. And guidelines meant there was no need to convince sceptical staff or heads. Guidelines meant they could do something, not nothing. But guidelines and actions could also push it out of view. Delete.

It was Mrs Vurley’s day to monitor the lunch room so she made a point of watching this new boy, freshly arrived from America with his heavy accent and fretful eyes. She saw him sitting alone as two bigger boys took their places on either side of him. But she didn’t see David leaning forwards into his tray nor did she see the two boys sit closer and closer. Both had been held back from last year. Neither was bright and both were strong and confident, popular. They had pulled their chairs in close to David and were leaning into the boy. She smiled as she saw the Kendulu boy suddenly pull away and David fall sideways under the force and weight of the kid on the other side and they were laughing. Relieved Mrs Vurley turned away to deal with a fuss about mashed potato blowing up in the queue. Delete.

But her attention was soon drawn back to the boys. David’s tray had fallen sideways with him and Kendulu was no longer laughing, but up on his feet. “Look what you done man, look what you done, your shepherd’s pie is all over me trousers. Look at the mess you made!” And his friend jumped up to join in. “Look what you done to Ken’s gear man, look what you done.” They were both towering over David, hands pointing upwards, heads turning from side to side, voices rising, looking for the audience, for response. And they were laughing and patting David on the back. It was impossible to see that the pat was just that little bit too hard, lingering just a little bit too long pushing the boy down. David tried to stand but they had blocked his chair with their feet so he was stuck between the table and his chair half up half sideways and now Ken’s leg with its smears of shepherd’s pie is in David’s hair. It was time to intervene and as Mrs Vurley hoved into view both boys stood back, moving their feet and smug as David’s chair scraped unexpectedly back and he fell onto one knee, baked beans stuck to the tears and his tormentors with their hands in mock surrender. “He’s such a laugh Miss, he spilled his food on me on purpose miss. I done nothin’” and “Yeah Miss, it was on purpose, he’s bullying us, he thinks he’s cool ’cos he’s an American miss.” 

As two other staff members started ushering the small audience back to their food, Mrs Vurley looked at the two boys. “What’s this about?” “David?” “Ken?” “Jason?” David said nothing, but shrank even smaller into himself. Kendulu repeated it was on purpose and that they were being picked on by this new boy, who thought he was so great because he came from America. “And you Jason, what do you have to say?” “It weren’t me miss.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley gestured them away and the two boys sloped off leaving David alone. As he looked up to answer Mrs Vurley’s unheard question David saw Jason draw a long finger in a straight line across his throat, before turning it into a wave and a laugh as Mrs Vurley followed David’s gaze.

“David, how long have you been at this school?” Mrs Vurley was a little embarrassed that she hadn’t really noticed the boy. Delete. Embarrassed but unsurprised. He was an unprepossessing thing, quiet and withdrawn, keeping his head down, avoiding contact. “Five weeks Mrs Vurley.” “Five weeks” she repeated, ”and how long have you been friends with Kenulu and Jason?” David stared sullenly at his lunch tray and its unappealing mess. “They’re not my friends” he mumbled and tried to straighten his shoulders, tried to claw back some sense of dignity. “But they like to follow me and send me messages on FaceBook an’ all. So maybe. Dunno.” There followed a series of questions, questions that Mrs Vurley knew she should ask, even though in the back of her mind she knew the answers already.

Yes, there was harassment, although he was evasive as to its frequency and intensity. Yes there were incidents, like today only mostly unseen and yes there had been unflattering pictures posted online and shared with various school groups. Girls and some boys sent him flirty messages and then ridiculed his replies. They invited him to online chat sessions only to block him at the last minute or worse to hide behind fake accounts and make ugly threats, sometimes with pictures of cats with their throats cut, or birds with their wings ripped off but still alive and bleeding. They threatened to tell his dad that David was staying over with friends, but really they planned to kidnap him and sell him as a sextoy to white supremacists. Mrs Vurley rolled her eyes at this, but still. The digital world’s a dangerous place. “How many David? How many boys and girls are doing this to you?”

By this time David was crying and the lunch room was empty. Mrs Vulney was glad she had no lessons this afternoon and persisted. “Do you know what mobbing is David?” “No miss,” he sniffed. “Do you know how to block people on your social media accounts?” “My dad’s told me I should do that and I’ve tried. But Snapchat messages disappear straight away and they use fake names. I know it’s them, and I want to be their friend though. That’s why I kept my Facebook account after … ” “After what? After what David?” “Nothing” he mumbled drowning in their power. Delete.

As she hit send on her email and its attached Pupil of Concern form, Mrs Vurley hoped that her colleague’s initial call to the family would go somewhere. It didn’t. They laughed it off. Delete. But later Mrs Clayman tried to talk to her son, except that the talk was more a forced encounter. A bully’s privilege? “It’s gone.” “What do you mean gone, David? Are you being picked on or not. You have to tell me.” “It’s gone because it’s SnapChat. The messages disappear straightaway.” “Don’t lie to me David. That makes no sense. I know you’re hiding something from me.” Mrs Clayman didn’t know she needed to get him to take screen shots. Would he have done? Would she have looked? Delete. Mrs Clayman tried another line. “Well what about FaceBook? Show me what you’ve got on FaceBook.” Here David had more to say, “I know I should block them on FaceBook, but if I tell them I’ll block them they just laugh, ooh you know how to block do you. Then they send me notes in History saying sorry. So I unblock them, then it’s ok for a while and then it starts up again. And on Instagram they pretend to like my pictures, but they’re just mocking me. You can tell in the comments.” The tears were rolling down his cheeks as David continued: “And I tried setting WhatsApp so that no one can see my picture and status and Aunty Jean got upset, so I put it back.” David could see that she wasn’t hearing what he said, wasn’t seeing, was inhabiting her own old world. Delete.

Mrs Clayman was starting a block of her own. This was all too silly. They’re just boys being boys with the new kid. It will pass. He was still adjusting to the new life. The school had it in hand. “David, let’s keep this in perspective shall we? They’re just lads and you’re different and sensitive, you know that don’t you? Let’s not get all bent out of shape about kids at school. It’s just their way, the British way, you know that I am pretty sure. You’ll get used to it. It’ll be fine.” Delete.

Sex in The Draftsman

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

There isn’t much to be honest, at least not much that is actually described, breathless and torrid. Sorry if that’s your gig. Sex is however one of the underlying themes of the book, even though the sex scenes aren’t explicit. In part this is because trying to write a sex scene is just so cringey. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. I have found that whenever I try it, the words invariably twist around and turn themselves into something that is very funny. I didn’t want that to happen in The Draftsman, so I avoided getting into too many details.

Is every exploration basically about sex? How do we need to understand it? What is its contribution to identity? Not sure. Read the book and tell me what you think. Or not.

The other thing that happens when trying to write sex scenes is that I start to blush and get embarrassed even though I am alone. It’s a problem and I don’t know any other writers well enough to discuss this with. I do know that when discussions head into the sex weeds in creative writing classes, the women take the topic very seriously and the men stare at their shoes. Perhaps it was just that particular group. Or perhaps sex is something that men writers find harder to chat about than women writers do. I fall into the men writer category, and I do have some very lovely shoes.

In The Draftsman, protagonist Martin Cox is a man whose sexuality is not clearly defined, it’s ambivalent. He’s a man who is always alone and who functions mostly in his head. For him sex belongs in an abstracted part of his psyche, a need rather than a dimension of his identity. Martin’s interested in sex, but not in any of the dramaturgy that for most people has to go with it. He just doesn’t care, cannot relate to any other aspect of his sexual partners, and is only concerned with their willingness to oblige. For Martin sex sits in its own box. Like hunger or the need to sleep, it’s not a defining characteristic of Martin Cox and it isn’t part of his identity. And yet that may not be entirely true.

Obviously I know why that is and you will too once you’ve read the book, but I wonder how widespread this disconnect is. Do we wall up parts of our natures in spaces that only occasionally can be accessed or, more darkly, that surface unexpectedly? This is an idea I plan to explore in the second book about Martin Cox, as he learns more about what happened to Ruth Lorne and her Canadian lover. In The Draftsman we learn a little bit about these characters, but only superficial details gleaned from diaries, police reports and newspaper cuttings. Ruth and Charles are certainly lovers, but sex may not have been part of their shared experience. Martin can be fascinated by these two people precisely because they are from another time, distinct from him but linked to him through their shared localities. They spent time in the same landscape as Martin, but over fifty years ago, far away enough on the continuum that Martin doesn’t need to integrate them into his world. They are in their own private box.

Martin Cox may be afraid or anxious about relationships and making a connection with someone who might have expectations about where that connection might lead. But this need for separation doesn’t have to be fundamental. This is addressed briefly in The Draftsman, but its implications are likely to be missed by many readers. That’s my fault for failing to add sufficient data to the scene, but the lack of data is precisely why Martin Cox reacts as he does to traumatic situations, including sexual ones. Read the book and let me know what you think.

The Draftsman and technology in the age of XXX

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

The world is awash with writers, fitness trainers, dog walkers, chefs and book bloggers. And around each of them is a web of service providers, sales channels and even sometimes paying customers. Yet very few of us have been able to give up the day job. As a début author (The Draftsman) I am totally drowned in an ocean of other writers and overwhelmed by the expectations of what one must do to stand out and build a following in the wild, wild world of XXX where XXX means whatever you want. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the work, the actual book, but everything to do with how skilled you are at managing the online channels, from Amazon to Wattpad (don’t ask), and how good you are at name dropping. And I am absolutely crap at all of it. I don’t want a relationship with algorithms or the XXX anons.

This is ironic, given that I have spent my career writing about technology, and that technology is what’s making all this possible. From word processors like Apple’s MacWrite and Microsoft Word, through to layout tools and the container for print ready pages that is PDF, I’ve been mostly on top of it. Looking back over the years I am pleased to see so many of the amazing innovations we’ve covered, now in the hands of so many creative people. These media production technologies are cheap, readily available and make it possible for anyone to produce a book, newsletter or whatever. And that has driven author incomes down.

The Draftsman, one in a gazillion.

It’s been the same story in the music industry as technology made production processes cheaper and accessible to more people. This is all quite wonderful because it lowers the bar to entry, so that more ideas can be shared in many different creative ways. Technology is central to The Draftsman, and how clever inventions make a difference to inventors, users and the planet. 

Technology is central to everything, so it’s fair to say that the publishing industry’s raw material, imagination and passion, is completely entangled with it. Today writers must develop an online following in order to be noticed. The online following comforts publishers who might be reluctant to take risks with new ideas and points of view. A following suggests a swathe of keen buyers and so informs budgets, project planning and print run lengths. Technology creates opportunity for so many expressive formats and allows publishers to identify and target potential readers for a given work. But there is way too much noise in the online world and much of it is self-serving and rather ugly.

In The Draftsman, set in 2006, two years after FaceBook launched, there is no social media apart from a passing reference to emails and the speed of internet connections. And there is a bit of foresight too, when Martin Cox ponders the rate at which many forms of printed content will migrate online, to decimate the printing industry and create opportunities for new business models. Even in 2006 when FaceBook was only two years old, it was clear that internet technologies were reaching not just into industrial applications, but also becoming central to daily living. By 2012 when FaceBook went public the platform had 845 million users and social media was a habit.

And yet I didn’t want Martin Cox to be an online junkie. He’s obsessive and dark, and what he would do with an online existence would be as obsessive, as dark. I didn’t want to write about how dark, given his personality and history, and his various confusions. But perhaps I should have done because that would have required more research into the whole social media eco-system and the paths through it. It might have made me a more adept manipulator of the channels and algorithms and it might have made me more popular, in a bitsy sort of way. (That’s binary digitsy, not little particles.) And the darkness in The Draftsman might have found an audience. Then I would have lots of followers and publishers might have been swooning at my feet. But then again, the lack of swooners might just be that I don’t write as well as I think I do. Read The Draftsman and decide for yourself. Ever yours, XXX.

The Trials of Getting Your Novel Published – Part 5

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Getting through the publishing process, or not? (from October 2020)

It’s taken weeks to get over the trauma of the structural edit of The Draftsman. And in between then and now, life and the outside world have weaseled their ways into brain and heart to make it even harder to think fiction.

This might be a natural part of the process. You think about characters, you eventually consider what they do and don’t do and then you get the whole thing down on the page and suddenly without any warning it’s all gone, forgotten about. Then people ask you about the story, the characters and what they do, and what happens in the end. It’s not polite to offer the first response that comes to mind, but it is polite to smile and say “thanks for asking” and then to change the subject. Sometimes this works. If it doesn’t you can tell the truth. “It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s about”. It’s only a little lie.

So fab, you send in your structural edit. And fab you wait, and you wait some more and some more and eventually you forget about it again. Then you see a diary note: “deadline for structural edit to Unbound” oh bugger. Then hang on, not oh bugger at all you say to yourself. Then slightly louder you say to the cuckoo clock “I sent that in, and I’ve heard not a whisper. Did they even get it? (who knows) Should I nag? (probably not) Can I resist the urge to ask? No I cannot.” And yes, they did get it. Pull some more teeth with another question: what happens next? 

After the structural edit?

A good structural editor will check for holes and that they are all in the right places.

Fortunately this is an easy question to answer, so the answer comes within weeks. What happens next is that the structural edit is reviewed and the editor puts together another set of queries and questions. These are so that the author can clarify why Mrs Himplestanger says she hates cheese in chapter two, but tucks into a cheese fondue in chapter nine. Oops. These are the sorts of things that authors really should notice, but often don’t. And why is that a surprise? Who knows about cheese or not when you’re forty thousand words away?

And while the structural editor is once more doing their wonderful thing, and you’re dreading having to read the bloody book yet again, you have other tasks to fulfil. The publisher wants a Style Sheet completed. This has nothing to do with formatting or paragraph properties but everything to do with “character lists and timelines”.

Character lists and timelines

I am not entirely confident that I can pull this together for The Draftsman, but I am trying. The trouble is that every time I take a stab at character lists and timelines, something terribly important needs doing and gets in the way. I have to straighten my speaker wires, polish my collection of novelty USB sticks and take an urgent inventory of the household rice collection (four varieties, all in good supply and all very surprisingly in date). Once the excitement of such activities wears off the character lists and timelines spreadsheet beckons once again. But then faced with a menacing array of empty Excel spreadsheet cells, arranging pens and pencils in size order on a far corner of the desk is suddenly an absolute must to do. And this vital task can take so long because the naughty pencils keep rolling off the desk. Then there’s the fringes on the rug to comb out, and the dead flies to line up and measure, and those spiders won’t spin their webs without a song or two to help them along. And so it goes. Thinking about it, there will be a couple of weeks before the structural edit second edition comes back with some important changes. Perhaps I’ll wait for that instead. Just in case.

A structural edit? What? Thank you Helen Francis

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

I have heard that when starting out as a novelist, getting your manuscript finished is the easy bit. I always thought that a little bit silly, because you’ve sweat blood over the thing, spent months or even years on it. But I’m beginning to see there is some sense to this. For a start there’s all the additional prep, the formating and understanding the process. Then there’s the cover design and blurb to sort, both of which are easy and exciting. But then comes the structural edit. This is not nearly so easy or as exciting, and sweating blood plays no part. 

A structural edit has to ensure that the plot makes sense, so if it doesn’t you’re faced with some heavy duty rewrites and rearranging. The structural edit also checks that the characters in the novel are believable and consistent, and that you haven’t overloaded them with tropes that undermine or distract the reader. As important is a check on the consistency of voice and point of view, of tense and credibility in terms of dialogue. These are all things you think you’ve addressed during your umpteenth rewrite, prior to submitting the manuscript to the publisher. But no matter how thoroughly you think you have gone through your work, you’re bound to have missed stuff. This is why editors are so vital and so lauded by their authors. They can literally help to spin gold from dross.

I’m now working on implementing the structural editor’s recommendations for The Draftsman, wrestling with the dross and trying to find the gold. In the process I’m learning a lot about writing. I’m struggling to resolve all the queries and suggestions to make The Draftsman better. Struggling, but at it.

Without seriously competent editing advice, this never could have happened.

Helen Francis did the first big edit of the Draftsman for Unbound, the publisher. She has given me a mix of mild critique and several excellent suggestions to improve the narrative. Helen has also pointed out that I use far too many pointless and distracting adjectives. Both my mother and my sister noticed this after they briefly skimmed some early chapters, but I thought I knew better. Ms Francis agrees with them. I was wrong. Now the adjectives thing is making me wonder why I thought I needed them in the first place. It might be that using too many adjectives is a way to avoid getting to the point. That’s probably because I wasn’t quite sure what that point should be or even what happened next in the story. More likely it’s a tendency to hide behind excess words because I don’t trust myself. This isn’t surprising because I trust virtually no one, so why should I trust me? There’s no habit for the trust thing.

Fixing all the points raised in the structural edit is extremely demanding and quite frankly exhausting. It’s at this stage that you understand that your book really is going to be published, and even if you might not agree with your editor’s suggestions, together you’re creating something that people will buy, a viable product. You might have to completely rethink how you present your characters. You might need to focus on how much or how little you want readers to get to know them and their role in the story, beyond helping to drive the plot. And yes, you must decide how many adjectives to use and which ones.

There is some real risk involved in this process. You need to make sure that the story doesn’t distort in the course of the rewriting and edits. This is almost harder than writing the thing in the first place, because you’re probably now working on some other work, one that’s completely different. Keeping within the bounds of the book is tough and it’s very tempting to bring in all sorts of other ideas as part of the structural editing process. You find there are lots of possible new digressions, subplots and thoughts you have in the middle of the night and think will made a massive improvement. Resist: they’re bound to go nowhere. Keep them far away from your editing process, keep them for another day, maybe as notes for a different story. Stay focused wholly on the work in hand.

And remember that you have to watch that fictional characters don’t start to change on the page. If you aren’t careful, this can happen almost without you realising it. Be disciplined and make sure to keep your face out of the narrative pie. Taking suggested edits one at a time and considering each one in the context of the paragraph, chapter and overall work, is slow and tedious work. It’s a first for me so I’m finding that process difficult. The structural editing thing is pushing me beyond what I thought were the limits of my abilities. Or perhaps I should say beyond whatever it is that feeds my sense of limits. I know I’ll get it done and in the end The Draftsman will be a much better product. Thank you Helen Francis.

(from July 2020)

The trials of getting your novel published part 2: Some more of the journey (January 2020)

Laurel Lindström Leave a comment

Last week seemed overrun with other peoples’ work, technical stuff, reading fiction (a 723 page work of historical fiction completed over an immersive four days), wrestling with social media and of course keeping the website alive and active (hah).

There was also a bit of helpful wrestling with a fellow author at Unbound whose book, Draca, is due out on the 14th May 2020. Geoff Gudgion is bravely considering a London book launch and this brings to mind all sorts of wild imaginings. The most important thing isn’t the venue or how much nosh and booze to order, but who will be there and making sure they’re the best candidates for the job of promoting the book.

It got me thinking about whether I should do the same for The Draftsman which is supposedly due out in May or June. A needling steely voice in my head says yes, but the rest of me, limp and weedy, says no. Why is that? Money? Publisher’s support? Neither. The reason is that despite 30+ years experience with press conferences, speaking and running seminars, I find the whole idea of a book launch quite terrifying.

Think about it. You have to invite people to show up (having found them first). What if they don’t, and how do you bear yet more rejection? Then, with as much gushing sincerity and enthusiasm, you have to welcome those few brave souls who do come, and hope that none of them are people you already know. What do you say to them? How do you talk about yourself without sounding like an American (sorry Americans, but I know you know what I mean)? How do you talk about your book in a way that doesn’t come across as either unbelievably pretentious, embarrassed by it, or just plain bombastic? And if you are able to raise a modicum of passion about what you want to say what tone do your strike? How do you keep from ranting and scaring everyone? How do you avoid making idiotic jokes that no one will understand? How do you keep yourself from necking too much wine before, during and especially after the presentation?

Martinis are always an excellent option too.

When I reached that point in the anxious wondering about having a book launch, I went for the nearest slab of Cote d’or Belgian chocolate rather than imagine any more of the awfulness. It’s fine, wonderful even, that Geoff is getting on with it, and in a way a launch would be okay for me to try. But mostly it just wouldn’t without involving a lot of chocolate and champagne first, and that really wouldn’t do. But maybe that’s the germ of an idea for how to manage it? Don’t manage it, succumb to the chocolate and champagne, bite the nails until they bleed, don’t speak or see anyone that you care about in case you lose it. Instead accept that you will turn into a screaming wild banshee for a little while and go for it. Get a list from Unbound of all their peeps who cover book launches and who have a proven track record of getting their stuff published. Get a venue willing to dish up just chocolate and champagne. (You could also contact Ann Cater who organises blog tours.) Get people along to talk together about what they do and what they look for in new releases. Encourage them to sit and sprawl on comfy furniture. Ply them and yourself with ample gobs of chocolate and champagne (you might have had enough by now and be onto the gin instead). Chat some more about what they want to write about and then lie as much as necessary about the book. All that remains is to finish the remnants of chocolate and champagne and probably gin (shame to waste it) and job done!