HOW WE VIEW OLD PEOPLE

CAN YOU SEE PAST THE WRINKLES?

In ME, DINGO AND SIBELIUS the main character is a young woman, the odd one out in her family, who inherits a fortune and buys the retirement home where she's been a care worker for five years.

The main theme, however, is the way older people are viewed and treated in these modern times.

There's lots of conflict, a touch of romance and a tragedy, but there's also a happy ending.

If you want to cheer up an older person in your family, this book could do it!

As with my previous books, my royalties are shared between our local hospice, our local hospital's radiotherapy appeal and MacMillan Nurses.

FROM SHORT STORY TO NOVEL

WHAT IS A SHORT STORY? AND CAN YOU TURN IT INTO A NOVEL?

You can't just define it by the number of words. In my anthology THE FLOATER the shortest short story is 513 words, the longest nearly 5000. The accepted maximum is around 10,000 words. Beyond that it becomes wearisome - unless you add several more elements and turn it into a novel.

Because the chief difference between a short story and a novel is that a story covers a single event, a single experience, a single incident or a single revelation. There are few characters, not much conflict and no sub-plots.

But although a short story has fewer words, it's not necessarily easier to write. It's a bit like composing a poem. Every words must count, must have significance. As for the endings! Ah, that can be the hardest task of all. An open ending? A closed ending? All the loose ends tied up? A full circle back to the beginning?

Here's my shortest story, A HICCUP IN TIME:

It took Dodwell six months to build the time machine. He had ordered it in kit form from Taiwan and the manual, translated into a quaint form of English, had severely taxed his limited knowledge of electronics.

His first trip had been a near disaster, catapulting him into his own bed some twenty years in the future.It had been disconcerting to find himself lying beside an older Dodwell and disappointing to find that his strict diet of sheep’s milk, yoghurt and oranges had not preserved him from thinning hair and a paunch. He would have liked to enquire further after his future health, but the older Dodwell’s bulging eyes evinced such terror that he had thought it best to mutter a quick “Sorry” and beat it for the door.

A pity about the little blonde who had dived beneath the sheets. Had he been able to stay longer he might have discovered her identity but at least he had something good to look forward to.

For the time being he would concentrate on his main interest: the great artists and performers of the past whose autographs he so desired to collect. The time machine was the instrument through which he would meet them in the flesh.

His second journey went only slightly awry. Whilst he had focussed on 1901 and the playwright George Bernard Shaw he arrived instead in 1999, face to face with Melvyn Bragg, a writer whose work still received occasional mention in the more comprehensive Literary Companions of Dodswell’s own time. Bragg had been pathetically pleased to give his autograph to a 22^nd century time traveller and Dodwell had managed to sell it on for a few Euros on his return.

Since then he had met many of his idols and rarely received a rebuff. Jane Austen had been amiable and courteous, Emily Bronte abrupt and a little puzzled. Nijinsky had taken some pinning down and of course there had been the language problem, but Pavlova, Caruso, Mark Twain, Laurence Olivier, Graham Norton – Dodwell now had them all.

Inevitably however the time machine failed, three days after its guarantee expired. It happened in London’s West End where Dodwell had popped in to see the 2013 production of The Book of Mormon.

No amount of twiddling or kicking would restart the machine, and in despair Dodwell was forced to retreat into its cabin, later suffering the indignity of being clamped.

Trapped in time, Dodwell prayed for deliverance but as the weeks went by he decided it wasn’t such a bad life. Most people were friendly. Those who had initially regarded him with suspicion decided he was harmless enough and began to bring him food, blankets, the Daily Mirror.

He became a fixture in the West End landscape, even meriting an article in the Telegraph Sunday Magazine. On fine days Japanese tourists surrounded him with their digital cameras, posing alongside his machine. Some asked him to pose with them. He always said yes. It gave him some amusement to picture the bewilderment on their faces when they saw the empty spaces on their photographs.

Now, could you turn this into a full length novel?

You'd have to add complications. Obstacles. More characters. An ongoing conflict or situation which is resolved at the end.

Perhaps Dodwell is not the only time traveller who's ended up in London in the year 2013. In this case the short story, perhaps minus the last few paragraphs, becomes the first chapter of a novel in which the two travellers meet up, struggle to find a solution to the problem, maybe fall in love if this is going to be a romantic fantasy, and live happily ever after as a tourist attraction.

Another alternative is that Dodwell - alone or with the proposed second traveller - decides to abandon his time machine, settle down in Bognor Regis and use his knowledge of the future to make a fortune and become Mayor.

Of course, the short story could become the final chapter. Perhaps Dodwell has an enemy in the 22nd century who wants to get rid of him and has programmed the time machine to expire in Leicester Square a hundred and fifty years in the past.

The possibilities are endless.

CREATING REAL, FLAWED CHARACTERS

Heroines Don't Have To Be Beautiful, Blonde and Boring

The journey of a plain girl through your novel can be far more interesting. In my latest novel, ME, DINGO AND SIBELIUS,  my heroine Charlie has become more lovable and more alive with each chapter. I'm really very fond of her and felt sad when I finally put her to bed! Perhaps I'll write a sequel one day.

Here's the first chapter. I hope you like it. 

It's Monday. And it starts like any other Monday.

Mum downstairs cremating breakfast. My sister Georgie and my niece Rosie screaming at each other in Rosie's bedroom. My other niece, Daisy, screaming for her morning bottle. The kitchen radio blasting out the Chris Evans Show. And me, grumpy because my hair drier, the only one in the house that still works, is missing.

Looking into the mirror I see my Dad. As usual. With the hair drier I might at least move up a notch or two on the charm scale.

'OK, who's got it?' I yell.

Of course, I already know. Rosie, who spends hours each morning creating elaborate hairstyles to impress her schoolmates. Is it worth marching into her bedroom and trying to claim it? I've tried that before and it's come down to a physical fight for possession which Rosie usually wins. It's surprising how strong a skinny twelve year old can be.

Right now her quarrel with Georgie is escalating. I can hear them through the thin wall.

'I don't care what the others wear, Rosie, you're NOT going to school in six inch heels! Apart from the fact that you'll probably break an ankle, you look ridiculous.'

'Everybody's wearing them, I'll be the odd one out.'

'I'm sure they're not. And you can take off those false eyelashes, too. They're mine, aren't they? For heaven's sake, you're twelve, Rosie.'

'And ten months. Practically a teenager!' Rosie's sobbing increases in volume, but it's not going to soften Georgie's heart.

Who'd be a Mum? Me, I admit. But fat chance now. Thirty two already and only one proposal to chalk up. Jason Fishlock, former handyman at the Sundowners Retirement Home. Clammy hands and a noticeable squint. He must have thought he was in with a chance, being that I wasn't likely to attract anyone else.

Pausing only to give my bird's nest curls one last despairing comb through, I grab my rucksack and run downstairs.

In the kitchen Mum, a vision of cool elegant efficiency, is stirring something vigorously in a large pan. A stranger watching her might assume she knew what she was doing, despite the scatter of eggshells on the floor, leaving slimy trails of albumen across the tiles. Once upon a time Georgie reigned in the kitchen, but that was in the days when she still had dreams of owning her own restaurant. Nowadays, leaving out Mum's occasional urge to cook breakfast, our family's diet consists primarily of tins, packets, takeaways and pizzas, unless I have a day off and I'm prepared to cook a meal from scratch. The irony is that the others appear to thrive on it. I'm the only one who ever gets zits or stomach ache or lank hair.

'I'm making scrambled egg,' says Mum.

'I guessed.'

She turns the pan upside down. 'Hmm. Seems to have set solid. Still, shame to waste it. Want some?'

'Just toast for me, Mum. I'm having lunch out.'

Her eyes turn bright with hope. 'Anywhere nice? Who are you going with?'

'British Home Stores, and Alice Howell. We're taking the residents on a shopping trip.'

'Still. You never know who you might see while you're out. You should wear that nice green jacket I got you from the charity shop.'

Yeah. The one that makes me look like a leprechaun's kid sister.

'Give up, Mum. I'm not likely to meet Mr Right in BHS or anywhere else. I'm past my sell by date and I look like – like - '

'You look very nice, love.'

Nice. Not beautiful. Not even pretty. Just – nice.

'If you'd do something with your hair, and maybe a bit of make-up?'

'It's no use. I'm never going to look like you or Georgie. I look like my Dad.'

'Your Dad was a very handsome man, God bless him.'

But handsome in a man equals plain, or at most, passable, in a woman.

No one else in the family has inherited Dad's genes. The hair, uncontrollable without half a pot of gel and half an hour of blow drying. The snub nose and wide mouth. The golden brown eyes that practically disappear when I smile. The lack of height.

Georgie and Rosie have blue eyes and slender figures like Mum. They also have Mum's long golden locks, like Rapunzel in the fairy stories. It's too soon to tell with Daisy, only ten weeks old and still bald as a coot. At the moment she looks like Harry Hill without the spectacles but no doubt she'll metamorphose into something blonde, slim and elegant like the rest of the Churchill clan.

I walk past the hall mirror without bothering to look. What's the use? I'm stuck with what I am. The ugly duckling. The runt of the litter. The one that's nearly but not quite.

And if I don't set off now, I'm going to be late for work.