Memory and the mythology of place

Hello blog! I've been so weighed down by viruses - I had a hacking chest cough for five weeks - and preoccupied by difficult family matters, that the only times I've had alone with my thoughts or with enough energy for creativity have been spent immersed in my current WIP. Anyway, things are looking up, I'm feeling more energised and the brain seems to be firing up in different directions and making connections again, and after I looked at this highly appropriate photo I got to thinking about the matter of photographs versus memory.

I saw this sight, and snapped it, when I was walking to Didsbury village at Christmas. I thought of sharing it on social media then, but hosting a big family Christmas put the whole thing out of my mind, after which I immediately became ill, and for weeks then I was so low that all I wanted to do was curl up away from everything and protect, as far as I could, the developing world of the novel inside my head, and think about nothing I didn't have to. I did go out now and then, and I even took a trip to London to the event for the Edge Hill Prize which was deservedly won by Sabba Sams for her collection Send Nudes. I probably shouldn't have spent the next day wandering around London in the cold and drizzling rain, because after that my cough worsened again. But the point here is that on that walk I was arrested by a curious sight: a high stepladder open on the pavement in front of an ornate door, and, perched on the top, a man working on something, maybe an electric light, most of him hidden by a light-coloured umbrella protecting him from the rain. It looked so strange and quaint, like something from the nineteenth century, and it was so picturesque, the steps and the umbrella creating a pale mushroom shape in front of that dark ornate nineteenth-century door. It reminded me of the photo above, and the two images instantly created a pair in my mind. I took off my gloves and got out my phone to photograph it, but then saw that John, who was with me and hadn't realised I'd stopped, had walked on and disappeared out of sight, and, feeling miserably cold and agitated by the cough, I gave up and put my phone back in my pocket and rushed to catch up with him.

So I didn't take the photo, but the image has stayed so vividly  in my mind. I wonder now, though, have I remembered it correctly? Was the umbrella really light-coloured - actually mushroom-coloured? Or did my mind manufacture that as a consequence of my registering that the whole construction was mushroom-shaped? Could it be the case that if I had taken a photo it would show something less poetically resonant and fitting (a darker, less dramatic-looking umbrella)?

Last week I went to a family birthday celebration at Croma restaurant in Prestwich. I had only ever been there once before, years ago, when it first opened, and although I had perfectly remembered the interior, I was staggered to find its location so different from that in my memory. It's on a side road off the main street, but I had remembered it very particularly as being on the main street surrounded by its busyness and lights - probably, I suppose, because I knew the manager, and it was an occasion of excitement at the opening.

This is the way that memory and imagination mythologise things, including place. It's something I explore to some extent in my story 'Looking for the Castle', which is included in my collection Used to Be, in which the protagonist-narrator returns to a long-ago childhood home.  I know there's a lot of current interest in literature of place, and I know many readers like it, finding in it the comfort of familiarity, but it is precisely because of this last that I sometimes - even often - don't name places in my writing. If, before last week, I'd wanted to name and describe Prestwich Croma in a fiction, I'd have had to travel up there to make sure I did so with accuracy - but in doing so, I'd have destroyed a very thing that would have most likely moved me to include it in the first place - that distorted image I've been carrying in my head, which would have been the locus of the atmosphere, emotions and even theme I would have been wanting to convey. It is the mythic version that would be relevant and resonant for the fiction, and in order for that not to be destroyed by contemporary readers' different potential associations with the place, it would need to be unnamed or renamed.

neverimitate reviews Astral Travel, and a podcast interview for The Wormhole.

I so admire the industry and application of book bloggers. Jackie Law has a very busy blog, neverimitate - I don't know how she manages to read as much as she does, and write about it all. I'm very grateful that she's given Astral Travel a detailed and thoughtful review, and thrilled, I must say, that she says it's 'a lingering and recommended read.'

Charlie Place, whose blog is The Wormhole, conducts podcast interviews with the authors whose books she has reviewed - that must be such a lot of work! - and last week she interviewed me about my story collection, Used to Be and Astral Travel - with a little bit, too, about writing drama for radio. I realised I'd never done an interview like this before - via telephone or zoom - previously, it's always been in person or via email. We did it via audio zoom, and I wondered beforehand if I'd miss the visual cues/clues of an in-person interview, but in the event found it worked very well. You can hear the podcast here.

Review of Used to be in the Short Review

I'm having a nice couple of days: hot on the heels of the review in Confingo, here's another really great review of Used to Be, this time in the inestimable Short Review. Reviewer Cath Barton discusses several of the stories in depth, and concludes:

Life is a series of might-have-beens, near-misses and what ifs. This is a tremendous collection of stories. They do not seek to be didactic, but may nonetheless give many of us who read them cause to reflect on the choices we have made in our own lives, and to be more mindful of the options which open in front of us every day.

Review of Used to Be in Confingo

There'a a lovely review of Used to Be in the new issue of the Manchester-based magazine Confingo. Confingo is an extremely smartly-produced publication, with stunning artwork and photography and high-standard fiction and poetry. This issue also carried an interview with David Gaffney. I thoroughly recommend it as a magazine worth subscribing to.

Of Used to Be, reviewer Emma Bosworth says: 'The writing is is vivid, buoyant, incisive ... vibrant evocation of time and place - and the power of the human mind to transcend both.'

Wales Arts Review reviews Used to BE

Here's a great new review of Used to Be in the Wales Arts Review - very insightful in terms of my basic themes and preoccupations. I didn't see it for a while, as I've not been on social media much - coming to the end of a big writing project means spending any spare time catching up in the garden, cleaning the sadly neglected house and spending hours and hours fiddling about with the manuscript - I've edited it twice now, but every time I look at the damn thing I see something that needs changing, and then I have to redo it and print out the changed pages again for my beta readers, who prefer hard copy.

The review, by Frances Spurrier, comments on the way some of the stories touch on technology, which I hadn't thought of myself - I tend to think I've left behind my obsession with technology, as worked out in The Birth Machine and some of my earlier stories, having become more interested in storytelling and memory, but I guess those things are intertwined, all feeding into my underlying theme of power which I made most explicit in Balancing on the Edge of the World.

I'm pretty chuffed by Frances Spurrier's comment:

 'While it may be easy enough to have existential anxieties, to ask what is real and what is not, to question the reliability of memory – it is not at all easy to ask big questions in this most difficult of writing forms, the short story, and using such lucid and poetic prose as the author here uses.'

Off to London today, to the launch of Isobel Dixon's new poetry collection Bearings - can't wait, I love her poetry!

Helen Walters reviews Used to Be

Another review of Used to Be to bring me back to my blog in spite of the demands of the WIP. Helen Walters writes a lovely response to the book on her blog, Fiction is Stranger than Fact.

She says:

One of the most appealing things about this collection is that, although all the individual stories are very different and cover different subjects, there is a real unity of theme to the book,

goes on to explain that

All the stories look at alternative explanations and viewpoints on things that have happened or are happening. They examine the nature of memory, the complexities of interpretation and the possibilities of alternate reality. The y also put the microscope on the art of storytelling itself,

picks out her three favourite stories, and concludes:

All in all, an enjoyable collection of well-chosen stories with a fascinating linking theme. Recommended.

WIP bulletin (for those the slightest bit interested): woke at 3.35 and couldn't get back to sleep for thinking about it, so overslept and lost an hour's working time this morning. Stopped for lunch, a walk in the park and a coffee in Nero's and then rushed back to it. Have just finished at 7 pm, and this page keeps blurring!

Review of Used to Be on Our Book Reviews Online

Still stuck like glue to my manuscript, so still not blogging properly, but in the meantime here's another nice review for Used to Be, this time by The Mole on Our Book Reviews Online. He concludes:

A really great collection that you will enjoy, identify with, wish that worm hadn't got into your head - and each of these in equal measure.

Whole review here.

You may or may not be interested to know that I am typing and rewriting so hard and for such long hours that my back aches and my sight keeps getting blurred, which is about all the other writing news I have at the moment. The thrills of the writer's life, eh?

Bookmuse reviews Used to Be

Pretty thrilled with this review of Used to Be on Book Muse. It's short, but then it's not how much you say but what you say:

Baines reminds me of a scratch DJ, taking a conventional format and messing with it, expertly, to give the audience a whole new experience... 

...Highly readable, thought-provoking and with beautiful use of language, this collection is a rich and unexpected delight.

Read the whole review here.

I haven't managed to blog much since the New Year, in spite of my hopes. As I said, I'm typing up a draft of something long, and I thought that this would give me more headspace than I had during the actual writing, but I'm so obsessed with it that I just type and type (and edit) all day, right into the evening when I'm too whacked to do anything else. Soon be finished, I hope!

Tim Love reviews Used to Be

Tim Love's review of Used to Be, based on his previous blog notes, is on Everybody's Reviewing.

He begins:

The Mandaeans of southern Iraq had a demon called Dinanukht, half man and half book, who "sits by the waters between the worlds, reading himself". This demon could be the patron saint of Bainesland, where characters interpret symbols that seem to belong to the external world, but turn out being part of the character's past.

I'm gratified by his grasp of what I'm trying to do in these stories. 'Explicitly or otherwise,' he says, 'the characters are story-makers, reassembling their life-arc from stirred memories.'  He discusses three of the stories in particular, and lists as his favourites three stories earlier versions of which happen to be online: the title story 'Used to Be', 'Falling' and 'Tides, or How Stories Do or Don't get Told'.

Review of Used to Be on A Life in Books

The New Year (well, the working New Year) kicks off for me with a great review of Used to Be on the A Life in Books blog. The poet Gillian Allnutt once said to me, 'It's so wonderful when people understand what you're trying to do', and that's just my reaction this review by Susan Osborne, in which she says that the collection 'niftily overturn[s] apparent certainties, often in a series of small revelations and delivering the occasional killer punch.' After considering several of the stories, she concludes:

There are several quotations I could have picked in which Baines neatly sums up her theme but here’s my favourite:  ‘your life might go one way, or a completely different other’. Most of us like the idea of certainty – it makes us feel safe – but as this thoughtful collection reminds us there’s precious little of it in life, although sometimes – as in fiction – that makes it more interesting.

Season's greetings, recap of the year and a nice bit of news

Happy festive season! 

Well, it's been a very busy year for me, and as a result I haven't blogged much, in spite of periodic resolutions to get back to it. Since January I've radically redrafted two novels I've had on the stocks, and struggled with a commission for a contribution to a book on writing - one of the most difficult things I've ever had to write, and it's not right yet! - and of course there's been the publication of Used to Be. (Plus we had our house re-roofed, which was naturally very disruptive.) When I went to get the Christmas decorations out, it seemed to me that I'd only just put them away after Christmas 2014!

When you're that short of time it's so much easier to post your news and share your thoughts about writing on Facebook or Twitter, but I have missed the chance to mull things over in the more contemplative way that blogs allow, and I hope that in the next year I'll have more time for that. Come the New Year, I'll be working on typing up and revising the longer of the two novels I worked on last year (I rewrote it in longhand, which for me, is the best way to feel the rhythms of the story and get into the dream-like state I need to imagine it: as I reported earlier, the reason I had to rewrite the other, shorter novel was that I had tried to write it directly onto the laptop, and it just didn't have those rhythms and juice) and of course I'll be trying to finish the ruddy commission. But both of these will be basically polishing jobs, so I'm hoping I'll have more headspace from now on.

That headspace thing is so important - I've constantly felt that I've had nothing to blog about, but of course it's not true, I've had loads of thoughts about writing, but it's all gone into the other things, the commission and the novels. It is also true, however, that being so cocooned inside the creative process, I've done less in the outside world, so have had fewer events to report. (That's the see-saw of writing, particularly with novels: you need the time shut away in order to do it, but then you need to be in the outside world to gather the material!)

As it happens, this morning does bring me some nice writing news to report: Scott Pack highlights a story from Used to Be on his 'Me and My Short Stories' page and gives it four stars. The story he picks out is 'The Choice Chamber' (which Katy Lumsden previously picked out as a favourite in her review), in which a woman thinks back to her younger self and the alternative possible futures she had then. Scott likes the fact that although this might seem to be a familiar situation, there's a 'killer last line' that turns it all on its head. Which, needless to say, leaves me feeling pretty chuffed!

Used to Be reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing.

A lovely review of Used to Be by Hannah Stevens on the Everybody's Reviewing blog, which opens thus:

'A collection packed with bursts of intense short stories, written in clean, sharp prose. The stories are immersive and gripping. I read this book in one sitting.'

Goodreads giveaway books ready to go

Here are the copies of Used to Be packed up and addressed to the winners of the Goodreads giveaway. Congratulations to the 10 winners, and thanks so much for the interest of the other 1,382 people who went in for it.

Katie Lumsden on Used to Be

A really lovely review from Katie Lumsden on her excellent blog, Just Books and Things. I'm streaming with cold and stuck at home feeling awful when I was meant to be away and meeting people and having interesting discussions as well as writing (I feel too ill to write well), but this review has cheered me up no end. I'll quote just a few of the lovely things Katie says:

These stories are journeys into the past and into possible futures and strike a superb balance between the thought-provoking and the poignant.

Baines is certainly a talented writer, and I find her narrative style fascinating and refreshing. I especially love her use of various voices and narrative perspectives. She uses the second person with a skill and effectiveness I don’t think I even realised was possible... The stories told in the second person – ‘Looking for the Castle’, ‘Clarrie and You’, ‘Possibility’ and ‘What Do You Do If’ – have a strange and beautiful sense both of universality and of uniqueness; they are about specific characters but they are also about you. You are literally pushed into the shoes of these characters. It’s different, clever and wonderfully effective

All in all, I loved this collection, and I am excited to read even more by Elizabeth Baines in the future. Her writing style is strong and refreshingly different... The collection fits together well and was a real pleasure to read.

So, warmed by that, I'll now take myself off with my box of tissues and get myself some honey and lemon...

First Amazon review for Used to Be - five-star

I never really know how to value Amazon reviews, or whether to quote from them, because there's been so much fuss about their lack of impartiality and openness to corruption, but then it's so hard to get mainstream reviews nowadays (I can't believe that when The Birth Machine first came out it had reviews in the TLS and Literary Review, and I was actually shocked and felt hard done to because, being from a feminist press, it didn't get into the daily broadsheets). So it's hard to resist when you get a nice Amazon review, and this, the very first for Used to Be, comes from a reviewer who is clearly serious about literature and short stories in particular. Since he/she goes under the name 'Manc' it's possible that I know her or him in real life, but if so whoever it is has not revealed his or herself to me, I've no idea who he/she is, and I'm pretty chuffed to get his/her five-star review!

Launch of Used to Be

The launch for Used to Be was a real celebration - of the publication, of short stories in general, and of literary friendship. Writer friends old and new came, many of them short story writers.

Ailsa Cox, perhaps my most long-time writing colleague and now Professor of Short Fiction at Edge Hill University (and world expert on the work of Alice Munroe), and Nicholas Royle, Creative Writing lecturer at Manchester University and tireless promotor and editor of short stories, both graced the event with superb readings from brilliant short stories of their own.

 It was wonderful to have there with us long-time writer-friends Cath Staincliffe, Livi Michael and Carl Tighe, and those with whom I've more recently chewed the cud about writing matters: fellow members of the Inklings writing group, Sarah-Clare Conlon and David Gaffney, and of the Narrative Research Group at Edge Hill University, John Rutter and Billy Cowan. Lovely too, to have the support of Doug and Jenny from the reading group, and Nick and Diane Duffy with whom John and I have attended many a Waterstone's reading and with whom we've had many a discussion about books, as well as friends from other walks of life. Thank you to all - your presence made the launch of book very special, and thank you to Waterstone's for hosting the event and looking after us so well. Thank you too, to Carys Bray who had been going to read, but was unfortunately prevented from attending.

A first review of Used to Be appears on Tim Love's blog today - in fact, it's a detailed, in-depth look at the book, and I thank him for his thoughtfulness and attention.

Two story reviews I hadn't seen before

Yesterday I came across two reviews I hadn't seen before of anthologies containing my stories, both by Katie Lumsden, on her great blog, Books and Things.

The first is a review of Best British Short Stories 2014, ed Nicholas Royle, and I'm chuffed to say that she really liked my story, 'Tides' :

I love Elizabeth Baines’s ‘Tides, or How Stories Do or Don’t Get Told’. In part I love it because I like self-reflective writing, because it’s clever, because it’s in part about writing, about telling stories. But it’s also just a beautiful, moving story, a story about the lack of story almost. It’s brilliant.

One of her favourite stories in the book is David Constantine's 'Ashton and Elaine', which led her on to Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes, ed A J Ashworth, where that story was first published, and which she reviewed here. I'm happy to say that she also liked my story in Red Room, 'That Turbulent Stillness', of which she says:

One of my favourite stories was ‘That Turbulent Stillness’. I’ve already come across Elizabeth Baines inThe Best British Short Stories 2014, and it was a real pleasure to read another of her short stories. ‘That Turbulent Stillness’ is movingly written, with strong characterisation. It has a lovely narrative voice in which the narrator intrudes, at first in a very Victorian manner (‘I know very well what happened’, etc), and later in a more self-conscious, almost post-modern way that I enjoy. I plan to buy and read Elizabeth Baines’s novel promptly and expect good things from it.

Both stories are included in my newly-published collection, Used to Be, a box of which arrived yesterday, to my great excitement.

Used to Be arrives

My author copies, which arrived this week. Aren't they lovely? They feel nice, too - sort of silky! I'll be doing a giveaway on GoodReads, and will add the widget to the sidebar when it begins in about ten days or so .

Used to Be published

Yesterday I was at my mum's for the day. 'When is your book coming out?' she asked me. I told her it was due back from press any day now, but I couldn't check on my phone to see if it had come yet, as where she lives there's no signal whatever of any kind - well, there is a bit of phone signal, but not great enough to hold a decent mobile phone conversation! So it wasn't until I was on the train back to Manchester that I discovered that Used to Be had arrived from the printer's at Chris and Jen's, along with Jonathan Taylor's novel Melissa, and Roddy Lumsden's poetry collection Melt and Solve. Don't they all look fabulous? (And isn't that a beautiful clock on their mantelpiece?)

I'm holding an event to celebrate the publication of Used to Be at Deansgate Waterstone's, Manchester, on Thursday 29th October (7 pm), and I'm making it a celebration of the short story, with additional readings from three brilliant short-story writers, two of whom are also key players in the recent rise of the short story. Ailsa Cox is Professor of short fiction at Edge Hill University and founder of the Edge Hill short story prize, and was co-editor with me of the one-time short-story magazine Metropolitan. She is the author of numerous prizewinning short stories and the collection The Real Louise and Other Stories (Headland). MMU lecturer Nicholas Royle, has edited numerous short story anthologies and now edits the Best British Short Stories series (Salt) and publishes short story chapbooks under his own imprint, Nightjar. He founded the Manchester Fiction Prize for a single short story. His own stories have been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and he is the author of several novels, including the latest, First Novel. (He was also a valued contributor to Metropolitan.) Also reading, I am thrilled to say, will be Carys Bray, whose debut novel, A Song for Issy Bradley, has been such a resounding success, and whose collection of stories, Sweet Home, won the Scott Prize.

And there will be wine! (Gotta celebrate, yeah?)

Unthology 7

Here's the great cover of the latest Unthology, the series which has been said to be 'quietly becoming a reliable guide to the modern short story' (The Workshy Fop). Edited as usual by Ashley Stokes and Unthank director Robin Jones, Unthology 7, due out this summer, includes my story 'Looking for the Castle' which was runner-up in last year's Short Fiction competition. I love the retro vibe of the cover - which incidentally it shares with the cover of my forthcoming collection, Used to Be (it's a bit of a thing at the moment, isn't it?) - as well as the communication-media theme - and it's a great design.