Guy Mankowski's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"

It is always strange being asked to chair discussions about a book you wrote. I have never failed to be surprised by the questions the audience most want answered. I suppose it is intriguing- how did a book come from nothing, a mere idea, to ending up in the shops? At what point does an idea become a valid, existing entity? To research my novel Letters from Yelena I conducted years of research, and travelled to Russia to gain insights into the carefully guarded lives of the ballerinas there. I was one of the first English people to be allowed complete access to the world's most famous ballet school, The Vaganova. At times it felt like the novel would not be finished, and I simply would never get the information I needed. In this discussion group I discuss how I wrote a novel which, to my surprise, ended up adapted as a play, reaching a Bestseller in Fiction List, and used as GCSE training material. I hope it will be helpful for anyone who is writing, or planning to write a book.
http://www.legendtimesgroup.co.uk/leg...

I'm thrilled to announce that my first novel in five years is being published internationally by Darkstroke / Crooked Cat Books in September.

‘The first page of my sister’s diary was a picture of Frances Farmer, facing a drawing of Ophelia. My sister’s psychic accomplices were all tragic figures…’

Emma Imrie was a Plath-obsessed, self-taught teenage musician dreaming of fame, from a remote village on the Isle of Wight. She found it too, briefly becoming a star of the nineties Camden music scene. But then she died in mysterious circumstances.

In the aftermath of Emma’s death, her younger brother, Jeff, is forced by their parents to stay at the opulent home of childhood friends on the island.

During a wild summer of beach parties and music, Jeff faces up to the challenges that come with young love, youthful ambition and unresolved grief. His sister's prodigious advice from beyond the grave becomes the only weapon he has against an indifferent world.

As well as the only place where the answers he craves might exist…

Pre-order here- mybook.to/deadrockstars

The actor River Phoenix was a huge influence on “Dead Rock Stars” but it is hard to easily explain why. People might know him best as the young Indiana Jones- with the floppy fringe- from ‘The Last Crusade’ and he was also very moving as a young troubled teen in the hit film ‘Stand By Me’. He had a very bohemian band whose songs were a unique rock / folk hybrid with very earnest lyrics about love and climate change, called ‘Aleka’s Attic’. I don’t just have a particularly wild character named after him in the novel, but my protagonist Jeff’s band is also called ‘Aleka’. (In River’s mythology Aleka was a philosopher who from his attic treehouse drew in a following by debating spiritual ideas). When River tragically died Michael Stipe of REM bought the back catalogue of Aleka’s Attic and Rain River, his sister, is slowly releasing it. The idea of an artist having a great lost record which is only just coming to light was a huge influence behind the other main character, Emma, and the scattered recordings she leaves behind, which in their own little way change the world too. I really enjoyed writing Emma’s angsty lyrics for her songs.

Kurt Cobain is probably the other biggest influence on the novel, because to me he took the artistic sensibility as far as it could go. From lyrics to interviews he used every means at his disposal to convey his 'message' (like Phoenix). He promoted a message of feminism through his interviews and lyrics, with songs like ‘Polly’, and he used his body and clothing to scream the messages that he wanted Nirvana to get across. At various points in my novel musicians play Nirvana songs. I was very much reminded of when I first learnt to play guitar that (like a lot of people) it was Nirvana’s songs I learnt first. It was so exciting to me that such catchy, emotional, raw songs could be picked up so easily and become a mouthpiece for your own emotions. It also became, in a punk way, possibly to express yourself knowing it requited so few chords.

In many ways my new novel book is a tribute to a lost era of mix tapes and cassettes on magazine covers. The book is heavily influenced by novels like Helen Cross' 'My Summer Of Love', Francoise Sagan's 'Bonjour Tristesse' and Emma Forrest's 'Namedropper'; as well as all those music weeklies from the nineties, like Melody Maker. As flippant as those music weeklies now seem and as dismissed as they are they denote a time when culture had more focus and weight, when there was still a distinct counter-culture, before the naivety of the nineties was exposed. I can't think of a story I've written where every word has felt as important to me.

I hope you like it x

"Dead Rock Stars" is published on the 14th September and it can be pre-ordered / bought here- https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Rock-Star...