Jane Lythell's Blog: https://janelythellamwriting.blogspot.com/

I've just completed the first draft of my fifth novel and this has given me a lovely feeling of euphoria.

When you start out on a novel you are enthused by your premise for the story and think it will unfurl before you. It does not happen like that.

I know how my story will start and how it will end, though I will write the ending many times before I feel the wording is right. But it is the getting from the beginning to the finale that is the slog. Keeping the narrative going through the middle of the novel is a challenge.

As you develop your characters and work through the plot developments self-doubt begins to creep in. Well it does with me. You have to persevere and slowly, chapter by chapter, it will come to life.

This story starts in Bow in East London in March 1995 on a bitterly cold day. My two main characters escape to La Rochelle in France.


A typical alleyway in La Rochelle
The novel is back in psychological thriller territory and, like The Lie of You, is told from the alternating first person point of view of the two main characters. I feel comfortable writing in the first person and because I can get into the heads of my two characters this gives me the freedom to reveal the motivation, deception and anguish of the characters.

La Rochelle was the perfect city in which to place my characters. They can start to build a new life in this beautiful place. I have used some of the key locations including the nineteenth century covered market and La Grosse Horloge, an important landmark.

La Rochelle's Covered Market


La Grosse Horloge, La Rochelle


The next stage is to wait for feedback from my editor and that is always an interesting moment.
My latest novel is BEHIND HER BACK, published by Head of Zeus.

Padded shoulders! With mum and my daughter Amelia in Devon when I worked at WestCountry TV from 1991 - 1995

All in grey: with my mum and Amelia in Shoreham November 2016
With Amelia at Wembley Stadium 4 September 2017

Thrilled to be a bridesmaid with my sisters Sarah and Caroline. I am next to the bride, Vivien who married my uncle Roger
I was an extra on Joesph Losey's The Go-Between and was on set for six weeks. Bob Whitaker took this photo while we were having a tea break.

The Lie of YouBooks, Box Sets, Big Screens with Jane Lythell, Sarah Pinborough and Matt Wesolowski.
Sunday 16 September, NoonNational Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, Norwich
£8 (conc £7 / students £6)Crime stories shape what we read, what we watch, who we are. We look forward to hearing from Jane Lythell (author of Behind Her Back and The Lie of You, currently in film production), Sarah Pinborough (Behind Her Eyes)  and Matt Wesolowski (Hydra) about Hollywood deals, the exciting crossover between page and screen, as well as the opportunities and challenges of writing crime stories that engage with different media.About the authorsJane Lythell worked as a television producer and commissioning editor before becoming Deputy Director of the BFI and Chief Executive of BAFTA. 
Her debut novel The Lie of You is a psychological thriller and has been translated into seven languages. It is currently in film production starring Tuppence Middleton, Rupert Graves, Lydia Wilson and Rupert Graves.Behind Her Back is her fourth novel, and the second title in the StoryWorld series. These explore the turbulent life of a TV station seen through the eyes of producer Liz Lyon.
‘Engrossing and compelling insight into rivalry and backstabbing at a TV station. I loved it’ – Kerry FisherSarah Pinborough has written more than 20 novels across a variety of genres. Her international number one bestseller, Behind Her Eyes, was a word of mouth sensation, receiving quotes and endorsements from authors such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Harlan Coben. The book has been optioned by Left Bank Pictures and Netflix. Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and leads Cuckoo Young Writers creative writing workshops for young people in association with New Writing North. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. He is currently working on his second crime novel Ashes, which involves black metal and Icelandic sorcery.TICKETS HERE 

The Lie of You

Books, Box Sets, Big Screens with Jane Lythell, Sarah Pinborough and Matt Wesolowski.
Sunday 16 September, Noon
National Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, Norwich
£8 (conc £7 / students £6)Crime stories shape what we read, what we watch, who we are. We look forward to hearing from Jane Lythell (author of Behind Her Back and The Lie of You, currently in film production), Sarah Pinborough (Behind Her Eyes)  and Matt Wesolowski (Hydra) about Hollywood deals, the exciting crossover between page and screen, as well as the opportunities and challenges of writing crime stories that engage with different media.About the authorsJane Lythell worked as a television producer and commissioning editor before becoming Deputy Director of the BFI and Chief Executive of BAFTA. Her debut novel The Lie of You is a psychological thriller and has been translated into seven languages. It is currently in film production starring Tuppence Middleton, Rupert Graves, Luke Roberts and Lydia WilsonBehind Her Back is her fourth novel, and the second title in the StoryWorld series. These explore the turbulent life of a TV station seen through the eyes of producer Liz Lyon.‘Engrossing and compelling insight into rivalry and backstabbing at a TV station. I loved it’ – Kerry FisherSarah Pinborough has written more than 20 novels across a variety of genres. Her international number one bestseller, Behind Her Eyes, was a word of mouth sensation, receiving quotes and endorsements from authors such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Harlan Coben. The book was both a hardback and a paperback number 1 bestseller in the UK and has been optioned by Left Bank Pictures and Netflix. Sarah also writes for film and TV and her YA novel 13 Minutes is currently being developed by the team behind The O.C. for Netflix.Matt Wesolowski is an author from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. He is an English tutor and leads Cuckoo Young Writers creative writing workshops for young people in association with New Writing North. Matt started his writing career in horror and his short horror fiction has been published in Ethereal Tales magazine, 22 More Quick Shivers anthology and many more. His debut novella The Black Land, a horror set on the Northumberland coast, was published in 2013 and a new novella set in the forests of Sweden will be available shortly. Matt was a winner of the Pitch Perfect competition at Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in 2015. He is currently working on his second crime novel Ashes, which involves black metal and Icelandic sorcery.TICKETS HERE: https://noirwich.co.uk/portfolio/book...

In December 1980 Diana Simmonds and I organised a full retrospective of the films of Doris Day at the National Film Theatre. Derek Malcolm reviewed our season and Day's films and this is from The Guardian Archive.
Doris Day and Howard Keel in Calamity Jane 1953“I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin,” a wag once remarked. It was a fair cop. But not all that appropriate. The well-scrubbed star, who made 39 movies in a 20-year career, was not just the prime fifties example of the Girl Next Door. She was also an ace professional who was once offered the part of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate because she could be relied upon to fight hard against her Hollywood image.
No, Doris Day wasn’t just goody two-shoes with a furniture polish voice. But there were tremors of shock all round when the National Film Theatre decided to mount a season of her films under the inspired title of:
Move Over Misconceptions - Doris Day Reappraised. 
Surely the NFT had something better to do with its time?
Jane Clarke and Diana Simmonds are the perpetrators of this alarming deed, and support it with an imposing Dossier which states the case for their favourite. Both would regard themselves as feminists, but don’t press the point too heavily.
What they imply was that Day was very often very sexy, that she was no push-over in the fifties sex war and that her films show quite clearly that she often actually subverted the squashy Hollywood values of the day.
“Mention Doris Day,” they write, “and you’re likely to get one of two responses. She is the subject of amused contempt among what we would describe as the post-68 generation; probably because she is remembered as the Constant Virgin - the sexual tease who hung on to her virginity through thick and thin.
“On the other hand, the post-war generation is more likely to remember Day with nostalgic affection as the Girl Next Door who exemplified a reassuring and uncomplicated sexuality. We would argue that both these memories are partial and symptomatic.”
And with most of this I agree. To see Day as a girl enmeshed in the bigotry of the Ku Klux Klan in Storm Warning, or as the teacher of journalism in Teacher’s Pet who gives Clark Gable’s cynical city editor more than he chauvinistically bargained for, makes nonsense of her “professional virgin” tag. So does the taut thriller Midnight Lace, or Love Me Or Leave Me, the biography of Ruth Etting, the twenties torch singer who started in a brothel.
But the reputation of Hollywood’s stars isn’t made by their most exceptional films. It is their most characteristic that form their real persona. And Day’s, according to the film books, were all those sex comedies with Rock Hudson. All those comedies? Actually, there were only three - Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson  in Pillow Talk 1959
But were even these as anodyne as popular memory has it? Here’s Ross Hunter, producer of Pillow Talk, quoted in the Dossier:
“For Doris, it was an enormous departure from the kind of films she’d been doing for a dozen years. A sophisticated sex comedy. Doris hadn’t a clue as to her potential as a sex image, and no one realised that under all those dirndls lurked one of the wildest asses in Hollywood.“I came right out and told her. You are sexy, Doris, and it’s about time you dealt with it. Oh, Ross, cut it out (she said). I’m just the old-fashioned peanut-butter girl next door, and you know it.“Now listen, if you allow me to get Jean Louis to do your clothes, I mean a really sensational wardrobe that will show off that wild fanny of yours, and get some wonderful make-up on you, and chic you up and get a great hairdo that lifts you, why every secretary and every housewife will say: “Look at that - look what Doris has done to herself. Maybe I can do the same thing.”
The truth is that Day only slowly recognised herself as something more than the sweetie-pie Hollywood would like us to remember, and her agent husband, in his highly effective anxiety to make a big career for her, didn’t help much to bring out the steel in her. But it was there, and only deflected by such titles as “The Girl We Would Like To Take A Slow Boat To The States With” (Korean Serviceman, circa 1950).
Besides, those Servicemen would hardly have wanted to take that slow boat with a professional virgin, or the girl next door. And, as Jane Clarke and Diana Simmonds point out, her rejection of the part of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, was done for what now seem impeccable reasons.
In her view the depiction of sexual relationships in the film was exploitative, as it undoubtedly now appears. She also had the last word about the virgin tag. In an interview she gave 10 years ago, she said: 
“When men call you a professional virgin, it usually means you won’t sleep with them, and I’m happy to be regarded as someone strong enough to resist all that. I’m also rather flattered - it sounds as if they want to. Women shouldn’t mind insults if it means they are respected. It means you’ve won the battle.”

The iron law in making television is that the show comes first, and you don’t leave the station until it is ready. In my 15 years working in live TV I saw first-hand how that pressure built a culture of rampant, sometimes even toxic, masculinity; editors shrieked at journalists, and you would go into the Ladies’ and find colleagues sobbing after being bellowed at. In the 80s and 90s, loyalty counted for nothing - it was a case of each person fighting to survive.



My female colleagues navigated this differently. After she had been very publicly sacked, Anna Ford encountered Jonathan Aitken at a party and threw her glass of wine in his face, saying later: "It was the only form of self-defence left to a woman when she has been so monstrously treated".Kay Burley, meanwhile, proved from the off that she had a burning ambition to get on: after a ferry disaster, she came into the TV-am offices with her suitcase packed and her passport in hand, urging the news editor to dispatch her right away.
As for me, I somehow managed to keep my head in all that chaos and conflict, making friends with the technical guys, cameramen and editors. I told them I was a complete beginner and they helped me - within two years, I was editor of the Henry Kelly Saturday Show.But it was female friendships at the station which really kept me going. Once I became editor I created an all-female team around me. The news guys scorned us as soft and cuddly, even though we dealt with difficult stuff all the time - bereavement; cancer; cot deaths and eating disorders.
Good Morning Britain was a TV show watched by women, and yet the station was always headed up by men.


It was these experiences that have since inspired my novels, Woman of the Hour and Behind Her Back: just how do women make themselves heard in a TV station run by men? 

In Behind Her Back the three main female characters use different coping strategies to navigate that challenging set-up.One uses her sexuality to leverage power in the station, while another plays the male power game, shunning allegiances with her female colleagues. In contrast, the central character tries to hold onto her values, supporting members of her team and attempting to be a decent boss. This means she often has to censor what she says and keep secrets - but in the end, she too has to fight dirty in order to survive.
I left the industry because the endless chauvinism became unbearable, particularly once I’d become a working mum. And much as I want to believe it’s changed, as the recent BBC pay row shows, we still have a very long way to go.



This article first appeared in Telegraph Online in February.
You can get my two TV novels for £1.98 here.
They are published by Head of Zeus

We held the launch of BEHIND HER BACK at the lovely BFI Southbank bookshop by the Thames on 15 February. Here is my speech:
It feels very special to be here tonight with so many of you my friends. I worked at the British Film Institute twice and have a deep affection and respect for its work, so thank you very much Kerry Meech for letting me have my launch here tonight. Behind Her Back is the second of my television novels and it is quite autobiographical. Like my heroine Liz Lyon I was a television producer and a single mum and I wanted to capture some of the professional and personal turmoil that working women experience.

My first TV novel, Woman of the Hour, dealt with an allegation of sexual assault and it raised issues about who do you believe when such an allegation is made? My heroine Liz worries that she did not speak out about something similar that happened to her seven years before. Woman of the Hour was written a year before the Harvey Weinstein allegations surfaced. Was it prescient? I'm not sure because of course abuse has been going on in the television and film industry for decades, but it was timely.

Behind Her Back is also topical. It asks: in a TV station run by men how do the women make themselves heard? This clearly resonates with the gender pay gap row currently going on at the BBC and elsewhere.There are three main female characters in the novel and each one has a different coping strategy to deal with the toxic masculinity at the TV station. Fizzy Wentworth the presenter uses her sexuality to gain power. Lori Kerwell, the head of sales, plays the men's power game. She's queen of the PowerPoint, armed with all her facts and figures. She makes no allegiances with her female colleagues, indeed she goes behind their backs. Finally there is Liz Lyon, the main character, a TV producer who tries to hang onto her values. Liz wants to be a good manager and she supports her colleagues but ultimately she too has to revert to aggressive behaviour in order to survive.  Now I don't want to give the impression that all the men in the novel are horrible! Far from it. The two men at the top are motivated by power and control but there are also good, kind and supportive men in the book. There is Simon, Liz's deputy; Gerry Melrose the astrologer and Henry the floor manager who is a good friend to Liz. I also don't want you to think that Behind Her Back is a dry feminist treatise. It's not. It’s a story with secrets and suspense and character development and a lot of fun along the way. It was certainly cathartic for me to write it.Finally I want to share some exciting news with you tonight.What better place than the British Film Institute, the home of film and TV, to announce that my debut novel The Lie of You will be a feature film later this year. It has been shot and is currently being edited. It is every writer's dream that their book will be made into a film.
My warm thanks to my agent Gaia Banks, the best champion a writer could wish for. Thank you Laura Palmer, my editor, I love working with you. And a bouquet to Clare Gordon of Head of Zeus for her fantastic work promoting this novel. Closer to home, thank you to my partner Barry Purchese for your masterly feedback and to my daughter Amelia Trevette for advising me on all things fashion in the novel.I also want to thank the readers who review my books and especially the book bloggers, some of who are here tonight. I say three cheers for book bloggers because they are passionate about reading and use their spare time to write reviews which as authors we greatly appreciate.
Information on my books here

I am running a series of interviews with inspiring women who are my Women of the Hour.Please meet Tracey Edges, artist, writer and broadcaster.



Tracey Edges is an exhibiting Fine Artist and a Radio Presenter, known for her popular Sunday Girl show with Siren FM. She also writes short stories, a column, reviews and three blogs. Tracey’s paintings are abstracted from her life, sometimes seascapes, sometimes urban landscapes. When painting she always knows where she will start but never where she will end up. After stints in Oxfordshire and Cornwall Tracey currently lives in Grimsby with the adorable Mabel, a Springer/Sussex cross.
What was your favourite book as a child?
Oh, so many. I was really lucky to have a mother that was a reader and I can remember the delight of going to the library in my pushchair. I devoured all that Enid Blyton could offer and desperately wanted to be George from The Famous Five (probably as she had Timmy the dog), climb up the Faraway Tree and then absolutely yearned to go to boarding school and play lacrosse! 
I suppose my main favourite was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis, with that whole idea of entering a whole new world via the back of a wardrobe. 
I remember a very serious discussion of the Narnia series, with a group of fellow book-lovers, around the lunch table at Infant School! We seriously underestimate the critical abilities of younger children.




Name the one thing you would put in Room 101 and why?
All politicians and leaders that are just in it for themselves and not the people that they are supposed to represent. A lack of empathy and understanding creates a huge negativity and to have a good, stable country, like a house, you need good boots and a good hat. Everyone is an individual and should be treated with respect.

Do you have a favourite place to go (in the UK or abroad) that restores you?
As long as I can breathe salty sea air I am happy. Cleethorpes has lovely long sandy beaches which are great for dog walks. 
The adorable Mabel on Cleethorpes beach
My favourite in Cornwall is Crantock Beach and abroad, it has to be The Bahamas with that beautiful, sparkling, clear, turquoise sea.
After a wet, windy walk, it was always a delight to dry off in front of a roaring fire at the cosy Headland Hotel, Newquay, before having a meal in the restaurant and watching the huge waves rolling into Fistral Beach.


WINTER WALK: Tracey's painting of Crantock Beach Cornwall
Prints Available here: https://fineartamerica.com/art/winter...

Greek Myths or Grimm’s Fairy Tales and why?Grimm’s Fairy Tales – I prefer the Gothic to the Classic. Fairy Tales can be so multilayered, dark and magical. One of my favourite childhood books was a colourfully illustrated book of Eastern European fairy tales, which I still have. 



What is your greatest fear now?
Since I got divorced, lack of money has been a constant, very scary, nightmare. I just want to be able to paint and write and record without permanently fighting financial fires. I have novels in me that are desperate to be realised. 
Other than that practical annoyance, it has to be the way that the world seems to be disintegrating into a bubbling cauldron of bigotry, hate and violence. All of a sudden, worldwide, we seem to be shooting backwards and it is truly frightening.

I collect small lead figures of working people. Do you collect anything?I have two things that I can’t resist: 1. Quilts and blankets. I would love to have a glass-fronted French armoire with them all folded up and on display and 2. Craft supplies – I’m terrible and it may take me years to actually get around to making something (usually quite badly) but it makes me happy to know that I have these things.



Did you/do you have a mentor?
Not as such but I have been lucky to have had champions who have encouraged me at the right time. A writer friend who encouraged me to start a blog, to get me writing, and Geoff, from Siren FM who initially picked up my PI GY fictional blog, which we recorded as a radio series. He then offered me the Sunday morning show on Siren FM Radio. Due to both these chaps I have worn out many keyboards. At the moment I have had to draw in half of the letters on my current one!
Westerns or Rom Coms and why?
Got to be a good Rom Com although it’s more the com part rather than the rom. I enjoy a light-hearted, feel-good movie in front of a roaring wood-burner, snuggled under a blanket with Mabel and a steaming mug of cocoa or a good glass of red! Although I had an amazing wood-burner in Cornwall, I’m just having to dream about one here, as I only have a weedy electric version.


Who are your heroes?
Anyone who manages to succeed in making a living doing what they love. It’s not easy in these days of music streaming and free books, high property prices, job uncertainty and austerity.
I am very much in favour of replacing the negative benefits system with a positive universal income, for all. I’m convinced that it would improve health and living standards, equalise stay-at-home parents and provide a solid, safety-net, foundation for the self-employed and victims of domestic violence, as just a few examples. 
Technology and different markets have combined to eradicate traditional job opportunities. Apprenticeships and voluntary work, along with the decline of the High Street and physical media, have removed, entirely, a lot of opportunities to make a living, especially in the retail and creative industries. Being able to financially, basically exist would provide a secure platform from which to grow. For those that are already financially secure, it would enable them to buy more from people such as Artists and support the things that they love, re-generating the local economy, in many ways.
What do you consider the bravest thing you have ever done?
Uttering my very first word, on my first live radio show, with Estuary Radio.
When I was at school, I said to my careers advisor, that I was interested in radio. I never dreamed that I would ever be a presenter, as I’m really quite shy, but I was interested in the behind the scenes. He told me to look for work in a bank or as an accountant. As someone who is dreadful with figures – erm...what?! 
Anyway, it may have taken me a few decades to get past that utter ridiculousness but I got there in the end and I absolutely love it. I love all that I do. I’ve tried to just concentrate on Art or writing or radio but it’s no good – I just had to stop fighting the inevitable and embrace my multifarious creative habits!


Thank you so much for answering my questions Tracey.

You can find out more about Tracey here:Social Media:www.facebook.com/traceyedges
Twitter: @tedges
Art:
https://fineartamerica.com/artists/tracey+edges (more work will be uploaded shortly)
www.facebook.com/whattraceydidnext
Writing:
www.traceyedges.blogspot.com (PI GY) www.alittlebitoftraceyedges.blogspot.com (short stories) www.wtdn.traceyedges.co.uk (reviews etc.)
Radio:
www.mixcloud.com/traceyedges www.facebook.com/traceyedgespresenter
Woman of the Hour is published by Head of Zeus.

I have received the Russian version of THE LIE OF YOU. I was excited to have been published in Moscow and the Russian title translates as TAKE EVERYTHING.




It is interesting to see the two covers side by side. Both have black backgrounds. The Russian cover shows a figure seen through broken glass.

The Norwegian, German and first UK cover also employed the image of shattered glass which I think represents psychological disturbance, apt for a psychological thriller.





 
The Lie of You is published in the UK by Head of Zeus.

First female BAFTA chief says pay gap is rife From The Times Ireland. Interview with Jennifer O'Brien 
The novelist Jane Lythell who had an early career as an editor on morning television has said that gender-based pay inequality in the TV industry in the UK and Ireland is rife.

Lythell worked for TV-am, the TV company that ran Good Morning Britain, the flagship ITV breakfast show, before she was appointed the first female chief executive of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) in 1998.
She claimed that she discovered discrepancies between her pay and that of her male predecessors at Bafta after her departure. “I realised after I left Bafta that the person in my position before me, and he was male, had been on a much higher salary,” she said.“I had been headhunted and went there as the first ever female chief exec, I thought I was on a good salary and it was good, just not as good as the men seemed to be earning.
“When the BBC pay story came out recently, it very much rang bells for me because there’s very much an attitude that as a female working in the industry that you should be grateful.“Women really need to stick up for themselves. It’s a wake-up call for the agents and for the women in the BBC,” she added.

TV-am was launched in 1983, with Anna Ford, Michael Parkinson and Angela Rippon among its presenters.“It was absolute chaos at the start,” Lythell said. “We had tiny ratings and people were in a blind state of panic. I started as a junior journalist and within two years I had moved up to be a programme editor as so many people had left.”
While with TV-am, Lythell watched a young Kay Burley and Lorraine Kelly begin their careers as regional reporters and says that it was clear from the outset that both would go on to have highly successful TV careers.Of Burley, who has been a Sky News presenter since 1988, Lythell said: “Her ambition was always evident. There was a sailing disaster that happened and Kay came in with her bags packed and told the editor she was ready to go on the story. Her drive meant she got to report on that when other more senior reporters, most of whom were male, didn’t.”
Lythell also spent time working as a programme editor for the Irish presenter Henry Kelly, who joined TV-am in 1983 and became a weekend presenter on Good Morning Britain.
Now an author, Lythell’s latest book,  Behind Her Back , tells the story of a TV producer who experiences back-stabbing and inequality while working for a British station.
“It’s absolutely inspired by my experiences working in television,” Lythell said. “I write about the feverish atmosphere, the egos which crave the limelight and the sense of panic as editors scanned the daily ratings for breakfast television. That kind of career simply isn’t for the faint-hearted.”

                    BEHIND HER BACK released August 10 by Head of Zeus publishing.