Michelle Shine's Blog

The last six months has been the anticipatory period between Kate Bush announcing her residency at the Hammersmith Apollo and the first of her 22 night gigs. Once my tickets had been purchased, I often found it hard to contain my glee, and took to hanging out on a fan site to commune with others. it seemed a whole lot safer than risking old friendships with my constant and adoring waffle about KB.

With over 900 people, I have shared excitement, humour and rare YouTube videos of the lady herself. I have been copied in to aritcles, pertinent KB alert news, loads of photos that were oohed and aahed over, and many pictures of memorabilia. Whilst I'm not too keen on gawking at images of Kate, however wonderful they may be, or doting over the keepsakes of others, it must be said that I do have my own small collection of Kate trophies, and I admit right here and now, that my interest is not solely based on her music and creativity. I am also a bit in awe of her as a person.

I love the fact that she has shunned celebrity because it would distract her from her art, and that she has this innate sense of female sexuality that is not based on any patriachal fantasy. She has maintained a strong sense of family and friendship throughout her successful career and remains respectful and humble. She is sensitive and talented beyond, beyond words, refining her work but never censoring it. She always remains true to herself.

In these last months I have been constantly told by non-believers that I might be a tad disappointed in the shows because it's not 1979 anymore and Kate is no longer twenty. And walking into the Hammersmith Apollo yesterday did seem to me like a moment of deja vu that almost set up an impossible expectation inside me.

However, those doubters need not have worried for me. As I'm sure you all know by now, she was so great that every song received a standing ovation. Everything was perfect. The sets were amazing. The artistry sublime. The musicians, second to none and her voice, remakable. You will have also heard how everyone stood clapping for around fifteen minutes at the end, in the hope that she might just come out and take one more bow. Before the Dawn is a mature realisation of Kate's own imagination and obviously very different from The Tour of Life, but one thing is constant with Kate Bush live on stage; her shows are totally addictive and going only once is just not enough.

A lot of fans are hoping that this will be the start of Kate performing live on a regular basis. Personally, I have always felt that this residency is a one off affair and the only reason she is doing it is to introduce her son, Bertie, as a performer to the the world. Interesting then, that Kate's opening words in the programme are:

'In March of 2013, I said to Bertie, "Shall we do some live shows?"

He said, "Yes. Absolutely!"'

Kate introduced Bertie right at the beginning of the show, after the first song I think, and announced that if it weren't for him she wouldn't be doing this. He was on stage the whole time in multiple roles and he has a credit in the brochure for being Creative Advisor. It is also not lost on me that the very last words she sang were, 'your son's coming out'. Or perhaps I misheard and she'd changed 'your' to 'my'.

When I first heard the album Aerial in 2005, I remember thinking, 'Good, Kate is happy now.' I don't know her personally, it was just a feeling. When she performed Sky of Honey (the second half of Aerial) after the interval, I felt an incredible warmth. According to early interviews, Kate used to believe that whenever she sang to an audience she had to perform. Yesterday, she came over as being totally herself. Bertie's mum is also coming out and what an honour to have been there on the very first night.

A big thank you to Anna Belfrage for asking me to participate in this new blog hop and for Debra Brown for introducing me to Anna. Here are the questions and my answers that refer to my latest, as yet unpublished novel.

When and where is the story set?

The book I’m seeking agent representation for at the moment is set in the part of Russia that is now Lithuania sometime in the mid 19th Century, and is about a Jewish family who lived in one of the many, many shtetls (Jewish towns/ghettos) that existed there at the time. Chapter one is based on an anecdote told to me by my grandmother when I was a small child and started life as a short story that was shortlisted by Cinnamon Press for an award in 2012. You can read it in the anthology The Book of Euclid available from

www.cinnamonpress.com.

What can you say about the main characters?

As opposed to the characters in my debut novel Mesmerised (set in the same time period but in Paris, France), who were mostly all well educated and cultured, the characters in this book are pretty much the opposite. I don’t want to give too much away about the story at this stage but it is told from three different points of view:

Hannah, the eldest daughter of Rabbi Isaac Aizenburg and his wife, Rachel

Rachel Aizenburg.

And Hannah’s husband, Ginda Lavinsky.

Hannah had always been the ‘good child’, the one who helped look after her grandparents, her siblings and got lumbered with household chores whilst her mother fulfilled the role of the Rabbi’s wife in the community. After Hanna married Ginda, Rachel (Hannah’s mother) perspective about her husband and her life in general changed and she became someone much truer to her core identity, shedding the outer layer of what was typical and expected and indulging in behavior that could be considered scandalous. Ginda’s personality is rough around the edges. He’s an orphan who had to fend for himself since very early childhood. His coupling with Hannah was not what he expected from an arranged marriage.

What is the main conflict?

Family members seeing things differently, doing things that affect others: love is not an easy game to play.

Now it's over to you Lisa Goll

Lisa Goll is a reformed publishing and marketing professional, aspiring novelist and chair of the writers' community, London Writers' Cafe. When not writing, working, talking or doing, Lisa can be found procrastinating on Twitter @LisasShare or blogging (sporadically) at http://lisasshare.tumblr.com.

Firstly, a big thank you to the lovely and talented Lisa Goll who asked me to participate in this blog hop. So friends, here are the answers to those very telling questions:

What am I working on at the moment?

I’m spending a lot of time on promotion for Mesmerised my debut novel. It’s historical fiction set in 1863 in Paris. The protagonist is Dr Paul Gachet, fellow artist, friend and homeopath to the impressionists. As a homeopath of over twenty years standing I was drawn to the life of Dr Gachet and his avant garde friends, especially Edouard Manet who was somewhat of an enigma. Today homeopathy is incredibly controversial and I wanted to explore it as it was at that time, not only its efficacy but also how it was received politically alongside impressionist art.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

That’s a very good question. If the genre is historical fiction, then although it is not about sovereigns from a long ago time, most of the characters are real. In this respect it most resembles Black Venus by James Mac Manus who writes about the life of Charles Beaudelaire (a character who also plays a small part in Mesmerised). But whilst Black Venus solely concentrates on charting an historical love affair, Mesmerised blends documented history with a fictitious plot that drives the story. If the genre is medical fiction, then it is homeopathy that separates it from the rest of the bunch. Incidentally, last Christmas, Mesmerised reached #2 in the Amazon UK medical fiction chart

Why do I write what I do?

I think stories find me rather than the other way around. I kind of fish for them and then they arrive. But I am only the transcriber. I cannot dictate how things will work out. For instance, I had the plot for Mesmerised earmarked for a contemporary novel, but my writing group urged me to write about ‘that man you’ve been researching and the impressionists’. I found that by giving the plot to Gachet, and therefore transporting it into the past, it worked so much better than my previous modern day stabs at it. The book I am writing at the moment started life as a short story that was shortlisted for an award by Cinnamon Press. It was based on an anecdote told to me by my grandmother when I was a small child. My writing group really liked it and wanted to know what happened next. I was between projects and also wanted to know what happened next, so I just carried on writing.

How does my writing process work?

Mesmerised was quite tightly constructed before it was written. I had post it notes stuck to my desk of scenes and at what point they were going to happen, this was because I needed to tie real events and real people into the narrative. But generally, I have a vague idea of where things are going to end up and I just keep writing in the hope that the work will structure itself organically. I think my writing works best when I try not to influence either the story or the characters too much. If I do, that’s when it gets complicated and difficult. Far more joyful to just let the story unravel and have its way with me rather than the other way around.

I will be doing a short reading from the Mesmerised at the Finchley Literary Festival on the 30th May at Friern Barnet Community Library between 7 & 10 pm. If you are not too far away, why not come along?

And here are two amazing authors who will be posting on the same theme on their blogs next week:

Cherry Potts is the author of two published collections of short stories, “Mosaic of Air” (Arachne Press) and “Tales Told Before Cockcrow”(OWP).  She has completed one fantasy novel and is currently working on three more: science fiction, young adult and historical.

Cherry started editing and publishing anthologies of short stories in August 2012 as Arachne Press Limited and has released four so far. A Young Adult novel and a Poetry Anthology are in the pipeline. She runs writing workshops using Neurolinguistic Programming and coaches and mentors writers. She sings in choirs for fun, and lives in South London with her favourite person and two spoilt cats.

Amy Bird is the author of two novels, both psychological thrillers published by Carina UK, the digital imprint of Harlequin. Her debut novel, Yours is Mine, about two women who exchange identities, became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching the coveted No. 1 spot in Amazon.com’s Women’s Crime chart. Her new novel, Three Steps Behind You tells the twisted tale of Dan, a crime writer who believes he has to experience everything in order to write about it. Amy has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Birkbeck and is an alumni of Faber Academy. She also writes plays. Her plays include The Jobseeker (runner-up for the Shaw Society T.F. Evans Award 2013) and Heart of Time (performed at The Rosemary Branch Theatre in 2012). She is a member of the Crime Writers Association. Amy lives in North London, where she lives with her husband, dividing her energies between writing and working part-time as a lawyer. Follow her on twitter @london_writer

My debut novel about Dr Paul Gachet, subject of the painting Portrait of Dr Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is out now in paperback and kindle. Paperback version is currently available at these booksellers:

www.indigodreams.co.uk

www.serpentinabooks.com

www.welbooks.co.uk

www.amazon.co.uk

And kindle:

www.amazon.co.uk

Check out the story, and Mesmerised in the making at: http//1writer2.blogspot.co.uk where you can also view the book trailer.

Just recently, I went to Lithuania on a research trip for my second novel. I joined an American Genealogy Tour and spent ten days with a group of fascinating people, each with their own story to tell.

I met one of the participants on an afternoon off in Kaunas. A lovely New Yorker, named Robin, who was searching for a statue, in front of which, her mother had had her picture taken, with her sister, in 1940.

As luck would have it we found the statue within minutes, in the grounds of a theatre, nearby our hotel and Robin asked if I would take some photos of her in front of the statue to create a then and now set of images for the family.

I was honored and incredibly interested in the story behind the photos. It is one I have contemplated many times since my return. The protagonist, a 15 year-old girl, gets sent with her sister from a small village in Poland to Kaunas to try and achieve exit visas for herself and her sister.

They make contact with certain people who steer them in the direction of a Japanese diplomat named Sugihara, a man who helped thousands of Jews escape the Nazis. Most were housed in a detention center in Tokyo until the war ended when they were able to continue their journey onto New York, Johannesburg or London.

Robin’s mother and aunt were lucky to attain visas to New York straight away, and at some point in the future, her grandmother joined them.

It’s a wonderful story that, in such a time of deep tragedy for the Jewish people, warms my soul. Robin’s grandmother’s decision to send her two daughters on such a mission can now be seen as inspired and heroic, but at the time must have felt desperate and frightening. Sugihara’s, and others, who helped those two girls on their journey half way across the world were probably risking their lives to do so, and were equally brave. And what about the girls themselves? The experience must have coloured their perspective on life for the rest of their days, hopefully in a good way because they did it. They actually survived.

Someone said to me the other day that it’s not survival of the fittest, per se, but survival of the most adaptable. In the light of the above story, and based on my own experience, I think that’s true.

All of this is totally anachronistic, and has absolutely nothing to do with the novel I was researching, of course …

March 30th 2011 was a normal day except for one big difference, I wasn't based at home, but instead had gone with my friend Sarah to The Old Bailey, two writers doing random research. When my train came through the last tunnel, after our interesting day, it bleeped continually with messages. I am not that popular. Something was wrong. I called my youngest son. 'Mum,' he said, 'They've just taken a stretcher in to go and get you.' I didn't understand and said so. 'We've had a fire in the house. The two cats have died,' he said. We lost all our possessions, but I felt lucky that my children and I were all saved.

So far 2013 has been challenging in its own way. Building works in our new home has been stressful too. They had to pull me out from under plastic sheeting to get me to sleep in my parent's home whilst it was going on. And since the builders have gone we've had a flood which damaged the flat downstairs and a day of no electricity and consequently no heating. The latter happened as I was coming home from Yorkshire having had a wonderful weekend away in Sarah's fabulous home, and I lost my cool on the telephone when trying to sort the problem out.

When I was in Sedona in the summer of 2011, my shaman suggested that whenever an animal seeks you out and acts unusually it is a sign for you.

Just recently a squirrel has made frequent visits to my balcony.

Perhaps to demonstrate that winter must be over.

Yes, I must remember that it is.

People ask, 'how do you think up what to write?'

Andrew Miller explains the process as 'like a dream'.

When I was writing the first draft of Mesmerised the story came to me quite whole, but also in scenes. I thought of myself as the transcriber rather than the writer and went along with the whole subliminal process of getting the story down. About half way through the novel I took a trip to Paris. I had already written scenes involving the hospital where Gachet (the protaganist) worked, and the building where he lived. Prior to my trip I was fully prepared to have to rewrite many scenes to incorporate the true nature and spirit of those places rather than leave my imagined efforts to taint the integrity of the piece. As it turned out, I had to change very little. Everything was as my imagination told me it would be, even down to a tree in the grounds of La Salpetriere, which I'd christened Gachet's tree.

I'm not sure how you can explain this phenomenon. I know that Stef Penney who wrote the Costa winning novel The Tenderness of Wolves, an historical book that was set in a Canadian snow desert, captured the landscape perfectly without ever having been there.

But what does it mean?

The novel I am writing at the moment is a very different experience. it began life as a short story that was shortlisted for a Cinnamon Press Award in 2012. My writing group, The Nomads, inspired me to explore what happens to the characters once the short story ends.

Up until now, (I am probably around two thirds of my way through the first draft) my only research of that time and place is anecdotal tales passed down to me through my grandparents.The novel takes place in Russia in the late 19th Century. Fairly recently, I've been hit by a terrible lack of confidence in the authenticity of this work. So, I stopped writng whilst I explored the political and social history surrounding this domestic story, and also the landscape, and am astounded to find that my imagination has not led me astray. It is a minor miracle and also an incredible relief. Now I can get on with writing the last third of the book, even though I have absolutely no idea how it's done.

Jon, my late husband used to say the whole of life is about timing. If he hadn't just left his first wife and I hadn't just left my first husband when we both did, we may never have met. And if we'd had met earlier on in our lives we wouldn't have appreciated each other. We used to acknowledge this, whilst marvelling that our relationship was flourishing solely because we lived in the light of our two previous marital experiences.

For years I have lived by the old saying, sink or swim, or as Churchill once said, 'When it gets difficult, keep going.' When Jon died things were difficult. Very difficult. I kept going. So much of Jon is a part of me now. His wisdom, a guiding light. 'It's all about timing. Swings and roundabouts,' he'd say. I had to believe my time would come again.

It's over three years now since his passing, and in a very different way, this year felt llke my time had come again, at least for a while. After a lifetime, or what has appeared to me like a lifetime, of rejection letters from magazines and publishers, this year the acceptance letters kept coming.

Dr Paul Gachet, my protagonist, in my debut novel 'Mesmerised' said, 'I don't believe in coincidence. I believe that forces of the universe dictate when certain fates collide.' Perhaps, he is right and it's all in the stars.

His story will be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2013.

I'm celelbrating.

Cheers,

xx

Blind Faith, shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Short Story Competition. It will appear in the winner's anthology to be published next April...

If you type Skin Deep by Michelle Shine into You Tube, you can watch a video of the Liar's League presentation of my story. For all those who missed it and would like to have seen/heard.