Neil Hanson's Blog - Posts Tagged "neil-hanson"
Tan Hill
The prodigal son's return to The Inn at the Top, aka Tan Hill, was great. Even though I spent three years of my life up there in the late Seventies and Eighties (the decades, not my age...) I had almost forgotten quite how remote the inn is, especially if you approach from the east, via Arkengarthdale. The road - only just about wide enough for two cars to pass, with not a single street light, white line or cat's eye to help motorists after dark - seems to go on twisting, turning and rising - never falling - for ever, with one false summit after another, so that by the time you finally get to the inn, you're certainly ready for a drink.
The surroundings are unchanged of course, a great ocean of wild moorland stretching away unbroken to the horizon under a vast cloudscape. And if the inn itself is much-changed, extended and improved from the "Wild West" days when we ran it, the bar is virtually unaltered with the seats either side of the inglenook fireplace still the most coveted and keenly contested by customers who've braved the often wild wind and weather to get there. The landlady, Tracy Daly, is a great character with a no nonsense approach and a mischievous sense of humour - just what the inn needs, in fact, because people who make it up there expect their visit to be an event, and I suspect they rarely leave disappointed.
If you fancy running it yourself and have a cool £1.3 million or so to spare, Tracy might be willing to sell it to you, she and her partner Mike also have a B&B business in Somerset they're keen to put more time into, but it takes a special kind of person to survive and thrive up there. You may make your mark on the inn, but it'll certainly also leave a mark on you.
If you're within range of Yorkshire over the next few weeks, you may catch me at one of the events to promote my book The Inn at the Top - commercial alert! - published this week by Michael O'Mara Books at £8.99. With my wife and sometime writing partner Lynn, we'll be talking about The Inn at the Top in York, Richmond, Knaresborough, Huddersfield, Morley, Northallerton, Ilkley, Scarborough, Malton, and Ilkley again, with a couple of events still tobe confirmed
The Inn at the Top Events:
Thursday 26 September, 6.45pm, Waterstone’s York, (Tickets/details: 01904 628740 www.waterstones.com )
Friday 27 September, 7.30pm, Richmond Walking and Book Festival at Richmond School Sixth Form Centre, Darlington Road, Richmond, N Yorks, DL10 7BQ (Tickets/details: www.booksandboots.org 01748 824243)
Saturday 28 September, 12noon-2pm, Castlegate Books, 13 Market Place, Knaresborough, HG5 8AL, book signing, (Details: info@castlegatebooks.com 01423 862222)
Thursday 3 October, 7.30pm, Herbert's Bar, 30 Cross Church Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2PT, (Details: Waterstones 01484 430701 / Herberts 01484 434888)
Tuesday 8 October, 7.30pm, Morley Literature Festival, Gildersome Conservative Club, Street Lane, Gildersome, Morley, Leeds, LS27 7HX, Includes "Pie and pea supper" (Tickets/details: Morley Library or Lesley Gettings on 0113 253 9763)
Wednesday 9 October, 12 noon-2pm, Waterstone's, 102 High Street, Northallerton, DL7 8PP (Details: 0843 2908515)
Wednesday 9 October, 7.30pm, Betty’s Cafe Tea Rooms, Ilkley, (Ilkley Literature Festival event). Includes “Delicious two course supper followed by tea and coffee”. (Tickets/details: Betty’s Cafe Tea Rooms, Ilkley, 01943 608029)
Saturday 12 October, 11am-2pm, Waterstones, 98 Westborough, Scarborough, YO11 1UQ, (Details: 01723 500414 enquiries@scarborough.waterstones.com)
Saturday 19 October, 10.30am, Ryedale Book Festival, The Milton Rooms Studio, Market Square, Malton, YO17 7LX (Tickets/details: www.ryedalebookfestival.com)
Thursday 14 November, 7pm, Grove Bookshop, 10 The Grove, Ilkley, LS29 9EG, (Tickets/details: 01943 609335)
The surroundings are unchanged of course, a great ocean of wild moorland stretching away unbroken to the horizon under a vast cloudscape. And if the inn itself is much-changed, extended and improved from the "Wild West" days when we ran it, the bar is virtually unaltered with the seats either side of the inglenook fireplace still the most coveted and keenly contested by customers who've braved the often wild wind and weather to get there. The landlady, Tracy Daly, is a great character with a no nonsense approach and a mischievous sense of humour - just what the inn needs, in fact, because people who make it up there expect their visit to be an event, and I suspect they rarely leave disappointed.
If you fancy running it yourself and have a cool £1.3 million or so to spare, Tracy might be willing to sell it to you, she and her partner Mike also have a B&B business in Somerset they're keen to put more time into, but it takes a special kind of person to survive and thrive up there. You may make your mark on the inn, but it'll certainly also leave a mark on you.
If you're within range of Yorkshire over the next few weeks, you may catch me at one of the events to promote my book The Inn at the Top - commercial alert! - published this week by Michael O'Mara Books at £8.99. With my wife and sometime writing partner Lynn, we'll be talking about The Inn at the Top in York, Richmond, Knaresborough, Huddersfield, Morley, Northallerton, Ilkley, Scarborough, Malton, and Ilkley again, with a couple of events still tobe confirmed
The Inn at the Top Events:
Thursday 26 September, 6.45pm, Waterstone’s York, (Tickets/details: 01904 628740 www.waterstones.com )
Friday 27 September, 7.30pm, Richmond Walking and Book Festival at Richmond School Sixth Form Centre, Darlington Road, Richmond, N Yorks, DL10 7BQ (Tickets/details: www.booksandboots.org 01748 824243)
Saturday 28 September, 12noon-2pm, Castlegate Books, 13 Market Place, Knaresborough, HG5 8AL, book signing, (Details: info@castlegatebooks.com 01423 862222)
Thursday 3 October, 7.30pm, Herbert's Bar, 30 Cross Church Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2PT, (Details: Waterstones 01484 430701 / Herberts 01484 434888)
Tuesday 8 October, 7.30pm, Morley Literature Festival, Gildersome Conservative Club, Street Lane, Gildersome, Morley, Leeds, LS27 7HX, Includes "Pie and pea supper" (Tickets/details: Morley Library or Lesley Gettings on 0113 253 9763)
Wednesday 9 October, 12 noon-2pm, Waterstone's, 102 High Street, Northallerton, DL7 8PP (Details: 0843 2908515)
Wednesday 9 October, 7.30pm, Betty’s Cafe Tea Rooms, Ilkley, (Ilkley Literature Festival event). Includes “Delicious two course supper followed by tea and coffee”. (Tickets/details: Betty’s Cafe Tea Rooms, Ilkley, 01943 608029)
Saturday 12 October, 11am-2pm, Waterstones, 98 Westborough, Scarborough, YO11 1UQ, (Details: 01723 500414 enquiries@scarborough.waterstones.com)
Saturday 19 October, 10.30am, Ryedale Book Festival, The Milton Rooms Studio, Market Square, Malton, YO17 7LX (Tickets/details: www.ryedalebookfestival.com)
Thursday 14 November, 7pm, Grove Bookshop, 10 The Grove, Ilkley, LS29 9EG, (Tickets/details: 01943 609335)
Curse of Keri?
As a Brit who regards New Zealand as almost a second home, it was great to see Eleanor Catton win the Booker Prize for her sprawling, epic novel The Luminaries, though it did make me think back to the last Kiwi to win the prize: Keri Hulme. Her novel, The Bone People, was pure Marmite for readers - some (including me) absolutely loved it, but others hated it like poison and it was probably the most contentious Booker winner ever.
The book could easily have never seen the light of day at all, because every major publisher rejected it at first. One rejection: "Ms Hulme certainly can write, unfortunately we don’t understand what she is writing about", was hanging on Keri's toilet wall at one time, and may well still be there. In the end she formed a self-publishing cooperative with three other women writers. The Bone People took off on word of mouth alone, and sold so fast that the mainstream publishers suddenly woke up to what they were missing. One of them signed her and put her on the path to her Booker success. However, those who were looking forward to her next novel were in for a long wait. Her long-suffering editor used to comment "I hope to publish it before I die", and almost 30 years later, it still hasn't appeared. There have been some poems and short stories from her but that felt a bit like being offered canapés when what I, and her many other admirers wanted was a five course meal.
Keri denied that she was suffering from writer's block and there was certainly no failure of imagination, but unlike most writers, she doesn't have the craft at the top of her list of priorities. According to Keri when I interviewed her some time ago, writing came a distant fourth behind the three Fs: family, friends and fishing, (no mention of any other Fs…) The fact that the second novel has still not appeared suggest that her priorities remain unaltered, but the fact that she's now no longer the only Kiwi winner of the Booker, may encourage her to fire up the word processor again. I can guarantee at least one reader if she does.
The book could easily have never seen the light of day at all, because every major publisher rejected it at first. One rejection: "Ms Hulme certainly can write, unfortunately we don’t understand what she is writing about", was hanging on Keri's toilet wall at one time, and may well still be there. In the end she formed a self-publishing cooperative with three other women writers. The Bone People took off on word of mouth alone, and sold so fast that the mainstream publishers suddenly woke up to what they were missing. One of them signed her and put her on the path to her Booker success. However, those who were looking forward to her next novel were in for a long wait. Her long-suffering editor used to comment "I hope to publish it before I die", and almost 30 years later, it still hasn't appeared. There have been some poems and short stories from her but that felt a bit like being offered canapés when what I, and her many other admirers wanted was a five course meal.
Keri denied that she was suffering from writer's block and there was certainly no failure of imagination, but unlike most writers, she doesn't have the craft at the top of her list of priorities. According to Keri when I interviewed her some time ago, writing came a distant fourth behind the three Fs: family, friends and fishing, (no mention of any other Fs…) The fact that the second novel has still not appeared suggest that her priorities remain unaltered, but the fact that she's now no longer the only Kiwi winner of the Booker, may encourage her to fire up the word processor again. I can guarantee at least one reader if she does.
Stand Down
Two looming deadlines mean that I'll have to suspend blogging activity for the moment - I need to be writing books, not talking about writing books - but apologies to those whose lives will be immeasurably poorer as a result! If anyone's still there by then, I should be back in action post the New Year. Meanwhile, season's greetings!
Kindle
Deadline looming - help! But if any Kindle-equipped readers out there have so far failed to buy a copy of The Inn at the Top, for some unaccountable reason, this may be the moment to remedy that shocking defect, as in a fit of seasonal generosity, the publishers, Michael O'Mara Books, have dropped the price on amazon to a mere 99 pence (UK) during January. Enjoy! Normal blogging activity will resume once the deadline has passed and the manuscript is delivered (with luck simultaneously)
Inn on Top
Manuscript finally delivered, stress frown turned upside down, I’m back in the game!
For those who’ve read The Inn at the Top - and with apologies to those who haven’t - I wanted to take a moment to answer a couple of queries raised by some of the many Amazon reviewers there have been.
The first is why the book is called “The Inn At The Top” and is never given its real name in the book, when anyone who knows the Yorkshire Dales or, indeed has read any of the reviews or articles about it, will know at once that the inn is Tan Hill, the highest inn in Britain at 1732 feet above sea level, on top of the Pennines to the north of Swaledale.
The reason is that, at the time I was writing the book, my Baldrick-style cunning plan was not to identify the inn in the hope of generating a bit of “buzz” among readers speculating about its identity and wondering if their favourite Dales pub could be the one featured. This still seems to me to have been a reasonable plan and indeed, The Dalesman reported a bit of exactly that sort of buzz from readers, when the serialisation began in that magazine.
However, my publishers, Michael O’Mara Books, felt there was greater publicity mileage to be gained from identifying it as Tan Hill, and since they were paying the piper, it seemed only fair to let them call the tune. So that’s what we did and the sales figures suggest they may well been right, but by then the book had already been printed, so The Inn At The Top it stayed.
The second often-voiced query or complaint is why - present company excepted - none of the characters in the book are identified by their real names. Quite a few people have suggested that I did it to dodge potential libel writs but, while that’s always a potential concern among nervous writers, my principal reason was to protect the privacy of those I was writing about. Many are now dead, of course - the book is about the inn in the late 1970s - but many others are still living and even those who have died often have children still living in the area. It did not seem fair to me to subject them to potential intrusions into their lives by well-meaning but not necessarily welcome outsiders. If they recognise themselves and want to identify themselves, they can of course do so, but that will be by their choice, not mine.
For similar reasons, none of the locations are identified by name either. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the name of the small Cumbrian town with an annual horse fair, but once you start naming names, they lead on to others, and some of the places are so small, that to name the village would render pointless any attempt to disguise the identity of the individuals who live there.
Whether I’ll continue the same policy in the follow-up, provisionally titled - spoiler alert! - “Return To The Top” which I’m working on at the moment, remains to be seen but you know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
For those who’ve read The Inn at the Top - and with apologies to those who haven’t - I wanted to take a moment to answer a couple of queries raised by some of the many Amazon reviewers there have been.
The first is why the book is called “The Inn At The Top” and is never given its real name in the book, when anyone who knows the Yorkshire Dales or, indeed has read any of the reviews or articles about it, will know at once that the inn is Tan Hill, the highest inn in Britain at 1732 feet above sea level, on top of the Pennines to the north of Swaledale.
The reason is that, at the time I was writing the book, my Baldrick-style cunning plan was not to identify the inn in the hope of generating a bit of “buzz” among readers speculating about its identity and wondering if their favourite Dales pub could be the one featured. This still seems to me to have been a reasonable plan and indeed, The Dalesman reported a bit of exactly that sort of buzz from readers, when the serialisation began in that magazine.
However, my publishers, Michael O’Mara Books, felt there was greater publicity mileage to be gained from identifying it as Tan Hill, and since they were paying the piper, it seemed only fair to let them call the tune. So that’s what we did and the sales figures suggest they may well been right, but by then the book had already been printed, so The Inn At The Top it stayed.
The second often-voiced query or complaint is why - present company excepted - none of the characters in the book are identified by their real names. Quite a few people have suggested that I did it to dodge potential libel writs but, while that’s always a potential concern among nervous writers, my principal reason was to protect the privacy of those I was writing about. Many are now dead, of course - the book is about the inn in the late 1970s - but many others are still living and even those who have died often have children still living in the area. It did not seem fair to me to subject them to potential intrusions into their lives by well-meaning but not necessarily welcome outsiders. If they recognise themselves and want to identify themselves, they can of course do so, but that will be by their choice, not mine.
For similar reasons, none of the locations are identified by name either. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the name of the small Cumbrian town with an annual horse fair, but once you start naming names, they lead on to others, and some of the places are so small, that to name the village would render pointless any attempt to disguise the identity of the individuals who live there.
Whether I’ll continue the same policy in the follow-up, provisionally titled - spoiler alert! - “Return To The Top” which I’m working on at the moment, remains to be seen but you know what they say: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Daytripper
Authors often travel a lot and like many people, I tend to use Tripadvisor http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ when looking for hotels or restaurants in unfamiliar places. I also post a few reviews from time to time. However, what bugs me about it - and I’d tell Tripadvisor direct if I could find a means to do so on their website - is that their overall ratings do not discriminate between reviews posted five minutes ago and five years ago. Admittedly, they appear in date order, most recent first, but I suspect most of us glance at the star percentages - excellent, very good, average, poor, terrible - and may get no further if those don’t look good. Yet, digging deeper, I sometimes find that the “terrible” reviews that nearly put me off had all been accumulated several years previously under a previous owner.
As we all know, the quality of hotels and, particularly, restaurants can change dramatically in a very short time. The chef throws a strop - or a razor sharp kitchen knife - and bales out; the hotel owner is caught in bed with the receptionist or, to avoid allegations of sexism, the barman; the maitre d’, after twenty years of being teeth-grittingly polite to ignoramuses, finally cracks and punches one of them; a brilliantly gifted new chef takes over from someone whose gourmet experience was confined to the kitchens at Strangeways; a new owner spends millions on refitting and updating a hotel and even does some staff training too; and Hey Presto! what was once a palace of delights becomes a chamber of horrors instead, or vice versa.
So my suggestion - are you listening Tripadvisor? - would be that all reviews more than twelve months old should be consigned to the dustbin of history and I might then feel a little more confident that my booking for a room for the night or a damn good dinner will leave me feeling five-star rather than no-star.
As we all know, the quality of hotels and, particularly, restaurants can change dramatically in a very short time. The chef throws a strop - or a razor sharp kitchen knife - and bales out; the hotel owner is caught in bed with the receptionist or, to avoid allegations of sexism, the barman; the maitre d’, after twenty years of being teeth-grittingly polite to ignoramuses, finally cracks and punches one of them; a brilliantly gifted new chef takes over from someone whose gourmet experience was confined to the kitchens at Strangeways; a new owner spends millions on refitting and updating a hotel and even does some staff training too; and Hey Presto! what was once a palace of delights becomes a chamber of horrors instead, or vice versa.
So my suggestion - are you listening Tripadvisor? - would be that all reviews more than twelve months old should be consigned to the dustbin of history and I might then feel a little more confident that my booking for a room for the night or a damn good dinner will leave me feeling five-star rather than no-star.
