All posts tagged vivienne tuffnell

Vivenne Tuffnell guests at GonzoInk: The Moth’s Kiss

The Moths Kiss jpegMoth’s kiss

A moth of mythic proportions(or a myth of mothic proportions)

by Vivienne Tuffnel

I grew up with a brother who was obsessed with butterflies and moths, and bugs in general so I learned early not to show fear or I’d find something in my bed. In time, I stopped being terrified of spiders, and now rather love them, but I have been surprised by the number of people who while loving butterflies, loathe and even fear their nocturnal cousins, moths. But then, I think knowing a lot about something tends to dissipate fear.

At one time staying with my brother might mean sharing a bedroom with Indian Moon-moths, as the spare bedroom was the hatchery. Ghostly, pale, furry wings six inched across would flap slowly across the room, lit by the lights from the street outside. They didn’t bother me. It was better than his room which was lined with tanks of various species of tarantulas. They still have the power to make me wary.

So when I was writing The Moth’s Kiss, I asked him about the moth that is said to drink tears, assuming it was a myth of a moth. “No, it’s very real,” he said, and sent me links to it. This is a moth that derives its nutrition from the tears of sleeping animals and people. More than that, it pokes the eyes to make them water. “It also spreads dangerous diseases,” he said, and then added, “Isn’t it marvellous?”

I shuddered. The idea of such a thing coming to you in the night, unseen and unfelt was horrifying but there was a certain frisson of ghoulish wonder about it. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.

The Moth’s Kiss was written as a side exercise, while I was writing a novel, a sequel to The Bet. The novel required that the main character become aware that he was being observed, stalked, not just by one person but by several, and to help me focus this idea, I wrote a number of extra sections, from the point of view of those stalkers, knowing that while I would not include those in the novel itself, they would deepen the experience for me. There’s nothing quite like building back story; it’s like method acting for writers. But when I wrote The Moth’s Kiss, I saw it could stand alone and unsupported because it touched on deep fears many of us share.

All of the stories in this little collection are intended to tap into those collective fears, that primeval jolt of terror, that is beyond the rational and yet even for us today still hold the power to unsettle and disturb us. We might not believe in ghosts, or demons or black magic, but most of us still have fears we’re not aware of till the hairs on the backs of our necks stand up on end, and rationality runs out the door.

I’ve encountered many experiences over my lifetime that might well be dubbed paranormal and spooky, and on the occasions I’ve been persuaded to do some live story telling, there’s been few listeners who haven’t at least enjoyed a frisson of fear.

Anyway, the collection of ten stories, some that have appeared here and some that have never seen the light of day can be found lurking in the darkest corner of Amazon, here and here.

I’d advise reading them in daylight, if you are of a nervous disposition.

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by Thea Atkinson on May 20, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Thea Atkinson on May 20, 2013

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Touching the taboos: Vivienne Tuffnell guests

Touching the taboos ~ an essential part of novel development or jumping on the bandwagon?

by Vivienne Tuffnell

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At first glance at the literary and creative world it might seem as though there are no taboos left. The recent explosion of literary erotica seems to show that there are few inhibitions left among both writers and readers. Yet it doesn’t seem long ago when the freedom to write about taboo subjects was threatened by certain financial institutions who will remain nameless. That battle was won; literary freedom was maintained.

So what then is a taboo? A quick trawl of the internet will give you a little to go on: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/taboo

“a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing: many taboos have developed around physical exposure the use of violence must remain a taboo in our society [mass noun]: Freud applies his notion of taboo in three ways

a practice that is prohibited or restricted in this way: speaking about sex is a taboo in his country”

It’s very clear that taboos are a kind of moveable feast, something that shifts and changes according to time and place. Until quite recently in the UK, talking about sex was very much frowned upon, and it’s this that gave us Brits our reputation for being uptight and repressed. This week I sat on a train and listened to a businesswoman on the phone to a chum, talking in some detail about the sex lives of mutual acquaintances. There’s change for you. I squirmed. It wasn’t so much the vague, salacious details that bothered me but the fact that she was sharing them on such a public forum as a very busy train!

The taboos of a country are not fixed and immutable but are slowly fluid. As we change, so do they. Death is possibly one of the most fixed of them in my culture; people seem to feel talking about it will bring the attention of the Grim reaper before their time.

Bookshops often have a whole section of books that are referred rather scathingly as Misery Memoirs, or Mis-Mems, row upon row of heartbreaking covers with emotive titles, each someone’s harrowing tale of abuse. These are big sellers, and I hope that greater awareness of the issues they highlight might be the result of their publication.

When I launched my new novel The Bet  a week or two back, a friend on Twitter commented about the timing. That week there had been a case of a school girl running away to France with her teacher. Now one of the central plot themes of The

Bet was an incident where a teacher made the moves on a teenage pupil. I wrote the novel some years ago, and I’d set the launch date months before the teacher-pupil affair became headline news. My timing for the release was pure coincidence. My Twitter chum saw it as good timing, in that the subject was topical and powerful.

But the novel was not written with that taboo in mind. I did not think one day, “let’s write a novel about….”. The process was far more nebulous, unplanned, and touching taboos deliberately was the furthest thing from my mind. Put simply, it was how the story revealed itself to me. It’s also not the scenario that you might choose if you were bandwagon-jumping to try to be topical. This was a female teacher making the moves on a vulnerable boy who has somehow caught her eye and piqued her vanity because he’s not interested in her.

It’s far from the only taboo in the book. Death, birth, child abuse, domestic tyranny and violence, suicide and severe mental illness all emerge as the story unfolds. They’re needed by the story itself. They’re not there because I decided to put them there, like ingredients for a cupcake mix. I don’t even cook by recipes; I make it up as I go along, letting myself be inspired by what comes to mind.

When it comes to reading matter, people generally find that stories where the challenges faced by the characters are mundane, everyday ones, the effect is one of blandness. They’re unchallenging. They don’t engage you with any emotional tugs, that frantic willing-on for the main character. Books like that tend to be rather meh! But a book that dares to touch on certain taboos risks being branded as sensationalist, of jumping on a bandwagon to gain more visibility.

Shortly after my book came out, there has also be a very high profile scandal about a now deceased celebrity, accused posthumously of a series of serious sexual crimes against young girls. If someone had used this premise as a plot for a novel, BEFORE this hit the headlines, I suspect it would have been treated as unbelievable, while the truth that unfolds day by day proves horribly believable and sickening. Accounts of this will be appearing for months, if not years, after the initial reports emerged, but to be honest, if a writer later chooses to use this terrible story as a basis for a novel, then to me that would be a blatant attempt to cash in on the misery of others.

My thoughts are simply that if a novel demands that you explore taboos, then don your pith helmet and get on with it. But if it’s done to fit in with a Zeitgeist or a movement or a fixation with celebrity misdemeanours, or because it may make the novel saleable, then I believe the effects may be other than expected. A novel that delves into psychologically dark areas can be very different depending on how it developed. One that has deliberately used those dark things as devices will perhaps seem far less real and powerful than one where the dark has bloomed of it’s own volition. And I know which I prefer to read…

 

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by Thea Atkinson on October 17, 2012  •  Permalink
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Balancing peripheral characters with main characters

I was thrilled beyond the beyond when I asked Vivienne Tuffnell to guest for me; I LOVE her writing and have two of her books to prove it. She is articulate, eloquent, and daggone encouraging to others: a real and genuine person I’m grateful to have met through this indie journey.

You are quite simply in for a treat today.

Balancing peripheral characters with main characters 

or how to stop Sideshow Bob murdering Bart Simpson.

by: Vivienne Tuffnell

Buy on Amazon for 2.99

One of the few novels I never actually finished was Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I was set it over Easter in my final year at university, as a part of my course entitled, “The Art of the Novel”. I forced myself to read a quarter of it, got bogged down and in the end got my flatmate to read it for me and give me a précis later. She very kindly did so, but it was all wasted when I got to the first tutorial and my tutor (in free-fall into a nervous breakdown) gave us a bright and brittle smile, said, “Right, you all read Anna Karenina, didn’t you?” and things went downhill from then on.

My problem with the novel was a combination of the three-course dinner that was every name and the sheer number of characters. I simply couldn’t cope with bonding with that many; I needed to know who was the main character(s) and tune out the rest. It’s one of the reasons why I often struggle with fantasy, particularly the epic style fantasy with a cast of thousands and a long list of who everyone is and how they relate to each other. I’ve also found a great deal of it is cardboard cut-out writing, where a character is generated by a need for certain qualities and that is really all they bring to the story. You don’t often get a sense of who that person truly is and what brought them to that point; seldom do you get a feeling that their story has an entire book or two’s worth of living to explore. They’re not real people, they’re something created for a purpose.

I have a head full of imaginary friends, and if truth be told, they’re often more vivid at times than many of my “real” friends. Like the “real” people in my life, I often know a great deal about some and less about others, but it’s not unusual to find one steps forward and reveals a snapshot of their back-story. With real life friends, it’s not unusual to discover extraordinary things about them many years into the relationship, things you have often had a kind of background awareness of but never really discussed. For example, I was aware of one friend’s army family upbringing but until recently I never knew she’d been born in the Far East. That brings a whole new dimension to an already interesting person.

It can be the same with the people in my head. Usually the main characters of a story are familiar to me, old friends if you like. But the others are often not so well known to me, friends of friends perhaps and I can be aware of them living their lives just beyond my inner sight and yet not closely aware of the particulars of their deepest workings. Then one day, they do or say something that I hadn’t been aware I knew about.

When that happens, I usually step back and take another look at them.

In my novel Strangers and Pilgrims, one of the six main characters Gareth has an older sister who steps into try and help him out of his breakdown. A number of folks have said they wanted to know more about Angela Forester, because though she only appears in a short section of the book, she made an impression strong enough for readers to want to know more about her. She’s a peripheral character in two other novels (as yet unpublished) and I am beginning to think she might just have a story to tell me of her own.

Just 2.99

Likewise, Isobel from Away With The Fairies started out as best supporting actress in another novel, due to be published this year. She popped up in the story as a very vivid sidekick to the main character about two thirds through the story. She caught my interest.

This is where the problems can begin. A peripheral character can sometimes sing a siren song, like an intriguing new lover, enticing you to divert the attention, the flow of the story and entirely hijack the key role. They might start to seem more interesting to you, the writer, than the main character you have been bonded at the hip with for so long.

I have some advice for you if this happens. Simply this: DON’T PANIC. It happens to most writers at some time and in all honesty, it needs to. This is the internally generated inspiration a good writer needs. Your first move, once you become aware of what is happening, is to step back a little. Go and spend some time with this pushy peripheral and talk to them. Take them out for a coffee, but make sure they know this is NOT a date. Let them fill you in on their life, on who they are and what they want, and also why they have appeared in this novel. Take notes, listen attentively, and when they’ve told you enough to be going on with, make a deal with them. Tell them that you’ll write more about them. Tell them they’ll maybe get their own novel to star in. But also tell them not now, not this novel. Be patient and wait their turn and you’ll get onto it as soon as you can and then you will do them proud. Ask them, are they content to try and steal the stage from someone else, or would they rather have the chance to be the star from the start?

This usually works very well. The upstart becomes much more manageable and the information they’ve given you about themselves adds depth and richness to the story and the main character. You don’t need to tell the reader very much about it; it tends to be enough that you know and a kind of ghostly hologram appears, a kind of signature that is often the marker that makes readers say, “I’d like to know more about X,” rather than the bewilderment they might feel if X has totally usurped the storyline from your star. The bonus of it is that you now have your next star on-side, co-operative and bursting to get started working with you.

However, not all peripherals are actually the same. It’s easy as a writer to get sidetracked and obsessed by the need to populate the background of a novel with convincing portraits of people, to give it colour and depth. It’s a little like trying to paint a crowd scene. If you watched the trilogy of films of Lord of the Rings, the vast armies of both sides were very cleverly presented. Panoramic shots of orc hordes in their tens of thousands juxtaposed with rapid close ups of the ranks, showing the astonishing range of differences between not only tribes of orcs but individuals within it. It gave a powerful impression of both the scale of an army and the nature of the individuals within it. But let’s face it, none of us wants to see shot after shot of orcs like mugshots, regiment after regiment of perfectly coiffed elves,going on for ten or more minutes, do we? It’s enough that we know they’re all there and it’s the same with writing. You don’t need to describe everyone in the park in detail; you use the same technique, brief panoramic overview, a few vivid details and it’s enough. It’s not dissimilar to the techniques of Impressionist painting. In our striving for reality in writing it’s tempting to get so focused on details that we forget we are really trying to create the bigger picture. Not every peripheral character needs to be any more than that.

My final thought is that just as you get to know the people in your life, and their lives ebb and flow in harmony with yours (or not!) it’s important to get to know the people in your head, your “imaginary friends” better. This is not about mapping out character details, like a shopping list, but allowing themselves to reveal themselves organically, just as people in real life do. You can’t know everything about them consciously, but unconsciously you do. So

trust the process and let them talk to you and let the new stars step forth  shyly (or boldly) to conquer their world.

-30-

If you liked this post, please do share.

Thea is the author of several novels that she considers left of mainstream. You can find her on BN, Kobo, Sony, Apple

Anomaly by Thea Atkinson
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by Thea Atkinson on February 22, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Thea Atkinson on February 22, 2012

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Do you believe in Fairies?

I believe in fairies ~ just don’t ask me to define what a fairy actually is!

by Vivienne Tuffnell

Buy now on Amazon.com

Most children stop believing in fairies somewhere in their tweens, if not beforehand. It’s a charming belief like Father Christmas that adults usually encourage them to hang on to but are never surprised when they finally declare in that argument-defying tone, “There’s no such thing!”

I suspect I was no different, though my personal belief in Father Christmas persisted a little longer due to an incident involving bells, the interconnecting chimney system in the Victorian house I grew up in and my father’s attempt to wrap an impossibly shaped toy. I’ve long been involved in the supernatural; a diocesan exorcist or two have been among my close personal friends and I’ve experienced many things that would make the researchers of Britain’s Most Haunted lick their lips in glee.

But fairies? Come on, now, flower fairies with gossamer wings? Tinkerbell?

I returned to a belief in fairies some time in 1997, when we lived in an isolated rectory at the edge of the Norfolk fens. Items of small worth but immediate need kept going missing and reappearing in improbable places, often where several of us had looked numerous times before. Glasses, jewellery, keys, precious little things all vanished into thin air. My husband or my daughter or I would storm around the house hunting for the missing item, getting more and more stressed about it.

Having coffee with a friend and neighbour Sam, I mentioned this and she let out a full throated chuckle of a laugh.

“It’s the fairies,” she said and I spilled my coffee and spluttered with disbelief.

To my shock she detailed the things that happened, the kind of things that went missing and where they tended to turn up. Half convinced, I asked what I could do about it.

“Not a lot, really,” she said. “I find leaving them sugar and the occasional glass of something sweet and alcoholic helps. They tend to return things quicker if you ask politely. And sometimes they give you things.”

After this I tuned up my inner vision and I did start to sense presences, around me. Most of them were in the garden which we’d cultivated as a traditional cottage garden filled with old fashioned scented plants, but some liked the house. They liked my collection of stones, polished gemstones and crystals; these were my most commonly borrowed items. They liked my house plants and the small grove of large leaved plants that I had in the larger of the reception rooms.

So, still a little sceptical, I tried working with them, and to my surprise I found that the garden grew better and the house felt happier. Things still moved around but I didn’t worry too much. Even when car keys vanished when I needed them, I tried to stay polite and eventually they were returned.

Of course, the big question is what ARE fairies? There are a number of

possible options. They may be nature spirits, of the type termed devas, which work with the natural world to keep things going smoothly. In some theologies, they are the spawn of fallen angels and are to be mistrusted and shunned; these are the kind that stole children and replaced them with changelings. They may be disembodied spirits, those of the dead or those not yet born. Or one theory is that in antiquity they were a pygmy race of humans driven to the margins and subsisting by stealing from us. This last theory is somewhat borne out by the discovery some years back of a miniature race of humans on the island of Flores; nicknamed the Hobbit, these tiny folks, now extinct, would have lived at the same time as modern humans.

And of course, for some, they may just be a figment of the imagination, the product of a deranged mind, a sustained hallucination. We use the term “away with the fairies” to denote someone has lost touch with ordinary reality and is on a trip of some sort. It’s a kinder way of saying someone is a bit mad. It’s also the title of my most recent book.

“Away with the Fairies” is the tale of artist Isobel, trying to carve out time and space from busy family life to pursue her career as a painter. Isobel has endured tragedy and hardship but has brushed all these under the carpet in the need to get on with everyday life. But none of these things have really gone away, and her life unravels spectacularly when she hits a deer driving home. Sequestered at their isolated holiday cottage, Isobel notices odd things happening, small things appearing and disappearing and doors and windows refusing to stay shut. Dismissing it as nothing at first, she becomes immersed more and more deeply in the cycle of visionary paintings she has begun until the strange events become impossible to ignore. That’s when she gets scared…..

My own experiences always tend to influence my books, so finding fairies in a story wasn’t that great a surprise, though the conclusion I come to in the book was a bit of a shock to me. That is one of the great joys in writing, that finding of secrets you didn’t know you knew.

“Away With The Fairies” is available as an e-book from Amazon USA :

From Amazon UK:

And currently as a paperback from Lulu, (though in a few weeks time it will also be available from Amazon)

It is also available at Amazon France, and Amazon Germany but I haven’t put up the links from those places as I can’t imagine it selling in either country.

Isobel’s a sceptic, as I suspect most people are, but she learns that there are far more things in the world that she never imagined could exist…….

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by Thea Atkinson on October 27, 2011  •  Permalink
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Posted by Thea Atkinson on October 27, 2011

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Thea’s 3 Mashup. :It’s all about me, baby @guineapig66 @booksandpals @siblehodge

June 17, 2011

First of all, I woke up in a frenzy this morning. Had a heap of things to do before I had to run off to work and do all those Friday errands that have spilled over from the last Friday when I didn’t get the errands done. So. I forgot the mashup.

But:

Ha Ha! Joke’s on me cause I ended up finding 2 really great reviews today! Yippee! So In honor of the really generous folks who review us poor dejected indies, this one’s for you! (and me of course; it’s all about me.)

I really want you to go over and comment if you can, if you find the time, if you care at all about indies and their support system cause reviewers are part of it, baby. I don’t care if you read the review, but as writers, it’s nice to show any reviewer support. So without fanfare and excitement, here are my three:

  • Sibel Hodge is a stunning writer and she reviews too. She posted a review today for One Insular Tahiti. Thanks so much Sibel
  • Big Al is probably the best known and I really love his site. It’s full of great, insightful reviews of tons of books. You could drown in the reading list. He reviewed Anomaly a month or so ago

happy reading!

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by Thea Atkinson on June 17, 2011  •  Permalink
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Thea’s 3 Mashup. :Take advice from Kristen Lamb and get er done

June 10, 2011

In honor of finishing Kristen Lamb’s book We are Not Alone I’m using her as a theme for my mashup this week. If you haven’t visited her blog and you are a writer trying to find ways to make sense of this whole social media thang, you really should subscribe. You should buy the book, in fact. (Just don’t take the advice of creating a MYSpace profile. She will tell you that after the book released MYSpace went ballistic.)

Speaking of Kristen Lamb, I’ve been working on advice from her blog to create posts that invite comment. Not working for me yet as I haven’t managed it successfully, but Vivienne Tuffnell’s blog is rich with comments. Each post she writes is full of people writing back to her and to each other. How does she do it? It’s worth the visit for investigation.

Mark Williams and Saffina desForges admittedly used Kristen’s (hope the first name’s ok, hun) advice to move into the top 10 – and one of them will correct me on the numbers I’m sure if it’s higher, and I think it is. They read Kristen’s book and applied the advice. They took off. I’m sure it has something to do with the writing, but readers have to find a writer first before it can become a sensation. These two even received mention on Kristen’s advice blog. I’m sending you to Mark Williams International because it’s wonderfully picture heavy and comment laden.

So how many of you have read and employed the advice in the book? Tell us about your successes and your failures. I’m listening.

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by Thea Atkinson on June 10, 2011  •  Permalink
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