Jane Johnson – author

When I stepped off the train at Penzance after my long journey back from the Ayot Literary Festival (which was so enjoyable) I found myself surrounded by pirates. There were pirates everywhere. Hundreds, no, thousands of them. I gather, eavesdropping in the rough communal huddle that passes for a bus queue here in Cornwall, that there were 8700 of them, to be precise. A world record for the greatest number of pirates gathered in one place at one time. Yay! Penzance! Or should that be Arrrrrr…

I have to say some of the costumes were pretty darn good – lots of Jack Sparrow rip-offs (men itching to try out their girlfriend’s eyeliner for years and finally getting a good excuse), and plenty of salty wenches in off-the-shoulder blouses and hooped earrings (but then, Penzance is the Chav capital of West Cornwall). There were bendy cutlasses aplenty, and fake parrots lurching drunkenly from shoulders. No scimitars though – it seems only Abdel does Barbary corsair (with some aplomb, as you might imagine). Rather a lot were default “pirates” in the sort of “costumes” you might cobble together from what you might find in the back of the wardrobe: stripy T-shirts, cut-off shorts and bandanas, and some attempts were desultory in the extreme. I mean what self-respecting pirate would wear flipflops? Or worse, fit-flops?! Or, chaviest of all, neon Crocs? (shudder) To say these efforts were half-hearted would be generous. Quarter – or maybe eigthth-hearted would be nearer the mark.

But as the bus drew into Newlyn, things took a properly piratical turn. These chaps actually looked as if they lived in their outfits, got blood and fish scales and salt stains on them. Looked as if they got into fights at the Swordfish inn in them. Did dodgy deals for contraband at the Red Lion in them. One dandy was wearing a faded velvet waistcoat and honest-to-god breeches. And battered buckle-shoes. I looked for a sword, but he must have stowed it with his stash. There were pirates hanging over the railing above the harbour in the sunshine necking rum and ale and smoking suspicious-looking roll-ups. And shouldering babies which had clearly been stolen from prams parked outside the Co-op and were now destined to be shipped out to the white-slave markets in North Africa…

I’m home, I thought, grinning. Now, where did I put my eyepatch and pistol?

Despite being an editor I really hate being edited. Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance: classic Kübler-Ross cycle! One of my authors once said: “When I get your editorial letter I go in the bathroom and scream for 5 minutes; then I get to work.” I screamed for 20… but the revised SULTAN’S WIFE is finally delivered to Penguin for publication Feb 2012. Phew…

How fabulous is this cake? Thank you Emma, Tracey, Dawn, Frances and (cakemaker) Ros at Swindon Central Library for a really great event last night for the Festival of Literature. (The lettering on the lilac ‘book’ is my name in Tifinagh, the Tuareg alphabet: you’ll have to read THE SALT ROAD to understand what I mean by that.)

If you’re in the area do come along for a discussion about Morocco, the Sahara, the Tuareg and adventures of the heart – I’ll be sharing my experiences, taking questions, showing photos and reading a little from The Sultan’s Wife. It should be fun!

7.30pm at the Central Library:

http://www.swindonfestivalofliterature.co.uk/03-tue.html

Today I was cleaning my collection of wood and stones in the bathroom (too rare an occurrence, I’m afraid: housework is not my forte). As I ran each one under the tap I remembered with wonderful clarity where they’d come from; vivid little snapshots of time – down to the colour of the sky, the smell in the air, the company I’d kept, the feelings I had as I pocketed my keepsake.

For each of these stones encapsulates a unique memory for me, and it reminded me that in many legends witches stored their magic, or sometimes their souls, in stones they kept hidden, to keep them safe from rivals. They are perfect magical objects, stones: each has its own character, its own history.

Here is the piece of obsidian – a shard of black volcanic glass (the ‘dragonglass’ of the George RR Martin novels, the only substance that can kill an Other) – I picked up in a storm while exploring the wild mountain interior of Iceland with artist Georg Gudni and my friend Pilar Perez.

Here, striped and polished by the waters of Lake Mavora, is a pebble I stashed away while watching the final scenes of Fellowship of the Ring being filmed; here some twists of smooth grey driftwood from the shores of Lake Te Anau, where I went fishing with Aragorn, Legolas, Merry and Pippin. This piece of tawny granite came from the deserts of Joshua Tree, where I walked with Viggo and Bridgit to see the Native American petroglyphs.

This chunk of glittering quartz I carried off the Lion’s Face mountain in Morocco as a talisman of my survival after Bruce and I got benighted on our climb – it went all the way to London, and then came back again as I shipped the contents of my London flat to Morocco. These two little white snail shells are from the same mountain: amazing they remain intact despite their fragility after their thousands-of-miles round-trip. A piece of rough pink stone studded with flecks of glittering silver came out of a dry riverbed on one of my first walks with Abdel. A heavy iron meteorite picked up out of the sand in the heart of the Sahara when I was researching THE SALT ROAD…

There are seawashed pebbles from beaches in my native Cornwall – from inaccessible places like Kenidjack Cove, where I climbed my favourite route, Saxon – and other climbing mementos from West Wales and Yosemite, Norway and Spain. Tailings and amethyst geodes from abandoned tin mines on Cornwall’s north coast. Fossils and azurite, granite and shale, haematite and crystal.

All my life lies buried in this little trove. But like those legendary witches, only I hold the key to the memories they contain!

It’s going to be a busy summer! (will update as dates come nearer)

May 3rd – Swindon Festival of Literature http://www.swindonfestivalofliterature.co.uk/
May 7-15th – St Ives Literature Festival
June 14th – 24th – Golowan Festival
June 25th – Ayot Literary Festival http://www.ayotliteraryfestival.com/
July – Penzance Literary Festival

Not sure how I’m going to find time to write…

Someone was asking me what the difference was between writing for adults and writing for children, and which I preferred. I started to answer, and stopped. That’s a tough question. It’s hard to pin down: the same level of attention and thought goes into both. Of course, my fiction for children tends to be shorter than my fiction for adults, but it doesn’t seem to take less time! Children are impatient readers: they don’t want loads of description, asides or extraneous words (though aren’t we all impatient readers nowadays?) and that means careful honing, cutting to the bone. But then, I’ve had to apply the cruel editorial knife to the draft of the new adult book, The Sultan’s Wife, because it was running long and I needed to get the length down (it’s a much better book for the discipline, though!). So if it’s not about length, what is the difference?

I’ve decided it’s about how I feel when I write, and the sort of internal dialogue I have with parts of my storytelling brain. My new book for children – Goldseekers – comes out this week. This time last year I was finishing the first draft, with a real sense of pleasure. It sat in my imagination like a piece of perfectly smooth river-washed stone,the right size, the right shape. Because I could encompass the whole story in my head at once, hold it there, turn it round, examine it from various angles. If a bit didn’t fit, or stuck out, I could spot it and sort it out at once.

In my other life, as a publisher at HarperCollins, I’ve spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of George RR Martin’s epic fantasy cycle A Song of Ice and Fire, trying to do exactly that in preparation for the delivery of the 5th volume, A Dance With Dragons, which he has just (almost) delivered. The scope of that series is simply mind-boggling. There are dozens of viewpoint characters, a cast of hundreds of minor characters, simultaneous events spanning continents. I find myself wondering how he can possibly carry all that in his head? It’s like Mount Everest to my river-washed stone. Or a vast, complex story machine, with hundreds of different cogs all turning around one another, at different speeds, the movement of each one affecting every other cog, directly or indirectly. As a reader, it beguiles me; as an editor it bamboozles me. How he manages to hold it all together as a writer I simply can’t imagine.

Goldseekers is a much simpler proposition. It’s a story with a single viewpoint character: young Jude Lanyon, a boy growing up in 17th century Cornwall. By various turns of ill fortune he’s orphaned. So far, so simple: a tale of a lad hard done by. But then, lo and behold, suddenly there were pirates and smugglers and knockers and djinns all over the place. Now, when you get unexpected incursions like this in an adult novel you usually have to be very severe and root out the trespassers. There are – or I feel there are – more constraints when you write for adults. You are aware of your own voice, of your intentions and your failings; of readers and editors and critics. Now, self-criticism is a good thing, and self-editing crucial: out must go all the purple prose, the self-indulgence and over-writing, all the things I try to excise as an editor of others. But it can be crippling, to wrestle with words, trying to write the perfect sentence (I lived with an author who really tortured himself to do this, and it was painful to watch, even though in the end the prose was exquisite). You can write the life out of a story much more easily than writing the life into it. And as for being aware of your market: that’s not to be encouraged, unless you want to write bland formula fiction. It can lead to timid decisions and dumbing-down – will they like this? Will they understand it?

But children love a bit of anarchy: they respond to it. And because they come to stories without prejudice and preconceptions they’ll embrace pretty much any weird thing you throw at them gleefully as long as you contain it within a strong, simple structure. And you know, that’s very liberating.

My swashbuckling adventure story about pirates, treasure and djinns, set in 17th century Cornwall, is due out next week, and is currently on offer at a special price from Amazon (other fine retailers are available…)

Some nice reviews coming through:
‘Moonfleet meets Treasure Island meets The Arabian Nights’ ! A rollickingly good ride with surprises around every corner. There are pirates, sea captains, djinns and talking cats – what more could you want!’
A Dream of Books

http://adreamofbooks.blogspot.com/2011/01/review-goldseekers-jane-johnson.html

Lovely review in the weekend’s Globe & Mail:

‘The Salt Road, like all powerful stories, is about change. It takes most of the novel until we learn, in the final surprising chapters, the reason for Isabelle’s barriers; her inability to connect with people is her arc. For readers looking to experience a shifting, disappearing world, and to be introduced to an exotic culture with evocative descriptions, The Salt Road is an exhilarating ride. Part historic and part contemporary, with universal themes of betrayal, love, and the anguish caused by human greed, it has an ending rich and fulfilling enough for those who like all their questions answered.’

I’ll be in Toronto the first week of February to launch the beautiful Canadian edition of THE SALT ROAD, signing copies of the book at the city’s bookstores and guesting at a Ben McNally Books dinner party. On the evening of 4th Feb I’ll be at Different Drummer Books in Hamilton with author Andrew Pyper. Hope to meet some of you there! To kick things off a truly wonderful review in The Women’s Post: “A beautifully crafted story that paints a vivid picture and captures the imagination… For the Tuareg the Salt Road can be a metaphor for the road of life, or the road of death. In this turbulent and emotional story there is pain, heartache and also healing. It’s a book you won’t want to end, yet at the same time you’ll be yearning for a satisfying conclusion. Jane Johnson’s novel will not let you down. Let the adventure begin…”

http://http://womenspost.ca/articles/books/review-salt-road
.html