Blog | Alison Morton's Thrillers

Reading allowed. Or not

Writers are encouraged to read their ms aloud. You arm yourself with a long drink, fend off all household pleas and settle down with the ms or screen in front of you and a notepad to jot down quick notes. Hopefully, the rest of your family hasn’t called the white coat men as you mumble away to yourself and you bash on.

I thought I’d be really clever. I’d load my ms as a personal document on to my Kindle and get it to read it using its text-to-speech feature. Easy-peasy. My throat would love me. Email sent off to Kindle with the attached ms and downloaded shortly after, I propped my Kindle up on the table (More on the fancy cover with a stand here). I opened the ms personal document in the list of books and selected Text-to-speech.

Oh dear!

The electronic voice was American – no problem as my protagonist starts life as a US citizen – and a light baritone. Word for word, it wasn’t bad. ‘C’mon’ came out as ‘See Monday’ but that was the only real blooper. The intonation was a bit haywire, but not a deal-breaker.

It was the way the voice ran straight into the next sentence and even worse, the next paragraph. A human would have paused for breath. After five minutes, my other half brandished headphones in my face and after ten, I had to turn it off.

But I’ve tried it. And you have to try things in life.

So it’s back to the read-aloud-a-thon. We need to hear the intonation, the pauses, the cadences, the flow and the emotion in the sentences. When we read silently, as the normal person does, we hear these in our heads as our neural and linguistic pathways insert them automatically.

Sorry, Kindle, although I love you as an e-book reader, you’re still just a machine.

Are some genres more equal than others?

I love bookshops. I love bookstalls at charity dos and the second-hand paperback club. I love the book table at conferences. The second and third are informal; the offer is either serendipity or confined to the books written by speakers (and certainly in the case of the RNA) attendees. Running my hands over the spines of books, opening the cover and reading the first paragraphs really is like opening a box of chocolates.

But bookshops give you a glimpse of all-round heaven.

On a recent trip, I noticed how strangely books are offered. I’m not talking the tables or the bestsellers’ or new racks, just the standard shelves of novels for adults. In the London, Tunbridge Wells and Birkenhead branches of a well-known book chainstore, the system was identical: crime; sci-fi, horror & fantasy; young adult; and authors A-Z. Even a delightful independent, Linghams Books in Heswall, Wirral, followed the same classification.

I often find SF/fantasy next to horror and dark fantasy. Timeslip/time travel and alternate history are jumbled in with steampunk, space opera, the classics like Asimov and Dick and the more literary end of SF e.g. China Miéville. But some speculative fiction such as Margaret Attwood’s dystopias Oryx & Crake or The Handmaid’s Tale is in the A-Z . That in itself is an interesting decision.

Now, I may hallucinating, but I remember as a kid that bookshops used to subdivide the A-Z section and I could find romance, historicals and thrillers grouped together. Now I have to dig around the A-Z for Katie Fforde, Ian Fleming, Simon Scarrow and Howard Jacobson.

Maybe it’s because genres are blurring; where does Diana Gabaldon fit? History, romance or SF/timeslip? Maybe it’s because space is limited in retail outlets? The bestseller and new displays attract a lot of interest – I go there myself when I step through the door. But say you’ve read all the books by your favourite historical writer and you want to find something similar, but by a different author, then you’ll have to search through the entire A-Z.

And if you’re a writer, researching where your book will be placed in the shop once it’s published (and it’s an absolute requirement by agents and publishers that you nail your genre and sub-genre in your submission), if it’s not in crime, sci-fi, horror & fantasy or young adult then you’re going to be lumped in with A-Z.

Rejection – why it shouldn’t be followed by dejection

I’m busy writing book3 but in the meantime, I sending book1 out into the world. I’ve polished my manuscript, I’ve hand-crafted my cover letter and honed my one-page synopsis. My critique partners, beta readers, expert publishing professionals, even the odd agent here and there have given me excellent feedback.

So, you think, why haven’t I got 99-book deal?

Several things, actually…
– numbers: there are an awful lot of people out there nourishing, cherishing and polishing their oeuvre. Publishing gurus (e.g. How Publishing Really Works) say many are poorly presented, badly written, punctuated, have a poor plot, implausible characters. Of those which are perfect on those counts, there are still quite a lot competing with my beautiful book;

– agents’ lists: many agents have a full list of clients, so obviously spend 98% of their work time looking after them (as you would hope to be). Sure, they all keep a weather eye out for The Next Big Thing. I mean, who wants to miss the next Harry Potter? Or Lee Child? But when that eye droops with tiredness at a 32 hour day, then perhaps we can understand;

– publishers’ lists: some do a wide spread of book types, others narrower, so your well-written, innovative and exciting book may not fit in with the rest of their catalogue. They may also have full schedules for a good period in the future. And they have the same problem with the 5,000 manuscripts they have to read each week.

But I think the big one is failure to resonate, also known as ‘I didn’t love it enough.’ As a wannabe author, it’s such a teeth-gnashingly irritating answer and something entirely out of your control. But set aside the anger and despair, have a think about it.

Picture yourself in your favourite bookshop. You have 30 minutes before the other half comes back from selecting your Christmas present. You browse the best-sellers, the tables, the 3-for-2, the new stuff, the ‘We recommend’ books, you look to see if your favourite author has brought another one out. But how do you choose what to buy? You read the blurb, you admire the cover, you read the first page or so, then you decide. Why? Because it calls you, it has a certain something that pulls you to it, that resonates. So I often get to the cash desk with a thriller, a historical, a fantasy adventure and the Booker Prize finalist. No logical pattern, just what attracts me.

So despite your beautiful oeuvre and perfect package (if you see what I mean), an agent or publisher may not ‘get’ your book. A very difficult thing to accept, but something writers need to swallow when submitting and reacting to rejections.

I was given a hard piece of advice. When you get a rejection, get another submission out the same day. If your book really is ready for market and your package so good, it should only take a few tweaks. This takes a bit of the sting out and you feel more in control of events. Another writer friend who has several books published says to submit widely (not to the agent not taking your genre, obviously!). You just never know who your idea is going to resonate with.

And lastly, all writers get rejections. Don’t take it too seriously, but here are some famous ones. You’re not alone. It’s never easy, even for the best writers.