Cassandra Clark Blog

Today is what used to be called Empire Day. To me it’s important because it’s my birthday.  My wish is that I’m forty and am Queen Elizabeth I.  That would mean that the immortal Thomas Tallis would compose his magnificent forty part motet for me as a birthday present.   Champagne and Tallis = paradise.  Happy Birthday to all you other Empire Day babies and many more of them. Ge be!

I was on a boat the other day and it was raining.  As is often the case nothing much was happening so we got to talking about this and that.  Somehow the question of balls arose. I can’t remember how we got there, maybe one of the chaps was trying to show his credentials as they sometimes do  when there’s only one woman on board, but anyway,  balls it was.  I once wrote a play called Balls, I told them.  It was terrifically successful if you count the number of  men in raincoats sitting at the back.  Indeed it was successful anyway because it ran for three weeks with full houses.  The reason there were  men so attired was nothingto do with the weather.  It was possibly because of the title and also because the reviews mentioned full frontal nudity, as it was called in those days.   Sadly for most of them it was a naked fellow who featured.  The reason I wrote the play, apart from the fact that it was commissioned, was to subvert a few of the gender stereotypes prevalent in those far-off days.  I say in  far-off days but it seems they’re not so distant.  I was in a toy shop the other day, looking for a birthday present for a four year old and was swiftly conducted by the young man running the shop to a wall of  glittering bangles and beads until I mentioned that she’d asked for some more brio rail track. What reminds me of all this is that  The World of Books is similarly limping along in an olden days mind set.  ‘Ditch the sexist book covers’ headlined a short piece in the Daily Telegraph the other day.  Dame Jacqueline Wilson was pointing out that  pink covers are pigeonholing girls and putting off boys.  Even books with gritty themes are made ‘sugary’ with ‘feminine’ covers when written by a woman author.  She’s not alone in this view.  Amanda Hocking also says that serious subjects written by women are too often given ‘girly chicklit’ covers with glib titles when those penned by men are not.  I’m humbly aware of all this myself as my own series was blighted at birth by ridiculous frilly-looking covers.  I wonder why publishers and sales directors do this?  What era are they living in?  It will be interesting to see what difference ebooks will make.  Final question though, how many thousand years will it take to tame the testosterone-effect and civilise the human race?

What a shame to allow the 23rd April to go by without comment.  I know somebody who can sing the Agincourt Hymn all the way through.  I wish I could.  I simply can’t get that tune into my head.  If you know it give it a go. And an extra one for me.

BBC Radio always comes up with the goods, doesn it?  I wrote The Parliament of Spies to the sound of their Mozart fest in 2011, now it’s a baroque spring – joy!

The other night Tim Marlow the art historican presented a fascinating programme on the soundscapes artists work with.  Do you work in silence or to music?  Until the Mozart fest I always worked  in silence or, sometimes, to the repetitive grind of garage or house so it was interesting to hear Tracey Emin say she played the same tune over and over again throughout the day to get into that creative trance state  we all need.  Rachel Whiteread mentioned medieval polyphony and it suggests we need something to take off that superficial layer of attention to get down to  deeper and creative source.  Some pople say they can only work if there’s the roar of traffic in the background, or the constant sound of the sea, or the rabble of a busy cafe.   Each to his own.  Can the neuroscientists explain it?

I was having a drink with a few writer friends at the weekend and the conversation got around to publicity or, rather, the lack of it.  The general feeling was that publishers choose one author to put all their resources behind and leave the rest of us to go to hell.  ‘What’s worse,’ somebody said, ‘is the fact that they have to pay bookshops for putting their author on the table and in the window.  But it’s catch 22.  If  they put them in the window they’ll sell but they’ll only put them there if they do sell.’   ‘That’s not all,’ somebody else said, ‘they do it on websites now as well so that everytime you click on a site you get somebody else’s book on the masthead.’  ‘Galling,’ we agreed.  ‘How much do they pay?’ somebody else asked.  Nobody was sure.  Then prizes were mentioned.  ‘Do you realise publishers are expected to pay to get their favourite authors on the lists?’ ‘Surely prizes are set up to honour the best work at the time?’  ‘It’s just like the politicians and the bankers. Anything goes if it makes money.’ ‘Aren’t we all being naive here?  We’re crime writers.  What else did we expect?  Corruption doesn’t just exist in the pages of a book.’  ‘Maybe a journalist might investigate. Who pays what to whom.  It would give  readers something to think about .’   Somebody wondered why we bothered.  ‘I like writing,’ I said, ‘it’s the best thing.  I’m miserable when I’m not working on a book.’  Everybody agreed with that.  Well, we would, wouldn’t we?

Before we broke up  the conversation veered onto the things we hate about publicists, how the lazy ones use other well-known writers to publicise their own wannabe authors by saying   If you like X you’ll like Y.  ‘It’s  cannibalising somebody else’s reputation and cashing in on their fame,’ was one view.   I pointed out that a top trade magazine had reviewed one of my novels by comparing it very favourably to a best-selling author (whom I happen to love) and my publisher understandably put the quotation on the cover.  I was reassured that this was OK as it was an unsolicited and unpaid for review and therefore genuine.  We still all agreed, though,  that if you like Bloggins you don’t necessarily like Noggins.

It was a good evening all round.  Much Guienne was sampled. Thanks folks!  Good writing!