Next Tuesday’s event at Blackheath Village Library has had to be postponed because of illness, sorry to say, and I hope whoever it is recovers well and cheerfully. We’ll be meeting instead on Tuesday 20 April at the library in Blackheath Grove, London SE3 from 7pm. Handy for the Thai restaurant and the best times south east London has to offer. See you there.
You’ve gone into New Year’s Eve optimistically and come out misty optically. Everything hurts, your mouth’s dry and it’s all down to something you ate. What you need to pull you through is the prospect of intellectual stimulus, and I have the answer. On Tuesday 16 February (2010) from 7 to 8.30pm south east London writers Imogen Robertson and I will be at the Blackheath Village library (the one by the post office in Blackheath village, SE3) talking about writing fiction: how to dodge it, do it and see it through to publication and beyond. See you there! Meanwhile I wish you a gentle recovery from the festivities, and a very happy new decade.
Here are the best or the rest, with my apologies for seasonal delays (wrong kind of snow on this webpage).
From MOLLIN V. W. MANDAZA in Harare, Zimbabwe: ‘My bedroom is my sanctuary of hope, solace and strength. My home within our home. A personal paradise for creativity, peace and reflection. Where everything seems right and even the world seems fair. The sacred and warm space to dream or cry.’
From SUSAN SHERWOOD: ‘A kaleidoscope of hues, textures, forms. Scent of moist soil, roses and newly cut grass. Sound of swishing grasses, rustling leaves and birdsong. My garden. Place of season and weather change. A continual fresh and novel place, conjuring up that pleasure which is a foretaste of Paradise.’
And from GABRIELLE BYRNE: ‘Intimate can conjure images of cotton wool hugs or softly spoken words whispered secretly throughout the night. For me however it’s walking along a stretch of lone, desolate coastline, tasting the faint tang of salt on my lips as the tide reaches its height, just me and the elements.’
Congratulations, everyone, and thank you very much for sharing your most intimate thoughts in such beautiful words. Right! It’s time for me to lower my head now, jut out my jaw, hunch those shoulders and face the least intimate place in the world, the shopping scrums in central London. It should be easy for me this year though – my kids are all students so they all want the same as me: a suitcase full of money and enough painkillers to see us through to January. Happy Christmas, everyone, and a very happy 2010.
We have a winner! The entries for the Most Intimate Place creative writing competition have been impressive not just for the excellence of their writing but for coming from all over the world too.
£50 worth of Maia Press books are on their way to MARIA JOSE MARINAS for this winning description of her Most Intimate Place: ‘The mountains of Soquel. Protected by pine trees a yoga studio rests uncertainly on the edge of a hill. I sit surrounded by strangers. Quietly I open and close the internal valve that controls my tears. A heat rises within that this envelope of mine cannot contain. I feel tender.’ I love the emotional tension in this piece and its perfect resolution in the final three words. Beautiful.
Signed copies of The Most Intimate Place are on their way to five runners up. JEN BROPHY’S entry made me laugh: ‘Squinting through sleep, I searched my phone’s face. I kissed Sam. “Time I got up.” In the bathroom, I pondered my body. An intimate view certainly but not an uncommon one. Upon my return, Sam started, his guilt exposed. My appointments, texts, photos. Sam had pillaged my most intimate place.’ I enjoy how she plays with us over whether she’s more in love with Sam or her phone.
MICHELLE PRITAL raised goosebumps with this entry shaped like a poem and sent from Israel: ‘When looking for that most intimate place When searching for that private niche in which to disappear When seeking out that most cherished of memories … I dissolve into Vivaldi’s Concerto in C for two violins And find myself at 5 years old sitting on the bathroom floor Looking up As my dad shaves’ So much is in what Michelle has left unsaid. Very moving.
From Scotland comes CHERYL O’BRIEN’s entry which rises in crescendo like a musical phrase: ‘It feeds dreams, nurtures ambition, is the wellspring of creativity. Curious, it thrives on knowledge, echoes passion and is a subtle prod guiding morality. Home to both logic and mysticism, it may even encompass immortality in spirit. I will only know for sure when I depart this place: my mind.’
BECKY SEFTON is another runner up with this: ‘Standing in the gravel sand, inhaling the salty air, I close my eyes and hear the waves smash against the shore, the surf breaking around my feet. Seaweed entwines itself around my toes. I feel the chilly breeze and the warm sun against my face.’ This took me straight back to the north Antrim coast where I grew up, lovely.
SHANE O’HALLORAN sent us this exquisitely sensual brew from Dublin: ‘Dancing inside the hillbillies beard between the moonlight and shadow, the hair brushes my cheek as I move nearer the warm crescent. Lingering scent from the night before fills my nostrils as I move in for more. This is the palace of my dreams.’
Thanks to all of you for the excellence of your work. I wish you all happiness, fun and every success in your writing careers. Tomorrow I’ll post the best of the rest.
If you’re in London, the Christmas party of the year will be at the Royal Opera Arcade this Wed 9 December, 4 – 7pm – please come. In July Pall Mall Stationers hosted a wonderful launch for me and this time the whole arcade is celebrating Christmas with red carpet style. There’ll be free champagne cocktails, mulled wine, mince pies, carols, Victorian entertainers and the chance to meet Kate Williams (the historian behind Young Victoria), Clare Mulley (prize-winning biographer of the founder of Save the Children) and me. You can pick up ideal Christmas gifts too in the shape of signed, discounted books too. Can’t wait to see you.
Can you describe YOUR Most Intimate Place in 50 words or less? The wonderful Blackheath library is running a competition to find the best description and the winner will receive £50 worth of books by my publisher Maia Press www.maiapress.com. The best submissions will appear here too. Don’t forget, 50 words max please. Email your entries to richardforeman.chalke@hotmail.co.uk and please don’t forget your name and contact details, otherwise we can’t send you your prize! Closing date: 1 December 2009.
While I was in Belfast in September, William Crawley asked me to drop into the BBC there for his excellent Sunday Sequence programme which offers intelligent comment on religious and philosophical issues not just from Northern Ireland but all around the world. William had read The Most Intimate Place, and better still he really understood it, so we had a fine old chat. It was broadcast while I was away in Portugal so I’ve no idea how I sounded. Probably just as well.
It was all going so well. Then came a review in the Church Times. Some poor woman from the Bible Reading Fellowship (who?) decided from first sight of the encomia on the cover of The Most Intimate Place that she wasn’t going to like what was inside. Sure enough, she took exception to Helen, my delightful woman priest character, being described as having a ‘beautiful arse’ and said that her readers should read Dan Brown instead. I’d hoped for something a bit more considered from the Church Times actually, especially as the theological research in my book was inspired when I sat in on a Church of England ordination course. (I had not been through the priest selection process but in those days interested lay people were allowed to hear the lectures for a small fee.) The review is followed by an invitation to buy the book from the Church Times bookshop, so there you go. Good old Anglicanism keeping it buttered on both sides as usual.
This has been a fantastic summer for me and I want to thank everybody for it. I never expected my novel to please everybody – there are plenty of acclaimed books I don’t particularly like – but I’ve been overwhelmed by people’s positive response to The Most Intimate Place. Thank you, everyone who emailed through this site, wrote or stopped me in the street to tell me how much you appreciated it.
Thanks to all you atheists and humanists and non-believers of all kinds, who wanted to discuss it for hours – I never anticipated that! Thanks especially to those of you who said that my book felt real. Reality is what I revised the book so many times to achieve.
Most moving were the people who told me that they read the book twice: first for the story itself and then a second time to absorb the language and nuances of the religious meditations. Some of those people are Christians but many are not. I’m deeply grateful to you all.
I’m in Portugal at the moment recovering from glorious book-flogging times. In Belfast and Coleraine both branches of Waterstone’s were superb again, thanks to all the staff for their great hospitality, and this time the books were there for the selling and did very well. My time in Belfast was complete when I’d dropped into No Alibis to sign books (my own, yes) and hear a bit of jazz, followed by a trawl round the Cathedral Quarter and ‘wee cacktail’ in the Merchant. Huge thanks to my auntie Anne for good times. In Portstewart I had a go on the swings with my school friend Sharon (thanks for putting me up again, Sharon) and breakfast in Morelli’s with her and Patricia Davies, reunion of three school friends after God knows how long. Very many thanks to everybody who turned out and bought The Most Intimate Place and if you like it, tell your friends. I’ll post the embarrassing pics when I’m back.
Thanks too to Emma Nissim and her sister Rachael for their terrific event. We sold Sword Rampant t-shirts and bags (there might be one or two left, I’m not sure) and drank wine and went over to the Coach & Horses where I read to the assembled patrons. They were rapt actually and afterwards people came up to tell me that it was my reading of Helen’s meditations (I slipped one of those in) that they enjoyed most. Now who would have thought that would ever happen in a pub?
I’m not just dossing in the Portuguese sun here actually. I’m working hard (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) on the second draft of my next murder mystery. More about that when I’m back in November. Meanwhile I’ve had another small but perfectly formed review, in the States this time I’m thrilled to bits!
available at Waterstones