Mr Rosenblum’s Cottage gets a new thatch

It’s been 20 years and it’s time for the cottage to be re-thatched. This is the cottage that my grandparents bought when they first arrived in Dorset and the place where I spent all my holidays as a child. The windows are really high as it used to be the village school and the teachers didn’t want the children to be distracted by interesting goings on in the lane outside.

The thatcher and his assisant are doing a grand job as you can see. My mum mentioned ‘Mr R’ to John the thatcher and he was very enthusiastic and is bringing his wife and their book group to the launch. If only he could have helped Jack and Sadie with their leaky roof in chapter 10…

bundles for the thatch

And you need a good head for heights… I feel dizzy.

I love the bright colour of the new thatch. It fades so fast.

jitterbugs and other novel translations

Mr S and I are back in Dorset after a busy week in London. It was all rather fun – I met my charming Dutch editor, Jacqueline, and saw the cover for the Dutch edition of Mr R. The book is being busily translated at the moment, and editors and translators are starting to send through questions about the text. The biggest challenge seems to be the Dorset dialect. There is a motley collection of local folk in Mr R and they speak in broad Dar-set tones.

This was great fun to write: I scoured old dialect dictionaries, read lots of William Barnes and, of course, Thomas Hardy. The speech is written phonetically with dialect words like ‘jitterbug’ (glow worm) and ‘yow’ (ewe) and ‘noggerhead’ (idiot).  In old West Country speech, nouns are gendered as they are in German or Anglo-Saxon and are nearly always ‘he’. So, a roof in need of repair is: ‘ee’s in a bit o’ a bad way, isn’t ‘ee?’ I chose to elongate the ‘ee’ when transcribing, as I felt ‘e’ as in ‘e’s in a bit o’ a muddle’ sounds too much like cockney.

All well and good – gave the poor copy editor a bit of headache – but I thought it was all finished. Now, the poor translators are going through exactly the same thing. Jacqueline and her translator are trying different rural Dutch dialects and choosing which sounds best. Professor M who is working on Jack in German, is struggling with the eccentric spelling of the dialect. He emailed to ask what an ‘ersey mistake’ is – (it’s an easy mistake to make…)

It’s a very strange feeling to be taking a week or so off writing (agent Stan has Fred) while knowing that other people are busily working on Mr R. I think they are all in need of some of Curtis’s jitterbug cider.

I love living in Dorset

The space between the words

I have now finished the first draft of Fred. I cried when I reached the end. I took a moment in the summerhouse to be alone and to feel sad that this part was over. Writing can be really hard, it can be frustrating but it also one of the greatest pleasures in life – or in my life anyway.

Writing endings are different to writing beginnings or middles. The story and characters are set up, and the reader has been on a journey for two or three hundred pages and has built up her own vision. By the end, I want to allow my reader to fill in the spaces between the words. I don’t mean leave an ‘open ending’ in terms of story, but allow the reader room to imagine things herself and be able to fill in the blanks. I think it is more emotionally resonant this way.

In case this seems all rather vague, I’m going to turn to my usual guru: Jane Austen, and in this instance the obsequious Mr Collins. In this scene, Mr Collins is taking Elizabeth Bennet round Rosings Park, and describing the scene in front of them:

“Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in the most distant clump.”

‘Pride and Prejudice’ chapter 28.

Mr Collins is not allowing any space between the words. He is describing the scene (which they can see anyway as it’s right there in front of them) in such detail that he ruins it. As a writer, I think one of the hardest thing is knowing how and when to evoke places, people and reactions, and when one needs to leave it to the reader’s imagination and trust them to fill the spaces. As Keats (almost) said ‘hear words are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’.

Me in a stripey hat.

This made me happy.

Beattie’s book blog said lovely things about Mr R: http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/mr.html

I’ve been having one of those days… so close to finishing this draft of Fred… and part of me doesn’t want to. Feeling a little melancholy*  so this made me smile.

*(interestingly, a word I used with a creative spelling in a story aged nine and was told off by my teacher for being pretentious – when asked what that meant, I was told ‘if you don’t know ‘pretentious’ you can’t possibly be melancholy’).

counting sheep to fall asleep

I feel slightly odd, like I’m actually living in two parallel worlds; or, at the very least, jet-lagged and trying to zoom between two time zones. Only rather than London/ Los Angeles, the zones are 2010 and 1941. I disappear to write and vanish into wartime Tyneford, then return to the kitchen for a cup of tea, a chat with Mr S and to make a phone call or two, and I feel very discombobulated. Time-lagged.

When I approach the end of a draft the story takes over and I start to think incessantly about it. I don’t sleep very well and, when I do, I dream of Dorset long ago. Out walking with Mr S, he complains that I’m quiet, but it’s not quiet in my mind, or at leas they’re not quiet, since they are chattering very loudly in my head. Before you start to panic, and think you need to send Mr S or Jocasta or Agent Stan concerned e-mails, let me assure you that this is a hazard of the job. Many writers talk about hearing snatches of conversation between their characters, and that part of getting into a story is learning to listen to them.

When that first draft is finished and set aside for a few weeks to rest and simmer, it will become peaceful again. My noisy characters will be held inside the manuscript, waiting to be read so that they can talk again. For now, I might go out to the summerhouse and hide, but somehow I expect they’ll be waiting for me there, impatient to get on with the story.

counting sheep to fall asleep... (and it's snowy)

Ah, home at last

It’s so good to be back in Dorset. Within a week I start to pine for green fields. The snow has almost gone here, just a smattering of white across the high ground. I think I timed it very well, carefully avoiding the evil slush.

Emails are flying back and forth as Sceptre (and my mum) try to organise the launch of Mr R and begin to arrange events for the book group tour. (If you want me to visit your book group, click on the link at the top of the page and leave a message – or email me at: mrrosenblum AT hotmail DOT co DOT uk). I’ll be very well behaved and will even bring my own biscuits.

Yet, while all this is going on, I’m hurtling towards the end of Fred. She even has a title. I can’t sleep for Elise and Mr Rivers wandering through my dreams. All I want to do at the moment is write. I have notebooks and files and scraps of paper, all filled with scribbles for the last few chapters and these are slowly making their way into the story. If only they could all stroll off into a sunset as lovely as this one…

Durdle Door sunset

I think it’s starting…

I’ve got used to telling people that my book’s coming out next year. Only now it’s this year. I’m excited and  nervous in equal measure. Little snippets are starting to appear, like here:

http://savidgereads.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/books-to-watch-out-for-in-2010/

Where the fab book blogger Simon Savidge picks ‘Mr R’ as one of his books to watch in 2010…

I’m also speaking at my first event – Jewish Book Week on the 2nd of March. So, do come along. It’s my very first Mr R talk, so I might be rather nervous…

http://www.jewishbookweek.com/2010/mr-rosenblums-list.php

It’s quite strange, as we get closer to the release of Mr R, I am busily writing Fred. In fact, I’m hurtling towards the end. I’ve enjoyed writing her so much that part of me really doesn’t want to finish. But, I know it’s alright. It will only be the first draft and I’ll have Mr S’s notes and then agent Stan’s and then Jocasta’s. So, Fred and I will spend a lot more time together yet. But this is a good thing – I really don’t get tired of the stories or the characters. I’m looking forward to seeing Jack and Sadie once again. Only this time, they won’t just be mine, but will belong to other readers too.

The thaw (and the last slice of birthday cake)

I’ve been in London again for a few days. Actually it was my birthday and I decided to celebrate in the big city with my friends. My mum came too and baked me a Baumtorte – a traditional German cake which literally means ‘tree-cake’. Rather than being baked in the oven, it is made by whipping up a vanilla flavoured batter which is then cooked in layers under the grill – like an enormous stash of very thin pancakes placed on top of the other. When it’s sliced, the layers look like the rings of a tree.

The recipe comes from my grandmother, Margot, a champion, if eccentric, baker. Each layer represents a memory or a thought, so it’s very appropriate for a birthday cake. The cake features rather prominantly in Mr R -  Sadie bakes it whenever she needs to remember something or someone. So, I saved a piece for Jocasta (my editor) who had never tried it before. I felt almost guilty at giving her rather stingy slice. Almost.

Today, Mr S and I finished off the last slice and I couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy. The last of this year’s birthday Baumtorte. There’ll be another layer on next year’s. It’s like the thaw. I love snow. It transforms the most stoic grown-up into a sledging six-year-old. We’re all transported back to a childhood in Narnia and a land of hot chocolate and stories before bedtime. But, with the thaw, the magic disappears. As the snow drips from the trees and turns into grey slush oil stained by car-tyres, we all grow up again in an instant. I don’t mind it once the snow has gone, but the act of watching it fade from perfect whiteness into sludge, I can’t bear. I’m tempted to hide in London until it’s gone.

And, yes, I switch off the Narnia movie, the moment that the snow begins to melt.

Elegant in the snow

I couldn’t resist posting this picture of my grandparents’, Paul and Margot, looking so chic after a country snowstorm in the 1950s. My grandmother looks particularly fetching in her blouse and slacks.

Dorset in the snow - 50s

Jack and Paul

The festive season was so much fun, but I am really glad to be snuggled at home writing again. Jocasta is busily preparing the paperback edition of Mr R and has asked me to find some photos of my grandfather, Paul, who was one of the inspirations behind Jack. I sent her the pictures through and she called straightaway to remark on how handsome and elegant Paul is. Jack is many things – determined, obsessive, tender, ‘five foot three and a half inches of sheer tenacity’ – but he is neither handsome nor elegant.I found myself oddly glad that Jocasta had observed the differences between the two men as well as the similarities.

I hope my grandfather would be proud of Mr R – even though he was never really a fan of fiction, never quite understanding why writers felt the need to make things up when the world is already chock-full of fantastic stories. I suspect he would not approve of Jack. He’s too rash and impetuous for his taste. And Paul would consider himself a far superior golfer.

Paul looking dapper in the Dorset countryside

Happy New Year!

For the first time in about a decade, I spent New Year’s Eve in London rather than in Dorset. Mr S and I joined friends at Wilton’s Music Hall for a twenties-themed evening of decadence, opera and burlesque, instead of the usual fireside supper at my parents’ cottage.

Mr S and I dancing...

It was very different to last year, when I’d just signed with agent Stan and was about to embark on the edits for ‘Mr R’. Stan was planning on submitting the manuscript in February and we were all hopeful that it would find a home. So much has happened in the past year: from getting an agent, to selling ‘Mr R’ at auction, signing foreign rights deals and meeting so many amazing people involved in the publishing process. And, I can’t quite believe that 2010 is the year that I’m really going have a book published. It still doesn’t feel real.

Thank you for reading this blog and for your lovely comments, and I wish you all the very best for a wonderful 2010!

Tea by the fire

I love winter. There is something about the cold weather that makes me want to sit by the fire and write. It’s too cold to venture out to the winter house across the ice-field terrace and arctic lawn, but Mr S has the woodburner blazing. I also love the seasonal food. Slow cooked stews, stroganov with cardamon rice, and most of all the cakes. This is the time of my grandmother’s sugar dusted vanilla crescents, marzipan stollen, gingerbread and the legendary Pffefferkuchen.

Christmas is marked each year by the search for the lost Pfefferkuchen. This is a chewy biscuit made with mixed peel, mixed spice, chopped nuts, sugar and egg whites, which my grandmother and her sisters used to make. Unfortunately, the recipe was recorded in my grandmother’s usual haphazard fashion: ‘chop sufficient nuts and fruit, cook in an oven that’s hot enough, until they’re done.’ No one is left who can remember the precise proportions so every December my mother, sister and I try to make the perfect Pfefferkuchen – ‘less sugar’, ‘just bash the nuts’ – and every year we fail. Inevitably our biscuits don’t rise, the texture is all wrong, and yet our quest for the lost Pfefferkuchen has become a memory in itself. Hmm. I’m getting hungry. I think it’s time for elevenses and perhaps a slice of stollen.

This is the teapot that I really want to pour my tea from. It was made my Polly at Hodder.

mr rosenblum teapot

And from the back…

Meet Jack Rosenblum

A heron haunted sea

It’s time to go home. I’ve seen dolphins and pelicans and manatees, and this morning a sea of black ducks soaring above us as we stood on the pier. The weather has been beautiful the last few days, and it’s been amazing to sit outside and write looking at the sea. It might be the Gulf of Mexico and not Worbarrow Bay, but that is what the imagination is for.

Of course, I took Fred on holiday with me. Kit and Mr Rivers et al refused to be left behind – even on the plane, I am sure that they were all huddled a few rows behind. They certainly paced up and down the beach with me, gazing at the sea and daydreaming about what happens next.

In the early morning mist, with fog drifting along the beach thick as smoke, I could easily see the scenes of Fred and the heron haunted English streams. Although, this picture by Mr S, shows a different view of a heron. He’s got his rod and tackle box and is enjoying the sunset.

heron out fishing...

And here’s a picture of me at the Ringling Circus Museum (a place itching with stories…) snapped by Mr S as I’m pondering Fred. There are probably some shadowy figures in the window, waiting…

Daydreaming at the Ringling Museum, Florida

Mr Rosenblum’s Vineyard

Sorry for the silence. Mr S and I are on holiday in sunny Florida at the moment with the senior Ss. Florida is amazing – it’s one of the few places in the world where you can get chopped liver and chicken soup on the beach. It’s also a magic land filled with Grandparents.

The apartment is right on the beach with an amazing view of the Gulf of Mexico. The other S’s have been perturbed from time to time about the morning mist which lingers over the sea, much like a Scotch harr. I, however, rather like it as the brilliant turquoise sea and bright blue sky is nothing like Dorset, while a bit of fog and grey makes it much easier to day-dream about Fred.

We’ve been celebrating Hanukkah (with aforementioned chopped liver and chicken soup as well as pineapple and chocolate fondue) and the Senior Ss found a bottle of Mr Rosenblum wine! It’s fortunate I’m not into writing sequels…

rosenblum vineyard

happy-ever-afters

We’ve had some good, hard frosts here in Dorset. Mr S is an early riser, and has persuade me to get up and walk with him across the fields in the ice and frost before breakfast. I love crunching through the frozen grass in my wellies, it triggers some childlike glee. We’ve been preparing for winter all around: a ton of logs were delivered from the woods on Bulbarrow and we then stacked them around the stove and in the woodshed. The winterhouse is so cosy with its shiny new radiator, and I feel a little guilty, sitting inside warm in my fingerless mittens and listening to the radio, whilst I watch Jeffrey pheasant strut around outside in the cold.

My parents have recently replaced their laptops (in white so as to match the fridge) and have complained that my blog was not on their new computers, so they’ve not been able to follow my progress on Fred. My father in particular is worried that the ending will not be happy enough. He is addicted to happy endings; he likes his stories, whether movies or tv shows or books or dinner party anecdotes, to end with an avalanche of happy endings. The hero must always get the heroine and there must be a happy-ever-after on a triumphant scale. For a while he was concerned about even reading Mr R, just in case there was a sneaky miserable ending.

In the pub last night, he suggested that if there is any ambiguity over the ending in Fred, that I write an alternate version just for him, where everyone lives happily-ever-after, surrounded by plump grandchildren, golden retrievers, chocolate cake and goes off sailing every Saturday in perfect weather with beer and a picnic.  My father is a huge fan of Jane Austen. Though interestingly, his favourite is Persuasion which, I would suggest, has one of the least happy endings in all of Austen. But don’t tell my father  – or he’ll never be able to read about the adventures of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth ever again.

me, in my pyjamas, out in the frost...

the saturday morning gift

I have had the most brilliant weekend. Last week I was chatting to my friend Kate about Fred, and she squealed and told me that I must read Eva Ibbotson. Then, on Saturday morning a parcel arrived yesterday morning, and I have done very little but read ever since. I took ‘The Morning Gift’ (very apt) and disappeared into the newly heated winterhouse and read and sobbed and laughed. It’s odd, but I’ve been reading for Fred all last week. I’ve consumed social history, guides for the auxiliaries, James Lees-Milne, vintage copies of  The Times and so on but I’ve felt rather disappointed and a bit scratchy. I know what I need for Fred, but all the history seemed to give me was useful information about painting cows in the blackout and imaginative cooking ideas for dried egg.

I usually avoid reading fiction when I’m writing and even during the strange in-between writing stage. I don’t want to have another writer’s voice in my head. And yet, some sixth sense (or else Kate was very persuasive) told me that this would be different. And it was. Eva Ibbotson has given me my eureka moment, or really moments. It is the emotionality of her writing – so real and so rooted. She herself emigrated from Vienna and lived in Belsize Park when she arrived in London in the 1930s, and because of this there is an honesty to her portrait of the refugee experience.

Soon after they arrived from Berlin, my grandparents also lived for a while in Belsize Park, back in the days when it was tumbledown and filled with mewing tom-cats and flats stuffed with refugees cooking vats of sauerkraut. When more recently Big Mike and lovely Rachel moved to Belsize Park after they married, my grandfather commiserated – ‘don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we all start out in Belsize Park. One day you will afford some place nice.’ For him, it was still a paint-peeling suburb filled with immigrants longing for something better.

In Eva’s book, I fell in love with all the Viennese ladies and gentlemen frequenting the Willow Tea Rooms. They are painted with such humour and pathos. I recognised them all from the figures of my childhood. Every other page is bookmarked and my fingers are tingling.

I’m filled with an urge to visit Louis in Hampstead, which is as close as one can possibly get to the ‘Willow Tea Rooms’. There, they always serve something sticky to be eaten with a spoon, and people are forever talking across the tables. I think Miss Maud is still there, coughing at customers who stay too long over a single cup of coffee.

postcards from the winterhouse

Mr S and I have had power installed in the summerhouse. We have a vintage-style heater (all shiny white to match the furniture) and a flower-shaped light and power-sockets for the macs. Though, we’ve kept the wind-up radio as we’re both rather attached to it. And, if the apocalypse comes, we’ll still be able to listen to Radio 4.

I’m still reading and scribbling notes for Fred. The problem is, I keep coming across delicious tidbits like this: did you know that farmers painted white stripes across black or brown cattle during the blackout so that people stumbling back from the pub in total darkness didn’t walk into cows on the unfenced lanes? I did not know that. But now that I do, I feel my life is better. I am wondering how I can incorporate this into Fred, but fear that it may not strike quite the right tone. What do you think? Can I paint the cows or no?

The light here has been so beautiful during the last couple of days – black, black skies which make the grass appear an unreal green and the white-washed cottages shine like Californian teeth. I am so pleased to be back in Dorset. More than a week in London, I really start to pine.

Please check out the new link under the banner at the top of the blog for Mr Rosenblum’s Great British Tour. I am going on a book group tour next spring and summer and I would love to visit your group. I don’t mind if there are only a few of you or lots of you! Leave me a comment and I’ll get in touch.

Dorset skies

itchy fingers

I’m not enjoying not writing. I am pining for Fred. Mr S is revising a screenplay where a writer’s fictional characters start to plague her in real life  – they’re bored living in the novel when she’s not writing – and I’m haunted by visions of Mr Rivers and Kit and Elise stalking me. In fact they are stalking me. I might not be writing, but I can think of nothing but Fred.

Reading is good – I am munching my way through the towering stack of books on my desk and scribbling voracious notes as the route to the end becomes clear. I can feel Elise et al, hovering beside my elbow, or sitting on my shoulder, eager to return to Tyneford. While I am desperate to write, I also know that I’m not ready to carry on. I needed to take breaks in between drafts of ‘Mr R’ in order to put myself in the way of serendipity. I discovered the small blue pamphlet which Jack turns into his list on a research trip in the British Library somewhere between drafts three and four. There was an eureka moment with a coronation chicken sandwich (it’ll make sense when you read Mr R, I promise) and another when my mum found a picture of my grandmother’s famous golf swing.

So for now, I must try to ignore Fred calling me and the grumblings of Alice and Poppy, and turn back to James Lees-Milne and the The Countryman’s Diary 1939. But, if you see a girl tramping across the Dorset fields with a string of odd looking characters traipsing after her, feel free to wave.

A slow, heron-haunted English stream

As part of my ‘not writing’ drive, I went to the Imperial War Museum to see the ‘Outbreak’ exhibition. They  had on display a copy of the small blue pamphlet, Helpful Advice and Friendly Guidance for Every Refugee, which inspired Jack to write his list. It always gives me a tingle when I see the original document. Telegrams, photographs and newspapers from the 30s, 40s or 50s have an aura that the reproductions  don’t quite convey. They seem quite literally steeped in history.

I listened to a recording of a Jewish woman remembering the court case which assessed whether she was to be classified as a class ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ ‘enemy alien’. It’s always hearing the voices that brings them back – I hear a German accent in an older person, a laugh, and then suddenly I’m back in my Grandfather’s house eating pickled herring and luncheon sausage, listening to him argue over stewed coffee with Edgar Hertzfelt. When Mr S and I stayed in L.A. a couple of years ago, there was an old man selling poppy-seed cake and beigels from a stall in the Farmers’ Market on 3rd Street. He was a refugee – from Hungary rather than Germany or Austria, but he had the voice and the wry shrug. I dragged Mr S there every day so I could buy mounds of poppy seed cake and challah, just to listen to the old man talk.

Walking round the ‘Outbreak’ exhibition, I heard the news reports and the accounts of refugees and listened to how language had changed. When did mother’s stop giving their children ‘a row’ and men stop being ‘chaps’ who sometimes felt ‘a trifle seedy’ after a late night?

Marinating Stories

I’m tired. I’ve been eating, breathing and dreaming Fred. I’ve bored my family, friends and Mr S with her. I feel like I should get one of those tea-towels that say ‘I’d rather be reading Jane Austen’ only with ‘I’d rather be writing Fred’. But right now, I need to pause.

This morning I had a chat with Jocasta my lovely and gorgeous editor, and admitted that I need to stop for a week, even two. I mean, when I say stop, I don’t mean actually stop, just not write for a bit. I have pile of books on my desk from Molly Panter-Downes Wartime Stories, to Adrian Bell’s Men and Fields, Joseph Roth’s Zipper and his Father and Eva Mennasse’s Vienna. I also want to re-visit Jane Eyre, Mansfield Park, Emma, The Country House At War, Death of a Naturalist, Field Work and…

I now need to let some ideas marinate. Reading Jane Austen and Jane Eyre will help me focus on the living portrait of the English country house, while Remains of the Day and James Lees-Milne will provide post-war context. Like making a marinade, I sprinkle layer after layer into the mix of my stories: a piece of folklore here, the detail of a room or the way a character enters it, the blend of tobacco that Kit smokes, precisely how Mr Wrexham shaves the gentlemen…the workings of the farm and manor, the style of a letter to The Times. These things matter and must be woven into the story, so that the details strengthen the feel of period and place, layer upon layer, without clogging the flow of the narrative. The only way to discover what is delicious detail rooting the story, and what is tinsel, is time.

Besides, I love the excitement of the unwritten page. First drafts are magical things. For now, Fred is mine and no one else’s. I can play my giant game of make-believe and for the moment, anything goes. This is one of life’s great pleasures – why hurry to the end?