Small Finds - two novels and a headache

The Writers' Workshop, York Festival of Writing 2012. webpage

Of course, I was absurdly over-optimistic.
I knew, deep down. 
It was a flicker on the gauges. Nothing more. It caught at the corner of my eye but I had other things to do.

Then the cracks began to appear and were politely pointed out.

At the York Festival of Writing, this is the process known as the "one-to-ones". The Bookdoc or Agent (prestigious people all) have a couple of weeks to take a look at the chapter you submitted a month or two before; the first chapter of your book. Then, at the Festival, you have ten minutes to defend it - i.e. to receive their response face to face. The Bookdoc also gave me a feedback form, a summary of the response, to take away with me and ... well, read at my leisure.

This is when you need to take a step back.
Objective distance is necessary but, on the York University campus, this means standing not too close to the edge of the lake.

Such books now seem to need some really strong or distinctive edge

OK. I can live with that. 
But ...

I did wonder if the archaeology would be more of a setting

Me too. It was only the first chapter. 
But, even more to the point ...

It feels as if we have two stories ... that might need working out a little.

Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. Gauges flicker.

Later.
One Agent, on Saturday, said: "Where's the archaeology?"
The other Agent, on Sunday, said: "Where's the crime?"
Harry Bingham said: The Art of the Pause.
It was interesting.

The Sunday one-to-one fell in the middle of Harry Bingham's workshop The Art of the Pause in which Harry invited us to consider the last three paragraphs of the first chapter of the book The City & The City by China Mieville. This was interesting in itself because my Saturday Agent had suggested that I might want to read this book. That's the sort of coincidence I notice. The gauges were flickering.
Returning to Harry's workshop after twenty five minutes, I remembered how Harry had said that China Mieville set up 'The Pause' with one enigmatic sentence:

With a hard start, I realised that she was not on GunterStrasz at all, and that I should not have seen her.

This, apparently (I must read the book), is never explained. The technique, Harry said, was to set up the pause and then do nothing. Never explain.

Where's the archaeology?
Where's the crime?
Come on, Gentlemen. That's the tease. That's the pause.

Foolish optimism was returning. I knew what I was doing. No, I didn't, but I saw there was the possibility that I might, eventually. 
The gauges were flickering. 

All was not well - I might have to break it up, rewrite it, re imagine it, them, however many there might turn out to be (the novels were breeding like mice in my imagination) - but that was alright. I could do it. Just think. I could have a cheap and cheerful police procedural self-published with Amazon for Kindle and a literary novel provoking questions like "Where's the archaeology?" or "Where's the crime?"
Quids in. Hey! Or, as they say, the pennies.

I must go and take a proper long look at those gauges.

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Small Finds - a novel

A modern, murder mystery mixed up with archaeology, economics and religion. (That's murder, archaeology, religion and economics: m a r e, as in nightmare.) A well-written, thoughtful story with off-beat characters, emotional depth and a compelling voice.

When there is a murder in Ancester, Detective Sergeant Marco de Luca relies on local knowledge to track down the killer but he is not the only one chasing criminals. An archaeology professor is out to stop heritage crime and a break-in and robbery at a local dig give him more clues to follow up. The dig, and a subsequent dig nearby, yield clues of a different kind. The archaeologists and their volunteer helpers gradual put together a story from the beginning of the fifth century that is not dissimilar to their own; a story of crisis and disaster, alienation and belonging. 

This is what I'm working on at the moment. 
Version 3.5 is currently going out to a Readers' Panel for critical review.
See other posts in this blog.

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Small Finds Readers' panel: Chapter Two/Three

Comments on Chapter 2/3.

Mostly liked it but there was a bit that I struggled to digest which I fear may be important later on! It is the historical section at the bottom of page 13 and top of page 14 which I found hard to follow. If it is important to understand this bit I think it would be helpful to use more of the chapter to explain it. I thought it may help to make the conversation less broken up, allowing one character to explain it from start to finish as there is a lot of information and I'm not sure it has a logical enough flow to the uninitiated! Or if that feels artificial then maybe some of it could be explained in a different prose device such as 'x had been particularly fascinated by y since they first learnt about it because..' In that instance some of the other descriptive bits that are less important to the story could be shortened to avoid the chapter becoming too long.

Otherwise if it isn't important to understand all of that then perhaps that part could just be stripped back a bit.

I liked the idea of two shorter chapters rather than one.

I think it's really great. It's setting the scene nicely and introducing the characters well to my mind.

I just had a couple of thoughts you might want to know:

 On page 8, the start of the chapter, I wondered whether to open with the second paragraph where Marco is thinking about food, so his thought chain (and the reader's attention) doesn't jump from bodies to food and back again in the first three paras. Perhaps 'On Friday evening as he was driving home-into para 2' then into the rest of para 1, and into 3 and on.  Then page 12, the section where Joshua is walking home and thinking back. I got myself a little muddled and wondered if using all ?past perfect? tense for the minibus flash back would avoid this to distinguish from the past present narrative? some paras have it already but some of the early ones don't which confused me a bit E.g. They Had gathered around the open doors of the minibus... Then on page 13 i like the use of it, but maybe for the first use of 'Oliver man' you could use 'The Oliver man' like elsewhere, so it reads as intentional use. 

I also think a break for a new chapter would fit well, although as it's all from the same time of day I can see why it might be all one chapter, perhaps with a few ****** as a line break?

I liked this chapter, more easy to read and get into, so these few things are me knit-picking really! But a few things to consider:

I'm not keen on some of the names -  Elyssia Goodenough? Is Joshua Jake and Joshua Williams the same person?

Moslem? I would probably change this to Muslim, I have never come across the Moslem spelling before and just read a bit about it by googling it, apparently some people find Moslem spelling offensive, although some just say its the old fashioned spelling - either way Muslim is probably better?

I'll give you the following feedback which I hope you'll find useful!
from which he only emerged later on Sunday morning.
'later' and a day and a half's time difference doesn't strike true to me...  Perhaps 'later that weekend, on Sunday morning'?
He wanted to hear more about the circumstances surrounding the
break-in at the dig and about the items that had been stolen and, if
To me, this would read more smoothly if the 'and about' was either ', about' or just 'and'
There's a missing 'he' in:
he thought might as well hear about them
Also a little confused about the 'handful of old coins' earlier in light of the medallions here - probably my ignorance, but a medallion to me signifies something larger and heftier than a coin... Maybe the explanation about medallions can come with the explanation about Constantius?
Chapter break - I think so, although it depends on how long the other chapters are I guess.  It's a good breaking point in the scene.

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Small Finds Readers' panel: Chapter One

Comments on Small Finds Chapter One.

I really liked it! I think the balance between the descriptive prose and the conversations is just right, and I like the humour in the writing too. It is an engaging first few pages too- I'd keep reading! The only thing I wondered about was the first conversation between Marco and Rose- the bit of banter about taking the car vs walking seemed a bit unlikely to be followed by the sense of urgency from Rose in telling him about the body.

I'm really enjoying reading it, so I guess that's feedback number one.  Lots of nice little touches in there too, like 'expression somewhere between exasperation and exasperation'... Also like the cliff-hangers at the end of each section... Picky as I am, there are a couple of things!  Again, these are just my opinion and so don't feel you have to take any of them on board! 
Firstly, I've only ever known 'dapper' applied to men, and a quick look on thesaurus.com shows this: dapper adjective (only ever used with reference to men, not women) so, perhaps another adjective here would work better (unless again, there's some other context I'm unaware of!) I also thought there might be a comma too many here - I've bracketed the bit that I think you could lose to perhaps make it read more smoothly:
She was walking from the town library, where she worked, to the Post Office in the
centre of the town [, because she needed] to post a package, when a man stepped out in
front of her and she almost ...

I have only skim read the first 4 pages but I find the dialogue on the first 2 pages means its quite difficult to get into it straight away, it's a bit he said, she said.  I find the writing style of the 2nd 2 pages much easier to get into and more interesting - but it might just be me! Maybe you could flip these two sections so that the one about the detectives is second - or will that ruin the rest of the flow?

  I like the descriptive writing, but one thing - it is set in the UK isn't it? I think you should use car park rather than parking lot!!

I really like it. I'm keen to read more to find out what happens so that's grand! 

- the female detective constable, just wanted to check it was deliberate to call here 'rose bush '? Am sure itis,  but just in case not!  

- then very minor thoughts, 

Wondered whether 'the ' before capital H High Street was needed, or if it looked easier to drop the 'the ' or the capitals? And when you introduce Alan the first time, I wondered if you didn't need his surname,  as this surname is then given un the next para,  a bit like when you introduce rose,  by first name, and then use the surname the next time.

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