The Process of Postmortem Photographs

 

Really nice video on how postmortem photographs were taken. Wish I'd found this in the early days of my research for Secure the Shadow, it's explained much more simply than many of the scientific demonstrations. 

 

Secure the Shadow

Secure the Shadow Fades Away

A big hug to all the book bloggers who took part in the Secure the Shadow launch tour. Really touched by the reviews.

Touched and surprised. I've said this several times both on this blog and to friends - I was never too sure how to feel about this one. It's not the book I set out to write, and I never really forgave it for that. The original idea was to write a first-person, very sad, very slow story about a woman with a passion for photography who loses her mind to mercury poisoning. A hazard of the profession back then. The idea was that her memories and the photographs would start to blur until she could no longer tell the difference.

That isn't the book I ended up with. It took on a life of its own from the prologue and I just couldn't control it. I didn't expect to meet any of the characters in it. So, when they took over, I felt a very slight sense of resentment because I thought my idea was better. But they wouldn't listen, and I was overruled. 

This often happens to sections of my books, but not usually to the entire thing. 

It's like I suggested, 'let's write a book about photography and ghosts,' and someone else (or a few someone elses) went, 'okay great, give me the pen.'

I thought we could maybe do something about it when we got to the end, but a novel is very similar to a jigsaw puzzle in that the pieces fit together so exactly that any attempt to remove a piece or insert something else just mucks up the whole picture. 

So, I had to accept, this was the book I got. 

Which is why I've been fairly blown away by the response. Because it wasn't what I thought it should be, I assumed it wasn't good. But I didn't listen to my own advice. I teach technical writing skills from time to time. One thing everybody struggles with is shortening a sentence. Once you put something on paper, you fall in love with it. You can't help it. You don't think you love it, but the moment someone else suggests getting rid of it - kill your darlings - you resist with all your might. What I try to explain to people is - you only think you're taking something away from the sentence because you knew it was there in the first place. Someone who never knew those words existed, really won't miss them. There's nothing there to miss. They will be perfectly satisfied with what they see. 

On a grander scale - that was this book. In my head, I had a whole other story. But nobody else saw that story, they saw this one. And this one is good also. It's just taken me a while to accept that. 

A blog tour is something I cringe from. The first one I ever did was with Rosy Hours, that introduced me to the concept. It's an important way to launch a book, like smashing champagne against a boat. Interviews are fun, giveaways are nice, but you just never know what the reviews will say. Each morning you wake up and steel yourself to click a link, only breathing again once you're a few paragraphs in and nobody said it was the worst book they'd ever read.

I was honestly overwhelmed by the positivity. There were a couple of five-stars in there, which is always a glowy feeling. Though I was particularly touched by Debjani's review because she quoted some of her favourite parts. I do that in book reviews, too. Certain things just stick with you, and those things are so individual to each reader. That people go to such trouble as to type them up is truly humbling. 

This is the first time I have seen such eloquent descriptions of death with just the hint of grief accompanying it. - Debjani's Thoughts 

You can find the full tour with all the links here.

The book has had a good send-off and now it's time to turn my attention to other projects. Still slogging away at the Children of Lir and Tangled Forest audiobooks, in that order. But all the nice reviews have given me heart again. I haven't written much in a while now, but once these are out the way, I will get back to it. Everybody, no matter how long they've been writing, needs a little encouragement now and then.

To all creatives out there - keep going. Make the world a little madder, a little badder, more Byronic than moronic.

Secure the Shadow Blog Tour

As of tomorrow, Secure the Shadow is going on a release blog tour. I'll link to the posts and reviews as they appear. Thank you to everyone taking part. There will be a few interviews, a guest post, and some giveaways happening along the way.

 

Rosie Writes... (giveaway)

Writer's Resources Blog
(interview/review + giveaway)

Literary Flits
(review + giveaway)

Jazzy Book Reviews
(interview + giveaway)

Jessica Belmont
(review + giveaway)

Historical Fiction with Spirit

Curled up with a Good Book
(review + giveaway)
This blog is no longer active.

Jess Bookish Life
(review + giveaway)

donnasbookblog

(interview + giveaway)

Ellesea Loves Reading

(guest post + giveaway)

The Magic Of Wor(l)ds

(interview + giveaway)

sharon beyond the books
(review)

B for bookreview
(interview & giveaway)

Debjani's Thoughts

(review and giveaway)

Call for Book Bloggers

I'm teaming up with Rachel's Random Resources to give my novel, Secure the Shadow, a little celebratory send off in early August. There's still a few spaces for book reviewers, so if you run a book blog and you're interested in receiving a copy, doing an interview or have room for a guest post, please get in touch with Rachel. You can read more about the book here on her website.

In 1824, a young man buttons up his redcoat and goes to war. Amidst the blood and devastation, he discovers a magical power which can save memory from the ravages of time.

1867 and a woman, living above a watch shop, meets two men who will change her life forever. As she ventures further into a world of séance and mysticism, she must decide whether to trust her own eyes.

In the present day, a rebellious artist finds herself photographing stillbirths for a living. At Little Angels, it’s not about what you can take from a picture, but what you can give.

The story of three lives, spanning the history of photography and our relationship with mortality.

Secure the shadow, ere the substance fades. 

Cover Reveal: Secure the Shadow

Ta-dah!

Next up is Secure the Shadow (working title Still Life). 

In 1824, a young man buttons up his redcoat and goes to war. Amidst the blood and devastation, he discovers a magical power which can save memory from the ravages of time.

1867 and a woman, living above a watch shop, meets two men who will change her life forever. As she ventures further into a world of séance and mysticism, she must decide whether to trust her own eyes.

In the present day, a rebellious artist finds herself photographing stillbirths for a living. At Little Angels, it’s not about what you can take from a picture, but what you can give.

The story of three lives, spanning the history of photography and our relationship with mortality.

Secure the shadow, ere the substance fades.

The launch is scheduled for early August, I'll update on that nearer the time. If you're a book blogger and you're interested in reviewing, drop me a line (Facebook/Twitter) and I'll include you in the list.

Beautiful cover art by Velulu Khesoh, who is a very talented cover designer.  

Don't Lose Your Head

Art by Taha Reda

Almost caught up on the book reviews, but I've also got some exciting news about my own books to come shortly.

One of which has been a right headache to research.

I'll be doing a cover reveal soon for my next novel, Secure the Shadow, which is tagged under the working title Still Life.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked at the file creation dates. I've been editing this one, very slowly, for almost a year. It has honestly been the hardest book I've ever dealt with. Fair enough, The Children of Lir took over thirteen years from concept to publication, but most of that time I'd simply forgotten about it. This one, I've actually been bashing away at. I recently said some rather uncomplimentary things about it and threatened to throw it away, but that resulted in an appeal from the people who had read it saying 'don't do that, just deal with the ending.'

There is nothing harder on earth than getting to the end of a complete manuscript and knowing there's something wrong. You start off with a story thinking you're in control. You think you know exactly where you're going. Then you start writing and the story has other ideas. Before you know it, you've jammed your silly putty of an idea through the slithering snake hole and it's come out in all these weird and wonderful shapes you never expected.

Most of the time.

Sometimes it comes out hideously malformed.

That was kind of what happened here. It didn't really need too much salvaging, but I wasn't in the mood. In my mind, I'd already checked out and moved onto the next project. So it took a monumental effort to go back through it.

Now, sitting on the other side of that, I'm really glad I did.

I'm looking forward to releasing it into the wild.

But the very last marker I'd placed between the pages was to go and fact check a date. I'd set a chapter in the midst of the Anglo-Ashanti Wars in West Africa. It was an absolutely fascinating battle in which British soldiers had only macaroni to load their guns with and literally sang themselves to death. At the end, the Ashanti warlords decapitated the leading general, rimmed his skull with gold and drank beer from him.

Many harbouring anti-colonial sentiment might be cheering at this point, but, unfortunately, all the British soldiers were abolitionists, trying to help another tribe, who were also decimated in the attempt.

History is nothing if not opaque.

The problem I was facing was that I'd written this scene as 21 January 1824, which is when the first Anglo-Ashanti war took place at the Battle of Nsamankow, according to Wiki:

On the night of the 20th, still without having joined forces with the other three groups, MacCarthy's force camped by a tributary of the Pra River. The next day, at around 2pm, they encountered a large enemy force of around ten thousand men...

Only, when you start reading the other Wiki page, about the Anglo-Ashanti Wars, it apparently happened on 22 January:

...they encountered the Ashanti army of around 10,000 on 22 January 1824, in the battle of Nsamankow.

Fecksake, Wiki!

Or, more correctly, whichever would-be historian got it wrong.

But that was the problem - who got it wrong? Which date was correct, 21st or 22nd?

The line in my book begins:

And so it was that, on the morning of 21st January 1824, Charles was reading Keats whilst Alfred buttoned his redcoat. 

And yes, I could have changed that to:

And so it was that, on a chilly morning in January 1824, Charles was reading Keats whilst Alfred buttoned his redcoat. 

But I didn't want to.

I mention the date twice and it has a nice ring to it, to be that precise. A lot of people died, you should know the date. And, besides, how hard could it be to clear up?

Bloody impossible, as it turned out. Alternating dates strewn throughout the internet. I tried Twitter, I tried an African History Forum on Facebook, I even tried writing to a professor at SOAS in London (still waiting on a reply).

It was driving me sodding insane.

The very final fact I needed to check and I couldn't find the answer anywhere.

Until it hit me.

The answer was rolling around in my skull.

Well, not my skull, exactly - the skull of Brigadier-General Sir Charles MacCarthy, former Governor of Sierra Leone.

The guy who got his head chopped off at the end of the battle.

So, thank you Wiki, you have redeemed yourself. The battle must have been on 21 January, because he couldn't have fought a battle without a head.

Sometimes you have to think really, really hard to write a book.

Still Life in Motion

First day back at work today. Lots to catch up on, but I put my last few days of holiday to good use and started combing back through Still Life - publication title Secure the Shadow. It comes from an old Victorian advert for photographic studios: Secure the Shadow, Ere the Substance Fade, Let Nature imitate what Nature made.

I completed the first draft of this in February last year, but for some reason I've found editing difficult. It's not quite the book I thought I would write, but that might be okay. I'm just in the process of polishing it up. I'll do a proper cover reveal soon, but it needs brightening as there's some detail on the woman's dress which is beautiful but lost to Amazon's dark matte finish.

I took myself down to Kigali Heights for a scoop of Delizia ice-cream to help me work. I think the ice-cream probably deserves centre stage.

I have to admit, I've never had a first draft of a book with more correctional notes than this one. It was a paper rainbow by the time I'd finished. Now I just have to transcribe everything to the soft copy and try again.

Still Life - First Draft

There's a disappointing dearth of Victorian-era top-hat-tipping gifs. So, this'll do.

Done and dusted. 

Still Life weighs in at a healthy 96,372 words. 

This is my tenth full-length novel. 

Of those, four found publishers, two will never see the light of day, and three have been self-published. 

I never really feel much of a high after finishing a novel. Maybe with the first couple, Lucid and Angorichina, because back then I still wasn't sure I could write that many words. It was exhilarating to discover I could. But, nowadays, I recognise it as the end of the beginning, and the start of the editing process. 

This has also changed with time. 

Back in the beginning, I used to be an obsessive continual editor. I'd read back over the chapters I'd written and fiddle with them before writing a few hundred words more.

Nowadays, I write 1,000 a day and I don't look back. It's even changed since Rosy Hours, where I'd pause to go off and do extensive research in between chapters. Now, I'll do cursory research as I go along, but I'm more likely to pop in a placeholder in bold where I know there's something that is crucial to atmosphere but not to plot, and pick it up in the edit. 

Which means more work in the edit, whereas before I'd arrive at the end with a fairly serviceable manuscript. Now, I know there's more to write. 

I read a quote the other day by Shannon Hale, which really summed it up:

I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shovelling sand into a box so that later I can build sandcastles.

I feel like I've just hacked a giant lump of rock out of a cliff and now I'm going to set about cutting and polishing.

I know this one needs a lot of work. Strong start, strong ending. In the middle, a bit squishy. A sense of nervous anticipation rather than elation. Can't bear to look at it right now. There's a recovery period before you lift the bandage and peer at the wound.

Still, it's a respectable length and an interesting subject. 

It's a bit early to say, but I was thinking to run submissions with this one. 

I'm already tentatively starting the next one. Taking a stab at futuristic sci-fi. Enjoying the imaginative freedom this allows in contrast with historical fiction, where many of the rules are already written. Might be a bit much to edit the past and write the future at the same time, so will probably take a writing break whilst editing. But, for now, it's a pleasant change of pace.

No, I definitely need at least one top hat in this post.

Still Life at 90

An old print by Fox Talbot of the original Hungerford Bridge, c. 1845. Something that featured prominently in my novel.

Which is now at 90,000 words. 

I estimate I have about four more chapters to go. 

Then there will be a huge amount of re-writing and fact checking. 

Nice to have a new, completed novel so early in the year. 

Uncharacteristically, not that much to say at the moment. By this stage it always feels like one of those fold-over games where someone draws the head, folds the paper, someone draws the neck, folds the paper, etc. By the end of a novel, you mostly forget what happened at the beginning and where it went in the middle. Once the last line is written, you can put it down for a few days, do something else, then unfold the paper and look at the completed picture. 

For now, four more chapters...

Still Life at 85

Well, made it to 85,000 words on Still Life.

I have to say, it was going really well. I made myself cry three days in a row whilst doing some awful things to some very good characters. Don't worry - it'll all be all right in the end. Also spent one day battling to write through my neighbour hammering metal all afternoon. Not sure what that was about - reroofing?

I've really felt back in the saddle this past week, after so long avoiding this story post-chaptergate. Then, today, at 85,000 words, I'm feeling a little stuck again. I can see the end, I'm just not sure how to get there. It's tricky alternating timelines. This one switches between modern day and Victorian England. At the moment, I can see the Victorian storyline very clearly, but I have a modern-day chapter to get through before that, and for the first time, I'm flailing a little.

It will come to me.

I feel like I'm entering the end of it. So it'll tie up around 90-95,000 words. Not that word count really matters, but it's nice to know you're in the ball park for a novel when you start to get a sense of impending closure. That's a horrible feeling to have at 50,000 and terrifying if you don't feel it after 100,000. Like tennis, with the sort of fiction I write, you're looking to hit it inside the service line.

More than any other novel I've ever written, this feels like a rough draft. I'm looking forward to polishing it up. When I first started out writing, I used to read back through what I'd written the day before, I'd be constantly editing as I went. Now, nine novels in (four published, two bottom-drawer, three self-published) I've really lost that compulsive obsessive edge. I'm more relaxed about getting it on the page and mopping up after.

This one will be an interesting beast.

Day late to mention this, but I've been keeping up the atmosphere with #momentomorimonday.

Still Life at 75

(article on wallpaper)

This is why I keep a blog. According to my posts, I've added 5,000 words to Still Life (working title of post-mortem photography novel) in the past four days. Which is a lot more than it feels like I've written. 

I've ditched the futuristic one because I can't split my head between Victorian England and the rest of the world post-2220. It's too much of a mind bend. I start putting the wrong things in the wrong era.

I have been struggling with this one, but struggling with writing doesn't always make it bad writing. Sometimes it's just a slow drip rather than a gushing font of creativity. Distilled goodness.

I'm doing something I've never really done before, where I find myself putting placeholders in bold for information I need to research later on. Like, She decided to walk in the direction of the medieval vault add description. Because I know that if I go off and start researching this place that I've never been to, I'll lose a day on Wikipedia and Google Image. I didn't really mind that with Rosy Hours, I did the extra research as I went along and enjoyed myself, but for some reason I want to get to the end of this story. I like the story. I believe in it. But I want to end it so that I can go through and flesh it out knowing that I know how it all turns out. 

That's new territory for me. It's that sentiment that's been attributed to a dozen different authors from Dorothy Parker through to George R. R. Martin: I don't enjoy writing, but I enjoy having written. I feel that one deeply, and once I know I've got a novel and it's written, I can go back and rewrite the bits I don't like, and add a few extra flourishes. I enjoy that part of it. 

I think a lot of authors would say the same, but few people say it out loud because it's not the sexy life of an author. There's a misconception that if a book was difficult to write, it's going to be difficult to read. That's usually not true. The hard work that goes into it is mostly down to working out how to make the book more readable and enjoyable for the person who picks it up after. Hard work equals easy reading. 

I did try to get back into the mood today by watching some post-mortem reels. There was no particular reason as that part of the novel had been written. I think it just brings up that question of why again. Why do we do it? Why do we photograph death up close and personal like that? I get annoyed by the old photo streams because half of them contain people who are clearly alive. Pictures of mothers with babies - neither of whom have expired. All mixed in with people who clearly have. 

But I do understand those ones as part of a wider, normal culture at that time. The modern ones raise more questions. Many are quite brutal photographs, or weirder still, taken from such an angle that you can clearly see cotton wool stuffed up the person's nose. The funeral home has gone to all the trouble of dressing them, applying makeup and making them look as natural as possible, and you take that one photograph that proves nothing is what it seems. 

That's definitely an outstanding question for me, and now that I'm actually thinking about it, something that deserves further exploration before I finish up.

I think it's about having that moment there in your hands. However disturbing, however upsetting - it's about that moment in time never shifting. Never distorting, never getting blotted out or re-imagined. About holding onto something you can't process in that instant, and taking all the time you need to process it. To revisit it, exactly the same, as many times as you need to. 

After all, photographs never change, but the way you feel about them does, over the days, the months, the decades. 

Perhaps that's why the cotton wool up the nose angle. The more shocking something is, the more time you need to examine it. Work out what the hell that feeling is and where it fits in your psyche. 

Most of these reels are compilations put together by people who didn't take the photographs themselves, but some people do share their own pictures. Maybe distasteful, maybe just a very reactionary urge to show something to the world and say 'Fucking hell, have you seen this? What's that about, then?' When you see something for the first time, it's shocking. When you see it a few times, it's disturbing. Eventually, it's just a curiosity. The power of a photograph, held privately or shared, to defeat the monster under our beds.

Right, well, got my second wind there. Should probably press on with it. 

You will die someday.

— Daily Death Reminder (@death_reminder) January 14, 2019

The Death Book

I'd like to give a shout out to a most excellent individual, Matthew Holroyd. 

He's releasing this gem on Halloween:

Edited and published by Matthew Holroyd, the founder of Baron and Baroness Magazines and photographer Edith Bergfors, the death book is a series of loosely connected vignettes exploring photography’s relationship to death and how death is portrayed in Western society.

A photograph typically captures a moment in the past, bringing it to the present. In contemporary surveillance culture (a.k.a the internet), the dead and alive exist side by side. On the satellite mapping site Google Earth, for example, Bergfors has sourced photographs of her now-deceased grandparents gardening. Likewise, as a genre, portraiture tends to circle around mortality, desire and power.  Through extensive Photoshop manipulation, the editors of this book presents themselves as thinned down, airbrushed and clad in designer fashions, in an attempt to be remembered as rich and picture-perfect. Sadly, The National Portrait Gallery, London, rejected their attempts to bequeath these portraits to the nation.

Popular representations of death act as simulations of death, rather than representations of any reality. For example, the devil has come to signify a host of mortal sins – from drinking to sexing. Playing on this legacy, here a rent boy is portrayed as the devil, alongside muscular clubbers exhibiting their sporty physique.

The book also contains contributions from  image makers and other visual practitioners who have informed the editors’ own ideas on death; these include Palm d’Or-winning director Lars von Trier, Golden Lion-winning director Roy Andersson, Turner Prize-winner Damien Hirst, a letter from the musician Merle Allin to the serial killer Danny Rolling, conceptual artist Manabu Yamanaka, the documentary photographer Miron Zownir,  conceptual artist Dallas Seitz and crime scene simulator Bill’s Playhouse.

In a time where a digital version of almost anything is possible, the advantage of being able to upload a posthumous video for loved ones to watch is now a possibility. Bergfors and Holroyd recreate such films and the book ends with two QR codes for anyone to scan and watch, just like a supermarket barcode.

The subject of photography and death is something I'm also extremely interested in, and writing my own novel about.

Got very excited when I saw Matthew post about this. We were at BRIT School together, and once got an A in Physical Theatre for doing two-person forward rolls back and forth in front of a television playing white static. That probably explains a lot about how we came to be where we are today.

Anyway, you can pre-order a signed copy here.