The Official S. J. Bolton Blog

Out dog-walking this week, with a woman from the village I know reasonably well, I spoke without thinking. 'You're so refreshingly nuts,' I told her. She laughed nervously, and then went quiet for a while. Perhaps I should have been less direct.

But I meant it as a great compliment. Of all the people I see on a regular basis, she is someone whose company I particularly enjoy. She has her own way of doing things and is happy with that, but wouldn't dream of judging those who take a different approach. She's happy to talk about dogs, children and home decorating (she's perfectly normal and these things are interesting) but she's also passionate about alternative medicine, the environment and accessible arts. Conversations with her can go in any direction, but I always leave her company feeling that my mind has been stretched and I've learned something new.

Nuts, to my mind, means interesting, entertaining, unusual, maybe a bit zany, but above all different. And different is good.

I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. Partly because the reviews for Dead Scared have started to appear on Amazon. As a rule, reviewers are pretty kind to me but, invariably, those negative adjectives creep in: "implausible", "far-fetched", "outlandish".

I don't like it, but it's a fair cop. I am a bit outlandish. I don't write classic police-procedurals in which a killer with a predictable motive is both hunter and hunted at the same time. I don't do cosy, rural mysteries where an assembled cast of characters are judged and found guilty, or not, by the reader. I write snakes and ghosts, inanimate figures that come to life and crawl around an abandoned abbey, detectives with more to hide than the killers they're pursuing.

When I'm criticized it's invariably because, as crime writers go, I'm a bit different.

I've tried to toe the line, honest I have. Now You See Me was my attempt at the classic city-based police procedural. I planned it to be gritty, urban, with a simple plot and a believable story line. Of course, being me, it didn't quite work out that way; the outlandish ideas and Gothic influences crept in, one by one, until as Andrew Taylor wrote in The Spectator: 'You don't so much suspend disbelief as chuck it gleefully out of the window.'

I can't do it you see. I can't write mainstream crime. For better or worse, I'm different and I've come to terms with that.

What I haven't come to terms with, yet, is how different I can "allow" my ten year old son to be. He has slightly wacky genes (inevitably) but at the same time a fragile self-confidence and a child's inherent awareness of the desirability of the norm.

He wants the support and camaraderie of the team, but not at the price of spending every school break playing football. He craves the acceptance of others and popularity within the group, but not at the expense of the quiet voice inside him that speaks for his true self.

It's hard, steering a child along the steep and precarious path of discovering his place in the world. I will not tell him to always do what he wants, because there are times when going along with the crowd is the natural and right thing to do. Following the herd occasionally, to my mind, is no worse than a stubborn insistence on being different purely for the sake of it.

And left behind by the herd is a lonely place to be.

It's all about balance, judgment and, ultimately, wisdom. And here is where I find myself encouraged. Because my nuttiest friends (you know who you are) are, strangely, also my wisest, the ones on whom I can always rely for honest and considered advice. Weird people, I've noticed, are invariably inherently sensible, as though the first step to wisdom is understanding and accepting who you are, even if what you are is a little alternative.

My son played in a football match yesterday, and merited special mention in the post-match report circulated by the club manager. He is proud as punch and so am I. It's good to be different, but sometimes it's better to gain the acceptance and approbation of our peers.

Last night I watched The Exorcist again. Earlier in the week, I'd spotted its screening on Friday 13^th, only to spend several days worrying about whether I really would be brave enough to see it and, if I did, what would be its impact upon my peace of mind and ability to sleep at nights.

The Exorcist was one of the defining films of my youth, possibly of the 20^th century. I remember to this day the buzz in the playground as those kids with siblings old enough to sneak into the back of cinemas described scenes and quotes. You all know the ones I'm thinking of: rotating head, defiled statue, antics with the crucifix. And what twelve year old could ever forget the line: "Your mother sucks xxxxx in hell." I'll wager people who have never even seen the film will know of these scenes, will have heard the more famous lines before. Which is remarkable in itself. How many films from over 30 years ago remain so entirely threaded in the public consciousness?

With this in mind, I was determined at least to try and watch it. I needed to see, with mature eyes, what the fuss was really all about. Is The Exorcist a "superb horror", as the TV guide described, and a groundbreaking piece of cinematic history. Or would it be a massive disappointment like many other so-called iconic horror films (I laughed my way through The Wicker Man), memorable only in its capacity to shock?

The other reason I wanted to see it again was that those of us who make our living from scaring others need continually to be re-honing our skills. A sort of continuous professional development for writers, if you like. If The Exorcist is one of the scariest films ever, what makes it so? What tricks does it contain that scribblers like me can learn from, adapt and use again.

Well, the first thing that struck me, watching the film with fresh eyes, is -for most of its duration - its complete ordinariness. This is a story of regular folks. OK, the main character is a famous actress but her primary role in the film is that of a perfectly ordinary mum. The film kicks off on an archealogical dig in the middle east. Some odd artefacts are found, it's a bit atmospheric, but nothing to get worked up about. Then we move to Washington and to a mother and 12 year old daughter enjoying family life. It's familiar, a little saccharine perhaps, almost verging on dull. And so it goes on.

Until that first, tiny clue that the status quo is about to swing. When Mum wakes up one night to find her daughter in the bed alongside her. 'What are you doing here?' She asks. 'Couldn't sleep, Mummy,' Regan replies. 'The bed was shaking.'

Mum dismisses this as a bad dream or an over-active imagination. But we know it's neither. We know it's the beginning.

Mr B and I made it to the flesh-slashing, vomit-hurling, head-rotating end and were in complete agreement that The Exorcist is worthy of its reputation. It is a superbly crafted film, seriously scary and genuinely groundbreaking.  And it has a huge amount to teach people like me whose job it is to scare others:

1. The power of the ordinary. If you fill your story with normal folks, giving them a life that seems entirely familiar and then shift the perspective, just a little, you've got a potentially very scary scenario, because when you take away one little foundation brick, what's to stop the whole pack of cards from tumbling down?

2. Playing to your audience's fears. Some fears are universal and for most adults, the greatest is of something terrible happening to a child we love. For all its gimics and special effects, The Exorcist is the story of a mother who faces losing her only child to a "disease" she cannot begin to understand.

3. Setting expectations. I'm convinced that one of the reasons The Exorcist scares the living daylights out of us is that we expect it to do so. I was on edge from the opening credits, knowing that some pretty heavy stuff was coming, and not being entirely sure when. The lesson for thriller writers has to be to let readers know from the outset that they are going to be scared.

4. Not overplaying your hand. Some of the scariest scenes in The Exorcist are not the famous vomit-laden ones, but the quieter moments: like when a young girl's eyes turn empty, and she laughs with a voice that is not her own.

5. Cutting off escape routes. The mother, in The Exorcist, cannot run. Her daughter is her life. She is trapped by a relationship, by the power of the mother/child bond, and as we see her options disappearing we can only share her sense of iscolation and entrapment.

6. Using shock tactics sparingly. There are some exceptionally shocking scenes in The Exorcist but, taken as a whole, they don't give the impression of a film using shock tactics gratuitously because they are balanced by the humanity of the rest of the film. The love, faith and courage shown by the mother and the two priests is enough to counter the graphic sexual violence that would otherwise drive people to turn the TV off.

I went to bed last night with a great deal to think about.

This morning, our young son joined us in our bed with the story of how something strange had happened to him in the night. His wrist-watch, that he'd been wearing when he went to sleep, fell on his face in the night and woke him up. And so it begins ...

On New Year's Eve I was given a friendship cake. Or, to be precise, I was handed a Tupperware dish with an inch of (what looked like) congealed condensed-milk in the bottom and a set of instructions: keep at room temperature, stir on a regular basis, converse with (like Prince Charles with his plants) and feed occasionally with flour, sugar and milk.

It grows. Rather alarmingly. Yes, I understand the properties of yeast, have even been known to bake my own bread, but there remains something rather disconcerting about having something in my kitchen that is bigger every time I look at it. (Apart from my son, of course, whose astonishing ability to increase in size I'm getting used to.)

The cake also has a name - Herman. Wasn't there a Munster so called?

Anyway, back to the instructions. On the ninth day, I divide Herman into five equal portions and give four of them away to friends, along with a copy of the instructions. Selected friends then start the process anew and so on, until the whole world is growing Hermans.

And so friendship spreads, supposedly.

I mention this, because one of my (only two) New Year's Resolutions is to spend more time with friends. (Whether they'll want to spend much time with me once I've foisted a Herman on them is another matter) Friends are something I regularly feel guilty about because I never feel I put the effort into the relationship that those who are in it with me deserve.

I'm invariably reserved with friends, playing the passive role, waiting from them to contact me, responding, rather than initiating. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this isn't fair. In fact it's fundamentally selfish. Why should I piggyback on their energy?

Whether it's laziness on my part or a fundamental lack of confidence (I genuinely can't see why these entertaining and popular people would want to spend any time with me) I'm never entirely sure, but the fact remains that my friendships are rather one sided, I feel guilty about it, and it's time I did something to address it.

(It's also rather indicative of another failing of mine. It's waiting for life to happen to me, rather than making it happen for me but maybe that's a subject for another blog.)

So, New Year Resolution No. 2: invest more time and energy in my friends.

Of course, I know New Year's Resolutions are invariably forgotten about come the middle of February - how many of us leopards ever really change our spots? Someone I know declared he will make no New Year Resolutions because there's nothing about himself he wants to change. Oh, to have such glorious self-confidence, although I suspect it can't go hand in hand with an intellect of any size.

Me though? Well, there's something I find heartening about recognising a problem, working out its solution and determining to put it into place. Making New Year Resolutions shows we know we're not perfect, that we recognise both the need and the desire to improve. It shows that we value the fresh start and are grateful that, at least once a year, another one comes along.

So, when I divide my Herman into five, (8^th January if you want to be sure you're out!) I will give one portion to my friend next door, who is the big sister I never had, a brilliant surrogate granny to my son, and whose presence in my life has a way of making me feel just that little bit safer. The next will go to the lady who lost a good friend over Christmas, because I want her to know that there is a spaniel-shaped hole in my life too right now. The third is destined for the woman down the road, who is a little older than I am, (although you'd rarely know it) and who is exactly what I want to be when I grow up. The last, I'm saving for the friend who can insult me to the core and make me laugh out loud with a single (usually the same) sentence and who I know, when given Herman, will consign it straight to the bin!

Resolution No 1: to work harder and write my best book ever. On that note ...

If there's one enquiry guaranteed to send me into orbit at this time of year it's: "Are you ready for Christmas?"

The next time I talk to my mother on the phone I know she's going to ask me exactly that; other parents at school pick-up will start slipping it in too; passing acquaintances will accost me in the street, enquiring cheerfully as to the state of my Yuletide readiness. Round about the 15^th of the month it will get shortened to: "Are you ready yet?'

Why do they do it?

Not only is it jaw-clenchingly annoying, it's meaningless to the point of being moronic (it's OK, mum doesn't read my blog) in its assumption that there's a point to arrive at in the next couple of weeks when every preparation has been made and we can sit, in smug and expectant idleness, waiting for Christmas to happen to us.

Seriously now, when can that point possibly be reached? Once we have presents wrapped, cards posted, tree trimmed, menus planned, etc?  Or do we have to buy the food, cook the dinner, plate it up and stick it in the freezer ready to be micro-waved back to edibility? At what stage does the effort stop and the Christmas begin?

And running alongside the list of chores are the build-up events, the carol concerts, drinks parties, nativity plays that I think, way back in history, were intended to be enjoyable but have long since become a series of hurdles to leap before we can reward ourselves with Christmas. It's as though the entire month of December has become a sort of virtual advent calendar with each day bringing along a pre-Christmas trial to be endured. Just a glance at the diary right now is enough to give me the jitters:

Dec 1^st - Advent Service

Dec 2^nd - School Christmas Fair

Dec 3^rd - Wedding (Wedding? Don't they bloody well know we have Christmas to get ready for?)

In one short, annoying sentence. 'Are you ready for Christmas yet?" embodies one of the deepest problems with my life and, I suspect, with quite a few others as well because it implies that the life we are living at the moment is nothing but a series of tiresome but unavoidable chores that we have to work our way through for the promise of the distant reward. Asking people if they are ready for Christmas in the first few days of the month puts the emphasis on moving as quickly as possible to a desired end, at the expense of enjoying the process.

I've fallen into exactly the same trap with my latest book. End of December is an important deadline for me, the date by which I aim to have finished the first draft. Agent Anne Marie and Mr B give me their initial thoughts early in January (never complimentary but I'm used to it) and I can spend the following six weeks refining and polishing before it has to go to Transworld at the end of February.

I've known for several weeks now that the first draft will not be done by end of December and with that knowledge has come a gradually increasing sense of panic. My priority now is building the word count, getting closer to the desired 110,000 as quickly as I can. It is not where it should be, and that is on making each chapter or scene as impactful as possible. I'm skipping research, glossing over characterisation, leaving out atmosphere and, most importantly of all, I'm not particularly enjoying the process.

This is wrong, because there were many times in the early days of this novel when I genuinely thought it could be my best yet. I was loving what was unfolding before me. I'm not now. Now, every hour at my keyboard is a trial to get through.

How did it happen? How did a job I love to bits become a chore?

It got Christmassed, is what happened. In my desperation to get to the finish line, I lost sight of the joy of the race. Which was both stupid and unnecessary. Book six will not hit the bookshops until Spring 2013. I have plenty of time. And no one will enjoy reading a book that I haven't enjoyed writing. So, tomorrow I will turn off my word count tool and concentrate on writing a scene in which my young hero, Barney, talks to two adults whom he likes and trusts, both of whom could be cold-blooded killers. I have to make it sad, touching and bone-chillingly scary.

As for Christmas, well the advent service made me cry sweet, sentimental tears, as it always does and the Christmas Fair, as usual, is the nicest event the PTA runs all year. The wedding was delightful: cold, beautiful and glittery. We sat on a table of people who have known each other for decades and who greeted us, perfect strangers, as old friends. Yesterday I wrapped presents, which I always enjoy because I'm good at it and tomorrow I'm going out for a Christmas meal with a dozen other mums from the village. On Wednesday Mr B is going to watch Handel's Messiah at St Paul's cathedral and, God I wish I was going with him, but I'll enjoy hearing all about it all the same. On Thursday my book-club are coming here for dinner. What a fabulous month this is!

So I'm begging you now, stop worrying about Christmas and, instead, chill out and enjoy December. And, please, wish me luck with that ruddy book!

I discovered last week that the scariest audience possible is a couple of hundred 14 - 17 year olds. Not, particularly, because they're mercilessly unforgiving of the slightest mistake, not even because they can't imagine a woman of my age having anything of interest to say, but because they were accompanied by their parents, most of whom knew me when I was 14 years old.

I was a special guest at the Awards Evening at my old school, invited to present an award to the most promising young writer and asked to say a few words about my own time at the school, and how my school experience had helped me in later life.

And there was the problem, because I'm not sure it did. When I went to Darwen Moorland High School at the age of 11, it was the year the town's educational system became comprehensive. It was a massive shake up. Lots of people were very unhappy and everyone: teachers, parents, pupils, were finding their way.

This was the prosperity proof north-west of England in the 1970s. We were all equal, because nobody had anything. And one thing we weren't allowed was ambition. Looking back, I think Moorland High School saw it as its business to churn out a semi-educated workforce who would neither want nor expect too much out of life. Getting above yourself was one of the worst sins you could commit back then and achievement was frowned upon. There were a couple of stellar brains in my year (not mine, I hasten to add) but whilst they'd have walked the entrance exams, Oxbridge was never mentioned. Only five of our year went to university, only three of us lasted beyond the first term. I believe to this day that that had nothing to do with the capabilities of the others in my year, and everything to do with the expectations (or lack of them) put upon us.

And yet, in this temple of the humdrum, we were continually told that these were the best days of our life. I tell you what, when you're thirty five minutes into a maths lesson, with nothing to look forward to but soggy vegetables for lunch and an hour hanging around in the cold, trying not to be hit in the face by a football, you really don't want to be told that this is as good as it gets.

I honestly couldn't tell that group of teenagers last week how school life had inspired me, but I could tell them what I wish someone had told me back then; which is that through hard work, passion and a belief in yourself, life can get better and better.

So instead, I talked about how one's teenage years are when you begin to understand who you are, what makes you tick and what it is you were put on this earth to do. I encouraged them to take every opportunity that comes along, that it doesn't matter if they fail many times over, because in the process they will find what it is that they excel at.

And then I got onto my own pet subject, which is the pursuit of excellence. I told them to work their socks off. That those who aim to be the very best that they can be, quite often find themselves the best that anyone can be. When I was their age, my English teacher introduced me to the sayings of Confucius and my favourite was always: "Aim for the moon, and you might just hit the top of a high tree." At the time I loved it, now I'm not sure it's quite good enough. Now, I think if children aim for the moon, every once in a while, they'll hit the moon.

I told them all of this but - you know what - I think they knew it already. Because Darwen Moorland High School is long gone and in its place is the Darwen Aldridge Community Academy. The Academy, in a glitzy, multi-million-pound new building in the town centre is revolutionizing the way young people are educated in my home-town. And thank God for that! Under the joint leadership of its inspirational sponsor and head-teacher, this has truly become a school that encourages and celebrates individuality, entrepreneurship and achievement. I don't remember a single award being given when I was at school, but last Thursday night I watched youngsters being rewarded for risk-taking, creativity, determination and passion. Passion! It would have been unheard of in my day. I saw children with talent, drive and self-belief, who were being encouraged by committed and motivated teachers to be the very best that they can be. Some of them, without doubt, are exceptional already. And things can only get better for this wonderful school, with which I'm proud, beyond words, to be associated.

A couple of special mentions before I close. The first to David Nairn, not just because he held us all spellbound with his beautiful voice and musicianship, but because thirty years ago, I remember his father, Peter, doing exactly the same thing. And the second to the first ever recipient of the SJ Bolton award for the most promising young writer. I'll be following this young lady's career with close interest and looking for her on the publishing lists in years to come. She certainly has the right name for it. Many congratulations, Kierney Hemingway.